The River Nymph (17 page)

“It’s over. I didn’t hear the sound of timber splitting. Reckon the
Nymph
made it. Good thing, because Dubois stayed aboard.”

“Oh, my God! Why?”

“He’s the captain,” Clint replied simply. “He’s never lost a boat. Doesn’t figure to start now. I saw your uncle with Ha-gadorn.
Sky got them down the creek a ways. Should be fine,” he added, knowing that would be her next question. “We’ll have to stay
here until daylight.”

She could not see him in the pitch blackness even though his voice gave away his position barely a few feet from her. “I pray
everyone is all right,” she said with a shiver.

“We were lucky. Dubois knows all the best hidey-holes along the river, places where it’s safest to ride out storms or twisters.
Long as you have time to get off the boat and onto land and lay low, chances are good you’ll make it.”

The silence between them thickened. The only sounds now were faint voices in the distance. Apparently most, if not all, had
survived the tornado. Finally, Delilah could not abide lying beside Clint, feeling the tension crackling between them. “How
long until dawn?” she asked.

“An hour, maybe less. You want to escape, don’t you, Deelie?”

She swallowed for courage. “No, but I do want to thank you for saving my life. I’ve never heard anything like that noise.
The destruction must be horrible.”

“Yes, it can be…but you don’t really want to talk about the weather now, do you? By the way, thanks accepted.” He waited,
but she uttered not a sound. He combed his wet hair from his forehead and sat up, hugging one bent knee with his arms. “Guess
I don’t want to talk about yesterday either, but we need to.”

“I waited for you until one this morning,” she replied crossly. “We can’t avoid each other for the rest of the voyage, Mr.
Daniels, but that doesn’t mean we have to continue…well, doing what we did.”

He threw back his head and laughed aloud. “Now I’m Mr. Daniels again. You really are upset that I didn’t come knocking at
your cabin door, aren’t you, Deelie?”

“I am
not
upset for that reason. I merely think you’re a coward—or worse yet, you have made the erroneous assumption that I’ll fall
into your arms any time you touch me. Well, I won’t.”

“You seemed willin’ enough yesterday. Enjoyed every minute, too, unless I’m badly mistaken.”

“You arrogant lout, if you’re fishing for compliments, I’ll grant that you possessed considerable skill,” she admitted forthrightly.

He shrugged in the dark. “Practice makes perfect, whether you’re makin’ love or playin’ cards.”

“A man like you
would
equate one with the other,” she replied with a sneer in her voice.

“Not really. Playin’ cards is a lot more important,” some inner devil made him say, knowing the remark would provoke her.

“If I could see your face, I’d claw that smirk right off it. But I suppose I should be grateful you’ve revealed your true
nature. I’m certain you’ve had as much
practice
with your harlot Eva as with a deck of cards. When we return to St. Louis, you can go back to shuffling her.”

Since he hadn’t shared Eva’s bed after meeting Delilah, that struck a nerve. “Eva is my business associate at the Bud. She
has nothing to do with us. But I am afraid we won’t be able to resist temptation while we’re cooped up on the
Nymph
.”

“What do you mean,
we
?” she asked sweetly. “I won’t become your temporary paramour, a—a convenience.”

“Sounds as if you want a more permanent arrangement…like a weddin’,” he drawled. Intuition told him she did not mean
that, but who knew with a woman like her?

“You are the last man alive I’d marry—if I ever intended to tie myself to a man again—which I do not.” Her voice was as calm
as she could make it. All the snappishness and something else she refused to recognize, she kept hidden.

“Ah, Deelie, what are we gonna do? I certainly desire you. And, considerin’ yesterday, we both know you desire me. Now, before
you get your feathers all ruffled, be honest.”

She let out a long whispery sigh of capitulation. “Just because I enjoyed what we did doesn’t mean I have to repeat it.”

“You think your uncle and my little sister will give up?”

“We’ll just have to be wary of their schemes from here on. Forewarned, you do possess the intelligence for that, don’t you?”

Clint suddenly realized this was not the answer he had hoped she would give. “I’ll try, Mrs. Raymond,” he replied. “All either
of us can do is try.”

