Lily raised her chin. “Any unwelcome callers will find themselves looking down the barrel of a twelve-gauge shotgun.”
They had reached the makeshift cabin, and Lily led the way over the threshold. There were gaps in the floor, and all the glass had broken out of the windows except for a few jagged shards. “What do you know about shootin’?” Velvet demanded, shuddering a little as she glanced around the one-room shack. Just being there probably brought back unpleasant memories for her.
“I used to hunt grouse with my brother,” Lily said firmly, “and I’ve got a gun. See? It’s right over there, in the corner.”
Velvet put down her bucket beside the stove and walked over to inspect the shotgun. She let out a long, low whistle. “Where did you get this?”
“I .. . borrowed it from Caleb.”
“Without him knowin’, I reckon,” Velvet added. “You’d better aim good when you fire this, Lily, because it’s only going to shoot one shell at a time. You’ll have to stop every time and reload.”
Lily was distinctly uneasy. “Put that thing down, for heaven’s sake. You’re making me nervous!”
“You ain’t smart enough to be nervous,” Velvet countered.
“If you weren’t practically the only friend I have,” Lily returned, her cheeks flaming with anger, “I’d be insulted right now.”
Velvet shook her head. “They say the good Lord looks after fools and drunks. I hope He’s keepin’ an eye on you.”
“I’m no drunk!” Lily flared.
“That’s so,” Velvet replied meaningfully.
Lily decided to change the subject before she found herself friendless. “If you and Hank are going to Tylerville, you could do me a big favor.”
“What’s that?” For the first time Lily noticed how Velvet’s eyes were sparkling, and how her skin had a pretty pink blush behind it.
“I’ve ordered some things from Spokane. I expect they’ve arrived by now, and I’d like you to tell the man at the freight office to ship them on out here.”
Velvet nodded. “That’s easy enough.”
Hank was calling her name from outside.
“Time to go,” Velvet said, beaming. She not only jumped at Hank’s command, it seemed to Lily that she liked being ordered around.
Lily shook her head in disgust. Now that Caleb was probably out of her life for good, she was never going to fall into that kind of trap again. She’d be beholden to no man.
In five minutes Velvet and Hank were rolling over the hillside toward Tylerville in their big wagon. Lily devoutly hoped they would be back soon.
Presently the soldiers returned to the fort, including a distracted Wilbur, and Lily was alone on her land, in her own house, for the first time. She immediately took up the shotgun and carried it outside.
After taking a shell from her apron pocket and putting it carefully into the wpon’s chamber, she pointed the shotgun away from the house and Dancer, who was tethered nearby, and drew back on the trigger. There was a deafening explosion, and Lily was flung backwards onto the ground, the butt of the shotgun striking her square in the stomach as she fell.
It sure wasn’t anything like using a .22 caliber to hunt grouse.
“Damnation!” she shouted, struggling back to her feet. Dancer was whinnying and pulling at the stake Wilbur had tied him to, trying to escape.
Lily decided to master the shotgun another day and carried the weapon back inside. She made a fire in the stove with the fresh, pitchy wood she and Wilbur had cut, and as she permitted herself to remember the kiss, her cheeks were as hot as the flames she’d just ignited.
With a little wail of despair she went over to the rough board table that had been Velvet’s and collapsed into a chair. While she hadn’t wanted to make love with Wilbur, she hadn’t been repulsed, either. That kiss had made her feel all warm and achy inside—there was no denying it.
Lily wondered how such a kiss would affect her in a month, or a year, when she didn’t have Caleb around to ease the strange tensions that rose constantly within her. Would she be drinking brandy then, the way her mother had, and welcoming men into her bed?
She paused and laid her hands on her abdomen. If there was indeed a baby growing inside her, would she eventually decide the child was in her way and send him or her off into the world alone to make its own way?
“No,” Lily insisted out loud. “No!”
