Cherish (6 page)

Gulp, dab. Gulp, dab
. Once he got a rhythm going, he relaxed a little.

She’d definitely taken a nasty tumble and had a number of abrasions on her torso and legs. After doctoring them, he sat back on his heel and did a peel-and-peek body check to make sure he hadn’t missed any spots. Thus convinced that he’d dabbed them all, he blew like a badly winded buffalo. Taking care of a woman was a hell of a lot different from taking care of a man.

Almost as if she sensed the liberties he’d just taken with her person, the girl began to toss her head, her fair brows pleating in a frown. Race almost jumped out of his skin, thinking she was about to wake up.

He grabbed the fresh nightgown he’d laid out and started stuffing her into it. Getting her limp arms down the sleeves was like trying to thread wet leather laces through boot eyelets. When he tried to reach up the sleeve to get hold of her hand, his fist got stuck in the cuff. He shook his wrist and jerked. If she woke up right now, half in and half out of her nightgown, with a strange man’s arm shoved up the front and one hand stuck in her sleeve, she’d fly into raving hysterics, for sure.

He finally got his hand out of the cuff by pulling with such force that he nearly toppled backward. She continued talking out as he finished wrestling her into the nightgown. Nothing she said made much sense.
Nightmares
. Race hurried to fasten the buttons that ran from her chin to her waist. Fifty of them, at least. It seemed like that many, anyhow; all of them so little, he had trouble getting hold of them.

When he finally got her completely dressed and tucked back under the quilts, he was worn to a frazzle. She thrashed her legs, her lips moving as she whispered things he couldn’t make out, her small face twisted with what could only be anguish. Race’s heart caught at her expression. She was obviously reliving the events of the day.

“Whoa, sweetheart” He lightly stroked her golden
hair, fascinated by the flyaway tendrils that caught at his fingertips. The only time his own hair had ever gone that kinky was when he’d bent too close to the cooking fire and singed the ends. “You’re just havin’ a bad dream, that’s all. You’re safe. Ain’t nobody gonna hurt you. I swear it.”

She quietened and turned her cheek against the inside of his wrist. A defeated whimper came from her, shrill and broken.

The sound cut through Race like a dull-edged knife. He’d walked through that encampment, and he’d seen enough to know that her papa hadn’t done much of anything—hadn’t gone for a rifle or lifted a hand. He’d just stood there and let the unthinkable happen.

Now, in her mind’s eye, she was seeing it all unfold again, and as before, an able-bodied man was standing aside, doing nothing. Every instinct Race possessed bridled at the thought. He wanted to crash through the barriers between dream and reality—to take her in his arms and press her face to his shoulder so she wouldn’t see, if nothing else. Anything to take the pain away. But she was trapped in a world he couldn’t reach.

Race had no idea how long he sat there, stroking her hair and trying to call her back from her troubled dreams. Minutes? Hours? He only knew he sat in one position for so long that pain knifed through his legs and zigzagged up his spine. When she finally quieted and drifted into a deep sleep, he was so weary he could scarcely keep his eyes open, and his head felt as if someone were driving a spike through it. He stretched out beside her on top of the blankets, using the crook of his arm as a pillow. As he let his eyes drift closed, he promised himself he’d only lie there long enough to get rid of his headache. It wouldn’t do for her to wake up and find a strange man in her bed.

That wouldn’t do at all.

Eyes closed and feeling oddly disembodied, Rebecca came
slowly awake. First she became aware of the familiar sounds of early morning that drifted to her from outside the wagon—the muted shuffle of footsteps on loose dirt, the clank of cooking pots and utensils, the sporadic snap and crackle of campfires, the indistinct clucking of chickens, and another noise coming from directly behind her that reminded her of someone snoring. Strange, that. Papa had never been one to snore. Then she heard a dog bark, which struck her as even stranger. No one in their caravan even owned a dog.

On the tail of that thought, Rebecca began to notice other noises that didn’t fit. In the distance, there was a monotonous droning sound, like the lowing of cattle. And somewhere close to the wagon, a gruff male voice muttered a profane expletive.

