Sweet Prairie Passion (Savage Destiny) (27 page)

Abbie’s tears spilled down her cheeks, mostly from disappointment that her sister could be so cruel. It was obvious she meant every word.

“Go on then,” she said in a choked voice. “I don’t know you anymore. Somewhere back on the trail the
real
LeeAnn got left behind. I prefer to remember you the way you used to be.”

“That’s when I was stupid and going nowhere. Now I’ve
got
something—a way to live like I’ve always dreamed of living! And if it isn’t enough to tell them all that Zeke raped me, I might add that I can make something up about Zeke and
you!
Zeke would hate
that more than anything. He’d not want you slandered. I expect he’d be almighty devastated if I made up a story about catching him and you going at it one night.”

Abbie angrily wiped at her tears. “Well, maybe that wouldn’t
be
a lie!” she spit back at her sister. “And maybe I wouldn’t
care
if you told such a story!”

LeeAnn’s eyebrows went up. “You mean … you’ve actually lain down for that half-breed?”

“Not the way
you
make it sound! I … needed him … and he needed me. And it was special… beautiful.”

LeeAnn chuckled. “With a man who wears buckskins and probably never washes?” She made a face. “Well, if you can pull up your skirts for a worthless, wandering Indian, then don’t be putting me down for wanting to go off with a proper gentleman like Quentin!” she said haughtily. “And it doesn’t matter that
you
wouldn’t care if I told.
Zeke
would care. So don’t make me have to make him look bad and maybe get kicked off the train or even
hung!”

Abbie turned away, picking up their father’s fiddle. “I’m glad pa isn’t here to see this or hear the way you’re talking,” she said quietly. “Good-bye, LeeAnn.”

LeeAnn surprised her by putting a hand on her shoulder. “I’m not all that bad, Abbie. I… I
do
love you. But my love for Quentin is so deep, so wonderful, I just
can’t
let him go without me, Abbie! And I have to get away from this horrible West: the bugs, the heat, and the awful ugliness of it all—and the danger and the dust. I
hate
it, Abbie! I
hate
it out here! The only thing that kept me this long was the fear of what
Zeke would do, and pa. But now pa is gone. And once Zeke sees how much trouble I could get him in, he’ll leave us alone. And I promise that somehow I’ll get in touch with you again. Perhaps you’ll even want to go back yourself some day, and you can look me up. I’ll have a fine big home by then, maybe in Chicago or St. Louis and you can live with—”

“Just go, LeeAnn. I’ll never live under the same roof with Quentin Robards!” She felt like a stone as LeeAnn sighed disgustedly and climbed out of the wagon. Abbie could hear Robards’ voice as he helped her saddle up, calling her “darling” and “lovely one” and other silly names. In the distance she could hear whistles and curses, as Zeke helped get the Haneses’ wagon across the river. Everyone was so busy, they paid no heed to LeeAnn and Quentin riding back in the wrong direction, figuring the two were off to some private place again and would return.

The crossing took as long or longer than the first one at Fort Laramie. It was an all-day affair that left them wet and exhausted, and early in the evening Abbie pulled from the wagon a few of things things that had gotten wet in order to hang them out to dry. For the first time that day Cheyenne Zeke spoke to her, approaching her on the big Appaloosa.

“You doing okay?” he asked, looking off in the distance and trying to appear casual in his conversation.

“I’ll make it,” she replied, keeping her back to him.

“Where’s your sister? I haven’t seen her and that Robards all day. They should be showing up by now.”

Abbie swallowed. “They … left … back in the other direction. They’re going back East… headed for Fort Laramie where I expect they’ll find a guide.
With pa gone, LeeAnn just… didn’t want to go on.”

He made no reply at first. As she turned to face him, his dark eyes flashed with disgust and his jaw twitched with obvious anger. He moved his horse closer and looked down at her.

“Why didn’t you
tell
me?” he hissed. “I’d have stopped them! It’s dangerous!
Much
too dangerous! Besides that, I’d never have let her go off and leave you alone like this! What the hell kind of sister
is
she? I expected her to at
least
go on to Oregon!”

