My favorite part of any stop came just after supper. Daddy would take out his map and, sometimes asking the expertise of our driver or whoever manned the station, gather us around to show just how far we’d traveled that day. Mother barely feigned enough interest to look over his shoulder before declaring that a bunch of little dots and lines didn’t mean a thing to her, and Chester stood impatiently, shifting from foot to foot, before being dismissed to find what entertainment lurked in the surrounding sheds or barracks. But Phoebe and I gathered round, holding the lantern as close as we dared, listening as Daddy asked about the day’s journey that lay ahead. Where we might be able to have another extended stop to bathe and change our clothes. The chance of Indian attack. The grade of the road and the surrounding terrain. Phoebe soaked it all in, asking question after question, until one soldier at a nearly deserted fort declared it a shame that she was a girl, as she’d make a fine scout.
It was amazing to gather around that long, folded paper and realize that we were in a different territory—Kansas, then Nebraska, a dip to the south into Colorado, and now Wyoming. I listened not so much for myself but for my father, who had recaptured every bit of the spirit he’d had back when we boarded the train in Belleville.
It was late in the summer, just days left in August and more than two months into our journey and hours before the dawn, when our stagecoach came to a stop amid a ramshackle group of long, low buildings. The air was still and cold; we’d spent the night huddled together in the stagecoach in what ways we could. The summer nights had never been balmy, this was the first to have taken such a frigid turn. When the traces finally silenced, we piled out of the coach, allowed our bodies long, wrenching stretches, then hugged ourselves against the cold.
The moon was round and full, but other than that, there was no speck of light to be found anywhere—no cookfires, no lanterns, no signal left to usher our arrival. Glancing around, I could make out the shapes of men sleeping on the ground near firepits long cold. Whip walked over to one of them and nudged him with his boot. “Git up.” He made no attempt to allow the others to rest in sound slumber. “Help me unhitch this team.”
Often when we approached stations in the dead of night, we were greeted by watchmen with rifles at the ready to defend the place against an Indian raid. As I watched this man scramble up to consciousness, I wasn’t sure which made me more fearful—that he might be in charge of guarding my safety or that he might mistake us for a threat and begin to fire madly from the pistol he was working so hard to get an honest grip on.
“Aw, gimme that.” While the man’s hat was still dropped low over his eyes, Whip grabbed the pistol by its barrel and dropped it to the ground. “C’mon now and gimme a hand with this team.”
While Whip began to unhitch the team, my father broke away from our huddled group and approached the newly unarmed guard.
“Excuse me, sir? Where are we to go?”
The man leaned closer to Daddy, trying to make out a face in the dim moonlight. “Go where?”
“That’s what I’m asking you,” Daddy said. “Where can we go to get some rest?”
The man let forth a slow, wheezing laugh and spread out his arms. “Rest where ya like, buddy. We’re none too particl’r.”
“Don’t you pay any attention to him,” said a voice from behind. “Some people wake up mean. Others wake up stupid. Marty just happens to be a master of the two.”
Marty laughed out loud at this, as did our driver. I turned to see a man standing at the boot of the stagecoach, unlashing our bags.
“You better watch yourself, Del,” Marty said, “or you’re gonna be one of them people that wakes up shot dead.”
“Well then, I figure he’s pretty safe as long he’s sleepin’ here,” Whip said. “That is, as long as he makes it a point not to shoot himself.”
“Can I get one of you to give me a hand here?” the one called Del asked, and I volunteered, eager to get a look at the man who could turn our taciturn driver into such a wit. “Well, that’s nice,” he leaned closer to look at me, “but it might help more if I had someone who was a mite bigger than the bags.”
Standing closer, I could see he wasn’t much older than Chester. He had a soft smile and broad shoulders, both of which held my attention as he swung our largest trunk down from its perch and handed it to my brother, who took great pains not to grunt too loudly under its burden.
“I think this is more your size.” He handed down my small satchel. “You’re kind of a little bitty thing.”
“Thank you.” I grabbed the handle.
I was glad for the darkness so he couldn’t see how I much I was blushing. As I walked back to the rest of my family, my mind raced with witty retorts: A little bag can hold a lot of treasures. Or some of the best presents come in small packages. But of course I hadn’t said any of those things, and what a fool I’d look to rush back with them now.
After the luggage was unloaded, Del told us to follow him to where we would lodge for what was left of the night. “It’s not but one room, folks. Sorry. But there’s cots and blankets, and I lit you a little fire soon as I heard you comin’.”
He hadn’t taken more than two steps when I noticed the limp—a heavy falling on his left foot while the right dragged somewhat to come abreast—and I was relieved to have something to focus my attention on besides the width of his back and the strength of his hands. He walked in front of us, and I think we all shortened our strides so as not to overtake him as we made our way toward the promised lodging. Once there, Del opened the door and walked away without saying another word, even as my father called out, “Thank you, Son.”
Mother was the first to venture inside, and she was back out before her skirts had a chance to fully cross the threshold.
“Well, this will never do.” She tugged her gloves more tightly to her fingers. “Get that boy back here and tell him this is not acceptable.”
