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“Of course, as it turned out, there really wasn’t a bear.” She carefully enunciated each word so that he could grasp what had happened. “But I had no way of knowing that at the time, did I?”
His cracked lips parted, but he didn’t speak. Instead, he seemed to regard her with a kind of morbid fascination.
Since leaving Boston, Victoria had become familiar with that look. As usual in her encounters with Western men, she was mystified as to why he had difficulty understanding her.
“The point is, I didn’t mean to hurt Mr. Dodson. He just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“How did you. hurt him?”
She sighed. “I shot him.”
Mr. Youngblood retreated a step. “You what?”
“I heard something outside my wagon in the wee hours of the morning. The day before, one of the men mentioned seeing a black bear in the vicinity. He warned us to be on the lookout.”
“Couldn’t you tell the difference between a man and a bear?”
“It was dark.”
Mr. Youngblood’s good eye blinked spasmodically. “Lady, you’re the one who should be locked up.”
At the reminder of how she’d found the battered Logan Youngblood, Victoria’s gaze drifted to the stockade. “I didn’t mortally wound Mr. Dodson. I just winged him.”
“Where?”
“Does it really matter?”
“I’m sure it did to him,” Youngblood countered.
“His foot.”
“What were you aiming for?”
She licked her lips, not at all liking the feeling that she’d lost control of their conversation. If anyone ought to be answering questions, it was him. He was the one who’d been incarcerated.
Strictly speaking, even if he wasn’t behind bars, he was still a prisoner. To be more specific, he was her prisoner. And, as she saw it, she was duty-bound to escort him to Trinity Falls to answer for his ill deeds.
“Everything happened so quickly, I didn’t really have time to aim at anything in particular.” She straightened. “But we seem to have strayed from the central topic.”
“So they kicked you off the wagon train for shooting one of its members?” he asked grimly, ignoring her efforts to get their discussion on track.
“Oh, no, they just took away my rifle for that.”
The nervous tic quickened. “Then what happened? I mean, other than the wagon train being attacked and everyone but you being killed, I can’t think of a single reason for you to have been separated from the others.”
“Of course you can’t,” she conceded, striving for the patience one used when dealing with a child. The trouble was, she hadn’t been around that many children.
“Let me guess,” he interjected softly. “They tossed you off the train because you drove them crazy with your damned riddles.”
She’d heard head injuries caused confusion. Was that why he seemed incapable of understanding the simplest of concepts? “How many blows to the head did you receive?”
Logan bit back an oath. Swearing at the contrary female who’d released him from the stockade would do no earthly good. He raked a hand through his hair. The subsequent flash of pain made him suck in his breath.
He looked toward the morning sun. Time was running out for them. They needed to leave the fort. “Look, lady, I—”
“My name is Miss Amory,” she told him in that dainty, haughty voice of hers.
“Which will make no difference to an Indian with justice on his mind.”
Her greenish eyes widened. “Justice?”
“The red man’s kind of justice. It’s swift and hard.”
She looked over her shoulder, as if expecting an arrow to come flying at her. Framed by a splash of yellow sunlight, she appeared achingly vulnerable. A slim woman, with reddish hair that was in the process of escaping its anchoring pins.
There was little logic to it, but he felt compelled to protect the foolish creature.
“We need to be on our way,” he repeated.
“I wasn’t the one asking all the questions.”
He scowled. Irritating female.
He would find out later how she’d become separated from the wagon train. He was sure that when he did, he’d learn she was responsible for her predicament. As his gaze dropped to the pert curve of her breasts and the slight fullness of her hips, outlined by her dusty dark green dress, there was something else he was sure of. Mr. Dodson with the shot foot had been prowling around Miss Amory’s wagon with mischief on his mind.
The kind of mischief that had been going on since Eve had plucked that forbidden apple from its branch and offered it to Adam. The kind of mischief that would probably shock this red-haired Eastern woman to the soles of her sensible little black walking shoes.
Again he was struck by how vulnerable she appeared in her makeshift campsite in the middle of the abandoned fort. He turned again to the six placid oxen munching on the loose hay scattered around them. “I’ll hitch the wagon.”
“I’ve been responsible for my team since leaving Independence, and I’m fully capable of attending to them now.”
Miss Amory’s raised voice halted him in his tracks. He turned on his heel and glared at the contrary woman. “Are you turning down my help?”
“No, but I don’t need a felon ordering me about. While we’re on the subject, there’s something else we need to clear up.”
Her casual use of the word felon made Logan yearn to shake her. Instead, he swallowed his anger. He didn’t have time to trade insults with Miss Amory, not with warring tribes of Blackfeet and Shoshones on the verge of attacking.
Later, he promised himself, he would delight in making this overbearing woman take back every insult she’d heaped upon him.
“Do you want to live or die, Miss Amory?”
Her slender hand shot to the bodice of her simple dress. “Are—are you threatening me?”
“Hell no, but we’re in a tough spot and need to move.”
“So you keep telling me.”
He closed the eye that wasn’t swollen shut and prayed for patience. “They’re still out there.”
“I’m aware of that. But surely we have enough time to establish our…er…chain of command, as I believe it’s called.”
Feeling not one iota of increased patience, Logan opened his eye. He felt downright mean and put-upon. He’d ridden to the fort to deliver Night Wolf’s warning. His reward for leaving the safety of Trinity Falls had been a nasty showdown with Windham, a brutal beating, and being left to die.
Almost miraculously, he’d been freed. But, evidently, fate still wasn’t done having a laugh at his expense, because his rescuer was the craziest female he’d ever had the misfortune to meet. And something about her well-bred, faintly censorious voice grated on his already savaged nerves.
