by Tess LeSue
“I can do them,” Alex protested, embarrassed. She was used to looking after herself. Even when Ma and Pa Sparrow were alive, she was the one who took care of things. Ma and Pa were both old, and no match for Alex’s vigor. She couldn’t help herself. Taking charge came naturally to her.
But Lucinda hushed her and snatched the filthy clothes away. “It’s no trouble, I’m already doing some.”
Alex had to admit that it was lovely to simply sink down on the dry grass while someone else took charge for a change. Above, the sky was turning on one of those spectacular prairie sunsets. She listened to the women chatter and the river swish by, to the sigh of the wind in the grasses and the soft noises of the livestock enjoying the fresh feed, and let herself succumb to her weariness. Her shoulders throbbed from the afternoon’s work and her buttocks ached from the short ride on Delilah.
She must have dozed off, because the next thing she knew Lucinda’s rough red hand, redolent with the scent of lye soap, was stroking her hair. “Up you get, boyo. Come and finish your nap by the fire while we cook those steaks.”
Her motherly voice filled Alex with a sense of peace. It brought back memories of better times. She struggled to her feet, her muscles protesting, and stretched. The sun was the merest sliver of molten gold on the horizon and the sky above was streaked lavender and pink. Alex yawned as she followed the women back into camp.
It was the nicest night they’d had on the trail so far. The steaks were fat and juicy, and there were potatoes roasted whole in their jackets in the coals, while the Watts brothers had picked up a jug of moonshine and were liberally sharing it around among the menfolk. The conversation flowed, and she got to know her traveling companions better. She didn’t even mind waiting up to burn the bonds.
The only thing that gave her pause was the way Victoria clung to Luke. Why couldn’t she see what kind of man Luke Slater was? Because no woman could when she was caught by his charm, Alex thought with a grimace, remembering the times she’d met him as Beatrice. She’d been like a fly caught in a spider’s web. Helpless to struggle, even when she knew she’d be eaten alive.
Gradually, long after the sickle moon had begun its descent, people began to retire. For the first time the Watts brothers were in bed well before anyone else from too much undiluted moonshine.
“They’ll pay for it tomorrow,” Sebastian yawned, as he headed for the chuck wagon, cradling his bottle of whiskey.
“You won’t be sleeping out here every night, will you, Luke?” Victoria asked with concern when Luke fetched his bedroll.
“If it rains I’ll join Sebastian. Otherwise I like it just fine out here. I like having the stars for company.”
Alex tilted her head back to examine them. She could see his point. It would be a mighty fine view to fall asleep to. There were more stars than sky.
“Well, good night,” Victoria said, lingering. Alex wondered what she was hoping for. A good-night kiss?
“Night.” Luke wrapped himself up.
“Come on, Alex.”
Alex looked away from the stars, startled. She was planning on burning the bonds once Luke was asleep, but Vicky was giving her a hard stare. Rather than argue, Alex decided to come back to the fire once everyone was safely asleep.
Which took much longer than she’d thought it would. Victoria kept tossing and turning and wanting to pepper her with questions about Luke.
“For heaven’s sake, Victoria,” Alex snapped eventually, “I don’t know any more than you do. Would you leave me be?”
In a huff, Victoria rolled over, taking the quilt with her. Alex hoped she’d go to sleep, but it took almost another hour before she did.
Carefully, praying the mules were nowhere around, Alex crept from the wagon to the fire. She’d had no chance to finish burning the bonds until now. Her heart pounded as she took them from the bag. She suddenly felt as though the Gradys would come looming out of the darkness at any minute.
Gradually, she worked her way through the sheaf of bonds. It felt deeply wicked to be burning such a fortune. How had the Gradys come by such money?
It was as she peeled away the next bond that the answer came to her. The last few sheets of paper weren’t bonds at all. Staring out at her from the top page was a very familiar face. It was a crude but recognizable line drawing, accompanied by a typewritten passage: “$300 Reward. Runaway named NOAH, negro male, 25 years. Five feet eleven inches. Very dark in color. On his body are several old marks of the whip.”
