Peril on the Oregon Trail by Billy Hall

Author:Billy Hall
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780719821349
Publisher: Robert Hale

CHAPTER 17

‘If you’d like, I’d be happy to show you a patch o’ mushrooms that’d sure make your ma happy to put in her cookin’.’

Hannah looked at Jeremiah Smith. Somewhere deep within her alarms sounded. She ignored them. He had been a perfect gentleman every time he had made occasion to be alone with her. There had been several such.

That he had deliberately made those occasions she was certain. He was obviously as attracted to her as she had to admit she was to him. He was so different from anyone she had ever known.

At first, his unkempt appearance and the readily evident fact that his buckskins had never experienced soap and water had appalled her. As she grew used to him, however, even the odor that emanated from him had an almost exciting tang. It wasn’t body odor, as if he never washed. She had been around people who didn’t, and it was a totally different smell. It was abhorrent.

This smell was different from that. It was a mixture of pine, juniper and sage, smoke and animals, with a musky undertone that just made her feel strange when he was close.

‘Are you sure they’re the safe ones to eat?’ she asked.

He laughed. It was the first time she had heard his laughter. She liked it. It had the same sort of feeling that the man himself did. Free. Unrestrained.

‘I’da been dead a hundred times over if I didn’t know the difference,’ he assured her. ‘These kind have a fine flavor.’

‘Do I need a basket or something?’

He shrugged. ‘If you want, I s’pose. You could just as well pile ’em in your apron an’ carry ’em thataway.’

She really wanted to let Andrew know where she was going. Or her mother. At the same time, she really didn’t want Andrew to know where she was going. Or her mother either, she had to admit.

She had looked for Andrew a while ago, but he didn’t seem to be in the camp. Well, it would take quite a while to get the mushrooms and then catch up to the wagons, so she didn’t have time to look for him. Besides, she was really excited to be going there with Jeremiah instead of Andrew. He was so much more … well … exciting.

It seemed like an awfully long way. She worried they were getting too far away from the wagon train. She very much didn’t want him to sense that fear, though. She was a grown woman, after all, and quite capable of taking care of herself.

The mushroom patch was exactly as he had described it. It took only about fifteen minutes for them to gather enough to tax the ability of her apron to hold them. Her mother would be delighted. There would be enough to share with everyone in the wagon train as well. Fresh mushrooms, after all, didn’t keep for very long.

Instead of heading back he walked over to a grassy spot and sat down.

‘Why don’t you just put ’em in a pile there an’ come sit beside me a spell.

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