Cheyenne Wife

Epilogue

Chapter One

Santa Fe Trail, 1844

She’d gone to hell.

Lily St. Claire pressed the damp cloth to her brow, desperate for a moment’s relief. She’d died. Yes, that must be it, she decided. Because right now, she had to be in hell.

The covered wagon lurched, a wheel finding another rut in what some overly optimistic guide—a man whom Lily believed truly deserved to be cast into the pit of eternal hellfire—had referred to as a “trail.” She braced her foot against a wooden trunk and grabbed the edge of the narrow bunk to keep from toppling to the floor.

A mournful groan reminded Lily that she was very much alive despite the heat, the suffocating wagon, the foul stench of sickness. The man lying on the damp sheets mumbled incoherently. Sweat trickled from his fevered brow, soaking his hair, his tangled gray beard and his thin white nightshirt.

Her father.

A stranger, really.

For weeks—Lily wasn’t sure how many—Augustus St. Claire had burned with fever, flailed his arms, conversed with unseen people, even Lily’s mother, dead twelve years now.

Lily dipped the cloth into the bucket of tepid water and laid it on her father’s forehead. Fear and guilt crept into her thoughts. Fear that he wasn’t getting any better. Guilt that he was dying before her eyes, and she didn’t know how to help him.

A wealthy businessman from Saint Louis, Augustus had stunned Lily when he’d told her of his plan to explore the West, to expand his business holdings in the wilds of Santa Fe. His plan to send her away.

Again.

Since her mother’s death when she was seven years old, Lily had lived in boarding schools. Fine institutes all, catering to the daughters of the wealthy. She’d just graduated from Saint Louis’s most prestigious academy for young women, prepared to do what was expected of her and take her place among polite society, when her father had revealed his intentions.

He’d wanted her to move to her aunt Maribel’s home in Richmond, Virginia, where Lily could take up the sort of life she’d been raised to lead. He told her harrowing accounts of Indian raids on the Trail, stories of disease and hardship. Yet for all his attempts to discourage her, Lily insisted that she accompany him. She had to take this chance—perhaps her very last chance—to get to know the man who was her father.

The trip had promised to be an adventure. Before leaving Saint Louis, Lily had been contacted by the editor of the newspaper and was asked to chronicle the trip in a series of articles. She’d packed her journal, her paints and brushes, intending to write poetry and sketch the scenery along the way.

Setting out, she’d envisioned she and her father working side by side to start the new business, carve out a living together in the new land. Finally, they would truly be a family. Lily’s heart had soared at the prospect. Perhaps, she’d hoped, he might even tell her all the things she’d longed to hear about her mother.

But barely two weeks into the journey, Augustus had sliced open his leg with a hatchet while attempting to split kindling. A deep, nasty cut; Lily had nearly fainted at the sight.

Her years at boarding school had been spent learning deportment, etiquette, menu planning, the proper way to supervise a household staff. Madame DuBois’s lesson plan had contained nothing about medicine.

With no doctor on the wagon train, a few of the older women had told Lily how to care for her father. She’d forced herself to look at the gaping wound, the oozing mustard-colored pus, and endured the stench. She’d sat at his bedside tending to him endlessly. Yet despite everything she’d done, his condition had only worsened.

And grew worse by the hour.

A slice of sunlight cut through the wagon’s dim interior, bringing a welcome breath of fresh air with it as Jamie Nelson pulled back the canvas opening. He was only fifteen years old, yet he handled the team of horses like a grown man.

Augustus had hired the Nelsons, a family also heading west, to assist them on the journey. Though they traveled in their own wagon, Mrs. Nelson cooked and cleaned for Lily and her father, while Jamie, their oldest son, took care of the horses and drove the wagon.

Lily’s stomach lurched. “Are we there?” she asked, unable to keep the excitement from her voice.

“No, not yet,” Jamie said, holding the reins, looking back over his shoulder.

“Is your mother coming?” she asked, her words more a plea than a question.

“Ah…no, Miss Lily,” he replied with an apologetic dip of his head.

Why not? she wanted to scream. Why hadn’t they arrived at the fort yet? Why wouldn’t Mrs. Nelson walk back to her wagon and help nurse Augustus?

And why wouldn’t someone make this nightmare end?

“You—you want to come sit up front for a while, Miss Lily?” Jamie asked. He gulped. “With…me?”

The desire to escape tempted Lily. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. She wasn’t supposed to be confined in this airless wagon, trying to figure out how to care for her ailing father, worried sick with fear, scared that he might die at any moment.

For an instant, Lily wanted to shout at Jamie to turn the wagon around, take her east again, deliver her to her aunt’s home in Virginia. She wanted a bath—a hot bath with lavender scents, a maid to style her hair, fresh clothing. That’s where she belonged. That’s where Augustus belonged, as well, with real doctors and nurses who knew what they were doing. Neither of them belonged here, suffering under these inhumane conditions, horrified by the constant threat of Indian attacks and fatal disease, filled with an aching loneliness.

Augustus groaned and Lily turned back to him. He mumbled something she couldn’t understand. She removed the cloth from his forehead and wrung it in the water, then swiped it over her own forehead, smoothing back an errant strand of her dark hair.

If she weren’t here, who would take care of her father? Again, Lily wondered at his original intention of making this trip alone.

“Miss Lily?” Jamie asked, jarring her thoughts.

She shook her head. “No. No, I’ll stay here. With Papa.”

“Oh…”

“But you’ll let me know when we get there, won’t you?” she asked, her excitement building. “When we get close, I mean. When you can see it?”

After the wagon train had reached the Arkansas River, most of the wagons had taken the Cimarron Cutoff, the southern—and more dangerous—branch of the Trail for the final leg into Santa Fe. With her father so ill, Lily had gone with two other wagons along the Mountain Branch toward Bent’s Fort. The fort was a center for trade along the Trail, not a military installation. There, they would rest and re-supply before continuing.

“Sure thing, Miss Lily. I’ll let you know the minute I see the fort,” Jamie promised, then pulled the canvas closed.

Lily gulped hard, forcing back a sudden wave of tears. Once they reached the fort, surely someone would make this nightmare end.

“Here comes trouble.”

Standing in the shadows of the adobe walls of Bent’s Fort, North Walker whispered the words to the horse tethered to the hitching rail. The brown mare rubbed her head against his pale-blue shirt, seeming to nod in agreement, but North didn’t notice.

The arrival of covered wagons at the fort—even as few as these three—brought news from the East, a chance to trade goods and services, make money.

But this one had brought something else.

Trouble.

North pulled his black hat lower on his forehead as he watched men step out of the trade room, the kitchen, the dining room. They stood in doorways and lingered in the shadows, staring. North’s gut tightened a bit, urging him to cross the dirt plaza as well.

Young white women—especially pretty ones—were rare at the fort and in this part of the country. This one, who had just climbed out of one of the wagons, hardly seemed to realize she was the center of attention as she spoke to Old Man Fredericks.

North kept his distance.

Half Cheyenne, half white, North was accepted by the men at the fort for what he was. A horse trader, a guide, a messenger.