“Best we decide on our own for that as well,” Jeremy said, “about whether to stop or go on. We don't need rules for everything.”
“But if An tone s cattle should go on ahead and I stay behind, then his cows'll get the goods.” This from a ferret-faced man who had eased into the firelight.
“Push a little harder the next day. Pass him to get the better feed. Think for yourself, man,” Jeremy said.
“Seems like it'd be better to have some rules we could vote on. Matt Schmidtke,” the newest speaker said, introducing himself as he came to stand beside his father. His voice cracked in its youthfulness. “Be un-American to vote and not know what you're voting for.” He had a streak of white in his hair though he couldn't have been more than fifteen. She guessed him to be the same age as Tipton. Mazy wondered if she noticed him. Mazy leaned forward to look at her, but the girl still sat staring without a flicker of recognition.
“What does Scripture say of it?” It was Sister Esther again.
“Are women going to be allowed to speak? I mean if women are, we'll be here all night.” Another man's voice.
“We've been here long enough to be ate up by mosquitoes and bewitched by the dancing music with men doing most of the talking.” It was a voice Mazy recognized well—her mother's.
“Guess we could vote on whether or not to have a leader at all. Bryce Cullver, here,” the man said to introduce himself. He wore little wire-rim glasses. A shock of brown hair slipped over one lens. “Then let our chosen leader decide about women and dogs and the Sabbath stops and such after that.”
“I ain't turning over my rights ‘til I know who's voting. I wont follow someone I don't know,” said the ferret-faced man, arms crossed over his chest.
“Who gets to vote on whether to vote?”
“You see the kettle of worms you've unleashed, Antone,” Jeremy said. He sat back down. A few applauded. He shook his head, paused, and stood back up. “All right. I'm in for election. I stand for limited rules, independent thinking, and making decisions based on essentials. We stay together only so long as we agree. Disagree and we move out on our own, join up with others more to our liking.” He sat back down, and Hathaway patted his back.
“Well, can women vote?” the ferret man persisted.
“Who'll stop us?” Ruth asked.
“I rest my case,” Jeremy said. “We're all too independent to form up a kind of congress way out here.”
“I rest mine, too,” Antone said. He lifted both palms in the air as though to say, See? What did I tell you? “If we cant decide even who will vote, then howre we going to figure out how to cross a mountain together?”
“I suggest we take the matter up later, after people have had a time together. Once we cross the Missouri and see each other in action, we might know better who'll be a qualified captain or if we even need one at all.”
“Whose wise counsel is that?” Jed Barnard, the former solicitor, spoke across the circle. Heads turned.
“Mazy Bacon, wife of Jeremy,” Mazy said. She swallowed and didn't look at her husband, but she felt him turn to stare.
“All in favor ofthat sage advice say aye,” Jed finished. The resounding response reminded Mazy of thunder.
“Good. Let's dance,” shouted a youngish voice, and the crowd began taking sideboards from the wagons and laid them in the dirt. Several other people disappeared, walking toward distant fires. The Schmidtkes huddled near their wagons.
“You might have waited,” Jeremy said. His voice was stiffer than a new leather stirrup, and he spoke low. “Could have had this decided tonight if you'd have kept your counsel to yourself.”
“People need time to consider things, Jeremy. This gives it.”
“Just because you can't make a decision until it's been wrestled to death, doesn't mean others can't and shouldn't.”
His words stung. “Giving things a little time often reveals a right and perfect answer,” she said.
“Or none at all,” he said. “It's human nature to want to do things on our own. It's what this heading west is all about. Self-sufficiency. That's what's essential”
“Is it?” she said. “And here I thought marriage was a yoked team ” She stood, turned her back to him, stared at the dancers beginning to assemble. She heard him blow his nose, stand up, and stomp away “I apologize for sounding critical of your care of our Tipton,” Adora said, coming up behind Mazy who wondered how much she'd overheard just now. “I remembered her with more flesh. But she says she's solid as an iron horse”
“Whatever made you decide to come?”
