Foxfire Bride (18 page)

On the third night out of the mining camp, Fox halted early enough to allow Hanratty to hunt for fresh meat. Before he rode out, he tossed Jubal Brown a triumphant smirk.

"How come you sent him?" Brown inquired, swinging off his horse and glaring after the coil of dust that followed Hanratty. "Is it because I got eliminated from the shooting contest? I was just having a bad day."

"You'd complain if I sent you, and you'd complain if I didn't," Fox snapped, handing Peaches her reins. She would like to have sent Brown off to gather piñon nuts, to get him out of camp and away from her, but it was too early in the year for nuts. "Do you think you could get a fire started without grousing about it?"

At this altitude the sun felt thin and weak. Drifts of snow lingered under rock overhangs and vegetation was sparse. On the positive side, the spring Fox remembered was running and the water was clear and as sweet as any they'd had so far.

"Thank you," she said, extending her hands to the fire that Brown finally coaxed to life. God forbid he should start the coffee. "Remind me," she said, her lips pulling down. "How many servants did you have when you were growing up?"

"No sense getting pissy at me because you've had a falling out with your gentleman friend."

Fox wanted to punch the sly smile off his face for the sheer pleasure of hitting someone. Right now, Jubal Brown was the someone she most wanted to hit.

Taking her time, she poured water from a bucket into the coffeepot, then added grounds. "I don't know what the hell you're talking about so just shut up." But of course she did. And it made her angrier to learn she wasn't the only one to notice Tanner's coolness.

Lifting her head, she scanned the campsite and finally spotted Tanner helping Peaches unload the mules. The sight irritated her. Tanner should have put Brown to the task rather than doing it himself.

"Who's cooking tonight?" Brown crossed his arms over his chest and adjusted his back against his saddle. His hat brim was pulled low and Fox couldn't see his eyes.

"I think it's my turn." Peeling onions and potatoes would give her something to occupy her hands other than mending, which she'd told herself she needed to do soon. She'd noticed a couple of loose buttons and a tear in her favorite shirt. "So don't talk to me. I don't like to talk while I'm cooking."

"Tell me what you're going to cook, then I'll shut up."

"I'll cook whatever Hanratty brings back." While she waited she could start peeling the onions and potatoes, and rolling out some biscuits.

"Seems we're making good time the last few days," Peaches remarked, settling down nearby to repair Tanner's bridle.

Fox didn't see where Tanner had gone. "I was glad to find this campsite, it's been a while since I was here last. We'd have lost time if I'd wound up a bit north at the alkali flats."

"I swear I don't know how you do it, Missy, but somehow you manage to find the passes that will save us from having to cross the summits of some mighty tall peaks. How high are we now? About eight thousand feet? That's as high as I want to go."

Fox scraped the peelings into a pile that she would bury later along with any leavings from supper. "AH right, what's on your mind?"

Peaches blinked innocently. "What makes you think I got anything on my mind?"

"You don't pass out compliments unless it's to soften up a person for something that person isn't going to like to hear." She pressed the open end of a coffee cup on the biscuit dough she'd rolled out, then slapped the round on a baking sheet. "So?"

Late afternoon sunlight slanted over the peaks behind them, shimmering in a last burst of light and warmth. Fox remembered Peaches looking glossy and vigorous in this kind of light, but today his skin looked dull and the wrinkles seemed more prominent.

"Hey, old man," she said in a soft voice. "How are you feeling?"

A frown of indignation tugged his eyebrows. "I'm at the top of the cream, Missy. Not a thing wrong here that a good night's sleep won't cure."

"Then I hope you catch a good night's sleep," she said after a minute. Before she let herself go down for the night, she always checked on Peaches, and thus far she hadn't noticed that he'd experienced any problem going to sleep. She studied the tone of his skin and the slope of his shoulders and decided that one of the younger men would lead Peaches's string of mules for a few days. "So what's on your mind? Why've you been looking at me like you're seeing something no one else does?"

"Well, you know I don't agree with what you're planning to do when we reach Denver." He held the bridle closer to his eyes and squinted. "And you know I was hoping something would happen on this journey to change your mind."

