Holt's Gamble Page 11

  Redolent with the heavy scent of damp earth, the air thickened around her. She set the cups down and pulled her sticky blouse away from her damp skin. The sound, when she first became aware of it, came from far off, like a steady drumbeat.

  Rain.

  It engulfed the wagon in seconds until all she could hear was the sound of its steady pounding against the sturdy oiled-canvas cover. It drowned out all other sounds, including the pounding of her own heartbeat as it clattered in her ears.

  Like a gust of wind, Jacob leaped into the wagon, already drenched to the bone.

  "Whoo-ee!" he cried, wiping a hand down his rain slicked face. He stood like some kind of drenched scarecrow, his expression somewhere between amusement and shock.

  "Jacob!" she cried over another clap of thunder. "You're soaked through."

  "Yes, ma'am!" he shouted. "Mercy, Lord, yes I am."

  She couldn't help laughing at the comical sight he presented, and he laughed along with her. Both of them were glad to be rid of the tension which had been there only minutes before. Jacob changed while Kierin turned the other way and finished preparing their meal.

  The food did little to warm the chill that had settled in the air. When they finished their meager meal, they wrapped themselves in blankets and sat for a long time, listening to the storm outside.

  "Can I ask you something, Jacob?" Her question broke the long comfortable silence that had settled between them.

  "You kin ask."

  "Well, I was just wondering how the two of you—you and Mr. Holt, I mean—came to be traveling together. How did you first meet?"

  Jacob sighed heavily as if the question had opened a long-closed door. Kierin was immediately sorry she'd asked.

  "It's really none of my business, Jacob. I'm sorry," she told him.

  "No," he countered, "s'all right. It be somethin' I don't think on much. But I 'spect it bears tellin' seein's how you and me gots a lot in common when it comes to Clay."

  Kierin wasn't sure she'd heard him right. "We do?"

  A sad smile tipped the corners of Jacob's mouth and he bent his head, staring at his laced fingers. "First time I laid eyes on Clay was two years ago. I was standin' on a auction block in Mississippi, wid chains on my wrists and ankles, an' just enough strength to stand up an' face the bastard that was sellin' me." Kierin's eyes widened as he paused there, gaining control over the painful memory.

  "Bein' a slave was somethin' I was born to but I 'spect it ain't in me to be a slave to any man. I grow'd up on a plantation just south o' Natchez under a master name o' Carstairs, Nathan Carstairs." The name spilled like poison from his lips and it was all Kierin could do to keep from shuddering at the hatred she heard in his voice.

  "Nastier man never lived," he continued. "Beat a man... for just lookin' his way. I had me a wife, Bess." A sparkle glistened in Jacob's eye as he remembered. "Fine woman. Prettier than a black-eyed susan in a meadow o' grass. Worked hard, same as all the rest. Didn't give nobody trouble. Her way... her way was to smooth things over. Not make a fuss.

  "Carstairs, he took a fancy to her. Come around the kitchen where she worked, botherin' her. Come special when he know'd she be alone—me off on some job he'd come up wid for me. Bess, she don't tell me about it right off, cuz she figures I kill that white man if'n I know'd.

  "But one night," Jacob continued, a catch in his voice, "I comes back an finds her covered with bruises an' bleedin' from the beatin' he give her. She tol' me he done it when she try to fight him off—but he got mad an' beat her for bein'—uppity." He took a shaky breath. "I never kilt a man before, but I had it in my heart to murder that man."

  The rain splattered hard on the canvas roof, insulating Jacob's deep voice. "My Bess... she say no. She tells me we never be free if we kills him." He lowered his head. "She was right, but I shouldn'ta listened. Instead, we made us a plan to escape.

  "The night we run, Carstairs be waitin' for us. Somehow he found out and he had him a whole passel o' white men from down by the river to make sure we don't get away. Took ten of 'em to hold me down whilst they string up my Bess to a tree. They... beat her—beat her bloody, an' all the time me screamin' for them to stop."

  "My God—" Kierin whispered, stricken with the horror of it.

