Tender Touch (7 page)

One kiss, he had told himself, a taste to carry with him in the pocket of his heart. That was all he’d intended to take. He’d expected her fear, and knew he could use it to make her submit to him. He didn’t want her that way. But that hint of passion in her eyes had been like a promise of hope, of something that might have been—had life not destined them for different roads and made a match between them impossible.

Tomorrow he would help her find her sister, then walk out of her life. That simply. He would make it that simple. There was no place in her life for him, none in his life for her.

Chapter Seven

Independence, Missouri sat on a high point of land overlooking the surrounding country. At the landing on the Missouri River, six miles away, emigrants reconstructed the wagons they had dismantled for the steamboat trip up river. Then they struggled up the steep bluffs to the camps at the outskirts of town.

A pall of smoke hung low over the town from the cook fires of thousands of emigrants. The camps were so close together Brianna couldn’t tell where one ended and an-other began. The press of humanity suffocated her and she longed for the quiet, open country they had left behind. She craned her neck, twisting this way and that, hoping to spot Julia and half-expecting to find Barret instead.

The noise and confusion in the camps were horrendous. Never had Brianna seen so many people, and from every walk of life. Farmers and professional men camped side by side, sharing whiskey bottles and daily news, trail advice, recipes, and dreams. Here and there grazed herds of oxen, horses, mules, even pigs, whose droppings littered the meadows, as plentiful as spring wildflowers, making Brianna thankful to be on horseback.

Columbus led her through the chaos to a spring where a crowd of people waited to fill cook pots or to water animals. He slipped easily from the gray’s back, and then reached for Brianna. She was so busy studying the people, she barely noticed how close he stood or the way his hands lingered at her waist after lifting her down. It was good to feel her feet on solid ground again and give her aching backside a rest.

Columbus had let her stop and change back into her dress before entering town. Still, she felt dirty in front of the women chatting amiably while they waited their turn at the spring. They seemed to be having such fun. Mrs. O’Casey had been the only woman Brianna had had to talk with in the last three years. She’d missed having friends her age.

Nigh noticed the direction of her gaze. “Them women might know where to find your sister.”

Her eyes swung to his tanned face, so familiar and comforting to her now, and back to the clutch of women.

“’Fraid they’ll bite you?” he teased.

“No, but they might be rude.”

“Seems to me you’ve lived through worse than that.”

He was right. Taking a deep breath, she straightened her shoulders the way she always did when seeking courage, and edged closer to them.

At the fringe of the small circle, she stopped to glance back uncertainly at Columbus. With a jerk of his head, he motioned for her to go on. She cleared her throat, brushed at the dust on her dress, cleared her throat again. Automatically her hand went to the button beneath her bodice. “Excuse me.”

The women went right on talking. Only a short round woman with graying hair and the rosiest cheeks Brianna had ever seen noticed her.

“Hello, there,” the woman said in a voice Brianna suspected would carry at least a mile. “You a new arrival?” The other women turned to look at Brianna as the rosy cheeked one thrust out a worn, callused hand, saying, “I’m Lavinia Decker. My husband and I hail from Indiana. You headed for Oregon or Californy?”

“Or-Oregon,” Brianna stammered. “Provided I can find my sister and her family. They should be here somewhere, getting ready to leave. John and Julia Somerville. Do any of you know them, by any chance?” She scanned each face, hope and dread in her eyes.

The women looked at one another and shook their heads.

“Well, now, dearie,” Lavinia Decker said. “We don’t know your sister. Ain’t many headed Oregon way this year. Me and this bunch are joining up tomorrow with a company what’s headed for Oregon. If you don’t find your sister here, you look us up on the Santa Fe Trail t’other side of town. We’ll ask around for you, see if we can scare up this sister of yours, all right?”

“Oh, yes. Thank you, thank you so much.”

“Think nothing of it. Got a difficult journey ahead of us. We’ll all be needing to rely on each other for help. It’s what neighbors are for.”

