Love Amid Peril on the Oregon Trail (Preview)

Prologue

Fort Sully, Dakota Territory, August 1866

Gunfire shattered the early morning air, sending a flock of crows skyward and squawking in protest. 

They had just emerged from Hap’s General Store and stepped into the wide, dusty street that separated two rows of ramshackle structures from each other. While it had been only two shots, twenty-three year old Lydia instinctively clutched young Oliver closer to her in an effort to protect him from whatever violence might overflow from the saloon across the street. The bottom half of the saloon, like several others on the street, was constructed of wide planks, while canvas tent covers provided roofs, some peaked, some flat.

“What was that?” Oliver yelped excitedly.

She tried, rather unsuccessfully, to keep the child behind her as the boy sought to peer across the street from behind her shielding skirts. Heart pounding, she once more positioned her body in front of the child. “Hush.”

“What happened?”

She glanced over her shoulder to find Drew, her eighteen-year-old brother, trying to peek over her shoulder. He moved her gently aside.

“Move over, Lydia,” he grumbled. “You’re blocking my view!” 

Bystanders paused to stare through the open doorway of the saloon in breathless expectation. Lydia watched wide-eyed, with an odd combination of curiosity and horror. No additional shots were heard. Within moments, the mildly curious continued on their way with little more than a shrug while she lifted a hand to her pounding heart. Moments later, two men wearing silver stars on their chests emerged from the saloon. Between them walked a man in handcuffs, the shoulder of his faded flannel shirt bloodied. A tall man appeared behind them, his hat pulled low over his face as he slid a revolver back into his holster.

While the deputies and the man in handcuffs disappeared around the side of the structure, the other man simply stood in the doorway, watching them roughly tugging the man away.

“Who was that?” Oliver asked. “An outlaw? Was that an outlaw?”

She glanced down at the boy. “Don’t look, Ollie. I don’t know who that man was, but it looked like he was wanted by the law.”

“I wonder who shot him. Do you think it was that man just standing there now, in front of the saloon—”

Drew’s question broke off when she jabbed him in the gut with her elbow and frowned. He sounded much too enthralled.

“I don’t like it here,” she muttered. She hadn’t wanted to stop here, but her father, her uncle, nor the so-called trail guide had asked her opinion in the matter. They had stopped for repairs yesterday afternoon, and she couldn’t wait to get back on the trail. Regardless of the dangers they might face in the coming days, this place was nowhere she wanted to stay for long. Yet here they were, emerging from a surprisingly well-stocked mercantile as the reverberation of the gunshots faded away into the distance.

Their small wagon train—fifteen prairie schooners drawn by mules or oxen—had been on the trail for nearly two months already, woefully behind schedule. They had left St. Joseph, Missouri, and headed west in early June. Then, her uncle had learned that Indians were causing some trouble out on the plains and suggested their small train head northwest, following the Missouri River up into Nebraska Territory. The decision to take the new route would provide the travelers and their mules, horses, and oxen greater access to water, as there had been little rain over the past couple of weeks.

“Don’t worry, Lydia,” Drew said. “We’ll be leaving tomorrow.” He glanced away from the saloon across the street, eyes wide with wonder. “Did Pa tell you our route’s changed? We’ll be following the Missouri until we reach the Cheyenne River. Then we’ll head across the plains.”

She nodded, trying to hold onto Oliver’s hand as the youth tried to tug it out of her grip so he could see across the street. “Yes, I heard.” She shook her head. “We’re way behind schedule. We should have been making nearly fifteen to twenty miles a day, which should have brought us here to Fort Sully a month ago!”

“Except Mister Rickmeyer broke his ankle when he fell off the back of his wagon just a day outside of St. Joseph!” Oliver chimed in.

“I know.” Drew sighed. “And then one of the mules sold to the Haverson’s in Saint Jo went lame for a couple of days—” 

“And those three families turned around and went back!” Oliver broke in. “Why did they want to go back?”

Lydia didn’t answer that question. She was struggling against her own reservations at this point, too.

“Don’t worry, Lydia, we’ll get there.”

