Dorothy Garlock - [Wabash River] (21 page)

“Come on over here by me. I haven’t seen you with your hair down since Christmas night.” Amy’s heart fluttered when she heard his softly voiced request. When she neared him, he reached out and filled his hand with the thick, long strands that spilled over her shoulders. His eyes, warm and smiling, held hers. “It’s as soft as the down on a duck’s belly.” He lifted it to his cheek, then wound it about his hand. The curls clung to his fingers. “Anything as beautiful as this shouldn’t be pinned up. I wish it could be free all the time,” he said softly.

“I’ve got to plait it or it’ll catch on fire when I cook.” Her small laugh was free and happy.

“Let me do it.”

Pleasure brought a faint run of color to her cheeks. “Do you know how?”

“Sure I do.”

His hands on her shoulders turned her around. He gathered the shimmering mass, brought it behind her, and divided it into three strands. Slowly and carefully he began to braid. After each crossover he ran his hand down the full length of each strand. Amy stood as still as stone, closed her eyes and wondered how many other women had allowed him to braid their hair. A sudden flood of jealousy washed over her like a tide.

“You . . . seem to be pretty good at that. Have you had a lot of practice?”

“Sure. All Indian boys are taught to braid. I learned to braid hair from a horse’s tail into a halter for my pony. Then it was leather whips, quirts, vines into ropes. I think I’m rather good at it. Stand still,” he said when she tried to turn her head to look at him.

“I mean have you braided a . . . woman’s hair?” she asked hesitantly.

“Do I dare to hope you’re jealous?” he murmured close to her ear.

“Curious, is all.” She was proud she could speak quite casually.

“I’m disappointed.” He held the end of the braid in his hand and moved around in front of her, looping the thick rope over her shoulder. “What do you tie it with?”

“This is a thong Uncle Juicy cut for me. I use it in memory of him.” She drew a narrow strip of leather from the pocket of her shirt.

Rain held the end of the braid while she tied it. When she finished, he let it fall back over her shoulder and framed her face with his cupped hands. He looked into her eyes as he bent his head and then closed them when he kissed her softly on the lips. His mouth was warm and loving on hers. As he moved his face against hers, she could feel the scrape of his eyelashes on her cheeks.

“Kissing you is getting to be a habit. I missed it last night.” He murmured the words against her cheek and then kissed her again, his lips lingering as if reluctant to leave hers.

“It was your own fault. I was willing.” Her breathless whisper breathed in his ear as her hand moved around him to stroke his back.

“You’re a rare woman, Amy Deverell.”

She looked into his dark eyes, trying to pierce the depths of his gaze to find what lay hidden there, waiting in an agony of suspense for him to say more, but he did not. He never said that she was pretty or that he loved her. He had only said she was rare and it was getting to be a habit to kiss her. For a timeless moment she looked up at him. Then she asked in a strangled whisper, “Rare like a white buffalo?”

“Like a white buffalo.”

Her anger flared suddenly. “I suppose you think I’m proud to be compared to a buffalo!”

“Why not? They’re noble, life-giving animals that have kept people alive for hundreds of years.”

“And clumsy and dumb and . . . they stink!”

“Not to other buffalo. What has your back up?” he asked with genuine concern.

“You don’t know, do you?” she spat out scornfully. When he didn’t answer, she said, “You’ve always been able to make me so . . . so damn mad, so damn quick! You may be smart about some things, Rain Tallman, but you sure are dumb about women.”

“I guess I am, for I sure as hell don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m not going to stand here and try to explain. It would take a week! Now get out of my way and I’ll fix breakfast unless you plan to eat those scrawny rabbits that just fell into the fire.” Her chin lifted stubbornly, her eyes determined, as if she dared him to say another word.

Rain stood with his hands to his sides looking at her rigid back as she bent to retrieve the burning meat. She was right, he thought. He knew less than nothing about women. He walked away wondering what he had said that had made her so angry.

Eleven

They arrived at Kaskaskia in the early evening of the fifth day. The village had become the first capital of Illinois less than six months before when the state was admitted to the Union. Perched on the bank of the Mississippi, the town had first been settled by the French more than a hundred years before.

