Rexanne Becnel (3 page)

It was Sarah’s turn to hesitate. “Um … well. I do like it now. But at first …” She sighed, then let out a nervous giggle. “Looking back on it, I think Victor was just as naive and innocent as I was. It was rather uncomfortable the first time. And we were awkward for a while. But once we got the hang of it …” She trailed off with another giggle.

“So. You like it.”

Sarah met Abby’s earnest look. “Oh, yes. I like it very much.”

Abby digested that for a few seconds. “Tell me this, then. Did you love Victor before or after … it.”

“It?” Sarah laughed again, but when she spied Abby’s hot cheeks, she managed to control her mirth. “All right. I’ll tell you the whole truth. I loved Victor before I married him. After that first night, well, I wasn’t so sure that I hadn’t made a terrible mistake. But after a few more days we were back to rights. There. Does that help any?”

Abby smiled at Sarah and reached for her hand. “Yes, very much. But it means you must stop trying to push me on the good reverend. And him on me.”

With an exaggerated sigh Sarah conceded. “You know, Abby Morgan, you’ve just spoiled all my fun for this trip. I was so looking forward to playing the matchmaker. Are you sure there’s no one else you have an eye for?”

“No. No one at all,” Abby vowed as her good humor fled. Abby Morgan. She still had not grown used to the name her father forced the two of them to use. They’d been around and around about it on the long journey to St. Joe. Or at least
she’d
gone around and around it. Her father had remained firmly and unreasonably silent on the subject. They would be the Morgans from now on, he’d sworn—or at least until they were settled in the Oregon Territory. No matter how she had pleaded, he’d absolutely refused to explain.

Despite her angry urge to rebel, or at least to threaten to do so in order to force him to explain, Abby nonetheless couldn’t quite bring herself to be that openly disobedient. Her father had always been a logical, hardworking man. If he was pursuing such strange behavior, it must be for a very good reason.

Yet she couldn’t help wondering if this was all connected to her mother’s death and the depression he still suffered. The move. The name change. The secrecy. It made no sense at all.

No one named Bliss had joined any of the wagon trains that had crossed the Missouri River this year. Tanner McKnight flung his saddlebags across his tall gelding’s back and tied them down. There was no one named Bliss, but there were at least seven men traveling without wives but with daughters.

He settled his wide-brimmed hat securely on his head and squinted back at the St. Joe Palace Hotel. There would be no soft feather beds for a while. But hell, once he found the girl and delivered her to Hogan, he could buy himself the biggest feather bed Chicago had to offer. The biggest feather bed anyone in the Kansas Territory had ever seen.

“Do you have to go so soon?”

Tanner glanced past his packhorse to the woman standing on the hotel’s wooden porch. Fancy Francie, her name was, and she’d known a few fancy moves even he had never seen before. Right now, though, with her face scrubbed of all makeup and her pretty blond hair loose on her shoulders, she looked more a schoolgirl than the highest priced working girl in St. Joseph. Recalling the night they’d just spent together, he was hard-pressed to remember what he’d even come to Missouri for.

“I’ve got to go,” he replied. “But the next time I’m in town, I’ll look you up.”

When she only smiled, then shrugged and went back inside, Tanner let out a frustrated oath. It had been a long, hard ride from Chicago. It would be an even longer ride across the vast prairies searching for Willard Hogan’s grandchild. He could be on the trail for weeks, in the company of pioneer families, every one of them fiercely protective of their womenfolk. Last night’s energetic diversion might have to sustain him for a long time.

But even on the Oregon Trail there were bound to be some willing women. There always were. Still, he had no intention of spending even one more day on this misbegotten search than he had to.

He frowned, concentrating once more on the task before him. Bliss was using another name, not that Tanner was surprised. Hogan described Bliss as an idealistic fool, a man who tilted at windmills. Still, Bliss had obviously tilted at Hogan’s windmill and won: He’d married the man’s daughter. Now Hogan was determined to get his grandchild away from Bliss. Only Bliss was hightailing it to California. Or so he said.

