Rexanne Becnel (24 page)

No doubt he still thought he could convince her to return with him to Chicago. But once she married Dexter, he would give up and go away.

So why did the thought of him leaving raise such an aching weariness in her chest?

The slurping sound of a rider approaching tightened every ending of her already overwrought nerves. When the rider slowed, however, and doffed his hat, it was not Tanner at all, and Abby knew a keen and undeniable disappointment.

“Miss Morgan—I mean, Miss Bliss.” The man O’Hara sawed at the mouth of his wild-eyed horse. “Sorry to hear about your pa.”

She swallowed her immediate revulsion of him and tried to ignore the unpleasant glint in his eyes. In his own way he was trying to be polite. She could at least respond in kind.

“Thank you, Mr. O’Hara.”

“It’s gonna be hard on you, what with you being alone and all.”

Abby concentrated on the oxen, refusing to meet his narrow-eyed gaze. “I’m hardly alone.”
I’m getting married tomorrow.
But she couldn’t bring herself to boast about something that she dreaded so much.

After another long moment of silence he kicked the horse forward, then turned it in a tight circle, watching as she struggled along in the mud. “You’re probably right. A woman who looks like you don’t never have to be alone. Not if she don’t want to.” Then with a last leering grin he spurred the laboring animal into a dead run.

She shouldn’t allow the insincere words of such an unsavory person to disturb her, she told herself as he disappeared in the drizzle. He was crude and ignorant. Yet Abby couldn’t shake off the icy finger of misgiving that ran down her backbone. He was a man who would take advantage of her, or anyone else, if he thought he could get away with it. Her father had warned her that the trail would be filled with people like him. And like Tanner.

The only difference between Tanner McKnight and Cracker O’Hara, she realized, was that the one at least possessed a veneer of manners to cover what was essentially a cold, unfeeling soul. They both saw people with a jaundiced eye, seeking out their weak spots, deciding how to use them to their own best advantage.

It would not surprise her if Cracker O’Hara had something to do with the attack on Rebecca Godwin.

Abby swallowed at that distasteful possibility, and the hairs stood up on the back of her neck. She had no proof, she realized, only instinct. But she was suddenly convinced of it. The man had the most degrading way of staring at a woman.

At least Tanner wasn’t like that. The last thing she felt when he looked at her was degraded. Flustered, maybe. Thrilled. Breathless.

And stupid, she reminded herself, before she could become
too
caught up in her foolish fantasies. He muddled her mind and chased every bit of logic right out of her head. She should be grateful to have finally recognized his true nature. He was a duplicitous rogue. A liar. An opportunist.

If only she could chase him out of her every waking thought.

Trying to do just that, she turned her mind toward her father and his painful, tortured death. He was at peace now. She had to cling to that one truth or else fall apart from sheer loneliness. Her father and mother were both in heaven now, and they were praying for her. She must not disappoint them.

But what, she wondered, would her mother think of this? What did she think of her own father—Abby’s grandfather—and his determined pursuit of her?

“Miss Abigail!” a childish call steered Abby’s thoughts away from that troubling subject.

“Why, Carl, I haven’t seen you in a couple of days. How have you been? How’s your foot?”

“Oh, it’s good. The snake just got my boot, not me.” He fell into step beside her, though he had to take two steps for every one of hers.

Abby affectionately stroked the wet felt of the hat he wore. “Where’s Estelle?”

“She’s sick.” He sighed. “Mama said for me to leave her alone.”

“Sick?” Abby sucked in a sharp, worried breath. “Sick how?”

He made a face. “Throwin’ up and stuff. You know.”

“Does she have a fever?” Abby asked, struggling to keep her fear for his sister from showing in her voice.

“Nope.” He hopped and landed with both feet in a shallow puddle, then laughed at the spray he’d caused. “Mama made us pray a long time last night
and
again this morning that Estelle wouldn’t catch a fever.”

Abby sent up a quick, fervent prayer of her own. Thank God. At least it wasn’t cholera.

“Can you tell me a story?”

Abby smiled down at the gap-toothed little boy. He’d survived the incident with the snakes well enough and had gone on daily to other adventures. But none had been nearly so dangerous. With God’s help he’d make it to Oregon and grow to be a man with children of his own someday.

