Rachel Lemoyne by Eileen Charbonneau

Author:Eileen Charbonneau
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2012-02-21T05:00:00+00:00

fourteen

Dare reached for his pistol.

“I need to come,” Rachel said quietly. “Where’s Atoka? Dare, I need to find my brother.”

He held out his hand. She took it. “Together,” he promised. “We’ll find him together.”

Mr. Walker, who the men had elected trail boss captain, had two pistols in his trousers as well as a musket. He was not good at caring for his weapons. Atoka suspected that the finger he claimed a Mexican soldier blew off was really the result of a loading error. Rachel wanted to keep her distance from him, fully armed. But he approached them.

“Gilmartin, put this woman in your wagon, there’s Pawnee coming out of the west.”

“And a larger party to the north,” Rachel said quietly. “And scouts posted at the other directions around our circle, sir.”

“What in hell—”

“My wife isn’t knowing much about hell, Captain Walker,” Dare claimed, with that singular, cold smile he’d used to trick the English into believing he was being friendly. “But she knows Indians. She’s a translator’s daughter, and was a mission schoolteacher.”

The man eyed her coldly. “Maybe she should have stayed there, teaching the heathens some Christian manners.”

“Maybe,” Dare replied evenly. “But she did not. She’s part of us now, and willing to be of service.”

The men’s worry eased, she thought, by her husband’s words, perhaps by her presence. She looked over Gibson Rice’s lanky shoulder. There. At last. Atoka. Smiling, giving her the quiet nod of his approval. But Walker turned on her. She did not back up, but her grip on Dare’s hand tightened. “And do you see through the black night as well, woman, to know their number?”

“No. But I’ve noticed them following us since we reached the Platte. They have been watching long enough to know we’re not a war party because of the women and children among us.”

“And what do we know of them, Mrs. Gilmartin? Like if they’re responsible for the whereabouts of my missing cow?”

“Bet they stole it,” Hiram Hyde claimed, before his mother’s arm appeared out of their wagon and hushed him with a swat.

The other women had herded their children into wagons. Rachel had no children. Would that be enough of a reason for the men to consider her part of their company?

“If there’s so many, what’s to keep them from slaughtering us, and doing worse to the wives and children?” Mr. Lowell, the nurseryman, asked Rachel. His wife was not the only one afraid of Indians.

“I don’t believe they’re looking to make war, sir,” she said quietly. “If they wanted to do us harm, they’ve had ample opportunity.”

The trail captain’s eyes narrowed. “And what do they want now, Mrs. Gilmartin? With their drums, and hovering over that hill?”

“I don’t know, sir. Why don’t we ask them?”

The men looked at each other. Atoka stepped out of his quiet place in their midst. “My sister and I will do it,” he said.

“You’re not leaving me out,” Dare protested, keeping his grip on Rachel’s hand.

Mr. Walker eyed them. “Who are you people? Do you talk Pawnee?”

“No,” Atoka admitted.

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