Messenger by Moonlight

by Stephanie Grace Whitson

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  Dedicated to the memory of the women of the Pony Express:

  Mrs. Tom Perry, Kennekuk Station, Kansas

  Mrs. John E. Smith, Seneca Station, Kansas

  Mrs. George Guittard, Guittard Ranch, Kansas

  Mrs. Sophia Hollenberg, Hollenberg Station, Kansas

  Mrs. George Comstock, Thirty-Two Mile Creek Station, Nebraska

  Mrs. Molly Slade, Horseshoe Station, Nebraska

  Mrs. Moore, Three Crossings Station, Utah

  The “three English women,” Green River Station, Utah

  Mrs. David Lewis, Ham’s Fork Station, Utah

  The “French Canadian Wife,” Muddy Creek Station, Wyoming

  And those whose names were not recorded, but whose labor fueled the men who ran the race

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you, Christina Boys, editor extraordinaire, for never losing faith in this story… or in me.

  Thank you, Janet Kobobel Grant, for your continued encouragement and guidance.

  Thank you, Daniel, for sharing my passion for history, for listening to countless read-aloud sessions, and for allowing my imaginary friends to become yours, too.

  Thank you, Judith McCoy Miller and Nancy Moser, for faithful prayers, treasured friendship, and brainstorming brilliance.

  Thank you, Katherine McCartney, Site Administrator at Hollenberg Pony Express Station Historic Site in Hanover, Kansas, for your encouragement, knowledge, and selfless enthusiasm for this project.

  I, ____________, do hereby swear, before the Great and Living God, that during my engagement, and while an employee of Russell, Majors, and Waddell, I will, under no circumstances, use profane language, that I will drink no intoxicating liquors, that I will not quarrel or fight with any other employee of the firm, and that in every respect I will conduct myself honestly, be faithful to my duties, and so direct all my acts as to win the confidence of my employers, so help me God.

  —Pony Express Rider’s Oath

  … the driver exclaims:

  “HERE HE COMES!”

  Every neck is stretched further, and every eye strained wider. Away across the endless dead level of the prairie a black speck appears against the sky, and it is plain that it moves. Well, I should think so! In a second it becomes a horse and rider, rising and falling, rising and falling—sweeping towards us nearer and nearer—growing more and more distinct, more and more sharply defined—nearer and still nearer, and the flutter of the hoofs comes faintly to the ear—another instant a whoop and a hurrah from our upper deck, a wave of the rider’s hand, but no reply, and man and horse burst past our excited faces, and go swinging away like a belated fragment of a storm!

  So sudden is it all, and so like a flash of unreal fancy, that… we might have doubted whether we had seen any horse and man at all…

  —Mark Twain, Roughing It

  Prologue

  Buchanan County, Missouri, 1855

  After five years of hoping, fourteen-year-old Annie Paxton had finally stopped waiting for Pa to come back from wherever his soul had gone the day Ma died. Hunkered down in the lean-to, she pulled her pillow over her head to shut out the noise. In the next room, Pa yelled and swore while Emmet and Frank tried to calm him down, Annie willed herself to take in a deep breath while she recalled the sound of Ma’s soothing voice reciting the Shepherd’s Psalm. Annie knew the entire passage, but she focused on the first few words, emphasizing a different word with each repetition. The Lord is my shepherd. The Lord is my shepherd. The Lord is my shepherd.

  A thud in the other room signaled what Annie hoped would be the end of tonight’s confrontation. She pulled the pillow away to listen. Emmet—always the peacemaker, always calm and quiet—was talking in low, mellow tones, and while Annie couldn’t quite catch the words, she could imagine them. Let us help you to bed, Pa. Annie’s already turned in. We don’t want to wake her.

  But Pa was bad tonight. Really bad. “We don’t want to wake her? What you talking about, we? You don’t speak for me. You got no idea what I want!” Pa blathered on with cursings Ma never would have allowed. Then again, Annie didn’t remember Pa ever cursing when Ma was still alive.