  Jacob ran a hand over the back of his neck then clasped his fingers tightly in front of him as if trying to hold back the pain of the memory. "Then," he continued, "he turned the lash on me. Near kilt both of us that night. Only thing stopped him was knowin' the plantation owners association come down hard on any slave owner who kilt a slave." Jacob snorted derisively. "In Natchez you kin beat a slave bloody, but if you kills him, you got's to answer to them."

  "After we heals enough to walk, Carstairs decides to sell us off—for bein' unmanageable, he say. Looks bad for the other slaves havin' us think we can run off. But I seen the look in his eyes. He be afraid I'm gonna kill him when I gets the chance.

  "He took Bess, my Bess, an' sold her from me. Sold her so's I wouldn't know where she be. Then he takes me up to Natchez an' stood me on the block and sold me. To Clay."

  Kierin's mouth dropped open. She tried to speak but couldn't make a sound.

  "Paid hard cash for me," Jacob went on. "Told Carstairs to let me loose of the irons. The old man just laughs and tells Clay he be a fool to let me loose 'fore I be seasoned some in my new place.

  "Clay, he just stares at that old sonofabitch with them cool blue eyes of his an' says, 'Do it.' Then Clay, he puts his arm around me an' helps me onto a horse. Before we goes, he rides up to Carstairs an' tears up my paper an' throws it at the bastard's feet. The whole mess of them owners just stood there gapin' as we rides off."

  "He—he just tore up your papers? He freed you?" Kierin repeated, trying to convince herself that she'd heard him right.

  Jacob nodded and wiped at the moisture in his eyes. "I never axed him why he done it and he never tol' me. He give me free papers an' said I was welcome to ride wid him if I was a mind to. When I tol' him I had to find my Bess, he helped me."

  "Did you find her?" Kierin asked.

  Jacob cleared his throat and nodded again. "Clay an' me, we finally tracked her down to a rice plantation in Georgia. She done took a fever down there and died 'fore I could reach her.

  "If somebody hadn't beat me to it, I'd a kilt the bastard who sent her there. But Carstairs wasn't so lucky with the next slave he tried to beat..."

  "Oh. Jacob," Kierin whispered. "I'm so sorry. About Bess, everything."

  Jacob looked into her eyes. "I ain't never told nobody that story 'cept'n Clay, and now you. I want you to know the kinda man you's dealin' with in Clay. He be a good man. Best I knows. He be madder'n a hornet if he know'd I talked to you about this, but I think you owe him the chance to work out whatever's got the two of you acting like a pair o' ornery mules—no offense, ma'am."

  Kierin worried the edge of her lip between her teeth, suddenly sure he was right. While the past few days had been almost unbearably tense for her and Holt, she knew now they'd been a strain on Jacob as well. "No offense taken, Jacob. And you're right," she admitted. "I do owe it to him to try and make this trip as pleasant as possible. I'll talk to him... I will."

  "Just hear him out," Jacob told her, unwinding his long legs and standing in the cramped wagon. "I guess I'll turn in."

  "Goodnight, Jacob. And... thank you."

  "Night, ma'am." Jacob turned and stepped out into the driving rain. She heard him splash through the soggy ground to the small tent nearby, but soon all sound was absorbed again by the rain. A bolt of lightning illuminated the wagon, followed closely by a clap of reverberating thunder. It pounded across the prairie like a giant fist. She hugged the blanket tighter around her and shivered in the dim light. Her thoughts returned to Holt. He was out there in that storm somewhere, alone. Had she been wrong about him? Her mind raced over all that Jacob had told her. Was it possible that he didn't mean to hold her to the papers he'd won from Talbot? Had she completely misread his
intentions?

  Kierin felt a flush of heat creep up her neck as she remembered the searing kiss he'd forced on her the other night, his own heart beating hard against her fingertips. She remembered the look in his eyes when he had pulled away from her. For the first time in days, she allowed the feelings she'd been fighting to surface—the feelings she'd been trying so hard to deny.

  The sound of the rain on the canvas lulled her and she leaned back against the sacks of flour behind her. When she closed her eyes, she tried not to think of him lying hurt somewhere in the rain. After all, didn't Jacob say that Holt knew the country around here better than most?

  "Mercy—" she said aloud. "Why does the darkness always make my mind race so? After all, he is a grown man."

  She jumped as another streak of lightning lit the sky. Suddenly, she wished he were there, holding her against him again, making her feel safe.

