“Now I understand,” she was saying. “Thank you, Michael.” For a moment he saw that young schoolteacher again, with her precise Eastern manners. “I’ll be going now.” She walked away, silhouetted by a red prairie sunset. She looked small and alone, but her back was straight as always. The trail wouldn’t defeat this woman. She had already been to the bottom. And her strength made him want her even more.
He’d made a shambles of most of his life. How had he managed to ruin this, the most precious thing of all? “Caroline.” Look at me, talk to me.
She turned, and her eyes flashed a warning. Do not say anything personal.
“We’ll be stopping early tomorrow,” he said, fumbling for a way to salvage the conversation, to end on a neutral note, if not a good one. “We’re almost to Fort John. Fort Laramie, some call it. You can do some shopping.”
“Give me some money, and I’ll replenish our stores.”
Once again they were scout and cook.
18
“Are you walking up to Fort John, Caroline?” Martha stopped by her wagon.
“I don’t have much choice.” Caroline checked her reticule for the grocery money Michael had given her. “We’ve half a barrel of cornmeal, and less of flour.”
Martha sighed. “Nice if we could find eggs. Oh, what I could do with a dozen eggs. Or two eggs.”
Yes, nice if they’d had eggs. Once, in a lean month, she had had to serve Daniel eggs three times a day, and grumbled about it. He’d looked up at her, the light glinting off his spectacles, and said, “Consider it manna from heaven.”
“We’re going on ahead,” Martha said. “I’ll see you in the store.”
Caroline picketed her oxen, making sure they drew what sustenance they could from the sparse prairie grass. Pace Williams would stay behind to guard the stock. He sat on the ground, smoking a corncob pipe, with his long legs stretched out in front of him and a long rifle at his side. “Ain’t nothing there that I ain’t seen before,” he said, waving them on.
Henry Prince would stay too, and take a nap. “Ina’ll spend what she wants whether I’m there or not,” he’d said.
Jenny also chose not to make the short walk to the fort. “Don’t need anything,” she said shortly. Was that all, or did she fear the stares of strangers? Since the buffalo hunt, Jenny kept to herself more than ever. As the younger woman headed off to check on her Rebel, Caroline breathed a prayer for her.
Though Caroline was a fast walker, Michael’s long strides overtook her. She tried to ignore him, picking up her pace, her worn shoes certain after so many weeks of rough terrain. But Michael stayed at her side until she stopped and looked up at him. “What do you want, Michael?” What more could he possibly want, or do?
“I’m thinkin’ I should walk with you,” he said, his eyes shaded by his hat brim.
She bit back a laugh. “I don’t need an escort. This isn’t a party.”
“I know. But I’m thinkin’ it’s a good idea. There’s all kinds of men make their way to the fort—fur trappers, mountain men, tinkers, soldiers. ‘Twouldn’t hurt you to have a bit of protection.”
She rocked back on her heels and stared up at the shadowed eyes, the unsmiling mouth. “You want to protect me?”
“Sure and I do. There’s nothin’ wrong with that, now is there?”
She could think of a litany of reasons.
His voice held both bluster and a hint of uncertainty. Caroline marked both, but her anger had a life of its own and sailed over them. “You want to protect me. Pity you didn’t feel that way three years ago, or even two. Because of you, I faced not one, but three of the worst things that can happen to a woman. I was ruined. I lost my job. I lost my baby. If it hadn’t been for Dan—”
Pain flashed in his face, replaced by his own anger. “Don’t throw Dan at me,” he ground out. “Saint Daniel. Do you know how that makes me feel? I could never measure up to Dan. Even if I’d stayed, I could never be him.”
He touched her arm. She flinched and then stood very still. Michael tipped his hat back, and his blue eyes were dark with despair. “I could never be what Daniel was to you.”
No. But if he’d done the right thing, he wouldn’t have needed to be.
The emigrants passed them, making their slow way to the fort. Some craned their necks to see what their scout and his cook could be discussing so heatedly. Others trudged on, wrapped in cares and concerns of their own. The Potters walked side by side, not touching, but bound by an invisible thread of facing tragedy, their tragedy, together.