With resolution she went about putting boards over the holes where the windows had been so that the cold air wouldn’t get in come nightfall. When that was done she fixed herself an early supper of scrambled eggs and fried pork from the few provisions she’d brought along.
After heating water on the small cook stove and washing the dishes she decided to make up the bed with the blankets, sheets, and pillows she’d borrowed from Caleb’s house. She had a few books of his, too, as well as a number of kitchen utensils, but she was confident he wouldn’t miss the items before she could return them.
The mattress was lumpy, and there was a great canyon in the middle where Velvet and her lovers had probably met in unbridled passion. With a great deal of effort, for it was an awkward task, Lily turned it over.
There were stains on the other side.
Wrinkling her nose, Lily shifted the mattress again, then briskly made it up with starched linen sheets and heavy blankets. She couldn’t afford to be fussy until her own bed arrived.
Nightfall brought strange animal sounds from the woods, as well as a persistent breeze that seemed to flow up through the cracks in the floor and seep right through the bottom of Lily’s bed. Since she’d forgotten to borrow lamps from Caleb, or even candles, there was no light at all; the shack was as dark as a bank vault in hell.
Lily settled down between the sheets, reminding herself that Velvet and Hank would be back from Tylerville in a couple of days. It would be much easier to sleep then, knowing she had neighbors.
Chapter
18
There had to be some mistake.
Caleb lifted his right hand in a weary signal, and the troops behind him came to an obedient halt.
“What the hell?” muttered Sergeant Fortner, who rode beside him, standing up in his stirrups to squint at the smoke rising in a neat gray plume in the distance. “Indians?”
“More likely settlers,” Caleb answered with a shake of his head. He wondered what Lily would say when she found out there were squatters on that precious three hundred and twenty acres of hers. “We’ll take a closer look.”
The men riding behind Caleb were hot, dusty, and saddlesore, but there were no murmurs of protest when he led the troops off the direct route to Fort Deveraux. They were aware, down to a man, of Judd Ingram sweating in the stockade, wondering whether he was going to be whipped or not, and none of them were willing to cross the major.
Caleb allowed himself a grim smile at this realization and spurred his gelding to a quicker pace. Fact was, he wanted to get back to the fort, too. He wanted a hot bath, a steak dinner, and Lily, in that order.
He shifted in the saddle to accommodate the discomfort thoughts of Lily always aroused. This time he wasn’t going to stop making love to her until she begged him to marry her, until she admitted she belonged at his side.
Lily’s lumber and other supplies had arrived two days before, and thanks to the industry of Wilbur and his colleagues, her new house was going up rapidly. There was already framework and a floor, and soon there would be a roof and windows.
Lily had made plans to convert the shack into a chicken coop, reserving part of it for a stall for Dancer, and she was busily hoeing out a plot for her garden when the cry went up.
“Troops!” one of the men yelled, pointing.
Lily turned her head, and sure enough, there was a cavalry patrol approaching—led by Caleb Halliday. She drew a deep breath and closed her eyes for a moment, composing herself.
She was watching intently when Caleb halted the patrol and spoke to the man at his side. The sergeant saluted, then
turned his horse and shouted a command to the men. Soon they were all riding toward the fort, and Caleb approached alone.
His glittering golden eyes swept over Wilbur and the others with all the friendliness of scalding hot butter. Wilbur, who had been nailing in a window casing, was the only man brave enough to approach the major.
“Major Halliday, sir,” he said, with a crisp salute.
Caleb didn’t bother to return the courtesy. “What’s going on here, Corporal?” he demanded.
“We’re building a house, sir.”
“At ease, Corporal. I can see that for myself. You and your men are dismissed.”
If he’d been talking to Lily, she would he wanted to know why he’d asked in the first place, since he could see what was going on with his own eyes, but Wilbur just cleared his throat and said, “Excuse me, sir, but I’m on leave, and the other men are off-duty.”
“Does that mean you don’t have to follow my orders?”
“No, sir.”
“That’s correct, Corporal. I repeat, you are dismissed.”
