Tender Touch (18 page)

“Brianna! Brianna!”

Brianna and Lilith came from the campfire as the boys skidded to a halt in front of their father and Columbus Nigh. Moisture beaded the boys’ lashes and their mouths quivered.

“What is it, boys?” Marc hurried to intercept them.

Tears raining down his cheeks, Jean Louis launched himself at his mother. “Somebody killed him, Mama. Somebody hung him in a tree.”

“Killed who, Jean Louie?”

The boy looked up at Brianna. He pointed toward the river. “Shakespeare.”

Brianna went ice cold. For a second she was too shocked to move. Then her hands flew to her mouth. She let out a muffled cry and bolted for the river. No, she prayed silently as she ran.
Not Shakespeare. Please, not my Shakespeare
.

Several children were gathered around a bent old cottonwood tree on the bank, staring upward. Brianna ran toward them. The children all knew Shakespeare. A few had been coming for reading and writing lessons. Others came only to play with the cat, sometimes telling Brianna of pets they’d had to leave behind. The Goodman girl, Fannie, started toward her, calling her name. The girl was sobbing.

“Missus Villard. Oh, Missus Villard, it’s awful. Why would anybody do such an awful thing?”

Brianna felt Fannie’s hands catch at her skirt and reached instinctively to hug the girl. Brianna’s feet barely moved her forward now. Her gaze had riveted on a gray object dangling from a dead branch, too heavy to do more than sway gently in the wind.

The children parted without a sound, creating a mournful corridor that led Brianna to the base of the tree. There she looked directly up at Shakespeare’s lifeless body. The cat’s eyes were open, but they seemed colorless now. His tail hung limp, his little paws turned toward the ground. She could easily have reached out to touch him, yet could not make herself move.

Without a word, Columbus cut Shakespeare down and placed the small, cold body in Brianna’s arms. She buried her face in the soft fur as Nigh had seen her do a hundred times before. Slowly, she sank to the ground. With the cat’s body clasped to her breast, she rocked back and forth, wild sobs tearing from her throat.

Fannie and Jean Louis wailed beside her. Francois sniffed and wiped at his eyes. Nigh swallowed. After a moment he asked one of the children to find something to wrap the cat in so they could bury him. Marc offered to fetch a shovel.

When the hole was ready, Nigh lifted Brianna to her feet and gently eased the body from her grip. He wrapped it in a ragged piece of toweling someone brought and placed it in the hole. Brianna tossed in a handful of soil. When she straightened, Lilith’s arms came around her, holding her while they watched Nigh shovel in the dirt and tamp it down. Marc found a large rock to place on top so the wolves couldn’t destroy the grave and the children decorated the spot with wildflowers.

Gradually the others drifted away. The Beaudouins rounded up their boys and walked back to camp. Only Nigh was left to watch Brianna stare down at the lonely grave.

Cold anger raged inside him. The cat had been a nuisance but he had gotten used to it. Truth was, he’d come to enjoy the animal. What mattered, though, was the love Brianna held for Shakespeare, as if the cat had been her child and dearest friend. Someone would pay for this piece of work, Nigh swore silently. He would see to it.

After Brianna and Col returned to camp and everyone had eaten, Lilith suggested Brianna take a nap.

“Good idea.” Nigh needed to talk to her, privately. “You didn’t get much sleep last night, what with the storm and worrying about me and all. Marc and me’ll help Lilith with the dishes.”

Brianna looked at the Beaudouin boys, sitting on the wagon tongue, kicking at pebbles in the grass and looking almost as forlorn as she felt.

“All right. But please take the boys hunting like you planned. It’ll distract them, and we do need the meat.”

“If that’s what you want.” He led her to the wagon. “I’ll tuck you in and fetch my rifle.”

Brianna climbed inside and sat on her bed. Nigh knelt in front of her and pulled off her shoes. She was too quiet. Something was eating at her, something more than the cat’s death. It worried him. He didn’t want to leave her alone like this.

When she spoke her voice was low and full of loathing. “It was Barret, Col. I wish I could kill him. I want to put a noose around his neck and hang him the way he—” her voice broke “—the way he did my Shakespeare.”

“Ah, Bri.” He gathered her into his arms. “Don’t, please. It wasn’t Barret.”

