Merline Lovelace (3 page)

Huddleston hooked a thumb toward the newcomer. “What about this one?”

“This is—” Daniel couldn’t remember her Osage
name. Not that it mattered. The priest who’d baptized her had given her another. “This is Madame Chartier. Louise Therese Chartier.”

“Madame?” Huddleston squinted, trying for a closer look at the face and figure almost hidden by the bulky robes. “She’s a woman growed and bedded?”

Avid eagerness leaped into Huddleston’s face. Of all the men in the small detachment, he’d been the most vocal in his complaints. And in his eagerness to accept offers made by several of the tribal chiefs they’d encountered to send women to warm their beds.

Lieutenant Wilkinson had refused the offers. Much to Huddleston’s disgust, Rifle Sergeant Morgan had backed him up. With everything else he had to worry about on this expedition, the last thing Daniel needed was the kind of problems that inevitably arose when men on the march ignored their duties and took their pleasures where they found them.

“I met up with Madame Chartier and her husband earlier this afternoon,” he informed the others, “right before a cougar ripped out the man’s throat.”

“The devil you say!”

“How’d that happen?”

“I’ll tell you about it after you set up camp and we spoon some broth into the lieutenant.” He leveled a hard look at the short, thickset Solomon Huddleston. “For now, all you need to know is that I made a promise to Chartier to see his wife safe to the nearest settlement.”

The man’s mouth twisted with the resentment that was never far beneath his skin these days. “Well, I hope you ain’t thinking I’m going to tote that heavy bale of furs she brung with her.”

“I’m thinking you’ll do whatever I tell you to, Private.” The swift retort cracked like a whip in the frosty air.

Huddleston looked as though he had more to say, but wisely bit down on it. Daniel would have to do something about that one, he decided. And soon.

“You’ve got your orders, men. Jump to them.”

While the company scattered to attend to their tasks, Daniel addressed the female standing stiff and silent. “I don’t know how much of that you understood—”

“I understand enough.”

“You don’t have to worry about Private Huddleston. Or any of the others, for that matter. They answer to me.”

She stared at him with those clear blue eyes. “Yes, I see that they do.”

With a nod, he turned his attention back to the lieutenant.

Louise watched him work. He spoke the truth. These men feared and respected him. He carried strong medicine, this wide-shouldered man with the shaggy brown beard and eyes the color of smoke.

Her stomach had clenched when he first stepped out of the woods. Henri’s movements had grown so slow of late, his sight so blurred and dim. He’d wel
comed the stranger too quickly, blind to the danger he brought with him.

Louise had sensed it, though. One glimpse of this man made her whole body go tight with the wariness of a doe scenting wolf. It wasn’t fear. She’d roamed the wilderness with Henri for too many years to feel fear at this one’s sudden appearance. Rather, it was the uneasy sense of something to come, a fierce storm or raging river that would sweep her up in its wake.

Her instincts had proved true. So disastrously true! Within the space of mere hours, she’d lost Henri’s comfortable companionship and had put herself under the protection of this—this American.

Suddenly, the day that had begun with the rise of the sun weighed down on her. Grief for Henri tugged at her heart. Uncertainty over what was to come burdened her mind. Weary beyond her years, Louise shrugged out of the heavy haversack and glanced around the makeshift camp.

“Where do I spread my blanket?”

Busy tending to the sick one, the man named Daniel jerked his chin toward a pack lying beneath a low-hanging branch.

“Over there, with mine. We’ll bundle together for warmth.”

She drew in a swift breath. So that’s the way it was to be. He wouldn’t even give her time to mourn her husband before he claimed her.

Not that Henri had wanted her to mourn. He’d spoken often of the many winters he’d seen, of how
he’d leave her soon to find a younger, more vigorous husband. He’d made her promise not to paint her face with ashes and grieve overlong. Their years together had been good, he’d asserted. More good for him, he’d added with a rueful grin, than for her.

When Chartier had paid Louise’s bride price and bought her from her uncle, the Frenchman had been long past the point of being able to raise his spear unassisted. Under his patient tutelage, she’d learned to coax it to hardness for him. In the process, she’d also learned how to take satisfaction from his so-clever hands and mouth.

Her husband had offered her the chance to lie with other men, of course. Trappers often shared their women, sometimes in exchange for furs, sometimes merely to relieve the loneliness of their lives. Louise had been tempted. More than once. Henri had awakened her to a woman’s passion, and in doing so, he’d stirred needs that often made her wonder what it would be like to take a young, strong warrior between her thighs. But loyalty to her husband had outweighed desire, and she’d chosen to share only Henri’s blanket.

