She wanted to hate her sister, but in spite of how rotten she might think Quentin Robards was, she realized that LeeAnn truly thought she was in love with him. And Abbie knew that if she herself had a chance to lie in the grass with Cheyenne Zeke, she’d do it. It was Robards she hated, not LeeAnn. The whole situation troubled her, so she turned her thoughts to Zeke, trying to picture him stripping Yolanda Brown right in front of everybody. That made her giggle again, and she snuggled down into the quilt to sleep.
Outside, Zeke watched her wagon longingly.
The journey became more difficult as they veered away from the Platte. Abbie could see why Zeke said they would begin to progress more slowly now. They were in higher country, hilly country. Zeke told them they were in the foothills of the Laramie Mountains. The land here was thick with pine trees, and between the trees and the grades, climbing the hills was difficult and treacherous.
Going down was even more treacherous, because the weight of the wagons pushed against the animals. Keeping the wagons from tipping was a constant problem; they had a high center of gravity, and the animals had to be maneuvered so they didn’t go at a sidelong angle down a hill.
Four days into the hills, the mules of the Kelsoe wagon driven by Bobby Jones grew stubborn and were out of control. The more Bobby tried to maneuver them into the right position, the more they balked, until suddenly the wagon started to tip.
“Look out below!” they heard Bobby yell. Luckily, according to Zeke’s instructions, most of the wagons were well behind the heavier Kelsoe wagons, but there were two other Kelsoe wagons in front of Bobby’s. Abbie screamed as the wagon went all the way over, breaking loose from its hitch, and the rest seemed to happen in slow motion.
The mules went one way, the wagon another, and at first, no one was sure which way Bobby Jones had gone. The mules, still hitched together, scuttled off into the woods, while the wagon rolled and crashed and bounced past the two in front of it and on past Zeke, who managed to jerk his horse out of the way just in time to avoid flying debris. Dust flew, and the ground in the wagon’s downward path was gouged out. It seemed forever before the pieces of the wagon and its cargo all found a resting place at the bottom of the hill. Rocks continued to roll afterward, and at first there was nothing but noise and confusion as the rest of them struggled and whistled and cursed to keep their own animals still, cracking whips and hanging on to keep their teams from doing what Bobby’s mules had done.
To Abbie’s relief, when the dust cleared she saw Bobby staggering to his feet about halfway down the hill. Zeke was already riding up to the young man. He dismounted and caught hold of the dazed Bobby, who had bent over and held his head a moment before straightening up. Zeke helped him walk to one of the other wagons and spoke with Kelsoe a moment. Then the rest of Kelsoe’s wagons began slowly moving to the bottom, while Zeke rode up to the others.
“Is Bobby hurt bad?” Abbie asked anxiously, suddenly realizing how much she liked the young man who had paid quite a bit of attention to her and had always bashfully asked her to dance whenever they were playing music and celebrating. For a moment an odd look passed through Zeke’s eyes, one that Abbie did not realize until later was a flicker of jealousy. But it quickly vanished, as Zeke thought to himself that Bobby Jones was the perfect kind of young man for Abigail Trent to get herself interested in.
“Got quite a bump on the head,” he replied. “But I think he’ll be all right. He’ll have to lie still for a while.” He looked upward and shouted. “Let’s get the rest of these wagons down—real careful! We’ll have to help Kelsoe gather up what’s left unbroken and divide it up—share the load for him. All of you can take a little extra in your wagon to help him out.”
Most nodded and agreed, but Willis Brown cursed the extra burden.
“Get the women and kids out of the wagons!” Zeke yelled out. “Willis, get your wife out of there. I’ll take her down easy on my horse. And I don’t want any arguments!” He rode the big Appaloosa up to Willis’ wagon, and to everyone’s surprise, Yolanda climbed out and onto his horse without a word of objection. Apparently she had learned not to argue with Cheyenne Zeke. She’d been quieter ever since she’d gotten dunked in the river, and Abbie wondered if the girl ever got upset with her husband for his uncaring attitude toward her. Perhaps they had had words, because Willis Brown had seemed to quiet down himself.
