by Beverly Bird
She finally rode off with Plank. Jack stood away from the wagon, watching her go.
“Want any?” He turned around to see Holly behind him, holding out one of the frying pans.
“No, thanks.” If he ate, he knew it would make him unbearably sleepy, and he couldn’t afford that. “Coffee’s fine.”
His eyes stayed on Carly. Holly followed his gaze.
“She always gets grouchy when she’s working,” she told him helpfully. “It’s not anything you did, I bet.”
Jack looked at the girl again. He needed badly to tell her that she was barking up the wrong tree—at least he was beginning to think she was barking, trying her damnedest to throw him and her mother together. But what, really did he know about kids? He fished for a way to explain to her that what was happening between him and Carly wasn’t…wasn’t…
What the hell was it? he wondered, the air going out of him.
It’s not a forever kind of thing, he told himself. He’d nail Scorpion and go to Florida. She’d go on to Dodge, or wherever the hell it was that they were heading in this no-man’s-land. They’d have some pretty dynamite memories, and that would be that.
Holly was still watching him.
“What?” he demanded.
She grinned. “Nothing. Sure you don’t want any eggs?”
“No. And maybe you ought to think about why your mom always gets grouchy while she’s working,” he added sharply.
Holly’s face fell. She started to turn away. Jack felt cruel.
“Listen, all I’m saying is, if that’s the case, maybe she doesn’t want to be working. Did you ever think of that? Maybe she’d rather be doing something else. Maybe she’d rather be with you. And maybe if she had some help to get the work done faster, she’d be happier.”
Holly looked back at him. Her expression said she didn’t know whether she wanted to be rebellious or sad.
“You think?” she asked after a moment.
“Yeah, I think.”
“She ought to get a foreman,” Holly grumbled. “Aunt Tee keeps telling her that.”
Jack almost mentioned that he doubted if the IRS left enough money for one. Then he thought better of it. Maybe Carly didn’t want the kid to know how bad their financial situation was. Theresa sure didn’t seem to have the full picture. It certainly wasn’t his place to fill either one of them in.
“Yeah,” he agreed instead. “Probably.”
“Maybe she could hire you.”
Jack hesitated. Where had that twist come from? This kid had a quicksilver mind like her mother’s. “I already have a job.”
“Doing what?”
He thought fast. “I’m a policeman.” Close enough. “Look, your mom’s coming back now.” Why was he getting involved with these people’s lives? It had only been a few relatively innocent questions and comments, but damned if it didn’t feel like more than that.
He glanced at Holly again, then at Carly, and he doubted if he’d been so glad to see anybody in a very long time. Like mother, like daughter, he thought again. They both had a way of taking conversation right to the heart of the matter, making a man think…too much.
“I think,” Holly went on quietly, “that more than just about anything, I wish we were normal.”
Jack’s heart thumped. Oh, yeah, he could remember thinking that once upon a time. “It’s easy to think that normal is what the other guy has, that you’re the only person in the world who hurts the way you do,” he heard himself say.
Holly’s eyes widened. “Yeah,” she breathed.
Then, Jack thought, he’d ended up at the orphanage and found ten’or twenty other kids in his same exact shoes. “It’s not always true,” he went on, though he admitted that knowing that didn’t always help.
“Everybody I know has a mom and a dad and brothers and sisters. And they go to work in dresses and stuff, and they never smell like steers.”
Jack’s mouth quirked. He realized that he was enjoying this. “And maybe they wish they did.”
“Smell like steers?” She laughed. “I bet not.”
“You know, I know a lot of people who hate wearing high heels and ties. I sure couldn’t stand it on a daily basis. The thing is, practically everybody can find something they don’t like about their lives. You’ve sort of got to play up what you do like, Holly.” And that, he thought, was something he had learned how to do. “Sometimes the bad parts are just things you can’t fix. If there’s nothing you can do about them, you can’t let them eat at you.”
