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“We’re lucky. Some trains start out in spring rains that don’t stop for days. They end up eating mud the rest of the trip.”
“My brother and I are prepared to eat anything we have to as long as we get to California.”
Haskell chuckled. “You are two mighty determined lads. How old are you, anyway, Kiernan?”
“Nineteen.”
Haskell nodded. “You’re not too big a fellow, are you?” he asked casually.
“Ah…no. Folks aren’t so tall where I come from.”
“Patrick looks as if he’ll be a strapping gent someday. He’s already almost as tall as you are.” Haskell’s blond hair glinted in the starlight, and he had that same secret smile on his face that had made Kerry uneasy when they’d met earlier in the day.
“I guess he’ll be bigger than I. Our father was a tall man.” She was finding the conversation a little odd. Scott Haskell had barely met them. What did he care about her brother’s height—or hers?
He looked at her steadily in the darkness for a long moment Then he gave a little nod and switched subjects. “I understand you’re headed for the Sonoma valley.”
Kerry shrugged her shoulders to ease out the tension. “Yes. Where are you headed, Mr. Haskell?”
“Scott, please,” he said with a smile.
“Scott.”
“I reckon I’ll look around a bit—see where the veins are running richest. Probably south of San Francisco somewheres.”
Kerry started to reply when suddenly her foot, clumsy in Patrick’s oversize boot, hit a large rock that had been camouflaged by the darkness. She fell off balance directly toward her companion. Scott turned quickly and caught her with strong, sure hands at each shoulder. “I’m sorry,” Kerry faltered, embarrassed. She righted herself, grimacing as her ankle gave a nasty twinge.
“Are you all right?” Scott asked.
“Yes, just…I’m sorry.” She took a step away from his grasp, giving a little gasp as her foot hit the ground. The twinge was turning into a definite throb. “I seem to have twisted an ankle.”
Scott reached out and took her slender hands. He pulled them toward him and turned them over slowly studying them in the starlight. Then he looked into her eyes. “Perhaps those heavy boots are too much for what must be delicate little feet…Miss Gallivan.”
Under the smears of dirt on her face, Kerry blanched. “I…what do you mean?”
Scott smiled. “Don’t worry, lass. Your secret is safe with me, though I can’t imagine how anyone on this train can actually believe that you’re a male.”
Kerry pulled her hands away from him. “When did you know?” she asked dully.
“The minute I saw those beautiful blue eyes,” Scott answered cheerfully. “I couldn’t believe that God would be so cruel as to waste them on a man.” As her features became more dejected he added gently, “Your face is well disguised by the dirt and floppy hat, lass, but I saw your hands. Those slender wrists couldn’t belong to a man.”
Kerry moved another step backward, only to be reminded once again of the pain in her leg. “The lawyer in St. Louis told us that they wouldn’t take a lone woman,” she explained, a little breathless with nerves at her sudden discovery and the pain.
“And you wanted to come anyway.”
“Yes. My brother and I have to get to California.”
Scott nodded, suddenly serious. “You’re a brave lass, Kiernan. Is it Kiernan?”
“Kerry.”
“Ah. That’s better. You’re a brave lass, Kerry, and, as I said, I won’t be turning you in. In fact, I hope you’ll consider me a friend.”
His eyes were kind and his hand gentle as he gave her shoulder a little squeeze. “If you will keep my secret, Mr. Haskell, I will definitely consider you a friend.”
“Good.” He cocked his head. “But you’ll have to learn to call me Scott.”
She smiled, then sighed. “I guess I’d better, Scott, because I’m already going to take advantage of your friendship.”
“Just ask.”
Giving her foot a rueful glance, she told him, “I’m afraid I’m going to need some assistance getting back to my wagon.”
Scott frowned. “You are really hurt, then. Damnation, what luck. I wonder if anyone in the group is trained in medicine?”
Kerry put both her hands up in protest. “No, please. I’ll be fine. If you’ll just help me to my wagon, I’m sure by tomorrow this’ll be back to normal.”
Scott hesitated. “You don’t want anyone looking at you too closely. Is that it?”
Kerry tightened her jaw against the pain that was beginning to radiate in rings up her leg. Scott grasped her elbows as she swayed. Her hands clutched at his forearms. “Will you help me? Please?” It was not a plea that came easy to her, but at the moment the pain was overriding her usual sense of independence.
Scott bent his head to see her eyes in the starlight, then without a word scooped her up in his brawny arms.
“You don’t have to carry me,” she protested.
Scott shook his head. “You weigh no more than a feather, lass. I could carry you from here to California without breaking a sweat.”
The ache pulsating upward from her foot obliterated all sense of embarrassment she might have felt at this unexpected intimacy with a man she had barely met. “Thank you,” she murmured. Then added in a tired voice, “Tomorrow I’ll be back on my feet.”
