Dorothy Garlock - [Wabash River] (22 page)

Daniel was sitting with his back to a small sapling, listening and watching her. Mercy looked at him, thinking of how comfortable she was with him and how she would hate to have anyone other than Daniel hear those things about her real family. She decided that she could almost like Bernie and Lenny. They were open and honest, and their love for their mother was the reason they had come looking for her. It was also evident to Mercy that the Baxter clan was close-knit and that she would
never
fit into the family. But then she wouldn’t have to. Daniel was with her, and after the visit he would take her back home to Quill’s Station.

“It’s about time to turn in.” Daniel’s voice broke into the quiet. “Do you want to sleep in the wagon?”

Mercy laughed. “It’s too short. My legs would hang off.”

“All right. I’ll fix you a place under the wagon.”

“Where will you be?” Mercy asked anxiously.

“Here, with you. You know this country, Lenny. Do we need to set up a watch?”

“We be nearby,” Lenny said stiffly, and Daniel saw the look that passed between him and Bernie. “Ain’t nobody goin’ to sneak up on ya.”

“I’ll sleep with one eye open to make sure. Mercy, I’ll hang a blanket over the side of the wagon if you want to get behind it and undress. We’ll let the fire burn down.” He kicked at the fire with his booted foot to scatter the embers.

“I’d like that. I’ve had these clothes on for two days.”

Lenny and Bernie wandered off toward the pool where Bernie had caught the fish. Daniel hung up the blanket. Mercy took off her clothes, slipped into a nightgown, and wrapped the blanket around her. Daniel spread a blanket on the grass, and Mercy sat down to take down her hair and watch him make up the bed beneath the wagon.

“Lenny and Bernie can be quite agreeable . . . sometimes. But I hope the others are not as contrary as they are. I never know what to say to them.” Mercy had loosened her hair from the braid and was brushing it.

“They’ve lived their lives one way and you another. I’m sure our ways are strange to them.” When Daniel finished making the bed, he lifted his own bedroll from the wagon bed.

“Oh, Daniel, I hope
she’s
not . . . gone! I want to see her and let her know I’m all right and that I have people who want me. If she’s gone, Lenny and Bernie will have come all the way to Quill’s Station for nothing.”

“No. Not for nothing,” he said quietly as he spread his bedroll on the grass.

*   *   *

The clouds scudded low over a rising full moon, letting patches of moonlight shine through. Mercy, lying on the pallet beneath the wagon, thought of Daniel’s words, “Not for nothing,” and her mind hung on them. He was right. Lenny and Bernie’s arrival at Quill’s Station had opened her eyes to a lot of things. It made her aware of how fortunate she was to have been found by Farrway Quill and raised in his home. Most of all, she was now aware of her love for Daniel.

Mercy was dozing when she was jerked alert by a distant sound—a howling that swelled and grew.
Wolves.
The word never failed to strike terror in her heart, since as a child she had heard tales of the gray killers. She leaned up on her elbow, her eyes probing the shadows where Daniel lay.

“Daniel . . .” Her voice was thick and strangled, and her heart raced wildly.

He rolled from his blanket and came quickly to kneel beside the wagon. “What is it?”

“Was that . . . wolves?”

The howl came again before he could answer. “Yes, it’s a wolf, but it’s not near.”

“But they hunt in packs.”

“It sounds like a single wolf calling its mate. You needn’t be afraid. He sounds much closer than he is.”

“I can’t help it. I’ve heard . . . stories.”

“All exaggerated, I’m sure. I’ll move my blanket closer if it’ll ease your mind.”

“Please . . .”

Daniel threw his bedroll on the ground beside the wagon, placed his rifle and pistol within reach, and laid down with his back to her. His head was even with her knees, and she could look down on his dark head, lying on his bent arm. She wished with all her heart that she had the right to reach out and touch him, ask him to move up beside her and let her hold him, pillow his head on her breast and share her warmth with him.
It’s all so one-sided, my love,
she told him silently. She didn’t have anything to offer him but herself, not even a good family background. All she had was a heart full of love for him.

