She parted the canvas curtains and stepped down.
Michael Moriarty tended their fire. His broad back was to her.
She approached, tying her apron.
“I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d get this going,” he said without turning around.
Everyday tasks. They were everyone’s salvation. He had boiled extra water, and she set to mixing biscuit dough and cornmeal mush without looking at him. “Thank you, Mr. Moriarty. Did they find him?”
“What do you think?”
The biscuits plopped into the spider with a satisfying sizzle. She scrubbed a few potatoes, rubbed them with lard, and dropped them into the ashes to bake. Martha had taught her how to do that.
Martha.
“We’ll be staying over today,” Michael said, both hands clutched around his tin cup. The rising sun illuminated his morning stubble, the tousled dark hair. Michael hadn’t had a good night either.
Most likely worse than hers, because he and Pace were responsible for all these people. “Is Mr. Williams—”
“He doesn’t want to talk to anybody right now. Sure and I’ve seen him this angry, but not often. We’ll give them a day,” Michael went on, wincing at the hotness of the brew. He accepted a bowl of mush from her. There was no milk. Had anyone milked Ben’s cow?
“We’ll have a regular funeral service,” Michael was saying. “Everyone likes Ben, and Sam’l was a favorite around here. Later on we may not be able to do that. It’s too hot in the desert to wait, and if someone dies in the mountains, we still have to get through before the snow flies. But right now we have the time. Sure and we’ll give the lad a proper send-off, even without a body.”
She ladled a biscuit on his plate without speaking. Don’t ask me. Don’t.
“You’ll want to go to Martha. I can clean up here.”
It was a statement, not a question. Caroline stilled inside. Only her hands were busy, too busy. Not that. If he knew what he was asking—“It’s a private time, Mr. Moriarty. A time for the family.”
“And friends,” he countered. “You’re her best friend, and Samuel was your student. She’ll be wondering where you are.”
“She has the girls.” Caroline wiped her hands on her apron. “I’ll–I’ll see her at the service,” she finished on a burst.
Michael unfolded his long length. He towered over her in the pale, new sun. She had seen his temper a few times, but never directed at her. “And what would your God say about that, woman?”
Oh, Michael.
If he only knew. But he was Michael, and she supposed that part of being Michael was not knowing. Could she tell him why she was afraid? Not and face him for the rest of this journey. “My faith is my own concern.” Her voice was cold, sharp enough to cut glass, and seemed to belong to someone else. “But–but I will see Martha. Because I want to, not because you told me to.” Though her back already ached from bending over the campfire, she held herself as though she had an iron poker in her spine. He would not break her again.
He bent, drained his coffee, and set the cup on the ground. “That’s good, then. Daniel would have wanted you to go.”
She knotted her hands together, prayed for control. But the words came out anyway. “Don’t you dare tell me what Daniel would have wanted.”
Michael looked down at her, his lips parted. Then he shrugged. “You’re right. ‘Tis not my place.” He crouched by the fire, and swiftly ladled mush and biscuits into a pie tin. “I’ll take the breakfast to the Potters today,” he said over his shoulder. “I’m thinking Mrs. Potter will be glad of another day’s rest.”
She didn’t give him the satisfaction of a reply. But when he had disappeared into the maze of wagons, she leaned against her wagon and breathed heavily. Never mind him, Caroline; there’s work to do. She put food in another pie tin, covered it, and placed it in the ashes to stay warm. Pace would be hungry. Some time. She banked the fire and stacked the dirty dishes to wash. Then she threaded her way through the hodgepodge of wagons. In last night’s chaos, everyone had parked everywhere.
She found Pace sitting alone on the bank of the river, the river that had been their enemy last night, but now sparkled in the new sunlight. She hesitated, and then went to him. Drawing her skirts about her, she sat beside him and lifted her face to the sunshine. “There’s a plate for you back at the campfire, Mr. Williams.”
“Not hungry.”
That was a first. “Well, it’ll be there when you are.”
They sat in a silence for a few minutes.
