Smolder on a Slow Burn

by Lynda J. Cox

  He cocked a brow at her. It shouldn’t be possible for his expression to grow any colder. Allison refused to look away from the ice forming in his eyes. His cool detachment fueled her anger and her doubt in him intensified. “Tell me I’m wrong, Mr. Adams. Tell me you don’t want that reward. Tell me you aren’t planning to take me back to Colton County. You did warn me not to believe that you are a gentleman.”

  “As you seemingly have this all figured out, perhaps you can explain to me why we’re heading in the wrong direction if I’m supposed to be taking you back to Georgia?” He crossed his arms over his chest and tilted his head in a gesture Allison defined as utterly patronizing. “Why don’t you tell me who so desperately wants you found that they’re willing to offer a five hundred dollar reward?”

  Allison backed away another step. Could she get to the gray before he could stop her and make good an escape? How fast was it? Faster than his bay horse? She glanced at the large horse placidly grazing on the summer burnt grasses. “Why did you make me get off the train and drag me out here?”

  He shook his head. “Uh-uh…my turn for an answer. Who wants you that badly?”

  “I don’t know. I can guess, but I don’t know for sure. Why did you pull me off the train?” She backed another step.

  “Use your head, woman.” A.J. stalked past her to the two horses grazing in the tall grasses. He untied the canteen on the gray’s saddle and then extended it to her. “Anyone capable of offering that kind of reward has something to hide. You know what they say about three men being able to keep a secret if two of them are dead—whoever wants you back in Georgia is willing to pay quite a bit to bury you.”

  Allison took the wooden water bottle. The water was warm and had a slight after-taste, but it wet her mouth and throat. She capped the container and handed it back to him. “So you’re not going to turn me in for the reward? Do you believe I didn’t kill anyone?”

  He took a long drink. He caught the reins of both horses, slung the canteen onto the gray and then jerked his head at the western horizon. “We need to get mounted up and find shelter. From the looks of that far horizon we’re going to get some weather before nightfall.”

  “You haven’t answered my question.”

  “Actually, I haven’t answered either of your last two questions.” He led the animal closer to Allison. “I need you up on Dan.”

  “I could run away with that horse.” She wasn’t expecting his wide grin.

  “You could. I’ll take the chance.”

  Allison sighed in surrender and let him lift her into the saddle again. Before he had swung up on the bay, she drummed her heels into the horse’s side. The animal hadn’t galloped more than a hundred feet away when A.J.’s piercing whistle brought him back around, no matter how much she pulled on the reins to guide him away.

  “Dan’s been well trained to come back to that whistle.” A simple statement of fact that was infuriating when combined with the smirk dusting his features.

  “I noticed.” No small wonder he hadn’t seemed overly concerned as she had moved closer to the horses while debating if she could get away. She wanted nothing more at that moment than to wipe the self-satisfied grin from his face.

  He pulled his hat down low, shading his features from scrutiny. “Don’t do that again. It isn’t safe. If he steps into a prairie dog or gopher hole at a gallop, he’ll go down. He could break a leg, and you could be hurt when he goes down. I’d hate to have to shoot him, because then I’d have to shoot you for making me kill my horse.”

  Chapter Five

  O! that way madness lies; let me shun that.

  ~William Shakespeare, King Lear

  As long as he kept them heading west, A.J. knew they were going to get to the storm front a lot sooner than he wanted. But, he also knew there was nothing behind that offered anything even resembling shelter. After spending a summer shooting buffalo—heaven knew he couldn’t call what he had done that summer hunting—he learned not to trust the weather on the plains, not even the weather in early fall.

  A far off rumble reached him. His chest tightened and he broke into a cold sweat. He shut his eyes for a moment, taking in a deep breath. There were no walls rising fifteen feet into the air surrounding him, no guards patrolling the palisades of those walls, he told himself. He opened his eyes and scanned the landscape, looking for anything that could offer them some sort of protection.

