“For God’s sake, Brianna, come on!”
Dumbfounded, she wheeled Oz around and loped ahead to join Lucas. Afraid their reprieve was a temporary one, they raced on to the station. The men there pulled them inside to safety, barred the door, and went back to their rifle positions.
White-lipped, Lucas held an equally shaken Brianna in his arms as he related what had happened.
“Are you sure that’s what they yelled?” one of the men asked.
“Positive. What does it mean?”
The man gave Brianna an odd look. “Roughly translated, it means fire demon. The Snakes have been talking about an evil spirit with hair of fire and eyes of ice all winter. They say it can produce a knife from a bolt of lightning and strike a man dead with it. They must have thought it was disguised as your wife, but that doesn’t make sense unless they thought only a spirit would be crazy enough to attack in such a situation.”
But it made perfect sense to Brianna. The brave she’d slashed at had recognized her. He was one who had visited the station in the fall and was afraid she’d attack with her killer camera again. Hysterical laughter bubbled up in her throat.
Lucas must have sensed how her control was slipping, for he hugged her even tighter. “One thing I’m curious about,” he said, resting his chin on top of her head. “Why did you yell at them like that?”
“I thought a battle cry might scare them.”
“Remember the Alamo?”
“So, I wasn’t real creative.”
He smiled. “You mean they didn’t teach you any battle cries in that school of yours?”
“One, but somehow ‘Go, Indians’ didn’t seem appropriate.”
CHAPTER 37
(April 1861)
“Lucas?... Lucas, where are you?” Brianna peered around the empty workshop then stalked into the tack room. “Ian, have you seen Lucas?”
Ian grabbed his shirt and held it up in front of his naked chest. His face was bright red and dotted with patches of soap lather. “Uh...I think he went to the house. We...we both decided it was time to shave.”
“Thanks. Sorry I bothered you.” Brianna ignored the strangled, ‘You’re welcome,’ in her wake as she left. She was mad,..no... furious, and Lucas Daniels wasn’t going to wiggle his way out of this one.
“Just who do you think you are?” she asked, slamming the door open.
Lucas looked up. “Good morning, Brianna,” he said, calmly stropping his razor.
“Don’t good morning me you...you...Judas.”
“Something on your mind?”
“I’ve just been down to the telegraph camp to deliver the sweet rolls I promised them.”
He took the first swipe of his razor down his jaw. “And?”
“How could you Lucas?”
“I thought you wanted me to tell their cook you’d sell him fresh rolls. If you’ll remember, I warned you they’d have to be delivered by six.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.”
He rinsed his razor and took another swipe. “Then you’ll have to enlighten me. I can’t recall anything else I might have said.”
“You don’t recall telling them there wasn’t any reason to build a separate relay station for the telegraph since you could wire everything into this cabin?”
“Is there something wrong with that?”
“Something wrong?... Dammit, Lucas, I live here!”
“So?”
“So, I don’t want to share my home with a stranger.”
“Nobody’s asking you to.”
“Oh, no, just the telegrapher who will start his job sometime this week and any Tom, Dick, or Harry who decides to send a telegram.”
“I doubt there will be much in the way of outgoing messages. Split Rock isn’t exactly in the middle of town.”
“What about the telegrapher? You’re forcing me to live with a man I don’t even know! If you think you can change my mind about leaving with you by making my living conditions here—”
“I’m the new telegrapher,” he said in the middle of her tirade.
“—intolerable you’ve got—what?”
“I’m the new telegrapher. Bromley said we wouldn’t need a full-time station master and a stock tender after the telegraph came through, so I applied for the job of telegrapher.”
“You know Morse code?”
He grinned. “Of course.”
“Of course,” she echoed faintly. It was probably a stupid question. For all she knew, Samuel Morse had gotten the idea from Lucas. “Won’t working for The Pony Express and Western Union be a conflict of interest?”
“If you mean what I think you do, the answer is no. James Bromley is the one who suggested I take on the job, probably trying to save Russell, Majors and Waddell money without cutting back on personnel.”
“I still think it’s unfair that Congress gave the mail contract to Butterfield when we’re faster.”
“I know. Frankly, I don’t see any way to save the company. It’s just a matter of time until bankruptcy forces us to close down. That’s why I took the job with the telegraph.” He locked gazes with her. “I want to make very sure I have a reason to stay here as long as I need to.”
“Oh.” Brianna returned his look for a long moment then carefully shut the door and went to fix breakfast. He was doing it again, damn him. It was pretty hard to resist a man who made you feel like he thought the world revolved around you. The Indian attack had ended any pretense of her indifference to him, and there had been a steady assault on her emotions ever since.
She’d laid the ring on his trunk, and it had never been mentioned again. But it was obvious he hadn’t given up.
She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. There was something incredibly sensual about watching a man shave, especially a man who looked like Lucas. If he was appealing in his cut offs, he was devastating dressed only in britches and suspenders. There he stood, calmly shaving as if he had no idea what his half naked body did to her. He did, of course. Over the last month she’d seen more of that gorgeous body than she had in the first nine. He was doing it on purpose, the rat.
