mumbled another oath, took her by the shoulders and pointed in the opposite direction. “That way’s east, Duchess.”
“Of course.” She stepped back. “Thank you again, Mr. Redman, for all your help. And good day,” she added before she closed the door in his face.
She could hear him swearing at her as he unhitched the horses. If she hadn’t been so weary, she might have been amused. She was certainly too exhausted to be shocked by the words he used. If she was going to stay, she was going to have to become somewhat accustomed to rough manners. She peeled off her jacket.
And, she was going to stay. If this was all she had left, she was going to make the best of it. Somehow.
She moved to the rounded opening beside the door that served as a window. From there she watched Jake ride away. He’d left her the wagon and stabled the rented horses with her father’s two. For all the good it did her, Sarah thought with a sigh. She hadn’t the vaguest idea of how to hitch a team, much less how to drive one.
She continued to watch Jake until he was nothing but a cloud of dust fading in the distance. She was alone. Truly alone. She had no one, and little more than nothing.
No one but herself, she thought. And if she had only that and a mud hut, she’d find a way to make the best of it. Nobody-and certainly not Jake Redman-was going to frighten her away.
Turning, she unbuttoned her cuffs and rolled up her sleeves. The good sisters had always claimed that simple hard work eased the mind and cleansed the soul. She was about to put that claim to the test.
She found the letters an hour later. When she came across them in the makeshift loft that served as a bedroom she wiped her grimy hands as best as she could on the embroidered apron she’d dug out of one of her trunks.
He’d kept them. From the first to the last she’d written, her father had kept her letters to him. The tears threatened again, but she willed them back. Tears would do neither of them any good now. But, oh, it helped more than she could ever have explained that he’d kept her letters. To know now, when she would never see him again, that he had thought of her as she had thought of him.
He must have received the last, the letter telling nun she was coming to be with him, shortly before his death. Sarah hadn’t mailed it until she’d been about to board the train. She’d told herself it was because she wanted to surprise him, but she’d also wanted to be certain he wouldn’t have time to forbid her to come. Would you have, Papa? she wondered. Or would you finally have been willing to share the truth with me? Had he thought her too weak, too fragile, to share the life he’d chosen? Was she?
Sighing, she looked around. Four bedrooms, and a parlor with the, windows facing west, she thought with a quiet laugh. Well, according to Jake Redman, the window did indeed face west. The house itself was hardly bigger than the room she’d shared with Lucilla at school. It was too small, certainly, for all she’d brought with her from Philadelphia, but she’d managed to drag the trunks into one corner. To please herself, she’d taken out a few of her favorite things- one of her wildflower sketches, a delicate blue glass perfume bottle, a pretty petit-point pillow and the china-faced doll her father had sent her for her twelfth birthday.
They didn’t make it home, not yet. But they helped. Setting the letters back in the tin box beside the bed, she rose. She had practical matters to think about now.
The first was money. After paying the five dollars, she had only twenty dollars left. She hadn’t a clue to how long that would keep her, but she doubted it would be very long. Then there was food. That was of immediate concern. She’d found some flour, a few cans of beans, some lard and a bottle of whiskey. Pressing a hand to her stomach, Sarah decided she’d have to make do with the beans. All she had to do now was to figure out how to start a fire in the battered-looking stove.
She found a few twigs in the wood box, and a box of matches. It took her half an hour, a lot of frustration and a few words the sisters would never have approved of before she was forced to admit she was a failure.
Jake Redman. Disgusted, she scowled at the handful of charred twigs. The least the man could have done was to offer to start a cook fire for her and fetch some water. She’d already made the trip down to the stream and back once, managing to scrounge out half a bucket from its stingy trickle.
She’d eat the beans cold. She’d prove to Jake Redman that she could do very well for herself, by herself. Sarah unsheathed her father’s bowie knife, shuddered once at the sight of the vicious blade, then plunged it into the lid of the can until she’d made an opening. Too hungry to care, she sat beside the small stone hearth and devoured the beans.
She’d think of it as an adventure, she told herself.
One she could write about to her friends in Philadelphia. A better one, she decided as she looked around the tiny, clean cabin, than those in the penny dreadfuls Lucilla had gotten from the library and hidden in their room.
In those, the heroine had usually been helpless, a victim waiting for the hero to rescue her in any of a dozen dashing manners. Sarah scooped out more beans. Well, she wasn’t helpless, and as far as she could tell there wasn’t a hero within a thousand miles. No one would have called Jake Redman heroic- though he’d certainly looked it when he’d ridden beside the coach. He was insulting and ill-mannered. He had cold eyes and a hot temper. Hardly Sarah’s idea of a hero. If she had to be rescued-and she certainly didn’t-she’d prefer someone smoother, a cavalry officer, perhaps. A man who carried a saber, a gentleman’s weapon.
When she’d finished the beans, she hiccuped, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and leaned back against the hearth only to lose her balance when a stone gave way. Nursing a bruised elbow, she shifted. She would have replaced the stone, but something caught her eye. Crouching again, she reached into the small opening that was now exposed and slowly pulled out a bag.
With her lips caught tight between her teeth, she poured gold coins into her lap. Two hundred and thirty dollars. Sarah pressed both hands to her mouth, swallowed, then counted again. There was no mistake. She hadn’t known until that moment how much money could mean. She could buy decent food, fuel, whatever she needed to make her way.
She poured the coins back into the bag and dug into the hole again. This time she found the deed to Sarah’s Pride.
What an odd man he must have been, she thought. To hide his possessions beneath a stone.
The last and most precious item she discovered in the hiding place was her father’s journal. It delighted her. The small brown book filled with her father’s cramped handwriting meant more to Sarah than all the gold coins in Arizona. She hugged it to her as she’d wanted to hug her father. Before she rose with it, she replaced the gold and the deed under the stone. She would read about one of his days each evening. It would be like a gift, something that each day would bring her a little closer to this man she’d never really known. For now she would go back to the stream, wash as best she could and gather water for the morning. Jake watched her come out of the cabin with a pail in one hand and a lantern in the other. He’d made himself as comfortable as he needed to be among the rocks. There had been enough jerky and hardtack in his saddlebag to make a passable supper. Not what he’d planned on, exactly, but passable.
He’d be damned if he could figure out why he’d decided to keep an eye on her. The lady wasn’t his problem. But even as he’d been cursing her and steering his horse toward town, he’d known he couldn’t just ride off and leave her there alone.
Maybe it was because he knew what it was to lose everything. Or because he’d been alone himself for more years then he cared to remember. Or maybe, damn her, it had something to do with the way she’d looked coming down that bluff with her bonnet trailing by the ribbons and tears still drying on her face. He hadn’t thought he had a weak spot. Certainly not where women were concerned. He shoved himself to his feet. He just didn’t have anything better to do.
He stayed well behind her. He knew how to move silently, over rock, through brush, in sunlight or in the dark of the moon. That was both a matter of survival and a matter of blood. In his youth he’d spent some years with his grandmother’s people and he’d learned more than any white man could have learned in a lifetime about tracking without leaving a mark, about hunting without making a sound.
As for the woman, she was still wearing that fancy skirt with the bustle and shoes that were made for city sidewalks rather than rough ground. Twice Jake had to stop and wait, or even at a crawl he’d have caught up with her.
Probably break an ankle before she was through, he thought. That might be the best thing that could happen to her. Then he’d just cart her on back to town. Couldn’t say he’d mind too much picking her up again. She
