Page 10 of Wild Sweet Wilderness (Missouri #1)

The sun was lighting the eastern sky and daylight was seeping through the trees when Simon rode into the yard, dismounted, and unsaddled his tired horse.

He too was tired, and irritable and anxious to know what had happened while he was away.

He turned the horse into the poled enclosure, measured out a scoop of grain, and poured it into the feedbox.

He stood beside the horse for a moment and wondered once again how he had allowed himself to become involved in the affairs of these two women.

There was no activity around the double cabin.

The entire homestead was quiet except for the scolding of Fain’s pet crow, which sat on the wood-chopping stump.

Israel and Eben, a black freedman who worked for Fain, were hunkered down before a cookfire at the edge of the clearing where the Warfield wagons were parked.

Simon headed for the small log house set back in the trees.

It was a ramshackle affair put there by a settler years before who had decided that frontier life wasn’t for him and had given up the land to return East.

Simon changed course abruptly, swung on his heel, and went to the big cabin.

He would find out for himself how the women had fared.

The door of the cabin was ajar.

He pushed it open and went inside.

In the dim light he could see Berry asleep in the chair and Rachel on the bed.

She was so still that he felt a shiver of dread slice through him.

He placed his hat on the table and went closer. A baby was sleeping in the curve of her arm. Her eyelids fluttered open.

“It’s all over?”

He bent low to whisper.

“Yes.”

Rachel folded back the blanket so he could see the baby’s face. “A girl.”

Her look was tender and filled with love.

Simon looked down at the baby.

She was red and wrinkled and reminded him of a dried persimmon.

My God! he thought. She’s been through all that pain and agony to get this! He was silent for a moment, trying to find words. Finally he said cautiously, “She’s got lots of hair.”

“Fain says she’s got ever’thin’ she’s suppose to have. We’ve named her Faith.”

“Biedy’ll be fit to be tied when she gets here and finds out she’s missed out on all the doings.”

He smiled and small lines fanned out from the corners of his eyes. He glanced toward the chair where Berry was sleeping.

Rachel caught the look.

“She’s tired. She’s not had much sleep for two nights. She was cross today because she was worn out . . . and after what happened at the wagon grounds.”

“I’ll put her on the bunk. There’s no reason why she can’t sleep the morning away, if you can last awhile without her help.”

“I’ll get by if you’ll lay that stack of cloth over where I can reach it.”

Simon knelt in front of Berry, removed her shoes, and held her slender foot in his hand.

He noticed her carefully mended stockings and the worn thinness of her dress.

His mind flashed to the fine stockings and soft kid slippers in his storehouse in Saint Louis.

His eyes searched every feature of her face.

He had not had this opportunity to look his fill of her face before.

He thought of her laugh tinkling like a wind chime and her eyes flashing brightly.

He felt the same unfamiliar feeling, the urge to protect and cherish her, that he had felt the night he kissed her.

It was not a purely unselfish emotion that possessed him.

He wanted to love her in every way a man could love a woman and to satisfy his own lust as well.

What’s wrong with that? he questioned his conscience, then tried to put the thought from his mind.

It was all happening too fast. Did he want his life, his peace of mind, his future tied up with this slip of a girl?

He scooped her up in his arms as if she weighed no more than a small child.

Her head drooped to his shoulder and her breath came warm and moist on his neck.

Wisps of her hair clung to his rough cheeks.

She smelled like warm sweetened tea, but like hickory smoke, too.

Her body was soft and light and he carried her easily to the bunk at the end of the room.

“Simon . . . ?”

The word came out on a breath. Her head fell back on his arm when he lowered her to the bed. She opened drowsy, green eyes.

“I’m not asleep.”

He remained hunkered down beside the bunk, his arms still around her.

“Playin’ possum, huh?”

“I’m sorry I called you a . . . mule’s ass.”

“Well, that’s something for a stubborn little mule to admit.”

He chuckled.

“That mouth of yours is going to get you in trouble someday.”

“It already has. Simon . . . ? Thanks for coming to find us. I didn’t think you would . . . didn’t think you wanted to be bothered.”

