Untamed Journey (18 page)

“Which ones?” he couldn’t stop himself from
asking.

If only you knew, she thought to herself
glumly. But she was not going to let thoughts of Jasper Smith ruin
such a lovely day. So she took the safe route. “I traveled
unescorted. I’ve seen a man who is not my husband half-naked –
several times.”

Jackson grinned at her pathetic list of
rebellion. By Western standards she was just a chick barely
hatched. “First off, the unescorted part was not your doing. If
your sorry excuse for a fiancé had half the regard for decent
behavior that you do, he would have escorted you himself, every
step of the way. As for the second, just looking hardly counts. And
again, if your fiancé had escorted you, you’d never have had the
opportunity to see me at all, much less naked.”

“Half-naked,” Ruth absently corrected
him.

“Back in Huntsville, I doubt the old guard of
maidenly virtue would count the distinction. So you might as well
go for a full-fledged viewing, since you’re being docked for it
anyway,” he argued half-seriously.

Ruth could just feel a blush returning. And
damn if Jackson didn’t have a point. She couldn’t help wondering if
the rest of him looked as strong and sleek as his shirtless chest.
“If you remove one more stitch of clothing, I’m leaving this
minute.”

Her heart couldn’t take the strain.

“You’re safe with me, Miss Ruth. I’ve even
put my hat back on,” he claimed with full-fledged laughter in his
voice.

True to his word, he’d stretched out on the
soft grass not two feet from her, with his well-worn black hat
tipped down over his eyes.

Ruth relaxed again, leaning across her raised
knees, and enjoyed the suddenly mild autumn weather.

“Is the weather always like this?” She asked
lazily, enjoying the first moment in weeks she felt completely at
ease.

“Always isn’t a word you can use with the
weather in Colorado Territory,” Jackson explained. “It’s always
volatile, beautiful even. But men have lost an entire year’s crop
thinking they could predict the weather for more than a few days
running.”

“How do you farm then?” she asked, genuinely
perplexed. “I know there’s mining and cattle here, but there must
be some agriculture.” Ruth was raised in a state riddled with farms
and had a hard time picturing a land so vast and empty that she had
yet to see a kitchen garden, much less the fully working farms she
was used to.

“Some do farm here, but mostly for their own
use and for trade with neighbors,” Jackson replied. “Montgomery had
vegetables and fruit earlier this year for sale at his trading
post. But in this part of the territory, at altitude, the kind of
crops you’re used to back east won’t grow. You have to plant local
varieties. But lucky for us, the army hasn’t figured this out
yet.”

Ruth raised her eyebrows in question. “What
do you mean?”

“The army actually ships in most of the grain
used to feed their horses,” he explained. “It’s very expensive. Sue
is trying to fill that void. She overheard one of the local
captains on a visit several years back, cursing the price of grain
for the horses. And she had an idea to find something local that
she could grow reliably and in bulk for the horses to eat.”

“But what do you feed your horses now?” Ruth
asked.

“My place is located on the edge of a meadow
where several varieties of seasonal grasses grow. Aside from
winter, we have natural feed the rest of the year. But once I
started raising extra mounts to sell to the army, I found myself
buying grain to supplement in dry years. Until Sue’s experimenting
paid off.”

At Ruth’s obvious interest, Jackson
continued. “After the Captain left that year, Sue came to me with
an idea. She wanted to try cross pollinating some of the local
grasses with more common grains, with the goal of something new
that would grow reliably here at altitude and survive our cold
temperatures. She partnered up with a local Arapaho woman who sells
us medicinal plants. Between her knowledge of the native plants and
Sue’s pure determination, they finally succeeded after three years
of trying. The crop they developed can be dried after harvest and
stored in grain form for the entire winter. Sue’s getting ready to
ship some to Colonel Roe over at Fort Lyon. First shipment is free.
And if his mounts like it as much as ours seem to, she’s going to
undercut the Army’s main supplier by thirty percent and still turn
a tidy profit.”

