by Petit, C. J.
Kate walked past the saddles and was going to return to her distant spot, but stopped and sat on her saddle instead. Her hair was wet and stringy, but it felt so much better. It would be a mass of tangles, but it didn’t matter. She wasn’t trying to impress anyone, especially not John Flynn.
John had the coffee made and emptied a can of beef into the pot, added some salt and then stirred it for a few seconds as it sizzled on the hot bottom. Then he dumped in a can of potatoes, another of onions and sprinkled some ground pepper. The pepper was one of those spur-of-the-moment things when he was getting his supplies at Johnson’s in Bellevue before he left. As the stew was simmering, he remembered another whim at the store that should be buried in the food pannier.
He had to go past the still armed Kate to reach the pannier he needed, and he was surprised that he was a bit nervous. Now that she knew she could shoot him, why would she need him at all anyway? But Kate didn’t shoot him as he reached into the bag and began to rummage. He found the can of peaches and pulled out one of his two pocket knives and began to open the tin of fruit. He pulled off the sharp lid and flipped it away to the east, watching as it spun through the air and disappeared into the dark. He then grabbed a spoon and stuck it into the can, turned back toward Kate and handed it to her.
She looked at him warily, but accepted the peaches. After she had the can in her hands, he held out the pocket knife to her.
“Keep this. It’s got a four-inch blade, so you can use it for protection, too. It’s a lot lighter than the pistol.”
Kate took the knife again without comment and put it on the ground near her. She’d put it in her pocket when she finished.
John just returned to the fire letting Kate eat and brood.
She used the spoon’s edge to cut a piece off one of the peach halves and began to eat. For all the bad things that had happened to her, the sweet taste of a peach with its sugary syrup made things better, as it sent her back to her childhood.
She closed her eyes and drifted back to when she was a young girl and peaches were the big treat for her and her younger sisters. It was only then that she suddenly felt the loss of her family since the first few days after she had climbed out of the river. It had been so long, and she had so many constant worries, that the loss had faded.
When she had married Phil Pearson back in Missouri Valley, she was just seventeen, and it wasn’t like she was far away from the rest of her family. She was only a half a mile from her family farm.
But even though it was nearby, she was already beginning to feel distant from her family, especially from her sisters. They would visit often, but it wasn’t the same. She had been told that’s the way it was supposed to be, that she would start her own family now, and the bonds of her first family would loosen, because she was a wife and it took so much of her time to take care of the house and her husband. When she thought of Phil, even the sweetness of the peaches turned sour.
Phil wasn’t the best choice for a husband, and certainly not the worst, but after they married, he began to put on weight. After he married Kate, Phil’s uncle, who owned the mill, promoted him to a supervisory position and he didn’t have to do any manual labor. So, the lessened work and Kate’s good cooking made Phil begin to grow outwards. He was a fairly tall man at 5’ 10” but she wondered if that made it even more noticeable as she could look up and see his expanding jowls. After just six months, Phil was a grotesque, blubbery man that gave Kate the creeps when he was in the mood.
Then after two years and she still hadn’t become pregnant, he began to accuse her of being barren and let it be known that he wasn’t happy about it. Her sisters would come and visit and see the bruising and sometimes even the cuts, but knew there was nothing they could say or do about it. She was his wife and he had the right to discipline her.
That had gone on for two more years until that almost glorious day when fat Phil had slipped off a scaffold and fallen to his death when his neck broke on a different scaffold. Phil’s widowed uncle offered to marry her and let him live in her nice house, but Kate had scampered home to her family in horror at the suggestion, and was reunited with her younger sisters.
Then, just six weeks later, came the parents’ decision to homestead a much larger farm out in western Nebraska. Then, there were those two weeks that she and her sisters were together on the trip west to new lands and new opportunities. Now, Maggie would be twenty and Eliza was nineteen. She wondered if either had married.
She remembered how all of them had attracted the young men on the wagon train. She hadn’t cared, but Maggie and Eliza did, and both seemed attracted to different Flynns.
She continued to eat the peaches as she recalled that night that took her sisters and parents from her yet again. So many memories released by the simple taste of a peach.
She heard the spoon click on the bottom of the empty can and opened her eyes to see John Flynn stirring the food near the fire. He seemed different, but she knew she couldn’t trust him. But there was the one overriding question: Would he return her to her family, or would he do what she expected him to do?
John was unaware of anything other than the boiling pot of stew. He tasted it a couple of times and thought it was ready, so he tested the potatoes and found them soft.
“Ma’am, did you want some stew? It’s ready.” he said without turning to look at Kate.
Kate rolled off the saddle and walked to the fire. Even after the peaches, she was still hungry, so she picked up a tin bowl that John had set by the fire and he scooped stew out of the pot, filling the bowl.
Kate took the bowl, walked back to the saddle, took the spoon out of the peach tin and began to eat, blowing on the hot stew before she put it into her mouth.
