They went to bed as soon as night fell. Days on the trail began before dawn, and no one wanted to waste precious oil or candles. Every night Caroline read her Bible for a few minutes and brushed her hair one hundred strokes while Jenny pretended to be asleep.
Not this night. It was still hot, and the air hung over them like an extra blanket. They could hear a baby crying, a man and woman in a quarrel neither had the energy for, Pace’s brisk booted stride as he made his nightly check of camp.
Jenny raised herself on one arm. “You been awful good to me, Mrs. O’Leary.”
In the candlelight she looked younger and smaller. Caroline had to remind herself that Jenny was only a few years younger than she—and had lived a lot more. Caroline concentrated on brushing her hair. Fifty-five, fifty-six, fifty-seven. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Well, you know what I was. You got it figured somehow, I just know it. And you a lady and all.”
Caroline’s heart began to pound under the white cotton gown. Sixty, sixty-one, sixty-two. “We are all equal in the sight of God.” It sounded stilted. She didn’t care. If you knew what I was—She fought to keep her back straight, to keep up the rhythm of brushing. It didn’t matter now. What if someone knew who she’d been, what she’d really lost? Sixty-five, sixty-six, sixty-seven. The brush stopped, her hand too weak to hold it. She bit her lip and tasted fear. Turn it back to Jenny. That was the only way. “Jenny, God doesn’t care what you were, he cares who you are. He’s so happy you’ve turned your back on that life. In Oregon Country you can do anything, be anything.”
Jenny clasped her hands behind her head, stared at their canvas ceiling. “I want a farm. Maybe a horse ranch—I’m not sure yet—but something with land. My land. Michael says I’m a natural with animals. ‘Course I already knew that.”
Michael. And the casual, familiar way this girl said his name. Of course. Why else would she catch up to this wagon train? Why was Caroline surprised? She’d known he wasn’t a saint.
And there was something else between Michael and Jenny, something that had nothing to do with Jenny’s former profession. Quick, grim-faced conversations stolen at the close of the day, ending with shrugs and glances over their shoulders. They were hunting something. Or someone was hunting them.
Michael was enough to contend with. But Michael with a mystery?
Caroline’s hands shook as she placed the hairbrush in her trunk. Her natural neatness had come in handy here. A place for everything, everything in its place. If only there was a place for Michael, where she could file him away. She began to braid her waist-length hair for sleep. When she was done she bent and touched Jenny’s forehead, briefly, before crawling on top of her own nest of blankets. “Sleep well, Jenny.”
It wasn’t the girl’s fault.
12
Michael Moriarty usually slept like the rock of Gibraltar, especially on the trail. ‘Twasn’t hard when you only had five or six hours to sleep, and you’d spent the day taking care of two hundred people and their stock. But tonight was different. Maybe it was the presence of Jenny on the wagon train. ‘Twould be just as reasonable to see St. Paul or George Washington. Or maybe it was Jenny’s message. The long arm of Ireland, ready to wrench him back. It had been only a matter of time. No matter how much he ran.
Pace snored beside him in the cramped wagon bed. The craft was big enough—barely—for two men who slept well. If one tossed and turned, he’d eventually wake the other. And the other was cranky enough with plenty of sleep.
Michael eased his way out of his bedroll and slung it over his shoulder. He crept down from the wagon and unrolled his bedding on the ground. Might as well have some fresh air along with his hard bed. Hands behind his head, he looked up at the wide, star-peppered sky. Not a tree, not a cloud broke the expanse. This was some country.
His country, now. He had money saved, he could make this work. A landowner, a rancher, a free man.
But only if he left Ireland behind.
Kelly and Kennedy. He should have known Hawthorne would send someone to find him. He wondered why it had taken so long, and knew it didn’t matter. Squire Hawthorne, the English landlord for their village, had never been as quick to react as his son. He considered everything, considered it carefully, before he acted. Hawthorne Senior would never have molested Michael’s sister Oona in a barn. He would have rented a flat for her, set up a bank account, and approached the whole thing as a business proposition. No less disgusting, but all the ends tied up. Hawthorne Senior had all the time in the world.