“It was my fault,” he said without looking at her. “I should never have listened to those men. Want to wash my hands of the lot of ‘em.”
“You couldn’t have stopped them.” Of all lessons she’d learned, this one was not learned in a schoolroom. People would do what they would do.
“Still.” He swore, and then whipped his head around to look at her. “Sorry, ma’am. But it’s my job to protect these people. And that Sam was a good boy. Would have been a good man.”
Her own grief was too fresh as she remembered the quiet, helpful youth. Dear God, bring him back. Take me instead? But it didn’t work that way. She’d learned that from experience, too.
Pace was different than Michael, leaner, craggier, whipcord-thin, an attractiveness that sneaked up on one rather than stopping one in her tracks. He gave her a rare, crooked grin. “Me and him used to talk, and he wanted to be a trail boss when he growed up. Can’t imagine what Martha would have had to say about that.”
“I can.” She laughed softly. “Martha never minced a word in her life, especially when it came to one of her children.”
“Yeah. She’s a tough one. She’ll do well wherever they end up.”
“You don’t think they’ll settle in Oregon?”
“Oh, I think they’ll make it. Sometimes people split off at the Snake River and head for Californy instead. But they’re both workers. Whatever they do, they’ll be fine.”
Without Samuel.
For a moment she envied him, a man with nothing to lose. But then he wasn’t too different from Caroline, at this point. “Mr. Williams, why did you never marry?”
He laughed a bark of a laugh with little humor. “Do you think I could ask a woman to do this? Trust me, Miz O’Leary. Ain’t a woman alive who wants to make this trip more’n once. If that.”
She thought of Ina Prince’s complaints. Kids running wild, seven-month babies—and had Ina ever even imagined losing something as valuable as Samuel? Sideboards left at home, those had value.
“Shows you what you’re made of,” he was saying. “Hardest job I ever done. I did logging in Canada. I was a cowboy in Texas and Mexico, only they call them vaqueros down there. Ain’t that something? Worked on the docks in New York, drove a stagecoach from New York to Philadelphia. Don’t hold a candle to this. Ever’thing I ever learned I use on this trip.”
A bird swooped low over the water. Samuel would have known the breed.
She got up, shaking out her skirts, and looked down at him. “Are you sure I can’t bring you something?”
“Coffee,” Pace said, squinting up at her. “And, Mrs. O’Leary?
She turned on her heel. “Yes?”
“I don’t know why you’re on this trip. Maybe it’s what you said, maybe there’s more.” He paused. “But I’m gonna get you to Oregon Country if it takes my last breath.”
Caroline brought him the coffee. She cleaned up their site, even more meticulously than usual, scrubbing the iron pots with sand and setting a bread sponge for baking. There would be time for light bread today, not just biscuits. Not that it mattered.
The camp was quiet, the only sound the hum of bees from a nearby field. A dragonfly dipped in front of her, and the sun turned its wings to silver. Neighbors huddled around their own campfires looked up, nodded, but did not speak. Children talked softly as they gathered buffalo chips, with furtive glances at the Harkness wagons.
She found Ben slumped on an overturned barrel
. He’d given up shaving on the trail, but today his beard looked more ragged than usual, and his eyes were bloodshot. Instinctively, she went to him and put a hand on his shoulder. “Ben?”
He looked up at her. “I offered her to go back home.” His voice was hoarse, rusty from crying. “This was my dream, not hers. We don’t need to lose no more kids. But she said no. Said ever’thin at home would remind her of Sam’l. Best just to go on, she said.”
“I’m so sorry, Ben.”
He cleared his throat. “I should have been more careful. Had him doin’ a man’s work since he was six. I should have had one of the grown men help me across. Iffen I had, he’d still be alive—”
Or something else would have gotten him. They both knew better.
She, of all people, knew the different ways one could lose someone. Or be lost.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she argued tiredly. “We shouldn’t have crossed at all. Mr. Williams and Mr. Moriarty are very upset, and sorry they let those men talk them into it.”
“Yeah. Well, guess we all take a little bit of blame.” He sighed. “Go on in, Miss Caroline. Martha’ll be glad to see you. Martha needs you.”
