by Merry Farmer
Isaiah, on the other hand, could be a problem. Graham studied the man, looking for any indication that he and Estelle had fought or gotten into some other conflict. No, Isaiah had his hands tucked in his pockets, an easy smile on his face.
“I guess Tim wasn’t up there looking at the artifacts with the others,” he said. That was it, the only explanation he had for himself.
It wasn’t explanation enough, as far as Graham was concerned. Isaiah was after something—something more than just the truth, and he was certain he’d already won. Well, Graham would just have to see about that.
As the wagon train rolled on after midday, the frightening confrontation with Isaiah stuck with Estelle. Marriage. Isaiah wanted to marry her. The prospect of marriage to Isaiah, being forever trapped in that world of her past, filled her stomach with butterflies. She would never do it, could never do it. Maybe if she hadn’t met Graham, but even then, the connection to her father’s world would forever haunt her.
It would have been a matter of a simple refusal, but Isaiah held the key to her ruin in his hands. She wouldn’t accept him, but she couldn’t refuse.
“You might want to watch that coffee there.” Graham pulled her out of her thoughts.
Estelle gasped and turned her attention to the pot she had resting over the fire. Thick steam was pouring out the top, along with an acrid, burning smell. She hissed and reached for a towel, using it to lift the pot off the fire.
“Are you certain everything’s all right?” Graham asked as soon as she’d settled the pot in a patch of dirt away from the fire. “You’ve been distracted since your conversation with Isaiah.”
“Everything’s fine,” she answered, forcing a smile.
Graham wasn’t convinced. She could tell by the look in his eyes. There was more to it. He’d been acting differently since she came back from that dreadful walk. It was subtle, but the shift was there. He stood closer to her, smiled with more of his eyes when he looked at her, and several times he had opened his mouth as though he wanted to say something. As if some barrier between them had been broken down.
And Lord help her, she wanted to knock down the rest of it and seek comfort from her fears in his arms.
She cleared her throat and left the steaming pot to sit on one of the barrels on the opposite side of the campfire from Graham. She would keep her distance, nip her longing in the bud, until she figured out a way to deal with Isaiah’s proposal.
“How did you lose your leg?” she asked. As soon as the question was out, her heart thumped against her ribs. If ever there was a question that would push Graham away, that was it.
Instead of bristling or getting angry, a grin spread across Graham’s face. “Funny,” he said, “but I was just sitting here thinking it was time I told you about that.”
No, no. Estelle pressed a hand to her stomach, pretending to be smoothing the fabric of her blouse. Her prying was not supposed to bring the two of them closer together.
Around the camp, Pete’s crewmembers were finishing their supper. Isaiah had gone off on some other business, but Lyle and Bob were right there, trying not to look too obvious as they eavesdropped.
Graham reached for a crutch, then used it to stand. “Let’s go for a walk,” he said.
He reached out a hand to help Estelle up.
“A walk?” Estelle slipped her fingers in his, but stood on her own power so she didn’t pull him off balance.
The two of them started away from the campfire and Pete’s men, away from the playing children and the families getting ready to hunker down for the night. They couldn’t go far on the wide and desolate prairie, but at least they could wander out of earshot. It was almost as though they were courting.
“Most soldiers who lost limbs in the war did so because of lead bullets,” Graham explained, a wealth of bad memories pinching his expression as they wandered at a snail’s pace.
Estelle nodded, her hands clasped behind her back. She wanted to slide her arm through his and let him escort her like a gentleman, like she was a lady.
“See, the horror of those bullets is that they’re softer than other metals,” Graham went on. “Once they hit flesh and bore inside, the tip flares. A lead bullet can do a lot of damage, shattering bone and tearing through muscle. They’re not easy to remove either.”
“So you were shot?” Estelle asked. Anything to keep her rebellious heart at bay.
Graham swallowed. He tried his best to stand straight as he walked—one step with his remaining leg, one with the crutch—but his steps were awkward.
“I was cavalry,” he said. “It was only natural for a low-level officer who was raised on a horse farm in Kentucky. I started riding before I started to walk.”
“I see,” Estelle prompted him when he went silent.
He cleared his throat. “My horse, Valliant, was shot.” His voice grew quiet. “I’ll never forget the sound of his screams, the way his muscles bunched in pain under me. Never. That horse was my friend.”
His voice cracked. He shook himself and drew in a breath. Estelle did reach out to take his arm now. Not even her need to keep her distance could stop her from giving him the support he needed.
“Valliant fell. My foot twisted and caught in the stirrup as we went down. He landed on top of me, and I heard the snap. I must’ve landed on a rock—a sharp rock. There was pain like you couldn’t imagine, but I was trapped. It had rained the night before, and there was mud everywhere. Valliant thrashed as he died, grinding my leg harder into the rock and pushing me into the mud. He nearly rolled on top of me at one point. My pistol was trapped underneath me, so I couldn’t even put him out of his misery.”
He paused, standing still, looking off at the horizon. The torment in his expression was so poignant that Estelle had to wipe a tear from her eye.
