Ana Seymour (8 page)

Jeb was exhausted. River-crossing days were among the most difficult on the trail. It was almost as if he used up a little piece of himself with each wagon safely across. When something went wrong, it always made the day worse. In this case, they’d had the bad fortune to have the mishap occur at the end of the day when everyone would normally have been ready to settle in for an evening’s rest. Instead, they’d had several more hours of hauling and shoving. All because of a stubborn female who’d lied to him from the minute he’d laid eyes on her.

His mood did nothing to ease the aching in his weary body. Eulalie Todd had tried to make him eat something, but he felt as if any kind of food would
taste like sawdust at this point. He’d accepted Frank’s offer of a long pull from his flask of whiskey and then had headed to his bedroll. It was another dry, mild night, which meant that once again he could sleep under the stars and leave the Todds alone in their wagon. Though he couldn’t imagine that Frank would have much strength to make use of the privacy this night. He’d worked all day like a man half his age. Maybe Eulalie’s motherly ministrations could revive him, Jeb thought with a tired smile as he shook his blankets out over a level, grassy spot. Normally he tried not to think much about those matters. He’d taken his ease now and then with a sympathetic bar girl at the end of the trail. But in general, his celibate life suited him. It was, after all, what he deserved. If he hadn’t been such a greedy, restless fool, he’d still be living in California and going to bed each night beside Melly’s sweet, warm body.

“Captain Hunter?” Kerry Gallivan’s voice startled him in the darkness. He whirled around to face her.

“If I were you, I’d pick another time to talk with me,” he said stiffly.

“You’re angry. Of course, you have every right…”

Jeb took a step closer to her, his fist clenched with tension. “No, Miss Gallivan. I’m
furious.
And if you were only the male you claimed to be, I’d be tempted to give you the thrashing you so richly merit.”

Kerry forced herself to stare straight into his wrathful eyes. “I’m sorry. I…we didn’t have a lot of time to decide what to do after my father’s death. It seemed like the only way…”

“And disobeying my orders about overloading your wagon was the only way, too?” he interrupted.

“Well, now,” she said, sighing. “That was wrong. It’s just that those tools have been in our family since…” Her voice trailed off forlornly, then she pulled herself up and said staunchly, “Go ahead and thrash me if you want, Captain.”

In the moonlight her perfect features were startlingly beautiful, even now, with her jaw set in stubborn lines and her eyes half-wincing as if she really expected that he might hit her. Jeb felt the anger draining from him like water out of a sieve. Her words and the way she stood before him so defenseless had brought out his most irritating protective instincts. And, Lord, she was beautiful. How in the name of heaven had he ever thought that she was a man? Haskell had evidently seen through her disguise. What had been Jeb’s problem? The anger began to build again, but this time it was directed along a more well-worn path—toward himself.

“Part of this is my fault,” he acknowledged, his voice less tight. “A wagon captain’s supposed to know what’s going on with his passengers. He’s supposed to know if they’re sick or hurting, happy or sad, tired or strong.” He ran a hand back through his disheveled hair. “And he sure as hell is supposed to know what sex they are.”

He could see her painful swallow all along the length of her slender throat Her slender,
feminine
throat. Damnation. “But I deceived you,” she argued. “I went to great pains to be sure you didn’t know, to be sure that no one knew. I felt it would be the only way we’d be able to get on the train.”

“Haskell knew.” Jeb wasn’t sure exactly why that fact grated on him so.

She hesitated. “Well, there was the problem with my ankle, you know.”

Ah, yes. Haskell had tended her ankle. The ankle that was attached to one of those shapely legs that Jeb had not been able to help noticing when she’d been sopping wet today with her man’s trousers clinging to her like a second skin. Haskell had probably held her ankle in his hands, turning it, rubbing it, perhaps…

Kerry cleared her throat. “And Mr. Haskell has had more chance to spend time with us.”

“When did you tell him?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“When did you tell Haskell the truth?”

Her thick black lashes swept down over the blue eyes. She looked as if she was reluctant to answer the question, as if she realized that the fact that Scott Haskell knew the truth was making her deception even more difficult for him. Finally she said, “I didn’t tell him. He…more or less…guessed that first day.”

“The first day,” Jeb confirmed, his self-reproach mounting.

Kerry nodded, head down.

