Prairie Moon

by Maggie Osborne

  “Look. If it truly makes you uncomfortable . . .”

  “I’ve thought about it. I’ll establish a new routine.”

  There were many things she could have said, but she restrained herself. “What an excellent idea.” And then she busied herself untying her bedroll and dropping it to the ground. Even the smartest men occasionally had skulls as thick as posts.

  She reminded herself of this as Cameron hung over her shoulder while she set up the coffee.

  “I like to start with a few of the leftover grounds. Gives the coffee a stronger flavor,” he said.

  “I did that.” She’d never known a man to be so damned particular about his coffee.

  “Did you find the bag of egg shells? A few egg shells give the coffee . . .”

  Straightening, she placed her fists on her hips and narrowed her eyes. “Do you want to do this?”

  Raising his palms, he stepped back. “No. You’re doing fine.”

  “Here. Fill the stew pot with water. Please.”

  It felt good to have chores of her own. Her mother would have been pleased. One of her mother’s concerns about sending her to Atlanta at an impressionable age had been that becoming part of a household with servants and slaves would spoil her. And it had.

  She paused in peeling potatoes and thought about the years she had missed with her mother. When she departed for Atlanta, she’d been at the age when she was just beginning to see her mother as a person.

  “The rain brought up the water level. There’s plenty of water if you need to wash out anything.” Cameron put the pot next to the coffeepot. “You look pensive.”

  “I was thinking about my mother.”

  “Tell me about her,” he said after they’d finished setting up camp and were drinking coffee while they waited for the stew.

  “My mother? She was widowed when I was four. I don’t remember much about my father.” He’d been a tall man with an accountant’s hands who smelled like peppermint drops. “What I remember about my mother is that she was always busy. Cleaning, sewing, polishing. It wouldn’t have occurred to her to while away an afternoon reading, like my cousin in Atlanta, or to spend an entire day at the park with me.” Frowning, she tried to remember. “Proper behavior was important to her. I never saw her cry or raise her voice. I had a feeling that she didn’t care much for children, that she and I would get on better when I was an adult.”

  “Did you?”

  “I didn’t see her again after I left for Atlanta. By the time Clarence and I married, travel was out of the question as the war was underway, and then she died shortly before Clarence did. So I never knew her on a woman-to-woman basis. I wish I had. What about your family?”

  “I think I mentioned that my father was a judge. My mother was involved with temperance societies and groups lobbying for women’s rights. My sister and I were expected to read the newspapers and be prepared to discuss the headlines at dinner.”

  “I think I might have enjoyed a family like that.”

  “The judge held high expectations for everyone around him. Both Celia and I were a disappointment. He wanted Celia to attend the university and pulled strings to make it happen, but she married instead. He strongly objected to me going to war.”

  “How did your parents die?” she asked curiously, keeping an eye on the stew.

  “The judge was shot by the wife of a man he sentenced to prison. A year earlier, my mother had been exposed to measles at a temperance meeting. She died within a week.”

  “And Celia died in childbirth?” she asked softly.

  “Yes.”

  Like herself, Cameron had suffered much loss and was the last of his family. “Well,” she said after a minute. “I believe supper is ready.”

  The hours after supper were the hardest of the day. That’s when Della became acutely aware of being alone with him. On a night like this, when distant stars spangled an inky sky and the range seemed empty and silent, she could almost believe they were the only two people left in the universe.

  What did the last two people in the universe say to each other? Especially when one of those people was increasingly consumed by secret speculation and thoughts that dared not be spoken aloud.

  This was the time when firelight defined his lips and the hard angle of his jaw. When she wanted to comb her fingers through his hair and smooth out the unruly tangles of the day. These were the oddly tense moments when she wondered if one man’s kiss was the same as another’s. And when she remembered the hard muscle of his chest and the way his arms had come around her that evening on the porch.

  Della cleared her throat and made herself stop twisting her hands in her lap. “Would you like to whistle?” Anything to chase away the embarrassing questions circling her mind.

