All over the ferry men watched, yelled, and whistled. Brownie first balked then jumped onto the dock, pulling against Bret one moment, crashing into him the next. Yellow Dog whirled and lunged, a growling, snapping demon.
Shoulders square, gait purposeful and rhythmic as if the antics of neither horse nor dog affected him, Bret strode onto the gangplank, his face giving no hint handling both animals was difficult, and no one came forward to help.
Unable to bear it, Hassie ran out from between the horses, across the deck to the gangplank, and met Bret halfway. She reached for Brownie’s reins.
“Leave the horse to me and take the dog,” Bret ordered coldly.
The dog was almost too much for her. Hassie wrapped the rope around her gloved hands, used all her strength and weight, and managed to drag the struggling dog across the deck to the horses. She hung on while Bret tied Brownie between Jasper and Packie, and handed Yellow Dog’s rope to him with relief.
Now that no one was forcing Yellow Dog to go where he didn’t want to, he stopped leaping and snapping and contented himself with murderous growls. Bret tied the dog beside the horses with no slack left for jumping overboard.
“I’m sorry,” Hassie mouthed.
Bret’s glare made her stomach hurt.
Half a dozen men crowded around, muttering and gesturing. “See, I told you,” one said. “It’s a woman, a white woman.”
The man who had ridden the pinto shoved through the others the same way he had shoved to the head of the line on his horse. “It’s a white woman, all right. Looked me right in the eyes, bold as brass.”
Bret stepped between Hassie and the men. “She’s mine. Find your own.”
“Oh, come on,” the pinto man said. “No reason to be greedy. How much you want for sharing a little?”
Bret moved so fast Hassie was never sure how he took hold of the pinto man. The man flew over the ferry rail the way Hassie had feared flying off Brownie. He landed with a loud splash in the muddy water of the Missouri River.
By the time anyone who witnessed what happened tore disbelieving eyes from the yelling, floundering man, Bret had his coat open and a hand on his gun. “Anyone else?”
A couple of the men shook their heads. Most shuffled off without word or gesture.
Icy gray eyes pinned Hassie against Packie. “You looked him in the eyes.”
“It was an accident.”
“Just wave your hands around. I’ll understand you better. And next time I tell you in plain English to stay somewhere, you stay there.”
Hassie closed her troublesome eyes and nodded. At least he wasn’t shouting. He never shouted at anyone in Werver either. He probably never shouted.
He was angry, though. Angry at her, and she didn’t want him to be. She wanted him to find her helpful and not mind having her with him. She wanted him to forget about taking her to his friends and let her stay with him.
How angry could he be really? He had just stroked Jasper’s nose. Angry men didn’t pet horses, but then most men didn’t pet horses no matter what mood they were in. He had recovered from that awful, terrifying anger in Werver before they were even out of town. She relaxed a little, remembering.
She also remembered the way pinto man flew through the air and into the water, the loud splash, the way water sprayed higher than the ferry deck. She hid her face against Packie, bit her lip, and smiled. She hoped pinto man could swim.
B
RET LEANED AGAINST
the rail, watching the west bank of the Missouri come closer and closer, and reconsidered his plans. Taking Mrs. Petty into Nebraska and trying to track down the bounty there with her along would be courting trouble.
She admitted giving the jackass on the pinto horse a good look at those big purple eyes, but the jackass wasn’t the only one who recognized her as female. The minute she ran out like that, rough clothes and a dirty face were useless.
Taking her straight to Gabe and Belle would save a lot of trouble. It would also cost time and money. At this rate he’d be lucky to make half as much this year as last. The farm was looking as good as it had before the war, producing again, but the family still needed what he sent home.
Getting rid of the cavalry horse would make things more manageable. With the bad-tempered bay gone, all that would be left to make a hash out of his life and business was Mrs. Petty and her scrawny entourage. That should be easier. He’d decide about Nebraska after seeing how things went at the fort.
Getting them all off the ferry proved a lot easier than getting them on. Gunner had settled down, spent the entire trip across the river studying the brown water flowing by as if the fish underneath were visible. Once everyone else disembarked, Bret untied the dog and let him run ashore on his own.
