Bound For Eden (38 page)

‘Where would he have gone?' Alex asked when she discovered his absence. She looked around, bewildered. She couldn't imagine anything more frightening than being alone in the wilderness.

The land was mountainous now, thick with stands of pine and larch, maple and cypress. The leaves of the deciduous trees were beginning to turn, speckling the treeline with red and gold, and the nights were crisp and cold. Alex shivered, imagining spending a solitary night out there.

Luke shrugged. ‘Who knows where he goes.'

‘Doesn't he live somewhere in particular?'

Again, Luke shrugged. ‘I have no idea. Whenever I see him he's always on the move. Jim Bridger reckons he's some kind of ghost, haunting the trails.'

They'd met Jim Bridger back at Fort Bridger. He was a rough-edged mountain man, set on making his fortune in the fur trade. Fort Bridger itself was under construction: a raw little patch of land in the forest where a few crude log cabins were being erected. ‘I think Bridger keeps trying to convince Deathrider to do some trapping for him,' Luke continued, ‘but I can't imagine him working for anyone.'

‘Are all Indians so lonesome?'

Luke laughed. ‘No, brat, they're not. But then, Deathrider ain't your regular Indian. Hell, I'm not even sure how much of an Indian he really is – I've never met one with eyes like that before.'

Alex was astonished. ‘He's not a real Indian?'

‘Don't get me wrong, brat. To all intents and purposes he's Arapaho, if a solitary one. Two Bears formally adopted him, I hear. But no-one really knows who he is. According to that dime novel he simply appeared out of nowhere. Riding out of a winter fog, the book says, pulling a travois.' Luke lowered his voice, ‘According to the book the travois was carrying his family. Each and every one of them stone-cold dead.'

Alex stared at him, wide-eyed, feeling the hair rise on the nape of her neck.

‘But then,' Luke said, breaking the mood with a chuckle, ‘everyone knows that those dime novels are full of rubbish.'

Alex wondered if she could get her hands on that book. She kind of missed the cold-eyed Indian. There was something reassuring about having him with them.

‘I don't suppose you know how to fish, runt?' Luke asked that afternoon, as he rode alongside their wagon, sharing lunch.

‘I love fishing,' she told him, smiling at old memories. ‘Once, I caught the mightiest catfish in Mississippi.'

‘You caught the mightiest hiding in Mississippi,' Victoria interrupted, eager to join the conversation. Despite her best efforts, she'd spent very little time with Luke since the Gradys had been captured. The night she'd danced with him at Laramie had been the last time he'd so much as touched her.

Alex grinned. ‘Didn't I just? Ma Sparrow was furious with me.'

‘For going fishing?' Luke asked.

‘For going in her Sunday dress,' Victoria corrected. ‘Her
white
Sunday dress. Ma made her scrub it and scrub it, but it was never white again. That river mud is black as tar.'

‘She didn't even let me eat any of my catfish,' Alex said ruefully.

Luke laughed. He could just picture her in a sopping, muddy Sunday dress, her face as filthy as it was right this minute.

‘Stephen was in worse trouble than me,' Alex admitted. ‘He was kept to bread and water for a whole week as punishment. She said he should have known better, that he should have sent me back the minute he saw me, instead of giving me a line and tying worms to my hook.'

‘She sounds pretty strict, your ma.'

‘She was. I think that was one reason Stephen headed out to Oregon.'

‘It just about broke her heart,' Victoria said sadly. ‘He was her only natural child.'

‘I guess she'd be horrified to see you now, brat,' Luke remarked.

Alex grimaced. He had no idea how right he was.

‘I was going to try a little fishing this afternoon while everyone makes camp,' Luke said, ‘if you'd care to join me. I thought fresh fish would be a welcome change from salt pork.'

‘Oh,' Victoria exclaimed quickly, ‘do you think I could come too?'

In the end, to Victoria's bitter disappointment, it was a veritable party that gathered on the riverbank as the sun was falling thin and gold through the stands of pine. And she wasn't even anywhere near Luke Slater. She stood morosely, limply holding her line, watching Luke laugh at something her sister said to him. Look at that, Victoria thought grumpily. Even looking like a scarecrow Alex managed to capture the attention of men.

