by Emily Woods
“Nothing's ever been right for us,” he replied, looking so disappointed, so crushed, that Beth had finally relented.
“If you really think this is the only way,” she agreed, her voice low. “But what happens if one of us actually falls in love out west? What will we do then?”
It wasn’t a real question. Neither one of them would ever allow someone to get close enough for that to happen. They’d learned early in life that if you cared about people, they had the power to hurt you. But George had an answer for that too.
He told her that people wouldn't question someone losing a wife. She could just move to another part of the state, and he would tell people she'd died. But that answer didn't sit well with her.
“What if you find someone?” she'd questioned, probing the old wound a little. “What happens to me then?”
“That's never going to happen,” he'd answered solemnly, his eyes filled with shame and regret. “And you know why.”
She did know why, and didn't say any more. Instead, they sold some of the gold their father had given them years before when he'd been working a productive claim. It was their only inheritance, a treasure that they'd managed to keep hidden from their greedy relatives. After receiving the money for it, they'd boarded a stage coach to Independence, Missouri, where they'd used almost all of the rest of their gold to buy everything they needed for the journey west, including paying the fee of the wagon master who would bring them to their destination.
With just a little money leftover, the brother and sister had joined the wagon train with hope in their hearts that the future would hold some happiness for them.
“You sure have a way with baking,” Emma commented as she walked by their campsite. “No matter how much advice I get from Grace, I can never make such light bread.”
Beth looked down at the loaf she was unwrapping, one she'd made in the morning. It didn't look special to her, but when she saw Emma's bread, she noticed the difference immediately.
“It's just extra pounding,” she replied softly, keeping her eyes down as she usually did. “And maybe a little extra saleratus.”
Emma nodded, but didn't looked convinced. “Maybe tomorrow morning you can show me?”
Although she'd tried hard to keep to herself, Beth didn't reject Emma's offer. How could she do so when she was so hungry for companionship? It was strange to feel this way considering she’d never had a true friend, but the overture of this kind woman who was only a couple of years older than her twenty-five years was too hard to refuse.
“You can show all of us,” Hope chimed in. “My mother's bread is good, but it isn't like this.”
Beth hadn't even seen Hope appear and jumped a little at the sound of her voice. “Oh!” she exclaimed, putting her hand to her chest. “Hello, Hope.”
The young woman's eyes widened. “I'm sorry! Did I startle you?”
“It’s fine. I'm a little jumpy today.” She didn't add that she was usually nervous, that it was part of her character to be easily startled. When she was young, being skittish had been part of her survival at the gold mining camp. From the age of eleven, men had started leering at her, and she'd had to always be on guard. In a way, when their mother had abandoned them and their father had decided to send them away, she'd been greatly relieved of at least one worry. However, many more were to follow.
Grace, Preacher Riley’s wife, overheard the last bit of their conversation. “Did you not get enough sleep, dear? It was very noisy around the camp last night.”
Being suddenly surrounded by three lovely women who were all concerned about her caused a lump to rise in her throat. When had anyone besides her brother shown such compassion for her wellbeing?
“Yes, it was,” she murmured.
“Well, I have some chamomile tea that I take to help me if I haven't slept much,” Emma informed her. “If you like, I'd be happy to give you some tonight.”
Tears stung the backs of her eyes. Why were these women, whom she'd avoided quite successfully up until now, being so kind to her?
“Thank you,” she replied, blinking rapidly to keep the tears from falling. “That's so kind.”
“Not at all! Consider it an exchange for learning your secrets to baking a perfect loaf!”
They four of them had a little laugh at that, and for the first time in months, perhaps years, Beth felt herself relax.
“You were mighty cozy with those ladies this evening,” her brother said casually as he dipped his spoon into his bowl of stew. His voice wasn’t judgmental, but Beth knew that he was concerned. “What were you all talking about?”
Beth glanced up from her dinner briefly. “Nothing much,” she answered. “We mostly commented on how things have been up until now and what's ahead.”
He nodded slowly, thoughtfully. “Well, be careful, Beth. We've managed to keep things to ourselves this far. Don't go messing them up now.”
Although she knew that he didn't mean to be unkind, Beth felt attacked and became defensive. “Have I let you down?” she whispered rather fiercely, surprising both her brother and herself. “Ever, George?”
Unexpected bitterness boiled up inside her chest to the point where she lost her appetite. Dumping the soup back into the pot, she all but threw the bowl down and stormed away. Of course, stormed away for her just meant leaving abruptly, but George knew her as well as she knew him.
“Beth!” he called softly, putting his own bowl aside to rise and chase after her. “Come on, now. Don't be that way.”
She stopped walking and crossed her arms, staring at the river that was flowing quietly today. A muscle near her jaw tensed and her back was stiff when he put a hand on it. Her lips trembled at the soft touch, and she knew that tears were close.
“You know I trust you more than anyone. You're all I have.”
Shaking her head released a tear that she quickly wiped away. “Then you should know better. Don't accuse me of jeopardizing us. I know what we have and what we don't. I know the risk we're running just as well as you do.”