She looked at him, her eyes full of questions and pain.

“That’s where I went yesterday,” he explained. “I found him. From what I could gather, he’d gotten healthy enough to molest the daughter of the poor fool who’d hauled him home after that storm. Barret had hightailed it out of there and was camped with another man some distance off the trail, likely so they wouldn’t be noticed too easily.”

“But, maybe they followed you here.” She took hold of the front of his shirt. “Oh, Col, I’m scared. Barret had other ways of punishing me besides hitting me. He was always threatening me, telling me what he would do to me if I tried to run away again. It must have been him. Who else would have done such a horrible thing just to hurt me?”

Nigh shook his head. “I don’t know, but after he and his friend went to sleep, I pulled the picket pins on their mules. Even if they woke up when I left, it would have taken awhile before they could go anywhere. Those mules wasted no time heading back home.”

She looked at him a long moment, then reached out to brush a finger along the fringe of his mustache. “Thank you. I don’t know what I did right to deserve such a wonderful friend as you.”

He kissed her finger. “You deserve a lot better than me. And I’m more than a friend, whether you want it or not. A lot more.”

Her hand dropped into her lap. “It’s not that I don’t want
.
.
. Please understand. My father was the only good man I’ve ever known. I didn’t know there were others, like you. But . . .”

“But you’re married.”

She nodded.

Wearily, he moved to sit beside her.

“It’s more than that,” she said. “I’m scared. I don’t want to be hurt anymore. And I don’t want you or anyone else hurt because of me. You don’t know Barret.”

“I know all I need to know about that bastard. He’s vermin of the lowest sort. And he’ll have to kill me before he can ever get to you again. Just the thought of him touching you—”

“No!” She spun to face him. “Don’t you see? I don’t want you near him. I’ll go back to him willingly, if it will keep him from hurting anyone else. Especially you.”

Rage darkened his eyes. “Like hell you will!”

Brianna cringed. Nigh lurched off the bed and stormed to the other end of the wagon. For some time he stood there staring down at nothing while he fought for control. When he turned back to her, his voice was calm. “Barret Wight didn’t kill your cat. Either Shakespeare did something to get somebody else’s back up, or you did, without knowing it. You sure nobody’s given you a bad time about anything lately? Punch Moulton, maybe?”

Edward Magrudge! The name burst into her brain with the force of a bullet. Shakespeare had attacked the man last night and Magrudge had mumbled something about getting even. It had to be him. But she didn’t dare tell Col. She would do anything to avoid a confrontation between the two men that might get Col hurt. Somehow she’d find a way to deal with the wagon master herself. She glanced up at Col and saw him studying her.

Slowly he walked back to the bed. He sat down beside her, cupped her face in his hands and forced her to look at him. His eyes were hard and as cold as a pond in January.

“What happened?”

She knew that deceptively calm tone he used to hide his anger. She wanted to deny that anything had happened, but the intensity of his gaze told her he wouldn’t believe her.

“Someone .
.
. a man . . . came to the wagon last night while you were gone. Marc and Lilith were at the dance and I was alone. Shakespeare was on your bed. When the man climbed into the wagon, Shakespeare started hissing and growling. Then he attacked the man and—”

“Who? Give me the bastard’s name and I’ll—”

“No! You can’t. I mean .
.
. I don’t know who it was. It was too dark.”

All he could see in her eyes now was terror. Of him? Of the man? Nigh wasn’t sure, but he’d find out. “Did he touch you? Did he—?”

“No, I promise, he never had a chance to touch me. Shakespeare was all over him. The man fell out of the wagon trying to get away, and he .
.
. he swore at Shakespeare, but he didn’t try to hurt him. He just went away.”

“You sure you didn’t recognize him?”

She buried her face against his chest so he couldn’t see the lie in her eyes. “I’m sure.”

“All right.” Col wrapped his arms around her and held her close. “Don’t fret any more about it now.”

When Nigh stepped down from the wagon after making sure she was in bed, he felt something hard through the soft sole of his moccasin. Bending over, he picked up the heel off a boot. Full of thought, he joined Marc at the fire.

“You lose a heel off your boot, Marc?”