John took a tin cup, filled it with coffee and walked it back to Kate, wordlessly setting it nearby and returning to the fire. As he was walking away Kate watched him closely to make sure he made it to the fire and wasn’t comfortable until he sat on his heels and poured himself a cup of coffee. She still watched as he then walked out of the camp and headed for the river. She wondered why he hadn’t eaten and what he was planning on doing. She kept a wary eye on him as she ate.
John reached the riverbank and watched the Platte flow by, its ripples reflecting the last vestiges of sunlight. He began to wonder why the sudden change in her behavior. She readily told him what had happened to her from the time on the wagon train until he arrived just minutes earlier. She was conversing normally until…when?
He began to recall the conversation. The downturn began the moment he told her his name. She had just said that she thought he was dead, but that wasn’t it. It was his name that made her suddenly distant and almost hostile. It was then that he saw the fear blossom in her eyes. Why would his name frighten her? She hadn’t known him before today, so it had to be an association with someone else in the family.
Then something connected in his mind and he withered at the thought. No, it can’t be! There was only one way to find out. He’d have to talk to Kate.
He tossed the dregs of his coffee into the river and turned back to the camp.
Kate was watching as he walked purposely toward the fire, determination in his eyes. She began to shake and reached for the pistol. It was going to happen again!
John stopped about ten feet away and dropped to sit on his heels again. Kate was fingering the pistol and he was well aware of it.
“Ma’am, I’m going to ask you a question. If you don’t want to answer, then I’ll understand.”
Kate knew what the question would be and had already decided to shoot John Flynn before she answered it.
“When I first arrived, you told me everything that had happened to you since you were taken at the wagon train until I shot that bastard. Suddenly, you began to act like I was just like Murphy. That change happened after I told you my name. I need to know, Ma’am. Was it one of my brothers who assaulted you and left you in the river?”
Kate was stunned. His question was as far
removed as possible from the question she expected to hear. Why did he want to know? Was he going to kill her to keep it quiet? But she had the gun and he didn’t, so she answered.
“Yes.”
John had been holding his breath waiting for her answer, and when she uttered that single syllable, he finally exhaled.
“Which one?”
“Jack.”
John lowered his head and said softly, “Miss Walsh, I am so terribly sorry for what Jack did to you. There is no excuse for that heinous deed, and if I see him again, I’m going to have to kill him, but only after I explain to everyone what he did to you.”
It was a massive shock to hear John Flynn say what he did. Would he really shoot his own brother based on what a woman he’d known for less than a day had said about him?
“Why would you believe me? You don’t even know me.”
“Women don’t lie about things like that. What would you have to gain? If anything, it would put you at greater risk by telling someone you’ve only known for a day that his brother had done something like this. Some men are so protective of their brothers that they’d have shot you for what you just said. No, Miss Walsh, you didn’t lie. Besides, I came to that conclusion earlier just by seeing the fear in your eyes. I just didn’t know which of them did it.”
Kate didn’t know what to say. He was right about her not gaining anything by telling him. And she had just thought that very thing, that he might kill her for telling the truth.
She didn’t say a thing. Kate just reached down and picked up his pistol and offered it to him, grips first.
John realized what a momentous step Kate was taking and didn’t want her to go too far, too fast.
John smiled and said, “You hang onto the pistol. I’ve got to clean it in the morning anyway.”
Kate looked at John Flynn’s smiling face, and for the first time in months, Catherine Mary Walsh smiled.
_____
The Murphy brothers were on their mules riding out of Plum Creek. They were drunk, but not falling-down drunk. But they were all determined to get even with their father and make him pay the price for denying them any Kate time.
“Who gets Kate first?” shouted Joe over the din of the three plodding mules.
Kevin shouted back, “I do, you moron. I’m the oldest.”
“You’re last, Joe!” Pat added with a giggle.
Each was carrying his Springfield rifle. They had picked up the rifles for a song in Omaha when they had passed through last year, but hadn’t used them much because they didn’t want to waste their money on ammunition. When they had tried them, they were satisfied with the guns’ accuracy.
The closer they got to the cabin, the lower their level of determination dropped. If they had been honest with themselves, they would have admitted that they were afraid of their father.
It was Pat who first voiced some doubt to the plan.
“Say, Kevin, what if he’s waitin’ for us with his shotgun?”
“Why would he be doin’ that? He ain’t got no reason to suspect we’re comin’.”
Pat held his opinion after that, but Joe felt emboldened by Pat’s question, so he spoke up.
“Kevin, I think it’d be easier in the morning. See, we wait with our rifles in the field, and when he comes out to use the privy we all let loose.”
Kevin, surprisingly, liked the idea because there was no chance of the old man getting in a lucky punch or even a knife stab. They all knew he always kept his pig sticker nearby.
Kevin halted his mule and let his brothers walk theirs back to him.
After they stopped, he said, “You know what, Joe. You got something there. We go over there bright and early and we wait for him. When you hear my rifle go off, you both shoot. If there’s a misfire, it won’t matter.”
Joe and Pat felt relieved by the new plan. Shooting the old man from a distance was way better than trying to kill him up close.
They changed their route due south to go home.
