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Baby On The Oregon Trail
Lynna Banning
New Year, new family!Heading west, pregnant widow Jenna Borland’s life surely can’t get any more complicated – until fate throws Lee Carver across her path. She resents his help, but she needs him to drive her wagon over the Great Plains.Lee can’t fathom why this prickly woman gets under his skin. But as the journey brings these two outsiders together, he wonders if Jenna and her baby could be just what he needs to begin a new life and a brand new family!


New Year, new family!
Heading West, pregnant widow Jenna Borland’s life surely can’t get any more complicated—until fate throws Lee Carver across her path. She resents his help, but she needs him to drive her wagon over the Great Plains.
Lee can’t fathom why this prickly woman gets under his skin. But as the journey brings these two outsiders together, he wonders if Jenna and her baby could be just what he needs to begin a new life with a brand-new family!
Lee pulled her close, holding her as if she were made of flower petals.
Jenna didn’t want this dance to end. She wanted to keep her eyes closed and keep moving in Lee’s arms.
But of course it had to end. She was acting like a silly addlepated girl, and she would never be that young again. She was wiser now. She knew better than to let herself become involved with a man. It never turned out the way you thought it would.
The musicians began to pack up their instruments and the crowd thinned and then began to disperse.
Lee kept her hand in his and they started back to the wagons. They had not spoken to each other all evening—had not needed to. But there were things that had to be said out loud, and it was going to be tonight.
Author Note (#u4a7374b9-9d6e-53f3-a3a5-8cb6860618be)
My great-grandparents came to Oregon in a covered wagon along the Oregon Trail from Independence, Missouri, to Oregon City and the Willamette Valley. Great-grandfather Edgar Boessen was an immigrant from Germany; Great-grandmother Maia Bruhn came from Denmark. Their descendants now number in the thousands.
There is an old, very romantic family story about how Edgar and Maia met and fell in love; I’m sure it’s probably little different from hundreds of other treasured family tales. I hope you will find Jenna’s story, told here, is one that touches your heart.
Typical of those intrepid travellers who came west on the Oregon Trail is the following diary entry:
Friday, October 27. Arrived at Oregon City at the falls of the Willamette.
Saturday, October 28. Went to work.
—James W. Nesmith, 1843
Baby on the Oregon Trail
Lynna Banning


www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
LYNNA BANNING combines her lifelong love of history and literature in a satisfying career as a writer. Born in Oregon, she graduated from Scripps College and embarked on a career as an editor and technical writer, and later as a high school English teacher. She enjoys hearing from her readers. You may write to her directly at PO Box 324, Felton, CA 95018, USA, email her at carowoolston@att.net (mailto:carowoolston@att.net) or visit Lynna’s website at lynnabanning.net (http://www.lynnabanning.net).
Books by Lynna Banning
Mills & Boon Historical Romance
One Starry Christmas
‘Hark the Harried Angels’
The Scout
High Country Hero
Smoke River Bride
Templar Knight, Forbidden Bride
The Lone Sheriff
Wild West Christmas
‘Christmas in Smoke River’
Dreaming of a Western Christmas
‘His Christmas Belle’
Smoke River Family
Western Spring Weddings
‘The City Girl and the Rancher’
Printer in Petticoats
Her Sheriff Bodyguard
Baby on the Oregon Trail
Visit the Author Profile page
at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk) for more titles.
To those from the many countries that make up America who have had the courage to forge new paths and start new lives.
Contents
Cover (#u66f9da5b-58e4-53b5-adb1-b4be77d3c465)
Back Cover Text (#u74fff8ab-9e6f-5a1c-8def-759c816d6fba)
Introduction (#u26560446-9045-5eb1-975a-4faa87b3423c)
Author Note (#uadf2d1c3-09e7-5672-865f-15b092c31f27)
Title Page (#u47a83922-56ee-5c91-b0a4-165fe2a6a3a9)
About the Author (#u303eb12a-c340-5422-9c12-e0627054b9f4)
Dedication (#u0a066142-831a-5af1-9c4a-5dd398ce4718)
Chapter One (#u1ab1eb0c-95aa-58e4-8237-32da9df932ec)
Chapter Two (#u77e2aba3-f03b-5830-8bff-7782e9d7a1cb)
Chapter Three (#u1d60f29b-9544-5bdd-9724-9b946c6a813b)
Chapter Four (#uc57ed9f1-2883-5a26-8870-dcaca5b1d820)
Chapter Five (#u7ec8ca0c-73b4-5721-a34f-6457807bb8b5)
Chapter Six (#u09deca1d-1652-58c5-9092-dd9a55291141)
Chapter Seven (#u838b2b0b-0c0b-59e3-a0a5-50f3714d119f)
Chapter Eight (#ufa457f85-f1ad-595c-befc-4c852294879c)
Chapter Nine (#u778b98fd-cb6a-5b99-92ba-145f58af74f9)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#u4a7374b9-9d6e-53f3-a3a5-8cb6860618be)
Oregon Trail, 1867
“Miz Borland?”
Jenna smoothed the threadbare apron over her swelling belly and turned to see Sam Lincoln, the wagon train leader. The big man removed his stained leather hat and stood uncertainly beside the wagon.
“Hello, Sam. Would you join us for supper?”
“No, thanks. I—” His sunburned face looked strained, and suddenly Jenna’s breath jerked inward.
“Sam? What is it?”
He turned the hat brim around and around in his hands. “Don’t rightly know how to say it.”
Oh, God. Something had happened. “Is it about one of the girls? Ruthie?”
The leader took a step closer. “Not the girls, no.”
“Mathias?” she whispered.
“’Fraid so. He’s...well, he’s been shot.”
“Shot!” Jenna closed her eyes. Surely she was dreaming.
Sam stepped forward and laid both his weathered hands on her forearms. “He’s dead, Jenna.”
She felt suddenly cold, as if all the blood in her body was draining away. “What?”
“He was caught stealing a horse. The owner killed him.”
She pulled away from Sam’s steadying grip and abruptly sat down on the bare ground. Dead? It wasn’t possible. And stealing a horse? It made no sense.
“Where is he?” she asked, her voice unsteady.
“In our wagon. My Emma’s, uh, laying him out. I expect you’ll want to see him.”
“Not yet. I have to tell the... His daughters.”
“Ruthie’s over visiting with the Langley girl,” Sam volunteered. “The two older ones are down wading in the creek.”
She nodded. Dead. Mathias was dead. Dear God, what would they do now?
“I’ll tell ’em about their pa if you want, Jenna.”
Jenna fought waves of blackness at the edge of her vision. “No. I’ll tell them, Sam. Just...just give me a minute.”
Ten minutes passed before she could stand and make her way to the Lincolns’ camp. She hesitated before the large canvas-covered wagon and clenched her jaw so hard her teeth ached. She couldn’t look at him. Then she resolutely mounted the step, drew back the curtain and stepped inside.
Round-faced Emma Lincoln rose and without a word laid her freckled hand on Jenna’s arm. The older woman tipped her head to indicate the still form stretched out on the bedroll, and Jenna forced herself to look.
She hadn’t remembered Mathias being so tall. Or so pale. In death his features had relaxed from the perpetual scowl he had worn; now he looked almost peaceful. She scanned his body for signs of blood but saw no stains. At her questioning look, Emma took her hand.
“The bullet entered his temple, Jenna. Killed him instantly. I cleaned up the... I cleaned him up.”
“Thank God,” Jenna murmured. Oh, yes, thank You, God. There would be no messy remains for his daughters to see. An unnatural feeling of calm flowed over her, along with an inexplicable sense of...what? Relief? Dear God, how could she feel this, as if a huge weight had suddenly lifted from her shoulders? It made no sense.
Or maybe it did. Mathias had not been pleased with her of late. Maybe he had never been pleased with her.
She drew in several deep breaths before she risked speaking. “Emma, thank you for doing this for Mathias. I must find the girls and tell... They will want to see their father.”
“Sam says if it’s all right with you, they’ll bury your husband at dawn, before we pull out. And tonight Sam and I will sleep under our wagon.”
Jenna nodded and climbed down from the wagon to do what she must. She’d gone only a few yards when Ruthie danced up. “What’s wrong, Jenna? You look all white and funny.”
She knelt before her stepdaughter and struggled to compose herself. “Ruthie, I want you to find your sisters. I have something important to tell you all.”
* * *
“Dead?” Tess screeched. “What do you mean Papa is dead?”
Eleven-year-old Mary Grace began to sob.
“I mean...” Jenna began. She glimpsed Ruthie’s stricken face and the words froze on her tongue. She swallowed hard and knelt before them.
“Your father has been killed. Accidentally shot by...well, it doesn’t matter who.”
Tess swayed forward and Jenna reached up to support her. Mary Grace wrapped her thin arms around her middle, but Ruthie just stared at her with horrified blue eyes.
“You...” Jenna’s voice broke. “You girls can see him if you wish. He’s laid out in the Lincolns’ wagon.”
“I don’t want to see him,” Mary Grace sobbed.
Jenna folded her into her arms. “You might want to, honey. You will want to have seen him after we leave in the morning.” She pressed her lips shut and walked them over to the wagon, where she stood with them beside their father’s body in the fading light.
“Papa don’t look dead,” Ruthie said after a time.
“Doesn’t,” Tess snapped.
“Well, he do—doesn’t. He looks like he’s sleeping.”
Jenna patted Ruthie’s thin shoulder. “Let’s remember him that way, as if he is just...asleep.”
At her side, Mary Grace jerked. “How come there’s no blood or anything?”
Jenna drew in an unsteady breath. “Well, Mrs. Lincoln said the...the bullet hit his temple, so there wasn’t very much bl—” Her voice choked off. What could she say to them?
“Come on,” Tess said, her voice tight. “Let’s go back to camp.” Without waiting for Jenna, she herded her younger sisters outside and started across the compound.
Dear God in heaven, what should she do? The girls had resented her from the moment she had married their father, and now she was solely responsible for them. By the time they reached Oregon they would hate her.
A cold chill snaked into her belly. And they would hate her baby.
Chapter Two (#u4a7374b9-9d6e-53f3-a3a5-8cb6860618be)
The following morning, Sam Lincoln and four other men dug a grave and laid Mathias to rest. Jenna watched them, her hands curved around Ruthie’s narrow shoulders, while Mary Grace and Tess looked on in stony silence.
Reverend Fredericks read some verses from the Bible, something about there being a time for everything under the sun. Then clods of earth thudded onto the blanket-wrapped corpse of her husband. It was an awful sound, terrible and final. Jenna clamped her jaw shut and pressed her palms over Ruthie’s ears.
Finally the last shovelful of fresh earth was heaped onto the mound and her fellow travelers drifted back to their wagons. Ruthie stepped forward and laid a ragged handful of scarlet Indian paintbrush on her father’s grave. Jenna’s heart lurched as if cracking into two jagged pieces.
“Come, girls,” she managed. “We must pack up our things.”
Ruthie turned her face into Jenna’s blue homespun skirt. “I don’t want to leave Papa here all alone.”
Tess leveled a venomous look at her sister. “Then you’re nothing but a big baby.”
Jenna fought an urge to sharply reprimand the girl, but concentrated on wrapping her hands around Ruthie’s quivering frame. She had never disciplined Mathias’s daughters, and besides, what good would it do now?