It was the man she’d helped at the Grady place. Alex would have known the face anywhere, even crudely rendered as it was. So he hadn’t been the Gradys’ slave. He’d been a runaway.
Behind that page was another, and behind that was a page from a news sheet, with column after column listing runaway slaves. The rewards started at fifty dollars and went up into the hundreds of dollars.
Was this how the Gradys made their money? Hunting down runaways? Alex couldn’t bear to look at the lists of names, at the descriptions of whip scars and missing teeth. With trembling hands she fed the news sheets into the flames. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to sleep tonight. Every time she closed her eyes she’d be sure to see the huge, dark eyes of those frightened children in the root cellar, and the solid metal collars around their necks.
As she disappeared into the wagon Luke’s eyes opened. He stared into the coals. What the hell was that runt up to?
21
SHE COULDN’T BELIEVE he was serious about the riding business. Both she and Victoria stared at him, shocked, when he rode up the next morning leading Mal Crawford’s chestnut gelding.
“But who will drive the wagon?” Victoria asked in a small voice.
“I can’t believe a woman like yourself wouldn’t be capable, Victoria.” It was the use of her Christian name that did it. Not to mention the intimate tone in which he said it. Alex could just about see Victoria melt.
“Maybe tomorrow,” Alex hedged. “She’s never done it before. I’d best give her a lesson before we leave her alone with these mules.”
“Do you need a lesson, Victoria?”
Damn him. Look at the way he was staring deep into Vicky’s eyes, like some kind of hypnotist. Alex knew full well the effect of that burning black gaze; her sister didn’t stand a chance.
“I’m sure I’ll be fine,” Victoria breathed.
“I can help too,” Adam volunteered.
“There you go, runt.” Luke threw Alex a triumphant grin.
She glared at him. Of all the manipulative . . . She should just refuse to go. But then the barbarian would probably just drag her over his saddle again.
“What does it matter to you if I ride or not?” she grumped as she climbed down from the wagon.
Luke shrugged. “Guess I’m just a Good Samaritan.”
“Ha,” Alex scoffed. “You sure you’re not just trying to make my life miserable?”
“You’ll thank me one day, runt. You’ll be mighty isolated if you can’t ride.”
“I’ll have a wagon.”
Now it was Luke’s turn to scoff. “You’ll harness all four mules to that big old wagon every time you need to go someplace?”
“I don’t see why not,” Alex said stubbornly.
He jiggled the reins at her. “Are you going to mount up?”
She hadn’t made a move to take them from him. She eyed the gelding warily. He looked enormous.
“Get on, runt,” Luke said impatiently.
She sighed and shuffled closer. “The stirrup’s as high as my head,” she grumbled. Somehow she managed to get her foot in. The horse began to turn as she threw her weight against it and she squealed. Damn, she had to stop doing that. She sounded like a hysterical schoolgirl.
Eventually she was up. Oh, it was awful. The gelding was way bigger than Luke’s mare; she felt like she was towering over him. If she fell
off this horse she’d break her neck for sure.
“His name’s Jack,” Luke said, passing over the reins.
Alex looked down at them and gulped. She’d rather just grip the pommel and let the horse go wherever it wanted.
“We’ll just take a walk away from the wagons, and I’ll take you through the basics.”
It was a long morning. While Luke was a patient teacher, he was also a strict one. He wouldn’t let her get away with doing anything less than perfectly. He rode beside her as she tried to master the art of trotting—which she wasn’t good at; she couldn’t seem to relax into the rhythm of the horse—and he called out a constant stream of instructions.
“No. Lift yourself up with your legs. Now. Now.”
“I am,” Alex snapped at him.
“No, you’re not, or I wouldn’t hear your butt slapping against the saddle.”
After a while Alex felt like throwing her hat at him.
