We were here.
We were here.
But where would she be at this time next July?
And who would be with her?
20
The emigrants marked the 71st birthday of the country they’d left behind with a short religious service and a barn dance, minus the barn.
Ben Harkness, scrubbed and solemn, read from Hebrews. “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place which he was to receive as an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was to go. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he looked forward to the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker was God.”
Caroline listened with her head bowed, her sunbonnet shading her face. They were on the western side of the rock, the sun, not yet set, blinding them with its glory.
“By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a foreign land.”
Lord, make it be all right. Because this is all I have left.
Then the fiddles tuned up, a cacophony that echoed over this “foreign land” as Henry and Caleb built a communal bonfire. Children scattered over the plain, gathering chips and whatever bits of wood they could find to feed the blaze, while their mothers cooked for the community meal at their own smaller fires. Each woman set out her own specialty, and they served themselves from a long makeshift table of barrels covered by a board.
Caroline dished up beans alongside Loretta Smith.
Lyman was still sleeping off his bender, Loretta told Caroline. Nobody, including his children, seemed to miss him.
The girl looked almost pretty tonight, the firelight softening her angles, in a dress Caroline had given her from her own dwindling collection. The apple green set off her dark blonde hair, the cut masked her thinness, and, head high, she sat with her friends. Loretta’s youngest brother still clung to her skirts, but that was nothing; most of the older children cared for siblings. Better Lyman Junior than Senior.
The two fiddles, two guitars, and a mouth organ were wild tonight, improvising the old jigs and reels from Ireland and Scotland and playing faster and faster. Dancers whirled in the firelight, the women’s clean, faded dresses belling out as the men swung them for all they were worth. The blaze crackled and the music muffled the sound of sticks breaking, but the laboriously-gathered twigs and sticks crumbled, as the flames shot toward the sky. A full moon shed silver on them, adding its cool light to the fierce glow of the bonfire.
Lily Taylor, light on her feet, whirled in the arms of her oldest son. Henry and Ina danced, her pinched face laughing for once, as she must have done when they were courting. Tom and Sarah sat, shoulders touching, one in their bereavement as nothing else could have brought them together. Though Sarah was not yet strong enough to dance, she tapped her foot and clapped her hands to the music.
Sam, the hero of the night, had changed back into farmer’s clothing. He stood to one side, telling his story to a group of wide-eyed girls. Sam would not lack for a dancing partner, now or for the rest of the trip. Samuel, the miracle boy.
Caroline watched from an overturned barrel, half in the shadow of her wagon.
Martha sat nearby but didn’t say much. A dreamy smile crossed her face, and Caroline knew she was thinking of her baby, her first to be born in Oregon. Martha would not dance tonight. She had a good reason not to. Martha’s Western child.
They were half a continent from their old lives, from anything that had once mattered. They celebrated the birth of a country most would not see again. And they danced to drive away the darkness still ahead.
Ben tried to organize a square dance, calling the figures for one number, but he gave up. Tonight’s dancing had a life of its own. Better just to let it be what it was.
Jenny would not be dancing. Hannah Harkness had a cold, and Jenny had volunteered to sit with her so Martha could enjoy the celebration.
Caroline had fought, only half-jokingly, to be the one who sat this one out. “Jenny, you don’t want to miss the party,” she’d cajoled.
“Missus Harkness is the only woman in the train besides you who’s nice to me, or lets me near her kids.” Jenny stamped out their cooking fire. “I owe it to her.”
As she gathered pots for scrubbing, Caroline tried for a light note. “Surely you’re not afraid no one will dance with you.”
And Jenny had turned those huge blue eyes on her. “No, ma’am. Fact is, I’m afraid they would.” She went then, her long legs striding over the tamped-down earth, the setting sun gilding her short hair.
Now Caroline let the music carry her away, down the years and across the lives she’d lived. Eastern belle…frontier schoolteacher…farm wife.
This.
