Книга - The Angel Of Devil’s Camp

The Angel Of Devil's Camp
Lynna Banning


A widow before she'd even been a wife–Mary Margaret Hampton was in big trouble! Lonely loggers. One genteel lady.A dangerous combination, Tom Randall thought. He was trying to run a business, not a tea party! And if obstinate Meggy Hampton didn't hightail her moonlight and magnolias back south, the sweet sparks she was igniting would make the camp–and his passion–explode like the Fourth of July!







Lonely loggers. One genteel lady. A dangerous combination, Tom Randall thought. He was trying to run a business, not a tea party! And if obstinate Meggy Hampton didn’t hightail her moonlight and magnolias back south, the sweet sparks she was igniting would make the camp—and his passion—explode like the Fourth of July!

Tom leaned in and inhaled the fragrance of her hair.

“You have any idea what that does to a man?”

“I should think it means they are perfectly starved for civilized conversation.”

Tom snorted. “They’re starved, all right, but it’s not for conversation. They’re starved for something soft. Something that’s sweet scented and…” His thumbs began to caress her shoulders. “And warm. And alive.”

He stepped in closer, bent his head to sniff the scent emanating from her skin. “It can make a man crazy, being alone,” he said in a rough whisper. “I can’t let a man near you without risking his life.”

The Angel of Devil’s Camp

Harlequin Historical #649


Praise for LYNNA BANNING’s previous books

The Courtship

“The Courtship is a beautifully written tale with a heartwarming plot.”

—Romantic Reviews Today (www.romrevtoday.com)

The Law and Miss Hardisson

“…fresh and charming…

a sweet and funny yet poignant story.”

—Romantic Times

Plum Creek Bride

“…pathos and humor blend in a plot that glows with perception and dignity.”

—Affaire de Coeur

#647 TEMPTING A TEXAN

Carolyn Davidson

#648 THE SILVER LORD

Miranda Jarrett

#650 BRIDE OF THE TOWER

Sharon Schulze




The Angel of Devil’s Camp

Lynna Banning





www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


Available from Harlequin Historicals and LYNNA BANNING

Western Rose #310

Wildwood #374

Lost Acres Bride #437

Plum Creek Bride #474

The Law and Miss Hardisson #537

The Courtship #613

The Angel of Devil’s Camp #649


For my agent, Pattie Steele-Perkins

With special thanks to David and Yvonne Woolston. And to fellow writers Suzanne Barrett, Tricia Adams, Brenda Preston, Ida Hills and Norma Pulle.




Contents


Chapter One (#uf4fde816-64c4-5108-81de-655f713c46af)

Chapter Two (#u8939e595-d82c-5895-b0d0-7b19ab932d58)

Chapter Three (#ua5f0c80c-b144-5e65-b2bc-93a33398fe67)

Chapter Four (#u30273f75-ff0a-57b8-a93f-863a89306d55)

Chapter Five (#uc666a052-deee-5019-ac63-574e879f43db)

Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)




Chapter One


Seton Falls, South Carolina

March 1872

Mary Margaret pulled the parsonage door shut with a satisfying thunk and for the very last time twisted the key in the lock. She’d married off five sisters in the past three years, the last one just the day before yesterday. Now it is my turn.

She marched down the walkway and out the front gate, lugging her satchel. For half a heartbeat, she wavered. The yellow rose rambling along the fence needed pruning, but with all the preparations for Charlotte’s wedding, Meggy had had no time for gardening. She forced her gaze away. It no longer mattered.

She smoothed her black traveling dress, slipping her hand into the left pocket. The letter she’d carefully folded crackled under her fingers. Dear God in heaven, let this be the right thing to do.

She heaved the tapestry bag into the buggy and climbed up onto the sagging seat. I will not look back. I will look to the road ahead and be joyful.

At last! She was free. No more meals to eke out from the squash and dried beans donated by the congregation. No more wedding dresses for Charity or Charlotte, cobbled together out of old tablecloths and scraps of lace. She had remade most of her old ball gowns into dresses for her sisters, and sold the rest for food. A barrel of flour cost 150 federal dollars, a basket of eggs $25. The war had made such a struggle of life!

She closed her eyes and pressed her knuckles against her lips. The war took everything, even our hearts and our souls. She and her sisters had survived, but the scars would always remain.

Leaning forward, she patted the satchel at her feet. Inside, on top of her spare petticoat and her nightgown, lay her father’s revolver. She would travel three thousand miles, all the way to Oregon, to marry a second cousin of her father’s, a man she had never seen. It was the only proposal she had ever received, and she most certainly intended to arrive in one piece!

She gathered up the worn leather reins. “Move on, Bess.”

The mare took a single step forward, and Meggy’s heart took flight.

“Colonel, darlin’, wake up!”

Tom rolled over on the narrow canvas cot and opened one eye. “What is it, O’Malley?”

“The deed needs doin’,” his former sergeant said. “And you’re the proper one to do it.”

Tom groaned. Being in charge didn’t let him sleep much. A logging crew wasn’t like an army unit. Loggers were a fractious bunch of misfits with a heightened instinct for survival and an even more heightened taste for liquor and high times. Not one of them would last a day under military discipline. Tom had mustered out two years ago, taken Sergeant O’Malley with him and headed west. The undisciplined men he commanded now obeyed him because he wasn’t a colonel.

“Tom.” The Irishman nudged his shoulder. “You won’t be forgettin’ now, will you?”

With an effort, Tom sat up. His head felt like someone was whacking an ax into his skull, and the aftertaste of whiskey in his mouth made him grit his teeth. He figured his breath alone could get a man drunk.

“Remind me what it is that needs doing, Mick? If it can wait, let it.”

“The peeler, the one that got killed yesterday? The coffin’s ready and Swede and Turner’s dug the grave. You need to speak some words over the man.”

Oh, hell, he had forgotten. Wanted to forget, in fact. Which was why he’d finished half a bottle of rye last night. In the past month he’d lost one, no, two bullcooks and a skinner. The timber was turning dry as a witch’s broom and then one of his peelers, a square peg on a logging crew if he’d ever seen one, let an ax slice into his thigh and bled to death before they could load him into the wagon.

“The men are waitin’, Tom.”

“I won’t forget, Mick. See if you can rustle up some coffee.” He tossed off the grimy sheet, lowered his legs to the packed-earth floor and stood up. “Tell them I’ll be there.”

The interior of the tent spun and Tom sat down abruptly.

“Get me that coffee, will you?”

“Sure thing, Colonel. And you’ll be wantin’ a clean shirt and your Bible.”

His Bible.

He clenched his jaw. His sister had sent it when he’d first joined the army. She had even marked certain passages she liked. He hadn’t opened it since that day in Richmond when he’d read over her grave.

Today would be different, he told himself. For one thing, he didn’t know the peeler very well. He’d known Susanna all her short life, had raised her by himself after their father died. A familiar dull ache settled behind his breastbone.

“One more thing, Tom. We found something on the body. You better have a look.”

“Later.” He stuffed the single folded page the sergeant handed him into his shirt pocket without glancing at it. “Coffee,” Tom reminded him. “And make it double strength.”

Meggy dropped to the pine-needle-covered ground beneath the biggest tree she had ever seen. She had climbed halfway up the steep ridge, dragging her satchel, which felt as if it was filled with bricks. Her mouth was parched, her stomach hollow, her eyes scratchy. The supply wagon had left Tennant at daybreak, and she had been walking the past hour. Now it was near noon and she could go no farther.

She gazed up into a sky the color of bluebonnets, listening to the rat-tat-tat of a woodpecker. All at once the sound was obliterated by raucous men’s voices.

Good heavens, Yankee soldiers. She scooted closer to the massive tree trunk.

That can’t be right. The war is over. Besides, this is Oregon. She eased around the tree until she could see to the top of the ridge.

Directly above her, a dozen men in colorful shirts and faded blue trousers stood in a circle. Most had unkempt hair hanging beneath their battered hats. Many had untrimmed beards. Three or four leaned on the handles of shovels.

Their voices ceased as a man taller than the rest marched up. He carried himself ramrod straight. She knew without a doubt he was a soldier.

The circle opened for him, and Meggy spied a rough-hewn coffin. She eased forward for a closer look, watched the tall man take a book from his shirt pocket and begin to read.

Tom cleared his throat, scanned the men gathered at the freshly dug grave site and opened his Bible. He ran his forefinger down the page, stopped at the Twenty-third Psalm. Raising his eyes, he opened his mouth.

“The Lord is my…”

Swede Jensen snatched off his red-and-yellow knit cap and bowed his head.

A flutter of something black through the trees caught Tom’s eye. It vanished behind a thick fir tree, then reappeared. A hawk? He couldn’t be sure. The summer sun was so intense the air shimmered.

Not a hawk. Too low. Something wrapped up like a cocoon—a bear, maybe? The back of his neck prickled.

Whatever it was plodded up the hill toward him at a steady pace. No, not a bear. A bear would pause and sniff the air. Not an Indian, either. Only a white man would walk incautiously forward in a straight line.

