Authors: Barbara Ankrum
Montana Territory
June 1864
Creed Devereaux wasn't a man to ignore a feeling. Anyone in his line of work who did, more than likely ended up dead.
Leaning against the green wood wall of Nielsen's Feed and Grain, his gaze scoured the crowded Fort Benton levee for the hundredth time in two hours, searching for the cause of his uneasiness. Instinctively, he sensed it had nothing to do with the overdue steamer—travel on the Missouri in spring was notoriously unpredictable. Nor did he believe it was about the woman he'd been sent here to meet. Despite his misgivings about her, she was Seth's problem, not his.
No, this unpleasantly familiar feeling had his gut churning like a hot spring. He slid one long finger beneath the edge of the bone and bead choker circling his throat. He knew about intuition, just as he knew other things some men never would.
Out of habit, his fingertips brushed over the walnut-handled army Colt seated securely in his cross-draw holster and he turned his gaze once more to the milling crowd nearby. Most were soldiers, miners, or tradesmen, here today—he gathered from snatches of conversations he'd overheard—to meet the women they'd left behind.
In sharp contrast to Creed's fringed buckskin, the clothing of most of the men on the levee marked them as outsiders to this Montana frontier—homespun, patched chambray and denim, crisp blue wool uniforms. Yet, strangely, it was Creed who felt like an outsider. The others seemed content to exclude him from their cliques of commiseration.
That suited him just fine.
A faint sound upriver turned the head of every anxious miner and soldier waiting on the levee. It was like wind singing through a stand of pine, though no breeze stirred the air and no needled spires broke the rolling sweep of prairie in the distance. Creed straightened, his gaze joining the rest. On the horizon curled a telling black plume of smoke.
"There she is!" shouted a fellow peering through his collapsible spyglass from atop a pile of wooden crates.
As one, seventy men broke from their clustered ranks and crowded to the levee's steep banks, straining to catch a glimpse of the boat.
"Can you see, John?" another shouted. "Is it her?" The sidewheel-steamer rounded the bend just then, chugging toward the levee.
"It is! It's painted right under the sidewheel, clear as day—
Luella."
A cheer broke from the crowd and the men pressed closer together, slapping each other on the back with good cheer. Aboard the ship, the helmsman in the wheelhouse yanked the chain on the sidewheeler's horn again. The four-note chorus, like the blast of a Scottish pipe, carried across the tumbling current of the Missouri, bringing sighs of relief from the crowd.
The happy shouts and waves of the men ashore were greeted with a flurry of fluttering white hankies from the ship, whose white-wooden rails were jammed with passengers.
Creed tipped his black felt hat back from his eyes and pushed away from the wall of the feed store. Despite the muddy, uneven streets, his walk held the measured gracefulness of a cat. His considerable height gave him an unobstructed view of the docking steamer.
"Pardieu,"
he muttered, drawing closer. Despite the dozens of would-be miners cramming its rails, Creed's conservative guess put the number of arriving females at close to forty. Some stood beside children. More did not.
Creed lifted his hat and ran an uneasy hand through his black hair. Even with the description Seth had given him, how would he know which one she was?
The crowd surged forward as the burly helmsman dropped the gangway to the new wooden dock with a bang. "Foo-rrt Benton!" he sang out in a seasoned voice. "All ash-ooore!"
From his place in the wheelhouse, a red-bearded captain greeted several of the men on the dock with a hearty wave.
"What kept you, Cap'n Ainsworth?" called a man from the shore who, except for the neat string tie at his throat, was dressed in the raggedy homespun clothing of a miner.
"Snagged us a helluva piece of deadwood," Ainsworth shouted back, climbing down from the wheelhouse. "Forty miles back, near 'Eye of the Needle.' Had the devil's own time getting free of it."
"You won't be catchin' any deadwood here in town tonight," the man joked in return, pushing his way closer to the gangway filled with women. "I aim to make darn certain of that, myself!"