“Tess.” She addressed the girl over Ruthie’s blond curls. “That is unkind. Your sister, all of us, are hurting. You know how hard it is to leave your father here.”
Tess bowed her head. “Sorry, Ruthie. You’re not a baby, I guess. Come on, Mary Grace.” The two older girls walked off, leaving Jenna standing by the grave with her youngest stepdaughter.
She stared at the wildflowers, wishing she had thought to gather some as well, but she’d been so busy frying the breakfast bacon and rolling up the bedding inside the wagon there had been no time. And anyway, Mathias would not care. The flowers were really for Ruthie, a way to say goodbye.
Jenna closed her eyes briefly, then turned toward their camp. She felt numb, unreal, as if this were happening to someone else.
Emma Lincoln stopped her. “Jenna, at the meeting this morning, Sam asked the men for a volunteer to drive your wagon. In about half an hour the man will come to hitch up your oxen. If you’d like to be alone for a while I could take the girls in our wagon.”
Jenna studied the woman. What a kind soul the trail master’s wife had been, right from the very beginning. How she wished some of that generosity of spirit would rub off on Tess!
“No, thank you, Emma. I am quite all right.” She wasn’t, really. She dreaded the days ahead, but she could not admit this to anyone. How would she manage without Mathias?
A blade of anger sliced into her belly. Mathias had talked and cajoled and pushed until she finally agreed to join the wagon train and come west. And now here she was, embarked on an unwanted journey she had no choice but to continue; once a wagon train started out across the prairie, there was no way to get off. No way to go back to Ohio.
Another woman, Sophia Zaberskie, thrust a loaf of fresh-baked bread into her hands. “You eat,” she grated in her perpetually hoarse voice. “Keeping belly full makes to heal.”
Jenna pressed Sophia’s meaty arm. Sophia should know; she had lost one child to cholera before the emigrant train was even under way, and another child, a boy, died two weeks later when a wagon wheel rolled over him and crushed his chest. If Sophia could survive, so could she.
She took Ruthie by the hand and walked to their camp. Tess and Mary Grace looked up but did not speak, both keeping their faces resolutely turned away from her while she moved about packing the skillet and the Dutch oven inside the wagon. Tess grumbled at her request to fill two buckets with springwater and dump them into the water barrel strapped to the wagon box; Mary Grace walked listlessly at her sister’s side, kicking at stones.
When the last of their belongings were stowed away, Jenna surveyed the tangle of ropes and harnesses and wood oxen yokes stashed under the wagon and her heart sank as if weighted with lead. She had no idea how to hitch up the team. Mathias might have taught her. Why hadn’t he?
It was hard to accept that he was gone, that he would never again snap at her for forgetting to fold a blanket in his particular way or serving him dumplings with his stew when he preferred biscuits. She knew she had been a disappointment to him; she often felt small, as if she didn’t matter.
Ruthie’s small hand patted her skirt. “Jenna, are you crying?”
“N-no, honey. I’m not crying, just feeling a bit sad.”
“Me, too. Tessie won’t talk to me and Mary Grace is too busy. And I’m scared.”
Jenna went down on her knees before the girl. “I’m a little scared, too. But we will be all right, just you wait and see.”
A shadow fell over her. “Mrs. Borland?”
She jerked to her feet. The man was tall, with overlong dark hair and steady eyes that were a soft gray. He held his broad-brimmed hat down by his thigh.
“Sorry to startle you, ma’am. My name’s Carver.”
“I know who you are, Mr. Carver.”
He’d joined the wagon train at Fort Kearney. A former Confederate soldier, Emma had confided. A Virginian. From a slave-holding plantation, no doubt. Jenna’s father had fought for the Union; he’d been killed at Antietam.
“I’ve come to yoke up your team.”
Her stomach clenched, and it must have shown on her face.
“Ma’am? Are you unwell?”
“Mr. Carver, surely someone other than you volunteered?”
His gaze flicked to the back of the wagon, where Tess’s face was peeking out from the curtain. “Mrs. Borland, is there someplace we can talk in private?”
“Why?”
Gently he grasped her elbow and moved her away from camp. “I want to tell you why I volunteered.”
“I don’t really care why, Mr. Carver.”
“I think you may when you hear what I have to say,” he said quietly. “You see, it was my horse your husband was stealing. I was the one who shot him.”
Jenna stared at him until her eyes began to burn. “Dear God in heaven, why would I want anything, anything at all, to do with the man who killed my husband?”
A flash of pain crossed his tanned face. “You probably don’t, Mrs. Borland. And I can’t blame you. But I’d sure appreciate it if you’d hear me out.”
Shaking with fury, Jenna propped her fists at her waist and waited. She could scarcely stand to look at him.
“I didn’t know who was taking my horse,” he said after a moment. “Didn’t recognize the man. But I knew my horse. The rider was heading hell-for-leather—Excuse me, ma’am. He was riding toward the trading post we passed yesterday morning. I fired my rifle and he went down.”
“You killed him.”
“Yes, I did. I’m sorry he turned out to be your husband, and the father of your girls there.” He inclined his head toward the wagon where three heads now poked out from the rear bonnet.
“‘Sorry,’ Mr. Carver, is not enough,” she snapped.
“I realize that. I know nothing can ever replace your husband, but I’d like the chance to do what I can to make it up to you. That’s why I volunteered to drive your rig.”
“You cannot ‘make it up’ to me, Mr. Carver. Ever. Don’t you understand that?” She clamped her lips together, afraid she would cry.
“I mean to try, Mrs. Borland. Where’s your yoke and the harnesses for the oxen?”
“Did you not hear me?” Her voice went out of control, rising to a shout. She hated him! He was a cold-blooded killer. “I do not want your help!”
He turned his back on her and peered under the wagon. Mary Grace stuck her tongue out at him, but he paid no attention. Instead, he snaked an arm out to capture the tack and moved off to where the oxen grazed inside the circle of wagons. He moved with such assurance she wanted to toss the hot coals from her morning cook fire into his face.
The instant he was out of sight, Tess scrambled down and planted herself in front of Jenna. “You can’t let him do this!” she screamed. “He was my father, and that man killed him. He has no right to be here, touching Papa’s animals.”
Jenna sucked in an uneven breath and wrapped both arms across her waist. “Perhaps not, Tess. But neither of us can yoke up the oxen, and he has volunteered. I will speak to Mr. Lincoln tonight and ask for someone else.”
The girl’s face flushed, but Jenna was suddenly too weary to care. Her shoulders ached. Her head felt as if it were stuffed with sharp-pointed rocks.
“Take Ruthie down to the latrine, then get in the wagon.”
She paced around and around their small campsite until Tess and Ruthie returned and Mr. Carver appeared, tugging the oxen, Sue and Sunflower, by their lead ropes. He said nothing, just moved past her, positioned the two animals in front of the wagon and went about jockeying the yoke into place and adjusting the harnesses, his motions unhurried.
Jenna stepped closer to watch what he did.
He paused and his gray eyes sought hers. “Want me to teach you and your oldest girl how to do this?”
“I—No. I mean, yes. But not my oldest girl. Tess would find such a task beneath her.”
His dark eyebrows went up, and then he nodded. “My little sister never wanted to curry her own horse. Same reason.” He went back to adjusting Sue’s harness.
“How did your sister turn out?” she blurted out. “Was she spoiled?”
He straightened, a look of such naked anguish on his face that Jenna winced.
“My sister was killed when Sherman’s men reached Danville and marched through our plantation. Some Yankee soldier bashed her head with his rifle butt. She was eleven years old.”
Stunned, Jenna stared at him, a choking sadness knotting her chest.
Mr. Carver shuttered his features and bent over the hitch again. “Watch now, Mrs. Borland. You have to pull this ring tight, or it’ll work loose.”
“Mr. Carver, I—I am sorry about your sister.”
“War is ugly, ma’am. We did some awful things to you Yankees, too.”
“But a child! Dear God, what is the world coming to?”
“Wondered that a lot when I was in the field. And later, fighting the Sioux.” He finished tightening the jangling metal, patted the heads of both animals and turned to her. “What are their names?”
“Tess, Mary Grace and—”
He smiled, and she was struck by how white his teeth were against the tanned skin. “I meant your oxen, Mrs. Borland. Helps to know how to address them.”
“Address them? Mathias never talked to the oxen.”
“Lots of folks don’t. I do.”
“Sue and Sunflower. Sue is the one on the left.”
He nodded and scratched Sunflower behind one ear. “If you’re ready to pull out, I’ll go get my horse.”
A horse! She was terrified of horses. One had bucked her off when she was eight; she’d never forgotten it.
“Aren’t you going to...? Mr. Lincoln said the volunteer would drive our wagon.”
“I will do that, ma’am. I’ll just bring my horse and tie it beside the wagon.”
Jenna checked on the girls. “You two can walk alongside the wagon if you wish. Or you can ride inside, but it will be hot when the sun is high.”
“I’ll walk,” Mary Grace said.
“Me, too,” Ruthie chimed.
“I’d rather die than see that man driving Papa’s wagon,” Tess muttered. “I’ll stay inside.”
Jenna found her sunbonnet and a blue knitted shawl, then climbed up onto the driver’s box. She supposed she could learn to drive the oxen. She’d never liked the two animals. She’d never liked horses, either. But she supposed she could stand Mr. Carver until they stopped for supper tonight and she could speak to Sam Lincoln about a replacement.
Within ten minutes he returned, mounted on a huge, gleaming black horse. He tied it to the wagon, climbed up beside her and lifted the reins. Then without a word he lowered them again and eyed Ruthie, who stood clutching Mary Grace’s hand.
“You want your little one to ride up here?”
“Why?”
“It’s safer,” he said.
“Very well.” She dropped onto the ground and handed Ruthie up onto the box beside Mr. Carver. She didn’t really want her sitting next to that man, but he was right; it was safer. She wondered why Mathias had never thought of that.
Slowly the circled wagons peeled off into a ragged line and amid the creak of huge oak wheels and the clank and groan of mule and ox teams, the train rolled forward. Their wagon took its designated place at the end.
Rather than ride next to Mr. Carver, Jenna set out on foot, walking an arm’s length from a downcast Mary Grace, who twitched her spare body away from her. She tried to say something, but the girl cut her off. “Just leave me alone,” she hissed.
Suddenly the girl yelped and darted forward to her father’s grave. The wagon train wheels were now rolling over the mounded earth, and Jenna could see that Mr. Carver intended to do the same.
“Stop!” Jenna screamed. He reined in and waited.
Mary Grace reached him first. “They’re driving right over Papa’s grave!” she wailed.
Mr. Carver tied the reins around the brake and jumped down to face the girl. “Miss Borland, we do that of necessity. If the grave looks fresh, wolves will get at it.”
“Wolves?” Jenna shuddered.
He went down on one knee before Mary Grace. “I know it’s hard to watch, miss, but it has to be done unless you want your father’s grave desecrated.”
“What’s des-crated?” Ruthie piped from her seat on the driver’s box.
Mr. Carver pushed his hat back and stood. “Desecrated means something spoils a grave. Digs it up, maybe. You wouldn’t want your papa to be disturbed, would you?”
Fat tears stood in Ruthie’s blue eyes. She shook her head. Lee Carver glanced over at Mary Grace. “You understand, miss?”