Amy viewed the town with interest. She was beginning to understand that a town grew up around a trading post as it had at Quill’s Station. The broad Mississippi held the key to all the towns scattered along its banks, for on the waterway, boats arrived from New Orleans with goods manufactured in England and France that could be purchased with dollars or with furs. The river linked Kaskaskia with the world.

The main road through town led to the quay, and on it were several fine homes. There were also taverns, livery stables, a wheelwright, a large trading post, a blacksmith, and other businesses necessary to trade. It was all surrounded by a cluster of crude cabins.

On the southern edge of town Rain found a small, unoccupied cabin and told Amy to pull the wagon up close to it and stop. He came to her and, with his hands at her waist, swung her down.

“This is as rough a place as you’ll find along the river, Amy. I want you and Miss Woodbury to stay out of sight. Understand?”

“You still don’t believe I can take care of myself, do you, Rain?”

“Don’t try to prove it to me here, sweetheart,” he said and turned away to untie her horse from the back of the wagon. “There’s a fireplace in the cabin. I don’t know what shape it’s in, but it’ll be better than an open fire.”

Sweetheart!
Since the morning he had braided her hair, he had occasionally called her that when they were alone. Each endearment was a treasure she kept close to her heart. Amy had nourished her anger all that day, but when night had come and he walked her to the wagon and kissed her gently and sweetly, she whispered that she was sorry she had lashed out at him. He held her close and murmured that he had never liked anything that was so tame it didn’t at one time or another try to bite him.

Eleanor had not forgiven either Amy or Rain for removing her petticoats and corset. She spoke to them only when necessary. Her attitude toward Gavin, however, seemed to have changed. They talked when he was on the wagon seat beside her, and she was quite civil to him at other times as well.

Because the fireplace in the cabin drew badly, Gavin climbed up on the roof and poked out the old bird nests that clogged it. The door hung on one leather strap and he fashioned a stout pole from a limb to prop against it on the inside. Eleanor refused to go into the dark, dirty cabin, and after walking about for a while, she climbed into the back of the wagon.

“I’m going in to see about getting passage across the river tomorrow,” Rain said after he brought the harnesses into the musty cabin and piled them in one corner. “When I get back, it’ll be your turn, Gavin. I guess I don’t have to tell you that there are half a hundred men here that would cut your throat for the fun of it if they got the chance.”

Gavin chuckled. “Aye. Ye don’t have to be tellin’ me ’bout river towns, laddie.”

“Save me some supper, Amy. It’ll probably be after dark before I get back.”

*   *

Rain followed the path along the blacksmith’s open-front building, his eyes searching ahead as they always did. He stepped on the walkway that ran in front of the mercantile, the tavern and the harness shop. The walk had been laid from the planks of old flatboats and trodden upon by the heavy boots of workmen, the callused feet of blacks, the moccasined feet of dark-skinned French
coureurs
and
voyageurs,
and wild, bragging boatmen from the barges that moved on the river.

Groups of men lounged in front of the three taverns. Some turned to look with more than casual interest at the tall, dark-haired man in buckskins who carried a rifle slung over his shoulder, wore a knife in his belt, and walked with long easy strides. He moved through the crowd, head up, never getting close enough to the buildings to get boxed in.

“Ain’t that the gent they was talkin’ ’bout up at Saint Louis?”

“If’n he got a notched ear it’s him.”

“Who is he?” the third man asked, whittling on a stick with a long, thin-bladed knife. “He don’t look like nothin’ but a woodsman to me.”

“Name’s Tallman. He’s a fightin’ son of a bitch. He can pick yore teeth with that knife a his’n at fifty feet.”

“Fast too. Fast as a cow shittin’ apple seeds.”

“Army scout?” the man with the knife asked.

“Used to be. Heared he scouted some fer ole Zack Taylor. Guess he ain’t spooky, but you ain’t ort a push him none.”

