Colonel Harrison Butterworth looked up when the plank door of his office scraped open. “Major Montgomery,” the adjutant announced.
The colonel rose as the tall, lean figure appeared in the doorway. Leaner now, he noted. No wonder in that. The wonder was that he was standing up at all.
He answered the major’s salute, then stepped around his desk and extended his hand. “Welcome back to Fort Kearny, John. It’s good to see you looking so…it’s good to see you.”
A flicker of something crossed Montgomery’s tanned face. Humor? Distaste? Either one would be a good sign, the colonel decided.
“Take a chair.” He gestured toward the straight-backed chair in the corner.
“I’ll stand.”
“Stand at ease, then. Cricks my neck looking up at you.”
The tall man didn’t move a muscle.
“Smoke if you want.”
“Thanks.” But he made no move toward the pocket in his tan buckskin shirt. Instead, he slid one foot apart from the other and relaxed his stance. His boots weren’t polished, the general noted. Maybe it was still too soon.
The two men regarded each other in silence for a full minute. The major’s ordinarily sharp blue eyes looked flat, like rain-dampened granite. A chill went up the colonel’s spine at the change. At least the man no longer walked with a limp. What remained was a wound that burned gut deep.
“Major—”
“The answer is no.”
“Well hell, I haven’t even asked you yet! Let a man finish.”
“Answer’s still no.”
The older man drew in a long breath. “I could make it an order.”
Major Montgomery’s gaze shifted to the single window behind the colonel’s desk. “You could.”
Butterworth sighed. “It’s been six months. Almost seven. Your hide still that raw?”
“Nope. Just stubborn. Maybe a little scared.”
The general barked a laugh. “Now that’s a first. Never known you to be scared.”
“Any damn fool in this man’s army is scared. Either that or he’s lying.”
“Just never heard you admit it before,” the colonel said in a gentle tone.
“Never been scared before.”
Colonel Butterworth’s shaggy gray eyebrows arched. “Major, I won’t mince words. My scouts report a small wagon train heading our way. They want an escort for the next few hundred miles through Indian country.”
“Escort! You and I both know Indians haven’t attacked a wagon train in over a year.”
“Yeah, well it seems they lost a couple of horses night before last, and their leader, one Joshua Duquette, imagines the sky is falling. Thinks they’ll all be massacred.”
“Damn fool,” the major breathed. “He thinks one horse-soldier ridin’ at his side will let him sleep nights? Let him learn the hard way.”
“It’ll just be hand-holding, Major. No action. That’s what—”
The major’s low voice bit out two words. “Why me?”
“For one thing, right now I can spare you. And for another, it’ll give you something to do while you…decide on your future.”
“No.”
The colonel’s voice dropped. “I’m making it an order, John. Take Billy West with you.”
Major Montgomery groaned. “That an order, too?”
In spite of himself, Colonel Butterworth laughed. “You ever try to give that wily old fox an order?” He strode forward and clasped the younger man’s hand.
“Good luck, Major. You know I wouldn’t ask this if I didn’t think—” He coughed and started over. “I need to provide an escort. And you need to…well, you need to get moving. Otherwise you’re going to rot inside.”
Major Montgomery extricated his hand and snapped a salute. “Mind your own business, Harry.”
“When hell freezes over, John.” The older man grinned. “Dismissed.”
Constance climbed up on the driver’s bench and spied a long-faced Cal Ollesen striding toward her, a rifle balanced on his bony shoulder.
“’Scuse, please, Miss Constance. Mr. Duquette said I vas ride in your wagon today, keep lookout for Indians.”
Constance sighed. “Any Indian with half a brain and a stolen horse will be riding away from us, not trailing us.”
“Mr. Duquette don’t t’ink so.”
“Mr. Duquette is a jittery old—” she hesitated a split second “—maid.”
Cal turned earnest blue eyes on her. “Dot is reason he put you last in line today. Your vagon bigger than the others, so I can ride inside to keep watch. Please, Miss Constance. I got to do vat he say.”
Constance sighed. He was only a boy, trying to follow orders. At her nod, Cal clunked the gun onto the bench and climbed up beside her.
“Don’t say anything to Nettie about Indians, will you? She’s feeling a bit…skittish this morning.”