The girl nodded.
Lee Carver looked to Jenna. She stood close to her daughter, but he noted that the girl hitched herself away from her side. Odd.
“Mrs. Borland?” he prompted. “Would you like me to drive around the grave site? This is the last wagon, so it’ll be pretty well dusted over by now.”
She stared at him, her face so white it reminded him of the stationery he’d used to write Laurie during the War. After a long moment she gave a short nod.
“It is all right, Mr. Carver. I would not want their father’s grave disturbed by animals.”
He wondered why she put it that way, “their father’s grave.” Why was it not “my husband’s grave”? All at once he realized that the girls were not her daughters; they had been his.
He glanced up at the smallest girl. “Ruthie?”
“It’s all right, mister. Papa’s in heaven anyway.”
His heart thumped. Oh, God, what had he done? He’d shot a horse thief, but the man had been a father. A husband. No horse was worth that, not even his black Arabian.
What the hell had the man intended to do with his horse? Where was he heading? And why?
He clenched his jaw, then climbed back up onto the box and picked up the reins. No matter what he did to make amends, Jenna Borland would get rid of him the first chance she got.
Chapter Three (#u4a7374b9-9d6e-53f3-a3a5-8cb6860618be)
Tess spoke not a single word to anyone all morning, and when the sun burned high over their heads, she refused to offer Mr. Carver even a tin cup of water.
Ruthie’s nose and cheeks got sunburned, despite her floppy calico sunbonnet, and halfway through the long morning her tired little body had tipped sideways against the upright frame of Mr. Carver. To keep her from toppling off the bench, he curled his arm around her and went on driving the oxen, the reins looped over his long-fingered hands.
Jenna pressed her lips together and brought him a cup of water from the water barrel lashed to the wagon.
By the time the train stopped for their nooning, Jenna was half-sick from the heat and dust. She had walked beside the rank-smelling oxen for hours after Mary Grace had given up and crawled into the wagon bed, and when the train pulled into a shady grove of ash trees, every muscle in her legs was trembling.
She rested for an hour in the cool shade, letting the breeze dry out her sweat-sticky cotton dress and soothe her overheated body. Then she packed away the lunch makings and when the train was ready to pull out again, she resumed her position beside the wagon. She stiffened when she saw Mr. Carver approaching.
“Mrs. Borland, if you think you could drive the oxen, I’ll walk. I can keep one hand on Sunflower’s yoke just to make sure she—”
“No,” Jenna interrupted. “I don’t like those two animals. Horses, too, if you must know. I would rather you drive the wagon.”
“Wouldn’t you rather rest inside the wagon instead of walking, ma’am?”
“Again, no thank you. The girls will be inside and they... Besides, it’s stifling in there. I don’t know how they can bear it.”
He chuckled. “I wouldn’t even ask, if I were you. Mary Grace and Tess, isn’t it? The older one would rather bake like a biscuit than look at me.”
Jenna blew out a weary sigh. “I’m sure part of it is because of their father, but the rest is because... Well, I don’t pretend to understand them.”
He regarded her with a flicker of emotion in his eyes. “Could be they resent having a stepmother.”
“When Mathias was alive, the girls tolerated me, up to a point. Now that he’s gone, they can’t bear to be near me. Except for Ruthie, that is.”
Why was she telling him this? She’d never confessed to anyone how Mathias’s daughters treated her, not even to Emma Lincoln. Perhaps the midday heat was softening her brain.
“I’d think not being their mother would be difficult.”
“Are you married, Mr. Carver?” Too late she realized how rude the question sounded. If he had a wife, surely she would be traveling west with him.
A veil dropped over his gray eyes. “I was married once,” he said, his voice quiet. He said nothing more, and Jenna knew she couldn’t ask. But she did wonder about him.
Near sundown, a shouted command from Sam brought the wagons into a wide circle, and men began unhitching their tired animals and leading them into the grassy area in the center to feed. Forage was lush, and there was plenty of water from a tumbling creek. The mules and oxen gulped greedily. Jenna longed to splash some over her face and arms, but first she had to make supper.
A grumbling Tess lugged two brimming buckets of water and plunked them at Jenna’s feet so hard they slopped over onto her leather shoes. Biting her tongue, Jenna stepped around the lanky girl and enlisted Mary Grace to help her drag three flat rocks together to make a crude fireplace. She sent Tess and Ruthie for kindling and firewood—buffalo chips, if they couldn’t find any downed tree branches.
When the fire was crackling, Jenna settled the iron kettle on the rocks and began slicing up potatoes and wild onions and dried venison. For seasoning she added a generous dash of salt and the last of the dried rosemary. Then she mixed up plain flour and water biscuits and patted circles of dough onto the hot rocks to brown while the stew bubbled. The smell was mouthwatering.
She kept a wary eye on the black stallion, still roped to the wagon, and wondered why Mr. Carver didn’t release him to graze with the other animals. She found out when he strode into camp, scooped out a double handful of oats from a burlap bag tied to his saddle and offered it to the horse in his cupped hands. He talked to the animal in low tones while it ate.
Jenna shook her head. Mercy, he treats that animal like it was almost human!
Men. Back in Roseville, Mathias had once adopted a mongrel dog. He’d fussed over it plenty, but he’d never hand-fed the mutt. Jenna had hated it because it nipped at Ruthie’s bare toes. When they joined the emigrant train, Mathias had left the dog behind to fend for itself. Even Jenna had wept.
“Mary Grace, would you please tell Mr. Carver supper is ready?”
“I’d rather let him starve,” the girl announced. Her hazel eyes flashed with anger.
Jenna dropped the iron ladle into the stew and spun to face her middle stepdaughter. “I can understand how you feel, Mary Grace, but the man has driven our wagon all day in the hot sun while you and your sister lazed inside. It would not be kind to refuse him food. He has certainly earned it.”
“You tell him, then!”
“I am busy with supper.” She worked to keep the annoyance out of her tone, but from the rebellious look on the girl’s round face she knew she hadn’t been successful. She laid her free hand on Mary Grace’s plump shoulder, but she jerked away.
“I know you do not like Mr. Carver, Mary Grace, but do as I ask. Now,” she added. “Unless you don’t wish to eat supper.” She leveled the threat calmly, but she’d had enough. Putting up with hateful treatment took energy, and her strength was just about depleted.
Mary Grace threw her a dark look and stomped off to where Mr. Carver stood brushing the stallion’s hide.
“Why do we have to be nice to him?” Tess demanded from behind her.
“Because.” Jenna sighed. “Feeding your enemies is the Christian thing to do.”
“Huh!” Tess clattered the tin plates and cups onto an upturned apple crate. “I hope he chokes on it.”
“Hush, now. Here he comes.”
Ruthie danced up from washing up in the creek, her face and hands still dripping. “We’re having ven’son stew, mister.” She blotted her wet cheeks with the sleeve of her dress.
“Smells good,” Mr. Carver said. “I’ve been eating hardtack for so long I forgot how good real food smells.”
“What’s hardtack?” Ruthie asked.
“Kind of a thick dry cracker.”
“What’s it taste like? Is it good?”
“Not too good. It tastes a little like sawdust, I guess. Mostly you just roll it around in your mouth until it softens up, then you swallow it quick.”
Jenna ladled the thick stew onto the plates. “Pass the biscuits around, please, Tess.” She tipped her head toward Mr. Carver.
To Jenna’s embarrassment, Tess pointedly bypassed him and instead scooped biscuits from the crockery bowl onto her sisters’ plates.
“Tess.” Jenna kept her voice calm but inside she was seething. “If you would honor your father’s memory, you will behave as he would want you to. And now, because he is gone, you will behave as I want you to.”
Mr. Carver solved the problem by standing up and reaching a long tanned arm for the bowl. Then he settled back on the ground, dropped the biscuit into his stew and mashed it up with his spoon. Jenna hid a grin. Tess’s rudeness didn’t seem to matter one whit.
She set a bucket of water onto the coals to heat for washing dishes and ate her supper in silence. When she had downed her last bite, she licked the spoon, laid it on the tin plate and handed it to Mary Grace.
“Would you rather wash the dishes tonight or roll out the bedding in the wagon?”
“Dishes,” she said with a grimace. “Let Tess make up the beds.”
Jenna nodded. Tired as she was, she tried to smile at the girl. “Ruthie, your cheeks are sunburned. I’ll put some ointment on before bedtime.”
“Where’s Mister gonna sleep, Jenna?”
Ruthie’s question stopped her cold on the way to the wagon for the medicine kit. Yes, where would he sleep? Up until tonight, she and Mathias had slept together under the wagon, but now what?
Out of the corner of her eye she caught Mr. Carver studying her. Would he sleep in their camp? Under the wagon, where she slept? Absolutely not. She must speak to the wagon master right away.
“Girls, I’m going over to talk to Sam Lincoln.” She pressed the bottle of ointment into Ruthie’s small hand and untied her apron.
“Can I come with you?” Ruthie begged. “Missus Emma gives me cookies.”
“Not this time, honey. I have some...business to discuss with Mr. Lincoln. You stay in camp and help Tess make up the beds.”
Mr. Carver rose and stood looking at her, his hands on his slim, jean-clad hips. The back of her neck grew hot, so she turned away from him and marched out of camp.
“Mister?” Ruthie gazed up at Lee with a question in her sky-colored gaze. “How come nobody likes you?”
Son of a gun. Even a child sensed the resentment against him. It wasn’t just the Borland family; everyone in the entire emigrant train had avoided him since the day he joined them at Fort Kearney. The thick hatred in the air because of his Confederate service followed him everywhere, and now, after killing Mathias Borland for stealing his horse, the heavy fog of dislike felt suffocating.
He knelt down to Ruthie’s level. “There’s lots of reasons they don’t like me, I guess. For one, I’m a Southerner. A Confederate.”
“What’s a ’Federate? Is it bad?”
Lee exhaled and thought how best to answer her. “A Confederate is someone who thought it was worth a fight to keep their way of life. I’m from Virginia, and that’s a Confederate state. Or it was, anyway.”
“Did you fight?”
“Yes, I did.” He’d fought alongside Bobby Lee, not because he thought slavery was right, but because he loved the South and his heritage. General Lee had felt the same.
“Did you win?”
“Nobody wins in a war, Ruthie. It’s a bloody, senseless way to solve a disagreement. The North won. That’s your side. But soldiers I commanded probably killed some of their kin, and that’s why nobody on this train likes me much.”
“Did you ask ’em to kill those people?”
Lee shut his eyes briefly. “Yes, I did. That’s what soldiers do, and I was a soldier. Was your daddy a soldier?”
“Nope. Papa didn’t like fighting. He was a...” Her voice faltered. “A...”
“A Quaker, maybe?”
“Nope. Tess says he didn’t want to go off to war an’ leave us.”
Lee sensed there was more to it than that. There was something odd about this family, and he sensed it was more than just the loss of their father. The girls resented Jenna, that much was clear. Maybe because she was going to bear a child? Or maybe because Jenna had replaced the girls’ real mother.
What little he’d seen of Mathias Borland made him wonder why Jenna had married the man. What was she, twenty-three? Twenty-four? She was too pretty not to have had other offers, plenty of them. Why would she choose a blustering loudmouth like Borland? Unless she was pregnant and he had been her only option.
