Deep as the Rivers (Santa Fe Trilogy) (35 page)

   
But he could never feel half so disgraced or foolish as she did for sharing that weakness. Her excuse might be better, for she did love him, but that changed nothing.

   
“There won’t be any need for you to dishonor the vaunted Shelby name by bestowing it on me,” she said scathingly. Forcing her eyes to meet his, she held her chin high and stood up on rubbery legs. Olivia St. Etienne knelt before no man. “The blood of the French nobility flows in my veins and although you’ve made it abundantly clear how much you despise it, I take pride in my heritage. I would not wed with you if my life depended on it.”

   
“Hit ‘pears ta me thet neither one o’ yew younguns is payin’ much mind ta th’ plain facts,” Micajah said patiently, still holding his rifle leveled at Shelby’s chest. “Now yore life might not depend on marryin’ him, Sparky, but I kin promise thet his does depend on his marryin’ yew. I seen whut I seen and hit ain’t comin’ ‘round no other way.”

   
There was sufficient steel in his tone of voice to make both of them realize the gravity of the situation. Micajah Johnstone was formidable and he was pig stubborn and he was holding the only loaded rifle.

   
Samuel looked at him in blatant amazement. “Is this some sort of trap you’ve cooked up between you? Because if it is—”

   
“Why, certainly,” Olivia cut in sharply, “we planned and rehearsed the whole thing with that charming coyote. I even infected him with the rabies!”

   
Samuel made a sardonic sweep of her with eyebrows raised. “Now that I
would
believe.”

   
“I despise you. Whatever makes you think I’d plot to lure you into marriage? No, don’t answer—I already know. Your overweening male arrogance!”

   
She started to flounce away but Micajah’s voice stopped her. “I ain’t funnin’ with this, Sparky. Yew warn’t ‘xactly fightin’ Shelby here off. Yew both know what would’ve happened if’n I hadn’t come along.”

   
Her cheeks blazed crimson. She held Micajah Johnstone’s good opinion in higher esteem than anyone else’s on earth, and she had shamed him, the man who had taken her in, treated her like his own daughter, taught her everything she knew to restore her sense of self-worth. In return she had betrayed his trust in her.

   
Micajah could see his stern voice was having the desired effect on Sparky. As for the mule-headed soldier boy, well the rifle would work well enough for now. “Sparky, fetch me a rope from the smoke shed.”

   
“You’re not going to tie him up?” she choked, horrified at the picture of Colonel Samuel Shelby delivered before a priest bound hand and foot.

   
Johnstone shrugged his massive shoulders like the great bear for which the Osage had named him. “Don’t make me no never mind. I kin always cudgel him a good smack ta thet hard head o’ his’n. Either way, we’s all headin’ ta a old French mission a couply days north. They got them a priest there. Ole Father Louie’ll marry yew onc’t I tell him th’ way thangs are.”

* * * *

   
Early the following morning they set out for the small mission outpost on the Missouri. Olivia St. Etienne sat in the prow of the canoe, back ramrod stiff, eyes staring straight ahead like a French aristocrat on her way to the guillotine. The colonel lay in the bottom of the craft trussed hand and foot, body rigid, a silently furious “cargo.”

   
Johnstone chuckled to himself. He had accomplished what he set out to do without having to fire a shot or wait half as long as a patient man such as he had been prepared to do. When Samuel had rushed out to rescue Olivia from the coyote, Micajah had already seen the menace since he had been going out into the woods to observe the two of them, hoping to catch them in precisely the compromising position he had. His rifle had been sighted on the rabid animal ready to fire if Shelby’s shot had missed its mark.

   
No, sir, he hadn’t had to fire a shot. He was pleased as a possum inside a pig carcass.

Chapter Sixteen

   
Emory Wescott sat in his dining room, a Spode demitasse cup paused at his mouth, inhaling the delicate fragrance of the specially blended French coffee he had brought upriver from New Orleans—among other items. It was those other items, fifty barrels of rotgut whiskey and twenty cases of old Brown Bess muskets, that had caused him some loss of sleep the past nights. That accursed shipment was delayed. Again. It seemed every enterprise he undertook in recent months had turned sour.

   
Wescott had made a tidy profit as a smuggler during Jefferson’s embargo the past decade, and in so doing had cemented excellent contacts in the highest circles of British industry. But during Madison’s administration the international economy had gone into a slump. To further add to his woes, he had made a series of bad investments and only this dangerous dealing with Stuart Pardee on the frontier stood between him and the wolf that was beginning to sniff at his door. At least such was true until war broke out, which was bound to occur within the next six months if not sooner.

   
The way Wescott saw it, allying himself with the British in the conflict was his hedge against the future. Whether the English army could invade New Orleans and march all the way up the Mississippi Valley to unite with British forces in Canada was problematic. If such could be accomplished, excellent, but even if the British failed to take the big river, they would certainly defeat the puny American forces on the Gulf and hold the key port city of New Orleans, thus placing a stranglehold on America’s western commerce. Then men of vision like him would become the arbiters of trade and he would grow rich as Croesus.

   
But that eventuality might take several years. In the meanwhile, he was alarmingly short of cash and in need of proving his good faith to his British allies, namely Stuart Pardee, the distasteful lummox. Where were those damned guns and whiskey for Pardee’ s savages?

   
As he sat drumming his fingers impatiently on the polished mahogany surface of the table, the butler entered with a missive. Bowing perfunctorily, the dignified black man handed it to his master, then stood quietly as it was read, waiting to see if a reply would need to be delivered.

   
A slow smile splayed across Wescott’s jowly countenance. He had sent word to his agents in New Orleans, hoping to locate his runaway ward through the uncle who had disowned her scapegrace family. This was interesting news from that quarter, indeed.

