Elizabeth Grayson (18 page)

Just as Ann wedged herself against the wall, the
Andromeda
battered into something solid. They hung there stalled, trapped. Run aground on what Ann guessed must be a sandbar.

The Indians whooped as if they’d won. The gunfire picked up sharply from the island and the bank.

Terror washed through her. Were they going to be boarded, overrun, and massacred?

Ann squeezed her eyes shut and prayed for deliverance.

Rifles rattled from the deck below. The smell of hot gunpowder burned up her nostrils. Were she and her baby going to die here, staring at the toes of her husband’s boots?

Chase kept yelling orders and ringing the engineering bells. Three decks below, Cal seemed to be answering. The engines shrieked louder than the Indians; the steam valves whistled. The
Andromeda
nudged hard against the bar.

Chase rocked back and forth as if his weight could push her over. “Come on, sweetheart!” he shouted. “Come on!”

The floor of the pilothouse shivered and shook. The shaking became a trembling. The steamer rattled so hard Ann’s teeth clattered together.

The Indians seemed to be whooping from right alongside the steamer.

“Please!” Ann whispered, though she wasn’t sure if she was praying or offering encouragement. “Please! Please!”

A deep guttural groan ran the length of the steamer. Sand gritted beneath her belly. Slowly, very slowly the
Andromeda
floundered forward.

She broke free all at once and surged ahead, skimming across the water so fast they might have been flying.

Ann fell back laughing with relief. All over the steamer, men bellowed. Someone started ringing the landing bell, and Chase gave the whistle a long echoing
thoop
of victory.

As the
Andromeda
sped upriver, the sound of the Indians’ rifle fire fell farther and farther behind them. Still, Ann stayed huddled on the floor of the wheelhouse, shaking too hard to try to stand.

Chase stood over her, signaled a change of speed, then steered them into a deeper channel.

“Annie?” he finally said, bending over her. “Annie, are you all right?”

When she nodded, Chase hauled her to her feet, then stood for an instant looking down at her. Then, without a word, he grabbed her and crushed his mouth over hers.

Panic detonated at the base of Ann’s skull, a response so reflexive she didn’t have time to think. A reaction so black and suffocating she twisted against him, frantic to break away.

Chase let her go.

She stumbled backwards, quivering and panting.

“Ann?” he whispered. “Annie, are you all right?”

Then all at once she realized where she was, who he was, and what Chase had just done for her. For all of them.

He’d saved their lives.

She saw all at once that he was trembling nearly as hard as she was. In that instant she reached for him, felt the tremor in his arms as he enfolded her. His face was damp against her, his palms clammy as he smoothed them down her back. She could smell his sweat.

“Jesus God, Annie!” His voice was as shaky as his hands. “Are you all right?”

And all at once Ann understood it wasn’t the Indians or their narrow escape that had put the stutter in his breathing and the fear in his eyes. It was concern for her.

The notion that she should be so precious to him melted through her like sun through fog. She couldn’t remember a time in her life when she’d mattered so much to anyone. That Chase cared for her astonished her, bemused her, made something stark and cold inside her liquefy.

This time when Chase bent his head to kiss her, Ann shivered and offered up her mouth. This kiss was less frantic, no longer balanced on the sharp, gilded edge of panic.

Instead it became fleet and tender, fluid and sweet. Chase feathered his lips over hers. He brushed gently and slowly, taught her the cadence of his kiss. He showed her the way intensity could blend into something softer, something delicate and fluttery.

They glided from one kiss to the next with languorous grace, shifting, merging. Ann’s mouth tingled and warmed, slackened and savored. She opened to him and caught her breath when he nibbled gently at the bow of her upper lip. When he slicked the sensitive inner margins of her mouth with the tip of his tongue. When he delved deeper and touched his tongue to hers.

She shivered from her scalp to her toes, but not with fear.

With a murmur of approbation, Chase slid the palm of his hand the length of her spine, fit the fullness of her body against him. She nestled closer and wrapped herself around him.

Their kisses deepened and expanded, filling Ann with a wonder she had never known. For what seemed like a good long while, Ann wasn’t aware of anything but Chase’s mouth on hers and his arms around her.