And Michael stood in front of her, backlit by the fire, shoulders broad in faded plaid, his black hair slicked down with water but the curls springing up anyway. “Dance with me,” he said, in the voice she’d know anywhere. He put out a hand.
Powerless to resist on this night of all nights, she put her small hand in his and let him lead her into the clearing. His strong arm went around her back. They were dancing, dancing as they had two lifetimes ago in that log schoolhouse in Ohio. Didn’t matter what the others thought.
If anyone even noticed. The figures, strange in the moon and flames, were barely recognizable to the loved ones who watched and tapped their toes to the manic music.
And there wasn’t anyone else. There was only him, Michael Moriarty, in the private world they’d created back in the little teacher’s cottage.
She rested her head on his shoulder, and his arm tightened about her. She never wanted to move out of that circle. She wished the music would go on forever. She loved him. Again and still. But she couldn’t.
The music went on, moving wildly but seamlessly from one tune to the next.
But Caroline’s feet stopped moving. She wrenched herself from Michael and ran, out of the circle of light, out on the plain to the blessed velvet darkness.
Even the moon was too bright.
You can’t.
He followed her, his long legs easily covering the distance. His breath came heavily, and as he caught her arm, his voice was hoarse. “There. ‘Tis enough. You cannot deny what’s between us.”
“There is nothing between us.” The words were wrenched from some place deep inside her. His arms held her, pinning her to the spot. She stared up at his strong jaw, those blue eyes, the hint of evening stubble. The face she’d known as well as her own, and tried to forget.
His gaze burned into her and she reached up to push back a curl of black hair, the way she had a lifetime ago. Her hand remembered, her body remembered. As if they’d never been apart. She fit into him like a key into a lock.
He traced her jaw line with his thumb. Don’t. Anything but that. But she couldn’t move.
He bent to kiss her, his lips seeking hers with a long-denied passion. No way she could resist. He was too strong, physically and otherwise…he was Michael. Her arms went around his neck, her slender frame fused into his as she responded. And the rest of the world dropped away. Again.
When his lips finally freed hers, she dropped her hands to her sides. “I can’t.”
“Can’t what? Can’t love me again? ‘Tis more like you never stopped.”
“I can’t…do this.” When he reached for her again, she made herself go stiff. “Michael, please.”
He kept his hands on her forearms, just enough to break any thought of a run. “That was the kiss of a woman in love. Whatever’s gone on before, Caroline, that was real.”
“No.”
“And why not?”
He could take her out here, away from everyone. But he wouldn’t. He had never forced her. And that was part of her guilt. She’d wanted him, too, back on that leafy October night and all the nights that followed.
She twisted in his grasp. “Michael, I’ll be going now. Please.”
His hands dro
pped to his sides. He looked at her in defiance and disbelief.
But as she walked away, his voice followed her. “I know why. You haven’t forgiven me, Caroline. For all your fancy Christian airs—your Bible-quoting—you haven’t forgiven me. You’re a fraud.”
She turned on her heel. The moon went behind a cloud, and she hoped the sudden darkness hid her face. “Of course I’ve forgiven you. I’m here, aren’t I?”
His words came like blows. “You’re here because you had no other choice. Because Pace hired you. But your heart is like stone where it comes to me. You’ve never let go of your anger toward me, and you can’t see past it to what we could be. You learned a lot of things from Daniel, but forgiveness wasn’t one of them.”
“Don’t talk to me about Dan.”
“Don’t talk to me about your God,” he shot back.
She ran then, stopping at last on the western side of Independence Rock, in shadow now, and leaned her hot cheek against its cool smoothness. How could he? How dared he? Forgiveness. What did it mean, anyway? She’d done her best to put their mistakes behind her. Wasn’t anything she could do about it; the damage had been done.
He’d said he loved her. Would it be so hard to let him love her? In their kiss, she’d felt the same thing he had. It wasn’t over. She’d buried their child, buried her precious Dan, and still it wasn’t over.
