Brides of Prairie Gold Read online

  Oh, dear God. What had she done? Had she lost her mind?

  Moonlight had destroyed her reason. She had allowed this dirty half-breed to place his hands on her body. He had dared to press his uncivilized, barbaric lips to the lips of a Boyd.

  Drawing back, teeth bared, she slapped his face hard enough to snap his head to one side. Instantly, his hand dropped from her waist and he stepped backward. His expression shifted in the moonlight and shadows until only his burning eyes indicated the unexpectedness of her blow and his anger.

  "You assaulted me!" she hissed, shaking with the horror of it. Frantically, she rubbed at her arms, trying to scrape off the touch of him, trying to scrub away the memory of his strong arms binding her close to his chest.

  He said nothing. He stood silent and rigid, his stare piercing her. A cool breeze stirred his hair, teased along the fringes adorning his leggings and jacket. He stood so still that she could not see his chest move.

  "You filthy savage!" She lashed the words at him, shaking so badly that she had to lean one hand on the tree trunk to remain standing. "How dare you touch a white woman? If I tell the others, they'll cut out your heathen heart! They'll hang you!"

  His stare was so powerful that she almost faltered. Then she felt the moisture cooling on the pantaloons that rubbed her inner thighs and she could have wept for the hideous shame he had visited upon her.

  "Barbarian! Rapist! I'll if you ever come near me again, I'll"

  But he had faded into the darkness like a shadow. Frantically, she scanned the cottonwoods, searching for a trunk that appeared to move.

  When she was certain that she was alone, she threw herself to the coarse grass and sobbed uncontrollably.

  The hollowness of her threats devastated her. There was no circumstance under heaven that could force her to tell anyone what had happened here tonight. She would rather die than admit she had permitted an Indian to touch her.

  And she could not claim that he had tried to rape her. Someone had seen Augusta Boyd step willingly into the arms of a filthy half-breed. Someone had seen her locked in his savage embrace, flushed with eagerness and desire.

  Waves of shame and anguished regret rocked her body, and she wished the earth would open and swallow her. If only she knew who had spied on them, who had seen. If only she could explain somehow. If only she knew who it was, she would offer that person everything she owned to hold his or her tongue.

  Fresh horror bit into her chest as she realized that someone in camp could destroy her with an innuendo, with a few words. A storm of weeping shook her frame.

  She hated Webb Coate. This was his fault. She wished with all her suffering soul that he was dead.

  Beating the ground with her fists, she wept and thought that she could not bear this latest tragedy. He was an Indian) . A heathen who undoubtedly had never seen a tablecloth, who would have the table manners of an animal. Despite the cultured speech he mimicked, she just knew he couldn't read, couldn't even sign his name. What Indian could? Everything he owned, he carried on the back of his horse. He was nothing. A nobody!

  And she had let this savage illiterate nobody, this worthless barbarian put his hands on her.

  She wanted to die.

  Cody glanced up from the arms wagon as Webb strode out of the darkness. The look in his burning black eyes caused the men around the fire to fall silent and exchange uneasy looks.

  "Trouble?" Heck Kelsey asked, standing. He dropped a hand to the pistol at his waist.

  Webb strode past them without speaking, moving toward the molasses wagons.

  John Voss swallowed a last bite of cornbread, then also stood, his frown following Webb. "His gun's holstered," he observed. "Guess it ain't trouble that concerns us."

  Cody flipped his cigar toward the fire pit. "Those who aren't on watch better turn in. It's a short night."

  After the boys dispersed, he walked to the second molasses wagon and leaned against the back wheel, sensing Webb at the tail. He gazed at the stars, letting a minute pass. "You want to talk about it?"

  "No."

  Cody nodded and traced the Big Dipper, following to the North Star. He removed another cigar from his vest pocket, holding it between his fingers without searching for a light.

  "Lucy Hastings died," he said finally.

  Cody didn't know a single wagonmaster who had crossed the continent without burying a few passengers; an experienced master knew the grueling journey would exact a toll. But it never came easy. Death was always a shock. And the loss of a passenger felt like a personal failure.