  “If you like.”

  Shy at first, then with greater confidence, they alternated choosing songs to try, stopping with laughter when one of them missed a note.

  “We’re good at this,” Della said, when they finally halted because her lips were tired of puckering. Tilting her head, she gave him a teasing glance. “If the legend business doesn’t work out for you, we could join a theatrical company.”

  For a moment he looked startled, then he laughed. “You can be a saucy creature.”

  The comment pleased her, mostly because it had been years since she’d considered herself saucy. Or flirtatious, which, perhaps, was another word for the same thing. That possibility shocked her and she stood abruptly, making a gesture toward her bedroll.

  “It’s gotten late. I’ll just . . .” This part of the journey wasn’t easy, either. Saying the word “bed” in front of a man would have scandalized her mother, her mother-in-law, and just about every woman she’d ever known. She liked to think that she’d become a no-nonsense woman who was above such silliness, but in this instance she wasn’t.

  “Thank you for an enjoyable evening.”

  “I enjoyed it, too.” And she’d learned something, watching him. The pucker for whistling was not the same as a pucker for kissing. A whistle pucker could be amusing, but she didn’t recall ever thinking a kissing pucker was funny.

  She didn’t know if Cameron observed her crawling into her bedroll, but it felt as if he did, which made her awkward and clumsy. The difficulties with hair followed.

  It felt unseemly to brush out her hair with a man watching, but if she didn’t plait it, her hair would be a mass of tangles in the morning, plus loose hair got in the way of sleeping comfortably.

  When she glanced toward the fire, sure enough Cameron quickly turned his head. Knowing she’d guessed correctly, and that he had been watching, made her feel strange inside, and oddly pleased. Which wouldn’t do.

  The solution to the hair problem was to braid her hair and leave it in a braid all day. There was no one to see her out here on the range.

  That settled, she started by turning her back to him. Then, after counting to one hundred, she turned as if asleep and peeked at him through her lashes.

  He sat hunched forward, staring into the dying fire, his coffee cup clasped between his calloused palms. What was he thinking? About tomorrow’s ride? About a new routine? About the incidents that had made him a legend and a target?

  About her?

  Groaning slightly, she turned over on her stomach and pushed her face into the thin pillow. She had to stop letting him dominate her thoughts. Think about Clarence and Claire, she commanded herself, squeezing her eyes shut.

  The pumpkin patch stretched as far as she could see in any direction, flowing toward a shimmering silver horizon in a lacy tangle of vines and blossoms.

  The blossoms should have delighted her, but instead produced a growing sense of alarm and anxiety. The flowers were long and slender, a greenish gold tube with a fringe of orange ruffling the opening.

  Della knelt between the rows, distantly aware that she was barefoot and wearing her nightgown. Afraid, she reached a quivering hand toward one of the blossoms, dreading what she would discover but dr
iven to see inside the petals.

  Heart racing, she peeled back one of the long petals to reveal a baby inside the blossom, cradled by the curve of the flower and wrapped in a silken petal.

  The baby waved a tiny angry fist at her and she jerked back, feeling her throat close.

  Choking and panicked, she ran down the dirt row, halting to look inside another blossom and another. The babies recognized her and cried out. “Don’t leave me.” “Take me with you.” “Mama, Mama, Mama.”

  Pressing her hands to her ears, she spun in a circle, despairing at the sight of miles and miles of baby blossoms, at the vines that seemed to stretch toward her.

  “I can’t take care of you all. I can’t.”

  Did they hear her? Did they understand? She could see their faces peering out of the blossoms, anxious and angry, betrayed, frightened, and needing her.

  Stumbling, she ran down another row. “Forgive me. Please listen, I can’t take care of you. There are too many . . .”

  What would happen to them? Maybe if she picked a few of the blossoms, but there were miles and miles of them.

  “Della?” Gently, Cameron shook her shoulder, his fingers inches from her braid. “Wake up. You’re having a bad dream.”

