# # #
The next morning brought with it, along with the rosy fingers of dawn, a sense of resignation within Phoebe’s breast. It seemed odd to her that the arrival of two practical-joking Indians should have punctured the last fragile bubble of hope within her breast, but it had.
Even when she’d first recovered from her ordeal, observed the destruction of her home, and realized she was alone in the world with practically nothing to her name; she’d believed there must be something worth struggling for, if only a shred of dignity. Yesterday, that last pitiful shred had been ripped apart and tossed to the indifferent desert winds in front of her eyes.
Today, though, she heard the jolly chatter of William and Sarah as they vied for the attention of their two fascinating Indian friends, and she sighed.
She would forge on. If her heart wasn’t in it, if there was a heaviness in her soul that seemed to weigh a thousand pounds, she would forge on. For the children. So they’d be able to fend for themselves in Jack Valentine’s new order. The words “new order” curdled in her brain and left her feeling almost queasy.
As for herself, she’d secure employment, take a room perhaps. William and Sarah would be perfectly happy with Uncle Fred and Aunt Mae. She rose and folded up her bedroll, gulping a large lump of gloom, and determined not to let remorse take root within her.
“Are you feeling all right this morning, Miss Honeycutt?”
Jack’s voice startled Phoebe into dropping her bedroll. He stooped to pick it up and Phoebe cleared her throat with some difficulty. His voice disturbed her. It did not drip with contempt, nor did he sound sarcastic.
“Yes, thank you.”
“This is too heavy for you to be carrying around.” He toted the bedroll over to the wagon.
Phoebe’s eyes squinted up mistrustfully. For a moment she only watched him. Then she followed him, murmuring, “I’ve carried it many times before, Mr. Valentine.”
As soon as the words were out, she wished she’d just kept her mouth shut. Every time she mentioned she’d been taking care of herself and the children before he showed up, he reminded her of the miserable hash she’d made of it. He was right, of course, which didn’t make her feel any better at all.
“I know you have, Miss Honeycutt, but you don’t have to anymore. You have three men to take care of you now.”
Phoebe was hard-pressed to make sense of the smile he gave her. It was a beautiful smile, neither sardonic nor condescending. When he smiled in just that way, his eyes didn’t look wicked; they looked heavenly. Wonderful, she thought, bitterness creeping up her spine like crawly bugs. Now she was finding herself attracted to the enemy.
“Am I allowed to help prepare breakfast yet, Mr. Valentine, or shall I sit and wait?” Her voice sounded sharp.
A line from Milton flitted through her head and was discarded as untruthful. Perhaps Milton served when he only sat and waited, but for Phoebe Honeycutt such behavior was anathema. The only worth she’d ever experienced had been through work; for days now even work had been denied her.
“You’ve worked too hard already, Miss Honeycutt. You deserve to rest for a while. There are five of us to see to the meals and the washing-up and the animals.”
She knew he was only being polite. What he really meant was that every time she tried to do something it turned out badly.
“Fine.” Phoebe turned abruptly and went to sit on her rock. There she watched the river while everybody else did the work she was supposed to be doing.
# # #
Jack suspected he was playing with fire, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. He wanted—needed—to be alone with Phoebe. Again today he let William ride Lucky Strike while he drove the wagon. Sarah, who had become fast friends with the jolly Antelope, rode in front of him on his horse.
Because Phoebe said not a word for or against such a scheme, a circumstance that troubled him greatly, Jack said, “Well, be careful, Sarah. Antelope, if she gets tired bring her back to the wagon.” He turned to Phoebe. “That all right with you, Miss Honeycutt?”
Phoebe shrugged. Jack sighed and watched Pete and William trot on ahead, Antelope and the giggling Sarah trailing behind.
“Sarah washed your veil, Miss Honeycutt. Better put it back on. Don’t want any freckles to sneak up on you.” He tried for a light note, hoping Phoebe would cheer up. He held the veil out in an almost supplicating manner.
She murmured, “It doesn’t matter,” and made no move to take the delicate fabric from his fingers.
“Why doesn’t it matter today when it mattered yesterday?”
She shrugged. “Yesterday I cared. Today I don’t.”