  He should have warned them not to drink ground water, just as he had warned them not to drink the alkali waters of the Platte. He should have chosen a different place to square the wagons. He should have found her earlier. He should have sent Miles Dawson to discover if there was a doctor on the train ahead or behind them. He should have been God.

  Angrily, he glared at the cloudy sweep of the Milky Way. At the start of every journey he told himself that any passengers were merely high-paying freight. He told himself that he didn't care about their lives. His job was to get them where they had paid to go, not to nursemaid them, not to care about them.

  But it didn't work. The trip was too long. They lived too closely together, too interdependently. Like it or not, want it or not, they came to know each other. And sometimes to care.

  Damn it to hell, Lucy was only seventeen years old. In some societies, she would still have been regarded as a child. Scowling at the starlight, he saw her fresh smiling face. A preacher's daughter who sang hymns while she milked Sarah's cow, who read Bible verses when they stopped for the noon rest on Sundays. A pretty woman-child who gathered wildflowers while she walked, who laughed aloud at the antics of the prairie dogs.

  She would never know a husband's embrace, would never hold her own child in her arms. Lucy Hastings's brief flame had flickered and died before her life had really begun.

  The irony of Lucy Hastings's death was that without her, the bride train would never have formed. When her father, the Reverend Hastings, accepted young Reverend Quarry's request for Lucy's hand, he had worried about sending his daughter unaccompanied across the country. His concerns and Paul Quarry's response had resulted in Quarry organizing the bridegrooms' search for wives. Because her father and her fiance had been concerned about Lucy's safety, Cody's train existed.

  Without Lucy Hastings, none of the women on the train would have had bridegrooms waiting in Oregon. But Lucy's intended bridegroom was the only man among them who knew and loved his intended bride and would genuinely grieve her death.

  Cody knew what Paul Quarry would feel. But at least Quarry's grief would not be scalded by the knowledge of betrayal.

  His stomach tightened when he imagined Reverend Paul Quarry reading the letter Cody would post at Fort Laramie. Once, he had received a similar letter.

  With a start he straightened and swore silently, then walked around the end of the molasses wagon. Webb had gone.

  For a long moment, he peered through the darkness toward the spot where Webb rolled out his blankets. It wasn't often that Webb allowed anything to penetrate his stoic serenity. Cody's gut instinct was to guess a woman. It had to be Augusta Boyd.

  He shook his head. "To each his own preference." Hell, Webb would probably think Cody was mad if Webb knew how much time he wasted thinking about Perrin Waverly. Who was he to wonder at Webb's attraction to the selfish and imperious Miss Augusta Boyd?

  Before turning in, he walked the perimeters of the camp, checking that all fires were extinguished, that the horses were securely tethered. When he reached Perrin Waverly's tent, he lingered beside the flap, picturing her inside asleep. This time he didn't indulge in any romanticized versions; he tried to picture her as she probably was. Dressed in her day gown, her braid unraveling, her lips slightly parted. It disturbed him to realize that reality was as arousing as the romanticized version.

  What would he be feeling now if he were burying Perrin Waverly tomor
row morning instead of Lucy Hastings?

  He stared down at the dusty tent flap. Never again did he intend to trust or give a woman the power to wound or destroy. It was a thousand times preferable to suffer an eternity of loneliness than to let some woman carve chunks out of his soul.

  After a minute, he clenched his jaw and made himself stride away from her tent.

  * * *

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  My Journal, June, 1852. Lucy Hastings is dead. I looked at her for a long time, trying to understand why he was so upset. I never saw him alone with her.

  I'm confused and more anxious every day. I'm afraid that he's sending me secret messages that I don't understand, so I think he's ignoring me. It must be that I fail to understand. Now I'm worried that he's disappointed in me, that I have failed him.

  That would explain why he seems so eager to meet the whore every night. He's disappointed in me. He's punishing me. He wants me to see them together to test me.

  Sometimes his silence makes me so furious that I want to punish him too. I imagine ways to do it. Then I get frightened by my thoughts and I have to punish myself. I resent that he does this to me, that he makes me think bad thoughts about him. Does he think I enjoy hurting myself?