  The Lord is my shepherd. Shuffling footsteps approached the doorway between the cabin’s all-purpose main room and the lean-to. Annie pressed herself as close to the log wall as she could manage. Pa was standing in the doorway. She could smell sweat and whiskey. She pressed her eyes closed, willing the tears away. They leaked out anyway. She held her breath.

  “Pa.” Emmet’s voice again. Closer, this time. “She’s asleep, Pa.”

  Pa mumbled something about a “poor little motherless gal” and how she didn’t deserve to lose her ma.

  Frank spoke up then, agreeing. They didn’t deserve to lose Ma, he said. Frank wasn’t like Emmet. Given a choice between backing down or fighting, Frank would fight.

  Annie relaxed a little when she heard Pa moan, “I don’t deserve you kids. Didn’t deserve my Tennessee belle, and don’t deserve you-ns.”

  A shard of bitterness pierced Annie’s heart. Maybe Pa didn’t “deserve” his kids, but couldn’t he love them anyway? Couldn’t he at least try? When Ma died, Emmet had taken up the farming Pa neglected, though he’d only been fourteen at the time. Nine-year-old Frank, Annie’s twin, had helped, while Annie took on the cooking and cleaning and gardening and milking and chicken-tending. Neighbors had stepped up for a while, but Pa’s penchant for drunken displays eventually ended that.

  Pa began to cry, and Annie put the pillow back over her head. She didn’t want to hear it. Didn’t want to hear him say how sorry he was and how he’d do better. Sorry or not, he never did any better.

  The Lord is my shepherd. Lately, Annie had focused on that phrase alone in the psalm, avoiding the rest, because all the questions she had about it made her feel guilty. Maybe she’d understand it better if they went to church. Maybe she could ask a preacher sometime. Emmet remembered going to church with Ma, but Annie didn’t think he’d appreciate his younger sister questioning the Word of God. After Ma died, when Annie couldn’t reason the answers to her questions about the Shepherd’s Psalm, she just stopped reciting the whole thing. Instead, she clung to that first phrase, comforted by the vague notion of someone powerful being her shepherd.

  She still thought about the rest of the passage, though, and the mention of green pastures and goodness and mercy. It would be nice if the farm wouldn’t grow so many weeds. Both the mules and the milk cow would surely enjoy green pastures. But the phrase that caused her the most trouble was the one right at the beginning. The words I shall not want just flat-out haunted her, because she did “want.”

  She wanted Pa to stop drinking and to help Emmet and Frank with the farm. She wanted a real home, with a front porch and curtains at the windows—real curtains, not the flour sacks Ma had decorated with embroidered bluebirds. She wanted to live somewhere where people didn’t think of her as one of those “poor Paxton kids.” She wanted to go to a nice church with a choir and maybe even a stained-glass window like the one she’d seen the only time she’d made
the twenty-mile journey to St. Joseph. And she wanted friends.

  It was quiet out in the main room now. She turned onto her back, staring toward the rafters. The Lord is my shepherd. She closed her eyes. Please don’t be mad at me. I do want. So much.

  Chapter 1

  Buchanan County, Missouri

  March 5, 1860

  Surprised by the emotion that welled up as she prepared to leave the ramshackle cabin for the last time, nineteen-year-old Ann Elizabeth Paxton hesitated before stepping across the threshold. Slowly, she turned about for a final look; at the rustic table where they’d eaten countless meals; at the two-burner stove she’d struggled with after Ma died; at the front door on the opposite side of the room, barred shut and perhaps never to be opened again. According to Frank, even the stock hands over at Hillsdale Farms lived in better places than this. Hiram Hillsdale wanted the land. He didn’t care about the cabin.

  Emmet and Frank had both said their good-byes to the cabin and its contents before sunup, wolfing down grits and gulping weak coffee before hauling their trunks out back on their way to hitch the mules to the wagon. While they were gone, Annie laid her own things in the trunk that was hers now—the trunk Ma had brought to Buchanan County years ago and that still contained a faded silk gown, dance slippers, lace mitts, and a few other treasures that had been Ma’s.