Zeke walked his horse down so Yolanda would not be jolted around too much, and the other women and children climbed out and walked down, while the men took the rest of the wagons down with no more problems. They all joined together to gather up Kelsoe’s cargo and were able to pack most of it onto the loose mules that Zeke and Olin had rounded up out of the woods. More was tied to the other Kelsoe wagons, so that there was little left to burden the others with.
The wagon that had crashed was practically in splinters, but they saved most of the wood, realizing it could come in handy when they reached places where wood was not available for fires. The cleanup took most of the rest of the day, so they made camp right there, all of them sleeping hard because of the extra work the day had brought.
After witnessing Bobby’s wagon crash, everyone was jittery when they set out again the next morning. The going got rougher as they headed for the north fork of the Platte, and they were even more worried because Zeke had informed them that they would again cross the river at a spot where it curved southward across their path.
On their ninth day out of Fort Laramie, tragedy showed its face to Abigail Trent, the beginning of Cheyenne Zeke’s vision. How or why it happened was something that would haunt her for the rest of her life, and she would feel forever responsible, for she’d become the only mother little Jeremy had.
Her little brother climbed back into the wagon after it started rolling, yelling that he wanted to find a jacket that was too small for him.
“Jeremy Trent, you know you’re not to climb in and out of the wagon when it’s rolling!” Abbie scolded.
“I want to give Zeke that jacket!” the boy balked. “It’s for one of the Indian kids who might need it, if Zeke wants to give it to him.”
“That’s a fine thought,” Abbie yelled back as she walked along beside the creaking wagon wheel. “But you could have waited till we make camp.”
“I want to run and give it to him now!” the boy pouted.
“You’ll stay inside that wagon now!” Abbie ordered. “You know the rules!”
The boy ducked his head back inside, rummaging for the jacket until he finally found it. He pondered disobeying his sister, which he seldom did. But he was filled with a child’s eagerness to give something to someone, and he’d heard Zeke talk about how cold the Indians got in the winter, especially the old ones and the children. He looked down at the blue stone necklace, wanting only to give Zeke something in return.
Outside Abbie and LeeAnn walked behind their father, both lost in their own thoughts. The only sound Abbie heard was a soft whimper, almost like the sound of a kitten crying. She turned curiously at the sound, and her blood curdled. Jeremy’s body lay under the wagon, and the front wheel had apparently already run over him. Before Abbie could scream out, the back wheel also went over him, across one arm and kitty-corner across his chest.
“Pa!” she screamed. “Stop! Stop!”
She stood there frozen, while her father struggled to stop the oxen, unaware yet of the reason. Jason Trent turned to look. He made a strange choking sound when he saw Jeremy.
The Haneses’ wagon, which was behind Abbie’s, had already stopped.
“Oh, my God!” Mrs. Hanes groaned.
“Jeremy!” Trent screamed, running up to the boy. Bradley Hanes reached Jeremy at the same time.
“You’d best not touch him!” he warned Jeremy’s father. “Somebody get Zeke!”
“Get Zeke!” another voice yelled out, as LeeAnn and Abbie knelt beside their shaking father. Jeremy lay there quiet, obviously in shock. He looked up at them but could not speak.
�
�Oh, God, not my son!” Trent choked out, tears filling his eyes. “Not my son, too! I already lost his ma!”
Abbie put her arm around his shoulders. “Don’t, pa,” she said quietly. “You’ll upset Jeremy more.”
It was obvious the boy was badly injured, and her mind raced with guilt. Should she have kept a better eye on him? Should she have gotten into the wagon with him to be sure he didn’t jump out against her orders? She should have realized how ignorant excited children were of danger and reckless behavior.
Zeke’s horse came thundering up, and in the next second he knelt down across from Jason Trent, Olin Wales standing behind him. Trent was weeping, and as Jeremy shifted his frightened gaze to Zeke, his eyes filled with hope, sure that Cheyenne Zeke would know of some miracle to help him, the way he had helped little Mary Hanes. Zeke leaned over the boy and gently unbuttoned Jeremy’s shirt.