  My secret messages are plainer than his. I've left the cake and the ribbon. But his acknowledgment was so subtle that I didn't recognize it which made me wild inside.

  I'm so angry, I'm furious at the oxen and the streams we have to cross. I hate the stinking sage and the prickly pear and the half cooked food and muddy water. I hate the noisy teamsters and Perrin Waverly and the haggard people we meet on the trail.

  He's the only person who really knows me. Why is he doing this to me? His silence is cruel.

  I'm so tired of waiting. Come to me, come to me, come to me.

  "I wonder if we could walk a little," Perrin suggested, glancing back at Cora over her shoulder. Cora paced beside Augusta's wagon, wringing her hands in her apron and anxiously watching as Perrin joined Cody for their evening meeting.

  Cody nodded curtly, then walked away from the squared wagons. Hurrying to catch up to his long strides, Perrin lifted her skirts away from the patches of prickly pear that plagued the entire Platte corridor. Every night she and Hilda spent an hour after supper picking thorns out of their hems and rubbing ointment on the scratches above their ankles. All the women hated the prickly pear. And the ubiquitous sage that ripped skirts and triggered sneezes. And the dust. And the lack of fresh water for bathing. And the afternoon heat, and

  Cody halted on a sandy rise, a dark silhouette against the blood-red sunset. He folded his arms across his vest.

  "We're out of earshot," he said as she climbed toward him, then turned her face into the dying sun. As far as the eye could see, the western horizon burned scarlet, orange, and lavender. "What's so important that it couldn't be said back there?"

  The vastness of sky and land overwhelmed Perrin, made her feel suddenly lost. The great prairie stretched endlessly before them, a featureless green and brown ocean tugged by dangerous and unseen currents. As this hour, crimson-dark shadows tiptoed across the immense expanse and she decided she had never seen anything so empty or so lonely as this terrible and beautiful country.

  Dropping her head, she blinked down at the flap of leather tearing back from the side of her boots. This would be the second pair of soles she had worn out, walking behind the wagons. Sometimes it seemed frighteningly arrogant and desperately foolish to believe that a small group of humans and animals could cross this endlessly vast land one plodding step at a time.

  "Perrin?"

  Raising her head, she gazed into his eyes, into the blue of a thousand stormy skies. Cody's face was darkly tanned now. The creases splitting his cheeks seemed deeper tonight, still dusty from the day's travel. She studied him silently, wondering if he had been avoiding her, forcing their evening meetings to be as brief as possible, or if she only imagined it.

  Drawing a breath, she gripped her hands together and forcefully told herself that she did not want to stroke his face and feel the softness of brown whiskery stubble beneath her palm. She didn't wonder about the texture of his skin or yearn to trace the contour of his lips with her fingertips.

  "Cora Thorp wants to be a bride," she said.

  Cody frowned at the sunset, his fists resting on his hips. "No."

  "With Lucy gone" She swallowed, finding it impossible to speak of Lucy's death. It was too terrible to think about. The memory of Lucy's lonely trailside grave would be painful for a long, long time. "There's an available bridegroom"

  "The bridegrooms insisted on specific qualifications."

  "No one works harder than Corayou must have noticed that. We all felt sympathetic toward Jane Munger when Winnie couldn't help with the chores, but Cora has been doing everything herself all along. She's twenty-three. That's young enough to bear many children. She's the fourth of ten children, so she knows about families and babies. She's thin as a rail, but she's strong. Cora is exactly what those men in Oregon are looking for in a wife."

  His steady gaze was unwavering. "First, Lucy's bridegroom knew and loved Lucy Hastings. Paul Quarry didn't want just a wife, he wanted Lucy. I doubt you can run in a substitution and expect him not to notice."

  A rush of pink stained Perrin's throat. "That isn't"

  "Second, the Oregon men specified healthy, educated women. They're building for the future. They want women able to work hard, but equally important, they want educated women who will teach their children, who will bring culture to the community, who will polish the roughness off the edges of the territory. Cora Thorp is uneducated and about as polished as a granite chip. Bluntly speaking, Cora Thorp is a pair of hands and a strong back. The Oregon bridegrooms also want an educated mind."