She caught his hand and gave him a fond smile. “You know, I was just wondering how Tillie and Snitch managed on wet, muddy days like today. What do you think?”

He grinned. “I bet Snitch catches on to an oxtail and rides there.”

“And what about Tillie?”

“Hmmm.” His face screwed up as he thought. “Does she ride in the wagon?”

“Under the wagon. On one of those braces between the wheels. See?” She pointed to her wagon, and Carl peered under it.

“That’s a pretty good place to ride,” he conceded. “But it’s kinda boring. Not like being on an oxtail.”

“You think so? Well,” Abby mused, letting her mind spin with fanciful possibilities. “Did I ever tell you about the time Tillie and Snitch got caught in a raging flood?”

“A flood?” His eyes grew round. Then his face split in a wide grin. “I know. I know. I bet Snitch saves Tillie from drowning.”

“Actually it happened just the other way around …”

By the time Captain Peters called for the noonday break, Abby was feeling calmer. Carl and his never-ending demands for more stories had forced her to put aside her own miseries for a while, and she’d spun all sorts of wild and dangerous tales of mouse escapades.

Now determined not to slide back into depressing thoughts just because the child left to get his midday meal, Abby busied herself with tending the oxen, mending a small tear in the canvas wagon tent, and checking the wheels for any sign of wear. At least with the wet weather there was no chance for the wooden wheels to dry and shrink and fall out of their steel rims, as they’d been warned could happen.

She ate a cold leftover potato with just a sprinkle of salt while she waited for the call to proceed. But it started to rain again, harder than ever, and soon the call to circle up came echoing down the line.

“Jerusalem,” she swore. Walking was boring. But sitting was even more so. Still, she heeded the call, and when her turn came, she aligned her wagon with the rest.

By then the rain was a blinding torrent. Was any place in the world dry today? she wondered as she retreated into the damp recesses of the wagon. After donning her oilcloth rain slicker, she freed the oxen from their tracings. Victor Lewis rode up, though he was so covered against the rain that she could hardly identify him.

“I’ll herd them to their grazing,” he shouted over the steady roar of the storm. “You go keep Sarah company.”

Abby nodded her acceptance of his suggestion. She didn’t want to be alone with her sad thoughts today. Young Carl’s company had been a blessing. She knew now that she could not spend the rest of the day in her wagon, surrounded by so many reminders of her father and a life that was no more. And maybe Sarah’s cheerful company and her unremitting joy in her marriage would help prepare Abby for her own forthcoming wedding.

She rummaged in the wagon for her needle and thread and a faded cotton blouse she’d torn beneath the arm. She would work on her mending while she and Sarah talked.

The wagon swayed and creaked as the angry wind tore at the canvas top, and bursts of rain gusted in past the flapping curtain behind the driver’s box. Abby leaned past a heavy trunk, struggling to retie one of the curtain’s string fasteners when a mighty blast of wind blew in from behind her. When she turned to attend to that problem, however, she let out a small, startled cry. It was not a loose flapping curtain that had allowed the storm in, but Tanner McKnight’s unexpected entrance.

For a long, silent moment she stared at him, wishing he had not come here, yet absurdly pleased that he had. Beneath the dripping brim of his hat the ends of his hair were wet. His slicker shed rivulets of water onto the floor as well. He looked wild and dangerous, and she could not tear her eyes away.

She rubbed her shaking hands up and down the folds of her slicker before she found her voice. “You shouldn’t be here.”

He took his hat off and speared his fingers through his dark hair. “You shouldn’t either.” His midnight-blue eyes ran over her, and though she was completely covered by the shapeless slicker, the weight of his scrutiny lifted goose
bumps all over her. How would it be if he’d actually touched her?

“You shouldn’t be here either,” he repeated. “Let me take you back to Chicago, where you belong now.”

Abby stiffened. Of course. He’d come because he had his job to do. His reward to earn. Knowing she was absurd to feel so disappointed, she half turned from him, finished gathering her sewing materials, and stuffed them in the pocket of her apron.

