Merline Lovelace (7 page)

Her vehemence took Mary aback. Deliberately, Julia changed the direction of the conversation.

“Will you be so kind as to direct me to the quartermaster’s storehouse? Private Rafferty says I may obtain a tub and soap and other supplies on credit until I get paid.”

“You’re serious, then?”

“I am.”

“I can’t talk you out of this?”

“No.”

Throwing up her hands, Mary conceded. “All right, then. Come with me and I’ll show you about. But don’t be too eager to run up a chit at the quartermaster’s store. The major’ll be wantin’ a word or two with you first, I’m thinkin’.”

The major wanted more than a word or two.

As Mary had predicted, he came galloping up to Suds Row less than an hour later. The dogs set up a
din, echoed by the children who pranced along behind the massive chestnut charger.

Julia was sweeping out the dust that had accumulated on the planked flooring when she heard the tumult. Her heart knocking against her ribs, she lifted a hand to shade her eyes. She needed only a glance to identify the rider.

Hands suddenly clammy, she went indoors, put aside the broom and swiped her palms down the heavy cotton work skirt she’d donned to set her temporary home in order.

“Go outside and play, Suzanne.”

“I don’t want to, Mama.” Her dainty, fastidious daughter wrinkled her nose. “I don’t know any of those girls and—and they’re not even wearing shoes.”

“Then you should take yours off, too, and wiggle your toes in the water.”

“Mama!”

A voice rang out above the rumble of hooves outside. “Where is she, Mrs. Donovan?”

“In number three, sir.”

“Put your doll down and go outside, Suzanne.”

“But—”

Julia caught the jingle of a bridle, followed by the hard stomp of boots.

“Now, if you please,” she commanded.

Her lower lip protruding, Suzanne pushed off the bed Rafferty had set up for them and crossed to the door. A shadow fell across it, stopping her in her
tracks. For a moment, the soldier and the youngster took each other’s measure.

“You’re the man who laid on top of my mama on the stairs,” the girl announced in a clear, ringing voice that carried to everyone within listening distance.

“Suzanne!”

Ignoring Julia’s anguished scold, the girl glared up at their visitor.

“I’m Major Garrett,” he replied, returning her look calmly. “I once knew your mama very well.”

“I don’t like you.”

“That’s enough, Suzanne! Go outside at once.”

The girl stomped out, leaving her mother prey to embarrassment and irritation.

“You’re wise to send her out,” Andrew commented coldly. “What I have to say to you is not for a child’s ears.”

“Say it, then, and get back to your troops. I have work to do.”

“The only work you have right now is to pack your things and get back to the McKinney house.”

“Victoria prefers that I reside elsewhere. So do I.”

“Well, you’re not residing here.”

“That’s not your decision to make.”

“The hell it isn’t.”

“Colonel Cavanaugh has agreed to put me on the rolls as a laundress. I’m here on his authority.”

“Then he’s guzzled even more opium than usual.” Stripping off his buff-colored gauntlets, Andrew
slapped them against his thigh. “This is no place for you.”

“At the risk of repeating myself, that’s not your decision to make.”

“The Belle of New Orleans won’t last a day at the tubs.”

The scathing prediction breathed fire into Julia’s faltering determination. Her secret dismay at the sparseness of her new quarters went up in a puff of smoke.

“Perhaps I won’t last a day,” she snapped. “And perhaps you’ll discover I’m not the same silly, simpering fool I was six years ago.”

He stalked across the room, anger in every line of his long, lean body. “Dammit, Julia, I won’t permit this.”

“I don’t need your permission. It’s done. Now go away and leave me in peace.”

He towered over her, so close she breathed in the scent of sun and horse and leather that came with him.

“Are you so desperate for money?” he growled. “There are other ways to earn it.”

“So the colonel informed me. I won’t whore for you, Andrew.”

His eyes narrowed dangerously. “I don’t recall asking you to.”

“What was last night,” she threw at him, “if not an invitation to sin?”

The gauntlets slapped against his thigh again, once, twice, each report cracking in the charged silence.

“It was a kiss,” he ground out. “Nothing more.”

But it could have been more. So much more.

Her stomach twisting, Julia knew he recognized that humiliating fact as well as she did. He must have sensed how close she’d come to lifting her mouth to his. How her traitorous body had tingled, and a desire she’d thought long dead had stirred to life. Only for an instant. A second, perhaps two.

