A Distance Too Grand

by Regina Scott

  She made it sound as if he’d been the delay. “Sure,” Ben drawled. “Sorry to have kept you waiting.”

  “No problem,” Dot said. “Just don’t wander off again. We need to make water by sundown.”

  With a shake of his head, Ben went to check on the corporal.

  Adams was running his hand over the iron rim of one of the rear wheels. Ben had only met the fellow on arriving at the fort, but the clerk had struck him as meticulous and cautious. He also tended to speak in a slow, considering manner that said he had an education beyond many of the Colonel’s men.

  He glanced up at Ben’s approach.

  “Any trouble?” Ben asked.

  “Everything appears to be in order,” he replied. “I can find no indication of a flaw. Perhaps the rocky terrain misled Mrs. Newcomb.”

  “Perhaps,” Ben agreed, though he still wondered how much Meg had had to do with the stoppage.

  “Corporal,” Dot shouted from the front of the wagon. “Stop dawdling and help Miss Pero remount.”

  Meg had come out of the van and taken her horse’s reins in hand. Now she glanced around, likely looking for a rock, so she could push herself up into the sidesaddle. Ben handed his reins to Adams, who pulled up short. Ben went to join her.

  “Allow me.” Setting a hand on either side of her narrow waist, he boosted her up. Once more memories threatened—twirling her in a dance, lifting her onto a rock so she’d have a better vantage point to shoot her picture, holding her close for a kiss.

  As if she’d been privy to his thoughts, her face turned pink. She draped her skirt about her, avoiding his gaze. “Thank you.”

  He sighed. “I’m not your enemy, Meg.”

  She turned to gaze at the spire. “I know that. And I’m not your enemy either. I want this expedition to be a success.”

  “Then it seems we share the same goal.”

  Her light dimmed, as if she expected him to refuse her next request for a photograph. His resolve dipped as well. “Let me know if you notice something else that must be documented, and I’ll see what I can do.”

  She smiled and met his gaze at last, and the whole world brightened. “Thank you.”

  He could have stood there for an hour, basking in the glow. He made himself turn and retrieve his reins from Adams, who was staring at him. Ignoring the corporal, he mounted and rode back to the front of the line.

  He expected to hear a request to stop at least twice more before they reached their evening camp at Mesa Springs. He even glanced back when they hit the edge of the escarpment late in the day. The plain dropped off through a steep set of stairs to the plateau below. Surely this deserved a picture.

  But Meg must have taken his warnings to heart, for she merely waved him on. No dulcet voice ever called out as they zigzagged down to the plateau, and the wagon and van never stopped again. They reached camp well before sundown, set up the tents around the little springs, and gathered downed wood from the trees for a fire.

  “Enjoy your dinner,” Dot said as she carved off the beef she’d seared over the flames. “This is the only fresh meat we brought. You want more than salt pork tomorrow, you better shoot it.”

  The others dug in, but Meg was sitting by the tent she would share with Dot, deep in study. Ben moved closer.

  “I know the first day on the trail can be hard,” he told her, “but you should eat something.”

  She glanced up, face puckered. “It’s not the ride that’s troubling me. I was checking the negative to make sure it turned out.”

  “I take it the picture was flawed,” he said, bending closer.

  “Not exactly.” She pointed toward the spire. “Look there.”

  Her cheek was an inch away. He caught the scent of honeysuckle over the smoke from the campfire. If he turned his head, their lips might meet.

  He glued his gaze to the plate of glass. Even though the light and shadow were reversed from what the picture would show, he made out the imposing finger of the rock, the tumble of boulders about its base. “It looks fine to me.”

  She shook her head. “Right there, near the largest boulder on the right, that small patch of white. It’s a shadow.”

  “Aren’t shadows good?” he asked, straightening. “They make the picture look more real. Everything casts a shadow.”

  Her frown didn’t ease. “Indeed. You can see the length of the spire’s shadow along that line. This shadow was cast by something else, or rather, I suspect, someone else.”