“Zeke, it’s best this way!” she replied, her eyes tearing. “Please,
please
don’t try to stop them! I
beg
you, Zeke. She … she said she’d say all kinds of awful things about you if you did! She’ll say you raped her back there somewhere, and she’ll say you’ve been carrying on with
me.
She’s
changed,
Zeke. I can’t let myself worry about her anymore. And I won’t let two people like that make more trouble for you! I tried to warn her; but she’s made her bed, Zeke, and now she’s got to lie in it. Let it
go,
Zeke! It will be bad for you if you go after them!
Real
bad!”

He yanked his horse’s reins, causing the animal to whirl in a circle as he tried to gather his angry thoughts. The girl probably would do exactly what she’d told Abbie she’d do if he went after them. The worst part was she’d slander Abbie’s name, and that was the last thing he wanted. He rode closer to Abbie again. “Abbie, I’ll go after them if you want. It’s too damned dangerous for her out there. I’ll do whatever you ask me to do, Abbie.”

“I don’t want you to do anything but keep this train going,” she replied in a determined voice. “Just keep us going. I don’t know my sister anymore. She
chose
to do this, Zeke. We can’t do anything more for her. All I can do is pray she makes it safely.”

“But what about you … what about—”

“I’m okay. I have the wagon and the rest of the animals, pa’s fiddle and my mama’s clock—all our belongings. And I’ll have Mr. and Mrs. Hanes when I get to Oregon. I don’t want you to worry about me, Zeke. It would be bad for both of us if you brought her back here. She’s so different now, it just isn’t worth it. Just go and tell the others that she wanted to go … and that I let her because she was so terribly unhappy out here and wanted to go back with Mr. Robards and marry him.”

He swung the horse around again, then stopped and looked out over the horizon. “Are you sure, Abbie girl?”

“I’m sure.”

He sighed. “All right, Abbie. I’m against it. But I’ll not let that bastard Robards drag you down in the dirt along with your sister. And I’ll not let her hurt you, either.”

“Zeke, I wouldn’t consider being linked with you as being dragged down in the dirt,” she answered. “I consider it beautiful and wonderful … an honor.”

He backed up the horse. “It isn’t how
you
consider it that counts. It’s how
others
consider it. And nobody knows better than I do what most whites think about one of their own kind who lies with a half-breed.” The thought brought pain to his loins. She could see the desire in his eyes, but he instantly replaced it with a look of stern warning. “Nothing has changed from what I said before,” he told her. “Get inside now and get some rest. I’ll tell the others.”

He turned his horse and she watched him lovingly as he rode away. Perhaps it would be better if he
did
leave the train at Fort Bridger. To go all the way to Oregon with him under these conditions would be unbearable.

Twelve

The next three days were like a living hell, not just mentally for Abbie, but physically for everyone. They passed through a canyon that wound for miles toward Independence Rock. It was unbearably hot, and all the water was poisoned by alkali. Wearied by the terrible heat, everyone’s strength was stretched to the limit by having to lose sleep for three nights in a row to chase after the animals and keep them from drinking bad water.

Zeke had warned them about what it would be like, and they’d stocked up on fresh water from the Platte, but there were always animals that would try to get to the salty beds of water in the canyon. In many spots these were simply big white beds of pure alkali, where small lakes had dried up completely. Abbie thought it a terrible, desolate place, and knew how much LeeAnn would have hated it. Being there only accented Abbie’s own lonely, desolate feeling, until she felt that the empty, vacant land epitomized her soul. She wondered if she’d ever be a whole and happy person again.
She longed to hear her father’s fiddle, to hear Jeremy’s laughter, to be held in her mother’s arms.

