Bound for Eden

by Tess LeSue

  He grabbed a biscuit from the kitchen on his way through and felt his spirits lift the minute he was out in the sunshine. He wasn’t one for the indoors. Give him the wide-open sky and the endless plains and he was a happy man.

  By the time he reached Taylor’s he was whistling a merry tune and tipping his hat at every pretty girl he passed. The runt was waiting for him on the porch of the hotel, looking somewhat out of sorts. Sitting on the steps at his feet was a big lad, barrel-chested, and a bit simple-looking in the way he had his head tilted way back watching the clouds scud across the deep blue sky. Sitting in the rocker was the runt’s sister, the one who’d thrown the hissy fit the night before. She wasn’t bad-looking, Luke noticed now. She had a nice, fresh-faced wholesome look.

  “Mornin’,” Luke said amiably. “Sorry to keep you folks waiting.”

  “This is my brother, Adam, and my sister, Victoria,” Alex volunteered stiffly.

  “A pleasure to meet you. I don’t often get to meet real ladies.” Luke tipped his hat at the sister and flashed his dimple.

  Victoria flushed and one hand rose to fiddle nervously with the ribbons of her bonnet. Alex scowled. “The wagon?” she reminded him shortly.

  “Right this way. May I?” He offered Victoria his arm.

  Alex watched in astonishment as Victoria smiled at him and descended the porch steps to accept his escort. What had happened to her snit about decency and morality?

  “So you’re heading out to Oregon?” she heard him remark smoothly as she and Adam fell in behind them.

  “We have a brother out there,” Victoria simpered. Alex glared at her back. Hypocrite. “He’s a pastor in Amory. Do you know Amory, Mr. Slater?”

  “There’s a red horse, Alex,” Adam said, pulling her arm to get her attention. She gave him an absent smile and tried to catch Luke’s response.

  “Can I get a red horse, Alex?”

  “Maybe when we get to Oregon.” Alex swore under her breath when Adam veered over toward the horse. She grabbed at his arm, but he was too strong for her.

  “Hello, boy,” Adam cooed, reaching out to rub the white star on the nose of the red-brown horse hitched in front of the bank. “Do you want to go Oregon with us?”

  “Not that horse, Adam,” Alex explained patiently. “That horse belongs to somebody. We’ll have to find you a different red horse.”

  “But I like this one.”

  “Fond of horses, eh?”

  Alex jumped; she hadn’t realized Luke and Victoria had followed them.

  “Fond of this horse,” Alex sighed.

  “He wants to come with us,” Adam said stubbornly.

  “Looks to me like you’ve got a ‘she’ there, not a ‘he,’” Luke drawled. “Lovely little mare too.”

  “He’s a girl?” Adam’s brow furrowed and Alex’s heart beat faster, afraid he’d let something slip.

  “He’s a girl,” Luke confirmed. “I’ve got a horse just that color back home in Oregon, a young gelding. Very sweet natured, and as fast as all blazes.”

  “And that one’s a boy?”

  Luke paused, obviously restraining himself from making a smart remark about geldings. Instead he nodded, doing a bad job of suppressing a grin. “He’s for sale too, if you’re interested.”

  Adam looked questioningly at Alex.

  “We’ll see,” she told him firmly. “I’m not saying yes, mind, just maybe. Say good-bye to the horse now, we have to see about the wagon.” She took Adam by the elbow and steered him back out into the street.

  “That was very good of you,” she heard Victoria murmur to Luke.

  By the time they reached the wagon maker’s Victoria was rosy pink and flirting prettily and Alex had been subjected to a monologue from Adam about his red horse waiting in Oregon.

  “Well, here we are,” Luke declared, holding open the gate and ushering them through to a yard full of wagon skeletons. Some were bare timber structures, still without wheels, others had wheels but no canvas roof. None of them looked travel-ready.

  The air was heavy with the fragrance of cut timber and linseed oil as they followed Luke toward a work shed at the rear of the dusty property.

