скачать книгу бесплатно
North recalled the stories his father had told about women in the East, his mother, sisters, aunts, left behind like all his other family members. Women so unlike North’s own Cheyenne mother, his sisters and the other women of the tribe.
North waited and watched the gate. No one else, apparently, had seen Lily leave. The routine of the fort continued on, as usual. Minutes dragged by. The sun drifted toward the Western horizon.
He watched. Still no sign of her.
He hoped she’d realize that the prairie was no place for her and come back on her own. He waited longer. She didn’t return.
North glanced around. No one, still, had noticed that she was gone. That meant he’d have no choice but to go after her himself.
He hesitated. Something about that woman bothered him. He didn’t know what it was, exactly. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it. But it was there, lurking in the back of his mind, and in the pit of his stomach.
“Damn…”
North headed for the stable.
A dark shadow fell across the ground startling Lily. She gasped and twisted around. A man stood behind her, his approach so silent she hadn’t heard a sound.
Seated on the ground, Lily brushed the tears from her eyes, then shaded them against the setting sun, squinting to see his face.
“Who are you?” she asked, unwilling and unable to sound pleasant.
He didn’t reply, just looked down at her quizzically.
Lily leaned her head back to see him clearly. He was the Indian she’d seen whispering to the stallion in the corral, she realized.
She gazed past him and the horse he’d left grazing a few yards away, to Bent’s Fort, now small on the horizon. She hadn’t realized she’d gone so far. She’d walked—then run—through the short, green prairie grass to the river, then followed its banks, finally collapsing here beneath a cottonwood tree, mindless of the distance.
She didn’t know why this man was here or what he wanted—and she didn’t care, either. All she wanted was to be left alone to cry, to scream, to indulge the ache in her heart and the emptiness in her soul. Was that too much to ask? Surely it couldn’t be, after what she’d been through today.
“Go away,” she told him, turning away, tears filling her eyes once more. “I want to be by myself. I don’t want any company. Can’t you understand that’s why I came out here in the first place?”
He walked closer, still staring down at her. Though he’d said nothing, his presence seemed to demand something of her.
“This has been the worst day of my life. Everything—absolutely everything—has been just awful. Why, I didn’t even have anything decent to wear to my own father’s funeral.” Lily shook the skirt of her green dress, the simple act bringing on another rush of emotion and a fresh wave of tears. “Why, I—I—I don’t even have a handkerchief!”
The magnitude of her woes descended upon her, crushing her. She sobbed into her hands, not bothering to hide her tears or wipe them away.
“My horses were stolen!” she wailed, turning her face up to him. “My belongings, too! My wagon is ruined! And I don’t have any money!”
She flung herself onto the ground and cradled her head against her arms, sobbing and gulping in ragged breaths of air.
Lily glanced up. The man still stood over her, his head tilted slightly to the side, watching her as if she were an insect in a jar.
“Is that all you can do?” she demanded. “Stand there and stare?”
His brows drew together, but still he didn’t offer a response.
She pushed herself up and huffed irritably. “Don’t you have any manners at all?”
His frown deepened.
“Do you speak English?” she wanted to know. When he didn’t answer, she asked again. “Eng…lish. Do…you…speak…English?”
The man rocked back slightly, regarding her with caution.
“Oh, lovely!” Lily dug the heels of her shoes into the ground and launched herself to her feet. “Here I am pouring out my heart to someone who doesn’t even speak a civilized language!”
She whirled away and flung out both arms. “What sort of godforsaken place is this? Savages running loose! With no sense of decorum! No manners! Unable to even communicate!”
“What’s wrong with it?”
Lily gasped at the sound of his voice, and spun toward him. Embarrassment heated her cheeks. “You do speak English.”
He watched her curiously. “Your dress. What’s wrong with it?”
Lily planted a hand on her hip and pushed her chin up. “You should have made your language skills known earlier, sir, and not allowed me to carry on like that. And you should have introduced yourself.”
