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“Sounds more like a string of misfortunes to me.”
Evidently Missy Devlin lived in a different world than most folks.
“What on God’s earth made you leave the safety and comfort of home for a place like this?”
“Can I trust you not to mock me? You seem to be less than admiring of my ambition.”
“You can.” At least he wouldn’t do it out loud. “I’ll take this as the beginning of a friendship, then. Will you call me Missy … and let me call you Zane?”
Since talking was the only honorable way to spend this long, close night, he agreed.
“Well, then, Zane,” she said, relaxing against him in a way more friendly than she must realize. “Let me tell you, safe and comfortable are well and good, but also tedious and restricting. Why, the minute a girl kicks up her heels and does something the slightest bit daring, she gets frowns and stares from everyone she meets.”
She sighed. Her breath warmed his neck. Between her belly and his, the animal she called a dog began to squirm.
“A sweet little thing like you getting frowns and stares? It baffles the mind.”
“And not only me. Suzie, too!” All at once her voice softened, the spark that animated her snuffed out, as though the tarp had suddenly come loose and the rain doused it. “At least, she used to. Suzie’s quite subdued these days.”
A long silence stretched, filled up with the beating of rain on the tarp. Close at hand, although he didn’t know exactly where, he heard Ace snort in wet misery.
Surprisingly, the thought of a person just like Missy subdued didn’t set easy on his heart.
“Why is that?” Maybe he was prying, but she was the one who had declared them friends.
“My sister was paralyzed two years ago when our buggy slipped off a bridge in the rain. Papa died … I got a bruised chin. Edwin had to grow up, just like that. One day he was a boy flirting with girls and the next he was raising them.”
He drew her in with a squeeze, offering comfort that he knew could not be found. He understood such grief. Even years from now the loss would sting.
“Since Suzie can’t come West, I’m sending the West home to her.”
“Darlin’, this isn’t the place for you. It’s not what you think. It’s dirty and wild and unpredictable. Listen, do you hear that?” As if on cue, thunder rolled low and threatening overhead. “The weather alone should be warning enough.”
The little dog whined. It wiggled out from between them. It crawled to Missy’s face, licked her cheek, and then wagged its musty-smelling tail across Zane’s nose. He pushed the dog down, toward his knees.
“What I know is that storms don’t last forever. Why, under this tarp we are getting as warm as can be.”
“What if I hadn’t come along? How long would you have lasted out there without even the clothes on your back to protect you?”
“But you did come along.”
The dog scrambled over his hip; a nettlesome growl rumbled in its throat.
“Let’s say I didn’t? What if it was just you and Wage? There’s even worse than him out there who’d have taken more than your horse.”
“Muff, no!” Missy reached for her dog.
She grabbed for Muff, reaching above her head, then down Zane’s neck and over his chest. When she groped for the dog in a place he’d never invited a proper woman, he did a quick flip.
In the scuffle he managed to keep the dog near his feet without opening the canvas to the rain. The trouble was, he’d also gotten Missy pinned underneath him.
In the darkness, the whisper of her shallow breathing filled the canvas. The quick brush of it against his face filled his nose with her rosy scent.
“It’s a lucky thing for me that you’re the one who came along,” she murmured.
Maybe not so lucky. Even under the coat, he felt the curves of her breasts rising and falling beneath the trip and hammer of his heart. The layer of petticoats wasn’t thick enough to keep him from noticing a pair of shapely female legs go rigid, then relax beneath his.
Heated breath moistened his mouth. Her lips couldn’t be more than an inch away. He nearly groaned into the tiny space of simmering darkness that separated them.
Would she turn her face aside in outrage if he kissed her? Maybe slap him across the cheek with her slender hand?
Or worse, would she welcome it? Would she melt against his mouth then give herself over to him with an eagerness that would singe his mustache?
With the possibility only a searing gasp away, he shouldn’t let himself get carried away with the dream of what it might be like to brush his tongue over her lips, to taste them and explore the shape and delicate texture of them.
Missy’s heat flashed through him, spun about his insides then settled low and urgent where it shouldn’t. It was wrong to allow his imagination to run wild. His brain, ready to boil over, was a thought away from becoming reckless.
