Baby on the Oregon Trail

by Lynna Banning

  She didn’t want to think about how much that meant to her. She didn’t want to be dependent on him. On anyone. After her experience with Randall and then Mathias, both of them turning out to be inadequate and unreliable, she’d resolved never again to rely on any man. If she’d learned anything during these past awful months it was that to be truly safe she had to stand on her own two feet.

  The long line of emigrants zigzagged down the steep trail with no mishap except for when one of the Zaberskies’ cows got rambunctious and butted Jimmy Gumpert’s backside. But all the way down to the bottom of the canyon, Jenna worried about Tess and Mary Grace and the two oxen plodding after them.

  As they completed the last switchback, Jenna glanced up at Lee. “Where will you sleep tonight?”

  “Up on top.”

  She felt an odd jolt of disappointment. “Be sure to—” She broke off.

  He unhooked Ruthie from his belt. “Be sure to what?”

  “Keep warm.”

  He laughed aloud, and chuckled all the way back up the cliff to Devil and the wagons. He’d be a lot warmer with Jenna sleeping beside him, even if he couldn’t touch her like he wanted to. Each night when she fell asleep, he laid his arm over her, but she never stirred so he guessed she never knew about it.

  Safely down in the flat valley, Jenna clasped her arms across her belly and stared upward as the first wagon was tipped over the top and dangled, supported by ropes attached to each wheel axle. Her neck grew stiff from peering up, but she watched, fascinated, as the cumbersome load inched lower and lower while the men on the ridge above payed out the rope they’d snugged around sturdy fir trees.

  As soon as the Zaberskie wagon had descended, the men rolled it to one side and Jenna let out a long breath of relief. Then she and Sophia set about putting the interior to rights, scattering feed for Sophia’s precious chickens and constructing a fireplace.

  Tess and Mary Grace tied Sue and Sunflower to a thick pine tree and rambled about picking ripe blackberries. Before thick darkness fell, four more wagons were slowly lowered off the cliff. Each one came down accompanied by gasps and murmurs, and when all four locked wheels finally settled onto the ground, relieved cheers broke out.

  By nightfall, after a supper of beans and bacon and blackberry cobbler, Jenna was so exhausted she felt light-headed. Sophia sent her a sharp look.

  “What iss wrong, Jenna? Are you not well?”

  “I just realized most of our menfolk are up there.” She gestured toward the cliff above. “And we are alone down here.”

  “Nonsense.” Sophia laughed and patted her arm. “You worry over Mr. Carver, eh? Do not. We haf five big strong men who stay to guard us. Go sleep now. We haf big day tomorrow.”

  The girls and Ruthie curled up on quilts by the blazing fire. Jenna lay down beside them and closed her eyes. She had to think ahead to what she—and her stepdaughters and the new baby—would do when they reached Oregon. The wagon train’s destination was the Willamette Valley, mostly farms and small towns. Her small stash of money was running out; she had to think what she could do to earn a living. Mathias had planned to run a store, so she supposed she could work as a clerk in a mercantile. Or maybe she could give piano lessons? Mathias often hadn’t thought things through. When they had started out, he’d had no idea of how difficult traveling to Oregon would prove to be.

  She groaned and rolled over. She couldn’t stop wondering about Lee up on the ridge. What was he thinking about? Probably that horse ranch he wanted to start when they reached Oregon. Such an ambitious undertaking, and with only one horse. Why could he not do as Mathias had planned to do, start a little business in a town? Towns were civilized. Ranches were...out in the unprotected country.

  She sighed. But she already knew the answer to that. A business, a shop, or a store in a town—that wasn’t Lee. He had his heart set on his ranch. No doubt in his mind he already had a corral laid out and fence posts dug. She was learning that Lee Carver thought about things far in advance.

  Well, so did she. She had three daughters, and girls needed certain things: a school, friends, and clothes and fripperies and...civilization. Things that were not available on a ranch out somewhere in wild, untamed country.

  She had to think about her children’s future, and her own, and how to earn a living in a town. But she would miss Lee when they got to Oregon.

