by Pat Tracy
The wheels of Victoria’s mind turned with the same steady rhythm as those of the lumbering wagon. Perhaps she really didn’t need to marry before Annalee. Maybe it would satisfy her parents’ archaic code of propriety if she was engaged to be wed. Now that she was almost a thousand miles from home, she would be free to do a little…creative letter-writing. Naturally, an outright falsehood was beyond her, but she could exaggerate—
The right front wheel struck a deep rut, and the wagon lurched violently as Victoria was bucked upward, then slammed against the wooden seat. Just that quickly, her thoughts jerked back to her immediate circumstances.
Her great Western adventure was falling far short of her expectations. Who would have supposed that the wagon train would continue without her because she was unable to keep up? It had shocked her that the wagon master couldn’t comprehend that, even if she was slowing down the group, she simply couldn’t abandon her precious cargo along the trail.
Victoria harbored no ill feelings toward the man. He and the others didn’t understand that her treasured volumes, some of them first editions of Jane Austen and James Fenimore Cooper, were impossible for her to part with.
Initially, she hadn’t been all that alarmed at being left behind. The overland trail was wide, and clearly marked by the hundreds of wagons that had preceded her west. She had plenty of food, and the obliging nearness of the Ruby River provided all the fresh drinking water she and her team needed. Also, the wagon master had assured her that a fort was nearby. Once she reached the fort she’d arrange for a party of soldiers to escort her to Trinity Falls.
But the loneliness had begun to wear upon her nerves, and there was the matter of the fearsome Indian warriors she’d heard so much about. It would have been somewhat reassuring to have a firearm for protection. Unfortunately, she’d had a slight mishap with her rifle the fifth day on the trail, and the wagon master had confiscated the weapon from her on the grounds that she was a menace to both herself and the rest of them with a loaded gun in her possession.
Victoria frowned. Goodness, she could hardly be faulted for shooting Mr. Hyrum Dodson in the foot. The man had been prowling around her wagon in the wee hours of the morning. And he very well could have been the bear she’d mistaken him for. As far as she was concerned, it was an understandable error on her part.
Neither the wagon master nor Mr. Dodson, however, had been inclined to be understanding.
Which brought Victoria to her third reason for going west. It seemed that people in general were disinclined to be tolerant of life’s little mishaps. For instance, take the innocent incident when one of her sister’s suitors had been caught with his pants at half-mast in Victoria’s bedchamber. Had anyone been interested in hearing that the hapless man had scaled the outside trellis and was delivering a rose to Annalee?
Not that she wouldn’t be the first to admit that his romantic gesture was the stuff of foolishness. But, foolish though it might have been, the cavalier act had been conceived and executed in innocence. It had been the merest accident that he chose the wrong bedchamber.
Unfortunately, at the instant of his arrival, Victoria had been changing and had been in her chemise and drawers. She wasn’t sure which of them had been more startled when they laid shocked gazes upon each other. Before he could depart her chamber, however, a crazed bumblebee had emerged from the bedraggled rose, circled Mr. Threadgill twice and then flown up the inside of his pant leg.
Victoria had acted without forethought, tugging down the man’s britches and landing several energetic whacks upon the trapped but clearly homicidal bee with her hairbrush.
If only Threadgill hadn’t screamed.
Her mother’s afternoon guests, the Reverend Golly’s wife among them, had heard Horace’s distressed cries and come charging upstairs. It had been the most mortifying occasion of Victoria’s life to be caught in a state of undress on her knees in front of the hysterical, half-clad man.
No one had been interested in explanations that day. The scandalized women had departed from her parents’ home and spread the most outrageous gossip about the entirely innocent episode. In a single afternoon, Victoria’s reputation had been hopelessly tarnished. Poor Mr. Threadgill had vacated his Boston abode. The last she’d heard, he’d decided to visit the Continent.
No doubt he’d been afraid that he would be obligated to redeem her reputation with a proposal of marriage. Clearly, the man had no intention of making such a drastic act of restitution on the basis of one demented bee and her honor.
She still couldn’t get over the fact that an entire lifetime of prudent and circumspect behavior could be overturned by one unfortunate occurrence. The very idea that anyone could think she would try to divest a man of his britches, against his will, and assert her runaway passions upon him was ludicrous.
She shook the reins.
“Ha!”
The oxen stayed put. Perhaps they were as weary as she was and needed a good rest. She would have loved to accommodate them, but she knew they had to keep moving. Determinedly she reached for the unwieldy bullwhip and cracked it over their broad backs.
“I said, Ha!” This time they moved toward the horizon where high-peaked mountains towered. Victoria laid aside the whip and used her sleeve to wipe the perspiration from her face.
The twisting river caused the flattened thoroughfare that ran alongside it to wind around yet another bend. When she rounded the curve, a large edifice several hundred yards away greeted Victoria. She blinked several times, lest it somehow disappear into nothingness. The building remained.
She’d finally made it to human habitation. Victoria strained to discern what the distant structure might be. Then she laughed at herself. Even if it wasn’t the fort, it didn’t matter. In her present mood, even a saloon would be welcome.
People lived there.
That was the only thing that mattered.
