Prairie Moon

by Maggie Osborne

  There was only one passenger car in use on the east-bound trip, and only the passengers from the Santa Fe stage had boarded. The other cars were designated for freight or closed off to be used during subsequent legs of the journey. Della and Cameron could have taken one of the bench seats for themselves and stretched out their legs, but without discussing it, they slid into the same seat.

  “It looks like a good supper.” Inside Della’s box were two pieces of fried chicken, soft rolls, a hard-boiled egg, an apple, and a piece of frosted spice cake wrapped in newspaper. Finger food that didn’t need utensils. This seemed like a good idea to Della. She placed her gloved hand on Cameron’s sleeve. “I haven’t been on a train in ten years. It’s exciting.”

  “I don’t guess the trains came this far west back then.”

  “They didn’t. I took a stage most of the way.”

  Naturally they sat in the back row. The only items behind them were a latrine and a potbellied stove tended by a sleepy-eyed boy. Ahead, the stage passengers had spread out widely, separated by empty seats.

  The whistle blew, a long blast of sound that made Della smile beneath sparkling eyes. The train lurched and couplings ground together. They lurched again and she felt a building vibration beneath her boots. Leaning to the window, she watched the platform slip away, disappearing behind a veil of snow.

  “It hasn’t felt real until now,” she whispered, responding to the power of the wheels turning beneath them. “We’re really going home.” Her eyes widened and she swallowed back a surge of panic. Her fingers tightened on the box supper. “I wonder if my cousin still lives in Atlanta. We didn’t keep in touch after the war.”

  The conductor came down the aisle to take their tickets and inform them they wouldn’t pick up a sleeper car until tomorrow. After checking on the boy dozing beside the stove, he returned to the front of the car, dimming the lights as he went.

  Della set aside her box supper and turned her face to the cold, dark window. Everything would be different. She had left behind a city in ruins. By now, buildings and homes were rebuilt. Atlanta would be like the landscape in dreams, partly familiar and also strangely unfamiliar.

  Should she try to locate old friends? Biting her lips, she stared at the snowflakes streaming past the window and let her mind turn backward. Names and faces flickered through her memory, people she hadn’t thought of in years.

  It would have been nice to see some of them, but she couldn’t bear knowing their conversation would center around losses and memories of a world that no longer existed.

  “I don’t think we should stay long,” she decided slowly, thinking about it. There was no one she really wanted to see. Just Claire. “Perhaps a week.”

  Cameron propped his boot on the seat back in front of them and bit into his apple. “This is your trip. We’ll do it however you like.”

  A sudden thought occurred to her and she turned stricken eyes to him. “Oh, Cameron. I’ve been so thoughtless and selfish. Are there people you want to see? Places you want to visit?” He lowered the apple and fixed his gaze on a point toward the front of the car. “Good heavens. I owe you an apology. I don’t believe I ever asked where you were from . . .” It seemed a glaring omission now that she noticed, and one that embarrassed her greatly.

  “My father was the third generation of Camerons to live in Winthrop.”

  “Winthrop.” Frowning, Della tried to recall if she’d heard the name. “What direction is Winthrop from Atlanta?”

  “It’s north.”

  She touched his sleeve and examined his profile. “We could take a few days and go there if you like. I’d enjoy seeing where you grew up.”

  “No.”

  The unadorned answer raised a half smile of annoyance and affection. If the stage ride hadn’t worn her to a frazzle, Della would have pried out a more complete response. But the heat from the stove behind them and the gentle sway of the rocking car lulled her toward sleep.

  “I think I’ll eat the egg and the cake, then doze a bit.”

  The emotional ups and downs of the last few days, followed by the discomfort of the stage, and now the jumble of confusion and anxiety caused by finally boarding the train, had worn her out.

  She attempted to doze sitting erect, her hands tidily folded in her lap, but her head fell forward and woke her. Then she tried resting her head against the window, but the cold on her cheek made it impossible to sleep.

  “Come here.” His voice was gruff and amused.

