Leaving Independence

by Leanne W. Smith

  “Are you sure you won’t sell me her, Mr. Hoke, instead of the gray?”

  “I’m sure. But I’ll let you ride her sometime.”

  “I’d love to, but I leave on Tuesday.”

  “It’s a two-thousand-mile trip. I expect there’ll be a few chances between now and September.”

  Her eyes got big. “You’re going?”

  “I am.”

  “Oh.”

  She turned back to the filly but not before he caught the upturn of her lips. Was she hiding her smile from him or the boy? Charlie was several feet away now, admiring the stallion.

  “What do you call him?” Charlie asked Hoke.

  Hoke stuck the hickory stick back in his lips and took a final measured look at Abigail Baldwyn.

  “My horse.”

  “George Dotson’s been after me to join his wagon train,” Hoke told James later that day. “I believe I’ll do it.”

  “How come?”

  Hoke shook his head. “I don’t know. Branson offered me a job here.”

  “I’m surprised at you joining Dotson’s train then.”

  “Me, too.”

  Hoke and James had talked about a lot of things in their years of evenings around a campfire but had never once discussed long-range plans. They’d just kept riding together, tackling one job at a time, one town at a time.

  When Independence first lured him back, Hoke had thought it must be time to settle. Branson’s offer should have felt like a sign of affirmation. But ever since he’d heard the sound of her boots clicking toward him on the boardwalk and looked up, all he could think of was the way sunlight glinted off Abigail Baldwyn’s hair.

  James looked at him a long minute before slapping his hands together. “We better go, then. When you start making decisions you can’t explain, things always get interesting.”

  Relief washed through Hoke to know James was open to the idea. There was his affirmation. Men he wanted to keep riding with didn’t often come along. “You think you can be around people that long?”

  “I can—but I don’t know if you can. How long will it be?”

  “’Bout five months.”

  James clapped Hoke on the shoulder. “You can probably tolerate people for five months.”

  Later, when Hoke told Dotson that he and James were going, Dotson asked, “What made you change your mind?”

  “I don’t know. Just feel like I’m supposed to go.” Even at the risk of disappointing Mr. Branson again, the pull to go was flaming strong in his chest.

  Colonel Dotson nodded. “The Baldwyn woman signed on, too . . . her and her four children, as far as Fort Hall. Her husband’s supposed to be a captain out there. But somethin’ . . . somethin’ don’t seem right about it to me. Nobody I’ve asked knows anything about him. I guess we’ll find out.”

  “I guess so,” agreed Hoke, not liking to hear she had a husband. But his decision was made—his gut told him to follow the scent of lavender.

  April 9, 1866

  Dearest Mimi,

  Today we leave Mrs. Helton’s boardinghouse. Her home lies within sight of the house of a famous artist, George Bingham, from whose porch one can watch the workings of the town.

  In our short time here, I have grown fond of Independence—it’s been both bustling and bittersweet. The folks are less genteel than what we are used to . . . more straightforward and hardworking. I like them very much.

  We spend tonight in our wagons and roll out in the morning.

  Independence buzzed.

  Families moved out of hotels and boardinghouses and loaded supplies on farm wagons to take to the jumping-off spot near the Bingham place. Farmers lined both sides of Main, selling produce.

  Even Corrine had trouble containing her excitement as the children helped Abigail buy sacks of potatoes, apples, beans and peas, seeds, and a slip of sweet potatoes for her wagon garden. Mrs. Granberry gave her a dozen strawberry plants and some dahlia bulbs. To Abigail’s joy, she also gave her a small cherry tree that had sprung up the season prior.

  Mrs. Helton took a final stroll with the Baldwyns, her arm linked through Charlie’s, which made Jacob smirk. She pointed at the train depot. “The train loops down from Chicago now, but soon it will replace the boats for bringing folks out here. I expect they will build the railroad on out your way before too many years, although if men don’t quit robbing trains, decent folks will be too scared to ride them.”

  At the top of a hill they came to a cemetery.

