by Merry Farmer
“Yes,” Darcy answered hesitantly.
“Then get under the wagon and see if you can’t figure out what’s wrong with it.”
“I don’t actually know much about wagons, Mr. Huber. Greg helped me to—”
“Go,” Conrad shouted. “Now!”
“All right,” Darcy yelped.
Greg was helpless to do anything but stand there and watch as Darcy dropped to her hands and knees and crawled through the wet grass and mud to look at the underside of Conrad’s wagon. As soon as she was crouched on her side, peering at each of the wagon wheels and axels from the inside, Conrad climbed up into the back of his wagon and out of the rain. Darcy gasped as his weight combined with the mud that the wagon sat on sank it a tiny bit deeper on top of her.
“Are you all right?” Greg called to her, taking a step closer.
“I’m fine,” she answered. “I was just a bit startled is all.”
“You shouldn’t have to do that in the rain,” Greg went on.
“No, no, it’s fine,” Darcy told him. “I think I can see what the problem—oh, no, that’s just a piece of the axel. I’m sure I’ll figure out what’s wrong with the wagon. You’ll see.”
“But the mud,” Greg protested. “You’ll ruin your dress.”
“It’s already ruined,” she said, and if Greg wasn’t mistaken, laughed. “Besides,” she went on. “I’m out of the rain at last.”
Those words broke his heart. Was it really better to be out of the rain if it meant you were stuck in the mud? He couldn’t help but feel responsible for the predicament he’d landed Darcy in. Even so, he felt utterly helpless to get her out of it. He had no claim on her. He had his own future to think about. Conrad was the one who Darcy owed money to. His mind searched for every rational argument it could to justify letting her go, but his heart rebelled against all of them. His heart told him he’d just made the biggest mistake of his life.
Chapter Five
Another week passed on the trail. The rain refused to let up, and neither did Greg’s misgivings. In fact, the more time that passed, the more he felt as though he had done something truly terrible. It wasn’t just the loneliness of walking by himself every day now that Darcy was with Conrad, it was the fact that Darcy’s unsinkable smile hadn’t been seen for days.
“I tell you, I have never seen anything like this in all my years,” Pete Evans said as he walked beside Greg.
“Neither have I,” Greg muttered, wracked with guilt.
Conrad had positioned himself several wagons ahead of Greg’s. From the looks of things, he was making Darcy darn his socks and walk at the same time. Darcy held a sock in one hand and a darning needle in the other with a spool of darning thread tucked into her sleeve. She wore her bonnet again with the brim drooping low over her eyes. When she stumbled, dropping the sock in an effort to catch herself, not only did Conrad not reach out to help her, he shouted at her for getting his old sock muddy.
“I don’t suppose it would do any good to appeal to a higher power to make it stop,” Pete went on, glancing up to the sky.
“What higher power is there?” Greg grumbled. “You’re the ultimate authority as far as I can tell.”
Pete’s eyes went wide and he gaped at Greg. A second later, he burst into laughter. Greg frowned, but Pete thumped him on the back.
“Son, I’ve been called many things in my day, but no one’s ever compared me to the Almighty quite like that,” he said.
Greg sent him a sideways look, wondering what he was talking about. “The way that man treats Darcy,” he began.
“I was talking about the rain,” Pete interrupted.
Greg paused, then looked up. Sure enough, a light rain was spitting down on them. Again. He’d been so wrapped up in his own concerns that he hadn’t even noticed. “Oh,” he said.
“I’ve seen rain before, but nothing remotely like this,” Pete went on. “Particularly along this stretch of the trail. It’s starting to concern me.”
“Is it?” As far as Greg was concerned, rain was an inconvenience. The way Conrad pushed Darcy around was something to be concerned about. Even now, he couldn’t help but notice the way Darcy started to limp, as if she had something in her shoe. She appealed to Conrad as he sat on the seat of his wagon, driving his oxen. Greg was too far back to hear her exact words, but whatever she said, she was denied.