“I came as soon as I heard about your pa.”

Simon felt trembly on the inside. His arms were still around her and he was terribly conscious of the thinness of her dress between them. He felt the warmth radiating from her and drank it in like a man thirsting for water in the desert. He had tried to ignore the realization earlier, but it kept coming back to him, washing over him like a wave—he was beginning to care for this woman!

“I didn’t know what the old woman was like or I’d not have brought her here.”

He wanted to say something, anything, in order to be with her for a little longer.

“The old woman acted plumb queer. At least I never heard of such as she was doin’ to Rachel. The girl was pretty.”

Berry’s eyes were wide open and looking directly into his. She thought she felt his arms tighten but couldn’t be sure.

“Uh-huh.”

“What’s her name?”

“Della. That’s what her pa called her.”

“Where is their homestead?”

“On down the river. They were just camping by the creek for a while. The old woman’s man was sickly. They’ll be moving on in a day or two.”

Simon hoped that what he was saying was making sense because his mind was really on his desire to kiss her moist lips, now slightly parted.

“Do you think their land is anywhere near ours? Rachel will be able to travel by the end of the week. We’ve got a lot to do before winter.”

“Berry . . .”

It was the first time he could remember saying her name aloud.

“Forget about taking up land. You couldn’t possibly improve on a homestead enough to get title even if the land commissioners would allow it.”

“They wouldn’t even know about it, if some busybody didn’t tell them.”

Her green eyes turned frosty, and the hand that rested on his chest fell away.

“The gossip would reach them. Every man within a hundred miles would know two young unmarried women were alone on a homestead,”

he said in flat tones.

“How do you think you’re going to protect yourself from the likes of Linc Smith back there in the back of nowhere?”

“I’ll shoot him!”

Berry said staunchly.

“I can find a place for you to stay in Saint Louis. Ernest Wenst, who works for . . .”

“No!”

Berry pushed against his chest to move away from him. His arms held and his hand moved to her chin to hold it in place while he glared at her.

“You stubborn little fool!”

Simon raised his voice. In his anger he forgot about Rachel at the other end of the room.

“Don’t wake Rachel,”

Berry hissed through clenched teeth because his fingers tightened on her chin.

“If you cared so all-fired much about Rachel you wouldn’t be so determined to drag her off to a homestead where she’ll either starve or be taken by rivermen or Indians.”

He said the words as if they were curses.

“You listen . . . little miss stubborn know-it-all. I’m not running after you again. I’ve got a business to look after, I’ve got my land, and I’m going to go upriver with . . .”

“Get your hands off me, you . . . mule’s ass! I never asked you to run after me! Get your hands off . . or I’ll hit you in the mouth!”

“You do and I’ll pound your butt so hard you won’t sit on it for a week! Better yet . . .”

He closed her mouth with his.

His face shut out the fury in her green eyes and his arms crushed her to his chest so that there was not a hair’s breadth between them.

His kiss was long and deep, and slow heat seeped into her body from her mouth to the tip of her toes.

The pressure of his lips opened hers and she gave herself up to the shivers of excitement as his tongue slipped inside.

She forgot to struggle, forgot Rachel at the end of the room, forgot how angry she was.

She remembered only the sweetness of his last kiss and how she had yearned just for this.

The fingers that left her chin closed warmly, caressingly over her breast.

Small fires began to build in that private part of her that ached to be fulfilled, and unaccustomed wetness seeped from the apex of her being.

His tongue penetrated the sweet hollow of her mouth, exploring, tickling, stroking her lips, teeth, and the roof of her mouth.

Berry returned the caresses freely, her inhibitions lost in the wave of longing she felt for him.

Her hand moved up his arm to his shoulder and on to press against the back of his neck.

Inquisitive, slender fingers combed the soft texture of his hair and circled the curve of his ear.

He raised his lips a little away from hers.

She opened her eyes to find him looking down at her with a hot intensity that made her heartbeat quicken even more. His eyes were so dark, so close, she could see hers reflected there. She smiled.

Simon gazed long and hard into eyes that shone like shimmering green pools, at a soft red mouth, parted and puffed from the pressure of his.