“Keep your back straight,” he called.
“Move with the horse,” he coaxed.
“Stop sawing at his mouth!” he ordered.
It was enough to make a girl scream. She was astonished when he complimented her at the end of the lesson. “Pretty good for your first time,” he said as they walked the horses back to the wagon train. It was hard to miss their party. There was a cloud of dust rising in the distance, neatly marking their progress.
“You’d do even better if you’d listen to criticism.”
Alex spluttered. As far as she was concerned, she had put up with his constant harping with exceedingly good grace.
“You’re a lot like my little brother, you know,” he said, observing her mute outrage.
“I am not!” Alex protested hotly. Forget the fact that she’d never even met his brother; Alex didn’t want to be compared to anyone’s brother at this point. It was just adding insult to injury. Fine, she had to pretend to be a boy. Did she have to be such a convincing one?
“There you are. That’s exactly how Matt would respond. I can’t say anything without him saying the opposite.”
Maybe she’d like this brother of his. She wondered if he was as handsome as Luke was. “How old is he?” she asked curiously.
“Twenty-one. Though he doesn’t act it.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s always off with his head in the clouds. He’s got this idea for a lumber business, and he’ll argue till he’s blue in the face that we should be building a lumber mill, but does he actually do anything about it? Instead he lives like a mountain man, wandering about the wilderness trapping and trading. Burning up daylight,” Luke said in disgust.
“Maybe he likes the wilderness,” Alex remarked absently. She was busy examining Luke and wondering about his age. If his little brother was twenty-one, how old did that make him? He didn’t look to be as old as thirty, but maybe he was.
“What do your parents think?” she asked. “About Matt wandering about in the wilderness?”
“Our parents died when we were kids. After we left Texas.”
“You’re from Texas?”
“Mexico originally. Our father was American, our mother Mexican. We lived in Mexico until I was ten, then we lived in Texas. When I was fifteen we left for California, and after a few years we moved on to Oregon. My father didn’t like to stay in one place for too long.”
“Maybe that’s where your brother gets it from.” Mexico, Alex thought with a silent sigh. That explained the earth-brown hair and burning dark eyes.
“You think he would have learned,” Luke said quietly. “It didn’t bring us any happiness, moving all the time. We left California when my mother died. Father couldn’t bear to stay. But the journey to Oregon killed him, and now he’s in a lonely grave in the wilderness, instead of resting beside my mother.”
The sorrow in his voice tugged at Alex’s heart. She knew what it was like to be orphaned.
“These trails take their toll,” Luke observed, watching the line of wagons rolling steadily across the plains. “So many people die without reaching their promised land.”
“But you keep traveling,” Alex said.
“Not anymore. I’ll be staying put from now on. Maybe there will be a trip to California now and then to auction a horse or two, but I’ve got roots in Utopia. There’s no lonely grave in my future, runt.” He turned to Alex, his black eyes serious. “I’ll be buried in the Slater plot on Slater land. Where my kids will be able to find me.”
“Your kids?” Alex asked through a tight throat.
“Amelia doesn’t know it yet, but I plan to have at least a dozen,” Luke said with a wink.
Amelia. Her name was Amelia. The name was still ringing in her ears when she dismounted.
“How about you, Adam?” Luke asked. “You want to have a ride too?”
Adam gave an almighty whoop and launched himself from the wagon.
“I’ll take that for a yes,” Luke chuckled. “Adam, meet Jack.”
“You be careful,” Alex warned her brother, but he was too busy struggling to pull himself into the saddle to listen. “Make sure he’s careful,” she said, turning the warning on Luke.
“Don’t be such an old woman. Adam’s a born horseman, aren’t you, Adam?”
Alex watched as they left, Adam’s elbows flapping like a chicken’s wings with every step.
“I hope you enjoyed yourself out there with Luke, while I was having my fingers sawn off,” Victoria said waspishly, handing the reins over to Alex and waggling her fingers, which bore red welts.
