to care for her father. She’d forced herself to look at the gaping wound, the oozing mustard-colored pus, and endured the stench. She’d sat at his bedside tending to him endlessly. Yet despite everything she’d done, his condition had only worsened.
And grew worse by the hour.
A slice of sunlight cut through the wagon’s dim interior, bringing a welcome breath of fresh air with it as Jamie Nelson pulled back the canvas opening. He was only fifteen years old, yet he handled the team of horses like a grown man.
Augustus had hired the Nelsons, a family also heading west, to assist them on the journey. Though they traveled in their own wagon, Mrs. Nelson cooked and cleaned for Lily and her father, while Jamie, their oldest son, took care of the horses and drove the wagon.
Lily’s stomach lurched. “Are we there?” she asked, unable to keep the excitement from her voice.
“No, not yet,” Jamie said, holding the reins, looking back over his shoulder.
“Is your mother coming?” she asked, her words more a plea than a question.
“Ah…no, Miss Lily,” he replied with an apologetic dip of his head.
Why not? she wanted to scream. Why hadn’t they arrived at the fort yet? Why wouldn’t Mrs. Nelson walk back to her wagon and help nurse Augustus?
And why wouldn’t someone make this nightmare end?
“You—you want to come sit up front for a while, Miss Lily?” Jamie asked. He gulped. “With…me?”
The desire to escape tempted Lily. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. She wasn’t supposed to be confined in this airless wagon, trying to figure out how to care for her ailing father, worried sick with fear, scared that he might die at any moment.
For an instant, Lily wanted to shout at Jamie to turn the wagon around, take her east again, deliver her to her aunt’s home in Virginia. She wanted a bath—a hot bath with lavender scents, a maid to style her hair, fresh clothing. That’s where she belonged. That’s where Augustus belonged, as well, with real doctors and nurses who knew what they were doing. Neither of them belonged here, suffering under these inhumane conditions, horrified by the constant threat of Indian attacks and fatal disease, filled with an aching loneliness.
Augustus groaned and Lily turned back to him. He mumbled something she couldn’t understand. She removed the cloth from his forehead and wrung it in the water, then swiped it over her own forehead, smoothing back an errant strand of her dark hair.
If she weren’t here, who would take care of her father? Again, Lily wondered at his original intention of making this trip alone.
“Miss Lily?” Jamie asked, jarring her thoughts.
She shook her head. “No. No, I’ll stay here. With Papa.”
“Oh…”
“But you’ll let me know when we get there, won’t you?” she asked, her excitement building. “When we get close, I mean. When you can see it?”
After the wagon train had reached the Arkansas River, most of the wagons had taken the Cimarron Cutoff, the southern—and more dangerous—branch of the Trail for the final leg into Santa Fe. With her father so ill, Lily had gone with two other wagons along the Mountain Branch toward Bent’s Fort. The fort was a center for trade along the Trail, not a military installation. There, they would rest and re-supply before continuing.
“Sure thing, Miss Lily. I’ll let you know the minute I see the fort,” Jamie promised, then pulled the canvas closed.
Lily gulped hard, forcing back a sudden wave of tears. Once they reached the fort, surely someone would make this nightmare end.
“Here comes trouble.”
Standing in the shadows of the adobe walls of Bent’s Fort, North Walker whispered the words to the horse tethered to the hitching rail. The brown mare rubbed her head against his pale-blue shirt, seeming to nod in agreement, but North didn’t notice.
The arrival of covered wagons at the fort—even as few as these three—brought news from the East, a chance to trade goods and services, make money.
But this one had brought something else.
Trouble.
North pulled his black hat lower on his forehead as he watched men step out of the trade room, the kitchen, the dining room. They stood in doorways and lingered in the shadows, staring. North’s gut tightened a bit, urging him to cross the dirt plaza as well.
Young white women—especially pretty ones—were rare at the fort and in this part of the country. This one, who had just climbed out of one of the wagons, hardly seemed to realize she was the center of attention as she spoke to Old Man Fredericks.
North kept his distance.
Half Cheyenne, half white, North was accepted by the men at the fort for what he was. A horse trader, a guide, a messenger.
His other activities he kept to himself.
Tall and broad shouldered like his father, North dressed in Western clothing to better blend into the activities at the fort. He had his Cheyenne mother’s dark eyes, but his skin was more white than bronze. His only concession to his Indian heritage was his long black hair, tied at his nape with a leather thong.
His father had been a mountain man who’d left his family and a comfortable life behind and come west with the beaver trade; he’d eventually married a Cheyenne woman. North had learned Eastern customs and Indian ways from each of his parents, and was equally comfortable in the two worlds.
Worlds that were on a collision course.
Evidenced by the young white woman who was still talking to Hiram Fredericks, sending four men scurrying to do her bidding.
Stepping out of a hot wagon after weeks on the trail, she somehow looked refreshed and poised. Dark hair artfully piled atop her head, a dress of delicate, light fabric that flowed in the late-afternoon breeze. There was an economy of movement as she spoke with Fredericks, a grace North had never seen.
A lady.
That’s what his father had called women like this one, North realized. Telling his stories of growing up in the East, he’d described the pampered women there, the hours they spent on grooming, attire and appearance, the value they placed on personal conduct. North had thought it outrageous. Hours spent in the practice of walking? Not to surprise an enemy or spring a trap, but to simply look pretty while in motion?
North had hardly believed him.
Until now.
This one moved like the whisper of the wind, a silent call in the wilderness.
Trouble.
North patted the mare’s thick neck, content to keep his distance for now.
This woman was trouble, all right.
But maybe just the sort of trouble he was looking for.
Chapter Two
Lily woke with a start and sat up quickly on the narrow cot. A moment passed before she remembered where she was.
The fort, she realized. The room Hiram Fredericks had given her and her father yesterday.
She sank onto the pillow once again.
After the confines of the covered wagon Augustus had crammed full of the goods he intended to sell in Santa Fe, this room seemed like a palatial bed-chamber. A solid roof over her head, four sturdy walls, a real floor—even if they were made of the plain adobe of the fort.
Yet any pleasure Lily might find in her new accommodations didn’t relieve the anxiousness that hung over her, that had followed her, dogged her since her father had injured himself weeks ago.
She pushed herself up on her elbow, the familiar anxiety that she’d lived with for so