Beloved Outcast

Neither the wagon master nor Mr. Dodson, however, had been inclined to be understanding.

Which brought Victoria to her third reason for going west. It seemed that people in general were disinclined to be tolerant of life’s little mishaps. For instance, take the innocent incident when one of her sister’s suitors had been caught with his pants at half-mast in Victoria’s bedchamber. Had anyone been interested in hearing that the hapless man had scaled the outside trellis and was delivering a rose to Annalee?

Not that she wouldn’t be the first to admit that his romantic gesture was the stuff of foolishness. But, foolish though it might have been, the cavalier act had been conceived and executed in innocence. It had been the merest accident that he chose the wrong bedchamber.

Unfortunately, at the instant of his arrival, Victoria had been changing and had been in her chemise and drawers. She wasn’t sure which of them had been more startled when they laid shocked gazes upon each other. Before he could depart her chamber, however, a crazed bumblebee had emerged from the bedraggled rose, circled Mr. Threadgill twice and then flown up the inside of his pant leg.

Victoria had acted without forethought, tugging down the man’s britches and landing several energetic whacks upon the trapped but clearly homicidal bee with her hairbrush.

If only Threadgill hadn’t screamed.

Her mother’s afternoon guests, the Reverend Golly’s wife among them, had heard Horace’s distressed cries and come charging upstairs. It had been the most mortifying occasion of Victoria’s life to be caught in a state of undress on her knees in front of the hysterical, half-clad man.

No one had been interested in explanations that day. The scandalized women had departed from her parents’ home and spread the most outrageous gossip about the entirely innocent episode. In a single afternoon, Victoria’s reputation had been hopelessly tarnished. Poor Mr. Threadgill had vacated his Boston abode. The last she’d heard, he’d decided to visit the Continent.

No doubt he’d been afraid that he would be obligated to redeem her reputation with a proposal of marriage. Clearly, the man had no intention of making such a drastic act of restitution on the basis of one demented bee and her honor.

She still couldn’t get over the fact that an entire lifetime of prudent and circumspect behavior could be overturned by one unfortunate occurrence. The very idea that anyone could think she would try to divest a man of his britches, against his will, and assert her runaway passions upon him was ludicrous.

She shook the reins.

“Ha!”

The oxen stayed put. Perhaps they were as weary as she was and needed a good rest. She would have loved to accommodate them, but she knew they had to keep moving. Determinedly she reached for the unwieldy bullwhip and cracked it over their broad backs.

“I said, Ha!” This time they moved toward the horizon where high-peaked mountains towered. Victoria laid aside the whip and used her sleeve to wipe the perspiration from her face.

The twisting river caused the flattened thoroughfare that ran alongside it to wind around yet another bend. When she rounded the curve, a large edifice several hundred yards away greeted Victoria. She blinked several times, lest it somehow disappear into nothingness. The building remained.

She’d finally made it to human habitation. Victoria strained to discern what the distant structure might be. Then she laughed at herself. Even if it wasn’t the fort, it didn’t matter. In her present mood, even a saloon would be welcome.

People lived there.

That was the only thing that mattered.

As she drew closer, the large building miraculously revealed itself to indeed be a military outpost. Relief swept through her. She was safe. For as long as she remained at.

Victoria squinted, trying to make out the name that had been crudely burned into a wide plank of wood suspended horizontally above the great open gate.

Fort Brockton.

Seeing the giant log poles less than twenty yards ahead filled Victoria with an overwhelming sense of euphoria. One by one, the tense muscles in her neck and shoulders relaxed.

A gust of wind came up. With it came a lonely, mournful cry that made the fine hairs at the nape of her neck rise.

Despite the reality of the immense log structure, Victoria was struck by the eerie impression that she was the last woman on earth. The jangle of leather harnesses and the plodding of her team’s hooves joined the whispering screech of air rushing through and around the fort’s timbers.

Her stomach knotted, and she tried to talk herself out of the nebulous fears that scurried through the corners of her mind. Only a few feet now separated her from the wide log doors, which gaped open with a kind of drunken clumsiness.

