Jodi's Journey (4 page)

She was one tough little hombre. Any woman
agreeing to marry him had to be flat out of their mind, though. And
him too. Why had he made such an offer? The answer was clear. She
wouldn't survive two nights on the trail. They'd have her for
supper. Not that drovers were obliged to treat a woman badly on the
trail. It was the opposite, in fact, but an unmarried lady, with no
man appointed to protect her, well, it just wasn't done. The men
would be all over themselves trying to please her and forget they
were herding cows. What a calamity that would be. What had she been
thinking, driving a herd up north? She was a woman, for goodness
sake...and men of any worth knew that a woman on a cattle drive was
asking for trouble.

But despite it all, he admired her spunk. Her
courage hadn't failed her. He remembered that look on her face, as
though it pained her to ask him. He hadn't seen pride like that
since before the war.

He knew how much courage it took to come and
talk to him. He wasn't blind to his reputation. So why had the
woman bothered?

The stench of whiskey wafted through the room
and Hunter glanced about for the bottle someone had left in the
room the night before. There was no place to put it, though, so he
left it sitting on the dresser by the bed. He hated smelling
whiskey, wondered why anyone would want to poison themselves with
it. But he knew it wasn't his business.

Jodi Parker thought he was a drunk. Probably
most people in Esser Crossing thought that, but they didn't know
him. No one in this town knew Hunter Johnson.

His mind was running rampant this morning,
flitting from one thing to the next. Yet, he had to admit, he was
excited.

He was dead broke and he'd taken a job to
herd cattle of all things. If Bonnie hadn't made the trade, he
wouldn't have gotten a good night's sleep.

The trip to Round Rock would be long and
hard, but not half as long as the herd would make. Jodi Parker had
no idea what she was in for. Storms, Indians, mean-hearted towns,
and cattle. Dang cattle were enough to contend with.

Still, he'd taken the job, and he'd see it
through. He needed the money.

He missed his deer hide jacket, but a good
night's sleep was more important if a man had to work, and sleeping
in the hay sometimes didn't cut it.

After washing up as best he could, he went to
the livery stable for his horse.

The blacksmith had shoed his horse. He owed
him. He couldn't pay. Surely he could work something out.

“I'm driving a herd through to Kansas. I'll
pay you when I get back,” Hunter said as he brushed aside the
blacksmith and went straight to his horse.

“I am not running a credit store, friend.
You'll pay before you leave,” the big man said with a strong
accent, and eyed Hunter with every intention of that promise.

“Can't. I don't have it.” Hunter figured his
honest candor was the only way to solve the issue.

“Then you'll work it off,” the man insisted,
coming to stand beside him and the horse, his mere physical
presence speaking for him.

“Can't, I tell you. I've got to be in Round
Rock in two days,” he insisted, trying to side-step the man.

“You'll work it off or you won't be riding.”
The man grabbed the reins and pushed Hunter to the other side of
the stall.

Hunter sized the man up. He was much bigger,
but he had tackled such before and it seemed logical that he could
do it again. He made the first swing and was cut quickly to the
ground with a right hook. Hunter never saw it coming. He'd
misjudged his opponent.

He saw stars before he was able to stand on
his feet again. “Reckon I'll work it off. Think a day would do
it?”

The Swede looked him up and down, sent him a
toothless grin, and nodded. “That will be fine, friend.”

Hunter nodded and took the pitch fork from
the man's big hands. “I guess a man's word isn't good any
longer.”

“Depends on the man, maybe.” The Swede
laughed heartily and slapped him on the back. “Work is good for the
soul, friend.”

By the end of the day, Hunter was aching in
places he forgot worked. But the debt was paid and he would sit the
saddle the entire night to get to Round Rock on time. He'd
forgotten what an honest day's work would do to him, and he was now
reminded of a schedule he had to keep.

He could see by the trail they left that all
must have gone well. Fresh tracks proved that Jodi had gotten the
herd on the move. Satisfied that she held up her end of the
bargain, he traveled onward.

