Baby On The Oregon Trail

He was right about their need to protect themselves. It was foolish to depend solely on him. What if he fell ill, or was injured? Yesterday he’d risked his life getting their wagon across the Platte River. What if he had lost his footing and drowned?

Another shot sounded. This time it was Mary Grace, whose two-handed grip wobbled with the revolver’s weight. She had managed to nick the target, and Jenna felt a surge of admiration for the eleven-year-old’s accomplishment. And, she thought grudgingly, for Lee’s skill at instruction.

The rifle lesson was next, she gathered from the difference in the sound. She tried not to listen. In an hour, the target practice session drew to a close, and Jenna grew edgy. Lee had insisted on showing her how to yoke up the oxen and touch that precious horse of his. She prayed he would draw the line at handling firearms.

Probably not. Once this man made up his mind about something, he was stubborn about it. Sam said Lee had “sand.” Right now, she wished he had a good deal less of it.

“Ruthie,” she called into the wagon. “Let’s walk down to the stream and take a bath, shall we?”

“Don’t want a bath, Jenna.”

“Why not?”

“I want to do it with Mister Lee.”

Jenna stuffed down a chortle of laughter. “You can’t do that, honey. Boys and girls don’t bathe together.”

Ruthie pushed out her lower lip. “He’s not a boy, Jenna. He’s a man.”

Oh, my. How could she explain the difference? Before she could come up with anything remotely proper, Tess and Mary Grace flitted back into camp.

“Did you see us, Jenna?” Mary Grace chirped. “I hit the target twice. Tess didn’t even come close.”

“Show-off,” Tess muttered. “Who wants to hit a dumb old tree stump?”

“I do!” Mary Grace challenged. “Lee says it’s important.”

“And it is,” his low voice announced behind her. “Now, Jenna...”

She spun to face him. “No.”

His dark eyebrows rose. “No what? I haven’t asked you anything yet.”

“Whatever it is, the answer is no.”

He looked at her steadily with crinkles growing in the corners of his gray eyes. “I was going to say that I’m going to take a bath before supper. All right with you?”

“As long as I don’t have to—”

His snort of laughter told her he’d read the thought she had squelched. Still chuckling, he strode off toward the stream, his canvas shaving kit dangling from his hand.

“All right, girls,” Jenna said when he was out of sight. “Let’s find us a private spot and do the same.”

* * *

Lee hung his shaving mirror over a huckleberry branch and lathered up his chin with the bar of soap he’d extricated from his kit. He finished stropping his razor and had just bent to peer into the mirror when a pair of blue eyes showed in the reflection.

“Ruthie! What are you doing here?”

“Wanted to watch.”

“Does Jenna know you’re here?”

“Nope. She’s takin’ a bath.”

His blade jerked. “Really?”

“Yes. Tess an’ Mary Grace are finished already. Jenna’s real slow.”

Jupiter! A picture rose in his imagination of Jenna emerging from the stream wearing nothing but her... Wearing nothing. He tried to keep his mind on shaving and his hand steady as he scraped away at his whiskers. Ruthie watched in total absorption, and for that he was grateful. It forced him to pay attention and keep his mind off other things. Like Jenna, all wet and...

He nicked his chin.

When Ruthie scampered off to play with her new doll, Lee tucked his shirt into his jeans, packed up his shaving things and headed back to camp. He was three yards from the creek when he heard a soft splash and a female voice humming a tune. “Polly Wolly Doodle.” A damn Yankee song if there ever was one, but it drew him like a magnet.

He walked eight steps past the huckleberry bush and there she was, thigh-deep in the water, with her back to him. Her dark hair tumbled around her shoulders in wild disarray, and water glistened on her skin. His groin tightened. She was too damn beautiful.

And then she turned, and he saw the slight curve of her belly where the baby swelled under her heart.

His fists clenched. She was carrying a child, he reminded himself. Another man’s child. He could want her, even ache for her, but he could never have her. She belonged to that unborn child. Not to her husband, the man he had killed, but to a being she could not even see yet. From the moment of conception until she reached Oregon and was finally delivered of her burden, she would belong only to that child.

Jenna Borland needed him only to yoke up her oxen and drive her wagon across the Great Plains and the Rockies to a new life. He didn’t belong here, with her. Once again he was the outsider. He and Jenna Borland were in two different worlds, heading toward two completely different lives.

With a groan he acknowledged he was headed straight for another wrenching loss at the end of another long, hard campaign. He wished he’d never laid eyes on her, especially as she was now, naked and singing to herself as she dried the moisture from her hair and that silky-looking body and pulled on her clothes.

When he strode back into camp, Sam Lincoln was waiting for him. The man nodded a greeting, then took a closer look at him.

“Anything wrong, Lee? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”

Lee shook his head and waited for the wagon master to continue.

“Ted Zaberskie and the Gumpert boy brought down a deer this afternoon. Thought you might like a share of the meat.”

“Sure, Sam. Thanks.”

Sam made no move to leave. Instead he kept his gaze on Ruthie and Mary Grace, playing with their dolls in the shade of the wagon. After a long moment the wagon master stepped closer and spoke in an undertone.

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