He squinted as the figure moved out of the shadows of the fir grove. Not a man. A woman! All in black from boots to veiled hat, with a shawl knotted about her shoulders. Something in the tilt of her head…

For one awful moment he thought it was Susanna. A knife slipped into his heart and he snapped the Bible shut. Handing it to O’Malley, he started down the hill.

She did not look up. Her leather shoes scrabbling on the steep rocky slope, she kept walking, dragging a satchel in one hand and a bulging sack in the other. She didn’t slow down until she almost ran into him.

“My stars, where on earth did you come from?”

Tom’s eyebrows rose. “More to the point, ma’am, where in hell did you come from?”

She let go of the satchel, and it plopped onto the ground with a puff of dust. “The supply wagon from Tennant. The driver brought me out on condition that I deliver this.” She thrust the sack toward him.

Tom accepted the bag and peered inside.

“It contains six bars of soap, a dozen lemons and two bottles of spirits. He said it would hold you until next week.”

“Only two bottles?”

She nodded. “One is for medicinal purposes. And six bars of—”

“Lemons?”

“Mr. Jacobs said they were to combat scurvy.”

Tom stared at her. Her eyes were a curious shade of gray-green, almost the color of tree moss.

“Besides delivering Mose Jacobs’s scurvy remedy, what are you doing out here?”

Her spine went rigid as a tent pole. “I am calling on Mr. Peabody. Walter Peabody.”

“Why?” Tom said carefully.

“It is a personal matter, sir. Between Mr. Peabody and myself. If you would be so kind as to conduct me—”

“Peabody’s dead.”

Her face went the color of chalk. “I beg your pardon?”

“An accident. His ax slipped and he bled to death.”

The stricken look on her face sent a band of cold steel around his chest.

“But…” Her voice wobbled. “He can’t be! We were to be married. I came all the way from South Carolina to marry him.”

“I’m real sorry, ma’am. We’re just burying him this morning.”

“I see.” She swallowed and lifted her chin. “Yes, I do see.”

Tom stood rooted before her, wondering why he couldn’t speak.

“May I…view his remains? You see, we never met. I have no idea what he…” She pressed her lips together.

He could not bear to look at her face. Except for her unsmiling mouth and her pallor, she could be any pretty young woman out for a Sunday walk. He’d seen Union soldiers with less composure.

Tom hesitated. His left eyelid began to twitch. Lifting the travel satchel from the ground, he pivoted away from her. “Come with me.”

Meggy followed him up the hill, his low, tersely spoken words sending a swarm of butterflies into her stomach. She stepped on the hem of her dress, stumbled over protruding tree roots as she tried to keep up with his long-legged stride. Where the ground leveled out near a stand of fir trees, he stopped short. “Coffin’s over there, next to the grave. Best hurry before we nail it shut.”

Her heart hurtled into her throat. She had seen bodies before. Old men. Young men. Federal soldiers as well as Confederate. Why was she so frightened now?

She took a step forward. In the coffin before her lay a slight man with pale-gold hair and mustache, a narrow chin and thin lips.

She stood absolutely still. It was a mistake to look at him, but she couldn’t help herself. Walter Peabody would have been her husband, had he lived. She had traveled all the way from Seton Falls to be this man’s wife. And now…now…

Now she was not only unmarried, she was also in a fix, stranded out here alone among a bunch of exceedingly rough-looking men. Yankee men. And she had not one single penny in her pocket.

“Seen enough?” A low voice spoke at her back.

“Oh. Oh, yes, I expect so. Thank you. I—”

“Okay, Swede, close it up.”

“Sure thing, Tom.” The big man dropped the lid on the box.

Meggy’s legs turned to jelly, and she looked away.

Then a steadying arm pressed under her elbow. “Name’s Michael O’Malley, ma’am. I’m thinkin’ you’d be Miss Hampton?”

She nodded at the russet-haired man. He wore a wash-worn Union Army shirt, faded stripes still intact, and wide red suspenders. A Yankee. She started to pull away, but she was so unsteady on her feet she could not stand alone. She let him guide her to the edge of the grave, where the bearded Swede was nailing down the coffin lid. Each blow of the man’s hammer sent a tremor through her body.

Whatever would she do now? Walter had paid her train fare, but the stagecoach to Tennant had taken all of her meager savings. Here she was, in a godforsaken wilderness with no money and no prospects.

The tall man, Tom, opened the Bible and cleared his throat. “The Lord is my shepherd….”

Meggy’s throat tightened. Poor Walter! Cut down in the prime of his life, with no kin to mourn for him except her.

“He leadeth me beside…”

She moved her lips silently over the words of the psalm. Would Walter Peabody rest in peace among Yankees?

“Yea, though I walk through the valley…”

She opened her mouth and joined in. Tom shot her a glance over the top of the plain wood coffin. The look on his face stopped her breath.

Eyes as sharp as a steel saber cut into her. The blue was so intense her mind conjured the morning glories she’d planted against the back fence of the parsonage. Dear Lord, he looked so angry!

“…in the house of the Lord forever. Amen.” He slapped the Bible shut. “Funeral’s over.”

Meggy gasped. “Oh, surely not,” she blurted. “Should we not…” She racked her brain. With him looking at her that way, his mouth hard, his jaw muscle working, every thought she had flew right out of her head.

“…sing?” she supplied at last. “Perhaps a hymn?”

He pinned her to the spot with those eyes, like two blue bolts of lightning. “No damned hymns.” His voice spit the words.

Her frame stiffened from her toes to the top of her head. “Why not?”

“Peabody was a good man. A bit soft, but no hypocrite. I won’t sully a decent burial by mangling some hymn none of us can remember.”

She stared at him so long her eyes began to burn. And then, still holding his gaze, she opened her mouth and began to sing. “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound….”

The Swede chimed in, then another voice. Mr. O’Malley and two more joined in, and finally everyone was singing.

Except for the tall man with the Bible.

Defiantly, Meggy began the second stanza. “I once was lost, but now am found….”

He stood rigid as a rifle barrel until the song ended, then stuffed the Bible in his belt and reached for the shovel stuck in the loosened earth. The Swede and another man with straight black hair that hung past his collar hefted the coffin into the waiting grave.

A shovelful of dirt plopped onto the pine box, and Meggy’s heart constricted. North or South, the sound of earth on a coffin lid was the same. By the time the war ended, she’d attended enough burials to last a lifetime.

She struggled to think clearly as the dirt clods rained down. Walter Peabody had been her last hope. With all the males in Seton Falls under the age of 16, or over 60 or dead, she’d come west out of desperation. She wanted a husband. Children.

But now she was neither grieving sweetheart nor bereaved widow, but still plain Mary Margaret Hampton, oldest of six sisters and a spinster at twenty-five.

Numb with disbelief, she bent her head, clasped her hands under her chin and closed her eyes. Lord, it’s me again. I entreat you to give this man, Walter Wade Peabody, a place in your kingdom where he may rest in peace. It isn’t his fault he left this world in an untimely manner. I assure you, his intentions were entirely honorable. Amen.

When she opened her eyes, the tall man with the Bible was gone.

“Miss Hampton?” A hand touched her elbow. “Colonel’d like to see you. First tent left of the cookhouse, yonder.” The red-haired sergeant pointed to an unpainted wood shack, twice as long as it was wide, on the other side of a clearing. Smoke poured out the chimney at one end.

“The cookhouse, yes, I see it.” Her mind felt fuzzy, as if her head were stuffed with cotton bolls. She started up the hill behind Mr. O’Malley.

When they reached the tent, her guide rapped twice on the support pole and pushed aside the flap. Through the opening she spied the tall man lounging on a tumbled cot, his feet propped on a makeshift plank desk, which rested on two thick log rounds.

“Here she is, Colonel.”

The tall man stood up, his dark hair brushing the canvas ceiling. Mr. O’Malley stepped away from Meggy and lowered his voice. “You read that letter yet, Tom?”

“Not yet. Fetch us some coffee, will you?”

“Colonel, I wish you’d read—”

“Coffee, Mick. Pronto.”

The sergeant gestured to the neatly made-up cot on the opposite side of the tent. “Have a seat, ma’am. Won’t be a minute.” The flap swished shut.

Meggy remained standing. “I’m sure I should not be here, sir. This is a gentleman’s private quarters.” She stared at a coal-black raven in a cage hung from the tent pole.

Tom chuckled. “Not private. And I’m not a…Anyway, sit down. This won’t take long.”

With reluctance Meggy perched on the edge of the cot. The warm air inside the tent was thick with the smell of leather and sweat. Man smells. Not unpleasant, just…different. Strong. Pungent, her sister Charlotte would have said. Charlotte wrote poetry.

Tom settled on the unmade cot opposite her, repropped his boots on the plank desk and looked her over with a penetrating gaze. “What do you plan to do, now that Peabody’s…gone?”

Meggy’s mind went blank. “Do?”

“Ma’am, you can’t marry a dead man.”

The sergeant bustled in with two chipped mugs of something that looked dark and sludgy. He handed one to Meggy and set the other near the colonel’s crossed boots. “There’s no cream. Fong churned it all into butter.”

Meggy removed her gloves and took a sip of the lukewarm brew. It tasted like the coffee she had concocted out of dried grain and sassafras root during the war. She sipped again and choked. Worse. This tasted like chopped-up walnut shells mixed with turpentine.

