Michael could take anything the trail dished out to him. He couldn’t watch it happening to other people. He’d finish this run, as he’d told Pace, and then buy his land. He had enough socked away. He knew cattle, he knew horses. Buy up some stock, pick up some hands. Place would pay for itself over five years. He’d be an Irishman with his own land.
If only Da could be here to help him enjoy it, or his brother Tom. They’d worked other people’s land all their lives, his people, for centuries. He’d do it for them.
And then?
Pace was right; a woman would make it go down easier. A woman and a couple of kids, someone to pass it on to. But that would have to wait.
Caroline, now, she’d make a good ranch wife. But he knew better than to ask. She was still mourning Dan. He could feel the sadness emanating from her.
But she was earning her keep on this trip, and then some. He cast a hopeful glance toward the spot from their morning campfire, long dead. Sunday night supper. Maybe she’d talk to him tonight, linger a little after the meal. She’d said very little about her life with Dan and he was hungry to hear the last tales he’d ever hear of his friend. Something to take with him to his ranch, his new life.
A shadow fell on him.
Ben Harkness, more sober than he’d ever been, but holding himself together. “We need your help, Mr. Moriarty.”
Of course they did. There was always something going wrong on the trail. Some of the things he’d faced before, more than once. But every trip brought at least one new and distasteful challenge.
“Is it Prince?” he asked around a sigh.
“Nope. Caleb. One of his oxen threw a shoe. Jim White’s got the tools, but we need muscle to hold it down.”
Oxen. They were high-strung creatures in their way, fine as long as they could plod along with no changes in their little worlds. But it didn’t take much to spook ‘em. A piece of tumbleweed, a loud noise, a darting child.
“Which one?”
“The biggest one.”
It would be. Michael tugged his boots back on.
James White, the blacksmith, had hauled out his small portable forge and had a fire going. White knew his business, and it had been good to have him on the trail for the inevitable moments when an ox or a horse’s feet were exposed to the roughness of the trail.
Caleb and his oldest son, Matt, held the beast by ropes on either side. Its eyes were black with terror and it pawed the ground with one hoof. This wouldn’t be good.
White plucked the glowing horseshoe from the forge with a pair of tongs. “Ready,” he said.
Michael, Ben, Tom Potter, and Bill Sadler from Georgia moved in on the ox from four corners. Couldn’t have asked for a better team. Nice if they’d had a set of stocks, but this would do. At a word from Michael they wrestled the animal to the ground. They crisscrossed the ox with ropes and pounded nails through the ropes, with each man standing on a corner.
White placed the sizzling horseshoe on the animal’s bare hoof.
The ox screamed and its eyes rolled back in their sockets. A shudder convulsed the huge body. With a sound more chilling than a human shriek it burst its bonds, knocking the men back into the dirt.
Michael scrambled to his feet and reached for the ox, but it was already gone and his boots skidded on the dirt.
The ox’s huge hooves churned up dust and people scattered from its path. All except one. A little red bonnet, as red as the setting sun or blood. Hannah Harkness, her plump little legs unsteady as she reached for a clump of purple-tipped weeds.
Not Hannah. Never.
Michael began to run.
~*~
Caroline heard a scream and realized it was her own. What was he doing? Not even Michael—
God, don’t let them die. Either of them.
Ben had begun to run, but Michael’s long legs were faster. He reached the little girl, scooped her up in his own powerful arms, crossed the ox’s path and fell on his back in the dirt, with Hannah clasped to his chest.
Heavier footsteps churned up the dirt. Caleb, with his rifle sighted. A shot rang out and the ox bellowed once, a terrible sound that echoed over the prairie, before it slumped to the ground.
Caleb stomped back to the camp. “Matthew, get out here and help me haul him off.”
His oldest son pushed his way to the front of the crowd, with a shovel and ropes.
