Without Words (17 page)

He had already apologized for the time and effort his friends had wasted because of her, and whether anyone else had noticed or not, Hassie had seen him slip a gold coin into the sugar bowl.

“Do you understand what you’re risking?” Belle asked.

Digging under the clothing she’d thrown on the bed, Hassie found the slate and pencil. She owed her own apologies. Belle had been kind.
“I do know. I’m sorry, but I have to do this. I
want
to do this.”

“Why? Maybe he’s handsome, but you have to see what else he is. Doing the right thing in the war cost him too much. There’s a hardness, an anger. There’s nothing for you down this road but a broken heart. He won’t go against that family, and they’d never accept you.”

Hassie pulled off her chemise and bound her breasts, ignoring Belle’s astonished gaze. Once decently covered, she pulled the pins from her hair, gave it a quick brush, and reached back to braid.

“Here, let me.” Belle took the brush, sectioned Hassie’s hair and fashioned a plait with swift efficiency. “There’s something else I should tell you. Gabe and I, we knew from the time we were little that it would be the two of us. We just always knew, and it was like that for Bret and another girl. By the time I knew either of them, it was like that. He always loved her. He proposed as soon as he came of age.”

Hassie stayed still, her head bent. Belle did not need to tell her this. Hassie had no fanciful illusions about Bret Sterling.

Belle had finished the braid but stayed behind Hassie as if she couldn’t say what she wanted to face to face. “Her family, his family, they’re Southerners, all of them. They came from Virginia originally. When Bret went for the Union, she broke the engagement and married....” Belle’s voice broke, and Hassie heard her swallow. “She married somebody else as fast as she could, and it didn’t make any difference to him. He still loves her, and if he ever marries, there will be three in the marriage bed.”

Hassie remembered all too well how high passions had run before and during the war. Even so, all wars end. How could any girl turn her back on a man she loved over which side he chose? That girl could not have really loved Bret, and she must be stupid.

Not that it mattered. What would happen when Bret married was of no concern. Making him so impatient he left without her was. Fighting the urge to hurry, Hassie turned and hugged Belle.

“I enjoyed having you here,” the other woman whispered. “I didn’t mean what I said before. You can come back here. We can find something for you.”

Grabbing the slate, Hassie all but scribbled,
“You know he will leave me in a safe place. I will write to you. Thank you for everything.”

Another hug and she was free. Free and running.

G
ABE HELPED
B
RET
catch up the horses, brush off days of dust, and load Packie.

Finally, Gabe said, “What changed your mind?”

Bret checked the balance of the load on the packhorse again. Hassie’s clothing wouldn’t weigh enough to throw things off. “Did you ever wonder how I came to see how wrong slavery was when from the day I was born people who considered it the natural order of things spoon fed me their ideas?”

“I always hoped it was exposure to Chapmans.”

“By the time I met you, I’d already made up my mind. One day I looked at the field hands out there working in the sun, and I wondered what it would be like to be one of them. After that I spent entire days spying on them, imagining it.”

Gabe groaned. “You and your imagination. I still haven’t forgiven you for the time you convinced me your horse could talk.”

“Forgive me now. I’ve been visited with a dog that sees inside my head.”

Gabe looked over to where Gunner and Collie lay side by side watching the proceedings.

“You can change your mind again and leave Hassie here, but the dog has to go.”

“Don’t worry. One way or another, he’s coming with me.”

“So you’re telling me this time you imagined yourself into the skin of a female, a widowed, mute female. You didn’t by any chance find out what it’s like to be on the other side of....” Gabe rocked his hand suggestively.

Bret finished with the packhorse and started saddling Brownie. “No one would ever guess from your conversation you’re a respectable husband and father. She said she wants to come with me. At first I figured she must be crazy, and then I started imagining what her life has been like, why she’d want such a thing.”

“Maybe because she sees you as a better prospect than Ehren Kulp.”

Bret shook his head. “There’s no sign of that, and she’s still half afraid of me.”

“Why the hell would she be afraid of you? You helped her.”

