Baby on the Oregon Trail

by Lynna Banning

  Shaking with fury, Jenna propped her fists at her waist and waited. She could scarcely stand to look at him.

  “I didn’t know who was taking my horse,” he said after a moment. “Didn’t recognize the man. But I knew my horse. The rider was heading hell-for-leather—Excuse me, ma’am. He was riding toward the trading post we passed yesterday morning. I fired my rifle and he went down.”

  “You killed him.”

  “Yes, I did. I’m sorry he turned out to be your husband, and the father of your girls there.” He inclined his head toward the wagon where three heads now poked out from the rear bonnet.

  “‘Sorry,’ Mr. Carver, is not enough,” she snapped.

  “I realize that. I know nothing can ever replace your husband, but I’d like the chance to do what I can to make it up to you. That’s why I volunteered to drive your rig.”

  “You cannot ‘make it up’ to me, Mr. Carver. Ever. Don’t you understand that?” She clamped her lips together, afraid she would cry.

  “I mean to try, Mrs. Borland. Where’s your yoke and the harnesses for the oxen?”

  “Did you not hear me?” Her voice went out of control, rising to a shout. She hated him! He was a cold-blooded killer. “I do not want your help!”

  He turned his back on her and peered under the wagon. Mary Grace stuck her tongue out at him, but he paid no attention. Instead, he snaked an arm out to capture the tack and moved off to where the oxen grazed inside the circle of wagons. He moved with such assurance she wanted to toss the hot coals from her morning cook fire into his face.

  The instant he was out of sight, Tess scrambled down and planted herself in front of Jenna. “You can’t let him do this!” she screamed. “He was my father, and that man killed him. He has no right to be here, touching Papa’s animals.”

  Jenna sucked in an uneven breath and wrapped both arms across her waist. “Perhaps not, Tess. But neither of us can yoke up the oxen, and he has volunteered. I will speak to Mr. Lincoln tonight and ask for someone else.”

  The girl’s face flushed, but Jenna was suddenly too weary to care. Her shoulders ached. Her head felt as if it were stuffed with sharp-pointed rocks.

  “Take Ruthie down to the latrine, then get in the wagon.”

  She paced around and around their small campsite until Tess and Ruthie returned and Mr. Carver appeared, tugging the oxen, Sue and Sunflower, by their lead ropes. He said nothing, just moved past her, positioned the two animals in front of the wagon and went about jockeying the yoke into place and adjusting the harnesses, his motions unhurried.

  Jenna stepped closer to watch what he did.

  He paused and his gray eyes sought hers. “Want me to teach you and your oldest girl how to do this?”

  “I—No. I mean, yes. But not my oldest girl. Tess would find such a task beneath her.”

  His dark eyebrows went up, and then he nodded. “My little sister never wanted to curry her own horse. Same reason.” He went back to adjusting Sue’s harness.

  “How did your sister turn out?” she blurted out. “Was she spoiled?”

  He straightened, a look of such naked anguish on his face that Jenna winced.

  “My sister was killed when Sherman’s men reached Danville and marched through our plantation. Some Yankee soldier bashed her head with his rifle butt. She was eleven years old.”

  Stunned, Jenna stared at him, a choking sadness knotting her chest.

  Mr. Carver shuttered his features and bent over the hitch again. “Watch now, Mrs. Borland. You have to pull this ring tight, or it’ll work loose.”

  “Mr. Carver, I—I am sorry about your sister.”

  “War is ugly, ma’am. We did some awful things to you Yankees, too.”

  “But a child! Dear God, what is the world coming to?”

  “Wondered that a lot when I was in the field. And later, fighting the Sioux.” He finished tightening the jangling metal, patted the heads of both animals and turned to her. “What are their names?”

  “Tess, Mary Grace and—”

  He smiled, and she was struck by how white his teeth were against the tanned skin. “I meant your oxen, Mrs. Borland. Helps to know how to address them.”

  “Address them? Mathias never talked to the oxen.”

  “Lots of folks don’t. I do.”

  “Sue and Sunflower. Sue is the one on the left.”

  He nodded and scratched Sunflower behind one ear. “If you’re ready to pull out, I’ll go get my horse.”