  “I came up the Missouri, just like you, fifteen years ago. Was planning to join one of the trains, just like you. But Edward took sick the week we got here.” She pointed to a headstone. “He died a month later. We were staying at the boardinghouse and I just kept staying there. The man who owned the house got shot one night in a saloon fight. He’s around here someplace.” She looked out across the sprawling cemetery.

  Abigail noticed fresh flowers on a grave nearby and stepped over to read the name: Ruby Branson.

  “I get letters back all the time filled with stories about people’s travels and the homes they make . . . who gets married and who has children . . . who loses children.” Mrs. Helton touched Charlie’s cheek. “I lost a baby boy, Charlie. He would have been sixteen. Almost seventeen. And then Edward died before I could have any more.”

  Corrine swatted Jacob for his earlier smirk, and Charlie looked sympathetically at his mother. Abigail saw the small headstone for the first time: Benjamin Helton.

  Mrs. Helton, her eyes full, turned to Abigail. “If you get to Idaho Territory and it’s not what you’re expecting, you bring these children back here and run this boardinghouse with me.”

  Lina tugged on Abigail’s skirt and pointed. “Look, Ma.” Across the cemetery, a man stood up from where he had just laid flowers on a grave. He turned toward the Baldwyns, smoothing back his hair before putting his hat on.

  It was too far away to see him clearly—he was a black silhouette against the waning afternoon, one that turned and quickly faded to a small dot going down the hill.

  “Can we go see?” asked Lina.

  They walked to the grave and Lina smiled to see the flowers.

  “We had jonquils at our home in Tennessee,” explained Abigail to Mrs. Helton before turning back to Lina. “Did you see the flowers on the other grave near Mr. Helton’s? They were jonquils, too.”

  Lina shook her head. “Can I have one?” she whispered.

  “Let’s not disturb them, Lina. They’re a gift meant to honor someone else.”

  Rachel Mathews, Beloved Wife and Mother. Reading it made the children smile. When Mrs. Helton raised a brow in question, Abigail explained, “Rachel was my mother’s name.”

  As they turned to leave, Mrs. Helton took Charlie’s arm, and even though she leaned in and spoke low, Abigail still heard her. “If anything happens to your mother, Charlie, you and the rest of the children come back here to me.”

  Abigail came around the wagon holding a rope. She handed it to Jacob, whose eyes grew large as they followed the cord to its other end.

  “What is that?”

  “A cow. Don’t act like you’ve never seen one before. Your job is to milk her every morning.”

  “Wa—wait a minute! Where did it come from?”

  “I traded for it.” When the Baldwyns moved their things to the wagons, Abigail realized her folly in thinking she could jostle all the way to Idaho Territory with a porcelain washbowl and pitcher. So she’d gone back to the store where she put the fire out to see if the merchant there would trade her for a tin set. He was so grateful to her for saving his store that he threw in a Jersey cow.

  “When?” asked Jacob.

  “Just now.”

  “I never milked a cow before.”

  “You’ll get the hang of it. Tie it over there, out of the way.”

  Charlie had been sent for a stock of firewood, and Corrine and Lina were repacking the food. Corrine didn’t like the way it had been stacked the first time.
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  “I’m going to the mercantile one last time, Corrine, to get a churn.” Abigail noticed mud clumps covering the foot of the wagon. “And a broom.”

  Corrine poked her head out of the wagon. “Why do we need a churn?”

  “We have a cow,” said Jacob, holding the rope high.

  Before going to the mercantile, Abigail paid a final visit to the post office. She handed the first letter to the postal clerk. I have taken your advice and am coming to Fort Hall. Robert would surely be surprised—this was the boldest thing she’d ever done.

  Then she reached into her pocket for Mimi’s freedom papers and slid them into the second letter. Robert had drawn them up years before the fighting began. Mimi couldn’t refuse them now and Abigail wanted her to have them—to remind them both that Mimi had never been hers to own.

  She smiled to see the clerk postmark each letter Independence.

  “I feel like I’m forgetting something important,” she later confessed to an attractive brunette woman behind her in line at the mercantile.

  The woman smiled. “You prob’ly are. But maybe I’ll have it, and you can borry it.”

  “You’re with Dotson’s train?”

