Westward Hope

by Bailey, Kathleen D. ;

  Jenny plopped down on the ground beside Caroline. Her blue eyes were round with the scene they’d just witnessed. “What stuck in their craws?”

  Michael took his seat again, whittling with a new savagery. The pile of shavings grew beside him. “They wanted someone to blame and they picked Miss Carver, the first thing to hand. Wagon trains are like small towns. The worst small towns.”

  Caroline knew about small towns. Though she didn’t like Ina and only liked Lily in small doses, Caroline defended them. She knew about loss, too. “It is the hardest thing they’ve had to face here,” she said.

  “They haven’t been through the Blue Mountains yet,” Michael responded dourly.

  “And anyway, Injuns don’t kiss,” Jenny blurted.

  Michael and Caroline swiveled their heads toward her.

  “I must of read it somewhere,” she said with a shrug.

  Caroline closed her eyes. The Blue Mountains. How could anything be worse than what they’d already seen? And done?

  “Been to see Miz. Harkness. She’s comin’ around,” Jenny was saying. “I bathed her and fixed her hair. She ain’t got much to say.”

  “I must go to her.” Caroline struggled to her feet. But the world reeled again, and she reached out to steady herself against the wagon.

  “I’ll be takin’ you.” Michael was on his feet again, offering his arm.

  She took it, glad again for his strength. She clung to his arm as they walked slowly around the circle of wagons.

  Families, what was left of them, huddled by their wagons. A foul stench, the ghost of their illnesses, hung in the lazy afternoon air. The smell of blood, of vomit, of dung-stained clothing burned because it was too dirty to wash.

  She stumbled over a bucket someone left out.

  Michael kicked it closer to the nearest campsite. “Nobody’s cleaned up anything yet,” he said. “It hit them too fast.”

  A vulture swooped down, and picked at the food scraps by a long-dead campfire.

  A gaunt man, one she didn’t know, passed them on his way back from hauling water. He put his tin pail on a campfire to boil and gave Michael a grim nod. They wouldn’t be caught again.

  Loretta was the only one stirring at the Smith wagon. Wrapped in a quilt, she poked at a sputtering fire. There was not an ounce of extra flesh on the girl. Really, there hadn’t been before she became ill. When she saw Caroline she smiled and held up a book. It was a slim volume of fairy tales Caroline had loaned Rachel Harkness, who must have loaned it to Loretta. Was she reading that well already? And was ever any child more in need of fairy tales?

  “Miss Loretta, I’m taking Mrs. O’Leary to the Harknesses. Then I’ll stop back here and help you with that fire,” Michael said.

  They reached the Harkness campsite, two wagons parked side by side. Unlike the others it was in order, with the last fire cleaned up, tools and dishes put away. Martha or Ben must have tidied it, with their last ounce of strength.

  Caroline looked up at Michael. His lips were a thin line. “Nobody would have done better in the West.”

  Ben’s wagons had special mounting blocks, collapsible wooden stairways he had made himself. He had thought of every detail.

  “I’ll be back in a half hour,” Michael said as she parted the curtain. “If you can’t comfort her in that time, sure and she can’t be comforted. You need to rest yourself.”

  She nodded, only too aware of how close she had come to dying.

  She stepped inside the wagon, adjusting her eyes to the dimness, and could go no further.

  Jenny should have told her.

  If she had, would you have come?

  Martha sat in a corner, with Ben stretched out beside her and his head in her lap. Her beautiful skin hung in folds, and her high color was gone. Just a week ago, her chestnut hair had been as thick and glossy as Rose’s. Now it hung in a single braid, and silver showed at the temples. She flashed a smile at Caroline, and then bent to her husband. “See, Ben, I told you she’d come.”

  Caroline knelt beside her friend. “Martha, I’m so sorry. If I could have, I would gladly have changed places with him.”

  “Wasn’t your time. And it wasn’t my baby’s time, either. I held on to him. Don’t know how I did it, but I did. I didn’t lose the baby.”

  She seemed to find comfort in the repetition. At least she would have that. Her Western child.

