Serena did not even look at her. Reaching for her faded cashmere shawl, she swung it around her. “I will not, nor will you. If you try, if you touch a finger to it, I will call the elder, your husband, and tell him I have changed my mind, that I want to stay with him as his fourth wife.”
“You wouldn’t—” Beatrice breathed, but there was no conviction in her strained tone.
“Try me, just try me.”
Beatrice looked away, running her tongue over her thin lips. “Well, what do I care what you take with you, since you are leaving so much else behind? I’m sure I don’t begrudge you your fancy clothes and gee-gaws. I doubt they are such that a decent woman could wear anyway.”
“If you mean a woman like yourself, I am sure they would not become you.”
Beatrice flashed her a dark look, but controlled her ire enough to force a sour smile. “I will send a man to take the trunk down for you, then.”
“Don’t trouble yourself. I can manage it.”
“As you like. I assume you have food and water?”
Serena nodded. There was flour and bacon and dried fruit in a sack beside the door, as well as a frying pan and a large tin flask of water.
“Then there is nothing more to be said. I know you do not expect me to wish you good fortune.”
“No,” Serena answered quietly, “but I will wish you God-speed — far from me.”
The satisfaction of that small victory was short-lived. All too soon Serena was sitting on her trunk in the buffalo grass while Beatrice and Agatha and the other Mormon women rode by her on the seats of their wagons with their faces averted and their eyes fixed straight ahead. It helped but very little to see Lessie peeping from the rear flap of the elder’s last wagon with tears streaming down her face, one hand fluttering in a forlorn wave. Indeed, the sight of the girl with her swollen belly was more of a reproach to Serena than all the sternly righteous backs that were presented to her. She felt as if she had deserted a friend, and none of the excellent reasons for it that she gave herself had the power to make her feel less guilty.
The wagon train grew smaller in the distance. When it began to shimmer in a heat haze from the morning sun, nearly disappearing in a prairie swell, Serena pushed to her feet. Setting her supplies on top of the trunk, she picked it up and began to follow in the ruts of the wagons.
The sun advanced, the trunk grew heavier. Serena tried putting her supplies inside and hoisting the load onto her shoulder. The wood frame of the trunk bit into her neck, and she shifted it to her back. Once she stumbled, falling to her knees, nearly wrenching her arm from its socket as the trunk shifted, pitching to the ground. Once she walked to within a yard of a sidewinder rattlesnake and was forced to stand completely still for long, aching minutes before the reptile uncoiled and slithered from her path. She rested for a time when she stopped for the noon meal, but before long she was moving once more, this time dragging the trunk by one handle.
One moment the sun was bright and hot, the next it was setting in a flare of crimson and gold while the sky was still brilliantly blue. Serena trudged on until darkness began to gather, making the trail uncertain. Too tired to make the effort to cook, she ate a handful of dried apples, rolled into her quilt, and dropped into the sleep of exhaustion.
Once in the hours after midnight she woke. She lay for a time staring at the stars above her, feeling the coolness of the night wind on her face. Something moved in the grass, a rabbit feeding. There came the whir of wings as a hunting owl quartered the darkness. Searching carefully, Serena found within herself a small uneasiness, but no real fear. That sense of unease came from her lack of control over her life, and yet that very lack gave her, at least for the moment, a fatalistic acceptance. What she could not change, she must endure. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, evenly. After a time she slept once more.
The second morning was little different from the first, except that the day was overcast, and when she stopped for dinner she found her water was getting low. She was not making good time, in fact she hardly seemed to be moving at all. She could do better if she left the trunk behind, she knew, and yet when she turned toward the shining mountains again she had the trunk on her back.
By the middle of the afternoon clouds began to gather, lying in a low, dark bank in the northeast. The wind grew stronger, flinging up fine particles of grit, hurrying grass-hoppers and prairie birds before it. Feeling it on her face, Serena thought she could feel moisture in its breath, so different from the dry air around her. She broke into a run for a few steps, then slowed once more. What was the use of hurrying? There was no shelter anywhere for her. All around her lay nothing but the treeless stretches of the prairie.