  “Archie?” Luke called.

  There was a thump and the sound of a gruff voice swearing.

  Alex blinked as they entered the shed, momentarily blinded after the brightness of the day outside.

  “That you, Luke?”

  By the time Alex’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness, a small man with a shiny bald pate had jumped down from the wagon he was working on and was approaching them, wiping his hands on his pants. “What are you doing here? I thought you were staying put from now on?”

  Luke shrugged. “This is my last trip.”

  “You say that every time.”

  “I mean it this time.”

  Archie snorted. “You mean it until the next time Jackson has a horse for sale.”

  Luke grinned. “If I get that stallion tomorrow, I won’t need any more horses. I’ll have all the studs I need.”

  “If you get him.”

  “I’ll get him.”

  “Just don’t let my Adele see you. Last time you left she cried for a week.”

  Luke held his hands up. “I never encouraged her, I swear.”

  “You don’t need to,” Archie grumbled. “If only that girl of yours would marry you and put the rest of them out of their misery.”

  Alex noticed a shadow pass over Luke’s face. What girl of his?

  “Arch, these are some new friends of mine. I told them you were the most honest wagon maker in town.”

  Archie snorted again. “He gets a commission if you buy from me,” he told them, “and he needs the money to buy that stallion.”

  “What did I tell you?” Luke declared, grinning at them. “Honest to the bone.”

  Alex couldn’t help but smile back. His grin was so wicked and his eyes so warm. The man certainly had a fatal charm.

  “So you need a wagon.” Archie pulled a notepad out of his pocket and licked his stub of a pencil. “When do you need it by?”

  “The runt seems to think they’re in a rush,” Luke drawled.

  “I can’t do anything before the eighth.”

  “The eighth!” Alex and Victoria exclaimed, both looking appalled.

  Archie blinked. “Whose party are you in?”

  “We haven’t signed up with one yet,” Alex admitted.

  “I said they could join mine,” Luke said, as if to remind them.

  “He’s more expensive,” Archie told them, leaning in and speaking as though in confidence, “but he’s worth it.”

  “When do you leave?” Alex asked Luke, her heart skipping a beat at the thought of spending the next few months with him.

  “Next week.”

  “Next week!” Alex felt sick to her stomach. She’d thought they would be out of Independence in a day or so at the most. She had a flashback of their house smoldering in the gully, and of Sheriff Deveraux’s body lying in a heap at Gideon’s feet.

  “We need to leave as soon as we can,” Victoria wailed.

  “Can’t do it much faster,” Luke told them, bemused. “You’ll need that time to get outfitted. Besides, you don’t even have a wagon.”

  “And I can’t do anything for you until the eighth,” Archie said firmly.

  Alex swallowed hard. That just wasn’t good enough.

  “Excuse us,” she whispered weakly, taking Victoria’s arm, “I need to discuss something with my sister.” She led Victoria out of the shed and around the corner.

  “Give me the gold,” she whispered.

  Victoria’s eyes widened. “I can’t. I did what you said: it’s in my bodice.”

  “So get it out.”

  “I am not undressing in public,” she hissed.
<
br />   Impatient, Alex turned Victoria to face the corrugated iron wall of the shed. “I’ll stand lookout. Unbutton and get that gold, or we’re not going anywhere, unless it’s with the Gradys.”

  * * *

  • • •

  AN HOUR LATER they found themselves the proud owners of a nearly finished wagon. It was one of the lighter, smaller ones.

  “You won’t need so many animals to pull this one,” Archie said, indicating the still-uncovered wagon. It didn’t look any different from a farm vehicle to Alex.

  “It’ll save you money,” he continued, not meeting their eyes. The wagon was worth about four hundred dollars, but they’d paid almost twice that. “I’ll have it ready for you in a couple of days.”

  Alex was aware of Luke eyeing the remaining gold as they left Archie’s shed, and she was glad most of it was still safely tucked away in Victoria’s bodice.