For three days they dragged through the canyon, and Abbie lost her two spare oxen to the poison water. Willis Brown lost one of his cows also. Abbie cried intermittently as she walked along beside her oxen, missing the two that had died because they’d become like pets to her, the only living things left that she could care for and call her own. Others had offered to help her guide the oxen, but she’d stubbornly refused, insisting on doing it herself. She’d helped her father plenty of times and knew what to do. Zeke stayed ahead of the train, but she sensed that his thoughts were of her and that he was watching out for her, even though he was not obvious about it. She was aware that he probably did not like her leading the oxen alone, but he had to keep from appearing too concerned. Besides that, Abigail Trent had made up her mind to somehow convince Cheyenne Zeke that it was indeed possible for them to be together. She would show him how strong she was, how she could endure and that she wasn’t afraid of work. She’d show him she could live just like an Indian woman, if that was what it would take to be with him. The thought of proving something to him gave her a stubborn strength, and the slim hope that there could yet be something between them was all that kept her going mentally, the only thing that helped mitigate her pain from the death of her father and brother, and the desertion of her sister. And so she ignored the horrible heat as she plodded along beside the oxen through the hellish canyon, passing the bleached bones of animals that had come this way before them and had not made it.

By the fourth day they reached Independence Rock and the Sweetwater River, an occasion of great relief and rejoicing for the weary, sunburned travelers. They all carved their names in the great, giant monolith of stone, and found enjoyment in studying the names of others who had carved their names there before them. Abbie wondered if the names would still all be there a hundred years later, and if, in the future, people would remember and appreciate those who went first and suffered so terribly.

By that evening, Abbie had recovered enough emotionally to begin thinking practically. She sorted through the things in her wagon, selling most of her father’s clothes to Bentley Kelsoe for a fair price. There was no sense in holding onto them, except for one of his favorite shirts that she kept in his memory, as well as his cherished fiddle. But she kept Jeremy’s clothes, remembering the boy’s desire to give them to Indian children. When they reached Fort Bridger, she would make some kind of arrangement with Mr. Jim Bridger to see that Indian children got the clothes.

For the first time since her father’s death, Abbie joined the others around the campfire that night, and to her great pleasure, Zeke also joined them, his mandolin in his hands. He played some soft, haunting Tennessee mountain songs, the wonderful music of the mandolin strings floating out over the night air. She knew it was his way of indirectly soothing her heart, of taking her back for a little while to Tennessee and the days when she still had a family. He again sang the song about a Tennessee mountain morning, and she thought of Tennessee, while she gazed out at the snow-capped peaks of the Rocky Mountains that
loomed ahead of them. They were far off on the western horizon, and she could tell already how mighty and magnificent they must be. It helped to have them in sight, for it stirred an excitement in that part of her heart where the child still dwelled. They were approaching something new, something she had never seen before. A whole different world lay ahead of them, and, perhaps, somewhere ahead lay some kind of happiness for Abigail Trent.

But she knew that her real happiness lay in the man sitting across the fire from her—in Cheyenne Zeke. He’d picked up the tempo now, and had everyone clapping to “She’ll Be Comin’ ’Round the Mountain”. Again he was all Tennessee man instead of Indian. In fact, he was everything when she thought about it—mountain man; scout; Indian fighter, although himself an Indian; and a down-home Tennessee man, too. How could she not love him or not want him? And how was she to forget him once he left them?

The music picked up even more, and before she knew it, Abbie was singing with the rest of them. She even laughed once. Zeke glanced in her direction when he heard her laugh, and he smiled. That provocative grin of his white, even teeth created a stir in her groin, and she thought about how sweet his kisses were. Their eyes held a moment, then both quickly looked away.

They headed out the next day, in better country now, following the Sweetwater. There was more grass for the animals, and the water was good. But as if someone were out to torture Abbie, at midafternoon,
they were greeted by a horrible sight, The train came to a halt for seemingly no reason. Abbie strained to see what was up ahead, and to her horror she could see a man tied to a post. She ran to the sight before anyone could stop her, and her blood froze and she made a choking sound when she saw it was Quentin Robards, his wrists tied over his head to the post, his body stripped to his long johns and horribly mutilated, apparently with a knife, but there were also bullet holes in his chest. A deck of cards lay at his feet, and a note was stuck in his underwear. Others had already seen and turned away, but some of the men circled the scene, shaking their heads and discussing what could have happened. Zeke stood staring rigidly at the body, already figuring out the answer. It could be none other than Rube Givens. He reached for the note now, while Abbie stood paralyzed with fear. Zeke scanned the note, then handed it to Olin and glanced at Abbie with terrible pain in his eyes.