  Dragging Allison off the train had been his only option back in Brownson but at the moment, he was having serious doubts about the wisdom of that decision. He had the uncomfortable feeling he’d pulled her out of the frying pan and right into the fire. A small hillock caught his attention for the only reason that it didn’t seem to belong. “Hold up,” he said, reining Sugar to a stop.

  Allison pulled on Dan’s reins and A.J. smiled with the horse’s sputtering snort. “Go a little easier on the pressure on the reins and the bit. He’s got a very soft mouth.”

  “Why are we stopping?” Allison threw a nervous glance at the distant horizon.

  A.J. pointed to the hillock that had caught his eye. “Is that a natural formation or an abandoned soddy?”

  Another long, low rumble of thunder rippled over the prairie. A.J.’s hands tightened compulsively on the reins.

  “It’s the only hill over there,” Allison said.

  Forcing the words out of a throat too tight, A.J. said, “Let’s go see what it is. If it’s nothing, we’ll keep going. Worse comes to worst, we can hunker down in the river bed, but that would be our very last option.” At the moment, the Lodgepole River moved sluggishly along. But a strong storm would turn that placid, slow moving body of water into a raging torrent.

  Drawing closer to the small hill jutting out of the flat landscape, A.J. stifled a sigh of relief. Even though the sod house was definitely abandoned, it would offer some shelter from the approaching storm. At one time, the doorway to the house had boasted an actual door, but that was long gone. The one small window glared out at the world like a black eye.

  Before he could stop her, Allison slid down off the gray and started for the sod house.

  “Wait.” A.J. swung down off the bay, drawing his revolver. “Let me go in and make sure there aren’t any tenants we don’t want to meet. Stay here and hold onto the horses.”

  Allison stopped. “Oh, I didn’t think of that.”

  A.J. ducked under the sagging doorframe and waited just inside the soddy. After a few moments, his eyes adjusted to the gloom. Curled in the back corner, barely visible between the dim light and the creature’s color blending nearly perfectly with the yellow-gray soil, was the biggest rattlesnake he had ever seen. He cautiously picked up a small clump of dried sod that had fallen from the roof and threw it at the snake.

  The rattler’s head jerked up and the harsh rasping of the beast’s tail filled the small interior. Its triangular head rose higher and its tongue flicked rapidly. A.J. aimed and fired.

  Allison’s scream rent the air. Not taking his eyes off the snake, which writhed in the corner despite now missing its massive head, A.J. backed out the doorway. He turned to Allison. “Are you all right?”

  She nodded. “I wasn’t expecting you to shoot.”

  He let a smile cross his face. “I don’t think that the rattler in there was going to share the floor space and now we’ve got something to eat.”

  “Rattlesnake?”

  Something he could only characterize as revulsion crossed her features.

  “It tastes just like chicken, or so I’ve been told.” He held a hand out to her, halting her entrance into the soddy. “Don’t go in there yet. It’s still moving.”

  Allison shuddered. “I thought you killed it.”

  “I did. Snakes can move for a while after they’re dead.” A.J. withdrew two sets of hobbles from the saddle bags and fastened them around the front legs of the horses. He then pulled the saddle and bridle from Dan and set those down next to the doorway. “I’ll clean the snake in a few. I want
to make this doorway a little larger so I can get the horses in here.”

  “They’re staying in with us?”

  A.J. merely nodded and worked at removing some of the earthen blocks from around the door. When he pulled a last block free he glanced over his shoulder at Allison. “I usually don’t sleep with my horses, but judging from the horizon, when that storm gets here, it’s going to be bad. I don’t want to take the chance they get struck by lightning or that they run off. Even with the hobbles on, if they get scared, they’ll bolt and I don’t want to waste hours in the morning looking for them.”

  As if to reinforce his point, another growl of thunder sounded, much closer this time and with more menace. The unwanted images of corresponding lines of blue and gray uniforms mowed down by merciless cannon fire flooded over him and then the walls of a prison that held him in a living hell crashed down on him. A.J. shut his eyes, trying to keep those recollections at bay. He caught a hand on the rounded edge of the soddy door frame, gripping the warm earth in an attempt to keep from falling into his memories.

