God, Sarah, don’t.
Even the bitter wind was savage as it gusted at her, bringing smells of grass, old manure, and the threat of frost.
The journey west had proven a great deal more arduous than Sarah had anticipated. The youthful enthusiasm with which she and Bret had left Atchison, Kansas, had rapidly dwindled. First had come the rude realization that riding inside a Concord coach was akin to being the target of a sparring pugilist. Suspended only on thick leather straps, she’d been jostled, bounced, banged, and slammed around the inside. On occasion the jolt was severe enough to send her airborne to land in her fellow travelers’ laps if she were lucky, or to smack into the window frames were she not.
She hadn’t been this battered and sore since she’d escaped from Dewley’s camp.
The trip had rapidly devolved into a contest of physical endurance. The food had been reasonable—if not outstanding—in the home stations on the eastern leg. But after Junction City, it had declined to rancid bacon boiled in a pot of beans with the occasional venison or buffalo steak.
Sarah had marked their progress by the station names: Ellsworth, Buffalo Creek, Fossil Creek, Downer, Henshaw’s Springs, and finally Camp Pond Creek. Here their Concord coach had been held up for a day to await the coach traveling a day behind them. For the two days prior, the eastbound coaches had failed to arrive. A sure sign of trouble.
Their driver, a bandy-legged man named Mapleton, had stared warily about, then scratched his bearded chin. “Won’t bother me a bit to hole up here until Rep Barker’s coach ketches up. And having them twenty so’jers along? That gives us nigh on forty guns. Jest hope y’all can shoot.”
The arrival at Willow Spring had proven everyone’s worst fears.
“What do you think?” Bret asked, stepping up beside her to stare out at the darkening grasslands.
“Wondering if we were fools, Bret.” She rubbed her hands on the back of her arms. “You’ve heard the same stories I have from the eastbound coaches. And if you have any doubts just step over yonder and look what’s left of those two boys they’re burying.”
“All of life’s a gamble,” he told her softly. “But if you’re that scared, we can turn back.”
She took a deep breath, fought a shiver from the chill. “I can shoot straighter than most men. Like Mapleton says, we’ve got forty guns.” She chuckled nervously. “Funny what life comes down to sometimes, isn’t it?”
She could feel the danger out there in the dark, smell it on the biting west wind. And what if the damned Sioux did manage to surround the coach, disable it? There’d be one hell of a fight. She’d save her last shot for herself. What did she have to live for anyway?
The band of gold on her ring finger still felt odd. Back in Atchison she had asked, “What are people going to think, Bret? A man and a woman traveling together? I say we act like we’re married.”
He had studied her through those liquid brown eyes. “It would make things easier. I have a ring, something I won someplace. No idea if it will fit.”
She fingered the gold band as she considered the darkening Kansas night. All of her childhood dreams of marriage to a prominent gentleman and a grand house? Her fine dresses? The servants? The elegant parties she had intended to host? Well, here she was in the middle of dark and bloody Kansas, faking marriage to a rootless gambler.
God had to be laughing until His guts ached.
The wind flipped her hair back and pressed her skirt against her long legs. “I’d swear, Bret, I can almost feel them out there. I grew up with Indians. Cherokee, Choctaw, and some Chickasaw. But, seeing those men…”
Images flashed behind her eyes, cold fear clutching at her. As if in an instant she was back on the cliff, bending down as Dewley screamed.
She shivered, only to be reassured when Bret pulled her against him. “It was … I was…” She swallowed hard. “That’s what Billy did. What I did when I cut Dewley apart. I didn’t burn them alive. But I was back. Seeing it all again.” She looked at him, adding, “I’m no damn different than a savage Indian, Bret.”
“I’ve been wondering if this was the right decision. It sounded so easy. Eight days and we’d be in Denver. Able to start over. I didn’t know we’d be walking right into a war.”
“This is worse than Yankees and Rebels. The Sioux and Cheyenne want us dead, and we want them dead. Ain’t gonna be no surrender. Won’t be like the Cherokee, dispossessed by that lying cheat Andrew Jackson. This is blood and pain and death to the last.”
“Cooler heads may well prevail in the end. Not all—”
“You and your Yankee Boston mind don’t understand, Bret.” She paused, guts gone hollow. “But I do. I lived it.”
Another gust of wind rocked her; Bret stood so as to shield her with the flap of his coat. “We’ll be all right now, Mrs. Anderson.”
“I just have a premonition, Bret. That’s all.”
“Claiming future sight now, Mrs. Anderson?”
She glanced up at him, imagining more than seeing his smile in the darkness. “You’re enjoying that, aren’t you?”
He paused for a moment. “I know it’s a sham, Sarah. But if you could ever feel comfortable with me, trust me enough, I would make it real.”
She stepped away from him, turning to study him in the darkness. “Bret, I’m not sure I could ever…”
“I don’t need your body, my dear. Men and women have made marriages without carnal relations. They have loved each other dearly for the enjoyment they took in simply sharing each other’s company.”
For a moment she couldn’t breathe, then forced herself to fill her lungs. The mere act of doing so seemed to break the spell. “Bret, you need to find some fine and decent woman, one who can fulfill a man’s needs. Give you children, build a home. You don’t want a ruin
