My Heart's Desire Page 23

  A long silence followed her words. Jarret lay back on the tick and turned toward the wall. "I don't always know about right and wrong around you." It was all the admission he was prepared to make. "Go to sleep, Rennie."

  * * *

  It wasn't a long sleep. Jarret woke her at dawn. He was already shaved and dressed. A bedroll lay at his feet, and elsewhere in the loft their packed bags were stacked. His arms were braced on the beams on either side of the sloping ceiling. He stared down at her while she stretched sleepily and pushed wayward strands of hair from her face. She smiled up at him.

  The rare and beautiful smile, the unguarded pleasure in her face, nearly rocked Jarret back on his heels. He realized it meant nothing, that she was hardly awake, but he could not let her see the same vulnerability in him. He stared back stonily. "If you want to go to the Jump, be ready in thirty minutes."

  Rennie watched him turn and take the ladder. She had no awareness of her fading smile, just as she had no awareness that it had been radiant and welcoming a moment before. She stared at the point where Jarret had disappeared over the edge of the loft and tried to imagine the hard journey ahead with a man who hated her above everything else.

  Jarret had their mares saddled and the third horse strapped with their supplies by the time Rennie joined him. Beneath her redingote she was wearing the clothes he had set out for her. She felt his eyes run up and down her swiftly, making his own assessment.

  "Everything fits?" he asked. "The trousers? The shirt?"

  She nodded. "These clothes belong to Jolene."

  "Belonged," he said, emphasizing the past tense.

  "She gave them to you?"

  "She sold them to me." There was no rancor in his voice.

  "They're comfortable."

  He handed her Albion's reins and held her gaze for a moment. "But you're not comfortable."

  Her eyes darted away. She mounted without assistance. "Not entirely," she said. "I'm not used to—"

  "Wearing a whore's clothes?"

  Rennie understood then that Jarret, for whatever reasons, was spoiling for a fight. She refused to be provoked.

  If he wanted to back out from his agreement to take her to the Jump, then he would have to do it on his own. She wasn't giving him cause.

  When he was ready to go Rennie chose to follow rather than ride abreast. Jarret never indicated he wanted it otherwise.

  * * *

  Rennie discovered early on that Jarret was not going to make any allowances for her inexperience or her gender. He altered the pace and chose breaks based on the needs of the horses. He expected Rennie to be able to ride long hours and then be useful when it was time to make camp. On the trail she was given the same attention and deference that Jarret gave to the packhorse's supplies. He couldn't have demonstrated any clearer that she was just so much baggage. At the camp he tersely ordered her around. There she was another pair of arms and legs to fetch and carry.

  He didn't make her cook.

  At night they shared the tent but not the blankets. They never woke in a tangle or traded a glance. They rarely spoke. Rennie realized that after three days on the trail Jarret and she had exchanged only a few dozen words. She no longer recognized her own voice, but she was getting used to the raspy, staccato orders that Jarret delivered.

  The terrain was uneven. Flat stretches opened up to steep descents or sharp ascents. It seemed to Rennie that she was always leaning forward or backward in her saddle. Sprawling juniper shrubs kept the ground from being relentlessly white and rocky, and all around were great forests of ponderosa, lodgepole, and limber pines. Snow defined the slender skeleton branches of the aspens. Mountain streams rushed cold and fast, sometimes beneath a thin layer of ice so that the water looked as if it were under glass. Rainbow colors were captured in the melting tips of icicles. The air was crisp, the snow glazed and crunchy.

  For the most part wildlife kept its distance. Rabbits scattered, birds soared, and deer stilled in the presence of the travelers. Rennie sensed more activity at night. Beyond the crackle of the fire and Jarret's soft breathing, it seemed she could hear all of nature's sounds. Pine cones thudded to the ground as predators and prey engaged in a life and death dance. Rocky inclines shifted when animals sought safety in higher ground. The rush of icy water changed its cadence when the chase cut its path.

  Rennie found it surprisingly easy to sleep.

