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“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.”