“It’s Sue doing business with the Army? Not
you?” Even having seen many women take to commerce to feed
themselves during the War, Ruth was shocked. Back in Huntsville,
those same women returned to housekeeping and child rearing as soon
as their men came home. And if they didn’t, their business dried up
wherever a war veteran was nearby to supply the same product.

“It’s all Sue,” Jackson admitted. “Our deal
was just that I supply her some of my land to supplement her own
homestead and the protection that goes with it. In exchange, I get
free grain for my breeding stock. Some of the local men will help
her with transportation, but she’ll drive a hard bargain with them,
that’s for sure. Sue never spends two pennies where one will
do.”

“You’re an unusual man, to admire a woman
like her,” Ruth observed. “Most seem downright offended by females
in business.”

He shrugged. “If a man has confidence in
himself and can take pride in his own work, he won’t be threatened
by the success of his neighbors, male or female. And in my case,
having strong women nearby only helps me. It attracts other women,
which in turn gets me the best pick of men to work my horses and
cattle. I don’t much care what a man’s opinion of a woman’s duty on
this earth is. But a man that would outright take offense at a lady
just trying to feed her kids is trouble waiting to happen. A man
like that lacks confidence and will cause problems wherever he
goes.”

She nodded in understanding. “My father used
to say the same. In the letters he wrote from the War. He always
said the South’s biggest downfall was cocky young men trying to
prove something. But brashness wouldn’t fill your belly or replace
your boots after the supplies ran out.”

“Sounds like your father was a wise man,”
Jackson replied.

“My Aunt Kate always insisted he was a
foolish one,” Ruth said. “That he actually believed he was fighting
for a man’s right to determine his own destiny, when in reality we
were all just being manipulated by the wealthy in the North. She
insisted they were using the War to steal rich plantation land. You
were in the Army. What do you think?”

Jackson chose his words carefully, realizing
that Ruth was still very young in some ways. “I think they were
both right. I’m sure some of the politicians involved were bought
and paid for and their masters were more than willing to sacrifice
any number of good men and women for a few dollars. But then there
were also men and women like your father, who were willing to
sacrifice everything for what they believed. And that belief had
nothing to do with money.”

Jackson mulled his thoughts over before
continuing. “You take any hundred men sitting in church on Sunday
and you’ll have one hundred different motives for them being there.
But do any of those motives change the face of God? Does one man
coming to curry favor with his neighbor somehow lessen another
man’s prayer for the life of his sick child? I’ve never thought
so.”

“Is that why you fought?” she asked. “You
could have stayed in the west, in the army here, instead of going
south to join the Confederates.”

“I had family to protect,” he explained.
“That came first. But you have to balance peace and security for
your family with the right to choose your own way. If you give that
up entirely, your protectors just might end up worse than the thing
they were protecting you from in the first place.”

Jackson’s words hit close to home as Ruth
questioned her moral obligations to keep her promise in marriage.
Her husband was a violent man, if the stories she’d heard from
Jasper Smith were true. And Frank Masterson could prove a danger to
her if he found out she had killed his man. Since the marriage
contract had been signed on her behalf by a relative who was not
entirely motivated by Ruth’s own well-being, could she just forget
Frank Masterson and start over fresh, as so many others moving west
seemed to be doing?

Ruth realized she didn’t feel one pang of
guilt on behalf of her Aunt Kate or Frank Masterson. But how could
she live with herself, if she deliberately deceived a good man like
Jackson? That decision would be hers and hers alone. And the mere
thought of doing it put a knot in her stomach that made her heart
ache.

K
ate barely stirred
at the loud pounding on her door. She’d become so accustomed to
angry creditors showing up at all hours – their shrill demands
greeting her as soon as she cracked open the front door – that
she’d stopped jumping when the brass bell rang. She thought about
ignoring the summons, but knew from experience that they’d just
come back. It was best to face them directly.

She had stopped bothering with the truth –
these people never cared that she hadn’t been the one to incur the
debt. “She’d married the wastrel, hadn’t she?” They would argue.
And every lawman and judge in the land was on their side.