Ruthie held up a dark bottle of something. “Would you put this on my face? It’s stuff Jenna made to help my sunburn.”
“Wouldn’t you rather wait for Jenna? Or maybe get one of your sisters to do it?”
“Nope. Mary Grace pinches, and Tess pulls my hair.”
Lee accepted the bottle and peered at the hand-lettered label. Aloe ointment. He uncorked it, took a sniff and wrinkled his nose. “Smells like turpentine.” He tipped it over and let the thick liquid ooze out onto his forefinger.
“What’s turp’tine?”
“Smelly stuff. Turpentine is what they use to clean things that are oily.”
Ruthie tipped her face back and closed her eyes. “I’m ready for the bad smell, mister. Do it now.”
He had to laugh. His sister, Serena, had gotten sunburned once. Hattie had doctored her with baking soda, and that night she had sneaked into his room and asked him to wash it off because it smelled funny.
He tilted Ruthie’s chin up with one finger and smeared a thin film of the ointment over her nose and cheeks.
“What’s your real name, mister?”
“My name is Robert E. Lee Carver. Why don’t you call me Lee? It’s shorter than ‘mister.’”
Being named after General Lee was probably one more reason why people on the train disliked him. Long before he became a general, Bobby Lee had been a close friend of his father’s.
He recorked the medicine bottle and stood up. “Show me where Jenna keeps this and I’ll put it away.”
“In the med’cine box. Inside the wagon.”
Lee frowned. “Then you’d better do it. Your sisters don’t like me being anywhere near your wagon.”
“What’s your horse’s name? Is it a boy horse or a girl horse?”
“His name is Devil. He’s a boy horse. They’re called stallions.”
“He’s real pretty.”
He watched the girl clamber up into the wagon and disappear through the bonnet, then started off to check on Sue and Sunflower grazing in the roped-off infield.
The instant he was out of sight, Ruthie emerged, climbed down onto the ground and headed straight for the big black horse tied up at the corner of the wagon.
* * *
“Why, Jenna,” Emma Lincoln exclaimed. “How are you doing?” She gestured at the fire pit behind her, where a blue speckleware coffeepot steamed. “Do sit and have some coffee with us.”
“No, thank you, Emma. That is kind of you, but I have come to speak with Sam.”
The large, graying man rose from his seat by the campfire and came toward her. “How’s your driver working out?”
“I—Well, that’s just it, Sam. I came to ask you—”
“I bet I can guess. The girls don’t like him.”
“Well, no, they don’t. Except for Ruthie, and she loves everyone. But—”
“And you don’t like him.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Is he rude? Or mean to the girls or you?”
“Well, no.”
“Talk too much? Spit tobacco juice? Smoke too many cigarettes? Drink spirits?”
“N-no. It’s that he—”
“Shot your husband.”
Jenna nodded. “It is difficult to be around him. The girls hate him, and I...well, I don’t hate him, exactly. But, well, he did kill Mathias.”
Sam Lincoln pressed her down onto his vacated seat and squatted in front of her. “You’re right, he did kill Mathias. Mathias was stealing his horse. Now, let me say something on Carver’s behalf.”
Jenna twisted her head away. She didn’t want to hear anything Sam had to say; she just wanted Lee Carver off her wagon and as far away from her as he could get.
“Carver’s a good man. Stepped right up and asked to make it right with you and yours by driving your wagon on to Oregon. He didn’t have to do that. Nobody holds Carver to account for shooting Mathias. It’s the risk any horse thief takes.”
“But I can’t abide...”
“You don’t have to like him, Jenna. Fact is, nobody on this train likes him much. He’s a Virginian and a Johnny Reb, a Confederate major.”
Jenna stared into the fire. “He’s the only Confederate soldier on the train. And that horse of his! Did you know he hand-feeds the animal? With oats that I could use to make mush.”
“That horse is pure Arabian, worth about a thousand dollars. Carver plans to breed horses for the army. The Union army,” he added. “Ever since the surrender, Carver’s been with our army, fighting the Sioux.”
“Oh.”
Sam laid a gentle hand on her hunched shoulder. “Anything else botherin’ you?”
“Sam, is there no one else who would volunteer to drive our wagon?”
Sam shook his head. “I trust Lee Carver. Might be a Reb, but like I say, he’s a good man. There’s some on this train that aren’t so good. Some I wouldn’t trust around you and three young girls. You take my meaning?”
Jenna nodded. Once again she felt helpless, caught at the mercy of a man she didn’t know but had to accept.
“You have any trouble, Jenna, you come to me, agreed?”
She bit her lip. Emma stood near the fire, pouring coffee into a ceramic mug. The older woman looked inquiringly at her. It did smell rich and enticing, but Jenna shook her head. She had duties back at her own camp.
Jenna knew that Lee Carver had been a Confederate soldier, as Emma had said. Well, she didn’t admire him for that. The South favored slavery, and her father had died opposing it. Besides, she just plain didn’t like the man.
She should have asked Sam how far they were from Oregon, how long she would have to put up with Lee Carver. Months, probably. Oh, Mathias, I wish...
No, she acknowledged, she did not wish him back. Not even with the baby coming. The man she had married in such desperate haste back in Roseville had turned out to be no bargain. But now she was stuck traveling in that tiny, cramped wagon with all their earthly goods crammed in among sacks of flour and sides of bacon with the man who...
She folded her hands over the slight swell of her belly and stared at the thick grass under her feet. It was difficult before; it would be intolerable with Mr. Carver. Perhaps...
She raised her head and rounded the corner of the wagon just in time to see Ruthie bounce up beside that huge black stallion and reach out to pat its side. Then she stepped backward, toward the animal’s hind legs.
With a gasp Jenna started forward, and in that same instant she heard a shout.
“Ruthie!” Out of nowhere Lee Carver appeared, running hard. He snatched the girl up into his arms and barreled straight into Jenna, who was racing from the opposite direction.
Chapter Four (#u4a7374b9-9d6e-53f3-a3a5-8cb6860618be)
Lee managed to keep his body underneath Ruthie as he fell, but he knocked Jenna sideways and felt his elbow connect with her cheek. He lay still, catching his breath, while Ruthie clung to his chest, her small head just under his chin.
“Ruthie?” he rasped. “Ruthie, are you all right?”
Her head moved in a nod, and her small voice answered. “I wanted to pet the horse.”
Jenna picked herself up off the ground and flew at him, batting his hands away from Ruthie. “You fool!” she screamed. “She might have been killed!”
A red mark bloomed on her cheek where his elbow had clipped her. He sat up slowly, feeling a muscle pull in his shoulder. “It’s my fault,” he shouted. “I’m sorry. I’m thankful Devil didn’t kick her.”
“That horse is dangerous! I don’t want it anywhere near our wagon.”
Lee got to his knees before realizing he must have hit his head on the wagon wheel when he went down. He was so dizzy he felt like vomiting. He rocked back onto his heels and put his head between his knees while Jenna paced around him like a stalking cougar.
“Get rid of that animal,” she ordered. “Now. Tonight.”
He shook his head to clear it and she gave a little screech. “Did you hear me? I said—”
“I heard you. Stop yelling for a minute and listen.”
“Listen! What can you possibly say that will...” Her voice was unsteady. Oh, hell, she was going to cry. He tensed, waiting for the tears.
But she surprised him. She spent the next five minutes calling him names and maligning his horse, and he let her get it all out of her system. But no tears. She was tougher than she looked.
When she began to run down, he got to his feet and stuck his face in front of hers. “You finished?”
She stared at him in mutinous silence. She had eyes that were an odd shade of green, like moss. And her mouth, when she shut it, looked soft and as rosy as ripe raspberries. He hadn’t been this close to a pretty woman in over a year, and funny things were happening in his belly.
“That horse,” he said quietly, “stays where I can see him, and that means he goes where I go. He stays tied up to the wagon until we get to Oregon.”
“I won’t allow it.”
“If you want me to drive your wagon, you don’t have a choice. I’ll talk to your daughters about staying safe around him.”
She glared at him. Ruthie sidled toward him, and then he became aware of two wide-eyed faces peeking out from the back of the wagon.
“Come on down, you two,” he ordered. “I need to talk to you.” While they climbed down, he knelt before Ruthie.
“Honey, listen. A horse doesn’t understand little girls. When you get close to his hind legs, he thinks you’re going to hurt him and he’ll kick you.”
Ruthie nodded, but she wouldn’t look at him. Tess and Mary Grace moved to stand on either side of their sister. He noted that they gave Jenna a wide berth.
“Now,” he continued with a glance to include the older girls, “if you want to pet a horse, you first look him in the eye and talk to him. Keep your voice low and don’t make any sudden moves. Then you can lay your hand on his neck. But you don’t do any of this unless I’m around.”
“What do you say to him?” Ruthie whispered.
Tess gave an unladylike snort. “You say ‘how do you do,’ I suppose. The whole idea is preposterous.”
“No, it’s not ’posterous,” Ruthie protested. “I want to know.”
Tess sniffed. “That just shows how stupid you are.”
“She’s not stupid,” Mary Grace interjected. “She’s...well, she’s not stupid.”
“Huh! That’s all you know.”
“Girls!” Jenna snapped out the word in a tone Lee had never heard her use. “Hush up and listen to Mr. Carver. Since he insists on keeping that animal, you should know how to act around it.” Then she shot him a look that would ignite kindling.
Lee stood up. “That includes you, Mrs. Borland. Don’t startle the horse by shouting or screaming when you’re near him.”
She propped both hands on her hips. “I plan never to be near him, Mr. Carver. I dislike horses. And I dislike—” She snapped her jaw shut. “But since I seem to be stuck with your services, I will do as you say.”
Her voice was pure frost. He’d guess Sam Lincoln had refused to replace him, and for the first time since he joined the emigrant train he felt a small amount of acceptance. By Sam maybe, but not by Mary Grace or Tess.
And not by Jenna. Jenna was the only one he really cared about, besides Ruthie. Strange, that the little girl accepted him with an almost adult understanding; she didn’t care that he was a Virginian or a Confederate soldier.
“Mrs. Borland, would you have any coffee?”
She twitched her skirt. “Of course. I don’t drink it at night as it keeps me awake.”
“Mind if I brew some up?” He ran two fingers over a lump swelling above one temple. “I have the beginnings of a headache.”
She whirled away to the wagon, rummaged around for a moment, then emerged with a small canvas bag of coffee beans and a small wooden coffee mill. “Tess, poke up the fire and fetch the coffeepot, please. I’ll go for water.” She snatched up one of the buckets and marched off toward the creek.
While she was gone, Lee ground a handful of coffee beans, and Tess unceremoniously clunked the coffeepot onto the fire. He saw Jenna stagger across the field with the heavy bucket and went to lift it out of her hand. Her grudging “thank you” came out cold as an ice chip.
Lee drew in a long breath. Looked like he was in an enemy camp with just one ally, a little girl less than three feet tall. Well, hell, he’d lived through Gettysburg and Appomattox, and he’d lived through the grinding emptiness of his life after Laurie died; he guessed he’d live through this.
Suddenly everyone disappeared into the wagon, even Ruthie. He brewed up his own coffee and sat alone by the fire gulping it down as hot as he could stand it. Anything to remind him that he was alive, even if he wasn’t liked or wanted.
