Page 5 of A Rugged Beauty
"It's possible we took a swim." His conclusion made her brows wrinkle again. "The inside of this pocket is wet. And your dress had to have been soaked at some point."
She looked down at herself.
His fingers closed over something cool and rectangular—he drew out a small leather bound book, tied with a leather thong.
He flipped the book open. Reading the words sliced pain through his skull.
Numbers. Columns of numbers, scribbled… names? An occasional sketch in the corner of one page.
Independence Rock. Fort Bridger.Ten lost.
He couldn’t make sense of it. Nor the sense of urgency that stole over him.Hurry.
“It’s a log book,” he said absently, still flipping through the pages. “I can’t understand it.”
It would’ve been more helpful to have found a diary or journal. Not … whatever this was.
“What use is a log book?” she asked, the question an echo of his own musings.
It stirred the muddy soup of his thoughts. “A traveler might use it.”
The words settled deep. Yes. A traveler.Hewas a traveler. But when he pushed for more answers from inside himself, there was only a dark void. A punch of fear.Run!The voice from somewhere inside that darkness seemed almost audible.
He blinked, and the charged moment—memory?—faded.
“If we are travelers, where are our belongings? Those oxen you mentioned? Friends or others we might’ve traveled with?” There was a building desperation in her voice.
He didn’t have any answers to calm her. “I don’t know. You’re right. We wouldn’t have come out here alone.”
“What if we are lost?” she whispered.
Two
Alice Spencer scrubbeda pair of dark blue pants over the washboard across the tub. The suds in the water had developed a brown hue so she figured this washtub was only good for one or two more items of clothing.
Her lower back ached. Her knees felt every inch of the hard-packed earth beneath them as she knelt over the tub of water she’d lugged from the nearby creek to the circle of wagons. But it was her heart that felt sick.
They’d camped in this same spot for two days as search party after search party had been sent out to locate Hollis Tremblay and Abigail Fletcher. Both the wagon master and the young woman had disappeared after a river crossing two days ago, and the captains of their Oregon-bound train had refused to move on until the two were found.
Abigail’s wagon had been abandoned on the bank of the river, the oxen still in their traces. But there was no sign of either person, or of Hollis’s horse. Alice was worried for her friend. And for the rest of the pioneers who’d come west under Hollis’s leadership.
Tensions had escalated in camp. Even so, the work never seemed to end.
A bubble landed on Alice’s cheek. She rubbed it against her shoulder. The motion caused a strand of russet hair to fall from its pins right into her eyes. She blew air straight up, not willing to get soapy water all over her face.
"I'm fine." Alice's sister-in-law Stella stood at the back of her nearby conestoga wagon.
"You don't look fine," Alice's brother Collin, Stella's husband, said.
He was right.
Stella was one of the toughest women Alice had ever met. For several weeks after the Oregon-bound train had pulled out from Independence, Missouri, Stella had dressed and acted like a man. She'd joined hunting parties, worked as hard as any man in their company.
But right now, she was as pale as a brand-new handkerchief. Her eyes were glassy.
Collin had his back to Alice, but she could guess just how his brows wrinkled in concern.
"Why don't you lie down for a bit? I'll fetch Maddie and she can check you over."