  * * *

  “That’s far enough,” Sam yelled.

  Lee wrapped a length of thick rope around the trunk of a pine tree, one on either side of the cliff edge, and looped one end around his saddle horn. At Sam’s signal, he stepped Devil backward until it pulled taut.

  Beside him, Arn McKernan, mounted on one of his mules, did the same. The two men stood ready to secure another rope tied to each of two front wagon wheel axles. Sam and Emil Gumpert attached the other two ropes.

  Sam raised one arm. “Let ’er roll!”

  Two men kicked away the blocks under the front wheel rims, and four more joined in pushing the wagon forward until the wheels tipped off the cliff edge. Immediately the two front rope handlers went into action, pulling with all their strength to keep the wagon from hurtling headfirst down the steep slope.

  The men grunted and shoved until the rear wheels disappeared over the edge.

  “Now!” Sam shouted. “Keep it level.”

  Lee felt Devil stiffen as the weight dragged at him.

  “That’s it! Keep those wheels up.” The wagon master swiped his shirtsleeve over his sweaty face.

  Lee stepped Devil forward with Arn’s mule. The horse dug in his hooves, and he hoped to hell the rope wouldn’t snap. The wagon gave an unexpected lurch, but he managed to advance the horse steadily, paying out line as needed. Arn was doing the same.

  The ropes scraped marks around the two thick tree trunks until suddenly all four lines went slack and Lee knew the wagon had settled on the canyon bottom. A cheer rose from below. Within minutes the axle ropes were untied, and the men on top drew them up, hand over hand.

  Sam waved one arm. “Next wagon.”

  Wagon after wagon was laboriously lowered to the canyon floor. It went on all day, and by suppertime, Jenna’s wagon and then the last one, Sam’s, came dangling down the canyon face and Lee rode an exhausted Devil down the steep switchback trail to find Jenna. Maybe he could talk her into giving him a shot of that medicinal whiskey she kept stashed somewhere. He prayed the bottle was still intact after the wagon’s bumpy ride over the cliff.

  She surprised him. When he rode in, she climbed into her wagon and emerged in the next minute to hand him the whiskey bottle. An hour later, pleasantly fuzzy-headed, Lee sat down to a supper of fried rabbit and biscuits. Then he took a swim in the bracingly cold stream, downed another shot of whiskey and spent a drowsy hour underneath the wagon, listening to Jenna’s voice reading about Lancelot and Guinevere.

  Poor old Lancelot, he thought lazily. What he should have done was scoop Guinevere up and ride off to his castle, never mind King Arthur. But in the next moment he recalled that Lancelot had done just that, and it brought the lovers nothing but heartache and a doomed kingdom.

  He rolled over and closed his eyes. “It was good while it lasted,” he muttered.

  “What was?” Jenna asked. When he didn’t answer, she scooted closer and repeated the question.

  He was half-asleep, but he managed to mutter a reply. “Lancelot and Guinevere. Star-crossed.”

  Jenna studied his face in the flickering light of the campfire. She guessed it wasn’t any easier to love a man in Guinevere’s time than it was today. Men always wanted to go kiting off on adventures. She’d bet Lee would risk every cent he owned on his horse ranch. Once they reached Oregon there would be no stopping him. She pulled her quilt over her body and closed her eyes.

  * * *

  For the next six days the wa
gons climbed steadily higher and higher. Pines and firs grew more sparse and finally turned into low scrub and wind-twisted bushes above the tree line, and still the wagons climbed.

  It grew harder and harder to breathe. The girls didn’t appear to suffer, but for Jenna, carrying the additional weight, every few steps she had to stop and pant.

  “We’re at seven thousand feet,” Dr. Engelman said as he checked her heart rate one night after supper. The gray-bearded physician surveyed her with somber eyes. “Not only that, Miz Borland, but you’re closer to delivery than I’d originally thought.”

  Jenna sucked in a panicky breath. “Surely not before we reach Oregon?”

  “Probably not, no. But just to be on the safe side, I want you to stop hauling buckets of water and lifting heavy kettles. Let your girls do it.”

