Rexanne Becnel (19 page)

In the end, though, he’d done it. He’d slid the Bible from the man’s slackened grasp and opened it, and he’d found all the evidence he needed. But instead of satisfaction he’d felt a disappointment so keen, it hurt, and a shame he’d never experienced before. All the men he’d hunted down, all the lousy things he’d done in his life, and it was this one simple act that made him feel like a low-life snake. For inside their family Bible had been listed every momentous date of the older man’s life—including his real name, Robert Bliss, and that of his wife, Margaret Hogan. Abigail Morgan was Abigail Bliss—Willard Hogan’s missing granddaughter and only heir.

Tanner yanked his hat off his head and wiped his brow with his sleeve. He needed a bath and a haircut. Then he swore again. Hell, who did he think he was kidding? It would take a lot more than soap and water and a visit to the barber to put him in her class. Bad enough when she was only a proper little church mouse. But now … now he had to take her back with him, back to become the toast of Chicago society.

He wished to God he’d never taken this job.

He turned sharply, then let out another blistering string of swear words. Damn, but his knee hurt! There was no way he could sleep, yet walking was a torture.

Still he limped on, heading toward the loosely guarded stock.

“This ain’t no place for a man on foot, McKnight,” one rider barked in friendly greeting.

Tanner did not reply but instead whistled, a long, low compelling note. A few horses looked up, then returned to their grazing. But across the darkness an answering whicker came. Tanner whistled again, and in a few seconds Mac ambled out of the herd.

Tanner rubbed the animal’s muscular neck with true affection, then grabbing a handful of mane, flung himself up onto the animal’s back.

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered at the twin stabs of pain. His side or his knee—it was a toss-up which hurt worse. But once straddling his longtime companion, Tanner felt marginally better. People came and went, but a man could always rely on his horse.

With a nudge of his heels and only the slightest shifting of his weight, Tanner guided Mac away from the peaceful herd of horses and mules, milk cows and oxen. If he was going to deliver Abby Morgan—Abigail Bliss, he amended—to her grandfather, he’d need two horses. Since he was too keyed up to sleep, he might as well go check on Tulip.

Victor Lewis was working on Tulip’s leg by the light of a tightly twisted grass torch. The mare stood, head down, her injured leg held up in obvious pain.

Tanner alighted gingerly and made his way to Victor’s side. “How’s she doing?”

Victor packed a fresh glob of mud on the swollen leg, then wound a wet cloth around it. “The walking hurt her bad. I stayed back with her as long as I could, walking her real slow. But even so, every step was a torture for her. She’s hurting pretty bad right now.”

“Will she make it?” Tanner asked, rubbing the mare’s ears. She had raised her head a little at his arrival and
bumped her nose against his chest in greeting. But there was no mistaking that she was not well.

“If she hasn’t gone down yet, I don’t think she will. She could use a day of rest, though. It’s the walking that aggravates her leg. But if she could favor it a day or two …” He trailed off with a shrug.

“Maybe I should stay back tomorrow with her,” Tanner mused out loud. “She and Mac and I can make up the time once her leg’s better.”

Victor gave him a sidelong look. “I would have thought you’d want to take advantage of Abby’s doctorin’ skills.”

Tanner didn’t smile. “She’s … she’s already got her hands full with her father.”

“That’s not the point,” Victor persisted. But when Tanner still didn’t smile, he shrugged again. “Whatever. But it might take more than just one day for this leg to be ready for any serious traveling.”

“I’ll stay back with her as long as it takes.”

And maybe while he waited with Tulip, he might figure out how to deal with Abigail Bliss. Her father had dragged her out here to avoid Hogan. That was clear. But he was beginning to suspect that Abby didn’t know anything about it.

Tanner knew Robert Bliss would do everything in his power to keep Abby with him. But Tanner didn’t have any idea how Abby would react to the news that she had a wealthy grandfather in Chicago, one who wanted to spread the world at her feet.

He was certain, however, that it would fall to
him
to break it to her, curse his unlucky hide.

T
ANNER CAME BACK VERY
late. Abby heard his irregular step and occasional grunt of pain as he crept into the pallet she’d laid for him beneath the wagon. True to his word Dexter had made his bed just beyond the fire. Beside her her father slept fitfully, his breathing shallow and too often broken by his lingering cough.