“Oh? Why’s that?” At least she was talking to him. He figured if he could keep her talking, maybe he’d discover some way to snap her out of her odd gloomy mood.
“I don’t care about freckles.”
“Why not?”
“Freckles don’t matter.”
She sounded unutterably discouraged. Jack wanted to grab and kiss some life back into her. And then shake her until her teeth rattled for worrying him this way.
“What about the example you’re setting for your niece, Miss Honeycutt?” He attempted to make his voice sound censorious, but was only moderately successful.
“Sarah has many others to whom she can look for an example, Mr. Valentine.”
Jack had already suspected what was at the core of Phoebe’s problem: she was feeling left out and useless. It didn’t make him feel any better to have his suspicions confirmed. “Now, how can you say that? You’re her aunt.”
Jack slanted her a look and saw one bandaged hand lift and flop uselessly back into her lap. When she murmured, “It just doesn’t matter. Nothing matters anymore,” he finally lost his temper.
Pulling the team to a halt, he turned and frowned at her. “Damn it all, Miss Honeycutt, will you stop it?”
Phoebe peered at him, obviously puzzled. “Stop what?”
“Stop being so—so—so damned passive!”
“Passive?”
“Dull!”
“Dull?”
“Dead!”
“Dead?”
“Stop repeating everything I say, too, damn it.”
He was slightly encouraged when he saw her brows dip a teensy bit.
“What on earth are you talking about, Mr. Valentine?”
Did she sound the faintest bit peeved? Jack forged ahead, heartened.
“I’m talking about you, Miss Honeycutt. You’re carrying on as if you don’t matter to the children.”
To Jack’s distress, Phoebe’s brows undipped and her face smoothed out into a blank again. “I don’t expect I do much.” She looked at him out of the corner of her eye and he might have been encouraged if she’d showed any animation at all. But she didn’t. “You know they don’t need me.”
“Oh, don’t be foolish, Miss Honeycutt.” He hoped calling her foolish would spark her temper.
A lift of her shoulders told Jack it didn’t. He thought hard for a moment and a brilliant thought struck him. “What do you mean they don’t need you, anyway? If it weren’t for you, Sarah’d be dead right now.”
Again, her brows dipped and Jack’s spirits lifted. “What are you talking about now? That’s not true and you know it.”
Jack figured an “Aha” would probably be inappropriate, but he did look at her with an air of triumph. “No?”
After a tiny pause, she said, “No.”
Smirking, Jack asked, “What about the rattlesnake, then?”
He had the pleasure of watching her beautiful eyes go round and hearing her say, after a second’s pause, “Oh.”
“‘Oh,’ my granny’s goat. You saved her life, Miss Honeycutt, by your quick thinking and fast actions.”
Another shrug of her slim shoulders made him want to shake her again.
“Anybody would have done the same,” she said dispiritedly. “Nobody likes snakes.”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” Lord, this woman could be aggravating. A
nother thought smote him and he asked, “What about Basteau?”
This time she frowned in earnest. “What in heaven’s name does Mr. Basteau have to do with anything?” She sounded snippier than before, and Jack felt a surge of pleasure.
“If you hadn’t hit him upside the head with that pan, he might have killed you all.”
Phoebe allowed herself to frown for a moment before she drooped again. Her defeated attitude irritated the hell out of Jack. Damn it, the woman seemed determined to belittle herself, and he was sick to death of it.
Really peeved now, he snapped, “You’re acting like a spoiled child who’s been told to sit in a corner, Miss Honeycutt, and I want you to stop it right now.”
Jack was sure he detected a burgeoning scowl on her face, and wondered if he’d managed to nudge her into feeling something at last. When she said, “Don’t be ridiculous, Mr. Valentine,” he was sure of it.
“It’s not ridiculous. You’re driving me crazy!”
Phoebe stared at him for a full minute before she gave one tiny, miffy sniff and her expression blossomed into a full-fledged frown. Jack felt his heart soar. Maybe she just needed to be really good and riled. He’d be happy to oblige.
“You think just because a couple of Indians came into camp and made you feel stupid, it’s all right to sit on the wagon and sulk. Well, you’re wrong, damn it.”