   
The troublesome chit had vanished without a trace, leaving him with the unpleasant prospect of facing Samuel Shelby upon his return to St. Louis, but Shelby had not to date come back. Perhaps he had perished in the wilderness at the hands of savages—or Pardee. But no, Pardee had agreed it would be better to keep Shelby alive and use Olivia as a conduit for information about American plans on the frontier. He had, in fact, sent word to the Englishman regarding his ward’s most untimely disappearance and offered a handsome reward for her return. Once war broke out, Olivia would be especially valuable to both of them.

   
Now it appeared she was even more valuable than Wescott had ever imagined. He skimmed the message again, then dismissed the butler and sat back to consider his next move. Charles Durand, the not so dearly beloved uncle in New Orleans, was dead without any direct heirs. His only existing blood kin was his sister’s child, Olivia Patrice St. Etienne.

   
Charles Durand had been a fantastically wealthy man. He had, it seemed, somehow managed to abscond from France with a sizable portion of the Bourbon family’s personal wealth and set himself up in exile, living the high life in the Creole backwater of New Orleans, awaiting the overthrow of that upstart Napoleon and the restoration of the rightful Bourbon monarchy. In the meanwhile, he had invested the wealth and multiplied it several times over.

   
“A pity he didn’t live to see his dreams come true,” Wescott said mockingly to himself.

   
Now the fortune was Olivia’s. And he, as her legal guardian, meant to have it. The first matter at hand was to locate the girl, no mean feat since she had obviously not gone to her uncle. If she had not headed south on the river, she must for some reason have headed in the opposite direction. In anticipation of that, he had dispatched agents to check the few settlements on the Missouri and upper Mississippi for a boy matching Ollie’s description, as well as notifying Pardee. Sooner or later someone would run her to ground. Stuart Pardee would not act so high and mighty around Emory Wescott once he had the Durand fortune within his grasp.

   
He stood up and headed to his library. It was time to send another inquiry upriver regarding Olivia’s whereabouts. Since he had a vested interest in her return, perhaps Pardee had already located the chit. No need to tell the Englishman their plan had now been altered.

* * * *

   
Stuart Pardee sat outside the Ste. Francoise trading post surveying the sunset. Small and rude as the little mission stockade was, it afforded some few amenities of civilization. Founded by French Jesuits in the last century, the post was austere and small, but at least he had slept for a few nights on a bed with a roof over his head, albeit the bed was a narrow corn husk mattress and the roof a crude log shelter.

   
He was heartily sick of smoky Indian lodges, greasy stews made of wild game and pot puppies and the everlasting quest to keep his majesty’s childlike, undisciplined allies loyal, such loyalty being purchased with old muskets and new whiskey. Since Ste. Francoise was on the river, mail boats arrived at odd intervals, keeping him in touch with Wescott in St. Louis. He detested having to report his failure to locate that fire-haired ward of Wescott’ s, but he was beginning to doubt that she had ever come upriver unless she was with one of the trading parties enroute to the headwaters of the Missouri, a most unlikely event that would place her well outside his reach, anyway.

   
What he really needed now was not that damned woman, but the latest shipment of guns and whiskey from Wescott. As usual the bastard was behind schedule. He leaned back against the rough log wall and peered out the open gate of the post to the river flowing by several hundred yards away. A canoe banked and three figures emerged. He looked away. Just more voyageurs coming from upriver, probably carrying a load of pelts to sell in St. Louis. Perhaps they had seen or heard something about a red-haired woman on the upper Missouri.

   
Pardee decided to question them, but just as he stood up he noticed that one of the three was walking ahead of the other two and his wrists were bound behind him. Something was nigglingly familiar about the tall black-haired man who walked with such arrogant confidence in spite of being a prisoner.

   
Shelby!

   
His eyes narrowed as he studied the colonel’s companions, a great grizzled mountain of a man who looked as if he had not seen civilization since the colonial revolt and a slight figure partially obscured by the two tall men. Then he caught a flash of flaming red hair glinting in the setting sunlight. A slow smile spread across his wide mouth. Two problems solved at once. He slipped into the shadows between the trading post and the small log cabin that served as a crude rectory for Father Louie.

   
“Ain’t no use yer tryin’ ta talk me outta this,” Micajah said doggedly as they walked through the gate of the post.

   
“I’m only telling you the priest won’t marry two people at gunpoint. The Catholic Church would not consider it a valid marriage,” Samuel replied with equal tenacity.

   
“He is right. I am a Catholic and I know it would be no true sacrament, Micajah,” Olivia added in a subdued tone of voice.

   
“Where I come from, once’t a preacher says th’ words over yew, yore hitched. Don’t make me no never mind ‘bout sacr’ments er sech.” He stopped as they neared the little church and fixed Shelby with shrewd brown eyes. “Yew really want ta walk in there all trussed up like a Christmas goose—er will yew give me yore word ta act like a man?”

   
The barb struck home. Shelby felt the sting of heat on his face. He had been badgering Johnstone continuously for the past two days, rather like a schoolboy caught in an infraction, trying to wriggle out of it. According to the old mountain man’s simple code of morality, he was guilty of a grievous sin and Micajah meant to see justice done. Sighing, Shelby replied, “I’ll tell the truth to the priest. You don’t have to drag me before him.”

   
“Good ‘nough.” Micajah nodded and slipped the long hunting knife from his belt to cut Samuel’s bonds.

   
Olivia stood silently through their exchange. Still chastened and humiliated by her foolish passion that had precipitated this whole debacle, she had said little during the journey to Ste. Francoise. She could not bear the idea of marrying Samuel when he believed her to be nothing more than a scheming harlot, but neither could she bear to see Micajah’s pain and disillusionment if she flatly refused to do what his honor demanded.