His gaze darted upward – and in seeing me only a few hundred yards ahead, he heeled Ranger and leaned over the animal’s muscular neck. Tears streaked my face and poured down my hovering body, wetting trails along my clothing and rolling from my hem, creating a gray mud-slick of the ground beneath my feet. Lacking control to prevent events from unfolding but knowing exactly how they would play out, I screamed anew for him to stop, both arms extended. Ranger’s strong legs were a blur of rippling motion and Axton could not see the depth of the water, now a mass of swirling energy in which he would plunge headlong and drown.
Axton!
Patricia!
Stop! Axton, stop!
“Patricia! Wake up!”
Cole’s voice, gritty with trepidation, intruded upon the dream and shredded my view of the darkening prairie and Axton and Ranger upon it. A different prairie smote my senses, this one shrouded by a bleak, predawn gray. My face was sticky with tears and I gripped Cole’s elbows, seeking reassurance. I couldn’t draw a full breath and therefore tell him I was all right. It was an outright lie, anyway. I was far from all right. I was beside myself with grief and strain, depleted and ill. I had been plagued by the dull ache of a fever for the past twenty-four hours. Cole’s concern was nearly palpable and I focused on him, shutting out the remnants of the dream.
You are a mother now, Patricia. You must set aside your despicable selfishness.
Upon seeing my open eyes, Cole exhaled a sigh of relief and lowered his forehead to my neck, gathering me close to his solid strength. He rolled to his right side, tucking me closer, bracketing my nape with one hand. We remained sheltered in the unforgiving wagon bed, over which Cole and Malcolm had stretched a crude canvas top, enough to keep the worst of the weather at bay.
“You’re burning up, love,” he murmured, resting his cheek to my temple.
I opened my mouth to tell him I was well but could not manage the words. My lips and tongue were too dry.
Just beyond the wagon I heard Malcolm Carter murmuring in a companionable fashion to my son, picturing him crouched near the crackling flames of the breakfast fire with Monty tucked in his arms. Interspersed with these sounds was the low-pitched rumble of another male voice, belonging to a man who had joined our journey only a few days ago; Blythe Tilson had in fact been awaiting our arrival at the homestead of Charley and Fannie Rawley, intending to travel north with Malcolm into Minnesota.
Exhausted and overwhelmed, I had paid little attention to the addition to our party, other than to note the most basic facts – Blythe Tilson was a giant, weathered bear of a man, whose elderly father, Edward Tilson, resided with Malcolm’s family in Landon. After many years of wandering, Blythe wished to reunite with his last remaining relative; the two Tilsons, elder and younger, had not been in one another’s company since before the War Between the States.
Though Cole and I had intended to make the journey to Minnesota alongside Malcolm, my ill health temporarily overrode those intentions. I’d heard the men discussing the situation last night, a conversation I recalled only in patches as I listened between bouts of restless dozing.
“I wish Uncle Edward was here just now,” Malcolm had said, the words undulating in slow waves to reach me in the wagon. “He’s a fine physician, one I trust with my life. He would know what was best for Patricia.”
“I won’t press on with her in this condition,” Cole pronounced, grim but resolute. “Once we reach Iowa City, I’ll get us a room in a boardinghouse. We can make the remainder of the journey when she is recovered. We can rejoin you by late summer.”
Malcolm was a long time silent – or perhaps sleep had claimed my mind for a span of time. At last he replied, “I hate to part ways. And to leave you behind in that city, in particular.”
“We haven’t been followed,” Cole said, again after a strange, disorienting lull. “We’ll be safe in town, among so many others. You and Blythe can make better time without the wagon.”
When I had first clapped eyes upon Cole Spicer last July, shortly after my initial arrival in Montana Territory, I could not drag my enchanted gaze from the magnificent sight of him. Tall and grinning, auburn hair sparking in the sun, he cut a figure such as I had never seen. I supposed my infatuation with his physicality reflected nothing so much as simple conceit, the shallow naiveté of a spoiled young woman only recently, albeit regrettably, married; Cole was Dredd Yancy’s opposite in all ways. There had been span of a time during which I would have given anything to claim every precious moment of Cole’s attention – my father’s fortune, my husband’s fortune, my very eyes. No price seemed too great for the privilege.
I was vain; foolhardy to an unforgiveable degree.
Paces away, outside in the gathering dawn, my newborn son issued a small grunt, the sort which inevitably led to full-scale cries. My nipples swelled and prickled in an immediate unspoken response to this demand. Seconds later Malcolm called in a hushed voice, “This little fella’s wantin’ his breakfast, I’d wager.”
“I’ll fetch him, love,” Cole whispered, planting a soft kiss upon my brow before extricating himself from our makeshift bed and climbing from the wagon with his
