He did not yell at her, or rant and rave as Luther or the twins might have done in a like situation, and Reagan thought that perhaps he wasn’t so bad after all. Feeling a little more at ease in his presence, she crinkled her slim nose at him. “Jesu, you got some sort of fixa... fixa .... ”
Jackson narrowed his gaze and one corner of his mouth curled down. “I believe the word you were searching for is fixation, and no, I don’t have one. It just pains me to hear such crude talk hurtling from lips as soft and as red as yours. You really ought to be supervised, you know. In fact, you ought to be confined to a parlor somewhere, wearing frilly underthings and mastering the finer points of embroidery instead of here, in this place, wearing those dreadful rags and consorting with the dregs of society.” He swept the gathering with an impatient hand. “Do you know how dangerous your situation is? What kind of men these are?”
“I’ve got a pretty good idea,” Reagan replied, sending him a meaningful glare, which he blithely ignored. “And my underthings sure ain’t none of your concern! As for the rest of it, I had book learnin’ once, and I can read and write and do sums better’n most gals I know. I can sew up a gash, too, as quick as a lick, and I don’t leave no scar, neither. Seems to me you could have made use of my talents yourself a while back—”
The moment the words were out of her mouth, Reagan wished to call them back. She’d always been quick to anger, and just as quick to speak her mind. Brash, her mother had named her, a trait that, along with her thick sable hair, she had inherited from her long-dead sire.
Jackson’s grass green eyes flashed his irritation, and that same tic she’d noticed earlier jumped in his ruined cheek. Reagan hurried to mend the rift between them. She was beginning to see that he had possibilities, and might—just might— be her ticket to freedom. “Listen,” she said, “I didn’t mean no offense. But bein’ where it is, right out there in the open, a body can’t help but take notice.” She cocked her head and peered at him, narrowing her eyes to slits. “You happen to kill that grizzly you tangled with?”
As she watched with a kindling interest, Jackson took a deep breath and let it go slowly. He seemed to be holding on to his temper by several fragile threads, and it appeared that those, too, were rapidly fraying. “Where is your father?” he asked abruptly. “I’ll take you to him now, this instant, before some terrible fate befalls you, like my stuffing a gag into that lovely and irrepressible mouth.”
“My pa’s dead,” she replied matter-of-factly. “Can’t say as I remember him much. He died when I was just a wee thing. Mama told me about him, though. She said he was quite the bounder when he was young.”
“Your husband, then?” he said hopefully. “Surely you must have a husband!”
“Don’t have no damnable husband, and I sure as hell don’t need none!” It was spoken with passion, and won her an icy glare from Jackson.
“That gag is looking more desirable by the syllable.” Releasing her abruptly, Jackson closed his eyes, shook his head, drew a calming breath, and tried again. “You must be here with someone,” he said. “An uncle, a cousin, a guardian, then?”
Throughout his inquisition, Reagan was silent.
“What am I to do with you?” he demanded hotly. “I cannot just turn you loose, and you sure as hell can’t stay here!”
Reagan bit her lip, hesitating. Here was her chance, her opening. If she waited too long, allowed it to slip through her grasp, Luther would find her, drag her back, marry her off to a stranger.
Jackson was strange, but she had to admit he smelled better than most of the hairy vagabonds who’d ventured near to gawk at her, and somehow he seemed less of a danger, far more interested in correcting the lapses in her grammar than taking liberties with her person.
It was just enough to hearten Reagan, who was well aware that she would be forced to take chances in order to gain her freedom. Tipping her hat back on her head, she wet her lips and took the leap. “You could take me with you, back to Saint Louis. I can cook a possum a hundred different ways— porcupine and raccoon, too. I could tend your camp and guard the horses, if need be. I’m a good shot, and know all there is to know about cleanin’ and carin’ for a rifle, and I won’t be no bother, honest. You won’t even know I’m around, unless, that is, you want company, and once we get back to civilization we can go our separate ways and you won’t have to bother about me ever again.”
Pacing before the door of the lean-to, head down and muttering to himself, Jackson paused to gape at her. “Are you mad? I can’t take you with me! Merciful God in heaven, I don’t even know you!”