O’Malley sidled closer to Tom and bent over the desk. “Read that letter yet?”

Tom downed a double gulp of the coffee. “Nope.”

“If I was you, Colonel, sir, I might do that right now.” He gestured at Tom’s shirt pocket.

Meggy rose at once. “Forgive me, sir. I must not keep you from your business.”

“Tom, for the love of God, read the damn letter! Beggin’ your pardon, ma’am.”

Tom glared at his sergeant, then dug in his pocket and withdrew a folded paper. It crackled as he spread it flat. Meggy found herself watching. There was something odd about the way Mr. O’Malley danced near Tom’s shoulder, grinning at her.

Tom scanned the words, then drew his black eyebrows into a frown. “That son of a gun,” he muttered. “I wonder when he found the time?”

“Might explain why Peabody looked so peaked the last few months. Must’ve come off the peeling crew and worked half the night on his own, I’m thinkin’.”

Meggy looked from one to the other. What were they talking about?

Tom spun the paper under his thumb until the writing faced her. “This concerns you, Miss Hampton.”

“Me? Why, how could it possibly?”

“It’s Walt Peabody’s will.”

Meggy lifted the paper with shaking hands.

“…all my earthly possessions to Miss Mary Margaret Hampton, soon to be my wife.”

“Possessions? Oh, you mean his law books?”

“No, not his law books. Seems he built a cabin. For when his fiancée joined him.”

Meggy stared at him. “You mean…you mean Mr. Peabody provided for me?” The knot in her stomach melted away like so much warm molasses. Oh, the dear, blessed man. He had left her some property! She sank onto the cot.

“Oh, thank the Lord, I have a home.”

Tom shot to his feet. “Not so fast, Miss Hampton. You can’t stay here. I run a logging camp, not a boardinghouse.”

“But the cabin—my cabin—is here.”

“A logging camp is no place for a woman.”

The red-haired sergeant stepped forward. “Oh, now, Tom—”

“Shut up, O’Malley.”

Meggy stood up. “No place for a woman? Mr. Peabody seemed to think otherwise.”

“Mr. Peabody isn’t—wasn’t—the boss here. I am.”

Meggy felt her spine grow rigid. It was a sensation she’d come to recognize over the last seven years, one that signaled the onset of the stubborn streak she’d inherited from her father. “That does not signify, for it is—was—Mr. Peabody who wrote the will, not you.” She gentled her voice. “And you, sir, even if you are the boss here, are surely not above the law?”

At that instant she noticed that Mr. O’Malley stood off to one side, shaking his head at her. The Irishman was trying to warn her about something, but what? What was it she was not supposed to say?

Silence fell, during which she desperately tried to think.

A woodpecker drilled into a tree outside the tent, and Meggy started. The noise rose above the rasp of cicadas, pounding into her head until she thought she would scream.

“The law,” Tom said in a low, hard voice, “protects no one. When push comes to shove, it’s not the right that wins, but the strong. Coming from a Confederate state, I’d think you’d have a hard time forgetting that.”

She clamped her teeth together. Was that what the man had against her? That she was from the South?

“The mighty prevail, is that it?”

“That’s it. It’s a lesson I learned the hard way. I suggest you are about to do the same.”

O’Malley pivoted toward his boss. “Oh, now, Tom, couldn’t we—”

“Nope.”

Meggy drew in a long breath and used the time it took to expel it to gather her courage. She might as well risk it. She had nothing to lose and everything—a home, a sanctuary out here in this remote bit of nowhere—to gain. She needed time to absorb what had happened. Time to make new plans. Besides, she had no money, and until she could decide what to do next, she was stuck here.

“On the contrary, Colonel…I beg your pardon, what is your family name, sir? I do not wish to be improper in addressing you.”

“Randall,” he growled. “I come from Ohio.”

“Colonel Randall,” she continued. “I believe it is you who may learn the lesson here. For it is a known fact that when a suit is brought, and the issue judged by an honest jury of one’s peers…”

She left the rest unspoken. It was always best to allow the enemy a graceful exit. “Why, your own president, Mr. Grant, made that very point not long ago in a speech before the Congress of the United States.”

Tom took a good long look at the young woman standing before him. She wasn’t going to give up, he could see that. Her softly modulated voice never rose, but beneath the controlled tone he detected cold steel. And the look in her eye…Yeah, she sure did remind him of Susanna.

In that instant he knew he was beaten. Women like this one, like his sister, didn’t give up. If he pushed, she would fight back, and she would continue until she either triumphed or died trying. He closed his hands into fists. He didn’t want to be responsible for another one. She had determination written all over her.

And, he noted, she had unusual eyes, set in a perfectly oval face and framed with thick lashes. Her dark hair was parted in the center and gathered in a soft, black-netted roll at her neck. The only other part of her body he could see was her hands, which were graceful and small-boned, with long fingers and short nails. For all her fragile female appearance, those hands looked capable enough.

For some reason his gut clenched just looking at them.

The good Lord can sure play a joke when He sees fit. The last thing he needed was a woman at Devil’s Camp. A pretty woman with eyes like a cool, deep river. The last thing he wanted anywhere near him for the remainder of his life was a woman who stirred his emotions.

He grasped her elbow, turned her toward the tent entrance.

“Meeting’s over, Miss Hampton. I’m sending you back to Tennant.”




Chapter Two


Miss Hampton regarded Tom with calm eyes. “Might I see the home Mr. Peabody constructed for our future?” Her voice was like honey, warm and so sweet it made his heart catch.

O’Malley nudged his elbow. “Can’t hurt, Tom,” he said in an undertone. “Might be it’d ease the lady’s grief some.”

Tom sighed. Being outnumbered wasn’t what got his goat. What bothered him was his reaction to her. He didn’t want to feel sympathy for this woman. Sympathy led to caring, and the minute his heart was involved he knew it would lead to pain, pure and simple. You could love someone, but you couldn’t keep them safe. Ever.

“Cabin’s that way, Colonel.” The Irishman pointed over his shoulder. “Past the bunkhouse. You can barely see it from here. It’s nice an’ privatelike, and…”

Tom raised his eyebrows and O’Malley fell silent. Then Tom waved a hand and the sergeant turned and headed toward the cabin.

Miss Hampton trudged beside Tom through the pine trees, their footfalls muffled by the thick forest duff. Her face had an expectant look, but she kept her mouth closed as they followed O’Malley past the cookhouse. At this altitude and in the midday heat, Tom guessed she was too short of breath to talk much.

He studied her full-skirted black dress as it swayed beside him. It had a wide ruffle at the hem and a bit of delicate-looking lace at the neck and sleeves. She looked as out of place as a rose in a potato field. She’d be used to town life, with gaslight and a cookstove with a built-in hot water basin. She wouldn’t last five minutes in a logging camp. He almost chuckled. The food alone would kill her.

The cabin was small, but Tom could see it was well built of peeled pine logs, notched and fitted at the corners. He noted that Peabody hadn’t had time to fill the chinks with mud. A good breeze would whistle through the cracks and chill her britches good. Not too bad a thought on a day like today, with the temperature near a hundred degrees and the sun not yet straight up. But in the winter…

He bit back a smile. Like he said, five minutes.

She quickened her pace. “Is that it? Why, it’s…charming.”

Tom had to laugh. The cabin looked sturdy. Rough and practical, not charming. He’d bet his month’s quota of timber she’d never lived in a place with just one window, to say nothing of a front door with leather straps for hinges and no way to lock it.

He tramped up to the plank porch and turned toward her. It was a giant step up from ground level; she’d never be able to negotiate it weighed down by that heavy skirt and a bunch of petticoats.

She stepped up to the edge of the porch and halted. “Well, I never…the door is open! I can see right inside, and…” Her voice wavered. “There isn’t one stick of furniture!”

O’Malley cleared his throat. “But there’s a fine stove, ma’am. And a dry sink. Creek’s nearby, so you won’t be havin’ to haul your water too far.”

Tom clenched his fists. “Shut your trap, O’Malley. A lady can’t live out here on her own.”

Miss Hampton looked up at him. “This lady can.”

Without another word, she hoisted her skirts and planted one foot on the porch. Bending her knee, she gave a little jump. Tom glimpsed a lace-trimmed pantalette as she levered her body onto the smooth plank surface.

“No, you can’t,” he argued. “I’m short on crew now. I can’t spare any men to nursemaid a—”

“I must respectfully disagree, Colonel Randall. I shall manage quite nicely on my own, as I have for all the years since my father passed on.”

“This is not a civilized town like you’re used to, Miss Hampton. This is wild country. You got heat and dust, flies big as blackberries, spiders that’d fill a teacup.”

She turned to face him. “We have heat and dust and flies and spiders in Seton Falls, too. I am not unused to such things, Colonel.”

A grin split O’Malley’s ruddy face. “You figure to stay then, lass?”

“Yes, I—”

“No, she doesn’t,” Tom interrupted. “I have troubles enough with two young greenhorns joining a rambunctious crew, ten thousand board feet of timber to cut within the next two weeks and weather so hot you can fry eggs on the tree stumps. A woman at the camp would be the last straw.”

