Aw, hell! Emmet released her hands and swung himself off her legs. She was a grieving widow and he'd treated her like a tart.

This was the first time he'd heard of a rule like that, although he knew some of the trains were like petty dictatorships. Pegleg Smith had been yarning one night they'd camped together. He'd told of a train where the captain decreed all dogs were to be shot. Most had, before some of the members stood up for themselves. And there was the one in which each family had to have a testimonial from a pastor, that its members practiced humane and Christian principles. "Why didn't you go back," he asked, "when your husband passed on?"

"I can't. Not now. Not after it's cost me so much to get this far." Her eyes closed, her mouth twisted. "And there's nothing to go back to."

"What will you do when you get to the Willamette Valley? You can't farm alone."

"Why can't I? Karl wasn't really a farmer. He was a cabinetmaker. I took care of the livestock and the orchard. Silas and me, that is."

"Who's Silas?" he demanded, knowing her too young to have a son to help her farm.

"He's...he's my hired man. And he's my friend."

Conscious of an unreasonable jealousy of Silas, Emmet said, "I'm no farmer."

She looked away, showing him a profile so pure, so lovely he ached. "I don't want a husband who'll stay with me, just one who'll get me there."

"I reckon there's something in it for me, if I do what you ask?"

Without meeting his eye, she said, "I've gold...."

"A man doesn't marry for gold, nor from the goodness of his heart." He wished he could see more of her than one round cheek, silhouetted against the still pale western horizon. The memory of her softness, of her womanly warmth, against his body sent rivers of fire into his loins. "Nights in the desert get mighty cold,"

he said, laying a hand on her shoulder and turning her to face him.

She flinched, but didn't pull away from his touch. Not quite.

"Say I was to marry you and see you to the Willamette," he said, pushing his luck. "Would you share my bed on the way?" Damn! Just thinking about her naked and writhing in his arms was getting him hard.

He felt her tension as she pulled away. He let her go, having trapped more than one frightened critter with patience and gentleness.

"I need a man to drive my wagon," she said, standing just out of reach, "and to help with the chores. That's all. Thank you kindly for considering my proposal, Mr. Lachlan. I should have known you weren't interested." A small sigh came to his ears, so faint that he might have imagined it. "I'll be going now. We start out early in the morning." She all but disappeared in the darkness.

"Wait!"

His single word stopped her before she'd gone twenty feet.

"I didn't say I wasn't interested." He couldn't let her go. Aside from the residual ache in his loins, he was still curious.

While a few coins jingling in his pocket wouldn't be amiss, Emmet had ample funds on deposit in St. Louis and wasn't looking to work for wages. "How much gold?"

"Fifty dollars?"

He laughed. He couldn't help himself. Fifty dollars wouldn't even buy a good mule.

"I'm sorry. It's all I can spare. And the other... I can't...." Her voice broke.

"It's too soon. I just ca...."

He strode after her, catching her as she attempted to pick her way along the narrow path that slanted along the canyon wall. "Wait," he said again, holding her with a light touch on her arm. "You've got to chose a husband tonight, or the colonel will do it for you?" He deliberately put his contempt for the pompous train leader in his voice.

He sensed rather than saw her nod.

"Whoever he picked, you'd have no choice about where you slept?"

This time he felt the movement of her head as her hair tickled his chin.

"So why not me?"

"Because...." Her words came to his ears like a whisper of wind. "...because I'm afraid I could come to care for you."

Once Emmet had found responsibility thrust upon him, and when it ended he'd sworn he'd never again take another's fate into his hands. Now he saw the trap he most dreaded yawning at his feet. Saw it, and still he stepped willingly off the edge and into its teeth.

He couldn't help himself. She was so brave. So comely. And she smelled of lilac.

"I'll see you to the Willamette and I'll hunt for you and guard your stock," he said, taking her hand and guiding her along the trail until the wagons were again in sight. Before he released it, he pulled her briefly against him, wanting just one more hint of her lilac scent. "And I'll sleep alone," he said into her hair, knowing it was about the most damfool promise he'd ever made.

"But you know nothing about this man!" Winston Whitehead was as close to speechless as she'd ever seen him.

"I know all I need to know," she snapped. Oh, but it felt good to be able to stand up to the colonel. He'd been telling her what to do ever since the day Karl took sick, and she'd had no choice but to obey, since she'd needed his help. "I know I'd rather be married to him than to anyone I've seen in this train," Hattie said. "Now, will you do the ceremony, or do I just let him move into my wagon?"

"I'll marry you," Colonel Whitehead said, disapproval in every word. "Tonight."