Michael tossed on his hard bed. He should have known. He’d thought he was finally free, that he could build his ranch and have a home, a life. But it didn’t matter: awake or asleep, Ireland would never let him go.
He remembered the cottage, the smell of potatoes and cabbage, peat fires darkening the stone walls—and the laughter. No one in their village, no one attached to the Hawthorne estate laughed as much as the Moriartys. Strong tea and thick slices of buttered bread when he’d come in on a stormy afternoon, and Ma, tucking a gray hair back into her bun, turning from the stove and smiling, smiling for all she was worth. Ma had a special place in her heart for this tall second son of hers, the one who made her laugh.
Even after Da died, they’d been better off than some of the tenants. Tomeen, the oldest son, worked the fields. It was what he was good at, all he wanted to do. He had been a born farmer, like Daniel. Not like Michael, who farmed until he could get out. Tomeen had been fixing to marry, and might have if Michael had stayed around to take care of Ma.
Michael and the oldest girl, Orla, worked at the manor house, he with the landlord’s blood horses, and she in the kitchen. When Orla married off the estate, Oona, the next youngest girl, took her place. They turned their wages over to Ma, and there were seldom hungry days at the cottage.
Michael could see the girls yet, step-dancing, singing together at the ceili, their voices woven as tightly as the long black braids down their backs. Handsome girls, tall and strong, with laughing blue eyes and red cheeks, with nine months between them.
He’d seen Orla one time since her marriage. Her once-proud shoulders were hunched, her hair thin and brittle, and she covered her mouth to hide her missing teeth. He didn’t know if her husband’s abuse or poverty had stolen her looks. He remembered, with almost a physical pain, the last time he’d seen Oona. He made himself remember. Like setting a bone, best to get it over with.
He’d enjoyed working with Hawthorne’s highly-bred horses. That and a glib tongue were the only useful skills he’d brought to the West. But one day he’d gone in late—a minor crisis at home? A hangover? He couldn’t remember. But he remembered everything else.
The smell of the barn, sweet, fresh hay and manure. The sound of the horses crunching hay. And the sense that something wasn’t right. The sense any smart Irishman carried with him. He’d walked into the stables and found them, Oona, young Hawthorne. Oona’s white shirtwaist was open, his hand was at her breast, and his lips pressed hers in a rough kiss. Over Hawthorne’s shoulder, the look she gave Michael was of sheer terror. And well it might be: both of them had seen the young man crack a whip over his thoroughbreds, for no reason but that he wanted to. No, young Hawthorne wasn’t known for his patience.
Michael remembered grabbing the man’s arm, until his fingers left an imprint on Hawthorne’s linen shirt sleeve. “Leave her alone. Now,” he’d choked out. But he’d known it would take more than words.
Hawthorne had been as tall as Michael, but slimmer, and without his work-honed muscles.
Michael could take him. If he had to.
Hawthorne’s white teeth gleamed in the dimness of the old stone barn. “What’s it to you, old man?”
“She’s my sister.”
Hawthorne’s laugh shattered the quiet of the stable. “Come, now. You Papists! You’d probably sell her yourself. What do you want?” With one arm still around Oona, he jingled his other hand in his pocket. “How much d’you need, bog dwelle
r? How much to go away?”
The red mist began to form before his eyes. It was the mist that had formed when he’d beaten up the curate and taken a shivering Dickie back to the cottage. His heart thumped under his faded homespun shirt.
“Michael.” Oona’s voice, faint but commanding. “Don’t. I’ll–I’ll manage,” she finished on a whimper.
Sure and she would have, with no decent man to marry her—if Hawthorne left anything worth having.
The landlord’s son was quick, and with his free hand, he encircled Michael’s throat. “Or do you want her for yourself?” he purred. “That’s what you do, isn’t it, you ignorant clowns?
‘Sure and my sister is a toothsome morsel,’” he mocked. “That’s why there are so many of you, isn’t it?”
The red mist had become a storm.
“Michael, don’t!”
Oona’s bleat, forever in his memory.
