“So you married him for your mother’s sake?”
She wrapped her shawl closer. “Yes. I was fifteen. I lied to my mother and told her I loved Dan, so she wouldn’t feel responsible for my unhappiness. I tried hard to hide it from her. I never liked the MacKinder boys much, but Dan promised me a good life. I was foolish enough to think if a woman married a man, she would surely learn to love him. But I found out—”
She stopped, shivering at the thought of her wedding night. “I didn’t know he would turn out to be so brutal. I knew they were a bragging, loud-mouthed lot; but I didn’t understand…about…” She was embarrassed to finish. “You were right. There is little difference between John and Dan.”
Josh listened with a silent rage building in his soul at the thought of Dan MacKinder bullying a young Marybeth. He had no doubt the man had used a fist on her more than once, just as John MacKinder had done. “Why do you stay with them, Marybeth?”
She shrugged. “I have no other choice for now. Dan died only six months ago. I was a foreigner in a land I knew little about, with a new baby to care for. The MacKinders are all I have, such as they are. In a place like New York, Irish families have to stick together. Most Protestants there hate us. We can’t help coming here poor. It was because of the famine.” She sighed. “At any rate, when Mac decided to go to Oregon, I had no choice but to come with them. I couldn’t stay behind in a place like New York City, with a baby to care for, no skills, no work, surrounded by all that prejudice. But I’ve decided that when I get to Oregon, I’ll find a way to be on my own.” Her chest tightened at the thought of trying to get away from the MacKinders. “It won’t be easy. John and Mac think I should stay in the family. Mac has already threatened to take Danny away from me if I don’t stay with them and marry John. As you well know he has no use for what he calls independent women. But I will never again marry for any reason but love. I will find a way to provide for Danny.”
She felt Josh step closer, felt a surge of excitement rush through her when he spoke softly. “MacKinder can’t take Danny from you. No law would allow that.”
“Law? Out here? He knows I’ll be more helpless to do anything about it in a land where men can do as they wish.”
“There is law in Oregon. I’ve heard they’ve already set up a court system and—”
She laughed lightly. “Josh, for MacKinder men there is only one form of law—their own.”
He touched her shoulders again. “There’s something a lot stronger than the MacKinders, Marybeth. It’s called faith—faith in what is right. And behind that faith is a love stronger than anything that might come up against it: a mother’s love for her child. Love can conquer a lot of things. I learned that when my sister fell in love with a man who was half Comanche. They went through hell to hang on to that love, and they made it.”
She turned to face him. “I never knew men could have such grand thoughts. You’re a very unusual man, Josh Rivers. And you’ve already made me tell you more than I should have about myself.” She smiled. “You’re an easy man to talk to. But you don’t say much about your own life. Isn’t Texas awfully far from here?”
“A few hundred miles south of Hell, which is a few more hundred miles south of here.”
“You make it sound like very rough country.”
Even in the moonlight she could see the sorrow come into his eyes. “It is, but it’s also beautiful—big, open, endless land, the biggest state in the Union; a wild, restless place full of thorns and thick-skinned critters, wild Indians and dust and hot sun. It can be all green one day, and dried up into brown nothingness the next. It’s a land you hate to love and love to hate. And it’s a land I reckon I’ll never go back to.”
The way he spoke the words made her almost want to cry. “You sound like you miss it the way I miss Ireland.”
He smiled sadly. “I suppose I do. What is Ireland like?”
“It’s very beautiful. Unlike your Texas, it’s always green—an emerald green, with rolling hills and—” She swallowed back a lump in her throat. “My parents are both buried there. Not long after I married Dan, the disease in the potatoes grew worse, and even the MacKinders lost everything. Mother got sick and died. I guess wherever we are, the land can be kind to us, or cruel. But we still love it. Like you, I will never see my homeland again.” She turned and met his eyes. “Does your sister still live in Texas?”