  She bolted to a sitting position, gripping his arms and shaking. Tears welled in her eyes.

  “I can’t,” she whispered. Anguish cracked her voice. “I can’t take care of them.” Her gaze slowly cleared and she frowned. “Cameron?”

  “It’s a dream.”

  “Oh Lord.” Releasing his arms, she raised trembling fingers to her lips. “It wasn’t like the other dreams, but it was terrible.”

  “I’ll bring you some coffee.”

  Food and drink were the cure-alls for everything. If a man was wounded, someone handed him a whisky bottle. If a family lost a loved one, the neighbors brought food to their door. A new baby elicited punch and desserts. Unexpected company called for lemonade and cake or cornbread. New neighbors received baskets of baked goods. The only thing Cameron could think of for a nightmare was to fetch coffee.

  “What did you dream?” he asked, sitting on the ground beside her bedroll. She had a warm, sleepy scent that he could have inhaled for the rest of his life.

  “It’s almost gone, but it was something about an enormous pumpkin patch. Acres and acres of pumpkins. And babies, but I can’t remember . . .” A shudder passed across her shoulders and for an instant her gaze went flat. “Pumpkins and babies don’t sound frightening or upsetting, but somehow they were.”

  “Dreams are odd things,” he said.

  She lifted her cup and he noticed her fingers weren’t shaking as badly. The dream had left her. “Do you have nightmares?”

  “Occasionally.” Lord help him, he was admitting to nightmares like a child. “I suppose everyone does,” he added, hoping that was the end of the subject.

  “Do you ever have a nightmare that you’ve had before?”

  How could she know that? He stared at her. As usual, she’d introduced a topic he preferred not to discuss but felt he had to, since now they were into it and she’d shared a personal observance. Damn it. Now she was waiting, looking at him with wide, expectant eyes.

  He hated this kind of thing. “Sometimes I dream I’m in a town. Walking down Main Street.”

  “Are there other people in the dream? Or are you alone?”

  “I’m always alone. But there are people on the boardwalks, families mostly, going about their business. They don’t see me.”

  “Go on.”

  “I’m looking for my family, then I remember that I don’t have a family. At the same moment, I see my reflection in a store window. I’m old. I have gray hair.”

  “And this upsets you.”

  “Yes,” he admitted reluctantly. He guessed that she’d expected his nightmare to involve a gang of outlaws and himself outnumbered, something like that. Certainly she hadn’t anticipated his worst nightmare would be that he was alone in the middle of a bustling little town. “I don’t understand it, either.”

  Irritated, he went back to the fire and cracked eggs into the skillet. Never mind that he’d told her that fixing breakfast was now her chore. He needed the ease of routine.

  What was it about Della Ward that made him tell her things he wouldn’t tell another soul? Why did he feel a need to explain himself to her, when he made a point of never explaining himself to anyone else? And why did her good opinion matter so much?

  That was the crux of his annoyance now. How could she admire a man who had nightmares about not having a family? He should have said he preferred not to talk about nightmares. That’s what he would have done with anyone else.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” she said, walking up to the fire. She’d washed her face and tidied her hair but left it in a braid.

  “No you don’t.”

  She studied the eggs bubbling in hot butter. “You’re thinking a nightmare should be more horrifying than walking down the middle of a street. You’re uncomfortable that this dream is a nightmare for you.”

  Damned if she hadn’t guessed right; she did know what he was thinking. He sure as hell didn’t know what to make of that, so he frowned and said nothing.

  “I think dreams send us a message, but not directly.”

  “That’s pure nonsense.” He didn’t believe in hocuspocus.

  “Then what are dreams?” She elbowed him aside and slid three eggs onto a plate, then handed him the plate. Using her fingers, she dropped several strips of bacon beside his eggs. “Some of my nightmares seem more like memories, but distorted, disturbing memories. Mostly my dreams are incidents that never happened, that couldn’t happen. Sometimes it feels as if they should mean something, but I can’t figure out the message. And you know what else?” She looked at him over her own plate. “I never dream about Clarence or Claire or my mother. I’d love to see them, but they don’t appear in my dreams.”

