by Shirl Henke
Delilah watched his profile, wondering what he was thinking. Had he taken Talks Wise’s words as a rejection? She did not know what the two men had discussed after they’d left the feasting late last night. At first she’d assume it was about Sky and Father Will, the young Episcopal priest who served their reservation. But later she learned that the old chief had cautioned Clint about returning to his former life, reminding him that he had built a new one in the white world and could serve the Ehanktonwon people best by remaining a respected businessman aiding Sky with legal connections in St. Louis.
He remained silent, staring into space for several moments. At length, she said, “Sky and Father Will certainly seem taken with each other. I suspect we’ll be hearing about a wedding within the year.” She blinked, then asked, “Oh, I wonder—can a clergyman perform his own marriage?”
Clint rewarded her question with a quizzical smile. “Yeah, I noticed the way they were huddled together, too. He’d be an asset dealin’ with the government. As to the marryin’ part, I reckon it’s possible. Sky’s spent too much time with whites not to want marriage lines, all proper.”
Left unsaid, Delilah knew, was any mention of their own situation. “Sky also expects that we’ll marry. I had a difficult time explaining that neither of us wants that.”
He snorted, half laughing. “She came to me last night, riled as a mama bobcat with new kittens. Tellin’ me I was taking advantage of you.” He looked down at her, watching the wind blow her curly hair, partially obscuring her face. “Well, am I, Deelie?” he asked in a husky voice.
“No, Clint. We have an understanding,” she replied calmly. Then, to cover her own unease, she added, “Besides, I’d never marry a man I couldn’t trust not to steal my boat.”
He threw back his head and laughed.
Rising early had become a habit since Captain Dubois blew the whistle at dawn each day as warning before they left the shore. He was tireless, always early at his place in the wheelhouse, studying charts and measuring them against what the river’s new twists and currents revealed to his keen eyes. Breakfast was usually brought up to him by the boy, Currie.
Delilah rubbed sleep from her eyes. It had been a week since they’d left Sky and her family. They had crossed from Dakota into Montana Territory. In spite of rainstorms, tornados and boiler break-downs, they were making good time. She watched as a big slope-shouldered roustabout carried the captain’s tray up to the wheelhouse. She wondered idly why Currie had not performed this task, but one of the crewmen approached her with a tally discrepancy on the buffalo hides that they’d purchased from Sky’s people. As clerk, it was her job to check, so she spent the next hour searching until the last of the cured skins were located.
Then she started thinking about the winsome boy who wanted to be a pilot. Had he fallen ill? The lad was devoted to his duties aboard the boat and would never shirk any assignment. She went in search of him on the main deck.
“Where’s Currie? Why didn’t he take the captain’s breakfast to him?” she asked Todd Spearman when she found him in the kitchen, flirting with Sadie, the pretty Irish cook’s helper.
Todd’s ruddy face appeared puzzled. “He picked up the tray, same’s usual, a couple hours ago.”
“We have to find him,” she said without further explanation. Obediently, if reluctantly, he left Sadie kneading bread dough and followed his boss lady around the deck until they located Currie with Zeke Hagadorn, the second pilot, who was teaching the lad how to take depth readings with a lead-weighted line.
“Why didn’t you take Captain Dubois’s tray up to him?” Delilah asked.
Currie’s eyes grew round with alarm. “I started to, honest, but Lew Flowers, that big rooster, he said capt’n ordered him to do it. I…I slipped on the steps ’n spilled some coffee in his eggs yesterday. Lew said the capt’n was powerful mad,” the boy stammered, rubbing one foot against his ragged pants leg.
“That doesn’t sound like Captain Dubois. I’m going to ask him about this,” Delilah replied.
Zeke and Todd nodded in agreement. Jacques Dubois would never be short with a boy for such a simple mistake. Carrying a tray up the ladder when the boat hit a shift in current could often result in a mishap. She headed for the wheelhouse, but when she called up to the captain, she received no reply, nor could she see him through the windows that wrapped around the small room. A sudden premonition of unease swept over her.