Fox rolled her eyes toward the sky. "I bought you spectacles not two months ago. And I know I packed them in your saddlebags. Now, why aren't you wearing them?"

"Has anything happened to change your mind about what you're planning to do in Denver?"

"No." As soon as she finished rolling out the biscuits, she'd search for his spectacles.

"You sure about that, Missy?"

She knew what he was talking about and heat flooded her cheeks. Irritated, she flipped her braid over her shoulder. "Nothing's going on that a preacher couldn't watch."

"Uh huh." Lifting the hem of his shirt, he polished the bridle buckles. "Remember when we lived with your mother's cousin?"

"I wish I didn't, but I do." The only thing good about that experience had been meeting Peaches.

"Remember when Miz Wilson ordered you to stir up a cake or a batch of cookies? And then when they were baked, you weren't allowed to eat any."

Fox dusted flour off her hands. "What's the point of this?"

"It hurts to touch, smell, and work with something you can't have. Remember?"

She met his level gaze and held it for a long moment. "Just once I'd like to have something that I really want," she said in a low voice. "I don't want it forever and all time, I know that's beyond reach. But just for a little while"

"Would one bite of the cookie have satisfied you? Or would learning how it tasted have made not having more even worse?"

Tanner returned to camp, examining a chunk of rock in his hand. Looking up, he nodded at them then headed toward the tents they had set up to make the night a little warmer.

"I don't know," Fox whispered, watching the way he walked, the swing of his hips and shoulders. "I just know I want this cookie even if it's only a small taste."

Peaches pushed to his feet and looked down at the bridle, then he sighed and squeezed Fox's shoulder before he left to check on the horses and mules.

When she lowered her hand from her forehead, she spotted Jubal Brown watching from beneath his hat brim. "Were you eavesdropping?"

Grinning, he raised both hands. "Will you give me a beating if I say yes?"

Fox tried to remember exactly what she and Peaches had said. Nothing specific that she could recall.

"Don't worry," he said, his grin widening. "I was dozing until a minute ago. All I heard was something about cookies. Are you going to bake cookies?" He sounded hopeful.

"You could have heard every word for all I care." A shrug punctuated the lie. She wished Hanratty would come back so she could get supper over with and crawl into her tent. Her energy seemed lowest at altitude.

"You don't like me much, do you?"

Fox glanced at him, but didn't answer.

"Is it because I'm a Confederate?"

"I told you. The war isn't real to me."

"Are you mad because the gold got stolen? That was Hanratty's fault, not mine."

Fox rocked back on her heels and examined him. Long, lean, and good-looking in a rough unpolished way. Two days of not shaving had given him a thin beard that made him appear a bit older. Fox had to remind herself he was a killer with the morals of a slug.

"I'd like you better if you complained less and helped out more."

"You'd like me better if I was rich and had the manners of a duke." Settling back against the saddle, he tugged his hat brim back down over his eyes. " 'Course if I was a rich duke, I'd stop watching your butt and go find me a fancy lady wearing silk and dripping perfume."

"Did I mention coarse and vulgar?" Fox snapped. "I'd like you marginally better if you displayed even a hint of manners."

"Like you're accustomed to fine manners."

Grinding her teeth together, Fox flicked a glance at Tanner's tent, then cut the potatoes into small pieces and dropped them and the onions into a pot of spring water that she hung over the fire. Maybe she didn't know chapter and verse about manners, but she could appreciate someone who did.

"Do you think Tanner's pa really got himself kidnapped?"

Fox's head jerked up in surprise. Brown's face was covered by his hat and she couldn't see his expression. "Why on earth would you ask such a peculiar question?"

"Maybe we're enduring all this aggravation for a whole different reason altogether."

"Such as?" She had no idea what he was implying.

"Tanner's a Union man, ain't he?"

She considered his comment and the direction it pointed. "Forget it. If Tanner wanted to send money to the Union, it would have been closer to take the gold to San Francisco. He could have been there and back by now."

"Maybe there's some reason he has to take the gold to Denver."

"That doesn't make sense."

