“This trip will be no picnic. It’s the middle of April, and we need to get going before the water holes dry up. It’s going to take guts and grit to get there. We’ll cross the Pecos at Fort Lancaster, then move on to Fort Stockton. We’ll travel through a dreary, desolate country, where nothing lives but Indians, snakes, and renegade traders usually called comancheros. You can expect to see some dreadful things. We might not all make it. You’ll never go to bed without a thorough search for a snake, a tarantula, or a scorpion. The wind will blow, the sun will cook your skin. We may run into a cyclone or a hailstorm. For certain we’ll run into hostiles.”
For the first time a nagging doubt, or rather apprehension, clouded Tucker’s mind. What had she brought Laura into? Lucas gave her no time to think; he was speaking again.
“I know I’m painting a grim picture, but I want you all to know what to expect. If any of you want to back out, now is the time to do it.” He stood with his arms folded, his feet spread. “I’ve put together a good
bunch of experienced men. We’ll have the best scout west of the Pecos. I’ve ridden many a trail with Buck Garrett and would trust him with my life. Mustang will lead out each day in the grub wagon. The rest of the wagons will rotate so one isn’t eating the dust all the time. Chores have been divided up. Some of you will cook. Those of you who are going to drive a team will not be expected to cook or gather firewood. Later we’ll put a couple of slings under the wagons and firewood can be picked up along the way. It’s scarcer the farther west we go. There’s no need for any of you to be sprucing yourselves up to look pretty. Save that until you get to California. If any of you have britches, wear ’em. Those of you who don’t have britches, make some out of an old skirt. I want all of you in pants by the time we leave Fort McKavett. Put your hair up under a hat. I don’t want some Apache Indian or renegade comanchero finding out this is a train of women; I don’t think I need to tell you why. If any of you have anything to say, now is the time to say it.”
For a while the scene around the campfire was suspended in silence. The people seemed to be mesmerized by the man standing before them. Tucker glanced quickly at Laura. She was facing Lucas, her lips parted, an excited look on her face.
“We’ll be up an hour before dawn,” Lucas said, “and leave at first light. We’ll noon on cold . . . tucker.” Tucker thought he hesitated just a fraction before he said that. “We don’t stop till sundown. That’s all.”
It was a quiet, subdued group of women that got to their feet. Each was thinking her own thoughts and wondering at the enormity of the step she was taking. A child cried; its mother picked it up in her arms. Tucker reached for Laura’s hand.
“Tucker Houston.” Lucas was by her side.
“Yes?” Tucker couldn’t see his face and was glad he couldn’t see hers. Damn! Why did she have to turn beet red every time he looked at her?
“I want you to keep a journal. Here is a list of every woman and child on the train. Copy it off and give it back to me. Keep a daily diary of everything that takes place from tomorrow on. Later on I’ll give you a map so you can mark our course, designate our camping places, where we pick up the Army and where they leave us. This shouldn’t be too difficult for a teacher. Can you drive a team?”
“Of course,” she said tightly.
“Do you have britches?”
“No, but Laura and I will make some.”
“Laura sews?” he asked after some hesitation.
“Of course.”
“You and Lottie can trade off driving the team or leading a string.”
“Don’t like to sit a horse, Lucas. I done told ya that.” Lottie spoke strongly. “I’ll drive the team.”
“Then we’ll teach Laura to lead a string.”
“No.” Tucker said firmly. “I’ll do Laura’s work.”
“Oh, yes, I want to, Tucker. I loved it when I rode the pony at the farm,” Laura piped up.
“A pony and a horse leading a string are two different things,” Tucker said sharply.
“She can do it. Stop coddling her, Red.”
“How do you know what she can do? You only met her today. You’ll get her killed, that’s what you’ll do!” A fierce, defiant glint glittered in Tucker’s eyes.
“Lottie, take Laura back to the wagon.” The softness of Lucas’s tone carried more menace than if he had shouted. “Red and I have got to come to an understanding.”
With a grip so vicious she only just withheld a pained cry, his fingers closed around her wrist and they were walking rapidly into the darkness.
They were well away from the camp when Lucas jerked her to a halt. Her pulse was hammering wildly, and the fingers that circled her wrist tightened their grip. They stood like that for several seconds, saying nothing.
“Don’t question my orders again! Is that understood?” His teeth were clenched with barely suppressed anger.
Coldly she stared at him, taking her time, her disapproval obvious. “Then don’t be giving orders where Laura is concerned. I know better than anyone what Laura can do. I’ve taken care of her since she was six years old.”
“That doesn’t give you the right to own her.”
“Own her?” she said furiously. “I’ve more right to tell her what to do than you have!”
He threw her hand from him in a gesture of contempt. She would have walked away, but his hand shot out and gripped her shoulder.
“Are you afraid you’re going to lose her, Red? Are you afraid she’ll get to where she won’t need you and will want a life of her own without you?” he jeered.
Her control snapped, her hand flashed up, and she struck him a resounding slap across the face. It was the last thing she’d ever expected to do, and something she would regret, she knew instantly.
“Damn you!” His face was the picture of fury. Before she had time to move, much less apologize, his hands whipped out and shook her by the shoulders until her teeth fairly rattled.
Tucker’s unbelieving eyes looked at him as she sought to regain her composure. She was speechless with surprise and hot anger.
“I don’t take to being slapped, you redheaded cat!” he whispered harshly as his arms pulled her forcibly against him even before he finished speaking. One large hand entwined itself in the hair at the nape of her neck and pulled her head back. Using the hand in her hair to hold her, he suddenly covered her mouth with his, hard and angry.