Already two long and hard months on the trail, and they had traveled just under six hundred miles, with another fifteen hundred to go until they reached the Oregon Territory, where they had decided to settle and try to start over. 

Their small, fifteen-wagon train had stopped here at Fort Sully for supplies, a few wagon repairs, and extra wagon wheels before heading out across another stretch of prairie. They had made camp on the outskirts of Fort Sully, on the eastern banks of the Missouri River about twenty miles south of the confluence with the Cheyenne River. A number of sturdy, as well as ramshackle, businesses had grown up out of the prairie not far from the fort. She had already counted two saloons, a boarding house, a hardware store, a two-story wooden building with a dance hall on the ground floor and…if the sight of scantily clad ladies hovering in the windows of the upstairs floor were a sign, a bordello upstairs.

She had turned away from it, but not before Drew had noticed and given it an overly curious look. 

“Lydia, let’s—”

The tall figure from across the street finally stepped off the boardwalk. Broad-shoulders, his hat brim shadowing and obscuring most of his face from view, while he glanced right and left down the street. Then he lifted his head to gaze across the dusty thoroughfare and looked right at them. 

Lydia froze and stared, her heart pounding. From beneath the hat, the man’s black hair was worn long, hanging almost to his shoulders. Beneath the shadow of his hat brim, she spied a lean, hard face. The slant of his nose attested to the slightest hint of Indian blood somewhere in his distant past, and scars marred the left cheekbone of what would have once been a handsome face. It was still handsome, and she had no doubt that some females would staunchly claim that the scars merely added to his allure. Yet it was the eyes that settled it for her, those all-so-familiar grey eyes that spoke silent volumes, if only one cared to listen.

A startled gasp escaped her lips, and her knees buckled. Drew reached out an arm to steady her. From the corner of her eye, she saw the man watching them for a moment before he stepped into the street. She sagged into her brother’s concerned embrace, struck speechless. In stunned disbelief, the man approached. 

He looked different. Bigger and stronger, but rougher around the edges. He limped slightly. Could it be? Could this really be? Her brother stiffened behind her. He’d recognized the man, too, even though he would have only been around twelve years old the last time he saw him. He gasped. The man stopped about ten feet away, watching them with narrowed eyes. Lydia’s words got caught in her throat for a moment.

“Oh, good Lord!” she croaked. “Jason? Jason, we thought you were dead!”

Lydia spoke the words with breathless horror. She knew the moment that he, too, realized the truth. She had not seen him in six years, yet even with the scruff on his cheeks, the scars on his face, and the hard stare, she knew it was him. 

Jason Boone.

Chapter One: Jason

Twenty-eight-year-old Jason Boone stood a short distance from the wagon train, the silhouette of Fort Sully on the hill in the distance. The fort overlooked the wide Missouri River immediately to the south. As the sun slunk toward the horizon, the ever-present warm and sticky breeze ruffled the fabric of his shirt and tugged gently at his hat brim.

Lydia. 

During that last summer before the war, he had noticed the way she looked at him, as if assessing him, but he had pretended that he didn’t. After all, he was going off to war. He had no time for love and romance.

Now, he was simply not fit for it. But seeing her, after all these years, had tugged at something in his heart that he hadn’t felt in a very long time— no. He pushed the thoughts from his mind. He was not good for her, not anymore. He was damaged goods. He was different now, no longer the innocent young man of five years ago. Too much had happened to him in the years in between. Though he tried not to care, he told himself that she was better off now, with a husband and a child of her own. She deserved it. 

He glanced away from the fort and eyed the cluster of loosely circled wagons in the near distance, roughly fifteen of them now, keeping a dubious watch over them. He shook his head, his sigh lost in the increasing cacophony of crickets and the deep croak of an obnoxious bullfrog down by the banks of the river. 

Why had he agreed? This was a mistake. He knew it, but he hadn’t been able to resist. Just for a little while, he could be around her, around someone who was still untouched by war and ugliness. He had agreed to the wagon master’s offer of one hundred dollars to accompany the small wagon train heading west. It wasn’t just because he knew much of the territory they’d be traveling through. It was because of the 1860 Sharps rifle he’d grasped in one hand and the Colt worn low in a well-worn holster on his hip. He was added protection against Indians, outlaws, and other ne’er-do-wells. Yet he hadn’t accepted for the money nor for the protection he might offer these travelers who knew nothing about what they were getting themselves into.

