Wyoming Bride

by Joan Johnston

  Hannah couldn’t imagine what it would be like for their lone wagon to travel without the support of the others. What if an axle broke? Who would help Mr. McMurtry repair it? What if one of their oxen died? How would they travel on with only three? What if Josie didn’t gather enough fuel for an evening fire and they were forced to do without one? What if they ran out of water?

  Hannah had endless nightmares about what might happen. Yesterday, she’d finally shared them with her twin, hoping it would make a difference in her behavior.

  “Captain Hattigan would never make us leave the train,” Hetty had said, laughing at her fears.

  “Please, Hetty. I’m begging you. Don’t flirt with both men.”

  “I know what I’m doing,” Hetty said defiantly. “Clive has hinted that he’s going to propose, but he wants to wait until the end of the journey. I don’t. I’m just flirting with Mr. Barnett to make Clive declare himself.”

  “It’s only a matter of weeks before we reach Cheyenne,” Hannah argued. “That’s not so long to wait. And since when do you call Mr. Hamm Clive?”

  Hetty flipped her blond curls back over her shoulder, grinned, and said, “I don’t call him that—to his face. He’s still Mr. Hamm. But Joe—”

  “Joe?” Hannah interrupted, appalled at such familiarity.

  “Mr. Barnett told me I could call him Joe.” Hetty smiled, revealing the dimples in her cheeks. Hannah knew her own dimples hadn’t seen the light of day since before she was married.

  “Do you like Mr. Barnett better than Mr. Hamm?” Hannah asked.

  “Of course not! I’m only using Joe to make Clive realize I won’t wait forever.”

  “Hetty, you’re playing with fire,” Hannah warned. “Mr. Hamm won’t stand still for another man poaching game he thinks is his.”

  Hetty’s eyes narrowed and her nostrils flared. “So now I’m a bird in the hand, is that it? Clive doesn’t own me. No man owns me. Yet.”

  “No man will want to own you if you keep flirting so outrageously,” Hannah snapped.

  “We’ll see about that!” Hetty had flounced away, chin uptilted, a disaster waiting to happen.

  Hannah stirred the pot of stew again and watched with disgust and disappointment as Hetty smiled up at Joe Barnett. She saw her sister take a surreptitious glance in Clive Hamm’s direction, then reach out and briefly touch Mr. Barnett’s sleeve.

  At that moment, Josie plopped down on a stone near the fire, tilting an open book toward the flames in an effort to see the words in the meager light.

  “You’ll ruin your eyes reading in the dark,” Hannah said.

  “I was almost done when the sun began to set,” Josie replied, pushing her spectacles up toward the bridge of her nose. “I hoped there would be enough light from the fire to finish. But there isn’t,” she said as she snapped the book closed.

  “What are you reading?” Hannah asked.

  “It’s a good one. Pride and Prejudice. About a family of girls in England. About falling in love. About failing at love. About the foibles of love.”

  It sounded like something Hannah might like, but before she could say so, she heard Clive Hamm shout, “Get away from her!”

  Hannah took one look at Hetty, standing with her mouth open and her eyes wide with fright, dropped the spoon she was using to stir the stew, picked up her skirts, and ran.

  “I told you to keep your distance,” Clive snarled at Joe.

  “Please, Mr. Hamm—” Hetty said, her hands raised in supplication.

  Hetty’s paramour shoved her aside.

  Hannah heard her sister cry out as her shoulder landed hard against the large back wheel of Joe Barnett’s wagon.

  “Clive, please don’t!” Hetty babbled. “I love you!”

  Mr. Hamm didn’t hear her. Or didn’t care. He was totally focused on his rival. “I told you what would happen if you went near her again.”

  “You don’t own her,” Joe Barnett shot back.

  “Get the captain!” Hannah shouted as she passed Mr. McMurtry. He looked startled, but he took off in the direction of the captain’s wagon.

  Hannah reached her sister in time to grab her arm and keep her from flinging herself between the two men, who were faced off against each other.

  “I have to stop them,” Hetty cried as she yanked at Hannah’s grasp on her arm, trying to break free.

  Hannah tightened her hold and said, “There’s nothing you can do now, Hetty. It’s too late.”