As she drew closer, the large building miraculously revealed itself to indeed be a military outpost. Relief swept through her. She was safe. For as long as she remained at.
Victoria squinted, trying to make out the name that had been crudely burned into a wide plank of wood suspended horizontally above the great open gate.
Fort Brockton.
Seeing the giant log poles less than twenty yards ahead filled Victoria with an overwhelming sense of euphoria. One by one, the tense muscles in her neck and shoulders relaxed.
A gust of wind came up. With it came a lonely, mournful cry that made the fine hairs at the nape of her neck rise.
Despite the reality of the immense log structure, Victoria was struck by the eerie impression that she was the last woman on earth. The jangle of leather harnesses and the plodding of her team’s hooves joined the whispering screech of air rushing through and around the fort’s timbers.
Her stomach knotted, and she tried to talk herself out of the nebulous fears that scurried through the corners of her mind. Only a few feet now separated her from the wide log doors, which gaped open with a kind of drunken clumsiness.
She halted. No uniformed man stared down from the fort’s watchtowers. No concerned soldier surged forward to draw her wagon inside protective walls. No sound of occupation reached her. Tingles of alarm scraped her skin. Simultaneously, a fierce blast of wind battered her sunbonnet. Victoria flinched at the almost physical assault and peeled back the tendrils of hair the disturbance had plastered to her cheek and mouth.
“Hello?”
The uncertain greeting was plucked from her lips and swallowed up by the wind that rollicked around her.
“Ha!”
Her voice was stronger, and she again urged the oxen forward. The sinister sense of danger permeating the trembling pines and aspen trees drove her to seek the tangible security of the empty fortress. No matter how bizarre the circumstances, surely being inside was safer than being out.
Victoria studied the fort’s deserted inner courtyard. Compact buildings that were a mixture of military offices and personal d
wellings shared common walls, so that it appeared she was looking at a small town enclosed by high ramparts.
Every door hung ajar.
“Hello!” she called again.
Silence answered her. She was simply unable to grasp that a fortress this size, one obviously designed to hold several hundred people, could actually have been abandoned.
Victoria climbed from the wagon, forcing back the uneasiness that continued to grow within her. The oxen were restless. She assumed they smelled the water inside the low rock cisterns that stood beside the empty corrals. Her mind balked at the realization that the huge animals would have to be unhitched in order to drink.
She was so blasted tired she was all but staggering.
And yet there was only her and the oxen. If they were going to be watered, it was up to her to do it. Their survival was in her hands. Blinking back tears of weariness, she went to the lead oxen’s giant halter. Simple wishing wouldn’t get the arduous task done. As she slid the leather harnesses through fist-size coupling rings, Victoria reflected that beginning a new life on the Western frontier was a far tougher endeavor than she’d imagined when she contemplated the contract Mr. Pritchert had sent her. Of course, she’d signed the document in the comfort of her family’s cozy parlor. How far away that parlor seemed at this moment.
When she had finally freed the animals to drink, Victoria proceeded to search every building that lined the fort’s interior. Each office and residence showed signs of urgent flight. Drawers were left open, their varied contents spilled onto the floor in wild heaps of clutter. Beds and blankets were in a state of upheaval.
In the largest office, it appeared that a whirlwind had come charging through. Papers and maps were tossed about. A chair was tipped over, and several lengths of rope lay on the floor.
No matter how exhausted she was, she had to think. What terrible menace could have caused the commanding officer to evacuate his troops?
The incredible, numbing silence of the deserted military facility heightened her already taut nerves. For the first time in her life, she didn’t know what to do next.
It seemed madness to stay in a place that an armed militia had fled. Her shoulders sagged as she turned from the doorway and retraced her steps across the military yard. Returning to the unhitched wagon, she scarcely registered the presence of a squat log stockade. She was tired and hungry—a poor set of circumstances under which to make anything but a bad decision. Perhaps things wouldn’t seem quite so bleak if she took care of the gnawing emptiness in her stomach. Who knew, if her legs ceased to tremble and she didn’t feel quite so light-headed, she might be able to make sense of her macabre surroundings?
Within minutes, Victoria had set up a campsite in the middle of the military yard. Early in her exodus west, she’d learned the subtle nuances of building a vigorous fire.
To prepare the biscuits, all she needed was some coarse brown flour, salt, water and a bit of grease. It took no time at all to knead the dough into egg-size lumps and drop them into the bubbling grease that lined the thick frying skillet. The simple action gave her a sense of being in control.
Dusk fell across the buildings silhouetted by her fire. The frying dough sent a pleasant aroma through the cooling air. She reached across the rocks she’d interspersed with pieces of wood and used a long-handled fork to spear and flip the biscuits.
“Who the hell are you?”
The husky male voice leaped from the encroaching darkness and vibrated in the very air Victoria drew into her lungs. She jumped back from the campfire, dropping her fork. She scoured the deepening shadows for a clue as to where the intruder lurked.
“I asked you…” There was a pause, as if the man were catching his breath “…a question.” The gritty voice tugged at her nerves with the same raspy irritation as the gravelly rocks that shifted beneath the soles of her shoes. “Did Windham send you to let me out?”