Bret urged Mrs. Petty up on Jasper again, ignoring her pale face and white knuckles as she seized the saddle horn.
Her excuse for a horse had settled down. Old Brownie probably didn’t have enough energy to raise another fuss, but Bret left the blindfold on just in case and led them all back to solid ground.
“You’re lucky that fellow didn’t drown,” said one of the ferry men as they passed where he was tethering the pinto horse to a hitch rail.
Bret tipped his hat. That was him. Lucky.
Leavenworth covered more ground than any of the other western forts Bret had seen, but it had been laid out in the same pattern. Long rows of buildings hemmed each side of a large central parade ground.
Ready to repeat his instructions to Mrs. Petty, Bret glanced back at her and abandoned the idea. Her head was swiveling around as she took it all in from the flagpole, to a cannon below it, to a troop of buffalo soldiers marching in formation.
Bret held out through several attempts to pawn him off on lesser beings and finally was admitted to the office of Colonel Grayson, Leavenworth’s commanding officer. Mrs. Petty stayed close and behaved perfectly, eyes downcast, hands in coat pockets. The colonel never glanced at her and didn’t invite them to sit, which was fine with Bret. He didn’t intend to spend much time here.
“I’m not sure I understand why you needed to see me,” Grayson said, his thin face tight with impatience. “We agreed on five hundred dollars. You’ve held that much back, and our business is concluded, although I have to wonder what happened to the rest of the money. If you hadn’t killed Petty we could have found out what he did with it.”
“If I didn’t kill him, he would have killed me, and you’d wouldn’t be getting a penny back, much less finding anything out,” Bret said pleasantly. “It seems Mr. Petty wasn’t eager to come back here and hang.”
Grayson made a sound of amusement, his thin lips curling. “Mr. Petty was never in danger of hanging. The troopers who saw him run from the paymaster’s office were from the Tenth Cavalry. No one would hang a white man on their testimony.”
Bret held on to his temper with an effort. “Maybe Mr. Petty worried about evidence that would verify testimony from a Tenth Cavalry trooper.”
Bret dropped Rufus Petty’s saddlebags on the colonel’s desk with a thump, knocking a few papers this way and that. “What I need now is either the worth of the horse Petty was riding or a proper bill of sale so I can sell it and the U.S. Army saddle on it without worrying about anyone wanting to hang
me
for a horse thief. A hundred dollars ought to do it.”
“And that gives you more than the ten percent you originally wanted.”
“It does. If you were a western man you wouldn’t ignore the value of a good horse.”
The colonel opened one bag, took out a small sheaf of bills, and counted out fifty dollars. “Take it or take the horse. As far as I’m concerned, the first wire I sent you is all the bill of sale you need.”
Bret scooped up the money and tipped his hat.
Pleased with the transaction, Bret couldn’t help sharing with Mrs. Petty. “I might not get hung for a horse thief for selling that horse,” he said, “but I would get shot for a swindler by anyone who paid fifty dollars for him.”
She gestured toward the men still doing drills on the parade ground and held up both hands, all ten fingers extended.
Bret nodded. “They’re an all-Negro regiment. Good Indian fighters from what I hear, and if they’re lucky they’ll get sent west to do just that soon. Serving under Grayson must be a trial.”
He untied Jasper and Packie and waited till she was mounted before swinging up himself. “What do you say we check out the establishments catering to civilians around here.”
She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t have to. Unless she was frightened, Mrs. Petty was a pretty agreeable female.
H
ASSIE HAD NEVER
been so happy. Staying in towns meant a hotel room to herself, baths, restaurant meals, and sending clothes to a laundry. Even though tracking down one man like Rufus brought more money than most people earned in a year, she marveled at Bret’s generosity.
Out on the trail, the days in the saddle were long but hardly ever boring. Wildflowers bloomed on hills that rolled away to the horizon. Birds sang. Prairie dogs stood like tiny sentinels over their towns and whistled warnings as she and Bret rode by. Now and then antelope appeared in the distance, tan and white specks that bounded away long before the horses got close.