“I told Hathaway here,” Adora poked a finger to her husband's chest, “I just could not take it, I just could not. Every night was a row up a salt river. I woke up more beaten than when I went to sleep.”
Tyrell strode across the disbanding circle and faced Tipton, flanked by her parents. His hands gripped his suspenders; his eyes held Tipton's. Adora said, “Your daddy said if I was going to mourn you so, we'd best go west, too.”
“All the way? To Oregon?”
“I believe our plans include California,” Charles told his sister He towered over the girl, tight curls around his head giving him a Roman look, even with his hat pushed high, exposing his smooth forehead. Mazy detected an edge to Charles's words. “More promise there, Papa says ” He flipped coins, their clinking hitting Mazy's ear like an annoying whistle.
“Figured you'd be grieving Tyrell if we took you home, so we'd only be exchanging one sad female for another,” Hathaway said. His eyes looked tired and lacked their usual sparkle.
Mazy wondered at the finagling that had gone to bring them here. Their decision to leave Cassviiie would have followed within days of the Bacons’ departure for them to have made it to Kanesville so quickly.
“Did you sell the store?” Tipton asked.
“Oh yes,” Charles answered before his father could “Nothings too good for you, now is it, little Tipton.”
“Aren't the men in our lives just too wonderful?” Adora gave her daughter a one-armed hug while she looked up into the eyes of her husband
“So we're all going…west?”
“Looks like it, daughter,” Adora said, high pitch to low. “Aren't you just pleased as pickles?”
It pressed against her chest, pulled then stretched until she thought she'd burst with the weight. Tipton thrashed about, strangled, gasping for breath. She heard sobs and Mrs. Muellers voice calling her name and she wondered who was crying and then realized it was herself.
“A bad dream,” Mrs. Mueller said in tones as soothing as a kittens purr. “Just a dream, child.” She untangled the light linen that had wrapped itself around the girls thin chemise and laid it lightly over them both. “Mazy used to cry in her dreams.”
“I don't dream, Mrs. Mueller,” Tipton said and pulled away from the older woman. “I'd sleep better if I were outside where the air mills around instead of trapped in this wagon like a badger.” She couldn't imagine how she'd survive these suffocating spaces when they reached the hot plains. “Men are so much wiser sleeping under the stars. We could drag the quilts out and—”
“Drier in here. Besides, Tyrell needs his rest,” Mrs. Mueller said.
“Tyrellie never entered my mind,” Tipton said. “It was a suggestion of comfort, yours and mine A tent's a must, I'm thinking.” She struck at the feather pillow, rolled it to fit beneath her neck. Her body dripped with perspiration.
“I've a suggestion for comfort,” Mrs. Mueller said. “Would you please call me by my name? It's so formal to share a bed with someone who can't even say my name”
Tipton felt herself blush in the night. Silence hung like a sparking board between them.
“Care to speak about the dream, child?”
“I told you It was the linen, that's all. I…don't like things tight around me. I'm fine now. I'm sure I'll sleep.”
“Could always hightail it to your parents’ wagon,” Mrs. Mueller said.
Tipton stayed silent
“Guess you will after we cross the river. Rearrange everything after that. Course looks like you got rearranged as it is, I'll ponder that.” The woman chuckled. “Look at it this way—you wont need to milk that cow no more.”
After that, the wagon grew silent and Elizabeths breathing changed. Tipton thought she might have fallen asleep. She could hear the pelt of raindrops against the canvas that stretched over the wagon top. “That Martin woman milked cows before, she tells me,” Elizabeth said. “Interesting, that one. She doesn't say much to tell you who she is, though she lets on like she has. Gets you talking about yourself, and you forget she hasn't said anything about herself. She rolls that whip pretty good too, I hear tell. Got herself a fine herd of horses. Wonder myself how she did that.”
Tipton turned over. If she didn't respond, Mrs. Mueller would eventually silence herself and fall back to sleep, which the woman soon did.