  Ben reared back. “You can’t know that. It could be a smudge.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “I know my photographs, Captain Coleridge. I know what I saw and what I took. There was another person at Deadman’s Tower, watching everything we did, and taking some trouble to make sure we didn’t know it.”

  4

  He didn’t believe her. Those blue-gray eyes were entirely too sharp, narrowed now as he gazed down at her. Oh, to have a commanding voice, the presence of an Amazon! Why did so many people think she could not know her craft because she was female?

  “Fine,” she said, wrapping the negative and slipping it back into her case for safekeeping. “You are the leader of this expedition. You’ve made that perfectly clear. Do as you please.”

  “Meg.” The word was half appeal, half apology. “Be reasonable.”

  “Hey!” Dot’s voice cut through the twilight. “You can’t expect your photographer to work all night, Captain. That lady needs to eat.”

  Ben rose, tipping his hat in Dot’s direction. “I know the folly of standing between a soldier and his—or her—mess.”

  Still smarting, Meg stood and approached the fire. Dot and Hank had gathered stones to circle the blaze. A big cast-iron pot was wedged into the heat, with a kettle suspended over the fire on a cast-iron tripod. She accepted a tin plate and wide-handled knife, fork, and spoon from Dot and perched on a larger rock to eat the beef and beans the cook had prepared. The smoky flavor rolled over her tongue. She washed everything down with the clear, cool water.

  “This is very good, Dot,” she said.

  The cook grinned at her. “Thank you kindly. The Army’s got its own ideas about what supplies we need—flour, bacon, saleratus, beans, cornmeal, salt pork. But I find a little rub off a cinnamon stick improves everything.”

  Mr. Pike must have finished earlier, for he was sketching in the red dirt with a stick, while Mr. Newcomb and the three cavalrymen looked on. The firelight flickered over his constructed hills and valleys.

  “Tomorrow, we cross the plateau,” he said in his gruff voice. “It will be dry going, so make sure the canteens and water barrel are full before we leave. There’s another spring here.” He stabbed the stick into the dirt. “That will be our next camp.”

  The hairs lifted on the back of her neck as Ben joined them to gaze down at the crude map.

  “Why head for the western end of the canyon?” he asked. “We’ll only end up backtracking.”

  Hank nodded. “Better to start at the eastern end and work our way west. Easier to map.”

  The guide pulled out the stick. “The eastern end is too rough for present company.”

  Dot glanced up from carving another slice of beef for Private Meadows. “You better not be talking about me, Rudy Pike. I was driving a wagon across the prairie when you were knee-high to a grasshopper.”

  “Prairie,” he grumbled. “I’m not talking about a flat stretch of wavy grass. It’s rutted and seamed and rocky. We’d be smarter to avoid the area.”

  “Which is precisely why we must map it,” Ben said. “Families moving out this way need to know what they’re facing. The Army needs to know where it can move supplies and troops, position new outposts. On his first expedition, Powell indicated several possible side canyons in the area that might prove useful for crossing. We’ll head toward the eastern edge of the plateau tomorrow.”

  He didn’t wait for the guide to argue further but turned to Adams. “Corporal, I want someone on watch through the night.”
/>   “Yes, sir,” he said with a look to the two privates.

  Mr. Pike climbed to his feet, tossing his stick into the fire. “Is that necessary? We haven’t seen hide nor hair of another soul.”

  “Standard procedure,” Ben answered. “I’ll take the first shift.”

  Corporal Adams nodded. “If you’d be so good as to wake me at moonrise, sir, I’ll wake Larson at midnight and have Meadows step in toward morning.”

  “Everyone else up at sunrise,” Ben agreed. With a look to Meg, he strode toward his tent.

  Was all that really standard procedure? Or was he mounting a guard because he believed her after all?

  As the others moved away from the fire, Dot waved a knife at them. “Coffee and hardtack in the morning. And you may have to wash it down in the saddle by the sound of it.”

  Meg finished her dinner and took her things to where Dot was pouring some of the hot water from the kettle into another of her big pots. She dropped a cake of soap into the water and followed it with some cold water from the spring. Bubbles speckled the surface.