Before he could continue, she swished through the cabin door. Her voice carried from inside. “Why, it’s quite…snug.”

O’Malley punched Tom’s shoulder. “Snug,” he echoed with a grin. The Irishman clomped onto the porch and disappeared through the open door.

“Just look, Mr. O’Malley,” Tom heard her exclaim. “A small bed could fit here, and my trunk could serve as a table.”

Tom gritted his teeth. “No bed,” he shouted. “No trunk. And no women!” He stomped through the doorway and caught his breath.

Smack-dab in the center of the single room, Mary Margaret Hampton sank down onto the floor, her black dress puffing around her like an overflowed pudding.

“Possession,” she said in that maddeningly soft voice, “is nine-tenths of the law.” She patted the floor beside her. “I am in possession.”

Tom stared at her. Was she loco? Or just stubborn?

“I will need a chamber commode,” she remarked in a quiet tone. “I do not fancy going into the woods at night.”

“Get up,” Tom ordered.

“I do not wish to, Colonel. This is my home now. Walter Peabody left it to me in his will, and any lawyer with half a brain will agree that I am in the right.”

He took a step toward her. “I said get up!”

O’Malley’s grin widened. “You’re not gonna like this, Tom, but she’s got a point.”

“She’s got chicken feathers in her head,” he muttered. He moved a step closer.

She looked up at him and tried to smile. “Please, Colonel Randall. Oh, please. Let me stay here, just for a little while. I will be ever so quiet.”

It was the trembling of her mouth that did him in. “How long?” he snapped.

She thought for a moment. “Until I can earn enough money to pay my fare back to Seton Falls.”

Tom snorted. “Doing what?”

“I will find some way. I am not without accomplishments.”

“Three weeks.” He almost felt sorry for her.

“Six weeks,” she countered.

Instantly he felt less sorry for her. Damn stubborn female. “Four weeks. During which time I expect you to keep to yourself, not bother any of my crew and be careful with your stove ashes. Timber’s bone dry this time of year.”

“Yes, I will do all those things. Thank you, Colonel Randall.”

“And don’t bathe in the creek without letting me know. I’ll have to post a guard.”

When she didn’t respond, he shot a glance at her. Her fingers were pressed against her mouth, and at the corners of her closed eyelids he saw the sheen of tears.

Tom groaned. Women were a menace to the human race! They acted so brave, so fearless, and then when they won, they cried. Susanna had done the same, and this one was no different. He hated the way it made him feel—downright helpless. His gut churned just thinking about it.

“Four weeks,” he barked over an ache in his throat. “And then you’re on your way back to Tennant, you savvy?”

She nodded without opening her eyes. Tom swung out the doorway, heading for his tent and the bottle of rye whiskey he hadn’t finished last night. Maybe a drink would help get her out of his mind.

The minute Colonel Randall and the Irishman were gone, Meggy covered her face with her hands. Oh, dear God, help me. I don’t know what to do now, and I feel so awfully alone.

After a few moments, she raised her head and took a good look at her surroundings. Through the chinks in the walls she could see glimpses of green leaves and an occasional brown tree trunk. A black iron potbellied stove sat in one corner, and a smoothed plank counter ran along the adjoining wall. The single window over the dry sink was so dust-smeared it admitted only a dim gray light. Well, Meggy, you needn’t be a complete ninny. A good scrubbing will fix that.

As for the rest, sheets and soap, a lantern, tablecloths, her Bible and her secreted copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin—all the things she had packed in her trunk to start married life with Mr. Peabody—they would not arrive until next week when Mr. Jacobs drove out from Tennant with his next delivery. She could manage until then, could she not?

She eyed the other two walls. A few nails would serve to hang up her clothes. As for a bed, perhaps she might gather some pine boughs and cover them with the extra petticoat in her satchel.

Her satchel! She’d left it in Colonel Randall’s tent. Bother! She’d have to walk back down and…

“Comin’ through, ma’am!” Footsteps thumped across the porch. Hastily Meggy rose and stood aside as the sergeant barreled through the door, balancing a cot on one thick shoulder. His other hand gripped her travel satchel, and from under his arm trailed a bundle of bedclothes. She thought she recognized the olive-green blanket. Hadn’t she sat on it in the colonel’s tent?

Speechless, she watched him plunk the cot down and shove it against the wall. “Colonel won’t mind, ma’am. He never uses this one.”

He dropped the bedclothes on top. “Had to scrounge a bit for your chamber pot.” He swung two battered milk pails into the corner. “One for haulin’ water, one for…you know.”

Her face burned.

The sergeant tipped his blue cap and gave her a wink. “Supper’s at five. Latecomers leave hungry.” With a grin he pivoted and sauntered on his way.

Supper! She hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and her stomach felt as hollow as an empty barrel. Oh, yes, supper! She’d be there before five. Perhaps she would go down to the cookhouse early and help out. In the meantime, she had to think.

What can I possibly do in this wilderness to earn money?

By the time she had made up the bed, hauled a bucket of cool water from the creek fifty yards from her porch, and used a dampened handkerchief to sponge the travel dust off her face and neck, she had made up her mind. If Colonel Tom Randall raised any objections, why she would…Never mind. She’d think of something.

She tidied her hair under the crocheted black netting and gave it a nervous pat. All she would require was a bit of ingenuity, a generous helping of elbow grease and God’s forgiveness. Plus a dollop of luck when she went down to supper.

Her heart flip-flopped at the prospect before her. Perhaps the colonel would be busy giving orders to his crew and wouldn’t notice. Maybe the cook…

She dared not think about it too much. To keep her mind occupied she set about unpacking the rest of her things. She laid the tin of candles on the cot, stacked her underclothes on the sink counter, then slid her father’s revolver underneath and covered the pile with a tea towel Charlotte had embroidered for her. A line of poetry was stitched around the perimeter. “Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt.”

Tears stung her eyelids. She must write to Charlotte, must write to all her sisters, and assure them that she was safe and…and not the least bit frightened.

On second thought, she wouldn’t lie. “Safe” would have to suffice!

She ran her hand over the mound of clothing covering the revolver, smoothed down her skirt and headed for the door. At the last minute she whipped the tea towel off the pile of garments and stuffed it into her pocket. She would need it.

Tom watched the black-clad form moving down the path from the cabin to the cookhouse and narrowed his eyes. She seemed to float slowly over the earth, and when he realized why, he grinned in spite of himself.

With extreme care she pushed one foot ahead of her, waited a second, then shifted her weight onto it. Only then did she move her other foot forward. Testing for rocks, he guessed. Or snakes. She looked like a miniature black-sailed ship skimming the ground.

You are one helluva fool, Tom Randall. He’d never get her out of his mind if he didn’t stop watching her.

He wrenched his attention back to the open accounts book on his desk. Devil’s Camp wasn’t near breaking even, much less making a profit. Payroll was high. The men made good wages, and they deserved it; he’d hand-picked most of them when he mustered out of the army. Logging was dangerous, and he needed a seasoned crew. But lumber prices were dropping.

He wondered sometimes why he’d taken on this operation. Maybe because the first thing he saw when he’d ridden away from Fort Riley was trees, tall Douglas firs so thick a man couldn’t reach around them. After years of killing Johnny Rebs and then Indians, felling timber seemed like a good, clean thing to do. Trees made lumber, and lumber built houses and barns and churches and stores. Civilization. He liked being part of things that would have a future, things that would live on after his own days on earth were over. He guessed he was like his father in that way.

Maybe that was how Walt Peabody felt about that cabin he’d built for Miss Hampton. At the thought of her, he glanced up to see a black skirt vanish into the cookhouse.

He massaged his tight neck muscles and got to his feet. Great balls of fire, a woman at supper. He’d best go over and keep order.

Meggy craned her neck to peer through the screen door of the cookhouse. No sign of activity. No cook. No crew of hungry men. She lifted the watch pendant at her breast. Exactly five o’clock.

But she heard the clatter of pots and lids, and wonderful, tantalizing smells wafted from inside. She’d just step in and—

A slight figure in a black cotton tunic bustled out a doorway, swept onto the long, narrow porch outside and banged an iron spoon against a metal triangle. The sound jangled in her ears, and when it stopped another sound took its place. Marching feet.

Her blood turned to ice water. Yankee soldiers.

“You stand back, missy,” the bell ringer warned. His long pigtail swung behind him as he sped noiselessly across the rough floor. “Men come,” he called over his shoulder. “You come with Fong.”

Meggy took a step in his direction, but in the next instant the screen door slapped open and a herd of jabbering men, all sizes and shapes, poured into the room, climbing over benches and even the long trestle table, to jostle a place for themselves.

Quickly she followed Fong to the sanctuary of the kitchen, then peeked back around the corner and released a sigh of relief. Not one of them looked like a soldier.

The hulking blond Swede she recognized from the burial this morning. And the Irishman. Two gangly youths with identical patches of freckles scuffled over the space next to the Swede until a man with long, straight black hair separated them with one arm and took the place for himself.

More men tumbled in, pushing and shoving and shouting good-natured insults at each other that made her cheeks warm.

