Page 24 of The Prospector's Only Prospect
“I did.”
“Well, then.”
“‘Then’ what?” She sat taller.
“Then you should be happy I put a stop to things this morning. You want to risk areasonto marry?”
“No.” Her answer was prompt and sullen. “AndIwould have put a stop to it before that happened.”
He choked on a chewy bite of venison. “Is that right? I’ll leave it to you to call a halt next time, then.”
“There won’t be a next time,” she snapped back, quick as a wet cat.
“Damned straight there won’t.” Though it stung to say it.
Her brow might have flexed with what might have been hurt, but it was hard to read her expression in the firelight. Why was he even trying? He scraped the last of the stew and set the pot aside.
The fire crackled and threw sparks into the air.
Just when he was thinking about taking that water for a rag bath, she gave a small sigh that was impatient, but also sounded injured and frustrated.
“You don’t have to be so mean about everything. If you want me to stick around and do my best for your children, we have to get along. Without…complications.”
This was the thing he found most annoying about her. She said frank things that made him feel in the wrong simply because she was right.
“Look…” He wanted a wife so his children would have a mother, someone they could trust to be there as long as God was willing, but it had to be someonehecould trust.
His throat closed over bringing up her history, though. He didn’t usually mind speaking plain, but he balked at flat-out calling her things he didn’t know were true.
After a second, he spilled the bald facts.
“When we staked our claim on this valley and started to work it, I went to Fort Kearney for supplies. While I was there, I sent a letter and some gold to Clara, telling her where I was. By the time a return letter from her brother caught up to me, the lawyer he’d hired was in Denver City with the children. I hadn’t seen Clara since she was carrying Nettie.” He left a nice long pause for that to sink in.
“I wondered,” she murmured, chin dipped so her gaze was in her cup.
“Everyone does,” he said flatly. “I had words with the lawyer, told him what I thought of the situation.” He was still feeling that punch in the gut when that man had accosted him at the Express station, dragging him across to a wagon where everyone in the camp had heard his business. “But Archie had paid him to leave all three children with me, and that man was determined to do it.”
“Lawyers are vile.”
“And slick enough to keep Archie from putting anything incriminating into his letter. The lawyer said Archie told him Clara had taken in a boarder—Albert—and that she ‘showed no regret for any lapse in judgment.’” Virgil had understood that to mean she’d taken Albert to their marriage bed of her own volition. “Archie’s letter said that as Clara’s husband, her children were my children and therefore my responsibility.”
“When did they arrive?”
“May. She died last Christmas. Archie sent them with the first wagon train west. The lawyer and his wife were carrying on to Oregon and anxious to get back to the trail. I could see plain as day that Nettie and Levi couldn’t do without their baby brother. Levi is protective of the both of them. Nettie clucks over Harley like he’s her own little chick. He’s all they have of their mother. What the hell was I supposed to do?”
“You did the right thing. The only thing you could do.” She lowered the cup to her knee and regarded him with the eyes of a doe, gaze wide and dark and open.
It made something seesaw in his chest. He shrugged a prickle off his shoulders and ran his hands up and down his thighs. God knew he’d tried to find other options but hadn’t come up with anything except bringing them home and placing ads to find them a mother.
“There was no word about whether this Albert might want them?” she asked.
“I wrote to Archie. Got what information I could out of the children. It sounds as though Albert went up to Canada for work, but he could have been running.” Whether Albert was free or enslaved, Missouri was a slave state, and Albert hadn’t been safe there. “What sticks in my craw is that Clara likely took in a boarder because I wasn’t sending her enough to live on.” Virgil rose and paced into the dark. “That’s why I had to accept Harley.” It was twisted logic, but it felt straightforward to him. “Clara must have felt abandoned, me being away for years and only sending dribs and drabs. If I’d been there, she wouldn’t have taken that man into our home, let alone our bed.”
“Did her brother not help her?”
“Do you know what that fucker did?” Virgil spun, still outraged by the man’s gall. “He kept the gold I sent to her. Said it was for the care he’d given my children since her death and the cost of sending them to me. They arrived with a change of clothes and empty bellies, not a toy between them. Son of a bitch.” If he ever got his hands around Archie’s throat…
“Well, it sounds as if they’re better off with you for many reasons.”
