Tender Touch (10 page)

Lost in his fury and frustration, he headed for the livery where he figured to find some privacy. If he couldn’t ease himself with a woman, he’d have to settle for getting good and drunk. Maybe later he’d go back and give Angel another try.

Mid-afternoon arrived before Brianna dragged herself out of bed. She bathed her red, swollen eyes with cool water from the ceramic pitcher on the washstand and dried them on the towel hanging on the rack. No time to indulge in self-pity. Unless she wanted to go back and face Barret, she had to get signed up with the Magrudge wagon company.

That meant hiring a buggy and driving herself out to the camp to talk with the wagon captain. The memory of the man’s dark ferret eyes on her bosom, and the sun glinting off the spittle on his thin lips, made her shudder. Perhaps she could ask around to see if there were any other parties heading for Oregon. She hoped the money she had taken from Barret’s study would be enough to see her there and pay for housing until she could find work. She would have to be very careful how she spent her hoard; it might have to last a very long time.

Sleeping fully clothed left her skirt badly wrinkled. She smoothed it as well as she could, donned her cloak and put on her bonnet. Stepping out into the hall, she glanced up and down, glad to find it empty. Carefully she locked the door behind her and slipped the key into her pocket. Her steps on the uncarpeted stairs seemed loud enough to echo in Jefferson City, but no one looked her way as she descended to the hotel lobby and walked sedately to the registration desk.

After receiving directions to the livery stable, she left the hotel and headed up the boardwalk. Dried clumps of mud crunched beneath her boots as she walked. Now that her mind was not caught up in the worry of finding her sister, she took more notice of the town—and of the lack of women on its streets. What few she saw were escorted by men. Her mind drifted back to the incident she had witnessed the day before; the woman struggling in the grasp of a drunken stranger until her husband rescued her.

Almost at once Brianna noticed the way men looked at her, their eyes running over her body as if curious what they might find beneath her cloak. Hoping to bluff her way through this predicament the way she had with Columbus Nigh, she straightened her shoulders, lifted her chin, and forged briskly forward. She ignored attempts to engage her in conversation, refusing even to blush at the lewd suggestions tossed her way. When she spied a large sign arching over the boardwalk with the name of the livery in bright red paint, she quickened her pace.

Brianna ran down the steps at the end of the walkway, lifted her skirts to maneuver the narrow plank stretched across the muddy alley, and scurried up the stairs on the other side. A man in striped pantaloons tucked into knee-length boots and a faded homespun shirt emerged from a doorway in front of her. His tread was unsteady, his laughter raucous, as he turned to make a bawdy crack to someone behind him. Just as she tried to step past the man, his unseen cohort gave him a push, and Brianna found herself locked in his arms while he regained his balance.

“Well hey, what we got here?” he said.

Brianna shoved him away and ran for the open doors of the livery, followed by coarse laughter and crude comments. Inside the smelly barn, she threw herself against the wall, panting until she caught her breath. Stalls lined both sides of the big room. Feed buckets, rakes, pitchforks, and coils of rope hung from walls or lay on the straw- covered floor. A wooden ladder led to a loft. To her right, through a wide opening, buggies and wagons waited. Pushing away from the wall, she took a few halting steps toward the second room, reluctant to penetrate its gloomy depths. Then she heard a voice coming from one of the stalls and the soft whicker of a horse.

“Hello.” Her voice sounded thin and reedy. “Is anyone here?”

Three-quarters of the way down the broad aisle between the two rows of stalls, a man’s voice answered. “Yeah, whaddya want?”

She walked toward the sound. “I-I need to rent a buggy, please.”

The man grumbled something she couldn’t make out. A bucket clanged to the floor and the horse whickered again. Brianna took two more steps. The man came out of the stall. He wiped his hands on his dirty trousers as he strode toward her. A little more than arm’s length away, he stopped to look her over. “Well,” he said, “what can I do for you, little lady?” Little! she thought. Was the man blind? Actually he was quite tall himself, with thick arms sticking out of a sleeveless undershirt that must have once been red, but was now a faded, dingy gray. Several buttons were missing down the front. Between the galluses holding up his baggy trousers, his hairy paunch protruded from the gaping underwear. He scratched the smudged skin above his naval and grinned as she blushed.