  Jenna groaned under her breath. The cooperative spirit that touched Tess and Mary Grace was sporadic. One day they were all smiles and “let me helps,” and the next they sniped at each other from sunup until dusk and refused to lift a finger. Even Ruthie was disgusted with them.

  “When I go to school,” she announced, “I’m not gonna listen to my sisters any more. Ever.”

  “Well, go on, then,” Tess jeered. “Get Lee to teach you some more French words, like s’il vous plaît.”

  Ruthie’s wide blue eyes sparkled. “What’s ‘silly play’ mean?”

  “That’s for me to know and you to find out,” Tess taunted. “Come on, Mary Grace, let’s practice our French.”

  “I wanna know now!” Ruthie clamored.

  “Good heavens,” Jenna murmured to Lee by the campfire. “I hope their schooling will include some lessons in manners. I am certainly wasting my breath trying to instill some gentility in the Borland girls.”

  “Gentility?” he queried with a wry smile. “They’re plenty genteel around Jimmy Gumpert.”

  “And around you,” she returned. “They’re oh-so-polite around you. What is it that makes girls so catty to each other and so nice to men?”

  He chuckled. “Competition.”

  “I was never, never mean to my friends like that,” Jenna said.

  “You probably didn’t have to be.”

  She propped her hands at her thickened waist. “What does that mean?”

  He rose and lifted the kettle of bubbling stew off the fire. “You going to make biscuits tonight?”

  “Don’t change the subject.”

  “Dumplings, maybe?”

  “Yeah!” Ruthie clamored. “Do dumplings, Jenna. I’ll help.” She clung to Lee’s leg. “Make her do dumplings, Mister Lee.”

  He detached Ruthie’s small hands from his knee and bent down. “You really think I can make Jenna do anything?”

  “Yeah,” Ruthie blurted. “Jenna listens to you.”

  “Not much,” he said.

  “I do, too!” Jenna exclaimed.

  He straightened and pinned her with tired gray eyes. “Not much,” he repeated. “And not often enough.”

  “Oh! Oh...” Her brain didn’t work right at this altitude, and her usual words of rebuttal didn’t come. Instead she seethed in silence, climbed into the wagon and scooped out a bowlful of flour from the barrel. “Dumplings,” she announced when she returned to the fire.

  “Oh, not again,” Tess groaned.

  “Yeah,” Mary Grace added. “I’m sick of lumpy old dumplings.”

  “Well,” Jenna said carefully. “Maybe Jimmy doesn’t like them, either.”

  “What’s Jimmy got to do with dumplings?” Tess asked.

  Jenna smiled. “I’ve invited him to join us for supper tonight.”

  Tess’s hazel eyes widened. “You have?”

  “Well...” Jenna hesitated, hiding a smile. She caught Lee staring at her, his lips twitching. “Perhaps Jimmy would rather not come, since—”

  “I’ll help you with supper,” Tess interrupted.

  “I make good dumplings,” Mary Grace added. “Better than you,” she sneered at Tess.

  “Wanna bet?” Tess grabbed the bowl of flour out of Jenna’s hands. “Watch me!”

  The girls donned aprons and bustled about the camp and Jenna dusted off her hands and shot Lee an I-told-you-so look.

  He rose from the apple crate, signaled her with his chin and strode out of camp. She met him at the corner of the Zaberskies’ wagon, where Sophia and Ted sat eating supper.

  “Jenna, Lee.” Sophia rose and extended her hands. “Join us, please. Iss plenty.”

  “No thanks, Mrs. Zaberskie,” Lee said. “The girls are making stew and dumplings.”

  Jenna studied the swelling under Sophia’s gingham apron and sent her a secret smile. “The doctor thinks maybe twins,” Sophia whispered.

  Lee touched her arm. “How long do dumplings take to cook?” he whispered.

  “About ten minutes. Maybe longer at this altitude.” She pointed at a skinny figure slipping past the wagon. “There goes Jimmy.”

  “Love is a great motivator,” Lee murmured. “Poor kid.”

  Jenna wondered why she went from furious to introspective within seconds. Dr. Engelman said her mood swings were perfectly normal, but she wasn’t usually like this.

