Ice Princess Read online

  And when he found her, he'd make up his mind whether he wanted to kiss her or whale the tar out of her.

  * * * *

  The fort had not changed in appearance. It still stood solid, set back and a little higher than the riverbank. The rough wall of adobe brick was grayish-tan in the morning sunlight. Flower stayed within the shelter of the cottonwoods until she was close to the wall, about halfway around the stockade from the entrance.

  I can do this, she told herself. Mr. Craigie is a gentleman. An Englishman. He is civilized. He will not harm me.

  She remembered him from years past, a friend of her father's. Buffalo had admired him, calling him a sharp ol' coon.

  She could go inside, could face him.

  She would do it.

  Taking one deep breath, and then another, she walked around the last corner and approached the gate. It was all but closed, ajar only far enough for one person at a time to enter.

  She hesitated, then slipped through the opening.

  On three sides of the rectangular space, wooden and adobe structures sat against the wall. All were weathered; some were missing boards. But the trading post and the factor's residence were in good repair, with strong plank doors and shutters for the windows.

  The enclosure was empty but for a brown-and-black dog, sleeping in the doorway to what was apparently a stable.

  Flower walked slowly toward the trading post, fighting the urge to flee. Mr. Craigie is an Englishman. A civilized man. He is not a savage.

  She stepped through the wide door into the trading post, heart pounding. As she waited for her eyes to adjust to the dim light inside, she drew a deep breath. The mingled odors of tobacco, bacon, dried apples, and neat's-foot oil filled her nostrils, bringing back comforting memories of the winter she had lived at Fort Vancouver and was in and out of the post almost daily. This place is no different. You were safe there. You will be safe here.

  But the man who stood behind the counter was not James Craigie. "What d'you want?" he demanded. His wet brown eyes swept over her body, leaving her feel as if she had been touched with dirty fingers. He didn't smile so much as leered, and the gold rings in his ears glinted in the dusty light.

  She decided that she would pay for her supplies. Haggling for her furs with this man would be a futile, expensive business. She listed her wants, her voice growing stronger with each word. "And cinnamon," she said after a moment's thought. Jacques liked it in his coffee. She would surprise him.

  "Let's see your money." His manner was abrupt, almost sneering. He didn't call her a squaw, but she could all but hear his thoughts, wondering where a "filthy Injun" would get the heavy gold coin she laid on the counter.

  "Anything else?" he said at last, dropping the flitch of bacon beside the other bundles.

  She shook her head and pushed the coin across the counter.

  He picked it up and bit it, his brown and rotten teeth marking the soft gold. Then he dropped it into a drawer under the counter.

  "Where is my change?"

  "Change? You're lucky you had enough to pay for what you got. We don't give credit to dirty fisheaters." He turned away, began fussing with a pile of skins behind the counter.

  "I have change coming from my coin. At least five shillings," she insisted. Surely prices had not increased as much as that since last year when she and Silas had stopped here to purchase coffee for Emmet.

  "One more word and I'm keepin' them supplies. Now git!"

  A rage such as she had felt but once before swept through her. She wanted to kill him. She wanted to cut his throat and let him bleed all over her hands, wanted to cleanse her hands in his blood until all the soil that would not wash away was gone and she felt clean once more. She wrapped her fingers around her knife's hilt, drew it from its sheath. Then she pressed its sharp point into the clerk's belly.

  A door opened in the far wall and a big, red-headed man stepped through it. "What the bloody hell is going on here?"

  At the same time, a deep voice came from behind her. "Flower!"

  She tightened her grip on the handle, knowing how much strength it took to penetrate skin. She would kill him before he could hurt her again...

  But the clerk was flung away, out of her reach, to crumple against the wall.

  "Flower!" A dark hand wrenched the knife from her grip and strong arms turned her, surrounded her. Her face was pressed against supple buckskin backed by a chest hard as a rock wall. She tried to bite, until she caught the familiar odor.