His gaze narrowed. A shot of pain radiated from his right eye. “Where are you from, Miss Amory?”
“I hardly think that’s relevant.”
“Boston, right?”
“Not that it matters, but yes, that is my hometown.”
He flinched. He should have known. Few good things had happened to him in Boston, which was why he’d left. As far as he was concerned, it was the hypocrisy capital of America, a place where men and women cared too much about appearances and not enough about integrity. It was where trust and loyalty fell before expediency and selfish desire.
“From your dour expression, I gather Boston is not one of your favorite places,” Miss Amory observed.
Nothing like a bit of understatement. “You might say that.”
“But where I come from hasn’t really anything to do with our present situation.”
She was speaking slowly again, as if she thought he were having trouble understanding her. Which he was, of course. But his lack of understanding had nothing to do with how fast or slowly she spoke. It was her confusing habit of talking in circles that made his head throb with more than the pain of the beating he’d survived.
Logan’s glance flicked to the stockade. He felt nostalgic about his internment there. While inside its dark interior, he hadn’t been forced to deal with a flame-haired harpy.
He rubbed the back of his neck. “Stop.”
She licked her damnably soft lips. “What is it, precisely, that you wish for me to stop doing?”
“Addressing me as if I were some kind of half-wit.”
Her already rosy cheeks flushed a brighter shade of pink.
Was that it? Did she really think he was dim-witted?
Indignation tore through Logan. That this capricious female considered herself superior to him was the last straw. Her words kept darting off in a dozen different directions. Trying to speak with her was like carrying on a conversation with a bundle of colorful butterflies.
“There’s no need to be sensitive about it.” Her Boston accent was crisp and officious. “Not everyone can boast a keen intellect.”
Astonishment popped the bubble of anger that had built within Logan. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so soundly offended. Not even Windham, with his ridiculous claim about Logan bedding his wife, had struck such a deep blow.
Logan found he disliked having his intelligence insulted more than he disliked having his honor impugned. A man could redeem his honor in a fair fight. There was no quick and final way, however, to convince this green-eyed witch that he was her intellectual equal. He told himself it didn’t matter what she thought.
“Now, about who’s in charge here,” she continued, as if she hadn’t just mortally insulted him. “As it’s my wagon, and my team, and you are now in my custody, I should be the one to decide who does what.”
“All right,” he managed to say through his clenched jaw, not wanting to waste time arguing.
She smiled. “Why don’t you go ahead and load the wagon, then, and I’ll.”
He said nothing, contenting himself with images of her being bound and gagged and tossed into the back of her wagon.
She gestured toward a row of privies. “Well, you know…”
He maintained his stoic silence.
Only after she left did Logan let out the breath he’d been holding. He stalked toward the team, each step making his ribs ache. Little Miss Boston Accent didn’t know it, but marauding Blackfeet were the least of her troubles. She would be damned lucky if she made it to Trinity Falls without him throttling her.
A short while later, with the climbing sun raising a bead of sweat on his skin after his exertions in harnessing the team, Logan looked into the back of Miss Amory’s covered wagon.
At first he didn’t believe what he saw.
When it finally dawned on him that he wasn’t imagining things, a heartfelt oath escaped his cracked lips.
“Well, hell, that’s why they left her.”
He lofted himself into the wagon, ignoring a stab of pain from his bruised ribs. He would demonstrate to Miss Amory that the West had its own code of survival. It was a lesson he’d learned, and he would see that she damn well learned it, too.
For both their sakes.
After performing her morning ablutions, Victoria felt revived as she walked back toward the wagon. She’d overcome her aversion to entering the abandoned domiciles and scrubbed her face and hands in a floral ceramic washbowl she’d found in one of the eerily silent bedchambers. She’d also borrowed a comb and refashioned her hair into a semblance of order.
Gazing into the mirror above the washstand, she’d studied her features. The freckles scattered across the bridge of her nose and cheeks were more prominent than ever. The Western sun was responsible for that, no doubt. There was one good thing about her profusion of freckles, Victoria had decided as she refastened her cuffs. Men did not find freckled women attractive, which meant that even a disreputable sort like Logan Youngblood wouldn’t direct any unseemly attentions to her.
As Victoria crossed the gravel yard, she said a hasty prayer on behalf of those who’d fled the fort. She included her own welfare on the list of those needing Divine assistance. When she added Logan Youngblood’s name to the silent litany, however, she felt that her prisoner needed a series of independently voiced prayers pronounced on behalf of his felonious soul, as well as his physical well-being.
He had already hitched the oxen and loaded up the campsite, and was hunched over, reaching into the back of the wagon. When he emerged, two things registered. The first was that he’d found a blue military shirt to replace the tattered white one that had been falling off his powerfully sculpted shoulders. Thank goodness for that.
Her sense of relief was short-lived, though, when she realized he held several of her treasured books in his broad hands.
She raced forward. “What are you doing?”
He looked up from the volumes, a narrow-lipped frown making his already pummeled features even more menacing. “I’m lightening the load so we can make better time.”
Victoria recoiled. He couldn’t have hurt her more if he’d shot her. “You will return those books to where they belong.”
“They belong in Boston.”
She shook her head. “They are my possessions and will come with me.”
“I think not, Miss Amory.”
She straightened and leveled her most chiding glare at the obtuse man. “We’ve already established that I’m the one who gives the orders, and I say my precious cargo goes with me to Trinity Falls.”
Not looking at all chastised, Youngblood’s good eye narrowed to pinpoint fury. “This is your precious cargo?”
“That’s right, and I’ve no intention of leaving it.”
“Lady, they’re not loved ones, they’re books,” he said flatly, tossing her beloved copy of The Last of the Mohicans into the dust. “And they’re certainly not worth dying for.”