The merciless prairie sun beat down on them.
Caroline stared up at Michael. Oh, what was she doing here? She longed for Dan, for their farm, for their home. It had been hard work, carving that farm out of the unbroken land, but she hadn’t minded. It had been theirs. Willingly walking behind him, dropping seed into the furrows as he broke the land with a plow and their one horse. Lovingly tending her kitchen garden, helping him feed the stock when he was rushed. Days of work and laughter, nights when they’d talked over her sewing and his whittling. In a few years, if he’d lived, they could have turned a profit. But Daniel had given her much more than a farm.
She remembered how he’d looked at night, vulnerable without his glasses, younger-looking in the candlelight. He liked to say, “I want to look at you as long as possible.” She’d scoffed at that, but she’d always been the one to blow out the candle. When she’d accepted his Lord and learned of the Church as the Bride of Christ, her first thought had been, “That’s like Dan.”
That first night. He’d taken her to a hotel, a luxury he could ill afford. She’d known instinctively that he’d wanted a fresh start, a neutral space for both of them. He’d been shy, turning his back to her as he changed into a nightshirt. And he’d pointed to the tiny bathroom. “You can, uh, go in there,” he’d mumbled.
She’d had no trousseau, no lingerie. Before she’d changed into her everyday flannel nightgown she’d spent a half hour being sick, the “morning sickness” that ended up plaguing her most of the day.
Drained, exhausted, she’d finally come out of the bathroom. But Daniel’s eyes had widened at the sight of her hair streaming across her shoulders, her face in the candlelight. Like someone in a dream he’d moved toward her, eased her onto the bed, and made love to her for the first time. Though he’d been gentle she had felt nothing, and when it was over, she’d cried until midnight.
She remembered Daniel catching her tears on his fingers, stroking her tumbled hair, telling her it would be all right. And it had been more than she had ever dreamed. After she’d lost Michael’s baby, she’d hoped for one from Dan. But there hadn’t been time.
Now, in a place that barely had a name, she looked up at Michael. “No, you could never have been Dan. But you could have been a better version of yourself.”
Silently, because it had all been said, they walked the rest of the way to the fort.
A wall, with gun turrets at two corners and a central blockhouse, surrounded Fort John. It looked like stone, with a mellow glow in the afternoon sun.
Esther Harkness had gotten there before them, and she had her palm splayed against the side of the entryway. She looked up at Michael. “Mr. Moriarty, what is the fort made of? It doesn’t feel like stone, and it sure isn’t wood.”
Michael crouched to her eye level. “Well, Miss Esther, that’s what they call adobe.” He had a serious, respectful way with children. Oh, he would have been a fine father, gravely teaching skills to a little boy, hopelessly ensnared by a tiny daughter. “In this part of the world, they don’t have much wood to build with. People make a clay out of mud, and they shape it into bricks and bake it in the sun. Then they build with it—forts, barns, houses.”
Esther nodded. “Like the slaves in Egypt,” she said.
Caroline too reached out to touch the sun-warmed clay, and marveled. A world where they burned dung, and built with mud. If only she’d had someone to write to about it.
Inside the fo
rt, small buildings ringed a central courtyard. The buildings were made of the same dried mud, and their back walls formed the outer walls of the stockade. Chickens, sheep, a goat roamed the enclosure. Two white women washed clothes at a cistern, and a young Indian woman sat quietly weaving a basket. The blanket in front of her was filled with samples of her work, brilliant and intricate designs unlike any Caroline had ever seen. The girl gave Caroline a shy smile.
The fort’s general store was large, dim and crowded. She wrinkled her nose at the combination of human sweat, animal waste, and spilled liquor. Indians in a variety of garb jostled men with long beards, dirty clothes and furs draped over their arms. And shabby pilgrims, mostly women, clutched their children to them. They looked faded, a little dazed as they swarmed over the meager goods. There was a look in their eyes that Caroline recognized, the glazed look of someone who’d spent too long staring at the unending trail, day after unchanging day. She’d seen the same look in sea captains back East.