“I’m sure it’s fine, Ellen.” Daddy pushed past her and emerged just as quickly. “We’ll just have to keep the luggage outside.”
One by one we wedged ourselves into the tiny cabin and saw by the light of a lantern hanging on a hook by the door that, yes, it did have the promised cots. Two of them, flush against two of the four walls, each piled high with folded quilts. The third wall was taken up by a small stove and fuel box, and the fourth was used almost entirely as the door. I set an immediate course for the stove, holding my numbed hands out and relishing the prickling as its warmth revived them.
“You and Mother should take the beds, Daddy.” I turned around to let the stove work its magic elsewhere. “There seem to be extra blankets, so the rest of us will be fine on the floor, won’t we?”
“Of course,” Phoebe said through gritted teeth.
“You all enjoy.” Chester grabbed one of the blankets off the end of a cot. “I’m taking my chances out in the barn.”
“I suppose this means we can bring the bags in after all.” Mother dispatched my father to fetch them. Mother and Daddy collapsed on the cots; Phoebe and I wrapped ourselves in quilts and settled on the floor.
Earlier that night, as we had lurched along the darkened road, I would have sworn that, given a level surface and a modicum of heat, I would be deep into slumber before my eyes were fully shut. But now, as the breathing of my parents and Phoebe took on a measured rhythm, my mind remained fresh and alert. Rumbles of deep, male laughter made occasional forays into the night air, and I couldn’t help but wonder what the latest joke was. And the floor was much less comfortable than I had anticipated; my body felt awkward trying to find a comfortable position. Maybe I was too warm even though the fire in the stove had begun to wane.
Or maybe I was thinking of the hand that laid the fire.
We walk by faith and not by sight;
No gracious words we hear
From Him who spoke as never man,
But we believe Him near.
10
Every morning since we’d left home, I’d sp
ent the first few seconds of consciousness trying to remember where I was. At first it was easy, since we spent a few nights in the Rutledge Hotel in St. Louis and a few more on the Felicity. But after that, nights and days and nights had become a stream of trees and dust and sky. Never mind that the night before, Daddy would always gather us all around with his maps of the trails and stations. They were nothing more to me than dots on a page where mountains were pencil sketches rather than treacherous inclines and rivers were benign blue lines that showed nothing of the terror of an unstable ferry.
The excitement of progress had long since dulled. Daddy’s joyous announcements of “We’re in Kansas!” or “We’ve dipped south into Colorado territory” no longer brought the same sense of accomplishment they once had. We each had our own way of measuring distance—Daddy through his maps, Mother by how long it had been since she’d seen another white woman, and Chester by the various currencies he took in his pockets whenever he could find a card game. As for me, I looked up every now and then, looked around, and thought, This is as far away from home as I’ve ever been.
Phoebe, still enchanted by the exotic names of some of our stops—Namaqua, Willow Springs, Twin Groves—sometimes tried to engage me in drafting an exciting tale for each stop’s namesake. But we had even grown tired of that game. There were only so many ways to find romance in death and despair, and I often grumbled that there might not be any meaning to any of the names. Just because a station bears the name of Pierson doesn’t mean that Mr. Pierson was a tragic hero or a gallant horseman or that he gave his heart to an Indian princess. “Names are just names,” I’d grumbled to her on more than one occasion before slumping down in my seat to take a nap.
I don’t think Mother would have allowed us to spend even one night at our current station if she’d realized the name of it was Crook’s Clearing.
But when I woke up the next morning and staggered, squinting, into the full sunlit new day, neither she nor anybody else in our little party seemed in any hurry to leave. A large cooking fire was built in the center of the encampment, and Marty, the sleeper from last night, hunkered next to it, gingerly testing the flapjacks laid out in a pan. In a more surprising sight, Mother sat on a little stool next to him, her hair long and loose falling over the quilt wrapped round her shoulders, and held a steaming cup of coffee to her lips. Thinking back, the sound of her laughter had roused me from my sleep.
“What are we doing here?” I asked, lumping all of my questions into one: we’d never lingered so late in the morning; Daddy, Chester, and Phoebe were nowhere to be seen; and Mother had never been one to let her hair down with the riffraff.
“Oh, we won’t be leaving today,” Mother said with a lingering giggle and a dismissive wave of her hand. “Something about horses and shoes …” Her voice trailed off in a happy little sigh.
“Where’s Daddy?”
“He’s close-by, overseeing the whole operation. If we’re not careful, he’s going to take the last of the money and buy himself bellows and an anvil and call himself a smithy.”
The last time I’d seen her this way was back on the steamboat after a third glass of champagne. I walked over to her and leaned in close.
“Did he put something in your coffee?” I whispered, tossing a suspicious glance over to Marty.
“Certainly not.” She gave the cup a quick sniff just to be sure. “I simply had a wonderful night’s sleep. Perfectly comfortable, perfectly warm. Tout à fait parfait! And to think,” she continued, “an entire day not riding in that wretched coach.”
