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“Do either of you know where we’re going?” Naps asked from behind them.
“Kids!” Mac muttered, then said over his shoulder, “We’ll let you know when we get there. Until then, keep your yap shut!”
“Did you understand what he said?” Naps asked T.C.
“My guess is that he told you to be quiet and wait to find out where you’re supposed to die.”
“You’re a gloomy one.”
“I’d like to come out here by myself and take some cuttings from these plants.”
Naps groaned. “Please! No more plants. You have the things everywhere. What are you planning to do with them?”
T.C. shrugged. “I don’t know. Open a museum maybe. I’d like to learn to paint so I could record them on paper. The dried specimens lose a lot as the color disappears.”
“Don’t you want something besides plants in your bed? Something warm and feisty like that little Betsy Wellman.”
“I think that Miss Wellman is part of the reason you and I have been sent on this mission, whatever it is.”
“Betsy? But what’s she got to do with anything? You know, she and I have been talking about marriage. It would be nice to marry a colonel’s daughter.”
T.C. pulled a few leaves off a bush they passed. “Do you think that the colonel is going to let his daughter marry the son of a farmer from the north of England?”
“Are you jealous?”
“Since Miss Wellman has also talked to me about marriage, I can’t very well be jealous, now can I?”
“You!” Naps said, and his usually happy face changed. “Look here! Betsy Wellman is my girl, not yours! And if you—”
“Shut up, the both of you,” Mac growled at them. “Betsy Wellman talks about marriage to every good-looking young soldier. The only thing she wants to marry is what’s in your trousers.”
When Mac turned back around, Naps whispered, “What did he say?”
“That it was a beautiful day and he loved hearing us argue.”
Naps blinked a few times at T.C., then laughed. “You’re all right. You’re a bit too bookish for a girl like Betsy, but you’ll do. You have a girl back home?”
“Did have; don’t now,” T.C. said, and his tone told that he wasn’t going to say any more on the subject.
“Heaven help me, but they’re fighting over the tramp,” Mac said to Angus. “I think that when we stop for the night you should tell them the truth.”
“Me?” Angus asked. “What makes you think I’m qualified to tell anyone about women?”
“All right, I’ll tell you what to say and you tell them. They can understand you.”
Angus gave a bit of a smile. “That makes more sense.” For a while they rode in silence and Angus thought about what he knew of Austin and how he’d had the men waiting for him. Austin knew that Angus would take the men Betsy Wellman was after and that would get them out of her grasp for a few days.
“So we’re to find this preacher Betsy Wellman wants to marry and take him back to her? Austin won’t like that!” Mac said.
As soon as he heard the words, Angus knew what Austin was doing. “We’re going the wrong way,” he said as he turned his horse around. “We have to go to the payroll wagon.”
Mac followed Angus, but he didn’t understand what was going on. “Payroll wagon? But I thought Indians had kidnapped the boy.”
“That’s what Wellman thinks. But how did the boy get from the east of us to the west? Why didn’t we hear of it?”
; “Maybe one of Connor’s plants carried him,” Mac shouted as Angus rode ahead of them, but he wasn’t listening. He was riding hard toward a trail that he knew would take them to the far side of the fort. Once a month the heavily guarded payroll wagon came in, and it was time for it. If Betsy’s fiancé was to arrive it would make sense that he’d come in with the payroll. If the boy had been taken, it was from that wagon. Angus wasn’t sure, but he felt that he’d been sent on a wild goose chase—and it wasn’t hard to guess who had sent him and why.