She wasn’t aware of anything until Rue came pounding up the stairs and burst into the pilothouse.

“For the love of God!” he shouted. “Chase, are you all—” He stopped dead in his tracks and stared at them openmouthed.

Chase raised his head, his own mouth drawn up in a smile. “Is something wrong?” he asked.

Rue waved frantically toward the bow of the steamer. Both Ann and Chase turned and saw a wall of trees not thirty feet away—and advancing toward them.

Rue finally found his voice. “We’re about to hit an—” The
Andromeda
grounded with a lurch that nearly knocked the three of them off their feet.

“—island,” he said.

chapter eight

IS THAT FORT BENTON?” ANN ASKED, STARING OUT THE window of the pilothouse in disbelief. “We’ve traveled all this way to get
here
?”

“It’s as far up the Missouri River as steamers can navigate.” Chase said, maneuvering the
Andromeda
toward an empty spot at the landing. “That’s what makes it important.”

“The Great Falls is only a few miles upstream,” Rue went on from where he lounged on the lazy bench, thumbing through a copy of a two-month-old Omaha newspaper.

From her vantage point in the
Andromeda
’s wheelhouse, Ann could look beyond the cluster of steamers, beyond the fifty-yard-wide swath of riverbank piled high with barrels and crates, to the cluster of shacks that passed for a town. She could see beyond the buildings and across a barren strip of bottomland to a string of hump-backed hills every bit as stark and uninviting as the rest of the place.

“I don’t suppose they settled Fort Benton for the scenery,” Ann observed.

“It was built for the fur trade,” Chase informed her. “And now that the Indians have pretty much closed Bozeman Trail, Fort Benton has taken on new importance. It’s the only way for people and goods to reach to the Montana goldfields.”

He leaned over the breastboard and shouted orders down to Goose before he continued. “Fort Benton’s full of folks either outfitting would-be miners or catering to the ones who’ve already struck it rich. And it most certainly is
not
the kind of place where a lady should go wandering by herself,” he went on, warning her. “Besides the
Cassiopeia
’s here.”

Ann hadn’t noticed her stepbrother’s steamer tied up at the levee until Chase pointed it out. The prospect of encountering Boothe the way she had in Sioux City very nearly guaranteed that she wouldn’t be going off on her own.

Yet something about Chase’s careful and determined protectiveness made her smile. Things had changed between them the day he’d run the
Andromeda
aground.

The day he’d kissed her.

The day she’d shocked herself by kissing him back.

She sensed his comings and his goings now as if the energy he generated moved like the warmth of sunshine across her skin. She seemed able to catch the deep timbre of his voice even if he was speaking to someone three decks below. She’d learned to recognize the rhythm of his tread on the stairs.

Chase had turned up the wick of her anticipation and made her look forward to dinner and dawn when the two of them had time together.

She thought Chase was more aware of her, too. He was more proprietary and solicitous. He almost always took time to wash and shave before he came to escort her to supper. He’d arranged for tea and a bite of something sweet to be delivered to her cabin in the afternoon. She’d even caught him badgering Frenchy about having her work fewer hours in the galley.

Oddly enough the growing affinity between them harbored a certain restraint. They were careful with each other now, as if they were passing something precious and incredibly fragile back and forth between them.

“Ann?” Chase’s voice cut into her thoughts. “I’ll be happy to escort you into town tomorrow, if you like.”

“Today he has to see about getting that busted rudder fixed properly,” Rue pointed out, “after he ran the poor
Andromeda
up onto that island.”

Chase flushed red. He’d taken a good deal of ribbing from the crew about the accident. The heckling would have been a whole lot worse if Rue had told anyone what he’d found Chase doing when he arrived in the wheelhouse. But for once, Rue had managed to keep a secret.

As it was, they’d lost two days mending one of the rudder blades as best they could and refloating the
Andromeda.

“Didn’t I warn you to stay off the sandbars?” the younger man gigged him as he shoved to his feet.

Chase called his brother a name Lydia never would have approved of as Rue sashayed out the door.

