Knight in a Black Hat

by Judith B. Glad

  Eventually the professor's party left, the four men riding single file past the lower lake and down toward the river. Malachi watched them go with a sigh of relief. His job was a lot easier when the professor was gone, never mind that it meant twice as much work for him and Murphy. The stock had eaten every blade of dry grass within their corral and it was time to move them, unless he wanted to be cutting feed for them every day.

  "I'm ready."

  He turned around. Miss Sanders was standing there, bonneted, gloved, booted, and smiling to beat the band.

  "Ready? For what?"

  "Why to go afield," she said. "As Uncle would say, 'time is a'wasting.' I want to go back down to the lake and check that plant I saw the other day. I have a feeling it will be in flower by now."

  "I can't go with you today."

  "That's all right. I can find it without your help."

  She was as single-minded as her uncle. Just less noisy about it. "You are still not going anywhere alone, Miss Sanders. I'll have some time tomorrow to take you out."

  Her stubborn little chin lifted and he caught a flash of dark blue from her eyes. "Mr. Bradley, I am perfectly capable of caring for myself. I have spent many days alone in the woods at home. I have encountered poisonous snakes, prairie wolves, skunks, and a bobcat. I have even been robbed--although I imagine the poor man was quite upset when he saw that my purse contained only a few pennies and some gingerbread crumbs. And I have never--never--needed a keeper."

  "Tomorrow, Miss Sanders."

  "Today, Mr. Bradley. With you or without you, I am going afield today."

  She would, too. The only way to keep her in camp would be to tie her to a tree. And he wouldn't want to be the man to do it. "I'll make a deal with you."

  Her raised eyebrow told him just how skeptical she was that any deal he offered would be in her favor.

  "You stay in camp this morning, while Murphy and I get the corral moved, and I'll take you down to the lake this afternoon." He'd have to leave some other chores undone, but he reckoned he could do them this evening.

  "I have a counter offer," she said. "I will assist you in moving the livestock, and we will go as soon as we are finished."

  "You can't--"

  "I moved those logs off of you, Mr. Bradley. I am no weakling."

  No, she was stronger than she seemed. And sensible. "You can keep an eye on the stock while we move the corral," he told her, grudgingly. They'd string some rope to pen the mules, which wouldn't stop one if he was determined to go for a stroll. But if she rode the donkey 'round the temporary pen, they'd be less likely to wander.

  No matter how diligently she kept her eyes on the mules, letting her help just didn't set well with Malachi. They were done well before dinnertime, though, which left the whole afternoon for her to go out and look for flowers.

  Nellie found her mystery plant again. In fact, she found a large stand of them, perhaps as many as two hundred individuals in an area about fifty feet long and twenty wide. They were taller now, and well leafed out. The leaves were finely dissected, lacy-looking things, round in outline and about two inches across. Clusters of unopened buds sat atop most of the tall stems, but two plants bore flowers!

  She bent down, looked closely at the brilliant flowers. They were small, half an inch across at the most, and resembled nothing she had ever seen before. The petals were blue, the narrow, fringed sepals brilliant red. Each petal seemed to be pouched, with the pouches extending between and under the sepals, so that the flower seemed to sit on a circle of fat blue bladders.

  She knelt beside one of the flowering specimens and carefully dug around its base. A stout taproot pulled free of the sandy soil and she lifted the plant loose. With great care she folded the stem into three sections and put it into her vasculum.

  "What is it?"

  She jumped, so intent had she been on the plant. "I don't know," she admitted. "I've never seen anything quite like it."

  She looked longingly at the only other flowering plant, but decided not to collect it. Not until she was sure that the others would flower. "I'll need to come back in a day or two," she said. "Will you have time?"

  "If I can't Murphy will. I'll make sure."

  "But I want--" she broke off, not certain how to express herself. She wanted him with her, not anyone else. Not that she didn't trust Mr. Creek to be a perfect gentleman. Just that she felt so much more...comfortable with Mr. Bradley.