But the next day there was no way Kerry would be able to walk and take a turn away from the dust. Her foot had swollen so that even Patrick’s large boot would not fit over it. Patrick had bound it in rags over which Kerry had painfully pulled on a large wool sock.
Scott appeared at breakfast to ask about her injury. He offered to make a bed for her in the back of his much roomier wagon, but she refused, accepting only his offer of help in climbing up onto her wagon seat.
Kerry told no one else of her mishap, but there seemed to be some mysterious network of communication among the wagons, and before they were a half hour out on the trail, Jeb Hunter rode back to them, his forehead creased with worry.
Without preliminaries he said, “I understand you hurt your leg last night, Kiernan.”
She nodded, keeping her face down under the big hat. After her discovery by Haskell, her confidence in her disguise had disappeared. “Just an ankle twist—nothing serious,” she mumbled.
Jeb shook his head. An injury already—the very first day out. He hoped it wasn’t an omen. “Are you sure it’s not broken? We won’t exactly be running into any doctors between here and Fort Kearney. I guess I’d better have a look at it.”
Kerry tensed, and Patrick, riding alongside her in the box, gave her a reassuring pat on the knee. “My brother will be fine,” he said. “Honestly. You don’t have to worry about it”
Jeb hesitated. The boys’ independence was admirable, but the health of his band was his responsibility. He’d seen broken legs fester and turn rotten. “I’ll just check it over to be sure,” he said in a tone that left no room for argument. “I’ll come around when we stop for the nooning. In the meantime, Patrick, why don’t you take over the reins and let Kiernan climb in the back to lie down—get that leg propped up.”
“There’s no room back there to lie—” Patrick began, then stopped as he saw the slight shake of his sister’s head. “All right, Captain. We’ll do just as you say.”
“Good lad.” Hunter wheeled his horse and headed back along the train.
“Now what?” Patrick asked after a moment.
Kerry had turned her head and was watching the guide’s retreating form with an indignant expression. She was starting to get a little tired of Captain Hunter’s high-handed ways. Her father had paid good money to hire his services, as had the other people on the train, yet he acted as if he were the one who had the final say in everything.
“I’m not sure I like that man. He thinks he’s the boss.”
“Well, he is the boss in a way,” Patrick said reasonably. “Everyone on the train has to do what he says.”
Kerry turned around on the seat to face her brother. “We’re paying him, remember?”
“But he’s responsible for all of us.”
“Well, he’s not responsible for…” She sputtered a moment, letting her temper build. “For my feet!” she concluded, looking down at her bandaged leg.
Patrick shook his head. “I think he’s going to want to look at your ankle—one way or another.”
Kerry thought for a minute. “As soon as we stop for lunch, I want you to run up and fetch Mr. Haskell—Scott Tell him I need to take him up on his offer.”
Patrick frowned. “What offer?”
“Of help. If my foot’s already been looked at by an expert, Captain Hunter can’t insist on treating it.”
“Mr. Haskell’s an expert?”
Kerry’s chin lifted and her smile held a touch of defiance. “He shoes horses, doesn’t he?”
Scott had agreed to help deflect the attention of the wagon train captain from Kerry’s obviously feminine legs, but only with the condition that she let him really check on the state of her ankle.
“I’m telling you, it’s nothing,” she said, her dirtsmeared face growing red. She’d been without a mother since she was a child and had grown up in a household with two males. She wasn’t used to anyone seeing a portion of her body that should in all decency be covered up.
“Sorry, lass,” Scott answered with a charming grin as he climbed up on the side rail to lift her down from the wagon seat. “If I’m to help out with this little deception of yours, I’ve got to do it with a clean conscience. What if your ankle’s actually broken?”
“It can’t be broken,” Kerry answered firmly. “I can’t afford for it to be.”
Scott chuckled and bobbled her a bit in his arms as he awkwardly stepped backward down to the ground. “It wouldn’t dare,” he clarified.
“That’s right.”
His chuckle turned into a laugh. Against the hard surface of his chest, Kerry felt warm and comforted—the way she felt when she used to crawl up into her father’s broad lap as a child. She put the thought out of her head. She hadn’t needed the comfort of her father’s lap for some years now, and she certainly didn’t need the warmth of a man’s arms. She was just feeling a little weak because of her injury and because the throbbing had kept her awake for yet another sleepless night.
“Well, we’ll just take a quick look, lass. On a strictly professional basis, I assure you.” Now his blue eyes smiled at her. “In my capacity as your…ah…veterinarian.”
Patrick had finished watering the oxen and came up behind them. “Is my brother going to be all right?”
“How about you lift down one of those boxes for your sister to sit on, lad,” Scott answered.