Traveling by moonlight, it was cool and the
thought of the brewing coffee made his stomach growl. It would warm
him, but he had to use it sparingly because it had to last a long
time.

He stopped long enough to build a small fire.
Getting his pot out of his saddle bag, he made the coffee as he
pulled his jacket tighter, a jacket that had seen better days. He
wished he still had his deer hide coat.

He sang to himself, pleasing himself greatly.
God had given him a voice like no other and he enjoyed belting out
one song after another.

The one tool a cowboy always used was his
voice, he thought with merriment, and he had developed quite a
bass. At least cows seemed to appreciate it.

He thought again of the woman, Jodi Parker.
He remembered wisps of blonde hair poking out of a flop hat, blue
eyes that seemed to look right through him, and blatant honesty
that stared him in the face. She wasn't little, nor big, but
rounded like a fully grown woman. Her hips had given her away as
she headed for the door, he remembered. Her face was sweet and
innocent, yet years of hard work had seasoned her. But she wasn't
that old, barely twenty, he'd expect. She was somehow appealing or
he would never have offered marriage. She might be all right in the
hay if he gentled her a bit. He'd think on that a while. She was
like a wild filly, full of spunk, and nerves.

Then he thought of Hershel Walker. Truth be
known, he hadn't heard what Walker had said that day, but the way
he’d been manhandling the little gal made Hunter angry. He wondered
why a woman like Jodi would know a man like Hershel, if you could
call him a man.

Hershel was well known in Esser Crossing. He
was the town bully during the years of the war, but he was still
wet behind the ears. He'd been nowhere, done nothing, and learned
absolutely nothing of life. Oh, he'd killed a few people, but no
one in their right mind would have called them fair fights. The kid
was trigger happy, and didn't use his head before he started a
fight.

It was easy to be a bully in a town full of
old men and young boys just back from the war.

The war was an ugly word in any man's books
these days, best forgotten. From the looks of the men that came
back, it took more than life itself; it took the soul of some, and
possibly their livelihoods. Broken men, physically and mentally,
and for what? The glory of the south?

He sighed.

No, Hunter had another idea about that
stinking war. It wasn't all about freeing men; it was about the
inability to understand each other. It was a known fact that the
south and the north didn't even speak the same language. How could
they agree when they were so opposite? The southern men were
gentlemen, the northern men were intellects. One had less pride and
more brains, the other had more pride and not enough brains. The
black people were somewhere in the middle.

Hunter never understood why they couldn't
have settled their differences. After all, the northern people
brought the Negro over on ships to sell for labor, not realizing
that they would somehow have to train these people to work in
industry. And the south, thinking they'd found a gold mine, bought
the slaves and put them to work in the fields where the work came
natural to the black man.

The north never understood that the south
didn't always treat the slaves badly. Some actually treated them as
family. A lot of southern girls grew up with Mammies that were as
close to them as any mother. Yet there were many injustices that
outweighed the arguments.

It was no secret that black people didn't get
a fair shake, because in Hunter's book, they were just that,
people. However, that wasn't a common belief. He had learned early
on in life, when he'd had a best friend growing up, that black was
just another color. And he remembered with bitterness when his
friend, Jacob, had been hung from a tree for stealing an apple pie
from Mrs. Douglas' window. Jacob had only been eleven. Hunter never
got over that. It still managed to bring a tear to his eye when he
thought of it.

Perhaps that's what had caused him to be a
spy for the union army under the guise of being a southern officer.
He'd been pulled by the people he grew up with and loved, and what
he thought was right and wrong. But never in all his life could he
justify Jacob's death to himself. A mob of angry men had killed him
to set an example for all, they had said. Jacob's father, a real
thief, had sat there in the dirt, crying as his son swung from a
rope…dead.

Hunter, on the other hand, had been pulled
into a vortex from which there was no escape…none but God given.
The war ended abruptly for him when a shell had knocked half his
hearing out and caused him to be responsible for one of the
bloodiest of battles of the war. It had given him an out of a
situation where there was none. For now, he carried a brand all his
own, the brand of a coward. But God had made him strong, and he
could hold up.

