done that? Gentled the horse with nothing more than his words? She’d never seen anything like it.
Patting the stallion, the man turned his back to Lily. She gasped aloud. Straight, jet-black hair hung past his shoulders.
Indian.
A rush of emotion swept through Lily. Fear, apprehension, curiosity.
Everyone on the wagon train had warned her about these Indians, their savagery, their heinous acts, the atrocities they committed—things so vile men wouldn’t whisper them to a decent woman.
Yet this Indian seemed anything but menacing, despite his size. Tall, broad shouldered with thick arms and a lean waist. His pressed, well-mended clothing was the cleanest she’d seen at the fort.
And he had gentled the stallion. With words and measured actions, he’d not only brought the horse under control, but calmed it as well.
Sitting perfectly still on the crate, Lily watched as the breeze pulled at the man’s shirt and ruffled his black hair. One evening on the wagon train she’d spoken with a young woman who’d told her that Indian men had no hair on their chests. For the first time, Lily’s stomach tingled at the notion. Could it be true?
She’d seen a bare-chested man a few times in her life. On the journey west when the men of the wagon train had been forced to engage in some difficult work in the heat of the day, they’d occasionally taken off their shirts.
But what would a smooth chest look like?
Beneath the fabric of his shirt, muscles bunched, expanded, contracted. Were they bare? she wondered. Smooth, slick—
The Indian turned sharply, his gaze finding her on the crates and pinning her there.
Lily gulped. Good gracious! He’d caught her staring. Could he possibly know that she’d been thinking about his chest—of all things?
She shrank deeper into the crates, drawing her legs up under her. Humiliation burned her cheeks. How unseemly of her. How unladylike. Ogling a man. Wondering about his chest. Madame DuBois would indeed be appalled.
Desperate to escape the hiding place that had suddenly become a prison, Lily froze as she heard footsteps. Easing around the edge of the crate, she saw a man—this one rail thin with blond hair—walking from the passageway beside the carpenter’s shop toward the corral.
She’d not seen this man before. Lily was sure she would have remembered. His buckskins hung loose on his thin frame, blond hair streaked with gray lay across his shoulders, a heavy mustache drooped past his lips. His hat shaded most of his lined face.
The Indian saw him, too, watched as he approached. He’d not seen her at all, Lily realized. It was the blond-haired man who’d drawn his attention.
The two men faced each other through the corral fence, a contrast of tall and muscular, thin and stooped. Neither smiled. They didn’t shake hands. A few words were exchanged, but Lily couldn’t hear them.
The Indian glanced up and down the alley, then pulled something from his trouser pocket—a packet of papers, a wad of money, perhaps?—and passed it to the other man. He shoved it in his own pocket and walked away. The Indian glanced around once more, then turned and disappeared behind the stable.
Lily waited for a moment, the feeling of foreboding that had plagued her for so long growing stronger—but for a very different reason this time. Just as the Indian had done, she checked around to see if anyone was watching, then slipped quietly from her hiding place among the crates and hurried back to her room.
“There’s just no easy way to say this, ma’am,” Oliver Sykes said, ducking his head, refusing to make eye contact with Lily.
“What?” She looked back and forth between Sykes and Hiram Fredericks, both men grim faced and solemn. “What is it?”
Standing outside the door to her room, Lily gazed at the evening shadows stretched across the plaza bringing a cooling breeze with the disappearing sun. Sykes had come by to see her father again, then left and had just now returned with Fredericks. They’d called her outside.
“Your pa’s bad off, I reckon you know that,” Fredericks finally said.
“But he’s getting better,” Lily insisted. “He slept straight through the night, and he’s been resting quietly all day. He’s—”
“No, ma’am, that’s not so,” Sykes said with fatherly kindness.
“Yes, it is,” Lily told them. Why were these two men saying such things? She wanted them to leave. “Now, I must go back inside and see to my father—”
“He’s dying.” Fredericks closed his hand over her arm, holding her in place. “The fever took its toll.”
“It was just too much for him,” Sykes added. He paused, then added, “Your pa probably won’t make it through the night.”
Tears sprang to Lily’s eyes. “No…”
“He roused up a bit a while ago,” Sykes said. “He’s asking for you.”
Lily shook her head, her throat tight and thick. “But…”
“Go on inside,” Fredericks said kindly. He guided Lily into the room, then closed the door behind her.
Lily clung to the door, afraid to cross the room, afraid to approach the cot. Her father couldn’t be dying. Fredericks and Sykes meant well, but they had to be wrong—they simply had to be.
“No, Papa, you can’t—you simply can’t,” she whispered. “Not now. We haven’t even…”
But her father lay so still, awash in a gray, ghostly pallor, that she knew the men were right. Tears sprang to her eyes. Lily covered her face with her palms.
“Lily…?”
Her head jerked up at the sound of Augustus’s voice. She rushed to his bedside and dropped to her knees, joy filling her heart.
“Yes, Papa?” she said anxiously. “Oh, I knew you wouldn’t—”
“It’s…gone,” he whispered.
Lily frowned. “What—whatever do you mean?”
With effort, Augustus lifted his head from the sweat-stained pillow, but collapsed again, his lips moving as if trying to speak.
Lily leaned closer, her ear to his mouth. “What, Papa? What is it?”
“Money…” he whispered. “All…gone.”
She looked at him, unable to follow his reasoning. Why was he talking about money—of all things—at a time like this?
“Bad deals…lost it all…nothing left.” Augustus drew in a ragged breath, then wheezed. “That’s…that’s why I came West…to…to start over.”
“No, Papa,” Lily insisted. “That’s not true. You told me yourself that you’d always wanted to come West, to explore, to seek new adventures.”
His