Jeb let out a long stream of air through his nose. Then he leaned down and pulled a towel out of his pack. His bout with the river had left him caked with mud. He’d need to wash before he could crawl into his blankets. When he’d straightened up, he told her, “I’m going to punish myself for my own stupidity by not berating you any further, Miss Gallivan. By not giving myself that pleasure.”

Kerry’s eyes filled with relief. “I promise I’ll do everything you say from now on, Captain. Patrick and I will keep up and work hard. We’ll find things to leave behind to make the load just right. And we won’t question your orders…”

Jeb held up his hand with a look of surprise. “Wait a minute. Surely you understand?”

“Understand what?”

“Miss Gallivan, there’s no way you and your brother are going to continue on to California. As soon as we reach Fort Kearney, we’ll find an escort to take you back to St. Louis.”

Kerry took a step backward, feeling almost as if she’d received that blow he’d threatened her with earlier. “Turn back now? You can’t be serious?”

“I’m deadly serious. A single woman and a raw boy have no business on a wagon train.”

Kerry couldn’t believe her ears. “We’ve done fine up to now.”

“Fine, right. Costing the entire train a day’s travel by letting your wagon break down in the middle of the river.”

Now Kerry’s fists clenched at her sides. “Captain Hunter, my brother and I are going to California…”

Jeb stepped past her in the darkness and started to walk away toward the river. “Not on my train, you’re not,” he said, and was gone before she could make a reply.

Dorothy Burnett was waiting for her when she returned to her listing, disabled wagon.

“He says he’s not going to let us stay with the
train,” she told her neighbor in a dazed voice. She still couldn’t believe what she’d heard.

“He’s just angry, Kerry,” Dorothy said, putting an arm around her shoulders. “In the morning he’ll probably give you one of those superior male tongue-lashings and then everything will be fine.”

Kerry shook her head. “That’s not how it sounded to me.”

Dorothy frowned. “Well, he can’t just abandon you. No one would stand for it.”

“He says he’ll find us an escort back East when we reach Fort Kearney.” Listlessly she picked up the coffeepot and dribbled water over the campfire to put it out for the night.

“That’s crazy. If you’ve done all right up until now…”

“I know.” Kerry sat down on an overturned bucket and dropped her head into her hands. “It doesn’t make sense. I knew he’d be angry, but I thought once we were out on the trail, there would be no way he could refuse to take us.”

“Maybe he can’t. What do the papers say? Maybe you can force him to take you.”

Kerry stuck her feet out in front of her. She was still in a pair of Patrick’s trousers. Her own clothes were carefully buried at the bottom of one of the soggy trunks that were piled haphazardly around the wagon. She was not sure she could find them even if she wanted to, and after everything they’d been through today, her attire was the least of her concerns. “I don’t want
to force
him. He’s our leader. I can’t make him into some kind of an enemy.”

Dorothy kicked at the embers that had scattered
from the fire, lost in thought. Finally she said, “Well, then, make him into your friend.”

“What do you mean?” Kerry asked.

“I mean, my dear Kerry, as long as everyone now knows that you’re a woman, you might as well take full advantage of it Hunter’s flesh and blood. At least I think he is,” she added with a chuckle. “Go talk to him. Bat those long black lashes if you have to. Didn’t your mother ever tell you about how a woman can get what she wants from a man?”

Kerry’s face flushed. “I was only six when my mother died. But I hope I know enough about those things to be above—”

Dorothy interrupted her with a quick hug. “I’m sorry, Kerry. You haven’t had an easy road of it, have you? But don’t get prickly on me. I wasn’t implying anything immoral. I just meant that if you can manage to talk to Hunter on a friendly basis, he might find himself much more disposed to change his mind”

“Do you really think so?” Kerry looked dubious. She’d always looked down on the girls back in New York who used their looks and female manners to get what they wanted. Plus, whereas Scott Haskell’s head might be turned by a pretty face, she had the feeling that Jeb Hunter was not so susceptible. She’d seen him polite and respectful to the women on the train, but she couldn’t recall seeing him look at so much as one with that flirtatious smile that Scott seemed to use on every woman between ten and sixty.