"This morning," she told him. "Before we start." The sun was still below the eastern horizon, but the train was almost ready to depart. She didn't want to have a full day to think about what a mistake she might be making. Last night had given her far too many hours to question her own sanity.

The colonel's lips thinned and his eyes grew hard. "Fetch him, then," he said, "and call your witnesses."

No, she knew nothing of Emmet Lachlan except that he was a good man and that his hands on her made her feel as if she could melt like hailstones under a July sun. She'd looked into his eyes and listened to his words and seen and heard honor and decency and respect. Enough at least, to get her safely to the Willamette, where she would tell him good-bye and hope he didn't take her heart with him when he left her behind.

Five minutes later she and Emmet Lachlan were standing before the colonel, flanked by Martha and Eli Stone. And three minutes after that, she was married.

"That's that, then," the colonel said, turning away. He snatched his bugle off his wagon's seat and blew a long, off-key blast. "Move out," he called. "Move out!"

"Wait," Emmet said, laying his hand on her arm as she stepped away from him.

"We're not married until we seal it with a kiss." He lowered his head toward her and she closed her eyes, not wanting to see into his. She was afraid of what she might read--desire or contempt. Either would hurt.

Emmet's kiss was gentle, promising companionship, comfort, and care. For a brief moment, Hattie wondered what would happen if the passion she sensed in him were unleashed.

But she would never know. A stab of regret pierced her vitals for the promise she had exacted from him.

"You did the right thing," Martha Stone said, embracing her after Emmet moved away. "He seems a good man and he'll take care of you."

Eli shouldered his wife aside. "Let me have my turn, Mother. I don't often get to kiss a pretty girl." He bussed her on the cheek and hugged her until her ribs ached. "God bless you, Mrs. Rom... Lachlan." He turned to shake her new husband's hand, repeating his blessing, and advising Emmet to treat her with gentleness and respect, "just like a good horse."

Since Hattie knew Eli loved his horses almost as much as his wife of twenty-two years, she took no offense.

Emmet rode beside the train for the first hour, then went far afield, seeking the big-eared mule deer hiding among the tall sagebrush. Aside from the bacon she'd brought from back east, there was no meat in Hattie's wagons. The dried apple pie she served him for breakfast--in celebration of their marriage, she said--had been a treat, but he was a man who wanted his fresh red meat.

That evening he cut up the deer carcass while Silas set up camp. The boy was efficient, for all his youth. Emmet wondered how old he was, with his long skinny legs and arms sticking out of outgrown pantlegs and shirtsleeves.

Thirteen, maybe? About the age he himself had been when he finally escaped to sea. He was ready to like Silas, seeing the way the lad tried to take on all the heavy work to spare Hattie.

"I'm grateful for the meat," Hattie told him as she dished up his plate. She'd cooked beans too, and there was a cold biscuit to sop up the meat juices "I didn't feel right, taking from Mr. Stone, what with all the mouths he's got to feed."

"Didn't anyone else offer to hunt for you?"

Her smile was mocking. "They did, but the price of their hunting was more than I was willing to pay."

"I got a couple of grouse," Silas said. "And snared rabbits whenever I could."

"We had bacon, too," Hattie added, "though I'd liked to have bought some more at Fort Hall."

"We can pick some up at Fort Boise," Emmet said. "Anything else you need?"

Mentally he counted how far fifty dollars would go at the prices charged at the Hudson's Bay Company forts. What if he'd taken her money? Would they have run short before The Dalles?

They spoke of necessities and of duties to be done. Hattie was at her tasks well after sundown. He returned from his after-supper reconnoiter to find her just pulling the dutch oven off the smoldering coals of the cookfire she shared with three other families. She tipped it on its side and let the round loaf fall onto the folded towel she held. Emmet's mouth watered at the smell, for all his belly was still full. He hadn't had real bread since he'd left St. Louis, nearly four years ago.

"That speckled ox," he said. "He's got a split hoof."

"I know," she told him over her shoulder as she carried to bread to the wagon.

"Silas has been putting pitch on it of a night, and we won't put shoes back on him until he's better."

He followed her and leaned one shoulder against the wagon as she climbed onto the tongue, then onto the seat. "Good thing you've got spares."

"Karl wasn't one to be caught short, if he could help it," she said, her voice slightly muffled.

He wondered what she was doing, behind the canvas curtain. Was she unbuttoning the faded calico dress, removing the ugly, ill-fitting moccasins? "Is that why he brought two wagons?"

Her head poked through the curtain, followed by her body, still decently clothed. "No. One's for tools and seed, the other's for household goods and food," she said, turning and stretching a foot toward the tongue.