And yet, the storm held off. The evening was turning lavender, drawing in, before the first rumble of thunder rolled toward her. It was followed by lightning, the merest flicker at the rim of the sky. She should stop, Serena knew, perhaps seek a low place, a swale or buffalo wallow, in the ground. Somehow she could not make herself halt, not while there was light in the sky. An anxious frown between her eyes, she watched as the purple-gray cloud spread upward, covering the sky, shutting out the sight of the mountains, bringing darkness close to the earth. The thunder came more often, a continuous muttering that exploded now and then into a crashing roar. Lightning walked the horizon, leaping high into the heavens with terrible grace.
Serena’s footsteps slowed and she scanned the darkening plains. Lightning crackled and she smelled the sulfur freshness of ozone and something else akin to smoke. It was smoke, for there in the distance was a pinpoint of light, firelight. For an instant she thought the lightning had set the grass of the plains afire, but no, the light was too close, too constant. Was it the Mormon wagon train then? Surely not. They should be far ahead of her by now. Other travelers, then, it had to be. But of what kind?
Tales she had heard crowded into her mind, of renegade Indians, of men with no liking for towns and the trappings of civilization, men who, as the saying went, had gone to the bad, outside the law. Who else would be out here except men like these? For her own safety she should stay as far from that fire as possible.
Even as she gave herself this excellent counsel, the cheerful blaze there in the storm-filled night seemed to draw her like a beacon. She dropped the handles of her trunk, and leaving it, moved closer.
She approached warily, circling to her left. There were two horses tied on long reins just beyond the range of the firelight, fine-looking animals with a sleek, well-cared-for look. Near the burning embers sat a coffee pot and a frying pan, both giving off mouth-watering aromas, while to one side lay a bedroll beneath an oiled canvas shelter. But though Serena circumvented the campfire at a distance of several yards, there was no sign of the person who had arranged such comforts against the night. She did not think he was in the bedroll, though in the uncertain light she could not be sure. Certainly it made no sense for him to turn in with his supper sitting uneaten before the fire.
Lightning crackled, forking viciously across the night sky. Serena swung toward the fiery light, then her nerves leaped and she drew in her breath in a soundless gasp. There close beside her, so near she could reach out and touch him, was a man. Outlined against the lightning-torn darkness of the heavens, he was tall and broad-shouldered. He stood at ease with a rifle hanging as if forgotten from his fingers, and yet there was a tightly strung alertness about him that gave an impression of leashed strength. In his silent stillness and the hard lines of his features, there was something cruel and deadly beyond reckoning.
The white glow faded. Serena took a swift step back, whirled to run. Instantly a hard hand clamped down on her arm and she was hauled back. She stumbled a little, and her shoulder came in contact with a chest as hard, flat, and unyielding as an oaken board.
“Where are you going in such a hurry?” The soft drawl was in direct contrast to the biting grip that held her. “You must accept my hospitality. I insist.”
The lightning flared again, flashi
ng with gold flames in the depths of Serena’s eyes as she stared up at him. It touched the pale oval of her face and was caught for an instant in the blue-black, windblown wildness of her hair.
“Let me go,” she said, her words nearly lost in the roll of thunder.
“I will be happy to do that, as soon as your friends show themselves.”
“I have no friends,” Serena said, aware of the mockery that edged his tone.
“You expect me to believe that?”
“You will have to. It’s the truth.”
“And what do you know of truth?”
Serena strained to see him in the darkness. Her answer came unbidden. “More than I know of falsehood. I am not sure just now if it would not be wiser, safer, for me to claim some friend waiting over the last rise.”
He weighed her words without speaking. Tension hovered in the quiet. She was aware of the steady rise and fall of his chest with his breathing. Abruptly he released her and made a curt gesture toward the fire.