Dorothy’s eyes swept from Kerry’s glossy black hair to her long, slender legs. “Kerry,” she said firmly, “once we clean you up and put some decent clothing on you, I predict that our wagon captain is going to find it awfully hard to stay angry at you.”

K
erry knew that she should be tired enough to fall asleep standing up, but Dorothy’s words were dancing inside her head and wouldn’t let her alone to think about going to bed. She had bristled at her friend’s insinuation that she use some kind of unspecified feminine wiles to get her way with Jeb Hunter.

It was true that Kerry had never had a mother to talk to about such things, but she was sure that if her mother had been alive to raise her, she would have cautioned her daughter against any such notion. But she’d vowed to do anything it took to get to California. And as Dorothy had said, it wasn’t as if she was talking about doing anything…well, anything
bad.
It only made sense that if she could approach their captain in a friendly manner, he’d be more apt to listen to her calm and rational case for allowing them to stay with the train.

As she reasoned with herself, her feet seemed to already be taking her in the direction of the grove of trees where Jeb Hunter had laid out his bedroll. Her heart sped up its beat and her pace slowed as she
approached. Perhaps he’d returned from washing and was already asleep. By the time she reached the edge of the grove, her hands had balled into fists and her lower lip was clamped firmly between her teeth. If he was asleep, she decided, she’d awaken him. She wouldn’t be able to sleep until she’d tried to make him change his mind.

Jeb dried his arms briskly with the towel, rubbing away chill bumps on his wet skin. His body, at least, felt better after his bath. It had refreshed him and eased away the worst of the day’s knots. His mind was still knotted, but he was used to dealing with that state of affairs.

He stood at the edge of the river, naked, letting the cool night air dry the rest of his body.

The camp had grown quiet Across the river he could barely see the glowing embers of a couple of banked fires next to the wagons that hadn’t been able to make the crossing. The majority of the wagons were on the far side, dry and repacked after their river adventure. They’d be ready to move out tomorrow as soon as the others made it across. And as soon as the Gallivan wagon was repaired.

The knot in his head threatened to tighten into a megrim. He’d begun having them after Melly’s death, had endured them almost daily for over a year. But they came less often nowadays, partly because he knew how to keep himself away from issues that might bring one on. He’d taught himself to keep uninvolved, unemotional, unruffled, no matter what the circumstances.

But he’d broken that rule today. He’d been most
thoroughly ruffled by Miss
Kerry
Gallivan. And now he’d probably have to pay for his lapse with a headache.

He dried his face with the towel and rolled his neck from side to side. Sometimes it helped.

“Oh, my goodness!”

The exclamation made his neck straighten up with an audible snap. Reflexively, he reached down to cover his most exposed parts with the towel. Like some kind of nightmare, conjured from inside his aching head, there stood Kerry Gallivan.

“Excuse me, ah…Captain,” she stammered. “I…ah…was looking for you.”

Jeb recovered his composure quickly. Her embarrassment amused him, a tiny bit of revenge for all the trouble she’d caused him and would continue to cause him. “I thought we had finished our discussion for the evening, Miss Gallivan,” he said calmly.

She looked away. “Please…ah…feel free to…ah…get dressed, Captain. I didn’t mean to interrupt you.”

“You didn’t interrupt,” he said. The surprise over, he was now definitely enjoying her discomfiture. “I’m finished with my bath. Don’t let me stop you from yours, if that’s what you had in mind.”

He gestured toward the water with the hand holding his towel and hid a smile as he saw Kerry’s averted eyes widen.

“No, I didn’t come…I mean, I came to talk with you.”

A hammer tripped at the back of his head. Jeb had had enough of the game. He threw the towel over his shoulder and reached for his pants. “I thought I
warned you earlier that I’m not in the best frame of mind for a discussion. What we both need now is some sleep.”

Out of the corner of her eyes she could see that he was once again decently covered. At least the lower half of him. She turned toward him and said, “I know, but the way we left things, I didn’t think I’d be able to sleep. I can’t accept what you told me, Captain. About turning back…”

“I’ll listen to you in the morning, Miss Gallivan,” he interrupted with a dismissive wave.

She’d been too direct, she realized at once. His eyes had narrowed and grown hard. He wasn’t even going to listen to her. She tried to remember Dorothy’s words about making him into a friend, but things just seemed to be frozen up inside her. “Kerry!” she blurted.