Determined to ignore him, Brianna turned her shoulder and went back to work. Yet, over and over again, she found herself watching him. She began to suspect he was deliberately taking his time. Ian had been nearly finished when she came by, and they’d supposedly started at the same time. Admittedly, Lucas had a much heavier beard, and he’d had to do some trimming before he started. Still...
“Will you watch the bacon for me, Lucas? I need to run get a bucket of water and see if Gertrude laid an egg yet this morning.”
“Sure.”
His grin said he knew exactly why she was leaving, and Brianna gritted her teeth. Oooo that man was irritating.
She took her own sweet time, going so far as to walk clear to the river for her water instead of taking it from the barrel beside the house. When she returned, the table was already set. She started to thank Lucas for his thoughtfulness, but the words froze in her throat.
The beard was gone, but not the moustache. It was just the surprise, she told herself. If it had happened gradually it wouldn’t have had such a devastating effect on her. But this was not a pathetic, bristly darkening of his upper lip; it was a thick, luxurious, full-grown mustache, and it looked fantastic. Had she told him she liked mustaches? Obviously she had, for the smile on his face couldn’t be described as anything but a self-satisfied smirk.
“Well, were there any?”
“Any what?”
His grin widened. “Eggs. Isn’t that what you went out for?”
The urge to wipe that look off his face was irresistible. “There was one,” she said, carrying the bucket of water to its place by the fireplace. “but I gave it to Richard Kincade.”
“Who?”
“Richard Kincade. He’s one of the men building the telegraph. I felt sorry for him. They haven’t had eggs since they left Fort Laramie in February.” She sighed as she bent over to
take the mush off the fire. “He has the prettiest green eyes.”
“Where the hell did you meet him?”
Lucas’s smirk was gone when she stood and turned back toward the table. Brianna wished she could allow herself the luxury of giving him one of her own. “I met him down by the river yesterday when I went down to check out the swimming hole.”
“You what?” His frown was so intense, his brows nearly met in the middle. “Have you no modesty? Good Lord, woman those men are total strangers. Don’t you realize—”
“Relax, Lucas,” she said, relenting a bit. “I didn’t go down to swim. I figured the water would still be too cold, and it was. We’ll probably be able to go next month sometime.”
“Don’t try to change the subject.”
Brianna raised her brows questioningly. “I thought we were talking about swimming.”
“We’re discussing this Kincade person and how friendly you are with him. It seems pretty convenient he was at the river the same time you were for two days in a row.”
“Yes, it was, wasn’t it? He’s really quite fascinating to talk to,” she said with an innocent smile. There was no need to tell Lucas Richard Kincade was all of thirteen years old and the cook’s son. “Do you know how they convinced the Indians to stay away from the telegraph wires?”
“No, and I don’t really—”
“You mean they’ve actually come up with a way?” Ian asked from the doorway as he and Billy came in for breakfast. “That was one of the reasons people didn’t think a transcontinental telegraph was feasible.”
“From what Richard said, they get two groups to stand at either end of a line about a mile apart. The telegraphers send messages back and forth between the two groups for a few minutes. The Indians think the words are actually going through their hands.”
Billy looked skeptical. “And it scares them?”
“No, but they always want to try it themselves. Someone from the crew hands an Indian on each end a wire and sends a jolt of electricity through it the first time they say a word.”
“I imagine that would convince them to stay away, all right,” Ian said with a grin.
Brianna frowned. “It seems kind of mean to me.”
“You’re a good one to talk about being mean to the Indians,” Ian put in with a chuckle. “As I recall, you chased a whole hunting party off at knife point.”
Brianna stuck her tongue out at him and finished putting breakfast on the table. Lucas didn’t say anything during the meal. Whenever she glanced at him from under lowered lashes, he was watching her. Good, maybe that would make him mad enough to back off for a while and let her breathe.
That morning, the news Brianna had been dreading for months finally came. Seth rode into the yard with a grim expression on his usually sunny face. “The Confederate States have taken Fort Sumter. The War of secession has begun.”
The Civil War. Brianna had almost begun to think it wasn’t going to happen, that history had been changed somehow. Now, she realized it was just the slow communication that had delayed the inevitable.
Over the next week, everyone talked of little else. They all seemed to think it would be over quickly. Lucas said little, and Billy nothing at all, but every other man who came through had an opinion. There was a steady stream of male passengers from the far West who had dropped what they were doing and headed back East to join one army or the other. Lucas and the stage drivers had to stop men who had differing viewpoints from killing each other more than once.
As the men talked of glory and fighting for the cause, Brianna remembered names like Gettysburg, Appomattox, Bull Run, and Vicksburg and wondered how many of them would die in the bloody years to come. She recalled her history teacher referring to it as the Uncivil War. For the first time, she understood what he meant.
There was, of course, no one Brianna could talk to about it all, so she wrote page after page in her journal. She tried not to put anything in that would give Anna too much knowledge if she returned, but she aired all her fears about the men she had come to care about. It was only a matter of time until she lost one of them to the lure of the War, and she dreaded it with almost maternal agony.
