Page 10 of The Prospector's Only Prospect
“Forty miles that way.” He pointed at the mountains. “It’s a mining camp. I didn’t expect you today. I thought this was my regular supply run, so I brought the oxen and had the wagon filled.” He motioned to where men at a mercantile were securing barrels and crates on an uncovered wagon. “We’ll leave in an hour.”
“More travel. Yay,” she said weakly.
“You want to add a night at the hotel and a day of my wages to your bill, we can arrange that.”
“You’re a very tough sort of man, aren’t you, Mr. Gardner?”
“Most people call me a hard-ass.”
“I was going to ask if I could call you Virgil, but if you prefer hard-ass…”
He ran his tongue over his teeth, perhaps hiding amusement, because his eyes held a hint of sparkle within the frost. “You can call me Virgil.”
“Well, Virgil, I wonder if you’d be willing to stake me a small cushion?”
…
She fell asleep on the ferry.
Virgil had noticed her bruised eyes but hadn’t realized how exhausted she really was until her head was nodding as they got underway. He stepped down from the wagon after driving it onto the ferry and helped the ferryman guide the raft across. When he climbed back up, she had stretched across the bench with the cushion he’d bought her tucked under her cheek.
“Marigold.” He nudged her shoulder, then again more firmly.
She was so deeply asleep, he grew concerned something was wrong, but she didn’t have a fever and had eaten the same stew he’d tucked into before they left. Her breathing was deep and regular, her skin pale, not flushed. She was just…dead asleep.
She didn’t stir when he shifted her so her bottom was against his hip and her bent legs were across his lap. He didn’t know how else to arrange her so she wasn’t falling out of the wagon. It was comfortable enough but also not, leaving him a little too conscious of the fact she was a woman. At least she was quiet.
He drove the wagon off the ferry and carried on up the rutted track into the foothills.
The oxen made it a ponderous journey, but it was peaceful, and this was a particularly heavy load with the stove and woodworking tools.
Despite the days still being warm, the mountain shadows closed in quickly and dropped the temperature. He dug into Marigold’s carpetbag for her shawl and draped it over her. She still didn’t move, even when he waved away a mosquito that was trying to add to the bumps on her cheeks.
She had some bite herself, didn’t she? He should have found that irritating, but it was heartening. This life was hard.
He was already losing men who’d only arrived a few weeks ago with dreams as bright and misguided as the ones that had lured Virgil to California eight years ago. Like him, those young men had had their spirits crushed very quickly and wound up in the back-breaking position of working for someone else. Sore and disillusioned, they were limping home.
Little Miss Marigold could very well do the same, and he wouldn’t begrudge her for it. He didn’t know what he’d do if that happened, though. He couldn’t take his kids back to St. Louis. He’d only wind up killing his brother-in-law for the way he’d treated them after Clara died. They’d be orphaned all over again.
With a sudden inhale, Marigold jerked upright. She was so disoriented with her legs tangled over his lap that she nearly fell off the bench.
“You’re all right.” He caught her arm to steady her. Spirited she might be, but she wasn’t very sturdy.
“I’m going to be sick.”
He pulled on the reins, and she scrambled down to the ground, then stepped off the track and stood with one hand against the torn-paper trunk of an aspen. Their yellow leaves quaked above her as she took several deep breaths.
While he waited for her to lose her guts, he began to feel ill himself.
“Are you pregnant?” he asked with such dread the words left a pall in his throat.
“What?No. I get sick when I travel too long.”
“You’ve been sick for days?”
“Yes.”
Add it up, lady. He didn’t say it, but she must have heard it, because she trudged back to give him a pale, affronted scowl.