Lily Taylor was ashen. “Caleb, did you have to? We paid good money for that ox. How are we going to—”
“Yeah, I had to. That’s why we got spares.” Caleb followed his son, but looked back over his shoulder. “It was a child, Lily. We can’t take those kinds of chances. You do what you got to.”
Michael handed the little girl off to Martha, who held Hannah tightly. “My baby. My baby.” The other three girls crowded around, murmuring their relief.
Caroline couldn’t stop staring at Michael. Well, that topped anything he’d ever done in Summer Pasture. “Are you all right?”
He swiped at his forehead with one flannel sleeve and grinned at her. “Were you worried about me, Mrs. O’Leary?”
“Of course not.” She ducked her head. “I was worried about Hannah.”
Michael brushed at the knees of his dungarees. “She’ll be fine. Won’t wander off again, I’m guessin’, and I don’t think Mrs. Harkness has the heart to punish her. But I wouldn’t want to be whoever was supposed to be watching her.”
“Nor would I,” Caroline said.
He looked down at her, the nonchalance gone, the deep blue eyes searching, and she caught her breath. She didn’t need this. Especially from him.
“Are you sure you weren’t worried about me, Caroline?” In a voice meant only for her. Teasing, but not really.
She couldn’t move away from that steady gaze. He was so big. So handsome. So…Michael.
And he’d risked his life for a child. Had he changed? Or was this all part of the scout’s job, something he’d shed as soon as he got them to Oregon Country? Could she trust him again, even as a friend?
For a moment they were alone, on the prairie, in spite of two hundred other people going about their business.
“Mike!” Williams jogged up to them. “Can you help Taylor and his boy clean up and get rid of the ox?”
Michael looked away.
Caroline dropped her own gaze.
“Sure and I will, Pace.”
~*~
Caroline made a hot, late supper with baked beans she’d soaked all night and dried bacon to flavor it. The three were silent as they dined.
Pace lifted his head only to ask for a second helping.
Michael ate more slowly, scooping up small portions of beans-and-bacon or her dried fruit compote and looking everywhere but at her.
Determined to bring some civility to the evening, she put down her fork. “What did you gentlemen do for a cook before you hired me?”
The men exchanged glances, glances which held a shared past and secrets, places she couldn’t go and didn’t want to.
Michael spoke after a minute. “We had a man named Lee. He worked for us for two years. He was a decent man and a fair cook.”
“Did he get another job?”
Again the glances.
“No. He’s dead,” Pace Williams said.
“I’m sorry. Is there a lot of sickness on the trail?”
“Yep, but that ain’t what got ‘im.” Williams dipped a corner of his cornbread in the juice from his beans. “He was murdered last trip, just before we got to South Pass. Somebody didn’t like the way he looked. It ain’t easy being Chinese in this country.”
For him it was a long speech. But as a conversational gambit, it stopped her cold.
The sun began to set, darkness spreading its cloak on the plain first, then creeping into the clearing. A chorus of peepers rose from the nearby creek. The campfire from each wagon made a pool of light. Someone took out a fiddle, and the plaintive notes floated on the evening breeze. Families finished with supper began
to visit, strolling through the village of wagons, and the shouts of children rose in one last, manic game of hide-and-go-seek.
Pace was first to go, thanking her for the meal and noting that five o’clock came earlier each year. “I’ll be at the wagon,” he told Michael. Pace ambled on, his lean figure gradually blending with the darkness.
But Michael stayed on, avoiding her glance as he dropped the last buffalo chip on the fire. He yawned and stretched, but made no move to leave.
Caroline knotted her hands in her lap.
Alone.
And he stayed, determinedly sipping at what must be very cold coffee.
What did he want from her?
“Those beans were very good.”
“Thank you.”
“I hope you’ll be comfortable tonight.”
They were the perfectly correct phrases of strangers. Which was all they were to each other.
“What’s it like in Oregon?” She wasn’t a babbler, but she had to say something. Something neutral.