CHAPTER 3
The first ones awake the next morning should have been the Murphy brothers, but it wasn’t.
John woke up with the predawn around six o’clock in the morning. He trotted down to the river and after taking care of nature’s call, washed himself in the river, making sure he stayed upstream.
He decided to shave for the first time in three days, ever since those idiots had shot his old shaving kit. He normally took care of his stubble daily because he knew the longer he waited the more damage he would inflict when he dragged that sharp blade over his face. At least he had a nice new razor.
New it may be, he still stropped the blade to make sure it was sharp, then worked up enough soap in his brush and cup that he could work a thick lather into his stubble and soften it for the razor. Five minutes later, with only a single nick, John wiped his face clean, ran his fingers through his sandy brown hair and pulled on his Stetson.
After he had returned to the camp, he built a new fire and had to walk back to the river and fill all the canteens again as well as the coffee pot. He lowered the canteens to the ground, put the coffee pot on the grate followed by the frypan. He was slicing bacon when Kate opened her eyes and felt different aside from her location and being warm in the bedroll. It took her a few seconds to realize it was because she was clean, and her skin felt alive. She slid out of the bedroll and scampered down to the river. She didn’t look back once.
When she finally returned after washing her face, John already had the bacon frying.
After the admission to John about Jack’s assault, and his startling statement, she felt much safer and had asked him to call her Kate. He replied that she could call him John, and it was the last thing they had said to each other before turning in for the night. It was still a giant step for Kate.
She approached the fire and said, “Good morning, John.”
John turned his head, smiled, and replied, “Good morning, Kate. Just beans and bacon this morning. Tomorrow we should have some eggs for a few days.”
“Bacon and eggs. That does sound good.”
“To me, too. After we get the horses saddled, we’ll leave here and ride along the Platte going west. When we see Plum Creek off to the south, I want you to keep your horse walking until it’s at your back and then just wait there. You should be able to see if anyone is coming from a long distance, including me. So, when you see me, start riding away from Plum Creek and angle toward me so we meet a couple of miles away. Okay?”
“Okay.”
After they had eaten and packed everything away, John led the animals down to the river and let them drink before leading them back to be saddled. A half an hour later, John and Kate were riding west.
_____
Pat Murphy was the first one to open his eyes. The top of his head told him light was a bad thing and he closed them again quickly.
By the time Joe Murphy opened his eyes and kept them open, his head tried to tell him to hide from the light too, but his bladder was much more demanding, so he slid off the naked mattress and trotted out the only door in the small sod house.
When he returned, he headed for the kitchen area and found the lone bottle of whiskey remaining in the house and took a long swallow. He was ready to finish it off when Kevin arrived after his brief excursion out the front door.
“What the hell do you think you’re doin?” he shouted, which startled Joe.
When Joe whipped around to see which brother had yelled, the bottle slid from his hand, and shattered on the hard-packed dirt floor, letting the last few ounces of liquor in the house flow toward the cook stove.
Kevin smacked his younger brother on the side of the head, but let it go after that. Pat walked into the room, saw the broken whiskey bottle on the floor and promptly threw up, which provided impetus for them all to leave the house.
None felt the need to eat anyway, so they took their Springfields and ammunition pouches, mounted their mules and trotted toward Kate’s place, already well behind thei
r schedule.
_____
John had left Kate north of Plum Creek, about a mile from the river, before he led the mule into town before nine o’clock.
He stopped at the dry goods store, stepped down and tied Arrow to the hitch rail.
He walked inside and found the proprietor sweeping the far aisle.
“Good morning, sir.” he said looking at John as he continued his sweeping.
“Howdy.”
John walked down the first aisle and began adding tins of food and other staples to his arms. After he was full, he went to the counter, dropped set them down and returned for a second load. The proprietor had finished sweeping and went back behind the counter and began putting the items into heavy burlap bags, adding each item to the total.
John didn’t forget anything. He bought all the normal supplies; coffee, the normal tins of food, including some rare tins of chicken, two slabs of bacon, a basket of eggs, jerky, soda crackers, salt, and some different items this time because of Kate. He bought a bag of sugar, condensed milk, some tea and a tea strainer, not knowing if Kate was a tea drinker or not. It seemed that all the ladies he had known, including his mother, were tea drinkers. He even added a small tin teapot.
He headed for the toiletry aisle and picked up two toothbrushes and tooth powder, some more soap, including two bars of rose-scented soap, a large pad of privacy paper, and four more towels.
Then, he picked up what he thought Kate might need to wear. The store only had four dresses, and the sizes seemed generic, so he bought them all. He bought a camisole, a pair of boots and some socks, two riding skirts, two blouses, and finally a Stetson. He added two pairs of boys working pants, a belt, two shirts that should be the right size, and a jacket and gloves. He added a second slicker because he knew the spring rains were far from over.
When he was leaving, he added a hairbrush, which effectively cleaned the store out of women’s things. Then he tossed a few hair ribbons on top while he was at it.
“Will that do it?” the proprietor asked as he put all the women’s clothes and things into one bag.