“Excuse me?”

“Could you please…” She let out a deep breath. “Call me Kerry instead of Miss Gallivan. Then it won’t sound so much like you’re mad at me.”

Jeb paused for a minute, his expression softening imperceptibly. “But I
am
mad at you.”

Kerry bit her lip. “I know. But I don’t want you to be. I want us to be…friends.”

Jeb looked at her in disbelief. “Friends? Miss Gallivan, I don’t make friends with the people on my trains, with people whose very lives might depend on me. And if I did decide that I wanted a
friend,
you, my charming deceiver, would very likely be the
last
person on this particular train whom I would choose.”

He hadn’t put on his shirt, and in the moonlight, Kerry was utterly aware of the sculpted muscles of
his chest. His waist narrowed just at the top of buckskin trousers that molded along straight hips down to bulging thighs. Jeb Hunter was a powerful man, she thought for the hundredth time. Dorothy had been right—she would be wise to make him her friend, whether he wanted to be one or not She just wished she were a little more certain of how to go about doing that Dorothy had seemed to think it would be no trouble at all. But as she looked at Jeb’s implacable expression, she wasn’t so sure.

She tried to remember what Katie Flanagan would do back in New York. Katie Flanagan had had more beaux buzzing around her than bees at a honey pot, and if she hadn’t had nine older brothers looking out for her, she’d have been married thrice over by now.

Kerry took a step closer to where Jeb was still standing on the edge of the bank. “What can I say to convince you that I’m sorry for…having to trick you?”

“Oh, I believe you’re sorry, all right. What good does that do anyone?”

Maybe Captain Hunter would soften up if she let him kiss her on the cheek. But as soon as the thought entered her head, something trembly started happening down inside her. She clasped her hands together so the shaking couldn’t make it all the way to the outside, and took another step closer. “Well, is there something I can
do
to make it up, then?” she asked, her voice grown small and squeaky.

Jeb stood looking at her for an interminable moment, his face totally unreadable. Then he said, “If I couldn’t see that you’re standing there shaking like an aspen leaf, girl, I might believe that you knew what
you meant by that question. As it is, I’m going to save us both a lot of grief by sending you back to your wagon.”

Kerry squeezed her hands together more tightly. They
were
shaking, darn them. “I’m willing to do anything it takes to get to California, Captain Hunter. I want you to agree to take us.”

“I don’t take lone women on my trains, Miss Gallivan.
Any
kind of lone woman,” he added. “Now be a good girl and get back to your wagon to get some sleep. You’ll have a busy day tomorrow reloading your wagon and deciding what you’re going to throw away.”

His tone left no room for argument, but Kerry was not ready to give up. “We’ll talk about this again tomorrow when we’re both rested,” she said with an attempt at a smile.

“You can talk all you want, right up until the time we reach Fort Kearney. But it won’t do you any good. At that point you’ll be on your way back East.”

Kerry once again found her eyes drifting down to the captain’s chest. Just because he was…strong, didn’t mean he had to be a bully. She straightened up as indignation and a new resolution overcame her nervousness. Now that she knew that her overtures of “friendship,” whatever that might involve, were to be refused, she was feeling better. She was more comfortable fighting the captain with her wits and her will than with some kind of mysterious feminine wiles, which, for all she knew, she might not even possess.

“Back East?” she said under her breath after he had nodded goodnight and headed up toward the
trees. “We’ll just have to see about that, Mr. Wagon Master.”

Jeb’s mood had not improved by the next morning. After his backbreaking day, he should have slept like the dead. Instead, he’d lain awake for hours, reliving the day. He’d close his eyes only to see Kerry Gallivan’s face as she’d licked her full lips and nervously offered to do anything to make up for her deception. And he’d get that sensation again of drowning in her intense blue eyes. Then behind his closed lids he’d see water rushing past, and picture the few moments in the river when he’d feared losing two of his charges to the swift current. He’d drift halfway into sleep, but his dancing visions would change. Suddenly the eyes would be Melly’s lifeless eyes, staring up at the ceiling of their cozy cabin as if doomed to relive the last dreadful moments of her life in some kind of horrible frozen eternity. He’d awaken with a start, sweating and terrified.