Michael’s voice quickened. “Prettiest country you ever saw. Prettiest country I ever saw, and that includes Ireland. There’s green forests full of animals for the taking, and green land just waiting to bear a harvest. And it’s never too cold or too hot. Rains a lot, but nobody minds. There’s a bill in Congress now, and if it passes, you can have 640 acres for free. And with what you made selling off Dan’s place, you could hire someone to run it for you until it turns a profit. The Willamette Valley is prime soil for growing.”
“Dan would have hated this,” she blurted. “Pulling up stakes. All he ever wanted was our place in Ohio.”
“Dan was an Irishman.” Michael’s voice came easily through the darkness. She could only see the outline of his big form. “They’ve lived on rented or borrowed land all their lives, so they have, and when they get a chunk of their own, sure they don’t want to give it up for anything. Even more and better land.”
“You’re an Irishman,” she blurted. “And you pull up stakes all the time.”
“‘Twasn’t always of my own choosing.”
There had always been something mysterious about Michael, from the day he’d appeared unannounced at his uncle’s farm. A six-foot, blue-eyed, blarney-talking Irishman. She hadn’t been there when he’d arrived, but she’d heard about it. He’d hit their dour village like a comet, and left just as fast.
“Do you still love him?” His voice, a little rough, came out of the darkness.
She tried for a laugh, and it came out as a sort of bleat. “Really, Michael, what kind of a question is that? He was my husband.”
“Do you still love him? Did you love him?”
It was none of Michael’s business.
At first she hadn’t loved Dan; or at least she hadn’t known it. When she’d lost her teaching position, her parents dead, her savings dwindling, Daniel had been her safety net, the way out of the worst thing that could happen to a single woman. And he had loved her, in his patient way, waiting for her to mature like one of his crops, waiting for her to heal. She wasn’t sure when respect and gratitude on her part had blossomed into love for the gentle farm boy. She only knew that it had. “When he died, I wanted to die myself,” she said at last, in a voice barely above a whisper.
Michael exhaled. Only then did she realize he’d been holding his breath. “Good. Daniel deserved someone like you. And you deserved him.”
She smiled, though it was full darkness now and he couldn’t see it. “Michael, do you know what the Bible says about that?”
“You know I’ve no use for the Bible. The priest discouraged it, and I haven’t seen much to question that. Only thing he was right about. I don’t even own one of the things.”
“I’m sorry. Because in the story of Joseph, Joseph tells his brothers, ‘You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.’ You remember the story of Joseph, don’t you, Michael? His brothers hated him, and sold him into slavery. But he became more than they ever dreamed…more than he ever dreamed.”
Michael sat up straighter.
His eyes were fixed on hers in the dying firelight. “So?”
“I wondered why God allowed…things to happen to me. Why He didn’t just stop me, or control what other people did. But the things brought Daniel to me.” She wished she believed it. If she said it often enough—yes, she did resent Michael, in those places she went where no one could follow. She resented what he’d done to Dan. But she wouldn’t let it master her.
“Sure and you were safe with him,” Michael said in almost a whisper. “What–what was he like after I left? I’ve missed him.”
She leaned her head on her hand. How to summarize Daniel?
“He loved to sing,” she said at last. “And read poetry. And laugh. He couldn’t turn away a stray animal.” He’d taken her in, hadn’t he? “He loved farming so much he helped me with the kitchen garden, because he liked to see vegetables coming out of the ground. He loved to eat, though you couldn’t tell by looking at him. I learned to cook to please him. An–and he was brave right up until the end. He worried about the toll his sickness was taking on me.”
“So he was the same as when I left.”
“Yes. Dan didn’t need to change. He was perfect the way he was.”
~*~
Would things have been different if he’d stayed? Would that have erased the sad, guarded look from her eyes? He couldn’t have kept Dan from dying, the epidemic took what it wanted. But he could have made things easier for Caroline.