“North Walker,” he said, seemingly unperturbed by her scathing accusations about his heritage. “Your father has just died. Yet your concern is with your dress?”
“It’s the wrong color,” she told him and shook her skirt once more. “It should be black, not green. Black is always worn to a funeral—in civilized places, that is. And, of course, I’m upset about my father’s death.”
Tears filled Lily’s eyes again. Emotion swelled in her, robbing her of her strength. She sank to the ground, her skirt pooling around her, not wanting to put forth the effort to stand.
“We were supposed to be a family—finally—on this trip. But now Papa’s gone, and I’m alone. All alone,” she whispered. Tears tumbled down her cheeks once more. She covered her face with her hands. “This was our last chance…our last chance to be together.” After a few minutes, she sensed North move closer, his nearness somehow calming her emotions.
“Your father is dead,” North said softly, kneeling beside her. “Gone to a better place.”
Lily sniffed and lifted her head.
“Isn’t that your belief?” North asked gently. “That he’s in heaven among the angels, free of pain and suffering, in the presence of the Holy Spirit?”
“You’re a Christian?” She swiped the tears from her face with the backs of her hands, unable to keep the surprise from her voice.
“I know God.” North waved his hand encompassing everything around them. “I know the spirit of the land and all things in it.”
“But—but you’re an Indian?”
“I’m a lot of things,” he told her.
North closed his hand over her arm. Heat seeped through the fabric of her sleeve, oozing outward, filling her with warmth.
He looked directly into her eyes. “Your father is at peace. Rejoice in his place in heaven. Don’t wish him into the torment of this earth again.”
Lily gazed into his eyes—rich, dark eyes that seemed to peer into her soul and, somehow, lift her burden. Almost magically, a sense of peace filled her. Her problems drifted away as if they were feathers on the breeze.
“Thank you for your kindness,” she whispered. “You’ve made me feel so much better.”
“It’s the same way I talk to my horses.” North rose and said. “But horses have more sense than to come out onto the prairie alone and get themselves in such a dangerous situation.”
It took a few seconds before his words sank in.
“Are you saying I don’t have as much sense as a horse?” she demanded. Lily scrambled to her feet. “How dare you! You don’t even know me, nor do you have the slightest idea of what sort of person I am, yet you have the gall to stand there and—”
“We have to go back to the fort,” he said and reached for her arm.
Lily jerked away. “I have no intention of going anywhere with you.”
“It’s a longer walk back than you think. It will be dark soon.”
She squared her shoulders, a strength she hadn’t felt a moment ago suddenly filling her. “I’ll manage, thank you just the same.”
He gestured toward the horizon and the orange glow of the setting sun. “Coyotes prowl at sundown. There’re snakes.”
Lily drew in a great breath. “I’ll go back to the fort when I choose. And I’ll get there on my own.”
“You won’t make it,” North said, anger creeping into his voice. “Most of the men at the fort will end up out here searching for you, risking their own lives.”
And she wasn’t worth it, his look seemed to say.
A sickly feeling wound through Lily’s stomach, shame that this man thought so little of her. Memories of the weeks on the Trail came back to her, the other women caring for their families, tending to them with practiced ease. She’d been unprepared for the journey. She’d known it from the start. She still knew it. But, somehow, seeing that look on North’s face hurt worst of all.
“I don’t need your help,” Lily said, holding up her chin.
A long moment dragged by while North just looked at her. Finally, he simply nodded.
“Fine,” he said, then mounted his horse and headed toward the fort.
Lily gasped and her eyes rounded at the sight of him riding away. He was leaving her? Actually riding away? Abandoning her here so far from the fort, in the middle of nowhere?
“Wait!” She ran after him. “Stop!”
She caught up with him. North rested his hand on the saddle horn and glared down, the brim of his hat shading his eyes.
“You’re—you’re not going to leave me out here, are you?” she exclaimed. She drew herself up, thinking of the nastiest thing she could call him. “You, Mr. Walker, are no gentleman.”
