She’d stopped talking to whoever she’d been talking to, and when she’d started again, her world had shifted for good.
“It’s just a dress,” Caroline said now, her voice harsher than she’d intended. “You can have that one, too.”
Rose looked at the puffed sleeves, the low round neck, and shook her head. “Ma would kill me.” Her voice held regret, but she smiled as she folded her new, pink-sprigged cotton. Rose knew what she could get away with.
Caroline rummaged through the heap of fabric. It was nice to have something to share. “This one’s a little snug on me. You can have it, too”
Rose held the blue and green paisley print against her before she folded that too.
Caroline grinned a little and shooed Rose back to her bedroll. Mechanically, she continued to fold her dresses. She would be neat no matter what, one small act of defiance against a world she couldn’t control.
A rustling outside the wagon, and Michael came in, ducking his head. “I brought you a shotgun, thought t’would make you feel safe. Here are the shells. I’ll—“ He stopped, his glance riveted on the rippling folds of blue delaine. “You still have it. The blue dress.”
“Yes.”
“I remember—“ He shook his head. For once, Michael Moriarty was drained of words.
Rose turned back from the wall, her gaze bobbing from one to another.
Caroline took the shotgun and shells from him and placed them on a low built-in shelf. Her hands still trembled. “Thank you, Mr. Moriarty. Rose knows how to use this, and so do I. I hope we don’t have to. Good night.”
“Good night, Mrs. O’Leary.”
6
“You can’t be serious.”
Michael’s lips quirked upward. “And why wouldn’t I be? What’s wrong with using nature’s finest fuel? ‘Tis free, and ‘tis all around us.”
They’d come to a dusty halt at the end of a dusty day. Caroline had looked for firewood and found not even a twig, so she’d taken the extraordinary step of seeking him out.
Michael brushed his horse. His hat brim shadowed his eyes against the still-blazing sunlight.
She didn’t like the grin that played at the corners of his mouth when she’d outlined her plight.
He burst out laughing. “Acushla, your fuel is right in front of you.”
Acushla, the Irish endearment. Don’t call me that. Ever. But for now, she had a fire to build. She planted her feet and crossed her arms.
He reached into the short grass, scrabbled for a minute, and pulled out something brown, roughly square in shape, and handed it to her. It felt stiff and dry in her hands. Like wood, yet she knew instinctively that it wasn’t wood. “What is this, Mr. Moriarty?” She infused her voice with dignity.
“It’s a buffalo chip. They’re all over the ground.” When she stared up at him he amplified. “Like a cow chip. You know.”
The chunk of dried buffalo dung slipped from her fingers. “I can’t burn this.” She could barely touch it.
His cheerfulness only made it worse. “Finest fuel there is, and the only fuel out here. You must have mucked out stables before.”
Yes, but it hadn’t touched her food. There had to be another way. She stood rigid. “I can’t. I won’t.”
“You can and you will.” Michael’s voice was deceptively mild. “Unless you want to eat cold suppers, here to October. And that’s not what we’re payin’ you for.”
She stared up at him, this man who held her future in his big hands. So that was the way it would be? Reminding her of her obligation at every turn? She didn’t answer him. There was nothing to say. Turning on her heel, she found a tin pail and gathered enough chips for the evening’s fire.
~*~
Michael gazed down at her from the back of his horse. She looked so small, silhouetted against the lowering sun, her face shielded by her bonnet. Like a speck against the vastness of this prairie. So much of it was still uncharted, and so many dangers lurked even in the known parts.
Should he help her? Two could do it twice as fast, and he was used to handling the stuff. Oh, it was almost painful to watch the way she handled the chips, holding them between the tips of her thumb and index finger. And didn’t she look close to tears? If Caroline cried, he’d be done for.
He’d never helped anyone else. ‘Twasn’t the scout’s job. People would talk. They were probably already talking, because that was what people did. Whether it was true or not. If he lifted her load on this, there would be other times.
And picking up chips, once she got used to it, was probably one of the easier things she’d do on this trip. Best to toughen up now. Besides, his last effort to protect her had gone terribly wrong. Made things worse, if one could imagine that. Michael had no business taking care of anyone. He wheeled his horse around and went to check on the Princes. Though, truth be told, he’d rather be gathering chips with Caroline.