“No. We all left together; moved up near Independence. That’s where I was before I left to join the wagon train—saying a last good-bye to Rachael, that’s her name. I meant to go to Oregon a long time ago, but Brand—that’s her husband, Brand Selby—he needed help getting a horse ranch started, and my younger brother, Luke, wasn’t quite old enough yet to help in the ways I could. Then Rachael got pregnant, and I felt like I should stay around to see the baby—and then she got pregnant again—so I stayed around for that baby.” He laughed lightly and Marybeth blushed. “Then I told her I thought she was just having babies to keep me around and if I didn’t leave she’d have more than they could ever take care of. I took a trip to St. Louis just to see what a big city was like. Rachael went to school there. She’s a school teacher, but she quit doing that for a while because of the babies. At any rate, I spotted you at the courthouse—and then on the riverboat. I figured you were headed for Oregon, but I had no idea you’d be on this particular wagon train. I chose it because I knew and trusted Devon, and I had heard Cap was damn good at what he does.”
She tried to digest all he had just told her. It had all come out so easily, as though they were old and dear friends, sharing memories that hurt, each explaining to the other how they came to be on the trail to Oregon—how they reached this precious moment, standing here together beside the Platte River in the middle of Nebraska Territory. All at once the world seemed amazingly small to Marybeth, and she suddenly understood his comment about destiny. Were they both destined to come to this moment?
Afraid he would read her thoughts, she turned away. “I should get back to the wagon. We’ve been out here too long, Josh.”
“Not long enough. Tell me you’ll meet with me again, Marybeth—every night that I’m in camp we’ll meet someplace. I’ve already talked to Cap—you know how he feels about trouble. I promised not to make any, but I also told him that didn’t mean I’d stay away from you while the MacKinders were absent.”
Her cheeks felt hot at the meaning of the words. “I don’t know. Everything is so new and strange to me. All I ever knew of this country was New York, until we left to come here. It’s like my whole life has been turned upside down, starting from when I married Dan. I feel so lost sometimes. The only sure and real thing for me is my baby.” She turned and faced him. “How do I know it’s right to be meeting you alone? I am not even sure why I would be doing it.”
“I think you do know why. We both know there is something between us that can’t be ignored, Marybeth. When my sister was first attracted to Brand Selby, I couldn’t understand then why she’d want to get mixed up with a half-breed. She said there was just something there that she couldn’t explain and couldn’t ignore. Sometimes these things just happen.”
Marybeth stiffened. “Are you comparing me to a half-breed Indian? Is my nationality that strange to you?”
“Of course not! I didn’t mean that at all! I’m attracted to you, Marybeth, and I can’t stand seeing you abused.”
The humiliation of being talked about by most people on the train, of Josh Rivers knowing what her personal life was like, brought angry tears to her eyes. “I do not want your sympathy, Joshua Rivers! I am not a poor abused soul who needs your help, and if that is the attraction I hold for you, that is not a very good reason to get to know each other better!”
She started to walk past him, and he grabbed her arm. “It’s not just that, and you know it!” She felt the power in his grip, but felt none of the fear she would have felt if John had grabbed her the same way. There was a gentleness in his hand, and his closeness made her fee
l weak. She remembered the day at the river, when his arm had brushed across her breast as he lowered her from his horse. She wondered if he remembered, wondered how it would feel to let Josh Rivers touch her breasts out of desire.
Desire. Yes, that was what she felt at this moment. She realized that for the first time in her life she truly desired a man, and it almost terrified her. She had known Dan MacKinder most of her life but had never desired him. She knew this man hardly at all, yet she wanted him more than she had ever wanted anything, and none of her arguments against seeing him seemed to work.
“Your personal life has nothing to do with how I feel,” he was telling her. “It makes me damn angry, yes; but I’d stand up to anybody who abused a woman or a child. It wouldn’t mean I’d have special feelings for that woman. All I know is that day I saw you at the courthouse, I couldn’t forget your face, and that was before I knew anything about your problems with the MacKinders, or about your background or religion or anything else! Say you’ll meet me again, Marybeth.”
Her eyes teared. “I…I don’t want anything…to happen to you,” she answered, her voice shaking.
