Rachel drew a fast breath but didn’t speak.
Suddenly, Phineas yelped. He stood a distance behind my brother, peering in anguish at his recently polished boots. Despite enjoying dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of acres, the Lintons obviously didn’t take the time to empty their chamber pots at a safe distance from the cabin. The yard was rank with waste.
And something else. When the hairy man—Mr. Linton, I presumed—swung his cane to whack one of his children out of his way, teetered closer, and opened his mouth to slur, “How do you do?” I determined the second essence: pure alcohol. His whole person stank of whiskey.
He ramblingly introduced himself. My brother had barely finished reciprocating when Mr. Linton clumsily twisted and said to the woman behind him, “Don’t just stand there with your mouth at half cock, you idiot. Get some refreshments for our guests.” As she skittered back to the house, a ghoulish smile parted the fur across his face. “We ain’t got more than a handful of potatoes to feed you, but there’s whiskey. Always plenty of whiskey.” He laughed uproariously at this. Except for his retreating wife and Rachel, the rest of his household joined in on the guffaws.
Taking in their vacant gazes, I couldn’t help but wonder if the children were inebriated as well. A wave of horror washed through me. I felt like a girl who’d gone to a trickling stream to fetch water and discovered a glutted river instead, one with a crumbling bank and a dangerous current intent on nabbing and drowning me. The situation was totally unexpected. Horribly foreign. It was hell.
How had Rachel endured this?
“Thought you’d try your hand at pioneering, did you?” Mr. Linton shook the head rug that was still parted for that gash of a smile. “The wondrous Genesee Valley. The oh-so-great Holland Land Company. Bamboozlers, the whole lot of them. Well, you’ll find out. You’ll find out for yourself. Wheat’s a damned bit easier to distill than it is to mill and turn into money. You grow your grain and then what? No mill in these parts, not quite yet anyway. So you lug it for days to the nearest place along the river and find no cash market for your efforts. You’ll learn. Oh, you’ll learn.” He gave vent to another round of cackles.
“I see,” I said. Since Gid had apparently lost his ability to speak and Phineas had stopped a safe distance from our weird gathering (no doubt fearing further indignities to his person), I cleared my throat and asked, “How many acres did you purchase?”
“Just shy of two hundred, and lousier land you never saw.” He elaborated, delivering a rant against the “swampy hell of a wilderness.”
I wasn’t listening closely. My mind was fiercely engaged with another matter entirely.
What were we going to do about Rachel?
I couldn’t leave her here. I wouldn’t. Not only did she appear miserable and half starved, she looked frightened. For good reason. I’d suffered this place for a mere few minutes and was already scared witless. I sidled closer to her. My breath caught. There were bruises along her neck, as if someone had battered, even tried to strangle, her.
Mr. Linton stopped complaining and lazily followed my gaze. When his bloodshot eyes, like twin fires in a thicket of brush, settled on Rachel, he cackled again. “Pretty minx, isn’t she? But damme, too sullen by half. Quit your moping, slut!” And, with a snorted hiss, he raised his walking stick and jabbed her side.
I gasped and instinctively reached for her, but Rachel had stumbled back, crossing her arms to shield herself.
My mind spun. I could barely absorb what had just happened, let alone make sense of the disturbing implications. Oh, Rachel, Rachel, what terrors have you faced in this cesspool of depravity?
Amazed my brother hadn’t rushed to Rachel’s side, I whirled on him. My dumbfounded horror grew. He was staring, wide-eyed with shock, at the ground, and when he did glance up at Rachel, another emotion flitted across his face. Not love. Not compassion.
Disgust.
The reaction was gone as quickly as it had appeared. But I recognized it—I knew I had—and so did Rachel. She dropped her gaze.
I shot him a furious look, unimpressed with the belated apology that now suffused his features.
While the children resumed their torture of the pigs, Mr. Linton started another drunken monologue, this one on the vicious creatures that slunk out of the forest and gobbled up his chickens.
I stiffened with cold disdain. No forest dweller could be more vicious than him. Interrupting the diatribe, I said tersely, “Thank you for your offer of refreshments, but we can’t stay. The brothers Welds are expecting us. Rachel? Are you ready to go?”
Her gaze flew up.
“Go where?” Mr. Linton barked. His fire-red eyes slid over Rachel. “She can’t leave. ’Tain’t decent, her living with those boys and no female to chaperone her.”
He was lecturing me on decency? “She won’t be living with her cousins. She’ll be staying with the Standens. The missus there will be her companion until…” I scrambled to think of a long-term plan for my friend that justified her parting from the Lintons and blurted the first thing that came to mind. “Until my house is up and Rachel and I can get married.”
This announcement at last galvanized my worthless traveling companions. Gid squeaked, “What?” Phineas, in a manner out of keeping with his usual eloquence, blabbed, “Er … huh?”
Rachel said immediately, “Yes, of course, dearest.” Her face shone with relief and hope and something else. Panic. She glanced meaningfully at our wagon. Hurry, the look said.
Mr. Linton appeared poised to argue, so I asked her quickly, “Shall I wait here for you to collect your things?”
She threw an uneasy peek over her shoulder and vigorously shook her head.
“Want me to go with you?”
She began sidestepping toward the wagon. “That won’t be necessary.”
I caught the hint: time to bolt. “Thank you again, Mr. Linton,” I said, treading backward.
Phineas observed me with amazement. “Engaged, my ass,” he muttered under his breath, when I was close enough to hear him. “You take chivalry seriously, I’ll grant you that.” Then he began retreating, too, leaping a zigzag around broken crockery and waste, until he reached Sweetheart. He pulled himself into the saddle.
My brother, in contrast, stayed put, shock alive in his bearing.
“Gid,” I called.
He jerked into action, mechanically repeated my thanks, and sprinted to the wagon, passing Rachel and me in his haste.
After hefting himself onto the seat, he put out his hand for Rachel.
She ignored the offer, urged me up next, then scrambled in on her own. This put the three of us hip to hip, with Fancy barking at our feet.
Mr. Linton had started to stalk us, his progeny trailing him like an army.
“Now wait one minute—one minute!—you damned jackanapes.” His drunken command had taken on a querulous quality. “You can’t make off with that girl. Rachel, I order you to come down from there, ya hear?” His red eyes glaring his rage, he paused to reinforce his command by pounding the ground with his walking stick.
Phineas clucked his horse into a canter. Though our oxen couldn’t hope to emulate that pace, they hurried up the rutted trail, too. Gid cracked the whip in the air to urge them to go faster.
Mr. Linton’s furious shouts (“You thankless girl! Come back here, I say—come back here!”) faded, then disappeared altogether as we put some forest between our wagon and the dreadful man. I was wholeheartedly grateful for the thickness of the wilderness. It felt like an armor protecting us from the enemy.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
To drive, Gid obviously had to occupy a portion of the seat, but he might as well have been invisible for all the attention Rachel and I gave him. Our heads touching and backs bowed, she and I made a huddle on the bench, like two exchanging secrets.
“Are you all right?”
Her breath left her in a quavering sigh. She briefly closed her eyes. “Grateful. How did you know to save me?”