Leaving Independence

by Leanne W. Smith

  “I did that on purpose,” Abigail said when he commented on it. “The children laugh at me for wanting things to look nice, but I can’t seem to help it. I took fabric strips left over from the bags and wrapped them around some of the twine to get that color effect. Well . . . you saw me do it, I guess.”

  Yes . . . they had quarreled after.

  A mirror was positioned smartly on one side over the carved box. This was where she combed her hair each night and morning and washed her face in the basin.

  “It’s a sight neater and prettier than my wagon,” Hoke said.

  “Men don’t think about making things pretty.”

  “True.” But he still admired beauty, and he admired functionality.

  A quilt covered the bed beneath her. She was dressed and her hair loose around her shoulders. He’d only ever seen strands that escaped the loose knot of it when she rode the white filly, and hadn’t realized she had so much. It hung long, past the swell of her breasts. He noticed again how soft and white her bare feet looked.

  He wanted to wrap his hands around her feet, or run them through her loose hair. Instead, he touched the quilt. It was yellow, blue, and white . . . ginghams, checks, and solids.

  “Did you make this?”

  “My mother did.”

  “What’s this pattern?” He’d heard the women talking about quilt patterns. This one was full of triangles in circles.

  “My mother called it a pickle dish. See how the diamonds shape an oval, like a pickle dish? She used material from some of my girlhood dresses for these pieces.”

  “There’s such a thing as a dish just for pickles?” Was she teasing him? He had not sat at a lot of fine tables in his lifetime and couldn’t believe there was such a thing.

  “Yes.”

  She smiled and took his hand to trace the outline of the dish, sending a warm current through his veins. “These form ovals like four different dishes to make the entire circle. A pickle dish of fine crystal has ridges around the edges, like these diamonds.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. It just does.” There was no teasing in her eyes. She didn’t fault him for not knowing.

  Careful not to move his hand away, loving the feel of her touch, Hoke looked around the wagon, breathing in the scent of lavender that had stirred in the air when she reached for his hand. “What? You didn’t bring a pickle dish on this trip? You don’t have a real one to show me?”

  She laughed and let go of his hand. “No. I don’t even like pickles. I don’t like the sour taste or smell of vinegar.”

  Sour smells made him think of blood. “That reminds me, I tore up that outfit you were wearing yesterday. I’m sorry about that, but I needed something quick to plug the holes in your side.”

  She winced. “Don’t worry about it. I’m sure it was already ruined. Corrine has probably salvaged the trimming and got rid of the rest, not wanting to upset me.”

  Today she wore a calico blouse, lilac with small buttons up the front and little pleats lining either side. It reminded him of the pleats she’d kept refolding the night they had their last good conversation, before he kissed her and made things awkward between them.

  Her deep-purple skirts fanned out over the bed.

  Abigail smoothed the wide black sash tied loosely around her waist. As Hoke drank in her surroundings with his ever-thirsty eyes, she grew more self-conscious.

  Did it meet his approval?

  Why should she care what he thought of her or her surroundings? But she did care. She wanted his approval. She wanted him to think well of her, and not regard her as silly for wanting to match the chair and fabric bags to the rug, or vain for covering her seeping bandages with a black sash or having a mirror nailed to the side of the wagon.

  Hoke thought her neither silly nor vain. He thought her fine.

  They both started talking at once.

  “Thank you for—” began Abigail.

  “I wanted to say—” He stopped.

  She laughed. “You first.”

  Hoke wasn’t used to feeling shy or tongue-tied. “No, you,” he insisted.

  Her eyes held his. “Thank you for yesterday. When you brought Lina to me—I don’t know how to tell you how much that meant to me. And I’m so embarrassed that I fainted! I’ve never done that before.”

  “Embarrassed?” He was incredulous. “You saved my life!”

  She brushed the claim away. “I don’t know about that.”