  Allison’s hand tightened on his lower arm. “A.J.? Are you all right?”

  He shook himself, drawing a deep breath. The landscape tilted, shifted, and then righted itself into the nearly flat, grass prairie of Nebraska. “Just wool-gathering,” he muttered, hoping to stop any further questions.

  To his relief, the excuse seemed to be enough. She smiled at him. “I do that often of late. I suppose, while you clean supper, I’ll try to find something to cook it over. I just don’t see a lot of wood around.”

  She was right. Even the wood framing the door and the single window was gone, taken when the original inhabitants had abandoned the soddy A.J. surmised. Fortunately, he knew that he could create a cooking fire with other material. “Look for buffalo patties. If you can flip them over with your toe, they should be dry enough to cook over. There’s more than enough dry grass to use as tinder to start the fire.” He led Dan and Sugar into the soddy.

  He was truly debating the intelligence of pulling her off the train as the distant rumbling of thunder turned nearly constant. Even after accusing her of lying to him, of being capable of committing murder, he hadn’t managed to destroy the trust in those chocolate eyes. The anguish lining her slender face when it dawned on her she was accused of killing her own sister and nephew had felt like a knife thrust into his chest. And she was a lot stronger than she looked. Nearly every woman he knew would have been reduced to hysterics by now.

  Every time he thought she might break, she surprised him by rallying and digging into a deeper reserve. He certainly couldn’t hold it against her that she cried on the train or after learning she was accused of murdering her twin. He’d seen grown men cry like small babies during that damned war. Hell, he’d been one of them. Hidden under all of Allison Webster’s shapeless sedge and linen was a core of strength he hadn’t expected.

  He looked up from cleaning the meat off the snake skin to watch her walking along the prairie, kicking at buffalo patties. He grinned when she shook and then dragged her foot through the grasses after kicking a patty. Obviously, one was still fresh.

  By the time Allison returned with several buffalo chips, he had the snake cleaned and long strips of meat hung from a small piece of rope procured from his saddle bags. Within a few moments, with the aid of a match and some very dry grass, he had the chips burning.

  “That is disgusting,” Allison announced. He glanced up at her. In the rising, gusting wind, her hair was pulled back from her face and the sedge skirt molded to her, leaving little doubt in his mind just how long and trim her legs were, or how flat her stomach was. He forced his thoughts from taking a meandering journey down a path of speculation at how much her buttoned up jacket covered.

  “Until the railroad was completed, immigrants overland cooked quite a few meals with dried buffalo patty fires. In my saddle bags, you’ll find a small metal cooking grate, as well as a plate and a fork.” He tossed another chip onto the fire and held his hand over the flames to determine the heat.

  It didn’t take long for the snake to cook. A.J. handed a section of the meat to Allison. She took it as gingerly as if it could still turn on her and bite. He waited a moment before he said, “At least try it. By my estimate, you haven’t eaten a thing in over a day.”

  Allison nibbled at the meat dangling from the fork. “It’s not quite like chicken, but it’s not bad.”

  “I’ll take that as a ‘thank you.’”

  “You’re welcome.” She took another bite. “Coffee would be nice, but I don’t think you have any of that in your saddlebags.”

  “Fresh out. My apologies for being such an inconsiderate host.”

  “You’re failing to be a gentleman, sir.” Her soft laugh snaked deep into his chest, coiling around his heart, and took the sting from her words.

  While they ate, the sun slipped behind the ever encroaching wall of black clouds, throwing the land around them into a strange and eerie greenish twilight. A.J. stood and turned to the west. “That is going to be nasty when it gets here.”

  Allison stood at his side. She gestured to the soddy. “Are we going to be safe in that?”

  “Safer than out on the prairie.” He spared the horizon another glance. Lightning illuminated the depths of the purple-green thunderheads and thunder rolled across the landscape. He nodded at the old shelter. “Let’s get the bedroll out and get sleeping arrangements squared away while we still have some light.”