  Now that was an odd observation. He had dreamed about Della when all she was to him was an image in a photograph. But he hadn’t dreamed of her since she’d become real.

  “Seriously, what do you think dreams are?”

  “I don’t know.” A glance at the sky told him they were getting a late start this morning.

  “Don’t you have an opinion?”

  “I’ll have to think about it.” He’d never discussed dreams. Couldn’t imagine that he ever would again. A sudden thought made him smile. “The judge would have enjoyed you.”

  She looked startled, then pleased.

  “The judge had an opinion about everything, and liked nothing better than to debate someone with differing thoughts.”

  “You think I’m opinionated?” She arched an eyebrow and waited, conveying the impression that she might be testing him.

  He was tempted to say no and avoid hurting her feelings or making her angry. But maybe he was in a testing mood, too.

  “Of course I do. Aren’t you?”

  They studied each other across the campfire, measuring things that couldn’t be seen, then her face lit in a smile.

  “Absolutely. When you’re alone as much as I am, you have all the time in the world to form opinions about everything. If you ask me about shadows, I have an opinion. If you ask me about turnips, I have an opinion.” She laughed. “I guess I would have enjoyed the judge, too.” Now she tilted her head the way she did when something puzzled her. “You’ve spent a lot of time alone, why don’t you have opinions about everything?”

  “Because I don’t feel a need to share opinions doesn’t mean I don’t have any. Differing opinions can erupt in a shoot-out. And if opinions align, it makes for dull conversation.”

  “I don’t agree with your last statement. It can be delightful to discover another person of like mind.”

  All day he thought about her ideas, arguing one side in his mind and then the opposite side. The only conclusion he reached was that she made an interesting traveling companion.

  “All ri
ght,” he said after supper, girding himself for a discussion he would not have had with any other living person. “Let’s suppose you’re right and dreams are a message sent to the dreamer . . . who or what is the guiding force behind the dream? And if the message is important, why doesn’t the guiding force simply state it plainly? And why do dreams fade so quickly that you can’t remember them for more than a few minutes? You tell me your opinions on these questions, and I’ll tell you why you’re wrong.”

  She smiled, then leaned forward, eager for the discussion.

  Lord, he loved the look of her. Beneath the castor oil her face had begun to take on a golden tan, but still showed a becoming sweep of sun-pink. And he liked that she’d worn her hair down, wished he could run her thick braid through his hands. Most of all, he enjoyed the way her face became animated and alive when a topic interested her. Her eyes sparkled and danced, and he could guess her thoughts by the expressions her mouth assumed. And she talked with her whole body, leaning forward earnestly, then pulling back in skepticism. Tilting her head, lifting her chin, gesturing with capable hands that were rough and reddened by work. There was nothing about the look of her that he didn’t like.

  “That was a good conversation,” she said after they’d exhausted every idea either of them could conjure regarding the mystery of dreams. She covered a yawn. “I guess I’ll just . . .”

  This was the day’s most awkward moment. She never said “go to bed.” But the instant she began groping for another expression, the image of a bed popped into his mind.

  “Good night,” he said. Standing abruptly, he walked out on the range away from the fire and her bedroll. Last night she had caught him watching her brush her hair and he’d felt embarrassed over invading her privacy. Tonight he was determined to not let that happen.

  Thrusting his hands into his pockets, he kicked a small stone, sending it skittering into the darkness. He’d never traveled with a woman before. Strictly speaking, that wasn’t true. He’d shared a stage or a seat on a train with women, but he hadn’t traveled the plains or spent this much time alone with a woman. He hadn’t known what to expect, but if he’d thought about it, he would have supposed there would be long periods of silence where each struggled to find bits of conversation that might interest the other.