  As quickly as it had flared, her rage flickered out. She sagged in William's arms, but did not attempt to free herself. Just this moment, she wanted to be here.

  She raised her head, but before she could speak, the clerk said, "She attacked me, Mr. Craigie, for no reason at all." He wiped a dirty hand across his bleeding mouth. "She pulled that there knife and came at me without cause."

  "Be quiet, Bickelow." James Craigie said, turning to look at her closely. "You're Buffalo Jones's girl, aren't you?"

  She nodded, and stepped out of William's now-loose hold. Fortifying herself with a deep breath, she said, in the well-bred English accent she had learned from Everett, "I believe I have change coming, Mr. Craigie. Your clerk did not agree." Her voice was steady, but her body still quivered with the force of her rage. And her fear?

  "Bickelow?"

  "No need to get impatient," he mumbled. "I was just gettin' it." He reached into the drawer below the counter and pulled out several coins. Tossing them down beside the bundles, he sneered. "There! Take your change and go. We don't want your sort..."

  "Bickelow!" Craigie jerked his chin toward the door. "Get out. I'll finish here."

  Once the clerk had retreated through the door at the end of the room, Craigie said, "I am dreadfully sorry, Miss Jones, that Bickelow was rude." He quickly inventoried the supplies she'd bought and counted the coins the clerk had flung upon the counter. "How much did you pay him?"

  "One gold coin. He put it in the drawer."

  Craigie retrieved the coin, looking at Flower strangely when he held it in the palm of his hand. But he said nothing, only tossed it back into the drawer. He scooped up her change, added several silver coins, and handed it all to her.

  Flower thanked him. While she felt less threatened by him than by his clerk, she still wanted out of this confining room, wanted to shrink away from his touch.

  A gentleman. An Englishman. My father liked and respected him.

  "Are you still fond of tea?" he asked, apparently unaware of her discomfort. He gestured toward the door leading into his private quarters. "Perhaps while your man loads your supplies, you would join me in a cup."

  Flower remembered the first time she had met Mr. Craigie, when he was just come to Fort Vancouver. She had to smile at the memory. He and Everett had taken tea with her. Two bearded men in coarse clothing smiling over tin teacups at the child in a calico dress who was so proud that she knew how to pour out correctly.

  How young she had been then, and how innocent.

  For a moment she considered accepting his invitation to tea. He touched her arm, to direct her toward his quarters. Instantly her hand was on the hilt of her knife, and only the strength of her will kept it in its sheath. What am I doing?

  "I am sorry, Mr. Craigie, but we have many miles to go before dark. Another time, perhaps?"

  "Of course. Anytime." He watched while William put the last of their supplies into the leather bag she'd made for the purpose.

  When they were alone, he spoke softly. "Miss Jones, is your servant entirely trustworthy?"

  "My servant? Oh, you mean William? He's not my..."

  "I ask only out of concern for you. Now that your father is no longer able to care for you, there are those who might...you saw the way Bickelow acted. These new men, well, they don't understand what it was like under the Company."

  Flower felt pity for him, trying to explain delicately what she had learned from brutal mistreatment. Biting back the words that would tell him that
William was no servant, she said, "He is entirely trustworthy, Mr. Craigie. Please do not be concerned for my safety." Then his words registered. "Under the...Mr. Craigie, what has happened?"

  He leaned back against the counter. "You didn't know? But Mr. Lachlan and I spoke of it when he was here, last summer."

  "I have not seen Em...Mr. Lachlan for some time. What happened?"

  "The Americans now control all of the Northwest, clear up to the forty-ninth parallel. The Company is pulling out of all its forts. I have resigned from the Company and am operating the trading post independently. But I expect I shall depart in the fall. Many Americans prefer to trade with one of their own."

  Cold fear clutched at Flower's belly. "What of Fort Vancouver? And the White Eagle?"

  "McLoughlin? He is at Oregon City, at the falls of the Willamette. The Fort is now an American post."

  "Thank God!" she breathed. Louder she said, "He was a good friend of my father's. Now that Buffalo is gone, I thought to visit him."