She frowned in bewilderment. Was that tobacco smoke she smelled? And what on earth was making that persistent jingling noise? It reminded her of the sound riding spurs made as the rowels dragged in the dirt or stuttered across the planks of a boardwalk, a distinctive
chuhchink—chuhchink—chuhchink
.

Something wasn’t right. None of the brethren used profanities or wore spurs on their boots, and worldly indulgences, such as the use of tobacco, were strictly forbidden. Vaguely alarmed, Rebecca struggled to open her eyes, a feat that proved to be beyond her.
Tired. So awfully, hor
ribly tired
. Her arms and legs felt as if they were anchored to the bed with iron weights.

No need to worry, she thought drowsily. Papa was out there, and so were Ma and all the others. Perhaps another caravan had left the main trail and camped near them last night, and this morning, the strangers had walked over to introduce themselves. The Brothers in Christ seldom mingled with outsiders, but when people did make friendly overtures, they felt it their Christian duty to reciprocate.

Rebecca nuzzled her cheek against the coarse linen pillowcase, luxuriating in the wonderful softness of the down-filled ticking. The lure of sleep seemed irresistible, and she drifted in the hazy mists between dreams and awareness, too exhausted to force herself totally awake. She had no idea how long she lay there, blanketed in dimness. She was simply too weary to care. But then, from just outside the wagon, a loud clanking noise startled her back into renewed awareness.

“Damn it, Blue!” a male voice barked. “Keep your nosy self outta my cookin’ fire, you no-account, addlepated hound!”

That definitely was
not
a voice Rebecca knew. With supreme effort, she managed to crack open her eyes. Through the spikes of her lashes, she stared blearily at what appeared to be the interior wall of their wagon, which meant she must be lying on the floor. How she had come to be there, she had no inkling. With little or no surplus space inside the cram-packed wagon, she and her parents slept on top of the cargo, three to four feet above the floor.

She ached all over, she realized, as if her whole body had been pummeled with a club. Even the strands of hair that hung free from her braid seemed to hurt. Had she been ill? She batted her lashes, struggling to keep her eyes open and clear away the fogginess inside her head. Yes, she must have been ill, possibly even delirious with a fever. That would explain why she felt so awful and had no recollection of making her pallet on the floor. Little wonder she ached and felt too weak to move.

It was past sunup. A brisk morning breeze buffeted the
wagon canvas, carrying with it the scent of a plains grassland, a not unpleasant mix of sage, saltbush, and dust. Straining under the bucking tarp, the hickory support beams creaked above her.

As her awareness sharpened, the clucking noise she’d heard earlier resumed, and with a growing sense of alarm, she realized it wasn’t chickens, after all, but men talking softly and cackling with laughter. She tried to make out what they were saying, but the words were so indistinct they were nearly drowned out by the snoring sound, which seemed to be coming from somewhere near her ear. So near, in fact, that the sputtering huffs of breath were stirring a lock of hair at her temple.

What man, besides her papa, would be sleeping in their wagon? The question wove in and out of her thoughts like a strand of yarn through the warp of a loom. In some distant part of her mind, she sensed that she should feel alarmed, but she was too befuddled and dizzy to grab hold of the feeling.

Instead she studied the vertical wooden stud only inches from her nose, struggling to impose clarity of thought over the haze of vague and disturbing impressions. Was she having a dream? An especially vivid one?

She felt as if she were drifting on a cloud. No. She was definitely inside the wagon. Only where had all their trunks gotten off to? Since their departure from Philadelphia, Papa had never once completely unloaded their cargo. The closest he’d come was to rearrange some of the trunks to distribute the weight more evenly. Yet now the wagon was empty.

The gauzy pink of early morning shone through the canvas, lending a rosy glow to the shadowy interior of the wagon. Through the tatters in the heavy cloth, shafts of sunlight formed pearlescent motes that caressed her face with warmth. She smelled eggs and bacon frying, which made her stomach pang with hunger. Lands, she felt as if she hadn’t eaten in days or had a drink of water either, for that matter. Thick and cottony, her tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth.

