Sahara Splendor

by Charlotte Hubbard

  part of her plan that came to her so full-blown and perfect last night. “I’ll have help,” she replied in a low, triumphant voice. “I just happen to know of a camp foreman whose letters to his brother bemoan the loneliness of the lumberjacks. Andy Glascock sounds like a decent, hardworking man any woman could love, and I’m counting on his sincerity to get this project rolling for me. I sent him a letter this morning. With money to cover some lumber and supplies.”

  She laughed and took Roxanne’s slender hand when the blonde’s mouth fell open. “He’ll sign up men to build our boardinghouses, and oversee the—”

  “Our boardinghouses?”

  Pausing, Sahara studied the deceptively strong woman whose wrapper sagged around her thin shoulders. “I’m hoping you and Mitch will join me. We’ll have Charlie Oswald and Bobby along, and—well, why mope around here, where our dreams fell apart? Personally, I can’t wait to be doing something, somewhere else.”

  “I can understand that, but…well, my furniture’ll be along any day now, and—”

  “Bring it. We’ll each have our own quarters, you know,” she coaxed. “You’ll appreciate having familiar things. A touch of home.”

  Roxanne glanced away, thinking. “Mitch’ll need schooling, and—”

  “Some of our women’re bound to be teachers. And it’ll be good for your boy to grow up around men who work hard for a living.”

  There was a long pause, and then Mrs. Pruitt focused her pale blue eyes on Sahara’s. “I—I’m honored that you’re asking me to go, but…well, maybe I need a little time to think about it.”

  “That’s fine. Oswald and my brother should be back in town in a few days, and by then I can have our supplies for the trip lined up.” Sahara smiled at her and then caught a slight movement at the door to the bedroom behind her. “What do you think about riding out to Oregon, Mitch?” she called across the suite. “Out to where the forests are full of little animals, and the lumberjacks’ll teach you how to swing an axe and sing bawdy songs?”

  As his mother groaned, the little boy poked his head out, wide-eyed. “Will I finally get to ride up in the driver’s box?”

  “You bet. Best seat on the coach.”

  Mitchell hopped up and down, his cotton nightshirt shimmying with his excitement. “Oh, Mama, can we? Can we go with Sahara, pl-e-ease?”

  Roxanne let out a resigned sigh, but she was chuckling for the first time in days. “Sahara Spade, you’re the schemingest little—I guess you know I can’t refuse you now, if I want any peace for the rest of my life.”

  “I’m counting on it.”

  “All right, then, I can have us ready by week’s end,” she replied softly. Mrs. Pruitt still looked weary and fragile, but there was a determined shine in her eyes now, a faint patch of pink in her cheeks. “I don’t understand how you’re going to make all this work, yet somehow I know you will.”

  Chapter 24

  Dan Madigan watched his wife sashay down the sidewalk toward the hotel and knew immediately that she had plans for a grand adventure—plans that didn’t include him. Her honey-red hair rode proudly atop her head, she smiled saucily at each man she met, and the skirts of her flower-print gown swayed with her purpose. How like her to recover so quickly from their cataclysmic spat. And damn her for it!

  He had his own mission, however, and although it wasn’t a journey of his choosing, he welcomed the chance to think about something other than the spritely woman who’d cast him out. Madigan realized he had every right to swing Sahara over his shoulder and force her to live with him until death did them part—just as he knew that was exactly the wrong approach to take. Sahara was her own woman. He would find a way to make her his woman again, but it would require time and careful planning. She would have to accept his selling Spade Express as the only sound business decision he could’ve made, under the circumstances. An act of love and protection to insure her future.

  Meanwhile, he was returning to the ranch. Besides being a summons from a frantic Jennifer Spade, the telegram he received this morning was a ticket to tying up loose ends and mending a few fences:

  HURRY HOME STOP RUSTLERS STEALING US BLIND, THREATENING MY LIFE STOP. HANDS READY TO QUIT IF YOU DON’T SMOOTH THINGS OVER.STOP I LOVE AND MISS YOU DESPERATELY STOP. YOUR DARLING JENNY STOP.