Carly was watching them closely. Suddenly he felt self-conscious.
“Anyway, just think about it,” he finished shortly, moving to tack his horse.
“You, on the other hand,” he muttered to the gelding, “are ugly as sin, stubborn as hell, and I can’t think of a thing you can do about it.”
The split-eared horse glared at him. Jack felt much better for having insulted him.
It took a little more than fifteen minutes to get on the trail again, but within half an hour dust plumed and the earth seemed to rumble as they drove on. The wagon pitched and rolled along behind them, and Scorpion took up his place again at the left rear side of the herd. Jack fell in behind him and watched him.
By eleven o’clock, Carly started to feel herself unraveling.
It didn’t matter that Jack had a pretty valid point and that she was trying her hardest not to think about what was happening, or which one was Scorpion, she thought. It didn’t matter because she was growing increasingly terrified of all the men the longer this went on.
They had just crossed over a narrow stream, barely enough to get the horses’ fetlocks wet, when Brad rode up beside her. She had her eyes on the herd and didn’t notice him coming until he spoke.
“Carly?”
Her heart hurtled into her throat and her skin went to ice. She jumped and looked over at him even as she cursed herself for her reaction.
“Is this the deepest water we’ll have to cross?” he asked. “This and that draw thing that we came through yesterday?”
Carly’s throat closed. She couldn’t find her voice. Talk. Answer him, damn it. Act normal.
Jack came up on her other side. “Problem?” he askea.
Carly felt her breath rush out of her, hitching halfway.
“I just wondered if we’d have to cross any deep water,” Brad explained. “I can’t swim.”
“Do we?” Jack asked Carly.
It was on the tip of her tongue to snap that he knew they did. He had already asked her that before they had even left the Draw. Then she caught herself. She breathed again carefully and nodded.
“We’ll hit the North Canadian River first,” she managed.
“How soon?” Jack asked.
Carly swallowed. “Soon.”
“Today?” Brad asked. “I can’t swim,” he repeated.
Good. Maybe you’ll drown. But what if she was wrong? What if it wasn’t him? Was he Scorpion just because he asked about rivers? It was a natural question if he really couldn’t swim. She remembered suddenly that Holly’s father had floated like a block of cement, too. He’d been terrified of even the bathtub and would only take showers. A river like the North Canadian had generally unhinged him, which just went to show that more sane and self-confident men than Brad had been scared by such a challenge.
“I…we’ll reach it any time now,” she managed finally. “Probably in about an hour.”
“How am I going to get over?” Brad asked.
“We’ll stick you in the wagon.” The one you were so worried about yesterday. She bit back on the words and glanced at Jack. If he didn’t like the arrangement, then the hell with him. If he wouldn’t tell her what the problem was with the wagon, then he could hardly expect her to work around it.
Jack looked unperturbed. Oh, God, maybe it wasn’t Brad, she thought again. Surely Jack would show some reaction over her putting him in the wagon if it was.
Carly spurred her mare, irritated, and trotted away from both of them. Jac
k caught up with her again a few minutes later. “You’re doing fine, cowgirl.”
“No,” she said tightly. “I’m not.”
“Were you telling the truth?” he asked. “Will we hit that river within the hour?”
“Barring calamity.”
“Then I promise I’ll try to get this over with before we hit the next river after this.”
Carly’s gaze flew to him. Jack had to look away. There was so much hope in her eyes, a plea, a certain desperation that was so unlike Carly it tore at something inside him. Make it end, her eyes said. Please make this craziness end.
She finally looked doggedly ahead again. Jack cleared his throat.
“In the meantime,” he said carefully, “I’ll need your help.”
“Do tell,” she answered, her teeth gritted.
He wanted to smile and couldn’t quite manage it. “You can’t put Brad in the wagon with Mazie Montoro.”
And there it was.
Her eyes came around to him again, sharp and stricken. “The wagon again, huh?” she asked finally, her voice cracking with the strain.