She tried to push up on an elbow, realizing with no
small amount of alarm that it wasn’t exhaustion alone that made her arms and legs difficult to move. Something actually was holding her down—something heavy and warm.

Just below her hip, a weight rested over her legs. Her searching fingertips traced its shape, which felt very like a muscular thigh sheathed in worn denim. Following the tapered length, she curled her fingers over a bony knee. A very
large
bony knee, so square and sturdily made it could only belong to a man.

Her heart skittered. That couldn’t be. She pressed more firmly with her fingers to better explore the shape. If not a knee, what on earth was it? She reached to see what lay over her waist. Her fingertips met with a finer weave of cloth, lying in bunched folds at the bend of someone’s elbow. A shirt sleeve? Venturing farther down, she traced the shape of a corded forearm. A hysterical urge to giggle came over her. This wasn’t happening. She was still asleep and having a strange dream, after all. Lord save her, there couldn’t actually be a man’s arm and leg in her bed. Unless, of course, there was a man attached to them.

Her heart leaped when she came to a broad, thick wrist and the back of a leathery hand nearly as big as a supper plate. Her father had coarse, curly hair on his arms, while this man’s was short, straight, and lay close to his skin like a silken veil.

She circled the realization cautiously, for if this wasn’t Papa’s arm, it meant that some other man was lying on the pallet with her. A man with long, sturdy fingers that were loosely cupping her breast.

Her breast? With a jolt, Rebecca came fully awake, her breath trapped in her chest, her body frozen, horror mushrooming within her.
Oh, dear God
!

Memories flashed through her mind in a vivid rush. She had gone out to gather buffalo chips for the cooking fires, heard screams, and run back to the wagons. As she drew close, she’d seen strange men in the encampment. Sweat beaded on her face as she recalled the horrible things those men had been doing to the people she loved.

Oh, sweet Father in heaven
. Those men had come back, and somehow she’d been taken captive.

She let loose with an ear-splitting shriek.

“
Jesus H.—Washington—Adams—Jefferson—Christ
!”

Race shot up from the pallet as if a hot brand had been laid to his backside, his sleeping partner scrambling in the opposite direction. Landing on his knees at the edge of the quilt, he stared incredulously at her cotton-draped bottom as she crawled frantically on all fours toward the front of the wagon. The headache that had plagued him so mercilessly last night recommenced, exploding behind his eyes like gunpowder touched off by a lighted lucifer.
The girl
? How in tarnation had he ended up in bed with her?

His last clear recollection was of stretching out beside her to shut his eyes for a minute.
Damn it
! He had done exactly what he’d cautioned himself not to do—he’d fallen asleep.

Her flight aborted by the end of the wagon bed, she huddled on her knees in the left front corner, her well-rounded fanny uppermost, her pointy elbows resting on the plank floor in front of her, her forearms folded protectively over her head. She was scared half to death, and who could blame her? In his sleep, he’d been hugged up to her like a pair of rain-soaked buckskins.

The inside of the wagon had grown so quiet that the air seemed to crackle. He needed to explain everything to her—the faster, the better. Only where should he start?

“This ain’t how it looks, darlin’.” His voice still gruff with sleep, he sounded like a bullfrog croaking. He worked his mouth for spit he didn’t seem to have. “I—uh—” His brain went as blank as unlined paper. What could he say to her? That he was real sorry for cozying up? “I—uh—
damn
! I know how this looks. Real bad, that’s how! But I never meant to get in bed with you, I swear. Not under the covers, leastwise.”

The words seemed to hang there, echoing like the blast of a shotgun. How come, he wondered, at times like this, the God’s honest truth always came out sounding like a lie?

“I had a real bad headache, is all,” he rushed to add, “and I just laid down to try and get shut of it. I reckon I fell asleep.”