For Tipton, everything felt a muddle. She'd pretend she was composed, not left bereft by her parents’ arrival It felt good to hold them and yet she felt babied, stripped, and exposed. And Charles. Why had he come, wearing his usual dark and brooding face? Just to torment her, of course.
She couldn't tell anyone how she felt, not even Tyrell, who had tipped his hat early to say good night and then taken his bedroll to the fenced areas where the other teamsters slept. She longed to find a quiet place to talk with him, even though she knew that it was never wise to say out loud what made one worrisome or sad, never good to let people come too close. People took advantage. Tipton had found that out early.
What she felt for Tyrell at first surprised her. His very presence caused her to flutter and behave in jittery ways, but she kept her eye to the wheel hub. She thought of arms as thick as dock pilings, his chest that expanded as he worked beside the hot coals of the forge, and legs so powerful folks said he could outwalk a sturdy mule. Yet he was kind and quiet and kept kittens on an old pillow in a corner where he hung repaired harnesses It was what had drawn her in at first, the sound of kittens mewing behind the wide opening of his shop
He had not been in Cassville long, had planned to ride through and north, on to Prairie du Chien, then stayed. She sensed the safety of him, in the size of his arms and the breadth of his heart. And he extended that strength to her. It was the only time she felt powerful and truly safe. Tyrell made her more than what she was.
When he said he was heading west, she'd almost fainted. She'd taken huge breaths, couldn't get her air, her nose tingled at the tip, and she felt her hand go numb for the first time. She'd turned from him and saw tiny dots of light flicker before her eyes, but she hadn't fainted. He'd stepped behind her, had her drop her head and rubbed the back of her neck while he spoke in soothing tones, her ears hearing his words and the cries of the kittens. No one had seen the intimate exchange; she wouldn't have cared if they had.
As her breathing eased, he'd pressed her gently to his chest. In time, he declared himself to her. It was then that she'd made her plan. She would go with him, whatever it took, whatever the cost. He was the hub of her heart.
Mazy woke early, feeling nauseous. Maybe it was the Kanesville water. It tasted strong, not like the spring water they'd had in the barrels most of the journey so far. She slipped out of bed and found a basket with ash pone in it. She brushed the ashes from the corn meal and bit off a tiny portion to quell the bile building in her stomach. She'd never been sickly before All the activity, the people and strangeness, it was probably that. And the longing to go home. She picked up her lead pencil and paper and small book of Scripture and slipped out of the wagon, darkness fanning a chill.
She wrote in the mornings, organized the feelings that didn't make sense in any other way Sometimes she wrote about what she'd seen or heard, a phrase or two; sometimes of her feelings, the emptiness and longing; she wrote now of how Scripture nurtured in a distinctive way. Whatever it was, the very writing of a thing calmed her, gave her direction Not feeling well had interfered with her writing of late. Perhaps the coarse corn bread would help.
She checked the tomato plant as she walked by, pressing her fingers into the earth at its base. At the sitting log beside the fire, she pulled her shawl around her and inhaled the morning. She looked up. The sky threatened rain once again. She began to write. Met folk from Missouri yesterday, Suzanne Cullver and Bryce Woman has no sight. Pig took a liking to hen licking at her fingers. Mazy felt a little envy, remembering how the dog left her side to nudge the woman's hand stretched out into the air in front of her. The woman drew back with a start at the dog's brush of fur and said something with a snarl about “loose animals being kept at bay” Mazy'd felt her face turn pink and called the dog. He'd come reluctantly, apparently not sensing as Mazy had that the woman disliked his presence.
“I'm so sorry,” Mazy told her, noting that she said those words often lately.
She began to write ofthat incident, of apologizing, when a soft light caught her eye. A shadow moved behind the canvas in a wagon. Another early riser. The light centered in front of the form, eased out of the wagon, then hesitated. It headed straight toward Mazy's low fire and became the woman Sister Esther. In her other hand, she carried an oak lap desk by its handle
“You would probably prefer your time uninterrupted,” the woman said, approaching “Diary-keeping of this grand journey is a noble task. Others will read of our bringing these United States west.”