Why didn't Luke approach
her
? He'd been so tender that night at Laramie and she carried his words around with her constantly:
No chipped tooth could ever dim your loveliness.
He thought she was lovely. And then there was that time he was talking to Alex about his sweetheart, when he'd described
her
, Victoria Sparrow: dark hair, dark eyes, slender frame and all. And what about that time in Independence, when she'd swooned and he'd carried her up the stairs at Ralph Taylor's boarding house, and laid her on the bed? They way he'd looked at her . . . she shivered now just thinking of it. Surely a man didn't look at a woman like that unless she meant something to him?

A sharp tug on her line brought her out of her thoughts with a gasp.

‘You have a fish,' Ned O'Brien exclaimed.

The line tugged again, cutting into her fingers. ‘Help me,' Victoria squealed, ‘what do I do?'

Ned passed his own line to his eldest daughter, Susan, and his warm hand closed around Victoria's, guiding her. With his help she brought in a magnificent trout, its belly streaked red from mouth to tail. Thrilled, Victoria beamed up at him. Then, with a shock, she remembered her monstrous tooth and clamped her mouth shut.

Ned's own smile faded as he saw the way she prodded the broken edge of her tooth with her tongue. He felt a surge of tenderness towards her and the strength of it drove all poetry from him. Even Byron was not enough. ‘You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen,' he said simply, his earnestness obvious. He was gazing at her in wonder.

Victoria flushed. No-one had ever looked at her that way before.

‘That's some fine fish,' Luke exclaimed, as he came for a look, breaking the spell between the couple. Flustered, they couldn't meet his eye.

Thirty-Three

Fort Laramie

Brian Cleary was having a bad day. Worse than bad. Catastrophic. The Gradys were his responsibility. And now, on his watch, they'd escaped. Every last one of them.

And it was that woman's fault.

She was still in the cell where they'd locked her, and Cleary had no intention of letting her out. He was fighting the urge to take a horsewhip to her.

‘What the hell happened?' his boss demanded, bursting through the door. Cleary jumped a mile. Unable to summon any defence for himself, he simply pointed in the direction of the cell.

It wasn't really a cell, just a windowless room in the low, adobe building. But it was as secure as any cell, and those Gradys should have been kicking their heels until the marshals came for them. Cleary's boss threw the door to the cell open and groaned.

There before him was a ravishing redhead, sitting quite calmly on a rough-hewn wooden bench.

‘Hell and damnation, Ava!' Hewitson roared.

The redhead rose, straightening her short, leather waistcoat and gathering her hat. ‘Must you be so crude?' she sighed, not in the slightest bit ruffled by his barely contained rage.

‘Let me guess,' Hewitson blasted her, ‘you came sniffing around for more news of that damn Indian!'

‘Well, I did hear tell that he helped to apprehend them.' She pulled a notebook from the pocket of her suede riding skirt. ‘Is that correct?' She licked the tip of her pencil.

‘If you want a story,' Hewitson snarled, grabbing her elbow and pulling her from the cell, ‘I'll give you one: Damn Fool Female Releases Cold-blooded Killers.'

‘They killed someone? The way I heard it the only casualties were the livestock. But of course it will be far more exciting if someone was actually killed. Imagine, the ice-eyed Plague of the West facing down the Gruesome Grady Gang.'

‘The Gruesome Grady Gang?'

‘My publisher likes alliteration. This time I think I might call him White Wolf. I hear that's one of his names.'

‘You, Miss Archer, are a menace to civilised society.'

The redhead gave a musical laugh and peered through the doorway at dusty old Laramie. ‘This is not civilisation, Mr Hewitson. People would hardly want to read about it if it
was
civilised.'

‘One of these days, Miss Archer, I hope you come face to face with your Plague of the West,' Hewitson said direly, giving her a shove out the door. ‘Then you'd really have something to write about in your dime novels.'

Ava sighed, nibbling on the end of her pencil. If only she
would
come face to face with the Deathrider. She was fast running out of ideas for her books. She set her hat on her head and pondered which avenue to pursue now. The Grady angle hadn't quite worked out as she'd planned. She supposed she was fortunate that they were too set on escape to assault her. She had to admit that she'd felt a thrill of fear looking into Gideon Grady's mad eyes. She wondered if the Deathrider's eyes looked like that. She doubted it. In her novel she'd described him as dark and handsome, mostly because that was what the readers wanted, but also because she'd met a fair few people who described him that way.