  By the time Frank and Emmet had driven the wagon up to the back door and loaded Annie’s trunk, the sun was up. Emmet said they’d wait for her outside. He patted her on the shoulder and said she should take all the time she needed. Pulling her threadbare shawl close about her thin shoulders, Annie looked about the room and summoned the memory of Ma. This morning, it wasn’t the Shepherd’s Psalm she remembered. This morning, as Annie looked at the pieces of the only life she’d ever known, she remembered Ma saying that even on the darkest day, when all a body wants to do is cry, if she looks hard enough, she can find a sliver of light. The tightness in her chest eased up. Taking one last look, she stepped outside.

  Emmet waited beside the team, but Frank had already climbed up to the wagon seat. An unseasonably warm March breeze ruffled his shaggy auburn hair as he reached down to take Annie’s hand and haul her up beside him. The minute Annie and Frank were settled, Emmet said something about taking his own last look. He went back inside.

  Frank muttered, “I hope another gander finally convinces him we haven’t lost much.”

  Annie was inclined to agree—at least when it came to the farm itself. The earth hadn’t yielded much beyond weeds and poor crops for a long time now. She didn’t really know why the neighbor, Mr. Hillsdale, even wanted it. Annie knew all about Hillsdale Farms, for working there from time to time had been part of Emmet and Frank’s desperate attempts to save their home. Both men were good with horses. Neither could imagine Hiram Hillsdale’s fine Thoroughbreds on Paxton land. Paxton land. She stifled a sigh. If only Ma hadn’t died. If only Pa could have managed better. If only he hadn’t become part of the trouble. If only he hadn’t caused the worst of it.

  Poor Pa. He never had recovered from losing the woman he called his “Tennessee belle.” Oh, he’d determined time and again to “buck up” and “move on,” but just when Annie and her brothers thought he might actually do it, Pa headed for town and one saloon or another. For ten years, she and her brothers had locked arms and kept things going. Somehow. But then, just two weeks ago, Pa had tried to find his way home through a late winter snowstorm—and failed. A few days after they laid him to rest beside Ma, the local banker knocked on the front door, and the three Paxton siblings learned that drinking hadn’t been their father’s only problem. He’d taken to gambling, too. And he always lost.

  Thinking on it now while she sat beside Frank on the wagon seat and Emmet lingered inside invited a fresh wave of emotion. Oh… Pa. Annie flung another plea at heaven. Help Emmet. Please. All Emmet had ever wanted to do was farm. It had taken him several days to accept the truth delivered by the town banker. Earl Paxton had left his three children a farm with so much debt carried against it that the only thing to do was to sell it.

  “That can’t be right,” Emmet protested. “We own the place, free and clear.”

  The banker shook his head. “I’m afraid not.” He was sorry, but his hands were tied. Surely they could understand that under the circumstances, he simply could not give another extension. He seemed pleased with himself when he told them they were not left “without recourse.” He was authorized to make an offer on behalf of their neighbor, Mr. Hiram Hillsdale. A “generous offer” the banker called it—one that would not only cancel the debt but also free Earl’s adult children to “explore the world.”

  They would of course be able to keep things considered personal. Clothing and the like. Whatever would fit in a trunk—three trunks, since there were three of them. The team of ancient mules and the farm wagon would also be “overlooked,” since they’d need transportation off the property. Mr. Hillsdale would give them a full forty-eight hours to vacate the premises once they’d accepted his offer.

  Annie had never seen Emmet lose his temper, but he came close that day. His face flushed bright red. He spun about and strode to the open door of the cabin, standing there for a long while, his body fairly vibrating with emotion. Finally, he took a deep breath and turned back around. “Forty-eight hours to pack up the only life we’ve ever known? You can’t be serious. We need more time.”

  The banker grimaced. “I suppose I could speak with Mr. Hillsdale—if you insist.”

  Frank intervened. “Don’t bother.” He scowled as he said, “We’ll not be begging crumbs from the table of the illustrious Hiram Hillsdale.” Frank put one hand on Emmet’s shoulder and gave it a little shake. “Remember how Annie blabbered about St. Joseph that time Pa took her to the city? We’ll go there. It’s March. The ice will be breaking up on the Missouri and that’ll mean a lot of business coming into St. Jo. We shouldn’t have any trouble finding jobs.” He winked at Annie. “What d’ya say? Shall we give St. Joseph a try?”