Now the choice looked to have been taken from her hands. The American had promised to protect her. In exchange, he expected her to warm his bed.

Her heart thumping, Louise tried to sort through her whirling thoughts. Should she wait until night fell and slip away into the darkness? Use her skinning knife to slash the sergeant’s throat when he tried to use her?

If she did the first, she would lose her supplies and her furs, and the cold would soon claim her. Or a cougar, such as had claimed Henri, would fell her. If she succeeded in the second, these men would exact vengeance for their slain leader.

There was a third path, she decided after much thought. She could submit to him. She would not dishonor her husband’s memory if she permitted him to take what Henri allowed her to give to others.

Nor would she have to coax his spear to hardness, she thought with a sudden quiver deep in her belly. He’d carried her bale of furs through the snow for hours without so much as a pause to take his breath. More to the point, she’d felt him hard against her when they struggled in the snow. He was as strong and sound-limbed as Henri had been thin-shanked and brittle-boned.

Her throat closing at the thought of the night to come, Louise spread her blanket under the pine.

A
s taut as one of Henri’s traps before its jaws clanged shut, Louise made her bed. Hacking boughs from low hanging pines with her knife, she laid her blanket over them. All the while, she fretted over what she should do when the sergeant tried to claim her.

Her task done but her thoughts still turbulent, she sat stiff and silent on a fallen log while the last of the day swiftly gave way to darkness. Her lip curled as she watched the small band of men set up their camp. They went about the business with dragging feet and backs bent from weariness. While one built a large, crackling fire and melted snow for washing and cooking, another put the livers and other organs of the beaver on to fry. He used no salt or herbs of any kind, Louise saw, and wondered how he expected anyone to eat such tough, tasteless meat.

She debated for long moments before delving into her haversack. She packed only enough supplies for herself and Henri and had hoarded them carefully to
make them last the winter. It worried her to part with so much as a pinch of salt or a handful of coffee beans. She had to eat, however, and chose not to chew on unsalted meat. Her fur boots crunching on the snow, she crossed to the fire.

“Here.”

The cook looked up at her with red-rimmed eyes.

“Salt to flavor the meat,” she told him. “And beans for coffee.”

“Real coffee?”

“Yes.”

“Damn!”

With a grunt, he snatched both offerings out of her hands.

Louise returned to her perch and debated even longer before digging among her pouches for her medicines. She wasn’t a shaman or a healer, by any means, but she could see that the lieutenant was in need of relief from the fever that flushed his face and drenched his body in sweat. A folded deerskin packet in hand, she approached the one called Daniel.

“I have dried leaves of the moonflower. If you soak them in melted snow and make a band to put around the head of your lieutenant, it will draw his fever.”

“Moonflower?” The thickset one with the small eyes and flat nose jerked around. “Isn’t that Indian for ‘stinkweed’?”

“I know not this stinkweed, only moonflower.”

“Is it a tall plant with big white blossoms?”

“Yes.”

“Hell! That
is
stinkweed she’s giving you, Sergeant. It’s pure poison. It’ll kill the lieutenant for sure.”

“It kills only if eaten. But if you do not wish to use the leaves, I will—”

The broad-shouldered one settled the matter with a gruff command. “Give them to me. I’ll see that they don’t go down his gullet.”

Louise handed him the folded deerskin and retreated once again to her log.

Daniel didn’t spare her a glance as he soaked the leaves in melted snow before folding them into a scrap of linen torn from what was left of his shirt. He couldn’t tell whether it was the moonflower or the rich broth he spooned into the lieutenant that stilled the young officer’s restless movements, but Wilkinson soon dropped into an exhausted sleep.

Almost as exhausted, Daniel joined the men at the campfire and claimed his share of the coffee and fried meat. The talk was all of his chance meeting with the Frenchman and Chartier’s sudden, savage death. More than one glance strayed to the trapper’s widow, sitting off by herself.

The Osage guides, in particular, seemed to find her presence disturbing. They made only one attempt to speak to her in her own tongue. Whatever she replied had them keeping their distance and muttering to each other. His meal finished, Daniel took his mug over to join her.

“Do you know them?” he asked, indicating the two guides with a nod.

“No. They are of the Little Osage.”

“I heard the Little Osage and Quapaw often hunt together.”

“Before, perhaps. Not now. Not since Pierre Choteau and his brother open their trading post.”

