McKettrick's Choice - Linda Lael Miller [76]
They made camp about a hundred yards from the house, on the other side of the trees, but the smell of death followed them, clinging to their clothes, their hair, their very skin.
“I would give ten years of my life for a bath,” Lorelei said, when supper—more beans, supplemented with jackrabbit—was over.
“There’s a little pond down yonder,” Tillie said, nodding her head toward a stand of trees, well on the other side of the homestead. “I saw it when I was hunting rabbits.”
Melina, rocking the sleeping baby in her arms, widened her eyes. “What would Holt say if he knew you went so far? Land sakes, Tillie, there are Indians around here!”
“They’re a long ways off by now,” Tillie said. Slow-witted and childlike though she was, she had moments when she almost sounded normal. “And I don’t do everything Holt tells me no-how.” She sniffed. “I’m not a cowboy, so it doesn’t matter that he’s trail boss.”
“We couldn’t,” Lorelei said hesitantly, imagining that pond and what it would be like to be clean. “Could we?”
“Reckon we could if we brought a rifle,” Melina said.
Lorelei frowned. “If the Indians are gone—”
“You want to bet your life on it?” Melina asked. “I’m not tossing mine into the ante.”
“All right,” Lorelei said. “Maybe we should just tell Holt—”
“And have a couple of cowboys watching the whole show, on the pretense of standing guard?” Melina shook her head. “Not me.”
“You two go on,” Tillie said. “I’ll look after Pearl. If anybody asks about you, I’ll just say you’re in the bushes.”
Lorelei hesitated to leave Tillie alone with the baby, but there was plenty of help around if she needed it.
“It’s the only way we’re going to get a bath, I guess,” Melina whispered, with a combination of reluctance and urgency.
Lorelei looked around the camp. Holt, the Captain and Mr. Cavanagh were conferring again, over by the wagon. Rafe was probably there, too, but she couldn’t make him out, what with all the shadows.
The rest of the men were either standing watch or playing a subdued game of poker in a shaft of moonlight underneath a lone oak tree.
“All right,” she said. “But how do we get our things, and a rifle? I’ve got soap in my bedroll.”
“Just walk right over to the pile of gear and get both our bundles,” Melina told her, nodding toward the heap that had formed when all the horses and mules were relieved of their saddles and bridles. “Kahill left his rifle leaning against the rear wheel of the buckboard when he went to join the poker game. I’ll fetch it while Tillie and Pearl are bedding down underneath the wagon. Tillie, I know you don’t want to wake the baby, but you need to make a little stir getting situated. That way, if anybody attracts attention, it will be you.”
Tillie nodded. It was probably all a game to her, and if anyone asked her directly, she’d most likely tell them without compunction that Lorelei and Melina had sneaked off to the pond to take a bath.
It was a chance they would have to take, in the name of personal hygiene.
“HOLT?” RAFE SAID QUIETLY, when the jawing fest was over and the Captain and Mr. Cavanagh went about their business. “Could I have a word with you?”
Holt shoved a hand through his hair. “I thought you were playing poker,” he said wearily.
“I like to size up the situation a while before I go betting on the other man’s game,” Rafe replied. “I’ve just been walking around the camp, thinking. Wishing I could lie down beside Emmeline tonight. I miss her something fierce.”
Holt sighed. “I know,” he said, feeling long on sympathy but a little short on patience. “Is that what you wanted to tell me?”
Rafe’s grin gleamed in the moonlight. Damned if he didn’t know something Holt didn’t. “It’s about the women,” he said. “Lorelei and Melina, I mean. They just stole Kahill’s rifle and lit out