Patrick’s eyes widened and he turned to Kerry. “He knows?”
Kerry nodded. “It seems that my disguise was not convincing to Mr. Haskell. But he has promised to keep our secret.”
“Criminy, Kerry. I told you this wasn’t going to work. It’s not going to work, is it, Mr. Haskell?” Patrick kicked the wagon wheel with his boot.
“It’s Scott,” he said, still holding Kerry lightly in his arms, then added gently, “the box, lad.” Patrick pulled a packing crate from the back of the wagon and positioned it where Scott could easily set Kerry. After she was situated, Scott stepped back and continued, “I can’t answer you for certain, Patrick, but no one else has questioned your sister’s identity. She’s a smart lass. She may be able to pull it off.”
“As long as Jeb Hunter doesn’t insist on seeing my ankle,” Kerry added grimly, stretching her leg out in front of her. Her foot, bandaged with strips of cloth she had torn from a petticoat last night, stuck awkwardly out the end of her too short, borrowed trousers.
“Maybe he won’t even come around,” Patrick suggested hopefully, but before he had even finished the words, all three lifted their heads at the sound of a horse riding toward them. The wagon master was approaching their wagon, his eyes on Kerry.
Scott pushed back the brim of his hat, then stood awaiting Jeb Hunter’s arrival with crossed arms. “Afternoon, Captain,” he said in a loud voice, drawing the trail guide’s gaze.
Kerry twirled around on the box so that her bad leg was partially out of view.
“Afternoon,” Jeb answered gruffly, pulling his horse to a stop a few feet away. “I came to see the lad’s bad ankle.”
He dismounted and walked toward them, but Scott took a step closer, cutting off his approach. “He says it’s fine.”
Kerry watched as the two men came to a stop opposite each other. Something in their demeanor made their positions look more like a confrontation than a conversation.
“I know,” Hunter said, with just a brush of irritation in his voice. “But I’m going to check it out just to be sure.”
He started to take a step around Scott, who reached out and put a hand on his arm. “I’ve looked at it myself,” he said. “There’s no need for you to bother.”
“Scott’s an expert,” Patrick chimed in.
Jeb Hunter looked down at Scott’s restraining hand. “An expert?”
Scott removed his hand and spoke in conciliatory tones. “I’ve worked with this kind of injury before,” Scott said. “Ankle sprains and the like. I think Kiernan’s going to be just fine if he keeps off it for three or four days.”
For the first time since her injury, Kerry was oblivious to the pain as she watched the exchange between the two men. They were not destined to be friends, that was clear. And it looked as if it would take little to set off a spark of animosity between them. “I wish everyone would stop talking about me and my blasted foot,” she said, making her voice as forceful as she could in its low range. “Mr. Haskell says it’s fine, and it’s practically stopped hurting. So I’d like to just forget the whole incident.”
Jeb Hunter looked over at her and frowned. “Did you get it properly bandaged?”
“Yes. As we said, Mr. Haskell is something of an expert.”
He took a step backward and turned his glance back to Scott. “The lad seems to take your word for it, Haskell, and it was nice of you to help out. But in the future I’d appreciate it if you remembered that I’m the one responsible for the health of the people on this train.”
Scott gave a bland smile. “Sure, Captain. We all know that you’re the boss man.”
Hunter seemed to hesitate for a moment, trying to decide if Scott’s comment had carried hidden sarcasm, but he evidently decided not to press the issue. “Fine. We’ll be getting started again here in about twenty minutes.” He nodded to Patrick, then turned with a last caution to Kerry. “Stay off that foot, then, Kiernan.”
When he mounted up and rode away Kerry discovered that she’d been holding in a deep breath. She let it out slowly. “Well, that’s one crisis past.”
Scott dropped to one knee beside her. “But I’m still going to look at your foot, lass.”
She winced in pain and embarrassment as he deftly pushed the trousers up her slender leg and began to unwind the cloth strips. Her ankle was puffy and grayish blue. Scott gave a low whistle, then looked up at her with a wink. “Now I’ve heard of a nicely turned ankle before…”
Kerry laughed and found herself relaxing in spite of herself under the influence of Scott Haskell’s charm. By the time he had gingerly felt along each side of her ankle, declared that there appeared to be no broken bones and rebandaged it, she had lost all her self-consciousness and was enjoying his banter. Though his detection of her secret had undermined her confidence in her disguise, it felt good to know that she had at least one ally on the train besides Patrick. She was determined to get to California on her own and wasn’t looking for help from any quarter. But it didn’t hurt to know that once in a while she could let down her guard and be assured of a friendly face.
Chapter Three (#ulink_2bb3852c-7937-5b1b-9b30-c7233fbf41ce)
