Bittersweet

by Anita Mills

  “No.”

  He hadn’t said much in the nearly three days it had taken them to travel less than a hundred miles. Whatever he’d learned at Kearny was eating at him like a cancer, turning him from haunted to haggard. She didn’t think he’d gotten much sleep either—every time she’d had to take a quick trip to the bushes during the nights, his bedroll had been empty when she passed by it. And twice her lantern had caught him, leaning against a tree, staring into the darkness. She didn’t know why, but she was pretty sure he was hurting as much as she was.

  “If you don’t mind, I’d like to walk with you,” she said quietly. “I’ve got a cramp in my leg from sitting.”

  “No, he responded shortly. “I’d as soon not have company right now. If you need to stretch that leg, you’d better stay close to the parade ground.”

  “Yes, of course.” Rebuffed, she remained on the seat while he climbed down from the wagon. “I hope you can find what you’re looking for, and it’ll give you some peace.”

  He swung around. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” he snapped.

  “Well, you need something, or you’re going to break like a spring that’s wound too tight. You’ve barely eaten, slept, or talked since Fort Kearny.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to.”

  Hunching his shoulders against an ominous wind, he looked for the post hospital. The cemetery ought to be close by it. Yeah, there it was. Pausing to suck in his breath, he let it out slowly, and he told himself he was prepared to find Ross, Liddy, and Josh lying under tombstones in there. He had to force himself to walk between the graves. The burden lightened as he read each marker, finding only strangers in the first two rows. Maybe by some miracle, it hadn’t been cholera after all, and the three of them were still alive. Then, at a grassless mound on the third row, his heart paused.

  The neat black letters printed on the white cross leapt out at him. Lydia Jamison Hardin, 1841-1865. He stared at the grave, too numb to feel anything. But he couldn’t help wondering if Ross had repudiated her at the end, or if it had been her wish to rest forever under her married name.

  Taking his hat off, he knelt in the dirt and tried to pray, but every eloquent word Thad Bingham had taught him was gone. Finally, he said simply, “Father in Heaven, forgive her, for I cannot.” Rising, he stared at the barren ground, finding it hard to believe that anyone as young and full of life as the Liddy he’d known could be down there. Closing his eyes for one brief moment, he allowed himself to remember the night he’d seen the stars reflected in her dark eyes.

  Spoiled and willful, her father had described her, Spence reflected somberly, but old Cullen had told him only half the truth. He should’ve added self-centered, faithless, and shameless to the warning, but it probably wouldn’t have mattered back then. All Spence had seen was the glittering, mesmerizing facade of her beauty, and he’d been utterly bedazzled by what he thought she was. While that explained his folly, he didn’t know what she’d ever seen in him. If she’d thrown herself at him out of pique with someone else, they’d both paid a terrible price for it.

  “Oh, no! I’m so sorry—I had no idea—none at all,” Laura Taylor whispered behind him.

  Before he could respond, she backed away, white-faced, then turned and fled from the little cemetery. As he watched her walk away, he realized he was even too numb for anger.

  She felt like a fool for following him, but he’d been out there so long it’d worried her. When she dared to look back from the parade ground, she saw him dusting his pants with his hands. She understood now why he’d needed to be alone, but as she took her seat in the wagon, she had to wonder what on earth had brought his wife clear out here without him. It wasn’t her business, she reminded herself. Besides, she’d already discovered that grief was a solitary pain, and no matter what anybody said or did, it didn’t help the hurt much. It was something that didn’t let go for a long time. She knew, because after six long, miserable weeks, it still had a stranglehold on her own heart. Turning away, she wanted to cry for him.

  The north wind was cold for September, but he scarcely noticed it. As much as he hated facing anyone right now, he knew he had to find someone to ask about Joshua. There had to be somebody who’d remember whether Ross or the boy had been sick when they left the fort. He needed to know whether he’d be looking for another grave.