Marc lifted each foot and glanced at the soles. “No. You find an extra?”

Yeah, he’d found one. And he had a hunch how it had come to be there. All he needed was a name to go with it. He went back to the wagon and searched the ground for clues. For anything out of place, anything that didn’t belong. Then he smiled and picked up a soggy cigar butt.

Edward Magrudge!

Chapter Eighteen

The antelope carcass attracted a crowd. Since the animals were shy and exceedingly swift, few of the emigrants had seen one up close.

“Curiosity killed this one,” Francois bragged as the men watched Nigh skin the carcass. “While we hid in the grass, Mr. Nigh waved a kerchief from the muzzle of his rifle. The antelope came closer and closer to see what it was—”

“Yeah,” Jean Louis butted in. “Then Mr. Nigh shot it. Papa says it’s a pronghorn, but Mr. Nigh calls it a prairie goat.”

Abner Goodman scratched his paunch, studying the carcass. “Meat any good?”

“Col says it’s coarser than venison,” Marc said, “but juicier and more tender.”

Nigh let the talk drift over his head as he skinned the pronghorn and eyed the assortment of boots shuffling around him. None were missing a heel. He laid out the hide and started the butchering. The best cuts he put in one pile on the hide. In another he placed smaller cuts.

“Hey, squawman, ain’t you ashamed to be seen doing women’s work? Where’s your squaw, anyway? Off pleasurin’ some buck maybe, for a few beads?”

The air tensed. The men fell silent.

Nigh looked up to see a new set of boots. Complete with heels, he was disappointed to note. Slowly he got to his feet, pulled out his kerchief and swiped at the blood staining his arms from elbows to fingertips. “My pa used to say you could calculate a man’s age and the level of his smarts by the size of his mouth.” Nigh looked directly at the owner of the boots, Punch Moulton. “Reckon he’d a changed his mind about that, though, if he’d ever met you, Punch, ’cause he’d a figured you for a twelve-year-old moron, and you must be at least eighteen.”

Whispers turned to chuckles.

Punch bristled. His face turned red and his chest began to swell, like Marc’s rubber air mattress when air was blown into the valve. Punch looked ready to explode when Jeb Hanks joined the throng and stepped between the two men. Behind Hanks stood Edward Magrudge.

“Ya asked for that one, Punch,” Hanks said, laughing. “Wal, lookee here at this fine buck. Oughta be a tender one, Col.”

“Take a piece, Jeb.” Nigh’s eyes, as he stared Punch down, were as cold as death and as sharp-edged as the blade he’d used on the meat.

Unaware of the tension, young Nate Goodman piped up with, “Whatcha gonna do with the horns, Mr. Nigh?”

Nigh could see Punch wasn’t up to starting anything in front of a crowd. Nothing physical anyway. Punch’s type preferred dark alleys and uneven odds—in his favor. Smiling at the Goodman boy, Nigh picked up the antelope’s liver and held it out. “Figured to give them horns to the first boy brave enough to take a bite of this liver.”

“Raw?”

“That’s the way the Indians do it. They believe it gives him a bit of the animal’s strength. Prairie goats run real fast. If you ate this liver, you just might end up being the fastest runner in the whole company.”

Nate stared at the bloody organ. It was slick and shiny and jiggled on Nigh’s bloody palm. Grimacing, one hand over his mouth, the boy raced away.

The men laughed.

“Listen to the damn squawman,” Punch sneered. ‘He’s trying to teach your young’uns Injun religion. And you just stand there laughin’ with him.”

“Why don’t you go pick on something the size of your brain, Punch?” said Taswell Woody.

“Yeah,” added Tom Coover. “Get rid of some of these confounded skeeters. They’ve nearly et me alive.”

Punch Moulton’s dark eyes narrowed to the size of raisins. His hands fisted.

Edward Magrudge stepped up beside Punch. “You’re first on guard duty tonight, Moulton, and it’s getting dark.”

Glaring at the wagon captain, Punch walked over to Dulcie. “You comin’ with me?”

“To stand guard?” Dulcie said with raised brows.

A few of the men snickered.

For a moment it appeared as though Punch might hit his wife. Then he mumbled something ugly and stomped off. The other men began to wander away.