  Heat pulsed in Perrin's cheeks. "Is that how you and the bridegrooms see us? As callused hands and strong backs? A group of draft animals who can read and write?"

  He stared at her. "That's stating it too callously. But if Cora had interviewed as a bride, I would have turned her away."

  Perrin's hands curled into balls, and scarlet warmed her throat. "When the journey began, we had eleven brides. Were there only eleven bridegrooms?"

  "No," he admitted after a reluctant pause. "There were twelve letters."

  "So there's one hopeful bridegroom who isn't going to get a bride. Is that correct?"

  He pushed back his hat, his strong features bathed in sunset red and orange. "Perrin, Cora isn't acceptable."

  A spark of determination kindled in her eyes and her small chin set stubbornly. "Augusta intends to put Cora off the train at Fort Laramie and she refuses to give Cora any money to pay for her return passage to Chastity." Her eyes hardened as her voice sank to a throaty whisper. "Can you guess what will happen if Cora is abandoned at the fort with no money for food or shelter?"

  Cody scowled into her flashing eyes. "This is between Cora and Augusta. The problem doesn't concern you or me."

  "Yes, it does! I know what happens to a woman when she's left penniless. I know that brand of desperation all too well. I know what Cora will do just to stay alive, and I know how she'll feel about herself afterward. She will wear a taint for the rest of her life! We can't let that happen!"

  "Damn it!" He slapped his hat against his thigh. "You don't recognize the word no. Why is it that other people's problems become something we must solve? That we can't allow to happen?"

  Eyes locked to his, struggling not to let herself be distracted by the stomach flutter that always occurred when she gazed into his eyes, Perrin tried to frame an answer.

  "I don't know why it's our problem, but it is," she said, frustrated by the question. She drew a breath. "If I can polish Cora a little, will that make a difference?"

  "There's more to this than a clean skirt and how she holds a teacup. You know that."

  They paced one direction, then the other, ending nose to nose, standing so close that Perrin inhaled the sweet tang of the venison
he'd eaten for supper. She gazed at dying sunshine glowing in the soft fuzz on his chin and jaw, at the shining red highlights in his hair, and her heart rolled in her chest.

  "Please, Cody," she whispered, yearning for him. Then she remembered what they were discussing and hoped he would mistake the sudden pink on her cheeks as an effect of the burning light. "All I ask is that you consider giving Cora a chance at a better life." She let her fingertips rest on his sleeve, unable to resist, then quickly withdrew them when she felt his muscled heat beneath the flannel. "Cora has been around Augusta for several years. She's undoubtedly picked up a lot of knowledge that she can use if she must. Please, I beg you to give her a chance. Don't abandon Cora in a military fort. Don't let that happen!"

  His gaze dropped from her imploring eyes to her lips. "I didn't promise the bridegrooms a wife in the making, I agreed to furnish women ready-made to the qualifications they specified."

  She noticed the pulse beating at the bronzed hollow of his throat and felt her breath involuntarily quicken. "Cora would be happy with so little. She'd work her fingers to the bone in return for a husband, a home of her own, and a brood of children. Just give her a chance. You gave Winnie a chance and look how well that turned out. Won't you please consider"

  She bit off the words, forgetting what she had intended to say. Cody stared into her eyes with a hard dangerous expression that mingled anger and desire. She smothered a gasp and felt her knees go weak.

  "Damn it, Perrin. When you look at a man like that, it's hard to refuse you anything," he growled, his voice thick.

  Her breath hitched in her throat and her heartbeat accelerated. Surely, she thought desperately, she hadn't heard him correctly. Uncertain, she wet her mouth and trembled at the sound that emerged from low in his throat as he watched her tongue dart over her lips. Unconsciously, she swayed toward him, drawn by the lean irresistible magnet that was Cody Snow.

  "Then you'll let Cora be a bride? I've persuaded you?"