  And yet as the wind whipped his hair and coat, he stepped back from the clay mound to look at the clouding sky, and the numbness became a terrible, impotent rage. He’d befriended Ross Donnelly, and he’d pulled strings to send him home from the war, only to have the man betray him. Well, he couldn’t do anything to Liddy now, but unless Ross was dead, too, he was going to pay the highest price possible for stealing Liddy and Josh. And the end wasn’t going to come easy, Spence promised himself. No, Ross was going to know he was about to die, and he was going to squirm before Spence pulled the trigger and sent him to hell.

  “You lost, mister?”

  Pulling himself together, Spence managed to ask, “Where do I find somebody in charge around here?”

  “Depends on what you want. He ain’t in the graveyard, that’s for sure. Not much goes on around here that I don’t know about it.”

  “I want to know about the woman buried here,” Spence told him, pointing to the grave.

  “The Hardin woman?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not much to tell about her, except that she was dead before she got here. Fella came in, said he had a body he wanted buried, that they’d been headed west when she took sick. Said she was a widow woman, that her husband was killed in the war, and he was taking her to stay with relations in California, but she didn’t make it.”

  “Did you see a small boy with him?”

  The soldier nodded. “No bigger’n a mite, probably three or four at the most. I sure felt sorry for him, too, ‘cause he was missing his ma. Funny thing was, all the time he was crying, he kept calling her Fanny. They was supposed to stay around long enough for the major to make a report on the body, but while we was getting her in the ground, they took off like the devil was after them.”

  “It wasn’t the devil—it was cholera.”

  “Cholera.” The soldier digested that for a moment, then said, “Well, if it was, he shoulda known he couldn’t outrun it. I mean, she died in that wagon, didn’t she? And I guess he had to know it, ‘cause he said the doc over at Kearny told ‘im she was bad off. He said he tried to leave her there, but she wouldn’t stay. She must’ve passed on right after, too, because by the time he got her here, she was pretty rank, L can tell you. I’d say that last day they was out, it must’ve been hell in that wagon.” He paused to spit tobacco juice. “Yessir, it was a shame—just a damned shame for her to die like that. And you know, that was a pretty little boy—man said he looked just like her.”

  Spence exhaled heavily and looked away. “Yeah, she was pretty, all right—about as pretty a woman as you’ll ever see. But the boy—he wasn’t sick, too, was he?”

  “No, but he was sure crying for his Fanny—Lt. Davison said he thought he was calling her his mammy, but I heard him real clear, so I know that wasn’t what he was saying.”

  “Auntie Fan,” Spence murmured, nodding. “She was the Negro woman who raised both of them—the boy and the mother. They left her to die over at Fort Kearny.”

  “You don’t say. Last time I seen ‘em, the blond fella was driving off, holding the kid on his lap. Everybody’d kinda thought they’d stick around, seein’ as he was a little queasy himself.”

  “Ross?”

  “The fella that brought her in. I thought he said the name was McDonald, or something like that.”

  “Donnelly. Ross Donnelly.

  “Yeah. He got some soda from the doc for his stomach, but Doc said he was probably sick from the smell, you know. ‘Course he didn’t know about the cholera, or we’d have limed her up good before we buried her.”

  “King over at Kearny sa
id that’s what he thought it was, anyway.”

  “Probably so, then. Doc or not, King’s a good man. Say—I don’t believe I caught your name, did I?”

  Spence took a breath, held it for several seconds, then let it out slowly. “It’s Spencer Hardin.”

  “Oh. Then you must be kin to her husband, huh?”

  “Something like that,”

  “Too bad you weren’t here to identify the body, ‘cause all we had was the man’s word it was Mrs. Hardin.” The fellow looked past Spence to the cross. “Yeah, it was sure a shame. Guess she wasn’t but twenty-five,”

  “Twenty-four. She was born in December,”

  “Even worse.” He shook his head. “ ‘Bout all I know, mister. Guess you could talk to Doc, but I doubt he could tell you anything more. They weren’t here much longer than it took to drop the body off.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Sorry I couldn’t help you more. But if you want to see Doc, he’s over at the hospital.”

  “No. I’d like to make a few more miles today.”