The wolf continued to send its lonely message to the female, who never answered his call. The moon rose reluctantly in the sky, dimming the stars. The wind came up. The air cooled, and Mercy pulled the blanket up around her neck. She was no longer uneasy about the wolf. Daniel was with her. She dozed and drifted off to sleep.

As Mercy came slowly out of a dream, she became aware of the warm hand caressing her ankle. She was not the least bit frightened by the touch. She lay with her eyes closed, her chin buried in the blanket, savoring the wonderful touch that could only be Daniel’s hand. She lifted her lashes a mere fraction to look down. They were lying on their sides facing each other, his face tilted upward toward her face. She could see the gleam of his eyes, watching her in the moonlight, and they felt like a warm hand caressing her cheeks.

She tried to keep her breathing even, lest he know the turmoil of her emotions, but it was difficult. All her senses were focused on that warm hand on her foot. Gradually the warming sensation crept upward to her thigh, and upward still to settle with a powerful throb in the area below her stomach.

The almost overwhelming desire to rub her thighs together caused her mouth to go dry. She closed her eyes tightly. Despite the drowning feeling his touch evoked, Mercy lay as still as a stone lest he take his hand away. Slowly, hesitantly, his fingers moved upward to the calf of her leg and stroked lightly all the way down to her heel. There his hand stayed curled about her ankle.

As she watched, he lowered his face and settled his head more firmly on his arm. Was that a deep sigh she heard? Mercy wondered if she had stirred in her sleep and if his hand on her foot was to reassure her that he was near. Regardless of the reason for his hand being there, this moment was to be remembered as one of the most precious moments in her life.

*   *   *

At the edge of the clearing the two Baxter brothers squatted in the shadows, their backs to a tree, their rifles on the ground beside them. They had been sitting there since shortly after they left the campfire. With infinite patience they watched the wagon. They heard the wolf howl and knew it for what it was, a loner calling its mate. When they saw Daniel move his bedroll, Bernie threw down the twig he had been chewing on and snorted with disgust.

“See thar! I tol’ ya he’d be under that wagon by mornin’!”

“By granny! Ya was right!”

“We ort to do . . . somethin’. It pure gets my dander up. That thar is our Sister he’s diddlin’ with.”

“Don’t make such a racket,” Lenny cautioned. “He’s as flap-eared as a deer, ’n’ got eyes like a hawk, ’n’ a plumb whirlwind when he’s riled. Ya’ve had a couple settos with him already. Didn’t ya learn nothin’?”

“It’s a plumb disgrace how they carry on. Ya reckon she be one a them loose women what carries on with any man a-tall?”

“I don’t reckon that. Not with Baxter blood! But I’m right bambozzled over it. It’s got ta be put right. There ain’t no two ways about it. I ain’t takin’ no whore home to Maw.”

“If’n Maw’s there.” Bernie’s words came after a long sigh.

“She said she’d hold on,” Lenny said carefully.

There was a silence as both the brothers pondered the sorrow that might await them when they reached home.

“Hit’s just come to me!” Lenny stood and picked up his rifle. “I done got me a idea what we got to do, Bernie, ’n’ we can do it tomorry. By jigger! It’ll take some doin’, but a Baxter don’t back down from a hard chore.”

“I’ll be hornswoggled if’n I know what ya’re talkin’ about. I done thought on it till I’m tired.”

“I’m talkin’ about puttin’ it right, ya dunderhead! If’n ya’d use yore head for somethin’ besides scratchin’, you’d know there ain’t but one thin’ to do.”

“We ain’t got no time to do nothin’ but to kill him.”

“We ain’t killin’ him! We ain’t never done a man in if’n he warn’t tryin’ to do us in. The fellers been kinda . . . decent, considerin’.”

“Guess we ain’t ort to kill him. Sister’d be sure to tell Maw, ’n’ she don’t sit still for killin’, exceptin’ if they’re shootin’ at us.”

The brothers went back to where they had unpacked their mules. Bernie sank down on his blanket and stretched out.