The soft murmur of a woman’s voice drifted from the wagon. From the measured cadence of the sounds, he guessed Jenna was reading aloud. Poetry, maybe. That must be why Tess knew a word like preposterous. Jenna was obviously well-lettered, and apparently she was educating the girls.
After a time her voice stopped, and she climbed out of the wagon and moved into the firelight. She ignored the coffeepot and perched on a wooden crate across the fire pit from him.
“I heard you reading to the girls,” he said. “Poetry?”
“Yes. Idylls of the King.”
“I admire your sharing your knowledge, even though they resent you.”
“I don’t want them to grow up ignorant, Mr. Carver. They will also know how to cook and sew and keep house. An ignorant girl in a wild new country like Oregon is asking for trouble.”
“Forgive me, Mrs. Borland, but an ignorant girl anywhere is asking for trouble.” He watched her back stiffen and waited a good ten heartbeats before he opened his mouth again.
“On another subject,” he began, “is it all right with you if I spread out my bedroll under your wagon?”
She didn’t answer.
“I sleep with my rifle next to me. Thought you’d like to know you’ll be protected at night.”
“Yes, I appreciate that.”
“You sleep inside the wagon?”
She waited so long to answer he thought maybe she hadn’t heard; then he realized where she’d been sleeping up until last night.
“There is not enough room inside for me,” she said at last. “I have been sleeping under the wagon.”
That stopped his breath. He’d bet a month’s pay she didn’t know what to do now. He could make it easy for her, volunteer to sleep outside, next to his horse. But something inside rebelled at that. Maybe it wasn’t the gentlemanly thing to do, but he wanted to sleep near her. Couldn’t say exactly why except that she was damn pretty and she had a nice voice. When she wasn’t yelling at him, that was.
Anyway, she was so mad at him she probably wouldn’t speak three words to him.
“Suits me,” he said quietly. He noticed she wouldn’t look at him.
* * *
The situation was awkward. Embarrassing. Never in a month of Sundays would Jenna have imagined lying next to a man who was not her husband. Her mother would have apoplexy if she knew.
She decided to sleep in her dress and petticoat, even though with Mathias she had stripped to her chemise and drawers. She arranged her pallet opposite to what she thought his would be, putting her head where she supposed his feet would be.
She did not like Lee Carver. But for some reason she did not fear him. She lay back on her quilt and closed her eyes until his voice startled her.
“Jenna.”
Just her name, spoken so low she might have imagined it.
“Yes?”
“Can the girls in the wagon hear us down here?”
“I don’t know. Mathias and I never talked at night.”
“Listen, then. You know I mean no harm to your family, or to you.”
No harm! She wanted to scream the words at him. You shot my husband. Your horse could have killed Ruthie.
She watched him spread out his blanket and prop his saddle at his head. He stretched out fully clothed and folded his arms behind his head. His rifle lay between them.
“Is that loaded?”
“Yes, it is. Did your husband not keep a rifle handy?”
“Mathias did not have a rifle.”
“Revolver, then.”
“He had no revolver, either.”
He sat up. “Good God, how did he plan to protect you?”
Jenna swallowed. “He did not think of it. Mathias did not plan ahead.”
She had often thought about it after they joined the emigrant train at Independence. Mathias was the only man other than Reverend Fredericks who went unarmed.
“Your older girls should learn how to fire a weapon, Mrs. Borland.”
“They will be proper, educated young ladies in Oregon. Why should they know about firearms?”
“It’s a long way to Oregon. Their lives might depend on knowing such things.”
She edged her body farther to the right, away from his rifle and away from him. Then she realized with a start that they were facing each other. So much for her head-to-foot plan.
“Tomorrow...” His words halted.
“Tomorrow,” she said in as matter-of-fact a tone as she could manage, “I will make coffee and breakfast and you will yoke up the oxen and we will move on toward Oregon. We need not even speak to each other.”
“Not quite,” he said. He shifted his frame, rolled onto his side and propped himself on one elbow. “You can’t shut me out like that. You don’t have to like me, Jenna, but you do need me.”
She sucked in an angry breath. “I do not need you, Mr. Carver. I will never need you.”
He laughed softly. “Yes, you do. You need me to teach your daughters about horses. About how to protect themselves in case...in case something happens to you. Or to me.”
A dart of fear stabbed into her chest. “What do you mean? What could possibly happen?”
“God! We’ve got over a thousand miles to go with two aging oxen. Rivers to ford. Four wooden wheels that could break or get mired in quicksand. Dust storms. Dried-up water holes and God only knows if there’s enough flour and beans in your wagon to last. Wolves. Indians.”
“I am well aware of the dangers. You need not elaborate unless you are trying to frighten me.”
“Hell, yes, I’m trying to frighten you!”
“Well, it’s working, so please hush up!”
She heard him chuckle, and then he gave a long, drawn-out sigh and settled back on his blanket. After a while his rhythmic breathing told her he was asleep.
She tried to forget his words, but they swarmed and circled in her brain until she wanted to shout them out of her head.
A thousand miles, he’d said. She wanted to weep.
Oh, no she wouldn’t! She might be frightened to death at what was ahead, especially now that she alone was responsible for the Borland girls, but she would not let it show. She would cry when they reached Oregon. By then, she supposed, she would be completely unhinged.
And by then she would be a mother.
Oh, God, she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t do any of it. Why, why had she let Mathias talk her into heading across this rough, uninhabited country?
And why, dear God, why had he taken Lee Carver’s horse?
Chapter Five (#u4a7374b9-9d6e-53f3-a3a5-8cb6860618be)
Lee woke before dawn and looked over at the still form that lay next to him. She was curled up on her side like a young girl, her face resting on her folded hands, and a little fluff of white petticoat peeked out beside her drawn-up knees. Her leather shoes sat off to one side, the coarse stockings stuffed inside. He wondered what kept them up after walking all day.
Her eyelids looked shadowed with fatigue and a purpling bruise bloomed on her cheek. Quietly he drew the rumpled quilt up over her sleeping form and crawled out from under the wagon.
Sue and Sunflower grazed peacefully a few yards away. He fed Devil a handful of oats, then tramped down to the creek to wash and shave using his army kit. He hung the mirror on a low branch, but in the half-light he could barely see the dark stubble on his chin.
The air was so still and balmy it reminded him of spring back in Virginia. And it was quiet, a good time for mentally sorting things out. Jenna, for example.
She bothered him. It was more than her sharp words and obvious dislike of him; something about her didn’t make sense. Had she really wanted to come west with three stepchildren? Somehow she didn’t seem ready for a journey this arduous. Maybe she’d let her husband do the planning, and right about now she might be realizing that had been a mistake.
It made him angry. Made him want to take her by the shoulders and shake her. On another level it made him want to put his arms around her and hold her.
He hadn’t held a woman in a long time. Hadn’t wanted to.
Until now. The thought of holding Jenna, maybe kissing her, sent hot prickles all over his body, and he had to laugh. You damn fool, what about your Never Again resolution?
Yeah, what about that? He’d sworn he’d never let any woman touch his heart again. It had worked just fine until he’d shot Jenna’s husband and ended up with her in the middle of a family he hadn’t expected.
He rinsed his straight razor and folded it back into his kit, then filled two buckets of water from the creek and lugged them back to camp. He found the coffeepot, rinsed it out and moved away from the wagon to grind the beans so the noise wouldn’t wake anyone. An iron skillet waited beside the fire pit, but the bacon, if there was any, would be in the wagon. He’d rather brave a Sioux ambush than tangle with Tess.
Ruthie popped out through the bonnet and he pantomimed slicing meat. After a long minute she produced a small hunk of not-too-lean bacon and watched in silence as he sliced some off with his pocketknife and laid it in the skillet.
* * *
Jenna awoke to the smell of coffee. Coffee? The sun was up and her empty stomach was rumbling. She pulled on her shoes and stockings, folded up her bedding and crawled out from under the wagon. The sight that met her eyes made her blink twice.
Lee Carver stood over a skillet of sizzling bacon, but it was Ruthie who was forking over the strips. Steam puffed out the spout of the coffeepot sitting on a flat rock next to the fire. Without a word, Carver sloshed a mug full and presented it to her.
“Thank you,” she managed. It was hot and strong and just what she needed as an antidote to her annoyance with the man. Well, it wasn’t annoyance, really, she admitted. It was fear, plain and simple. Not of him, necessarily, but...
She hadn’t wanted to leave Roseville, where there were streets and board sidewalks and shops. She’d been completely unprepared to find herself with three stepdaughters, two of whom resented her, and a husband who had not cared about her, not really. Mathias had offered marriage simply to gain a mother for his girls. She had not allowed herself time to think too carefully about his offer because she had no choice, really, considering her situation. She had not dared to tell her mother the truth; instead she had unthinkingly agreed to marry Mathias.
“Any biscuits left over from supper?” he asked.
“In the wagon. Ruthie can get them.”
Tess yanked open the canvas bonnet, took one look at Mr. Carver and disappeared back inside with a sniff. But Mary Grace climbed out and marched up to Lee.
“When are you gonna show us about your horse?”
“After breakfast.”
“Can I ride him?”
“Not until I say so.”
Mary Grace propped her hands on her hips. “You are just plain mean!”
“I am sensible,” he replied without looking up from the skillet. “People who don’t know what they’re doing around a horse get themselves killed trying to ride before they’re ready.”
“You sure are hard to please,” she snapped.
“Maybe.”
Tess finally descended from the wagon and sent him a black look. Jenna laid out the leftover biscuits on the warm fire-pit rocks, and after a few minutes they gathered to devour them, along with the crisp bacon. Then, while she heated water to wash the tin plates, Lee marched the girls over to his horse and she could hear his low, patient voice giving instructions.
All at once he appeared at her side. “Now you.”
“Now me, what?”
“Horse lesson.”
Her heart somersaulted into her stomach. “No.”
“Yes. Jenna, you have to know how to behave around a horse.”
“Not this horse.”
“Any horse. How is it you grew up without knowing anything about horses?”
“I grew up in a town back in Ohio. I walked to school and the mercantile and the dressmaker and my music lessons. I had no need of a horse.”
“Well, you do now. This isn’t Ohio. Come on.”
Tess and Mary Grace drifted near and stood watching, waiting to see what she would do. No doubt they relished her discomfort, and the thought made her grit her teeth.
Carver turned his head toward them. “Mary Grace, would you finish washing up the plates? Maybe Tess could help you.”
To Jenna’s astonishment, both girls advanced toward the bucket of warm soapy water, and Lee muscled her over to confront the stallion.
Lord, the animal was huge! It looked at her with a giant black eye that clearly held a message: I hate you. She flinched away.
Lee caught her arm and pulled her back within touching distance, but Jenna put both hands behind her back. “I can’t. I just can’t.”
“Can’t what? I haven’t asked you to do anything yet.”
“If it’s about this horse, I can’t do it.”
He looked sideways at her. “Jenna, you can do this. You’re not a coward. You have plenty of backbone.”
“I don’t care about backbone.”
He gave her arm a little shake. “Are you going to give Tess and Mary Grace more ammunition just because you’re afraid of this horse?”
“Yes, I guess I am.” She thought that prospect over for a moment. Her relationship with Tess and Mary Grace was bad enough already; she would die before she gave them something else to dislike about her.