  “Don’t know as I’d want to be alone out at night,” the fellow allowed. “Been some Indian trouble—stock run off, folks killed. I been here long enough to see some of it, and it ain’t pretty. Had to bury a fellow once, and when they was done with ‘im, I was puttin’ pieces of ‘im in a sack instead of a box.”

  “I’ll watch out.”

  “You’d damned sure better. I’d put a bullet in myself before I’d let ‘em catch me. They turn you over to the squaws, you got a hard way to go, mister. Yessir, we got Cheyenne and Sioux war parties out, and if it was me, I ‘wouldn’t be anywheres on the Platte Road come night. And if I had to be out, I’d be eating in my saddle, and I wouldn’t be cooking nothing. Fire’ll give you away quicker than anything, and Indians got good noses when it comes to smelling smoke.”

  “I’m just taking Mrs. Taylor and her wagon as far as the advance Union Pacific camp.”

  “Railroad man?”

  “No. Just passing through.”

  “Headed west, are you?”

  “California.”

  The soldier looked up at the sky for a moment, then back to Spence. “Well, you might make it, but I’d sure doubt it. Them clouds up there already came across the mountains—that’s why the road’s nigh to empty, you know. Snow’ll be hitting in another couple of weeks, too—you got to get worried about that before the end of September, mister.”

  “Once I drop her off, I’ll be traveling light enough to make good time.”

  “Yeah, but California’s a fur piece from here, you know. Gettin’ through the Rockies don’t put you halfway there. You got the desert, then the Sierras to cross after the Rockies.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you now?” the fellow countered skeptically. “Don’t guess you heard about those Donners, did you?”

  “Yeah, but I’ve got to go.”

  “You get caught by a blizzard up in them passes, and you ain’t never getting to California, mister. Talk to ‘em over at Laramie, and they’ll tell you right. Snow’s twenty feet deep, wind’s blowin’ ten times faster’n a race horse can run, temperature’s down to thirty below—once you eat your horse, you’re done for. You got no food, no way out, and no place to keep from freezin’—that’s what it’s like up there. Won’t anybody find you before summer, neither.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind, Spence told him impatiently. “Look—”

  “If you don’t, you’re a damned fool—that’s all I got to say.” The fellow spat tobacco juice again. “It ain’t me that’ll be burying you, anyway, so I don’t know why I’m wasting my breath on you. If there’s anything left by spring, Laramie’ll get that job.” Holding out his hand, the soldier added, “Well, whatever you do, good luck to you.” As Spence shook it, the man’s grip tightened briefly. “You remember to look out for Indians, you hear?”

  “Yeah.”

  Laura Taylor looked away when Spence swung up onto the wagon seat next to her. As he took the reins, she offered, “If you want to talk about her, I won’t mind, and if you don’t … well, I won’t mind that, either. I know what it is to hurt inside.”

  “I’m not hurting—I’m just damned mad, he lied, “and I don’t want to talk about anything right now.”

  “All right. Would you like me to drive the wagon?”

  “No,” he answered tersely. “I’m just fine and dandy.”

  But he knew he wasn’t. When he’d left Georgia, he’d never expected to find Liddy buried alone in such a godforsaken place. No, he’d spent his waking hours thinking about wringing her slender white neck, and now it wasn’t going to happen. The Almighty had gotten even for him there. And the hell of it was he’d have to pray to God that Ross had made it to San Francisco with Josh, because the alternative was unthinkable. Losing Lydia had been a terrible blow to his pride, but losing Josh would mean he had nothing he loved left on this earth.

  Laura sat silently, her hands gripping the seat as the wagon bounced over the rutted road, her thoughts fixed on that grave, on what he’d just said. I’m not hurting—I’m just damned mad. If he believed that, he was surely deluding himself.

  But the whole thing didn’t make any sense. What in the world could have brought the woman out here? Why had she died? And where was the little boy in the photograph? As curious as she was, she wasn’t about to ask him. If he wanted to tell her, he would. If not, it was his business, not hers. But she had to wonder if he still meant to leave for California tomorrow.