His fingers were moving gently on the nape of his neck, causing feelings of possessive, rueful tenderness to wash over him.

He lowered his mouth and placed small, light kisses on her lips, her cheeks, her eyes.

His emotions were in an uproar.

He wanted to shake her and he wanted to make love to her in a way he had never loved a woman before.

“You bullheaded, stubborn little ... baggage!”

he said through gritted teeth.

“You make me so mad I want to shake your teeth out!”

“Why?”

Soft giggles blew from her lips.

“You know why,”

he murmured against her mouth.

She felt the quiver in his arms, the pounding of his heart against her own. Elation that she could cause this great body to tremble sliced through her, and her hand tightened at the back of his neck. She gloried in the warmth of his chest pressed against her breasts.

“I . . . did it again!”

It was impossible to have coherent thoughts while he was holding her like this.

“Did what?”

“Called you a mule’s ass!”

He grinned, his nose almost touching hers, his eyes brightened by the sparkle in hers.

“Sometimes I think you’re right about that.”

He stood when Fain pushed open the door and came into the room.

“I heard ya ride in.”

Fain’s glance took in the fact that Simon had been kneeling beside the bunk where Berry lay.

“I wasn’t trying to keep it a secret,”

Simon said with a tinge of irritation in his voice. He snatched his hat off the table.

“I’m hungry. Seems like I haven’t eaten since Christmas.”

“I’ll fix you . . .”

Berry swung her feet off the bunk and sat up.

“Stay where you are,”

he snapped.

“I’ll rustle up something.”

He was out the door before Berry could get to her feet.

Fain came across the room chuckling. Something was definitely eating at his friend Simon. Then he forgot everything but the picture before him—Rachel with the baby lying in the crook of her arm.

“You ’n’ Faith a-makin’ out all right?”

Faith had awakened while Simon talked with Berry. Wanting to give them as much privacy as possible, Rachel had turned her back to them and put the baby to her breast. Now she flipped the cover up and over the baby’s face.

Fain sat on the edge of the bunk, leaned over, and stroked the baby’s fine, silky hair with his fingertips, but his eyes were on Rachel’s face. He seemed not to notice the faint pink color that had come up under her skin, making her cheeks seem to glow.

“You’re lookin’ better, lass.”

Rachel could think of nothing to say. Her hand fluttered up to sweep the hair back from her face.

“I feel a heap better,”

she finally managed. She wished he hadn’t sat down on the edge of the bed. She wished he would go and she hoped he would stay. What she really wanted was for her stupid heart to settle down so she could think before she made a fool of herself.

“Fish is fixing up some vittles.”

Fain chuckled. It was beginning to be a familiar sound.

“He’s cookin’ up a mess of eggs and deer meat. He’s a good hand at it. Says my cookin’ ain’t fit for the hogs. You eat all them eggs he brings ya. That’ll put some strength back.”

“Eggs? I’ve not had eggs since we left Ohio. I can’t just eat eggs. You’d better save them for a pie or a puddin’.”

“You eat the eggs, lass. There’ll be more for puddin’, if’n you’ll make it. I’d not want to turn Fish loose on a puddin’.”

His eyes were laughing down into hers and Rachel forgot her embarrassment.

“Biedy’ll be here late this evenin’. That is, if’n they got a good start. Then the fur will fly! She’s the beatin’est woman you ever did see. Beatin’est and talkin’est. Ever’time she comes she scrubs and cleans till thin’s is in such a mess I can’t find a thing. But she cooks, too. And when she goes we got pies ’n’ bread ’n’ dumplin’s a-comin’ out our ears. She’ll come loaded, too. Always brings me a crock of butter ’n’ sometimes hominy. She knows my fondness for it.”

“She sounds like a nice woman.”

“She is . . . if’n ya can stand her chatter.”

From the laughter in his eyes, Rachel knew he was teasing, and that he would tease only about someone he was fond of.

“Is this your sleeping room?”

“Usually. The other part is the eatin’ room. We work on the guns in here some. I’m a gunsmith and part-time farmer ’cause I have to improve on my land. Right now I’m tryin’ to teach Fish the gunsmith trade.”