“Please,” Reagan said, reaching out, taking hold of his arm. The word was bitter as gall in her mouth, but there were shouts in the distance—Luther’s reedy voice, and Luck’s and Lafe’s—and this man was all that stood between Reagan and certain disaster. “I’ll find a way to pay you.”
Before she’d even finished, he was shaking his head. “I’ve trouble enough already. I cannot take on the responsibility of dragging a backwoods wildcat over half the damn country. I will not.”
Reagan’s face fell. The shouts were growing louder with every thud of her heart. She felt sick and dejected, and as she turned and dashed headlong into the darkness her eyes filled with tears. “Go to Saint Louis, then, and be damned!” she shot back over her shoulder. “I don’t need you! I don’t need any man!”
Chapter Two
Monongahela whiskey was pure bliss in a bottle, and as Jackson wove his way through the crowd, he had his sights set on oblivion. He was hoping that if he drank deeply enough, he would effectively drown the memory of a certain young woman with the vernacular of a stevedore and a decided lack of fashionable flair.
Take me with you… Please... 1 won't be no bother, honest….
Her plaintive plea seemed to issue from somewhere in the gathered throng, yet when Jackson scanned the bearded faces of his contemporaries, she was nowhere to be found.
Troublesome little baggage. What in hell had possessed her to solicit the company of a stranger? Did she have no inkling of the fate that could befall her if she were to take up with the wrong man?
Her face rose up in his mind’s eye, her expression burned into his brain. He’d seen that same look once, long ago, on the face of a horse thief about to mount the gallows stairs, and the desperate, knowing glance and stark resignation were something he’d never forgotten. In his careworn mind, the faces overlapped the girl’s pert features haunting and stark above the hempen noose.
Jackson shook his head to clear it, but the image continued to plague him, and by the time he found Tom Bridger and his friend G. D. Strickland, he was racked with guilt and feeling as if he’d kicked some starving hound for lying in his path.
Strickland, by way of contrast, was disgustingly jubilant. Already sodden with whiskey, he thumped Jackson’s back, pressing the jug upon him. “By thunder, I’m glad you changed your mind and decided to join us.”
“What kept ye so long, Seek-Um?” Tom Bridger put in. “Strickland here said you was lookin’ to buy yerself a bride, an’ the prettiest ones have all been sold.”
“Nothing could be farther from the truth, Tom,” Jackson replied, then tipped the jug and drank. A long pull, and he lowered it again, gasping for air. The whiskey tore a path down his throat, exploding in his belly. He raised a hand to wipe the water from his eyes, and as soon as the burning subsided he raised the jug again.
“Not a marryin’ man, eh, Broussard?” Bridger said with a nod of his shaggy red head.
Jackson passed the jug to Bridger, who took a swallow, then passed it back again. “My life is complicated enough without a woman in it.”
Bridger smiled his understanding. “Now that I can comprehend quite well—and respect--unlike Strickland here. A fella like yourself, born to good looks and a brimming purse, can afford to be selective about the company he keeps. I, on the other hand, have long suffered the misfortune of bein’ born to homely parents, and therefore must rely on oth
er means to win the ladies fair. Through the years my shining personality has taken me where a bonny face has gotten you, though not without a concentrated effort. ’Tis a chore, I must confess, to be gallant at all times when in company, schooling oneself not to scratch a sudden itch, no matter how pervasive, swallowin’ one’s baccy juice instead of spitting in the corners.” He stroked his fiery beard as Jackson swilled his whiskey, a purposeful gleam entering his mud brown eyes. “Yes, sir, now that I think on it, purchasing one’s companion does seem to have its merits!” Snatching off his hat, Bridger waved it in the air, leaping into the frenetic bidding with Strickland egging him on.
Jackson watched his companions with a somewhat jaundiced eye. A gentle pink phosphorescent haze seemed to be rising from the lip of the jug, insinuating its way around and through him, so impenetrable that the mental echo of the girl’s voice was soon smothered by the catcalls and obscene shouts that at times threatened to drown out the voice of the auctioneer.