If only they could take a reprieve, she thought longingly as Tanner settled down, so near and yet so far away. Between the heat, the choking dust, and the snakes, she was sick to death of traveling. A day spent in a shady grove of willows beside a clear running stream would lift everyone’s spirits, even the draft animals’. Lord knew that Eenie and Tulip both could use the extra time to heal.

But there was no chance of that. Captain Peters pushed them all a little faster every day. Besides, the Platte was hardly a clear running stream. It was more a hot, shallow river of thin mud, moving at a snail’s pace.

She shifted on her hard pallet, looking for a more comfortable position. Her father, Dexter, Tanner—the three of them were tearing her into little bitty pieces, shredding her emotions as well as her common sense. The level-headed, gentle Miss Abigail who taught school in Lebanon was gone, to be replaced by an irrational, often sharp-tongued woman who didn’t know which way to turn anymore.

Her father was ill—declined into melancholia. He needed her support more than ever. Yet she was so consumed with Tanner—by any standards a completely unsuitable man for her—that she turned a blind eye to her own father’s needs. He was all she had in the way of family, yet she let Solomon’s Song and all the inappropriate feelings it roused inside her distract her from that fact.

Abby reached out a hand to lightly touch her father’s brow. No fever. Thank the good Lord for that. She lay back and stared up into the darkness of the wagon tent. The moon shone faintly through the canvas, very like the truth straining to shine through the murkiness of her many emotions, she thought morosely.

What would Tillie do? she wondered, though she knew that what she needed was logical thought, not fanciful imaginings. Still, she couldn’t erase the thought. What
would
her little mouse character do if she found her innate sense of responsibility swayed by the inexorable pull of emotions?

Oh, just call a spade a spade, Abby.
She was pulled by more than emotions. Lust was not just an emotion. It was like the rest of the seven deadly sins, a failing of her fickle mortal soul, something to be fought and resisted with every fiber of her being.

She closed her eyes and prayed.
Make me be an obedient daughter. Make me accept the life you’ve planned for me.
But even as she prayed, she knew her heart was not entirely in it. She should implore her heavenly Father’s help, not demand it. God gave her a free will to make her own decisions, to do good or evil as she chose.

But longing for Tanner … was that such an evil thing? If they were to marry, to enter the holy sacrament of matrimony, surely that would be good.

Except that her father would never allow it. And anyway, Tanner wasn’t looking for a wife. How could she have forgotten that fact?

First he’d saved her from her own wicked tendencies when he could so easily have ruined her. Then he’d saved her life from that horrible nest of snakes. But he didn’t want to be bound to her for a lifetime.

She shut out the hopelessness of that fact the only way she knew how.

Once upon a time there was a little mouse named Tillie. She lived in such a big house that it supported a huge community of mice. In the dairy barn even more mice lived. But they were field mice, and the house mice kept strictly apart from their more common relatives…

Abby awoke with a headache and a crick in her back. By the time she checked on her father, dressed and alighted, both Tanner and Dexter were moving about. While Dexter fed a small fire, however, Tanner stuffed his meager belongings into his saddlebags.

“Where are you going?” Abby blurted out as a sudden panic seized her.

He didn’t respond at first, and in the awkward silence she heard Dexter’s tentative “Good morning, Abigail.”

“Good morning,” she managed to reply, sending him only a brief glance. But her gaze returned at once to Tanner. “You should be resting, or your knee and side will never heal. See?” she added when he limped over to the fire to test the warmth of the water heating for coffee.

“I plan on getting plenty of rest the next few days,” he retorted, though he did not look at her.

“What do you mean?”

“Stop mothering me, dammit. I can take care of myself just fine.”

Abby gasped in dismay at his curt tone. Why was he angry with her?

“I’m not mothering you,” she said quietly, mindful that Dexter had risen to his feet and watched them now in uneasy silence. “I’m just … I’m just concerned. After all, you wouldn’t have been hurt except for me.”

A swirling eddy of wind drove the smoke from the fire toward her, causing her eyes to sting with quick tears. When Tanner finally met her gaze, however, she knew it was not entirely the smoke. He was doing the right thing, putting some distance between them. Only she couldn’t bear it.