“If we don’t start moving faster,” Pete said, “we’ll have trouble getting through the mountains before the snow starts.”
Darcy paused, bending down to unlace her shoe. Conrad’s wagon rambled ahead of her, but before she could take her shoe off, Conrad leaned around the side and shouted, “Keep up!”
Darcy struggled to catch up to the level of Conrad’s oxen, one shoe now untied. She walked a few steps, bent over to fiddle with her shoe, straightened and walked some more, bent over, and eventually got her shoe off. She shook it, but whether a stone came out or not, Conrad didn’t give her time to put it back on.
“I know of a group that didn’t make it through the mountains on time,” Pete had continued while Greg watched the horrible scene in front of them. “They had to hunker down in the snow. Ended up being forced to kill off most of their animals for food. Rumor got around that they ate their own dead, but I have it on good authority that’s not true.”
“Someone should help her,” Greg said, not hearing what Pete had been talking about and not particularly caring.
Pete paused and stared at Greg, then straight ahead. “What, Miss Howsam?”
“Yes.” Greg huffed with frustration. “It’s shameful the way he treats her, like she’s a pesky dog who keeps following him.”
Pete was silent for so long that Greg finally turned and frowned at him. As soon as he did, Pete arched a brow.
“She’s the one who answered his advertisement for a bride, son,” he told Greg.
“She couldn’t have known what she was getting herself into,” Greg argued.
“Most of the women that I know who answered those sorts of advertisements knew exactly what risks they were taking,” Pete reasoned on. “Miss Howsam there is as smart as anyone. She knew.”
“How can you say that?” Greg protested. “Conrad Huber is a bully.”
“I’m not saying he’s the kind of man I’d be friends with,” Pete said, taking his hat off, pushing back his hair, and fixing his hat in place again, “but I haven’t seen him hit her and I haven’t seen him touch her inappropriately.”
“Yet,” Greg added with an ominous frown.
“He rejected her back at Ft. Laramie, didn’t he?”
“Yes,” Greg answered, not liking where the question was going.
“And she worked to get back on his good side, right?”
“Maybe.”
“And if I’m not mistaken, you had something to do with that, didn’t you?”
“Mistaken is the right word,” Greg agreed. “I think I made a huge mistake.”
Pete laughed, low and ironic. “Son, if you don’t mind my asking, why didn’t you snap that pretty girl up when you had the chance?”
“What do you mean?” Greg asked, not liking the way the question echoed what he hadn’t been willing to admit he’d been asking himself on an hourly basis for the past week.
“The two of you look like you got along just fine,” Pete said. “Better than fine. You looked like you might fancy each other. A couple of us started taking bets on whether the two of you would up and tie the knot right here on the trail.”
“I’m not in the market for a wife,” Greg mumbled, feeling as sullen as a schoolboy claiming that he never wanted the prize to begin with after he’d lost it.
“Well why not?” Pete pressed him.
“Because… because I’ve got plans,” Greg defended himself. “I want to buy some land and start a farm or a ranch.”
“A farm or a ranch?” Pete asked. “Those are two different things that take different kinds of planning.”
“I’m sure I’l
l figure out which one before I get to Oregon.”
“You haven’t even figured out what you want for yourself, and yet here you are, insisting that a fine, brave girl like Darcy Howsam won’t fit into those plans?”
When Pete put it like that, Greg felt like even more of a fool. He should have seen what he had when he had it. Only, he still couldn’t reconcile how he was supposed to provide for and support a wife the way Darcy wanted to be provided for and supported when he hadn’t even established his own place in the world yet. She wanted legitimacy. He could only offer her uncertainty.
“I’m not sure it matters much anyhow,” Greg went on, as gloomy as the rainy day around him.
“Why not?”
“Because even if Conrad didn’t want to marry her—which he does now—she would still owe him the money he spent to bring her out here, and she doesn’t have it.”
“Son,” Pete said, thumping him on the back and letting his hand rest there. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in all my years, it’s that money has a way of showing up when it’s least expected.”