Somehow, the little lady had gotten him stirred up inside, and all by lying perfectly still.
How was it that she made him want to run like hell away and dive in headlong all at once?
One thing he was sure of, if he didn’t grit his teeth together, take a big bite of bitter reality, this would be one adventure that Missy Devlin would never write to her sister about.
He pressed the canvas on each side of her shoulders then pushed himself up so that he didn’t feel the tug of her breath calling him to behave disgracefully. He lifted up as far as he could without dislodging the shelter and letting in the rain.
There must be some remnant of honor left in him.
The close air stirred, fabric shifted, she touched both of his cheeks with her fingertips. They felt like hot butter against the week-old growth of his beard.
“Go to sleep now, Missy.” He settled down beside her then kissed her forehead with a quick peck. The dog scratched and plumped the canvas near Missy’s feet. “I’ll see you safe on the train first thing in the morning.”
Chapter Three
Missy snuggled into the cocoon-like shelter. The rain on the canvas had slowed to a steady splat.
Hours must have passed. It ought to be morning since the absolute black inside the tarp had given way to shadowed gray.
She felt rested … even energized. Such amazing things had happened in twenty-four hours. Her fingers fairly itched to write them down.
Zane’s slow, even breathing told her that he was still asleep … with his arms around her and his chin resting on top of her head! She could only hope that Muff would not need to get out. It would be fine to lie here until the rain quit, feeling the slow rise and fall of her hero’s chest, heartbeat to heartbeat against her own.
Last night, she had taken his advice and gone to sleep at once. Her emotions and her body had been tumbling in confusion and delight. A few hours’ rest to figure them out had been what she needed. Luckily, sleep always came easily, as sweet as a little bird settling into a nest.
Zane didn’t know it, but his vow to put her on the first train home had been wasted breath. It was a wonder that he hadn’t felt her silent bubble of laughter.
Out here in the West, free of the restrictions that Edwin had put on her behavior, she was an independent woman. Yes, indeed, free as a feather on the breeze. She certainly hadn’t come to Nebraska to have Zane Coldridge take Edwin’s place.
Suddenly, Zane sat up. The canvas cocoon burst open with a rush of cold, wet air. Missy noticed his hand reach for his gun even before he had come fully alert.
“What’s wrong?” she sputtered against the rain tapping on her mouth.
He didn’t speak. He touched her lips with two fingers and cocked his head to the left, listening.
She felt a slight rumbling in the ground a second before she heard a great roar and boom pound the air. Muff exploded from the folds of the canvas, trembling and barking.
Zane leaped to his feet and grabbed her hand. He yanked her up and pulled her along toward the rise of the hill.
Through the rain she looked down on the flood that engulfed Green Island.
Water lapped at the front porch of the hotel. While she watched, a wave washed inside the lobby. A man ran out, lifting his feet high in an attempt to clear the water. Luckily, her belongings were on the second floor and likely safe.
“Damn it all to hell,” Zane whispered under his breath and this time his curse didn’t sound at all colorful.
Missy followed his gaze upriver to see a massive chunk of ice floating on the current.
“The gorge up in the narrows must have burst.” He gripped her fingers tighter. “We’ll be safe enough up here.”
He scooped Muff up from the ground and stuffed him in the big pocket of her borrowed coat.
Upriver, several boulder-sized ice chunks bobbed after the first. The river was jammed with them, jouncing and crashing into one another, piling up on the shoreline then breaking loose with furious screeches and cracks.
Zane glanced backward, toward the flattened shelter of the canvas. He let out a shrill whistle, barely audible over the thunder of the ice. A second later his horse trotted into view with mud caked on his large black hooves.
He gripped the horse’s reins tightly in his fist. If it was truly safe on top of this hill, why did Zane seem to lean toward the horse as though ready to leap upon its great wide back at any second? Why did a silent shiver race through his arm and into hers?
The first of the giant ice floes hit the Congregational Church. Its tall spire shook but the building held … for a moment.