  Flower forced herself to speak polite words of farewell. She had her hand on the door when Craigie spoke again. "Just a moment, Miss Jones. I am curious about something."

  She halted.

  "The coin you used to pay for your supplies. Where did you get it?"

  "A friend gave it to me," she said, shrugging, hoping he would believe she knew nothing more.

  "Ah. I see. Well, perhaps he has been to India, then." He held the door open for her. "I sincerely regret my employee's behavior, Miss Jones. I pray you will not let it keep you away from Fort Boise in the future."

  "No, I...thank you Mr. Craigie," she said, knowing she would do her best never to return. "It is not your fault that he saw me only as a savage. It has happened before."

  The clerk stood near the gate, leaning against the wall of the stockade, glaring. Again she felt as if he touched her with dirty hands. At this moment, she admitted she was glad to have William's company. She slipped Windchaser's lead line from the hitching post and hurried through the gate, to join William and the loaded mule.

  Silently she checked the mule's pack, then mounted Windchaser. She turned her mount's head toward the northwest and dug her heels into the mare's flanks.

  At the top of the first hill, she paused and looked back. William was no more than a quarter-mile behind her. She pulled Windchaser to a halt and waited while he caught up, walking beside the mule. "How did you find me?" She was angry that he had followed her, yet relieved that he was not harmed by the yarbs she had dosed him with.

  "I knowed where you was goin'." He didn't look at her, and his tone was hard.

  Well, she couldn't blame him for being angry. "Why, William? Why did you come after me?"

  "Woman, I told you. I's comin' with you, wherever you goes."

  Flower jerked on the rains and the mare half-reared. "No, you are not! Go home William. Go back to Cherry Vale."

  Now he looked directly at her. There was a glint in his eye, almost a glare. "Else you'll drug me asleep again?"

  Biting her lip, Flower shook her head. "You saw how Mr. Craigie assumed you were my servant. After you came so far to be free, how can you bear it?"

  "'Cause I looks like a servant, I s'pect," William said. He sounded almost amused.

  "It is your color, isn't it? That was what made him think...oh. William, I am so sorry."

  "It don't make no never mind to me. I's been a slave most of my life, so bein' a servant is like I got me a premotion. " His chuckle sounded natural, as if he were really amused.

  Perhaps he was, but she didn't think the situation funny. Flower had not realized, before now, just how much William's appearance would prejudice people against him. He was a Negro, therefore he was a servant--or a slave.

  Again she was reminded of the danger he could face in any encounter with Americans. The British would, like Craigie, assume he was her servant, but no American would believe a half-breed woman kept a black slave.

  "I need no servant," she said, forcing her voice to be cold and hard. "I need no one." She turned from him, jerking at the mule's lead line. "I don't want you with me, William. Go back to Cherry Vale."

  Then she gasped as strong hands took her around the waist and lifted her from Windchaser's back.

  "I reckon not," William said, taking Windchaser's reins and the mule's lead rope in his big hand. "Let's go. It's a long way to wherever you're goin'."

  With long strides, he headed west.

  Chapter Four

  Except for the occasional call of a circling raven, the only sound was the wind rustling the tall bunchgrass. This wasn't his kind of country, William decided. He missed the green fields, the humid smells and dark, moss-hung woods of the land where he'd been born. Here he felt exposed, defenseless, almost naked. There was no place to hide.

  But Flower was here, and that was enough for him.

  She'd walked alongside her horse for most of the afternoon, never looking at him. When he'd held out the reins to her after they'd walked a fair ways, she'd snatched them from his hand, but she hadn't mounted. Hadn't run off, as he'd expected her to do. So maybe she'd come to see that he was going with her whether she wanted or not.

  He'd be back in Cherry Vale if he had his druthers, but the next best thing was being where his Flower was. Walking along like this, with her beside him, he felt like singing.

  Even so, he kept hold on his mad. She'd had no call to dose him like she had. It wasn't as if he was askin' anything of her. All he wanted to do was see her safe, wheresomever she was headed.