The din grew louder as one by one, the men caught sight of their loved ones. Two and three abreast, the passengers hurried down the narrow walkway. Women ran into the arms of their husbands. Flat-capped émigrés from Eastern cities stood on Montana soil for the first time, some spinning around in wonder, taking in their first solid glimpse of their new home.
Creed pulled a tired hand down his face, where his touch encountered a three-day growth of beard.
Damn.
After seventy-two hours of hell-bent riding to get here from Virginia City, he'd had neither the energy nor the inclination to find a bath house. Not to mention a proper bed. Still, he supposed he should have at least made an attempt to look presentable. Seth had told him Mariah Parsons was a lady.
He frowned. Ladies rarely survived long on the Montana frontier. They were either fragile as tended lilies or plain outraged by the day-to-day brutality of it all. What the hell. It wasn't his job to make her like it here, only to bring her home to Seth in one piece.
Creed scanned the deck of the
Luella
for the lady in question and searched his brain for the sketchy description Seth had given him: golden eyes, unruly brown hair, on the skinny side. No, Creed remembered,
scrawny
was the word Seth had used.
The raucous laughter of three young women sidling down the gangway caught his attention immediately. Garishly dressed in low-cut satin gowns and ostrich-plumed hats, the trio was being sniffed after like rabbits in fox season by several would-be miners. Indeed, the potent scent of ambergris with which they'd liberally anointed themselves filled Creed's nostrils as they indelicately hiked their hems out of the mud and sashayed past him.
A vague smile curved his lips. Aside from the fact that they looked older and infinitely harder up close than they had from a distance, he knew Fort Benton could stand an infusion of fresh female blood. Men outnumbered white women three hundred to one in Montana Territory. He doubted anyone would mind the fading beauty of these three. In fact, if he weren't so tired—
"Jamie O'Hurlehy! Whooo-oo! Jamie, me darlin'—" At the sound of the woman's voice, Creed's gaze flicked up to the deck of the steamer. He spotted two more women sandwiched between the rail and the crush of men. The redhead, her plump arm pumping like a Fourth of July flag at her Jamie, was definitely not the one Creed sought. She was too old, too large, and obviously taken.
It was, however, the young woman standing beside her who made Creed's breath catch in his throat and caused his body to go tight all over. She stood out from the crowd like a white-petaled daisy in a field of sweet-grass. Her skin was the delicate color of new ivory, her features, befitting a sculpted Grecian goddess.
His gaze traveled down the length of her sage green, black-trimmed traveling gown which hugged her tiny waist then blossomed from her hips like an opening flower. Wisps of cinnamon-colored hair escaped beneath the brim of her black-frilled morning bonnet. And, Creed noted with amusement, she clung to the tapestry grip she was carrying as if it might sprout legs and escape.
He was too far away to see the color of her eyes as she anxiously scanned the crowd below in search of someone as she was pulled with the tide of passengers down the gangway. Unwillingly, Creed tore his gaze from her to try to determine who was meeting her.
Incredibly, no one seemed to claim her.
Yet, even as he dismissed the idea that this breathtaking girl and Seth's scrawny Mariah Parsons could be one and the same, her gaze met his. It lasted only seconds—long enough for Creed's fingers to find the brim of his hat in acknowledgement and for her lovely face to flush pink as a sunrise.
"Maeve, me girl!" called a blue-coated sergeant who waved as he shouldered his way toward the gangplank. "You're a sight for sore eyes, darlin'."
"Jamie!" the older woman cried again, hauling the green-clad beauty by the arm through the press of bodies. "Saints preserve us! Come lend us a hand before Mariah and me are squashed like bugs on this gangway!"
Mariah.
Creed's throat tightened and he took a step forward. So, it
was
her. It seemed Seth's ugly duckling had turned into a swan. He didn't relish seeing disappointment in those lovely eyes when he told her why
he'd
come to fetch her instead of Seth.
Creed pushed closer. Mariah was nearly to the levee when he halted abruptly. His blood turned to ice as he stared at the tall, dark-skinned man not twenty feet away. The bitter taste of bile rose in Creed's throat.