“We don’t want to misput you. We can move out to the wagons.”

“You’ll stay right here, lass. I like seein’ ya here. You ’n’ this little button here.”

His voice had turned gruff and his hand cupped the baby’s small behind through the covers.

“Wal . . . I’d best get on out and see to it Simon don’t eat ever’thin’ includin’ the table.”

He stood, and it seemed to Rachel that his presence filled the room. Unaware that she was doing so, her hand reached for his and was engulfed tightly. She gazed at him with soft, caring eyes.

“Thank you.”

The words formed on her lips but couldn’t seem to pass the large cotton ball in her throat. He understood. The words hovered between them for a moment, then he dropped her hand and walked quickly from the room.

* * *

A sense of elation stayed with Berry throughout the morning.

She was sure that Simon liked her, maybe even loved her. He had liked holding her and kissing her—if not, why had his heart pounded and his month drunk from hers as if he couldn’t get enough of her? Every word he had said danced through her head. Even when he called her a stubborn little baggage he had grinned afterward. No, she cautioned herself. Don’t make too much out of the fact he liked kissing you. He offered to court you once, and nothing came of that.

After breakfast Berry shut and barred the door and washed herself and Rachel. She wanted to wash her hair but had to content herself with a good brisk brushing. She put on a clean shift and dress, then bent over at the waist and worked her fingers through her hair until it hung loosely from the top of her head. She whirled it around in a coil, like a rope, and swirled it around on top of her head and fastened it with two smooth wooden pins.

“I saw a wash pot in the yard. I’ll get ever’thin’ washed before we move on.”

Berry rolled the stained cloth from Rachel’s bed and the damp padding from the baby in a tight bundle.

“I’ll put this in the wagon until I can wash it.”

Rachel raised herself on her elbow and peered out the open door.

“It’s a beautiful, sunny day for a washing,”

she said wistfully.

“Fain seems fond of this woman Biedy. It’s good of her to come all this way to help us.”

“I’ll clean before she gets here. We don’t want her to think we’re slack-handed.”

Rachel lay back and sighed.

“This is a nice tight cabin. My, my . . . I never expected to see glass windows way out here.”

“The room on the other side of the dogtrot is just as big as this one and there’s a window in it, too. I wonder why he built the rooms so big.”

“He’s a big man,”

Rachel said shyly, and looked down at the baby to keep from looking at Berry.

“The place looks settled. He’s got chickens and a smokehouse. He’s got a garden in and fruit trees are blooming. It’s a sightly place.”

“The water is so good. It don’t taste like river water.”

“That’s because there’s a spring out back.”

“He makes guns.”

Rachel smiled, and it spread a warm light into her eyes.

“I thought that we were a bother, that he would want to work in here, but he says . . . not.”

Berry darted a quick look at Rachel and caught the blush on her cheeks. Was it possible that Rachel liked Fain in . . .that way? Berry’s eyes darted around the cozy room while she tried to get her thoughts together.

“Well . . .”

she said after a long pause, “it’s . . . good of him to say so, but we’ll move on soon as we can. We don’t want to wear out our welcome.”

* * *

It was late in the afternoon when a shout came from the direction of the river and an answering halloo issued from the homestead. Berry stepped out to the end of the dogtrot and watched two men in buckskins and a small woman walk up the steep grade toward the cabin. Fain walked out to meet them. One of the men was tall with cotton-white hair; the other was slimmer and smaller, with a drooping mustache curled down at each side of his mouth.

The woman was small and quick. Berry couldn’t see her face for the stiff-brimmed bonnet she wore tied in a jaunty bow beneath her chin, but she could hear her voice. It went on and on, interspersed with small trills of musical laughter. The men each carried a pack and a long gun, the woman something wrapped in a cloth. She shoved the bundle into Fain’s hands the instant they met.

