The long lips lifted in one corner. "Report me? To the Tonkawas―or the Karankawas? They'd like very much wearing your hair at their belt. Such a color of red is a rarity in these parts. Or maybe you'd like to report me to your husband who couldn't be bothered with meeting his bride on her arrival in Texas."
Infuriated as she was, Anne could still not help but notice the deliberation in the man's speech and the peculiar spacing between the words. As if he were recalling the English from memory. She opened her mouth to make some response that would put the man in his place but clamped her lips in a tight line. She, would not give the lout the satisfaction of arguing with him.
As if he sensed her strategy and wished to provoke her into another outburst, he said lightly, "Or maybe you could report me to the civilized Donovan ...though it looks like his work was too important to leave and come as your escort."
"He had to present his credentials at the Capitol!" she said and realized he had succeeded in goading her again. Why, she wondered furiously, did she bother to defend Colin to the savage? She remembered Colin's note the innkeeper had given her that morning and closed her eyes, visualizing the fine script that promised he would find a way to see her again.
But what was the use? There could be no more improprieties like the night before. They both must be rigidly aware of their positions. She, the wife of a pastor. He, with the promising career in politics ahead of him. No scandal must ruin that. Dear God, why now did she have to finally fall in love? After all the meaningless flirtations of Barbados. Why now, when she was married? She tried to imagine the fair, freckled Otto stirring up the same romantic feelings and knew it was hopeless. She would simply have to put Colin from her mind, to train her thoughts to respond to mundane matters such as eating and resting and getting warm once more.
But when she turned to address Brant Powers, she found the dark face closed over. Commanding him obviously had not obtained the desired results. She hugged her cloak about her.
"Mr. Powers, please. I know I was wrong in forcing you to take us with you. But I had no other choice. Don't tell me you've never done the same ...taking the only opportunity available―regardless of what obstacles blocked your way."
Was there a spark in the depths of those dispassionate, lazy-lidded eyes that continuously swept the countryside in anything but a lazy manner? "I'm not trying to be an obstinate jackass, Mrs. Maren. We're still in Kronk territory. They're flesh-eaters, ma'am. And I don't aim to be their next meal. We'll travel 'til we reach Brazoria tonight."
With the scout having the last word, Anne could only drop back along the narrow trail and watch with growing relief as the wintry sun reached its zenith and began its slow descent. Occasionally there were the glimpses of the swift, russet waters of the Brazos River, paralleling the party's northwestern course, to break the monotony of the enclosing forest. Nearly two long, boring hours had passed when Brant, a frown deepening the sun wrinkles at the outer corners of his eyes, dropped back along side of Anne.
"Wait here," he warned. His voice, though a low whisper, was, she realized, suddenly the only sound in the forest. When had the bird calls and the other noises of the forest animals ceased? She watched with tingling apprehension as Brant and Ezra conversed in quiet tones. The two men dismounted and, squatting on their haunches, seemed to be studying a tangled growth of vines that appeared in no way unusual to her. They rose then and, moving in separate directions, disappeared into a fifteen-foot wall of cane break.
Impatiently Anne waited beside Delila. Their mounts moved restlessly as if sensing something the two women could not. "Some'n out there up to no good," Delila muttered.
"Fiddlesticks!" Anne said. "Those two are tired of riding and have gone to relieve themselves. Which is exactly what I intend to do."
Anne proceeded to dismount, and Delila, hampered by her balking mule, could only call, "Miz Anne, you come back here! Right 'dis minute!"
Anne ignored her and, leaving the trail, carefully raised her skirts as she picked her way over the damp, spongy earth, moving toward the faint sound of running water. But the trees grew denser and the underbrush thicker. Finally forced to halt within sight of a muddy bayou of the Brazos, she lifted her voluminous petticoats and strove to lower the lacy pantalettes, trying unsuccessfully not to soil her fine undergarments in the black land bog. It was then she heard the swishing noise and saw the dull olive form plodding through the mud of the bayou's banks.