  Having already wasted days he couldn’t spare, Spence had planned on heading out as soon as he got Laura Taylor to the camp, but he could see now it wasn’t going to happen quite that way. As he drove through the crude little camp, he was furious with himself, her, and the whole damned world. The damned place was nothing but ten or twelve tents pitched beside a trackless railroad bed, with a primitive latrine ditch less than twenty feet behind them. There wasn’t anything resembling a privy in sight.

  And the men loitering around the few tents looked worse than the thieves and cutthroats Mississippi paroled to fight in the war. None of them looked as if they’d seen any soap in six months, and the clothes on them were so caked with dirt and grease they could stand alone. It’d take a year’s supply of lye soap and a good, hard hide-scraping before anyone with a nose could get within ten feet of that crew without gagging. As miserable a bunch of hardcases as any he’d ever seen, he decided sourly. As the wagon passed by, one of them tilted a bottle of whiskey, guzzling the stuff so fast it dripped from his matted beard. When he finished it, he threw the empty bottle on the ground, then ambled off to the latrine to relieve himself in plain sight.

  No matter what Laura Taylor had said about having nowhere to go, she sure didn’t belong here. He didn’t even see anyone in charge of the hellhole. Damning her for the inconvenience and himself for being a fool, he jerked the reins savagely to turn the wagon around. Out of time or not, he had to take her back at least as far as McPherson, maybe even all the way to Kearny, to put her on a train headed east. And unless he wanted to use up more of his time trying to find Russell, he’d have to pay for her ticket himself. She wasn’t going to like it, and she’d be as balky as a damned mule, but he couldn’t help that.

  “As difficult as it is to imagine, by the time the crews move on, this place will be on its way to being a town,” Laura murmured. “And in a couple of years, it’ll look like Omaha. There’ll be churches and schools and enough decent women to civilize it.”

  “Well, it’s a long way from it now,” he retorted.

  “Not as long as you’d think. When the rest of the crews arrive, the camp will fill up.”

  “Yeah—with sots and whores. No, you don’t belong here—you’ve got no way to support yourself— nothing. I must’ve been out of my mind, or I’d never have done this,” he muttered.

  “I’ll be all right, really.”

  “Like hell!” he snapped. “Jesse
’d turn over in his grave if he had any notion you were out here alone.”

  “Well, it’s no worse than the last place he left me,” she said mildly. “And since he was never around, I might as well have been alone.”

  “But you had a husband, and everybody knew it,” he pointed out tersely. “Look around you—how the hell do you expect to feed yourself, let alone the kid?”

  “I’ll have to go into business.”

  “Doing what?”

  ‘Ί don’t know yet, but I’ll think of something. I have to.”

  “No. I’m putting you on a train home.”

  “What? Oh, but you can’t! I don’t have a home anymore!”

  “You can screech and squawk all you want, but you’re going.”

  “Oh … now, you wait just a minute … it’s my life, not yours. Just because you’ve got some fancified notion of what’s proper, you’ve got no right to make me fit it. You turn this wagon around, you hear? I’m not going anywhere!”

  “The hell you aren’t.”

  “You sure like that word a lot.”

  “Huh?”

  “Hell. You can’t say a sentence without it, but you think you’re the civilized one in this wagon, don’t you? I don’t know why you bothered to bring me out here, considering you don’t think I’ve got the brains of a goose.” Her chin came up defiantly as she added evenly, “But this wagon’s mine, and so is everything in it, except you and that horse tied on back there. If you want, you can take it and go on—that’s your right. But you can’t make me leave all my belongings behind and go somewhere I don’t want to go, just because your pea-brain tells you I ought to do it.”

  “Jesse’d never—”

  “Jesse’s dead, Dr. Hardin. I’ve got to look out for me and the baby myself now. I’ve got two guns, and I’m not afraid to use them. Maybe your wife would be, but I’m not.”

  “Leave Liddy out of this!” he snapped. “You don’t know anything about her!”

  Taken aback by the anger in his voice, she regarded him soberly for a moment. “No, I don’t, but I know me. Once I find Mr. Hawthorne, you can take your horse and go on with a clear conscience.”