“My, my, my, Fain! I never thought I’d be a-comin’ to a birthin’ at your place. Sakes alive! There’s somethin’ a-happenin’ all the time. Silas and the boys woulda brung me, but seein’ as how Jeff and Will was a-comin’ this way, I just come on with ’em. Lordy mercy! What a ride! I swear they was a-tryin’ to drown me. They shoved that boat this-a-way and that-a-way ’n’ ever’time I’d holler they’d laugh. Them two is wild! They need a couple good women to settle ’em. I ain’t never had me such a wild time a-comin’ downriver. Where’s that poor woman at? What you a-standin’ there that way for, Fain? Birthin’s don’t wait. Take me to the woman. Silas’ll be after me in a day or two. It’ll take that long to give that cabin of yourn a good goin’-over.”

Biedy Cornick left the men standing in the yard and came toward Berry. She was the plainest woman Berry had ever seen. Her bright blue eyes played up and down and over Berry like a blue flame. Not one of the men had uttered a word, but now Berry heard soft chuckles as they watched the birdlike woman come to the house.

There was absolutely nothing pretty about Biedy Cornick. Her features were sharp, her lips thin, and the hair that framed her face was a fine, brown fuzz. She wore a black apron over a faded butternut dyed homespun dress. She carried herself like a young girl, head up, shoulders back, her feet moving lightly across the ground. It was impossible to tell her age.

When she reached Berry she walked right up to her and enfolded her in her arms.

“Land a goshin’! If’n ya ain’t ’bout the purtiest thing I ever set my eyes on.”

She laughed. Her voice was like a melody, soft and flowing.

“Course, ya ain’t the one havin’ the youngun. I can see that. I’m Biedy Cornick, come to help with the birthin’.”

She clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth.

“I know what hurtin’ goes with birthin’. I had me four boys. They’re about grown now. I’d-a give my right arm for a girl—a purty little gal such as you are.”

“The baby came last night, Mrs. Cornick.”

“It’s come? Glory be! Them men coulda said so! Call me Biedy—ever’one does when they ain’t a-callin’ me chatterbox.”

The musical laughter came again.

“I’m Berry Rose War—”

“Berry? Oh . . . Bring in that berry pie, Fain. If’n it’s fit to eat I’ll be surprised, what with the way Jeff was a-sloshin’ it this-a-way and that-a-way. Bring the butter, too,”

she called over her shoulder.

“Land sakes! Much as that man takes to butter’n thin’s, he oughtta keep a cow.”

She untied her sunbonnet and jerked it from her head.

“Wheee . . . it’s gonna be a scorcher today.”

She moved past Berry and went into the cabin, tiptoeing and smiling.

“There you is. Are ya a-makin’ out all right? Are ya wore out? Birthin’ ain’t easy.”

Berry followed Biedy into the room, stood beside the table, and watched her swoop down on Rachel. Her lips curled in a smile when she saw the look on Rachel’s face. The woman was like a whirlwind, but like a ray of sunshine, too.

“I’m Biedy,”

she said to Rachel before she turned the force of her attention on the baby.

“It’s been a coon’s age since I held me a baby.”

Rachel turned back the cover and the woman needed no other invitation. She lifted Faith and cuddled her in the curve of her arm, clucking and crooning.

“Her name is Faith,”

Rachel murmured.

“It’s a girl baby? Glory be! Faith, ya say? It’s a suitable name.”

Biedy’s bright eyes softened and her mouth gentled as she looked at the baby.

“You’re jist as purty a youngun as I ever did see, lovey.”

She made dovelike sounds in her throat and rocked from side to side.

Berry exchanged glances and pleased smiles with Rachel and glided out the door.

* * *

Simon was bathing at the spring when he heard the shout that told him Jeff Merrick and Will Murdock had arrived with Biedy Cornick. Cleanliness was not a luxury to Simon. It was a necessity that went back to the time he had spent with the Pollard family. There, he and the other children were bathed once a week the year around, whereas their friends were bathed only occasionally in the summer. The habit had stayed with him, and during the warm weather he seldom let two days go by without a dunking in the river or a stream.

He toweled his wet head and dressed quickly. He liked and respected the two Virginians who had come out over a year ago to take up a parcel of land on the Missouri beyond the Cornicks’ place. He was almost sure the two were involved in the political intrigue that had flourished in the territory since the land had been purchased by the United States. But their politics were of no concern to him. They were good, reliable men and good company. It was through them that he had met Lightbody, the French-and-Indian scout they called Light.