Tucker struggled for only a moment, then breathlessness forced her to abandon her wrestling and yield to the hands that held her and the fierce, cruel demand of his mouth. His arms pinned her so tightly against him she could feel the wild beating of his
heart against her breast. The tangy smell of him was in her nostrils as her nose pressed against his cleanly shaven face. His mouth, as it ground into hers, tasted of tobacco. At last he released her lips, and for a moment she stood locked in his embrace, breathing deeply and erratically like someone who has run too far and too fast.
“Let go of me!” she demanded in a husky voice.
Slowly he let his arms slide from around her. She saw a hint of a smile twitch at the corners of his mouth as she moved away.
“Think about that before you strike me again. Next time it might not end there,” he said softly.
Tucker’s throat felt choked with a bitterness that made her say rashly, “Find another teacher. Laura and I won’t be going with you!”
His laugh was short and dry and owed little to humor, but it did more than anything else to make her heart throb under her ribs in a strange and urgent way. Almost unconsciously she raised her hand and rubbed its back across her lips, still warm and tingling from his kiss.
“You’re going, Red. And if you get it into that stubborn head of yours to run off, I’ll come and get you. You’re like a spittin’ barn cat. All you need is for someone to rub your ears,” his fingers gently fondled her cheek and looped a strand of hair behind her ear, “and to slap you down once in a while.”
Tucker caught her breath sharply. This was something else she hadn’t expected. She tried to move away, but he held onto her.
“I’m no man’s plaything!” she hissed at him, and the soft chuckle that followed infuriated her. “You try it again and you’ll find a knife in your back!”
She could feel the laughter in him. His eyes rested on her face for a long time, and at that moment, given the strength, she felt she could have killed him! The murderous impulse increased the longer he held her prisoner between his powerful hands.
“I wouldn’t have missed meeting you for anything, Red.”
“Stop calling me that!”
“Want me to call you sweetheart? You’re anything but sweet.”
“No!” She was afraid she was going to disgrace herself and cry. She braced herself for another mocking jibe, but when he spoke it was without amusement in his voice.
“The safety of this train depends on every one of you doing what you’re told. That means you, too, Red. Don’t question my orders.”
“I didn’t!”
In the stillness that enclosed them after her words she looked her bewilderment. His statements moved sluggishly through her mind even as she battled the violent storm of emotions that pounded inside her and threatened to accelerate beyond control and send her hurtling past all bounds of reason. She had to do something; she tried to jerk her arm away, and instilled all the coolness she could command into her voice when she stated: “I think we have said everything we need to say to each other.”
Instead of loosening his grip, he moved forward to imprison her other arm and pulled her up against him. After a tense second, his rigid frame relaxed and his anger gave way to reluctant amusement.
“I never did like a tame horse, Tucker Red.” He spoke admiringly and laughter spilled into his words.
“If you don’t mind,” she said, carefully blending in a touch of sarcasm to give credibility to her words, “I’d like to go back to the wagon.”
“I don’t mind at all, Red.”
With his hand firmly clamped to her arm, he guided her around the camp so they would approach the wagon from the outside. Tucker’s teeth caught her bottom lip in an agitated nip as she stumbled along beside him. The evening was warm and alive with the soft music of cicadas and crickets, and the moon cast a pale light on the white tops of the wagons.
“I trust you’ve brains enough not to do anything foolish,” he said as they neared the wagon.
“I haven’t completely lost my mind,” she snapped. “I imagine you know our circumstances as well as I do. But Laura hasn’t had much experience with men like you!”
To add to her irritation, he laughed. “Neither have you,” he said softly.
“Enough to know a jackass when I see one.”
“You are the most willful, balky, pigheaded woman I’ve ever met, but I still think you’ll do nicely when I get you broken in.”
Tucker allowed his words to wash over her, knowing full well he was trying to provoke her. They
walked the last few yards in silence, and as soon as he released her arm she went quickly to the end of the wagon.
Lucas watched her go, a peculiar emotion moving through him. There was something about this one that goaded him to anger her. Why did he go out of his way to make her hate him? And why in the hell had he kissed her? He certainly hadn’t meant to. But never had he touched lips so sweet, or flesh so soft, and never had he had to force himself to allow a woman to leave his arms. He scowled to himself. It was that damn portrait he had carried so long.
Lucas stretched out on his bedroll beneath the freight wagon. A poignant loneliness possessed him for the first time in a long while. Far away a coyote called to his mate and her answer echoed in the stillness. He was filled with a quiet unrest; his thoughts raced. For a moment he speculated on how it would be if the redheaded woman responded to him out of love. How would it be if she whispered words of love in his ear, and there was a softening in her eyes when they stared up into his? He suddenly felt the desire to recall all the details of that time long ago when for a few short weeks he had known love. He turned restlessly in his bed and wondered about the strange, twisting feeling that was churning inside him.
The first trip he made to California was in ’44 when he was twelve years old. That was fifteen years ago. He and his father had left his dear, gentle, Scottish mother and his sisters buried beneath the pines behind the farmhouse in East Texas after the scarlet fever had
taken them. They made it all the way to the Pacific coast, and there they found the same kind of people they had left in Texas—people with tawdry dreams of making a fortune—possessive, crowding in, taming the land.
William Steele took his son to the mountains, and it was there, by his father’s side, that Lucas killed his first bear, wrestled Indian boys, and learned to wear black, oiled buckskins and moccasins. He had hunted with Gray Eagle and tumbled his sister, Little Dove, in the bushes. It was a happy, carefree time of his life. He was twenty years old when he and his father made another trip over the trail. Texas had changed; towns were springing up, county lines were being drawn, settlers were moving in.