“No,” she blurted out. “I am not!”
“Good girl. We’ll take it slow.”
She drew in a careful breath. “I am not a girl, Mr. Carver.”
“That, Mrs. Borland, is obvious. Now stand here and just talk to the horse. Keep your voice low.”
Jenna stared into the big black eye and opened her mouth. Nothing came out.
“Jenna?”
She tried again. “H-hello, horse.”
“Devil,” he prompted. “His name is Devil.”
“That’s ridiculous. Surely he doesn’t recognize his name?”
“Try it.”
She stiffened her back and looked straight at the animal. “Um... Hello, Devil. What a d-dreadful name you have. It’s enough to scare anyone who has any sense at all.”
Carver laughed. “Good,” he said. “Keep going. Tell him who you are.”
Jenna shut her eyes. If she lived through the next ten minutes she would put hot pepper in Lee Carver’s coffee the first chance she got. She peered again at the big black horse.
“My name is Jenna West—Jenna Borland.”
Carver sent her a puzzled glance. Behind him she saw Tess and Mary Grace watching her with avid interest. She squared her shoulders.
“You’re doing fine, Jenna. You want to pet his nose?”
“No,” she said quickly. “I do not.”
He ignored her, took her hand in his and lifted it to the stallion’s shiny nose. She tried to jerk away, but he held her fingers firmly under his. His hand, warm and insistent, pressed hers into the animal’s smooth skin.
“Let go of me,” she whispered.
“No. Just relax. He won’t bite you.” He kept her hand pinned under his.
“Please, Mr. Carver.”
“My name is Lee.”
“Lee, please. I am truly afraid. Surely he, I mean Devil, senses that?”
“He won’t hurt you if you don’t startle him, or yell at him, or hurt him. He’s just like a human being. If you mistreat a man, he will strike out.”
“Is—is that a warning?”
“About the horse? Yes. About me? No.”
“I don’t believe you.”
He grinned suddenly. “I know you don’t.”
She could not think of one single thing to say. She just stood there with her hand captured under his and her heart fluttering like a frightened bird.
And then he bent toward her and whispered in her ear.
Chapter Six (#u4a7374b9-9d6e-53f3-a3a5-8cb6860618be)
Jenna jerked away from Lee so fast he thought something had bitten her. “What? How dare you say something like that to me!”
The truth was he didn’t know how he dared. First off, she was carrying another man’s child. And second, after his wife died he’d sworn never again to think twice about any woman. But Jenna wasn’t just “any woman.” All he knew was that even after a day under the broiling sun and a night sleeping in all her clothes without even a spit bath, Jenna Borland smelled good, like something flowery.
So he told her so.
“You,” she said, her blue-green eyes accusing, “smell like a horse. A smoky, bacon-y horse. A...sweaty horse.”
He laughed aloud. “That’s because I’ve been working around the oxen and frying bacon over a campfire and haven’t taken a bath in a while.”
“I must pack up the breakfast things,” she said quickly.
“Get Tess and Mary Grace to pack up. I want you to watch how I yoke up the oxen.”
She knew better than to argue, because she walked with him into the center area where the animals were grazing and watched in silence while he drove Sue and Sunflower to the wagon and wrestled the harnesses and the wooden yoke into position.
“Slide the hoop under the yoke, like this,” he instructed as he worked. “Then attach it to the tongue, here. Next, put a lead rope through the nose ring, see? Be sure not to tangle those lines there.”
Jenna nodded. She stared at the two animals. Hour after hour, day after day, they plodded patiently along the wheel-rutted trail, hauling their wagon loaded with everything they owned.
Some days she’d felt just like those two oxen, as if she were pulling a crushing weight with no respite, with no encouragement from Mathias or from the girls, working until her back ached and her hands were chapped and her nose sunburned.
Lee sent her a swift look. “Think you could manage this if you had to?”
“You wouldn’t force me to, would you? As you did with your horse?”
He shook his head and bent toward her. “Just look over yonder at Tess and Mary Grace,” he intoned.
Both girls stood transfixed at the sight of Jenna scratching behind Sunflower’s ear. At least she assumed that’s what they were staring at. Or perhaps her petticoat had come unsnapped, or her drawers...
But no. The instant the traces were attached, both girls lost interest. It wasn’t her they watched; it was the oxen. And Lee Carver.
Lee offered to show her how to drive the wagon, but after the horse, she couldn’t face another challenge. The man made her nervous; he asked things of her she wasn’t ready for.
He climbed up onto the driver’s bench and looked at her expectantly. She didn’t want to sit next to him, even with Ruthie between them. Maybe it was the way he smelled.
But you like his smell. Admit it. Mathias never smelled like anything except, well, hair oil and strong spirits. Imagine, dousing oneself with hair oil on an emigrant train. There were some things about Mathias she had never understood.
One by one the wagons rolled into a long, ragged line, and the day’s journey began. Mary Grace and Tess walked on the side of the wagon opposite Jenna, occasionally stopping to pick wildflowers or collect buffalo chips in their aprons.
The route skirted the south fork of the Platte River. Lee said they would have to ford it ten miles farther on.
But after their nooning, the sky darkened and it began to rain. At first it felt refreshing. Tess and Mary Grace yanked off their poke bonnets and turned their faces up into it, but then the sky opened up and fat drops pelted down. Ten minutes later both girls were soaking wet and took shelter inside the wagon.
Lee dragged his rain poncho out of his saddlebag and sheltered Ruthie underneath it. She insisted on riding on the box with him, but Jenna gave herself up to the cleansing downpour, unbraided her thick, dark hair and let the rain wash through the dark strands. Then she shook the dust out of her skirt and held it out so the water soaked through it. If only she dared, she would strip off her dress and let the downpour cleanse her body, but when she saw Lee watching her, she gave up the idea and dropped back to the rear of the wagon.
“Tess? Mary Grace? Come on out! The water isn’t cold, and it feels wonderfully refreshing.”
Silence.
Mathias’s daughters had no sense of adventure. Well, why should they? Mathias himself had had little sense of adventure. Then why had he insisted they travel to Oregon?
“Jenna!” Lee yelled over the rumble of thunder. “Climb up here under the poncho.”
She shook her head, feeling the wind slap wet tendrils of hair across her face. “No,” she called. “I like the rain. It’s like taking a bath!”
He slowed the oxen. “There may be lightning,” he shouted. “Don’t get caught in the open.”
She nodded, then stretched out both arms and turned lazy circles in the wet. A jagged bolt of blinding white lightning cracked across the black sky, and she bolted for the wagon. Lee pulled to a stop and reached his hand down to her. She climbed up and took Ruthie on her lap, and he draped his poncho over them both.
Water sluiced off the wide brim of his hat. Jenna reached out and tugged it lower on his face, but he brushed it back with an impatient gesture. “I have to see,” he yelled. She nodded, but he didn’t turn away. Instead he stared at her for a good half minute.
Goodness, she must look a sight!
Finally he refocused his gaze on the muddy trail ahead, an odd smile playing about his mouth. Well! He’d look messy, too, if he was as wet as she was.
An hour passed, then another, and the oxen kept lumbering forward. Then Sam Lincoln rode up on his bay mare and signaled to Lee.
“River’s dead ahead,” he shouted. “Hurry it up. With this much rain there might be a flash flood.”
“Can’t,” Lee yelled back. “Oxen can only go so fast.”
Sam frowned and rode off toward the Zaberskie wagon.
When the wagons drew up along the riverbank, Lee heaved out a long sigh. “Flooding” was an understatement. Muddy brown water rushed past, swelling what had been a series of shallow rivulets and sandbars into a wide, slow-moving sea. He pulled the oxen to a halt and studied the situation until Sam reappeared.
“The rest of the men feel it’s worth a try to ford now, before it gets any worse. What do you think?”
“No,” Lee said. “Too risky.”
Sam rode off again, returning within a quarter of an hour. “We’re going across. Yours will be the last wagon over.”
It was midafternoon before all the wagons but theirs had lumbered across the swollen river, and then the rain-bedraggled wagon master returned one last time. “Hurry it up, Lee,” Sam yelled over the roaring water.
Lee clamped his teeth together. “I’ll take the girls and Jenna over on horseback first. Then I’ll drive the wagon across.”
Sam nodded and was gone.
“Jenna, get the girls dressed in warm clothes. You, too. It can get cold in the middle of a river.”
She climbed down and reached up for Ruthie. When they disappeared into the wagon, he wrapped the leather reins around the brake handle and dropped to the ground to untie Devil and throw on a harness and bridle.
“I’ll take Tess across first,” he announced to Jenna. “Then I’ll come back for Ruthie and Mary Grace.”
The rain-soaked girls nodded, biting their lips. Mary Grace began to whimper.
“Hush up,” Tess snapped. “It’s just water. Besides, I’m going first.”
“Tess, I want you to catch your dress up between your legs, like a split riding skirt,” Lee instructed. When she was ready, he lifted her onto Devil’s broad, wet back and swung up behind her. Then he walked the horse to the riverbank, now shelving off under the onslaught of rain, wrapped an arm around Tess’s middle and turned the animal into the water.
“Hold on to his mane,” he shouted. “Dig your fingers in deep.”
The current sucked at them, swirled up around his boots. He kicked Devil hard and they lurched forward. Tess was trembling, but she kept a death grip on Devil’s thick mane. He put his face near her ear. “Don’t let go, no matter what.”
Her head tipped down in a nod, and the next thing he knew Devil stepped into a rampaging freshet up to his belly. Tess yelped.
“Hold on!” he shouted.
Water flooded up to the girl’s knees, then her thighs, but she didn’t let go. Ahead of him Lee saw the other wagons lined up on the opposite bank.
The horse started to swim but was swept downstream a hundred yards. Sam Lincoln and another man rode along the bank, keeping pace with Devil as he struggled through the raging water.
At last Lee felt the stallion’s hooves hit solid ground and he dug his heels into the animal’s sides. The bank was a slurry of mud, slippery as molasses. Twice the horse tried to heave its body up onto dry land, and twice he floundered.
Tess began to gulp noisy sobs. On the third try, Devil lurched up onto the bank, and Sam and someone else, Ted Zaberskie, standing ankle-deep in mud, reached to grab Tess. She tumbled off into Sam’s arms.
“Wait!” Sam shouted to him. “Lee, don’t go back across.”
Lee shook his head. “Jenna and the young ones are back there, plus the wagon.” He reined back into the river without looking back.
The return trip was easier. He mounted Ruthie tight against him, then snugged Mary Grace in front and wrapped his arms around them both. Jenna gave the two girls a wobbly smile and stood back, her arms clasped across her waist, to watch them go. Her face was white with fear, and suddenly Lee wanted to kiss her. Instead, he started back across the river.
This time the river seemed less wild, or maybe he was just getting used to it. Mary Grace cried all the way across, but Ruthie maintained a stoic calm until they reached Sam and Zaberskie on the other side. Sam lifted Mary Grace off the horse and slogged up to where Tess stood, wringing her hands; Ruthie threw her little arms around Ted Zaberskie’s neck and wouldn’t let go.
The downpour increased. Hell, if the river rose any higher, the wagon would never make it. He swam the stallion back across to Jenna, who stood with the rain pounding down on her head and shoulders, calling something up to him.
“Wagon!”
“No,” he shouted. “You next.”