  “Is there a party leaving earlier than yours?” she asked him.

  “Probably,” he said with a shrug, “but you won’t find a captain as good as me.”

  “But you don’t leave for a week.”

  “And I told you that you’ll need that week to get provisions. As long as we leave by the end of the month we’ll be fine. We’ll be safe in Oregon well before the first snows.”

  Alex jingled the bag of gold at him. “I don’t think so.”

  Luke eyed the runt speculatively, wondering about the shift in power between him and his sister. Last night the girl was tearing a strip off him, but today he seemed to be the one in charge. And he was the one that the brother—Adam—seemed to heed. Luke couldn’t work it out.

  “Where would we find out about other parties?” Alex demanded.

  The runt certainly didn’t act like a normal kid. What twelve-year-old spoke with such decisiveness and authority? He must be older than he looked.

  “I reckon the town square would be the place to look,” Luke told Alex slowly. “I was planning to head over myself, to drum up some business, if you want me to show you the way.”

  * * *

  • • •

  THE TOWN SQUARE was chaos. There were more wagoners than Luke had ever seen in one place, and he’d seen his share of wagoners departing Independence. The pull of the west was luring both easterners as well as migrants from the old world, who disembarked in New York and set out overland to find land and a new life. They had queer accents and even queerer ways. Luke had a feeling he was witnessing the beginning of a flood. He’d heard tell some of the captains were taking on double the clients this season, and from the crush in the square it looked like it was true. Damn fools. It was hard enough looking after a score of people, let alone two score. There must have been more than two dozen wagons crammed on the hardpacked dirt of the square. It was a warm late-spring day and a fine cloud of dust hung in the still air, kicked up by oxen and horses and a townful of boots. The white canvas arches shone in the sun like an armada of sails on a calm harbor. They wouldn’t stay white. By the end of the voyage they’d be dusty and stained.

  The noise in the square was incredible: a hundred voices speaking at once. Children darted in and out of the crowd, shrieking as they swerved through the melee. The laughter was raucous but Luke saw a fair share of pinched, frightened faces. They were right to be frightened. They had long months of hard travel ahead of them. They’d need to trust their captains to keep them close to water and not to stray away from fertile lands, where their animals would have feed. Some of them would sicken, some would starve, and some would die. Not a few because they’d trusted a guide who led them off track, or who was ill-provisioned, or slow, leaving them subject to the wicked bite of winter.

  “You said we’d be able to find a wagon train to join here,” the runt said, his eyes fixed on the chaos. “It’ll be like looking for a needle in a haystack,” the kid muttered under his breath.

  “We’ll wait until this lot have gone and then we’ll see who’s left. They’ll be the ones looking for a party, or looking to lead one.” Luke led them to the courthouse steps, and they jostled their way up to get a good view of the proceedings. Gradually the wagoners climbed into their wagons and the screaming children disappeared beneath the shining white hoops. At the far edge of the square a man climbed onto the seat of the lead wagon, gripping the hoop for support and waving his hat in the air. “Three cheers for Oregon,” he shouted.

  The wagoners cheered. Some idiot fired his gun in the air. And with creaks and chatter, cheers and whistles, the train rolled out. It took almost an hour for the square to clear and by then the dust had risen in a red fog. Victoria coughed delicately into a handkerchief while Adam covered his face and the runt sneezed.

  “The first wagon will have crossed three counties before the last one gets out of Independence,” the man next to Luke said, shaking his head.

  “Who’s captaining them?” Luke asked.

  “No one,” the man said in disgust. “They elected one of their own to lead them. Damn fools.”

  “So people go west without hiring a captain?” the kid asked him as they descended the steps into the thinning cloud of dust.

  “Some do.” Luke gave the boy a sharp look. “It’s not something I’d recommend.”

  “No. You’d recommend I pay you to do it.”

  “I’d get you there alive.” He headed for the shade of a sycamore. “There’ll be captains lining the square,” he said shortly. It was no skin off his nose if the boy wanted to sign up with another party. Luke would have no trouble making up a party without them. He never did.