He gave her a long, slow once-over that sent a strange warmth flooding through her. Heat crept up her neck and onto her cheeks, then arrowed downward to the center of her belly. Still, Lily refused to look away.
Finally, North shook his head, almost to himself, and climbed down from the horse.
Relieved, but still clinging to her pride, Lily said, “I decided that it would be prudent to accept your offer and—Oh!”
North grasped her waist and hoisted her upward, plopping her into the saddle. Lily grasped a handful of mane to keep from tumbling backward off the other side, then glared down at him. He glared right back.
An odd warmth leaped from him, covered her, touched her in strange places. She’d assumed he thought her worthless, but the look on his face made her feel as if—
Lily broke eye contact, afraid—but of what she wasn’t sure.
North picked up the reins, then reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out his handkerchief. He held it up to Lily.
Stunned, she looked at it for a moment. The white, pressed linen fabric. His big hard long fingers. She’d complained earlier that she had no handkerchief. He’d remembered.
Without a word, Lily accepted it. North led the horse toward the fort.
In the moonlight the fort looked almost pleasant, Lily thought as she gazed out the window of her room. She rested her arm on the sill, looking up at the stars, searching them for—
What? A glimpse into the future? A window into her own heart?
When they’d drawn close to the fort this evening, Lily had jumped from the horse, marched right past North and entered the fort alone. She’d hurried to her room, not bothering to even thank him.
Not that he deserved to be thanked, after the way he’d insulted her.
Yet it was her pride that hurt more than anything. He thought little of her, and she’d done nothing to prove him wrong.
But what was she to do? She didn’t belong in this place, was totally unprepared for life here in the uncivilized West. Yet, somehow, North’s low opinion of her still hurt.
Sighing into the dark night, Lily decided this was but further proof that she should leave immediately for her aunt’s home in Richmond.
She’d be glad to go. She’d miss nothing about this hard, unforgiving land. The land that had taken her father and the last chance she’d ever have to know what it was like for the two of them to be a family.
North floated through her mind. Tall, wide shoulders. So strong. He’d lifted her into the saddle with no effort. And he was handsome, surprisingly handsome. When Oliver Sykes had stopped by her room to check on her a short while ago, she’d casually—she hoped—asked about North. An English father and a Cheyenne mother, Sykes had said. His mixed heritage had blended to give him a unique handsomeness, to Lily’s mind.
Her stomach warmed at the memory of the two of them beneath the cottonwood tree. He belonged here in this land. He was strong and brave and rugged. Everything this place demanded.
And she wasn’t. A thread of sadness filled Lily’s heart at the thought. Then alarm took its place.
North had seemed decent enough under the cottonwood. But he was, after all, half-Indian. Half-savage. What if his Cheyenne side had presented itself at that particular moment? Would he have ravished her? Scalped her? Left her for dead?
A chill ran up Lily’s spine. She had to leave this place. Tomorrow she’d make the arrangements.
She’d get to her aunt’s home in Virginia—no matter what it took.
Chapter Four
Gray clouds hung over the fort, stretching to the horizon, heavy with the threat of rain. The morning breeze tugged at the loose strands of Lily’s hair as she crossed the plaza.
She stepped inside the trade room, the economic heart of Bent’s Fort, the primary reason for its existence in this vast wilderness. Here, merchandise, goods and services were traded or sold to Indians and trappers, travelers and explorers.
As she hoped, Lily found Hiram Fredericks and Oliver Sykes busy at work among the dry goods, hardware, tools, guns and knives.
The two of them had done so much to help her these past few days, they deserved her thanks and so very much more. That was, however, all that she could offer these two fine gentlemen, in light of her newly discovered financial straits.
“Good morning,” she greeted, and managed a small smile as she cross the room.
Both men looked up from the desk they were huddled around, and smiled in return, looking a little surprised but pleased to see her.
“How’re you doing, Miss St. Claire?” Sykes inquired, giving her an earnest look, setting aside the stack of papers in his hand.
“Well enough,” she said, trying to push her chin up a little and sound brave, “considering the circumstances, of course.”