Emmet caught her waist and lifted her down, wondering at her fragility. She didn't feel strong enough to walk a mile, let alone the twelve or so they'd covered today.

"Thank you Mr. Lachlan," she said. She held a bundle of cloth in her hand. "I thought these might fit you." She shook the bundle open, revealing it to be two shirts, both calico, one faded red, the other pale blue. "They were a mite big on Karl."

Touched, he took the shirts. He preferred buckskin to cloth most of the time, but looser, cooler shirts might be nice during the hot, dry, windy days here along the Snake River. "I'm obliged," he said, removing his belt. The long buckskin shirt fell loose, clear to his knees, the folded-up part light and clean compared to the rest. He started to pull the shirt over his head, but her hand on his arm stopped him.

"I think you'd better go inside," she said, her cheeks pink and her eyes darting everywhere but at his half-bared chest. "The colonel doesn't hold with immodesty."

"The colonel be hanged," Emmet said, skinning the cat and tossing the buckskin aside. He reached for the red calico. "It's not like I'm takin' off my pants."

Her cheeks really did flame then. He wondered how she could retain so much maidenly shyness after having been married.

He wondered how deeply she might blush if he were to take off his pants and do to her what he suddenly wanted to do.

She had been married two full days.

And nights, although her husband hadn't come to her bed to claim his rights.

Having insisted on his promise, Hattie knew she should be grateful that he was a man of his word. She was grateful, so why had she lain awake half the night, waiting for him?

She shook her head. A body would think she didn't know her own mind. A body would probably be right, although it hurt to admit it.

Silas appeared around the end of the wagon. He leaned the shotgun against the wheel and lowered the dipper into the water barrel. "Mr. Lachlan, he don't know much about wagons and oxen, but he's a good hand with horses and right handy with that big knife of his." He drank deeply.

Hattie smiled. Perhaps she'd made a better bargain than she'd had any reason to expect. Just then her husband appeared at the edge of the wagon circle, astride his big gray gelding.

My! What a handsome man he was. Tall and strong, shining golden in the westering sunlight like one of those German gods Karl had been fond of reading about--the ones he'd named the oxen for.

She watched him stop to speak to Eli Stone, saw him hand the older man something. Then she lost sight of him as he guided the gelding off to the south where the livestock grazed the dry grass.

It was close to an hour before he returned. In that time she'd made biscuits, and gravy from the pan drippings. Oh, it was good to have meat again, and plenty of it. She looked up from where she knelt beside the fire, smiling in welcome.

"Supper will be ready by the time you've washed, Mr. Lachlan."

"Here's something to go with it," he said, holding a dark bundle toward her, "and some flowers to decorate your table."

The daisies and brilliant sunflowers he held out to her were slightly wilted, but Hattie couldn't remember seeing blossoms more lovely. She took them with both hands and buried her face in them, for all they smelled strong and slightly acrid, of dust and dry pollen. "I... I thank you kindly, Mr. Lachlan," she said, fighting the burning behind her lids. No one had given her flowers, not since she'd been a laughing child in her father's house.

"I brought you some watercress," he said, drawing her attention to the package he held in his other hand. It dripped, the water making dark spots on the dusty ground.

"Oh, where did you find it?" She'd had a hunger for something fresh, ever since they'd eaten the last of the greens she'd traded a china bowl for at Fort Laramie.

"Other side of the river. Did you see the springs across there?" He poured a scant inch of water into the washpan and set the soap beside it. "There are some big ponds where it grows so thick you can't see the water."

Hattie turned away, as politeness demanded, when he stripped off his shirt and washed his chest and arms. He was the cleanest man she'd ever seen. Even her pa, who'd taught her to love the feel of water on her naked body, hadn't washed as often as Emmet Lachlan did.

But she watched from the corner of her eye, wondering how his warm skin would feel against her palms.

"Hat? Where's the ax?"

She felt herself blush, to be caught ogling a half-naked man. "I haven't got it out yet," she told Silas, willing the hot blood to recede from her cheeks.

"There was still wood from last night."

One thing her new husband had done was insist that they carry enough wood to start the cook fire at each new camp, so that supper could be prepared quickly.

With what she'd been able to pick up along the road, she'd had plenty of fire to warm up the venison and beans from last night. Seeing that Emmet was once again decently covered, she set the plates and utensils on the chest they used for a table. "Supper's ready," she called. "Silas, you can cut wood later. Come eat, now."

The menfolk set to with a will, both filling their plates with huge mounds of beans, circling them with several chunks of cornbread. Hattie understood how Silas could eat and stay skinny as a rail--he was a growing boy, after all--but her new husband must have a hollow leg, to put so much food away and still be whipcord slim.