Deep as the Rivers (Santa Fe Trilogy) (17 page)

   
“Try me,” he said. With lightning speed he seized a fistful of the thick curls spread across her shoulders and raised the knife.

   
“All right! I’ll put it up,” she yelped, pulling desperately away from him until her scalp prickled.

   
He released the silky strands and watched as she braided it hastily and wadded it beneath the battered cap. “That’s better. Even if the men know you’re female, it’s best if they don’t see all that bright red hair. It might prove an irresistible lure for them—not to mention how any Indians in the vicinity would fancy it—quite a trophy on some buck’s scalp pole.”

   
She paled. That thought had never occurred to her but she still resented his high-handed orders and threats. She resented
him.
“There. Does that satisfy you, Colonel, sir?” she sassed, making a mock salute that somehow dripped with contempt.

   
“You make a damn poor excuse for a soldier or a worker, but since you hired on to be a cabin boy, I suppose you’ll do to tend to some camp chores for me while we’re forced to travel together.”

   
“I already have my assigned chores, gathering firewood and hauling cooking water for Monsieur Lisa.”

   
“That was while everyone still thought you were a boy. From now on you’ll be under my protection. I’ll explain to Manuel. He’ll be angry, but he’s already told me you weren’t pulling your weight so I don’t expect he’ll think you’re much of a loss.”

   
“I was too pulling my weight! I worked until my hands were blistered and my back ached,” she retorted, stung by that Spanish oaf’s lack of appreciation. Never in her life had she struggled so hard as she had loading the cargo on the boat and doing the endless fetching and carrying. Unconsciously she rubbed one hand with the other. Once they had been soft and white; now they were hideously reddened with the nails broken. She had been reduced to utter misery and it was all this lying, arrogant lout’s fault! “What do you plan to do—use me as your squaw? If so, I warn you, once you’ve abused me, you’d better never plan to sleep again.”

   
There was something lethal in her speech, impassioned and foolish as it was, that made him take notice. In spite of himself he admired her grit. But she was spoiled and selfish and had put them both in terrible danger, not to mention jeopardizing his mission. Swallowing his anger he said evenly, “I find I no longer have a taste for you, even though I’m sure the rest of the men might not be so fastidious. You’re filthy and disheveled...and you smell. No, to be precise, you stink. However, we’re stuck together for the time being and you should be damn grateful that I’m willing to take responsibility for your safety.”

   
“I never asked for your protection. I don’t want it. Just leave me alone!” She could feel the sudden surge of tears beginning to sting beneath her eyelids and was horrified. After all she had endured, his cold rejection was simply too much to bear. She turned and tried to slip past him back to the camp, but he caught hold of her arm and pulled her up against his body.

   
“You brainless little idiot. Has no one in your entire spoiled life ever made you understand the word
no
?”

   
“You certainly will not,” she snapped back, shoving at him.

   
He let her go with a snarled oath and she stumbled backward. “All right, run into camp. See how far you get before several of the men grab you and push you to the ground in front of the fire. They’ll rip off your clothes and then they’ll take turns at you, one after another until—”

   
“No!” She put her hands over her ears, shaking her head as the horror of her brush with rape replayed in her mind. She could feel the bruises the rivermen’s big callused hands had inflicted on her arms and legs, smell the whiskey on their breath, their rotted teeth and the feral stink of their lust. She shivered in revulsion and then straightened up defiantly, forcing herself to assume a calm facade. “You’ve made your point. Better the devil I know than those I don’t. Consider me under your protection, Monsieur Colonel,” she said with scathing sarcasm.

   
“How gracious of you to consent, Mademoiselle St. Etienne,” he replied dryly, relieved that she had at last seen reason enough to do as he demanded. Perhaps they could get through the men without his having to engage in mortal combat with half a dozen of them for her favors—favors he would not avail himself of no matter that he burned with wanting her.

   
Cursing his ill luck and even worse taste in women, he strode toward the camp with Olivia following respectfully behind him.

* * * *

   
Olivia awakened to a gust of icy air as the blanket she had been huddling beneath was ripped from her body and tossed across a pile of lashed together crates inside the long, narrow cabin box of Lisa’s keelboat. River damp instantly penetrated the thin shirt and trousers in which she slept. She looked up into Samuel Shelby’s scowling face. In the dim light she could see the darkening shadow of beard stubble on his jaw. He was out of uniform today, dressed in a pair of soft well-worn buckskins that hugged his thighs scandalously. A loose brown cotton shirt, as yet unlaced hung open revealing a good deal of his bare chest. He looked like a river pirate.

   
“Get up and make some coffee while I’m gone. Manuel just spotted some deer drinking at the water’s edge a hundred yards upstream. I’m going after one.”

   
She sat up, rubbing her aching back. “The men have already made coffee. Go get your own,” she replied in a surly voice. She had always hated rising early and was scarcely at her best in the mornings.

   
“I don’t want that brackish swill. I’ve always made my own.” He gestured to a battered pot and sack of coffee beans lying beside one of his opened packs.

   
“Then make it now. I’m certain my humble efforts wouldn’t please you,” she replied saccharinely.

   
He finished fastening his shirt, then tucked it into the buckskin breeches. “If everyone in the party is to believe you’re under my protection, you’d better start performing some simple female chores around here.”

   
“I don’t do simple female chores. I was hired as Señor Lisa’s cabin boy.”

   
“That was before everyone learned you aren’t a boy. I discussed the situation with Manuel after you went to sleep last night. You were performing your work so poorly he was going to set you off at the first outpost. We’re damn lucky he hasn’t put us both afoot on the riverbank and left us to walk all the way back to St. Louis. He’s agreed that your services will be rendered to me for the duration of the journey—as long as I can keep the rest of the men from causing trouble.”