She pointed to herself, then cupped her hands and yelled back. “Go with wagon. You drive. Devil swim across.”
That was one smart woman, he thought. She was right. If he didn’t get the wagon across now, they would be stranded on this side with no shelter and no food.
He dismounted and slapped Devil’s rump, hard. The animal trotted down the bank and splashed into the river; with a knot in his gut, Lee watched him start to swim.
He couldn’t afford to lose that horse. But right now he had other things to worry about. He grabbed Jenna around the waist, pushed her up onto the driver’s box and climbed up after her. While she covered them both with his rain poncho, he unwound the reins and flapped them over the oxen.
Jenna slipped one arm around his middle, and he had to laugh. Did she think she could keep him from floating off the box? He shook the traces, and then they were rattling down the bank into the rain-swollen water.
Almost immediately the wagon hit deep water and started to lift off the bottom. Still, Sue and Sunflower plowed inexorably forward until they were chest-high in muddy river water.
Jenna’s arm tightened around him. It would feel great if he had time to relish the moment. But he didn’t.
Ahead of them he watched Devil’s dark neck drifting downriver.
“Got a whip?” he shouted.
She shook her head.
Well, hell. He needed something to urge the team on, a stick, a goad, anything. Should have thought to cut some willow switches. He yanked off his hat and swatted at their broad rumps, letting loose with some swearwords he hadn’t realized he knew.
And then the current caught them broadside and swept the wagon downriver.
Chapter Seven (#u4a7374b9-9d6e-53f3-a3a5-8cb6860618be)
The wagon slewed sideways, and Jenna bit back a scream. A surge of terror rolled through her. The weight pulled the oxen off balance, and no matter how much Lee shouted and slapped at them with his sodden hat, the animals had to struggle to keep their footing.
Suddenly he ripped off the poncho and slapped the thick leather reins into her hands. “Hold them tight,” he yelled.
He jumped down off the box into the river and fought his way through waist-deep water until he reached the oxen. He gripped the side of Sue’s wooden yoke and half pushed, half pulled the animal toward the riverbank.
The reins jerked and bucked in Jenna’s hands, but she resolved she would not let go. With Lee urging them on, Sue and Sunflower stumbled forward to a place where the bank flattened out and the exhausted animals heaved their heavy bodies up onto level land. The wagon splashed up behind them and ground to a stop just as Sam stepped forward to grip the harnesses.
Inexplicably Jenna thought of the flour barrel. Had it gotten wet? Was their bedding dry? She sat with her head down, unable to move, until she heard a voice at her side.
“You can let go now, Jenna.” Lee reached up and pried her fingers off the reins. Shaking, she inched across the driver’s box and put one foot on the iron step. Her knees turned to mush. She grabbed for the brake handle, then felt strong arms scoop her up.
At that moment the sun broke through. Rainbows arched in the distance, beautiful wide bands of color shimmering through the mist. Lee set her down in front of Emma Lincoln, who handed her a tin cup of something. “Drink it up, dearie. You earned it.”
Jenna gulped down a swallow and choked as something fiery slid past her throat. “Whiskey,” the older woman explained. “Warms your cockles.”
It certainly warmed something. After two more gulps she decided she liked the effect.
“The girls are drying off in our wagon, Jenna. Sam says as soon as you’re rested we’ll continue on for another hour and make camp early.” As she spoke, Sam stepped forward and settled his large hand on her shoulder.
“Lucky day for you, I’d say. That Virginian’s got sand, all right.”
“Sand?”
“You know, grit. Courage. Smarts, too. Good man, like I said.” He gave Jenna’s shoulder a fatherly pat and moved away.
They were lucky, she acknowledged. She glanced back at the wagon. Under the sun’s rays, steam rose from the canvas covering. She still wore Lee’s rain poncho and it, too, began to steam.
Lee collected his horse from Sam and stood scratching the animal’s ear and talking to him. Then he tied him to the wagon and swung up onto the driver’s box. Jenna set the cup of whiskey on the bench and climbed up beside him. She lifted the poncho over her head and spread it out over her knees to dry.
Lee looked pointedly at the tin cup. “You all right?” Without a word she offered him what was left. He kept his gray eyes on her and emptied the cup in one gulp.
“Didn’t know you drank, Mrs. Borland.”
“I didn’t know you had such a...colorful vocabulary, Mr. Carver. You have names for Sue and Sunflower I’ve never heard before.”
“Made your ears burn, I’ll wager.”
“And my eyes and my nose and everything else. Where did you learn such words?”
“In the War.”
After a short rest, the wagons once more began to roll along the now-muddy trail. Sue and Sunflower stepped sure-footedly over the slippery tracks ahead of them as if the day had not been the least unusual. For a split second Jenna envied them. Nothing seemed to bother them. They had no worries, really; all they had to do was follow orders and trust that the driver knew what he—or she—was doing.
An hour later the wagon master called a halt. Jenna climbed into the wagon bed and checked over everything—food barrels, bedding, even the canvas sacks of beans and cornmeal. Amazingly, everything was dry except for Ruthie’s yellow poke bonnet, which had fallen onto the wet floor. Jenna laid it outside in the fading sun to dry.
Evening fell. The air smelled sweet and fresh until smoke from the campfires drifted into a gray haze. Emma and Sam invited the girls to take supper with them, and all at once Jenna realized she was alone with Lee. She studied his tall form as he stood brushing his horse and drying off the saddle he stored in the rope rigging underneath the wagon.
He would expect her to cook something. Pancakes, that was it. Rolled up, with blackberry jelly, if she could unearth the jar from inside the wagon. And coffee. Nothing could keep her awake tonight; she was so tired she ached all over.
Lee brought water from the stream, poured some into a bowl for Devil and dipped enough into the coffeepot to half fill it, then set the bucket near the rock fireplace he had cobbled together. He had not spoken one word.
After all that yelling and swearing in the river, it was strange he was so quiet in camp. He sat on the sturdy apple crate they used for a chair, whittling on something with his pocketknife, saying nothing, while she stirred up the pancake batter and clanked the skillet over the fire.
They ate their supper in complete silence, and after a time Jenna’s nerves were stretched so thin she fancied she could hear them humming inside her head. They had just been through a horrifying experience. Why did he say nothing about it?
Finally she couldn’t stand it one more minute. “I’m going for a walk,” she announced.
“No, you’re not,” he said, his gaze on the block of wood in his hands.
“Don’t tell me what I can and cannot do. Why shouldn’t I go for a walk?”
“Because my horse is twitchy tonight, and when he gets that way there’s usually something afoot.”
“What kind of something?”
“Coyotes, maybe.”
“I may be afraid of horses, but I am not afraid of coyotes.” She moved past him.
“Or a wolf.”
That stopped her cold. “Wolf? There are wolves out here?”
“And renegade Indians.”
“Indians!” She stared at him, her heart pounding.
“This is Sioux country.”
“Oh.” For a long time she stood uncertainly at the edge of camp, twisting her skirt in her hands and pondering what to do. Then Tess and Mary Grace and Ruthie trooped over from the Lincoln’s wagon and with no urging whatsoever, all three climbed up into the wagon.
“Are your dresses dry?” Jenna called.
“All dry,” came Ruthie’s voice. “But my dolly got all wet.”
“Are you gonna read some more about King Arthur tonight?” Mary Grace queried. “If you are, hurry up, ’cuz I’m sleepy.”
An hour later, Jenna closed the leather-bound book, gathered up her two quilts and crawled under the wagon. A single candle burned next to Lee’s discarded boots. She found he had spread his poncho flat to serve as a ground cover and rolled his pallet out on top, and he gestured for her to do the same.
But the poncho wasn’t large enough to reach under them both.
“Come closer,” Lee said. “After all, there’s a loaded rifle between us.” His voice sounded tired and his eyes were already closed.
The proposition jarred her, and she had to think it over. For one thing, being that close to him made her uneasy. It was almost harder, now that she was beginning to see the kind of man he was. But no one would know if she did as he suggested. And what if they did?
She removed her shoes and stockings and puffed out the candle flame.
“My mother used to wear stockings like that,” he said. “Before the War.”
“You were watching me!” she accused.
“Hard not to.” He went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “After the War, none of our women had stockings.”
She floundered for something to say. “My mother was never without proper stockings,” she said at last.
“Yeah?”
“Yes. My mother was never without proper anything. She wanted me to be proper, too, but she certainly failed in that.”
Why was she telling him this? She never talked about her mother, not even to Mathias. Besides, why would he care? Mama was a Yankee through and through, starched so stiff her spine crackled. Lee Carver was a Confederate, a Virginian, from a slow, genteel life she could scarcely imagine.
Water and oil, that’s what she and Lee Carver were. Oh, well, it was only for another thousand miles or so. Then he’d ride off to raise his horses on a ranch somewhere and...
She caught her breath. And she would have her baby. And she would have it in Oregon, in a nice, civilized, safe town.
A town where no one could ever find her.
Chapter Eight (#u4a7374b9-9d6e-53f3-a3a5-8cb6860618be)
Lee was close to exhaustion, but for some reason he still couldn’t sleep. Lying on his pallet under the Borlands’ wagon, hours dragged by as he listened to Jenna’s soft breathing beside him and the night sounds around the camp. Crickets. An owl in the ash trees at the edge of camp. The rustle inside the wagon when one of the girls rolled over under her blanket.
Sure was an odd family, he thought for the hundredth time, a young woman expecting a baby and two older stepdaughters who obviously resented her. But he’d watched the youngest, five-year-old Ruthie, gently pat Jenna’s shoulder as if she were the adult and Jenna the child.
He puzzled over it until a new sound drifted to him, a long, mournful cry coming across the far-off plain. Tied to the wagon, Devil gave a muffled whicker; the horse had heard it, too.
He listened for a while, his arms folded behind his head, wondering exactly where the animal was. Then another cry answered, and the first one, now longer and more drawn out, grew more intense.
“Lee?” Jenna whispered beside him. “What is that sound?”
“Wolf,” he answered. “Not close, just noisy.”
“There are two of them,” she said after a moment. “They sound so forlorn.”
“Hungry, probably. And lonely.”
She was silent, but he could sense her listening in the dark. He hadn’t thought about being lonely since the War, but the howling from the hills sure as hell crawled under his skin.
“Are they going to find each other?” she asked.
The question sliced into his brain clean as a razor. “Yeah, they will. Probably going to mate.”
He heard her breath suck in. She must be pretty ladified if the word mate brought that reaction. Made him wonder even more about her.
“You said your mother was ‘proper,’” he ventured. “How come she let you join an emigrant train?”
“She didn’t have a choice, really. I mean I didn’t have a choice. Mama had to let me marry Mathias and join the train.”
“How come she let you marry a horse thief in the first place?” He held his breath, expecting an explosion of anger. No woman wanted to hear her husband called a horse thief.
She stayed quiet for a good two minutes while he waited.
“Again, Mama felt she had no choice.”
“Your father still alive?”
“No. He was killed in the War. At Antietam.”
“Too bad. It’s hard on a woman alone. She never remarried?”
“Mr. Carver, you ask far too many questions.”
“Maybe. Some might say I don’t ask nearly enough.”
“Well,” she huffed, “I would not be one of them. I thought Southern people, refined people from the state of Virginia, were too polite to probe into others’ affairs.”