“Yah, like my mare, Ilsa, I bet. She is feeling same way.”
She shot him a look. “No, not like your mare, Cal. Nettie has lost her father and has left behind everything she has ever known. It is hard on her.”
“You, too, leave everyt’ing behind.”
Constance looked to the grass-covered plains beyond the cottonwood grove. “I am older.”
And stronger, she added silently. She’d watched over Nettie for the past eleven years, been both mother and sister to her. After Mama died, Constance had resolved that nothing—nothing!—was going to hurt Nettie ever again.
Cal ran two fingers through his mop of curly blond hair. “Iss all right, Miss Constance?”
“Go on back in the wagon, Cal. “You can use the extra bed pillow for a cushion.”
She lifted the reins and peered ahead to where Nettie walked off to the left, surrounded by a knot of children. Two of them, Essie and Ruth Ramsey, were so small their short legs took two steps to every one of Nettie’s. She held their hands, one on each side, and the boys, Parker, Elijah and Jamie, followed. All Ramseys. Mrs. Ramsey rode in their wagon with a new baby girl.
Nettie’s clear voice floated back to her. “A story? Well, now, what kind of story? One about a dragon? Or about…two little girls? Or, let me think…” She twisted to check on the stair-step-sized boys in her wake. “What about a boy named Elijah?”
Constance smiled. Her sister’s assigned task was to prevent the younger children from falling beneath the wagon wheels. To keep them in check, she told stories and made up games along the way. She also taught them their sums and letters as they walked, but that was her own idea. Nettie was a born teacher.
“The children—” Nettie had confessed, “Ruth and Essie and the boys, they take my mind off…things.”
Constance wondered if Mrs. Ramsey knew what a blessing her offspring were for her sister. During the day, she lapped up the adoration of the Ramsey brood like a hungry cat. Nettie loved being the center of attention. Ever since Mama died, Nettie could not be loved enough.
Only at night in the privacy of their wagon did she confess her fears and complain about how tired she was.
A shout came from the head of the train. Constance snapped her whip, and the oxen strained forward. The iron-covered wagon wheels began to turn.
“You recall that time we was camped by the Big Blue, John?” Billy West patted his mare’s neck and chuckled. “You was just a lieutenant, with soapsuds behind yer ears, and this gaggle of Sioux braves rode by just as we stripped for a rinse in the river.”
John grunted. He remembered all right. Seemed like a good idea at the time, a bath after eighteen days on the trail. He was so parched he couldn’t decide which to do first—drink or dive in headfirst.
“’Member how those braves lined up along the bank, laughin’ at us?”
John grunted again. “They were laughing at you, Billy. Indians don’t wear long red underdrawers.”
“Oh, no they wasn’t. It was you they got their tongues tangled up over, when you walked outta the water with yer pecker standin’ straight up.”
John said nothing.
“Most peckers kinda shrink up in water that cold.”
“I wasn’t thinking about it. I was going for my rifle, trying to save your scrawny neck.”
Billy West shook with silent laughter. “Hell you was. You was thinkin’ ’bout your woman, plain as day. Well, now, that’s perfectly natural, except in the middle of a river with seven braves pointin’ fingers at you. Funny how a woman does that to a man, distracts him, I mean. I never will forget the look on your—”
The major shifted in the saddle. “Best keep your mind on the trail, Billy. Wagons shouldn’t be too far ahead.” He pushed the wide-brimmed hat off his forehead, studied the rolling grassland ahead.
“How come we’re trailin’ them, instead of meetin’ them head-on? Seems like a lotta extra trouble, circlin’ around behind.”
John let out a slow breath. “Wagon master’s green. Maybe trigger-happy. Don’t want to give him a target, in case he’s nearsighted, too.”
Billy nodded. “I knowed that,” he muttered under his breath. “Just checkin’.” He sent a quick look to the man at his side. “Don’t do nuthin’ without some good reason, do you, Major?”
The major’s steady blue eyes met his. “Not anymore.”
Billy looked off into the distance. “Yeah, well, I knowed that, too. Sure am sorry, John.”
They rode in silence for a good half hour before Billy couldn’t stand it another minute. “You recall that other time, after you was made captain, when the sky opened up and snowed on us in July? One minute it’s all blue heaven and me sweatin’ so hard I’m like to drown, and the next we’re lost in a ground blizzard. I thought we was both dead men.”
