And then another burst of applause broke out—Saul, Salmon, Dr. Morelli, Megan, Jenny, and a few others had gathered to watch the little drama in the creek.
Jason flushed, grinned, tipped his hat, and began to lead Matt’s horse out of the water after he removed the loop he’d tossed over its head. He noticed that the more shallow the water grew, the less the horse shivered—and the more he did.
He shook his head. Jenny would have him smothered in quilts and drinking tea for the rest of the afternoon, if she was truly back to being the old Jenny.
* * *
Piled with quilts and grudgingly sipping at the hot tea she’d forced on him, Jason sat silently in the back of the wagon while Jenny sat on the driver’s bench, the closed copy of Moby Dick beside her.
He was quite the hero, her brother, although he’d never see it that way, let alone admit to it. She was proud of him, truly proud. He had saved Matthew’s life. Even Matthew admitted it, and he had more than his share of pride. This she knew. But she couldn’t help but admire him, anyway. He had other qualities that more than made up for that tiny shortfall.
Oh, but he looked commanding when he rode that big spotted gelding of his. And he was handsome, too, handsome as the day was long, with those flashing blue eyes and those cleanly chiseled features and that devilish grin. He’d been so brave to try and ford the creek by himself.
And he was going to be very rich someday. Not that a thing like money mattered to a girl like her, she reminded herself.
But it never hurt, did it?
She wondered . . . If she begged and pleaded with Jason long enough and hard enough, would he leave her behind once they reached their destination?
True, she was only fifteen, but plenty of girls her age were already married and had children.
Which was exactly, although she hardly dared admit it, even to herself, what she was hoping would come about, if she could just figure out how to get Matthew’s attention in that way.
She knew that Jason didn’t much care for him, and that the feeling was mutual. But then, they were of an age, weren’t they? She supposed it was natural for jealousies to arise between them.
Mrs. Matthew MacDonald.
Mrs. Matt MacDonald.
Jenny MacDonald.
Well, a girl could dream, couldn’t she?
Chapter 15
Megan MacDonald carried another pot of coffee to her wagon, and her brother, the idiot. Honestly, how could anyone be so blind? And stubborn.
It amazed her that he had lived to see twelve, let alone twenty. Always doing exactly what he’d been told not to do, always disobeying orders since the time he knew what orders were. And he always suffered for it, which meant that she always had to take care of him in the aftermath.
She half-wished he’d break his leg or something, some injury that would keep him immobile and out of trouble, for a while at least.
But he didn’t, so she just kept patching him up and pouring him coffee and bandaging his blisters. He wanted to be in charge, he wanted to be the one everyone trusted. He wanted to be Jason.
What he didn’t understand was that trust like that wasn’t given, it had to be earned. And Matt did his best to earn nothing except the occasional sneer. She loved him, but . . .
After she dropped off the coffee, for which she received little more than a grunt from the still-shivering and quilt-wrapped Matt, she went to check on his horse. Jason had stripped him of tack, or maybe it had been her father, but the gelding still needed a rubdown. Even in the sunshine, he was shivering.
She went to work on him with a couple of old burlap bags, and soon had him fairly dry and looking a good bit more comfortable. She looked around for Jason’s palomino mare, and saw her tied to the Fury wagon, her nose bag on and moving rhythmically with the gentle grinding of grain against molars.
Leave it to Jason to think of his horse first.
Leave it to Matt not to think of his horse at all.
Her smile turned into a scowl. She was embarrassed enough by Matt’s actions, but there stood her father, bragging to the Reverend Milcher on his boy’s idiocy.
“Rode right out there,” Hamish was saying loudly, while he waved his arms about. “Wouldn’t take that upstart’s word for nothing. Says he would have made it across, too, if Jason had warned him about the current instead of yelling at him to get off his horse. Trying to get my Matthew kicked to death, that’s what Jason Fury was up to.”