She couldn’t allow that spark to burst into flame again. She
wouldn’t!
The last time she’d let it blaze through her, the resulting conflagration had consumed her illusions and destroyed her youth. This time, she sensed with every instinct she possessed, the fires would destroy her.

As if reading her mind, he backed away a step or two. He had no more desire to be burned again than she, Julia realized.

“When I mentioned earning money,” he said gruffly, “I was speaking of the hospital. Henry Schnell could use another matron.”

“I don’t know anything of nursing. Although you don’t choose to believe it of the
Belle of New Orleans,
I have learned how to scrub.”

His gloves hit his trousers again. “Have you always possessed this stubborn streak, Julia?”

“Always.” A little pain formed just under her breastbone. “You simply never knew me well enough to recognize it.”

L
ife on Suds Row proved as arduous as Mary Donovan had predicted.

Julia soon learned that boiling batches of uniforms, long johns and socks in huge black kettles and lifting them out with a heavy wooden paddle required every bit of her strength. Bending over a washtub filled with cooler water to soap, scrub and wring the items out demanded even more.

Added to that was the chore of hauling buckets of water from the river to keep both the pot and the tubs full. Thankfully, prisoner details supplied precious wood from the fort’s store to keep the fires burning, but the coarse lye soap stung Julia’s eyes and burned her hands. Heat from the fires and the blazing sun drenched her in sweat, which seemed to attract the plague of mosquitoes that swarmed the riverbanks in early morning and late afternoon.

After the first day, she could barely drag herself back to her quarters at sundown, fix dinner for herself
and Suzanne, and fall like a sack of loose bones into bed.

After the second, she seriously considered accepting Maria Schnell’s repeated invitations for Julia and Suzanne to stay with the surgeon and his wife. Only Andrew’s curt disclosure that the kindhearted Schnells almost beggared themselves to augment the Fort Laramie’s medical supplies kept her from slinking back to Officers’ Row.

That, and the grim news the major brought her the third day of her residence. He was riding a sleek bay instead of the chestnut this time, and wore what Julia now recognized as his informal dress uniform. The light-blue pants with the yellow cavalry stripe down the outside of the legs were reinforced with canvas at the thigh to protect him against long hours in the saddle. He’d unbuttoned the top few buttons of his darker-blue shirt to allow for the heat and knotted a yellow kerchief loosely around his neck. His slouch hat was a dull tan instead of the corded and tasseled dark-blue campaign hat. He looked, Julia thought with a thump in her chest, whipcord lean and leather tough.

Looping the bay’s reins over the hitching post in front of the row quarters, he made his way down the bank to the tubs. The laundresses’ ribald discussion of the dimensions of a certain private’s prodigious member stilled. Julia, whose cheeks had already flushed with the heat and the women’s frank com
mentary, warmed even more as a series of snickers and nudges circled the tubs.

“’Tis the major, coom t’see his lady.”

“
Ja,
he’s randy as a goat for her.”

“They was sparkin’ on the McKinney’s front porch the night o’the hop.”

The tittering comments carried to Julia’s ears but not, she prayed, to Andrew’s. Cheeks burning, she tossed the uniform she’d just ladled out of the kettle into her tub and laid aside the paddle.

“He near diddled her on the stairs, I heared.”

“I wouldn’t mind if a man like that tried to diddle
me.
”

“Will y’hush now!”

With a slap of a wet uniform against her washboard, Mary Donovan stilled the gossip. But she, like the rest of the women, fixed her gaze on the major as he made his way down to the bank and stopped before Julia.

“May I have a word with you?”

Scrubbing her hands down her skirt front, she nodded.

The circle of curious faces all around her prompted Andrew to suggest they walk along the riverbank. She hesitated before reluctantly acceding to his request.

“Mary, Suzanne’s playing with the other girls in the yard. Would you keep an eye on her?”

“That I will, missus.”

With Julia leading, they followed the bend of the river for fifty yards or so, until the flats gave way to
a little eddy pool dotted by yellow crowfoot. Rooted deep in the mud, the aquatic buttercups poked their bright-yellow heads above the rippling water. Faint echoes of the busy post drifted along the river, but here in this nook of the bank they were cut off from curious eyes.

Andrew frowned at the buttercups while he tried to decide how best to break his news. Her appearance kept getting in the way of his decision. He’d never seen her in anything but silks and fine muslins before. This woman looked nothing like the Julia Bonneaux he’d come so close to kissing a few nights ago, even less like the Julia Robichaud he’d known in New Orleans.