Lydia. He had decided to ride with the wagon train because of her. He couldn’t get his most recent image of her out of his mind. The last time he’d seen her, she’d had a slender, almost boyish figure. She’d always been pretty, with those long eyelashes of hers. Now she was all grown up, filled out with the curves of a woman, her heart-shaped face the same, her lips a bit more lush and full. Something deep inside him had felt the jolt when he’d seen her standing across the street from the saloon.

He’d not laid eyes on her since he left his home in Massachusetts after the first shots had been fired on Fort Sumter in April of 1861. He, like hundreds of other men of his county, had volunteered to mobilize following the declaration of war. The lop-sided battle had been relatively small and short-lived, with less than a thousand men from both sides engaged, the majority of them under Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard. The general gained the Confederate victory over the Union commander of the fort, Robert Anderson. Jason, like many of his fellow compatriots, couldn’t believe that the confrontation had not produced any wounded or killed and none missing or captured. 

That luck hadn’t continued. Just three months later, the same could not be said following the Battle of Manassas. The Southerners called it the Battle of Bull Run. Didn’t matter. That battle waged along the southern banks of the small river in Virginia had cost Yanks and Rebs nearly five thousand deaths and casualties. The Rebs had won that one, too.

Jason tried to push such thoughts from his head, but it was too late. Echoes of the barrage of cannon fire, orders to charge, horses whinnying, wagons creaking as artillery fired, and cannon balls shrieked through the air around him. In his mind’s eye, he then saw the battlefield at Shiloh, or Pittsburg Landing as the Rebs called it, where nearly twenty-four thousand men had died in Hardin County, Tennessee, both Union and Confederate. 

The Yanks had won that one. It was during that battle that he had been wounded by flying cannonball shrapnel, leaving behind the familiar, crescent moon-shaped scar on his right cheekbone. 

“No!” He took a deep breath and looked at the sky above. “You’re ignoring me, Lord, I know that. I know I’m not the most deserving person to be calling on you like I do, but…but I need some peace. Is that so much to ask?”

He wasn’t expecting an answer and didn’t get any. He sighed.

After the gunfight, she had recovered from her shock. She had reached for the little boy’s hand and hurried away, the young man, who was probably her younger brother, following, glancing back over his shoulder several times as they made their way down the dirt street and then disappeared around the side of a trading post.

As he headed for his horse that he had stabled at the livery at the edge of town, two men approached. He recognized one of them as Lydia’s father, Robert Gray, older now, his hair streaked with wisps of white, and his face showing more wrinkles than the last time he’d seen him. The other looked a mite older but with the same nose and firm mouth.

“Jason.”

Lydia must have told her father. He said nothing but nodded in greeting.

Robert glanced at the man beside him. “This is my brother.” He cleared his throat. “I don’t know if you remember me, or him, but—”

“I do,” Jason said. He strove to avoid any hint of emotion. How was it that he happened to run into the one person he had thought about the most during those difficult and painful years? Out here in the middle of nowhere! And her—

Matthew stuck his hand out. “Matthew Gray. Good to see you again, Jason.”

Jason hesitated briefly and then took it. He glanced warily at Robert, who eyed him with a hard gaze and firm mouth. He figured that Robert was angry at him because his daughter was also angry at him for not telling them he had survived the war. That and she had probably told him that Jason had just shot a man in town. 

Well, what was he supposed to say? He wouldn’t apologize for letting them all think he was dead. After all, the old Jason was dead, and he needed to stay that way. He turned to the older brother as the man spoke.

“I’ve put together this small company of wagons,” Matthew explained. He gestured at the wagons gathered a short distance away. “We’re heading for Oregon.” He offered a shrug. “Years of war devastated many of us, economically, I mean. Robert and I owned a meat shop, but…” He paused. “Anyway, we’re starting over.”

Jason vaguely recalled that Lydia’s father and uncle were butchers and had owned a successful meat shop in Rawlings. He waited.