Its hibernation disturbed, the ten-foot alligator wallowed toward the spot where Anne stood rooted. Beneath the broad snout the reptile's teeth were bared in a bellow. Slowly Anne backed away before turning to run. But she tripped over the encumbering pantalettes about her ankles and went flying headlong into the mossy bog. She screamed then, only to have it cut off abruptly as the breath was knocked from her.
"No―help! Help!" she cried, struggling frantically beneath the overpowering weight.
"Will you shut up!" Brant's voice hissed at her ear. "Do you want to bring every Kronk in the area down on us?"
"An alligator," she gasped. "There!"
His hand clamped roughly over her mouth. "Damn it, lady, will you keep quiet!" When her body ceased its fighting, he said, "The 'gators rarely attack humans. Besides, it's gone now." He released her mouth, and she drew deeply on the pine-scented air, filling her lungs with its sweetness.
And at that moment she became aware that her skirts were above her waist, aware of the insistent pressure of his loins against her bare buttocks. The weight of a man. It was a new sensation. And she lay there paralyzed with fear and something else, half wondering why she did not try to move. In that fraction of a second she could identify the scent of the pines and the moss―and the scent of the scout. The clean odor of leather and woodsmoke―and the fresh scent of ...man. So different from one of the dandies of Bridgetown who had always smothered themselves with the cloying lilac water to stifle the smell of unwashed bodies.
Brant rolled her over roughly so that his body half pinioned hers. She watched his face, the way his jaws clenched and the long mouth tightened, as his hand impatiently brushed away the mud from her cheeks and mouth. The touch of his fingertips at her lips caused her breath to cut short. The hot coffee-colored eyes met hers and seemed to look through her. "Never―never disobey an order I give," he said harshly.
She nodded, incapable of speech. Her entire attention centered on the scarlet line that branded the granite-cut chin. Would he demand the threatened payment for his services now?
But to her relief he rose from her and retrieved his sombrero from where it had fallen in the underbrush. When he turned back to her his eyes were cold and hard as they raked over her near nudity. "Get your clothes on!"
With that he spun around and stalked off, leaving Anne to contend with her muddied, disarrayed clothing. Her knees trembled and her breath came in gasps, as if she had run a race. Dear God! She covered her face with hands that shook, trying to get control of herself.
Somehow she made her way back to the trail to find the three of them waiting for her. Concern showed in Ezra's blue gray eyes, and Delila exclaimed, "Miz Anne! Is you all right, baby?"
Anne shot Brant a venomous glare. "Only frightened by a disgusting animal!" Silently she mounted her horse, this time unassisted. The remainder of the day her thoughts seethed with her dislike for the man, for his crudeness and his arrogance. But most of all she detested him for awakening in herself base, vulgar feelings. Feelings which were as far apart from the romantic ones she had of Colin as the two men themselves were in personalities.
At last the early onset of the winter evening brought an end to the day's journey. Purple clouds streaked the sky as the party came upon a cleared expanse of lowland dotted with fifteen to twenty huts that constituted the town of Brazoria.
Before the largest log cabin, a dog-run type with the main room and kitchen separated from the bedroom by an open hall, a young woman of perhaps eighteen years fed scraps from a wooden pail to the scrawny chicken
s pecking in the dirt about her. She wore heavy men's boots and a thin dress of cheap calico beneath a ragged leather coat too large for her. When she looked up and recognized the lead rider, her narrow face took on a glow that made her almost pretty.
"Brant!" she cried and started toward him, only to halt as her gaze swept past him to fall on Anne.
Brant swung down from the sorrel. "Your father got room for four more, Dorothy?"
"Ain't no travelers through here since last week, Brant." The scout said something Anne could not hear, and the girl laughed. "I'll tell paw you're here," she said, running on ahead.
The inside of the cabin was almost as desolate as the surrounding area outside. But at least there was the welcome warmth of crackling pine logs in the native stone fireplace. Brant and Ezra, who lit up a corncob pipe once he was seated at the long table, were immediately drawn into conversation by Dorothy's father, George Hamlin, a grizzle-haired man with a watermelon paunch and tobacco-stained teeth.
Anne sought the three-legged stool before the hearth. Her thin silk blouse clung to her skin like icy fingers, and she thought she would never be warm again. Delila bustled about her like a mother hen. "Let me take that jacket, chile, and brush off that dried mud. Jus' look at yo' po' hat! Yo' mammy would give up her ghost if she thought ah wasn't keeping you looking like a lady."