“Now what did you go and do?” he asked, trying to sound casual. But Abbie could see he was deeply concerned. He opened Jeremy’s shirt, and already the small chest was purple. LeeAnn gasped and turned away, while Abbie choked back a sob, trying to stay calm. Trent cried openly, thereby causing Abbie to worry about him as well as her brother. He had not taken his wife’s death well and was just beginning to recover from it. How would the death of his only son affect him? Would he blame himself for bringing the boy West in the first place?
Zeke ran expert hands gently over Jeremy’s ribs and down the injured arm. He moved the arm just slightly, and a bone popped through the skin. Jeremy made no sound, but some of the others gasped and had to turn away.
“He’s apparently in deep shock,” Zeke said quietly. “He doesn’t feel anything now, but he will soon. We’d best get some whiskey down his throat if we can.”
“Jesus God! We have to help him! We have to fix him!” Trent sobbed. Zeke looked at the man with pity; then he looked at Abbie. He shook his head, and she understood. She covered her mouth and forced back the tears that tried to surge forth, but she wanted to scream and tear her hair.
Zeke turned to Olin. “Fetch a flat board over here from that busted wagon,” he told the man. “We’ll try to get him onto it without disturbing him too much and carry him into the wagon that way. If we pick him up loose, God knows how many more bones will break up. I don’t want to handle him too much. He’s broke up bad inside, and I think he’s bleeding internally.”
Olin turned to get the board, and Jason Trent grasped Zeke’s shoulders.
“You’ve got to do something for him!” he growled. “There has to be something we can do! Maybe … maybe you have a remedy of some kind! An Indian remedy!”
Zeke put a hand over Trent’s. “Not for something like this, Jason. The best I can do is mix up some herbs with some whiskey that might take away the pain … and we can all do a lot of praying. But what we need is a good doctor, and there’s not one to be had—not out here. I’ll do my best to set what bones I can set, but I can’t do much for his insides. Now you’d best calm down. If you collapse, you won’t be much good to your son. He needs you.”
Trent wiped at his eyes and nodded. “I … reckon’ so,” he replied in a choked voice. “Can’t we … stay here? At least for the rest of today? I don’t want to jostle him around. Maybe by tonight we’ll know better … how things look.”
Abbie knew without being told that her brother would very likely die, and she felt compelled to speak to him before the pain set in and he became delirious and incoherent. She leaned close to the boy, smiling for him.
“I love you, Jeremy,” she said softly. “I love you as much as mama did.” She kissed his forehead. “You’ll be okay, baby. In just a few days you’ll get better, you’ll see.”
The brave little boy looked up at her and actually smiled a little, and his smile hurt her more than if he’d screamed and cried. She looked over at Zeke, picking up the little jacket still gripped in Jeremy’s other hand. She handed it to Zeke, wanting Jeremy to see so he’d know Zeke got the jacket.
“He … climbed back into the wagon … to get this… for you,” she told Zeke. The man frowned in confusion. “It’s … an old jacket of his,” Abbie went on. “It was too small … and he wanted to give it to you … for an Indian child. I guess maybe he was so excited about giving you something … he jumped out of the wagon when he knew he shouldn’t.”
Zeke closed his eyes and grasped the jacket.
“I … don’t mean to make you feel bad, Zeke. It’s not your fault. Jeremy thinks the world of you. I just … wanted him to see me give you the jacket.”
Zeke nodded, and when he opened his eyes they were full of tears. Olin returned with the board then, and he and Zeke and Kelsoe carefully slid the boy onto it, but already the pain was setting in, and Jeremy was beginning to whimper. Abbie slid her arm around her father’s waist and helped support him to the wagon. The men placed Jeremy inside and climbed back out; then Trent, Abbie, and Zeke climbed in, while LeeAnn rushed over to Quentin Robards to cry against his chest. Abbie could hear Olin Wales quietly ordering the others to circle and make camp. Her head reeled and her stomach sickened when she looked down at Jeremy. But the next thing she knew Zeke had supportive arms around her, and she was quietly weeping against his chest.