Thank the Lord they didn’t have debtors’
prison in America.

That was the only spot of good luck she’d had
since Jonathan Waters had sauntered into church that fateful Sunday
two months before and sat right next to her in the front row. Kate
remembered clearly how he’d been extremely generous as the
collection plate passed by. Borrowed money and a short run of luck
at the gaming tables, no doubt, Kate thought sourly to herself, as
she drew back the curtain to see who it was.

Kate was surprised to see a girl and two
small children on the porch, instead of the fat shopkeeper she was
expecting. The tailor, the butcher, the stable owner – she’d met
them all, hands outstretched to snatch her last penny.

Kate opened the door to a rapidly-cooling
evening. “Well. What can I do for you, child? Speak up – it’s cold
out here.”

“We’d like to come in and see our father,
please,” the petite blond girl requested.

She was even younger than Kate had first
thought – twelve at most. And clearly she was not the mother of
these children.

“And who might your father be?” Kate
demanded, having little patience for the troubles of others these
days.

“Jonathan Waters is our father.” The oldest
girl glanced at her younger sister, as if she’d played this part
many times before. “You must be our new mother. We’d like to come
in now. It’d cold out here, and John Junior doesn’t have proper
shoes.”

The girl did her best to walk into the house,
but Kate was tired of being pushed about and stood her ground.
“Wait just a minute, young lady. Explain yourself.”

The girl sighed audibly. “I’m Margaret.
Margaret Waters. Oldest daughter of Jonathan Waters, your husband,
or so my Papa wrote to me just last month. You are Kate Waters, are
you not?”

“Yes, I’m Kate Waters. But I married a
widower – a childless widower.”

“Is that what he told you?” Margaret rolled
her eyes. “He must have found it too hard to get a new wife with
three children to take care of, so he didn’t mention us.”

Kate took immediate offense. “Yes, you
impertinent child, that is exactly what he told me. I’d hardly have
forgotten the existence of not one, but three additional mouths to
feed. How do I even know you are who you say you are?” Kate
demanded shrilly.

“Is there any money left?” Margaret asked,
ignoring Kate’s question. “Of course not, or we wouldn’t be here in
the freezing cold. The boarding schools only send you home for one
reason – no money for tuition. We’d like to come in now, if you
please.”

Kate didn’t protest this time as Margaret
brushed past her with two siblings in tow. The girl made her way
toward the kitchen and started up the stove.

The girl seemed to know her way around the
house, Kate thought. She grew nervous, starting to believe this
latest chapter in her nightmare of a life might actually be
true.

She couldn’t help the nervous laugh that
escaped and caused all three children to turn and stare. Kate had
thought she’d married a well-to-do shopkeeper – a lonely widower
with no heirs who’d dote on her and keep her in every luxury.
Instead she’d gotten herself a no-account gambler who disappeared
three weeks into their marriage, leaving Kate holding the bill. And
now she had three children on top of that. What was she going to
do? She wondered silently. The courts had taken every penny she had
and sold off every luxury item to pay Jonathan’s gambling
debts.

“Don’t worry. He’ll come back for us
eventually,” the younger girl said, patting Kate’s knee. “Once the
shopkeepers give up and stop coming by every day. The last time,
Papa almost got it good, though. He came back too soon. He owed
some man so much money, the man practically slept outside our door
for eight months. He nearly caught Papa straight in the chest. But
Billy here – he was just four years old at the time – he tripped up
that man and threw his aim off. Papa only got nicked on the arm and
was able to run into the woods and hide until the man finally gave
up and went home for supper.”

Margaret joined in the telling. “Papa had to
sneak into his own house in the middle of the night. He’d had a run
of good luck at the tables, so he bought us all tickets on the
train. That’s how we arrived here.”

Kate’s voice reflected her continued shock at
the state of her life. “Didn’t the law come after your father? Or
that man your father owed money? He could have just followed and
spoken to the local Marshal about collecting his debt.”