  “That’s right. Melinda Austelle.” The woman extended her hand. Abigail could see she wasn’t shy. “Mr. Austelle and I have two boys and a girl. We’re from Georgia.”

  Melinda Austelle seemed to know everyone and everything. Abigail quickly learned that Mr. Austelle was the blacksmith traveling in Colonel Dotson’s wagon train.

  “Mr. Austelle has been workin’ in that big lot across from the courthouse helpin’ make shoes for all these stock and iron wheels for the local wagon sellers. Would you believe they’s over twenty smithies down there? If the wheels ain’t prepared right, the wood shrinks and the irons fall off. Some people soak the wheels in creek beds at night, but Mr. Austelle says you shouldn’t have to, if they’re prepared right.”

  Melinda was better prepared for this trip than Abigail. She had a husband to help educate her on things like wheel irons. Abigail wondered again what she was forgetting.

  With the stoneware churn on her hip and the broom in the crook of her arm, Abigail wove through the growing maze of wagons. As she neared her own, she heard a deep, now-familiar voice and saw Hoke talking to Lina and Corrine.

  “When you start the team you give a little flip on the reins, like this. Mules are stubborn, but if you show them you’re boss and get them into a routine, they’ll do fine.”

  Abigail stopped, curious to see what Lina and Corrine thought of him. Hoke’s back was to her . . . same dusty black boots, same once-black hat, different buckskin shirt.

  “What if they see a snake?” asked Lina.

  “If it’s a big rattlesnake, it’ll scare ’em.”

  “What do you do then?” Lina’s eyes were large.

  “Better hold tight. If they take off running it’ll be hell to pay.”

  “Mr. Hoke!” Abigail stepped forward.

  “Just Hoke.”

  He didn’t turn. Had he known she was standing behind him?

  “Please don’t say hell in front of my children.”

  He turned to her. “They don’t know about hell?”

  “Hoke brought our mules and horses, Ma!” Lina ran to tug her skirt, whispering up to Abigail, “I like his growly voice.”

  “Mr. Hoke,” corrected Abigail.

  “Is Charlie around?” Hoke asked. “I’ll show him how to harness the teams and hobble them at night so they can’t wander off.” He stooped to rub Rascal’s ears. Within seconds the dog’s eyes rolled back in his head.

  “I know where the boys are.” Corrine reached for her sister’s small hand. “Come with me, Lina.”

  Rascal loped after them, turning several times to look back at Hoke.

  Abigail grinned. “You certainly made an impression on the dog.”

  Hoke stood and came toward her. “Could you stop correcting me in front of people?” He was clean shaven and no longer smelled like horse sweat, but the scent of pine and cedar lingered.

  Hugging the churn, she took a step back. “When have I corrected you?”

  “I told Charlie the other day to just call me Hoke and you said, no, call him Mr. Hoke. You just did it again, plus you scolded me for saying there’d be hell to pay. Here, give me that, it looks heavy.” He took the churn from her arms and set it in the back of her nearest wagon.

  “I’m sorry. But I’ve worked hard to teach my children a strict moral code. If you can refrain from cursing in front of them and promise not to offer them liquor or teach them to gamble, then I won’t have to correct you in front of them.”

  “Do you think I’m a scoundrel?” He reached for the broom.

  She couldn’t read him well enough to know if that smoldering look in his eyes was hurt or anger. Why should it hurt him for her to think he might be a scoundrel?

  “No,” she answered hesitantly, letting go of the broom, which he set by the churn. “But you do have a piercing . . . hard way about you.”

  He turned back toward her and burned her with his eyes. “Does that make me a bad person?”

  Abigail looked from the churn to the broom, and back to Hoke. “I guess not.”

  Charlie came bounding around the wagon. “Mr. Hoke! Good to see you again.” They shook hands. “This is my brother, Jacob.”

  “Good to meet you, Jacob.”

  Hoke took Jacob’s hand in his like he was shaking hands with a man. Jacob stood straighter.

  “You boys probably already know this,” said Hoke, “but let me show you how to hitch and hobble these mules and horses.”

  The boys looked at each other with raised eyebrows and followed him.

  Abigail didn’t know if she was glad or upset to have Hoke on the trip.