“We have a route mapped out, but we could sure use someone…” He pointedly eyed the gun on Jason’s hip, and the Sharps slung over his left shoulder. “What I mean is, we could use some protection along the way.”

Jason said the first thing that came to mind. “Don’t any of you know how to shoot?”

Lydia’s father narrowed his eyes at him. 

As if sensing the tension, Matthew quickly spoke up again. “We’re simple townspeople, Ja—” He glanced again at Robert and then amended. “Mister Boone. I heard that you…that—”

“That I just shot a man?” Jason said. “It was a fair fight.” He looked at both of them and got it over with. “I’m a bounty hunter now,” he explained, patting his shirt pocket. “Got the papers right here that orders me to send ‘em back dead or alive.” He lifted a shoulder. “He decided he didn’t want to go back and face his crimes. He shot first. The deputies inside saw it all.” 

Robert shook his head as he turned to Matthew. “I think this is a mistake, Matt. He’s under contract—”

“I work for myself,” Jason interrupted. “I come and go as I please.”

Matthew nodded. “Well, the truth is, we could use some protection as we cross the prairie.”

Jason saw the look they both gave him. To them, he appeared tough and mean enough to provide it. He shook his head. This was a mistake.

He should…he should have said no.

Now, hours later, the soft echo of a woman singing a quiet hymn to herself filtered through the still night, along with the distant wail of a crying babe. He pushed thoughts of war from his thoughts as he turned to look in the opposite direction, away from the structures of Fort Sully and the wagons camped nearby, staring into the welcoming, silent darkness. Nothing interrupted the blackness surrounding him as he gazed westward, save a dull glow of moonlight cast by the quarter moon rising overhead. He narrowed his eyes at it. Never would he have thought to run into her again, never. He had left that life behind, with all its disappointments and grief. He was not fit company for any woman of good breeding, especially Lydia Gray.

He had started his life over, such as it was, after the war, with nothing to call his own except a horse and a meager saddlebag of belongings. Yet today, for the first time in six years, over years filled with fear, pain, and anguish, he had seen her. The girl he had once upon a time promised to come back for so long time ago. 

He grunted, disgusted with his wandering mind. It was obvious that she had tired of waiting. That little boy clinging to her skirts couldn’t be more than five or six years old. That meant that she had forgotten about him fairly quickly after he’d left home, full of grandiose images of life as a soldier, the excitement of a war that certainly would be over within a matter of days, if not weeks. Yet those weeks had turned into months, and those months had turned into years. She had married and had a little boy, maybe another child as well. He—

 He heard the light crunch of footsteps in the dirt behind him but didn’t turn around, not even when the gentle night breeze caressing his face brought with it a hint of lavender.

“Jason.” 

He closed his eyes for a moment and then turned slowly and watched her step closer, moving hesitantly, almost as if she were…no, she couldn’t possibly be afraid of him. He tried to smile, but it had been such a long time since he had that it would be a wonder if she even saw the corner of his mouth lift the tiniest little bit. Her dark auburn hair was swept into a neat roll on the back of her head, but a few tendrils had escaped near her temples and caught in the evening breeze. They beckoned him to reach out and wrap those wisps of hair around his finger. Would it be as soft as he remembered?

She stared up at him, his memory filling in the shadows of her face, those dark green eyes and their depths filled with unanswered questions. The pale calico dress she wore accented her slender yet full figure, the high-necked dress making her neck seem that much more slender and elegant. He had almost forgotten how pretty she was, and his heart skipped in painful regret.

“Jason…why?”

What was she asking? Why he hadn’t gone home after the war? Why he hadn’t written to her after those first few months of furious fighting? How could he explain? How could he explain the horrors of war, the loss of any hint of excitement and adventure that he had felt when he’d set off? How was he supposed to tell her about his year of imprisonment in a prisoner-of-war camp and the horrors he had endured there? 

No, after only a few months of fighting, he had realized, deep down inside, that he would never be the same again. Even now, just over a year after the final surrender at Appomattox, he still woke at night drenched in sweat and reaching for his gun.

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me.”