  “Where are the girls?”

  “Mrs. Stewart took them for the afternoon. So’s I could have time with their Pa. He’s dyin’, Caroline.” She stroked Ben’s forehead, the thinning brown hair she had teased him about. Brawny Ben. Now he looked at least sixty, his features defined by the skin stretched taut across his face. But with them it had never been about looks.

  Caroline shivered. It was cold in the wagon, away from the sunlight. “What will you do?”

  “I’m goin’ on.” Martha lifted her chin. “I said my goodbyes when we left Ohio. Never expect to see my folks again in this world. This was Ben’s dream. I got to go on. For him.”

  “How will you manage? It’s hard enough with a man.”

  Martha shrugged. “I talked it over with my kids. Sam will drive the second wagon and Rose will milk the cow. Esther will do most of the cookin’. She has to learn, and out here nobody much cares what things taste like. And Rachel will mind Hannah for me. They don’t want to go back either. They’re Ben’s kids all the way.

  “And when I get there I’ll cook, or open a boardinghouse. Maybe a store. Ben had a little seed money to get us started. I might even farm again.” She brushed a kiss on her husband’s forehead. “And our child Ben—I’m thinkin’ it’s a boy—he’ll be born in the West. Just like we wanted.”

  Oh, anything but that. Too many women, always the women, reduced to shells of themselves.

  But when Martha looked up, she was lucid. “No, I’m not mad. I just wanted a few more minutes with him.”

  What Caroline wouldn’t have given for ten more minutes with Dan.

  No. This couldn’t be happening, not to Martha.

  Michael had interceded for her, stormed Heaven the best he knew how.

  Could Caroline do any less? Caroline touched Ben’s forehead. It was hot, hot as a flatiron, hot as a forge. “Dear God, no. Lord, spare this—this good man.”

  Was that the death rattle? No, not yet.

  “Father God, spare him. For Martha. For all of us.”

  She barely heard the ordinary sounds of the camp in the afternoon, water buckets being set down, children waking from their naps, tools clanking as men repaired whatever had begun to fail on the journey.

  Caroline prayed as she’d never prayed before, beseeching God for Ben’s life. She touched his forehead again, and her hand lingered. It was cool.

  A tiny shudder ran through Ben. He opened his eyes and stared straight ahead. “Martha? Why is it dark in here? Is it nighttime already?”

  ~*~

  Caroline was ready when Michael came by the Harkness wagon, precisely a half hour later.

  Spent, she took his arm without protest, and he shortened his strides to hers. She had never been a large woman, and the disease had taken whatever spare flesh she had. Her eyes were big in her thin face, underscored by blue shadows.

  He had done this to her. If he’d stayed in Ohio, done his duty as a man, she wouldn’t have been on this blasted trail in the first place.

  And Ben was alive. Blind, but alive.

  “What will they do?” Michael asked.

  “They’re going on. Ben says he’ll be as useful blind in Oregon as he will in Ohio.”

  He would, too. Michael could see him already, navigating his world by touch and feel, learning to do things all over again. Ben would not be kept down.

  She was speaking softly, and he bent to hear her words. “What’s the cause of cholera, Michael?”

  Always the student, when she wasn’t being the teacher.

  “‘Tis a theory Pace and I have. We’re not men of science, but we
’ve noticed bad water and cholera go hand in hand, at least out here.”

  “But there were so many. And I boil our water.”

  She stumbled, and he helped her over a rough patch of ground. “I’m thinkin’ it was the Independence Day party. Remember, all you ladies pitched in with food?”

  “Yes. I ate Lily’s beans.” Her voice quickened. “But you didn’t get it, nor Pace, nor Jenny.”

  “I only ate your food. ‘Twas all I needed.” He paused to let that sink in, for whatever it was worth. “Pace didn’t eat a lot, he went off to mind the stock, and he’s had the cholera before. Jenny never came to the party. She was caring for Hannah, the only Harkness who didn’t get it.”

  She nodded slowly, as though her head felt too heavy. “It makes sense. As much as anything does out here.”

