Frank let out a deep sigh and nodded.
Without saying anything else, Lisa, dressed up, spurred her horse to a trot and headed for the road. Town was only a few hours ride one way, but she wasn't going just one way and wanted to be back long before dark.
At first she kept Jeb at a quick pace, but soon the plow horse was panting heavily and Lisa slowed the pace down to a walk. She really didn't need to be in a hurry. And so what if she came back in the dark, what was the worst that could happen? Sure there was some strange Indian fellow stalking the homestead and who took her clothes, but what did that even mean? Maybe he's totally harmless; after all, he didn't threaten her in any way. All he did was to take her clothes. At least he left her shoes! Maybe he was just watching the homestead to make sure that she and Frank weren't soldiers in disguise or something of that nature. Or maybe he thought that secretly they were panning for gold and wanted to know if they were or not so that he could pan for gold as well.
“Don't be silly,” Lisa said to herself in a soft voice. “The Indian isn't looking to pan for gold. He wants you.” The thought both turned her on and scared her once again.
There were other times that she bathed in the river that she felt like she was being watched. The bend where the current really picked up was the most fun place to wash off in the spume. It was also the most open part of the river. Frank hated that she bathed there completely stark naked to the world, but sometimes she convinced him to bathe with her. Anyone and everyone with eyes could have seen Lisa was a very beautiful woman if they saw her bathing at the big bend of the river near the homestead.
“Maybe Frank was right,” Lisa said. “Maybe it does pay to be modest.”
But this was all conjecture, she had to remind herself. She didn't even know for sure if the Indian guy was a man, or if he was just her imagination. She reminded herself of all the times she'd thought she’d seen something in the woods and it turned out to be nothing more than a jumble of shapes her brain had put together to be something they weren't. That was probably it, Lisa convinced herself. There was probably nothing really to be worried about at all. The only thing that she and Frank needed to worry about was their sex life.
Lisa often times wondered what Frank really thought of her. Sure he treated her well enough, but at the same time, even though he treated her like a partner, there were many times that he took her for granted. Then again she couldn't imagine what life would be like being someone else’s wife; someone who wasn’t quite as forward thinking about women as Frank. And Frank didn't care that she was barren. The thought made her sad. Even though there was no way to know that it was her.
In society’s eyes, although it was naughty, it was kind of all right for men to sleep around. The standards for women were different.
Lisa's heart sunk as she thought about it, because it probably meant that Frank knew if he was fertile or not. Lisa was sure, now, that Frank had gotten someone pregnant before. He probably had a whole brood of children somewhere, tucked away in some New England colony! That's why he'd been so eager to come west with her, to get away from his other wife and their children. They probably had a bunch of children!
“Oh Lisa, don't be silly,” she said to herself. “None of that is real.”
Jeb let out a snort as he walked down the road.
“That's right Jeb, none of it is real,” Lisa said, patting the side of the horse’s neck. “None of it’s real at all. It's silly to make up stories about Frank's past in my head. What normal person does that?”
Jeb snorted and tossed his head, shaking his mane back and forth. Lisa started to wonder why Jeb was acting like something was wrong. It was a nice day, the sun shone through clouds down on the road in front of them. The town was only a little way ahead of them now, but Jeb wouldn't even walk a straight line anymore. He kept dancing side to side, as if swerving to avoid something only he could see.
“What has gotten into you?” Lisa asked Frank's horse as he danced from side to side on the road. “Is there something a matter? Is there a pebble or something under the saddle?”
She had checked the saddle for debris before she put it on the horse though, so she was fairly certain it wasn't that. Or had some kind of hard shelled insect flown under the saddle as she put it down on the beast? She wasn’t sure what made her look behind. Maybe it was Jeb's goading that finally did it, as that was plainly what the horse was doing in hindsight. Or maybe it had to do with the way her flesh goose pimpled for no reason. Lisa didn't know what made her cast a long look over her shoulder, but when she did her blood ran cold.
Down the road behind her quickly closing ground was the Indian man on a war pony!
“Go, go, go!” Lisa screamed as she kicked Jeb's ribs.
Jeb took off like he had been waiting the whole time for Lisa to realize what was going on and act in her own best interest. The town was just ahead and Lisa was glad for that. Jeb, although a workhorse, was good at short sprints. She hoped he would be able to hold out. She looked over her shoulder again and saw the Indian and the pony just a few horse lengths behind her.
“Come on Jeb,” Lisa screamed. “Come on! Go! Go! Go!”
Jeb's stride reached out as if responding to his mistress’s command. Lisa would have liked to think that Jeb was speeding up in order to save her but she knew it was because Jeb hated to feel another horse behind him. It just didn't feel right to Jeb - that much was easy to tell. Jeb liked to be out in the stretch by himself when he was running, not cramped up with a bunch of horses behind him and around him. Not that Jeb had ever been to an actual horse race or anything like that, it was just what Lisa imagined Jeb's personality to be like.
But as hard as Jeb ran, the Indian kept on closing the gap. Lisa panicked as she realized that she was finally going to come face to face with the Indian.
She didn't want to look. She kept looking straight ahead, hoping that he'd just disappear like in her dream.