Only Dorothy was quiet as she moved efficiently about, frying ham, boiling hominy, measuring out the ground coffee, which Anne was to learn was not true coffee but parched corn and acorns. All the time the girl's alert eyes darted from Brant to Anne to Ezra, and always back on Brant, as if she were trying to determine what connection the elegant lady had with each man. Feeling useless and uneasy under the girl's scrutiny, Anne rose and went to her. "My name is Anne," she said softly. "Could I―help you in any way?"
The girl's gaze dropped to Anne's left hand and the narrow gold band on her third finger. Anne understood. "Anne Maren. My husband's pastor of the Adelsolms settlement."
The girl's smile was suddenly open. "Name's Dorothy."She turned over the slice of ham sizzling in the lard. "You could mix up that batch of cornbread for me, if you like."
Glad to have something to do, Anne took the earthenware bowl and wooden spoon and began to stir. Within seconds the coarse cornmeal was streaked across her face and powdered in her hair. She stopped to wipe the meal's dust from her eyes, and the bowl slipped to the floor with a crash. Guiltily Anne looked up from the mess at her feet to find all eyes turned on her.
"That's all right, ma'am," Dorothy said quickly. "I'll take care of it. Why don't you settle yourself at the table? We're just fixing to eat anyhow."
Anne could well imagine how scarce food could be there in the winter. And to waste it through her clumsiness―she could only be glad the men had resumed their conversation as she took a seat at the table.
Across from her Brant shook black tobacco flakes from a small leather pouch onto a thin square of paper. "We ran across a party of them about ten miles out," he told Dorothy's father. "Driving a milk cow and her calf."
George Hamlin grunted. "Those were Lemmuel Todd's animals. His wife's milk done dried out―and their babe's sickly with the croup. Can it git any worse?"
As Dorothy set the plates on the table, Ezra laid aside his pipe and said, "The Kronks could decide to carry off you instead if the winter lasts much longer."
The host spit out a diarrheic stream of chewing tobacco that hissed as it spattered in the fireplace. "That's how come we're posting lookouts on shifts now."
"We spotted Willie just north of the salt lick," Brant said, surprising Anne, who was not aware they had passed within sight of another human being until they reached Brazoria. Then Brant surprised her further. "Isn't Willie the one who was courting you when we were last here?" he asked Dorothy with a teasing smile.
The girl blushed and began to spoon out the hominy. "Willie's just a boy."
The dinner talk turned to the new line of forts Sam Houston was having built and continued with the problem of the new Indian hostilities until the acrid tallow candles sputtered in their tin holders. Then the bedding arrangements were made, with the men occupying the main room and Delila sleeping in the loft.
Anne gratefully climbed into the one bed, moldy though the feather, ticking was. At her side lay Dorothy, who she knew listened intently for Brant's steps outside the cabin as he checked the horses.
For herself sleep came instantly. A troubled sleep of Brant's hand at her mouth, a hand that changed to a gleaming knife wielded by a hideous Karankawa tearing away at her flesh. Anne bolted upright in the bed with a scream hovering in her throat. She glanced around the darkness. Beside her Dorothy slept peacefully. Anne lay back down again to sleep, only to scratch the rest of the night at the bedbugs that attacked her.
IV
Dawn came too early for Anne. The damp morning air seeped through her clothing the moment she set foot outside the Hamlin cabin. Stars still twinkled faintly in the gray pink sky.
With the Brazos River at their backs, Brant led the party in a due northwestern direction, heading for the San Bernard River. The sky remained overcast the rest of the morning, but in spite of the wintry weather, Anne found herself enjoying the day's journey.
They left the forest of loblolly and longleaf pine behind and traveled across an endless, treeless prairie. That same morning she had her first sight of the shaggy mammoth, the buffalo. An awesome sight, the herd stretched as far as the eye could see, blackening the prairie like some blight. Their breaths steamed the frigid air, and their collective movement through the tall grass sounded like distant thunder.