When she opened the door, she found him holding onto the wheel, struggling to reach the whistle, no doubt to stop the boat. His normally café-au-lait complexion was ashen. Delilah tried to yell for help, but the noise of the engines drowned her cries. What was the number of blasts for pull to shore? She began to yank on the cord, sending a frantic cacophony of whistles, sure to call attention.
Below, Clint heard the racket and ordered the engineers to stop the boat and drop anchor in deep water. Then he tookthe stairs to the boiler deck two at a time and raced to the wheelhouse. He saw Delilah at the door, a look of grave alarm on her face. He was up the stairs before she could finish saying, “Captain Dubois is unconscious, gravely ill! We need Mr. Hagadorn to pilot the boat to shore.”
“I’ll carry him down to his cabin. You send for Ha-gadorn,” Clint said, kneeling and hoisting the smaller man over one shoulder. She scrambled down the stairs, with Clint moving more carefully behind her.
By the time she reached the stairs to the main deck, she remembered Currie and the big rooster who’d taken the breakfast tray away from him. “Riley’s man!” And Currie was with the second pilot right now! She reached into her pocket for her Derringer. Since the incident with Riley’s assassin, she’d taken to carrying it with her at all times. She hiked up her skirt and raced down the steps in the most unladylike fashion imaginable, then ran toward the back of the deck, where she’d left the second pilot with the boy.
Zeke Hagadorn was nowhere to be seen but the burly roustabout had Currie cornered between the wall of the engine room and the hog chains. “Now it’s yer turn, ya little turd,” Lew Flowers said, lunging forward and grabbing hold of the boy’s shirt collar as the nimble youth tried to slip past his far larger foe.
“No, it’s your turn, Flowers,” Delilah yelled just as the deafening noise of the engines began to abate.
The giant turned around without relinquishing his hold on the boy. Instead, he threw Currie overboard and advanced on her with a feral growl, big yellow teeth showing when he laughed at her small pistol. She fired point blank, though not at his chest, which might not stop the brute quickly enough. Instead, she aimed for the bridge of his nose.
Delilah did not miss.
With a look of amazed consternation twisting his features, Flowers collapsed backward as blood spouted from his ruined face. He crumpled to the deck. She screamed, “Man overboard! Man overboard!”
From above, Clint heard the shot and her cries as he laid Dubois on the bed in the captain’s cabin. Turning to Todd Spearman, he said, “Fetch Luellen and have her bring Mrs. Raymond’s medical kit from her cabin.”
With that he dashed out the door and leaned over the railing near where he heard Delilah’s voice. She was pointing to a head bobbing in the swift current about a dozen yards off the port side. He yanked off his boots and gun belt, then vaulted the rail. At this stretch of river the bottom was uncharacteristically deep. He only prayed it was deep enough for him to come up without breaking his neck—or miring himself in silty mud while the crewman was swept to his death.
With her heart pounding madly, Delilah watched Clint leap from the upper deck. Please let it be deep enough! She could see the boy growing smaller in the distance as he struggled ineffectually against the strong, swift water. But Daniels surfaced quickly and stroked powerfully downriver. In moments he reached Currie and began swimming slowly back toward the stopped boat.
“Zeke Hagadorn is missing,” she said to Horace, who had heard her screaming and rushed to see what was wrong. “I think this offal—” she shuddered, po
inting to the dead man at her feet—“must be responsible. He threw Currie overboard.”
“Riley’s man, no doubt,” her uncle said, quickly assuring himself that she was unharmed.
Horace immediately ordered several of the crewmen to lower the yawl over the side and begin searching up and down the banks for the second pilot. Delilah and Todd assisted Clint after he swam to the boat with Currie. They pulled the boy over the railless, foot-high side of the main deck while Clint hoisted his dripping body beside them, panting from the exertion of the swim.
“Zeke Hagadorn’s missing,” she said to Clint.
“He…h-he k-killed ’im, ma’am,” Currie hiccupped, gulping for air and coughing as he pointed to the dead rooster. “He sneaked up back of us with a b-blackjack ’n split his skull, then shoved him overboard afore I cud do anythin’.”
“You all right, son?” Clint asked. Currie nodded.