  After a token hesitation, Della moved into his arms and found a perfect place to rest her head between his shoulder and throat. It occurred to her that if anyone looked back or passed them on the way to the latrine, they would look like lovers. She didn’t care. This was the safest place on earth, here in James Cameron’s arms. Pressed to his side and chest, enclosed by the solid warmth of his body, Della went to sleep with his heartbeat in her ear and his apple-scented breath warming her cheek.

  Cameron held her as the train rushed through the snowy night. His arm grew tingly and then numb but he didn’t move or disturb her. He wished that he could freeze time, wished the dawn would never come. He would have been happy to spend forever riding a train with Della Ward in his arms.

  There were folks who claimed it wasn’t healthy to ride faster than a horse could run, who claimed that train travel twisted a person’s innards.

  “No, I don’t believe that,” Cameron said, smiling.

  “The Two Creeks Gazette sparked a heated debate by stating that trains are against nature and an abomination in God’s eyes.”

  “Would it be fair to guess that the editor of the Two Creeks Gazette hadn’t ridden a train?”

  “That was my thought, too.” Della nodded when a waiter clad in spotless white offered more coffee before whisking away their breakfast plates.

  After three days her initial excitement had waned considerably. She’d been wearing the same clothing since they boarded and her traveling suit was beginning to look the worst for wear. Then it was either too hot or too cold. The boy who tended the stove kept it cherry red and roaring or he let the flames die to ash and didn’t seem to notice the cold until frost laced the inside of the windows.

  At each stop across the Great Plains, the train took on more passengers. There were few empty seats now. Babies cried, children ran up and down the aisles, the smell of crowded humanity filled the coach. Sleeping cars had been added, but there were few amenities. Della slept in the ladies’ coach atop a thin mattress rolled out on a board.

  The times she liked best were meals in the dining car, and when they stopped to take on fuel and the passengers pushed outside to stroll the platform and inhale great gulps of fresh air.

  The difficult times were sitting hour after hour on the bench seat, feeling Cameron’s solid shoulder against hers, and sometimes leaning into his body to doze a bit during the long afternoons.

  Sometimes the physical contact between them felt sensual and arousing and where their bodies touched became the only thing she could think about. Those few inches of shoulder or thigh or hip became the only part of her body that seemed alive, that she could actually feel. When the electric tingling became more than her nerves could bear, she shifted on the wooden seat and turned her cheek toward the cold air at the window, seeking to cool thoughts as heated as the potbellied stove.

  Other times, like now, she sat primly erect, eyes forward, and told herself that the rush of sensation emanating from the point where the sleeve of her jacket pressed Cameron’s sleeve was nothing more than gratitude and the recognition that, for the moment, she was not alone or lonely.

  Della told herself that a woman could daydream about being with a man without it meaning something like love or commitment. She had pondered this issue during the long hours and had concluded that maidens earnestly believed love and commitment must precede being with a man, and that was undoubtedly a prudent attitude. But a mature woman, like herself, say, could be with a man for the pleasure of it without
tying either partner to an emotional commitment.

  This meant that love was not necessary to justify following one’s desires. That was excellent because she did not want to love James Cameron. Unless he loved her back and was willing to move away from his legend, that is.

  As the train moved across Kansas she began to see that he’d been correct. A few military passengers wore side arms, and here and there a cowboy type sported a gun belt. But most of the passengers appeared to be farmers or businessmen who traveled unarmed.

  “Ladies and gents, may I have your attention, please.” The conductor shattered her reverie. “We’ll be stopping in St. Joseph, Missouri, for three hours. There’s a café and several good restaurants in town. You’ll find many pleasing views of the Missouri River, and some might enjoy a stroll along the docks. You can buy current newspapers in the lobby of the Saratoga Hotel and there’s a novelty shop next door to the hotel.” He removed a brass watch from his vest pocket. “Be back on the platform at four o’clock.”

  “Are you hungry?” Cameron asked. Today his eyes were the piercing blue of a morning sky, and he was so handsome that Della’s breath caught in her throat.

