Rexanne Becnel (18 page)

“Oh, Papa. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” She pounded on his back, then when that didn’t help, ran for a dipper of water.

After a few false starts he was able to swallow a mouthful. He leaned back in his chair, heaving for breath. As swiftly as his face had turned red, now it seemed to drain of all color.

Gray hair, gray mustache. Gray skin. With his eyes closed, only his rattled breathing saved him from looking like a corpse. That grim picture filled Abby with even more guilt than she already felt.

“I’ll mix up more cough medicine,” she murmured. But he caught her hand before she could go.

“Promise me, Abby girl.” He coughed again, and his entire frame seemed to shudder with the effort. “Promise me that you’ll turn your eyes away from him.”

Abby squeezed his hand in response to his imploring grip. “Papa. For once won’t you please explain to me what’s really going on? If you would just trust me. Why are we running away from Missouri?”

But he ignored her pleading words. “We don’t need the likes of him.” He sank back in the chair and let his eyes close once more. “We’ll do just fine. You’ll see.”

Only they weren’t doing fine, Abby admitted as she returned to cooking. Her father’s decline was beginning truly to alarm her. It didn’t help that he was so fixed in his dislike of Tanner. But as she mixed flour and water to begin biscuits, Abby had to admit that her father was right in certain respects. Tanner
did
live by the gun. God only knew what acts of violence he’d engaged in over the years.

Still, there was a deep well of goodness in him. Of honor. He’d come to her aid twice now. And he’d even warned her away from himself. She knew he was a good man. If only there were some way to convince her father of it.

Robert Bliss worried the very same subject, only it was Abigail he felt needed the convincing. She had a perfectly good man ready and willing to marry her, yet she was blind to Reverend Harrison’s sterling qualities. She was blind because she only had eyes for that gunslinger.

Robert rubbed one hand across his eyes.
Father in heaven, help me,
he silently prayed. For a moment he wondered if perhaps he should tell Abigail everything. About her grandfather and his letter. About the wealth the man was ready to cast before her. Perhaps if she knew, she would understand why marriage to Dexter made so much sense.

But no, that was far too risky, he realized. He watched her as she shook the heavy skillet back and forth to prevent the pan biscuits from scorching. There was no guarantee she would be as repulsed by Willard Hogan’s vulgar offer as he was. After all, she’d never had any extra money available to her. Hogan’s offer might sound awfully tempting to someone who’d lived so sheltered a life as Abigail.

No, they must simply go on as they were. Best for her not to know about her selfish grandfather. And as for Tanner McKnight … Robert let out a long, slow sigh. Whether the man was simply the gunslinger he appeared to be or some hireling of Hogan’s, it hardly made any difference. Robert would just have to be on his guard whenever that man was near her. He would just have to always be on his guard.

T
HE THREE MEN SAT
evenly spaced around the fire, her father studying his Bible by the last streaks of sunlight, Dexter mending a tear in a pair of his pants, and Tanner massaging his knee. Abby had thrown together a dinner of beans, pan biscuits, and a little gravy made from the last of the antelope. The false rush of energy her nervousness had generated was fast waning, and she was glad the food was nearly done. She wanted nothing more than to crawl beneath the bed linens and succumb to the mind-numbing weariness that already threatened to overwhelm her.

It was an exhaustion, she knew, not just of the body but also of the spirit. For as she’d worked, she’d tried to pray, and even her prayers had been muddled.

Help me to be patient with my father. Help me to stay strong, at least until journey’s end. Help me to know what to do about Tanner.

But there had been no answers, no flashes of insight. No God speaking directly to her as He apparently did to her father.

What was she to do? she worried as she scooped a generous portion of beans onto each tin plate. Life had been so simple in Lebanon—a very long time ago, it seemed. But now she felt like the thick knotted rope her students used for tug-of-war during their lunch break, yanked back and forth, shredding apart on the inside.

“This is delicious,” Dexter told her once they’d begun their otherwise silent meal. He even smiled at her, a tentative, hopeful smile. But after only a nod of acknowledgment she averted her eyes, concentrating on the beans. She didn’t want to give him any ideas whatsoever, especially since she suspected her father might be encouraging his suit again.