“And if it doesn’t?” Greg arched an eyebrow at him.
Pete chuckled. “If it doesn’t, then all you really need is a horse fast enough to make an escape.”
Greg let himself chuckle with Pete, but his heart still felt sick. He’d made a mess of things, no two ways about it. Maybe all he needed was a fast horse so that he could whisk Darcy away in the middle of the night and take her somewhere no one would find them.
Then again, she would probably fight him. She was the one who looked so happy when Conrad had taken her back. There was little to no chance he could take her away from exactly the thing that she had wanted all along.
She was a fool. A ridiculous, weak fool. Of course there were lives she could have taken up in the West aside from being Conrad’s wife. Then she could have avoided the frustration that hadn’t left her since the moment Conrad made her spend all afternoon in the mud under his wagon, looking for a problem that wasn’t there. But it was too late now, and even if it wasn’t, there was the money to think about.
“I’m going up to ride with Bruce and the boys,” Conrad announced, shaking her out of her gloomy thoughts as she plodded alongside his wagon.
Conrad had been walking for the last hour or so, since the rain had stopped. He thrust the ox goad at her, then without another word, marched away up the line of wagons to where his friend, Bruce, was driving with a pack of the rough types.
“When are you coming back?” she called after him. “Do you need me to do anything else while you’re gone?”
There was no point in asking any questions. If Conrad could hear her, he was ignoring her. She let out a breath as she watched is back retreat up the line of wagons. It could have been worse, she told herself. She may have already made her bed, but perhaps lying in it would be a lonely prospect instead of an oppressive one. If Conrad spent more time with his friends than pestering her, there was a chance her married life could be quite peaceful, particularly if she made a few other female friends in California where—
She stopped and heaved a sigh. Why bother putting a sunny side on things when there was no sunny side. She’d made a mistake that she couldn’t get out of. Even the heavy clouds above seemed to share her dismal view of the whole thing.
Darcy caught herself peeking over her shoulder at the wagons behind her as she moved to walk alongside Conrad’s oxen. Greg was watching her from several yards back. Her heavy heart was certain he’d been watching her all week. What a mess they’d made of things between the two of them. If only….
No, there was no point in wondering what could have happened if Greg felt differently about things, if he felt differently about her. He was a young man who knew what he wanted, and she admired that. Even if he didn’t want her.
“Come on, ladies,” she mumbled to Conrad’s oxen, walking on.
The two oxen, Jane and Peg, were in a temperamental mood. They bucked against their yokes, each trying to go in a slightly different direction. The ground was still soft beneath their feet, and it felt as though the two of them had had it with the weather as much as Darcy had. They started to slow down, and Conrad’s wagon threatened to knock into the one traveling behind her.
“Sorry,” she apologized to that wagon’s driver as he veered to the side and slowly passed Conrad’s wagon on the left.
“You better get those oxen in hand, missy,” the driver said.
“I’m trying, but they’re having a bad day.”
She thought she heard the man mutter, “Bad luck,” as he drove on.
Darcy sighed, near tears. “Come on, girls,” she pleaded with the oxen. “Walk straight for me. Please?”
She tapped Jane on her rump with the goad, but Jane just mooed in protest.
“Here, do it like this.”
Darcy twisted as Greg marched up the length of Conrad’s wagon to where she walked with the oxen. He took the goad from her and used it to sort the oxen out.
“Keep their heads straight and the rest of them will go straight too,” he said, handing the goad back to Darcy.
She was so relieved to have Greg right there next to her, talking to her, again that she smiled, though her eyes were far more misty than they should be. “Thank you.”
She took the goad and continued to tap the oxen the way he showed her.
“That’s it, just like that,” Greg said.
Sure enough, the oxen got back in line and picked up their pace. In no time, they were marching right in step along with the rest of the wagons in the train.
“Thank so much, Greg, I don’t know what I would do without—”
She turned to give Greg a more confident smile, but he had already gone back to his own wagon. Darcy’s heart sank, even though she told herself that he had to stay close to his oxen to make sure they didn’t wander off since he had no one else to do it. That didn’t explain the way she missed him so.