With her face set and her hand clenched on the skirt of her dress, Serena walked before him. He had made no move toward her with the rifle he held, had said little to give her the impression, and yet she felt like a prisoner. He indicated a seat on the lower end of his canvas-covered bedroll, and she sank down upon the end, being careful not to dislodge the supports which held the canvas covering open like a low tent protecting the bedding from the weather. As the warmth of the fire reached her, she gave a small shiver, holding her hands to the flames. Until she had felt their heat she had not realized how chilled she had become.
Across the orange-red campfire, the man watched her, his face stem as his gaze rested on her slender form in the faded dress and shawl, and the dark cape of her loosened hair glinting with a sapphire sheen in the firelight.
As she felt his steady regard, Serena raised her blue-gray eyes to meet his hard green stare. He towered above her, his face bronzed by the sun, his frame loose-limbed and powerful. He wore a shirt of linen open at the neck under a tailored jacket of split cowhide, and trousers of rough cotton twill tucked into the kind of supple leather boots worn by men of means. He was hatless, and the rising wind ruffled the dark-brown waves of his hair. A frown drew heavy dark brows together, and thick lashes narrowed his stare.
He tilted his head toward the night beyond the fire. “Do you have a mount somewhere?”
Serena shook her head.
“Alone and on foot. I suppose you have an explanation, but before you start, let me warn you it had better be a good one.”
Something in his voice and manner sent a wave of irritation over Serena. “I see no reason why I should explain anything to you. I am no threat to you, I assure you. If you can’t or won’t believe that, then I will gladly leave you and make my own camp.”
“I think not.”
“You — what do you mean?”
“I mean that I prefer to keep you here until I find out exactly who you are and why you are out here on the plains without an escort or means of transportation.”
“Why?” Serena demanded bluntly.
“Because I value my skin. It wouldn’t be the first time a pretty shill had distracted a man while her partners slipped up and took everything he had.”
“I have no partners!” Serena said in angry amazement.
“So you say.”
“It’s ridiculous. Do I look like the kind of woman who would do such a thing?”
He surveyed her with slow deliberation. “You are attractive enough to claim and hold any man’s attention. If you mean the way you are dressed, why, it fits the part of a poor, innocent girl in trouble well enough. It would be stupid of you to wear your finery, wouldn’t it?”
Her blood rising with stinging heat at his appraisal, Serena pushed to her knees. “If that’s what you think, you should be happy to let me go on my way.”
“No.”
The word was quiet. He did not move, but Serena knew that if she made any sudden try to escape he would step in to stop her. To hear him call her attractive in that distant, detached tone, to see the look in his eyes as they moved over her, gave her a distinct feeling of peril. Taking a deep, steadying breath, she said, “You can’t keep me here.”
“Can’t I?”
His assurance was maddening. More maddening still was the realization that he had reason for it. He could indeed keep her there, and with little effort. If she tried to run there was every likelihood that he would be able to catch her, and even if she was more fleet of foot, there were his horses ready to hand to run her down. If his attention wandered, she might try to take a horse herself, but she had little hope of being able to mount it barebacked before he could reach her. At this moment, defiance would gain her nothing and might well be dangerous. She had no wish to feel his hard hands upon her again.
Shielding the rage in her eyes with the dark screen of her lashes, she moved her shoulders in a small shrug. “All right. Perhaps you can. But you are going to feel foolish in the morning when you find that I am still here, and still alone with you.”
He watched her settle back on his bedroll, recognizing the stiff reluctance that still could not rob her movements of their grace. His gaze traveled over the firm curves of her breasts that strained against the fabric of her old gown, and lingered briefly on the sweet line of her waist that merged with such perfect symmetry into her hips. “That may be,” he answered, “and then again, it may not.”
“I promise you that you will! If you had eyes in your head you would have seen that a wagon train passed this way sometime yesterday. You should have guessed that I — that I was from it.”
“Was?”