Hit by three more vicious blocks of ice, the structure left its foundation in one piece. It floated gracefully away with the current. A bend in the river took it out of view. Only the white steeple bobbed in and out of sight behind a grove of bare-branched trees.
The snap of shattering wood splintered the air. The church steeple tipped, then vanished.
Even over the rumble and thunder of the river, Missy heard the splitting screech go on and on. The church must have broken, shattered like toothpicks among the trees downriver.
Missy looked back toward the hotel. The man who had run outside had taken refuge on the roof. He called out to a group of men running and waving their arms on the far bank.
A pair of ice floes hit the hotel and sent it floating after the church. The man flopped down on his belly and rode the peak of the roof.
“God protect him,” Zane mumbled. Missy barely heard him over the shriek of splitting buildings.
In only a few moments the river had robbed Green Island of every building but one, and that one looked half caved-in and fully flooded.
Many of the structures floated away whole, only to be shattered to bits around the bend. A few others broke apart before her eyes.
Still, the worst wasn’t the ruined homes and businesses. It was the men, women and children clinging to rooftops, floating doors or any other surface to keep from being sucked into the turbulent water or crushed by a random shift of ice.
People from Yankton, the town bordering the north side of the river, ran along the shore, shouting and waving their arms, helpless to do anything more because of the treacherous current.
On the side of the river where Missy and Zane stood, a roof floated past carrying a family of five. They held tight against the violent lurch and sway.
The roof split down the middle when a jag of ice, pushed to the river bottom by a downward wave, suddenly lurched up again. One member of the family, a little girl of no more than three, clung to the separated piece.
The child’s mother tried to scramble into the water but her husband prevented her, holding her down with the weight of his body.
In only a moment, the family’s screams faded, carried away downriver along with the rooftop. The baby’s wail of terror grew louder when the current swirled her fragile section of shingles toward the shoreline not thirty feet below.
“Stay here,” Zane ordered.
He placed the horse’s reins in her hand then ripped the ribbon from his hair. He placed the worn scrap of lace in her fist then curled her fingers around it.
In the second that it took him to scramble down the bank, the roof snagged on the shoreline. It bucked and heaved against the current. It reminded Missy of a drawing she had seen in a dime novel of a wild horse trying to dislodge its rider.
The little girl held on as well as any bronco-buster she had ever read about.
But, Lord have mercy, her strength would be no match for the huge hunk of ice set on a dead aim for her fragile section of roof.
The wood roof pitched upward just as Zane lunged for it. A splinter of wood that felt like a two-by-four stabbed him under his thumbnail. He bit down on the pain and pulled up with straining arms until he got one leg over the rooftop.
A wave from behind washed him up and over. From an arm’s reach away the little girl looked at him. Big brown eyes blinked through hair plastered against her face.
“Hold on, baby, I’ve got you.” He hung on to the slippery roof with his injured hand and ignored the gush of crimson washing from his thumb. He stretched his arm out, straining at the shoulder to touch the child.
He’d just grabbed on to her tiny wrist, cold and slick with water, when a wave tossed her up. Her hand slipped out of his grip. She flew up, over his head. He caught a flash of calico skirt and yanked her back by it.
In the instant that he wrapped her to his chest he spotted the hunk of ice carried in the wave’s wake.
“Hold on.” She looped skinny arms about his neck then squeezed as tight as any binding rope would have. “Good girl.”
The jag of ice crashed down on the roof. It tossed him airborne. Turning and twisting, he dug his fingers into the child’s dress.
Upside down and spinning, he thought he saw Missy rushing toward the river, towing Ace behind her. That couldn’t be since he’d told her to stay put. Surely it was only a jumbled illusion that she wasn’t safely on the hilltop.
Hour-like seconds passed before he crashed back down into the water.
The wonder was that he hadn’t been hit by a deadly object coming down. The horror was, that he was down, way down under the water, still tumbling and turning and not knowing which way was up.
His hip crashed into something and then his shoulder. The little girl struggled in his grasp, needing air.
The current dragged him across the river bottom then slammed his back against a solid object. It knocked the breath from his lungs. Bubbles floated in front of his face. He loosened one arm from around the baby to grip the solid thing that he had hit. He pulled upward following the bubbles.
