Trail of Kisses (10 page)

“
No, ma’am, I sure hope not,” Ben
answered her, breaking into a bashful smile, unable to meet her
eyes.

“
See?” she said, throwing out an
arm to point at Cade’s boot. “It was probably just an animal of
some sort that did that. Why, the prairie has coyotes and things,
doesn’t it?”

“
We would have seen a coyote,”
Cade said. He marched past her to pick up his other boot. “We would
have seen or heard any animal that was big enough to do
this.”

But not a human. It was the only animal that
could have made cuts that clean, and they hadn’t seen or heard
anyone near the bush.

Because they had been distracted. Because he
had let his guard down and let his little head do the thinking.
He’d let his guard down once before when it mattered and disaster
had befallen. Only now, with Lynne, the stakes were much higher. He
wasn’t going to let it happen again.

“
I need to speak to Pete Evans,”
he said, scooping his clothes up. “I need to talk to the whole damn
U.S. Army.” He started to walk back to the fort, leaving Ben behind
with the laundry. Lynne followed him.

“
None of them are going to speak
to you at all if you march back looking like that,” she
said.

“
It doesn’t matter what I look
like, I’m going to get to the bottom of this.”

“
Interesting choice of
words.”

The sauce in her tone had him twisting to
frown at her. She was watching him intently.

“
What are you looking at?” he
demanded.

“
Your derriere,” she answered with
enough wickedness in her eyes to take down a coyote and half the
prairie with it.

Every inch of him was hot in a heartbeat. His
groin tightened, screaming at him to pick up exactly where they’d
left off in the river.

A moment later and he was furious.

He swayed closer to her. “You are not going to
distract me from doing what I have to do by….”

“
By what?” she challenged
him.

He clenched his jaw, body warring with his
mind, desire battling responsibility. The only reasonable thing he
could do was turn away from her, drop his boots, and start getting
dressed. He did it with a sigh.

“
I am going to put an end to
this,” he said. “I am going to find whoever is threatening you and
bring them to justice.”

The pinched look that touched her face and
then vanished was all he needed to know she wasn’t completely blind
to the threat, even when she said, “You’re just wasting your time.”
She turned away from him and marched back to the river. “Ben, do
you need help with the laundry?”

“
Why, I’d—”

“
No, you’re coming with me,” Cade
insisted before Ben could answer.

He fastened his pants and shrugged into his
shirt, then stormed back to hook his arm around hers and force her
to change directions.

She huffed in frustration. “You are no
gentleman.”

“
I think we’ve already established
that,” he said.

Lynne was willing to go with him as far as the
sea of wagons parked beside the fort. Callie and John had made it
back from the stream by then as well, and Lynne jumped at the
chance to get away from Cade and help with the wedding. Cade
grudgingly let her go. He trusted her friends to not try to kill
her when his back was turned. Barely. Aside from that, he needed a
little bit of distance to think through his next moves.

He needed new boots, for one. Whoever had
slashed his to pieces knew their way around a knife. First the
photograph of Judge Tremaine, now this. A knife was no match for
firepower, though.

“
What do you have for sale in
terms of firearms?” he asked the eager cashier behind the counter
at the supply depot as he plunked down not one, but two new pairs
of boots and a box of soap.

“
Rifle or revolver?” the man
asked, all smiles.

Cade paused to consider, he had a rifle, and
it wasn’t likely he would need to confront a would-be assassin at a
distance. “What kind of revolvers do you have?”

The cashier turned to a wall of shelves behind
him and took out a heavy tray. He balanced it carefully and brought
it to the counter.

“
Stock is low with the war on back
East,” he said. “It’s hard to get resupplied this far away from the
conflict, even with the threat of Indians. But I’ve got a couple of
Colts and this very interesting Cooper Pocket Revolver.”

Cade picked up the Cooper and turned it over.
It was small and light with a five ball cylinder. It was the kind
of thing that could be kept concealed if it needed to be. Just what
he was looking for.

“
I’ll take the Cooper,” he said,
setting the gun down and reaching for his wallet. George Tremaine
had given him a budget for just this sort of thing, but he had a
reasonable amount of his own money too. “You know what, I’ll take
one of the Colt revolvers as well. You can never be too
careful.”

The cashier’s brow flew up, whether from
surprise that Cade would spend that much money or that he was
arming himself with so much power, he didn’t know and didn’t care.
He purchased the two guns and ammunition and tucked them into his
belt to show he meant business.

He ran into Pete Evans on the way out of the
supply depot.

“
Mr. Evans, I need to talk to
you,” he said.

Pete paused as he strode past the depot.
“You’ll have to talk quick,” he said. “I’m on my way to a wedding,
then I’ve got to make sure we’re fully stocked for the next leg of
the journey.”

“
That’s just what I was doing,”
Cade replied, running a hand across the handle of the Colt at his
waist.

Pete noticed the motion and frowned. “What’s
all that about?”

Cade matched step with his as they headed
toward the wagons. Pete Evans was young for a trail boss. He had a
rough and wary look that came from making the trip to the Pacific
coast and back several times in his life, starting when he was a
boy and Oregon City was barely a thought in the back of someone’s
mind. Of all the men Cade had met on the trail so far, he trusted
Pete the most.

“
I told you that I’m taking Miss
Tremaine to her uncle in Denver City.”

“
You did.” Pete nodded.

“
Well, whoever made those threats
against her is in our wagon train.”

Pete paused to frown at him.

“
They’ve left a few ‘presents’ for
her.”

“
What do you mean?”