“You help, missy. Bullcook quit yesterday.” The Oriental shoved a huge bowl of mashed potatoes into her hands, turned her about and gave her a little push. “Hurry. Colonel Tom not like to wait.”

Meggy gulped. A blob of butter the size of her fist melted in the center of the steaming potatoes. She was so hungry! She inhaled the delicious aroma and felt another nudge at her back. “Go now. Eat later with Fong. Not good one missy with dozen misters.”

Quiet fell like a sheet of chilling rain when Meggy stepped into the dining room. No one moved. No one spoke. Twelve faces stared at her in complete silence.

She forced her feet to carry her forward to the table, where she set down the bowl of potatoes.

The Irishman rose and swept off his cap. “Boys, I’m presentin’ to you Miss Mary Margaret Hampton. She’s Walt Peabody’s next of kin.”

She tried to smile. “Gentlemen.”

“That they aren’t, lass. Some of ’em haven’t seen the likes of a lady up close for six months, so I wouldn’t be fraternizin’ too much.”

“Aw, come on, O’Malley, be reasonable,” a man shouted. A chorus of similar protests followed.

“Gosh, she shore is a purty one. She kin set on my lap and fraternize all she wants!”

“We want to hear her talk! Been a long time since we heard a woman’s voice.”

“Let’s have us a chiv—”

“Hold it!” a voice boomed from the doorway. Tall and lean, Tom Randall strode toward her, his eyes shooting sparks. Meggy’s heart began to skip beats.

“Thought I told you not to bother my men,” he said just loud enough for her to hear.

She swallowed. “I was not ‘bothering,’ Colonel. I was serving potatoes.”

He turned away from her without a word. “Boys, we’ve got us a problem. Maybe one of you can solve it.”

A murmur of interest hummed through the room. Meggy noticed how he used his body to shield her from view. Fong was right; one missy and a dozen misters not good! She edged backward toward the kitchen.

“The problem,” Tom continued, “is this. We’ve got no meat.”

Meggy stopped still and heard her stomach grumble. No meat? What smelled so good, then?

“We haven’t had any meat for weeks, Colonel. How long is this gonna go on?”

“That’s not exactly true, Price. We’ve eaten a rabbit or two, and a squirrel.”

“And some scrawny little pigeons,” someone ventured.

She saw what he was doing—drawing the men’s attention away from her—but she was so interested in the meat problem, she hovered near the door to listen.

Tom reached into his bulging back pocket, pulled out a bottle of amber liquid and thumped it down on the table. “This is fine whiskey, boys. One full quart.”

Every eye studied the bottle.

“Now I’m going to tell you how one of you can claim this joy juice. It’s plain we need meat. Fong tells me a deer’s been nibbling his tomato plants at night. I’ll give this bottle of liquid fire to the first man who shoots us some venison!”

“Hurray for the colonel!”

“I’m one crack shot,” yelled the Swede. “We haf meat by tomorrow.”

“A whole bottle for just one deer? Wouldja give me a gallon of rum if I kill an elk?”

“Elk meat tastes funny,” the man called Price said. “Least it did back in Kansas.”

“Hell, that weren’t no elk, that were a beef cow. Are all Kansans that stupid?”

Tom held up one hand and a hush fell. “Let’s get on with supper so we can be rolling into the timber at first light.”

Fong scurried past Meggy with an oval platter of sliced tomatoes in each hand. He plopped them down to the accompaniment of groans.

“Not more vegetables,” Price moaned. “I’m gonna turn into a carrot before this season’s half over!”

Tom slid onto the end of the bench and tapped the whiskey bottle with a ring he wore on his little finger. “Just a reminder, boys. We need meat to go with the potatoes.”

Meggy had to laugh. The man was a master at guiding people in the direction he wanted. Her father, minister of the Methodist persuasion until his death in the field at Shiloh, had been similarly persuasive. The difference was that Papa fought for men’s souls; Tom Randall cared about men’s stomachs.

Such a man surely lacked depth.

She tore her thoughts away from him and tried to focus on the mission she had set for herself. She calculated she would need about ten minutes to do what she had to do.

She spied two blue china plates loaded with food and set aside on a small kitchen table. First, she decided, she would eat her supper.

And then she would use the very trick Tom Randall had just showed her to benefit her own cause.

She did hope that God would forgive her.




Chapter Three


Meggy adjusted her position at the small kitchen table so she could see into the dining hall where the men were eating. As she lifted forkfuls of mashed potatoes and boiled carrots to her mouth, she watched Tom Randall out of the corner of her eye.

He sat facing her, speaking to the tall, dark-haired man across the table, the one who had stopped the freckle-faced boys’ scuffle. Tom’s blue eyes steadily surveyed the dark man’s face; Meggy studied Tom.

The colonel was a handsome man, she conceded. The skin of his face and arms was tanned from the sun, his features well proportioned. He wore a red plaid shirt, stuffed into dark-blue trousers. Even his mouth was attractive. For a Yankee, that is. Southern men generally sported mustaches.

The crew laughed and joked as they ate. Tom did neither. He kept his gaze on his men but didn’t join in beyond an occasional word. Many of them eyed the whiskey bottle Tom had set out, and a few even caressed the glass container as they finished their meal and meandered onto the porch for a smoke.

Fong bustled between the huge iron-and-nickel cookstove and the sink, pumping water into food-encrusted pots, shaving in bits of brown soap and setting the utensils aside to soak. Then the cook stood poised in the kitchen doorway, watching for the moment he could swoop down to clear the dirty plates the men had left on the table.

When the main room emptied, Fong shot forward, and Meggy laid her fork aside.

Here was her chance.

Very quietly she pushed back her chair, stood up and glided to the pantry. Inside, barrels of flour, sugar, salt and molasses lined one wall. Woven baskets stuffed with carrots, potatoes, apples and squash teetered on crude plank shelves, and bunches of drying herbs tied together with string hung upside down from nails in the ceiling.

She withdrew the tea towel from her pocket, lifted the first barrel lid and scooped up three handfuls of flour. She dumped it in the center of the towel, gathered up the four corners and then moved to the barrel marked Salt. She sprinkled a pinch on top of the flour, then searched for a container of saleratus. There, on the middle shelf!

She maneuvered the top off the square tin canister, dipped in her thumb and forefinger and added the white powder to the contents of the tea towel.

In the cooler sat a ceramic crock of pale cream-colored butter. Meggy hesitated a long moment. Did she dare? Papa would spin in his grave if he knew I was stealing butter from a cookhouse pantry.

She dug her fingers into the crock, scooped out a slippery handful. I cannot believe I am doing this!

She slid the glob of butter in on top of the flour and wiped her fingers on the towel. “Now,” she breathed. “What else will I need?”

Her gaze fell on a bushel basket of mottled gold apples by the door. Four went into the tea towel; the fifth and sixth she stuffed into her skirt pocket. Sweeping past the sugar barrel, she hesitated for a split second, then halted and plunged in her clean hand. Her fist closed around coarse brown lumps.

Fong’s voice rose from the kitchen like a trumpet call. “Missy help wash dishes?”

Her heart stopped. “Yes, I will,” she called out. She dumped the sugar into her pocket, then jiggled up and down so the lumps would sift down around the apples and collect at the bottom. Satisfied, she dusted off her hands and straightened her skirt.

Stepping out of the pantry, she slipped the bulging tea towel under her knitted black shawl and turned to the pile of pots and pans in the sink. Fong’s black eyes followed her every motion.

Trust me, she begged silently. I will pay you back.

He turned away without a word and dropped an armload of plates into the wide sink. “Fong wash, missy dry.”

He lifted a whistling teakettle off the stove. Steam arose as he emptied the kettle, then pumped cold water into the enamelware dishpan and pointed to a clumsily hemmed flour sack. Meggy snatched it up and stood ready.

The man was a wonder. Plates, mugs, pots and lids flew through the soapy wash water and into the rinse bucket. She wiped as fast as she could but could not keep up with him. Last to be cleaned were four black iron skillets in various sizes. Fong wiped out the grease with a wadded towel and hung them upside down near the stove.

Meggy eyed the smallest pan. Just perfect. But how would she get it out the door? Perhaps some conversation to distract Fong just long enough?

“How long have you worked for Colonel Randall?”

“Long time, missy. Since before war. Before that, on railroad crew. Boss find me and I cook in army, now here at Devil Camp.”

He sent her an inquisitive glance. “Ladies not allowed in camp. Why Colonel Tom let you stay?”

Meggy blinked. “Why, I don’t know, really. I guess he couldn’t very well turn me away, since Mr. Peabody willed me his cabin.”

Fong grunted and splashed the last plate into the rinse water. “Make no difference. Boss not like pretty women. Remind him of young sister.”

His sister! Not a wife or a fiancée? “Colonel Randall is not married, then?” How rude of me. First I turn thief, then inquisitor.

“No woman. Not since sister die.”

“Die! Oh, dear Lord, how did she die?”

Fong scrubbed hard at a tin saucepan. “Soldiers in Richmond hang her.”

Her hands stilled. “Hanged her! How dreadful! Whatever did she do?”

“They say she Yankee spy.”