Though it was one of the hardest tasks she’d performed since losing Daniel, Caroline’s heart lifted a fraction as she pushed aside the canvas tent flap. Martha needed her. I have a friend. Not like the young married women back in Ohio, who had greeted her with artificial politeness and then whispered when they thought she was out of the mercantile. Or the church.
Martha sat alone in the wagon bed. Every inch was organized—a small trunk for each child’s clothes, wooden crates for foodstuffs, pots hanging from hooks in the crossbars. She’d shown Caroline how to get the most out of the space, explaining that it was better to have something and not need it than need it and not have it. But now she sat with her back to the wooden chest that held their clean dishes. Her legs stuck out straight in front of her, skirts in disarray, but this wasn’t a time for propriety. Her hair was down. Caroline had never seen Martha’s hair down. She looked as though she hadn’t slept, and the eyes she lifted to Caroline were dry but rimmed in red. Caroline caught her breath as she saw what Martha clutched: a small, sodden felt hat.
She knelt beside the older woman and took her into her arms. The damp hat leaked on to her dry gingham, but she didn’t care. For a few minutes they rocked together soundlessly. Caroline rubbed at her own sandy eyes. “Where are the girls?”
“Lily’s got the little ones, and Rose is out gatherin’ chips. Mr. Williams said not to worry about dinner or supper, people are sendin’ things over. But it’ll give her something to do.”
And maybe she’d meet up with some of the other girls, and they’d comfort her in ways a parent couldn’t. The girls who had giggled whenever Samuel had walked by, or given him sidewise looks as their fathers conducted business. Beyond everything else, he had been a beautiful boy.
Martha’s mind ran in the same direction. “I used to wonder about the woman he’d find. I been prayin’ for him, and her, practically from the day he was born. Hopin’ he’d find something like what Ben and I have. I would have loved her like a daughter. Never could keep Sam’l down,” she went on, stroking the worn, wet fabric. “He could climb afore he could walk, and he got Oregon fever even before Ben did. Used to waylay people at the general store who’d been there, or even knew someone who’d been. Always wanted to see the next thing, ‘see the elephant,’ Sam’l did.
“And I’m a believer—you know that better than anybody—but don’t tell me he’s in a better place. Next week, maybe. Not today.”
Caroline’s throat constricted. “I won’t.” She knew how clichés didn’t comfort, in fact did the opposite. Caroline looked at the river dirt in her friend’s fingernails, the swipe of mud hardened on one cheek. “Martha, when is the–the funeral?”
“Four o’clock. The missionary’s saying the words over Samuel. Hasn’t had too much to do with any of us, but Mr. Williams said he’d offered. Ben’s gonna make a cross. Then we’ll–we’ll—” Sobbing at last, she crumbled into Caroline’s shoulder.
Leave his memory in a spot none of them would likely visit again. Caroline had heard of worse, of bodies left by the dusty trail because of heat or the threat of disease. She silently blessed Michael and Pace for letting them have this, at least.
Martha’s sobs subsided. She looked spent. She needed sleep now more than anything. Lily Taylor had a bag of “simples,” herbs she’d gathered on her Wisconsin farm. Most likely she’d have something to help Martha sleep. Martha needed to store up strength for this afternoon, for all the afternoons to come.
“I’ll see Lily and get you something to help you rest,” Caroline said. “When you wake up, send Ben for me, and I’ll wash your face and do up your hair.”
Martha’s hold relaxed, and she shifted the hat off her lap. “You’ll be at the funeral? Stand with me?”
Caroline covered her friend’s cold hands with her own. “I will be with you until it’s over,” she said.
~*~
“You don’t need to do this.” Michael tried to take the shovel from Ben.
“Yeah, I do. Last thing I’ll ever do for him.” Ben flung another shovelful of dirt out on the plain. His eyes were red, his movements labored. Ben needed to rest. But he dug on, flinging the dirt onto the bare, baked earth, until he had a hole deep enough for a memorial.