~*~
Caroline dropped a large buffalo chip in her basket. She wished she could use gloves, but her one pair had to do her through the cold of the dreaded Blue Mountains.
This part of the trail was flat, with no trees or settlements, nothing to break up the vastness, the deadness. Even the Harkness children were dull-eyed from the heat. She had cut back their lessons to “only” reading whenever they could find the shade.
The Platte River looked and tasted dusty, and she boiled water before she used it.
Caroline, Michael, Pace, and the Harknesses were the only members of the train not sick, who hadn’t been felled by a bout of diarrhea. While the men and Samuel tended everyone else’s livestock, Caroline and Martha had nursed the sick, running from one fetid wagon bed to another.
“I told them to boil the water,” Martha had groused as she rinsed out an armload of Ina Prince’s bedding in the creek.
“The guidebooks told them to boil the water,” Caroline had responded as she struggled with a similar armload of bedding for the two missionaries.
With even the older children down, and no drivers, they’d faced a two-day layover.
And Caroline had had words with Michael Moriarty, something she’d promised she would never do. Now she was about to cook a meal on dried dung.
A rustle of skirts, and Martha was there. Without speaking, she crouched to the ground and picked up chips, holding them by their edges and plopping them in Caroline’s basket. “It isn’t so bad,” Martha began to say, then her laugh bubbled over. “It’s plenty bad, isn’t it?”
“You don’t have to—”
“The girls are getting ours.” Martha cast a glance skyward, where charcoal-colored clouds blocked a pale sun. “Let’s get enough for tomorrow morning. It’s gonna rain. And Mr. Williams says it’ll be a big one.”
When the heads of households had finished their evening chores, Pace called a meeting. “It’s gonna be nasty,” he said as he lounged against the side of Caroline’s wagon.
Caroline stared up at the blackening sky.
Jimmy Dulaine had told her the canopy was waterproof. But had Jimmy Dulaine ever actually been in a prairie storm?
“I seen them clouds before, a dozen times,” Pace was saying. “Storm comes in, we ain’t gonna be able to ford. Me and Mike think we should lay over one more night.”
Hiram Taylor stroked his black beard. “Gonna lose time, Mr. Williams. Time we ain’t got.” He folded his arms over his barrel chest and looked around; when Hiram spoke, the men usually listened and agreed.
“Another day won’t hurt,” Pace argued back. “I know places farther on where we can make it up. Fording the Platte in a storm—it’s bad business.”
Henry Prince, prodded in spirit by Ina, moved to the front of the group. “If we’re careful…” His voice trailed off.
“Don’t matter how careful you are. You ford the Platte on the wrong day, you’ll lose more than time,” Pace retorted.
James White, the blacksmith from New York State, elbowed Prince aside. “You’re the one who said we need to get to Orego
n by autumn,” he told Pace. “Now you say we got to stop? What kind of a leader does that?”
The men’s voices rose in rumbled agreement.
Michael move from the shadows, his hand at his holster.
But Pace waved him back. “We’ll take a vote. Whatever we decide to do, we’ll do, and I don’t want to hear about it after.”
The men voted in the affirmative, with only Pace, Michael, Ben, and young Tom dissenting.
“We ford tomorrow,” Pace said. He stalked off without a good night.
~*~
Michael tugged at the rope he’d thrown around the yoke of the team of oxen. “Use the whip on ‘em,” he hollered, but the wind carried half the words away.
“I can’t,” Caroline shouted back, fighting to be heard above the rushing water.
Lightning split the sky. His black hair was plastered to his skull, and the blue eyes held a hardness she’d never seen in them. “Use the whip,” he mouthed.
She nodded numbly, her bonnet sliding off, and knew all the while that she couldn’t.
Back on shore, Michael’s horse neighed in sheer terror.
One wagon had made it to the other side, and Caroline had breathed a prayer of relief.