California. Tanner tugged the cinch belt snug on his dappled-gray gelding and patted the animal’s flank. He’d almost bought it. But why would a man tell the very person he was trying to evade where he was going? Tanner had tracked down enough wily criminals in his day to know better than to assume the obvious. For whatever reason, Robert Bliss was running from his father-in-law. But if the man thought to throw Tanner McKnight off his trail that easily, he was a fool. The man was heading west, all right. But Tanner was convinced it was to the Oregon Territory, not to California.

Tanner mentally ticked off the few facts he had to go on. Robert Bliss was average height, probably close to fifty by now. His brown hair was probably going gray. Twenty years ago he’d been a humorless sort, a stern teacher, well read and well spoken but given to a preacher’s style of discourse.

As for the girl who was the real focus of his search, he knew next to nothing about her. Not her age. Not even her first name.

It was that fact that had frustrated Hogan the most, Tanner recalled. After describing what he wanted Tanner to do, the normally decisive Hogan had paced his ostentatious office restlessly, caught midway between frustration and fury.

“I don’t even know her name!” he’d ranted. “I don’t even know my only grandchild’s name!”

“Show me the letters.”

While the older man continued to mutter, Tanner had scanned the first letter Robert Bliss had sent to Willard Hogan, informing the man that Margaret Hogan Bliss had passed on after a lengthy illness. One sentence only had revealed the existence of a granddaughter. “Our daughter was a great comfort to Margaret up to the very end.”

“What did you say in your letters back to him?” Tanner had asked.

“I wired him—a long message saying that I wanted to meet the girl of course. Hell, I can give her everything she wants. And if we can’t get it in Chicago, we’ll go where we can get it!” the older man had boasted.

“I take it he turned you down.”

“The bastard! The bastard,” he began again, “told me in that same holier than thou way he has to basically go to hell. He said he was taking her to California—”

The door opened without warning. “Who’s going to California?”

Hogan frowned at the man who’d entered so peremptorily. “I’m having a private meeting, dammit!” Then when the man only raised his brows mildly, Hogan swore again. “Tanner, this is Patrick Brady. He handles my East Coast ventures.”

“And the foreign ones.” Brady extended his hand to Tanner.

Tanner nodded and shook the man’s hand. “Tanner McKnight.”

“You’re doing some work for us in California?” Brady asked, giving Tanner a quick once-over.

“For me,” Hogan answered before Tanner could. “Family business.”

“What kind of business?” Brady asked. Then his brows drew together in thought. “Are you the same McKnight that tracked down the gang that hit our First City Bank?”

“And found that weasel Lanford who embezzled three thousand dollars from that railroad venture,” Hogan said. “We’ll be finished in a few minutes. I’ll find you in your office then,” he added pointedly.

Brady shrugged, then turned and left. Only then did Hogan continue. “I haven’t told anyone about Margaret’s child,” he explained to Tanner. He paused and poured himself a whiskey with shaking hands, then tossed it back. “There’s no need to tell anyone, not until I know you’ve found her. So keep me posted, you hear? Send me a wire as soon as you learn anything.”

The rest of their meeting had been brief. Though Hogan hadn’t actually admitted to Tanner that he’d disowned his own daughter when she’d married Robert Bliss, it hadn’t been hard to figure out. Now the aging business tycoon was desperate to make up for his mistake of all those years past.

The thought of dragging some child back to Chicago had not sat well with Tanner. It still didn’t. But the extravagant amount of money the desperate Hogan had offered had been enough to assuage Tanner’s doubts. He was to bring her back with or without her father’s approval. With business and political connections such as Hogan had, he could guarantee that there would be no legal repercussions to Tanner.

Not that Tanner worried too much about the law. Once he had his payment from Hogan, he’d be gone. That money would buy all the breeding stock he needed—plus a huge feather bed. When he left Chicago the next time, it would be for good.

Tanner turned the collar of his jacket up against the sharp spring wind. He checked the bulky load on his packhorse, then pulled on his leather gloves and mounted his eager horse. There were four wagon companies ahead of him out of St. Joseph, the first almost two weeks gone. He had some hard riding ahead of him, with delicate questioning to be done at each wagon train. It was time to get going.

The wagon train reached Fort Kearney on the Platte River on a Saturday afternoon, and Abby couldn’t imagine, a more welcome sight. Almost three weeks on the trail, and the thought of four more months of travel was overwhelming.