  They had reached her wagon.

  How good it would be to stay, to share domestic life and do little things for her, to talk about their day, to marvel over the miracle of Ben. But she was well enough now, she could do for herself. She had lived. It was enough for now. It would have to be. He handed her up into the wagon. “‘Tis time you rested again. Jenny or I will bring your supper. And you’re not to exert yourself.” He could see an argument forming. “When we start up again, I’ll be drivin’ for you for a few days. Jenny will ride ahead, be the scout. She’ll like that.”

  She looked down at him from the wagon seat, her small face sober. “When will that be, Michael?”

  “As soon as we’ve a driver for each family. We’ve lost a week, and we’ll have to press to get through the mountains before winter.”

  She nodded, let the curtain fall, and went on into the wagon. Alone. He pounded one fist into his open palm. If only he could go with her. Not to make love—she was far too weak still—but to share her day, to share the thousand little things that made up a life.

  But he could never be what Dan had been to her. Dan, whose name she had cried out in her delirium. He could never be half the man Dan was, or a quarter of what he’d been to Caroline.

  23

  They took up the trail again the next day, with haggard men and women, and sometimes their young, spelling each other beside the teams. “We’ll put one of the spare oxen on, in place of–of the one we lost.” Michael stamped out the breakfast fire. “I’ll drive your wagon, at least for the next week or two.”

  “I can drive.” Compared to what Caroline had been through…

  “You will not. You’re too weak. You’ll ride in Martha’s wagon, or with one of the other women.”

  He didn’t want to be alone with her. Was he, too, afraid of what might happen between them? Because it had already happened.

  She was too weak to argue. Gathering her Bible and bonnet, she trudged away. She rode with Martha in the mornings, though neither had much to say. Caroline huddled on the wagon seat while Martha walked beside the oxen.

  “‘Tis time you rest,” Michael always said after their noonings.

  “I won’t be able to sleep,” she countered, even as she climbed into the back of the wagon.

  “Nonetheless.”

  It was good to have someone care whether she exerted herself—or lived or died.

  But sleep seldom came. She lay on her side, watching the path of the sun through her canvas walls, and feeling every jolt of the wagon. Hearing the voices of people going about their business, ordinary talk in ordinary days, restored at last. Though none of them would forget the people they’d buried on the windswept plain. The graves they would never visit.

  Her mind would not quit. Over and over, she reviewed the events of that week—the plague that had cut down their company by a third, Ben alive but irreparably altered, Michael’s solicitousness. Daniel, in her dream more real than he’d ever been, in the place beyond sorrow or pain.

  Why didn’t you just let me die? she begged.

  But God was silent, as silent as the prairie nights.

  What lay ahead in fabled Oregon? Would she find love again, or go through life alone?

  Not alone. She had her God. But would he allow her to have a husband and children, a home full of laughter?

  Was it enough merely to have survived?

  Michael wanted her, wanted her in the right way now. She’d known it even before he’d told her, known it when he was at her bedside. They could start over. But he was the same Michael, as much as she could tell, and she was a different Caroline. A Caroline made new in Christ. It could never work, not in the way she needed it to. Had she any regrets? No. She squeezed her eyes shut, ignored the jolt as the wagon went over a rut. “I choose You,” she whispered into the silent afternoon.

  ~*~

  The fabled South Pass began as a broad, shallow opening between two distant mountains. The twenty-mile-wide swath had a gentle grade. Michael was still driving for her, and Caroline often got down and walked with the Harkness girls or the Smith children. It was good to feel strength coming back to her body, to stride up the rocky slope with the mountains in her sights. The mornings were cooler now, the faintest tinge of fall in the air.

  But the oxen weren’t so fortunate. Their steps were slower now, and more than one needed prodding. Others simply stopped where they were.

  “I’m glad you’re driving,” she admitted to Michael.

  “‘Tis the grass,” he said. “It isn’t enough. And the water doesn’t agree with them either.” Michael sighed and pushed back his hat. “They have trouble with the slopes, too. You’d do well to check the wagon, see if there’s anything you can do without.”