He should have known.
It was Étienne LaRousse.
Fury pumped his heart, pounded through his veins. The choker that circled his throat seemed to tighten, while the memory of his father's tortured eyes flitted through Creed's mind like a brief glint of light.
The sight of the half-breed, LaRousse, laid open an old festering wound that had poisoned Creed's life for the last four years. Cursing the timing of finding him now, his mind emptied of everything but his need to get LaRousse.
The woman could wait.
Experience coached caution. The unsuspecting crowd demanded it. Slowly, Creed shouldered his way closer, fixing his gaze on the trademark streak of white that punctuated Étienne's cropped black hair at the temple.
As Creed drew nearer, he eased his gun from its holster. That action—or perhaps the fierce expression that had settled over his features—had wary men in his path scuttling out of the way. Murmurs of alarm arose from the crowd, but he paid them little heed. He kept coming.
Étienne LaRousse leaned to whisper something in his companion's ear, but the collective movement of the crowd behind him and the resolute sound of approaching footsteps compelled him to turn around. His black eyes went wide at the sight of Creed—not because he recognized him, but because it was eminently clear Creed meant to kill him.
Stumbling backward in the slippery mud, Étienne pushed aside several bystanders, clearing a path of escape. The man he'd been standing with melted into the throngs.
"LaRousse!"
The name was more growl than shout. Creed's gun was raised, but there were too many people between them.
Étienne didn't spare Creed a glance over his shoulder, but a low snarl tore from the half-breed's throat. One hand groped for his revolver, the other swept a frantic arc in front of him, knocking people out of his way.
Too late, Creed realized Mariah Parsons stood directly in Étienne's path.
"Mariah
—
!"
The warning scraped against his suddenly dry throat. Her eyes, the golden color of fine whiskey, flashed to his at the sound of her name.
"Get out of the—"
Étienne's steely arm swung sideways, catching her hard across her shoulder and jaw. In a flash of green skirts and white crinolines, Creed saw Seth's fiancée careen backward into the thick mud. The screams of the woman beside her drowned out Creed's own thudding heartbeat, but he didn't have time to stop. LaRousse was slipping away.
A bullet whizzed by Creed's ear. He ducked and tried to get a clear shot at LaRousse's legs. Creed wanted the bastard dead, but not before he learned what he needed to know.
A few steps past Mariah, Étienne crashed into a giant of a man, bounced off his chest and sprawled to the ground. He rolled instantly to his knees, gun in hand, but the crowd had scattered for cover, leaving him completely vulnerable.
"Drop it, LaRousse." Legs splayed, feet planted unequivocally in the mire, Creed had his Colt aimed directly at the man's face.
"Qui es-tu?"
LaRousse demanded. Spittle flecked the corners of his mouth. His hands were raised slightly, but he did not drop his revolver.
"Tu sais pas?
You don't know me?" Creed smiled a smile that didn't reach his eyes. His finger tightened on the trigger and the spring made an ominous creaking sound. "Take a closer look, LaRousse. Perhaps you remember my face after all."
The half-breed's eyes narrowed and he blinked rapidly, obviously at a loss. His dark face was as angular and hard as the edge of a finely honed blade. His breath came raggedly. "No."
"Pity," Creed replied, but there was no compassion in his voice. "Where is he, Étienne?"
Étienne glanced around at the gaping crowd. "Who?"
"Your brother. Pierre."
Again, LaRousse shifted his fingers around the grip of his gun while his eyes sought escape. Seeing none, he worked his mouth and flung a wad of spit at Creed's feet.
"Drop the damned gun," Creed snarled through clenched teeth. "It would give me great pleasure to blow you in half."
LaRousse laughed nervously and glanced at the revolver still in his hand. "Ah, but you are not fast enough to kill me before I kill you. Eef you know of me, zen you know I speak ze truth."
"The truth? Cowards like you have only one truth," Creed retorted. "Their lack of nerve. No, you're much better at back-shooting, LaRousse. Or hanging an innocent man slowly, until the breath is squeezed out of him."