Rivals (32 page)

He was at her side in a stride, catching her by the shoulders and pulling her upright as if she weighed no more than thistledown. “Are you all right, Mrs. Morgan?” His hat was pulled low on his forehead, its brim shading the gleaming bronze of his face and intensifying the sharp blue of his eyes.

“I'm…fine.” She nodded shakily, aware that her hat was askew and her beautiful gown was smudged with dirt. As she reached down to brush uselessly at the dust, Ann noticed the holstered gun strapped to his hip. She was surprised to see him wearing one. Kell, yes—a gun fit him as naturally as the hardness of this land—but not Jackson Stuart. It was the moment's pause the gun gave her that kept her from mentioning the unconscious woman lying on the ground only a few feet away.

And in that moment, Jackson Stuart spun around and grabbed the man who had shoved her. “I believe you owe the lady an apology.” There was a coldness in his voice that stunned Ann, but the man just looked at him with torpid eyes, his senses too dulled by the heat to catch the threatening tone. In a lightning move the gun was in his hand, the muzzle pressed under the point of the man's chin and the hammer back. “I said—you owe the lady an apology, mister.”

Suddenly everything was still around her except the wind-swirled dust. Someone up the line called out, “Better do it, Joe. That's Blackjack Stuart.”

What did that mean? Was he some sort of desperado? Ann stared at him in confusion, barely noticing at all the poor settler's wide-eyed look of alarm as he stammered out an apology.

“That's better.” Jackson Stuart smiled smoothly and gently eased the hammer down, then released the man and holstered his gun all in one fluid motion. When he turned to Ann, his look was warmly apologetic. “Sorry. Sometimes they need to be reminded of their manners.”

“Of course,” she murmured, not knowing what else to say. “Please, there's a woman over here suffering from heatstroke. We need to get her out of the sun—and to a doctor if there is one.”

“There's a tent down the way that passes for an infirmary. We can take her there.” He crouched down on one knee beside the unconscious woman, his hands tunneling under her shoulders and her skirts to pick her up.

“Put her in my buggy,” Ann instructed as her escort came riding up.

“Sorry, Mrs. Morgan. I didn't see you stop.” The cowboy grabbed at the creased front of his hat brim in a quick gesture of respect, then struggled to control his mount as it shied away from the flapping skirts of the woman Jackson Stuart carried. “What happened?”

“This woman collapsed. We're taking her to the doctor.”

Jackson Stuart nodded in the direction of the black stallion, standing quietly with its reins dragging the ground. “Tie my horse to the back of the buggy. And if you've got any water in that canteen, we'll need it.”

“Yes, sir.” He untied the canteen from his saddle and handed it to Ann, then walked his horse over to the stallion and scooped up the trailing reins.

Ann climbed into the buggy unaided, then turned to help Jackson maneuver the woman onto the seat. She was limp as a rag doll in Ann's arms. Then Jackson Stuart crowded onto the buggy seat and relieved her of the heavy burden.

“Open the canteen for me,” he said.

Ann removed its cap and handed it to him, watching as he held it to the woman's parched and cracked lips, tipping it slightly to let the warm water trickle into her mouth. He was so gentle with the woman that Ann found it difficult to conceive that a moment ago this same man had held a gun to a man's head. He didn't look at all sinister. In fact, were it not for the absence of a jacket, he had the appearance of a polished gentleman—and an extraordinarily handsome one at that.

“Here.” He gave her back the canteen, then loosened the yellow neckerchief from around his throat and pulled it free. “Wet this for me. We'll see if we can't cool her down a bit—and get some of this dirt off her face.”

The smile he flashed her was the sharing kind that made her feel warm inside—just like the sound of “we.” It was the two of them helping, but Ann hadn't thought of it that way until he'd said it. Quickly, she moistened the cloth, then gently bathed the woman's face with it.

The woman stirred, roused perhaps by the coolness of the water on her hot skin or the shade of the buggy's protruding hood. “Where…where am I? What happened?” Feebly, she lifted a hand, her eyes still glazed.