She was still missing him when Mr. Evans stopped the train to rest that night. Conrad didn’t come back, even after Darcy had settled the oxen and made sure they had food and water, and after she’d put together a simple stew for supper. She stirred the stew, wondering if she could get away with taking a bowl of it back to Greg.
Greg had stopped his wagon only a few dozen yards from where she had stopped Conrad’s. His campfire glowed against the cloudy evening dimness just as hers did. It would have been so much nicer if the two of them could sit and eat together, laughing and talking about everything from their pasts and their plans to the people on the trail. With Greg, she could laugh about the way people considered her bad luck. But as it was, she’d been so absorbed in catering to Conrad’s needs for the last few days that she didn’t even know how her fellow pioneers were doing, if the McTavish family had recovered or if more people were ill. No one wanted to talk to her now that they thought she was bad luck, and Conrad barely said a word to her, and all of those orders.
What had she done? The question kept rolling back into her mind, even when she pushed it aside to clean up the supper that Conrad never came to eat. Was there any way she could have prevented this from happening? That question joined the first as she rolled up the canvas sides of Conrad’s wagon so that it could air out while the sun went down. She moved some of Conrad’s food supplies—a barrel of bacon and the sack that held the jerky he loved so much—to the ground as she worked. Not as long as the question of money hung over her, she answered herself. She couldn’t pay Conrad back, so she had to marry him. That was all there was to it, she concluded as she shook out Conrad’s blankets and bedding, hoping that the rain would go away entirely and things would dry overnight.
She was absorbed in her questions and their unfortunate answers as she hopped down from the back of the wagon and went to check on the bacon and the jerky, debating whether they should go back in the wagon or whether she could leave them where they were for the night. A low growl answered her as she rounded the wagon. The sky was still
cloudy, so all there was to see by was the light of a few campfires, but the shape that Darcy saw near the food she’d left out looked like a cat. A very large cat.
“Hello?” she asked, approaching slowly.
The growl sounded again, followed by a menacing hiss. Darcy started as the beast lifted its head. It was a large wildcat. Her breath caught in her throat as the cat crouched. It was wary of her, but it must have been hungry and thought Conrad’s jerky would be an easy snack.
“Shoo,” Darcy told it. She stepped forward, flinging her arms at it even as her heart thundered in her chest. “Shoo, kitty, go away.”
It wasn’t working. The wildcat crouched lower, growling, its ears back. Darcy swallowed and glanced around for something she could use to chase it off. Nothing was close at hand. She couldn’t just walk away and let the cat take any of Conrad’s food, though. Not if she wanted to keep on Conrad’s good side.
“Go away, kitty, scoot,” she tried again to shoo it gently.
The cat didn’t like that. As soon as Darcy got close enough, it yowled and lashed out at her, claws bared.
Darcy yelped and jumped back, but claws ripped her skirt. The cat must have been ravenous. It took a few threatening steps toward her and tried to swipe again. Darcy backpedaled, catching her heel in the muddy ground and tumbling backward. She shrieked and saw the cat coming at her in a fury of fur and claws.
Half a second later, with a loud shout, Greg was by her side, swinging at the cat with the butt of a shotgun. The cat had no interest in those odds, not even for jerky, and turned to bound away.
“Thank God,” Darcy panted, pressing a hand to her chest. “I didn’t know what I was going to do.”
“You’re all right,” Greg said. He dropped his shotgun and bent to scoop Darcy up. “It must have been hungry is all.”
“That’s what I thought too,” she said, letting him hoist her to her feet. “I guess with all the rain—”
Her thoughts vanished as she regained her footing and swayed against Greg. He had his arms around her still, and her chest pressed against his. He was so warm and smelled of wood smoke and supper. But it was his eyes, the affection and the deep, deep regret they held as he gazed down on her that withered the words on Darcy’s lips. Everything about him was irresistible.