Then she realized that he was riding right next to her. He could have jumped her or stopped her horse or something by now. Finally, she looked at the Indian riding beside her.
His tanned, handsome face looked even better in person. His dark eyes told her that he was not trying to harm her. She could tell that he had no evil intent for the moment and that he just wanted to get a close up look at her.
He studied her as if he were about to buy a horse from a rancher. Social grace certainly was missing! After he studied Lisa's body, he let out a yell and his horse almost instantly stopped. He let Lisa get away.
Just as they entered the city limits of the town, Lisa looked back and the Indian on the pony was gone. She could see the froth coming off of Jeb's lips in thick clumps and steered him over to a trough. Lisa jumped off the horse and started to rub him down with a rag she kept in one of the saddlebags. She let Jeb drink a little bit, but pulled him away when he started to drink so much that his stomach would hurt and make him sluggish.
“Good boy,” She cooed. “Good Jeb. Going to have to keep this one between us, all right? Going to have to keep this one from daddy. Frank won't understand, all right? So let's just keep this between us.”
Jeb nodded his head as if in agreement and Lisa fished an apple out of the saddlebag and fed it to him. She felt confused as to what the Indian man really wanted. Wouldn't he have tried to hurt her then if he had ill intent? And if he had some other intent, why didn't he do anything about it?
None of it made any sense unless the Indian wanted to kidnap her so he could bring her back to his tribe and make her live a life of indentured servitude from which there would be no escape. Even though the thought of that was very scary, it turned her on to know that someone so wild and free wanted her.
“Well, guess we better head into town.” Lisa said.
Before the Indian had tried to run her down Lisa had had all kinds of plans when she got to town. Sure, she needed a few horseshoes and some small nails, but she didn't want to waste a perfectly good trip to town by just getting a fe
w things that were needed. She wanted to shop around and see what was going on; maybe even stop by some local watering whole that women gathered at and gossip.
It would be hard to mingle with women, she realized, since she dressed like a man and moved with the freedom of a man. In her experience Lisa found that woman especially didn't like it when she disobeyed the societal norms of the day. Some men could handle it, or at least abide it, especially since Lisa was smart and pulled her own weight. Pulling her own weight seemed to cut her a lot of slack with most men; even those who were used to women that fell into the role of being passive and needing help like they had been taught to their entire lives.
Lisa wondered if she should go to the Sheriff and tell him what happened, but decided against it. If she talked to the Sheriff he would surely come out and try to tell Frank how he was wrong to let his wife do as she pleased, and then Frank would tell the Sheriff off and things would go poorly from there. No, Lisa decided, she would go and find the horse shoe that she needed, a few of the small nails that worked the best, and try to make it home before the sun went down.
She could only hope that the Indian was spooked and took off in fear of a search party going out and looking for him. If the Indian was bold and waited in ambush by the road, Lisa might very well be in some serious trouble. She'd never killed a man before, and wondered if she had it in her.
Part 2: A Trip To The City
Chapter 1
The town hustled and bustled with an astonishing amount of people Lisa wasn't used to. Living in the cottage with Frank sometimes made her forget that there was a world outside of their little homestead, and trips to town like this one were exactly what she needed to rekindle the sense of adventure that had filled her with excitement when she was a child and people had spoken of settling land in the land out west.
Iowa may not have been as far west as California and the gold rushers there, but it was much farther out west than most of her east coast relations would ever venture.
Lisa rode Jeb to the nearest stable and turned him over to the young boy out front.
“Could you just wash him down and baby him a little bit?” Lisa asked.
“Well I sure can miss,” the boy answered, taking the reins from her hands.
Not until after she had walked away to window shop on main street did she realize that she'd never inquired about what the payment would be. She wondered if the young boy would even charge her. She’d heard that sometimes people in town did little things like that no charge as long as the people riding in from the country did something to stir the economy; it was a kind of an incentive and a sharing in the little hardships of country travel that served to lessen their sting. Lisa thought that there might be a chance she could acquire the horse shoe and nails for free as well since they were such small things that many of the city folk would have in abundance just laying around.
She wondered what things she had that the city people didn't, what little things she had access to in her day to day activities that a city slicker would find intriguing. Frank had told her once that a doctor had paid him for a map of where morel mushrooms grew at in the forest. The doctor had gone on to tell Frank that he had an interest in all kinds of fungi, and that any kind of specimens that Frank gathered in his travels should be brought to the doctor and he would buy them for a fair price. The richer folk in the city seemed to have some eccentricities about them, but she found them interesting instead of obnoxious like Frank did.
Lisa walked down the main street, window-shopping as she looked at dresses and household appliances on display behind the big window pains of busy stores. The gangplanks creaked loudly as she walked, making her glance with worry at some of the boards that bowed in badly, as if they were going to break at any moment. She found it strange to think that the city didn't take care of the walkway and that each individual store had the responsibility of fixing up the boards that broke in front of them.
She wasn't an economics professor at some fancy university. It reasoned that if the stores were essential to the survival of the town then the city should see to it that the people could get to them without breaking their necks tripping on a broken board.
