Powell smiled at Jacquine. “I hope you can stay a few days, Miss Coyle. We see all too few women at Reno.”
The sky was already turning gray and the long shadows were drawing back reluctantly toward the snowcapped mountains in the west. The air was very fresh and cool, and without talking, Matt rode on ahead, Jacquine keeping pace with him. When they reached the stream they stopped and their horses waded gratefully into the water, drinking and blowing.
It was very still. A bird called in the aspens down stream, and the darkness that lay on the water lifted. There was a damp freshness in the air, and the smell of trees and some faint, barely discernible perfume from some blossoming vine hanging in the trees.
“You know,” Matt said suddenly, “sometimes I wish we could have met under other circumstances.”
Jacquine looked up quickly, then away. “What circumstances?”
“Oh, in the town you came from. In your home, at a dance, at another home. This way, well, there’s almost everything against us at the beginning. The things you heard about me, the dislike your father has for me … all of those things.”
“Maybe they aren’t important.”
“Perhaps not, but again they might be much more important than either of us realize. Now, in a few days, we will be nearing the end of our trip. We go north now, and then around the Big Horns into the Basin, and we will come to the Shell. Then or sooner, a lot may happen.”
“You think there will be trouble?”
“A lot of trouble. I think we may have things happening from the day we leave Fort Reno.”
“You know that I think you’re mistaken?”
“Yes, of course. I think I know how you feel. Frankly, while I warned your father about bringing you along, I’m glad you came. In fact, that’s why I came.”
He shifted in his saddle, pushing his hat back on his head. In the growing light she could see him clearly, and see the grave seriousness of his eyes, yet there seemed to be some hint of dancing deviltry in them, too. That same look that had excited her in front of the IXL, and later when he arose to leave the table in the dining room.
“You mean you came because of me?”
“Sure,” he took out the makings and began to build a cigarette, “I’ll admit I might have come anyway, but as it happens, I made a decision back there at Pole Creek.”
“At Pole Creek? The stage station?”
“Uh huh. I decided then and there …” he touched his tongue to the cigarette, then put it between his lips, “that you were for me. I made up my mind that come hell or high water, you were going to belong to me.”
She looked up. “Is this a statement of intentions or a proposal, or just what?”
“It’s not a proposal. I don’t believe in them very much. It’s much safer to tell a girl than to ask her. Saves a lot of wear and tear on their minds. Women are such contrary creatures, they have to stall or say no. So the thing to do is to tell them, and let that settle it.”
“And they have nothing to say about it?”
“Of course not!” he grinned. “Although they would probably say plenty!”
“Where did you leam all of this about women?” Jacquine asked, a streak of perversity made her add: “From Rosanna Cole?”
His head jerked around. “From who?”
“Rosanna Cole … the girl in the wagon that has been following us.”
“You know as much about her as I do,” he said. The thought had taken hold of his mind. Why hadn’t he considered it before? When Powell first mentioned the wanted woman? “If her name is Rosanna Cole this is the first I knew of it.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“That,” he said gently, “is your problem. I’ve told you the truth.”
“It seems very strange that the story would be all over the wagon train if there was nothing to it. I’ve heard several people mention it as unquestioned truth.”
Irritation mounted in him, but he fought it down.
“It isn’t strange to me when Clive Massey is so anxious to discredit me.”
“You do him an injustice, Matt Bardoul! Clive has never said anything against you! Nor has he given me, or my father, any reason to believe all your vile suspicions about him. I don’t know exactly what you have in mind, but I can tell you that you’re wrong! Dead wrong! Clive Massey is a gentleman, in every sense of the word! I’ve been associated with him a great deal more than you have, and I think I should know.”
“You may be right,” he agreed quietly, “if you are, all my instinct and judgment of men is at fault.”
“It’s simply because you two are at cross purposes, and have been from the beginning! There’s nothing wrong with Clive, and I think he has done a good job with this wagon train. Father admires him very much.”
It was light now, and behind them they could hear the first of the wagons. Upstream some of the horsemen were already watering their stock, and beyond them, on the parade ground of the fort, the troops would be lined up for reveille.
Somewhere downstream a loon called, and a dove mourned in the deep brush. The zebra dun lifted his head, ears pricked, all attention. Jacquine said nothing, and Matt fumbled in his pocket for his tobacco. In his impatience he had thrown down his cigarette half smoked.
“If that is Rosanna Cole,” he said thoughtfully, “Tolliver knows something about her. I wonder how much? And where are they?”
“You are going to warn them?”
He shrugged. “The Lieutenant may have found them by now, or no one may guess who they are. Somehow, well … they seemed such nice people. Kids, both of them. As far as that goes, I’ve nothing on which to base a conclusion that one of them is a girl. Abel Bain believed it… but I don’t know.”
Jacquine listened without comment. She did not know whether to accept this as truth or to believe it was said to convince her she was wrong. She had never really believed the story, but it had been going the rounds in the wagon train, and a number of the women had repeated it.
Something else came to her mind suddenly. “Matt, did you ever hear of anyone named Sun Boyne?”
His head jerked around so quick that he spilled the tobacco from the cigarette paper. “Sun Boyne? Where did you hear that name?”
“Who is he? What is he?”
He studied her, his eyes narrow. “What have you been doing? Listening to someone talk around the camp fires? Sun Boyne is a killer and a murderer. He’s one of the last of those renegades that made the Natchez Trace a synonym for blood and death. They were worse than any Indians. Bill Shedd told me a lot about them, but everyone who has been to Natchez or New Orleans knows a lot about them.”
Jacquine frowned, then started her horse. As they rode up the opposite bank, he reached out and caught her bridle. “Where did you hear that name? It’s important that I know!”
Their eyes met and held. “Matt,” she said, “I heard that Sun Boyne was on this wagon train, and another man named Dick Ryder … and that both of them were in your company!”
“Now, listen … !” He was apalled. In his company? But who could … he stared at her. “Jacquine, tell me where you heard this and how. Who in the world could have such an idea, and who did they think these men were?”
Jacquine’s eyes were level. “Matt,” she said quietly, “I just overheard some talk in a wagon I was passing one night. I heard one man say that he knew Dick Ryder, that he had seen him, that he was now in your company. He also said that where Ryder was, Sun Boyne was not far away. Then he described Sun Boyne.”
“Described him? What was the description? Do you remember?”
“Yes. I remember very well, although at the time I did not know who Sun Boyne was, and since I have mentioned this to no one. The description … but why tell you, Matt? You know, because you’re Sun Boyne!”
She touched spurs to her pony and was gone in a pound of hooves. Blankly, Matt stared at the trees. “Well, I’ll be damned! I’ll be forever damned!”
He sat by while the wagons crossed the stream and moved up to the camping ground and drew in a tight circle of their own. Reutz was also pulling in, and his wagons joined Bardoul’s. The storekeeper shook his head. “Man, if we’d had three miles further to go none of my wagons would have made it. As it is, three of them have fallen out and after we water the stock we’ll have to go back an’ pick them up.”