Daniel knew the enterprising Frenchmen who’d established the first permanent trading post south of the Missouri River only by reputation. General Wilkinson had invited the prosperous Choteau brothers to St. Louis when he assumed governorship of Louisiana Territory. Reportedly it was to gain information about the territory he was now responsible for, but everyone in St. Louis figured the wily general’s real purpose was to find ways to cut into the brothers’ lucrative fur trade.

Such private enterprise wasn’t illegal or even discouraged for men in uniform. More than one soldier earned extra dollars by hunting fresh meat for his garrison or bringing in furs. General Wilkinson, however, was rumored to have his fingers in more pies than a baker. Daniel wasn’t surprised his son had spent more time talking furs with the chiefs they’d visited during this expedition than talking peace. Cradling his hands around his mug, he angled for information.

“What do you know about Pierre Choteau?”

“Henri trades with him. So do the Quapaw. Or they did. Henri says Pierre worries the Quapaw might now sell only to the agent of the Spanish.”

The casual remark brought his head snapping up. “The Spanish are trading in these parts?”

“They come,” she answered with a shrug, “they go.”

So much for respecting the boundaries of the United States, he thought wryly. The Spanish had yet to completely concede the territory they’d ruled until the French took it from them a few years ago.

Before Daniel and the rest of the group had broken away from the main body of the expedition and turned south, they’d found ample evidence of Spanish military presence. One campsite wasn’t more than a few days old. At a Pawnee village, Lieutenant Pike had had to talk long and hard to convince the chief to lower the Spanish flag and hoist the Stars and Bars. This was the first Daniel had heard, though, that the Spanish were operating so deep in Osage Country.

“Who is this agent you speak of?” he asked the woman beside him.

“I know not his name. Only that he plans to send boats up the Great River and lay claim to these lands.”

The hair on the back of Daniel’s neck rose. Were the Spanish out to recover the vast territory Napoleon had wrested from them by treaty, then sold to the Americans? General Wilkinson would want to hear about this.

“How do you know about these plans?”

Her shoulders lifted in another shrug. “The trappers, they talk.”

They sat for a few moments, each lost in thought. Daniel’s mind was still spinning with the possi
bility of a Spanish agent stirring up trouble in these parts, when Louise slanted him a sideways look.

“The trappers also say your Great Father speaks of moving the Choctaw and Cherokee to this land.”

Not just the Choctaw and Cherokee.

Citing the inexorable westward movement of white settlers, President Jefferson’s second inaugural address had endorsed a plan to move all tribes living east of the Mississippi to the newly acquired Louisiana Territory. The move would guarantee the tribes rich hunting and farming lands “forever and in perpetuity,” and create an immense Indian Country to serve as a buffer between the United States and the Spanish holdings to the west and south. Coincidentally, it would also free up vast tracts of Indian land in the east for white settlement.

The plan had been enthusiastically endorsed by land-hungry citizens and heartily condemned by those who believed the government should stand by the treaties it had negotiated over the years with the sovereign Indian tribes. Emotions on both sides of the issue ran hot and looked as though they would soon heat to a boil. Daniel wasn’t surprised rumors about the scheme had penetrated even these remote reaches. It was stirring up enough controversy everywhere else.

“Is this true, what the trappers say?” Louise asked. “Your Great Father has such a plan?”

“It’s true.”

“Pah!” Her blue eyes flashed with scorn. “It is
foolish beyond words. The Osage war now with the Choctaw and Cherokee. If the Great Father sends them here, the rivers will run red with blood.”

Daniel suspected she was right. He also suspected it would fall to the army to keep traditional enemies from killing each other off—along with anyone else who got in the way—if Congress passed the Indian Removal Plan.

And, he acknowledged with a sudden tightening of his gut, the proposed plan would provide a crafty Spanish agent with just the fuel he needed to fan the flames of rebellion among the tribes already living in Louisiana Territory. A rebellion that would allow Spain to move in and take back the territory they’d lost.

Had the chiefs they’d met with so far during the expedition expressed their concerns to the lieutenant? Or made mention of this Spanish agent? If so, young Wilkinson hadn’t commented on it.

He’d ask the lieutenant if he’d picked up these disquieting rumors. In the morning. When the young officer had shaken off his fever and regained his senses. Downing the last of his coffee, Daniel left Louise and went to secure the camp for the night.

After checking the placement of the sentries, he instructed Private Wilson to lay his blanket next to the lieutenant’s and notify Daniel immediately if the officer should take a turn for the worse.