She walked into a furniture store. Polished chairs glimmered in the light streaming through the windows, along with tables, bed frames, benches, and all other manner of woodwork. From the looks of it the furniture was being made in the back of the place.
All of the wood work bore a uniformity only achieved by skilled hands working lathe, saw and sand paper over the raw wood itself, followed by several coats of some kind of high gloss sealant. Lisa didn't know a great deal about the creation of furniture, but she did have a good idea as to the basics of wood working - enough of an idea to know that whoever was working wood here knew what they were doing and did it well.
“Oh my, my, my,” Lisa said.
She ran her hand over the arch of a chair's back as she admired it. Frank had made all of the chairs in their log cabin when he'd built it. He was competent enough when it came to woodworking—the chairs had never failed to support his or her weight—but he didn't have the style or flair of a professional. Lisa would have died to be able sit in the chairs in front of her now. She would have loved to bring food off the stove and set it on one of the tables that shone like glass, or to be able to prop her feet up on one of the comfortable looking stools after helping Frank around the fields. She knew that Frank wanted to make a bigger bed for them at some point, but time was hard enough to find, not to mention the lumber.
“Well hello, madam,” a voice said from the back of the store.
A tall man with dark hair and eyes walked toward her while he wiped his hands with a rag. From the look of black oil on his fingers he'd been in the back room staining some new additions to his stores inventory. The man's hands were strong and well muscled, bearing heavy calluses. His chest was broad and the shirt he wore hung unbuttoned, opened down to the middle. Sweat trickled down his brow, and he wiped it again and again while he made his way toward her.
“Hello,” Lisa said, her voice almost catching in her throat.
“What can I do for you today?” the man asked.
“What is your name?” Lisa said. Immediately she blushed a deep red. It wasn't because she’d asked his name; it was how she asked it. She sounded like a young girl at a school dance wondering the name of a pretty boy who had just walked in the room. From the way the man hands slowed down their efforts to wipe the stain from themselves, it was apparent the man had noticed it as well.
God damn it, Lisa thought, way to make yourself look like a country bumpkin.
Lisa glanced down at her own clothes and realized that it was obvious she had come in to town from a nearby homestead.
“You look famished,” the man said. He extended his hand. “My name is Ted. It's a pleasure to meet you.”
Lisa took his hand and squeezed it.
“Ted, it is so nice to meet you. Your wooden creations speak much to your work ethic and character.”
“Well thank you, Lisa,” Ted said. He glanced at the clock above the door then back at Lisa. “You know, I see the dust on your boots and it occurs to me that you just road into town and you looked simply famished. Why don't I close for lunch and we head up top for lunch?”
“Up top?” Lisa said, hesitantly.
“Oh, my, well yes you wouldn't know, would you?” Ted said with a smile. “On top of this building I've set up a table, chairs, an umbrella of sorts to keep the sun off and a music player. Just a little bit ago I set out some rather hot soup to cool as well as some sandwiches to warm in the sun. I'd love for you to join me!”
“I don't know,” Lisa said.
She didn't know why she was having such trouble thinking around this man. Her breath was come more difficult than it had before she'd seen him. Scared to open her mouth in fear of something silly coming out of it she had to really put effort into forming words and sentences.
It had been a long time since anyone h
ad made her feel so beside herself for no reason. It made her think back to when she was an awkward teenager and boys were noticing her all the time and then finally she had noticed one of them. Goodness, this man in front of her looked simply divine, like a sultry, dark haired angel that fell from earth and decided to start making furniture.
“No none-sense, please,” Ted said. “I realize we don't know each other but I often times have guests on top of my shop for lunch, especially people that haven't been in to see it before. I realize I'm new here and it's good to build up a rapport with people, not just for myself as a man but for my business as a whole.”
Lisa didn't know what to say.
“So please,” Ted said as he put her hand on the small of her back. “Just come with me.”
Chapter 2
The sun hung high up in the sky. Its glare would have been harsh had it not been for the cloth umbrella casting its shadow on the table. Lunch had been wonderful. Music had played from a strange machine that Lisa had not seen before, only heard of, while Ted had talked to her about the city and how it had been changing.
There was a new mayor who wanted to establish some kind of economic dominance in the area in many different material mediums. Much of it affected Ted because in his line of work he used wood, cloth, copper, and steel to create furniture. When the mayor, or whoever else the powers that be were, decided to raise the prices or create some kind of tariff, it forced Ted to raise prices. It was either he raise prices, or that he took the hit on the chin and just made less money.
It was hard for Ted to justify not passing the money onto the customers, though. Most of the town’s people loved the mayor while having no idea what his policies were or how he planned on improving the town. As far as Ted was concerned anyone that voted for the mayor could help shoulder the financial burden of his poor policies and decision-making.
Lisa had listened much more than she talked during lunch. Much of the time she had simply admired the view or Ted, depending on whether he was paying attention to where her eyes fell or not. Most of the time he was completely oblivious to anything but what he was talking about, not that he was pretentious, though. He was just the kind of person who passionately believed in what he spoke.
WESTERN ROMANCE: A Settler’s Wife’s Dreams (Contemporary Westerns Historical Romance, Cowboy Romance) Page 3