  During a short stopover in Dodge City, Kansas, Cameron had ordered his trunk from the baggage car. When Della saw him again, he’d packed away his duster and Stetson, his riding pants and shirt. Now he wore a three-piece black suit and narrow-brimmed hat, and would have looked like a businessman, except for his boots. And she doubted many businessmen carried a pistol in a shoulder holster.

  “Unless you’re starving, I’d like to walk for a while. Stretch our legs and enjoy the fresh air.” Della pulled on her gloves and straightened her hat. “This is a treat.” Ordinarily the train didn’t stop for much longer than thirty or forty minutes.

  She took Cameron’s arm and they turned downhill toward the river. Immediately Della’s heart lifted. It was lovely to be in the fresh cold air and free to speak without the people around them overhearing. They were almost to the docks before it dawned on her that the folks they passed paid them no attention.

  “No one recognizes you,” she said, looking up at Cameron. By now she knew the signs. That sudden surprise of recognition, followed by an effort not to be obvious, which was usually overwhelmed by the urge to speak to Cameron and shake his hand. But sometimes the look of recognition was followed by a measured study, and she could almost see the man calculating his chances if he drew his gun. “I also don’t see many guns.”

  Cameron led her to a bench overlooking the activity swarming around the wharf and a good-sized cargo steamer. “There aren’t as many pistols worn here as in the West. But there are probably more than you think. Still, a man can relax a little.” He went to a vendor and returned with steaming cups of hot chocolate. “You’ve been quiet. Are you thinking about your daughter?”

  “Actually I’ve been trying not to.” When she thought about Claire, her stomach lurched and she felt sick. What could she possibly say to the child she’d left behind? Hello, I’m the mother who abandoned you and left you with a vile-tempered grandmother and a controlling, sickly grandfather. Della lowered her face over the hot chocolate and closed her eyes.

  Increasingly the dread came over her in waves, knocking the strength out of her spine and knees and making her hands shake. She had terrible visions of being unable to stop herself from revealing her identity to Claire. And Claire would spit her contempt. All the accusations and hurtful words that Della had said to herself for ten years would come out of Claire’s mouth, carrying a hundred times the power to wound.

  Cameron stood slightly before her, drinking his chocolate, his gaze on the river.

  “Cameron?” Her voice was hardly more than a whisper. “Do you think less of me for leaving my baby with the Wards?”

  “No.”

  “Mrs. Ward is a poisonous woman. If Claire reminds her of me—maybe the Wards have treated her badly. Mrs. Ward has a tongue like a razor, and Mr. Ward never stood up to her. He wouldn’t interfere if she mistreated Claire. I knew that, but I left my baby, anyway.”

  “Don’t do this, Della. You had no choice.”

  “I had a choice about what I wrote in that last letter to Clarence. I wasn’t a good and loving wife.”

  He turned with a frown. “You were seventeen, pregnant, forced to live with people who didn’t like you or welcome you. You were frightened and alone and struggling with responsibilities you weren’t prepared for.”

  Cameron understood.

  With blinding clarity Della realized that if she had written that last terrible letter to James Cameron, he would have understood the reasons and the impulse behind it. He would not have surrendered to her pleas for him to come home any more than Clarence had, but he wouldn’t have been angry at her for wanting his help and protection. He would have known she didn’t mean half the words written in that letter, because Cameron knew her better than Clarence ever had. Cameron knew her heart.

  And Della would have understood that. There would have been no blame and no need for forgiveness. No letter, no flash of pique could have changed their belief in each other.

  Concentrating on what she was discovering, she fixed her gaze on the stevedores loading the river steamer, but she didn’t see them.

  Cameron should have blamed her for writing that bitter letter and for leaving Claire with the Wards. He should have, but instead somehow he understood.

  She blinked back tears of gratitude. Thank heaven Cameron did not see her demons in the same monstrous way that she did.