Ten
Little Jeremy’s suffering was like a horror story for the boy’s father and his sisters. The child’s agony grew rapidly throughout the day, in spite of Zeke having set as many bones as possible, and in spite of the herbs and whiskey that were forced down his throat. Jeremy’s fever rose and his moans turned to louder groans, then finally to intermittent screams mingled with crying. These sounds cut into Abbie like a hatchet. If she could have taken Jeremy’s place, she would have. But there was nothing to do but sit and watch helplessly, as his gruesome injuries enveloped him, slowly sucking away his life. His chest and even his stomach grew darker and darker, and it was obvious he was badly injured internally. This was something they could do nothing about, and something that would most definitely kill him eventually—perhaps within hours, perhaps not for days.
Abbie’s concern was doubled by the fact that her father just sat crying, drinking, and carrying on about how it was all his fault for coming West in the first place. The man’s guilt and suffering were overwhelming, as he carried on about not wanting to live if he lost his little boy. Everyone, including Zeke, tried talking to him to soothe him, but it was obvious that if Jeremy died, nothing could bring happiness to Jason Trent again. His fiddle lay in the corner of the wagon—silent.
Zeke watched Abbie with quiet admiration and agonizing sympathy. She was the only one who remained strong for poor Jeremy, the only one with the stomach to tend his wounds and stay by his side through his terrible suffering, and the only one to talk to him, sing to him, tell him stories, encourage him, and hide her tears from him. LeeAnn was no use at all. She moaned about the blood and the pus, the horrible purple chest, and the screams; and she threw up twice. Abbie told her to go stay with the Hanes until it was over, and of course, Quentin Robards was right there to comfort her.
His injuries tugged and pulled at the life inside Jeremy throughout the rest of that day and into the next, until by nightfall of the second day his arm had swollen to gruesome proportions and pus leaked from the spot where the bone had broken through the skin. His chest and stomach were also swollen, and he’d thrown up blood, a sure sign of grave injury. His fever rose until the boy was delirious. Throughout the night, Abbie slept fitfully beside him, with Zeke camped right outside the wagon, available the moment she might need him. The rest of the train retired grimly to their wagons, saying prayers and trying to block out Jeremy’s screams.
Abbie tried desperately to keep the flies off the boy’s open wounds, but when she awoke from a short sleep in the early dawn of the third day, she gasped at the sight of maggots on his arm. She choked back vomit and tears as she desperately tried to wipe them away, but touching Jeremy only made the boy scream. She looked into his desperate eyes and wanted to scream
herself, just as loud and long as she could, and she wondered if she’d lose her mind before long. She struggled to keep from completely breaking down in front of Jeremy. She needed someone to give her strength, and more than that, she needed an end to her poor little brother’s misery. To watch him suffer as he was suffering was asking more than a human being could bear. She longed to talk to her father, thinking to herself how he should be the strong one and not herself, but he was slumped over in the corner of the wagon, completely blacked out from a night of weeping and torturous heartache and a good supply of whiskey. She looked at Jeremy again, and she knew.
“I’ll be back real quick, Jeremy,” she told the boy reassuringly. She bent over and kissed his forehead lightly, bracing herself against the odor of blood, vomit, and infection. “I love you, Jeremy Trent. I do love you so. And God loves you. Wouldn’t it be nice to be with God right now … and with mama … and to be free of the pain?”
A tear slipped down the side of the boy’s face. “Yes,” he squeaked. Abbie smiled for him.
“The pain will be gone soon, Jeremy. I promise,” she said softly. “I have to talk to Zeke, and I’ll be right back. You want Zeke to come inside when we come back?”
“Yes,” he whispered. She smiled again and climbed out of the wagon, thinking to herself that she must look terrible by now in her crumpled dress and with her hair uncombed for the last two days and nights. The sun was not even up yet, but the sky had lightened somewhat. She could see Zeke lying curled up on the ground with only a light blanket beneath him and a dead fire beside him, and she loved him more than ever for his loyalty and attention. Already it was this man from whom she got her strength, and she wondered if it weren’t a sign of the future.
But she could not think of such things now. There was only Jeremy to think about. She walked close to Zeke and started to stir him awake, but his eyes opened before she could touch him. In an instant he was on his feet, as though he’d never been asleep. He reminded her of a wild animal that always seemed to know when someone was close by. He glanced at the wagon, then back at Abbie.
Sweet Prairie Passion (Savage Destiny) Page 18
