MB01 - Unending Devotion (16 page)

Lily closed her eyes and let the steady rhythm of Connell’s heartbeat soothe her. She curled closer to him and dared to lay her hand on his.

Suddenly something shoved against the door.

Connell woke with a start, and his knife was out and positioned to throw before she could move.

She strained to sit up, but his arm tightened around her, pulling her closer.

Another shove against the door pried it open a crack.

“Don’t move,” he said in a voice slurred with leftover sleep.

She didn’t know if she could move even if she tried. She was content to lean against him, into the safety of his arm, and know he would protect her, just as he had all night long.

Maybe her defenses had fallen away because she was sick. Maybe they’d crumbled because she’d come to realize that Connell was one of the most decent men she’d ever met. Whatever the case, she relinquished her need to always be the strong one, the one doing the protecting. For once, she could let someone else be strong enough for both of them.

A slam on the door, this one harder than the last, ripped the door from its tenuous hold on the rusting hinges. It crashed down on the dead wolf and tree branch, letting in a blinding stream of sunlight and a rush of frigid air.

“They’re here!” someone shouted.

She blinked hard, her eyes watering from the glare.

There was more shouting, and before she knew it, a man bundled in a buffalo-skin coat shoved his way past the broken door.

Through the fog that weighed down her head, she glimpsed the anxious face of Stuart Golden. In one sweeping glance, he took in her position within the confines of Connell’s arms and his eyes narrowed. She almost thought she caught a glimpse of jealousy in them before he forced a grin.

“What do you think you’re doing out here slacking off, McCormick, you big lazybones?”

Connell’s knife disappeared, and a tired smile hovered over his lips. “Oh, you know me. I’m always trying to get out of my work. Figured this was a good way.”

“Yeah.” Stuart peered at the gap in the roof and then at the paw of a dead wolf dangling through the hole. “I’d probably have more fun out here fighting off wolves too.”

“Yep. You don’t know the rip-roaring good time you missed.”

Stuart glanced again at her and then at Connell’s arm that was wrapped around her. He shifted his gaze away and swallowed hard.

“Is she alive?” Oren’s voice boomed from the doorway.

“Doesn’t look like the wolves had a chance,” Stuart said over his shoulder. “Not against Connell’s knife.”

Oren elbowed his way past Stuart. “Thank the good Lord.”

Beneath the brim of his derby, his face was red and chapped from the cold, but his eyes brimmed with a warmth that brought an ache to her throat. His overgrown mustache drooped as much as his shoulders, as if worry had pressed down on him like a felled tree while she was gone.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, wishing she could turn back the clock. If only she’d waited for Oren to take her to Merryville instead of rushing off. At the time, she hadn’t realized her rashness would nearly kill her and bring trouble to everyone else.

“How are you?” he asked, his gruff voice cracking.

“I’m fine—”

“She’s got a fever,” Connell interrupted.

Only then did Oren seem to take in the nature of her predicament. His gaze went first to Connell’s arm around her. His eyes widened at the lace of her camisole peeking above the edge of the blanket where her coat had slipped away. And then he glanced at her dress puddled on the dirt floor where she’d left it.

“What in the hairy hound has gone on here?” Fury flamed to life in his voice and his face.

“It’s not what it looks like.” Connell slipped his arm away from her, leaving her suddenly chilled.

“I’m not blind or stupid.”

“I know things don’t look proper.” Connell held himself rigid. “But you’ve got to believe me when I tell you that nothing happened between us.”

“I think I remember telling you no one touches Lily and lives to tell about it.”

“Then you’ll be happy to know I treated her honorably.”

“You had her sitting in your lap and were devouring her like she was your breakfast, lunch, and supper.”

“Don’t blame Connell,” she said. If anyone deserved a rebuke for the indecency of their situation, she did. She was embarrassed to admit it, but she’d been the one who’d wanted to be close to him, while he’d done all he could to keep an honorable distance from her.