“We must’ve been out there for hours,” Graham went on at last. “Valliant died in the end, but the rain picked up. As the mud and muck rose higher, I was genuinely afraid I might drown. The battle kept going on around me, even after dark. I could barely move. A dead horse weighs more than a living one, or so it seems. They didn’t find me until the next morning.”
“How awful,” Estelle whispered, squeezing his arm.
He turned to send her a grateful smile, laying his hand on top of hers. His smile vanished as he went on.
“At first, they thought they could save my leg, but infection set in. The docs at the field hospital decided the best thing for it was to lop the whole thing off above the point of the infection. I was only barely conscious at the time, but I remember begging them to leave it. They didn’t listen to me.”
He stopped. That was it. He could only hold his head up for a few more seconds before lowering it and letting out a defeated sigh.
“I’m luckier than most,” he admitted after a silence. His hand was still over hers, and he squeezed it. “I didn’t think so when I started on this journey, but I think so now. Knowing you, Estelle, has given me hope, given me a feeling that I can do more than my injuries would allow me to do.”
“Graham,” she started, heart torn between running from him and holding him forever.
He held up a hand to stop her. “I’m just saying,” he said. “I’m not asking anything in return.”
Her heart pounded. Her breath came in shallow gasps. Heaven help her, but she wanted to do something wild, something drastic.
If only visions of Isaiah and the threats he’d made, the consequences they would all suffer if he told one little truth, didn’t pour over her. If Graham knew and rejected her—
“Is that why you don’t ride?” she asked, desperate to find some way to challenge him, to keep him away from tender topics that would lead where neither of them could afford to go. “It’s not because you don’t want to strain the horses. It’s because of the memories.”
A sharp flush spilled over Graham’s face, and he looked down with a frown. Her ploy had worked, but she didn’t feel any joy in her victory.
“I
can’t do it,” he said. “I can’t. Every time I get near a horse, I hear Valliant, remember what it was like to lie with him for hours while he died in pain. I should have done something, should have made it easier for him.”
“There was nothing you could do,” she said, walking on.
“I know,” he said.
“And from what you’ve told me, you love riding.”
“I used to,” he agreed.
The conversation had turned. The tenderness had gone out of Graham’s eyes, replaced by the steel of his trials.
“I wish there was something I could do to take away your pain. I hate to see you suffering. And I know you don’t feel ready, but it would be easier for you to make this journey on horseback than to keep trying to walk,” Estelle pressed on, advocating for his own good now.
Graham huffed a laugh, a bitter smile on his lips. “I don’t know.”
They were silent for a moment. The happy sound of children chasing fireflies around the camp formed a strange counterpoint to the seriousness of their conversation. This was Graham’s life they were talking about. It was as if he had showed her his scars all over again, only these ones ran much deeper.
“You’re afraid,” Estelle whispered at length.
Graham clenched his teeth and hummed, but he didn’t say anything to agree or contradict her.
“I know you’re bigger than that, stronger. You’re going to get back on a horse,” she decided. This was something she could do for him. This was a way she could help. “As soon as possible, you’re going to ride again.”
“Estelle,” he started to protest.
She shook her head, cutting him off, filled with new purpose. “If I’d known, I would have made you do it sooner. Isn’t that what they always say? When you are thrown by a horse, the first thing you have to do is get back on?”
“It was more than being thrown,” he protested.
“That may be, but you’re still getting back up.”
“I don’t know if I can,” he insisted.
Estelle smiled. “You can do anything,” she told him. “You just don’t realize it yet.”
He paused, then reluctantly laughed. “You’re not going to let me refuse, are you?”
“No, I’m not. Because I can see that in your heart, you want to ride again.”
He sighed, wincing at the setting sun, then gave up with a long breath. “All right. Maybe.”
She smiled. Finally, she’d done something right.
“Thank you, by the way,” she said when they had walked on a few more steps, looping back to head toward the wagons.
“For what?” Graham asked.
“For fighting,” she said. “For joining up and going to war for what you believed in.”
His smile softened. “Any time.”
A moment later, he blinked.
“What’s a fine, Southern lady like you doing thanking me for fighting? Shouldn’t you be railing against me for destroying your way of life?” There was something deeper, teasing or even coaxing, behind his question.
Her smile dropped. “It was a way of life that needed to change.”
Graham watched her as they moved slowly on. He hummed. “Where were you from exactly?” he asked.
“Georgia,” she answered. “Close to Savannah.” Her lips pinched tight, and she sent him a darting sideways glance. It couldn’t hurt to reveal a little. Thousands of people lived close to Savannah. “I grew up on a plantation,” she went on. “There were hundreds of slaves. I—”
She stopped and huffed out a breath.
“I’m sorry, Graham. I can’t talk about it. I just can’t.”
She expected Graham to push her or get angry at her reticence. Instead, he smiled.
“I can’t get up on a horse and you can’t talk about your past,” he said. “We’re a ridiculous pair, you and I.”