“Nothing so grand as that,” Mazy said, folding her paper. “Just ideas and impressions I have. And the mileage we make. I take it from the odometer.” She nodded toward the gear wheel that counted the revolutions
“I did not hear you out here or I would have chosen another path,” the woman said. “It is not my intent to intrude.”
“The night captures sound.”
“So it does. You are the woman who suggested we wait to vote?”
Mazy hoped the heat of her face didn't show. “It's always good to have time to consider.”
“Do you wish to avoid choosing a leader or traveling alone?”
“I think a captain's valuable if for nothing else than to settle disputes,” Mazy said.
The woman nodded. She set down the lantern and then the writing desk. “A reason why the Israelites demanded judges—for when they failed to settle things among themselves.”
“I wonder what difference there'd be now if God hadn't allowed that,” Mazy said. “If the Israelites had been forced to learn to compromise, not to become dependent on a judge, but to work together toward a solution. Maybe we'd be better at that now, too.”
“I have not thought of it that way,” Esther said.
“I must say I like being heard in the deciding of a thing, though,” Mazy said after a moment.
“A part of human nature,” the woman said, finally unclasping her hands to brush at her dark skirts. She looked down at Mazy. “That is part of what I try to teach my charges.” She nodded toward the wagon. “The importance of finding agreeable ways to live in close proximity. It is important that they remain clean and with the highest morals, to avoid sickness when there are so many people as we are here.”
“Who do you travel with?”
“I am employed by the Caroline Fry Marriage Association. We bring young women to be joined in wedlock to deserving young men. Two of my brothers are with me, acting as teamsters. We'll deliver the young women to their new husbands in California.”
“What after that?”
“Why, we'll head back for more.”
“You'll return? People do that?”
“Many forty-niners came back, of course. Some in but two months’ time—they claim—motivated by greed and the need to tell all of their exploits. But my brothers and I will return in an orderly, planned fashion.”
“It would be so…dangerous, traveling back alone.”
“Indeed. The newspapers do not mention the dangers of returning. They do not want to discuss the difficulties that would make souls turn around. But the fact is man
y do. How else would we have such guidebooks as your husband spoke of?” She lifted her eyes upward. “Others simply have a change of heart—the very meaning of conversion.”
“I'd wager those are folks who didn't want to go in the first place,” Mazy said. She tapped her pencil against her wool skirt.
Sister Esther looked at Mazy. “Perhaps something changed their mind.” The woman's black eyes pierced like an eagle's. Mazy felt invaded. But the woman must have guessed that about herself as she turned away, looked as though to find a place to sit, then pushed with her foot at the end of the log feeding the fire.
“I didn't want to come,” Mazy said, the thought of turning back gnawing “So it's no change of heart that makes me think of going home again.”
“That's what you pray for?” Sister Esther nodded to the Bible that rested on the log beside Mazy.
“For my husband to want to go back, before we go any farther,” Mazy said, her words tentative, not accustomed to sharing intimacies with a stranger. “There's nothing waiting for us there except…uncertainty. We had this most wonderful farm in Wisconsin, along the Mississippi. Bluffs above a quiet valley. A pond lured ducks, thousands in the fall. Wildflowers everywhere, morel mushrooms. Good, rich soil. There was no place like it anywhere. I would have lived there forever.”
“We are not yet where we will be,” Sister Esther told her. “And not where we departed from, so all is strange. But we are not alone. The Psalm tells us nothing can separate us from the love of God.”
“I know that verse.” Mazy reached for a stick and poked at the fire. “I just can't believe God wanted me to leave home in the first place. That's what bothers me.”
“He does not reveal all he has in store,” Sister Esther said. She had a front tooth missing a piece and so her S s whistled when she spoke. “But he's with us.” She tapped at her heart. “Ofthat I am certain.”
“Once I woke up with this phrase in my mind: Wisdom wears a dog's face, certainty, a cat's.’ Strange, isn't it? I mean, I like dogs, their acceptance no matter what. Cats are so…”
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