Weariness pulled at him like anchor chains when he approached his own bed of pine boughs covered
with his tattered blanket. He wanted nothing more than to drop down, drag his buffalo robe over his head and snatch a few hours’ sleep. The shadowy mound a few feet from his blanket reminded him of his newest responsibility.

“Are you warm enough?”

The mound didn’t stir.

“Madame Chartier. Louise.”

Slowly, a corner of the buffalo hide peeled back. The flickering campfire illuminated the pale oval of her face.

“Are you warm enough?” he asked again.

“Yes.”

The curt reply stirred a stab of pity in Daniel. In the space of a few hours, the woman had lost a husband and been forced to throw in her lot with a band of scruffy, half-starved soldiers. Small wonder she’d retreated after sharing her precious supply of stores with his men, and now huddled beneath that pile of hide.

“Sleep well, then,” he said gruffly.

Dropping a knee onto his blanket, he claimed his bed. The pine boughs rustled under him as he worked into a comfortable position and dragged his robe up around his ears. With the scent of resin sharp in his nostrils and an endless expanse of star-studded sky above, he noted the sounds of his men settling down for the night. The muted remarks. The muttered complaints. A hiss as John Wilson spit his wad into the fire. Sam Bradley’s hacking cough.

The sounds were as familiar to him now as the
sensation of lying next to a female was strange and unsettling. Despite the exhaustion weighting his limbs, Daniel couldn’t seem to empty his mind of her. Or of the thought of Henri Chartier taking his ease on her young, lithe body.

To his profound disgust, images of Chartier’s wife lost to passion leaped into Daniel’s head again. His belly clenched as he pictured her on her back, her coal-black hair fanned against a blanket and her extraordinary eyes heavy with desire.

Guilt stabbed into him, sharper and far more intense than the pity that had gripped him just moments ago. He had no business thinking such thoughts about this woman. He’d sworn to protect her, to see her safe to the nearest settlement. He’d rid himself of the burden she represented as soon as he was able, get his small, tattered troop to the mouth of the Arkansaw and go home.

Deliberately, he wiped all thought of Chartier’s widow from his mind and filled it instead with a face framed by hair as pale as a winter moon.

Louise lay still and rigid beside him. With each thunderous beat of her heart, she expected him to roll over, raise her buffalo robe and reach under her tunic to probe for the slit in her leggings.

Her pulse fluttered like that of a startled quail when the pine branches rustled under him. She sucked in a quick breath, held it. Long, tense moments passed. When he made no further move, she
unclenched her fists and released the air trapped in her lungs.

More moments slid by. With the heavy robe pulled up around her ears, her world was narrowed to a thick, impenetrable darkness scented with the familiar scent of tanned hide. She could sense him, though, feel him on every prickly inch of her skin.

The grim anticipation that had gripped her since he’d instructed her to lay her blanket next to his held her in its maw. She’d been so sure of his meaning, so convinced of his intent, that it was some time before she interpreted the low, snuffling cadence her straining ears picked up.

He was asleep.

Fast asleep.

Relief lanced through her, followed almost immediately by the oddest sensation. It wasn’t disappointment. It couldn’t be disappointment. She needed time to mourn Henri properly, time to accord him the respect he deserved. Yet the realization that the American evidently didn’t intend to claim her this night left her feeling strangely unsettled.

It was the events of the day, she decided. So much had happened in so short a space of time. Seemingly in the blink of an eye, the entire course of her life had changed, and she now walked an unfamiliar path. That was what caused this—this disquiet.

Squeezing her eyes shut, she said silent prayers to Wa-kon-dah and the other spirits who gave balance to all things on earth and in the heavens. If the spirits
were kind and so inclined, they would welcome Henri Chartier into their midst.

She woke the next morning to the stench of burnt meat and the taste of snow in the air. Pushing aside her heavy robe, she blinked the sleep from her eyes and surveyed the various occupants of the camp. They looked no better in the harsh light of morning than they had in the waning light of the previous day.

They must have endured much hardship for their skin to stretch so tight over gaunt cheeks and their garments to hang in such tatters. They moved listlessly, she noted, as though their morning tasks gave them no pleasure or anticipation for the coming day. One poked at the meat sizzling in a fry pan with a stick. Another squatted on his haunches, waiting for snow to melt and boil in a battered tin coffeepot.

She felt not the slightest urge to join the two at the fire and help prepare their meal. She’d perform tasks necessary to her own survival, like gathering wood and carrying her haversack. She’d share what she could of her supplies. But she certainly didn’t intend to act as a slave to any of these men. With that resolve firm in her mind, she rose and slipped into the woods to attend to her personal needs.