River Lady (James River Trilogy 3)

“That’s just like you to take on other people’s problems,” he said, forcing a little smile.

“You…you don’t mind?” Leah asked, holding her breath. Was he really going to believe her and not tear his wound open when he went searching for her?

“Leah,” he said softly, “have I been such a tyrant that you’d believe I’d force you to stay with me and leave a widow and some children to die? Is that what you think?”

“No…I’m not sure I knew what to expect. You don’t seem as badly injured as I thought. I was worried about you here alone.”

And too scared of something to stay with me, he thought, but he took her hand and kissed the palm. “Can you stay or must you return?”

She dreaded the trip through the night down the mountainside, but she was afraid of remaining with Wes. Revis might start to look for her. “I have to return. Will you be all right?” She stood.

“I’ll miss you but I’ll survive. You go on and get as much sleep as you can. I’ll just eat and sleep some more. My side hurts too much to do anything else.” His voice was a study in tiredness.

“Yes,” Leah murmured, and while she still had some energy she left the cabin.

“Goddamn her,” Wesley muttered as soon as the door closed. What in the world had she gotten herself into? First she’d slipped off into the night to meet that good-for-nothing who’d visited their camp and all the next day she was jumpy as a rattlesnake. The next thing he knew he’d been shot, and while he was bleeding to death, she was fighting with that scoundrel.

Today Wesley had stay

ed in bed, eating food someone had left for him and waiting for his wife to return. And when he had seen her again, she’d looked ten years older and scared to death.

What the hell was going on?

Carefully, his hand on his bandaged ribs, he swung out of the bed. For all the blood he’d lost, the wound really wasn’t that bad and he’d purposefully tried to get rid of Leah before she started wanting to inspect it. If she could lie, so could he, and his lie would be to tell her he was sicker than he was.

Outside he cocked his head and listened. It was easy to hear Leah thrashing her way down the mountainside. If she meant to do anything in secret, she was making a poor job of it.

As he started following her, he heard the sound of another person off to his left. It was a heavy person and Wesley guessed it was the big man he’d first seen in his camp. He was trailing Leah, staying just out of sight of her.

Soundlessly Wes slipped to the left, and as he traveled he picked up a large tree branch. With the size of the man, it’d take something heavy to get his attention.

Following the man and Leah, Wes traveled quite awhile before he halted above the cabin in the clearing. Silently he watched as Leah walked to the back, and in the moonlight he could see the thin man run to meet her.

The words of “Where the hell have you been?” floated up to him.

Wesley crouched on the ground, watching the scene, puzzled for a moment, wondering just exactly what Leah was involved in.

But the next moment he came upright because the stick he’d been carrying had someone’s foot planted on it. He looked up into the eyes of the young giant he’d first seen yesterday. Instinctively Wesley drew his fist back, but someone behind him caught it. He swiveled about and saw a second giant.

Wes pulled his arm out of the man’s grasp. “Either one of you touch my wife and I’ll kill you!” he said, seething. He wasn’t exactly in a position to threaten, but that didn’t stop him.

“She is safe for now,” one of the men said.

“Come back to your cabin now before you start to bleed.”

Wes looked from one man to the other in the moonlight and suddenly he knew that what was going on involved great danger—and Leah was somehow caught up in it.

“My wife needs help, doesn’t she?” he said, praying he could trust these two.

“Come to the cabin and we will talk,” said one of the men.

Four hours later, Wesley was again alone in the little cabin. The lantern was out and it was dark in the room, but Wes was sure his anger was enough to provide half the world with light.

The two young men, Bud and Cal, had difficulty at first in talking, almost as if their voices had never been used very much. But, after some persuading and when they saw Wes’s intense interest, they started talking as if they couldn’t stop.

They didn’t remember their parents but had been adopted by Revis’s mother when they were three years old and already so big that people stared at them. Even as a boy, Revis had been a thief, yet he’d been charming too. While other people treated Bud and Cal as if they were freaks because of their size and their silence, Revis had been good to them. Revis’s mother used the boys as an extra team of oxen, so when Revis suggested they travel westward, Bud and Cal had agreed.

Now they’d been living in the Kentucky forest for four years and even as good as Revis was to them and as much as they owed him, they didn’t like the way he treated the women he brought to the cabin. A few times Bud and Cal had tried to help the women, but the women had screamed in terror, especially after Abe made up stories about the young men.