  “May I help?” Meg asked.

  “Sure.” Dot nodded toward another pot nearby. “I’ll wash, and you rinse. We have plenty of water tonight. Can’t say the same about the next few days. Might as well keep things tidy as long as we can.”

  Dot was more fastidious than some cooks with whom Meg and her father had served. She used soap on the plates, cups, utensils, and cookware, scrubbing at them with a rag, then handed each item to Meg to rinse off in hot water before laying out to dry on the rocks around the fire. As they worked, Meg kept glancing to where Ben sat in front of his tent. He’d taken his rifle apart as the others prepared for bed and was cleaning it more thoroughly than Dot cleaned her dishes.

  “Have you known Captain Coleridge long?” she asked the cook.

  Dot smiled fondly. “Since he was a boy. Hank and I served with his father out at the Presidio in San Francisco. That’s a fancy name for a fort. After he graduated from the military academy, he worked with us on the Wheeler survey. He came out to Fort Wilverton to replace Captain Reynolds.” She eyed the stain on the plate she was washing and gave it an extra rub with her rag.

  “Captain Reynolds?” Meg asked.

  “He was supposed to lead this survey. We were all set to start out in June, but he was thrown from his horse. Broke his leg. Army sent him north to recover, but he wasn’t expected to return in time for us to set out.”

  So how much experience did Ben have with this sort of thing? “Did Captain Coleridge conduct the survey with Mr. Wheeler or merely serve as an escort?” she asked, laying out the last rinsed plate as if the answer made no difference to her.

  Dot shook soap off her hands. “Far as I recall, he worked with the scientific folk, but Hank would know for sure.”

  So would Ben. She could ask him directly. They used to be able to talk about almost anything. She’d loved listening to his plans.

  “This country’s going someplace,” he had said, gleam in his eyes as if he could see what lay ahead. “I’m going to help.”

  Would he confide in her so readily now? She could find out.

  Or she could get some sleep. Already Mr. Pike was rolled up in his blankets, feet to the fire and head away.

  “That’s why they say you need to keep a cool head,” her father had once told her. Her own bedroll called from the canvas tent she’d be sharing with Dot.

  Yet she wanted to talk to Ben. She wanted to know his plans, his ideas about this survey. What drove him so hard and fast toward the canyon? Her safety and the safety of everyone else on the expedition depended on his judgement. Surely she should try to understand him better.

  She and Dot finished the dishes, then she picked up the skirts of her riding habit and went to join him in the growing dark.

  He glanced up as she approached. “Something wrong, Miss Pero?”

  She’d been demoted. A while ago she’d been Meg. She chose not to think about when she’d gone by other names.

  Darling.

  Dearest.

  Sweetheart.

  “Nothing wrong,” she answered. “But I’m not ready to sleep just yet. I’m more interested in your thoughts.”

  He cocked his head, and she took that as an invitation. She sat across from him on the hard ground.

  “It’s clear you’re concerned about the pace,” she said. “But everyone seems determined to make good time. Why push so hard?”

  He eyed the wooden stock instead of her. “We have work to do. That’s all.”

  She didn’t believe him. “It’s more than that, like something’s chasing you.”

  He raised his brows high enough that they disappeared under the shadow of his hat. “I don’t chase easily.”

  Very likely not. Yet something was riding him. Had the Army given him orders he wasn’t at liberty to share? Was there some other reason they had to rush to the canyon?

  What was waiting for them on the north rim?

  Ben finished the last of the cleaning as Hank and Dot headed for their tents. The Colonel had shown him how to clean his rifle at an early age.

  “Sometimes all that’s standing between a man and death is a fast horse and a well-maintained gun,” his father had stressed. Ben had done the drill so many times now it was second nature.

  But not even the Colonel’s eagle eye had made him linger so long at the task. Some part of him seemed to think the longer he polished, the longer Meg would stay by his side.

  The light was nearly gone now, her hair the bright spot beyond the fire. On other moonlit nights, her eyes had mirrored the stars. He gave the stock an extra rub and began reassembling the rifle. “You should get some sleep.”