As the wagon master joined them, Nigh noticed the man’s gait was a bit off, the way it might be if one leg were shorter than the other.

Or if one boot were missing a heel.

Lilith bundled her boys off for a good scrubbing. As Brianna and Dulcie climbed into Brianna’s wagon for a reading lesson they heard Jean Louis say, “I would’ve taken a bite of that old liver, Mama, only Papa was hanging onto my hand and wouldn’t let go. You reckon it would work the same way if it was cooked just a little?”

Halfway through Dulcie’s reading lesson, Col came in looking for a clean shirt. Dulcie had already learned her alphabet and was trying to sound out three-letter words in the Bible Brianna used to teach her from. Noticing Columbus’s interest, Brianna maneuvered the slate she had borrowed from Francois so Col could study the alphabet she’d printed on it. A sudden movement brought all three pairs of eyes to the rear of the wagon. Dulcie’s hand flew to her throat.

Punch Moulton was peering inside. “What’s going on in there, sugar?”

With pride and defiance, Dulcie said, “Brianna is teaching me to read.”

“Yeah? I suppose you’re gonna tell me her squaw-lovin’ brother’s helpin’ to teach ya?”

“Your brain’s showing again, Punch,” Col growled as he climbed out of the wagon.

To prevent a fight Dulcie clambered down from the wagon and dragged her husband home. Alone, Brianna leaned back against the side of the wagon and wondered if her teaching career was over already. After a time she took out writing paper, fitted the penholder with a fine steel point, opened the ink vial and began to write.

Dear Mrs. O’Ca
sey,

Today is Sunday and a day of rest. Tomorrow we reach the Platte and the day after that, Fort Kearny.

Everyone is in good health. Nearly every other wagon company has someone sick with cholera, and we see new graves every day. Lilith is terrified. Being buried in an unmarked grave in the middle of nowhere, her body perhaps unearthed and devoured by wolves, is the most horrible fate she can imagine.

This rough life is very difficult for someone as fastidious and delicate as Lilith. There never seems enough time to bathe properly—even if one could find the privacy. Usually, we are too tired at the end of the day to care about cleanliness.

My hands are rough and callused now. My hair is dull and lifeless and since I rarely have time to re-braid it, wisps have broken off around my face which blow continually into my eyes. And my feet are always tired and sore.

Barret has discovered my whereabouts, but Mr. Nigh sees to it that I am protected, so do not worry about me.

I suffer greatly from grief, however, as someone has murdered my sweet little Shakespeare. Everyone I have ever loved has been taken from me. I feel more alone than ever, and in a land where fear and danger seem constantly to hover over us. Thank goodness for Mr. Nigh. At times he makes me so angry I want to throttle him, yet he is good to me, too. He is like good French bread, so hard and crusty on the outside you wonder how you could ever bite into it, then on the inside, soft and warm and nourishing.

My eyes grow heavy with sleep, so I will close here. I will write again from Fort Laramie. Until then, I remain your faithful friend,

Brianna Villard

Nigh found Edward Magrudge alone, sitting on the tongue of his wagon trying to nail several thicknesses of rawhide to the bottom of his boot. Leaning indolently against the wagon, Nigh watched, a toothpick hanging from his mouth. “Lose the heel off your boot?”

The wagon master glanced up, then went on struggling to keep the assorted scraps of rawhide in place long enough to drive a nail through them and into the sole of his boot. Nigh tossed him the heel he had found by Brianna’s wagon.

“Here,” he said, “maybe this’ll help.”

Magrudge looked down at the heel, then up at Nigh. “Sure. Thanks.”

Nigh took out his knife and a half carved piece of wood and began to whittle. “Funny thing about that heel. Found it by my sister’s wagon. Seems someone tried to sneak into her bed a couple nights ago and lost that heel in the process. Wouldn’t know anything about that, would you, Magrudge?”

“I lost my heel today. Got it caught in some rocks down by the river. When I broke it lose, the heel tore free and fell in the water.”

Nigh nodded and kept on whittling. After a time, while Magrudge fidgeted with his boot, his fingers seeming to grow clumsier by the minute, Nigh said, “That was the night somebody hung Brianna’s cat from a tree. I figure it to be the same man, since it was the cat kept him from getting to Brianna. Kinda humorous, don’t you think? Cat defeating a full grown man that way?”