“I need a buggy,” she said, “and a horse.”

“Yeah?” He scratched under his arm this time. “You gonna drive it all by yourself?”

“Yes, I-I have business at a wagon camp west of town.” He stepped closer and she backed away. “Tell ya what, honey, why don’t I drive ya out there? Pretty little thing like you don’t want to get herself all dirty now, does she? And if you’re nice to me, why, I won’t even charge ya nothing. Whaddya say?”

“She says no.”

Bits of straw rained onto her head as Brianna gazed upward, the direction the voice came from. As she blinked to clear the chaff from her eyes, two mocassined feet appeared on the second rung of the ladder from the loft. The feet were followed by fringed, leather-clad legs. A good four feet from the bottom, Columbus Nigh kicked off and jumped lithely to the floor.

“What business is this of yours, mister?” the liveryman asked.

Columbus spared the man no glance. “Lady’s with me. Go finish your shoeing.”

“Now, look—”

Columbus swung toward the man, his eyes glinting steel. “You got a problem?”

The two men glared at each other a long moment b
efore the liveryman backed off.

“Lemme know when you make up your mind about the buggy, lady.” He lumbered back to the stall where he had been working, grumbling all the way.

When he was gone, Columbus pinched his eyes closed with thumb and forefinger. “What the hell are you doing here, woman?”

“I need a buggy so I can go out to talk with Mr. Magrudge.”

Hands on his hips, he hung his head as if too tired to hold it up. “Waste of time. Ma-grudge ain’t gonna let no widow woman in his train unless she’s got a man with her who can protect her.”

“Then I’ll speak with Mrs. Decker. Perhaps she or one of the other families will let me travel with them.”

“Dead set on going, are you?”

She swallowed nervously under his intense scrutiny. “I told you, there’s nothing left for me in Missouri except bad memories. I want more.”

“Only way you can travel with that wagon train without invitin’ trouble is with a man, preferably a husband, legal or not. Just how bad you want to go?”

Her eyes widened. “What are you suggesting?”

His lips quirked up on one side as he leaned closer, his weight on one leg, thumbs hooked in the back of his belt. “Don’t reckon anyone needs to know we ain’t hitched proper.”

Brianna’s mouth fell open. “You despicable… How dare you suggest such a thing?”

“Now hold on.” He held up his hands. “Ain’t said nothing ’bout living married, only letting folks think we’re married. I’ll sleep under the wagon. Is it a deal?” She chewed her lower lip, pondering his words. The man certainly had nerve. What, precisely, did he want from her? Why would he offer to do this? “Won’t people think it strange if my ‘husband’ sleeps under the wagon every night?”

He shrugged. “Who cares what they think, long as the men leave you alone and the women see you as respectable?”

“Wouldn’t it be equally as acceptable if they thought you were my brother?”

Again he shrugged. The idea didn’t appeal to him as much, but he could think of no objection she would accept. “Reck
on. Do we have a deal, or not?”

For one breathless moment, she stared deep into his cold, stormy eyes. Did she have a choice? “Yes, Mr. Nigh, I reckon we have a deal.”

***

“Hey, Will?”

United States Marshal Will Rainey swung his long legs off the desk and sat upright in the battered old swivel chair. “H’lo, George, what you up to this afternoon?” The tow-headed boy grinned as he tossed a dirt-smeared envelope on the marshal’s cluttered desk. “Mr. Birch asked me to deliver this. It’s marked ‘Rush.’ See?”

Rainey picked up the envelope and sniffed the orange smear across the address. “Been into your ma’s apricot jam again, George? How come you didn’t bring me any?”

“I will next time. Promise, Will.”