  It was dawn on the fourth day of travel before Rennie was the first one to wake. She eased out from under the blankets and escaped the tent without rousing Jarret. The sky was gray, and the encampment was shrouded in a cloud. The sun was a blur of light rather than a beacon. It hardly seemed powerful enough to burn off the mountain mist. Rennie knew they would have to travel anyway.

  After washing at the stream and seeing to her own needs, she took care of the horses. She had just finished making a better fire when Jarret crawled out of the tent. He took one look at the sky, another at her, then scowled at nature in general. Rennie supposed the scowl was a greeting. When he turned his back and headed for the stream she merely shook her head in unhappy acceptance.

  The brisk bathing and shave did nothing to alter Jarret's disposition, but he looked a shade less menacing. He began preparing breakfast while Rennie pulled up stakes on the tent. Out of the corner of his eye he watched her work. Her movements were clean and efficient, and she went at her task with more energy than she had shown on any previous morning. It seemed to Jarret that not only had Rennie survived the demands of the journey, she had adjusted to them.

  "Coffee's ready," he said.

  Rennie dropped the hammer and stakes on the flattened tent canvas and went for her coffee before it got cold. She sat on a log on the opposite side of the fire from Jarret and held the tin mug in both her gloved hands. The rising steam warmed the tip of her nose as she raised it to her face.

  Breakfast was stew left over from the night before. When it was ready, Jarret let Rennie dish out what she wanted, then ate the remainder straight from the pot.

  "By midmorning we should reach the rails," he said.

  As much in reaction to the sound of his voice as to the content of his statement, Rennie's head jerked up. "We're that close?"

  He nodded curtly. "We'll follow the tracks to Juggler's Jump. You'll find the traveling easier."

  She couldn't seem to help herself from pointing out, "I haven't complained."

  "It wasn't an accusation," he said. "I'll find the traveling easier, too."

  Rennie ducked her head and continued eating, angry with herself for having taken his comment so personally.

  "We should reach the Jump by early afternoon."

  She nodded, her mouth flattened in a grim line.

  "We'll be approaching it from above. I'm not certain how we'll get down to the wreck. That could take most of the day."

  "So long?" Anxiety clouded the emerald eyes she lifted in his direction.

  "We'll see," he said tersely.

  The subject was closed. Rennie finished her meal in silence. When she was done she took their utensils to the stream, washed them, then completed packing the tent. Jarret put out the fire and saddled their horses. They worked separately but together, skirting each other by design more than chance, as if their motions were choreographed by an unseen hand.

  They reached the tracks laid by Northeast Rail sooner than Jarret had expected. Riding single file along the tracks, they hugged the mountainside of the curve during the slow, gradual descent. Occasionally Jarret looked over his shoulder at Rennie, just to reassure himself of her presence. She had not recovered her color since he'd told her they would reach the Jump today. The full impact of her decision to search for her father was confronting Rennie squarely. Jarret wondered if she would be bent or broken by the pressure.

  He held up one hand, indicating a halt, as he drew up on Zilly's reins with the other. Ahead of him the tracks disappeared beneath a wall of rock, snow, and ice. Swearing softly, he dismounted and walked ahead to investig
ate the obstacle. Above him and to his right a wide path had been cut through the trees and shrubs by the force of the avalanche.

  Rennie came up behind him and stared forlornly at the blockade that was nearly twice as tall as Jarret at its peak. It was impossible to tell its depth. "What are we going to do?" she asked.

  Jarret shook his head. "You said the tracks were blocked in places, but I didn't expect this."

  Rennie hadn't either. "Can we get around it?"

  "We can," he said, "but it will take us a week to reach the Jump by another route. We'll have to retrace our tracks more than halfway. I don't have enough supplies to do that. I'll have to take time out to hunt for game, and that's going to add to the journey. I had planned to make camp at the site of the wreck and do tracking and hunting then."

  "Well, we can't dig through that," she said.