  “He’ll be killed!”

  “If he is, you’ll have no one to blame but yourself,” Hannah snapped back.

  “Please,” Hetty begged. “Let me go!”

  Hannah only held on tighter. She felt a sinking sensation. This was not going to end well. She wasn’t thinking of the two men. They deserved whatever they got from each other. She’d sent for the captain, because she hoped to avoid bloodshed. But Hannah knew, as sure as God made little green apples, that even if neither man was injured, Mr. and Mrs. McMurtry and the Wentworth girls would not be moving on with the wagon train.

  “Oh, Hetty, you fool!” she said bitterly.

  “I didn’t mean for this to happen,” Hetty retorted.

  Hannah was riveted as Clive closed the distance between himself and Joe Barnett. “Shh,” she hissed at Hetty. She didn’t want to distract either of the men.

  “We’re going to settle this once and for all,” Clive said through bared teeth. He pulled a knife from the sheath at his waist and menacingly sliced it through the air.

  Joe pulled a gun.

  Clive turned the knife in his hand and threw it hard and fast just as Joe pulled the trigger.

  The gunshot reverberated in the night air.

  The knife landed with a sickening thunk!

  Neither man made a sound, and for a moment Hannah thought both of them had missed their marks. But then Joe put a hand to his chest, where the knife was buried to the hilt. And Clive put a hand to his chest, where a dark stain was blossoming on his muslin shirt. The two men exchanged looks of disbelief. And their legs stopped holding them upright.

  There was nothing dramatic about it. Clive’s knees crumpled, and he fell forward onto his face. Joe dropped to his knees and fell onto his side, the Colt .45 still gripped in his hand.

  Hannah was so shocked, she loosened her hold on Hetty. Her twin ripped free and raced toward the fallen men.

  “Clive!” Hetty cried. “Clive!” She dropped to her knees beside the man she’d professed to love and reached down to lift his head into her lap.

  Hannah could see Clive’s lips moving and watched as her sister leaned close to hear what he was saying. Tears filled Hetty’s eyes and began streaming down her cheeks. She sobbed once as she pressed her cheek against Clive’s.

  Captain Hattigan was tight-lipped when he finally arrived and surveyed the mayhem. “What happened here?”

  “They was fightin’ over her, Captain,” one of the nearby men said, gesturing toward Hetty.

  The wagon master turned to Mr. McMurtry and said, “When we leave tomorrow, you won’t be going with us.”

  Hannah met her husband’s gaze and saw frustration. And disappointment. And despair.

  Those emotions she’d expected. What surprised her was what she saw next.

  Understanding. And acceptance. And forgiveness.

  Hannah’s throat tightened with emotion, and her nose stung with unshed tears. She might never love Mr. McMurtry, but in that moment, Hannah knew she would always be grateful to him.

  Marriage was no fairy-tale romance. It was supporting your partner and accepting the bad with the good. Fortunately for her and her wayward sisters, Mr. McMurtry was a very tolerant man. Because, during their very brief marriage, there had been far more bad than good.

  Hannah stopped walking abruptly as Mr. McMurtry bolted off the wagon bench and stumbled to the dusty ground. She took a step toward him and then had to back up as he bent over and vomited.

  They’d survived alone on the trail for f
our weeks and five days. They hadn’t made as good time alone as they had with the wagon train, but at least nothing had gone wrong that Mr. McMurtry couldn’t fix.

  It seemed their luck had come to an end.

  Mr. McMurtry slowly lifted his head and reached into his back pocket for a red kerchief, which he used to wipe his mouth.

  Hannah met his gaze and saw the same despair she’d been feeling ever since he’d gotten sick. “You should rest,” she said.

  “We have to keep going.” He turned, lifted a booted foot to climb back onto the wagon bench, then dropped it, gripped his belly and bent as though curling his body around the pain. “Goddamn it to hell!” he muttered.

  A feeling of foreboding slithered down Hannah’s spine. For Mr. McMurtry to take the Lord’s name in vain, he must be in agony. “What can I do to help?”