He rubbed a thumb gently over her arm. “Is that what’s really bothering you? Nothing is going to happen to me, Marybeth. I’ve been taking care of myself for a long time now. Just say you’ll meet me again. You let me worry about the consequences.”
She sighed resignedly. Wrong as it seemed, and logical as her arguments were, she could not tell him no. “I’ll take another walk tomorrow night, after everything is settled down.”
He released his hold. “Good. I’ll watch for you.”
She looked up at him, and their eyes held a moment longer. Marybeth felt as though she was falling into a bottomless pit, and she was pulling Josh Rivers in with her.
“You just let me handle things,” he added.
She felt nearly faint at his provocative closeness. “I have to go,” she told him quickly. She hurried away, afraid if she stayed a moment longer she would make a fool of herself; wondering if she would be wrong to meet him as she had promised. She reached the Svensson campfire, and Aaron looked up at her from where he sat on a crate drinking coffee. He smiled gently, and Marybeth wondered if he could tell how red her face must be.
“Delores is inside the wagon,” he said.
She glanced at the wagon and back to Aaron. “I’m sorry about…I mean, I would gladly sleep under the wagon if you would rather be inside.”
He shook his head, still grinning. “We are just fine. I would not think of making a woman sleep on the ground. Besides, Delores is waiting to talk to you. She is full of questions.” He gave her a wink and Marybeth hurried to the wagon, her heart as light and excited as any young girl in love for the first time.
Was that what this was? Love? She didn’t dare let herself think such a thing. It wasn’t possible—not this easily; not this suddenly! Yet no one made her feel more happy and secure than Josh Rivers. Right or wrong, she would meet him again, as often as she could before she had to face the reality of the MacKinder hold on her.
Chapter Ten
The gunshot startled Marybeth awake. Delores rose at almost the same time, the two women looking at each other in the brightly moonlit wagon.
“What was that?” Delores asked.
“I think it was a gunshot.”
“What time is it?”
“I don’t know. It must be very late.”
They heard footsteps. “What was that?” someone else asked farther away.
“Are you women all right?” Aaron stood at the back of the wagon.
“Yes,” Delores answered him. “What is happening?”
“I don’t know. I’ll go check. You two stay right here.”
There came another gunshot then, and Marybeth bent down and drew Danny close, feeling an awful dread. “What could it be this time of night?”
“Heaven knows.”
The two women drew closer, waiting with pounding hearts for several long, silent seconds.
“Oh, dear God!” they heard a woman scream then, followed by dreadful sobbing.
“Holy Jesus,” someone else exclaimed.
“Somebody get Cap!” another voice yelled.
“Don’t touch the bodies,” a man ordered. “Wait for Cap.” It sounded like Josh’s voice, and Marybeth breathed a sigh of relief that whatever had happened, he had not been hurt. They heard footsteps returning toward their wagon. A moment later Aaron stood there again.
“Aaron, what happened,” Delores asked anxiously.
The man sighed deeply, hesitating. “Delores,” he said finally, his voice strained. “You do not hate me for bringing you out here, do you?”
“Aaron! I could never hate you. Why do you ask such a thing?”
The man swallowed. “It is Mrs. Sleiter,” he said quietly. “She—killed her husband—and then herself.”
Delores gasped, and Marybeth’s eyes widened. “Dear Lord, none of us realized just how depressed the woman had become,” Marybeth said in a near whisper. She hugged Danny closer, realizing how much more she would hate the MacKinders if her baby died on this journey. She would also want to die, but suicide was a mortal sin for a Catholic. She knew she could never go that far, and somehow she knew that buried deep within her was a profound strength that would help her through such a horror. She could only pray she would never have to put that kind of strength to a test.
They could hear other gasps and exclamations now; more women crying. A few children started to cry, frightened by the sounds of gunfire and the women crying.
“Some of you men wrap the bodies so the children won’t have to see them in the morning,” Marybeth heard Cap ordering. “Put them inside the Sleiter wagon for now. We’ll have a funeral come sunup, but I’m afraid we can’t be taking too long. We’ve got to keep going.”