He silently stared at her, wanting to forget the attraction that he had once felt for her. She began to fidget nervously beneath his steady gaze. He made an unintentional sound, almost a snort. “You couldn’t have been more than sixteen when I left—”

“I was eighteen, Jason Boone, and that was the last time I saw you, almost six years ago now.”

She didn’t appear afraid of him any longer. In fact, she glared angrily up at him, the top of her head barely reaching his shoulders, hands fisted on her hips, eyes shining with indignant anger. He supposed she had a right, but—

“How dare you let us all think you’d been killed in the war! How dare you not write and tell us you were alive!” Her voice caught in her throat. “Why didn’t—”

Jason shifted uncomfortably. “I never meant to hurt you, Lydia,” he muttered. “I want you to know that. But I wasn’t…I’m not the same man that I was when I left. You wouldn’t have liked me very much then…or now.”

“If you only knew—”

“Let it go.” His words sounded rougher than he intended. He sighed. “It’s all done and in the past now,” he added, his tone softer.

“Jason—”

She continued to look up at him, as if taking in the difference between the “old” and the “new” Jason Boone, as if comparing him as he stood in front of her now to her memories of him from so many years ago.

He stood three inches over six feet tall, likely about six inches taller than he had been when he left. His eyes were still as icy blue, so light they nearly always appeared grey. His garb was certainly different than the homespun trousers, the flat shoes, and the linsey-woolsey shirt worn second-hand that he usually wore on the farm. Now, he wore a dark blue cotton shirt that tugged at his broad shoulders. His faded and well-worn dungarees could have used a wash in the creek, but he hadn’t gotten around to it since arriving at Fort Sully. He eschewed boots and spurs in favor of elaborately beaded knee-high moccasins. The bone handle of an enormous Bowie knife protruded from the inside of his right moccasin. In a well-worn holster riding low on his hips was an 1860 Colt Army revolver, a six-shot, single-action weapon with a nearly eight-inch long barrel.

She lifted her eyes to a face darkened by days in the sun, then paused on his whisker-stubbled cheeks, then glanced at the scars, hoping for an explanation that never came. He remained motionless as she took her time examining him from head to toe, or from toe to head rather, waiting for her to finish with her curious inspection. Her gaze returned, as always, to his face, her chin tilted slightly to the side, one eyebrow lifted, and her mouth curved downward into a gentle frown.

She moved her arms, almost as if she were going to hug him, but hesitated. He stepped back, just in case. He was no longer the man she had thought she’d known all those years ago. She should have nothing to do with him.

He couldn’t stop the question that was uppermost in his mind. “Your husband know who I am?”

---

“Love Amid Peril on the Oregon Trail” is an Amazon Best-Selling novel, check it out here!

Lydia Gray’s journey westward, fueled by the embers of a broken engagement, takes an unexpected turn when the shadows of her past come to the present. As her wagon train faces unheard perils, Lydia is mystified by a chance encounter. A mysterious figure emerges from a gunfight, revealing himself as Jason Boone, the lost love she had mourned as dead since the end of the War Between the States. The reunion is shrouded in enigma, leaving Lydia grappling with emotions she thought were buried deep.

Will this fateful meeting be a sign of her luck turning around finally?

Haunted by the ghosts of war and the specters of a love he believed lost, Jason Boone’s life takes an unforeseen twist when he crosses paths with Lydia Gray. Battling past demons, he agrees to guide Lydia’s wagon train westward, challenging not only the harsh terrains but also the disapproval of her father. As Jason becomes Lydia’s troubled guardian, the journey unfolds, weaving a tale of two hearts on a collision course with destiny.

Will this blind affection guide him in the right direction?

Love blooms amidst the untamed plains for Lydia and Jason, but a sinister specter emerges when a notorious outlaw attacks their wagon train forcing them to confront not only the challenges of the wilderness but also the malevolent schemes that threaten their pursuit of a new life in the Oregon Territory. Will Lydia and Jason discover the strength within themselves and in each other to forge a future that transcends the scars of their past?

“Love Amid Peril on the Oregon Trail” is a historical western romance novel of approximately 80,000 words. No cheating, no cliffhangers, and a guaranteed happily ever after.

Get your copy from Amazon!