  But his eyes and voice were insistent. “Yes, you did. You saved my life. And before that, you were rounding up women and children and throwing ’em in your wagons. You knew those Indians were circling back around to attack from the other side, and true to your nature, you didn’t squeal and you didn’t run. You started shooting at ’em—runnin’ right toward danger. You wouldn’t listen to me when I told you plainly to stay put in your wagon.” He shook his head. “I should have known you wouldn’t listen to me . . . damn hardheaded woman.”

  He wanted to kiss her something fierce. He wanted to crawl up on that clothes-trunk bed and wrap her in his arms and bury his face in her hair, and he might have, but was afraid of hurting her—that, and she had a husband. He couldn’t believe he’d let himself feel this way about a woman with a husband. His instincts usually served him better.

  Abigail grinned, and then her expression grew more somber and she swallowed hard. “I’ve never killed anything.”

  “I know too well that’s a god-awful feelin’. And I don’t mean to make it worse, but I believe you killed two.”

  Her brows pinched tightly, but he kept going. “Altogether, the twenty-four able-bodied men of this wagon train killed four Indians in that skirmish yesterday, and you killed two. If I were putting together a small group to defend this train, I’d want you on my side, Mrs. Baldwyn.

  “A lot of bullets fly in skirmishes like we had yesterday. I’ve been part of more than I care to count. But not many find their mark so well. In fact, a lot that do find their mark are pure accidents, like the bullet you took might have been.”

  Hoke scowled and shook his head. “The more I think about it, the more I think old man McConnelly might have shot you by accident. The Indians had rifles. A rifle shot would have—”

  “Oh, no! He might have hurt someone.”

  Hoke scowled harder. “What do you call this?” He pointed to her side.

  “I mean, what if someone else had been hurt?”

  He leaned in. “What, you don’t matter?”

  “No, I mean . . . I’m just glad it was me if it had to be someone. And it’s not bad. Well, it’s sore, to be sure, but I’m not in danger of dying, according to Marc.”

  Hoke pulled back. “Marc, is it?”

  Abigail had said the word innocently enough but was pleased at Hoke’s reaction. He was jealous. She felt wicked for loving the fact that he was jealous and the way his forehead crinkled when he was irritated.

  He had to still care for her then, even if he had snubbed her at the Fort Laramie dance.

  A thousand times she had relived the kiss they’d shared when she’d measured him for the shirt. She could still feel his strong arms around her from yesterday, too, when he’d held her and told her that everything was all right, just before she lost consciousness.

  Her face flushed at the memory.

  Hoke noticed the flush in Abigail’s cheeks and wondered if he’d hit a nerve by mentioning the doc. Trying to restrain his irritation, he said, “At any rate, I’m glad you’re a dead shot. Oh, and here’s your gun back.”

  He reached to the back of his waistband and pulled out her Colt, running his hand over the barrel. “I cleaned it and reloaded it for you. You don’t have to keep it on an empty chamber. It’s got a safety peg right here it’ll sit on between rotations.”

  Her eyes looked surprised. “How did you know I kept it on an empty chamber?”

  Hoke bet Marc Isaacs wouldn’t have known that fact. “You only fired twice, and there were three bullets
in the chamber.”

  “I feel better if it’s sitting on an empty one.”

  “Well, I’m just tellin’ you because you might need that sixth bullet sometime. That safety peg’ll keep the hammer from hittin’ the percussion cap even if it falls.”

  “That’s just what . . . I thought it would be safer with children around.”

  Hoke slid his hand over the barrel again. He loved the smooth, solid feel of it. “It was better on some of the older guns, but on this Navy revolver you’re fine to load every chamber. You’ve got six in there now. Normally a .36 wouldn’t take such a big chunk out of a man, but it sure took a plug out of that fella who was behind me.”

  She winced. “Please don’t describe it that way. You say it like it’s a good thing, but it’s awful. I killed a person. I was having a hard enough time without you saying I might have killed two.”

  No one but Hoke, Colonel Dotson, Jenkins, and Charlie knew that one of the men she’d killed had her picture in his leather pouch. Hoke wondered how that news would have made her feel. He didn’t like the feel of it at all himself.