  Safe? The thought struck her oddly. No, his touch made her feel anything but safe. It made her feel wanton, reckless. It made her feel as she never had before.

  The image of his face rose up in her mind: his cheeks, covered with stubble of a day's growth, dark against his skin. His eyes, steely blue with tiny flecks of gold, rimmed by dark thick lashes. Dark tousled hair which defied control, spilling carelessly onto his forehead.

  Handsome. In a dangerous way, handsome.

  "Lord help me," she sighed, listening to the lonely sounds of the rain. "Where is he?"

  Chapter 8

  Holt shivered beneath the thin slicker, his buckskin shirt and leggings damp and clinging despite the covering. The cold air fingered through to his skin and he reached into his saddlebag for a piece of dried jerky, hoping to generate some warmth by eating. He chewed it slowly, thinking what he'd give for a hot cup of Jacob's strong coffee.

  The sting of the pelting rain and icy blasts of wind numbed his hands, making his grip on both reins and food tenuous at best. He peered into the sheeting gloom. If he got as far as the river and still hadn't found the train, he decided he'd have to hole up until daybreak. If he kept searching in this soup, he could end up miles downstream from them, depending on how far they'd gotten today. Hell, he could pass right by a herd of elephants in this weather and never even see them.

  Another jagged streak of lightning peeled back the darkness momentarily, followed closely by the hollow swell of thunder. Ahead of him lay only naked prairie. Treeless. Empty.

  His mind wandered back to the first time he'd seen it, crossing its vastness on the heels of his wife's death in pursuit of her murderers. The land's emptiness had been a comfort to him then—in harmony with the void that had cradled him since her death.

  The wide-open prairie had freed him from reminders of his ranch in the Oregon Territory, dense with towering, ancient trees. The loneliness of the rolling plain had soothed his grief and given him time to sort out the guilt that had settled like an albatross around his neck after Mandy's death.

  Eventually, he'd made a kind of hollow peace with himself and learned to live with the knowledge that he'd been partly to blame for her death. How many times had he wondered how different his life would be now if he'd stayed home with her that day instead of leaving her to attend to ranch business in Oregon City? But as she did so often, Mandy had waved away his concern about her and told him to go.

  When he'd returned, she was dead and the ranch lay in ashes before him.

  Until now, nothing had upset the delicate balance he had maintained between mere existence and the wish to join her. Yet now, when he tried to picture Mandy's face, her smile—it was Kierin's he saw. Her hair, wild as a fanned flame setting off eyes that reminded him of the turbulent Pacific after a storm. Her lips, beckoning him and kindling a spark long dead inside him.

  Her face. Not Mandy's.

  Taeva's shrill whinny pulled his thoughts back to the inky landscape ahead. The horse's ears were pricked up and he snorted impatiently at something in the darkness Holt could not yet see. Slowly, as they moved closer, the dark shapes of the circled wagons appeared like ghostly shapes nestled in a hillock. A mare's answering whinny came from within it.

  "You've got eyes like a cat, Taeva. Or was it that mare's scent you were following?" Holt asked, slapping the horse's rain-slick flank.

  He dismounted, threw the reins over the horse's neck, and led him to the barricaded opening between the first and last wagons. Surprised by Holt's appearance, the man standing sentry pointed an anxious rifle in his direction.

  "Hold there!"

  "Whoa!" Holt shouted, throwing his hands up protectively. "It's me, Daniel. Clay Holt."

  The man, Daniel Thorp, sagged with relief and lowered the gun. Rain dripped off the brim of his hat in a steady stream. "God damnit, Holt. You just took a year off my life. Where the hell have you been? Jim Kelly told me to look out for ya, but you nearly got your head shot off, sneakin' in here like some damned redskin."

  "Yeah," Holt answered over the downpour, leading his horse into the circle, "It's easy to miss someone on a night like this."

  "You're tellin' me." Thorp blinked back the rain that splattered in his eyes as he scanned the gloomy sky. "Wilkerson's got the next shift. One more hour and I'll be snug and cozy next to my Susan." He shrugged back an involuntary shiver beneath his slicker. "But then," he added, nudging Holt with an elbow, "I don't reckon you'll be cold for long either, eh, Clay? That's a fine-lookin' bride you found yourself there. Fine-lookin'." Thorp's mouth twitched in a mischievous smile.