Thin and reedy, the man’s voice rose, trebling over the din, barely heard. “Twenty-twenty-do-I-hear-twenty-five-thirty- thirty-five? Thirty-five prime beaver skins, going once, going twice, sold to the gentleman with the blinded eye down in front! Step up, sir, make your mark, and claim your blushing bride!”
Bridger lost out as a rotund trapper with a patch over his right eye waddled to the front, taking the Indian maiden he’d purchased around the waist, and swinging her into his arms to the raucous tune of his fellows’ jeers, catcalls, and ribald shouts of encouragement.
The evening’s entertainment was almost over, and Jackson felt nothing but a deep and unsettling restlessness. He was headed home... home to face the rampant speculation, his father’s deep-seated hatred, the dark rumors, the regrets.
The girl would go back, too, eventually, back to whomever and wherever she belonged, which was precisely as it should be. He was not responsible for solving her difficulties, real or imagined, and he was in no position to help her. Hell, he was not even certain that he could help himself.
With a past that lay in shambles and a reputation that could not bear the light of day, he was no fitting influence for an impressionable slip of a girl, no matter how earthy, how sensual, how desperate she happened to be.
Roused by the thought, he felt that same restlessness he had acknowledged earlier bite deep into his soul. Jackson turned away, impatient to depart. At that same moment a loud thump and a muffled howl issuing from the makeshift dais rocked the crowd up and onto the balls of their feet. From the corner of his eye, Jackson saw a familiar form borne bodily onto the stage, caught firmly between two lanky young men, and his blood ran cold in his veins.
She was awash in a thin sheen of mud, from the battered black hat pulled low over her brow to the trim ankles showing above a pair of clumsily fashioned boots. But it was her eyes that caught and held Jackson’s attention... smoky gray eyes that shone with the feral gleam of an animal caught in the relentless steel jaws of a number-four trap.
Her captors hauled her roughly to center stage while she struggled and kicked, catching one of the young men square on the shin with the toe of one oversize boot. The injured one yelped in pain, retaliating with a vicious shove that sent her reeling from the other one’s grasp. Suddenly freed, she rounded on the pair, making a dive for the one who had pushed her, her shoulder catching him in the belly, knocking him off his feet. Then, agile as a squirrel, she was up in an instant, straddling her captor’s midsection, raining blows about his head and ears. “Putrefied polecat!” she screeched. “That’ll teach you to try and truss me up like a fowl ready for market!”
All around Jackson the crowd went wild with her show of spirit; Jackson went deathly still. This couldn’t be happening. They couldn’t be dragging her out on the platform to sell her... though his rational mind reasoned that it happened to Indian women all the time. Captives stolen in raids were sold each year at rendezvous for a few jugs of whiskey—but a white woman? It must be some sort of bizarre joke.
The auctioneer did laugh, albeit a trifle nervously, as she was caught and pinned again. “As you gentlemen can judge for yourself, Miss Dawes is a bit rough around the edges and the smallest bit reluctant to wed. Her stepfather assures me, however, that with a little patience she’ll soon warm to the idea of having a helpmate. Now, shall we begin?”
Several hoary specimens immediately launched into the bidding. Twenty beaver skins, twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five. The price, given the scarcity of white women here in the mountains, and coupled with her recent show of spirit, went soaring in no time. Jackson watched, his belly burning, as Abe McFarland offered ten prime beaver pelts, the equivalent of about fifty dollars, just to ascertain if the one being sold were truly female. Laughter rippled through the gathering, but Jackson knew from past experience that Crazy Abe wasn’t making idle sport.
Abe had worked for Broussard Furs some years before, until a girl at Kate Flannigan’s brothel had refused to service him. In a fit of maniacal rage, Abe had drawn his scalping knife and proceeded to carve his initials into the ample bosom of his unfortunate victim. He’d just formed the crosspiece on the A when the girl’s screams brought Jackson running. A half hour later, the sheriff had carted what was left of Crazy Abe off to the jailhouse. The incident had cost Abe his job; Jackson had seen to it, and he had taken great pleasure in delivering the unwelcome news.
Beside Jackson, G. D. Strickland had lost his whiskey glow, and even Tom Bridger’s ruddy cheeks bore a sickly hue. “Jesus H. Christ,” Strickland said. “You don’t suppose they’d sell that stripling gal to Crazy Abe?”