‘Except for the eyes,' one young lady had added, giving a nervous shiver. ‘His eyes are strange.'

‘Strange?' Ava had prodded, her pencil at the ready.

‘Like they've got no colour,' the girl said. ‘Pale, you know, like ice.'

So in her book he'd been an ice-eyed killer. Now, staring at the treeless plains around Laramie, her pencil tapping thoughtfully against her notebook, Ava wondered how she was going to finish her next book. She was already well past deadline and her publisher was screaming for it. Well, she thought with a shrug, if the Gradys had flown, without leaving her any the wiser about what had transpired, she only had one option left. She'd make it up.

‘Why the hell did you leave her alone with them?' Hewitson snapped at Cleary, as they watched her through the window; neither could resist lingering on the alluring sway of her hips.

‘She was only going to talk to them through the door,' Cleary said miserably, remembering the way his thoughts had flown from his head like butterflies when she'd fixed him with those beautiful, dark eyes.

Hewitson resisted yelling at the lad again. Hell, he too had fallen victim to her in the past. It was the deceptive openness of her expression that did it every time. She looked like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth.

‘Send word with a rider,' he ordered Cleary, ‘we need to warn the forts along the trail . . . as far as Oregon City, you hear. I'd hate to have those varmints attack Slater unawares. Get Jed Hacker. He's fast.'

‘At least Slater's got a long head start,' Cleary said hopefully. ‘His group will be all the way to Oregon before the Gradys reach South Pass.'

‘Let's hope so,' Hewitson said grimly. ‘And let's hope Jed's fast enough to catch them before the Gradys do.'

But they hadn't bargained on the fact that Jed Hacker had been shot clean through the temple.

It looked like Ava Archer had her cold-blooded killers after all.

Thirty-Four

They were all going to die.

Alex was numb with fear as she regarded the churning Snake River. ‘You want us to cross
that
?' she demanded.

‘It's the quickest route,' Luke said, eyeing the thunderheads massing on the horizon. The wind was blowing in their favour and would hopefully keep the storm at bay, but he didn't want to risk it. If the Snake flooded they would have no chance of crossing it safely.

‘And you've done this before?' she asked dubiously.

‘Many times.' What Luke didn't say was that he'd seen men die here, had seen entire wagons swept downstream, and mules drown as they were dragged down by their harnesses.

Below them the Snake was at its widest, splitting into four streams around three islands. The water boiled and frothed, its current wicked and swift. ‘We'll swim the livestock across first,' Luke told his gathered campers. ‘We'll use two of the islands as stepping stones to get them to the far shore. Then we'll pull the wagons across with ropes.' He tried to sound as reassuring as possible, aware of their pinched white faces. ‘The womenfolk and children will be best off in the wagons. But keep to the front, close to the buckboards; if anything happens, you're to jump free and make a swim for it.'

‘Miss Sparrow?' Ned approached Victoria anxiously. ‘I know you must be apprehensive, but I was hoping I could ask you to ride with my girls.'

Victoria looked over at the O'Brien wagon, where the three girls were huddled together. Her heart twisted at the sight of their frightened faces. She too had once been motherless. ‘Of course,' Victoria said bravely, trying to quash her own fears.

‘What about me?' Alex squeaked when her sister informed her.

‘You're a grown woman,' Victoria said, ‘and they're just children. They need me.'

‘
Now
you decide I'm not a child,' Alex muttered. Oh hell, she'd be alone in the wagon. Luke had already decided to take Adam with him when they swam the livestock. ‘He'll be the first one over. He can watch over the animals and keep out of trouble,' Luke had told the sisters in a low voice. ‘He'll be safe.'

‘As long as he doesn't drown on the swim over,' Alex said darkly.

‘He'll be on the Arab,' Luke had soothed her, ‘and that horse is as strong as ten men.'

Alex was surprised now when Victoria swept her into a hard embrace. ‘Good luck,' her sister whispered, giving her a swift kiss. And then Alex was alone, clenching the side of the wagon with white knuckles as she watched the mounted men plunge into the churning river. Mules were braying and oxen lowing as they hit the river, and then they fell silent as they struggled to keep their heads above water. Luke and Adam were way out in front, and Mal Crawford brought up the rear, riding Delilah.