“We are, usually. No law says we can’t be curious, though. And we’re out here in the West, Mrs. Borland. Not in Virginia. We’re in Yankee country, and Yankees, I’ve observed, are often ill-mannered.”
“That is insulting!” Her voice held more than a bit of frost. “Surely you, a supposedly genteel Southerner, recognize bad manners?”
Lee exhaled a long sigh. “I’m less Johnny Reb now than I was a few years back. Maybe now I’m more like your bluecoats. Your husband, for instance.”
“You are nothing like my husband,” she countered, punching out the words. “Nothing at all.”
He laughed quietly. “I’ll take that as a compliment, if you don’t mind. I didn’t like your husband.”
“I do mind,” she retorted. “You didn’t even know my husband.”
Lee chose his next words with care. “I knew him enough to see some things.”
“What things?” Her tone went from frosty to cold, stinging sleet in sixty seconds.
“For one, he had no business bringing his family on a wagon train with as little preparation as he’d made.”
“What do you mean?” Her voice rose. “Mathias prepared for this trip.”
“Then I’d have to say he didn’t have much experience. And for another thing, looks to me like you’re gonna run out of food before you get halfway to Oregon. Your man didn’t plan far enough ahead.”
Her voice turned to steel. “I’ll thank you to shut your mouth, Mr. Carver.”
Again he laughed. “You know, whenever you’re mad, it’s ‘Mr. Carver.’ And when you’re learning something, or scared, it’s ‘Lee.’”
“I cannot make up my mind about you, Mr. Carver.” She bit his name out in hard, clearly enunciated syllables.
“You might want to hurry that up a little, Mrs. Borland. We’re going to be in each other’s back pockets for another two months.”
That seemed to shut her up. He closed his eyes, listening to her uneven breathing. He knew she wasn’t asleep because she kept twitching under her quilt.
The wolves were crooning loud and long by now. Lee let himself listen and thought about Jenna, about what she’d sound like if... Ah, hell. That wasn’t any way to get to sleep.
But he couldn’t help thinking about it. He smiled up at the shadowy underside of the wagon and closed his eyes.
* * *
Odious man. He was laughing at her, and if there was one thing Jenna hated it was being laughed at. Who did he think he was, anyway? She would never last another two months in the company of this man with his outspoken ways and his subtle goading.
The South had lost the War, hadn’t it? Mathias always said the Confederate soldiers should have slunk back to their ruined plantations and done some honest work. At the moment she half agreed with him.
On the other hand, some of the things Mathias said, which he’d expressed often and crudely, were things she could not agree with. Now that he was gone, she could try to erase some of the hateful poison he’d spewed into the minds of his daughters. It hadn’t all been about her; mostly it was about how worthless other people were. How they owed him something. How he was better than they were.
“Jenna.”
“Oh, what is it?” she said sharply. She clamped her jaw shut. At least he hadn’t called her “Mrs. Borland.”
“I owe you an apology. I had no right to question you in that manner.”
“Oh.” Instantly her annoyance began to fade, but she couldn’t resist one last jab. “Tit for tat, Mr. Carver. The next time we converse it will be my turn to pry.”
He chuckled. “I will look forward to it, Jenna. Good night.”
She debated making a retort until she heard him roll over on his pallet. “Good night,” she said at last. After a long pause, she added, “Lee.”
His soft laugh made her grit her teeth. Why, why was it that he got under her skin? Tomorrow, when he least expected it, she would find some way to make him squirm. She could hardly wait.
Chapter Nine (#u4a7374b9-9d6e-53f3-a3a5-8cb6860618be)
Ruthie gazed up at Lee with round blue eyes. “Mister, I heard funny noises last night.”
Lee snapped his pocketknife closed. “Noises like what?”
“Like something crying.”
“Do you know what a wolf is?”
The girl shook her head. “Tell me ’bout a woof.”
“A wolf is like a dog, honey. In fact, a long, long time ago, dogs were wolves.”
“What happened to them?”
“I guess they grew up. Some of them got to be dogs, and others stayed wild.”
“I want one,” Ruthie announced. “A big one.”
Lee swallowed a smile. “Would you like a new doll instead?” From his shirt pocket he produced the small figure he’d been carving.
Her eyes grew larger. “A dolly? For me?” She reached out her small hand and touched it with one finger. “Is it a boy doll or a girl doll?”
“A girl doll, I think. See, she has on a dress.” From the corner of his eye he saw Jenna watching them, her hands propped at her waist. But her eyes looked soft and kind of shiny.
Ruthie flung her arms around his neck and smacked a kiss onto his stubbly cheek. “Gosh, mister, you’re all scratchy.”
“Yeah. Guess I’d better shave, huh?”
“Oh, goody. Can I watch?”
Over the girl’s blond curls he saw Jenna shake her head.
“Maybe another time,” he said. “What will you name your doll?”
“I’m gonna call her Lee.”
“What? Lee is a boy’s name. My name is Lee.”
“You’re not a boy, mister. You’re a man.”
At Jenna’s burst of laughter he felt a rush of relief. From the moment she rolled out of bed at dawn, she had been glowering at him, all through their breakfast of cornmeal mush, right up to the moment Ruthie had interrupted his wood carving. Didn’t take a genius to see Jenna had something stuck in her craw.
He rose, pressed “Lee” into Ruthie’s hands and strode off to the creek to shave. As he scraped away at his chin he thought about Tess and Mary Grace and what he had planned for them this morning.
And Jenna. That is, if he could he persuade her to do it.
* * *
“Not on your life,” Jenna announced an hour later. “No. No. No. Never.”
“Listen,” he said, his voice oozing patience. “The girls will learn, and that will make your presence out here on the plains a good deal safer.”
“I understand that,” she said. “But you don’t need extra hands for firearms we don’t have. We have only your three weapons.”
He shook his head. She knew what he was thinking, that Mathias had not taken proper steps to protect his family. In that, perhaps, the Virginian was correct.
She watched him walk Tess and Mary Grace off some fifty yards away from the wagons, nail a scrap of white cloth to a tree stump for a target and direct the girls’ attention to his revolver.
With a sniff, Jenna turned back to the fire pit where the kettle of beans sat soaking.
A single gunshot cracked into the quiet, and she looked across the plain to see Tess standing with Lee’s Colt gripped in both long-fingered hands. Lee was bending to show her how to reload.
He was right about their need to protect themselves. It was foolish to depend solely on him. What if he fell ill, or was injured? Yesterday he’d risked his life getting their wagon across the Platte River. What if he had lost his footing and drowned?
Another shot sounded. This time it was Mary Grace, whose two-handed grip wobbled with the revolver’s weight. She had managed to nick the target, and Jenna felt a surge of admiration for the eleven-year-old’s accomplishment. And, she thought grudgingly, for Lee’s skill at instruction.
The rifle lesson was next, she gathered from the difference in the sound. She tried not to listen. In an hour, the target practice session drew to a close, and Jenna grew edgy. Lee had insisted on showing her how to yoke up the oxen and touch that precious horse of his. She prayed he would draw the line at handling firearms.
Probably not. Once this man made up his mind about something, he was stubborn about it. Sam said Lee had “sand.” Right now, she wished he had a good deal less of it.
“Ruthie,” she called into the wagon. “Let’s walk down to the stream and take a bath, shall we?”
“Don’t want a bath, Jenna.”
“Why not?”
“I want to do it with Mister Lee.”
Jenna stuffed down a chortle of laughter. “You can’t do that, honey. Boys and girls don’t bathe together.”
Ruthie pushed out her lower lip. “He’s not a boy, Jenna. He’s a man.”
Oh, my. How could she explain the difference? Before she could come up with anything remotely proper, Tess and Mary Grace flitted back into camp.
“Did you see us, Jenna?” Mary Grace chirped. “I hit the target twice. Tess didn’t even come close.”
“Show-off,” Tess muttered. “Who wants to hit a dumb old tree stump?”
“I do!” Mary Grace challenged. “Lee says it’s important.”
“And it is,” his low voice announced behind her. “Now, Jenna...”
She spun to face him. “No.”
His dark eyebrows rose. “No what? I haven’t asked you anything yet.”
“Whatever it is, the answer is no.”
He looked at her steadily with crinkles growing in the corners of his gray eyes. “I was going to say that I’m going to take a bath before supper. All right with you?”
“As long as I don’t have to—”
His snort of laughter told her he’d read the thought she had squelched. Still chuckling, he strode off toward the stream, his canvas shaving kit dangling from his hand.
“All right, girls,” Jenna said when he was out of sight. “Let’s find us a private spot and do the same.”
* * *
Lee hung his shaving mirror over a huckleberry branch and lathered up his chin with the bar of soap he’d extricated from his kit. He finished stropping his razor and had just bent to peer into the mirror when a pair of blue eyes showed in the reflection.
“Ruthie! What are you doing here?”
“Wanted to watch.”
“Does Jenna know you’re here?”
“Nope. She’s takin’ a bath.”
His blade jerked. “Really?”
“Yes. Tess an’ Mary Grace are finished already. Jenna’s real slow.”
Jupiter! A picture rose in his imagination of Jenna emerging from the stream wearing nothing but her... Wearing nothing. He tried to keep his mind on shaving and his hand steady as he scraped away at his whiskers. Ruthie watched in total absorption, and for that he was grateful. It forced him to pay attention and keep his mind off other things. Like Jenna, all wet and...
He nicked his chin.
When Ruthie scampered off to play with her new doll, Lee tucked his shirt into his jeans, packed up his shaving things and headed back to camp. He was three yards from the creek when he heard a soft splash and a female voice humming a tune. “Polly Wolly Doodle.” A damn Yankee song if there ever was one, but it drew him like a magnet.
He walked eight steps past the huckleberry bush and there she was, thigh-deep in the water, with her back to him. Her dark hair tumbled around her shoulders in wild disarray, and water glistened on her skin. His groin tightened. She was too damn beautiful.
And then she turned, and he saw the slight curve of her belly where the baby swelled under her heart.
His fists clenched. She was carrying a child, he reminded himself. Another man’s child. He could want her, even ache for her, but he could never have her. She belonged to that unborn child. Not to her husband, the man he had killed, but to a being she could not even see yet. From the moment of conception until she reached Oregon and was finally delivered of her burden, she would belong only to that child.
Jenna Borland needed him only to yoke up her oxen and drive her wagon across the Great Plains and the Rockies to a new life. He didn’t belong here, with her. Once again he was the outsider. He and Jenna Borland were in two different worlds, heading toward two completely different lives.
With a groan he acknowledged he was headed straight for another wrenching loss at the end of another long, hard campaign. He wished he’d never laid eyes on her, especially as she was now, naked and singing to herself as she dried the moisture from her hair and that silky-looking body and pulled on her clothes.
When he strode back into camp, Sam Lincoln was waiting for him. The man nodded a greeting, then took a closer look at him.
“Anything wrong, Lee? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”
Lee shook his head and waited for the wagon master to continue.
“Ted Zaberskie and the Gumpert boy brought down a deer this afternoon. Thought you might like a share of the meat.”
“Sure, Sam. Thanks.”
Sam made no move to leave. Instead he kept his gaze on Ruthie and Mary Grace, playing with their dolls in the shade of the wagon. After a long moment the wagon master stepped closer and spoke in an undertone.

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