Clint looked at Delilah. “How did you—”
“I was suspicious when Flowers took the captain’s breakfast tray away from Currie. I suspect he put poison of some kind in the food.”
“Luellen’s taken your medical kit to his cabin. Best you help her tend him,” he said, peeling the soaked shirt from his broad shoulders.
Any other time she would have stood transfixed at the sight, but now she turned quickly and did as he told her, eager to get away from the bloody corpse. She had known when they tricked Riley and took the Nymph into the upriver trade that it would be dangerous. But she had never imagined watching men die, much less killing two herself.
When she reached Captain Dubois’s cabin, Luellen looked up at her. “Capt’n don’t look too good, but he says he’s gonna be at the wheel tamorrah.”
“Lew Flowers must’ve poisoned your meal after taking the tray from Currie,” Delilah explained.
“I hate to give a backhanded compliment, but I am most grateful you served grits this morning, Mrs. Colter,” Dubois said. “I detest them so ate very sparingly—and your normally excellent coffee tasted a bit off. I took one taste and no more.”
Luellen slapped one plump knee and chuckled. “Reckon I’ll recomember not to serve yew grits no more, but I shore am glad I did this mornin’.”
“Just to be certain you’ll not suffer any lingering effects from the poisoning, let me check your tongue and eyes,” Delilah said, opening her medical kit. She turned to the cook. “Please brew a tea from these herbs,” she said, handing Luellen a cloth-wrapped packet. “It’s a soothing aid for digestion. Some plain bread would be good, too. That is,” she asked Dubois, “if you think you can hold down solid food?”
“Mais oui, anything to get out of this bed. Have Mr. Ha-gadorn restart the engines. We have all day to run and hours before we reach the next wood stop.”
Delilah explained about Zeke, whom she knew the captainhad worked with for many years. “My uncle has the crew searching for him, but Currie said he was thrown in the water after a strong blow to his head.”
Dubois’s eyes grew hard with anger. “In this stretch of the river, so wide, so deep…” He sighed in resignation.
But in spite of their fears, Zeke Hagadorn was located clinging, semiconscious, to a sawyer nearly a mile down the river. Although Delilah had to put seven stitches in the gash Flowers had made on his head, he appeared little the worse for his ordeal.
“We were very lucky,” Delilah said to Clint when all the commotion had died down.
“You were very observant. If you hadn’t been suspicious of Flowers and gone looking for the captain, we could’ve lost him, most certainly would’ve lost Hagadorn and Currie. Probably wrecked the boat and lost half the crew and passengers to boot.” He looked at her with genuine admiration. “You’re one hell of a partner, Deelie.”
Visions of Flowers’s ruined face flashed through her mind. She hugged herself. “I never imagined having to kill men to survive. Is that the way it has to be out here in the wilderness, Clint?” She searched his face, which had grown expressionless…all except for the graying of his pale blue eyes. She knew that he was remembering the tragedy Sky had told her about.
The stars shone brightly that night, countless millions of pinpoints of light. Mr. Hagadorn had been able to guide them to shore for the night’s berthing. Now both he and the captain slept, recovering from their respective ordeals. Although she was grateful both men were mending, Delilah’s thoughts were not on the Nymph’s near brush with disaster but on Clint and how he’d looked that afternoon.
She waited for several hours, making certain her uncle was soundly asleep before donning her wrapper and leaving their quarters. Starlight illuminated her way down the deck to Clint’s cabin without need for a lantern. She paused for amoment before she knocked softly, praying no one would see her out this late.
For what seemed like an eternity there was no answer. Just as she was about to slip away, Clint opened the door. He was barefoot, practically naked, wearing only a short robe that draped open, revealing his chest. She was certain he had nothing on beneath the blue cotton. His expression was once more unreadable as he extended his hand and she placed hers in it so he could pull her inside.
“I wondered if you might come to me tonight…no, I hoped you would, Deelie,” he said, closing the door silently.
“I…I couldn’t sleep. I keep seeing that man I killed. I shot Pardee after a long, frightening ordeal. I acted instinctively, but Flowers…” She shuddered, remembering how she’d deliberately aimed for his face to stop him.
