The Scout's Bride

“I could live through a fever, ma’am. I’m not sure about the whiskey.”

“Drink it, boy,” the scout commanded.

With a distasteful scowl, the soldier took the cup. “Your day is comin’, Jack,” he muttered. “Soon. You show her your arm?”

“What happened to your arm?” She glanced at the other man.

“Got in the way of an arrow.” Covered with a blanket, he made no move to reveal his injury.

“He was shot as he came for me,” Teddy elaborated.

“I wouldn’t have, if I had known you weren’t going to take your medicine.”

Holding his nose, the private drained the cup. “Now give me some good bourbon,” he panted, “and let her look at your arm.”

When Injun Jack threw off his blanket and sat up, Rebecca saw that his right arm hung limply at his side. Fishing a tarnished silver flask from inside his shirt with his left hand, he passed it to Teddy. “Take it easy. You’ve probably had too much already.”

After the young man drank and lay back on his pillow, Injun Jack plucked the flask from his hands and saluted the woman with it. “Your health, Miss Rebecca. That is your name, isn’t it?”

She nodded. His face was pale under his tan and a fine sheen of perspiration coated his forehead. The glaze in his eyes had more to do with fatigue and pain than with the whiskey he swigged. “I could look at your arm, if you’d like,” she suggested kindly.

“No, thanks.” Slumped against the bedstead, his big body hid the injured limb from view and made it virtually unreachable. “O’Hara treated it in the field.”

“This Mr. O’Hara is a doctor?” she inquired crisply.

“This Sergeant O’Hara is a ham-fisted Irishman who did what needed to be done.” He gripped the edge of the mattress to steady himself. “You’ll understand my reluctance, however, to have anyone else poke around in me after he finished.”

Rebecca regarded the scout appraisingly. He had threatened, bellowed and bullied, but he had not hurt anyone yet. Surely he would not harm a woman. “I must insist on examining your arm,” she said quietly.

Amusement glinted in his blue eyes. “You have a lot of stubborn for such a little gal.”

“And you have little sense for such a big man,” she retorted. “Are you going to let that arm become infected?”

“No, ma’am.” Docilely, he extended his right arm. The sleeve of his buckskin shirt had been split up to his shoulder and a dust-caked yellow scarf encircled his bare bicep.

Reaching across him, Rebecca tried to loosen the bandage. “You’re going to have to move. I can’t get to it.”

As he turned, his knees brushed against her, but she did not notice. Intent on her task, she stepped around his long legs to remove the wrapping, her apron catching on the sixgun at his side.

“So this is what reeks of alcohol,” she choked out when the fumes hit her.

“And a waste of fine bourbon it was, ma’am.” The scout drew deeply from his flask. “But O’Hara insisted.”

“The arrow seems to have missed the bone,” she said with relief. “Thank goodness, it passed through muscle and came out the other side.”

“Thank Sergeant O’Hara.” Teddy roused himself unexpectedly. “When he couldn’t pull it out, he pushed it through.”

She flinched at the thought.

“It’s not that bad.” Injun Jack sounded almost reproachful.

“No.” She tried to keep her concern out of her voice as she inspected the punctures. Both were seeping a nasty brown fluid. “There’s just a good deal of debris… and something else.”

“Tobacco juice,” Teddy supplied the answer groggily.

“Tobacco juice?” she echoed, her stomach pitching and rolling.

“O’Hara worked it through the wound,” the scout explained. “It’s not uncommon in the field. Are you all right, ma’am?”

“Fine.” She swallowed deeply. “It must be the heat.”

“Now look what you’ve done, Teddy.” Setting his flask on the floor, Injun Jack stood and steadied her with his good hand. “The Yankee angel looks like she’s going to faint.”

“Sorry.” Teddy was asleep before the word left his mouth.

“I’m not going to faint.” Irritated by her own weakness, she sidled away and found herself backed into the wall.

“Are you sure?” The big man’s voice was husky. He swayed toward her, his bourbon-scented breath stirring the tendrils at her temple.

“Of course.” Intending to convey calm confidence, she smiled up at her patient, but her smile wavered at the startling heat in his blue eyes. Washing over her, it sparked an answering flicker deep within her, melting her resistance. His lips were close, so very close. Her own parted and she held her breath… waiting….