“All right, thanks.” Rainey pulled a penny from his vest pocket and flipped it to the boy.

“Hey!” the marshal shouted as George bolted for the door. “Thank Sam Birch for me, too, will you?”

Alone now, the marshal ripped open the envelope and quickly scanned the scrawled handwriting on the single piece of folded paper it held. He was reading it a second time when Glory wiggled into the office.

“Hey there, Will. How’s that man of mine you’re keeping locked up back there?”

“If you’re talking about Barret, he’s gone.”

Glory glared at the marshal with all the fire her Irish temper could muster.

“What do you mean, gone?”

“Just that.” Will Rainey propped his feet on the scarred desk and rifled through the wanted posters brought in with the day’s mail. “Your fancy lawyer, what’s his name? Rawlings?”

“Ralston, Clinton Ray Ralston.”

“Yeah, well, he got Judge Hanley to order me to show cause or release that lover of yours.” Dropping the wanted posters into his lap, the marshal grinned up at her. “What’s the matter, Glory? Did Wight forget to hustle his plump, hungry body straight over
to your little love nest?”

With a final glare that should have seared his eyebrows, Glory stormed out the door.

Twenty minutes later, as Marshal Rainey walked down to the Roast Goose Cafe for his supper, Glory burst out of Ralston’s legal office like popcorn out of a hot skillet, nearly knocking Rainey off his feet.

“Hey, slow down there, woman.” He latched onto her, as much to catch his balance as to stop her. “I’ll have to incite you for horse racing on the boardwalk if you don’t.”

“I haven’t got a horse and you know it, you . . . mule’s hind end.” She pried at his fingers clamped firmly to her arm. “Let go of me, I’ve got a snake to run down.”

Rainey laughed. “I surely do pity the poor thing if you’re after it.”

He let go of her and started to step past her when the significance of her statement penetrated his brain. Swinging around, he barely managed to grab onto her again. “Wait a minute. What snake are you after? Wouldn’t be that pimp of yours, would it?”

Glory slapped at his hands. “He’s not my pimp.”

“You’re a whore and he owns you, doesn’t he? Makes him your pimp in my book.”

“Well, your book is made out of privy contents. Now let go of me. Or are you going to arrest me?”

Rainey chuckled. “That can be arranged. Who’s the snake?”

“Barret Wight, of course. Why didn’t you put a tail on him, if you were so all-fired sure he killed his wife? Now he’s gone. Run off after that frigid scarecrow he’s married to. And Ralston says there’s not a thing I can do about it.” She poked him with her finger, her eyes blazing with anger. “But I’ll find him, and when I do, you won’t have to worry about building any gallows for him, because I’ll kill the fat bastard myself.”

“I’d head for Independence, then, if I were you.”

“Why Independence?”

“Because I just received word that Mrs. Wight’s sister died of cholera in a wagon train near Independence. Her husband brought the children back here for his folks to raise.”

“You think Brianna Wight knows?”

He shook his head. “Not until she gets there. If she’s still alive.”

The marshal leaned back against the wall of the law office and gave Glory a smirking grin. “My bet is that Barret’s hot on her trail right now. Or maybe he’s only running from that noose I promised him.”

She stabbed him in the chest with her finger again. “Then go after him. You’re the marshal. Bring him back.”

The laughter leached from his eyes and his mouth became grim. “My jurisdiction ends at the border to Indian Territory, Glory. Once he crosses that, there’s not a damn thing I can do.”

Chapter Ten

Dear Mrs. O’Casey
,

I shall write only a few minutes as Mr. Nigh is waiting to take this to town. The wagon company departs at dawn. Our only problem thus far has been the rain which seems determined to keep us mired here, only forty miles west of Independence.

Our company numbers forty-eight wagons, divided into platoons of four wagons each, which rotate every day so that everyone gets a chance to ride up front out of the dust (if it ever dries out enough for dust). The men number sixty-two, the women thirty, children Jifty-five. The greater majority of com-panies are headed for California and are comprised almost entirely of men, thousands of them.