He broke the surface and lifted the child high against his shoulder. Her terrified screech filled his ear. Thank God.
It turned out to be an uprooted tree that he’d collided with. He wrapped one arm around a wide twisted root.
“It’s all right, sweetling. Hang on tight.”
His words must have sounded confident because the child clung to his neck like a summer vine twined around a post.
The tree, his only lifeline, shifted in the current. It wouldn’t be long before it ripped loose or debris racing downriver crashed into it.
More than twenty feet of turbulent river lay between this unstable sanctuary and the shore. If he let go, made a swim for the bank one-armed, he and the child would likely drown.
“Hush now. Everything’s going to be fine.” Somehow.
“Zane!” He barely heard Missy call his name over the rumble of river rushing past, carrying its cargo of deadly debris. “Zane!”
“Get back!” The child whimpered against his neck, probably startled by his outburst, but he couldn’t believe what his eyes told him. “Get out of here!”
Six feet out from the shore, with the insane tug of the Missouri pressing and heaving, Missy sat atop Ace. She urged him forward against any instinct the animal had of self-preservation.
“Hold on!” she cried. A wave splashed over the toe of her delicate boot. “I’m nearly there.”
“You’ll get yourself and my horse killed! Get back!”
“Don’t let go!”
Rain beat down on her. The coat blew open revealing her white lace corset with its droopy blue bows. Her dog poked his wet head out of the coat pocket, quiet for once.
“Don’t be an idiot,” he mumbled. But she didn’t look like an idiot. She looked brave and beautiful and too fragile to be urging Ace on through the torrent.
After a few more of those hour-long seconds, Ace stood beside the log in belly-deep water, holding steady. Missy reached down. He lifted the little girl into her arms.
“I’ll be back.” Missy shouted. “Hold on.”
“Damn it, no! Get to shore and stay there!” Ace was strong, but it was only luck that he hadn’t been knocked down by debris hidden in the current.
He watched Missy’s mouth open and close with some words that he guessed meant he’d wasted his breath on insisting she stay put, but a sudden crack of ice close by drowned out the sound.
She turned Ace’s head toward shore and whispered something to the little girl. A second later she glanced back, her face set in an expression that would excuse her brother tying her to the bedpost.
She’d come back all right, and probably die trying.
He lunged for Ace’s tail. By Heaven’s own luck he caught it and tangled his fingers in the thick, wet mass.
The horse’s first step toward shore made Zane swing wide into the current. He hung on, wincing against the pain from the splinter lodged in his thumb.
The brave animal didn’t protest the weight hanging on his tail even when a slap of water washed over his haunches. He whinnied then pointed his soaking black nose toward the shore.
It was a miracle. Missy had heard the declaration from the mouths of everyone she encountered that morning. Not a human soul had perished. Livestock and buildings had been washed away to their doom, but each and every human had been reunited with friends and loved ones.
Amazingly, the family of the little girl had claimed her a few moments after Zane crawled out of the river. He had barely caught his breath before the child’s mother hugged it out of him again.
With each soul accounted for, people now focused on retrieving their lost goods. Along the riverbank, families hunted under rubble and up in tree branches for pieces of their shattered lives.
Missy lifted a splintered scrap of lumber and peeked underneath it. Scattered about in the muck were the remains of the hotel. Surely she would find one or two of her belongings.
A timid finger of sunshine teased her shoulder blades without offering any heat. Muff, napping in the coat pocket, did warm one side of her knee.
“You’ve been searching for three hours.” Zane lifted a window frame and peered underneath it. “You won’t find anything.”
Maybe not, but it was a day for miracles, even small ones like finding a dress or a matching pair of shoes.
“Did you hear the church bell ring?” Missy asked, stopping for a moment to arch her back against a cramp.
“The church didn’t have a bell.” Zane tossed a piece of lumber aside and lifted a muddy hat up for Missy to see.
“Not mine.” The ache in her back tightened with the stretch. “And yet half the town of Yankton heard it.”