“Yes, sir.” After casting one beleaguered look in Lily’s direction Wilbur turned and strode back to the men to relay the order.
Lily was now too angry to be intimidated. She stormed over to where Caleb sat, still mounted on his horse, and looked up into his face. “It just so happens that I need these men to help me finish my house,” she pointed out.
Caleb swung one leg over his saddle horn and dismounted. “As you were, Corporal,” he called to Wilbur and the others. Then he took Lily by the arm and hustled her away. They were nearly to the trees before he stopped.
“What did that mean,” Lily asked with hopeful defiance, “when you said ’as you were’?”
“See for yourself,” Caleb bit out, gesturing angrily toward the house. The soldiers were picking up their hammers and saws and going back to work.
Lily folded her arms. “Thank you,” she said in a saucy tone of voice. “Now, if you’ll just get back on your horse and ride out—”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Caleb informed her coldly. His jaw ground when he closed his mouth, and he was glaring at Lily’s house as though he could set it on fire with a look.
Fury flushed through Lily’s system, turning her pink. “I beg your pardon.”
“If you want to play this game, then so be it,” he snapped. “We’ll play settler until you finally learn what a miserable, hardscrabble life it really is!” He’d swept his hat off his head, and when he slapped it against his thigh, dust flew.
“You mean you’re going to marry me?” Lily dared to ask, coughing.
“Hell, no!” Caleb retorted in a raspy whisper. “I wouldn’t marry a stubborn, sneaky little chit like you for anything!”
Lily might have slapped him if she hadn’t been so aware that Wilbur and the others were looking on, no matter how disinterested they might pretend to be. “Well, I know I’m stubborn,” Lily admitted grudgingly. “But sneaky?”
“Yes, sneaky!” Caleb hissed, whacking his hat against his leg again. “I turn my back for a week, and here you are, charming my men into building your damned house for you!”
Lily was staring up at him in confusion and concern. “Caleb, just what is it you plan to do?”
He stormed past her toward the new house, and Lily was compelled to follow. Clasping her skirts in her hands, she scrambled alongside him in an effort to keep up with his long strides.
As he passed the tool wagon Wilbur had brought out that morning from Fort Deveraux he snatched up a pick.
“Caleb!” Lily cried, terrified that he meant to destroy her cabin.
But he went around the cabin to the land behind it and plunged the pick into the ground with a mighty swing.
“Right here!” he bellowed, no longer caring, evidently, that some of his troops were there to witness his fit of temper. “I’m building my house right here!”
Lily stared. “But you can’t, Caleb. Someone else has claim to that land.”
“The hell I can’t,” he barked back. “I filed before I ever had the misfortune to meet you!”
Lily’s eyes went wide. “You’ve claimed the land adjoining mine?”
Caleb grinned, but his gaze fairly crackled with fury. “I have indeed.”
“Well, I don’t want your house so close by,” Lily fussed, folding her arms again and stomping over to look up into his face.
Caleb pointed to the ground. “Get off my land,” he ordered.
“Everybody else around here might jump when you give an order, Caleb Halliday,” Lily told him, “but I’m not afraid of you.”
“You’d better be,” Caleb drawled, advancing on her so that she was forced to retreat.
Lily went inside her shack, wildly embarrassed that Wilbur and the others had witnessed the scene, and slammed the door. Before she could shoot the bolt, however, Caleb came in. Seething, he flung his hat aside so that it landed on Lily’s new bed.
“Now you’re on my land,” Lily pointed out, inching backwards. The shack was mostly in shadow, though shafts of light struggled inside through the cracks in the boards over the windows.
Caleb’s eyes shifted to something in the corner and went narrow, and a dangerous calm replaced his outrage. “My shotgun,” he said disbelievingly. “Isn’t that my shotgun?”
“I only borrowed it,” Lily said, squaring her shoulders. “You shouldn’t make such an issue of a little thing like that.”
“Have you fired it?”