  It was strange to look back on that moment now and realize that Frank had been the one to make peace with their situation while Emmet struggled. No one who knew the Paxtons would ever have called Frank a peacemaker. His auburn hair and deep brown eyes were visible indications of a dark, stormy temperament. Blond, blue-eyed Emmet was the quiet, steady one who never wanted more than what already lay within reach.

  Weathered boards and rusty hinges creaked as Emmet finally exited the cabin and pulled the door closed behind him. When he climbed aboard and lifted the reins to signal the mules to move out, the team refused to budge. Slapping their rumps with the reins, he called out, “Come on, now, Bart. Git up, there, Bill. You can retire the minute you pull us up to the livery in St. Joseph. And that’s a promise.”

  Frank muttered something about retirement “courtesy of Mr. Winchester.”

  Annie frowned at him. “You don’t mean that.” When Frank only shrugged, she appealed to Emmet. “He doesn’t mean that, does he? You can’t let anyone hurt the mules. They can’t help being old.”

  Emmet flashed a warning look at Frank as he said, “No one’s going to hurt the mules, Annie. Not as long as I have a say.” He flicked the reins across the team’s flanks. With a brayed protest, they leaned into the creaking harness. The wagon began to move. “Now don’t cry,” Emmet said as they pulled onto the road. “We’re going to be all right.”

  “Darned right we are,” Frank said. He nudged Annie. “We’ve got us a fresh start, and we’re going to make the most of it.”

  Annie nodded. She rather liked the idea of a fresh start, although it sometimes made her feel guilty to admit it, even to herself. After all, but for Pa’s dying they might have been able to hang on. Maybe she shouldn’t be glad to be leaving, but still—there were good things about moving on, not the least of which was an end to being seen as one of “that drunken Earl Paxton’s poor kids.” From what she remembered of St. Jo., it was as different from home as one of M
r. Hillsdale’s fine Thoroughbreds was from Bart, the lop-eared mule. This time of year, thousands of travelers would be poised to begin spring journeys either to gold mines in the Rockies or homesteads in Oregon. The city would be bustling. If one job didn’t work out, a body could try another and another and another, until finally he or she landed on whatever was just right. St. Jo. was the perfect place to get a fresh start.

  Annie glanced over at poor Emmet, who wasn’t the least bit interested in living somewhere different. All twenty-four-year-old Emmet cared about was farming, Luvina Aiken, and God—although probably not quite in that order. For Emmet, St. Joseph was only a temporary necessity. A place to earn the respectable living that would convince Luvina’s father to consent to a wedding. A detour on a path that he hoped would lead him right back to farming—and to Luvina.

  They’d been on the road for a while now, and Emmet had apparently mistaken Annie’s silence for sadness. “I know things seem bleak,” he said, “but God hasn’t forgotten us. The Lord is our shepherd, and He still means everything for our good, whether we can see it or not. Thinking about our going to St. Joseph just now had me thinking about Joseph in the Bible. You remember that story? Ma used to tell it. I think it comforted her when she felt homesick for Tennessee.”

  “I remember Joseph,” Annie said, although the memory didn’t come from Ma. Compared to Emmet, she remembered so very little about Ma. She had a vague notion of warmth and feeling safe. A gentle voice. Sitting in church and liking the sound of Ma’s voice singing hymns—although she wasn’t sure if she actually remembered the part about church or if she’d just heard Emmet talk about it often enough that she thought she remembered. It especially bothered her that she didn’t remember what Ma looked like. Emmet said if she wanted to know that, all she had to do was look in the mirror. Annie wasn’t sure if that helped or hurt, because if Ma looked like her or she looked like Ma, then why didn’t she remember her better? Then again, Emmet was five years older than she and Frank, and the extra years had given him more memories of Ma. Memories from a time when life was better and Pa was sober all the time. Sometimes Annie thought the hardness of the past ten years had put a jagged edge to her memories and cut away most of the good. Maybe that was why she couldn’t remember Ma better.