Out?
Her gaze pivoted to the small stockade just ten feet from where she’d built her campfire. With stomach-tightening dread, she realized she wasn’t alone after all.
The smell of frying dough drew her attention to the biscuits. They were about to burn; she refused to let that happen. With a well-aimed kick, the toe of her shoe dislodged the long-handled fork from where it had landed. The hem of her petticoats served as a pot holder as she wielded the rod to salvage the biscuits.
“Who’s out there?” came the low voice again.
Victoria thought she detected both wariness and anger in the deep, masculine voice. After she retrieved the last biscuit and set it on a china plate to cool, she approached the stockade. She wiped her palms against her skirts and took comfort in the sight of the metal beam lodged between two iron posts that guaranteed the prison door wouldn’t come flying open. Surely only the most hardened, most vile, of villains would have been locked inside such a horrible, crude cell.
Ah, but to be abandoned to a slow and painful death by starvation…
Every soft and feminine instinct she possessed urged her to set him free. What crime could have been so heinous as to warrant such cruel punishment?
Murder, came the immediate answer. A murderer might be left to such an awful fate.
Victoria continued to stare in horrified fascination at the simple but effective bar laid across the stockade’s entry.
It struck her suddenly that she was responsible not only for the oxen under her care, but also for the nameless prisoner on the other side of the rough wooden door. Unless the cavalry suddenly returned, it would be up to her whether or not this man lived or died.
“Answer me, dammit! Who are you?”
Victoria looked from the door to her shaking hands. Even though she might pity the stranger for being left to die this way, she would be a fool to let him out before discovering the crime he’d committed. She would also be a fool to let him know he was talking to a woman, she thought, reasoning that men credited other men with more intelligence than they did the weaker sex.
She coughed twice and lowered her voice as best she could.
“The question, sir, is who are you, and what did you do to land in such an awful situation?”
Chapter Three
Logan strained to hear the muffled question. Battered and hurting from the beating Windham had ordered, he’d lost track of how much time had passed since he’d been locked inside the stockade. He’d drunk the last of his water a few hours back.
“Sir, I asked you who you are,” came that suspicious sounding voice again.
Logan shook his head to clear it. He must have been unconscious for most of the day. It had been the glorious aroma of cooking food that nudged him to full alertness. He could have sworn someone had pitched camp outside his cell door.
Saliva pooled in his mouth, and his tongue seemed twice its normal size. Hot food. His stomach shuddered in sweet anticipation.
“The name’s Logan,” he growled, relieved the newcomer’s arrival hadn’t been a hallucination. “Logan Youngblood. How about letting me out of here and sharing some of that food? While you’re at it, I’d appreciate a drink of water.”
The only response to his request was more silence. Frustration, and the possibility that he was going to pass out again and never come to, snapped Logan’s patience.
“What are you waiting for? Open the damned door!”
“I don’t think that would be a good idea. The soldiers who put you in there must have had a good reason.”
Outraged, Logan couldn’t believe he’d heard the newcomer right. “You mean you’re going to leave me in here to die?”
There was another silence.
“That would make you a murderer,” Logan pressed, anger gnawing holes in his control.
“I—I wasn’t the one who put you in there.”
“When they locked me up, they took away my gun,” he pointed out, just in case the nature of his plight wasn’t clear. “I’m unarmed and ready to pass out.”
More silence.
�
�Even if you’re alone, you’ve got to be carrying a rifle or a shotgun or a pistol,” Logan persisted. “How can I be a threat?”
Silence.
He ground his teeth, which made his head hurt all the worse. “Say something, damn you.”
“You swear too much.”
“Say something relevant.”
“I’m not letting you out until—”
“Hell freezes over?” he said savagely.
“Are you wounded?”
The words seemed closer. For the first time, Logan thought he detected a note of concern in the stranger’s tone. His hopes rose about the time his legs gave out.
“Some cracked ribs, and a headache that’s strong enough to split my skull in two,” he admitted hoarsely. “I’m sorry.”
“Then let me out.”
“What did you do?”
Even though the question was reasonable, Logan’s control unraveled further. “What does it matter? I told you, I’m too weak to cause you any trouble.”
“You could be lying. Perhaps you have a.club. If I were to open the door, you could attack me,” came the husky voice.
“So shoot me.”
More silence. An incredible notion struck him.
“Don’t tell me you don’t have a gun!”
Silence.
Logan swore feelingly. “What kind of fool comes poking around Idaho Territory without a gun?”
“Fortunately, there happens to be a cannon nearby,” came the snippy answer.
Logan suddenly was struck by a mental flash of what the unexpected visitor might look like.
A boy.
That would explain the odd fluctuations he heard in the low voice from time to time. It would also explain why the lad had such tender ears, and why he was afraid to let Logan out of the stockade. It all fit. A wave of reluctant sympathy tugged at Logan. A lot of young men had shown up in Trinity Falls, hoping to fill their pockets with gold. To them, every stranger was a potential enemy.
“You don’t have to raise the bolt to feed me, kid. Just shove some of that food you’ve been cooking through the small opening at the bottom of the door. I’ll pass you my canteen, and you can fill it at the well.”