They'd discussed the fact that they could be fined and possibly imprisoned for posing as man and wife, but they’d decided that the risk was worth it. Besides, it didn't seem likely that they would get caught so long as they didn't talk much and kept to themselves.
But now Beth didn't want to keep to herself. In the past, the truth of her life had prevented her from making friends, and now she was somehow even lonelier because of a lie. Not having friends before hadn’t been her choice, but the outcome of her situation. Now the situation had changed, and she had a slim chance at happiness.
“I will not reveal our secret,” she promised him, her lower lip trembling. “But these women have reached out to me. They have extended friendship, and I will not throw it back in their faces. Either you trust me or you don't, but either way, I don't care. I love you, and I will still follow through with our plans, but you have to let me have this, George. Please.”
He stared at her for a moment, then nodded and sighed.
“Fine, Beth,” he finally said. “Have it your way. I just hope that we don't regret it.”
2
At four the next morning, the rifle shot woke everyone as usual, but Beth rose with a lighter spirit than she'd had for months. As she emerged from the tent she shared with her brother, she looked over to where Emma and her family slept. When the woman pushed back the flap and looked her way, Beth gave her a tentative smile. She had no idea what had prompted the woman to reach out to her yesterday, but she would not refuse the gift.
“Good morning,” she said shyly. “Did you sleep well?”
Emma nodded and smiled back. “And you?”
“Yes, thank you.”
Grace and Hope appeared in the darkness, the mother holding a lantern. “We're ready to learn your secrets,” she joked, but Beth could see that Hope was not in as good a mood as her mother. The girl was not even twenty years old yet and had a kind young man and her beck and call. What could she have to be so do
wncast about?
“I hope you won't be disappointed,” Beth murmured. “It's really not that exciting.”
The two older women laughed. “We'll be the judge of that,” Emma declared.
Over the next hour, she showed them how she first warmed up the water to the exact right temperature, kneaded the dough for longer than usual, and then let it rise a little longer than others generally did.
“I also add a little more saleratus and decrease the salt,” she explained, referring to the rising agent that everyone used for their baking. “It's a trick my mother used when baking bread, something her mother taught her.”
The three women listened carefully, but Beth could tell that Hope was not as enthusiastic as she'd been the day before. When the other two women went back to their own sites to start their bread, Hope hung behind a little.
“Is everything okay?” Beth asked timidly. It wasn’t in her nature to enquire after other people’s well being, but the girl looked so miserable that the question was out before she could stop it.
Hope's face screwed up with agony, and she shook her head. She opened her mouth, but then quickly closed it again.
“Thank you for showing us how to make the bread,” she mumbled. “Have a good day.”
As she scurried off, Beth felt her heart constrict a little. The young woman's face reflected real torment, something she was very familiar with. Her own spirit had been broken at a young age and was not likely to ever recover. She doubted that Hope was suffering in the same way, but her heart still went out to the girl. The only problem was that she didn't know how to help her. What advice could she give when she’d never experienced love herself?
However, Hope's face kept appearing in her mind's eye over the course of the day. She wasn't sure how she managed to work up the courage to talk to her, but at lunchtime, the two of them were fetching water near the same spot, and she felt the urge to speak.
“I hope you're feeling better,” she said softly as she dipped her bucket into the river that fed into the Platte. “It's hard enough walking when you feel well.”
Hope's bottom lip trembled a little, and her eyes closed for a moment.
“Do you know about Gabriel and me?” she whispered, looking over her shoulder to where the trio of brothers were relaxing and eating their lunch of cold bacon and bread.
“Um, I think so. You two are...involved?”
Hope nodded. “Yes, we are, but Gabriel can't convince his brothers to let him go to Oregon City. They want him to travel south for gold.”
Beth felt her stomach tense. Although she knew that the brothers were planning to go to California to join in the gold rush, she nearly broke out into a cold sweat every time it was mentioned. She knew from experience how things would likely go for them.
“They must care about him a lot,” she murmured. “They would miss him.”
Hope shrugged. “Maybe, but he doesn't want to go. He wants to come with my family to Oregon and be a farmer. He doesn't have gold fever like his brothers do.”
Her heart sank, and she felt another familiar tug on her spirit, the same kind that had propelled her to talk to Hope, and she couldn’t ignore it. She knew that God led people to speak to others, but she didn't consider herself to be someone He could use. Her grandmother, a woman who had religiously prayed, fasted, and read the Bible was the type of person God wanted, not her.
Her faith was a mysterious thing to her. Despite the harsh life she and her brother had endured, Beth had managed to hang onto her beliefs. She didn’t know very much, and she was mostly in awe of what she did know, but somehow, she’d never let go of her faith, even after being abandoned by her mother, shipped off to live with uncaring relatives by her father, and… Well, she didn’t want to dwell on the last issue.