Race wasn’t sure what he expected. Some kind of reaction, at least. For her to look at him, maybe? Instead, she just continued to huddle there, arms shielding her head. He had a bad feeling she was so scared that she wasn’t hearing a word he said.

And wasn’t that a fine kettle of fish. On his best day, he wasn’t exactly gifted at putting a shine on words.

“I must’ve got chilled during the night,” he said, as much to himself as to her. “In this country, it can get colder than a well digger’s ass along about dawn. In my sleep, I reckon I went burrowin’ for warmth under the quilts.”

Nothin
’. Just that terrible shaking. Frustrated, he raked his fingers through his hair, encountered tangles, and damned near jerked the strands out by the roots. The sting brought tears to his eyes. He blinked and sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose.

In his mind’s eye, he pictured her waking up this morning and realizing a man was in bed with her. He doubted she had any recollection of what had happened yesterday after the attack on her traveling party, which meant she had no idea who he was or how she’d come to be in his company.

The thought brought his head up. No recollection? If she remembered nothing save for the killings, she probably thought he’d been involved.

Even when he was scrubbed up, clean-shaven, and wearing a fresh shirt, Race knew he had a look about him that made strangers leery. He had always laid it off on his coloring, the dark skin and eyes, the high cheekbones, and the blue-black hair that marked him as a breed. There was also the distinctive way he wore his guns so low on his hips, the stamp of a gunslinger. In this country, folks had a healthy fear of both Indians and gunmen, especially ladies, and this girl had more reason than most.

Of all the dumb things he’d ever done—and he’d pulled some good ones—falling asleep beside her took the prize.

Race pushed to his feet. At his movement, the wagon jounced slightly. The girl gave a startled squeak, pushed off on all fours like a frog in a hopping contest, and grabbed hold of the rough half-wall behind the driver’s seat. When she threw up a leg to crawl out, Race nearly leaped after her. But then he thought better of it. That would only frighten her more.

Even if she got outside, she wouldn’t go far. The surrounding area was crawling with his men, for one thing, and she wore no shoes to protect her feet. The grassland that stretched forever in all directions was chock-full of burrs and stickers. There was also the fact that he had longer legs, which made the outcome of any footraces between them a sure bet in his favor.

As he anticipated, she poked her golden head out the front opening of the canvas, saw all the men milling about, and froze with one knee hitched up over the seat, the hem of her nightgown riding high in back to reveal her calf and ankle. He’d never seen a leg so daintily made. Her ankle bone looked about a third the size of his.

For some reason, seeing that leg drove home to him what a hell of a fix she must think she was in, outnumbered and outflanked everywhere she turned, by men she thought were cold-blooded killers.

“Sweetheart, don’t be afraid. You got no call to be. You’re safe here. Me and my men won’t harm a hair on your head, I swear it. As for the killin’ of your people, I didn’t have nothin’ to do with it, and neither did they.”

Her breath coming in shaky rasps, she turned to look at him. Her expression caught at his heart. Fear. Hopelessness. Defeat. She slid off the wagon seat and sank to the floor, her back pressed to the wall, her slender body once again drawn into a protective huddle, arms locked around her bent knees. Her small face was so bloodless that he could scarcely tell where her white cotton nightgown left off and her skin began. Under her blue eyes, dark circles stood out in stark relief against her pale cheeks, and her soft, full lips were tinged with purple.

He searched his mind for some way—any way at all—to reassure her. The way she looked at him made him feel
too big for his skin. Six-three in his bare feet, he stood a head taller than most men. To someone of her slight stature, he knew he had to seem huge. There had been countless times in Race’s lifetime when he’d had cause to wish his legs weren’t so long or his shoulders so wide, but never more so than now.

Barely aware of his movements or the thoughts that ran through his mind to prompt them, he folded a leg under himself to sit down, hoping he might seem less intimidating that way. Then, very slowly so as not to startle her, Race unbuckled his gun belt. Bless her heart, she was shaking so hard, she looked incapable of standing, let alone making a run for it. As she followed the movements of his hands, a look of stunned disbelief crossed her face.