The only small blight on the intoxicating luxury of traveling with Bret was that he didn’t talk to her. Sometimes she suspected him of deliberately avoiding her, but much as she wished things were different, she was used to the way he was acting. Mama’s second husband and his family had never been willing to talk to her and neither had her own husband. They talked
at
her, gave orders.
Of course Bret didn’t need to give her orders any more. They had arrived at a satisfactory division of chores and rode northwest into buffalo country with few words between them, spoken or written.
Things changed the first day Hassie ran. She couldn’t help herself. Morning chores were done. Bret had breakfast on the fire, and he never let her help with cooking.
Fresh, cool morning air, bright sun, and level ground all around the camp provoked a burst of exuberance. She took off, whirling and pirouetting at first with arms outstretched, laughing as Gunner whirled too, barking encouragement. Then she ran.
When the stitch in her side stopped her, she picked wildflowers to weave in Brownie’s mane until she caught her breath and could take off again. By the time her wild joy calmed, breakfast was ready.
Bret said nothing until they were almost finished eating. “The women I know would say running like that isn’t ladylike,” he said finally.
She fetched the slate and pencil and left the flowers by her saddle.
“Ladies don’t wear trousers and ride astride.”
“That’s my fault.”
“Ladies have soft voices and can sing.”
“That’s not your fault either.” He hesitated then asked, “What happened to your throat?”
Hassie studied his face. Was he really interested? The whole story would be a lot to write out, and no one cared how it happened. They just despised the effect.
“It
is
my fault. We went to the park. I climbed a tree when Mama said not to, and I fell. The man who took care of the park used a wire to tie a branch up.”
She shrugged.
“If falling into a wire didn’t take your head off, I’d expect you to bleed to death from a wound like that.”
“It didn’t cut straight in. More....”
She used one hand to show him the angle.
“A doctor was in the park. He saved me, but then he was sorry.”
Bret’s mouth thinned. “He thought you’d be better off dead?”
“Breathing was hard.”
In fact the effort to breathe after it happened had been terrifying. She had stayed unmoving in bed or in a chair day after day, unable to think of anything else except her next breath, whether she could draw it, whether it would be enough.
“He said there would be more scarring inside than outside. My throat would be too narrow inside, so any illness, and I wouldn’t be able to breathe, and I would die.”
“But you didn’t.”
“Mama said it would never get better unless I made it better. She made me walk, and when I could walk and breathe, she made me go faster. Until I could run.”
“So running fixed your breathing.”
Hassie smiled at the memory.
“Mama thought so. I think scars shrink, and when little girls grow, so do their throats.”
“How old were you?”
She held up eight fingers.
“So you could already talk and sing and shout, and you lost all that.”
“I can whistle.”
“Let’s hear.”
As soon as he said that, her mouth went dry. She only managed a thready warble.
“That’s not much better than your voice. The next town we come to we better see about a tin whistle.”
Trying to decide if this sharing of history went both ways, Hassie nodded absently, then wrote,
“Is your home in Kansas near your friends?”
“No, my family has a farm in Eastern Missouri. I go home every winter.”
“You have a wife there, children?”
His face closed. “No.” He rose and started toward the horses. “We better get going.”
She gave the scraps left over from breakfast to Gunner, smothered the fire, and cleaned up. If he was willing to have a conversation of sorts once, he would be again. The thought of another conversation where he talked to her and even listened made her want to run some more.
M
RS.
P
ETTY HAD
no right to be so damned happy. Joyful. Sometimes Bret wanted to tell her about things he’d seen and done, crush the smiling and eagerness and softness right out of her, make her properly somber and realistic. Yet what could anyone say or do to a woman like that to change her?
Her father must have died early on. A childish accident stole her voice. The mother’s second husband only tolerated the young girl Mrs. Petty had been. She should have had a line of suitors, but because of her voice she had to marry an old drunk when she was shoved out of the nest.