The plate she was drying clattered to the plank floor. Colonel Randall’s sister had spied for the Yankees? Meggy couldn’t believe her ears. Of course there had been spies; she knew that. But hanging a woman? Why, it was unthinkable!

“So,” she murmured, “that is why he is so unfriendly. Perhaps I remind him of the sister he lost.” Oh, no, it was more than that. The Confederates had hanged the colonel’s sister…and she was a Confederate!

Fong’s face wrinkled into a frown. “You Johnny Reb, missy?”

“Y-yes. From South Carolina.”

The Oriental nodded and plopped another pot into the wash water. “Luck is bad,” he muttered. “Two things Colonel Tom not like—pretty woman and Johnny Reb. Luck very bad.”

Meggy gulped. And here she was, stealing from the colonel’s food supplies. If he found out, he would hang her!

“You go home now, missy. Fong sit up, guard tomatoes from hungry deer.” He brandished a sawed-off broom handle.

As soon as she dried the last pot and suspended it on the rack above the stove, she clutched the tea towel containing the flour mixture and pressed the smallest of the iron skillets into the folds of her skirt. Keeping her back to the cook, she slipped out the screen door and fled down the porch steps.

Behind her she heard the click of the door latch and Fong’s tuneless whistling. The latter blended with the throaty croak of frogs and the scrape of crickets. She stumbled up the path in the dark, felt her way to her own front porch and yanked open the door.

The cabin interior was black as the inside of a chimney. She crept to the bed, found the tin of candles and lit a short, fat one that Charlotte had scented with rose petals. Meggy set it on the counter. The little puddle of light calmed her nerves.

One hour. She needed just one hour.

She dampened her under-petticoat in the water bucket and scrubbed the plank counter. Then, with shaking hands, she poured the contents of the tea towel into the skillet and dug her fingers into the center. Within a few moments the flour and butter mixture was crumbly.

Dumping the lump of dough onto the clean counter surface, she patted it into shape and rolled it between her hands to make a smooth, round ball. When she’d set it on the sill of the open window to chill overnight, she emptied her pocket of the apples and spilled the sugar into the lid of a hand cream container. Then she stripped off her dress and petticoat, sponged her hands and face, puffed out the candle and fell into the bed still wearing her shimmy.

Tom tramped off the cookhouse porch and down the well-beaten path to his tent. He’d left the quart of whiskey in Fong’s care, knowing his cook would guard it as zealously as the tomato patch he’d planted at the start of the season. He’d bet Fong would sit up in his garden all night, the whiskey bottle tucked beneath his tunic.

He chuckled. The deer that gobbled Fong’s tomatoes would be far bolder than a man hankering to sneak a shot of rye!

He snatched up his account book, thumbed the pages, then slapped it down on the desk again. Damn, he wished he had some of that turkey sauce now!

He whittled the tip of his goose quill pen, fiddled with the bottle of brown ink. Finally he rose and took four steps to the front of the tent, four steps back to his makeshift desk, then repeated the circuit.

He felt another sleepless night coming on. In fact, he was so out of sorts he should probably be guarding the tomatoes and let Fong get some shut-eye. Peabody’s death had stirred up old memories.

Every single time he got riled up over something he lay awake thinking about Susanna and the ill-informed junior officers with the oh-so-gentlemanly manners who had executed her. Tom had gotten there too late to save her; instead, he’d had to bury her. He’d spent the last seven years trying to forget his failure.

His belly tightened into a hard knot. Just the sound of a soft Southern drawl set his teeth on edge. Lucky thing Peabody hadn’t talked much like a Confederate boy; otherwise, he’d never have been able to stomach the man. But Walt Peabody had spent more years in Oregon than he had in the South and talked pretty Western before the war even started.

Walt’s widow, or fiancée, or whatever she was, was another matter. Mary Margaret Hampton was a Southern belle from her toes to her crown, and he’d hated her guts the minute she opened her mouth. A woman exactly like her had accused Susanna and, worse, had testified against her in court.

Tom flopped onto his cot, shucked off his boots and trousers, and stretched out full length with his head resting on his folded arms. He spent too many nights like this, staring at the canvas tent ceiling or out into the dark. He was wasting his life.

A light glowed on the rise beyond the cookhouse. He squinted his eyes. The cabin. Must be a lantern or a candle burning inside; the flame shone through the chinks in the split-log walls.

He watched the light wink on and off as something—likely Miss Hampton—moved back and forth in front of the source. What was she doing, pacing up and down like that? That’s what he usually did at night. It was damned unsettling to lie here and watch someone else do it. He felt like he was watching himself.

The light flickered out, reappeared. It reminded him of the signals the Cheyenne made with hand-held mirrors. He stared at it, trying to clear his mind of Miss Mary Margaret Hampton, until his eyelids drifted shut.

Meggy woke with a start. What was that?

Something rustled in the brush outside the cabin. She raised her head, listening. A shaft of moonlight fell through the open window above the sink, silhouetting the ball of dough on the sill and the six lumps that were her stolen apples.

The rustling came again, closer this time. Without a sound, she sat up and swung her feet to the floor. Pulling her father’s revolver from under the heap of garments where she’d hidden it, she hefted it in both hands, crept to the window and peered out.

A huge, soft brown eye peered back at her. A sleek brown head ducked, then lifted again. A wide rack of antlers gleamed in the pale light.

A deer! Probably the one that foraged in Fong’s tomatoes. The animal took a tentative step forward, stopped, then sniffed the air.

Oh, no! Not my piecrust!

“Shoo!” she cried. Her voice came out no louder than a whisper. “Go away, please!”

The stag took two more steps. Meggy raised the revolver, closed her eyes and squeezed the trigger.

The shot brought Tom out of bed so fast he smacked his head on the tent pole. Great jumping catfish, what in the—

A woman screamed.

He yanked on his pants, jammed his feet into his boots and began to run. In the dark he could barely see the trail. Keeping low to the ground, he headed in the general direction of the noise.

Moonlight, he thought as he stumbled past the cookhouse, was one of God’s greatest ideas!




Chapter Four


All the way up the hill, Tom could hear the sound of a woman crying. It cut into his belly like a shot of rotgut whiskey and made him blind with rage. He didn’t know why, but he’d never been able to stomach a woman’s tears.

When he could see the dark outline of the cabin in the moonlight, he slowed to a walk. If she could cry, she could breathe. That answered one question.

The other question—Why?—he answered when he stumbled over the carcass of a deer.

Someone had killed tomorrow’s supper. The shot must have scared the ginger out of her, but the thought of venison steaks made him smile. He stepped around the dead animal and headed for the glimmer of white on the porch ahead of him.

“Miss Hampton? It’s Tom Randall.”

When he stepped forward, she jerked upright. “Oh! Please come no farther, C-Colonel Randall. I am not p-properly attired.” She sounded like she had the hiccups.

Tom spun on one heel so his back was to her. “Who shot the deer?”

“I—I did,” she confessed between sobs. “At least I think I did. I had my eyes closed.”

Tom knelt to inspect the animal. “Mighty good shot, ma’am. Clean and true, right into the head.”

“Oh, the poor, dear thing. I meant only to scare it away, not kill it!”

Poor dear thing? He sneaked a look at her. Arms locked about her white-shrouded legs, she rocked back and forth, her forehead pressed against her knees.

“I feel just awful about shooting it. It had such big, soft eyes.”

Two things warred for Tom’s attention—the revolver lying beside her and her hair tumbling loose about her shoulders. He struggled to keep his mind on the gun.

“Where’d you learn to shoot?”

She choked back a sob. “My father taught me, before he went off to his military post. He said I had a g-good eye.”

“And a steady hand, it would appear. Miss Hampton, you might as well dry your tears and make the best of it. The boys’ll be grateful to you for supplying some good meat.”

“I—I will try.” She gazed at him with a stricken look. “I just feel so…mean!”

He stuffed down a chuckle. “You ever shoot anything before?”

She nodded. “I shot a Yankee once. In the backyard of the parsonage. He was after our last two chickens, you see, and I…I hit him in the shoulder. I offered to dress the wound, but he swore something dreadful and skedaddled over the back fence.”

So she’d lived in a parsonage, had she? A preacher’s daughter with good eyesight and guts. Now, why should that surprise him? All Southerners were murdering bastards hiding under a cloak of gentility. He’d learned that in Richmond. His jaw tightened.

“I hear somebody coming, Miss Hampton. You might want to put on a robe.”

Meggy scrambled to her feet. The colonel stood before her, both hands jammed in his trouser pockets. Mercy me, he wore no shirt!

She stared at the bare skin of his chest, at the muscles cording his broad shoulders. Never in her whole life had she seen a man without his shirt, not even Papa. She gulped. Even her intended, Mr. Peabody, had been laid out in his coffin fully dressed.

An odd, restless feeling crept over her as she gazed at the colonel’s tall frame. Why, he looked strong enough to—

Sergeant O’Malley crashed out of the trees and into the clearing. “For the love of God, Tom, what’s goin’ on? I heard a shot, and when I found your tent empty…well, I thought maybe you’d—What’s this, now?”

The Irishman stared down at the dead stag. “Well, I’ll be smithereened! You killed us a deer, Tom.”