The cholera is very bad here. There are sick in nearly every camp but ours, and graves everywhere you look.

The next opportunity to post a letter may be weeks away so do not worry if you don’t hear from me for awhile. I wish you well, and remain your grateful friend,

Brianna Villard

P. S. Villard is my mother’s maiden name. I add one other note; one of the men in our company is the Kentuckian with whom Mr. Nigh fought that day at Longmire’s. His name is Jack Moulton but everyone calls him Punch because he is always fighting with someone—a little like Barret when he was younger. How I wish I knew what is happening back home and if Barret is pursuing me.

* * *

Stinky Harris cocked his head to one side and spat in the brass spittoon on the sawdust-littered floor at his feet. He propped a muddy boot on the scarred foot rail, leaned his forearms on the whiskey-stained bar, and shouted for another drink. Being only mid-morning, there were few customers yet. In the mirror behind the surly, square-faced bartender, Stinky saw a short, boxy- built fellow enter the tavern and pause to scan the crowd. Barret Wight didn’t look quite as cocky as the last time they’d met. Grinning, Stinky turned and waved the man over.

“Didn’t expect you till tonight,” he said when Wight reached him. “You worried they’d go ahead and hang you if you stuck around too long?”

Barret ordered a beer and growled, “I told you they didn’t have enough evidence to pin that rap on me. Soon, the whole world will know that Amazon I’m married to wasn’t murdered by anyone. I rode night and day to get here. Damn horse went lame five miles out of town. Had to hitch a ride on a wagon full of brats.”

The bartender poured, Barret emptied the glass, and passed it back for a refill.

“Coulda been worse
,” Stinky said, still grinning.

“Huh! One more thing that bitch is going to have to pay for.”

Barret downed the second glass. The brew wasn’t as good as what his brewery produced, but after the long, dry trek, it would do. He glanced around at the other patrons: greasy-looking Spaniards from Santa Fe, long haired fur trappers from the Rockies, eager-faced argonauts bound for the California gold fields. Damn, but it was fine to be free again. “Well, I assume, since you dragged me clear across Missouri to this mud hole, that she’s headed west.”

“That’s right.” Stinky dipped a finger in the whiskey the bartender had spilled filling his glass, and sucked it dry. “She wasn’t registered anywhere under her own name, but the Independence House had a widow named Villard there until a week ago, who fits her description. There was a man with her, a paid guide or something, who slept outside her door. They joined one of the wagon companies.”

“Villard . . . means nothing to me. Where’s she headed, Oregon or California?”

“No one knew. Going after her?”

Barret pounded his fist on the bar to catch the bartender’s attention and jabbed a finger at his empty glass. “You bet I am. She seems to have forgotten she belongs to me, but she’ll never forget it again once I get my hands on her.”

“What about this fellow she was with? Mountain man type, the clerk said. Tough as rawhide and mean as a bulldog with his balls slit open. Don’t think I want to go up against him.”

Wight gave Stinky a look over the rim of his glass that wiped the grin from the man’s face and put worms in his belly. His tone deadly soft, he said, “You aren’t me. Now get out of here and buy us some mules and supplies so we can get our asses on the road. Whatever head start she’s got on us, we’ll be able to make up easily enough. A bunch of wagons move a lot slower than two men with mules.”

“All right, Barret. I’ll get right on it.” Stinky downed his drink and turned toward the door.

Wight stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Make sure you get a shovel. If she is with a man, there’ll be a grave to dig. Maybe two.

By midmorning Nigh knew it wasn’t going to be an easy day. Or a quiet one.

“Coover, get them goldanged critters of yours moving, dagnabit! Ain’t gonna reach Oregon afore Christmas the rate we’re going.” Magrudge’s deep baritone boomed nearly to the rear wagons, over two miles down the line.