Michael wiped his hands on his dungarees. He had spent the last hour helping Ben fashion a crude cross from a broken chair. It would be all Sam had, his body lost to the river.
The sun was still bright but beginning to lower as they assembled on the plain, two hundred strong. A pre-evening breeze ruffled the women’s skirts and the men’s hair as they removed their hats.
“I am the Resurrection and the Life. He who believeth in me shall never die.” The missionary’s thin voice seemed swallowed up in the vastness around them.
And was that even true? How could a loving God take Samuel from his people? The same God who took Michael from his? He’d rather go it alone, and take his chances on the afterlife.
Martha Harkness stood with Caroline on one side, her daughter Rose on the other. Caroline had her arm linked through Martha’s, her slight form buttressing the larger woman with all she had. Caroline stared straight ahead.
Michael tried to catch her eye, but she refused to look at him.
What ailed her? Why had she at first refused to go to Martha, her best friend? She didn’t want Michael telling her what to do; that had been clear from the start. But he’d sensed something more, something to do with Martha’s loss. Had Caroline had a child with Daniel? No. If she had it would be on the trail with her now. Because no power on earth or in Heaven, if it existed, could part Caroline from a child of her own. She had changed, but not that much. Never that much.
Who had hurt her? What had they done?
8
“I’m it! I’m the king of the mountain!”
Michael smiled as he watched the small boy claim his title. Kids. They made the best of this Oregon Trail, especially on Sundays when they could stop walking. Seeing it as the grandest of adventures, the children embraced the trail unaware of the challenges that put frowns on their fathers’ faces and made their mothers cry into the night.
The two middle Harkness girls were playing, their braids swinging and their skirts flying. Rachel and Esther had recovered the best from Samuel’s loss. Hannah had nightmares. He heard her screaming and heard her parents’ tired attempts to calm her. And Rose was too quiet, almost as quiet as her parents. But they stayed on, doing their work and helping others with theirs, with a silent dignity he admired. Did it come from their God? Or was it something bred into them, going back to their forebears, to the people who had first settled their great country?
Pace’s footsteps, unhurried for once. “Hey Mike.”
He shaded his eyes as he looked up at the trail boss. “Yeah?”
“Things is quiet now, thought
I’d take a nap. Can you take charge for a couple hours?”
He could.
Pace ambled off, and then turned on his heel. “And could you tell Miz O’Leary no rush for supper? It’s a nice night. We can take our time.”
Tell Mrs. O’Leary. Well, he guessed he could.
He’d lost count of the times he’d sought her out, just to hear her voice or see those wide eyes thoughtfully considering her next move. Was he insane? She couldn’t stand the sight of him. And he wasn’t interested in her, nothing like that. He was just looking out for her. For Dan’s sake.
He came upon Caroline as she rinsed clothes in a creek. Her clothes, Pace’s and his.
Today she wore her hair like the Norwegian women, in two thick braids wrapped around her head. Like a crown. Looked good on her, but then not much didn’t.
“Mr. Moriarty?” She shaded her eyes against the blinding prairie sun.
She wouldn’t call him Michael. Silly to pretend they hadn’t known each other, but he’d play along. For now.
“Mr. Williams says not to hurry supper. He’s resting a bit, so he is.”
“I shan’t, then. Thank you.”
She bent to her task, scrubbing like a banshee. He could have told her no amount of lye soap could root out trail dirt. Some things couldn’t be cleaned up, fixed, changed. If anyone knew that, it was Michael Moriarty. He wheeled around with a gruff, “Goodbye.”
~*~
Michael eased the boot from his right foot. There, that was better. Didn’t know how he’d managed to pick up a blister, these were old boots. Maybe they’d shrunk in that last river crossing. A small price to pay compared to what other people lost, but it didn’t make this job any easier.
How long could he do this? Expose total strangers to the worst this continent could offer, and then help them pick up the pieces? Harknesses weren’t all right, weren’t anywhere near all right. But like everyone else here, they set their faces West and moved onward. Martha, polite but distant. Ben, losing the train of thought when one was talking to him.
Westward Hope Page 5