  He looked up at the sun, which was at its zenith, then shook his head and said, “We’ll have to stop here for today. I can’t—” He rubbed at his belly with knotted fists, met her gaze, and said, “Oh, God, Hannah.”

  Hannah stared at her husband with horrified eyes. Finally, at long last, he’d used her first name. Hannah. But there was nothing soft or sentimental in its utterance. It had sounded like … a death knell.

  He brushed past her, running to the back of the wagon, yanking the braces off his shoulders and unbuttoning his pants. Hannah turned her eyes away, but she knew what was happening behind her. To her horror, she heard him vomiting again as well.

  Hannah had been watching her husband with worried eyes for the past two days, ever since they’d left the last place they’d stopped, a collection of shanties and tents where folks had given up traveling west and decided to try and farm.

  Surviving on the trail alone as long as they had was a miracle, as far as Hannah was concerned. They’d stayed close behind the wagon train for two weeks, but had fallen steadily behind ever since. Hannah had no idea where the other wagons were now.

  She watched Josie clamber up onto the wagon bench seat and take up the reins Mr. NcMurtry had dropped.

  Josie looked down at her and whispered, “He’s really sick, Hannah. He didn’t even bother to put on the brake.” She pulled on the leather straps he’d dropped until the oxen stopped again.

  “Can you set the brake, Josie?” Hannah asked.

  “Sure. I’ve seen Mr. McMurtry do it plenty of times.”

  “Then do it.” Hannah turned and strode toward the back of the wagon, where Mr. McMurtry was lying on the ground, curled into a tight ball.

  Hannah looked around for Hetty, but she was far behind. Her twin had hardly spoken since they’d left the train. Or eaten, for that matter. If Hetty wasn’t careful, she’d get sick, too.

  In that moment, Hannah hated her sister. Fervently. If not for Hetty, they wouldn’t be all alone out here in the middle of nowhere.

  She reached Mr. McMurtry and crouched down beside him. The wind was blowing more than one foul smell toward her, and she put the back of her hand against her nose to keep from losing the contents of her stomach.

  Mr. McMurtry batted lethargically at the hand she reached out to him and said, “Go away.” His skin looked shriveled. His eyes were sunk deep in purple sockets.

  Hannah felt unaccountably hurt that he’d rejected her offer of help. She couldn’t count the times Mr. McMurtry had assisted her with some job. Now that their roles were reversed, he was acting like she was some stranger to whom he’d owe a debt. She’d been the best wife she could be, done her share of the work and never shirked. His refusal to allow her to minister to him seemed like a rejection of her as his wife.

  She wanted to shout, You’re not perfect, either! But he was sick, and she owed him the respect he’d earned during their marriage. So she swallowed over the wretched lump in her throat and asked, “How are you feeling?”

  “How the hell do you think I feel?”

  The irritability, and especially the profanity, were frightening because they were additional signs Mr. McMurtry was not himself. Hannah felt a rising panic and shoved it back down.

  He tried to get up but grabbed his stomach, groaned, and lay back down. “I need a little time to rest.”

  “I’ll wait here with you,” Hannah said as she settled onto a tuft of buffalo grass beside him. She watched as his eyes slowly closed.

  She tried to hold the fear at bay, but her body began to tremble. They were out here in the middle of nowhere with no one to turn to for rescue. Maybe if Mr. McMurtry got some sleep his illness would pass. Maybe someone traveling behind would catch up to them and help. She thought of every possible scenario where someone—some stranger—saved the day.

  Hannah felt a hand on her shoulder. She lifted her head and saw it belonged to Hetty. How long had they been stopped?

  “Come with me,” Hetty said. She reached down and took Hannah’s hands and pulled her to her feet and led her several steps away from the supine man.

  “He’s got cholera,” Hetty said in a soft voice.

  Hannah shook her head in denial. Cholera could kill in a matter of days. Mr. McMurtry had been sick for at least forty-eight hours. That would mean he didn’t have long to live. “What makes you think it’s cholera?” she demanded.

  “There was an outbreak in those shantys we passed,” Hetty said. “I heard some folks talking about it. He must have come in contact with someone who was infected.”

  “Then why aren’t the rest of us sick?” Hannah challenged. “We went everywhere he did.”