Waiting for what? Coming to her senses in a rush, she drew herself up, increasing the distance between them without moving. What was she doing, behaving like a schoolgirl over an unkempt, uncouth scout who was drunk and getting drunker by the moment?

Deliberately she removed Injun Jack’s hand from her waist. Standing on tiptoe, she placed her hands on his brawny shoulders and pressed down until he sat on the bed. “If I am to treat you, you must comport yourself as a gentleman, sir,” she advised.

“If I can remember how,” he replied coolly. Hanging his gun belt on the bedstead, he sat down and retrieved his flask. He sipped from it and extended his injured arm, scowling when she came no closer. “Go on,” he growled. “I’m not going to shoot you.”

She looked as if she doubted his word. “I’m afraid you must take off your shirt before I can clean your wound.”

“I’m afraid you must cut it off,” he countered. “Since I can’t pull it over my head, perhaps you’ll accept the gentlemanly loan of my knife?”

Terrified she would cut him, Rebecca gingerly sliced through the damaged shirt from armhole to neck. The scout stared straight ahead, lifting his arm a little so she could split the side seam of his shirt, but he did not look at her. When she finished, he shrugged out of the ruined garment, his muscles rippling under bare, bronzed skin. A necklace of odd, ivory beads encircled his sturdy neck, nestling in the black hair that furred his chest.

Catching herself staring again, she lifted her abashed gaze. Just as she had feared, Injun Jack was watching.

“For a woman who doesn’t embarrass easily, you sure blush a lot,” he baited, taking his knife from her.

She said nothing, but refused to look at him as she washed his arm from the shoulder to the tips of his fingers. Carefully, she cleansed his wound, probing gently for debris, and treated it.

He bore her painful ministrations in silence. By the time she tied a new dressing into place, his flask was empty and his eyes were glazed.

“Won’t you lie down?” She tried to ease him back on the bunk. “You’ve lost a lot of blood. Rest is the best thing for you now.”

“Not till I thank you for your charity to a stranger,” he slurred, hauling himself to his feet. “I’m afraid I’ve forgotten my manners. Allow me to properly introduce myself, ma’am. Jonathan Braithwaite Bellamy, at your service.”

His attempt at a bow ended precipitously when he overbalanced and lurched toward her. Bracing both hands and a shoulder against his chest, she leaned against him to keep him from falling forward.

Jack shook his head, confounded. He had intended to kiss her hand, but both hands seemed to be planted against his chest and her body was pressed against his. He hadn’t even seen a woman for three months and now he was holding one, he realized through an alcoholic fog. Things were working out better than he had planned.

She gasped in surprise when he slipped his good arm around her waist, drawing her against him. “Mr. Bellamy,” she protested, her hands trapped between their bodies, “please.”

“Please,” he whispered, remembering his manners. Her eyes are hazel with little flecks of gold. How could he have forgotten?

She stiffened when his lips claimed hers, but did not shrink away. She fit against him, her small firm breasts pressed against his chest. She felt so right, he thought hazily, pulling her even closer.

Rebecca was motionless as his mouth covered hers, hot and bourbon-flavored, inciting a riot of unfamiliar sensation, inviting an unlearned response. There were no thoughts, only feelings as she returned his kiss, afraid to breathe, afraid to move, for fear the unexpected, exquisite pleasure would end.

When it did end, the feelings receded. Her face burning from the brush of his stubbled cheek, she blushed crimson in mortification. Plastered against his muscular length, her toes barely touched the ground. She attempted to squirm out of his grip, but he would not release her.

Grinning down at her, he mumbled, “You kiss even better than you doctor. I’m downright thankful to be your patient, ma’am.”

“You…”

But before she could muster a fitting tirade, he toppled backward, taking her with him. She landed atop him in a black billow of skirt and petticoat.

Untangling herself from his loose embrace, she scrambled to her feet. “Ooh! You, sir, are a disgraceful, uncivilized savage.”

Injun Jack did not hear. A silly grin on his disreputable, bearded face, he sprawled on the narrow bunk and began to snore.

Chapter Two

Rebecca’s patients did not awaken at the sounds of Dress Retreat from the parade ground. Teddy stirred fitfully when the sunset gun was fired, but Injun Jack snored on, sleeping the sleep of the dead.

Or the dead drunk. The woman glared at him. The scout lay with his back to her, his good arm crooked beneath his head.