  That night, Flower made her camp beside a seep, surrounded by low hills. He stayed a ways back, close enough that she knew he was there, far enough so's he wouldn't spook her. In the false dawn, he heard her moving about and he rolled out of his threadbare blanket. His breakfast was a handful of the mixture of pounded, dried meat and berries he'd traded for up at Lapwai--he couldn't remember what it was called, but it sure had kept him alive when pickin's was slim.

  'Long about noon the second day, Flower halted at the top of a rise. William stopped walking and looked up the hill. My! But she was a pretty thing, outlined against the sky like that, with the wind molding the soft buckskin of her dress to her sweet body. Both she and her spotted horse had their heads raised and were staring into the distance, like they was watchin' something far off.

  The mule lowered his head and started nosing at the almost barren ground between the big sagebrushes. After a while Flower turned around and waved at William, motioning him to come to her.

  She'd walked her horse back from the crest of the hill when he got there. "I saw smoke," she said, "ahead, where the trail drops down to the river."

  "Injun smoke?" With her along, William didn't reckon he had much to fear from Injuns.

  "I don't think so. It looked like they were burning green wood." She chewed her bottom lip. "We'll have to go around."

  His mad came back in full force. "What's this 'we' shi...nonsense, woman? You been runnin' away from me for near a week, and now you wants me with you so the bad men won't cotch you?" He glared up at her, when what he really wanted to do was hold her close and swear to take care of her.

  "Of course not! But they're probably white men--Americans--and you don't want them to see-- "

  "I don't give a hoot in hell what they sees. All I care about is getting wherever you're goin' as quick as I can. You figure out what trail you're followin' and I'll just follow on behind, 'til you gets there in one piece. Then I can go back to my land and forget about you." Like you could forget your own name, a small voice told him.

  "You're a fool!"

  "I reckon so," he agreed. A smart man would go home. It was still too early to plant, up in Cherry Vale, but he could be breakin' ground, not lettin' the land lay fallow and useless.

  She opened her mouth, then snapped it shut, glaring at him. With a jerk on the mule's lead line, she started down the other side of the hill. By the time he got to the top, she had both animals running across the next swale.
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  He hoped she knew where she was goin'.

  After a while she slowed, moving little faster than he was. When she stopped at the next creek crossing to let her animals drink, he caught up with her.

  She ignored him.

  So be it. William said nothing, figuring he'd let her get over her mad first. But he watched her, seeing how troubled she was. She reminded him of those trees he'd seen broken during the big storm that set him free. The ones that had bent to the ground under the wind's force, they'd sprung back as good as ever. Them that fought the wind, they'd lost their branches or toppled. Flower wasn't one to bend. She was too stubborn, too proud. Sooner or later, she'd break, unless he helped her hold herself together until she was healed.

  Was he strong enough? He didn't know, but he was gonna do his damndest.

  That night she made no complaint when he joined her in camp.

  After they'd eaten in silence, Flower claimed first watch. She climbed to a crest that looked at their back trail and settled herself against the slope so that her head was hidden by a tall sagebrush. He banked the fire and made their beds, then climbed up to join her.

  "I reckon you's got somethin' you wants to say to me," he said softly, seating himself beside her. If he had his druthers, he'd pull her up against him and pet her until she was soft and pliant. But he didn't dare, and he felt for her, sitting there tight as a fiddle string, so full of hurt that he wondered she didn't shatter.

  Her short, shining black hair swirled as she gave a quick shake of her head, but she didn't say anything.

  "Don't do no good to sit there and brood, woman. We's gonna talk about this and it might as well be now."

  "There's nothing to talk about," she said, still not turning to face him. "I told you I didn't want you to come with me."

  "Never mind that now. I'm here and I wants to know why you went and drugged me."

  Hearing his anger made her ashamed. "Oh, William, it was for your own good. I couldn't let you put yourself into danger." Flower didn't look at him, for she'd only admitted to one of her reasons.