  Holt stared back at him impassively, lost in his own thoughts.

  "Yes sir," Daniel rambled on, trying to keep up his end of a one-way conversation, "a man needs a little comfort on a night like this. We're lucky men, Holt. Plain lucky."

  "Yeah, lucky." I'll be lucky if she shares the damn blankets with me tonight, Holt thought glumly. A bone-rattling tremor raced through him as the damp chill seeped beneath Holt's wet clothing. His shoulder throbbed and all he could think of was getting dry and warm again. "See you later, Daniel," he said, and moved off before the other man could buttonhole him further.

  He made his way to the wagon and unsaddled Taeva. He ground-staked the horse, gave him a ration of oats from his saddlebag and watered him. Passing Jacob's small tent, he carefully eased his tack into the front of the wagon along with the bundle of meat and covered them with a tarp Jacob had left for him.

  Like a beacon, a dim light glowed from the interior of the wagon. Was she still awake, he wondered, as he slogged across the muddy ground to the back of the wagon. It baffled him to think she might have waited up for him. Biting back that small seed of hope, he clenched his jaw and pulled aside the canvas cover.

  What he saw there made him catch his breath in wonder. Kierin lay against the pile of grain sacks, her hair spread out upon them like an auburn cloud. She was fully dressed... and asleep. One slender hand, relaxed with slumber, lay curled close to her face and seemed to beckon him in. Her expression, guileless and unguarded in sleep, was free of the strain he'd seen there for the past days. He released a shaky breath as the rain continued to fall, but he found he was unable to move—forward, backward—he stood rooted to the spot. God in heaven but she was beautiful.

  "Wha—?" Kierin sat bolt upright, awakened by something she couldn't identify. Her eyes were clouded by sleep and she blinked to clear them.

  The figure of a man just outside the wagon stood out in shadowed relief against the storm. Silhouetted in the darkness, rain spilling from the brim of his hat, she knew that he'd come back. "Clay."

  He cleared his throat and she felt the weight of his step on the wagon. "Yeah. It's me."

  Relief swept through her like a gust of warm wind. Thank God, she wanted to cry. I was so worried something had happened to you. But as he moved toward the light, his clouded expression forced those words back in her throat. She swept her hair back from her eyes. "Are you all right?"

  Holt didn't answer as he climbed into the wagon and peeled off his wet rain slicker and hat. His clothes w
ere, indeed, soaked through, and another involuntary shiver rattled through him.

  "You must be half-frozen." Kierin reached for a dry blanket.

  "I am," he agreed, blowing into his stiff hands. "You think you could scare up a few dry clothes for me to change into while I get out of these?"

  "Oh—of course." Her heart did a little dance in her throat. She turned her back on him and dug through his small trunk of clothes. When she turned around with his things, he had already peeled his wet buckskin shirt over his head and was pressing a hand to his tender shoulder. He stopped self-consciously when he found her watching him.

  She lowered the bundle deliberately to her lap. "If you're going to pretend you didn't hurt yourself today, you needn't bother."

  He stared at her for a long moment. "No?"

  She shook her head.

  "I guess there wouldn't be much point, would there?" He squeezed his eyes shut and reached up again to his shoulder, kneading the cramping muscles. "You're right. It hurts like hell."

  "You'd better get out of those wet things," she told him. "I'll take a look at it." Turning her back on him while he undressed, Kierin swallowed hard and pulled her blanket more tightly around her. A thousand thoughts flitted through her mind, but none told her how to approach the taciturn man standing behind her. Almost overwhelming was her need to resolve the bad feelings between them. But how?

  She rummaged through Jacob's medicinal bag for something to soothe his shoulder. Her search produced a bottle of witch hazel. The strong-smelling stuff served double-duty as both astringent and liniment. It would do.

  Behind her, she heard his soft curse as he struggled out of the sodden buckskins and dropped them to the floor. Kierin resisted the ridiculous urge to turn around and admire him. She didn't have to look to recall the powerful contours of his body, his broad shoulders, the whip cord strength in his arms, even the feel of the dark silky hair on his chest.