Again, the war had come to invade his
thoughts. But if the army had taught him anything, it was how to
survive even a war with oneself. He could and would go on living,
and no one would be the wiser.

But this time…this time…he didn't make
excuses for his actions as those memories haunted him. This time,
he faced them and tucked them away into a small part of his mind
for another time. A tear slid unattended down his cheek as he
forced his thoughts to other things.

He had a job, and that was something.

He wondered about the little lady who’d
walked into that broken down shed with such a bold request. What
did he know about the Parkers?

Old Man Parker had been a pretty fair cow-man
in his day, but he couldn't stay away from the bottle. Once he had
started drinking, it had been the end of the cattle days for him.
He'd joined the Confederate Army when the war broke out, but he
managed to get himself in a heap of trouble not two years into the
war. Some said he was with a troop down by Camp Verde that hung a
bunch of ranchers on their way to Mexico. The leader of that group
hadn't been seen since, and anyone with him was either dead or
hiding for the rest of their lives. Hunter wondered if the money
those men had been carrying to Mexico to buy supplies and stock had
been worth it to the soldiers who decided to hang them. Yeah, war
had a displeasing taste to it, even the parts that weren't
concerned with the fighting.

His mind flitted back to Jodi Parker. He
couldn't recall anything about there being a Mrs. Parker, but she
must have died early on. Maybe that was why Old Man Parker took to
drinking. The word was that the foreman had taken over the Parker
place the last few years, and had made a fair ranch out of it. Clem
Morton was a good man with cows, a fair man, too. The old Riding R
Ranch would have a hard time replacing Clem.

There had been a brother, too, but Hunter
knew all too well about him. He'd been there when he fell. He was
partly responsible for his death, and he'd never forget it. He owed
the Parkers, he reckoned, and this little chore might help settle a
few things. For everything there was a purpose. He smiled to
himself.

However, having Jodi as a bride sure hadn’t
played into his hands. What was he going to do with her? A woman,
especially a permanent one, was not what he needed.

From the way she had acted, Jodi Parker
wanted nothing at all to do with Hershel, and that was good.
Hershel was a no-good, snot-nosed kid who used his gun instead of
his head. He was trigger happy and had a mean streak. But he was
obviously interested in the Parker girl. Hunter wondered why. It
wasn't that she wasn't tolerable to look at, but as green as
Hershel was about being a man, Jodi was about being a woman, Hunter
decided, and in her innocence lay her value. Hunter stopped singing
and nudged his horse faster.

He stopped a time or two to pour himself some
coffee from his flask where he'd saved it, and he pulled some jerky
from his saddle bag, then he took off again. He knew he'd have to
keep a steady pace to make it on time. He crossed a couple of
streams along the way, and his horse actually balked at having to
cross them, shallow as they were. They were bone cold, Hunter
noted. Spring wasn't entirely in the picture yet. That wasn't good
for a cattle drive. Dealing with heat would be better, to his way
of thinking.

It was a long, lonely ride, but he'd made it
by sunup.

CHAPTER FOUR

Jodi twisted a bit in the saddle and her
mouth fell open as Hunter rode up to her, startling her. She hadn't
expected him to make it, at least not on time. But he was here,
just like he said he would be.

Hunter reached the distance and closed her
mouth. His touch was gentle and unexpected. Jodi felt it to her
toes, but for nothing would she speak of it. Disoriented, she
spurred her horse onward, determined not to have a conversation
till she could clear her mind.

Why had she let a man like Hunter Johnson
affect her so? His hand, though calloused, was gentle against her
chin.

He'd shaved and cut his hair. He'd actually
cleaned up, and she was shocked beyond words at how handsome he
was. None of her men were shaved or clean. Why had he done it? Most
men she knew grew beards, or at least a mustache early, and rarely,
if ever, shaved. To Jodi it was like he wasn't wearing any clothes.
He was just too darn good-looking.