Damp tendrils of black hair escaped her braid and straggled about her neck and face. Her heavy work skirt and the canvas apron wrapped around her waist seemed to weigh her down, but it was her calico short-gown that riveted Andrew’s gaze. The blouse fit loosely over her waist and hips and tied modestly well above her bosom. It might even have disguised her slender curves completely if wash water hadn’t drenched the damned thing.

The tantalizing sight of her breasts outlined in precise detail by sopping pink calico distracted Andrew so much he almost forgot what had brought him to Suds Row.

“You wanted to speak with me?” Julia prompted.

“The telegraph lines are back up.”

She shoved her hands in her apron pockets. The
skin across her cheekbones stretched tight, as though she was afraid to hope for good news.

“Have you heard from the commander at Fort Smith?”

“I have. He sent your letter on to Adler’s Gulch.”

She searched his eyes. “You don’t sound hopeful Philip will receive it any time soon.”

“The odds aren’t good, Julia. Especially now. Chief Red Cloud’s called a meeting of the Ogalalla and Brulé bands of the northern Sioux.”

The name meant nothing to her, he saw. She was too new to Wyoming to understand the hatreds that had piled up between the Sioux and the sweeping tide of white immigrants these past twenty years.

“Red Cloud has sworn to stop the wagons that keep pushing north to the gold and silver fields in Montana,” Andrew explained. “He ambushed and massacred eighty troops in December. So far this spring, he’s harassed every wagon and freight train that’s tried to make it through.”

He hesitated, searching for a way to soften what came next. There wasn’t one.

“When the telegraph lines went back up, we received a report that a band of his men attacked the company you’d traveled with.”

“Dear Lord!”

“The only casualties were two oxen,” he assured her. “The train made it as far Fort Phil Kearny and has holed up there.”

His calm assurance didn’t lessen her shock any
more than it had lessened his own. Julia and Suzanne might well have been among the women and children who huddled in terror in the wagon beds. The idea of an arrow piercing her soft flesh had formed a pool of sweat at the base of Andrew’s spine.

“I’m taking two companies out tomorrow morning to try to intercept Spotted Tail, chief of the Brulé band. General Sherman has empowered us to offer him and the rest of the northern Sioux certain concessions if they’d agree to come and negotiate for peace.”

Of all the personnel at Fort Laramie, only Andrew and the angry Colonel Cavanaugh were privy to the contents of the dispatch they’d received from departmental headquarters that morning. Cavanaugh had ranted for almost half an hour, incensed by the preposterous notion that the Army would actually burn the forts it had established along the Bozeman Trail, as Red Cloud insisted. He couldn’t believe the government would even contemplate withdrawing troops from the vast stretch of territory between Fort Laramie and the gold fields of Montana, leaving it to the Sioux.

Andrew grasped the politics of concession even if his superior didn’t. Two significant events would soon eclipse the Bozeman Trail as the quickest route to the Montana mines. A new steamboat landing had just been constructed at Fort Benton, high up the Missouri River. From there, it was a relatively short trek south to the Montana mines.

Even more important, the Union Pacific was pushing relentlessly across the plains. The rail crews had reached Wyoming only two months ago. A whole new city called Cheyenne was now springing up at the railhead, a hundred miles south. When the railroad finally made it to Utah, where it would connect with the track being laid from California, stage and freight lines could then head directly north to Montana instead of trekking across the northern plains, right through the heart of Sioux country.

The completion of the transcontinental railroad could become a reality as soon as next year…if the angry Sioux would stop harassing the rail crews and tearing up the tracks as soon as they were laid.

In exchange for their agreement to cease hostilities, the United States government was prepared to cede all claims to the northern hunting lands they’d roamed for centuries. The task of getting the Sioux to come in and negotiate the specific terms now fell to the 2nd Cavalry.

Although she might not understand the intricacies of the proposed negotiations, Julia had picked up enough post gossip to identify at least one of the key players.

“I’ve heard this Chief Spotted Tail’s name mentioned.”

“I’m not surprised. He’s visited Fort Laramie often. The last time was last spring, to bury his daughter.”

“I’ve heard of her, too. Isn’t her coffin the one set on a high scaffold in the post cemetery?”

“Yes,” Andrew replied quietly, “that’s Ah-ho-appa.”

“Ah-ho-appa?”