“Christ, man, why the hell are you asking me?”

Nigh blew the fine shavings from his carving, then pocketed it and the knife. “’Cause if I could prove who did it, I’d cut the bastard’s balls off and make him eat them. You being captain of this outfit, though, I know you’ll see to it my sister isn’t bothered again.”

Magrudge rose to his feet and watched Nigh walk back to the Villard wagon. His hands trembled. He itched to throw the hammer he held at the man’s head and see his brains splatter from the Little Blue all the way to the Missouri. “We’ll see who ends up without his balls, Columbus Nigh. I’ll bed that snippy sister of yours yet. She won’t be so high and mighty by the time I get through with her.”

Nigh was never so glad to hear thunder in his life. The first patter of rain on the wagon had him gathering up his bedding. He grinned as he climbed inside the wagon. Brianna watched silently from her bed as he dumped the bedding onto the supply box, then stripped off his shirt.

Brianna tried not to watch him undress. She forced herself to look away. Her gaze passed over the smoke-stained canvas roof with its wooden hoops, the cap lock pistol in its pocket, complete with powder and patching. She studied the barrels of flour, dried beans and hardtack, and sacks of salt, sugar, rice, and corn meal. Finally she shut her eyes.

As each moccasin hit the floor, her pulse accelerated. The soft rustle as his leggings fell set her insides awhirl like leaves in a dust devil. She held her breath, waiting to hear him climb into bed. When the silence became unbearable, she opened her eyes to find him standing next to her bed staring down at her.

Without a word he lay down beside her and gathered her into his arms.

“Col, what are you—?”

He silenced her with a kiss. When he lifted his head and she could breathe again, she whispered, “This is wrong, Col. I don’t belong to you.”

“No, you belong to yourself. No one else. Remember that.”

Then he kissed her again. Her disappointment when he got up and went to his own bed was a physical ache, in her heart, and deep in the pit of her abdomen.

The last thing Nigh wanted to do was sleep. His whole body throbbed with need. Give it time, he told himself. Give it time. Let her get used to him, learn to trust him. Eventually she would learn to love him, want him. But, damn! To lie there so close and be unable to touch her, had to be worse than getting his hide peeled off, bit by bit, by a hoard of bloodthirsty Blackfoot squaws.

***

The Platte River was everything Columbus Nigh had said it would be, sluggish and turbid, rolling in eddies, yet no where more than four feet deep. The day’s heat had lost some of its bluster by the time the Villard and Beaudouin wagons reached the top of the long ridge of sand hills that bordered the Platte River valley. Arm in arm, Brianna and Lilith gazed out over the dun-colored expanse of water, elated to have reached this milestone without the breakdowns and illnesses others had suffered.

“River’s high.” Nigh stood beside Brianna, a hand on her shoulder.

“It looks like a great inland sea,” Brianna said, “wider even than the Mississippi, only without trees.”

“My Lord, look at the people.” Marc pointed to the wagons and herds of oxen, horses and mules dotting the south bank. “No wonder we haven’t seen any buffalo.”

Nigh said nothing. He thought about the wagons scarring the beautiful wild country he loved to roam. He envisioned the trees cut down and smoky cabins cluttering every valley. Where once he had traveled weeks without catching sight of another human being, there would soon be masses of people, killing off the game and throwing their trash everywhere. Their guns would make such a racket Nigh figured a man could never again hope to hear the proud cry of an eagle or the bugle of an elk seeking a mate.

Sensing his distress, Brianna put her hand on his where it lay on her shoulder. “Nearly all of them are going to California, Col.”

He looked down and saw the understanding in her eyes. God, how he loved her. There wasn’t another like her. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to pull her close and kiss her temple. He might have moved on to her sweet mouth if she hadn’t warned him away with a frown.

“Is that snow down there, Papa?” Jean Louis pointed to the splashes of white that streaked the sandy earth below.

“Alkali,” Nigh said. “Poison to animals. Not too healthy for people, either. Be seeing plenty of it for the next few hundred miles. Flavors the grass as well as the water. Milch cows generally dry up on the Platte and stay that way till they reach Oregon.”