“Sssh. You fainted,” Ann explained softly, glancing briefly at Jackson as he reached forward and unlooped the buggy reins with one hand, giving them a slap. The buggy lurched forward. “We're taking you to the doctor. You'll be fine.”

“No,” she moaned, her head rolling from side to side. “I can't. My place…I'll lose my place…. No,” she sobbed, her arms reaching, her body lifting with its last bit of strength to get back to the line.

“Stop it. You're in no condition to go back there.” Half-frightened by the woman's crazed reaction, Ann tried to make her lie still, pushing her back against the buggy seat.

The woman tried to resist, but the effort was too much. Instead her dirty-nailed hands clutched at Ann's gown. “My land,” she whimpered, her shoulders shaking with great, silent sobs. “I was so close…so close.” Her voice was so faint Ann had to strain to hear it above the hot, blowing wind and the constant din of the settlers' camp. “It would have…been my turn.”

Ann pried herself loose from the woman's clutches and poured more water from the canteen onto the already damp cloth, the rolling bounce of the buggy causing her to spill some of it on her skirt. She darted a quick look ahead of them, then swung it to Jackson. “How much farther is it?” She was a doctor's daughter, but she'd never had to cope with a sick person. “She's out of her head, raving on about losing her place in line and her land. She needs quiet and rest, but I can't make her calm down.” There was an edge of panic in her voice, part of it picked up from the woman and part of it from her own sense of helplessness.

“Here.” He took a slip of paper from his pocket and handed it to Ann. “Give her that. It'll quiet her.”

“What is it?” Ann frowned at him.

“A registration certificate.” He whoaed the gray, stopping the buggy in front of an open-sided tent. “That's what she was standing in line to get so she could legally make the Run on Saturday.” He wrapped the reins around the whipstand and swung to the ground, then turned back.

“But—” She remembered the line of people standing in the blazing afternoon heat, a line that got longer instead of shorter. “—it's yours.”

His mouth twisted in a quick smile as he reached to lift the semi-conscious woman from the buggy. “I'll get another.”

He hefted the woman from the buggy seat and cradled her limp weight in his arms. Belatedly, Ann stoppered the canteen and scrambled down to join him, fighting her layers of skirts and ignoring the outstretched hand of her dismounted escort rider. The precious slip of paper was still clutched in her gloved hand when she reached Stuart's side.

“How will you get another?” she repeated. “You surely aren't going to stand in that line?”

His glance moved over her face, taking in the concern for him. The sight of it pleased him, and he toyed with the idea of letting her worry a little longer, then decided against it.

“It isn't necessary, not if you have the cash to spare to buy one. You'd be surprised how many people in that line sell their certificate after they get it, then go back and do it over again.”

“Why?” She couldn't imagine anyone enduring the agony of that line.

“To make extra money.” He carried the woman inside the tent and laid her on an empty cot. Mumbling more protests, she tried to rise, but he gently pushed her back onto the cot, then took the slip of paper from Ann and folded the woman's fingers around it. “Here's your certificate.”

With an effort the woman focused her reddened eyes on it. Relief cracked through her dirt-streaked face as all resistance went out of her.

“Thank you,” she whispered, her body shuddering with dry sobs, but there was no welling of tears in her eyes. She had none to spare.

“I'll put it in your bag.” He loosened the beaded, drawstring pouch looped around her wrist and tucked the certificate inside, then placed the reticule in her hand, closing her fingers around it. She clutched the small bag tightly to her breast and closed her eyes.

A man with shirt sleeves rolled and a checked vest straining to surround his protruding belly wandered over to the cot, mopping the perspiration that streamed down his bewhiskered jowls. With an air of disinterest, he looked down at the woman.

“Sunstroke,” he grunted, then looked at the two of them. “Are you kin?”

“No,” Ann replied. “I believe she's here alone.”

“Another single woman.” He grimaced tiredly. “It's hardest on them. Chivalry vanished out here after the first day. Now it's everyone for him—or her—self.” He ran the sweat-damp handkerchief around inside the collar of his shirt. “What's her name?”

“I don't know,” Ann realized with a trace of chagrin.