"And it doesn't make sense that kidnappers would hold his pa for three fricking months. If I was the kidnapper I wouldn't mess with some old guy for three months. I'd shoot him and be done with it."

Fox glanced toward Tanner's tent and lowered her voice. "I hope not, but maybe that's what's happened. Tanner will pay the ransom but his father is dead."

Jubal Brown thumbed up his hat. "If the old man is dead, then why wait three months for the money? If it was me, I'd send a telegram saying I had the old man, wire fifty thousand within a week or the old man dies. And I'd shoot him anyway. But the whole thing would be over in a week. Not strung out for months."

Fox wished he hadn't put this idea in her head. Biting her lips, she frowned at Tanner's tent, seeing him sitting inside studying the rock he'd brought back. Would he use his father to cover some other reason for taking the gold to Denver?

"Well, it's not you who kidnapped Tanner's father. Obviously, the men who did kidnap him have their reasons for doing it this way. It's probably safer for them than putting their names in a telegram."

Brown made a sound of disgust. "They wouldn't use their real names."

"Even so." She was glad to spot Hanratty riding toward camp with a small deer draped over his horse's rump. "I have no reason to disbelieve what Tanner's told us. As far as I'm concerned, that's the end of it."

But she wondered. And all through supper, she watched Tanner holding his platter of hot venison apart from the rest of them, asking herself if he might have lied about his father being kidnapped.

Along about midnight, she stopped staring at the peak of her tent and decided Brown's suspicion was nonsense. Matthew Tanner was an honorable man. But what if ?

His reason spoke to his character. If he was pushing to reach Denver to rescue his father, then he was admirable, a devoted son, a man of loyalty whom one could trust. If he had lied about his father and the gold was for the war effort or some other secretive thing, then Tanner was a liar, a deceiver, and without conscience about using his father to gain undeserved sympathy.

That was not possible.

Shifting on her side, she heaved a sigh. She longed for Matthew Tanner's touch, burned for him. But he was avoiding her. She didn't like it much, but the thought occurred to her that she might have to take matters into her own hands.

The next few days were uneventful. By now crossing creeks and ascending or descending treacherous slopes had become as routine as setting up camp in the evenings. It was cold on the peaks, warmer in the valleys. One day a heavy morning snow turned into cold rain by afternoon and they rode hunched over, grinding their teeth and enduring the misery. But by and large they had been lucky with weather.

Hanratty and Brown complained of boredom and the sameness of peaks, valleys, and overarching sky. Tanner suspected the two would have been lost in half a day as they clearly lacked the keen eye for landmarks that Fox possessed.

So far, Fox had stumbled only once, leading them to the edge of a deep, steep-sided gully that the animals couldn't cross. As a result, they'd lost several hours to the necessity of riding around the gully. Otherwise, she had been on target. In the morning she generally announced where they were heading and how long she estimated it would take, and then she unerringly led them to the campsite she'd selected.

Tanner would have liked to ask how long it had been since she'd previously taken the direct route, and what landmarks did she key off of. Did she remember the route in total, or did she recall the terrain as the bowls and peaks unrolled before her?

But Peaches's words had stuck in his mind. He admired Fox enough that he didn't wish to take any advantage that might cause her grief at the end of the journey.

So he'd kept his distance, curtly turning aside any approach she made. That wasn't easy because it wasn't what he wanted.

Right now he sat beside the campfire, brooding and watching her brush out her hair with the same intensity as he'd watched her wash her face and throat. Every evening she went through these woman routines, and every evening they fascinated him. Before she crawled into her bedroll, she'd rub something on her face and then she'd sniff her bedtime gloves with a pinched expression before she put them on and settled down for sleep.

That was another thing he wished he could ask. Why did she wear gloves to sleep in?

"Mr. Tanner?" Peaches asked for the second time. "Would you be interested in a game of checkers?"

The other men had their backs to Fox and didn't see her brushing out long wavy lengths of auburn hair. But Tanner understood that Peaches knew what he was watching.

"Not tonight, thanks." Standing, he stretched his neck against his hand and examined the sky in the fading light. There were no clouds, just a slice of moon. "I think I'll take one of the lanterns to my tent and read a while."