He heard her take a deep breath and hoped it was one of indignation. “That’s absurd, Mr. Valentine!”
“Absurd? You’re the one who’s being absurd. Somebody tries to heal your hands and you have to sit by and watch other people do your work for a few days and all of a sudden you think your life’s worthless. You start wallowing in self-pity and decide to go get yourself all freckled up. Now that’s absurd.”
When she looked at him this time, her lips had gone flat, her cheeks were pink, she was stiff as a poker, and Jack knew he’d hit the nail on the head. He didn’t dare ease up on her until he knew she was out of her funk.
As snidely as possible, and with a careless shrug, he said, “Now you’re frowning, Belle. Better watch it or you’ll end up with freckles and wrinkles.”
She glared at him and triumph surged in his breast.
“Now put this damned veil on and quit sulking!”
A little intake of breath—almost a gasp—from Phoebe made him feel like singing. This was working!
“I am not sulking, Mr. Valentine,” she said, her voice harder than he’d heard it for a day or more.
“No?” He smirked at her, willing to risk having his face slapped if it would bring her back among the living. “That’s what it looks like from here. Sulking and whining.”
He saw her lips purse up indignantly and added, “Whining, pouting and sulking like a spoiled baby,” to vex her further.
Her brows arched so high, they nearly met her hairline. Her chin jutted out. Her cheeks flamed. “I am a Honeycutt,” Phoebe told him in what he expected was her finest southern drawl. “A Honeycutt neither sulks nor whines!”
Because he was afraid his joy would show, he turned around and snapped the reins to get the mules moving again. “Couldn’t prove it by me.” He tried very hard to make his voice dry and sarcastic. What he wanted to do was hug her.
“Put your damned veil on. Don’t want that precious Honeycutt complexion to get spots, now do we?” He let her veil trickle through his fingers and flutter out upon the breeze, for all the world as though he thought her complexion an idiotic thing to concern herself with.
“I don’t want that veil, Mr. Valentine!”
“Why the hell not?”
“Will you please stop swearing at me! I don’t want it because . . . because—”
“Well?”
Phoebe sucked in a big breath and glared at him as if she’d sooner pop him in the nose than explain herself. “Because I don’t believe it to be—necessary to a female riding in a wagon across the frontier!”
It took Jack a few seconds to realize what she’d said, then he stared at her. She glared back.
“And don’t you dare say a word, Mr. Valentine. I know you think I’m stupid, but I’ve never ridden across these stupid plains before.” She crossed her arms and sat as straight as old Miss Pennyfeather used sit in the classroom back home. She looked mad as hell about her confession, too. Jack decided a triumphant “I told you so!” would not be in the best interest of the future serenity of their trip. He said nothing.
“What about you, Mr. Valentine?” she asked after a brief silence. “Do you enjoy browbeating me? First you ridicule my veil, and then you practically force me to wear it. I’d say that’s a little inconsistent on your part, wouldn’t you?”
“Now, just a minute, Miss Honeycutt.” Jack was stung. Hell, he’d just been trying to tease her out of the blue-devils.
“Just a minute, my foot! Why, you’re nothing but a big bully!”
He would have told her what was what except that Antelope rode up with Sarah and said, “Big Spring is comin’ up, Jack.”
“Thank God for small favors,” Jack muttered.
“And I think our little princess here’s tired of ridin’.”
“My butt’s sore, Aunt Phoebe.”
Jack couldn’t help but grin when he heard Phoebe’s horrified, “Sarah!”
By damn, even if she was the most ungrateful female he’d ever met, she was back to being her irritating, old, southern belleish self. Jack couldn’t have been happier unless it were Santa Fe instead of Big Spring in front of them.
Antelope grinned, too, when he helped Sarah down from the horse and into the wagon.
“Well, it does,” she muttered. Still, she looked abashed at having uttered her impulsive truth.
“Don’t whine, Sarah,” Phoebe commanded firmly.
“Must run in the family,” Jack said just loud enough for Phoebe to hear. Her shoulders stiffened, and he grinned.
Phoebe didn’t condescend to reply to him. “You may sit between Mr. Valentine and me, Sarah dear.”