  Madigan shook his head as he read it again, wondering how much truth was behind her terse message. By now she could’ve seen Jenkins’s stories about him and Sahara being partners, and jumped to some very peeved conclusions—yet he doubted it. Jennifer didn’t exactly pore over the papers. She’d probably returned from St. Louis bored and needed someone to sharpen her claws on.

  The next morning when he boarded the eastbound stage, Dan knew it would be a long, painful journey. Already the fares had nearly doubled, and he flinched each time he heard the lash slap horses that were driven at a merciless pace. Ben Holladay insisted on speed from his teams and drivers—as the accounts of ruined horseflesh on his previously acquired lines attested to—and the floor of the coach was heaped with mail sacks, so his bent knees bounced nearly to his chin every time the wheels struck a rut.

  Fortunately, only four other passengers were sharing the coach, but none were so vibrant and interesting as the young lady he’d fallen in love with on the trip west. He spent long hours gazing out the window, brushing dust off himself, and having his very serious thoughts jostled roughly from his mind on the poorer stretches of road.

  He also tried to discuss the sale of Spade Express with way station keepers during the brief stops for fresh teams and meals. These stalwart men and women, so charmed by Sahara earlier, heard him out with their lips pinched in grim lines and cold, cold eyes. It was a gut-wrenching task, but Madigan felt he owed them an explanation.

  “This warn’t Miz Spade’s idea, was it?” more than one employee accused.

  “No, but it couldn’t be avoided,” he offered lamely. Only Sahara’s rejection cut him more deeply than those he received from her loyal employees, and when the coach stopped at Elizabeth Kent’s farmstead, Dan’s heart shriveled beneath her agonized stare.

  “Well…that paints a different color on things, doesn’t it?” she whispered hoarsely. Her hand went absently to the swell of her belly as her eyes misted over. “For Sahara, I could hang on and trust things’d work out, but now…well, I just don’t know what to do.”

  He felt like a piece of wet laundry being wrung between her brown, calloused hands. Dan couldn’t eat the generous meal she’d prepared for their arrival, so he wandered past the corrals, recalling the gruesome aftermath of the Indian attack…the instinctive bond between Elizabeth, Roxanne, and Sahara at the burial…his woman’s lush, moonlit body as she shivered in the creek, beneath Tom Underwood’s shadow—and then as she gave herself to him in the cool, sweet grass beneath these cottonwoods.

  Would one unfortunate decision haunt him forever? Was there no forgetting the sight and sound and wild-flower scent of Sahara, even for a moment?

  Madigan was so relieved to reach Atchison that he paid no heed to dust-encrusted clothes that smelled of old sweat, or to the grizzled growth on his cheeks, or to the bone weariness that made his steps drag along the street to the livery stable. Once the buggy was hitched to a spirited Spade horse, he was in it and headed toward God knows what at the ranch.

  And God knows, it could be no worse than the ordeal he’d already undergone…could it?

  Jennifer’s horrified stare confirmed just how disreputable he appeared as she watched him shuffle to the porch. “My Lord, what happened? You look so…?”

  Madigan stopped at the bottom of the steps, squinting up at her. The late-day sun was broiling him, and he had a pounding headache and a growling stomach; and he was hardly in the mood for this simpering little harpy’s insults. But they had to talk—which, if he was to avoid any hissy-fits, would require utmost diplomacy on his part.

  He forced a smile. “The advertisements tend to glorify the ride between here and the Rockies,” he an
swered wryly. “Just grateful we had no Indian attacks or bandits on the way home. I’d appreciate it if you’d have Pearly send a supper tray to the cabin, and request some hot water be brought over for my bath. We’ll talk after I’m more presentable, if you don’t mind.”

  Miss Jenny’s eyes never left him while he spoke, and her pale, pampered hand wandered to the base of her ivory neck as she nodded. He’d done the right thing, appealing to her mistress-of-the-manner sensibilities. His walk around the closest corrals had revealed no sign of the dire emergency in her telegram—as he’d expected—so he planned to be shaved, relaxed, and fed before he challenged her about hailing him home under such drastic pretenses. But he’d no sooner eased himself into the blissful, steaming water than he sensed her presence in the doorway.

  “Jennifer, I’m in no mood for games,” he growled.

