“No screams of jealousy?” Steven said to Leah under his breath as Wes watched Kim in obvious rapture.
Leah didn’t bother to answer as she cleared the supper dishes.
The next morning dawned hot, and Leah unbuttoned the top of her dress.
“Is that for me or him?” Steven asked. “If it’s for Stanford you may as well close it. All he’s interested in is my sister and she’s an expert at keeping a man tailing after her. You ought to learn something from her. Never be too honest, at least not with gentlemen like Stanford. He’d rather look at a woman from behind a blanket. But you and me,” he said with a chuckle, “we like skin.”
He clucked to the horses and they were off.
Leah tried to still her trembling. She prayed she was not like Steven Shaw.
Toward noon they had to ford a river. The water, heavy with spring melts, was over the hub of the wheels.
“If we take it slowly we’ll be able to make it,” Wes informed Steven as they all stood on the bank.
“I’m frightened, Wesley,” Kim said, clutching his arm.
“Don’t be.” He smiled. “We’ll come through this. What about you, Leah, scared?”
“No,” she said flatly. “I think we’ll make it. Others have before us.”
“I knew you’d feel that way,” Wes said before turning away.
“Hallo!” came a man’s voice from across the water. A tall, slim man in buckskins similar to Wesley’s waved at them.
“It’s Justin Stark,” Wes said, smiling. “He’ll be traveling with us.”
Leah paid no attention to the man waiting on the far side but turned back to the wagons.
Wesley eased his wagon and horses into the water with utmost care. The horses shied, but Wes controlled them.
“He’s afraid!” Steven said contemptuously. “He’s scared to risk his hide. Hiyah!” he called to the horses, cracking his whip over their heads.
“No!” Leah said. “Wait until they’re across.”
“I’m not spendin’ all day here and I’ll not let that Stark fellow think I’m a coward.”
Steven whipped the horses forward into the deep water.
“What the hell are you doing?” Wesley bellowed back at them.
“Not eatin’ your mud,” Steven called as he pulled alongside Wes’s wagon.
“Keep to the right! Keep to the right!” the man on the land shouted at them.
Leah, hanging onto the seat with both hands, repeated the man’s instructions to Steven, but Steven ignored her as he cracked the whip again.
The right front horse stepped into an underwater nothingness, screamed, and pulled the other horses after him. The heavy wagon tipped to one side and Steven went flying into the water. Leah released her hold on the seat and grabbed two flying reins as Steven released them. The others fell to the side.
“Keep a tight rein!” the man on land shouted. “Control that horse!”
Leah tried to obey him, wrapping the reins around her arm while trying to ease down far enough in the seat to get the dangling reins.
“Help her, Wes!” the man shouted. “Let that woman drive and help the redhead!”
Leah barely heard the man’s shouts as her fingers inched toward the reins. She screamed once, when the frightened horses pulled until her arm nearly came off.
“Leah!” she heard Wesley shout but couldn’t understand what he was saying because Kimberly had started to scream hysterically.