  A horse! She was terrified of horses. One had bucked her off when she was eight; she’d never forgotten it.

  “Aren’t you going to...? Mr. Lincoln said the volunteer would drive our wagon.”

  “I will do that, ma’am. I’ll just bring my horse and tie it beside the wagon.”

  Jenna checked on the girls. “You two can walk alongside the wagon if you wish. Or you can ride inside, but it will be hot when the sun is high.”

  “I’ll walk,” Mary Grace said.

  “Me, too,” Ruthie chimed.

  “I’d rather die than see that man driving Papa’s wagon,” Tess muttered. “I’ll stay inside.”

  Jenna found her sunbonnet and a blue knitted shawl, then climbed up onto the driver’s box. She supposed she could learn to drive the oxen. She’d never liked the two animals. She’d never liked horses, either. But she supposed she could stand Mr. Carver until they stopped for supper tonight and she could speak to Sam Lincoln about a replacement.

  Within ten minutes he returned, mounted on a huge, gleaming black horse. He tied it to the wagon, climbed up beside her and lifted the reins. Then without a word he lowered them again and eyed Ruthie, who stood clutching Mary Grace’s hand.

  “You want your little one to ride up here?”

  “Why?”

  “It’s safer,” he said.

  “Very well.” She dropped onto the ground and handed Ruthie up onto the box beside Mr. Carver. She didn’t really want her sitting next to that man, but he was right; it was safer. She wondered why Mathias had never thought of that.

  Slowly the circled wagons peeled off into a ragged line and amid the creak of huge oak wheels and the clank and groan of mule and ox teams, the train rolled forward. Their wagon took its designated place at the end.

  Rather than ride next to Mr. Carver, Jenna set out on foot, walking an arm’s length from a downcast Mary Grace, who twitched her spare body away from her. She tried to say something, but the girl cut her off. “Just leave me alone,” she hissed.

  Suddenly the girl yelped and darted forward to her father’s grave. The wagon train wheels were now rolling over the mounded earth, and Jenna could see that Mr. Carver intended to do the same.

  “Stop!” Jenna screamed. He reined in and waited.

  Mary Grace reached him first. “They’re driving right over Papa’s grave!” she wailed.

  Mr. Carver tied the reins around the brake and jumped down to face the girl. “Miss Borland, we do that of necessity. If the grave looks fresh, wolves will get at it.”

  “Wolves?” Jenna shuddered.

  He went down on one knee before Mary Grace. “I know it’s hard to watch, miss, but it has to be done unless you want your father’s grave desecrated.”

  “What’s des-crated?” Ruthie piped from her seat on the driver’s box.

  Mr. Carver pushed his hat back and stood. “Desecrated means something spoils a grave. Digs it up, maybe. You wouldn’t want your papa to be disturbed, would you?”

  Fat tears stood in Ruthie’s blue eyes. She shook her head. Lee Carver glanced over at Mary Grace. “You understand, miss?”

  The girl nodded.

  Lee Carver looked to Jenna. She stood close to her daughter, but he noted that the girl hitched herself away from her side. Odd.

 
“Mrs. Borland?” he prompted. “Would you like me to drive around the grave site? This is the last wagon, so it’ll be pretty well dusted over by now.”

  She stared at him, her face so white it reminded him of the stationery he’d used to write Laurie during the War. After a long moment she gave a short nod.

  “It is all right, Mr. Carver. I would not want their father’s grave disturbed by animals.”

  He wondered why she put it that way, “their father’s grave.” Why was it not “my husband’s grave”? All at once he realized that the girls were not her daughters; they had been his.

  He glanced up at the smallest girl. “Ruthie?”

  “It’s all right, mister. Papa’s in heaven anyway.”

  His heart thumped. Oh, God, what had he done? He’d shot a horse thief, but the man had been a father. A husband. No horse was worth that, not even his black Arabian.

  What the hell had the man intended to do with his horse? Where was he heading? And why?

  He clenched his jaw, then climbed back up onto the box and picked up the reins. No matter what he did to make amends, Jenna Borland would get rid of him the first chance she got.