“I don’t belong in Chicago,” she countered. “Besides, what you are proposing is quite impossible,” she added, striving to sound casual and offhand. “Dexter plans to build a church in Oregon, and I plan to be at his side.”
And perhaps one day I will learn to crave his touch as I so foolishly crave yours.

“You don’t really want to do that, Abby.”

She looked sharply at him. “You don’t know anything about what I want. You don’t know anything about me!”

Her stinging accusation hung in the air between them. A raindrop fell through the canvas to plop on the bed, then another. Abby automatically moved a pot to catch them, and in the close quarters the metallic sound of the drops seemed to tick away the seconds. The minutes.

“I know you’re far too passionate for the likes of Dexter Harrison.”

Abby swallowed hard. When he spoke to her of passion in such low, moving tones, he seemed to strike some chord in her that left all her nerves thrumming. “Dexter … Dexter and I, we shall get on very well.”

He smiled at that, a taut smile that seemed at once both sympathetic and somehow pained. “You would make the best of it, I’m certain of that. But I hardly think a preacher would let his wife publish stories about a pair of little mice and all their adventures.” He paused, watching her. Letting his words sink in. If they didn’t echo so closely Abby’s own fears, she would have been better able to ignore them.

“Don’t you pretend to care a bit about me or my stories. All you want is the money this man—”

“Your grandfather,” he interrupted.

She glared at him. “The money this man has promised to pay you.”

One side of his mouth curved down ever so slightly. “I do care about what happens to you, Abby.”

Why did he have to say that? He didn’t mean the words the way she wanted him to mean them, yet her foolish heart insisted on beating faster till she thought she could not breathe.

“Just leave me alone, Tanner McKnight. Go back to your employer and tell him … tell him that my mother and father loved each other very much. For whatever reason he objected to my father as a son-in-law, my father made my mother happy. Now they’re at peace together—” She broke off and fought down the hard rush of emotion that rose to choke her. “They are at peace together despite his interference. I don’t intend to let him interfere in my life any more than they did.”

He nodded once as if he understood and maybe even agreed. But then he said, “Do you love Harrison?”

Abby didn’t answer.

He didn’t give her time to, she tried to rationalize a few minutes later as she picked her way across the mud-slick that was their campsite, heading toward the Lewis wagon. He’d turned around and left before she had time to say that her father hadn’t loved her mother right away either. He’d come to love her, just as she would come to love Dexter.

Only she feared that in her case it would never happen. She’d already lost her heart to an undeserving rogue who didn’t value it in the least.

The day remained gloomy and wet. Even Sarah’s ebullient revelation that she thought she was in the family way couldn’t completely dispel Abby’s mood. One person died and another soul came to take its place. It was the way of the world, and that at least restored some of her equanimity. Perhaps she’d name her own first son Robert, after his grandfather. If Dexter would agree.

Dexter. Suddenly the realization that every decision for the rest of her life would be made only with his approval depressed her enormously.

She tucked her needle into a corner of the blouse she was repairing. “I think I’d best be going.” She smiled gratefully at Sarah and Victor. “Congratulations on your good news.”

They didn’t protest when she left, and Abby suspected Victor was happy to have his little wife all to himself. They were so obviously in love with each other.

Dusk had seemed to come early due to the low-hanging clouds. As she picked her way through the drizzle that still lingered, she saw Doris Crenshaw struggling to build a fire from her hoarded chips and kindling. Rebecca Godwin was with her, chattering with Doris’s daughter. Rebecca was healing from the trauma she’d endured, and so would she as well, Abby supposed.

But once Abby climbed into her lonely wagon, what little flare of optimism she’d had died. Her father’s tobacco pouch hung down on a peg near the front of the wagon. His prayer book lay on a trunk.

She should have buried him with that book, she realized with a guilty twinge. Or with the big family Bible. No, not the Bible. She needed to hold on to their family Bible and pass it on to her own children.

At that thought she began to cry, only this time it was not for her father, or even for herself. She cried for her children, hers and Dexter’s. How happy a home could she possibly hope to make for her children if she so deeply dreaded their father’s husbandly attentions?

Abby sat on the bed, hugging the big leather-bound volume to her chest as she wept. Only when a man’s voice hailed her did she look up.