Nudging Rosie ahead, she dismounted and tied her to the hitching post just outside it. In front of the saloon just down the road were two rough-looking men sitting on straight-backed chairs, with an upturned crate for a table that held checkers. As she went into the store, one of them whistled at her and said, “Hey, sweetheart, get your grub; then you can have a drink with Leon and me.”
Paying no attention to them, Chantel went into the store and found no customers, but a heavyset, whiskered man was there working. He had pale skin and dark eyes with a droopy mustache that hid most of his mouth. “Good day, miss. What can I get you?”
“I need coffee, bacon, and a loaf of that sourdough bread.” Chantel waited in front of the counter as the man found what she asked for.
“Thirty-three cents, ma’am,” he said. As she counted out the money, he cocked his head to the side and asked, “Where’s a young lady like you heading all by yourself?”
“South. To Lafayette,” she answered shortly, not looking him in the eye. Quickly she grabbed the bag of her goods and hurried out of the store.
She tied her sack to the pommel. She was anxious to get out of this dirty little town, and she would sort out the supplies later.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the two checker-playing men sauntering toward her. One of them was tall and had a slight limp. The other was a small man, odd-looking because his hat was much too big for him. He looked like a little boy wearing his father’s headgear.
“Hello there. My name’s Charlie, and this is Leon. What’s your name, pretty lady?” the tall one asked her.
Chantel didn’t answer. She grabbed the saddle horn and started to raise her foot to the stirrup.
The smaller man—Leon—said, “Wait a minute, there. Why don’t we talk for a while? Make acquaintance, like? You’d like me and Charlie. We’re nice fellows.”
“That’s it,” Charlie agreed, sucking on a shred of a toothpick. “Come on. We’ll buy you a drink.”
“No,” Chantel said evenly.
With her left hand she reached up again for the pommel, but the one called Charlie grabbed her arm and pulled at her, muttering, “Now just wait a minute here—”
Instantly Chantel drew the knife from the sheath at her side and held it up so that the sun glinted on the sharp blade. “Let me alone, you!”
Charlie laughed and put both his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “You don’t need no knife. We just gonna have a little fun.”
“No, we’re not gonna have fun,” Chantel said between gritted teeth. “I’m not going to tell you my name, I don’t care what your names are, and I don’t want to drink with you. And if you don’t leave me alone, I’ll cut you. I swear I will, me.”
“She’s a little spitfire, ain’t she?” Charlie said with admiration.
“Uh—yep, she is,” Leon agreed, but not with quite so much admiration. He was very slowly backing away.
With one last disgusted look at them, Chantel mounted, still holding the knife in her right hand. Without another word, she turned and headed out of town. Though she wanted to look back, she made herself stare straight ahead. Though no one could have seen it, Chantel was very scared, her heart skipping along like a wary little rabbit’s. She whispered, “Thank You, good God, for taking care of me.”
She was at least two miles past the settlement, riding again in silence and solitude, before she could calm herself down, and then a weary sort of numbness settled on her. Blindly, not knowing what new fears may lie ahead, she rode east with the sun warm on her back, but she had a coldness in her heart.
Ten days after her encounter with the two men, Chantel was still traveling steadily northeast. She was getting low on supplies because she was avoiding towns.
She had tried to stop once more, but the same thing had happened. A group of toughs were lounging around outside the saloon, and they called out and whistled to her as she passed. One young man with a knife scar on his face ran up to Rosie and grabbed her reins, grinning and calling Chantel “a pretty piece.” Chantel had kicked his face then spurred Rosie to her fastest lumbering gallop, bypassing the general store without regret.
Right then she knew that, as young as she was and with the way she looked and traveling alone, it was bound to happen no matter where she went. Once again she stiffened her resolve and decided that if she had to she’d drink water and eat fish and small game.