Now, even Megan knew that you should slip off a horse that was going down under you in the water. Slip off and grab his tail, out of reach of those pummeling hooves, and just float along after him. She’d done it herself once, when she was younger and certainly more stupid. And she’d done it out of instinct.
Apparently, Matt couldn’t do the right thing even when he had specific instructions.
But then she felt bad. She shouldn’t think such things about her only brother, even if he acted like a lunatic half the time.
Well, three quarters.
She turned Matt’s horse free and started back toward the wagon. But then she remembered that Matt was in there, and went instead to the Fury wagon. She could use a visit with Jenny.
It didn’t hurt that Jason was inside, either.
* * *
“I’d stop with the talking young Fury down, Mr. MacDonald,” Saul said as he led his draft horses out to graze.
“Matthew did a foolish thing,” he went on. “I know. Wasn’t I there? And I think that most of the other people think so, too, and that what Jason did—going out there after him, I mean—was truly brave.”
Hamish answered him with a sneer, and then, “Aw, mind your own beeswax, Jew.”
Saul said nothing, just gave his head a slow shake and proceeded with the horses. He’d given up on Hamish.
Some had suggested to Saul that oxen would be better for pulling his merchandise wagon, but he liked his Shires. They were sure-footed, very strong, and gave him no trouble. Rachael could drive them all day without incident, and ten-year-old David had no difficulty controlling them, either.
Perhaps Saul would be sorry later on, but at the moment he was glad he didn’t have two teams of oxen to deal with. Let alone one. He supposed it would be like having two teams of Hamish MacDonald to contend with each day.
This, he could do without.
“Good for you, Saul,” said a voice. It was Salmon Kendall’s. He’d led his team of mules and horses out to graze, too. “I overheard what you told MacDonald. He’s sure a piece of work, ain’t he?”
Two at a time, Saul let his big horses free. The ground practically shook as they trotted away!
“And he reproduced in kind,” Saul said, still staring after the Shires.
Salmon laughed loudly as he loosed his mules. “You can sure say that again. Matt’s a skunk’s behind if ever I met one.”
“They’re getting set up for dinner,” said Saul, who had turned around. He watched his Rachael carrying a bowl of something or other over to Olympia Morelli’s cook tent. “I wonder what it will be this evening.”
“Sure as hell ain’t gonna be nothin’ as exotic as pronghorn,” Salmon replied. “At least, I ain’t been out huntin’. Doubt anybody else has, either.”
Saul caught sight of Hamish, leading a party of four men and armed with a big knife: what he’d heard several of the other men refer to as an Arkansas toothpick.
“It will be beef,” he said, just as his attention was diverted by the sight of a pretty, young blond woman with a six-year-old girl and a terrier pup tagging at her heels, walking down toward the shoreline. She carried a blanket and a long pole. He pointed. “Isn’t that Carrie English?”
“Beef? How do you know? And danged if it ain’t, and she’s got Chrissy and Rags with her, too.”
They watched as she spread out her blanket, sat down on it, summoned Chrissy away from the water’s edge, and baited her hook.
“She gonna fish for her dinner?” asked Salmon, as if he’d never seen a w
oman fish before.
“I believe she is,” replied Saul.
Rachael had told him that the petite midwife was running short on supplies already, and it was likely she was trying to keep up her end by supplying a major portion of at least one supper.
He added, “I’ll go see, shall I?”
And then, when he’d walked ten feet, it suddenly occurred to him that Salmon had lost his wife, and just recently. It wouldn’t hurt for Salmon to go help a pretty widow, would it?
“Salmon!” he called. “Hey, Salmon!”
And as Salmon turned around and approached him, he thought, Better her than the Widow Jameson, at least.
* * *
Eulaylee Jameson and her daughter, Cynthia—just as plain, dark, and beetle-browed as her mother—were, at that moment, carrying a basket of canned goods to the cook tent. There were home-canned tomatoes and peas and potatoes in this haul. Yesterday had been strawberry preserves, apricot jelly, and enough dried apples for three pies.