“It translates loosely to Yellow Buckskin Girl.”

“Did you know her?”

Thinking of the slender, bright-eyed maiden in supple buckskin who’d delighted in the fancy dress parades and parties at Old Bedlam, Andrew nodded.

“Yes, I knew her.”

Julia eyed him curiously, as if sensing there was more to his reply than he wished to communicate.

“Do you think her father will listen to you?”

“I can only hope so. We’ll be gone two, possibly three weeks. I’ve instructed Corporal Gottlieb to deliver any telegraphs that come in concerning you or your husband during my absence.”

“Thank you.”

He’d said what he’d come to say. He should leave. Andrew was damned if he knew what held him there. The way the sunlight sparkling off the Laramie brought out the blue-black glints in her hair, maybe. Or the tired shadows under her amethyst eyes.

“I wish you would reconsider and move back in with Victoria McKinney while I’m gone.”

“I prefer the company of Mary Donovan.”

“Julia, for pity’s sake, think of your daughter if not yourself.”

She turned away, hugging her arms tight around
her waist. Her gaze fastened on the buttercups sticking out of the water like tiny yellow totem poles.

“I
am
thinking of Suzanne,” she said at last, her voice low and strained. “I must have some means of providing for her if Philip isn’t… If he doesn’t…”

Andrew bit back the answer that rose to his lips. Julia wouldn’t have to worry about providing for Suzanne if Philip Bonneaux was dead. Any of the two hundred men on post would jump at the chance to take such a young, beautiful widow as his wife.

The truth was, most of them wouldn’t care whether she was widowed or not. Such matters tended to become blurred out here, where men and women formed the partnerships needed to survive. Andrew knew of more than one female who’d set up housekeeping with two or more troopers.

The idea that Julia might enter into such an arrangement sent a shaft of primitive possessiveness lancing though him. If she went to anyone’s bed, he thought savagely, it would be his.

He took a step toward her, driven by an instinctive need to stake his claim. Just in time, he remembered her scathing comment that she never wanted to feel his hands on her again. He curled his fists inside the buff leather gauntlets. All he could do was offer the same comfort he had the night of the hop.

“If Bonneaux’s alive, he’ll come for you.”

“If he’s alive,” she echoed hollowly.

Dammit, there were a hundred tasks and fifty men waiting for him. He needed to see that the troops had
turned out to prepare their mounts and equipment for the march. He had to ready his own gear, and ensure his striker got Jupiter to the farrier to be reshod as well. Yet the thought of leaving Julia alone there beside the river carved a hole in his belly.

“I’ve tasked my striker to check on you while I’m gone,” he said gruffly. “His name’s O’Shea. Let him know if you need anything. Anything, do you understand?”

At her nod, he started back along the bank. “I’ll see you in a few weeks.”

“Andrew!”

“Yes?”

“Be—be careful.”

“I will.” He tipped two fingers to the brim of his hat. “Bring Suzanne to watch the troop leave tomorrow. It’s a brave sight. A lot braver,” he added with a quick, slashing grin, “than when we come back in, dusty and saddle sore.”

Suzanne and Julia weren’t the only ones who turned out to watch the platoon depart. The entire population of the fort gathered on the parade ground in front of the barracks, as well as most of the residents of the tents and tipis across the river. The event soon took on almost a festive air, as if to disguise the fact that some of the men preparing to ride away from Fort Laramie that morning might not ride back.

Mary Donovan came with six of her seven children to see her husband off. Huffing from her trek up from
Suds Row, she advised Julia that the post had seen a flurry of activity all night. In less than twenty-four hours, company farriers had reshod fifty or so mounts as well as the mules hauling the ambulance and supply wagons. The hospital steward had packed a chest of medical supplies. Quartermaster personnel had issued two weeks’ rations and ammunition to each man. Sergeant majors had inspected their men’s mess kits, field packs and equipment. Troopers had stashed their personal belongings in their footlockers, written hurried letters to their loved ones and oiled their saddles and tack a final time.

The sun was just beginning to raise trickles of sweat on the necks of those waiting when the bugles sounded boots and saddles. Almost immediately, a group of Indian wives dressed in calico and beautifully beaded jewelry began an answering chant. The watching crowd stirred in anticipation. Dogs barked and yipped. Children raced back and forth. Even the usually prissy Suzanne joined a group of barefoot excited youngsters that included the offspring of officers, troopers, civilians and the Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho families who made their homes across the river.