She had traveled far from the bayou now, but it was pretty country. There were a lot of farms with cotton fields, and the few homes she saw were usually whitewashed two-story homes with painted shutters and deep verandas. The woods were deep and secret-looking, and sometimes Chantel thought she might like to just disappear into them and live there, like a wild thing that would not be tamed. But something kept her on the road, and something kept her going northeast. She was past questioning why. She just rode.
Not far off the road, she saw a nice farmhouse. A young lady sat on the porch holding a baby. On impulse Chantel went up the path to the house. “Hello, ma’am,” she said uncertainly.
The woman was in her middle twenties and pleasant-looking. “Hello. Are you traveling alone?”
“Yes, ma’am, to my family in Tennessee, ma’am,” Chantel said her polite lie.
“About a mile up this road there’s a fork. The left one will take you to Jackson. The right one continues northeast, just a mule track, really, and it’s a long way to the next settlement that way, all the way to Baxley. Would you like some lemonade?”
“No thank you, ma’am, I’d better be going on, me.” Chantel left, with the woman staring after her. She came to the crossroads and followed the right-hand fork, which led in a more northerly direction than Chantel had been riding. The woman hadn’t lied, for the road was no wider than the width of a wagon. She could even see the ruts that wagon wheels made.
She traveled on in her dogged way for two days.
That morning she awoke to a dirt-gray dawn and ugly dark clouds in the east. After two hours a light rain started and then turned into a downpour. Rosie was soaked, and Chantel was soaked, but she was lucky because she had a good piece of canvas that she could arrange over the saddle to cover the saddlebags that held her supplies. Still, she made a miserable sodden camp and wished she were back in her nice house on the peaceful bayou. Without Rufus Bragg, of course.
The next day the rain kept on, and she gave up and found a deserted barn. Half the roof was falling down, but the other half seemed solid enough. She pulled Rosie in and unsaddled her. She found enough dry wood in the barn to get a fire started. She took off her clothes and wrung them out and hung them on a few sticks and branches close to the fire. She fed Rosie and rubbed her down good. The barn still had some sweet-smelling hay, and Rosie munched happily on it.
Chantel was hungry and ate four eggs, all that she had left, a big greasy chunk of fried salt pork, and her last piece of bread. She huddled by the fire, glad to be out of the rain, savoring the warmth and comfort of the fire. She had managed to keep her blanket rolls dry, and after she ate she was sleepy. That night she slept sounder than she had in days.
She slept a little later than usual because the day was still gray. Though the rain hadn’t completely stopped, it wasn’t the mad torrent it had been the day before. At first she was tempted to stay in the barn, but whatever it was that seemed to be driving her made her decide to ride on that day. It rained off and on, and the twilight fell early, for the sun had never come out that miserable day.
Suddenly something caught her eye up in the road, and she pulled Rosie over. “Whoa, girl,” she whispered. “There’s something up ahead.” It was just a big shadow, looming up right in the middle of the road. Cautiously she rode closer until she could make out that it was a wagon, stopped right on the track. She stopped Rosie again to watch. For long moments she listened, but she heard no sound and saw no movement.
She pulled the shotgun from the sheath and rode slowly past the wagon, giving it a wide berth. As she passed it, she saw
a horse, still in the traces, lying in the road. It was obviously dead. Again she pulled Rosie to a stop, turned her, and called out softly, “Hello, is anyone here?”
The crickets had begun singing, but just barely louder than their shrill calls she heard a voice coming from the wagon. Dismounting, Chantel tied Rosie to the seat upright, still holding the shotgun. She went to the rear of the wagon, stopping once again to listen but hearing nothing. Finally she came to the opening at the back and lifted the canvas cover. No lamp was lit inside, but she could make out the form of a man lying on the floor. “Are you sick?” she asked hesitantly.
A man’s weak voice answered. “Yes, I’m afraid I am. Very sick.”