  He gave her a sideways glance, his mouth pulled to one side in derision. "I may not be an engineer," he said, "but I figured that out on my own."

  She ignored him. "If we can't get around it, and we can't get through it, then we have to get over it."

  "You're not listening. I said we can get around it. It will just take longer."

  "Unless you're telling me that going over it is impossible, then going around isn't a choice as far as I'm concerned."

  Jarret tipped back the brim of his hat with his forefinger and let his eyes scan the terrain of the blockade. "Truth is, Rennie, I won't know if it's impossible until I've tried it and failed. What I know is that it's dangerous. Are you willing to risk your life? Take a good look over the side of the mountain before you answer that; see where the rest of the rock and snow landed that didn't get stopped on this lip of land."

  Rennie didn't look. She knew what was down there, and she knew what was behind her. She was willing to take a chance with what was ahead. "I want to try getting over it, but I won't ask it of you. If you want to turn around, I'll understand and I'll follow."

  "So it's up to me."

  She nodded.

  He turned toward her, and for the first time in four days he touched her, lifting her chin in the cup of his hand. She didn't flinch, but stood there stubbornly, color washing her cheeks as he took the full measure of her resolve. "If you so much as stub your toe getting over this thing, I'll make your life miserable."

  She smiled brilliantly, warmly, but Jarret didn't see. He had already turned away, his decision made.

  Rennie helped him remove some of the load from the packhorse and distribute the supplies to Albion and Zilly. When that was done they worked together trying to reconstruct the face of the avalanche so that they and the horses would have better footing. They packed the snow where it was loose and moved rock when it was possible. The going was slow. Rocks that seemed to hold at first merely rested on layers of pebbles. When they shifted, sliding like ball bearings, the rocks would shift in turn. Rennie bit her lip every time she heard the sound or felt the earth give beneath her. The alternative was to scream.

  When Jarret and Rennie reached the top they saw that the remains of the avalanche stretched nearly fifty yards in front of them. It also sloped gradually toward the tracks again, putting them at the steepest point at the outset. Rennie waited at the summit while Jarret climbed back down to bring the horses. She watched him gentle and calm them when they shied at the start of the ascent. Rennie never doubted he would get them to move; she had witnessed his success with the recalcitrant packhorse often enough to be certain of the outcome. Somewhat to her chagrin she realized he had occasionally used similar techniques with her.

  "Must be I've got more horse sense than common sense," she muttered to herself as Jarret crested the ridge.

  He glanced at her, and for a moment the old easy smile was back. "Don't flatter yourself," he said dryly.

  Rennie knew the air wasn't a single degree warmer than it had been a second ago. It only felt that way. Without another word, and hiding her secret smile, she carefully picked her way across the rock and ice.

  It wasn't until they were all safely on the other side that Rennie realized the scope of their accomplishment. Looking back at the barrier they had just defeated, she saw the precarious balance of rock on rock. The snow and ice that had been nature's glue was melting much faster than Rennie had noticed while traveling over it. Without warning an entire section of glistening rock and snow slipped over the mountainside. It thundered at first, then echoed eerily as it came to rest farther down the slope.

  Jarret was soothing the horses, but his attention was on Rennie. "Are you going to be sick?" he asked.

  She swallowed hard and took an uneasy step back from the edge. She stumbled on a railroad tie behind her and fell on her bottom on the track. "At least I managed not to stub my toe," she said wryly, raising slightly bemused eyes to Jarret.

  He transferred the reins to his right hand and reached for Rennie with his left. He pulled her to her feet. They touched along the length of their bodies for the briefest of moments before he released her. They both felt the same frisson of awareness, but only Jarret knew precisely how close he had come to kissing her.

  Rennie brushed herself off and adjusted the scarf around her neck. Game again, she took Albion's reins from Jarret's hand and led her mare along the stretch of tracks. Once she was walking it was easier to pretend she wasn't shaking quite as badly as she first thought.

