Gold Rush Bride

by Debra Lee Brown

  “Kate!” He grabbed her shoulders and shook her, but she didn’t respond. “Stay with me. Do you hear?”

  He gripped her tighter and closed his eyes against the blast of memories exploding in his mind. A vision of his first wife, writhing on her deathbed despite all that had been done to save her, seared the backs of his eyelids.

  “No,” he said, shaking his head.

  He opened his eyes and stared at Kate’s gentle face, gone ghostly white in the moonlight. This was different. She was different. And he, God help him, felt differently about her than he had about any other woman in his life.

  A second later he scrambled back down the rocky slope, gathered up his weapons, and the rifle Kate had used to kill the bear. She was strong, brave, a fighter. She couldn’t die. He wouldn’t let her.

  On his way back up the hill he nearly tripped over the damnable thing that was responsible for the bear’s presence: an open bag of sugar wedged under Landerfelt’s overturned wagon.

  He scanned the area one more time as he sheathed his knife and jammed the rifles together into the mare’s saddle holster. There was no sign of the Packetts, or of any of the looters Mustart had told him about.

  But one of the wagon’s wheels was missing. The Packetts had probably taken it and Landerfelt’s draft team south to Coloma, where there was a wheelwright who could repair it.

  Kate was still unconscious. Will lifted her into his arms and, after a couple of tries, mounted the mare and settled her limp body across his lap, her head tucked under his chin.

  Spanish Camp was the closest settlement, but there was no one there who knew any more about medicine than he did. He remembered a Miwok camp to the south, not much farther than Spanish Camp was east.

  Doc Mendenhall frequented the place. Swapped herbs and tinctures with the medicine woman there. Doc had left Tinderbox, heading in that direction, just after Liam Dennington died. If they were lucky, damned lucky, maybe he’d still be there. And if not, the medicine woman could help.

  There was no time to think about it. It was full on dark now, and the temperature was dropping fast. He whispered a hasty apology to his exhausted horse, and spurred her into action once more.

  She had wondered what it would be like to awaken to the sound of his voice, the feel of his hands on her skin. Mmm, what a lovely dream.

  “You’re going to be just fine.” Will’s voice was a whisper, comforting and low and soft.

  Kate felt his fingers caress her cheek. She rolled toward him, a soft moan escaping her lips. “Aye,” she breathed. “Fine.”

  Her eyelids fluttered open. Will’s face came into focus above her. His jaw was tense, his brow furrowed with concern. His eyes had gone that warm shade of chestnut she loved and saw all too rarely, reflecting the fire she heard crackling somewhere at the edge of her awareness.

  Her hand reached out blindly, of its own accord, and connected with Will’s face, tracing the angry line of his scar, grazing a three-day stubble of dark beard growth.

  “How did you…get it?” She’d wondered about it since the very first time she’d seen him. “The…scar.”

  “My wife did it. It doesn’t matter now.” His hand closed over hers and gently squeezed.

  “W-wait…” This was no dream. She blinked her eyes a few times and sucked in a breath. “What on earth—?”

  “Easy, Kate.”

  All at once she remembered. The overturned wagon. Hoofbeats in the distance. The bear. “Sweet Jesus!”

  She bolted upright as her vision, and her mind, finally cleared. Her ribs burned, and her head— “Ow!” Her hand flew to the spot that throbbed like a sledgehammer breaking rock.

  “It’s all right. You hit your head. Something fierce, by the look of it.” Will grasped her shoulders—her bare shoulders, she realized with a start—and eased her back down.

  “Where am I?” She clutched at the soft furs covering her naked body, her gaze darting from Will’s face to the unfamiliar surroundings.

  “A Miwok camp.”

  “Oh.” They were in a sort of tent, made not of canvas but of deerskin. A teepee, she guessed. She’d seen them on her journey to Tinderbox, but only from the outside. A small fire blazed in the center, smoke curling out a hole in the roof.

  “Where are my clothes? W-what’s happened?”