Even so, she had no premonition of danger when James Bromley stopped on his way home from a trip to the East.
“Mr. Bromley, what a pleasant surprise.” She said when she answered his knock. “What brings you to Split Rock?”
“I wish I could say it was on my way so I thought I’d stop for a visit, but I’m afraid it’s more serious than that.”
“Oh dear. I think the men are all down at the barn. Do you want me to run get them?”
“No, I’ll go down myself. You might want to come along though, because it will affect you too.”
It wasn’t difficult to find them. All three men were in the corral doctoring a mare with a split hoof. Bromley came directly to the point.
“The company is in serious difficulty, gentlemen. The money originally promised to Russell, Majors and Waddell has been appropriated to fund the War instead. To make matters worse, Congress is talking of giving the Butterfield Express our northern route since it’s faster.”
“They can’t do that!” Brianna said indignantly. “There are laws against that kind of thing.”
All four men looked at her as if she’d suddenly sprouted horns.
“Well, if there aren’t there should be.” She finished lamely. Surely governmental checks and balances weren’t a modern invention. Of course, without instant press coverage, the government probably got away with more, as did everybody else.
“At any rate, Wells Fargo has bought out Butterfield and may well do the same with The Central Overland and Pikes Peak Express,” Bromley continued as though she hadn’t spoken. “In the meantime, we need to cut costs wherever we can.”
“What are you suggesting?” Lucas asked.
“We’ve lost several of our men to the War. Rather than hiring replacements, William Russell decided to reassign the men we have. Since the telegraph is this far, one of the riders will move farther down the line, and we need a new station master at Simpson’s Springs.”
All three men looked at each other. “Who goes and who stays?” Ian asked finally.
“That’s up to you. Seth has already volunteered to move since his route is gone anyway, so unless you really want a change, Billy, that’s taken care of. MacTavish, you and Lucas can decide which of you will go to Simpson’s Springs and which stays here.”
“I wouldn’t mind going to Simpson’s Springs,” Ian said after a moment of consideration. “It’s closer to my mother. I might get to see her a little more often.” He grinned. “That should please my step-father.”
“That was easy enough,” Bromley said with a smile.
“Do you have time for a roll and coffee?” Brianna asked.
“As a matter of fact, I do. I was hoping you’d ask. Oh, there is one more thing, gentlemen. Because of the War, Mr. Majors wants all the Overland employees to take an oath of allegiance to the United States.”
“What if we refuse?” Billy demanded.
“Then you’d no longer have a job with Central Overland and Pike’s Peak Express.”
Billy stared at him for a long moment. “Then,” he said, “looks like Seth won’t have to be leaving this station after all. I reckon it’s time I went to join the War.”
“Oh, Billy, no.” Brianna cried as a wave of dread ran through her.
Lucas gave her shoulder a warning squeeze. “Don’t, Brianna,” he said quietly. “Sometimes a man has to follow his conscience.”
Billy flashed her a crooked grin. “I’ve been thinking of leaving anyway. This just gives me a reason.”
A week later, Brianna stood outside the Split Rock Pony Express station trying hard not to cry. All four men were down at the barn getting the horses ready. Billy and Ian were leaving today, one to the West the other to the East. Seth would be leaving within the month to a different home station as the telegraph continued t
o push west.
Good-byes had always been tough for Brianna, but this one was going to be especially difficult, for she knew she’d never see either of them again. For the first time, she had an inkling of what it must have taken for people to leave their families and everything they knew to go West. Communication was nearly non-existent.
Ian was the first out of the barn. “I thought I’d come say good-bye now and avoid the rush later,” he said as he joined her.
“I’ll miss you, Ian.”
But when she went to hug him, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her full on the mouth. “I’d have never forgiven myself if I hadn’t done that at least once,” he said softly. “You’re one special lady, Brianna Daniels.”
His words made her feel horribly guilty. If Anna had been here, she’d probably be going with him. “Ian...”
He put his fingers against her lips. “Shhh, I know. You don’t feel it. Lucas is the only man in the world for you. But if anything ever happens to him....”
“Oh, Ian.”
He gave her one more hug then went to get his horse. By the time he returned, Billy, Seth and Lucas were with him. All five of them stood there for several uncomfortable minutes making small talk trying to put off the inevitable. At last they could delay no longer, and the round of handshakes and well-wishing began. In spite of her best efforts, tears were streaming down Brianna’s face.
“Don’t worry, Brianna,” Billy said with a jaunty smile. “If I can outrun Snake and Sioux arrows, I can dodge Yankee bullets.”
“Just make sure you dodge,” she said as she hugged him.
Five minutes later, Ian and Billy rode away in opposite directions, and Brianna grasped Lucas’s hand for comfort. There was nothing she could do to protect them. The Civil War had begun.
CHAPTER 38
(May 1861)
“I almost forgot. There’s a letter for you, Mrs. Daniels.” The driver of the eastbound stage handed it to her as the last of her customers boarded the coach.
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