Now Michael turned on his side, tried to find a softer place on the trodden ground of the Nebraska Territory.
Some things, such as his sister’s virtue, were worth fighting for. And running for.
13
Michael’s worn boots thumped against the ground, raising dust as he ran. He crashed into Caleb Taylor, left the stouter man reeling and muttering. Nobody else mattered. He had to get to Caroline.
Caroline moved slowly in the heat as she cleaned up after their cold midday lunch. Her shoulders slumped, though the sun still rode high. She still had the whole rest of the day to get through. He seldom saw her this unguarded, and his heart stopped for a minute. What had life done to her, the girl who had come West to Ohio with such confidence and hope?
But at the sound of his footsteps she straightened, that thin invisible band of iron in her spine. No, she wouldn’t let him know she was tired. “Yes, Mr. Moriarty?”
“Caroline—I mean, Mrs. O’Leary—you’ve got to come. Now.”
The mask slipped a little, the hazel eyes wide with concern. “Is someone hurt?”
“No. But there’s something I want you to see.” He held out his hand.
Though she ignored the hand, a tiny smile played around her lips and was gone. “All right, then. Show me.”
Michael was too aware of her as she kept pace beside him. This was the Caroline he’d known in Ohio. Ready for anything, with a sweet laugh that bubbled up when that “anything” happened. She’d been more than a pretty face and a trim figure. She’d brought the whole package. Still did, in a different way. She was a woman now, all her girlhood potential realized. Warm, compassionate, giving. With the Harkness children, with older members of the party. With Jenny. Had it come from her marriage to Dan, her religion, or both?
Dan’s wife, he reminded himself. You made your choice, so you did. But he could still make this trip as good as he could for her. For Dan’s sake.
He led her to a sandstone bluff just beyond their noon camp.
She pushed ahead of him, eager to see this marvel—she had always been curious, that was what made her a good teacher. She stopped, so abruptly that he almost slammed into her.
“Ohhhhh.”
Below them, hundreds of buffalo thundered over a trodden plain. Their thick hooves kicked up clouds of dirt. Their huge humpbacked bodies and sharp horns were visible through the dust. As they charged, heads lowered, their bellowing sounded above the pounding of their hooves.
He could even smell them, up here on the bluff. And Caroline was entranced, as he’d known she would be.
“Oh, Michael,” she breathed. “They’re magnificent.”
No. She was.
The hot wind tugged at her gold-brown hair, loosening a few strands, and the hazel eyes shone. Did he dare put an arm around her? Just once. Would it hurt? The distance between them pulsed with a life of its own. “I wanted you to see it.” Hard to talk—must be the dust. “Sure, and it isn’t an elephant, but it’s…impressive.”
Caroline’s laugh pealed, and he leaned closer. “I don’t think I could take an elephant after this. It would be too much. If I could write or paint—”
“You’ll tell your students about them.” Or her children. He couldn’t think of her bearing another man’s seed. Not even Daniel’s.
He could smell the fresh herbs—lilac maybe—that she used to wash her hair. She was still clean and sweet-smelling, even after the days they’d put in. Some people gave up on their hygiene on the trail. Not Caroline.
He could put an arm around her, share this wonder. No, he couldn’t. The time for such things was past. One of his many missed opportunities, and the one that stung the most.
As she turned her attention back to the spectacle below them, Michael looked down at her shining head and forced his voice to be businesslike. “Pace will want to lay over a day or two. We can’t afford to lose the opportunity. It’s fresh meat. We’ll hunt a few, cook ‘em up, and you ladies can salt and dry what’s left over.”
Crisp hoof beats, and Jenny Thatcher pulled up beside them. Jenny, on her devil mount. They were only separated when she ate or slept. She sat a horse—well, this horse, anyway—as though they were carved from a single piece of wood. “Hey, Michael. Mr. Prince wants to know iffen you’d—” Her words trailed off.
Michael never did find out what Henry Prince wanted.
Jenny took one look at the buffalo and let out a string of joyously creative swearing.
Michael winced for Caroline’s sake, but Caroline gave no notice.
“We gonna hunt them, Michael?