He hadn’t awakened when she redressed his wound after their fall or when she washed his exposed upper body, unwilling to remove his leather pants. He didn’t move now as the nurses bustled around, lighting the lamps against the approaching night. No innocent babe ever slept more soundly, Rebecca thought tartly, and Injun Jack Bellamy was far from innocent.

He had tramped into the hospital, threatened the nurses and tried to intimidate her. He had insulted her, pawed her and made her lose her temper, something she tried never to do. But most disturbing was the memory of his drunken kiss and the feelings it stirred in her. No one, not even Paul, had affected her so.

“Why don’t you go home and get some sleep, Rebecca?” Trying to keep his gravelly voice low, Doc Trotter joined her.

“I thought I’d stay awhile yet.” She smiled at the short, stout man.

“As you say, my dear.” Careful not to waken Teddy, he peered beneath the blanket at his wounded leg. “We must keep an eye on that red streak,” he muttered. “He’s resting easily enough. I thought he might need more painkiller, but apparently he does not.”

“He partook rather liberally of Mr. Bellamy’s flask.”

“Mr. Bellamy? Ah, Injun Jack.” Doc nodded in comprehension. “Sergeant Unger told me you had taken him on.” He regarded her, uncertain how to broach the subject. “He didn’t…er… harm you?”

Her face colored tellingly. “I’m fine, thank you. And so is he, though he did his arm no good when we fell.”

“How badly is he injured? I’d as soon face an angry bear than rouse Injun Jack.”

“He’ll be fine until morning. The arrow passed through his arm and there’s no sign of blood poisoning. I cleaned the wound thoroughly before he passed out—-”

“From pain?”

“From whiskey.”

The physician laughed aloud at her rueful expression. “Pain, exhaustion and good bourbon make a mighty potent sedative. This is probably the first sleep he’s had in days.

“You’ve done a fine job, my dear,” he complimented her. “Call if Private Greeley awakens in pain. We’ll make do with laudanum since there’s no more morphine and no supply wagons within a hundred miles. I’ll be glad when the railroad finally reaches Chamberlain.

“Sure I can’t talk you into going home?” he asked, preparing to leave her. “I can get one of the nurses to walk with you.

“Very well,” he said when she shook her head. “Keep pouring water down our young friend. If his fever continues past midnight, dose him with more quinine and rub him with alcohol to cool him. I’ll be close by if you need me.”

“Doc—” she stopped him impulsively “—do you know who Joe is? Mr. Bellamy has been muttering about him.”

“Old Jo—that’s his horse,” he replied with a chuckle, “named after his old commander, General Shelby. If he wakes up, tell him I had the ornery animal taken to the stables.”

“Mr. Bellamy was a soldier?” Rebecca stared skeptically at the shaggy man. He snored through her scrutiny.

“A major in the Iron Brigade of the West, one of the finest in the Confederate Cavalry.” Perched on a footlocker, Doc drew on an endless supply of post gossip. “He doesn’t talk much about himself, but I understand he comes from a fine old family.”

“An officer and a gentleman,” she murmured sadly. “You would never know now. What do you suppose happened?”

“The war.” The physician shrugged.

“The war changed a lot of things,” she murmured. “So Major Bellamy came west.”

“I understand he has lived among the Indians for the past few years. He’s an expert tracker and the best interpreter on the plains. The army’s only complaint is that he’d rather talk to hostiles than fight them. Says he’s had a bellyful of killing.”

“He has an odd way of showing it,” she scoffed. “He pulled a knife on Privates Westfield and Farina this afternoon.”

Getting to his feet, Doc grinned. “Did he hurt them?”

“No.” Rebecca could not help but return his smile. “But they nearly hurt themselves trying to get away.”

“Thus the legend of fearsome Injun Jack grows.” His dark eyes twinkling in amusement, the physician departed.

Rebecca settled in, shifting in her seat, searching for a comfortable position. A crackle of paper reminded her of the letter in her apron pocket. She had been busy when the courier brought it.

Pulling out the envelope, she inspected it in the dim light. Wrinkled and water-stained, its postmark was more than a month old. Judging by the scrawled address, her stepbrother’s wrath had still been at fever pitch when he had written it.

But Lyle was usually angry. Cold, unremitting fury seemed to be a Hope family trait. Rebecca had been seven years old when her widowed mother had married Lyle’s father, Caleb.