“Thank you, Aunt Phoebe,” Sarah said with great formality. To Antelope, she said, more cheerfully and infinitely less formally, “Thanks, Antelope. Maybe you can give me another lesson tomorrow.”
“Glad to, Sarey gal.” To Jack and Phoebe he said, “She’s learnin’ real fast.”
“Had a good time, did you?” Jack was glad the little girl seemed so chipper. Not everybody took readily to life on the trail, but William and little Sarah didn’t seem at all fazed by the hardships this trip entailed.
“Oh, yes.” Sarah sounded enraptured and Jack chuckled.
“What kind of lessons is Mr. Antelope giving you, Sarah, darlin’?”
“Oh, he ain’t ‘Mister Antelope,’ Aunt Phoebe. He’s just Antelope. He told me so.”
Sarah’s head nodded up and down and Jack could see Phoebe sit up straight and square her shoulders.
Phoebe said, “I expect one must make exceptions when one is in the company of people from a culture different from one’s own.”
“Just wait until you get to Santa Fe, if you want to see people from other cultures, Sarah.”
Although Jack spoke to the child, his words were for Phoebe’s benefit. He wanted to keep her interested and, if possible, annoyed. He knew he’d succeeded when he saw her head whip around and she pinned him with a hard stare.
“Really?” Sarah sounded as though the opportunity to mingle with people from other cultures was one she’d been pining for all her life.
“Sure thing.”
“Golly,” the little girl said. Then she winced and shot her aunt a look. “Sorry, Aunt Phoebe.”
Jack said, “Have to watch our Ps and Qs, huh, Sarah?”
“I reckon.”
Phoebe ignored both Sarah’s “golly” and Jack. “What did Antelope teach you today, dear?”
“He was teachin’ me to ride, Aunt Phoebe. It’s so much fun!”
Jack grinned and gave her an approving nod. “The Comanche are about the best horsemen on th
e plains, I reckon, Sarah. You couldn’t ask for a better teacher than Antelope.”
“Ain’t he, though?” Sarah looked as though she might pop with excitement.
“But Sarah, dear, how could he teach you to ride when you don’t have a proper saddle?”
Sarah exclaimed in a sprightly voice, “Oh, you don’t need a saddle, Aunt Phoebe. The way Antelope does it, you just give the horse signals with your knees and stuff, and it does whatever you tell it that way. His pony’s named Fleet, and oh, he surely is.”
“You rode astride?”
All at once Jack wondered if it was such a good idea to have coddled Phoebe out of her snit. “Of course she rode astride, Miss Honeycutt. You didn’t honestly expect a couple of Comanches to run around the desert armed with a sidesaddle, did you?”
“I didn’t expect to meet any Comanches at all, Mr. Valentine. And I certainly didn’t expect one of them to teach my eight-year-old niece how to ride astride!”
“Well, I guess it’s just too damned bad the desert isn’t crawling with southern gentlemen with sidesaddles in their pockets then, isn’t it? The Comanches are the best horsemen in the world. People would pay a fortune for lessons from one of them.”
“Nobody I know, certainly.”
“That’s probably because the only people you knew are washed-out, in-bred, weak-brained Georgians!”
“What?”
Sarah put her hands over her ears. Phoebe noticed the little girl’s gesture and muttered, “I’m sorry, Sarah darlin’. I allowed my temper to get the better of me, and I was wrong to do so.”
Jack grumbled, “Sorry, Sarah.” Then, because he couldn’t help it, he added, “But you couldn’t ask for a better teacher than Antelope. And if you’re going to live in Santa Fe, I don’t expect you’re ever going to see another sidesaddle again in your life, either.”
“Really?” Sarah apparently found Jack’s information both fascinating and welcome.
“Really?” Phoebe apparently found it horrifying and exceedingly unwelcome.
Jack couldn’t restrain his smirk. “Really.”
Phoebe huffed and didn’t speak again.
After a spate of dusty, uncomfortable silence, Sarah yawned and began to sag against Phoebe’s side. Soon the little girl was sound asleep. Neither of the adults in the wagon said another word until they were rumbling up to the piles of bottles and cans and litter that signaled the outskirts of Big Spring.
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