  No matter how she could say it, telling him that would seem unconscionably forward. Particularly since he'd once again made it clear that he regretted kissing her. Wanting her.

  The rest of the afternoon was anticlimactic. Nellie collected several specimens of early flowering plants, but nothing of great surprise. After all, one expected to find mustards and composites among the grasses of the meadow. She did discover one small buttercup tucked under a low sagebrush that looked exactly like the Ranunculus she had seen at the stage station.

  Mr. Bradley was very patient with her. He held Sheba's line while Nellie wandered aimlessly--she had long since found that she found more than if she systematically searched. He used his big knife to dig a deep-rooted, dandelion-like plant, and he offered to carry her vasculum so she would be less encumbered.

  After several hours during which neither spoke more than a few inconsequential words at a time, he said, "Why are you doing this?"

  Nellie put her latest specimen into the vasculum. "What do you mean? Uncle has explained how important it is to document the plants that are native to this area."

  "He said something about 'adding to the sum total of human knowledge,' but he didn't say why that was important." He tied the vasculum to Sheba's small packsaddle. "Let's go sit on those rocks and soak up some sun. You've been scurrying around like a squirrel gathering nuts for winter."

  Startled, she looked at him. There was a faint smile on his face, replacing his usually serious aspect. Although she wasn't tired, she said, "Yes, I'd like that. I am thirsty." Self-honesty compelled her to admit that the prospect of sitting beside him appealed to her.

  "So explain it to me. Why does knowing what plants are here 'add to the sum total of human knowledge'?" he said, once they were comfortable atop the huge, rounded boulders. He handed her the canteen.

  Nellie sipped before answering. "Uncle believes that a complete catalogue of the plants native to North America should be made. He bemoans the fact that so many of them have been displaced by agricultural weeds in the East, so that we do not know what was really there before the early settlers arrived."

  "Does that matter?"

  "Oh, yes! Because...well, because...of course it matters." To her great embarrassment, she could not tell him why it mattered. She just knew it did.

  "Seems to me," he said, as he leaned back onto one elbow, "that settlers have been changing places for a long time, bringing in their crops and their livestock, until pretty soon the new place looks like home to them."

  "You're right. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't document what was here before they came. Uncle says--"

  "Miss Sanders, I didn't ask why your uncle was out here picking flowers. I asked why you are." A pause. "Your uncle was telling me, the day we went out last week, how important it is to a botanist to be the one to describe new plants. He made it sound almost like folks were keeping score. Is that what you're doing? Looking for a new plant?"

  Nellie chewed her bottom lip. Finally she looked at him. "You make it sound trivial. As if it wasn't the knowledge that was important, but the fame."

  "No, ma'am, your uncle makes it sound that way. I've never heard you talk about how many papers you've published, or how famous you are. That's why I asked why you're doing this."

  "I want to be a real botanist," she blurted out before she could catch the words. "I want to be recognized as someone who is doing worthwhile work, not just as Dr. Kremer's laboratory assistant, little what's-her-name."

  He traced an aimless pattern on the rock surface. "What will it take to hav
e folks think of you as a 'real' botanist? What you're doing this summer? All these plants you're collecting?"

  "No, I'm afraid not. I'm still Uncle's assistant, so anything I bring in will be listed among his collection." For a moment she felt such anger, such resentment, that she could not speak. At last she was able to say, "I have no education, no training, you see. I'll probably never be anything but a laboratory assistant." Admitting it aloud seemed like admitting defeat.

  She slid from the rock and stood with her back to him. "I argued for two years to be allowed to come along this summer. When Uncle returned from Montana year before last, he swore that he would never again hire his field assistant sight unseen. I started working then toward convincing him I could do as well in the field as any young man just out of school."

  "Your uncle was in Montana two years ago?"

  "Yes, he collected there during two successive summers. Last summer he traveled to several herbaria on the East Coast, visiting and conferring with other botanists."

  "So you convinced him to let you come with him?"