Dour and acrimonious, Caleb had had little regard for anyone or anything. He’d blamed everyone but himself for his misfortunes. When her mother died, he had considered his stepdaughter an unpaid servant, a housekeeper or a field hand, depending on the season. He treated his own son little better. He wore out his land, sapping its fertility, and died on the brink of ruin, cursing God.

Lyle was his father’s son. For years, Rebecca had dodged his fists when cold anger gave way to white-hot temper. Not every man would give his spinster sister a home, he had told her as she cooked and cleaned and helped him hold onto his rocky inheritance. She hadn’t believed his self-righteous mouthings, but they had worn on her, almost as much as his constant criticism.

Nothing had pleased him. When times were hard, she worked in the fields beside him, but when crops failed and bills came due, he begrudged even the food she ate…until Paul Emerson proposed.

Sweet, kind Paul, her childhood friend, had returned from the war a confident, soft-spoken man; a captain in the U.S. Cavalry. And he had wanted Rebecca as his wife.

Her stepbrother had been livid to think she would desert him, her only family. He forbade her to see her suitor, threatening to lock her in her room. In the end, his harshness drove her away.

Though Rebecca was fond of Paul, she had not loved him. She had promised herself she would learn. It would not be difficult. He was a good man and she would make him a good wife.

She had tried, though there had been little time. No sooner had they arrived at windswept Fort Chamberlain, one of a string of forts across the frontier, than Paul had been assigned to lead a series of patrols. While her bridegroom came and went, the new Mrs. Captain Emerson endeavored to make a home for them. Surrounded by determinedly genteel officers’ ladies, she strove to become the perfect wife, the wife Paul deserved.

During an expedition to Fort Wallace, where cholera raged, he contracted the disease. He was quarantined upon his return to Fort Chamberlain. Rebecca had stayed by his side to the end. In a matter of days, she found herself alone among strangers, her marriage over almost before it had begun.

“Water, please, water.” The hoarse plea penetrated her memories. Stuffing the envelope into her pocket, she looked around. Across the aisle, Doc rose from a chair in the shadows to tend the recent amputee.

Both of Rebecca’s charges slept. Teddy felt warm, but it was too early for more quinine. Poised to place her hand on Injun Jack’s forehead, she snatched it back when he grunted without opening his eyes, “Leave me alone.”

“I’ll leave you alone,” she muttered under her breath, “till the cows come home.”

Fuming, she went to the window and stared out. From the dark parade ground came the comforting sounds that had already become the rhythm of her life.

The buglers’ call to Tattoo heralded the sound of voices as the men assembled for roll call amid flickering lanterns. The officers on duty emerged from their houses on the Row and went to the flagstaff where the nightly reports would be made. Soon Taps would sound on the night wind, lights would fade from windows and Fort Chamberlain would sleep.

Returning to her chair, Rebecca opened Lyle’s letter. As she expected, it was filled with recriminations. Faced with imminent failure, he ordered his stepsister to come home and bring Paul. The soldier boy would find plenty to keep him busy on the farm, he insisted, instead of gallivanting around the West, chasing Indians.

He closed his scribbled diatribe by reminding Rebecca that she owed him a debt of loyalty. He also requested money, neglecting to thank her or even to mention her savings that she had left for him.

She did not know whether to laugh or cry. She had no money. Paul had left her twenty-seven dollars in greenbacks, a small pension, and a large bill with the army trader. She had dismissed the striker, the soldier he had hired as a servant, and returned unused luxuries to the trading post, but her pride would not allow her to make her dilemma known. No one knew but Mr. Peeples, the trader; Colonel Quiller, the post commander; and her friend Flora.

Closing her eyes, the widow tried to recalculate her meager finances as she had so many times in the past month. The numbers were chased from her head when Teddy thrashed in his bed.

Discovering he burned with fever, she forced water and more quinine down his unwilling throat. She bathed him and talked to him softly through the long night. When his fever broke a little before dawn, Doc appeared, eyes bloodshot and chin unshaven, to help her change the perspiration-soaked linens.

“He should sleep now,” he told her when her patient rested quietly. “Let me get my jacket and I’ll walk you home.”

The first hint of dawn lit the sky when they emerged from the hospital to stand for a moment, overlooking the parade ground. Encircled by a wide, hard-packed dirt road, the quadrangle was the center of life at Fort Chamberlain, bordered on the east by barracks and headquarters buildings and on the west by Officers’ Row, the hospital and the main gate. At opposite ends of the grassy expanse, the post’s only trees jutted up unexpectedly on the flat plain: a tamarack that overshadowed the hospital porch and a cottonwood near Suds Row, the laundresses’ quarters.