She halted. No uniformed man stared down from the fort’s watchtowers. No concerned soldier surged forward to draw her wagon inside protective walls. No sound of occupation reached her. Tingles of alarm scraped her skin. Simultaneously, a fierce blast of wind battered her sunbonnet. Victoria flinched at the almost physical assault and peeled back the tendrils of hair the disturbance had plastered to her cheek and mouth.

“Hello?”

The uncertain greeting was plucked from her lips and swallowed up by the wind that rollicked around her.

“Ha!”

Her voice was stronger, and she again urged the oxen forward. The sinister sense of danger permeating the trembling pines and aspen trees drove her to seek the tangible security of the empty fortress. No matter how bizarre the circumstances, surely being inside was safer than being out.

Victoria studied the fort’s deserted inner courtyard. Compact buildings that were a mixture of military offices and personal dwellings shared common walls, so that it appeared she was looking at a small town enclosed by high ramparts.

Every door hung ajar.

“Hello!” she called again.

Silence answered her. She was simply unable to grasp that a fortress this size, one obviously designed to hold several hundred people, could actually have been abandoned.

Victoria climbed from the wagon, forcing back the uneasiness that continued to grow within her. The oxen were restless. She assumed they smelled the water inside the low rock cisterns that stood beside the empty corrals. Her mind balked at the realization that the huge animals would have to be unhitched in order to drink.

She was so blasted tired she was all but staggering.

And yet there was only her and the oxen. If they were going to be watered, it was up to her to do it. Their survival was in her hands. Blinking back tears of weariness, she went to the lead oxen’s giant halter. Simple wishing wouldn’t get the arduous task done. As she slid the leather harnesses through fist-size coupling rings, Victoria reflected that beginning a new life on the Western frontier was a far tougher endeavor than she’d imagined when she contemplated the contract Mr. Pritchert had sent her. Of course, she’d signed the document in the comfort of her family’s cozy parlor. How far away that parlor seemed at this moment.

When she had finally freed the animals to drink, Victoria proceeded to search every building that lined the fort’s interior. Each office and residence showed signs of urgent flight. Drawers were left open, their varied contents spilled onto the floor in wild heaps of clutter. Beds and blankets were in a state of upheaval.

In the largest office, it appeared that a whirlwind had come charging through. Papers and maps were tossed about. A chair was tipped over, and several lengths of rope lay on the floor.

No matter how exhausted she was, she had to think. What terrible menace could have caused the commanding officer to evacuate his troops?

The incredible, numbing silence of the deserted military facility heightened her already taut nerves. For the first time in her life, she didn’t know what to do next.

It seemed madness to stay in a place that an armed militia had fled. Her shoulders sagged as she turned from the doorway and retraced her steps across the military yard. Returning to the unhitched wagon, she scarcely registered the presence of a squat log stockade. She was tired and hungry—a poor set of circumstances under which to make anything but a bad decision. Perhaps things wouldn’t seem quite so bleak if she took care of the gnawing emptiness in her stomach. Who knew, if her legs ceased to tremble and she didn’t feel quite so light-headed, she might be able to make sense of her macabre surroundings?

Within minutes, Victoria had set up a campsite in the middle of the military yard. Early in her exodus west, she’d learned the subtle nuances of building a vigorous fire.

To prepare the biscuits, all she needed was some coarse brown flour, salt, water and a bit of grease. It took no time at all to knead the dough into egg-size lumps and drop them into the bubbling grease that lined the thick frying skillet. The simple action gave her a sense of being in control.

Dusk fell across the buildings silhouetted by her fire. The frying dough sent a pleasant aroma through the cooling air. She reached across the rocks she’d interspersed with pieces of wood and used a long-handled fork to spear and flip the biscuits.

“Who the hell are you?”

The husky male voice leaped from the encroaching darkness and vibrated in the very air Victoria drew into her lungs. She jumped back from the campfire, dropping her fork. She scoured the deepening shadows for a clue as to where the intruder lurked.

“I asked you…” There was a pause, as if the man were catching his breath “…a question.” The gritty voice tugged at her nerves with the same raspy irritation as the gravelly rocks that shifted beneath the soles of her shoes. “Did Windham send you to let me out?”

Out?

Her gaze pivoted to the small stockade just ten feet from where she’d built her campfire. With stomach-tightening dread, she realized she wasn’t alone after all.