There were other sights to captivate her attention, to make the day pass faster: flocks of geese that completely obliterated the sky, fields of wild violets and bluebonnets, blooming as if spring had arrived.
"Not unusual at all, Miss," Ezra told her. "Tomorrow a warm front could move in from the Gulf hot enough to fry a tortilla. Texas weather's as fickle as a painted woman."
However, even these sights began to pall, and she lost interest with each weary mile they covered. Brant refused to halt for the midday meal but pushed the group onward at a steady pace. Anne was already sore in the muscles of her buttocks from the previous day's excursion. And now she was cold, hungry, and thoroughly out of sorts.
Since she knew Brant would not give in to her demands, she tried another tack. Dropping back alongside Ezra, she told Delila to ride ahead in her place. "Ezra, I'm not feeling well. Perhaps it was the soda biscuits we had this morning. But I feel as if I'm going to―to―" she hesitated in describing such an indelicate ailment.
"Upchuck?"
Anne closed her eyes with an inward sigh and nodded. "Precisely. Do you think you could possibly persuade your Mr. Powers to halt―it would only be for a very short time. To rest―and get out of the cold wind." She looked around, realizing there was no shelter from the cold, no trees, no bluffs―only the limitless prairie with buffalo grass as high as a horse's flanks.
"Don't think I could, miss." Beneath the stubby, curly lashes, the giant's eyes twinkled. "There's rain coming 'fore nightfall, and Brant's hell-bent on reaching the forests of the San Bernard River first."
Anne looked upward. "Why, the sky is overcast, but there's not a thunderhead in sight, Ezra." She ought to know a storm cloud. She'd seen enough of them roll in off the Atlantic.
"That may be so, but all the weather signs say rain."
"Such as?"
"For one, miss, the spider web in the Hamlin lean-to this morning. It was low and short and thick-like. If we were gonna have dry weather, it would have been thin-and long and high."
"That's all well and good, Ezra, but it still doesn't alter the fact that I―" Anne broke off. Even if she could persuade Ezra to halt for a rest, there would still be no way under heaven she could get around Brant.
"If you'd chew on a blade of grass miss," he offered, "it might settle your innards." Anne winced. "No―I think I'm going to be all right, than
k you."
Ezra was right. For as the afternoon wore on, and more and more trees, mostly red elm and sweet gum, dotted the prairie, bilious black clouds rose on the horizon. The icy wind blew with the force of an Atlantic hurricane, whipping Anne's cloak about her like giant bat wings. Her nose was numb and, she was sure, red, and her eyes watered. Her fingers hurt from clenching the reins so long in the cold. Even Delila grumbled, her mutterings carrying on the wind.
We'll die out here, Anne thought morbidly. Freeze to death! And all because of one man's stubbornness.
At last, when she did not think she could stay upright in the saddle a moment longer, Brant called a halt beneath a magnificent stand of pine and cedar elm. On a rocky hillside within a pine-scented grove which broke the blustering wind, he dismounted and crossed to Anne.
"I can dismount myself, thank you!" she snapped.
He shrugged. "Suit yourself, lady."
Anne unhooked her leg from the sidesaddle and slid easily to the ground only to have her legs buckle beneath her. Brant caught her and effortlessly raised her to her feet. Embarrassed, she stared straight ahead at the leather lacing of his buckskin jacket. "I―I didn't realize I was so stiff from the cold."
"Yes'm."
Anne glanced up to find the firm lips just a quiver away from a smile. "Well, it wouldn't have happened," she retorted, "if you hadn't forced us to―"
"Miz Anne, stop that arguing and git yo'self out of the cold!" Waddling behind her, the old woman propelled Anne with an affectionate shove toward the lee of the trees.
Anne half sank, half fell on the bed of pine needles and watched with apathy as the two men went about apparently prearranged tasks―Brant unsaddling the horses and Ezra gathering dead sticks and brush. Even Delila seemed to fall in with the appointed jobs and began digging around in the saddle bags. With a gleaming grin she produced a battered coffee pot. "Now all we needs is water."
"The San Bernard is about two hundred yards the other side of this hill, Miss Delila," Ezra said, stacking the firewood in a mound.
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