  They had already seen armchairs, end tables, even a pewter tea service abandoned at trailside.

  She turned away from the oxen carcasses, stripped by vultures and bleached by the sun, and scoured her wagon for anything she could do without. It was precious little. She’d left her collection of mismatched furniture in Summer Pasture. She held up a couple of books. But Michael shook his head, as she’d known he would.

  Breathing heavily and stopping often, the oxen lumbered on.

  On the third day, two of the Princes’ beasts slumped to the ground and died. They hadn’t brought backup, of course, and Henry issued the ultimatum: to make it easier on the surviving yoke, some of their belongings had to go.

  Ina’s refusal could be heard across the noon camp. “I need my furniture,” she argued. “What will I put in a house?”

  “If the oxen can’t pull, there won’t be a house,” Henry responded, an edge to his usual mild voice. “And it’ll be harder once we get to the real mountains.”

  “But they’re my things,” Ina wailed.

  With their cold dinners gulped, their oxen yoked, and their drivers on the wagon seats, the rest of the company was ready to move on. A small group of men stood near the Princes’ wagon. At a nod from Henry, they clambered inside. Grunts and curses. Most likely, they were bumping into furniture. Then, with more grunts, they threw the mahogany breakfront to the ground. A bookcase and the pineapple-carved headboard followed, splintering against the rocky ground.

  Ina’s scream ripped across the hills. She stared at the faces of her friends and fellow travelers, begging for some kind of comfort. But even Lily turned away.

  Even Lily knew now. One did what one had to do.

  ~*~

  On the fourth day they made camp on a stony plateau. Caroline went to bed before the sun set. Nights were cooler now, and she hoped to store up some rest. But her mind wouldn’t shut down. Ben blind. Wounded, careful Jenny. Her own brush with death. The unknown ahead of her. What did Oregon Country hold, if they ever managed to get there? Finally she slipped into a housedress, but left her feet bare. The smooth rock felt cool against her feet as she walked to the sloping edge of the plateau.

  The moon poured its light across the barren landscape. It was light enough to read.

  Michael was there, a dark shape with his back to her, but the height and the shoulders unmistakable.

  He started when he heard her, and made as if to go. “I do
n’t want people to talk. “

  “They will anyway.” He had spent a week at her bedside, and she’d seen women whispering behind their hands. She stood well apart from him and gazed back on the route they’d taken, a stony path splashed with moonlight. “Couldn’t sleep?”

  “I never can, at this point.” His white teeth flashed in his habitual grin, though tonight it seemed forced. “Look at it, Caroline. It’s like another world. It still amazes me.”

  “It’s not Ohio. Or Ireland.”

  “‘Tis halfway we are. Caroline, look at this.” He took her hand and led her to a crevasse in the rocks, where a thin stream of water glistened in the moonlight, clear against its black bed.

  Caroline looked and understood. “It’s flowing west.”

  “Yes.” Michael flung out his arms. “‘Tis the Continental Divide. We are now in the West.”

  Caroline reached down, put a drop of water on her fingertips, and tasted it. Western water. Suddenly she began to cry.

  And Michael gathered her into his arms. “‘Tis glad I am,” he murmured, “to see it with you.”

  They stood there for a long time, embracing like two old friends who had been through everything together. Dan was with them, and the better times in Ohio. They were young again and riding his uncle’s horses without a care. He was part of her life. He always had been. But he was more, and neither of them could deny it.

  She listened to the steady beat of his heart as she clung to him. How could she have fooled herself? And for so long? She lifted her face to him to say something—she would never remember what—and saw the hunger in his eyes as his lips claimed hers.

  No, they could never be just friends.

  When they parted he was breathing heavily, and all the brightness and the teasing, the fantastic stories, all the elements that made the Michael she’d known were gone. “Don’t ever,” he rasped, “tell me you don’t feel anything. Not after that. Don’t ever lie to me, Caroline.”

  “I won’t.” Not after that.

  She was trembling, and turned so he couldn’t see her face. Would it be so bad to let herself love him, to finish what they’d begun?