  His voice came from right behind her, as if she could lean back and be pressed solidly against him. She took a deep breath and the scent of him--woodsmoke, sweat, and a unique scent that was his alone--filled her nose and her lungs. "I...ah...yes. I convinced him. I argued and pleaded and appealed to his frugal nature. I think it was the fact that I would cost him no wages that finally convinced him. That and my finding Mr. Franklin's advertisement. Uncle had always made his own arrangements before, and they were not always satisfactory."

  Why am I dizzy and lightheaded? Am I coming down with something?

  "So you'll collect plants and he'll get credit for them, and when you go back, you'll be no better off than before?"

  "Oh, no!" She spun around, only to find herself no more than a handspan from him. "I'll have the memory of a wonderful summer. Perhaps Uncle will acknowledge that my assistance is useful and will take me with him in the future. Eventually he may even publicly acknowledge my contributions."

  "You think so?"

  "I hope so," she said, knowing that the likelihood was small. But without hope, where would she be? Hope had brought her this far. Hope and determination. And an aching need to do something worthwhile, something memorable. Something to show that her life hadn't been empty and uneventful. Wasted.

  "That doesn't sound like much of an ambition, getting named as somebody who helped pick some flowers."

  The sudden tightness in her throat made Nellie's voice high and thin. "It's the only one I can have. With no education, no prospect of marriage, no future outside the herbarium, the best I can wish for is to be acknowledged as an able assistant." She wiped a shaking hand across eyes that were suddenly burning, threatening to overflow. She jerked on the tie of her bonnet, tore the ugly thing from her head. "Look at me, Mr. Bradley! Look closely. What do you see?"

  Something leaped in his eyes. Nellie felt as if he had been transformed in a single instant from a quiet, serious man to a fierce predator. She took a half step backwards, was brought up short by his hard grasp on her shoulders.

  "What do I see?" He shook her slightly. "What do I see, Miss Sanders? I see a woman who haunts me. I can't put you out of my mind. When I'm standing guard, I look at the sky and see your eyes, sparkling at me. I hold my hands out to the fire and wonder why it doesn't warm them like touching you does." Another shake, this one so gentle it seemed almost like he was pulling her into his embrace.

  "I wake in the night, hearing your voice, tasting you, smelling you. I reach for you...and you're not there."

  His hands framed her face. "Nellie Sanders, I've never wanted a woman as I do you."

  Chapter Eleven

  She stared up at him, her mouth opening in a silent oh!

  He was tempted to toss prudence to the winds. Great God, he was tempted!

  "Mr. Bradl...Malachi!"

  The soft exclamation just about broke his heart. "Hush," he said. "Don't call me that."

  Her fingertips covered her mouth, and above them her eyes were enormous.

  Catching both her hands between his, he held them tight, wanting this much, at least. "You know what I am, Nellie Sanders. A shootist. A target."

  She denied his words with a vigorous shake of her head.

  "Yes, I am. I'm fair game for the first glory-hungry kid who comes along, bent on proving how big a man he is."

  Another shake of her head, and he saw tear tracks glinting on her cheeks.

  "I shot three men--boys, really--last summer, another one just before Christmas. Two of them died. If I weren't here, if I weren't using a name not my own, I'd likely be facing more of the same this summer. Boys who've heard about me or read that accursed story. Boys who want to be the next Jesse James or Wild Bill Hickok."

  "But you don't have to kill them. You could refuse--"

  "No, I can't. I have to fight them. Or let them kill me." Memories crowded into his mind, sickening him. He turned away from her, stared out across the river at the steep, dry hills to the east. "

  "Oh, God! The death! Sometimes I prayed My father and my grandmother were killed at Manasses in 1861. By Southern canon. I went North, joined a Pennsylvania regiment. We fought in most of the major battles--Mechanicsville, Second Bull Run, Antietam, Gettysburg--I don't know how many more. They all ran together. Noise and blood, and death. to die myself, so I wouldn't have to kill any more."

  Her soft touch on his arm startled him. "You don't look old enough to have joined the army in 1861."