  Chapter Three

  Tess spoke not a single word to anyone all morning, and when the sun burned high over their heads, she refused to offer Mr. Carver even a tin cup of water.

  Ruthie’s nose and cheeks got sunburned, despite her floppy calico sunbonnet, and halfway through the long morning her tired little body had tipped sideways against the upright frame of Mr. Carver. To keep her from toppling off the bench, he curled his arm around her and went on driving the oxen, the reins looped over his long-fingered hands.

  Jenna pressed her lips together and brought him a cup of water from the water barrel lashed to the wagon.

  By the time the train stopped for their nooning, Jenna was half-sick from the heat and dust. She had walked beside the rank-smelling oxen for hours after Mary Grace had given up and crawled into the wagon bed, and when the train pulled into a shady grove of ash trees, every muscle in her legs was trembling.

  She rested for an hour in the cool shade, letting the breeze dry out her sweat-sticky cotton dress and soothe her overheated body. Then she packed away the lunch makings and when the train was ready to pull out again, she resumed her position beside the wagon. She stiffened when she saw Mr. Carver approaching.

  “Mrs. Borland, if you think you could drive the oxen, I’ll walk. I can keep one hand on Sunflower’s yoke just to make sure she—”

  “No,” Jenna interrupted. “I don’t like those two animals. Horses, too, if you must know. I would rather you drive the wagon.”

  “Wouldn’t you rather rest inside the wagon instead of walking, ma’am?”

  “Again, no thank you. The girls will be inside and they... Besides, it’s stifling in there. I don’t know how they can bear it.”

  He chuckled. “I wouldn’t even ask, if I were you. Mary Grace and Tess, isn’t it? The older one would rather bake like a biscuit than look at me.”

  Jenna blew out a weary sigh. “I’m sure part of it is because of their father, but the rest is because... Well, I don’t pretend to understand them.”

  He regarded her with a flicker of emotion in his eyes. “Could be they resent having a stepmother.”

  “When Mathias was alive, the girls tolerated me, up to a point. Now that he’s gone, they can’t bear to be near me. Except for Ruthie, that is.”

  Why was she telling him this? She’d never confessed to anyone how Mathias’s daughters treated her, not even to Emma Lincoln. Perhaps the midday heat was softening her brain.

  “I’d think not being their mother would be difficult.”

  “Are you married, Mr. Carver?” Too late she realized how rude the question sounded. If he had a wife, surely she would be traveling west with him.

  A veil dropped over his gray eyes. “I was married once,” he said, his voice quiet. He said nothing more, and Jenna knew she couldn’t ask. But she did wonder about him.

  Near sundown, a shouted command from Sam brought the wagons into a wide circle, and men began unhitching their tired animals and leading them into the grassy area in the center to feed. Forage was lush, and there was plenty of water from a tumbling creek. The mules and oxen gulped greedily. Jenna longed to splash some over her face and arms, but first she had to make supper.

  A grumbling Tess lugged two brimming buckets of water and plunked them at Jenna’s feet so hard they slopped over onto her leather shoes. Biting her tongue, Jenna stepped around the lanky girl and enlisted Mary Grace to help her drag three flat rocks together to make a crude fireplace. She sent Tess and Ruthie for kindling and firewood—buffalo chips, if they couldn’t find any downed tree branches.

  When the fire was crackling, Jenna settled the iron kettle on the rocks and began slicing up potatoes and wild onions and dried venison. For seasoning she added a generous dash of salt and the last of the dried rosemary. Then she mixed up plain flour and water biscuits and patted circles of dough onto the hot rocks to brown while the stew bubbled. The smell was mouthwatering.

  She kept a wary eye on the black stallion, still roped to the wagon, and wondered why Mr. Carver didn’t release him to graze with the other animals. She found out when he strode into camp, scooped out a double handful of oats from a burlap bag tied to his saddle and offered it to the horse in his cupped hands. He talked to the animal in low tones while it ate.

  Jenna shook her head. Mercy, he treats that animal like it was almost human!

  Men. Back in Roseville, Mathias had once adopted a mongrel dog. He’d fussed over it plenty, but he’d never hand-fed the mutt. Jenna had hated it because it nipped at Ruthie’s bare toes. When they joined the emigrant train, Mathias had left the dog behind to fend for itself. Even Jenna had wept.