  There were no other blockages along the track. Jarret and Rennie reached the curving abutment known as Juggler's Jump at midday, earlier even than Jarret had anticipated. While the tracks followed the curve of the mountain closely and blasting had widened the shelf, the Jump itself reached out beyond the mountain's face.

  Rennie and Jarret stood a few steps back from the edge. Four hundred feet below them lay the twisted wreckage of No. 412.

  "I make out four cars and a caboose," Jarret said. Snow had long since covered most of the damaged cars, and trees that had been felled in their careening spill off the mountain also blocked the view. "Is that what you understood?"

  She nodded. The caboose lay completely on its side, identifiable only because some small patches of red were still visible. Three of the cars were more difficult to distinguish because they were buckled and fused, altered beyond their normal rectangular shape to something that had no well-defined shape at all.

  The fourth car was something else again, and it was the one that held Rennie's attention. Even before the wreck it had been different from the others. Jay Mac had insisted that his private car be equipped with both function and comfort in mind. It was only on the outside of the car that he permitted embellishment that served no purpose except to set it apart. The Worth crest appeared on both sides of the car and again on the roof. Jay Mac's private car was the only one in a mostly upright position. Its tilt against a row of sheltering pines meant snow had not clung so tenaciously to its roof. When she looked carefully, Rennie could see the gold leaf coat of arms against the shiny black background.

  She pointed it out to Jarret. "That's my father's car," she said. "Ethan told me I'd find it nearly upright. You can tell from here that it's hardly damaged."

  Jarret couldn't tell anything of the sort, but he didn't say so. Just because it landed that way didn't mean it hadn't somersaulted in the air on its way down. Neither did it necessarily mean Jay Mac had had a better chance of surviving the crash.

  "How do we get down there?" she asked.

  "Well, we can do what old Ben Juggler did..."

  "I'm not jumping."

  "Then, we keep on walking. We'll take the tracks to their lowest point, then cut back through the woods. It's not as steep an incline as it seems. Which is why Juggler finally settled on a gun to end it." He grinned. "Jumpin' here didn't do the trick."

  She stared after him as he walked away. "You're making that up."

  He raised his right hand. "Swear to God."

  Rennie couldn't see, but she suspected he was still grinning. She picked up Albion's reins and fell into step behind him.


  * * *

  It was one of those things that shouldn't have happened, an outcome for which neither one was prepared. After giving their horses a rest along the track route, they shifted the supplies back to the packhorse and mounted their own. Neither Albion nor Zilly found the ground they had to cover any more difficult than anything that had come before. Looking up at Juggler's Jump from below, Rennie could see that Jarret was right about the mountain's incline. It only became steep, and virtually impossible to ascend or descend, where it rose vertically to support the tracks.

  The terrain they covered now seemed a gentle slope in comparison to the view from above. She thought later that it might have been the ease with which they were moving, or a touch of unwarranted confidence that they had finally reached a milepost on their journey, that made them careless.

  Rennie didn't see the rabbit that charged under Albion's hooves until her horse reared. She managed to hold her seat, but Albion faltered on the landing and nearly went down. His attention caught by what was happening over his shoulder, Jarret wasn't prepared for Zilly's misstep. He tried to right himself in the saddle, grabbing the pommel, but the tingling in his hand prevented him from having a good touch. His panic was only momentary, yet Zilly felt it. She stomped restlessly, dislodged some rock, and began sliding.

  Jarret regained some control by leaning forward in the saddle and letting Zilly do what she did best. The mare's legs scrambled for purchase, then charged ahead. It was a wild ride to the bottom, and Jarret thought for a moment he and Zilly were both going to make it safely. That was until he saw the fallen ponderosa. It lay on a slant, the bough end caught in the crux of another tree, barring his route like a gate four feet off the ground. He tried to use his knees and legs to redirect the mare's path, but she was too frantic to feel his movements and understand them. Jarret was helpless to stop Zilly from making the jump, and with no strength now in his right arm he couldn't hold on. He lost his seat going up, and unlike Zilly, never cleared the gate.