Three others, including Michael’s and one of the Harkness rigs, were a third of the way across when thunder rumbled, lightning crashed, and the very sky seemed to break open. The animals had dug in their heels and refused to move. The river, still swollen from another recent rain, foamed with menace within a matter of minutes. They had been at this since morning, and it was now well into the afternoon. On the shore behind them children sobbed, animals bellowed, and adults conferred with grim faces.
“Gid-up,” she pleaded with the oxen, who had obeyed her so beautifully on the dry trail.
One of them turned, his big eyes reduced to only the whites, and bellowed his objection.
Michael fought his way through the waist-high, churning water. His voice, usually so rich with its Irish brogue, sounded thin over the roaring water, the screams of children, the lowing of Ben’s cow. His plaid shirt, colors muted by the water, clung to his shoulders. “If you can’t make a dumb beast behave, could you at least get down here and help me?”
She glared at him until he turned and sloshed back to the oxen. She shoved the pins tighter into her hair—the wind had whipped at her bonnet until she’d ripped it off herself and tossed it into the wagon bed. She kilted her skirts, tucking the long ends at her waist so they wouldn’t drag in the water. Her teeth began to chatter the minute she stepped into the roiling river.
Michael’s demeanor had to do with much more than the storm. He hadn’t been the same since the night she’d shared the wagon with Rose. The night they’d prepared for an Indian attack that never came. The night he’d glimpsed the blue delaine dress. He’d looked at her too long and too often, and he’d talked to her less. Until now. Caroline pressed her lips together. If only Daniel…but wishing wouldn’t bring him back.
“It would help if you could control your animals,” Michael bit out when she joined him.
“They’re not my animals, Mr. Moriarty. None of this is mine, in case you’ve forgotten.”
He started toward her.
She stepped back, slipping slightly in the mud.
“Woman—”
“Just tell me what to do,” she said, already infinitely weary.
“Grab onto the yoke and pull. I’ll pull from the other side. And talk to them. Whatever it takes.”
Caroline’s fingers tightened around the water-slick wood. Her hair had fallen from its knot, and she was soaked to the skin within seconds of climbing down from the wagon. Her shirtwaist clung to her. But this was no time to be modest, and a glance at Michael told her he hadn’t noticed. “Come on, Fred, Patches,” she urged the beasts.
Their usually mild eyes were rolled back until the whites showed, and they refused to budge.
“Jake, Star, let’s go.”
Michael’s exasperation could be heard above the raging water. “You named them?”
Caroline counted to ten. “Yes,” she shouted back, over the wind-lashed waves.
She’d named every animal on the farm. Daniel had warned her about it, and then laughed. But when it came time to kill a chicken for dinner, he’d always done it for her—and he’d sent her to his mother’s house when he’d butchered hogs. This fall she would have had to do it herself. Or not.
Michael slapped Patches’ flank. “We’ll probably lose everything.”
Oh, what she could tell him about losing everything. Caroline glanced back at the shore. Flashes of lightning illuminated the scene. Rose Harkness tried to control Michael’s horse. Her braids were sodden, her lips dark from the cold. Though the Harkness children knew animals, Rose was no match for the wild-eyed, pawing beast. He reared up, and she scrabbled for purchase in the mud.
Sarah Potter, belly bulging, sobbed in Tom’s arms, as he patted her awkwardly. She’d be harder to get across than the oxen.
Pace Williams was everywhere, helping Henry Prince nudge his team closer to the water, helping Rose calm the horse. Pace’s lips were tight. Someone, maybe everyone, would hear about this later.
Ben Harkness piloted the first of the family’s wagons across the river, leading the oxen through the waist-deep water much as Michael and Caroline did. Ben looked calm and focused. Samuel, high in the wagon seat, cracked a whip over the beasts, his eyes bright with another adventure. Did anything scare the boy?
He leaned forward, on the edge of the seat. “Pa, hey Pa, why don’t we—”
A wave rose and knocked him from the wagon.
Ben, tugging on the oxen, looked as close to swearing as he’d ever come. He didn’t notice Samuel’s fall, not until Martha’s scream rent the air. Ben’s head whipped around. He slipped off his heavy jacket and fought his way through the water to where his son had disappeared. He plunged below the surface in an unpracticed dive.