“Not to mention true gourmet vittles.” Marty piled a plate high with flapjacks and drenched them in brown molasses from a small square bottle. “Bon appétit, ma’am.”
Mother dug in with a relish I’d rarely seen, declaring it the finest breakfast she could have imagined. “You simply must have some, Belinda.”
“Better double up her stack, Marty. Or else she’s just gonna blow away.”
The familiar voice made me smile despite my embarrassment at his attention. I wanted to turn around, if for no other reason than to see if the face I’d gone to sleep envisioning was as handsome in the day as it was in moonlight, but I was solidly rooted where I stood. I heard his step circling, and suddenly he was in front of me, crouched down looking up. His eyes—the color of soft green moss—squinted against the morning sunlight. His hair was wet and had been combed back, still bearing the tracks of his fingers.
In all the novels I’d read with Phoebe, in all the stories she and I concocted together, there was always that moment when the lovers’ eyes met. Phoebe loved to go on and on in this breathless voice about hearts stopping, time stopping, the earth itself moving beneath somebody’s feet. We would giggle and laugh and swoon at the very idea of being so swept away. But I didn’t feel any of that now. My heart was beating so loudly I could swear its call would be answered by a group of Indians just over the horizon.
I saw him lifting down our trunk, handing me my bag, limping toward the fire he’d built to keep me warm last night. Now the earth was hard and cold as my bare toes curled around blades of frosted grass, and I shifted from one foot to the other in a fight against the prickling pain. This movement caught his attention, and he looked down at my feet, then up again, rising to his full height so that I saw nothing but his coarse blue woolen shirt.
“You’d better tell your girl to get inside and get some shoes and socks on,” he said with a nod toward my mother. “And Marty’ll get her something to eat.”
Then his distinctive step took him away.
Mother’s joy at having an entire day stretched out to our own devices was contagious. With a belly full of Marty’s pancakes, my hair brushed to a sheen and braided, dry socks and shoes, I was sent to fetch Phoebe to enlist her in doing a much-needed wash of our soiled clothes. She was lurking in the barn, having brought Chester a second cup of coffee.
“He’s beautiful when he sleeps, you know,” she said as we left. “When I went in to see him this morning, he was still asleep. And his face—he’s just … beautiful.”
Normally her prattling about the irresistible attributes of my brother annoyed me, but this morning I caught myself wondering what Del might look like when sleeping, and it was a moment or so before I slapped the back of her head and told her to shut up about it already.
As we made our way back, the camp was coming to life. Doors of the scattered cabins opened and men of all ages, shapes, and sizes stepped out. Some half dressed, most not shaven, and all quite taken aback at the sight of two young girls strolling about. Few of them took any pains to hide their appreciation of our appearance, and while I didn’t understand everything they said to us, their tone was clear enough to make me want to crawl in a hole. But they didn’t faze Phoebe. She jeered over her shoulder—“Ah, keep it to yourself! You’re acting like you’ve never even seen a girl before”—and kept walking, never turning back to let them see her smug little smile.
We found Mother back at our cabin, where she’d commandeered a washboard and a cake of surprisingly pleasant soap. The three of us walked down a gently sloping hill and found a smooth-surfaced lake nestled within a wall of tall green brush. Closer to the water’s edge, thick shrubs seemed to hold any advancing water at bay. The center of the lake was dotted with tiny grassy islands. We took turns enjoying a quick, cleansing bath while the other two held a blanket to guard against prying eyes. When we were all done and dressed in clean clothes, Mother left Phoebe and me with the pile of soiled laundry.
“It’s good to see her happy,” I said once my mother walked out of view.
“She can be happy. She’s not the one doing the wash.” Phoebe scrubbed Mother’s dress across the washboard.
I didn’t say anything until she was finished and handed the dress to me to rinse in the lake’s frigid water, then wring out and spread over a low bush to dry.
“She didn’t mean what she said that night, Phoebe.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking a
bout.” She was scrubbing her own dress now.
“Mother can say some pretty horrible things when she’s upset. And sometimes when she’s not so upset—when she’s just not thinking. Why, if I believed every terrible thing she’s ever said to me, I wouldn’t think she loved me at all.”
“You don’t have to think she loves you, Belinda. She’s your mother. You know she does. Frankly, it doesn’t make any difference to me.” Phoebe handed her soapy dress over to me. “I’m not going to build my life around whether my blessed Aunt Ellen loves me or not. I already have a mother.”
“Do you miss her?” It may have been an obvious question, but Phoebe rarely mentioned her parents, and she hadn’t said a single word about them since our fateful night in the Bledsoe house.
“I did at first, but I had Uncle Robert and your mother to fill the gap. And now … well, I guess I just got out of the habit.”
“You still have my parents, Phoebe. They care about you very much.”
“We’ll see, won’t we? When we all get to the end of this little fairy tale journey that we’re on and it’s time to start building up something new.”
“You’re family.” I laid her dress out next to Mother’s. “We’ll need you.”
“To do what? Do you think I came out here to be your washwoman?”
I had just knelt next to her, and she thrust my newly washed dress at me with such force that the splash from it sent icy droplets to my face.
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