The late-afternoon sun shone softly on the leaves and the ground when he left the woods. He sniffed, gratefully identifying the mingling odor of pine, rotting vegetation, and the delicate scent of yellow and purple wildflowers. He loved the forest. Loved it much more than any river. Each month now, new encroachments were made on it as the eastern settlers moved in to establish homesteads. You’ll either have to adjust to the population increase or move on, he often told himself.

Cutting around back of the cabin, he unexpectedly came upon Berry. Only minutes ago, while bathing, he had found himself thinking of the arm that had circled his neck and the soft breasts that had pressed against him. He had even found himself looking around for a glimpse of her as he came out of the woods; but now, the sight of her gave him a guilty start. She was standing at the end of the dogtrot, her head tilted back against the rough logs, her eyes closed. She was not aware of his nearness.

“Berry.”

Her eyes opened.

“Are you asleep?”

She stammered for something to say. The smile on his usually solemn brown face and the gleam of the afternoon sun on his dark, wet hair completely wiped all logical thought from her mind.

“I was listening to the sounds.”

It seemed to her a stupid thing to say even if it was true. He didn’t laugh.

“I do that sometimes,”

he admitted.

“The best place to listen is deep in the woods. If you’re still enough, you can hear an owl snore in a tree above your head.”

The smile on her face was brilliant when she realized he was teasing. He found he could not take his gaze away from her sparkling gray-green eyes and high dark brows, her small nose, and her soft, full mouth. He had an almost irresistible urge to take the pins from her hair and set it free. Anything so beautiful and alive shouldn’t be twisted and confined in that harsh knot on the top of her head.

Blast it! What was the matter with him that he stood there staring at her? He’d seen women more beautiful than this one; women who made pleasing a man their life’s work.

“Next you’ll be telling me you can hear a cloud float overhead.”

Her soft voice and the low musical laughter that followed it drew him back to the present and he looked away from her. He felt a tightening in his throat and with it a kind of terror, like that of a child awakening in the dark to find himself half-smothered by a blanket. For one frightening second he imagined himself bound by soft clinging arms, always holding him back.

Berry was very aware that he looked at her strangely. Dark blue eyes bored into hers, eyes bordered by thick, dark lashes. His irises were truly blue, but so dark that they appeared black at this close range. She could see that his eyes had widened, as if he was surprised by something he saw in hers.

“Has Biedy got things under control?”

It wasn’t at all what she had expected him to say. She nodded while her mind searched for a logical reply.

Fain’s booming laughter shattered the quiet. Simon took a step back, glanced around the corner of the house, nodded to her, and moved out of sight. Berry heard him greet his friends and listened to the voices as they moved away from the cabin. She rested her head against the rough logs, shut her eyes, and recalled the moment when she was held clasped in his arms, his lips on hers. She could feel her body crying to be close to him again, her lips hungering for his kisses. Could he rouse her as he did and feel nothing in return? What could she do? Nothing. It was ever a woman’s fate to wait for the man’s next move.

* * *

Jefferson Merrick was a big man with hair so light that at first it appeared to be gray, but he was a young man. His eyes were dark brown and he had a week’s growth of brown whiskers on his cheeks. He wore buckskin pants and shirt much like the French voyageurs wore, but without the fringe and bead decorations. His deerskin moccasins were well worn, as were those of his friend Will. Both men moved with the ease of those who had long used their feet for transportation through the dense forest that lay east of the river.

Jeff squatted with his back to a tree, his long gun in his arms. He handed it over to Fain when the big man reached for it. Fain caressed the carved stock, lifted it to test the balance, and sighted down the long barrel.

“Should hit a pimple on a blue jay’s ass at ninety yards,”

he murmured.

“That’s if a man knows how to shoot it.”

Jeff laughed.

“I’ll put my shootin’ with that rifle up against any in the territory.”

“I hadn’t oughtta let you hornswoggle me out of it. It’s the best I ever made.”