Brianna returned to Columbus wearing a radiant smile that made his heart skip. Her fear and anxiety were gone, making her look young and passionately alive. It took all his control not to pull her to him there in front of the whole passel of strangers and kiss her.

“Reckon that wasn’t so bad, was it?” he said, smiling.

“No, not bad at all.”

Brianna saw the heat in his eyes and blushed. The last time he’d looked at her like that, he’d kissed her. It had taken all morning to wipe the memory from her mind. Now it rushed back, bringing with it heat and anticipation. When he merely lifted her onto the buckskin’s back and mounted his own horse, she felt oddly disappointed.

Mud sucked hungrily at the horses’ hooves as they skirted wagons and herds of oxen and mules offered for sale to emigrants. Slowly they made their way to the center of town where a large park like square housed a brick courthouse with a conical roof. Houses and stores surrounded the square. The town’s permanent population of barely more than a thousand people had swelled overnight to several thousand, mostly argonauts bound for the California gold fields discovered the year before.

Temporary shacks and hastily thrown up tents offered a variety of goods meant to capture a share of the wealth to be gleaned from emigrants who must travel hundreds of miles before reaching another chance to restock for the long journey. The camps themselves spilled in every direction over the undulating and wooded countryside outside Independence and its smaller neighbors, Westport and Wayne City.

In front of the Noland House Nigh paid a boy to hold the horses because there was no room at the hitching rails. He carried Brianna through the thick loblolly of the street to the muddied boardwalk. Inside the hotel, the middle-aged clerk shook his head regretfully when they asked after the Somervilles and directed them to the next hotel.

Back out on the street, they walked past a gambling house where a fiddle rasped and drunken customers sang off key. At Wilson and Clark’s General Store they stopped long enough for Brianna to buy a bottle of rose water and a few other personal items. Farther down the street they passed a gunsmith’s shop and a newly set-up daguerreotype gallery where Nigh shook his head in wonder at display photos set on small easels in the window. The post office was the size of a postage stamp, with a two dozen emigrants trying to wedge themselves in-side. Brianna noted its location so she could post a letter to the O’Caseys’ before leaving town.

“Keep close,” Nigh told her. “Easy to get separated in all this confusion.”

In spite of his calm, easy manner and self-assurance, he obviously cared no more for crowds than she did.

At the Independence House, they had no better luck in locating the Somervilles, but the thin, balding owner, recognizing Brianna as gentry and fed up with the riffraff traipsing through his establishment, offered her a small room on the second floor which had just been vacated. Nigh frowned at the signature she wrote in the register. Villard. Not the name he had heard the O’Caseys’ use in addressing Brianna, but he said nothing.

Since she was alone and the town crawled with men, Nigh requested a cot be set up in the hallway outside her door for himself. The clerk pointed out the public dining room to the right of the registration desk, then gave them directions to several homes which rented rooms at a dollar a day where they could inquire after her sister.

Nigh put their gear in her room. Then, grumbling, he went to find a box he could fill with dirt so the cat could see to its needs. After stabling the horses, he returned for Brianna and they went to check out the boarding houses. On the boardwalk in front of them a woman was struggling in the grasp of an obviously drunk man. Brianna’s steps slowed and Nigh felt her tremble fearfully. He slid his arm about her waist. “Has nothing to do with you,” he said softly. “Come on, we’ll just slip past them.”

A man shouted somewhere behind them: “Hey you! Get your hands off my wife!”

Brianna cringed. Then she felt herself shoved into Columbus’s arms as a man pushed past. The husband knocked the drunk into the mud and traffic along the boardwalk began to move again. All but Brianna and Columbus Nigh. He held her close until she stopped shaking, one hand stroking her back while she buried her face in his chest. Finally calm again, she drew away, embarrassed at having been seen embracing a man in public.

The first of the boarding houses was of brick in the old Federal style. A maid answered the door. She denied knowing the Somervilles. The next two homes were small frame affairs, and no more help than the first. At last they came to a fine old home of Spanish flavor where a middle- aged woman of French extraction welcomed them into her parlor.