Neither of her parents had cared to foster those beliefs, and her brother thought that putting one's trust in an invisible God was ridiculous, but Beth still believed that there was a God who loved them. The one thing she'd insisted on bringing with her everywhere she went was the Bible that her grandmother had reluctantly put into her hands before they'd left Kentucky for North Carolina in 1838, when she was only ten years old and George was twelve.
“Read it and do what it says,” she’d told her. “I hope I’m not wasting it on you.”
Beth had understood. It was the only Bible she had, but she wasn’t well and probably knew that she wouldn’t be on Earth much longer. Beth always supposed that her grandmother had bequeathed it to her in order to keep it in the family, and she’d been glad of it. There had been many times during those years that she’d been glad of it, reading the Psalms over and over again, and finding great comfort in the words of Jesus.
Looking back, she was surprised that her mother had gone along with idea, but she’d been excited by the prospect of finding wealth. However, after two years, she’d become disenchanted with that way of life to the point where she couldn’t endure it anymore. She’d taken what she believed was her fair share of the money that her father had made and left the three of them behind.
Their father tried to manage the two children, but his heart wasn't in it. He’d truly loved their mother and fell to drinking. After that, he didn’t work much and therefore didn’t bring in much money. They'd been left to fend for themselves most of the time, and after another year, George had gotten into a terrible fight that had left him unconscious, and he'd sent them to live with his relatives back in Kentucky, giving them most of the gold he managed to hang onto as a kind of payment that they were meant to hand over to his sister. She wished he’d come with them. Even though the claims had all but dried up, he was sure that he would find more and refused to leave.
“Gold fever can rob a man of his senses,” she murmured, blinking her eyes rapidly and returning to the present. “It did that to my father.”
Shock coursed through her. Never in her whole life had she revealed anything about her personal history, always fearing condemnation and shame, but something about Hope's desperation brought down her defenses.
Hope only gave her a curious look that was void of any judgment. “Your father was a gold miner? Where?”
The shame of her past had always haunted her: her mother's abandonment, her father's greed, her relatives’ poor treatment of them, and the incident that had provoked George to fight. But somehow, the worst of all was the lack of companionship she'd endured. She hadn’t had a single friend for more than twelve years because of it all. Now, there was someone who actually wanted to talk to her, who didn't look at her with disdain. Would she feel the same way when she learned of Beth's family?
She didn't want to risk it, but the words jumped off her tongue before she could think.
“North Carolina. He bought a claim there in eighteen-thirty-eight, sold all of our belongings and moved the whole family there before the end of the next year.”
Hope leaned back in surprise, her eyes wide. “What was that like?”
A lump rose in Beth's throat. She'd never been able to talk about her time in North Carolina to anyone besides her brother, and even they barely spoke of it.
“It was hard,” she replied quietly. “It was barely a life.”
The two of them brought the water back to their wagons, which were standing side by side. “Will you tell me more this afternoon?” Hope asked, her eyes eager. “I want to be able to tell Gabriel so that he can have better reasons not to go with his brothers. They won't accept that he wants to go because of me or because he wants to be a farmer. They don't believe that he knows his own mind.”
Could she do this for Hope? Could she dredge up the horrid memories that she'd kept buried for over fifteen years?
With one look in the desperate girl's eyes, Beth had her answer.
“If you want me to,” she agreed. “But I have to tell you that it's not a nice story.”
Hope nodded. “I don't expect it to be.”
The afternoon passed slowly as the group began their walk through the South Pass,
the Rocky Mountains on either side of them. Hope and Beth fell in step with one another, given that their wagons were side by side.
“I thought about leaving my family and going to California with him and his brothers,” Hope confided quietly. “But my father has already told me that a gold mine is not a place for a respectable woman, but he only knows what he's been told. What would you say?”
Beth tried to find the right words to say to this sweet girl, but how could she put the indelicate delicately?
“I would say that he's right,” she began, her voice hoarse. “It's a hard life, for one, but the men who work there are…different from regular people. Or maybe they grow to be that way because of the life they live.”
Hope's eyebrows pulled together, and Beth knew she'd have to explain. Taking a deep breath, she continued, though it cost her everything. She was getting precariously close to revealing a secret no one but George knew.
“The men became hard. Their way of talking was rough, they were prone to violence and fights broke out often, especially when the day hadn't produced much gold. And sometimes, they wouldn’t even know what they were doing.”
“Did your father find much?” Hope asked.
Beth shrugged, her mind pulled in a different direction, but maybe that was better. She barely knew Hope after all. She didn’t want to traumatize the girl.
“At—at first he did. He went at the peak of the rush, selling all of our belongings and moving us there in a week's time. One of his friends convinced him to give up his job as a blacksmith, saying that he could make more money in a week digging up gold than he could in a year of working as a smithy.”
Her images of those days, the days before she nearly lost her innocence, were hazy, but she remembered them as pleasant, save for her mother’s complaints about lack of money.
“But he stayed too long. Very few men were content to walk away when they'd found a good quantity of gold. Usually they ended up spending it all and would sell their claim for next to nothing after it was mostly played out.”