Rain paused at the end of the walk long enough to look across the street at a building with a new painted sign:
PERRY FREIGHT COMPANY
. Hammond Perry had moved into Kaskaskia. Rain wondered if he controlled the ferry as well. If he did, they would have a hard time finding someone to take them across. He didn’t want to go on south with the wagon. The land was swampy close to the river, and to swing out would take more time than he was willing to spend. He’d have to figure out another way.

*   *

Hammond Perry stood beside the window of his freight office and watched Rain Tallman walk down the street. The kid he had sent to kill Tallman had failed. Hammond swore never again to send a kid to do a man’s job, yet the opportunity had fallen into his lap when he had seen Tallman at Cahokia. He had no doubt that Tallman had gone on to Louisville and collected Will Bradford’s bride. The man had the reputation of doing what he set out to do.

There were two men in the world that Hammond Perry despised above all others, and Rain Tallman was close to both of them.

Farrway Quill had tried to ruin Perry’s military career the year before the War of 1812 by undermining his relationship to his superior officers. One time, seven years earlier, Hammond thought he could get rid of Quill and had had him arrested for treason. At the trial his witnesses turned yellow and fled, and Major Taylor had believed Quill’s story. At that time the major had Hammond Perry and a fellow officer banished to Fort Dearborn for two years.

Will Bradford was the other man who had bested Perry at every turn. When it came time to select a man to take a company of men up the Arkansas River and establish a fort at Belle Point, Hammond was sure that he would be given the task. Will Bradford had managed to have him looked on with ill favor because of the way he had disciplined a platoon of men who had been insubordinate. Will Bradford had received the prize assignment, an assignment that would make his name go down in history instead of Hammond’s.

Hammond rocked back on his heels, his dish-shaped face twisted with resentment as it always was when he thought of how fate had dealt with him. He was a small man with a receding chin that he tried to hide beneath a well-trimmed goatee. He dressed in clothes made in London and wore shoes made in Italy. He was rich and had plans to become richer. He was a man who loved revenge and he had plans for getting that too. With his hands locked behind his back, he rocked back and forth from the balls of his feet to his heels while his mind worked on his plans.

*   *   *

*   *   *

The idea of going into the village came to Eleanor when she heard Rain say he was leaving to arrange passage across the river. The last week had been the most miserable of her life. The thought of going on to Belle Point and marrying a man she did not love or even know was so repulsive that she dared not think about it lest she get sick. She should never have left Louisville. She knew that now, but at the time it had seemed romantic to go with the handsome stranger who was sent to take her hundreds of miles to a man who wanted to marry her, especially a man of wealth and position like Will Bradford.

Eleanor’s heart fluttered with excitement as she washed and dressed in one of her most fetching dresses. Hidden in the bottom of her trunk were a few coins, enough, she hoped, to pay her passage to New Orleans. There she would sell some of her clothes and a few pieces of jewelry her aunt had left her for money to live on while she found a way to support herself. True, she was not the card player that Gilda had been, but she played fairly well. Her aunt had supported them for years by playing cards with high-class gentlemen who thought it a lark to play with the lady while her charming young niece looked on. Eleanor had told the story of her father’s big plantation so many times that she half-believed it herself. She had known at an early age that her father was a scoundrel. He never did a day’s work in his life, or so Gilda said. Her mother, however, was of good family, and Will Bradford was her first cousin. Gilda had set the wheels in motion that caused Will to ask for Eleanor’s hand in marriage by telling him of her dire plight.

Eleanor waited until Gavin had gone to the creek and Amy was in the cabin. Then she took her money from the trunk, put on her prettiest bonnet and slipped out the front of the wagon. Within minutes she was walking down the road toward the main part of the town.

Kaskaskia’s main road was choked with horses, freight wagons and men. When Eleanor turned on to the street her courage almost failed her. Yet she continued on, knowing this was her only chance to break away from the future that had been decided for her. By the time she reached the boardwalk that fronted the mercantile, the eyes of every man on the street had passed over her and most of them stayed there. From either side of the street men watched her go by—freighters in heavy boots, boatmen, Indians, gamblers in beaver hats, French trappers with bright dark eyes and elaborately fringed buckskins. And everywhere there were dogs, medium-sized dogs, big dogs and runts, all searching for food.