  As if to prove as much, she yawned. His mother or sister would have covered their mouths with a gloved hand, if they had deigned to yawn in public at all. Meg was natural, unaffected, like the land around them. He’d always admired that about her.

  Her hair flashed as she glanced up into the night. “How can I be tired? Look at that sky. I almost forgot how you can see forever.”

  He glanced up as well. Thousands of pricks of light pierced the black of the canopy, the center denser, opaque, like a lace veil on velvet. Cool air brushed past them, and an owl hooted from the wood. Though they were surrounded by companions, they might have been the last two people on Earth.

  “Papa wanted to take that shot,” she murmured as if awed by what she saw above them. “But no camera was up to the task.”

  “What happened to him?” Ben asked, dropping his gaze and laying the rifle across his knees.

  “I’m not really sure.” Her voice was as mournful as the call of the owl. “His hands started shaking. Then his eyes began to fail. I didn’t realize how sick he was until he’d gone.”

  Her sorrow clung to him like wet wool, leaving him heavy. “I’m sorry.”

  “Me too.” She was quickly becoming another shadow in the night, but he thought she lowered her chin to gaze at him. “And I was sorry to hear about your father. I know how much you admired him.”

  He had. He did, he hastily amended. There was still the possibility that the Colonel was alive—held hostage by natives, perhaps, or holed up with a broken leg. Still, more than two months had passed since anyone had heard from him. Every day the chances of finding him alive grew slimmer.

  “The Colonel was a force to be reckoned with,” he agreed. “I know what he’d say now. You need your sleep. Dismissed, Miss Pero.”

  She climbed to her feet, and he rose with her.

  “I’ll go,” she said, voice once more precise and controlled. “But not because of any order. I’m a civilian, Captain Coleridge. You have only so much authority over me.”

  “You’re here in the service of the Army,” he countered. “My orders apply to each member of this expedition.”

  She saluted, head high. “Yes, sir.” He caught a flash of teeth as she lowered her hand. “But see that you keep your orders civil and sensible, or you
might have a mutiny on your hands.”

  She headed for her tent before he could tell her that mutinies were for sailors. Soldiers just turned tail, and that he would never do.

  He kept watch until moonrise, but aside from the howl of a coyote and the occasional hoot from their friend the owl, he never sensed the presence of another living being. Adams came out promptly when Ben rattled the canteen hanging from the pole at the front of the tent.

  “All clear,” Ben told him. “Call if there’s any change.”

  “Yes, sir,” Adams promised.

  Despite the narrow, Army-issued cot and stuffy canvas tent, Ben generally slept well on a survey. A sign of a clear conscience, the Colonel would have said. Tonight, his mind drifted to concerns—his father’s safety, his mother’s fears, the unknown shadow on the negative. Perhaps because he could not solve the first two issues at the moment, he focused on the third.

  Meg knew her work. If she said that shadow shouldn’t have been there, he believed her. Did it follow, however, that whoever or whatever had made that shadow harbored ill intent? His team consisted of a company of eight well-armed and mostly experienced members. A single entity could do little against them.

  Still, wasn’t it better not to take chances, given his hopes for this expedition? Something or someone had prevented the Colonel from returning home.

  He must have fallen asleep, because the urgent hiss of a whispered conversation woke him. His tent was dimly lit; it couldn’t have been dawn yet. The moon must be out, for the darker shadows of two people loomed outside the flap. Drawing his gun from the holster on the ground beside his cot, he slid out from under the covers, stood, and aimed.

  “Who’s there?” he demanded.

  The voices hushed. Then came Larson’s voice, creaky and contrite. “Sorry to wake you, sir. I thought I saw something.”

  Pulling the suspenders up over his shoulders, Ben moved to the opening of his tent and ducked under the flap.

  The fire was a dull orange where Dot had banked it against the cool night air. Silvery clouds drifted past a moon that was just narrowing from full. His two privates stood at attention in front of his tent, their faces in shadow.