She stopped and blinked in confusion, but quickly saw what he was talking about. She too broke into a smile. “Whatever are we going to do?”
“I don’t know, Estelle. I don’t know.”
Chapter Eleven
Estelle might have had a point. No, as sharp of a blow to Graham’s pride as it was, she definitely had a point. He had been thrown from a horse—figuratively, if not literally—and it was time he got back up. Nelson was helping him to take those steps in one area, but the time would come when he would have to find himself a horse and ride again. He owed it to Estelle to try.
But not yet.
“Whoa. Easy there, girl,” he soothed one of the two oxen driving his wagon as he hobbled along next to them.
“I don’t like the look of that sky,” Nelson said as he walked beside Graham.
“It does look dark,” Graham agreed.
Estelle glanced over her shoulder at his comment from several yards ahead where she walked with her wagon. He debated picking up his pace so that he could walk beside her and reassure her, but Nelson had gone out of his way to keep Graham company. Then again, Graham suspected his politician friend liked people to see the two of them together, to see how important the friends he’d made on the trail west.
“So I couldn’t help but notice that slave pestering your Estelle the other day,” Nelson commented, lowering his voice.
“Former slave,” Graham corrected him, though without much conviction.
Nelson hummed. “I don’t like to see our innocent young women preyed on by those sorts.”
“I’m sure it was just trail business,” Graham said, feeling it was anything but. It was likely Nelson was just posturing, but then again….
“There’s a group of men I know down in Tennessee,” Nelson went on. “They’re dedicated to stopping upstarts like that Isaiah from getting above themselves, hurting our women, among other things.” He paused. “You just say the word and I’ll see what I can do to take care of Miss Estelle’s problem.”
Graham frowned, an uncomfortable itch down his back. He would gladly have sent Isaiah elsewhere if it meant he stayed away from Estelle, but Nelson’s implication was far more sinister. Graham didn’t like Isaiah, but he didn’t wish harm on him. Worse still, the comment left Graham anxious about how Nelson would react to Estelle’s background.
“I can handle it,” he said, then quickly moved on to, “The oxen sure are nervous about those clouds.”
Indeed, the oxen had been nervous since the first sign of rough weather. Graham reached out and stroked the side of the ox nearest him, but with his balance as poor as it was while walking, he couldn’t keep his hand in place.
“Tim, do you think you could hop down and keep the girls quiet here?” he asked, turning his head toward Tim, who sat on the wagon’s seat with the goad, pretending to drive.
Tim’s face lit up with a smile at odds with the weather and the mood of the conversation with Nelson. He scrambled over the driver’s seat and into the wagon bed, climbed through, then hopped off the back as the wagon continued to move. A more cautious man might have warned Tim against jumping out of moving wagons, but watching the way the boy leapt and scurried out of the way of the supply wagon behind his, the way he sprinted up to Graham’s side, beaming with joy at being asked to help, filled Graham with a sense of pride in the boy… and envy.
“They just need a little care,” Graham instructed him, nodding to one ox’s back. “Run your hand along her side and let her know it’ll be all right.”
Tim nodded and swayed close enough to the big, lumbering beast to pet her. Graham half hoped Tim would open up and say something to her, make some sort of sound, but he remained silent, as usual.
“Now, when we get out to Oregon and get ourselves set up in responsible positions,” Nelson went on, “I plan on enacting legislation that will prevent the wrong sort from buying land.”
The itching down Graham’s back intensified. “Is that legal?”
Nelson smiled. “It’s the governors who make the laws, son. Get elected to office and make your case, and you can set things up the way you want.”
“Good job,” Graham told Tim to keep from getting mired in more uncomfortable discussions.
Ahead of him, Estelle dropped the ball of yarn she was using to darn a sock as she walked. She stopped and bent over to scoop it up, which held her back a few paces.
“Excuse me, Mr. Nelson,” Graham nodded to his companion with a polite smile. “Looks like someone could use my help.”
Nelson chuckled. “You go after her, son,” he said, then held back to wait for his own wagon.
Keeping one eye on Tim, Graham picked up his pace until he reached Estelle’s side just behind the supply wagon. Isaiah sat in the driver’s seat, but he still managed to notice when Estelle turned her attention to Graham with a smile. He scowled. Graham ignored him.
“There’s one thing I won’t have to worry about as much now,” he said, forcing himself to smile as though nothing were wrong.
“What?” Estelle asked. A splash of pink warmed her cheeks and she kept her eyes on her work.
The familiar tug in his chest teased Graham, turning him inside out. He wanted her so deeply it hurt.
He nodded to her work, pushing the ache aside. “Socks. I’ll only have half as many to darn going forward.”
Estelle’s brow lifted. Her lips twitched as she tried not to smile. “That’s something,” she said.
Graham had the distinct impression she was trying hard not to open herself up to him. He shook his head.
“Next time we stop,” he said, lowering his voice in the hope that Isaiah wouldn’t overhear, “I’d like to talk to you about a few things.”
Estelle’s amused expression dropped to a tight frown. “I… I don’t know that I have anything to say,” she murmured.