“Be not yoked to unbelievers.” She clung to the remembered verse. See, Lord, I couldn’t have let myself love him anyway.
The way Daniel let himself love you?
That was different. Dan rescued me.
Because you were the love of his life.
The faint thread of the music came to her, borne on a sudden warm breeze. Though the night was hot, she shivered in her thin cotton dress. A Fourth of July without fireworks. Except for the ones between her and Michael. Did “forgiveness” mean letting Michael anywhere near her heart? She couldn’t do it. She would go up in flames, like those twigs in the bonfire.
Dan’s last words to her, as he lay dying on their rope bed. Old Dan and Bridget were already gone, she’d nursed them without success, and now Dan was going. She bit her lip as she sponged him, knowing it wouldn’t bring his fever down.
Stay with me.
His eyes were huge in his ravaged face. She’d taken away his glasses away; they wouldn’t do any good now.
“Caroline.” He’d lifted one weak hand to stop her ministrations.
“What?” She remembered blinking back tears. Twenty more minutes. Ten. Was it too much to ask? She’d nurse him for the rest of her life if that was what it took.
“These past two years were the happiest of my life.” The words came slowly, each as much of an effort as when he’d moved stones to clear their land. “You made me happy.”
“Danny. Don’t try to talk.”
“But there’s one more thing I need you to do. Forgive Michael.”
And as she’d stood frozen, absorbing his words, the death rattle had begun.
“Forgive Michael.”
Surely he hadn’t meant she should marry Michael. Even Daniel wouldn’t—
“Forgive Michael.”
Forgive Michael.
And let him hurt her again?
I did.
The voice was the unmistakable one of her Lord.
Glad of the darkness, she moved toward her wagon. She could not go back to that dance, not at the cost of her life. She’d read her Bible and go to sleep, and deal with Michael in the morning. Or not.
“We-el, here’s a pretty sight. Good thing there’s a moon.”
Lyman, who’d slept off his bender. Just in time to ruin what was left of her night.
“I’m tired, Mr. Smith.” She pushed past him.
But the husky, teasing voice followed her. “I seen you kiss ‘im. The scout.”
She froze, skidding to a stop on the baked earth.
“Wouldn’t want that to get around now, would we?” Smith moved closer, and she saw the grin, his strong, yellow teeth in the moonlight.
Something screamed inside Caroline. She collected what was left, the rags of her composure. Her voice shook, hot with fury and exhaustion. “If you say one word to anyone about what you saw tonight, I’ll tell people about the cane marks on Loretta’s back. I saw them when I gave her the dress. And if I see any more, I’ll tell anyway. Good night, Mr. Smith.”
~*~
Michael walked blindly out on the prairie, the first direction he found away from her. He didn’t stop until the white covers of the wagons, backlit by the fire, glowed faintly in the distance. Fool. That was a stupid stunt. Sure and she’s told you how she feels about you.
But she’d shown him, too. For a moment he reveled in the memory of that kiss, of her in his arms as they’d danced in the firelight. As if she’d belonged there. Just as before.
Though his body yearned for her, it was more than physical. He wanted to know and be known by this woman, wanted to protect her, wanted her at his back. What Ma and Da had had, Ben and Martha, even Henry and his shrill Ina. What he’d walked away from before.
Why did she have this hold on him, even now?
She was beautiful, no argument there. Not in the stop-men-in-their tracks way of Jenny, but in a manner that sneaked up on a man and never let him go. They had laughed about it once, Caroline arguing that her stature and coloring didn’t hold the proverbial candle to his more dramatic looks. “I’m just a little brown wren next to you,” she had teased.
And Michael, his head spinning from her nearness, had answered, “Acushla, then the brown wren is the most glorious bird in creation.”
But she had been much, much more. Though he’d told her only the basics about Ireland she had known somehow, on some level, and loved him anyway. In her bed, by her fireside, at her kitchen table, in walks and rides, her quiet acceptance of him had muted some of his pain.