Oren’s thick eyebrows came together in a furious scowl, one that would have scared the wolves away had they made an appearance.

“He saved my life, Oren.” Everything within her rose up to defend Connell. “If it weren’t for him, I’d be frozen like the ice on the river, and I’d be buried under several feet of snow. He did what was necessary to get me warmed back up.”

Stuart cleared his throat, and when she looked up, two more men had ducked inside.

She tugged the edge of the blanket higher until it reached her chin. “Connell’s a good man, and he treated me with the utmost respect.”

Nobody said anything for a long moment, but it was obvious from the way the newcomers shifted their feet and looked everywhere but at her that they had assumed the worst too.

Embarrassment crashed over her, and she sat forward with a burst of desperation. “Connell McCormick did nothing but put his life at risk numerous times to save me.”

When Oren met her gaze, the anger had fizzled and was replaced instead with sadness. “He may have saved your life, but let’s hope to high heaven he didn’t ruin your reputation.”

Chapter
12

“I
’m going to make an announcement to the men at flaggins,” Connell said to the foreman of Camp 1.

Herb Nolan didn’t say anything and instead reached for the whiskey bottle filled with coal oil perched on a nearby stump.

Connell absently tapped the flat edge of his ax against the pine next to him, ignoring the growling in his stomach that told him the noon meal was fast approaching. “I’ve finally come up with a way to get us back on track with production.”

Herb squirted a stream of oil onto the long crosscut saw his sawyers were jerking through the kerf. The wobbling blade stuck for only another instant before the few drops of oil did their job. The men resumed their practiced rhythm, the saw swishing back and forth through the felled tree.

Connell’s trained eye measured the tree, checking the ax clips where the tree had been laid off, the places where the trunk would be cut into sections. Each was exactly twenty feet apart, just as he’d expected.

The swampers had already been over the tree, cutting off the limbs, throwing the tops and other waste into a pile. As far as Connell could tell, the log was an upper—a superior grade. Fortunately, about ninety percent of the logs from his three camps were uppers.

Unfortunately, they weren’t getting enough of those logs into town to the main rail. They’d already been struggling with production, but the week of melting had thrown them back even more.

“I’ve had the icer out every night this week.” The foreman stepped away from the sawyers. “I’ve even kept the contraption going during the daytime so we can haul as many logs as possible. The roads have never been smoother—”

“I know you’re working hard,” Connell reassured Herb. “But we’ve got to take advantage of this weather while we have it.”

Herb nodded, but the crinkle across his leathery forehead was only the beginning of the resistance Connell knew he was going to get once he asked the men to start hauling at night. Maybe his announcement would help.

Just then the bugle of the cookee’s nooning horn called to them above the echoes of chopping and sawing. The men straightened their backs and flexed their muscles before slipping back into the coats they’d discarded after becoming overheated from all their exertion.

They made their way to the swampy clearing where the cookee, the cook’s helper, had brought them flaggins on his pung sleigh. He’d started a fire, and the men gathered around it to warm their hands in the bitter air that had poured in from the north and chased away every last hint of an early spring.

And while they did their best to stay warm, they ate the meal cookee served them. Some sat on logs and others stood, balancing their tin plates and pannikins in one hand and utensils in the other. They gulped the usual fare of beans, salted pork, and steaming tea, working fast to inhale the meal before it lost its heat.

Connell stood back and watched, knowing Duff would have a special mincemeat pie for him when he finally made his way back to the kitchen. He supposed it was one advantage of being the boss man. But it couldn’t offset the fact he had to be the bearer of bad news. And from the scowls of some of the men, he figured they’d already guessed why he was there.

Once everyone was served, Connell moved to the front of the group. There was a part of him that wished he could walk away and let the men do their work. What difference would a few more thousand feet of board make? Especially when McCormick Lumber already had so much?

But the other part of him knew he had to stay and make sure McCormick came out on top of all the other companies. That was his job. Dad had trained him to work hard. And Dad was relying on him to help make McCormick Lumber successful. How could he do anything less?