Eulaylee, Cynthia believed, was getting more than a little sick and tired of this community cooking business. The way Eulaylee would see it, her preserves were hers, period. According to her mother, nobody could cook or can as well as she could, anyway, so why should she be forced to share with a bunch of people who didn’t know which end of the ham to keep for yourself, and which one to send to the church poor drive?
“Philistines,” Eulaylee muttered under her breath.
“Yes, Mama,” said the long-suffering Cynthia. She didn’t have much more charm than her mother, but she was at least relieved that somebody else was doing the cooking without demanding that she be pressed into service.
Her sister, Deborah, had been in a state ever since the men brought her back from the Comanche camp, and their mother was doing nothing to make things any better. To hear their mother tell it, you’d think that Deborah had held up her arms and said, “Take me!”
And their brother was no help, either. A mama’s boy to the end, Elmer was the one who’d planted the idea that Debby has been a more than willing captive.
The peckerwood.
Sometimes, she’d just like to punch him. Except that wouldn’t be very ladylike, would it? Cynthia was constantly concerned about being a lady. After all, she was practically an old maid, and she’d thought that perhaps she could find herself a man on the trip west.
So far, she wasn’t having much luck. Jason Fury and Matt MacDonald were too young, although they were both highly attractive. Hamish MacDonald was too old and too gruff and reminded her too much of her mother.
Salmon Kendall and Randall Nordstrom had both lost their wives in the Comanche attack and were both of about the right age, but she didn’t think it would be proper to single one of them out quite yet.
She’d give it another week or two, although her mother had been nudging her toward Randall Nordstrom since the very day they shoveled the first grave dirt over his poor wife.
And then there were the hired men. But somehow, Cynthia felt she was a little above Milt Billings and Ward Wanamaker and Gil Collins, even though she found herself fascinated by Gil. He had such nice blond hair and such a clean, straight nose....
“Cynthia! Honestly, girl. Get your head out of the clouds!” her mother snapped. They were at the cook tent already, and she helped her mother swing the basket of preserves up onto the table.
Olympia Morelli—who was getting far too big to be decently out in public, Cynthia thought—took the jars from their basket, thanking them effusively for each one. That Jewish woman was there, too, and smiled at her.
Cynthia looked away, embarrassed to be noticed.
Her mother had refused to eat any supper the first couple of nights that Rachael Cohen helped with the cooking, but all those good smells finally got to her. She finally ate. But she still wouldn’t admit it was any good, even though Cynthia had caught her scraping her plate more than once.
“Roast beef tonight, Mrs. Jameson,” a smiling Olympia Morelli said to Cynthia’s mother. “Mr. MacDonald is slaughtering a steer. Your tomatoes, peas, and potatoes will make wonderful side dishes.”
Eulaylee grunted a response, then abruptly turned and walked back toward her wagon. Cynthia curtsied, said, “Thank you, I’m sure,” to Mrs. Morelli, and trotted to catch up.
Eulaylee glanced up the bank, then froze. Cynthia nearly ran into her.
“Well, would you take a look at that!”
Cynthia followed her mother’s pointing finger to the figures on the creek’s bank, about a hundred yards away.
“Why, I believe that’s Salmon Kendall with Carrie English! And his wife’s not dead a fortnight!”
Actually it had been more than three weeks, but Cynthia knew better than to open her mouth.
“Why don’t you have Salmon Kendall following you around?” her mother wanted to know.
“I didn’t think it was proper to—”
“Proper, my bustle! Well, it’s probably too late now. You’re going to stay an old maid all of your life, Cynthia Ann Jameson, unless you start baiting your line for Randall Nordstrom! He’s probably a better catch anyway.”
They had reached their wagon.
Eulaylee climbed up first, wagging her large backside at a frowning Cynthia, who followed, muttering, “Yes, Mama.”
Chapter 16
It was ten in the morning before Milt and Ward rode back into camp with the news that although the water had significantly retreated, there wasn’t a decent place for fording within miles. Ward’s horse was covered with drying mud up to his belly, and Milt reported that the meadowland on either side of the creek was all in the same condition—waterlogged.