  “I have the feeling that what’s left of my reputation is about to be shattered.”

  Despite the tension tightening in his chest, A.J. laughed at the sheer incongruity of her words and the remarkable manner she had of making understatements. “What was left of your reputation was shattered when I pulled you off that train. I promise I will be a complete and total gentleman, Miss Webster.”

  And, if he was very lucky, he wouldn’t find himself lost in the memories he struggled to keep buried. Intense thunder storms always seemed to bring those nightmarish images to the surface.

  ****

  A primal howl of pain woke Allison with a start. How she had managed to fall asleep with the constant roaring of the thunder, the nearly constant flickering of lightning, and the wailing wind, she didn’t know, but somehow she had. She sat up, looking for A.J. in the opposite corner near the horses.

  What could have caused that long, soul-searing cry?

  In the harsh, flickering white light of the lightning spearing into the ground around the soddy, all she saw was the immense bulk of the two horses, their eyes shining a bluish-gray. The last she had seen of A.J. before she did fall asleep, he had been on his back, arms twisted under his head, keeping watch between the two horses.

  Where in the name of heaven could he have gone in the midst of the storm? And why? She wriggled out of the improvised sack made of the blanket and water-proofed ground cover and stood. Making her way to the doorway, she peered out into the storm. The next lightning strike forced a gasp from her.

  A.J. knelt in the pouring, wind-slanted rain, head bent nearly to his chest, arms wrapped around his head in what was clearly a protective measure. She bolted from the safety of the sod house. Before she reached him, she was soaked to the skin. She stood in front of him, forced to shout over the storm. “A.J., you have to come in out of this weather.”

  He lifted his head. Rain ran off his head and down his face. There was no recognition in his eyes. “Lieutenant Glasser, Sergeant Miller, look at the sharp-shooters on those palisades. Pass it down the line that not a single man is to break formation. This is what he’s been angling for. He fully intends to kill me this time.”

  Allison’s stomach clenched. She’d heard of men so scarred in the war that they often relived those horrifying experiences. Even though he’d told her not to believe the “drivel” in her dime novel, apparently there was a large degree of truth in what was written there. She dropped to her knees, gripping his shoulder. “No one here is going to kill
you.”

  The violence of his response frightened Allison. He shoved her away with a growl that seemed to come from deep inside. Allison fell onto her backside and looked up at the man now towering over her. Coupled with the lack of recognition was a primal terror. “I told you I don’t know where they’ve hidden the gold from the paymaster’s wagons. I need more time. You’ve got to give me more time.”

  Allison scooted backwards until she put a safe distance between herself and A.J. and stood. “I believe you. You have to come in out of this rain.”

  His laugh didn’t have the slightest trace of amusement. “And, then I’ve disobeyed an order and you take it out on my men.”

  Allison racked her brain for a way out of this dilemma. The lightning all around them thumped into the ground and the instant peals of thunder certainly lent to the images she believed a raging battle would have looked and sounded like. It was more than obvious he wasn’t seeing and talking to her in this grotesque conversation. She pulled herself up to her full height and barked at him in what she hoped was an official tone, opting for her best angry school teacher voice. “Major Adams, I am ordering you to get out of this storm.”

  To her utter relief, he turned on his heel and went into the soddy. Allison followed a few paces behind. Once inside the doorway, he collapsed to his knees again, repeating over and over, “I’m sorry.”

  Allison stepped around him and for a moment debated her next course of action. So much pain sounded in his voice she knew she had to snap him out of this horror and bring him back. She knelt in front of him and wiped the rain from his face. “It’s all right, now.”

  He pushed himself to his feet and walked to the back corner of the sod house. “I can’t do this. If I don’t agree to his insane plan, he’ll order five more men be pulled out into the yard and executed. He’s already murdered five young men.”

  Allison stood. “Then agree to it. More men don’t have to die.”