He turned, reluctantly, from Caroline. “The men will have a buffalo hunt. I’m not about endangerin’ a woman, even one such as yourself.”
Jenny shrugged. “Thought I’d ask. The meat’s really good. I had it one time. It’s drier than most meat. And you can smoke it so it lasts longer. I seen someone—” She stumbled over her words. “A friend of mine told me how,” she finished. That was Jenny, full of teasing, of life and chatter, but pulling the curtain when someone got too close. She never mentioned her past, not where she hailed from, not why she’d become a saloon girl. Hard to reconcile that sensual, elegant woman with this hoyden who swore, swaggered, and did a man’s work well.
Mayhap there were two Jennys. He’d already learned there were several Carolines.
But, alas, only one of himself, and it wasn’t all that good.
Jenny wheeled Rebel around. “I gotta get back to the stock. Let me know what I can do to help.” Rebel broke into a trot, and the hoof beats soon faded.
But Caroline and Michael stood, still staring at the herd of buffalo.
If only he could touch her—not the casual hand on a sleeve, helping her down from the wagon, or the brush of fingers. Those were intense in their own way. No, he wanted to really touch her, to cross the divide between them.
She didn’t look at him, and her voice was suddenly very small. “Why did you come to me?”
The truth was the easiest way, and the hardest. “I wanted you to see it.”
Her parted lips, her look of wonder brought back the young schoolteacher he’d known, the woman fascinated by every aspect of frontier life.
He could imagine her settling into life with Dan, decorating his two-room cabin, making a home out of nothing. Taking on the adventure of marriage. What an asset she would have been, learning about the stock, making herself a full partner. Because Caroline Pierce never did anything halfway.
What had her God allowed to happen?
“Yes. Well,” he said, his voice roughening. “Guess I’ll go round up the men. It will be a long day.”
“It’s worth it,” she said, her gaze still on the buffalo.
~*~
He had come for her. For her.
They walked, decorously apart, back to the camp.
She didn’t dare look at him, didn’t dare speak. Why was he doing this now? Why was he wreaking havoc with the fragile life she’d barely begun to rebuild? The last thing she needed in that life was Michael Moriarty. No way out and no way back, unless she
wanted to admit defeat. Take her fifty dollars and beg a ride back from some Army post. Back to where?
If only she’d stayed in Salem, entertaining suitors in her mother’s parlor until she’d found one who suited. A big wedding, supervising a large household, entertaining his business associates, raising children in comfort for the same life. Smelling the sea breeze, hearing her husband’s boots on the cobblestones, the click of the gate at five o’clock. It was a good life. It had been good enough for Mama.
But it wasn’t what this country was about.
They came into the camp and parted without speaking. She had to pass the Princes’ campsite to get to hers. Ina Prince was cleaning up after their nooning. She looked up from scraping a tin plate. Her eyes narrowed as she brushed at a nonexistent stray hair. “Afternoon, Miz O’Leary.”
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Prince.” Caroline’s voice was tight, her smile tighter.
~*~
Michael ran through the camp, summoning every able-bodied man, every almost-grown boy. If only Samuel were here.
But Ben Harkness’s face lit up for the first time since losing his son. “Sure, I’ll go. It’s why we came West, ain’t it?”
Henry Prince wasn’t so sure. He shuffled his feet, looked down at the ground around his miserable campsite. “Don’t know as I’d be any good at it, Mike. Don’t want to get in the way.”
Michael clapped the smaller man on the shoulder. “I’ll hunt beside you, Henry. Give you some tips. But you don’t want to miss this.”
“No.” Henry shrugged. “Guess not. This sure isn’t Bangor, is it?” He didn’t expect an answer.
Michael didn’t give one.
Of all the men, only Dr. Jenkins and Tom Potter remained behind. “I shall stay to protect the women,” Dr. Jenkins said, looking up from a thick book he was reading in the shadow of the wagon.
Tom Potter kept glancing back at his wagon. “I can’t leave Sarah that long, Mr. Moriarty. She’s…real uncomfortable. We don’t have to—”
Westward Hope Page 8