  “Rest now.” He pulled another fur over her. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

  “But the bear. What—?”

  “It’s dead.”

  She closed her eyes and exhaled, crossing herself as she offered up a silent prayer.

  “How do you feel?”

  She blinked her eyes open again and met his gaze. “Grand. Just a bit tired.”

  “You’re lying.”

  She forced a smile as she slipped her hand under the furs and gingerly felt her ribs. They were bandaged, one side tender as the devil.

  “Doc says it’ll be a few days before those scratches are healed up. They’re not as deep as I’d thought. Most of the blood was the bear’s. We cleaned them out and—”

  “You cleaned them?”

  “Well, Doc did. I helped.”

  “Oh.” Their gazes locked, and heat flushed her face. “Thank you.”

  He shrugged, as if he were uncomfortable, then turned away to stoke the fire.

  Kate heard footsteps outside. The flap covering the teepee’s entrance was thrown back and a man she’d never seen before—a white man—ducked inside.

  “You’re awake. Good.” The man knelt beside her and smiled. He had an easy manner about him, and a soft, encouraging voice. Right away he made Kate feel comfortable.

  “I told her she has to take it easy,” Will said.

  “For a few days.” The man placed his hand on her forehead, as if he were checking for fever. “That’s quite a goose egg on your noggin. Must have been a hard fall.”

  “N-noggin?”

  “Your head,” Will said.

  “Oh.” She laughed, then winced, her ribs on fire.

  “Doc Mendenhall, ma’am. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  “My thanks, Doctor, for all you’ve done.”

  “Wasn’t much, really. Just cleaned you up a bit. Will here did the smart thing by getting you out of the night air.”

  “Aye. I don’t know what would have happened had he not come.” She looked at him, but he wouldn’t meet her gaze.

  “You’d best get some rest now, Mrs. Crockett.” The doctor turned to leave.

  “Wait.” She struggled to sit up a bit, pulling the furs with her. “You’re the same doctor who tended my father, are you not?”

  “That’s right. My condolences, ma’am.”

  “Thank you.” She knew, now, what it must have been like for her father here in this wild place, ill and alone, with no one to look after him save strangers and what few friends he’d made. She reminded herself that in a fortnight, she, too, would be alone again. “I know you did everything you could for my father, and for that I’m grateful.”

  Mendenhall frowned. “Funny thing, him dying like that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He means he was getting better,” Will said. “Then he died, all of a sudden. Just like that.”

  “Did he…suffer much?”

  “No, it was over merciful quick.” Mendenhall shook his head. “The only time I ever saw anyone go quicker ’round here that wasn’t shot, was from strychnine. Drank it by mistake in a glass of milk meant to poison a pesky varmint. Died right before my eyes.”

  “Oh.” Kate’s head throbbed. She eased herself back down. “Thank you for telling me.”

  “G’night, Mrs. Crockett.” The doctor opened the teepee’s flap to leave, and a Miwok face peered in at them.

  A woman. The same woman who’d come to Tinderbox a week ago with her husband and babe. She entered the teepee as Mendenhall left, and knelt beside Kate.

  Will said something to her in her own language. The woman spoke back.

  “What d
oes she want?”

  “Just making sure the doc did a good job,” Will said.

  Without warning, the woman pulled the furs back, exposing Kate’s breasts and torso to view. Will’s view. She snatched at the furs, trying to cover herself, but the Miwok woman was strong, too strong, and Kate was spent.

  Will’s gaze fixed on hers as she lay there, rigid, holding her breath. Then he politely looked away.

  None of this was lost on the Miwok woman. She frowned, looking back and forth between the two of them as if they were the strangest people she’d ever seen. As she prodded Kate’s bandaged ribs, she spoke.

  “W-what’s she saying?”

  Will kept his gaze on the fire. “She said that she thought we were married.”

  “Oh.”