“Are you all right, Delores?” Aaron asked her.
The woman wiped at her eyes. “I think so. Oh, Aaron, how awful!” She moved to the back of the wagon, and the man reached up and embraced her. Marybeth longed to also be held right now, to feel warm protection from the horrors of the journey and what awaited her once she had to rejoin the MacKinders. The murder-suicide seemed to bring into focus the unpredictability of peoples’ behavior under such strenuous conditions, and again she realized how violent John would be if he knew she was meeting Josh alone. Would he be crazy enough to try to kill Josh? Out here there was no real law, and this wilderness did something to a man—and to a woman.
Aaron left to help with the bodies. “Oh, Marybeth, what a tragedy,” Delores sobbed. “It makes me afraid.”
“Everyone on this wagon train is a little bit afraid. And we have a long way to go. Just be glad you have Aaron and you can draw from his strength. All that matters is that you have a good man who loves you. He’ll get you to Oregon, Delores.”
Delores lay back down against her pillow. “And Josh Rivers will get you there safely.”
Marybeth laid Danny back down gently. The little boy had not even awakened. “Don’t say it that way, Delores,” she said quietly, lying down beside her son. “I only talked to him once. I’m not even sure how I feel about him.”
“Yes, you are. I saw it in your face when you came back tonight. You feel about him like I felt about Aaron when first we met. I knew then and there that we would always be together.”
Marybeth smiled at the Swedish woman’s odd accent that made her end sentences with an upswing in her voice, making everything sound like a question. She sighed deeply, realizing that just thinking about Josh helped relax her, gave her a comforting feeling of safety against horrors like what had just happened to poor Mrs. Sleiter. “You shouldn’t call him ‘my’ Joshua.”
“He will be your Joshua.”
Marybeth said nothing. Inwardly she liked the sound of it. My Joshua. Had Wilma Sleiter once felt this way about her husband, or had she perhaps never truly loved him? It seemed sometimes the line between love and hate could be so thin. On a journey li
ke this one, love either grew stronger, or turned to bitter hatred, and old hates only got worse.
“Poor woman,” Delores said quietly. “Poor, poor woman.”
“Yes. Throwing out her dead son’s furniture seemed to make something snap inside of her. But I think her husband must have suffered more than she did. He must have felt so alone, so guilty.”
“Who can know what is going through a person’s mind?”
“Marybeth.” She heard the name spoken softly outside. She sat up, pulling a blanket around herself, recognizing Josh’s voice.
“Yes?”
He stepped to the back of the wagon. “Are you all right?”
She moved toward the gate. “I am just fine.”
He lit a thin cigar, using the light of the flint to study her lovely face and the way her hair tumbled around it. “I’m just sorry I didn’t see it coming.”
Marybeth was amazed that he seemed to half blame himself. The MacKinder men would only have fumed about the woman’s weakness and stupidity. She could just hear Mac saying “Good riddance—a woman with no backbone to support her husband isn’t worth having around anyway. It’s just too bad she took a good man with her.” There would have been no sympathy; no compassion.
“Any one of us should have seen it,” she told Josh, “most of us sooner than you. You were gone hunting most of the time. The rest of us tried to console her after they took the furniture off her wagon. After a while, we just gave up. She wouldn’t even speak to her own husband.”
Josh met her eyes, taking the cigar from his mouth. “She wasn’t ready for a trip like this. Her husband thought he was doing what was best for her, but he was wrong, poor soul.” He sighed, pushing his hat farther back on his head. “I’ll see you in the morning at the funeral.”
“Yes,” she answered, surprised and touched that he had come to check on her.
He left her then, heading for the cook wagon, where Cap was settling back into his bedroll. The Sleiter bodies were wrapped and lying inside their wagon, and people returned to their bedrolls. Joshua thought how odd it was—life and death seeming to walk hand in hand. Two people lay in tragic death, and life went on. He knelt down near Cap.
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