“
First, they cut up a photograph
of her father. Got into her wagon somehow to do it in spite of the
fact that I was right there. Then, just now, whoever it is sliced
up my boots while we were down at the stream having a bath.” His
face heated at the memory in spite of the direness of the
situation. It was a reaction he was going to have to learn to
control.

Pete crossed his arms and rubbed the scruff on
his chin. “Sure it wasn’t an animal that got your
boots?”

“
You should have seen them,” Cade
sighed. “Animals don’t make precision cuts.”

Pete nodded gravely and they walked on. “What
do you want me to do about it?”

“
Keep your eyes and ears open,” he
said. “Watch out for any sort of strange behavior from anyone. I’m
not gonna lie, I think that group of miners we’ve got with us is a
little shifty.”

Pete huffed an ironic laugh. “Mr. Lawson, I’ve
had my hands full with that lot since the day we set out from
Independence, and they’re only gonna get worse before they get
better. I’ll keep my eyes peeled as much as I can for this sneak of
yours, but I’ve got a couple hundred people in my care to keep an
eye out for too.”

The comment settled uneasily in Cade’s gut. It
wasn’t a dismissal, but it wasn’t the outpouring of concern and
promise of immediate action he was hoping for.

Pete must have noticed his disappointment. He
slapped Cade on the shoulder as they reached the edge of the wagons
where the wedding was set up and said, “I’ll do my
best.”

It would have to do, for now. The best was all
that anyone could hope to do. Or so he had thought. He wouldn’t
fail this time. He wouldn’t let George Tremaine or Judge Tremaine
down. He wouldn’t let a hair on Lynne’s head be touched.

He edged his way into the small circle of
well-wishers gathered to support Callie Lewis and John Rye as they
did the nearly unthinkable and got married. As far as Cade knew,
they’d hardly spoken a word to each other until a few days ago, and
now here they were, being joined as one. Reverend Joseph looked as
nervous as Cade was sure Callie and John felt as he rushed through
the ceremony. In fact, Callie and John seemed resigned. The
reverend was the only nervous one.

Cade peeked at Lynne. Dammit, but she looked
beautiful, still damp from the stream, wearing the same soiled
clothes. She looked worried too. It had to be her true feelings
about the threat at the stream showing through. That or concern for
her friends making a major decision about their lives on the spur
of the moment.

He shifted his stance and stared at her harder
as the reverend stumbled on. Lynne was far and away the most
beautiful woman he’d ever met. She was full of fire. It would take
more than a few threats to subdue her, and he loved that.
Loved
it. The word dredged up a wealth of feeling in his
chest. He shot a glance to the happy couple now reciting the
simplest of wedding vows, then peeked back at Lynne. Her face
relaxed into a smile as the ceremony reached the “I
do’s.”

Would he marry her? If she had had nothing in
the world and no one to help her, would he risk his whole future
happiness to make her his wife and bring her under his
protection?

The answer came to him clear as day in tandem
with John Rye’s solemn, “I do.”

He would. He’d marry Lynne in a heartbeat.
Kissing her had sealed that. But had her kiss been just a show of
bravery or would she say yes if it came to it? He grinned at the
thought and rubbed the handle of the Colt in his belt. He had to
keep her safe long enough to give him the chance to ask the
question.

Chapter
Six

Shortly after the sun rose the next day, they
were on the trail once more. Lynne wasn’t sure if she was relieved
to be away from Ft. Kearny, or if leaving the tiny dot of
civilization for the vastness of the prairie was leaving a part of
herself behind. The entire wagon train was in a more somber mood
than when they had set out from Independence, but she didn’t know
whether to smile or rage. She had kissed Cade Lawson. Did that make
her brave or a fallen woman? Should she rail at him… or should she
try to kiss him again? Lynne did her best to force emotion from her
thoughts and to keep going.

She had other things to worry about. They
weren’t more than three days out from Ft. Kearny when the miners
were stirred up and in a tizzy.

“
I swear I had that deed at the
poker game, but it was gone the next day,” an old, grizzled miner
by the name of Barney complained as he walked near where Cade and
Lynne rode.

“
Ya done lost that deed on a pair
of eights, ya old coot,” another miner, Kyle, ragged on him. He
snickered to the man walking with him.

“
I lost the nugget, I’ll admit to
that,” Barney said, “but I kept the deed in my pocket.”

“
Barney, you was so drunk by the
end of things last night, you wouldn’t’a known which end of a horse
was which. Ain’t that right, Ben?” Kyle called across Cade and
Lynne to young Ben, driving the wagon.

Ben flicked the whip across the back of the
oxen and ignored them with a scowl. Lynne pursed her lips and shook
her head. She’d warned him once about spending time with the miners
at his age. She’d have to do it again.

“
That deed’s got to be somewhere,”
Barney went on. He stopped to scratch his head and look around, as
if it would pop out of the prairie grass. Thankfully, the other
miners stopped with him and the wagon train moved on.

Lynne let out a breath of relief when the men
were far behind. “Thank heavens they fell back,” she said and
patted Clover’s neck. She’d had her trusty mount checked by a
farrier in Ft. Kearny and was glad to be riding instead of
walking.

“
I don’t like it,” Cade
grumbled.

Lynne didn’t know whether to sigh or grin.
“Seems to me you don’t like much of anything these days.” She
leaned low over Clover’s neck and whispered, “Cade has been out in
the sun too long.”

He kept his eyes forward, but for a flicker of
a second Lynne was certain his lips twitched into a smile. He was
as serious as January a moment later.

“
What do I have to do to convince
you that the dangers you’re facing are real?” he asked.

The uncomfortable tremor that Lynne had come
to hate so much caught in her chest. She fought it by sitting up
straight and smoothing her skirt over the knee hooked across the
pommel of her saddle.