“I’m just plumb petered out, Lenny. When we get home, I’m goin’ ta sleep a week.”

“Get up! Ya ain’t home yet,” Lenny said sharply. “We got plannin’ to do.”

M
orning came, and Mercy tried to meet Daniel’s look with smiling calm while an almost frantic thrill leapt within her at the thought of his warm fingers on her foot. Nothing in his manner indicated that for him that morning was different from any other. He made tea and they used it to wash down the hoecake left over from the night before. When they finished, they went about breaking camp and packing the wagon as the sun was sending streaks of light up over the eastern hills.

The Baxters didn’t come to their breakfast fire, but they were waiting on the trail when Daniel guided Zelda out onto the road. They rode ahead without as much as a greeting.

“I wonder what’s got into them,” Mercy said when the brothers moved their mules on ahead at a brisk trot.

Daniel chuckled. “Who knows. I thought you softened them up last night.”

“They’re hard to talk to. They don’t tell me a thing unless I ask.”

“You’ll know about them soon enough. Lenny said we should be there by mid-morning tomorrow.”

“Will we camp out again tonight?”

“If we don’t come to a place where I can get a bed for you, we’ll have to.”

“I’d rather camp than stay in a place like we stayed the first night.”

Mercy watched a large snake slither across the trail ahead. Zelda broke stride and whinnied.

Daniel slapped the reins gently. “Go on girl. That’s just a harmless old grass snake. It’s scared of you too.”

“Ugh!” Mercy shivered. “I don’t blame Zelda. Snakes give me the chills. I even hate a big worm.”

“Then there’d be no point in taking you fishing.” Daniel looked down at her. His deep, dark eyes were dancing with devilment, and the slight, upturning smile of his lips was boyish.

Mercy swallowed the large lump blocking her throat. Today everything seemed to take on a new, different, and wonderful meaning. He was an extraordinarily handsome man: broad shoulders, trim waist, long legs, and the most beautiful eyes in the world. She wanted to ask, “When did you shave?” Instead she said, “Bernie caught the fish last night with chicken meat. Did you see the chicken bone fall out of his pocket?”

“I saw it.” Daniel chuckled again. “They’re quite a pair. I could almost like them if they weren’t so bullheaded.”

“I suspect it’s a Baxter trait.”

He smiled down at her again. “I suspect you’re right.”

“I wonder what the rest of the Baxters are like. I hope they’re not all like that young Gideon. It sounds like he’s had no upbringing at all.”

“What’s wrong with wild and horny?” Daniel asked with an innocent look on his face.

“What’s wrong? Why . . . why, Daniel Phelps, you know what’s wrong!”

“There you go . . . sputtering. You don’t even know what it means.” Laughter rippled in his voice.

“I do too know what it means. It means that at age fifteen he’s got bastards spread all over the county!” Her voice was curt, her chin up, and her face as red as the morning sunrise. “They were so quick to condemn me because you spent the night in the house with me, but they think it’s funny that Gideon . . . does what he does.”

“It seems that they have a different set of rules for the women of the family,” Daniel said patiently, trying not to laugh at the indignant look on her face.

“Well! They’re not telling
me
what to do. “I’ll set them straight about that.”

“You do that and I’ll back you up.”

“You’re laughing at me!”

“Yeah, I am.” He smiled into her eyes, reached across her lap, and patted her bent knee. “It’s fun to get you riled up. It used to be my favorite thing to do. You’d shout, ‘You don’t know everything, Daniel Phelps.’ Remember saying that?”

“And you’d say, ‘You silly girl. I know more than you do, I’m older.’ You would make me so mad that I’d cry.”

“I remember.”

“We’ve been together a long time, Daniel.”

“Yes, a long time,” he said quietly.

*   *   *

They passed through the rich bottomland stretching black and loamy on either side of the Green River, which cut a deep gash through central Kentucky, and entered low, clustering green hills. They followed a pike that wound around jutting slopes and across small rocky streams that divided the hills that rammed each other. At times the pike clung to the rocky ledges; at other times it passed through woods so dense and dark that no brush grew beneath the trees.