  He said something to the woman, and she answered back, shaking her head. Will fidgeted by the fire, as if his clothes were suddenly too tight or the close quarters of the teepee over warm. “I…I told her we were.”

  “She said something else. What was it?” He turned to look at her then, his gaze roving boldly over her bared body. Kate lay there, her nipples hardening in the cool air, and let him look.

  “That white people made no sense.”

  “Aye, perhaps we don’t.”

  He looked back at the fire, and Kate breathed. The Miwok woman finished her examination and covered her again with the soft furs. Before she left the teepee, she paused and spoke.

  “She offers her thanks to you for that day in town,” Will said. “For standing up to Landerfelt.”

  “Tell her she’s very welcome, and that I hope her babe fares well.”

  Will translated. The woman nodded but did not smile. A moment later she was gone.

  “It’s been a long day,” Will said. “Let’s get some rest.”

  He stoked the fire a final time, then laid out his buckskin jacket on the hard-packed dirt floor opposite from where she lay on a lush pile of blankets and furs. Kate knew that ground would be wicked cold, fire or no fire.

  “You’re welcome to sleep here.” She edged closer to the fire and patted the expanse of available fur beside her.

  For a long time Will didn’t move, then, as if he’d finally come to terms with something in his own mind, he lay down beside her and covered himself with his jacket. Kate pulled one of the furs off the thick pile cloaking her and offered it to him.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “Not at all.”

  They lay there, side by side in silence, watching the firelight dance on the stretched deerskin walls of the teepee.

  After a while, Will said, “What you said, out on the road…”

  She remembered her words with a shock. “I…I thought I was dying.”

  “So did I.”

  The fire crackled, providing a momentary respite from the awkward silence.

  He turned on his side to look at her, and she was forced to meet his gaze. “You said that you wanted me to know something. What was it?”

  “I…don’t remember. I was frightened. I’d hit my head and was probably delirious.”

  He seemed to accept her answer.

  “Why’d you do it, Kate? Why did you cut that deal with Landerfelt?”

  She’d known he would ask her and had decided that afternoon she’d tell him the truth. “I thought that maybe you weren’t coming back. That I was on my own again.”

  “You really thought I’d just leave you there alone to fend for yourself.”

  “I didn’t know what you’d do.”

  “I said I’d come back, and I did.”

  “Aye, you did. And I’m grateful to you.”

  “You shouldn’t be. We had a bargain. I gave my word.” He fidgeted beside her, and she could tell by his eyes that he was annoyed. “You didn’t trust me.”

  “I didn’t know what to think. You were so angry the day you left.” He couldn’t argue with her there, now could he?

  “What were you doing coming up to the claim anyway?”

  “Mei Li was hell-bent on it.”

  “Hell-bent?”

  “Aye.” She realized she was picking up his vernacular. “I couldn’t let her go alone, now could I? It was just by way of being a good Christian act, is all.”

  “And was it a good Christian act to ride off with the town drunk?”

  “What choice did I have? Mr. Dunnett’s wagon—”

  “Rolled into town yesterday, unscathed, right before I left.”

  Kate shot up and instantly winced with pain. Will pushed her back down.

  “Mustart heard it wrong. It wasn’t Dunnett’s wagon that was ambushed, it was—”

  “Landerfelt’s. Aye, I recognized it once I saw it. I thought it was the Packetts making all that racket beside it. It was dark and I couldn’t see until—” Her gaze flew to his. “Will, I was so scared.”

  He looked at her, silent, for what seemed an eternity. God forgive her, but she would have sold her soul to the devil if he’d only take her in his arms and hold her, kiss her as he had mere hours ago on the road in the moonlight.

  “You did just fine,” he said evenly.

  “You saved my life.”

  “No, I didn’t. I was too late, Kate.”

  “You weren’t. If you hadn’t come—”

  “You killed the bear. Not me.”

  “But I might not have. And if you hadn’t come…”

  She’d been foolish to venture out on her own. She knew that now. Will had been right all along. The streets of Dublin were one thing. She was at home there, familiar with the dangers lying in wait for lone women. But here, on the frontier, she didn’t know what to expect. The incident with the bear had proved that.