  “He visited those folks camped in tents away from the others. None of us went there with him.”

  “He can’t have cholera.” If Mr. McMurtry died, who would yoke and unyoke the oxen? Who would tell them which way to go? Who would protect them from strangers on the trail?

  “He’s been in the bushes on and off for two days,” Hetty said. “We need to camp here, Hannah, so he can rest and maybe get better.”

  “Maybe get better?”

  Hetty shrugged.

  “We’re getting farther behind the wagon train every moment we stand still.”

  “I know, Hannah. But we don’t have a choice. Look at him.”

  Hannah stared at her husband. His eyes were closed, his breathing shallow, and he lay motionless. She looked for a pulse at his throat but couldn’t see it. Her heart was pounding in her chest as she knelt beside him and pressed her fingertips to the spot where his blood should be pumping strongest. And found a thready pulse.

  She looked up at Hetty and said in a shaky voice, “He’s going to get well,” as though the spoken words could make it true.

  “Sure he will,” Hetty said.

  Hannah could tell her twin didn’t believe what she was saying. Surely not everyone died of cholera. But Hannah had heard stories of enormous death tolls in places struck by cholera.

  Josie climbed down from the wagon and joined them. She’d been sulking as well, angered by the loss of that cherished wagonload of books. However, with nothing but the trail to look at, the tarp slung under the wagon was full of grass for tinder, dried wood, and cow dung. “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “We’re stopping,” Hannah said. “Until Mr. McMurtry gets better.”

  “We’re getting farther behind—”

  “There’s no help for it,” Hannah interrupted. “We can’t go on with him as sick as he is.”

  “We could put him in the wagon and keep traveling,” Josie said practically.

  The suggestion made a great deal of sense to Hannah. And it would move them closer to their destination and help. “All right,” she said, getting to her feet. “Let’s do it.”

  “We’re going to have to unload a bunch of stuff and leave it behind to get him in there,” Hetty pointed out.

  “What other choice do we have?” Hannah asked.

  “We could wait here,” Hetty suggested.

  “Until what?” Hannah said.

  Until he dies.

  Hannah heard the words, even though Hetty didn’t speak
them. Instead, Hetty said, “Maybe the last place we stopped has a doctor who could help him.”

  Hannah didn’t believe that any more than Hetty probably did.

  “We’d be better off finishing the journey,” Josie said. “We can’t be too far from Cheyenne.”

  “The problem is, we don’t have any idea exactly how far it is,” Hannah said.

  “It can’t be more than a couple of days farther on,” Josie said. “Unless we’re lost.”

  “Don’t even think that!” Hannah said. Although she’d thought exactly that herself when they hadn’t reached Cheyenne after four full weeks of travel. Mr. McMurtry had looked worried after their stop at the collection of shantys. She wished now that she’d asked what was wrong.

  “Going back to a place we can find sounds safer than going forward to a place we’ve never been,” Hetty said.

  “If the last place we left is infected with cholera, I’d rather steer clear of it,” Josie said.

  That made sense to Hannah, too.

  “I say we keep going,” Josie argued.

  “How will we find the trail by ourselves?” Hetty asked.

  Josie pointed to shallow ruts the width of wagon wheels that led across the prairie. “We follow those.”

  Hetty stuck her hands on her hips. “Who’s going to drive those stubborn oxen?”

  “I will,” Josie said. “I’ve been watching Mr. McMurtry snap that bullwhip every step of the way. How hard can it be?”

  Hannah looked from one sister’s face to the other’s. They didn’t look nearly as afraid as she felt. There was no sense reminding them of the difficulties that lay ahead. “All right. Let’s get the wagon unloaded. Josie, give the oxen some water, but don’t unyoke them. We’ll have to take a good look before we do that tonight to make sure we can figure out how to yoke them up again tomorrow morning.”

  They’d started out with a wagon filled to the two-thousand-pound limit with supplies, everything from hammers and hatchets to snowshoes, from dried fruit and beans to pickles and vinegar, from a butter mold and churn to a coffee grinder. Even after nearly three months of travel, the wagon bed was still packed so full that there was barely space for Hannah and Hetty to stand.