The River Nymph
miraculously received little damage from the night twister. A few canvas covers had been ripped from the cargo on the open
main deck, but that was quickly repaired. Nothing had been swept overboard and no crew or passengers had been seriously injured
in the mad rush to shore. One roustabout sprained his ankle when he jumped into the shallows and a burly farmer bound for
the gold fields broke a tooth when he fell over a tree root in the dark.

Sky had found Horace amid the confusion and kept him safe, much to Delilah’s relief. Everything returned to normal when they
pushed off upriver the next day…or almosteverything. Clint and Delilah acted as if nothing had changed between them,
but Horace and Sky sensed a strange truce. No more of his teasing or her snappish replies. They worked smoothly, crossing
paths as little as possible.

She checked inventory lists when cargo was unloaded and passengers were added to the growing roster. He assisted the first
mate, overseeing the roustabouts as they hauled goods to shore. Clint collected the money due them and Delilah tallied their
profits. They were civil to each other at the dinner table, but Clint often ate with the roustabouts on the lower deck, saying
he had too much work to dine formally. Mr. Iversen’s infected tooth made him violently ill. When they reached a doctor in
Sioux City, he was told he was too sick to continue the trip. After they paid him what he was owed, Clint assumed his duties.

Within days they reached Dakota Territory, and the landscape evolved gradually, growing more stark and wild. The river became
shallower. No more high bluffs but wide, treacherous shoals lay hidden, waiting like the Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho who had
the past winter refused an army ultimatum to go meekly to reservations or face the wrath of the Great White Father inWashington.
But it was not the government or even the ruthless little general, Phil Sheridan, who would attack the tribes. Commander of
the Missouri Sheridan issued orders to a lieutenant colonel who had advanced his career by massacring high plains horse Indians.

They called him Long Hair.

Aboard the
Nymph,
Captain Dubois and Clint knew little about the army’s battle plans for that spring but were aware of the long-standing antipathy
of the tribes toward the fire canoes that brought soldiers and supplies for the invading hordes of whites. The steamers also
brought disease, the inadvertent and fatal accompaniment of government-issued trade goods. In return for buffalo hides the
natives often received blankets contaminated with smallpox or whooping cough, a certain death sentence for people with no
natural immunity to white illnesses.

Although the Ehanktonwons, or Yanktons, as the whites misnamed them, had been pacified and placed on reservations, most of
the Sioux tribes and their allies still roamed free and often attacked steamers. Every time they rounded a bend in the river
or slowed for shallow water for fear of running aground, Clint, Horace and crewmen who were proficient with firearms watched
the shoreline apprehensively, anticipating ambush. The same was true when they had to pull over to refuel or tie up for the
night. Guards patrolled the decks and kept watch from the wheelhouse for any signs of hostiles.

At a wood stop near the mouth of the White River, Delilah was finishing a count of men who had paid for passage to the Montana
gold fields when a loud commotion drew her away from her work. She heard the captain’s voice from above call out a warning.
It was quickly followed by the sounds of guttural cries in a foreign language. Dropping her pen, she dashed out onto the deck.
Clint strode slowly down the gangplank after ordering the crew back toward the boat.

The men backed up as a large party of Indians followed them, some mounted, most dismounted. The hostiles shouted what she
knew must be insults, even though she couldn’t understand a word. “They’re spoiling for a fight,” she said to Sky, who looked
worried when Clint, armed to the teeth, stood on the bank while the crew returned to the boat.

“Let Clint handle them, my dear. He’s familiar with their ways,” Horace said, although he carried his Colt rifle. “Perhaps
it might be wise for you ladies to remain indoors.”

“They’re Teton Sioux. Renegades, and they’re demanding whiskey,” Sky said, showing Horace and Delilah the cus-tomized Winchester
Yellow Boy she had partially concealed in the folds of her skirt. “I’m a very good shot, Uncle Horace.”

“As am I,” Delilah said, turning swiftly back to her cabin for the Hopkins & Allen .32-caliber revolver that she seldom carried
on her person because of its long barrel.

Sighing, Horace said, “Let us hope your brother can defuse the situation before it escalates.”

“We should never have brought that whiskey,” Delilah said as she returned with her weapon ready to fire if necessary.