Bridger turned his head and spat, then wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his hunting shirt. “Does give a body pause to think, now, don’t it? I hear tell old Abe run outta supplies in the winter of twenty-six and et his last wife. Little Bird, she was called, and a real fine looker, too.”
“Merciful God in heaven,” Jackson ground out. He couldn’t seem to get the girl from Kate’s place out of his mind. Abe had branded the pock-faced little prostitute for life for spurning his advances. What might he do to the chit onstage once she set up a full-fledged rebellion?
Irrational thoughts were flinging themselves about his brain, finding fertile soil in his sudden remorse, taking deep root. Though he argued hard against it, deep down he knew that he’d been wrong. He was every bit as responsible for her predicament as the nervous clods who held her onstage, and it was a responsibility that he could not shun, no matter how much he wished it were otherwise. If only he’d bided his time, thought it all through, tried to ferret out the truth before turning her out into the night.
Beside him, G. D. was concurring with Bridger. “It does seem that I recall hearin’ about such an incident. Word came from Abe’s trapping partner, Albert Sally. They had a fallin’ out over the affair. Sally swore he’d never seen such blatant cruelty. He never did have nothin’ more to do with Abe after that. Don’t you recall it, Boss?”
Jackson barely heard G. D. Those hated words, her words, screamed in his brain: Take me with you . . . please! He’d wondered what had possessed her, to seek out the company of a stranger.
And now he knew.
Sheer desperation. She’d seen an opportunity to escape, and she’d seized it with both hands. Caught up in his own difficulties, he’d callously knocked those grasping, desperate, dainty hands away.
“Seek-Um?” Strickland said, grasping Jackson’s shoulder.
Jackson pushed G. D. off as Abe McFarland knocked a third and final opponent out of the bidding. “Two hundred beaver skins.”
The auctioneer, sweating profusely, paused to mop his brow with a wrinkled kerchief. “That’s a small fortune in furs, sir. Is anyone willing to best this man’s bid? Two hundred once, two hundred twice—”
“Twenty-five hundred dollars in hard currency!” The crowd had been silent, waiting for the outcome of the auction; now, as Jackson leaped to the platform, a ripple of sound, like an uneasy murmur, moved through it.
> The girl’s twin captors stared openly at Jackson, their jaws hanging slack. The auctioneer stared, too, but quickly collected himself, clearing his throat. “Did I hear you right, sir? Did you issue the bid—”
“Twenty-five hundred dollars for the girl,” Jackson reaffirmed. “That’s more than double the highest bid, and since I doubt there is a man among you able to best that figure, this proceeding is over.”
The auctioneer grimaced, showing a missing tooth in front, and looking uncomfortable. “It cannot be over until I see the cash money, sir. That’s the rule, you understand.”
“Do you know who I am?” Jackson demanded, looking hard at the smaller man, smiling when the auctioneer swallowed convulsively and looked away, unable to stand firm beneath the weight of his stare.
The man swallowed convulsively. “Aye, sir. Everyone ’round here knows who you are.”
“Then you know that you’ll get your money,” Jackson said. “Now, kindly stand aside. It’s my habit to review the state of my goods before signing a bill of sale.” Ignoring the two who continued to hold the girl, Jackson halted before her. “Open your mouth,” he said softly.
“Go to hell,” she whispered hoarsely, outrage blossoming in her soft gray eyes.
Jackson smiled at her venom. “You’re somewhat worse for wear than the last time I clapped eyes on you, yet it’s clear they did not break your spirit. Let’s see about the rest of you.” Reaching out, Jackson caught her chin with his strong fingers, turning her face aside. A purple bruise marred the lovely turn of her jaw beneath the glaze of mud, yet other than that, nothing seemed broken, at least on the outside. “Your mouth,” he said again. “Open it.”
“I ain’t no horse, damn you!”
“Her teeth are sound, mister,” one lad said.
“Sound enough to take a chunk from any man fool enough to venture near,” added the other.
“No aches, no pains?” Jackson asked her. “No broken bones?”
Bride of the Shining Mountains (The St. Claire Men) Page 3