  He nodded. “I know. Believe me, I know. And I’m not tryin’ to make light of it, but if it had to be me or him, I’m glad he’s dead and I’m not. Where do you keep this?”

  She pointed to the cherry box.

  He moved the wash tin and opened the lid. After laying the gun back in its case he noticed a stack of books inside. “Mind if I look at these?”

  “No, go ahead.”

  They were good books—Charles Dickens and William Wordsworth. He would have expected no less.

  “You’re welcome to borrow any of those.”

  “I’d like that. I haven’t read this one.” He pulled out Wordsworth’s Poems, in Two Volumes.

  “You’ve read Dickens?”

  Why did she say that like she was surprised? Bet she wouldn’t be surprised if Marc had read them.

  “I have. Just because I didn’t go to school very long doesn’t mean I don’t read. ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,’” he quoted, “‘it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness . . . it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair’—I think that’s the beginning of this one, anyway. I like Dickens.”

  Hoke had carried A Tale of Two Cities in his saddlebag a long time before trading it for his fold-up pocketknife. He lost count of how many times he’d read it, especially that passage at the beginning. Just like his old Bible. The Bible was the only thing he had that had once been his father’s, so it was still in his saddlebag. He read it cover to cover as a kid, then cover to cover again, several times over, trying to figure out why his father had put such stock in it—and trying to figure out why God would allow any boy to end up alone in the world.

  Reading that Bible made him less angry when he saw that God suffered, too.

  “Dickens wrote that about England,” Hoke said. “But it sounds like things out here, don’t it?”

  Abigail smiled and shook her head. “You never cease to amaze me. Why don’t you take the poetry book since you’ve not read it? It’s mine to lend. The two Dickens books belonged to Robert.”

  He noticed she’d said belonged. Sometimes she referred to Robert in the past tense, and sometimes in the present. Should he tell her what the soldier at Laramie had said about her husband? No, he decided. It would seem mean-spirited if he did.

  “Thank you.” He kept the book out and closed the top of the cherry box. “I’ll take good care of it and get it back to you.”

  “Be sure to read the one about the daffodils . . . ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.’ That one and ‘Resolution and Independence’ are my favorite two.”

  He nodded, holding the book in his hand and staring at her so hard she began to squirm.

  She lowered her lashes. “Were you going to say something before?”

  “What?”

  “Before. You and I started talking at the same time. Were you going to say something else?”

  Just that I wish your husband weren’t alive and that I’m in love with you. You’re driving me crazy and distracting me with your yellow patchwork quilt and your cherry box and your bare feet and your golden hair and your blue eyes and the way you smell like lavender.

  “No,” Hoke said. “Just, thank you for shooting that Indian. Oh . . . and I wanted to tell you that Charlie did good yesterday and this morning. He’s a good one. They’re all good . . . good children.” He wished they were his.

  Hoke put his hands on his knees; he’d stayed too long.

  “Thank you again, Hoke.”

  Just Hoke. It was sweet music to his ears. She put her hand on his as he stood up.

  He brought it to his lips and kissed it softly. “You have lovely hands, Abby.” Then he took his hat and the book and left.

  Abigail lay still for a long time and thought about him, her hand hot from the kiss, her heart beating so hard it made the bullet wound in her side throb.

  CHAPTER 25

  Blood-orange sunsets

  July 13, 1866

  I remembered your remedy for fleas, Mimi. Lavender! How could I have forgotten? Now if only I knew a remedy for weevils in the sugar sack.

  A steady stream of visitors helped Abigail keep her mind off Hoke. Paddy Douglas brought Carson to visit. One of the coon’s legs was wrapped on a splint.

  “He got dropped and stepped on during the attack,” explained Paddy. “But Doc Isaacs reset it and it’s healing nicely. Since you’re both laid up, I thought you might enjoy each other’s company.”

  Abigail laid a hand on Alec Douglas’s arm, grateful he had come with Paddy to see her. When Paddy talked, his round eyes darted and pitched, like the tempo of his words, and hardly ever rested on the person he was talking to. He talked more than he used to, ever since he beat the colonel when they raced at the fork of the Platte River.