Rebecca breathed the morning freshness, savoring the quiet. Soon the fort would be clamorously awake and bustling. Though the wind had died, the air was chilly. In the stillness, the only sound was the croaking of the frogs in the river behind Suds Row.

“Your help was invaluable as usual, Rebecca,” the contract surgeon said as they walked to her quarters on Officers’ Row, “but I wish you would not work so hard.”

“I don’t mind. It gives me something to do with my time.”

He shook his gray head sadly. “Every time I look at you, my girl, I wish things could have been different. You deserve to be happy.”

They walked in silence, stopping in front of her tiny duplex quarters. Like all the housing at Fort Chamberlain, it was shoddily built and unpainted. Dust sifted through the chinks in the summer, and snow in the winter. The wooden structure’s most appealing features were the communal porches affixed to its front and rear.

“Have you decided yet what you are going to do?” Doc asked in a hushed voice, careful not to wake her neighbors.

“I want to stay,” she sighed. “Paul and I were going to make a new life in Kansas. I know it will be hard, but I want that new life, even without him.”

“You’ve explained that to Colonel Quiller?” he asked gravely.

“Yes, but what I wish and what the army wishes are very different things. I fear the army will have the last word.”

“You don’t think he can be persuaded?”

“He insists the frontier is no place for a woman. For me to stay would be imprudent as well as improper.” Her voice was bleak as she recalled her last meeting with the commander. “He says I must return to the East as soon as it is safe to travel.”

“I wish there was something I could do,” the man said glumly. “Edgar Quiller is the stubbornest man I’ve ever met.”

“You’re a good friend, Doc. You needn’t do anything—except quit calling me by that ridiculous nickname,” she teased quietly as she mounted the steps.

“But it fits, Rebecca-Perfecta.” He grinned. “Good night.”

“Good night.” With a chuckle, she closed the door.

Reveille sounded as Rebecca went into her tiny kitchen. Drinking a dipperful of tepid water from the bucket by the back door, she wistfully eyed the coal scuttle beside the cold stove. She was too tired to haul water for a bath and her stomach rumbled loudly, reminding her that she had missed dinner last night.

Locating a day-old biscuit, she smeared it with apple butter and stepped onto the back porch to gaze out at the prairie beyond the dreary yard.

She was glad Fort Chamberlain was an open post. Wellguarded and armed with moveable howitzers, its only earthworks were trenches; the only ramparts, the positions of the sentries.

But she never felt a threat here, only an exhilarating sense of freedom as she viewed the plains spreading out before her, undulating and as vast as an ocean. Its mood, its color changed with every hour, with every day. During her short stay in Kansas, Rebecca had come to love the vivid blue mornings sparkling with dew, the lavender haze of the evenings and the bright wildflowers that dotted the dun-colored landscape, so different from the green hills of Pennsylvania.

“Good morning, Messmate,” she called softly when a lean, gray-striped cat emerged from under the steps and stretched sleepily. Plopping down to sit on his haunches, he meowed and blinked at her expectantly.

“Sorry about dinner,” she whispered, presenting the last of her biscuit, “but I should have known you’d be here for breakfast.”

The cat climbed the steps to sniff her offering dubiously. Taking it from her fingers, he chewed without enthusiasm, then looked to her for more.

Through the thin walls of the duplex behind her, Rebecca heard her neighbors rising. Inside, pots clanged, Captain March whistled a jaunty tune and his wife called her family to breakfast.

The cheerful, homey sounds made her feel even more alone. Tears burned her eyes as the familiar sense of loss flooded over her. Drawing a ragged breath, she forced herself to remember that she had lost her husband, but not her entire future.

She would go on with her life, she vowed, trudging into the house. She would find a way to stay in the West.

Opening her eyes, Rebecca looked dully around the stifling bedroom. She lay on her narrow bed, fully clothed, except.for her cage crinoline. Collapsed and misshapen, it rested on the floor where she had shed it. By the light filtering through the curtains, she guessed it was well into the morning. When the knocking that had awakened her resumed, she stumbled to the parlor and opened the door. An immaculate soldier stood on the other side.