She glanced at Tanner, then took a sharp breath when she found him already staring at her.

“Yes, delicious,” he echoed in an innocuous tone. But the full meaning of his words started the most disquieting feelings reverberating throughout her body. His gaze held steady, telling her things she knew she should not want to hear. But she
did
want to hear them. She wanted to listen to every word, for the rest of her life.

Her father’s hacking cough drew her eyes abruptly away from Tanner. She realized with relief that her father had not noticed the look that had passed between her and Tanner. But then she felt an awful guilt. Her father’s physical strength was declining. His cough was getting worse, and yet her first reaction to it was relief for herself.

She set her plate down on the crate she sat on and crossed over to him. “No more sleeping on the ground,” she told him once the spell had passed and he could catch his breath. “You sleep in the wagon. With Tanner,” she added.

Her father shifted his dulled gaze to the man watching from across the fire. Abby expected him to object, to bluster and protest. When he did not—when his arm trembled beneath her hand—she knew a sudden, chilling fear. He was more ill than she’d suspected. All the terror she’d felt as she’d watched her mother’s decline came back in excruciating detail. Every torturous minute. And then the bleak days after she’d died—

“No,” she practically shouted, unnerved by the grim turn of her thoughts. “No reason for you to stay up any longer,” she amended. “You need to rest. Come on, Papa. I’ll help you.”

He stood, though it took considerable effort for him to muster the strength. Tanner and Dexter watched the interchange between father and daughter. Then they both stood as well.

“May I be of any assistance?” Dexter asked.

“Fetch some water,” Tanner answered. “I’d do it but for the obvious reasons. Two buckets,” he added as he limped toward Abby and her father.

Dexter hesitated, but at a pleading look from Abby he turned to his task. Tanner meanwhile took Abby’s place with one strong hand under her father’s arm. “I’ll take him off for a moment of privacy. You make whatever concoction you must so that he can get a good night’s sleep.”

Like Dexter, Abby did as she was told. Indeed, so shaken was she that she was incapable of thinking for herself. By the time they reassembled, however, and she put her father in bed with a strong dose of horehound and honey, she had her emotions better under control. The other two men puttered around, cleaning up the dinner mess while she sat beside her father in the darkly shadowed wagon.

“I want the big Bible,” he whispered hoarsely. “The big Bible.”

Once more Abby retrieved the old family Bible from the trunk where it lay with the other most precious of their mementos.

Though her hands trembled with fear, Abby swiftly laid the book beside him, then placed one of his hands on the familiar worn leather. His eyes were closed, and in the dark it would have been difficult to read anything. But Abby knew he did not need to see the Bible. His fingers moved lightly over it, tracing the embossed patterns on the cover and sliding up the well-creased spine. He was not a man who craved material goods beyond what was necessary for health and comfort. But he loved that Bible. Because her mother had given it to him it was his most prized possession.

“Whither thou goest,” he murmured, so low that she had to bend down to hear. “That’s what Margaret vowed to me, and she was true to her word.” He coughed, but it was milder than before. “Perhaps it’s my time to go with her.”

“No, Papa. Don’t say that.” The anguish in Abby’s voice must have registered, for he opened his eyes. Even in the dim wagon their gazes clung. “You have to get well, Papa. For me,” she added, barely holding back her frightened tears.

His eyes closed again, and panic welled in her chest. But he patted her hand, and the faintest smile flitted across his lips. “You’re a good daughter, Abigail.” He took a slow, labored breath. “You would make a good preacher’s wife.”

If she thought it would make him well, she would willingly wed the Reverend Dexter Harrison, Abby decided as she sat beside him once he slept. If it would give her father the strength to carry on, she would promise him anything at all. She simply could not bear to lose him. To lose the last family she had.

“Abigail?”

Dexter’s hushed call, coming so swiftly on the heels of Abby’s desperate thoughts, seemed almost a sign from God. She pressed a light kiss to her father’s brow, then pushed herself wearily to her feet. Both Dexter and Tanner waited in the pale moonlight for her, and her troubled gaze slid from one of them to the other.

“He’s asleep now. I think … I think we’d best do the same.”