  He heard her enter behind him, her step slow and purposeful. “I brought your supper,” she murmured. “Please don’t berate me for being happy to see you after all these weeks, Daniel.”

  Madigan held his breath, trying to anticipate her. Jenny Spade only used his full name when she wanted something, and when she’d finally circled around to stand in front of him, he was startled by the brazen hunger on her face. Her powder blue gown was now shoved down to reveal her smooth, cream-colored shoulders and the swell of her breasts, and she was studying him with the calculated sultriness typical of Miss Zerelda’s girls.

  “Oh, Daniel, you look so…”

  “Filthy,” he interjected, shifting slightly beneath the water—which, he realized, hid nothing from her gaze.

  “…strong. So manly and vital, next to those bankers and lawyers I tolerated at the town house,” she whispered. “I—I’ve never felt all fluttery, just looking at a man—”

  “And you’d better trot yourself right back to your room,” Madigan ordered. Yet she was inching toward him, her fingers fidgeting with the ribbon that ran through the gathered neckline of her gown. “Dammit, Jenny, haven’t you heard? I expected you to be at least a little put out when you learned Sahara and I became partners. It was in all the papers.”

  She raised one coal black eyebrow, but undulated to her knees, displaying her lightly flushed cleavage as she positioned herself beside the wooden tub. “Sahara,” she muttered, coaxing the soap from his hand. “How like her, to see you only as a business asset—a means to more of Daddy’s money. I see you as a man, a lover who can show me exactly how it feels to be all woman.”

  Her breath fell across his face, she was leaning so close, and the first scrape of the soap across his chest brought Madigan out of his shock. His intentions to have a calm, businesslike talk with Miss Spade were evaporating with the steam rising from the tub. Lord, he was hot—but it was frustration, rather than this raven-haired minx, making him that way. ‘Jenny, we can’t—”

  “Oh, but we can,” she purred, and then her mouth was bearing down on his, silencing his protest. He’d given her light, appeasing kisses in the past, but Miss Spade was advancing like an impassioned predator, and she had to be stopped!

  Dan grabbed her shoulders, splashing her as he pushed her away. “Sahara’s my wife now,” he insisted, “so you’d better—”

  “What?”

  Her shriek reverberated in the small cabin, reminding him all too much of his bride’s outburst a week and a half ago. Jenny was glaring at him, her quaking breasts damp with rivulets of water. “You’re just saying that to provoke me,” she wheezed. “You’ve been promised to me, ever since—”

  “It’s true,” Dan mumbled, “and if you’ll let me explain, you’ll see why—”

  “Explain? I’d sooner explain this!” With amazing speed and agility, Jennifer shoved him under the water. Since he’d crossed a leg to cover his privates, his backside slipped forward, and he choked on a hot, soapy mouthful in his surprise. Surely she didn’t intend to—

  But as the seconds brought his desperate lungs to the bursting point, with Jenny grasping his hair, pinching his nose shut while shaking him in a violent rage, he realized she meant to drown him.

  Dan braced his feet against the end of the tub and propelled himself upward with all the strength he could muster. Jenny was screaming and swearing, but all he cared about was gulping air, gripping the tub’s edges to keep her from gaining the advantage again. “If you’ll quit your squalling,” he gasped, “I’ll tell you why—”

  “You cheating—whoring—traitor!” Miss Spade hurled at him. “How could you? She’s a skinny, homely little tramp who—”

  “She turned your father’s express company around in just two weeks,” he spoke above her raving. It was an ironic note to be defending the other woman who’d reacted this violently to one of his announcements, but he

  continued, watching for signs of another attack. “If you’d seen the way she treated the station keepers—”

  “You can’t love her!” Jennifer declared, her china blue eyes ablaze. “She forced you—or tricked you into—”

  Dan closed his eyes against a wistful aching. “I do love her, Jenny. I never intended to break the news to you this way, but—”

  “You—you two-faced, lying son of a bitch!”

  Again she rushed at him, but this time Madigan grabbed her hands and stood up to defend himself. There was a commotion at the door, and then Mike Glascock and Uriah White were rushing in to grab her.

  “What the hell—”

  “Mistah Madigan, you done lost yo’ mind?” the colored hand demanded.