  “I was too late, Kate. Too late.” He turned away, and she stopped herself from reaching for him.

  In all her life she’d never relied on any man for anything. Her father had meant well, God rest his soul, but her mother, when she was alive, had been right not to count on him. Kate had always looked out for herself and her brothers. It was hard to believe that someone would want to look out for her, that a man like Will Crockett would go out of his way to protect her.

  “I know I’m not your responsibility. That you have your own life, your own plans, and that my petty troubles don’t concern you.”

  “They do concern me. You’re my wife.”

  “Not truly, I’m not.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’m responsible for you. It’s my fault you were hurt.” He rolled over again to face her. “You could have been killed, Kate. That would have been my fault, too.”

  “Why? You told me to stay put, and I didn’t. I chose to go on a wild-goose chase after that wagon.”

  “All the same. If you’d died…”

  All at once, the reason for his self-reproach was clear to her. “You think it was your fault.”

  “It was.”

  “No, I don’t mean that. I’m talking about Sherrilyn—your wife.”

  “What?”

  “She died of cholera—that’s what Mr. Vickery said. But you blame yourself.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Will threw off his jacket and sat up.

  “That’s why you’ve been so…overprotective. Your first wife died on the frontier, and so naturally—”

  “I told you once, and I’m telling you again, it’s none of your business.” His eyes were live coals, and she felt suddenly vulnerable under the furs without a stitch on.

  In his eyes she read bitterness and pain, and a guilt she imagined was a hundredfold greater than that which she bore like a weight and reflected on each time she thought of her brothers.

  “It was cholera, Will. Claiming another life.”

  “Two lives,” he said, his voice barely a whisper.

  “What do you mean, two?”

  All the light went out of his eyes then. He lay back down and rolled away from her, as far as he could get. The fire crackled, spitting ash and sparks that whirled like a dervish upward toward the hole in the
teepee’s roof.

  “Two lives,” he said again. “She was pregnant.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  A crow’s insistent squawk jarred her from a fitful sleep. Kate squinted against the flat light blasting through the hole in the teepee’s roof. It had to be well past dawn.

  Last night’s fire was reduced to ash, the furs beside her cold. She didn’t have to look to know that Will was no longer beside her. Blindly she ran a hand over the place where he’d slept.

  Or hadn’t slept. She’d lain awake last night long after their conversation had ended, and could tell from Will’s breathing that he’d been awake, too.

  Even now, in the cold light of morning, the raw twist of emotion wrought from this news of his unborn child was still with her. She understood him now. Her own feelings were irrelevant. They had no place in her plans, or his.

  The flap of the teepee opened and the Miwok woman who’d examined her wounds last night entered, carrying her clothes and a crude wooden bowl of something steaming. It smelled like a meat broth. Kate sat up to greet her. Her head still throbbed, and the soft flesh where the bear had mauled her burned.

  The woman knelt and thrust the bowl at her. The last thing Kate had eaten had been some hardtack on the road yesterday afternoon. She realized she was starved. In less than a minute she downed the broth.

  “Good,” she said. “Thank you.”

  The woman nodded, then said something to her that she couldn’t understand. Kate shrugged. Handing her the garments, the woman pulled back the furs and gestured for her to dress.

  “Oh, aye.” As she struggled into her shift, Kate noticed it had been mended. As had the slashes in her corset and dress. She pointed at the neat stitching and smiled. “Thank you.”

  The woman nodded again, and helped her to finish dressing—not an easy task given how stiff Kate was, and the fact that her head was still spinning. Obeying pantomimed instructions, she left the laces of her corset loose enough so the garment didn’t press against her wound.

  “All ready,” she said, once she’d slipped into her dark woolen stockings and boots.

  They stepped outside and Kate squinted against the light. The sky was white and dreary, the air biting cold. No surprise, given it was mid-November.