  “Mary Grace, would you please tell Mr. Carver supper is ready?”

  “I’d rather let him starve,” the girl announced. Her hazel eyes flashed with anger.

  Jenna dropped the iron ladle into the stew and spun to face her middle stepdaughter. “I can understand how you feel, Mary Grace, but the man has driven our wagon all day in the hot sun while you and your sister lazed inside. It would not be kind to refuse him food. He has certainly earned it.”

  “You tell him, then!”

  “I am busy with supper.” She worked to keep the annoyance out of her tone, but from the rebellious look on the girl’s round face she knew she hadn’t been successful. She laid her free hand on Mary Grace’s plump shoulder, but she jerked away.

  “I know you do not like Mr. Carver, Mary Grace, but do as I ask. Now,” she added. “Unless you don’t wish to eat supper.” She leveled the threat calmly, but she’d had enough. Putting up with hateful treatment took energy, and her strength was just about depleted.

  Mary Grace threw her a dark look and stomped off to where Mr. Carver stood brushing the stallion’s hide.

  “Why do we have to be nice to him?” Tess demanded from behind her.

  “Because.” Jenna sighed. “Feeding your enemies is the Christian thing to do.”

  “Huh!” Tess clattered the tin plates and cups onto an upturned apple crate. “I hope he chokes on it.”

  “Hush, now. Here he comes.”

  Ruthie danced up from washing up in the creek, her face and hands still dripping. “We’re having ven’son stew, mister.” She blotted her wet cheeks with the sleeve of her dress.

  “Smells good,” Mr. Carver said. “I’ve been eating hardtack for so long I forgot how good real food smells.”

  “What’s hardtack?” Ruthie asked.

  “Kind of a thick dry cracker.”

  “What’s it taste like? Is it good?”

  “Not too good. It tastes a little like sawdust, I guess. Mostly you just roll it around in your mouth until i
t softens up, then you swallow it quick.”

  Jenna ladled the thick stew onto the plates. “Pass the biscuits around, please, Tess.” She tipped her head toward Mr. Carver.

  To Jenna’s embarrassment, Tess pointedly bypassed him and instead scooped biscuits from the crockery bowl onto her sisters’ plates.

  “Tess.” Jenna kept her voice calm but inside she was seething. “If you would honor your father’s memory, you will behave as he would want you to. And now, because he is gone, you will behave as I want you to.”

  Mr. Carver solved the problem by standing up and reaching a long tanned arm for the bowl. Then he settled back on the ground, dropped the biscuit into his stew and mashed it up with his spoon. Jenna hid a grin. Tess’s rudeness didn’t seem to matter one whit.

  She set a bucket of water onto the coals to heat for washing dishes and ate her supper in silence. When she had downed her last bite, she licked the spoon, laid it on the tin plate and handed it to Mary Grace.

  “Would you rather wash the dishes tonight or roll out the bedding in the wagon?”

  “Dishes,” she said with a grimace. “Let Tess make up the beds.”

  Jenna nodded. Tired as she was, she tried to smile at the girl. “Ruthie, your cheeks are sunburned. I’ll put some ointment on before bedtime.”

  “Where’s Mister gonna sleep, Jenna?”

  Ruthie’s question stopped her cold on the way to the wagon for the medicine kit. Yes, where would he sleep? Up until tonight, she and Mathias had slept together under the wagon, but now what?

  Out of the corner of her eye she caught Mr. Carver studying her. Would he sleep in their camp? Under the wagon, where she slept? Absolutely not. She must speak to the wagon master right away.

  “Girls, I’m going over to talk to Sam Lincoln.” She pressed the bottle of ointment into Ruthie’s small hand and untied her apron.

  “Can I come with you?” Ruthie begged. “Missus Emma gives me cookies.”

  “Not this time, honey. I have some...business to discuss with Mr. Lincoln. You stay in camp and help Tess make up the beds.”

  Mr. Carver rose and stood looking at her, his hands on his slim, jean-clad hips. The back of her neck grew hot, so she turned away from him and marched out of camp.