Cowboy to the Rescue Read Online Free PDF

“Have you ever heard of a little thing called a train?” She shook her head. “I can’t imagine why you didn’t just have the crates shipped that way over the mountains.”
    Now serious, Nate frowned. “The Colonel didn’t trust them to show due care, especially over La Veta Pass. Sometimes trains jump track or run into fallen trees.” His tone suggested he didn’t quite agree with his father. “He didn’t want to risk it.”
    At the mention of railroad tragedies, Susanna could think only of the stories she’d heard all her life. Sherman’s army destroyed the Confederacy’s entire rail line, digging up the tracks and wrapping them around trees, burning train stations and cutting telegraph wires. Maybe Colonel Northam participated in that same kind of destruction somewhere in the South. She shook off the memory and forced her thoughts to Mrs. Northam’s certain appreciation of her husband’s extraordinary gift. After all, Northern ladies hadn’t participated in the war, and surely nice things meant as much to them as they did to Southern ladies.
    “Maybe he wouldn’t mind just for the crossing?” She lifted her eyebrows with the question and smiled at Nate.
    He glanced between the bridge and her, and his Adam’s apple bobbed. This man liked her, she could tell. But she wouldn’t play with him, as she had some of the boys back home. Southern boys understood and even expected flirtation. Yankee boys might get the wrong idea if she behaved as she had back home, and so far their teasing had fallen short of real flirting.
    “I wouldn’t have you disobey your daddy, Nate, but isn’t the most important thing getting the china safely to your mother? That would honor both of them most of all, wouldn’t it?”
    He grinned in his boyish way. “Yes.” He eyed Zack. “Let’s unhitch Henry.” He nodded toward one of the lead horses. “I’ll ride up the tracks a ways and flag down the train to see if they’ll carry it over for us.”
    “It’ll cost you, boss.”
    Nate shrugged. “Broken china will cost me a lot more.”
    * * *
    The moment Nate rode away, Susanna heard her father’s faint call. Zack gave her a worried look as he helped her climb into the rear of the prairie schooner.
    “I’m sure he’s all right,” she whispered as she gave the cowboy a nod of appreciation. Then she ducked inside. “Yes, Daddy?” She knelt beside him and brushed the back of her hand over his cheek. “You’re hot. How do you feel?”
    “Don’t worry about me, sweet pea.” A glint in his eye contradicted the set of his jaw. “While Northam’s gone, you walk on up to that hotel and give that note to the desk clerk.”
    “What? Now?” She retrieved the envelope from beneath her tattered bedding. “Daddy, please tell me what this is all about.”
    “Now, daughter, you’ve never been one to question me.” He fumed briefly. “Oh, very well. I’m not partial to being laid up in some hotel in a tent city where no one knows or cares about us. I want that proprietor to turn us away. Then Northam won’t have any choice but to take us on to his place.” He coughed, then held his ribs and groaned with pain. When he recovered, he gave her an apologetic grimace. “Out here in this wild country, it’s hard for a man to be so helpless he can’t even take care of his own daughter. I trust Northam. He’ll do the right thing by us, he and his family.”
    Susanna studied him for several moments. He’d slept fitfully last night, and no doubt the river crossing had been hard on him. Maybe he wasn’t in his right mind. But that didn’t give her an excuse for disobeying him. Still, he had never asked her to do anything this close to lying in all her born days. Unless she counted his changing their last name and pretending to be poor. She still hadn’t reconciled herself to those ideas.
    “Will you go?” He tried to sit up. “If you won’t, I will.”
    “Shh.” She gently pushed him back down. “You rest,