He’d been so young, succumbing to his own version of “Oregon Fever.” Thinking, with the arrogance of youth, that it would all wait for him, that it would be there when he wanted to come back. And there had been the other thing, the thing he didn’t dare voice, the thing he’d hoped would go away. Well, it hadn’t. Someone was tracking him, or would be once they got wise to Jenny’s lie. Nothing and nobody stood still. Daniel dead, Caroline left penniless. Nothing stayed the same.
Not Ireland, not Daniel, not Caroline.
One couldn’t go back if there was no “back” to go to.
~*~
Michael stood and looked down at her. The fading firelight highlighted the planes in his face, but his eyes were unreadable. “I’ll go now. You need your rest. As Pace said, five o’clock comes early.”
“Yes. Thank you. How many miles did we make yesterday?”
He was almost in the shadows, but turned. “Eighteen. We made good time, so we did.”
Eighteen miles. All that for eighteen miles.
“Good night, Mrs. O’Leary.”
“Good night, Mr. Moriarty,” she said around a sigh.
9
A week later, another Sunday-night supper. Michael came into their campsite to find Caroline hunched over the fire. She looked up from the blaze and brushed a wisp of hair out of her face.
“I have a surprise for you,” Caroline said.
And though her words were for both him and Pace, Michael imagined for a second that she meant only him. She was so neat, so efficient. What must it have been like for Dan, coming home to this woman? And so beautiful. He swallowed. “Sure, and what would that be? Have you found a new way to cook beans?”
“No. There isn’t one.” Caroline whisked the lid off the spider to reveal a mound of fluffy yellow stuff—scrambled eggs? As rare as turtle soup and tea sandwiches in this baked wilderness. As Michael stared and Pace grunted his approval, she began ladling the eggs onto tin plates, flopping a fresh biscuit next to each serving.
He hadn’t eaten an egg—hadn’t seen one since leaving St. Joe. Don’t talk with your mouth full, Michael, especially in front of this one. He took another bite, swallowed, forked up and swallowed another before asking, “Where did you find eggs?”
“At that trading post near Fort Kearney.” Caroline filled her own plate and settled her skirts about her as though she were paying a call in someone’s parlor. “It was the only useful thing that storekeeper had—useful for me, that is. He seemed t
o have quite a stock of spirits. I thought scrambled eggs would be nice for Sunday night supper, so I did a little haggling, and here we are. I packed them in sawdust to keep them fresh while we traveled, and I scrambled them with milk from Martha’s cow.”
The eggs were ambrosial, rich with milk and the subtle flavoring of herbs. Caroline could cook—and she could plan and manage, a different skill entirely. There she sat on an overturned crate, her legs crossed at the ankles under her faded calico skirt. She had tried to make a home for him and Pace, though neither of them knew what “home” meant any more. She deserved a home of her own, a man to cook for. Her own chickens. A garden.
He wanted to pound someone, something. She should not be here. It wasn’t fair.
She deserved Daniel. Not for the first time, he realized the magnitude of what they had both lost.
It was Sunday, the day they stopped traveling and exchanged their daily chores for another set of chores. The women had done their washing and hung it on makeshift lines or spread it on the rocks, had cooked some for the week ahead before most of the emigrants had gathered for an early afternoon service.
He’d hung around long enough to see them assemble before he headed for a nap in Pace’s wagon. Funny the way they got themselves up, the men in clean shirts they’d change out of after the service, the women in bonnets. Caroline always changed into a clean, unfaded, cotton dress before she put her worn trail duds back on.
They were a thousand miles from anything that mattered. Did they think their God cared what they looked like?
But he’d stayed quiet, humbled by their faith as he’d been humbled by Daniel’s, all the while knowing it wasn’t for him. The parish school administrators had beaten it out of him, with all the rules he’d disobeyed time and again. Maybe he’d beaten it out of himself, he mused as he washed Caroline’s scrambled eggs down with her excellent coffee. “This is good.”
Westward Hope Page 6