“I’ve done an inspection of the camp,” he started, drawing more frowns. “And from what I can tell, you’re all doing the best you can.”

Even after his investigation, he still hadn’t been able to figure out why all his camps were falling behind on the logs they were delivering. From the reports his foremen were giving him for the trees felled and logs cut, they should have had more logs arriving in Harrison.

“But the fact is we’re behind what we were producing last year, so now, especially after last week, we’ve got to pick up our pace.”

A round of grumbling wound through the group as they huddled near the fire, the raw January wind blowing down their necks.

“Yes, it’s going to require some extra hours in the woods,” Connell continued, pulling the collar of his coat closed to fight off the chill. “But I’m promising a bonus to whichever McCormick camp gets out the most logs over what the contract calls for. A nice bonus.”

At the word
bonus
, the men stood taller and their faces glimmered with what Connell hoped was excitement. They tossed out suggestions and questions.

He did his best as always to present himself as a capable leader. But inwardly he exhaled a tense breath. Apparently dangling the possibility of a bonus in front of them had worked.

In a matter of minutes the foreman called the men to return to their duties.

“I sure wouldn’t mind a woman for my bonus,” one of the men said under his breath as he picked up his ax.

Another shanty boy mumbled back, “Yeah, and I wouldn’t mind being stranded alone with a half-naked woman for a couple days. That’d be the best bonus I could think of.”

The muscles in Connell’s shoulders tensed. So the news was out. Ever since the rescue party had discovered them the previous morning, he’d kicked himself over and over for not doing a better job protecting Lily’s reputation. He could have at least made sure she’d had her dress on, couldn’t he?

He’d been secretly hoping that by some miracle he could spare her the gossip that was sure to get around. But from the snickers and sly glances the men were giving each other, the rumors had obviously spread as fast as typhoid fever.

The best thing was to ignore the insinuations. If he acknowledged them, he would only degrade Lily more.

The road monkey, the youngest of the shanty boys at Camp 1, stopped and joined the other two. “Heard his woman is a real looker.” One of the teamsters yanked the young man and shook his head in warning.

But the youth wasn’t paying attention to the old teamster or to the fact that Connell could hear every word he was saying. Instead the young man grinned at his friends. “Maybe when the boss man is done with her, the rest of us will get a chance to have a little fun.”

There was something about the young man’s comment that sent a hot slice of anger through Connell’s gut. Out of instinct, his hand lifted to his knife. The heat pulsed through his fingers and he gripped the handle. For a long moment, all he could think about was throwing the blade into the youth’s arm and making an example of him.

If he did, no one would dare speak about Lily that way again.

The teamster tugged the youth, his eyes fixed on Connell’s hand and the knife that had somehow made an appearance.

The young man followed the gaze of the old teamster, and his grin froze faster than tobacco spit.

“Come on now,” the teamster urged, pulling the youth along.

Connell had no doubt they’d also gotten word about how he’d killed the wolves.

The shanty boy stumbled after the teamster, casting frightened glances over his shoulder at the blade and tripping over his feet in his haste to get away.

The others disappeared just as quickly, and in a moment Connell was left standing with only the cookee and his foreman.

The cookee collected and dumped the dirty plates with a clatter into the pine soapbox fastened to the pole runners on the pung sleigh. He hustled about with an extra burst of energy that contrasted with his usual methodical trudge.

Herb looked off into the distance, his forehead furrowed.

Connell glanced at the knife and then slipped it away, wondering what had possessed him to unsheathe it in the first place. He wouldn’t have thrown it at the man. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt one of his workers, especially a youth who wasn’t strong enough to do much of anything but keep the iced roads free of horse or ox droppings.

Of course the youth hadn’t known he was listening to them, that his ear was attuned to every crude remark about Lily, and that he was choked with guilt.

The cookee smothered the fire with ashes and snow and then sat on a log and began to strap on his snowshoes before beginning his haul back to camp. All the while he avoided making eye contact with Connell.