She had loved him for who he was—or in spite of it.
The dancing had been a foolish move. Now all the harpies would be on her, with their unbridled tongues and sly looks. He had ruined her reputation—twice.
He pounded one fist into the other. Fool! He’d be months undoing this mistake, if it could be undone. Months of only the barest exchanges with her, months of keeping his distance for the benefit of the gossips. When all he wanted was to be one flesh with Caroline Pierce O’Leary.
And they still had to get over the mountains.
It was bitter medicine for both of them. In the darkness he cursed this country that had given him freedom, and then set Caroline in his path.
21
“Miss Caroline, best if you move.” Ben’s voice was kind as always, but beginning to fray around the edges.
“No.” Skirts fanning out across the short grass, she scuttled closer to Patches and put an arm around the ox’s large, drooping head. But Patches didn’t bother to look up. His bloated belly stuck out in front of him. His beautiful brown eyes were glazed, one part misery to one part terror.
The noonday sun beat down on their heads. It even penetrated through her sunbonnet. Though the wagons had gone on to midday camp, their dust still hung in the air, filling her throat until she thought she would choke. The spiky grass cut through her thin skirt, but Caroline didn’t care.
Ben squatted in front of them. “Be a kindness,” he said in his mild way. “He’ll never make it the rest of the trip, never make it through the mountains. Best to take care of it now.”
She had seen the carcasses of the great beasts, bleached white by the prairie sun, stripped bare by the prairie scavengers. And still she hadn’t believed, until Patches had dropped down in the grass, his bellows of agony echoing across the wasteland. They had unyoked him and the other three had pulled on alone, awkward and unbalanced, to the noon camp. Sam had taken her place beside the remaining three, and she had run back to be with Patches.
Ben had matched her, stride for stride, with his rifle over his shoulder. “He’s been sick for a couple of days,”
Ben was saying. “You seen it coming on. Might have been the grass, might have been the water, but he’s in no shape. He can’t pull, and that’s what we got him out here for.”
Michael stood a few feet away, his arms crossed over his chest and a faint smile on his face. Not hard to tell what he was thinking. “Sure, and didn’t I tell you not to name them?”
Oxen weren’t pets. They were beasts of burden. Pace would probably have sold the team anyway, when they got to Oregon.
Caroline bit her lip. It was just an animal. She shook out her skirts, got up and walked away. Michael made a gesture as she walked by, but she ignored him. She walked a few steps further onto the prairie, her bonnet shading her face, and bowed her head with her back to the man and beast. But when the shot crackled she flinched. The bellow that followed, she hoped she’d never hear anything like it again.
That was that.
She walked back slowly.
Patches jerked a little, and then lay still.
Ben shouldered his rifle. “I’ll get some of the men to help me move him out of the way. I’m sorry, Miss Caroline.” He seemed unusually weary, for Ben, and as he turned to go he stumbled.
Michael caught him and steadied him. “Man, what’s wrong? Have you been tippin’ that jug of Lyman’s?”
“You know better.” But Ben’s voice was faint. His breathing came hard, and a sheen of perspiration covered his forehead. “I’m not feelin’ well. Sort of cold and—” He broke away, threw down the rifle and ran behind a large rock. When he emerged, the sheen was still there and he was trembling. “Gonna go lay down for a while.” He began to walk toward the camp, swaying a little.
Michael exchanged a quick glance with Caroline, and then stooped to pick up the rifle. “I’ll walk back with you, Ben,” he called, and his long legs overtook the man in a few quick strides.
Caroline prayed for Ben as she made her way to their temporary camp. She brewed coffee over a small fire, with water boiled at their last stop, and set out cold cornbread and dried buffalo. No time for more. But too much time to think about her friend, his family, and how she would drive a wagon with three oxen.
Westward Hope Page 14