   
Your services.
She bristled up like an angry porcupine. “I am
not at your service
that way!”

   
He smiled sardonically, without a trace of humor in his eyes. “If you recall, I’ve already declined those services, mademoiselle. I would suggest that you perform the camp chores I assign you and wait on me like a good little girl.”

   
“I am not a little girl.”

   
“You’re certainly not good either, except at causing trouble.”

   
The overweening arrogance of the man! “I refuse to be your lackey,” she said, standing up to face him. Just then the boat took a sudden lurch as a large driftwood log struck the bow. She lost her balance and toppled forward against his chest.

   
As Samuel caught her in his arms, her breasts brushed against him with their tantalizing softness. “I don’t keep useless pets,” he gritted out, setting her away from him and struggling to bring his body under control. “You will work for me in exchange for your passage and keep, or by God I’ll turn you over to the three charming fellows who accosted you last night.” He slung his shot pouch around his neck and fastened his powder horn at his hip, then seized his rifle and stalked out of the dimly lit cabin.

   
Olivia sat back against a crate filled with strouding and wrapped her arms around her chest, feeling heartily sorry for herself. How could she ever have been so naive as to be attracted by that crude, ill-mannered lout? He was so unprincipled he might well hold to his threat and give her to the men who had tried to rape her.

   
He doesn’t even want you that way.

   
She shook her head to banish the nagging thought. “Damn him, I’ll make him coffee. I’ll make him coffee he’ll never forget!”

   
She slipped on her boots, then stomped outside the cabin. Morning fog hung chill and dank across the wide river. The sun was a dim molten ball barely lighting the eastern horizon yet the men were all up and about, packing their gear and preparing to shove off. Several campfires blazed cheerily on the sandy beach. She considered grinding the beans on the small sharp-bladed grinder Lisa kept on deck, then decided not to bother. Instead she climbed over the side of the big keelboat, clutching the pot and sack of beans in one hand while she negotiated the crude unsteady plank to the bank.

   
The water that lapped up onto the sand was murky with mud that had washed downstream with the spring thawing, but the Missouri, or Big Muddy, was always silty. She knelt at water’s edge and sloshed a generous amount of the gritty liquid into the pot, then looked at it. Deciding it was still too clear, she reached down into the muck and scooped up a handful of the rich river bottom and added it to the pot.

   
“That should give it body,” she muttered, adding a fistful of the whole beans. “There, that should do it. Nice and crunchy. Food and drink all in one, and if his colonelship doesn’t like it this way, he can strain it through one of Señor Lisa’s socks, for all I care.”

   
She walked over to the nearest fire and slammed the pot down in the middle of the hot coals to boil. An iron pot of unappetizing hominy sat bubbling evilly on the opposite side. Her stomach growled. She was starving but since the fare of the boatmen was mostly comprised of pork fat, weevily hard biscuits and mush, she had eaten little since the journey’s beginning. One of the squaws dished up a tin plate of the hominy and offered it to her. Olivia accepted, noting as she dug in with a none too clean spoon, that the woman was studying her with curious eyes.

   
Word had spread that she was a woman masquerading as a boy...and that she now belonged to Samuel Shelby.
And he didn’t even have to buy me. I stupidly let myself be dropped into his lap.
She raised her head, proudly ignoring the murmuring and stares, then dug into the sticky grayish lump on her plate, thinking with relish of how much Samuel was going to enjoy his morning coffee when he returned.

* * * *

   
Shelby sat motionless watching the fat buck drinking at the water’s edge. As he waited patiently for the deer to move into a better position for the shot, he thought of Olivia St. Etienne. What the hell was he going to do with her? He knew he had been hard on her, perhaps even too hard, but she had the most irrationally infuriating effect on him.

   
In hindsight, he realized making the obscene arrangement with Wescott had probably been a mistake. He should have refused. If the girl had really been her guardian’s innocent victim, she could have come to him for asylum. Now he would never know if that had been the unlikely truth. Of course, there were still several other far less appealing possibilities. She could be the wildly immoral hoyden Wescott hinted at, a social embarrassment he wanted to rid himself of; or even more sinister, she could be in league with her guardian to infiltrate Samuel’s mission and report to the British about his work.

   
If the latter were true, he was in a real quandary for he had to pick up the Englishman’s trail and strike out into the Osage villages in pursuit of him. He could scarcely take a white woman with him, especially a citified French belle like Olivia. There seemed to be no answer. He rubbed his eyes, then steadied his rifle in the fork of a cottonwood. The deer drew nearer, lowering its head to drink once again. Shelby sighted and fired.

   
When he dragged the buck into camp, Olivia was crouched at a campfire tending the coffeepot. Good. At least she was willing to obey orders. One of the squaws came over to him and inspected his kill. Seth Walton was still out, farther afield in search of game and was not expected to catch up to the boat for a day or two. The woman was delighted with the first fresh meat they’d had in several days. She called for another of the squaws to help her with the butchering.

   
Samuel strode over to the fire where Olivia sat watching him with an unreadable expression on her face. She looked younger yet oddly sensuous in the morning light. Ignoring the ache in his loins that had become a constant companion ever since he’d first laid eyes on Olivia St. Etienne, he knelt down beside her and picked up a tin cup. Smiling, he reached across for the pot and poured himself a cupful.

   
Olivia resentfully watched as he used the heavy leather mitt rather than burn his hand on the molten handle as she had foolishly done when she tested the horrendous brew. As he raised the cup to his mouth her burned hand was forgotten and a slow smile spread across her face. “How is it?” she inquired sweetly.