  “I don’t see why we don’t just go with Mr. Slater,” Victoria complained as Alex dragged them around the square. It was hot and they were covered in dust.

  “You weren’t so keen on signing with him this morning.”

  “That was before we got to know him.”

  Alex rolled her eyes. Before he turned his charm on you, you mean, she thought sourly. But she wanted to go with Luke Slater too, especially after she met the other captains. They found grizzled old fur trappers, rumpled bleary-eyed drunks and mean-looking cowboys; there were surly men, and men who talked a mile a minute; men who claimed to have led the first expedition to Oregon City, and men who claimed to have never lost more than a quarter of their wagoners. A quarter! It made Alex feel sick to her stomach. Was she leading her family to their deaths?

  She eyed Luke Slater from across the square. He was young and strong and sober. He didn’t seem like a fool or a villain. He was expensive but she had more than enough Grady gold to pay for him . . .

  But he wasn’t leaving for an entire week. And there were the Gradys to think of. They’d be here soon, if they weren’t here already. Alex scowled. Luke was the best choice, but she couldn’t afford to wait a week. She turned back to regard the captains she’d just spoken to. She sighed. She’d just have to interview them again. At least one of them would have to make a better impression this time. They certainly couldn’t make a worse one.

  “Where are you going?” Victoria asked.

  “I need to make a choice.”

  “Well, I’m tired,” her sister snapped. “I’m going to sit down on that bench under that tree.”

  The tree by Luke Slater, Alex observed grumpily. She could sit in the shade and moon over Luke while Alex baked in the heat and did all the work.

  * * *

  • • •

  LUKE HAD JUST about made his quota when Victoria sank onto the bench behind him, fanning herself prettily with her handkerchief. “Who did you like the look of?” he asked cheerfully.

  “None of them,” Victoria said, wrinkling her nose.

  He laughed. “And your brother?”

  “He’s just being stubborn,” Victoria said firmly. She bit her lip and then straightened her shoulders and met Luke’s eyes. She was blushing, he saw. “You’d best put us down for your party, Mr. Slater. I’d hate
for you to be booked up by the time Alex realizes what a damn fool she . . . he . . . is.”

  And that was his quota. Luke grinned and turned back to the square. He could see Alex and Adam talking to Slumpback Joe. Even from here he could make out the cranky set of the runt’s features as he argued with the old trapper.

  “Well, look who we have here.”

  Luke sighed at the sound of the voice. He’d had a feeling he’d run into these idiots again. He turned to see Silas swaggering toward him. He supposed he should count himself lucky that the cretin hadn’t brought his brothers with him.

  “If it ain’t the cardsharp,” Silas said. Luke could see he was itching for a fight.

  “Haven’t you learned your lesson?” Luke asked.

  “I ain’t the one who needs to be learnin’.”

  “Let’s not make a fuss in front of the lady,” Luke suggested.

  “What lady?” Silas followed Luke’s gaze and spotted Victoria. His nostrils flared with shock, and once again he reminded Luke of a bull. “You!”

  Victoria, never a brave soul, chose that moment to swoon. Luke caught her as she tumbled from the bench.

  “Where’s the other one?” Silas demanded.

  “What other one?”

  “Where is she?” Silas was turning scarlet with rage.

  “Who?” Luke was genuinely clueless.

  “The sister.”

  Luke looked down at the woman in his arms.

  “The other one,” Silas snapped.

  “I haven’t met any sister,” Luke told him.

  If possible, Silas’s face turned even redder. “Why should I trust a cheat like you? I know your type. You think every beautiful woman should be yours.”

  “I didn’t even know she had a sister,” Luke insisted. “She’s heading out to some brother in Oregon. She just joined my party.”

  “Gideon said they’d go to Stephen. Fools.” Silas spat in the dirt. He sized Luke up through narrowed eyes. “She pay you in gold?”