  In fact, the physician had advised, women in the later stages of pregnancy tend to pull into themselves. He went on to describe it as being “broody, like a hen.” The analogy made her teeth clench.

  “I’m going for a walk,” she announced.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Mary Grace and Lee had washed and dried the tin plates when Jenna dragged back into camp, looking preoccupied and unusually downcast. The minute Lee saw her, he picked up the ladle and bent over the still-warm kettle of stew. “Want some supper, Jenna?”

  “No,” she said, her voice weary. “I am not hungry.”

  “Might want to eat some anyway,” he said. “Pretty good stew. Besides, you need to keep your strength up.”

  She spun, her green eyes full of tears. “Don’t tell me what I need to do, Lee. I am perfectly capable of thinking for myself.”

  Carefully he laid the ladle back in the kettle. “Then do some of that thinking,” he said quietly. “And start now.”

  Her lips trembled. “What does that mean, exactly?”

  “It means start taking better care of yourself, exactly.”

  “Oh. Dr. Engelman said I am perfectly healthy, and—”

  “No, he didn’t,” Lee interrupted. “Doc said your pulse is too fast and you’re letting yourself get overtired.”

  “He did? He told you that?”

  “He did,” Lee said, keeping his tone matter-of-fact.

  “Well!” she said, narrowing her brimming eyes. “I’ll have you know that my pulse is none of your business.”

  “Jenna, for God’s sake—”

  “Please don’t lecture me, Lee.”

  He stepped in close and laid one hand on her shoulder. “We’re all tired and on edge. We’re making a long, tough trip, but your stubbornness isn’t making it any easier.”

  Without warning she turned into his arms. “I don’t know wh-what’s the matter with me,” she sobbed. He pressed her head against his shoulder and motioned the girls off. Mary Grace grabbed Ruthie’s hand and all three of them walked off toward the Zaberskie wagon.

  “I can guess what’s wrong,” Lee said at last.

  “What?” Her voice sounded muffled against his shirt.

  “For one thing, you’re having a baby.”

  She tipped her head back and looked up at him. “That is perfectly obvious, isn’t it? I’m as big as a house and clumsy as...as a cow.”

  “Yeah, you’re big. And maybe you feel clumsy, but—” He stopped suddenly and sucked in a breath.

  “But what?” />
  “Nothing. I was... Nothing.”

  “But what?” she pursued.

  He shook his head. “Come on, crawl under the wagon and roll out your quilts. I’ll tell you a bedtime story.”

  She laughed in spite of herself. “A story? What kind of story? About King Arthur and Guinevere?”

  “You’ll just have to wait and see.”

  She did as he suggested while he put a lid on the stew kettle and banked the fire. Then he lugged two buckets of water up from the stream and dumped them into the water barrel.

  The girls straggled back into camp and dutifully went to bed, grumbling when they found Jenna was not reading to them tonight. Lee fed Devil and Mary Grace’s roan mare some of his dwindling supply of oats, checked the hobbles on both horses and crawled under the wagon next to Jenna.

  He noted with satisfaction that she was using a waterproof ground cover under her bedroll, but he was smart enough not to mention it. One thing he’d learned about Jenna—she did not like to be proved wrong.

  Making no noise, he shucked his boots, laid his hat and gun belt aside and rolled himself up in his wool blankets. He half hoped she’d be asleep so he could lay his arm across her body. It made him feel good, like he was taking care of her. He’d just closed his eyes when he heard Jenna’s subdued voice.

  “Lee?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m sorry I’m so hard to get along with. To be honest, I—I think I’m a little frightened.”

  He rolled toward her and propped up on one elbow. “There’s plenty to be scared about, Jenna, that’s for sure.”

  “But I’ve been scared ever since we left Ohio.”

  “All of us on this train have been scared at one time or another. Any reason in particular?”

  She was quiet for a long moment, and he reached over and smoothed an errant strand of hair off her forehead.

  “I think,” she said, her voice almost inaudible, “that up to now in my life I have not done one thing well.”

  “Yeah? What, for instance?”