Ann laughed and reached across to pat her husband’s arm. “I’d love for you to escort me into town tomorrow afternoon.”

Chase was waiting for Ann at the head of the gangway the following day at two o’clock.

“Are you sure you’re up to this?” he asked as she swayed awkwardly toward him.

“I’m a little unwieldy these days,” she acknowledged and adjusted her hat, “but it will be good to get off the boat.”

The wagon ruts cut deep into the mud gave the levee the texture of corduroy, and Ann had to take Chase’s arm as they navigated around head-high piles of barrels and crates. The single row of business that comprised Fort Benton’s main street included the Overland Hotel, several freight offices, two mining outfitters, and a handful of saloons. At the end of the street rose the walls of the fort itself.

Ann found what she was looking for—a fine, white cotton flannel for baby blankets—at I.G. Baker’s store. While Chase was paying for her things, Ann ambled out into the sunshine.

As she stood waiting, a family of Indians rode past her. She couldn’t help but stare in fascination at their smooth brown faces and night-black hair. She took note of the man’s fringed shirt and split-feathered headdress and how the woman rode with her baby’s cradleboard braced against the pommel of her saddle.

“Those folks are Blackfeet,” Chase said, coming up behind her. “They’re headed to the Indian Agent down at the fort.”

“Do you suppose they live around here?” Ann wanted to know.

“Some Blackfeet do. There’s an encampment back of the fort if you’re curious and don’t mind the walk.”

“I’d like that,” she said and took his arm.

“I generally do a little trading while I’m here,” Chase told her. “There are a couple of collectors in St. Louis who’ll buy what I bring back. We’ll stop and see what my friend Red Dog has for me this time.”

Red Dog’s tepee was on the river side of the wide circle of tents. It was a fascinating conical structure of sticks and skins, painted with bright designs of birds and animals. As Chase and Ann approached, a stocky, dusky-skinned man rose from where he’d been sitting on a blanket in the company of a pretty young woman.

Chase spoke a few words of greeting in what Ann supposed was the Blackfeet language, and Red Dog answered in English.

“You come to trade, Hardesty?”

“I came to see if you have anything I like,” Chase offered noncommittally. “Then we’ll see. This is my wife, Ann Hardesty.”

“Hello, Ann Hardesty,” the Blackfeet trader greeted her.

“How do you do, Mr. Red Dog,” Ann answered him, then felt ridiculous speaking so formally when the man she was addressing was bared to the waist.

Red Dog looked bemused by her address, then gestured to the woman by the fire. “This is my wife. Her name in your language is Spotted Fawn Woman.”

At the sound of her name the young woman with the thick black braids rose slowly and gracefully. As she did she let the blanket she had draped around her shoulders drop to the ground. Beneath it she was round as a pumpkin and even more full of baby than Ann was herself.

The two women looked at each other, then laughed.

“Spotted Fawn Woman carries my first child inside her,” Red Dog said with a nod of approval, then turned to Chase. “Come, I will show you the beadwork and skins I have for you. You will pay me a good price for them because you are going to be a father, too, and are feeling generous.”

“We’ll have to see about that,” Chase answered and followed Red Dog into his tent.

After the men were gone, Ann and Spotted Fawn Woman didn’t have so much as one word in common. They stood staring for a moment, then the Indian woman smiled graciously and gestured for Ann to join her on the blanket.

Ann descended somewhat clumsily, but managed to make herself comfortable. Once she had, Spotted Fawn Woman pointed to Ann’s belly, raised one finger and made a gesture Ann interpreted as a moon crossing the sky. It was an amazingly accurate guess as to when her baby was due.

Ann nodded and pointed to the other woman.

Spotted Fawn Woman began what looked to be the same moon sign she’d used before, then abruptly closed her fist and lowered it to her lap.

“Any day now,” Ann interpreted. “Are you scared?”

But there were no hand signals to pantomime her growing feelings of anticipation and doubt, and no way for Spotted Fawn Woman to answer.

Yet as if she’d understood what Ann meant, the Indian woman patted Ann’s knee and brought out a tiny pair of beautifully beaded moccasins.