“I killed Rufus about thirty seconds after she first laid eyes on me, and she was standing no more than ten feet away.”

“Oh.”

“I lost my temper in Werver over that brothel business.”

“Really lost it?”

“Really.”

“Then I’m surprised she’s not still hiding under a table somewhere.”

“I dragged her out of town with me and didn’t give her a chance to hide. So if she wants a few months of something different than what she’s had, it won’t hurt me to let her have it. She’s not bad company.”

Gabe put away currycomb and brush. “She’s a fascinating conversationalist all right.”

“Not your kind of woman,” Bret said agreeably, remembering how he’d climbed trees and crossed creeks as a boy to get away from Belle’s constant chatter. He tied off the latigo on Brownie, let the stirrup fall back in place, and smoothed saddle blankets on Jasper’s back.

“Once Belle calms down she’ll change her mind, you know,” Gabe said. “If you can’t figure out what else to do when you’re done with her, bring her back, and we’ll do what we can.”

Bret shot Gabe a hard look. “It’s not a matter of being done with her.”

Gabe grinned. “You’re the only man I know I’d believe that from, but damned if I don’t believe it.” The grin slowly faded. “Maybe while you’re imagining, you should try imagining a life of your own. You can’t keep this up forever.”

Reaching under the horse for the cinch, Bret avoided Gabe’s eyes. “I have been imagining that. I’ve been keeping a little for myself every year, you know. If you’re right about race horses, maybe I’ll be using it soon.”

“I hope so. You keep this up much longer, and you won’t be good for anything else.”

The front door to the house opened, and Hassie appeared. She stopped a moment where the children were building forts in the dirt and put down everything in her arms. Her hands moved, fluttered, and waved, and the children imitated the motions. She hugged each one, picked up her things and continued on, almost running.

“I guess I’d better get back inside and rescue that double eagle you left in the sugar bowl before Sarah finds it and lays claim or Gabriel eats it,” Gabe said. “You take care of yourself.” His hand rested heavy on Bret’s shoulder for a moment, and then he was gone, striding toward the house, nodding at Hassie and saying a few words as he passed her.

Hassie’s arms were full. She’d brought the green dress. Good. He stored her things in the space left in one pannier, considered the balance of the load one last time, and decided he had it right.

“Check your cinch before you get on,” he ordered, watching her dutifully check not just the cinch but her bedroll and saddlebags. Her breasts had disappeared again. Probably just as well.

By the time Bret finished with the packhorse, Hassie was mounted. She smiled the real smile at him, her face alight with eagerness, and Bret let himself enjoy the sight.

He swung up into his saddle and led the way down the farm lane. As they approached the town road, he turned and looked back. Hassie actually had Old Brownie keeping up. Gunner trotted alongside as if he’d never had ambitions of a romantic interlude.

Bret straightened in the saddle, a cynical smile curling his lips. Any owlhoot who saw them coming would probably just give up.

H
ASSIE FOLLOWED
B
RET
west so filled with giddy joy she had trouble staying on Brownie. The urge to jump down, run, and spin filled her. The morning air was at its sweetest. The sky its bluest. The grass its greenest.

The rising heat of the day couldn’t wilt her high spirits. When the sun beat down from straight overhead and Bret stopped and dismounted near a small stream, Hassie chomped her way through one of the sandwiches Belle had packed, several slices of dried apple, and two cookies.

She expected Bret to mount up and start out immediately after they ate. Instead he drew his pistol. Not the rifle he used for rabbits, or the shotgun he used for birds, but the pistol.

“This is as good a place as any for your first lesson,” he said. “We’ll start with this.”

First lesson? Hassie looked from the gun in his hands to Bret’s face. This morning he’d said something about learning to take care of herself. He couldn’t have meant learning to shoot things. She didn’t like guns. She didn’t want to learn to shoot things.

“Have you ever shot a gun before? Pistol, rifle, shotgun?”

Her mouth went dry. Shooting things was what he meant. She needed to get the slate, tell him she didn’t want any part of his guns.

And if she did that, he’d take her back to Belle and Gabe.