Kerry Gallivan was not Melly, he’d reassure himself. He’d
saved
Kerry. And her brother as well. He had nothing to reproach himself for.
This time
he’d been where he should be; he’d done the right thing. But, by God he’d not have to do it again. The sooner he got Kerry and Patrick Gallivan off his hands, the better.

Then he would lie back down and the cycle would start all over again. Close to dawn he gave up the effort entirely and got up. He’d get an early start on the day, and if they were lucky, the remaining wagons would be across and the Gallivan wagon fixed and reloaded by noon. They could still make four or five
miles’ progress today. Four or five miles closer to Fort Kearney where he would no longer have to worry about the late Sean Gallivan’s misguided children, the younger of whom was at the moment making his way toward Jeb.

“How are you feeling today, Patrick?” he asked, trying not to take his sour humor out on the boy. “No ill effects from your dunking yesterday?”

Patrick looked younger, somehow. He’d lost a little of the cockiness Jeb had found secretly amusing. “Not from the dunking,” he answered, “but I’m feeling pretty rotten about everything else.”

Jeb waited for the boy to approach him. The Todds had not come out of their wagon yet, so Jeb had begun building the fire for morning coffee. “What aspect of it are you feeling rotten about?” he asked, being careful not to make his voice too sympathetic. He put most of the blame for the deception on the boy’s sister, but Patrick had been involved and was old enough to know better. He didn’t want to let him off too easily.

Patrick shrugged and mumbled, “I don’t know.”

Jeb could hear tears at the back of his throat, but he didn’t relent. “Do you think it’s the fact that you lied to me or that you and your sister disobeyed my orders about the wagon?”

Patrick looked up into his face, his eyes stricken with guilt. Intense blue eyes just like his sister’s. “I told Kerry from the beginning that it was a dumb idea.”

Jeb nodded. “Well, you were right. It’s caused a lot of trouble, and it’s going to cause a sight more before we can send you two home.”

“Please don’t send us back, Captain.” The blue eyes misted over and one great tear hovered at the edge of his eyelid, threatening to spill down his cheek.

Jeb felt a tug on his insides. He reached out and clapped a gentle hand on the boy’s bony shoulder. “I have to, Patrick. Your sister doesn’t understand what a terrible place the West can be for a woman alone.”

“Kerry’s strong,” Patrick began eagerly. “And our papa always said she was smarter than any of the men he knew.”

“It doesn’t matter Patrick, horrible things can still happen. Being smart doesn’t help.”

Patrick looked as if he had no idea what kind of horrible things Jeb might be referring to, and Jeb was not about to enlighten him. Though bright and quick to learn, he was still a child, and Jeb didn’t want to be the one to put that childhood to an end.

“It’s because you’re so mad at us,” Patrick said sadly.

Jeb pulled the youngster toward his side and gave him half a hug. “No, Patrick. I’m not mad at you. Not anymore. But I can’t take you and your sister to California. I’m sorry.”

Patrick’s arms crept timidly around Jeb’s waist. “Can I still go riding with you until we reach the fort?”

Jeb looked down at the small boy tucked under his arm.
This is what it would feel like to have a son,
he thought. This peculiar mixture of pride and uncertainty that turned your insides to mush. He ruffled Patrick’s black hair. “You can ride with me as much as you want, Patrick. Until we reach the fort.”

* * *

Kerry had slept poorly and was just getting up when Dorothy and the twins arrived at her jumbled campsite with a platter full of johnnycakes. “You have enough on your mind this morning, Kerry,” Dorothy said. “I thought I’d bring you some breakfast”

Kerry smiled her gratitude. She’d needed to start the day with a kind word.

“Mama says they’re going to kick you off the train, Kiernan,” Polly said with a bit of pride in her voice at being in on the news.

“It’s not Kiernan, it’s Kerry,” Molly reminded her sister shyly.

“Yeah, Kerry. ‘Cause you’re a girl after all, and Captain Hunter’s not going to let you be on the train,” Polly continued, without seeming to pass judgment on the situation. In the way of children, she was dealing with the plain facts, not the ramifications.

It was left to Dorothy to provide the sympathy. “Girls, don’t bother Kerry about that right now. She had a hard day yesterday, and she has a lot of work to do today.”

Polly put her hands on her hips and looked around at the jumble of crates and boxes. “This is just a
mess,
” she said, shaking her head.