“Hornswoggle! Listen to that, Will! I gave the old cuss everything but the skin off my back.”

He reached for the gun.

“Give it back, you old son of a goat. She’s my wilderness wife, by gawd!”

Pride in his work was etched in Fain’s face. He handed the rifle back to Jeff. There was a proud, wide grin on his face.

“Wilderness wife, huh? It’d be a cold comfort to snuggle up to in the wintertime.”

“Not if the wolves were a-howlin’ at the door or the Indians breathin’ down your neck.”

“Speaking of Indians,”

Simon said.

“Are you still on good terms with the Osage?”

“So far. They seem to be fascinated by the two black men who live up on the place. They’ve taken them into the tribe, shared their women. Besides, the Osage and the Delawares are on the warpath and too busy to pay much attention to settlers.”

“How’s your apprentice a-doin’?”

Will asked in the slurry tones of a Virginian.

Fain laughed and glanced at Simon.

“Well . . . if he lives to be a hundred he might learn a thin’ or two about gunsmithin’. He’s a good lad, just ain’t handy with borin’ tools and the like.”

“Did he ever say exactly where he come from?”

Jeff asked.

“Back east,”

Simon said.

“I guess he went to Harvard College for a year and to the university at Paris. That’s about all we know about him except he was about to be thrown into debtors’ prison for family debts and skipped out. He drifted down the Trace and ended up in Saint Louis. He came into the warehouse one day and I told him about Fain being a gunsmith. It was something he wanted to do, he said, so he wandered on up here and made a bargain with Fain.”

“He’s a better cook than gunsmith, that’s certain,”

Fain added with a chuckle.

“Is he staying around awhile?”

Fain looked at Jeff sharply. It wasn’t like the man to ask so many questions.

“Dunno. Ain’t bothered to ask.”

He knocked the ashes out of his pipe.

“Ya got a notion about Fish?”

“The name Edmund Aston rang a bell when I first heard it, but nothing’s cleared in my mind since.”

“I’d almost forgot his name.”

Simon ran his fingers through his still-damp hair.

“We’ve called him Fish since Eben pulled him out of the river. The name stuck. He didn’t seem to mind.”

Jeff stood.

“We’ve got to be a-pushing on. I’d like to stay and eat some of Biedy’s pie, but can’t spare the time.”

The men walked toward the river and the fast skiff they had beached there.

“We’re a-headin’ for Natchez to see the sights.”

Will carefully placed his rifle in the boat.

“Whoeeeeee . . . I’m gonna find me a sweet, soft woman ’n’ stay abed a week!”

His blue eyes twinkled and he jumped in the air and clicked his feet together.

“You’d not last a week,”

Jeff teased, then said to Simon and Fain, “If Light comes back this way, ask him to check on the homestead. Henry and Jute would be glad for his company.”

“We’ll do that. Thanks for bringing Biedy.”

Simon shook hands with the two men.

“It’s a shame you can’t wait to meet the two purtiest womenfolk to come down the pike,”

Fain said when the men stepped into the boat.

“Second thought, seein’ your ugly faces mighta scared the wits outta ’em.”

“From what Lardy told us, they don’t scare easy. They sound like gutsy women, my kind of womenfolk.”

Will smiled his cool, dry smile, but his eyes teased.

“You’re lucky I ain’t a-stayin’ ’round. I’m a-goin’ to let ya get a little head start before I come a-courtin’.”

“Are ya gonna have to listen to that braggin’ all the way to Natchez, Jeff?”

Fain called as the boat pulled away.

“He’ll get tired o’ talking to himself,”

Jeff said cheerfully. Then: “Are the women going back east?”

“We’re not sure what they’re going to do,”

Simon called as the boat pulled away.

They stood on the bank and watched the current catch the canoe. In a few minutes it was around the bend and out of sight. They walked back up the slope toward the house. A burst of feminine laughter came from the open door of the cabin.

“It sounds good a-hearin’ womenfolk in the house,”

Fain said, and then seemed embarrassed that he’d voiced his thought.

Simon didn’t answer, but silently he agreed.