Give My Soul to Carol (To be read after Give My Heart To Kaitlyn)

Give My Soul to Carol

Somewhere in the Western Territories 1854

Carol rubbed her hands up and down her arms, feeling a chill despite the heat of the day. Marcus was dead and he was starting to smell. Three days she had been sitting here with the wagon. The Indians had killed Marcus and his body was riddled with arrows beneath the sheet she had used to cover him.

She had hidden in a secret compartment that Marcus had built in their wagon, knowing that Indian attacks were commonplace in this part of the country.

She had cried for the first two days after her husband of twenty years had been killed but now she had no tears left. She had cared for Marcus but the relationship was more out of duty than it was passion and love. They had no surviving children having lost three over the course of their marriage and he had had a stern hand and firm beliefs on how a wife should behave.

Carol knew that she would never let herself be tied down and controlled by another man like Marcus. That would prove to be a very easy thing to live by if she died of thirst out here. She took another sip out of the nearly empty canteen in her hand and then pushed the cork back in. Surely someone had to come along soon. The Indians had stolen all the livestock and Carol hadn't wanted to go wandering around on foot.

She had been munching on hard biscuits for the last couple of days and she was worried that she was going to lose her soft, voluptuous figure if she didn't get some real food soon. She wasn't really worried about her figure but after three days in the hot July sun she wasn't thinking very clearly and her brain had stopped having any serious thoughts at all.

She picked up a rock and threw it at the group of crows trying to land around Marcus's body. Poor Marcus. A hate filled, firm handed, strict, live by the book man in life was now a rotting, stinking, arrow filled corpse that would very soon be crow dung. She was sure he would find that unacceptable if he had any say in the matter.

She squeezed the angel figurine in her hand a little tighter. It was one of the only personal belongings that she had left. She hadn't been able to talk Marcus into letting her bring very many and the Indians had destroyed most of what she had brought.

This angel was her most prized possession. It had been a gift from her five year old daughter on the last Christmas that she had been alive before the fever had taken her tiny life.

Carol's eye lids were feeling gritty and heavy and so she decided to let them slip closed for a while. A small nap wouldn't hurt anything.

888

Duke saw the wagon in the distance and he saw the crows circling. Looks like them injuns had been at it again. Hopefully they'd left something valuable behind that he could take with him. He was running short on money and supplies and could use some things to sell.

The first thing he saw was the sheet covering what could only be an arrow riddled body judging by the way the sheet was sticking up in the air and a pair of boots were hanging out the end. He cursed under his breath. That meant someone had beat him here and there probably wasn't anything valuable left.

He guessed it still wouldn't hurt to just take a look. He led his large appaloosa stallion to the wagon and then jumped down to the ground. He climbed in the back of the wagon and began looking through the tossed around bloomers and dresses, stopping suddenly when he heard footsteps come to a stop at the opening behind him.

He looked over his shoulder and saw the most beautiful woman he had ever seen standing there with her hands on her soft hips. Her thin white cotton dress was dirty and sweat stained. The hoops and petticoats had been removed from beneath the skirt and as a result it hung loose and fit close to her body. .She had ripped the sleeves and collar from the dress to offer herself a bit more air in this heat and her skin was darkened from the sun. Her black hair hung limp beneath her wide straw hat and her blue eyes, nearly the color of the coldest winter ice, glared at him. She had her bow shaped lips narrowed into a thin line and the nostrils of her long thin nose were flared.