“I didn’t exactly…”

Meggy slipped inside the front door and listened to Tom’s voice floating from the porch. “Think we can dress it out here?”

“Nah. Too dark. Let’s lug it down to the cookhouse. I’ll go rustle up Fong and some other help. Maybe those two rascally Claymore lads you took on.”

She held her breath. Tom had sidestepped telling Mr. O’Malley who had killed the animal. True, she didn’t want to confess the deed, but she doubted the colonel would understand why. No Yankee soldier could fathom Southern sensibilities.

She tiptoed to the counter and rummaged in the pile of garments for her night robe, drew it on over her shimmy and underdrawers and tied it about her waist with a jerk.

No Federal officer she’d ever encountered paid the slightest attention to the feelings of civilians. When the Northern army overran Chester County, the soldiers had swaggered and shouted and stolen her mother’s ruby ear-bobs. Why, they did not even look like gentlemen. Even the men she and her sisters had tended in hospital were hopelessly ill-mannered and unlettered.

Through the open doorway she watched the two men drag the deer away from her porch. Then Mr. O’Malley tramped off down the hill toward the cookhouse and the colonel settled himself on the planks, his back toward her.

A long minute dragged by. Meggy became acutely aware of the noises around her, the breeze sighing through the treetops, the low hoo…hoo of an owl. The uneven breathing of the man sitting not three feet away from her.

What was he thinking?

The silence hung on until she thought she would scream. All of a sudden his low voice made her jump.

“Might as well go on back to bed, Miss Hampton. We’ll haul the carcass down to the cookhouse so you won’t have to look at it in the morning.”

“Thank you,” she managed, in a tight voice. But she stood frozen to the spot. Why could she not move?

Because…Meggy’s entire body trembled. Was the sight of a half-naked man outside her front door so disturbing?

Certainly not! It was because she was a tiny bit afraid of him.

Because she disliked him.

Because he, well, he was a Yankee.

Because he was a man.

Her heart hammered. Most definitely not! She put no stock whatsoever in such things. She and Walter Peabody had contracted a union of souls, not bodies. She always wondered at her sisters, who had grown dreamy-eyed and absentminded when they were smitten by some young gentleman. Oh, Meggy, just the sound of his voice gives me the shivers!

She had no time for such sentimental nonsense.

Besides that, she most certainly harbored no such feelings about a man she had known just half a day and was a Yankee besides.

She was tired, that was it. And overwrought. Her nerves were frazzled. This entire day—and night—was a dreadful nightmare, and any moment she would wake up.

“Go to bed,” he repeated.

“I would,” she murmured, “if I could make my feet move.”

He rose and half turned in her direction. “Are you all right?”

“No. I—I mean, yes. Of course.”

He stepped up onto the porch. “Need help?”

His movement toward her jolted her into action. She inched backward until her legs touched the cot against the far wall.

“Miss Hampton?”

Her derriere sank onto the blanket. With a supreme effort she closed her eyes to blot out the bronzed skin of his bare chest, his sinewy shoulders and arms. Mary Margaret, you are hallucinating!

Voices came up the hill. Someone—it must be Colonel Randall—stepped across the porch and pulled her front door shut.

“Tomorrow…”

She heard his words as clearly as if they were spoken at her bedside.

“Tomorrow, Mick, I want a lock put on this door.”

Oh, yes, Meggy thought with relief. A lock was exactly what she needed. A lock would surely keep her safe.

By the time Meggy woke, the sun was high overhead in a sky so blue and clear it looked like a cerulean-painted china bowl. She breathed in the warm, pine-scented air and bolted upright. Mercy, she’d overslept!

With hurried motions she washed her face and arms, pulled on her blue sateen skirt, a white waist and a plain cotton apron, and bound up her hair in a neat black net.

Cautiously she cracked open the front door. No sign of men. No sign of the deer, save for a mashed-down patch of dry grass. Skirting the area, she gathered small sticks and an apronful of pinecones, then started a fire in the wood stove. When it caught, she fed it pine chips apparently left over from construction of her cabin and small sections of a tree stump that had been chopped up and left in chunks. Then she rolled up her sleeves and set to work.

Using a smooth glass bottle of Molly More Rosewater as a rolling pin, she pressed the lump of dough into a round flat circle, laid it in the skillet she’d borrowed from the cookhouse, and crimped the edges with her thumb and forefinger. With the pocketknife she always carried in her reticule, she peeled the apples she’d taken from Fong’s pantry, sliced them into the pie shell and sprinkled her pocketful of sugar over the top. A dollop of molasses would have been nice, but she could manage without it. It was one thing to carry a tea towel full of flour and butter, but a handful of sticky syrup?

When the oven was hot, she shoved the skillet in, rinsed off her hands and busied herself gathering more wood to replenish the fire while the pie baked.

Oh, it did smell heavenly, even without the cinnamon she usually sprinkled over the apples. The sweet-tart scent made her mouth water. Papa used to say she could make a pie so tender and delicious it was like an angel’s breath melting in his mouth.

To her sister Charlotte the good Lord gave the gift of words. To Hope and Charity, keen eyesight and skill with a crochet hook. To Addie, a singing voice that could reduce a congregation to tears.

But to me, Mary Margaret, God gave the ability to cook.

When the pie was golden-brown, she wrapped her apron around her hand, slid the bubbling confection out of the oven and set the skillet on the windowsill to cool.

Unable to stop herself, she twirled about the room until she was giddy. It was a silly thing to do, but at this moment she didn’t care one bit. Her daring venture would be a success, she just knew it!

Off in the distance she heard the crash and thump of a falling tree. Somewhere in the woods beyond were twelve hungry loggers. All she needed was a bit of patience and the Lord’s own luck.

She eyed the cooling pie and smiled.

Meggy dipped her bare toe in the slow-moving river and shivered. She didn’t care what Colonel Randall said, she desperately wanted a bath and a chance to wash her clothes and her hair. Her scalp tingled at the thought of soapsuds. With the men out cutting trees, she couldn’t see the sense in advising the colonel of her plans, as he had requested. What could he possibly care about her personal habits?

Despite the bright sun beating down on it, the water was ice cold. She pulled her arms in close to her body. Rivers at home in Chester County were generally tepid by late summer. Out here in the West, everything was colder, bigger, steeper, rougher. And more frightening.

She waded in until the clear water covered her knees, then submerged the bundle of clothes she carried and tossed a bar of rose-scented soap on top of them. Standing naked in the shallows, she scrubbed her black traveling dress, two petticoats, her underdrawers, even her shimmy. Soft, warm air brushed against her skin, and she sighed with satisfaction. Her apple pie was cooling in the window, and now her laundry was done.

She wrung out the sopping garments, waded to shore and draped them over a sun-drenched chokecherry bush. By the time she’d washed her hair and dunked her hot, sticky body in the cool river water, her clothes would be dry enough to put on.

Bending at the waist, she unpinned her hair and sloshed water over the heavy chestnut waves, then worked up a lather with her fingers. Oh, how blessed it was to feel clean again! She took a deep breath, leaned forward to dive into the blue-green water, and froze.

Voices floated from the woods behind her. Men’s voices.

Good heavens, the logging crew! Meggy clapped one hand over her mouth to suppress a squeal. She plunged in neck deep just in time to see Colonel Randall stride into view at the head of a straggly line of slow-footed workers. Two loggers, the Swede and the plump, sweet-faced man called Orrin, carried a two-man crosscut saw across their shoulders.

Dear God, the colonel was heading straight for the chokecherry bush! He would see her garments and know in an instant she had disobeyed his orders. Worse, she was stuck out here in this freezing water with her hair piled up under a tower of soapsuds.

She sank into the water up to her chin, and her teeth began to chatter.

She watched him approach, saw him hesitate as the chokecherry came into his view. Her bent knees began to ache.

Suddenly the colonel quickened his pace. Meggy groaned. He had spied her dress, her petticoats, her…Oh, how perfectly mortifying!

Barely breaking stride, he gathered up the items, rolling them into a wet ball as he walked, and tucked them under one arm. Without a backward glance he kept moving, staying well ahead of the men lagging behind him.

When their voices died away, Meggy dunked her head under the surface and swam to shore. Her skin sprouted goose bumps as big as June bugs as she waded out of the river. Heaven help her, she had not one single scrap to clothe herself in except for her shoes! How was she to get back to her cabin?

In disbelief, she circled the chokecherry bush. How could he have left her in such a fix? He was a mean, no-count lowlife if ever she’d met one. Imagine, taking advantage of a helpless…

Something caught her eye, and she jerked to a halt. There, in the crotch of that young maple tree—what was that dark roll poking out?

Her clothes! Wadded up in a ball and wet as rainwater.

She snatched them up and with shaking hands pulled on the dripping garments, starting with her underdrawers. Her skin shrank at the feel of the damp, clingy muslin.

That dreadful man!

Every step of the way back to the cabin she rehearsed the stinging words she would level at the colonel when she confronted him.

Tom leaned back on the plank porch, supporting his weight on one elbow. He’d sent the crew on ahead with the promise of venison steaks for dinner, and now he waited for Mary Margaret Hampton. He worked his thumbnail into the wood, outlining a curved half-moon that looked like the letter C.