Five days had dragged by while they waited out the rain and the flooded creeks. Five days of dealing with contrary oxen, runaway horses, and bogged down wagons. But each day they had managed to advance a few miles. Now before them lay the open prairie, as vast and sweeping as the endless sky, as undulating as the washboards the women lugged to the creek on wash day. At last, the sun had banished the clouds. Bedding and clothes were dry and the road was manageable. Nigh figured they were too far from the States to turn back, and that made today the caravan’s first full day of travel.

Yet, already, trouble was brewing.

“Hellfire! Go around that mud hole, ya blasted idjet! Think we need more broken wheels?” Magrudge hollered. “Woody, ain’t you learned yet how to yoke up your dang oxen? Get Shorthill over there to show you. He drives no better’n a hog on Sunday, but at least his critters stay yoked. And you, Beaudouin, this ain’t no Easter parade. You might could drive that fancy rig of yours better if you changed outta them elegant duds into something more sensible. You know, like work clothes. Ever hear of them?”

By the time they stopped for the noon meal, Nigh reckoned mutiny a sure bet. Men stood about in small clutches, kicking the ground and shaking their heads. Nigh sat on a wagon tongue, off by himself as usual, whittling creamy yellow curls from a chunk of apple wood to form a two-inch grizzly bear, his eyes flicking every minute or so to his “employer.” The term which still rankled.

As usual, Brianna hovered on the sidelines while the other women gossiped and traded recipes. It wasn’t shyness on her part, he thought, but plain lack of self-confidence. The loneliness and yearning in her eyes made his insides knot in frustration because he didn’t know how to help.

Marc Beaudouin and Tom Coover approached. The hesitancy of their pace and the careful way they avoided his gaze warned him they wanted something. Nigh tongued his homegrown toothpick from one corner of his mouth to the other and went on working. He knew the men would get to whatever was on their minds eventually.

“What do you think, Col?” Marc’s hands were stuffed in the pockets of his wool pants, making knuckle-bulges at each hip.

Nigh lifted one sardonic eye. “About what?”

“Some of the folks are talking about breaking off and forming a company of their own. They’re tired of being bullied by Magrudge.”

Tom Coover squatted down and scooped up the yellow curls of applewood at Nigh’s feet, like a farmer sifting soil between his fingers. “The women are all worked up over Magrudge’s language, too. Say they won’t move another inch till someone talks to him.”

Nigh could well believe that. Every time he let slip with a cussword, Brianna bristled up worse than a porcupine. The other women weren’t as fine bred as Brianna, but he supposed they had their standards as well.

From beneath lowered eyes, Nigh studied Coover’s red, freckled face and young rangy body. He was agile and strong and rarely stayed still for long, as though he feared the young sap in his veins would harden and turn old before he could use it all up.

“Bound to happen sooner or later, folks choosing to go their own way,” Nigh drawled. “The women’ll be wishing soon enough that a few cusswords was all they had to deal with.”

“We were hoping you might talk to Magrudge,” Beaudouin said, looking slightly abashed.

“Why me?” Nigh asked.

“It’s a matter which requires diplomacy as well as composure.” Beaudouin nodded toward the men who were still kicking dirt, though their anxious gazes rested now on Nigh. “Some of them are afraid of Magrudge. Others fear they’ll lose their tempers and kill the man. As for me, well, Magrudge has made it plain he thinks little of men of my standing, so I doubt he would listen to anything 1 have to say.”

That was usually how it went, Nigh thought. Folks wanted things their way, but wanted someone else to get it for them. As for Marc, he was dressed and equipped better than any other family in the company. His wagons looked like most of the others, with their blue bodies and bright red wheels. But the heavy white covering bore no catchy sayings, like “Oregon’s where we’re going, Ohio’s where we been.” And the goods inside cost a lot more money.