“Don’t blame me, I tried to get you out of it.” Alex winced as she sat down on the hard seat. Her rear end felt battered and bruised. She couldn’t see the appeal of this riding business.
“So?” Victoria demanded, after barely a minute of silence. “What did you talk about?”
“Mostly about how awful I am at riding.” Alex couldn’t keep her mind on the conversation; she kept hearing Luke’s voice in her head: Amelia doesn’t know it yet . . .
“Did he mention me?”
“No, but he did mention that he wanted a dozen kids,” Alex said. A dozen kids. She sighed, imagining twelve little Lukes around a dinner table, little black heads bowed for grace, voices raised exuberantly, passing dishes down the table . . . Oh glory, what was she doing to herself? Those children didn’t belong to her; they belonged to dark-haired, brown-eyed, slender Amelia.
Alex had never met the woman, but she wanted to scratch her eyes out.
* * *
• • •
ALEX WAS NEVER going to be a horsewoman. Luke took her out every morning and she tried her best, really she did, but she never could quite overcome her fear of horses.
“He’s responding to you,” Luke scolded her, when Jack skittered. “Would you stop being so nervous?”
“It’s got nothing to do with me,” Alex snapped, pulling hard on the reins and cursing when Jack danced sideways. “I think he’s been talking to those damn mules.”
Luke gave her an exasperated look.
“It’s true! I saw him with them this morning. Those wretched animals have poisoned him against me.” Alex knew she sounded ridiculous, but she couldn’t seem to button her lip. She was flustered and embarrassed by her failure with the horse. Why didn’t animals like her? She gave Jack a poke behind his ear. “What did I ever do to you, you brute?”
“Do you want to swap horses?” Luke offered.
Alex gave Delilah a withering look. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed the looks she’s been giving me.”
“It’s all in your head.” But even Luke had to admit that Alex lacked a certain rapport with horses. The minute Jack saw the runt coming, he tensed up and got jumpy. And the gelding was one of the most placid horses Luke had ever seen.
Still, at least the kid could sit a horse properly now. And he r
eally wasn’t bad in the saddle, or wouldn’t be if he didn’t shriek with fear every time the horse did something he wasn’t expecting.
Not like his brother. That Adam was a born horseman. You only had to show him something once and he was doing it like an expert. And he genuinely loved the animals. Luke enjoyed riding out with him; he wished either one of his own brothers had half as much interest in horses.
Alex wondered what he was thinking about. He had surprised her in the last few days. She’d had him pegged as a social animal. She’d figured that a man who flirted with every woman he met must like the company of people. And he seemed to, in moderation. But once they rode out on the plains, and the wagons had receded into the dusty distance, he tended to be quieter, more introverted. Now that she’d learned the basics of riding, he was prone to just light out and leave her to follow.
She thought that that was when he was happiest—when he and Delilah were tearing across the plains, moving as one, leaving a plume of dust in their wake. Sometimes they’d ride a whole morning and he’d barely speak. And, to her relief, Alex found herself beginning to relax around him.
It was easier, of course, like this: when she was a boy. He didn’t turn that burning black gaze on her and melt her mind to mush. She watched him do to it to the other women in the party: Lucinda Crawford had taken to doing his laundry, Victoria and Ilse Ulrich fought over who would cook his dinner (sometimes he ate from both cook pots, just to keep the peace), and even five-year-old Ellen O’Brien and six-year-old May Crawford competed for his attention around the campfire at night.
Now that she was no longer subject to his charms, Alex had a chance to examine him as he bewitched the females of the species. It wasn’t necessarily that he was a shameless flirt, although Alex hadn’t ruled out that explanation entirely; it was simply that he gave a woman his full attention. He looked right into her eyes and nothing distracted him. She became the entire world to him. And what woman could resist that? Coupled with the fact that he looked like some kind of fallen angel.
“Here it is,” Luke announced, as he pulled Delilah up beside the river.