“Why don’t you go see if there’s a newspaper to be had,” she encouraged her father once the wagons had made their customary circle to form their camp. “I’ll see to the oxen.”

Robert Bliss squinted straight ahead, his bushy brows nearly hiding his eyes. “Tending to the oxen is men’s work.”

“No, Papa. Really, I don’t mind doing it tonight. They’ve become like pets to me.”

He swung his balding head around to peer at her. “Like Becky was?” he asked, referring to her horse that he had sold. “Have you transferred your affection for Becky to the oxen now?”

Abby heard the edge of hopefulness in his voice, and somehow it depressed her even more. “Yes, Papa,” she lied. “I suppose I have. So you go on. I’ll tend to them and start our supper. You go on up to the fort. Look for whatever news there might be from Oregon. And from the states.”

It was wrong of her to want to be rid of her father, Abby knew. But she would just have to pray on it because the fact was, after three long, rainy days spent riding beside him in the wagon, she simply needed a little solitude. Besides, it would do him good to mingle with other people. He was becoming far too moody, veering from boundless enthusiasm for the Oregon Territory to dark moments of hopelessness. The enthusiasm brought out his eloquence; the hopelessness, however, came with silence.

He’d always been moody, she realized. But now … now without her mother’s mediating presence, his emotions grew ever more extreme. There were times when even his books seemed unable to console him. She watched him walk away, his gait slow and heavy. He’d aged so since her mother had died.

With a sigh she set the brake, climbed down from the box seat, and discreetly rubbed her sore behind. At least here they would rest for the Sabbath. Her father would appreciate that. He could read in peace. And he always seemed to enjoy talking to Reverend Harrison. Unfortunately.

As for her, she could only hope that his moods lightened as time went on. If not … If not there was nothing she could do about it but continue on as best she could. Unable to escape that grim thought, she turned to tend the oxen.

But before she could get to that, she spied the earnest young preacher approaching her, his long-legged stride purposeful, his ever-serious expression even more so. She pasted a halfhearted smile on her face and braced herself.

“Miss Morgan.” He doffed his plain felt hat and swallowed hard. Even beneath his rust-colored beard she could see his Adam’s apple bob.

“Good evening, Reverend Harrison.”

“I … uh … I just wanted to tell you—to invite you to attend Sunday services tomorrow. I’ll be preaching a special sermon I wrote, about how our duty to God is tested and changed by this journey we have embarked upon.”

He would have said more, preached the sermon to her then and there, she feared. But she cut him off.

“My father and I will certainly be there, and I thank you for coming to tell us. But I really do have to see to my team,” she finished, edging toward the four oxen, who were beginning to stamp in impatience. They knew their day’s work was done and they were ready for a long, cooling drink and the freedom of the pasture.

The reverend nodded his head and backed off a pace. “Well. I’ll just be going, then.”

As Abby watched him walk away, she tried to sort through her feelings. He was a very nice man. But all she felt for him was … was nothing. Somehow that just couldn’t be the right way to feel about a man who wanted to make her his wife.

Grateful for a diversion from thoughts that were fast becoming depressing, she turned back to her team. For all their bulk, the four oxen were an amiable lot—though nothing approaching her beloved Becky. She’d named them Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John to satisfy her father’s sensibilities. Privately, however, she called them Eenie, Meenie, Minie, and Moe.

After releasing them from their harness, she guided them toward the muddy riverbank, holding the willow whip high, though she knew only a touch was needed to keep them moving. Eenie was the clear leader of the quartet, so she had made a special pet of him. He minded her, and the others followed him.

She hung back as they waded into the deep muck that edged the shallow, meandering Platte River, but in the dull light of the overcast sunset she gazed longingly at the water beyond. How wonderful it would feel to take a full-fledged bath, not just a wipe-down. Clean hair. Clean skin. Clean clothes that were truly clean. And white.

She twirled the willow whip in her hand as her mind wandered. The very first thing she wanted to get when they arrived in Oregon was a brand-new hip bath. A big one, with a high back to rest her head against. She sighed and took a step nearer the sluggish water, then staggered when her foot sank past her ankle in the loose mud.