Zane placed the hat on a mangled tree branch sticking up from the mud. “Even if there had been a bell, no one could have heard it ringing.”
“They could if it had been a special bell … Oh, look at this.” She lifted a milk pail and hung it on the branch near the hat. “A natural bell couldn’t be heard, but a supernatural one could.”
“Darlin’, that might happen where you come from, but out here bells are pretty much brass or iron.”
It was hard to tell whether he was annoyed or amused since his hat shaded his eyes and his voice gave nothing away.
“Well, there you have it, then,” she said.
He straightened, plucking a man’s pipe from the mud. He shoved his hat back from his face. The sun shone bright on his expression.
It was not annoyed or amused. His eyebrows arched in bewilderment. “Have what?”
Mercy, what a handsome man! He nearly made her lose her train of thought.
“Proof, of course. If a brass or iron bell couldn’t be heard, and there wasn’t one to hear, but so many folks swear that they heard it, then what else could it be?”
“Delirium.”
“Magic.”
Zane turned and wedged the pipe behind the drooping yellow ribbon on the hat. He glanced back at her with a hot-coffee gaze. The simmer nearly made her knees knock together.
“Did you hear the bell?” he asked.
“No, but—”
“There was no bell.” He raised his hands, calloused palms out as though to block her words. “You didn’t hear it and I didn’t hear it.”
“In my book there will be a bell.”
“That’s the trouble with dime novels. For every word of truth there’s ten of fancy.”
“That’s simply not true. Lots of people heard that bell and it wasn’t fancy to them, it was hope.”
“I’ll tell you what’s true. Everything you own is spread across half the county. That’s a fact and no matter how you try to twist it into some sort of a bell-ringing adventure it all amounts to a hill of trouble.”
So true, but she had long believed that trouble was made to be overcome. “No one died and that was a bell-ringing miracle.”
“Take a peek around at your miracle, darlin’. This town is gone. Look at your own situation. You’ve got less than some others. You can’t even borrow clothes because no one has any to lend.”
“That is a challenge.” A rather big challenge that nearly made her feel like weeping. She had to remind herself that adversity held the seeds of adventure.
“No need for a tear.” He touched his thumb to her cheek. “If the tracks haven’t washed out, you can take the afternoon train home. I’ll stand by you until then.”
“That certainly was not a tear. I was just considering what to do.”
“That’s wise.” He dabbed her other cheek with his finger.
“I’ve decided to stay with you.”
He jumped backward. His brows arched like dark wings. His eyes widened in apparent horror. Quick as a blink he narrowed them in an uncanny reflection of the grim set of his mouth.
“That’s not possible.” His voice deepened. It sounded calm but a muscle twitched in his jaw. “I’ve got an outlaw to catch.”
“And so do I. That bank robber had my journal tucked under his arm when he managed to escape me!” Missy paused when a thought hit her. The theft was just another of the day’s miracles. If she had made it safely back to town the journal would have been washed away. At least now she had a chance of getting it back. “I need to go with you.”
“I ride alone.”
“It wouldn’t be right to leave me here to be a burden to the folks of Green Island. Even Yankton will have its hands full taking care of its own.”
“Go home, Missy. At least there, you’ll only be a burden to your brother.” Zane whistled for his horse.
“True enough.” Missy couldn’t blame him for being annoyed. He’d gone through some discomfort during the last day on her account. She heard Ace’s hooves snapping scattered twigs. “But all things considered, I’ll stay here.”
“Suit yourself, then.” He grabbed Ace’s reins then lifted up into the saddle.
“Thank you for the loan of your coat.” She plucked Muff from the pocket and slid it off her shoulders. Chilly air prickled her skin.
“You keep it.” He turned the horse toward the open prairie.
“Thank you!” she called out. “I’ll return it to you when we meet on the trail of the outlaw.”
He stopped Ace midstride, turned and gave her a hard frown. He shook his head then leaned forward in the saddle. The horse bolted away, racing for the horizon.
She tucked the coat tight against the icy breeze. The cloth smelled like campfire, horse and open prairie. The aroma of Zane Coldridge wrapped her up.