Chantel stood irresolutely, afraid of being out there in the wilderness, alone, and maybe trying to help a man who was not good, a man who might be like Rufus Bragg or the men in towns who looked at her so greedily and licked their lips. She shuddered a little but then closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Chantel knew herself. She couldn’t ride on and just forget. She had to help this man. Whoever or whatever he was, she would not leave him here, like her, alone and frightened in the wilderness.
CHAPTER NINE
With determination Chantel tucked up the canvas flap and climbed up into the wagon. She drew close and looked down at the man.
He was elderly, she could tell, lying flat on his back, and as her eyes grew accustomed to the dim starlight, she could even see the lines in his face. His hair and his beard were as white as snow. He didn’t speak, and she could see that his cheeks were sunken in and his eyes were dull with pain. Even as he stared at her, his eyes began to close and his head lolled to the side.
She glanced around and saw that, although the wagon was huge, most of the space was taken up with shelves filled with goods of all kind. There were canned goods, fresh vegetables and fruits, bolts of cloth, hardware, tack, tools, and many small unlabeled boxes. The man lay stretched in the space between the shelves in the middle of the wagon, and there was barely enough room for her to kneel beside him. She spotted a lantern hanging just by the canvas flap for the opening, with a box of matches on a neat little shelf just underneath it. Quickly she lit the lantern and squeezed by so that she could kneel down by the sick man.
“You are very sick,” she observed. Now that she could see him more clearly, she could make out the pallor of the old man’s face, the skin that looked stretched too thinly over the bones. It was a death’s-head look, they called it, and she had seen it on her mother.
The old man coughed weakly. “Yes, I’ve been very ill indeed. How did you find me?”
“I was just traveling along the road, and I saw your wagon. Your horse is dead, no?”
“Yes, that was the problem.” Another coughing fit seized him and racked his small frame. When it passed he continued in a weak whisper, “My horse died, and I tried to dig a hole to bury him. But I was so tired, and then the rain caught me. I got wet and there wasn’t any way to dry off.”
“You’re still wet,” Chantel said, feeling the dampness of his clothes. “You need to get warm and put on dry clothes.”
“Yes, but first some water, please? I had my canteen here, but I drank it all.” Bewildered, he looked around.
Chantel knew he had a fever. When she had been feeling his clothes, she had touched his neck, and it was hot. She jumped up. “Never mind, you. I’ll get water.”
Chantel hurried to get her canteen and the tin cup she used for coffee. She filled it half full and gave it to him. She had to pull him up and hold him in a half-sitting position, but he drank thirstily.
“Could I have some more?”
“Maybe you drink just a little bit at a time, yes?”
“Maybe that would be better.”
Chantel nodded. “It’s still wet outside, but I’ll build a fire and get you dried off.”
“There are two tents stored under the wagon. One of them is much too large, but the other is small, maybe small enough for you to put up. There’s also a small stove stored right behind the seat. In the cold weather, I heat the tent up with the stove.”
“I can do this,” Chantel said sturdily. She got her blankets and hurried back up into the wagon. She put one of them over him and rolled up another to rest against his back so he could stay in a half-seated position. Once again she refilled the cup and warned, “Little sips only, yes?”
“Yes, I’ll do that,” he agreed.
“I’ll be taking the lantern. I’ll need it to find everything,” she told him.
He merely nodded, obviously exhausted, and his eyes closed again.
Chantel headed for the wagon opening and for the first time saw the fold-down steps that made it so much easier to come in and out of the wagon. Without hesitation she flattened herself in the mud beside the wagon and looked at the frame underneath.
Sure enough, there was a great roll of canvas that must have been a huge tent and another much smaller roll, both tied with sturdy rope and simple knots to the undercarriage. Quickly she untied the smaller tent and pulled it out. She had never had a tent, had never even been in one. But she had seen them before, and Chantel had a quick mind, so it took her little time to figure it out. She found the stakes and tent poles and immediately could picture how to stake out the tent and then raise it. This she did, quickly and efficiently. It was a small tent, but it was high enough for one to stand upright.