Voices rose around them, the Indian dialects, Germanic-sounding tongues, something she recognized as a form of French. She hesitated just inside the door. A lot of men. Maybe Michael had been right.
“There you are!” Martha was at her side, and Martha elbowed her way through the mob, creating a space for her girls to pass. Caroline brought up the rear. The crowd, like the Red Sea, closed behind them.
At the main counter, a man in buckskins scooped flour, coffee, and cornmeal into paper twists. He ignored everyone save the woman he was serving.
The woman at the front of the line wore a patched skirt and men’s boots. “I got to get some flour,” the woman said, her voice edged with hysteria. “I run out two days ago. I got to feed my kids!”
Caroline read the hand-lettered placard aloud. “Coffee, $1.50 a pint. Flour, 50 cents a pint. That’s—“
“Highway robbery,” Martha finished tiredly. “Whoever uses just a pint of flour?”
“Cornmeal, 50 cents a pint. Lard, one dollar a pound.” The prices were even higher than they’d been in St. Joe. “Better get on with it.”
“You! Hey! You got any eggs?” Ina, her voice like a screech owl’s above the din.
“Gotta wait your turn, ma’am.” He handed a twist of flour to the matchstick-thin woman. The woman looked at the coins in her palm for a long time before she handed him one. She turned to go, shooing two dull-eyed children ahead of her.
Caroline whispered a prayer for her.
Martha’s lips thinned. “Hold my place,” she said. Martha pulled a bill from her reticule and held it over her head. She pushed her way through the crowd, catching up to the ragged mother and her twist of flour.
Caroline couldn’t hear, but she read Martha’s lips.
“You dropped this,” Martha told the woman. And when the woman from the other train demurred, Martha pressed the money in her hand and walked back.
“Nice,” Caroline said. “I would have done it, but—”
Martha waved a dismissive hand. “It isn’t your own money. Ben wouldn’t have minded. He won’t when I tell him. There’s people worse off than us.”
Without Pace and Michael, that could have been Caroline.
Caroline let Martha go first because of the children. When it was her turn she ordered dried beans, flour, cornmeal and coffee. There was no sugar, and there were no eggs—facts which sent Ina Prince off in a huff. Caroline ordered salt and dried bacon, and slipped in nine peppermint sticks—four for the remaining Harknesses and five for Lyman Smith’s brood.
“Mr. Moriarty will pick up my order,” she told the clerk.
She glimpsed him in the crowd.
If anyone stood out in a crowd, it was Michael Moriarty. He and Ben chatted with the scout from another group. The scout drew something on the dirt floor, with a stick, and both Michael and Ben bent to inspect it. A map? A warning? Michael’s rich laugh rose, distinct in the babble. Caroline turned her head away.
She’d look at fabric with Martha. The selection was sparse, or would seem so to anyone whose clothes hadn’t been beaten down by prairie dust and rain. But it was fabric and it was new.
As Martha fingered a bolt of cotton in a rich burgundy red, her face filled with longing.
“That’s pretty.”
“Nice for Christmas,” Martha murmured.
“Why don’t you buy it? I’m sure Ben wouldn’t mind. You’ve been so careful all along.”
“I shouldn’t.” Martha pushed the bolt away. “I’ve got to make the money last, and we’re not even halfway there. Rose is set, she has all the dresses you gave her, and the others are fine with hand-me-downs, at least for now. And me—I don’t even know what size I’ll be by Christmas.” She finished in a voice meant for Caroline alone.
“Oh, Martha.” Caroline grappled with this new complication. A welcome one, especially to parents like Ben and Martha, but still… “How did you ever find the time? And the energy?”
“Ben and I comforted each other after we lost Samuel. Wasn’t that hard. Near as I can tell, the baby’s due March.”
Comfort. What Dan had done for her after Michael wreaked havoc on both their lives. Caroline pulled herself back to the present. “Are you feeling all right?” she asked in the same low voice.
“Better’n I did with the first five. No morning sickness. The Lord knows how much we can take. I’m tired a lot, but I was tired before,” Martha said.