  She looked at the churn and broom again, wondering how he’d managed to take them from her hands in such a way that she had barely noticed, then stepped to the back of the other wagon to put her reticule in the cherry box.

  Immediately she knew: someone had been in here . . . one of the children, maybe. Things she had left sitting on the top of the chest were strewn to the side of it. When she raised the lid and looked inside, it was obvious someone had rifled through her letters. Panicked, she checked the drawstring purse that had held the last of their twenty-dollar gold pieces.

  It was empty!

  CHAPTER 7

  Mere suggestion of money

  Fear nearly stopped her heart.

  Abigail dug under the letters for the small box that held her jewelry. When the lid flipped up, she felt her heart beat again. The cameo brooch and pearl pendant were still there. The cameo had been her mother’s. As a girl, Abigail had thought the silhouette in the carved ivory was her mother’s profile.

  Robert had given her the pearl pendant as a wedding gift.

  Abigail tucked the jewelry box under her arm and searched for Colonel Dotson, but found his wife, Christine, instead.

  “Mrs. Dotson!”

  “Hello, Mrs. Baldwyn. Is everything all right?”

  “Money is missing from my wagon . . . over a hundred dollars in gold coin. Nearly all we had left.” Fear and doubt squeezed her heart in equal measure. How could they possibly survive this trip on the few remaining coins in her reticule? Was she a fool for bringing her family out here?

  Christine left to get Colonel Dotson while Abigail went to find her children. None of them had seen anyone near the wagon.

  Hoke arrived with the colonel, and Abigail showed them the cherry box. “This is where I keep important letters. The money was in here, along with a small jewelry box.”

  “They didn’t take the jewelry?” asked the colonel.

  She shook her head.

  The colonel looked out darkly over the camp. “I won’t tolerate thievery.”

  “Be hard to know if it was someone in our group. People have been coming and going all day,” said Hoke.

  “Mrs. Baldwyn, we could go wagon to wagon
,” said the colonel, “but Hoke’s right. It could have been somebody from town. We could have everybody in our own group turn their pockets out, but how would we know your coins from theirs?”

  Abigail thought of the bag of coins she’d laid in Hoke’s hand only days ago. She wasn’t sure she would recognize those same coins again if Hoke handed them back to her, so how would she know her missing coins if she saw them?

  She bit her fingernail. “I don’t know if we can still afford to go. Unless . . . how much time do I have before the group meeting, Colonel?”

  “Two hours.”

  “Charlie, Corrine, watch Jacob and Lina. I’ll be back in an hour.”

  Mrs. Helton looked surprised to see Abigail standing in the door of her kitchen. “Did you decide to stay?”

  “No. I’m hoping you’ll help me go.”

  Abigail told Mrs. Helton what had happened and showed her the jewelry. “Do you know anyone who might buy a pearl pendant?”

  Mrs. Helton wiped her hands on a cloth and inspected the jewelry. “Not the cameo?”

  Abigail shook her head. “I can part with the pendant more easily.”

  The older woman looked at her a minute. “I’ll buy it.”

  She was so humbled she could hardly speak. “I’m not asking you to buy it; I was just hoping you could refer me to a jeweler.”

  “I have money. And I like it. If your circumstances change I’ll sell it back to you.”

  Abigail’s eyes burned as Mrs. Helton laid twice the amount Abigail had paid her for their lodging back in her shaking hands. She clutched the older woman’s fingers and whispered, “What if I’m making a mistake, Mrs. Helton? What if I lose more than my money?”

  The older woman studied her face before answering.

  “Come here, I want to show you something.” She led Abigail to a cabinet in the parlor and opened a drawer filled with letters.

  “These are postmarked from every territory west and south and north of here. And they don’t all have a happy ending. Sometimes people lose more than their money. But I am amazed at what they find.

  “I know it took courage for you to come here, and it’s going to take courage for every hardship you encounter on the way. I admire you for it. If I knew Edward was out there somewhere . . .” She looked out the window, in the direction of the cemetery. When she looked back at Abigail, her eyes brimmed with tears. “Or my boy? I’d walk two thousand miles to get to him.”