“Please stay,” she whispered for his ears only.

For a long moment their eyes held. His were so dark that they looked more black than blue. Hers, she suspected, revealed everything she felt for him. That she had fallen in love with him. But if he read the truth, it did not prevent him from turning away from it. And from her.

“I’ve got to take care of my horse. I’ll be back in a couple of days.”

He didn’t elaborate, and Abby did not have voice enough to question him further. Giving up on the coffee, he slung his saddle and saddlebag over one shoulder. As he limped away, a tall, solitary figure in the early-morning light, Abby could only watch him go—and her heart with him.

Dexter laid one hand on her shoulder, by way of comforting her, she supposed.

“It’s for the best, Abigail. Truly it is.”

Perhaps she would think so one day, Abby admitted, bending away from him to blindly tend the coffee. But she would be a very long time believing it.

Still, he’d said he’d be back in a few days. That was something to hold on to, wasn’t it?

It was the longest, most miserable day of her life. Dexter drove the wagon; she walked. Her father lay abed the whole day, clutching his Bible both sleeping and waking.

Abby never strayed farther than hailing distance from the wagon. Her father might need her, and anyway she could not bear the thought of the other women’s company today. She wished to be entirely alone in her misery.

And miserable she was. There was no sign of Tanner at all, no indication whose wagon he rode with. At the noon rest she prepared a substantial meal of bean soup and corn bread, but she couldn’t eat. Nor did her father take much, but Dexter more than made up for their lack of appetite.

Their rest was cut short, however, when a heavy band of clouds was spied advancing over the horizon from the northwest. Rain would be a welcome reprieve from the June heat. But it would turn the little swales to rivers and the ever-rising hillocks before them to slippery mudbanks. Traveling would become that much more difficult, so Captain Peters wanted to make as much distance as they could before the storm struck.

Obligingly Abby hurried to repack the wagon, taking one last sip of tepid water to sustain her. If it rained, she would find a way to take a good bath, even if she had to drape sheets between two wagons for privacy. But as the long afternoon ensued and the clouds only hung far beyond them, thoughts of a refreshing bath waned. She trudged along in the sticky heat, patting at her perspiring brow with a stained handkerchief and wondering about Tanner.

Not until they camped beneath a grim and threatening sky did she get an answer. As she set up buckets and bowls to catch whatever rainfall she might, Sarah called out a friendly greeting.

“Abby. At last. I’d have found you sooner, but I had to drive our team today.” With typical enthusiasm she positioned an enameled bowl so that runoff from the wagon tent would pour into it. “I had hoped you would come search me out. Or is your father too ill?” she added, concern coloring her voice.

“He’s sleeping right now,” Abby answered. She pulled her friend a little way from the wagon so as not to disturb him—and so that their conversation might not be overheard.

“Oh, Sarah. I don’t know what to do anymore. Papa … Dexter is driving our team. And Tanner …” She wrung her hands together. “He left this morning and I don’t know where he’s gone. He’s still injured from yesterday, and I’ve been so worried—”

“He’s with his mare. Didn’t he tell you?”

“Yes, but—” Abby broke off. She was behaving like a fool, she knew. But she seemed unable to stop herself.

“Victor stayed back with him this morning. He says Tulip—that’s the horse—she should be much improved in two days’ time.”

“Stayed back with him? What do you mean?”

Sarah gave her a quizzical stare. “Didn’t he explain—No, I can see he didn’t.” Sarah patted Abby’s arm comfortingly. “Tulip could barely keep up yesterday afternoon. Tanner decided to camp a day or two with her so her leg could mend easier. He’ll catch up afterward. And he’ll have a chance to mend as well.”

Abby nodded as if she understood, and part of her did. It made complete sense for him to stay back with his injured mare, and she found his loyalty to his poor horse commendable. But she didn’t understand why he hadn’t explained it to her. He’d behaved as if he was furious at her. And considering what had passed between them the day before …

Perhaps it was
because
of that. That and her pleading with him. “Please stay,” she’d begged. But he’d gone, leaving her to torture herself about why he’d left, and where—and with whom—he was.