Martha kilted up her own skirts and climbed down from the second wagon, where she had been poised to bring it across. Her face was a fearful mixture of terror and hope as she waded out into the river. Sam’s felt hat, a miniature of his father’s, bobbed on a churning wave.
“You got to find him,” Martha screamed when Ben surfaced from his plunge.
“Cain’t have gone far.” Ben’s teeth chattered. “But I can’t see him nowheres.”
Michael cut through the roiling water in a smoother dive than Ben’s. Caroline saw his big form thrash about under the water, fighting the waves. He surfaced minutes later, sputtering and shaking drops from his hair. “No sign of the lad. Sure and this current moves fast.”
“Ben.” Martha clutched her husband’s sodden arm. “We can’t—we can’t just—”
“He’ll be dead, woman.” The words tore from Ben. “It takes three minutes to drown.”
Pace waded closer. “Not necessarily,” he said. But Caroline knew he was lying. “But we got to work fast.” He looked over the Harknesses’ heads to Michael, and some kind of unspoken signal passed between them. “Mike, finish gettin’ that crowd across. Get Caleb to help you, he’s got the coolest head. Me and Ben—we’re goin’ fishin’.”
Pace handed Martha the sodden hat, and he and Ben struck out, moving with the current.
Martha’s rich color had faded. She looked stooped and old as she worked her way back to the shore.
“Why did he tell her that?” Caroline glared up at Michael. “He knows Sam couldn’t have survived, you know it. Even I know it. Why hand out false hope?”
Michael shook his still-damp head. “Because a man like Ben won’t quit ‘til he’s done everything he can. So Pace is giving him that chance. Ben’ll know the truth soon enough.”
Samuel, the boy who could work like his father, but had Martha’s blue eyes, good looks, and quicksilver brightness. Samuel, the boy who hated schoolwork but loved adventure. Samuel, dead.
Caroline held back a sob.
“You don’t
have to stay,” Michael told Caroline. “Go to her. I’ll fight this out.”
But a sudden shyness gripped her. She didn’t want to intrude on Martha. Martha, the person with whom she’d shared laughter and recipes, and all her secrets except the most important one. And what comfort could she possibly give? Caroline wanted…she wanted someone to hold her and tell her it would be all right. The one thing she’d never have again.
She set her jaw. “No, I’ll stay.” She swiped a lock of hair back and knew there was mud on her cheek. “Come on, Fred,” she coaxed. Her teeth chattered again, and she willed herself not to think of warm clothes, steaming drinks, or a hot brick at her feet—all the things she’d taken for granted on a blustery day back home.
~*~
It was dusk and the winds had subsided before Fred and Patches lifted their big feet out of the mud, one at a time, and slogged the rest of the way to shore. Jake and Star followed even more reluctantly.
Michael helped Caroline picket her oxen. For once she didn’t reject his help. Good thing, ‘cause he would have done it anyway. She looked even more fragile than usual, with her hair down and her clothes drenched, her small face pinched. If anything had happened to her—
He would take care of her for Daniel’s sake. Whether she wanted him to or not. “You should rest,” he said.
“I’ll make some supper for you and Mr. Williams. You’ll be hungry some time tonight. Then I’ll see where I can help.” She was a woman now, thinking of others before herself. She had matured in more ways than her figure.
It made him want to know this new Caroline. But not tonight. They’d all been through enough. “Then do it,” he said without looking at her. “And then get some rest.”
7
As Caroline peered out from the wagon, the sun was out and the world had a washed-clean look. As though last night’s drenching had been a dream, as though they had forded the river in minutes rather than hours. As though Samuel still teased his sisters, wheedled another griddle cake out of Martha, ran to catch up with Ben.
Samuel, who had opened Martha’s womb.
Caroline had slept poorly, the wagon bed harder than usual under her thin pallet. She had drowsed a little, just before dawn, and woken to the smell of strong campfire coffee. Shivering, she fumbled into her clothes from the night before. Her dress from the river crossing hung damply over a chest. She’d need to find a way to hang it up, to keep it from getting moldy before she beat out the river dirt at some clear creek.
Westward Hope Page 4