Lily thought of the large round bruise on her stomach where the butt of the weapon had struck her when she pulled the trigger. She wasn’t about to talk about that, or the fact that the force had thrown her ignobly to the ground. “Yes, sir,” she said, putting a pointed and mocking emphasis on the word “sir.”
Caleb let out a long sigh and shoved splayed fingers through his dirty hair. “Lily, you could hurt yourself with that thing. You’ve got no damned business being out here without a man to protect you.”
Lily ladled water into her shiny new enamel coffeepot and set it on the stove with a bang. “Well, I won’t have to worry anymore, will I? Now I’ll have you for a neighbor!”
“You could be a little happier about it.”
“Why should I be? Velvet and Hank are settling just over the next hill. What do I need with a man who won’t marry me, who thinks I’m sneaky? Besides, you’re not interested in settling here—you just want to be handy so you can gloat every time I make a mistake!”
Caleb chuckled ruefully and shook his head. “To think I actually imagined you’d be waiting for me at home.”
“This is home,” Lily said tautly, spooning coffee grounds into the pot.
“We’ll see how you feel when the snow is six feet deep and you’ve been eating beans for two months straight,” Caleb replied. He drew back a chair and sat right down at Lily’s new table without even waiting for a nod. “God, I’m tired.”
Lily felt sympathy for Caleb even though she resented him heartily for refusing to marry her. “Did you really file a claim on the next half-section?” she asked in a more moderate tone.
“Yes,” he answered, running the fingers of both hands through his hair again.
Lily imagined him as her husband, stretched out in his bathtub at the fort, imagined herself washing his back, and she had to turn away again and pretend an interest in the coffee to hide her expression. “You can’t just leave the army and start up a farm,” she reasoned in a small voice.
“Yes, I can. My tour of duty is finished next month, and I’ve got plenty of leave saved up. Colonel Tibbet won’t like it, but I’ll be back here tonight, Lily.”
“Tonight?” Lily’s voice was a squeak, and she couldn’t help turning around to look at Caleb. “Where would you sleep?”
His cleft chin was set at a stubborn angle. “In a tent,” he answered flatly.
Lily swallowed, filled with the small, warm aches that Caleb’s presence always engendered in her. “It looks like it migh
t rain. Maybe you should sleep in here.”
His gaze practically flayed her alive. “Not on your life. I’m not going to marry you, Lily, and I’m not about to share your bed, either.”
It was humiliating to make such an offer and be rejected. “If you feel that way, then perhaps it would be better if you just went on with your life and forgot all about me.”
“I’m sure it would be better,” Caleb agreed, “but I’d never get a moment’s peace for wondering if you were being carried off by rogue Indians or raped by outlaws.”
Lily felt a little better. “Then you do care?”
“Yes,” Caleb admitted grudgingly, “but if I can find a way to put you out of my mind, I’m going to do it. That will be the day I ride out of here and never look back.”
Lily suffered a chill, envisioning that. “Good riddance, that’s what I’ll say,” she bluffed.
Caleb pushed back his chair and fetched his hat from the bed, but not befre he put his hand on the mattress and pressed to make the bedsprings squeak.
The sound was so loud that Lily cringed, knowing what Wilbur and his men would think. “Caleb, stop!” she cried angrily.
Caleb only grinned at her and repeated the process, once, then again, then again and again.
“Damn you,” Lily whispered, “stop it.”
He paused, watching the color climb her face. After deliberately stalling for several minutes he put on his hat, swatted Lily on the bottom as he passed her, and left the shack whistling. Loudly.
Lily was so mortified that she could not bring herself to go outside, even after she heard Caleb riding away. She was sitting at the table, holding a coffee mug in both hands and sipping the brew like a survivor of some cataclysm, when a knock sounded at the door and Wilbur put his head inside.
“You all right, Miss Lily?” he asked, and Lily could see in the stream of sunlight he’d let in that his face was red as a ruby.
Lily swallowed hard. “I’m perfectly fine,” she lied. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
Lily and the Major Page 27