Serena looked away. “Yes. I — left it yesterday morning, not that it matters. The important thing is that it shows you are mistaken in me.”
“The road I have been traveling only joined the wagon route this evening, but I saw the evidence of the wagons.”
“Well, then,” she said in triumph.
“I could hardly believe anybody would use the old trail at this late date.”
She explained quickly about the Mormons and Elder Greer’s determination to duplicate the feat of the earlier Saints.
“You are no Saint.”
Serena flashed him a quick look of indignation for the sardonic inflection of his voice, though she could not but agree.
“How does it come about, I wonder, that you decided to strike out on your own here in the middle of nowhere — or was the decision made for you?”
“It was a misunderstanding,” Serena said, her lips tight.
“It always is.”
“You are determined to think the worst of me, aren’t you?”
“In my experience, it saves time and trouble, especially where women are concerned.”
“What a disappointing life you must have led. You will not be surprised to learn, then, that I was put off the Mormon train for enticing an elder into my wagon?”
“Not at all.”
“That is exactly what I would expect someone like you to say! Well, let me tell you, it was a lie, a false charge made by Elder Greer to cover his own crime of climbing into my wagon while I was sleeping and trying to force himself on me.”
“I suppose you prevented him?” he inquired, a light that might have been skepticism or consideration in the emerald eyes watching her so intently across the fire.
“Yes, though I doubt you will believe it.”
“What did you do? Scream for help? He was a brave man, or a stupid one, if he waited around for it to come.”
“I stabbed him with a fork, if you must know the sordid details, and when he wouldn’t let me go, I dragged him with me out of the wagon.”
He stared at her for a moment, then gave a sudden shout of laughter. “Stabbed him with a fork?”
“Yes,” she snapped.
“Fascinating. I can almost believe it. What did he do, refuse to marry you?”
Serena sent him a look of fury. “He did not! That was his whole pu
rpose, to persuade me to become his wife.”
“A rough courtship, wasn’t it? Or maybe you just preferred money to honor? That’s the usual reason for women finding themselves in your position.”
As she stared at him in chill dismay, unable to find words to refute this nightmarish charge leveled at her once more, the rain began, a scattering of drops shaken from the clouds by the reverberation of thunder.
The man spared a glance for the black sky above them.
“We had better get under cover.” Flicking a look toward the horses, he bent to scoop up the pan of bacon and pot of coffee, then stepped around the fire. “Don’t just sit there,” he said in exasperation, “get under the tarp.”
Serena moved to obey, then she raised wide eyes to the man who stood over her. “My trunk — I left it on the trail.”
“Your trunk?” He might never have heard of such a thing.
She gave a short nod. “If it gets wet it will ruin it.” Without waiting for his reply, she surged to her feet and ran into the windswept darkness. In an instant she was lost, disoriented. She came to a halt, dragging the hair from her eyes.
“You’ll never find it. Wait until morning!”
She ignored his shout. She had to find it. It held all she owned. Then in the brief glare of lightning, she saw its squat shape. She plunged in that direction.
“Let me.”
The man was beside her, lifting the hidebound box as if its weight were nothing. He strode with it toward the fire, and was even able to spare a hand to steady her as she tripped over a clump of weeds in her efforts to keep up with his long steps. His action in coming after her might have been to prevent her from escaping from him into the stormy night. Regardless, he need not have carried her burden. The gesture was so casual, so natural, and yet so at variance with his cynical suspicion of her that she was left confused.
She was given no time to consider it. He flung down the trunk, whipped an oilskin coat over it and weighted it down, then drew Serena with him toward the low canvas shelter.
She ducked into the opening, but found she could not sit up. The only way to take advantage of its protection from the rain was to lie down and push her legs back into the lower section. It was disconcerting to discover that in the darkness she had slipped between the blankets of the bedroll beneath the tarp. Before she could pull herself out again, the man was beside her, the long firm length of his leg pressed against her.
Love and Adventure Collection - Part 2 Page 90