Dexter helped her climb down from the wagon. “I’ll bed down here, if you like.”

She gave him a tight smile of gratitude. “Thank you. I know he would appreciate it.”

The lanky preacher bobbed his head, then shot a wary glance toward Tanner. “I’ll just go fetch my bedroll. Will you be all right?” he finished, taking her hand in his.

“I’ll keep a watch on things,” Tanner answered before Abby could.

At the sound of Tanner’s voice all the mixed-up feelings inside her seemed to multiply a hundredfold. Abby extricated her hand from Dexter’s warm grasp, but she did not look at Tanner.

“I’ll be fine,” she assured Dexter. “And I appreciate everything you’ve done for my father.”

Dexter stared hard at her, his heart shining in his eyes. “I hope you know that I’d do anything for your father. And for you, Abigail.”

She had no answer to give him. Every part of her that was sensible wanted to feel toward him as he obviously felt toward her. But she didn’t feel that way. It was as simple—and as complicated—as that. Again she gave him that small forced smile. Once he left, however, she felt as if her face would crack under the pressure of maintaining that expression.

“Come here, Abby.”

Before she even heard his approach, Tanner took her arms in his hands. “Come here, sweetheart, before you fall down from exhaustion.”

Whatever remnants of logic she possessed fled as Tanner turned her to face him and enfolded her in his strong embrace. He was solid and warm, and he offered her the one comfort she truly needed. No demands. No pressure. Just someone to lean her head against and wrap her arms around.

For a long, quiet moment they stood that way, sheltered by the night, surrounded by the cool breeze and soft evening sounds. She could have stood that way forever, his heart beating a reassuring rhythm beneath her ear as she borrowed from his vast reserves of strength and will. But her father’s cough, though nothing like the hacking of before, intruded on her momentary idyll.

Abby pulled back reluctantly. Then, when he would have tugged her into his arms once more, her sense of responsibility forced her to slip all the way free of his hold.

“I … I can’t,” she whispered.

“Can’t what, sweetheart? Rest even a minute? If you don’t rest soon, you’re going to get sick yourself. Then what will you do?”

Abby shook her head and silently cursed the tears that stung her eyes. “I can’t,” she whispered brokenly, unable to explain any further.

She heard him expel a long breath. “Go wash up for bed. I’ll sit with your father a few minutes. Go on,” he prompted when she remained rooted in her tracks.

In the end it was easier for her to do as he said than to try to explain. He climbed into the wagon, favoring his injured knee, while she found one of the buckets of water. She bathed her face and neck, her hands and arms. Then she made a quick trip into the dark prairie surrounding them for a private moment.

She looked up when a faint light flared in the wagon. Had Tanner lit a candle, or the lantern? But after only a few seconds the light was snuffed out.

By the time she returned to the wagon, once more washed her hands, and checked to see that their camp was settled for the night, Tanner was perched near the back of the wagon, a cheroot glowing softly in the night.

“You’d best sleep in here beside him. He might need you in the night.”

Abby nodded, though she knew he could not see her movement. She waited until he climbed down before she climbed up. He didn’t speak again, and they didn’t touch.

She was grateful for that, she told herself as she removed boots and stockings, her skirt and single petticoat. But when she slid her flannel gown over her head and let her hair down, she knew she was lying. She wanted to be with Tanner. Not in the carnal way. At least not tonight. But if she could have simply lain beside him in his arms, pressed up to his strong body, and still have retained her reputation, she would have done so without a qualm.

But she couldn’t. She couldn’t, and she would very likely mourn that fact every day of her life.

Tanner took a last pull on the cheroot, then tossed it down and viciously ground it out. Why her? He wanted to throw his head back and scream his frustration at the impassive night sky. Howl his anguish at the moon. Instead he settled for a low string of oaths, the foulest language he’d heard in a lifetime spent moving around in foul places and foul company.

Why the hell did it have to be her?

But it was her. She was Willard Hogan’s missing granddaughter. He’d sat there in the wagon beside her sleeping father while she was gone, and for the longest time he’d just stared at the Bible in the man’s hands. He’d known it would provide the proof he needed, one way or the other. But he hadn’t wanted to look