When he beckoned, she walked on stiff legs to stand beside him, half-listened as he showed her how to make the revolver break in two, how to eject the cartridges, how to put them back. She almost dropped the thing when he handed it to her. It weighed more than an iron.

If she didn’t do this, he’d take her back.

She set her jaw, went through all the motions, lifted the gun the way he directed, and practiced pulling back the hammer and squeezing the trigger with the gun empty.

“Good,” he said. “Now load it, aim at that little hump of ground over there, and squeeze the trigger.”

Everything about it was terrible. The gun jumped in her hands like a live thing. The sound assaulted her ears. Fire spurted from the end of the barrel. The stench of gunpowder filled the air.

“Try it again.”

She flinched as she pulled the trigger, but this time was better because she couldn’t see the blast of fire through her closed eyelids.

Bret was patient through a dozen shots. “You’ll get better with practice.” He holstered the reloaded revolver, pulled up his right pant leg, and brought out another gun.

Hassie gaped at him.

“It’s for emergencies,” he said, “and since it’s a smaller caliber, you may do better with it.”

The smaller gun was only marginally less awful. Another dozen wavering, blind shots, and Bret took it back, shoved it in the holster in the top of his boot, and walked to Jasper.

Hassie watched him pull the rifle from its scabbard. No. He couldn’t be serious. He could not want her to learn to shoot that too. She thought again of refusing, of how close they still were to Chapmans’. She took the rifle with trembling hands.

By the time Bret was satisfied, her hands had progressed from trembling to shaking. The shotgun was the worst of all. Bret claimed if she held it tight to her shoulder, what he called recoil wouldn’t hurt, but he was wrong. Her shoulder hurt as if someone had hit her. She’d have a bruise there soon. Her wrists ached. Her jaw and teeth ached, and he was already talking about more practice tomorrow.

Hassie mounted Brownie, all giddiness gone. Had he done this on purpose, hoping she’d refuse and he could take her back to Belle and Gabe? If so, he was going to be disappointed. She would hate every minute of it, but if she had to, she would point the guns where he said to and pull the triggers.

E
XCEPT FOR THE
guns, traveling with Bret was everything Hassie expected. In spite of her promise to obey Bret absolutely, all she saw was the freedom of it. No Ned Grimes complaining about her very existence, none of his sons trying to corner her in the barn to grope and steal a kiss. No husband so drunk he forgot a wife couldn’t live on whiskey, so sick he needed constant nursing until exhaustion turned the world gray.

They traveled from one small town to another, zigzagging west across the state. In every town, every encounter on the trail, Bret fished for information. He talked to men in mercantiles, feed stores, and cafes, at blacksmiths and gunsmiths.

If a town had any safe place where Hassie could stay alone, he left her and spent a few hours in each saloon. For a man so reserved, he could be friendly when he wanted to—or needed to.

This was how he had found out about Rufus, she realized. Someone had noticed a man riding a horse with a US brand and received a dollar or two for the information. Or maybe the informant had just let it slip in conversation and never known.

Thieves and murderers, men who sold guns and whiskey to Indians, and deserters who had done something so egregious the army was willing to pay to get them back for court martial. Men like that were Bret’s business, and before long he picked up the trail of a man who had robbed a general store, not a robbery that would usually have resulted in a reward, except this store included a post office, and the thief had robbed it too.

They caught up with the thief no more than fifty miles from the scene of his crime, broke and trying to peddle stamps from one end of a small town to another.

He tried to run when he realized who Bret was, stamps fluttering down around him.

Hassie was almost sorry when Bret turned the stamp thief over to the nearest U.S. Marshal. At least with a prisoner along, Bret didn’t make her practice with his guns.

Better yet, as he went back to searching for another trail, he showed signs of accepting every blind shot she made was a waste of ammunition. Daily practice slipped to every two or three days, then once a week.

He still had every intention of enabling her to take care of herself, though. He proved it when he led her into a bank in Wichita on the way to pick up the horses and leave town.

“You need to sign this with your full name,” he said, putting it down on the counter next to a pen and ink bottle.