John remembered that event as well. Remembered fighting through snowdrifts higher than a man could reach, struggling for every foothold. They lost one horse, clung to the other until morning came and the sun rose.
He shook off the memory. Feeling the way he did now, it might have been better if he’d died then and gotten it over with.
“An’ then there was the time—”
“Billy, for God’s sake, shut up.”
“There they are!” the older man shouted. He shaded his eyes with a battered felt hat. “Them wagons sure move slow.”
The two men spurred their horses at the same instant, riding hard until they drew within fifty yards of the last wagon, a blue-painted schooner with red wheels. Suddenly a flash of fire spit from the canvas curtain and a bullet zinged past them.
Constance bolted upright at the sound of the gunshot. “Cal,” she shouted. Oh Lord, Indians. Mr. Duquette was right.
Without slowing, the two men following the train separated and zigzagged their mounts until they caught up to the wagon, one on each side.
Hoofbeats pounded close. “Nettie,” Constance screamed. “Run. Run!”
A dark horse swerved toward her from the left. A man in dark blue trousers and a butter-colored shirt grabbed the wagon frame and levered his body onto the bench beside her. Instinctively she raised her whip hand.
He caught her wrist. “Pull this damn thing up,” he yelled. In the next moment he vanished into the interior.
Constance hauled on the traces with all her strength. A scuffling sound came from the back of the wagon, then a yelp.
“Cal? Cal, are you all right?”
No answer. “Cal?”
“He’s all right, ma’am,” a low voice said. “Just working up an apology.”
Some mumbled words, and then Cal poked his head through the bonnet. “Sorry, Miss Constance. I f-fire before I see clear.”
Using both hands, Constance set the brake, then leaned back to let her pounding heart slow to normal. Cal climbed out and settled beside her. She could feel his thin frame shuddering.
“A fine pair we are,” she managed. “We’re both shaking like wet chickens.” She attempted a smile.
A giggle escaped the boy’s white lips. “Yah, chickens. Who iss that man, d’ya spose? He t’row Mr. Duquette’s rifle out of the vagon.”
The same low voice now spoke at her elbow. “Name’s John Montgomery.” The man’s gaze slid past her to Cal. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you to look before you shoot?”
Cal gulped. “I thought you vas an Indian.”
“Take another look,” the man snapped.
Nettie ran toward the wagon, a child’s hand clutched in hers. “Cissy, what happened?”
“Nothing, pet. Just a—” she flicked a glance at the tall man beside her “—misunderstanding.”
A second man with a drooping salt-and-pepper mustache trotted up on a piebald mare. He led the dark horse behind him, and laid the reins in the tall man’s palm.
“Thanks, Billy.” The man turned away to mount just as Nettie came to a stop in front of him. He stepped out of her path. “Ma’am.”
“It’s ‘Miss’,” Nettie replied with a gay smile. “I am…not married.”
The tall man nodded once. “Miss.”
“Henrietta Weldon,” Nettie volunteered, her voice silky. “Lately of Logan County, Ohio.”
Constance gaped at her. Until this moment, Nettie hadn’t spoken so much as a “Good morning” or “Good evening” to any man on the train, even young Cal Ollesen, who gazed at her with sheep’s eyes when she wasn’t looking.
The older man chuckled. “My name’s Billy West, in case y’er interested. Sure looks like you’ve got a passel of young-uns.” He waved his hand at the Ramsey children hugging Nettie’s skirt.
Nettie’s gaze remained on Mr. Montgomery’s face. “I am very pleased to meet you.” There was a lilt in her voice Constance had not heard since they had left home.
Joshua Duquette thrust his flushed face into the circle. “What in tarnation’s goin’ on back here? You ladies holdin’ a social?”
“Are you Duquette?” the tall man inquired.
“Yeah. Just who the hell are you?”
Billy West coughed. “That’s Major John D. Montgomery. You might not’ve heard of him, but he’s the man who—”
“Shut up, Billy.”
“Sure, Major. I just thought—”
“Colonel Butterworth sent us out from Fort Kearny to escort your wagon train.”
“Oh, well, in that case—” Duquette thrust out a sweaty hand “—you’re just in time.”