He sighed and shook his head, something wry and cynical in the smile that twisted his mouth. “I had a man die of sunstroke earlier today. We're still tryin' to find somebody that knows his name.” Then he seemed to gather up some energy. “Well, you done your share. Now I'll do what I can for her. Won't be much. I haven't got any help here. Nobody does. They all quit to make the Run and get a piece of land of their own—or die tryin'.”

He took hold of the woman's wrist, locating her pulse as he pulled a gold watch from his vest pocket and flipped it open. His air of unconcern chilled Ann. Where was his compassion? His solicitude? Sapped from him by this sweltering prairie as it had been from the others in the line?

“He's right, Mrs. Morgan. There's nothing more you can do for her.” Jackson Stuart's hand lightly gripped the back of her arm, its faintly insistent pressure urging her to leave.

She let him steer her from the tent, then halted outside its supporting poles, still within the shade of its canvas. The buffeting wind pushed at her, its breath hot like the blast from a furnace. Settlers plodded by, their heads bowed, their shoulders hunched against the wind, and their faces blurred by the haze of dust.

“All these people,” she murmured. “Half of the ones I saw in the line looked like they belonged in the infirmary. How do they endure these conditions?”

“I've been told it's worse along the Kansas border at Arkansas City. Two, maybe three times as many settlers are gathered there. In just one day fifty collapsed from the heat, and six of those died before nightfall.”

She turned to him. “Why? Why do they do it?”

His gaze was turned outward, thoughtfully surveying the scene. At her question, he directed his look to her. “For a piece of land to call their own, what else?” The corners of his mouth deepened in wry amusement. “You should see them at night, sitting around their campfires, poring over maps of the Strip, studying every wind and bend of a river or creek, deciding which plot of ground they're going to claim, tracing a route to it, then memorizing the terrain around it so they can find it once the race begins…assuming, of course, that someone else doesn't get there first. It's all they talk about—all they think about—all that keeps them going.”

“But why?” She remembered the woman he'd just carried inside—dirty, bedraggled, half-dead from the heat, yet she'd been frantic to get back in that line. She hadn't cared about her disheveled appearance or the grime and sweat that blackened her face or the agony of standing hour after hour in the full sun—not as long as she got that silly scrap of paper. “Why does it mean so much?”

He gave her a long, considering look, then once again faced the dusty scene before them. “You're looking at the losers of this country, Mrs. Morgan, the losers and the dispossessed. Former slaves from the South, and Johnny Rebs who came back to burned-out homes and Reconstruction, and the people who came west too late to get the rich lands in Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri—or else tried and failed. This is the only cheap land left for them, the only place where a man or a woman can file a homestead claim on as much as one hundred and sixty acres for as little as one dollar an acre depending on the location of their claim. This is the only chance a store clerk, a schoolteacher, or a livery boy has to own a piece of land. This whole Territory is being settled by losers. They have nowhere else to go, and they know it. If they don't get their chunk of ground here, they likely never will. That's why they're so desperate—why they cling so tenaciously to those certificates.” He paused briefly. “It's no place for the faint of heart, though.”

“No,” she murmured in absent agreement, recognizing that she was one of them. She hadn't been faint of heart, not in the beginning. When she'd married Kell, she had been as eager and excited as these people were about her new life on the frontier, thinking it would be one long adventure. “But they don't know what it's like here. They don't know how isolated, how monotonous—how very primitive it is,” she declared, inwardly longing for the life she'd left behind in Kansas City.

Jackson Stuart wasn't surprised by the undercurrents of dissatisfaction and despair in her voice. He'd pegged her from the start as an unhappy woman left too much alone. And the interest—the curiosity—she'd shown toward him outside the hotel that afternoon in Guthrie had merely confirmed it. A contented woman might have cast an admiring glance his way, but she wouldn't have been curious. More than that, she wouldn't have had that hunger for attention in her eyes.

No, the mistress of Morgan's Walk was a very lonely and unhappy woman. Which raised some very interesting possibilities.

“Why are you here?” Ann stared, recognizing that he wasn't like the others. He was too aloof, too detached from all this. Yet he'd had a registration certificate. “Is it the land you want, too?”