“You did what you had to do today. Saved Currie’s life with your quick thinking—else I’d’ve had to choose whether to save him or you from the river,” he said with a crooked grin, smoothing a long strand of hair away from her cheek.
“I could swim for myself,” she whispered. “When I saw you leap into the river, I was so afraid.” She laid her head against his chest and felt the reassuring beat of his heart.
“I could’ve buried myself in mud instead of water. Fool way to die.”
She raised her head and touched his lips with her fingertips. “Don’t say it. You didn’t die. It was very brave if reckless, just like you…and then, when you climbed back onto the boat, dripping wet…”
“Come,” he invited, leading her to his bed.
Although it was unmade, she could tell he had not been sleeping. A book of Shakespeare’s sonnets from her uncle’s collection lay beside a lantern turned up high. He lowered the flame, then drew her into his arms. Delilah went eagerly, untying the belt to her wrapper as he slid it off her shoulders, tracing soft, wet kisses along her arms and breasts. She could feel the heat of his mouth through the sheer batiste of her night rail and wanted no barriers between their flesh.
When her hands moved to the belt of his robe, he plucked her loose gown up and over her head in one swift, graceful motion, then shrugged out of his robe. “Do you always sleep in the altogether?” she asked breathlessly.
“Always,” he said, scooping her into his arms and laying her on the narrow bed. He sat beside her, spreading her hair across his pillow, then lifting it with his fingers, letting it fall like silk, gleaming russet in the shadows cast by the lantern. “The light catches your fire, Deelie,” he murmured, lowering his head so his stubbled chin brushed her sensitive breasts.
Prickles of delight shuddered through her at the faint scratchiness, but she wanted his mouth on the aching tips and guided his head until he took one nipple between his lips, then the other. She writhed, reaching for his straining staff at her thigh, but he moved lower, eluding her grasp, trailing kisses down to her belly and around the curves of her hips, his hands following where his mouth led.
She expected him to kiss her legs as he’d done last time, but now he paused by the dark russet curls at the juncture of her thighs. Delilah squirmed, uncertain whether or not she wanted this shocking intimacy. His mouth brushed across the tops of her thighs. “No,” she whispered.
“Oh, yes,” he answered, lying on his stomach on the bed, spreading he
r legs, caressing her inner thighs until they fell apart of their own volition, even though her mind said this was…was…
“This is…” Again her thoughts faded into pure sensation, her mind fuzzy and lost.
“Wicked? Forbidden?” He chuckled softly. “Oh, Deelie, you have so much to learn. Let me teach you?”
He did not give her the opportunity to reply but lowered his head once more to her soft, feminine heat and tasted of her. When she moaned and offered herself to him, he cupped her derrière in his hands and raised her lower body up to feast, laving gently with his tongue, swirling, tugging, ever so softly, gently caressing.
Delilah gasped at this scalding new pleasure. Howstrangely, wonderfully, wickedly delicious it felt. Her fingers sank into his straight dark gold hair, urging him on until she could feel the beginnings of what she had come to know meant culmination. Her breath gathered to emit a cry of keening ecstasy when the waves crested.
But before she could do so, he slid up her body, plunging his hard staff deep inside her while his mouth found hers in a fierce, possessive kiss, smothering her cries lest they be heard through the thin walls of the cabins.
She could taste herself on his lips, although there was no room for thought of it now. He stroked hard and fast, drawing from her his own desperate pleasure, mindless as she, feeling her clenching heat surround him. Then he, too, surrendered to the bliss.
They lay entwined, sweat-soaked and panting for breath in the afterglow. The soft lantern gave its golden benediction.
“It’s the Liver Eater’s camp! Ole man Johnson hisself,” one of the roosters called out as they approached the wood stop the following afternoon.
“I ain’t a goin’ into his place. Seen it once’t ’n that were ’nough fer me,” a second said, shivering. “ ’Sides, he’s got some fancy-ass gunman workin’ fer ’im now, has ole Jeremiah. Word is that killer’d jist as soon shoot a feller as spit.”