Suddenly the trading post seemed smaller, and the smell of a fur trapper made Caroline’s stomach lurch. She remembered her own pregnancy, the good part, after Dan married her. She had to get out of there. Caroline squeezed Martha’s hand. “I am happy for you,” she said, and meant it. “I’m going back now. When you get to camp, send the girls over. I’ve a surprise for them.”
She left the sacks to Michael’s care, headed blindly toward the entryway. Better the harshness of camp life than these memories. She grazed against another person, mumbled an apology and was almost out of the shop when a shrill voice cried, “There’s Miss Pierce! Hullo, Miss Pierce!”
“Miss Pierce”? The title belonged to a lifetime ago. It had to be for her.
She had last seen the little boy when he was dressed for church, in knee breeches, dark jacket and white shirt, his hair slicked back with water. Now he wore a faded homespun shirt and pants, his feet bare to the dirt floor like most of the emigrant children. Zebulun Wilkins, a former student, grinned up at her. “I didn’t know you were on the trail! I’m keepin’ a diary, just like you told me to do if I ever had an adventure.”
She touched his flyaway brown hair. “That’s good, Zeb. I’m pleased to see you.”
“And I’m doing good at my multiplication, even though the new teacher didn’t explain it near as well.”
“That’s fine.” Time to drag her gaze up to his mother. “Hello, Mrs. Wilkins.”
Mary Alice Wilkins inclined her head. “Mrs. O’Leary.”
The former social leader of Summer Pasture, Ohio had traded her morning, afternoon, and evening dresses in a rainbow of colors for a housedress almost as faded as Caroline’s. Freckles dotted the once-envied skin, and a sunbonnet hung down her back. She looked tired, as tired as Caroline felt. And her brown eyes held only a touch of their old arrogance.
“I didn’t know you were on the trail,” Caroline said. “Zeb talked about it a lot, said his father wanted to go.” That was when Zeb had still been her student, before his mother crossed the street to avoid talking to her.
Mary Alice shrugged. “My husband Nate got the bug, and here we are. Women don’t get a choice, do they? We’re with Carl Huckabee’s outfit. What are you doing out here?”
“I sold Daniel’s farm. I’m working my way West and hoping to find a job in the Oregon Country.” Or something.
“Is that Michael Moriarty I see?”
Mary Alice knew perfectly well it was. Best to get it over with. “Yes. He’s the scout for this outfit, and I hired on as their cook.”
“Oh.” Mary Alice could
invest the single word with a fortune of meanings.
Well, they wouldn’t be friends this time around either. Caroline made as if to go. “I hope you have a good trip.” Her manners were dwindling like the flour in the barrel.
But Mary Alice grabbed her arm, her touch searing through the worn fabric. “It’s awful.” Her words spilled from some place deep within, to someone she didn’t care about impressing. “It’s always cold or always hot, and there’s never enough of anything. And everything’s so dirty. My children…I’m afraid every minute of the day and night. If I’d known what it would be like, I would have left Nathan. Nothing in Oregon can be worth this.”
Depended on what one had left behind.
“At least you have Nathan to go through it with. Good day, Mrs. Wilkins.”
19
Caroline woke to a baby’s cries, the thin but insistent wail of a newborn. No, not again. Relief followed as the wails grew in intensity. Even she knew a baby with a cry like that was alive.
The sky outside was still dark. The white canvas didn’t hide anything, day or night. But the chill in the air told her that dawn was near.
They’d pulled in later than usual last night, the result of Henry Prince’s losing a wheel on the trail, and they’d struggled to make camp in the dark. She’d gone to bed without even scrubbing the dishes. She knew she’d pay for it today. Out here, chores had a tendency to snowball. She was glad for the discipline of the farm years, especially the year without Dan. Might as well be glad for something. She fumbled her way into a shirtwaist and skirt, but left her hair in its thick nighttime braid. She drew back the canvas curtain.
Michael had started a fire.
Her job. She clambered down the side of the wagon, more quickly than she had back in St. Joe, but no more gracefully. Smoothing back the wisps of hair escaped from the braid, she joined him at the fire.
The rest of the camp slumbered on, except for one furious infant.
“You shouldn’t be doing my work.” Caroline warmed her hands at the blaze.
Westward Hope Page 12