  “I was one of the colonel’s best runners when we had the attack,” he reminded Abigail. “I brought bullets just like the colonel said. I didn’t drop a one.”

  “He’s taught Carson a new trick,” Alec told Abigail. “Show her, Paddy.”

  Paddy grinned and held out a bag. “Give Mrs. Baldwyn her present, Carson.” Carson reached in and pulled out a small bundle of flowers, tied with a string.

  “Oh!” Abigail clapped. “How sweet! Thank you, Carson. And thank you, Paddy.” She reached to hug them and winced, wondering if her side would ever stop feeling like it was on fire. “How is Baird doing today?”

  “Some better,” said Alec. Baird had taken a spear in his shoulder during the Indian attack. He’d been fine at first but then started a fever. “Doc thinks he’ll pull through. He’s still runnin’ fever, tho’.”

  “Doc says fever is not all bad,” said Paddy.

  “That’s right, Paddy. Doc says it’s a lad’s way o’ fightin’ infection.”

  “But it don’t feel good,” continued Paddy.

  “No, he don’t feel his proper self yet. We’re happy to know you’re feelin’ better, Mrs. Abigail.”

  “Can I mend anything for him, for any of you?”

  “Oh, no, ma’am. We’ve had so many offers from the lady folk, we don’t want for nothin’. In fact, Paddy and I are gonna get fat if folks don’t stop bein’ so good to us.”

  “We’ve had two cobblers already.” Paddy held up two fingers. “And Carson has had three ears of corn.” He added another finger.

  Alec grinned at Abigail. “He can count to ten, can’t you, Paddy? We never got past ten ’cause that’s all the fingers he’s got.”

  Alec and Paddy Douglas weren’t her only visitors. So many people brought Abigail flowers while she recovered that she started weaving them together and made a covering as wide as her bed. She kept adding to it, like she was weaving a quilt, letting the flowers dry and working the tapestry on a light cloth that she rolled it up in each night.

  Some of the Schroeders even visited. Mrs. Inez brought two loaves of bread and Rudy and his wife, Ol
ga, sent a cured ham and a dozen eggs.

  “I take it they’ve forgiven you at long last for Rascal eating their chicken,” said Melinda when she stopped by. “Now we know what it takes to get back in their good graces. Gettin’ shot savin’ one of their young’uns. You should’ve got shot sooner!”

  “Melinda,” scolded Abigail, holding her hand to her bandages. “You’re making my side hurt!”

  Melinda smiled mischievously. “Mr. Austelle told the colonel he figured out why the Schroeders don’t shoot well. The only meat they ever eat is pork, and it’s not hard to take aim on a domesticated pig.”

  After spending five days in the wagon, Abigail got Charlie to help her down to join the others for supper. Doc Isaacs rushed over and told her she shouldn’t be getting out this soon, but she insisted, so he got her rocker and set it close to the fire.

  Abigail smiled proudly at Corrine. She had taken over the cooking without complaint. Lina brought her mother a plate. Caroline Atwood came to sit with her until Will grew fussy and had to be put to bed. Doc Isaacs walked back over to her and said, “Feel like stretching your legs a little?”

  “I’d love to.”

  She took the arm he offered and they strolled slowly around the outer circle of wagons. Alec got out his fiddle and Nichodemus and Nora were soon singing. The older children danced and played in groups while the mothers started getting younger children to bed. Abigail could see Jacob with Cooper and Lijah under the Austelles’ wagon, making plans to reenact the Indian attack. Lijah had bounced back the quickest—children were always the ones who did.

  “You’re to be commended for saving his arm,” said Abigail.

  “The arrow missed the bone, so I can’t claim to have worked any miracle.”

  “I get to be Hoke,” they heard Jacob say. “You be Colonel Dotson, Cooper. Lijah, after you get shot with the arrow, you can be Harry Sims. We need more people. Go see if your sister Hannah wants to play.”