One of the Beaudouin wagons carried personal items needed on the trail, a tent for Marc and the oldest boy, beds in the wagon for Lilith and Jean Louis. There was a made-to-order collapsible table and three camp chairs—with backs, not just stools—as well as a sheet iron cook- stove with a detachable bake oven. The second wagon held household goods and furniture. Marc even had a pen full of live chickens beneath the wagon bed. At each stop the hens were let out to forage in the grass, when they weren’t defending themselves against Shakespeare. Each morning the boys herded them back up the little ramp into the pen for traveling.

Most folks had to make do with one wagon, leaving behind all their prized possessions. Nigh wasn’t surprised some of them had their noses out of joint. For himself, all he needed was a buffalo robe to roll up in at night, his Hawken, his
horse, and his possibles sack.

At least, that was all he’d needed before he’d met Brianna Villard.

“Well?” Coover prompted, getting restless.

Nigh was scrounging for an answer when Jeb Hanks rode up. From a distance the pilot looked like a boy playing grown-up; he wasn’t any bigger than a good-sized hound.

“Hou, Col. Heard you was with this bunch. How’s that pretty little squaw you tied up with?”

“Gone under, Jeb.”

Hanks wagged his head sorrowfully. “Dead? Too bad, she was a good ’un. How come ever’body’s standing ’round with their thumbs up their noses? We got wagons to move.”

Not bothering to answer, Nigh said, “Jeb Hanks, boys. Injuns call him No Scalp.”

The sun glinted on Hanks’s bald pate as he doffed his wolf skin hat to show how he’d earned his Indian sobriquet.

“Ah yes, our famous pilot.” Beaudouin was quick to offer his hand. “Your reputation has added greatly to our confidence in making this journey, sir.”

Jeb Hanks plunked the hat back on his sleek dome and took the hand, always glad to meet a man willing to accept him at face value, in spite of his size. “Thank-ee fer saying so, even if it don’t make much sense.”

At Beaudouin’s look of confusion the pilot chuckled. “Don’t you know what you got here in the form o’ Columbus Nigh? Why, he could lead you to Oregon riding backwards and wearing a blindfold.”

Beaudouin’s eyes widened. Coover broke out in a full- bellied Coover laugh.

“Quit your yarning, Jeb.” Nigh sat down and calmly plied his knife to the wood he held. “These boys’re as green as that grass your horse’s standing on and are likely to believe a wily old coyote like you.”

“Jest as they ought to. Now, you gonna answer my question? Why ain’t these wagons moving out?”

Nigh explained.

When Hanks heard the part about the women, he slapped his knee and chortled. “Bless my flea-bit hide, if that don’t beat all! Well, let me handle it. Need to talk to Magrudge anyhoo an’ he might take it better from me since I ain’t got no stake in the matter.”

“You heard him,” Nigh said as the pint-sized man rode off. “Tell the women to find something new to fret over.” At the trumpet call thirty minutes later, all forty-eight wagons uncoiled and began a meandering route across the grassy plain. Sometimes they rode single file, slow and twisty like a cumbersome snake slithering out to seek the sun. More often they branched out, as many as five riding side by side over the broad prairie. Mourning doves rose from their path like puffs of cigar smoke, their soft coos lost to the rumble of wheels, the rattle of chains, and the lowing of cattle.

Jeb Hanks rode ahead to seek out the next stopping place, leaving Magrudge to lead the wagons, smug and stiff-backed in his pride. Coming along behind with the others, Nigh felt a rush of exhilaration as he gazed across the rolling green prairie toward the shining mountains, invisible still except in his heart. Grudgingly he allowed himself a moment of optimism; he was going home.

The only thing that would have made Nigh happier was riding his dappled gray mare off by himself, instead of driving a slow wagon with a slower team of oxen that made him feel as out of place as a bull elk in a dry goods store. Out in the open spaces with a good horse under him, the reins secure in his work-toughened hands, Nigh could feel whole again. He’d feel relaxed and competent the way he had when he and Jeb Hanks and Edward Magrudge roamed the untracked lands, sinking beaver traps in ponds only Indians had known before.