Page 71 of A Rugged Beauty
I want our marriage to be real.
If she was close enough, if they were in private, she'd ask him whether he was pushing on out of stubbornness. Somehow he knew it.
He wasn't. But the uncertainty gnawed at his gut.
Owen stomped off, and Maddie said something low to Abigail before scurrying off into the center of camp.
Leo walked around the campfire to come face to face with Hollis. "If Owen leaves the company, August will, too."
Was it a warning, or a threat? Leo considered Hollis seriously and Hollis had to wonder if Owen had told him about the memory problems. Were all of Hollis's captains questioning his authority?
"And what about you?" Hollis demanded. "Will you leave?"
The larger wagon train offered more protection for Leo and his brothers' herd of cattle, offered a watch at night to help out the cowboys that Leo had hired earlier in the journey.
A smaller wagon train would make an easier target. Leo had to know that.
When Leo rubbed one hand down his face, Hollis noticed how peaked he looked. Was he sick, too?
"I don't know," Leo said. "I need to talk to Alice. Evangeline. And my brothers." Leo had more to protect than when he’d left Independence. His wife had a wagon full of gold hidden among her things. Leo had a daughter now. Surely he’d see Owen’s stubbornness for the bad idea it was.
Hollis let him go, frustration and concern boiling into an inferno inside him.
Then Abigail was there, offering him a biscuit with a piece of ham squished into the middle. “Eat.”
He hated that she saw what was gnawing at him inside. Her words from earlier wouldn't leave him alone, like buzzing bees.
Distracted.
He couldn't afford to be distracted. Not with an epidemic on his hands.
"I have nothing to give you," he said. "That's my answer."
He saw the stricken expression on her face but forced himself to turn away.
It was too painful to hope and then have everything good ripped away from him. He needed focus now more than ever.
Marrying her had been a mistake. One he never should've made.
Fourteen
Two days later,Abigail dipped a small cloth into a pail of cool water and even the effort to lift it back out felt like climbing a mountain. All she wanted to do was lie down.
This wasn't the time for that. She knew it. And yet…
She forced the notes of mama's lullaby from her chest in a hum as she dragged her arm up, wrung out the cloth, and then used it to dab the brow of a young boy lying on a pallet on the ground next to his parents' wagon, burning up with fever. His parents fared no better, sleeping next to him, faces pink with fever.
After Abigail had done what she could to cool the boy's face and neck, then dribbled a scant few drops of water in his mouth, she stood on shaky legs, wiping her brow with the back of her hand. She took the pail with her. Where was she needed now?
Afternoon sunlight warmed her, pricking her skin with tiny beads of sweat. The fort stood several hundred yards away, a grouping of squat buildings behind a barricade that appeared half-built. Or maybe someone had started it and given up. Hollis was there, bringing help.
That was her only solace as the weight of the pail pulled her shoulders down. They had pushed the oxen faster and longer so that they could reach the fort as soon as possible. But almost half the company had been left behind. Abigail missed Felicity dearly, and it'd only been thirty-six hours since she'd seen her friend.
She traded out the pail of used water for a clean, fresh one with a dipper inside. She leaned against the nearest wagon, taking respite in the shade of its canopy. Just for a moment.
Surely Hollis would arrive with help soon.
Hollis had been taciturn and pensive, almost angry, since the company had split. She didn't know how to help him, how to let him know that he wasn't alone. He didn't want her for a wife, but at one time she'd been his friend. Maybe she could still be that.