“But of course,” she said after hearing Brianna out. “The Somervilles were a lovely family. They stayed with us about six weeks before they left to join the wagon company. That was eight days ago, however.” She sighed wistfully. “I miss Julia and the children. Such a sweet boy she had, and little Genevieve was as pretty and petite as her mama. You are fortunate to have such a fine sister.”

Brianna managed an appropriate reply though her spirits, which had begun to soar at the beginning of the interview, lay now at her feet.

Without thinking, Nigh put a comforting hand on her back. “Forming a wagon company takes a lot of organizing. That means a slow start. We’ll find them.” Looking up at their hostess, he asked, “Do you happen to know which company they joined up with?”

“No, I regret I do not.”

Brianna was too distraught to notice the way Columbus helped her to her feet and guided her from the house. She felt faint and wondered if she were becoming ill.

“You need food in you,” he said. “We’ll go back to the hotel and have something to eat.”

She looked up at him with dazed eyes.

“You truly think we’ll still be able to find Julia?”

“If they left only a week ago, chances are they ain’t gone more’n sixty miles. I’ll find ’em.”

It was then she realized his arm was around her, his hand at her waist. She knew it wasn’t proper, that she should reprove him for his boldness, but her legs felt no more substantial than the mud in the street and she feared she might fall if he removed his support.

After a solemn meal of venison, greens, bread, and apple pie, they made their way back to the hotel and Columbus went in search of the man who had sent for him to guide a wagon company, promising to ask after her sister as well.

Time passed slowly. Brianna felt too agitated to lie down. She ordered up a bath and soaked in the rose-scented water until it grew cold. Then she wrote a letter to Mrs. O’Casey. After that, there was nothing to do but sit beside the window with Shakespeare curled in her lap and watch the people come and go on the street below. Always, she kept her eye out for Barret, as well as Julia.

Columbus Nigh’s earlier question came back again and again to plague her. What would she do if they couldn’t catch up with Julia? Did Brianna have the courage to join a wagon train by herself and travel all that long way, hoping to find Julia when she got there? How could she be certain John hadn’t decided to go to California instead? There seemed to be no answers. Except that she would not return to St. Louis. There was no question of that. Even Independence was too close to Barret Wight for her to feel safe.

Shakespeare butted against her hand as she scratched behind his ears and she bent to kiss the top of his silky head. The cat looked up at her, his green, slanted eyes half-closed in an expression of love that expanded her heart and filled her with warmth. He was all she had now. How would she keep him safe all those miles to Oregon? She couldn’t keep him in a basket for months on end, yet there was no way to make sure he stayed in the wagon and if he got out, he could easily be lost.

In a way, Colombus, too, was all she had now. A cat and a man she knew nothing about. It wasn’t much to inspire confidence. But the truth was, she had no choice; she had to go on, to Oregon or to California, anywhere to get away from Barret. And with Columbus going to Oregon, there was no question about her preference.

It was mid-afternoon when Brianna answered a knock on her door to find her guide leaning against the wall, twirling his hat in his hands. When he saw her he straightened and stuck his thumbs in the back of his beaded belt, letting the hat dangle behind him from his fingertips.

“Thought you might like to ride out to see that woman you talked to at the spring. I rented a buggy.”

“Yes, I’d like that very much,” she said. “I’ll get my bonnet.”

The glances Columbus Nigh received from the women they passed as he drove the rented buggy toward the outskirts of town did not escape Brianna. She studied him out of the corner of her eye and decided he did make an imposing figure in his rugged, form-fitting buckskins. There was something almost primitive about him, a feral sort of wildness she found sensuous as well as frightening. With his stormy gray eyes squinting from under his hat brim, so cool and indifferent, he again put her in mind of the romantic savages she had read about in Francis Parkman’s book on the Oregon Trail. But now she realized that beneath her fear of Columbus lay an undercurrent of excitement and yearning that left her bewildered and dismayed.

“Did you find the people you were hired to guide to Oregon?” she asked, trying to get her mind off the sensations he aroused in her.

He took out a wooden pick and stuck it in his mouth. “Found the man who sent for me.”