  "I lied. Told them I was sixteen. They wanted me for a drummer, but I showed them how I could shoot. They didn't worry about my age after that."

  The touch turned into a tight clasp as she demanded, "How old were you?"

  "Twelve," he whispered. "I was twelve years and three months old." For the first time in years, he had to fight the tight knot of tears that grew at the back of his throat. Soldiers don't cry! But they did. They wept and they cursed, and they drank and brawled and fornicated with abandon, just to prove themselves still alive.

  "Oh, you poor soul," Nellie whispered as she embraced him. She wanted to hold him close, to comfort him.

  Later she would think about what he said. Later, when the shock of his words was not making her heart flutter in her chest, butterflies swarm in her belly.

  Later.

  For a long time she clung to him, murmuring words of comfort, as one would to a child. His body trembled like he'd been stricken with ague, and he breathed in and out in hard gasps, almost but not quite sobs. Gradually the tremors lessened and his breathing quieted.

  She waited, hoping. When she felt him start to pull free of her arms, she held on, gently but firmly.

  With gentle but irresistible strength, he pushed her away. "Don't," he said, but without heat. "Don't touch me any more, Miss Sanders, or I won't be able to help myself."

  His face was drawn with harsh lines, the shadows around his deep-set eyes more pronounced. A muscle twitched at the corner of his jaw as he gazed down at her. "A woman deserves better than me. A man whose hands aren't stained with the blood of all those he's killed. A decent man, who knows a peaceful craft or trade." He touched her lower lip, and the pressure of his fingertip was like a stolen kiss. "A man who'll walk the streets without every glory-hound or barbarian bound to challenge him."

  Once again he turned away from her. Nellie saw the rigid set of his shoulders, could almost hear the thrum of his taut muscles.

  "From now on, Murphy will go out with you. I'll be too busy."

  "Oh, but--" Before she could find words of protest, he picked up the canteen and her pack. "Bring the ass," he said, and stalked away. At the edge of the woods, he waited for her to catch up, then resumed walking, staying a short distance ahead of her all the way back to camp.

  * * * * *

  Malachi told Murphy Creek of his new assignment after Miss Sanders had retired. The two of them were sitting just outside Murphy's tent, watching the last deep purple-bl
ue fade from the western sky above the mountains.

  "You're a fool," Murphy told him. "She's got eyes for you, make no mistake."

  "I'm the only one who's spent any time with her," Malachi said, wondering how Murphy had noticed what had taken him by surprise. "She just doesn't know you or the kid."

  "She knows enough about him to steer clear of him. I've watched her. She won't let him help her with much of anything, and she never laughs at his teasing." He removed the pipe from his mouth, tapped it on his hand. "Damn thing. Ever since it got so wet, it won't stay lit worth a plugged nickel."

  "He's going to give us trouble, sooner or later. I can feel it in my bones."

  Murphy shrugged. "So maybe I ought to beat the stuffin' out of him before he does. Teach him who's boss."

  "I want no fighting. Not if we can avoid it. The professor's causing enough headaches, without you and the kid being at each other's throats."

  "Hellfire, Mala-- Malcolm! Did you go and get religion or something? Used to be, you didn't take shit off of nobody. Now you're talkin' like a damned schoolteacher." He spat to one side. "No fighting, boys," he said in an affected, treble voice. "Let's be little gentlemen, now."

  Despite his grim mood, Malachi had to chuckle. "See that you are a gentleman while you're out with Miss Sanders. She's a lady, and don't you forget it." He rose and looked toward her tent. She must be reading, for a candle's soft light made the canvas glow.

  It called to him, with a deep and aching need.

  "Get plenty of sleep," he said to Murphy. "She'll walk your legs off."

  On the way to his tent, he managed to keep his head turned so he wouldn't see the glow of her candle. Right now he hadn't much willpower.

  The professor's party returned after four days, rather than the week they'd planned to be out. Dr. Kremer simply said, "We found nothing worth collecting," when his niece asked why they'd come back early.

  Willard had more to say to Malachi when they were alone.