“Forget it.” He couldn’t stand the look on her face. He’d work around the problem. Somehow. “Forget I said anything.”
“Right,” she muttered sarcastically. Then, after a moment, she added, “If Mazie is in danger, then I have to do something about it, Jack.”
Jack grimaced. “Yeah. I guess you’re right.” The reason this whole damned thing had gone on as long as it had was his preoccupation with getting anyone else hurt.
Damn it.
Carly made a sound of distress. Jack flinched and watched her visibly get a grip on herself, and he was amazed by her all over again. This, he thought, was one very tough lady.
“So what do you want me to do?” she asked finally.
Jack thought about it. “Tell him that you’ve changed your mind, that you’ve thought about it and you’ve realized the wagon’s already too heavy as it is.”
“So if he doesn’t ride in it, what am I supposed to do with him?”
Jack smiled in a look so cold, it made her heart stop. She realized, suddenly, that she didn’t know him at all. He had touched her, had made love with her, but she simply did not know any man who could smile like that.
“I guess we’ll just have to let him try to get over on his horse,” Jack said. The more he thought about it, the better he liked it. He doubted if the bit about not swimming was true anyway. More than likely, it was a ploy to stay close to the money. So they would separate him from his wagon, and send it across the river without him.
“Sometime in all this, you’re going to have to mention that the Cimarron is even harder to get over than the North Canadian,” he went on, thinking aloud.
“It’s not.”
“It is now.”
Carly forced herself to nod.
Scorpion wouldn’t risk making such a crossing a second time, Jack thought. He’d finally have to go, before they got to it.
When they came up on the North Canadian forty-five minutes later, Jack kept a close eye on the assassin. The sight of the muddy, yellow water and its steep banks seemed to get no appreciable rise out of him. The river would hardly ruin the money, Jack thought. It would still spend. But it was going to be a hell of a job drying out fifteen million dollars. Then again, Jack thought, he’d certainly be willing to tackle such a chore for so much cash. If he had to. If there was a very valid reason for keeping it in that wagon a little while longer.
A reason like not wanting to leave, not wanting to panic and bolt, without the woman he had come to get.
Jack removed his hat, squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed them. They felt dry and grainy from the dust and from far too little sleep. And Scorpion, good old Scorpion, was still hanging loose.
He finally looked up again to see Carly hesitating at the bank. He rode to her.
“Well?” he asked.
She shot him a frustrated look. “I was about to ask you the same thing. What do I do now?”
“Talk to Brad.”
She blanched.
Jack swore quietly. Just a pawn, she’s just a pawn.
No, he thought, she had stopped being that days ago, even before he had touched her.
He didn’t want to ask her to get anywhere near the man, he realized. It was professionally dangerous, as well as personally appalling. “Here’s what I want you to do,” he said softly. “Wait a few minutes after I ride away from you. Then just call out to him, tell him what you’ve decided about the wagon. Don’t make a big deal of it. You don’t have to go over to him to talk to him. I’ll take it from there.”
Carly nodded, her face still pale.
“Are you okay?” he went on.
“Okay,” she repeated, whispering.
“So how are we supposed to get over this thing?” He motioned to the river.
“I need to find a place where the bank’s not this steep.” She pulled her braid forward over her shoulder and played with it nervously. “The catch is that it can’t be steep on either side.”
“You’ve been this way before,” he pointed out. “Don’t you remember where you crossed last time?”
“It doesn’t matter. It changes. Every time, it changes.”
Jack waited, one brow raised in a question. He wanted her to talk about it. He wanted to snag her attention with the logistics of the ride so that she would calm down.
It worked. Her gaze finally cleared again.
“My father used to say that a river is just like a woman,” she mused, half-smiling. “Contrary, sometimes even bitchy, giving you a fit if you look the other way even for a moment.”
“I know one like that.”