  Was she testing him? Honestly, she didn’t know. She preferred to think that she was checking the truth of the assumptions she’d made.

  As a general rule, men did not excel at picking up hints, and Cameron seemed worse than most in this regard. Della understood this meant that she would have to speak frankly, but not so frankly as to embarrass either of them. Unfortunately she was out of practice at this sort of thing.

  She wet her lips, glanced at Cameron, then back at the river. “You know, since we visited the gypsy camp, I’ve been asking myself what Clarence would think if I were ever to . . .”

  She almost said “remarry,” but stopped when she realized that might alarm him.

  “. . . were ever to start seeing another man.” A glance revealed that Cameron was paying close attention. “I’ve concluded that Clarence probably wouldn’t mind if the man were someone he approved of. Like a close friend.”

  There. She’d said it and demolished Cameron’s reticence to pursue a courtship of his friend’s widow. Had she spoken the truth? She had no idea. Probably not. As recently as a few days ago she’d dreamed about the hearse and, as crazy as it sounded, she had attributed the dream to Clarence and interpreted it to mean that she’d done wrong by kissing Cameron in the hotel corridor.

  When Cameron didn’t comment, she sighed. “What do you think?” she asked, speaking to his stiff back.

  “I think we should walk to town, find a good restaurant, and have an early supper.”

  That wasn’t what she wanted him to say.

  Embarrassment flamed on her face. She had all but begged Cameron to court her and he was changing the subject. And the change was abrupt, even for a man who didn’t easily discuss personal matters.

  Della didn’t speak a word between the docks and the dining room at the Saratoga Hotel. Neither did Cameron. By the time they were seated and considering menus, they were both in a bad mood.

  “I’ll have a whisky,” Cameron said to the waiter.

  Della looked at him. “It’s early for whisky, isn’t it?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll have a glass of Madeira.” Wines had never appealed to her, especially Madeira, but it was the only wine she could remember on the spur of the moment.

  “A friend once told me that women can put you in a corner where, no matter what a man says or how he says it, he’ll cause pain where he didn’t intend to.”

  Della lifted her chin. “I apologize for placing y
ou in a corner.” Why didn’t he drop this topic and spare them both? She had asked him to court her and he had said no thank you by abruptly changing the subject. The issue was closed.

  “I want you to know that I respect you and hold you in the highest esteem.” Cameron spoke quietly and earnestly, but his face was flushed and clearly each word emerged with great effort. “It must be evident that I’m powerfully drawn to you. If I could, I’d . . .” He waved a hand. “But I can’t. There are reasons that you don’t understand.”

  Her shoulders moved with a tiny motion of relief. She hadn’t misjudged him after all, and she hadn’t made a fool of herself.

  “Maybe I do understand,” she said, hoping the softness in her eyes apologized for her sharpness. “I’d like to hear your reasons. Perhaps they aren’t as insurmountable as you think.”

  She watched his eyes narrow and felt his gaze like a caress on her lips. Something moved deep inside and she marveled that one special man’s gaze could fill her with such longing.

  “You’ll hear the reasons. But not now.”

  Knowing him made her forget sometimes that he was dangerous. Plus, she’d never considered him dangerous to her. But now she looked into his cool eyes, heard the warning in his voice, and felt a sudden shiver go down her spine.

  Tilting her head, she tried to see him as others did. Hard. Coldly handsome. Ruthless. A legendary man who left death and destruction in his wake. Solitary and untouchable.

  “Cameron . . .” Her voice sank to a whisper. “What is it that you want to tell me?” Something had been there from the beginning. Whatever it was hadn’t diminished but had grown in power and importance. “Tell me now.”

  He shook his head. “Soon. But not yet.”

  The expression in the depth of his eyes frightened her. She saw hopelessness, sadness, and fury gathering force like a storm.

  Later that evening, Della leaned her forehead against the cold window glass and peered outside, half expecting to see lightning flash ahead of the train. The feeling of dread returned, depressing her thoughts and making her wish that she could turn around and go no further.