For the first time, Jason was at a loss. The main part of the creek bed itself was probably eight to ten feet deep with a sharp drop-off on either side, worn that way by all the rainstorms since he’d last been through with his father. There was barely a trickle of water going through it today, although a few muddy sinkholes existed where large carp, washed down from somewhere upstream, gasped their last.
“What you thinkin’, Jason?” Ward asked. “Build a bridge?”
Jason smiled momentarily. “Out of what?”
Ward looked around at the featureless landscape and gave a sheepish grin. “Oh, yeah.”
But then Jason recalled a story his father had told him, about taking a train of settlers out to Oregon, in which he was faced with a similar problem. Jason said, “On the other hand, Ward, you may not be far from wrong.”
“Huh?” Ward scratched the back of his head, bobbing his hat up and down.
“You feel like digging?”
Ward’s nose wrinkled. “I must be feeble, Jason, ’cause I don’t know what in tarnation you’re talkin’ about.”
Jason said, “You will, Ward. You will.”
* * *
By two in the afternoon, Jason had put together two gangs of men for the work.
Hamish MacDonald wasn’t happy.
“If I wanted to wreck my pants and boots, I could’ve just stayed home and dangled ’em in the creek,” Matt said as he slipped into his oldest trousers.
“That blasted Jason Fury,” Hamish grumbled. “This whole thing is his fault. I saw a map. We could have swung farther south and crossed the Canadian River all at once, but nay, we have to ford every bloody branch of it. And what kind of fool calls a river ‘the Canadian’ this bloody far from Canada, anyway? We’re practically in Mexico!”
Matthew jerked a boot on. “Damned if I know,” he said without expression.
“And now that little brat of a lad has us digging our way out! Might as well try digging to China, I say!” Hamish grabbed a shovel and tossed it to Matt, then grabbed the other one for himself.
“Tell him, then, Pa. Or tell your friend Milcher. I already know how you feel about it.”
Hamish glowered at his son good and hard, but those parental glowers didn’t work like they used to. Honestly, he didn’t know what was going on with his son. Or the world in gene
ral, it seemed.
Digging! Manual labor. The hired men should be doing this, not every man in the bloody camp.
It offended Hamish’s entire sense of class structure.
“Pa?”
He turned toward Matthew. “What?”
“This time, aren’t you the one putting on a little too much of the English?”
Before he realized it, Hamish did something that he had often had the inclination to do, but never had. He slapped his son across the face, just as hard as he could.
“Sass!” he roared as Matthew picked himself up off the floor of the wagon. “You’re as bad as Jason Fury, sassing your betters.”
Matthew, his cheek red with the imprints of his father’s fingers and palm, merely smiled. Which only made Hamish madder.
“I don’t know what this world is coming to.” Hamish climbed down out of the wagon, leaving his ungrateful son to his own devices.
* * *
By three in the afternoon, the two teams of men had dug down the near slope of the bank. Jason had them start well back at a narrow angle, digging their shovels into the sodden earth and emptying them down into the creek itself.
By the time they pitched the last shovelfuls down into the creek, the earth they’d uncovered was dry and the creek bed was a quarter filled with earth.
Then they started on the walls of the opposite bank, digging down the muddy water way and casting the refuse at their feet. Jason planned for them to dig the path two wagons wide, and on a shallow slope both down and up, filling the creek itself halfway to the top of its original bank.
Things were going along quite handily, too, aside from the grumbling from Hamish and Matt MacDonald, when he heard sounds approaching from the way they had come.
“Everybody, get your guns. Get back to the wagons and your families.” It didn’t sound like marauding Indians, but it could very easily be brigands and thieves. They were driving wagons. At least, it sounded like they were.
He had only reached his own wagon when they came into sight: a wagon train, just like theirs. It was somewhat smaller and battered. Some of the wagon canvases showed signs of burning and they had no herd or remuda.
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