Secured right behind the driver’s seat was a stove, and beside it was a box that held rich pine, which would burn almost instantly and was the best and quickest way to start a fire. The stove was small indeed, but large enough to warm the little tent and cook a little bit on the top. She set it down near the tent opening and laid the pine knots along the bottom.
Running now, she hunted, almost despairing of finding any dry wood, but not far off the road she found an enormous oak tree with many fallen branches, some of them as thick as her arm. The thick greenery of the leaves above seemed to have sheltered them from much of the rain.
Soon the stove was throwing out a cheery heat, and Chantel was heartened. But she looked around at the muddy ground and knew that she couldn’t lay the old man on the ground.
She went back into the wagon and saw that the man was still sleeping, his head fallen to the side, his mouth slightly open. His breathing had a funny, rattling, wet sound. She sighed and held the lantern high to look around.
Soon she spotted them, cleverly stored, as all the many items in this wagon seemed to be. Folding cots were attached to brackets above the shelves, and they had thin but soft canvas mattresses. On a shelf underneath the neatly piled bolts of fabric were several blankets folded into uniform squares. Chantel hurried to make him up a bed in the tent, which was now pleasantly warm.
Returning to the back of the wagon, she climbed in and said, “I have the tent up, and the stove is making it warm. If I help you, can you go there?”
“I think so.” The old man struggled, and Chantel went to his side and put her arm around him to lift him up. He coughed then smiled faintly and said, “I’m sorry for being such a bother.”
“No bother to me,” she said awkwardly.
She helped him as he took tentative steps. He was weak indeed, and she practically had to carry him. It took them a long time to reach the tent. Immediately he collapsed onto the cot gratefully.
“Mister, you need to get outta those wet clothes.”
“Yes, I’m—so—very cold.”
Chantel went back to the wagon and found some dry clothes for him. She returned and saw that he had been able to sit up on the edge of the cot and remove his shirt. “Here, put this warm shirt on.” She helped him put his arm through the sleeve and buttoned it up. “You lie down. I take your pants.” The old man didn’t argue. He lay back, and Chantel lifted his feet and legs onto the cot. She removed his sodden shoes and wet socks, and she put on a pair of thick socks she found with the rest of his clothing. He was very thin, and his skin was sodden, but he still burned with fever. She looked u
p and she saw that he had passed out again. It took a little struggle, but she finally was able to put the dry pants on him. She then put the blankets around him. “You be warm soon, you,” she said quietly.
The old man didn’t answer. By the dim lantern light she studied him. He was thin-boned, his cheekbones pronounced, his cheeks hollowed. His mouth was short and full, and he had a pronounced nose. She knew that he was old, but at fifteen years of age, she couldn’t tell the difference between thirty and sixty. He seemed to be resting quietly now, so Chantel decided to take care of Rosie and investigate the wagon more. She was hungry, and she knew that when the old man woke up she should try to get him to eat.
First she went and untied Rosie and led her to the great oak tree. Although the rain had stopped, it was still the driest, most comfortable place she could think of for her sweet, hardworking horse. Chantel unsaddled her, rubbed her down, and gave her the last of the grain. There was grass growing underneath the tree, though, and soon Rosie was grazing contentedly.
For perhaps the dozenth time that night, she climbed back in the wagon. She rummaged around in the foodstuffs, and to her surprise she found something she had never seen before: chicken broth in a can. She set about trying to figure out how to open it; it seemed like it would be a dangerous business with her hunting knife. It took her a little while before she figured out the tool she needed to open it, and then triumphantly she found a can opener. She took a couple of carrots and stalks of celery and with satisfaction used her opener on the can of broth. Soon she had a thin but nourishing soup bubbling on the stove.
“It smells good.”
Startled, Chantel turned to see that the old man was awake. “Hello,” she said a little shyly. “You sit up and eat. It’s good for you when you’re sick.” Again she had to help him sit up and propped him with some rolled-up blankets from the store in the wagon.
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