  But the burly horse trainer, who now had Jenny’s arms pinned behind her, spoke up. “The way I see it, Miss Spade’s trespassing and plenty mad enough to be going for Madigan’s throat,” he said over her mutterings. “Is that how it happened?”

  “Yeah. Thanks, Mike.” Fatigue came down hard, and when he realized how tawdry this situation looked, Madigan sank back down into the bathwater to cover himself. “I can understand why she’s upset about my marrying Sahara. And if she’ll quit her yowling, I’ll explain something.”

  Uriah had apparently changed his original assessment, and now stepped in front of the struggling young woman, pointing a wiry finger. “We’s had ‘nuff of yo’ childish ways, Miz Jenny,” he declared. “Hush yo’self, ‘fòre I ties you to a chair and locks you in de cellah, like we shoulda done when dat temper of yours fust showed itself. Tears I’s wanted to do dat!”

  Shocked into silence, Jennifer stopped her thrashing. The cabin rang with expectant silence as the trio watched him, waiting. Madigan sighed, wishing for a better time and place…wishing for a more palatable story about his family background. “When I took out after Sahara,” he began tiredly, “it was because she’d found…incriminating letters in the office. Letters written by my mother, and by a doctor in the sanitorium where she died.”

  He cleared his throat, which was bone dry despite all the water he’d swallowed. “She admitted to being Horatio’s lover,” he said in a choked whisper. “Turns out she went away because she was pregnant by him…again. I could never in good conscience marry you, Jenny, because I’m your half-brother.”

  Her nostrils pinched as she sucked in her breath. “No!” she rasped. “I don’t—I won’t believe—”

  “And Spade never let on,” Glascock muttered. “Acted like you and Jenny were to get hitched whether you wanted to or not, or else—”

  “I’d lose my job. Not to mention my home,” Dan finished.

  “This is insane!” Jennifer cried. “You’re all just tormenting me, giving my daddy a bad name when he’s not here to defend himself.”

  “I’m sorry. If there were any other way to tell you—you can look in my luggage, at the letters,” he offered. Jennifer’s face was getting blotchy with imminent tears as she shook her head in denial, and Madigan wondered how he managed to make every woman he knew despise him.

  It was Uriah who broke the strained silence. “No need t’apologize—to Miz Jenny, or for yo’ mama’s hidin’ the truth,” the colored man said with
quiet conviction. “Mistah Spade, he done wore out his missus, bein’ cruel to ‘er, and yo’ mama she was young and pretty and—well, he didn’t let nobody tell ‘im no. He’d’ve kilt her, and the times I seed ‘er sneakin’ back to yo’ cabin, she looked plenty broke up ‘bout ‘er cheatin’. Cain’t see how she lasted as long as she did, bearin’ such a cross.”

  His words were balm to Madigan’s soul, and apparently Jenny, too, sensed the sincerity of old Uriah’s utterance. She let her arms drop, and when Glascock turned her loose, she hurried out the door with a sob. The two men stood watching him for a moment.

  “Good to have you back,” Mike finally said, a little awkwardly.

  “Yassuh, we’s sho’ been a-wonderin’ what you’s seein’ and doin’ aboard dat stagecoach,” the colored man drawled. “Me, I’d love to light out dat way, fo’ to see de country, but Pearly, she’d nevvah leave. Gots roots growin’ down from dem py-ana legs, she does. But you’s tired. We’ll ketch up tomorra,” he said with a wave. Then he ambled out, leaving Glascock with an odd little grin on his face.

  “Sounds like we do have some catching up,” the trainer teased. “And I’m not the only one who’ll be surprised, I bet.”

  It was an off-hand remark like the hands were always baiting him with, yet Madigan puzzled over it until he fell into a deathlike sleep. I’m not the only one who’ll be surprised… If those rustlers in the telegram were real, Mike would’ve told him, so Madigan allowed himself the luxury of waking, eating the breakfast Pearly had sent over, and sleeping again before he dressed and went outside. The last time he’d started a day this late he was hung over from a New Year’s party at Zerelda’s, but that felt like lifetimes ago as he studied the stark white ranch house in the midday sun…the corrals and stables and bunkhouses looked the same, yet somehow smaller than he remembered. Traveling six hundred miles and back again altered a man’s perspective.