Her grin flashed a little wider for a second. “You can’t go anywhere without having to cross one sooner or later,” she went on, “and once you do, once you experience the thrill, you’ll keep going back for more. It’s scary, but it really is an adrenaline high.”
“Yeah,” Jack said. “That’s the one.”
Carly’s heart hitched and she looked at him. She found herself hoping yet again, fiercely, that this would be over soon. Before she knew it, she would look up and see Jack walking back into the camp, calmly blowing on a smoking gun, and Brad would just be…gone. Would it happen that way, or had she seen too many old movies? She found herself hoping that if it did happen, if it could only happen, then maybe she would see him again somehow. Maybe the end of the trail didn’t have to be Fort Dodge after all.
And that was a startling, treacherous hope. She knew better. All men left, sooner or later, one way or another.
Her jaw hardened and she looked deliberately back at the river. She tossed her braid back over her shoulder. “There’s no time like the present, I guess.”
Jack watched her go. At the very least, she didn’t seem to be overly concerned about Scorpion now. He wondered what she had been thinking about. Whatever it had been, it had changed her face for a moment, making it go soft, yearning, in a way that stroked something deep inside him, something he wasn’t even sure he could name.
He left the river as well, riding back behind the herd. His air went out of him slowly. He realized his breath had snagged somewhere in his mid-chest.
He felt a fierce rush of pride when her voice rose over the other commotion. It was remarkably steady. He watched Scorpion digest the news that he would be crossing on a horse, and that he’d better get used to it, because the next river was even worse.
Now the man was starting to look uncomfortable.
Suddenly, Jack didn’t feel tired anymore.
Chapter 14
They rode nearly a mile to the east before Carly found a place to cross the river. There was some tree cover on the opposite bank, but only a few scrubby bushes on the close side where the cattle and the guests waited.
A look of utter horror began dawning on Brad’s face. Maybe he really couldn’t swim, Jack thought.
“I can’t do it!” he protested, his voice grainy with
nerves.
Carly didn’t even look at him. “Sure you can,” she snapped. “You float. Your horse floats. You’ll just buoy up a little more than he does. Your legs will try to drift out. You’ve got to concentrate on keeping yourself centered above him. Hold onto his mane, and hold on tight when he gets his footing again. It’ll be a bumpy ride for a few seconds there.”
“But I can’t float!” Brad protested.
“Then just let your horse do it and hang on to him,” Carly said flatly.
She circled around the herd, coming up on its rear. Brad glared at her with a look of such utter fury that Jack felt his skin crawl. He looked quickly around at the others to see if anyone else noticed. They were all too preoccupied with their own concerns about the crossing. He breathed again and only then did he realize that his hand was like a claw on his thigh, ready to go for his gun again.
Easy, he cautioned himself. Easy does it.
He looked for Holly. She rode up beside him.
“Scared?” she asked.
“Who? Me? Never.”
She giggled. It made his heart move.
Carly started waving her hat again and hooting at the cattle to urge them down toward the bottom of the bank. The cowboys took up their places to keep the animals from bolting back toward solid ground. The other guests all more or less waited for Carly to shout more orders at them. Finally she did, pausing now and then to interject comments at the cowboys and the cattle.
“Come on, everybody! Move!” A cow tried to turn around, heading back toward her. “Oh, no, you don’t, Mama. Not that way.” She turned her again. “Josh, watch out there, that calf’s going to run for his life. Let’s go, Leigh, or I swear I’ll smack your mare’s rump so hard you’ll fly over. Okay, I want you all to follow the cattle. Enter the water right after the last of them are in. The last of them. Got it? After that, all you’ve got to do is stay on. Your horse will do the rest. Just hang on, no matter what. If there’s a problem, the men and I will take care of it. Holly, are you okay?”
“Sure. Do you want me to ride up ahead with you? Maybe you’ll need some help.”
Carly opened her mouth and closed it again. What was this? Holly hadn’t offered help in more than a year, since she had decided she resented Carly and everything connected with her.