“I doubt they know whether or not we have contraband aboard,” Horace replied dryly.

“He’s right,” Sky said. “They look for any excuse to fight. Nothing would make them happier than to burn a fire canoe to the
waterline.”

“There is some justification for their anger,” Horace replied with a reflective expression on his face.

“Not
my
fire canoe,” Delilah said, her eyes never leaving Clint, who made a broad gesture with one hand. “What’s he saying to them?”
she asked Sky.

“He is introducing himself as Lightning Hand, an Ehank-tonwon. He calls them cousins.”

“We hear of you, great Pawnee killer,” the leader of the Tetons said in a loud voice in English. He crossed his arms over
his chest and gave a proud smirk. “I see your squaws with weapons. They must not trust you to fight for them. And they are
very pretty. Two fine ponies for the one with fire in her hair,” he said, pointing at Delilah. “I want her for my blankets.”

“I will give two ponies for the other,” the man standing next to him said in their own language.

Sky’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “They’ve insulted us. A healthy young woman is worth at least a dozen ponies.”

Delilah gasped, giddy with fear, uncertain whether to laugh or be as angry as her friend.

Clint answered the chief. “White men—even those who have lived as Ehanktonwon—do not sell their women. You know this. We have
no firewater to trade either. Go in peace.”

“No! We will have whiskey first. Then we leave,” the leader reiterated. The men around him began to murmur restively. Farther
back, those on horses scattered across the riverbank, waiting to see what would happen. One of the roustabouts reappeared
with several sticks of dynamite and matches.

“What on earth…” Horace said in a low voice as the man handed the volatile materials to Clint, who had obviously asked
him to fetch them.

“As I said, my canoe does not carry firewater, but we do carry fire sticks, and these I will share with you.” Clint struck
a match, then touched the flame to the wick on one stick of dynamite. He appeared to admire it calmly for what seemed an eternity
to Delilah and the others.

“What on earth is he doing? Is he insane?” she asked of no one in particular.

Then Clint said to the young chief, “Look you.”

With that, he threw the lighted explosive between two of the mounted warriors some distance up the bank. Their horses shied
when the dynamite exploded, gouging a big hole in the soft earth, sending dirt and rocks flying all around them. A small crater
remained where the stick had landed. A collective gasp and murmurs of astonishment echoed through the assembly of Tetons.

Very calmly, Clint lit a second stick with a slightly longer fuse. “Let us smoke this fire stick as cousins. Very strong medicine.”
He stuck it in his mouth as if it were a cigar, rolled it around, then extended it to the leader. “Now you puff.”

The chief’s eyes grew round and his dark skin paled noticeably. He stepped back, as if Daniels had offered him a live rattler.
“The Grandfather Spirit has touched this one. Let us leave him in peace as he has said!” he commanded his followers in their
own language.

From above, Delilah, Sky and Horace watched the stampede that ensued when Clint tossed the second fire stick. The Tetons raced
up the bank, some chasing horses that had already run off in terror, others leaping on their mounts to gallop away. Clint
followed on foot, laughing as if he were indeed touched.

“What did their leader say?” Delilah asked Sky.

“He said my brother has been touched by God. It’s their way of saying…saying he’s crazy. Most tribes honor those who
are insane—and yet avoid them as bad medicine,” Sky replied reluctantly.

“Come back, Cousins!” Clint lit another stick and again tossed it where no warriors were too close. “See, there are fire sticks
for everyone!”

A third explosion rent the muddy ground, scattering horses and Indians. One rider was thrown from the back of his terrified
pony and quickly jumped up to pursue the fleeing animal. Across the prairie braves were trying to control bucking horses or
simply running away from the boat as fast as humanly possible. Several tripped and fell, only to bound up and continue the
mad dash.

“He looks as if he’s actually enjoying this,” Delilah said incredulously. “He could be blown to bits!” She watched in horrified
fascination while Clint threw back his head and laughed wildly, shouting in a mixture of English and Sioux as he continued
to lob the dynamite. “Do not flee, Cousins. Come back and smoke with Lightning Hand!”

Sky looked down at the deck, a worried frown creasing her brow. Horace said in a low voice, “I begin to understand why you
feel it would be judicious for your brother to return to St. Louis.”