C for cantankerous. C for crazy. Chuckle-headed. Calico-hungry. All that and more. His crew was an obstreperous bunch of misfits, and it had taken half the season to turn them into a team. He’d almost lost another man today when that idiot bullwhacker Sam Turner got to showing off and one of the young Claymore boys slipped under the mule team.

On top of that, he was saddled with a cotton-headed female. By damn, he was in no mood for any nonsense, especially not from a little slip of a woman whose sense of independence outweighed her brain power.

When she appeared on the trail that led up to the cabin, Tom lifted his head. She marched along the path with jerky steps, holding her wet, drooping skirt up out of the dust. Her eyes glinted an icy green.

“Evening, Miss Hampton.”

She stopped short and pressed her lips together. “What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you. Thought you might be along pretty soon. I see you found your dress and…things.”

“Found and donned, no thanks to you. Whatever possessed you to take them in the first place?”

“Had to,” he said quietly. “Behind me were eleven men who haven’t seen a woman in six months, let alone one standing in the woods buck naked. What do you think they’d do if they stumbled across some damn fool’s frilly underwear hangin’ on a bush?”

“Avert their eyes and walk on, of course. As any gentleman would.”

Tom rose. “My men aren’t gentlemen, Miss Hampton. They’re rough and they’re rowdy and they’re all male. I wouldn’t go poking at this particular hornet’s nest if I were you.”

“I was most certainly not poking—”

“You were taking a bath in the river. Against my orders.”

She dropped the folds of her skirt clenched in her fingers and propped her fists on her hips. “You saw me!”

“Couldn’t miss you. Hair all sudsed up with white foam, you looked like a frosted cake floating out there in the middle of the river. I gathered up your clothes so the men wouldn’t get interested in finding the owner.”

“Frosted cake! Well, I never!”

“That water’s crystal clear,” he said with a grin. “The rest of you looked like a shriveled up corn doll.”

“The rest of me?”

“Miss Hampton, don’t take another bath without telling me. Like I said before, I’ll post a guard.”

Speechless, Meggy stared into the man’s face for a full minute. A muscle under his eye jerked. “A guard,” she echoed.

“A guard.”

All at once she became aware of how cold and wet she was. Her clammy underdrawers stuck to her thighs and calves; her damp shimmy clung to her back and chest like a coating of cold syrup. Her petticoats dripped water down her ankles and into her shoes. And her dress…well, it felt for all the world like a heavy, cold shroud.

“Go inside,” he ordered. “You’re shivering. Get out of those wet things.”

“I am n-not s-shivering.” She had to work hard to keep her voice steady.

He rolled his eyes toward the treetops. “Go!”

Without thinking, Meggy snapped her heels together and saluted. “Am I dismissed, then, Colonel?”

Without waiting for a reply, she hoisted her skirt up a few inches and planted one foot on the porch. With a little lift she attempted to heave herself upward, but the weight of her wet clothes was more than she’d bargained for. She stumbled against the edge.

Tom watched her struggle for a moment, then moved behind her, placed his hands about her waist and lifted her onto the porch. The feel of her body under his hands, the whiff of roses that came from her hair sent a red-hot arrow straight to his groin.

With an exaggerated sniff, she stomped across the planks to the front door, yanked it open and banged it shut behind her.

“Headstrong and excitable,” he muttered as he clomped down off the porch. “She sure gets an arch in her back over the damnedest things.”

On the other hand, she might have been raised on prunes and proverbs, but when she closed her mouth, she was all woman.

“That being the case…” He laughed out loud as he strode down the hill toward the safety of his tent.

“The next time she flames up over something, I guess I’ll have to set a backfire.”




Chapter Five


Meggy listened to the colonel’s boots clump across the porch and fade as he tramped down the path. As fast as her chilled fingers could move, she unbuttoned her wet dress, stepped out of her petticoats and peeled off the cold, clingy underdrawers and shimmy. The late-afternoon air was still warm, but her naked skin pebbled just the same. Hurriedly she laid the wet garments out on the counter beneath the windowsill to dry.

And stopped short.

Her pie! Her beautiful apple pie had disappeared. The black iron skillet sat on the sill right where she’d left it, but it was empty.

Clutching a damp petticoat to her body, she tiptoed forward for a closer look. Gone. Not a single crumb remained in the pan. Something, or someone, had stolen her pie.

She snatched up the skillet and gasped. A shiny round coin lay underneath it. “Merciful heaven, a five-dollar gold piece! But who—”

The colonel, of course. That scoundrel! Why, he’d just lounged there on her porch, waiting for her to return from the river. Plain as buttermilk he’d helped himself to her creation, without even a by-your-leave.

Seething inside, Meggy struggled to think clearly. At least it was decent of him to pay for his prize. She could use the money to pay for the flour and sugar she’d used, and then…

Absently she hung the damp petticoat on a nail by the door and drew on clean, dry undergarments, her brain turning over the spark of an idea.

Yes! And it would serve him right, too. The very idea of eating her pie…

By suppertime she had made up her mind. Slipping the gold piece into her pocket, she snatched up the iron skillet and sped down the path to the cookhouse.

Fong glanced up from the cookstove as she entered the kitchen. “Ah, missy find fry pan. Have good luck now. Fry steaks for supper.” He lifted the pan from her hands and banged it down on the stove top.

Meggy blinked. “Don’t you want to ask me about the skillet?”

Fong grinned at her. “Nope. More better you not explain.” He turned away, dropped a teacup-size ball of suet into each of the four pans. When it sizzled, he slapped down inch-thick slabs of meat and turned to her.

“You need more flour?”

Her heart nearly stopped beating. “Yes,” she said in a small voice. “But this time I can pay.” She drew out the gold piece and laid it on the warming shelf.

The cook scooped it into his palm. “Too much, missy. You take what you need for two, three days.”

“And…and a skillet?” Meggy held her breath. Without the heavy iron utensil she had nothing to bake a pie in.

“Oh, yes. Take big pan this time.” He banged a two-pronged fork against the handle of the largest skillet. “This one good. I hear about pie,” he added in an undertone.

Meggy swallowed. “Who told you?”

Fong’s black eyes sparkled. “Cannot say. But—” he beckoned her closer “—he say needs maybe more sugar.”

“Oh! The pie thief is criticizing his booty?”

“I not steal,” Fong protested. He pointed to the side pocket of his black tunic. “Someone pay. In gold. Good business, missy.”

Meggy exchanged a long, significant look with the cook. Was she dreaming, or was he encouraging her in her enterprise?

Whistling idly between his teeth, Fong surveyed his skillet-crowded stove top, jabbed one sputtering steak with the fork and expertly flipped it over. “Next time,” he said, “use big pan. Make more dollar.”

Was it possible Fong was in cahoots with the colonel? She baked a pie, the colonel stole—well, bought it—and Fong got rich when she paid him for the supplies she’d used? It made sense of a sort.

Except that she needed the money, or at least part of it. Otherwise, she would never collect enough for train fare back to…

She caught her breath as a sudden, sharp realization hit her. She could not possibly return to Chester County. By now, the parsonage would be occupied by the new minister and his family, and even though her sisters would surely take her in, she did not relish the role of maiden aunt, a spinster like Aunt Hattie, who’d grown old taking care of other people’s children instead of her own, and who’d become addled and crotchety in middle age because no man had ever touched her.

Oh, dear God, please don’t let that happen to me. I want a life for me. I want someone to love who will love me back.

Therefore, she resolved, she must go forward. She would go where she could have what she wanted. And if that meant selling another pie and saving her money, then that was exactly what she would do. She did not belong anywhere, now. But she would. She would.

Meggy pointed to the largest skillet. “That one, please.”

Fong nodded and flipped over two more steaks.

She set plates and mugs and utensils on the table, lugged out the coffeepot, brought two bowls of boiled potatoes and one of savory-smelling brown gravy, and finally carried out the huge platter of venison steaks just as Fong clanged the dinner bell.

A loud, quarreling knot of men tumbled through the cookhouse door.

“Get yer butt outta my place.”

“Anybody know who shot the deer?”

“Shut up and pass the meat!”

“Kinda takes the sting out of bustin’ that skid, don’t it, Swede?”

“Ya, sure it does, by golly.”

The men fell on the food like vultures. As the last man, the black-haired Indian, sat down at the table, Meggy spotted the colonel on the porch, his gait slow and loose jointed, his unruly dark hair curling over the collar of his red plaid shirt. Talk ceased the instant he moved into the room.

Meggy turned back toward the kitchen. Something clunked onto the table, and Tom’s voice rose behind her. “Boys, we have among us a sharpshooter of the first water.”

Meggy stopped in her tracks.

“Well, who is it?” someone shouted.

“Shut up, ya numbskull. It’s the colonel that done it.”

“You mean he won his own whiskey? ’Tain’t fair!”

“Well, hell, what do we care? We got meat, ain’t we?”

“Boys,” the colonel said. The sound of his voice brought instant quiet.

Meggy’s neck grew warm. Would he tell them who had shot the deer?

“Now, boys, when a person’s this good a shot, it pays to take note. First off, it’s food on the table. And secondly—”





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