“Are these for your baby?” Ann asked, turning the little shoes over and over in her hands. The colored beads were arranged in intricate leaf designs, and the stitches were small and neat. “You do fine work. The moccasins are wonderful.”

But when Ann tried to give the moccasins back, Spotted Fawn Woman shook her head. Ann offered them again, but the other woman refused her.

“I can’t take them,” Ann told her. “They’re the most precious little things I’ve ever seen, but you made them for your own baby.”

The Indian woman pursed her mouth insistently.

Just then, the men pushed out of the tent.

“You must take the moccasins,” Chase encouraged her once he realized what was happening. “To refuse would be an insult.”

Ann glanced up at him for confirmation, then pressed the tiny shoes against her heart. “Thank you for your kindness to someone from another place.”

When Red Dog translated Ann’s words, Spotted Fawn Woman smiled and nodded. It seemed as if in these last few minutes she and Ann had become friends.

Chase helped Ann to her feet and left the encampment amid a flurry of thanks and good wishes.

As they strolled—a good deal more slowly than before because Ann was tiring—back to the
Andromeda,
Chase told her not only about the hide and beaded pieces Red Dog would be delivering to the
Andromeda,
but about an invitation he’d received from Mr. Baker.

“He’s giving a party tomorrow night on one of the steamers,” Chase told her, as they recrossed the levee, “and I thought we should attend.”

“Oh, Chase,” Ann demurred. “A woman in my condition is hardly fit for polite society.”

He laughed outright and shook his head. “No one could possibly mistake parties here at Fort Benton as polite society,” he told her. “There will be food and music and probably a bit of storytelling. Baker throws some sort of a shindig every year when the boats come in. I think you might enjoy it. And I promise we’ll leave before the fighting starts.”

Four months ago, Ann would have thrown up her hands at the idea of attending such a crude gathering. But after traveling more than two thousand miles in the company of miners and rivermen, Ann thought she just might enjoy herself.

“All right,” she agreed. “We’ll go.”

CHASE SHOULDERED UP TO THE BAR IN THE STEAMER
Independence
’s crowded salon and ordered a drink.

“So Ann decided to come to the party, did she?” Rue greeted him, turning from where he’d been talking to two other rivermen.

“I didn’t even have to coax her,” Chase answered and glanced toward where Ann was chatting with the only two other respectable women who’d come tonight. Mrs. Tyson and Mrs. Young would be taking the stage to Helena in the morning to join their husbands.

“Well, she certainly seems to be enjoying herself.”

Chase nodded and sipped his whiskey. In a roomful of miners and soldiers and riverboatmen, Ann stood out like a diamond in a dish of sand. Even round and full as she was with her child, she maintained the elegance and refinement he’d admired in her from the first time he’d set eyes on her.

Of course he had absolutely no business bringing a lady like her to a place like this. But then, Ann hadn’t had any business marrying up with a man like him, either. Chase just hoped she wasn’t sorry.

Somehow that notion snagged in his throat like a burr, and he washed down the sting with a swallow of whiskey. “She
is
a lovely woman, isn’t she?”

Rue grinned and nodded in agreement. “I bet she’ll be glad to be getting home.”

“I think she’s liked being aboard the
Andromeda.”
And no matter how unwilling he’d been to have her there at the start, he couldn’t imagine what it would have been like to make this trip without her.

Still, Chase hadn’t realized how close Ann must be to delivering that baby until he’d seen her at a distance yesterday. How pressing it suddenly felt to get her back to St. Louis, find her a place to live, and a doctor to look after her.

The commotion at the door of the steamer’s salon drew everyone’s attention, and as the newcomers piled in, Chase nudged his brother. “I thought the
Cassiopeia
was supposed to leave this afternoon.”

“Cal said they were having trouble with one of the boilers,” Rue replied as Boothe Rossiter bellied up to the bar three or four miners down from where they were standing.

Chase considered collecting Ann right then and getting her out of harm’s way. But before he could, officers from several of the other steamers converged on them.

“They tell me James Rossiter entrusted you with his brand-new boat,” the
Julie B
’s captain, Barnaby Greene, greeted Chase with a grin. “Can that possibly be right?”