Saul looked confused. “Nothing. I just asked if you need more coffee.”
Jason shook his head. “No, thanks.”
“We keep eating beans like this, and Rachael, for once, will be glad to be sleeping in an open wagon.”
Jason smiled a little.
“It’s a girl, isn’t it?” Saul asked. “The reason you’re acting so strangely, that is. For a minute, I thought maybe you were mad at me for volunteering my spare wheel. But now I’m thinking that maybe you’ve got woman trouble. Why else would you hide over here, with a couple of old married people?”
It took Jason a moment to realize that the “old married people” Saul referred to were himself and Rachael.
“Don’t be silly,” Jason said. “Unless you want to get rid of me?” He started to stand up, thinking he’d overstayed his welcome.
But Saul put a hand on his arm. “No, no. Sit and make yourself comfortable. And tell me—who is she, this girl who has you tied in such knots? Is it the lovely Miss Krimp?”
Jason snorted.
“I take it this is a no?”
“You take it right.”
“Ah. Megan MacDonald, then.”
Jason turned toward him.
“Didn’t I know it? Rachael,” he called. “We were right.”
Jason snapped, “Keep your voice down!” before he realized his mouth was moving. And then he muttered, “Sorry, Saul.”
“No apology is needed. I remember what it was like with my Rachael, and I wasn’t trying to keep twenty-some wagons safe on the way west. You have quite a lot to handle, Jason.”
More than Saul knew, Jason thought. “I can’t. Not right now.”
“You can’t fall in love now?” Saul’s eyebrows went up. “Love isn’t something you can give yourself permission for. You can’t pick the time and place, or the girl. Love is God’s gift to you and a woman, forever and always.”
“Well, He sure picked a bad time to give it to me.”
Saul threw his arms into the air. “The young,” he said, shaking his head. “So ungrateful.”
“Jason?” Jenny’s voice.
“Over here, Jenny.”
She came from the next wagon in line, her skirts held up in clenched fists and swishing angrily before her, and Jason thought, I’m in for it now!
“Jason Fury!” she began. “Have you been over here all the evening? I’ve been looking for you. Megan’s been looking for you!” Just then, she saw Saul and said, “Good evening, Mr. Cohen.”
Saul nodded and said, “Good evening, Jenny,” adding, “Please, don’t let me stop your conversation. I’m not here.” He leaned back against the wheel spokes and straightened his legs out before him.
Jason barely heard him. He said, “Megan?”
“Well, no, not actually,” Jenny admitted angrily. “But if I were her, I would have dogged you all over camp!”
“You did,” Jason said.
“Oh. Well . . . can we go somewhere and talk?” Her eyes slid toward Saul, then back to Jason again.
But Jason had no intention of going anywhere. “No. Just tell her . . . just tell her I’m sorry if I embarrassed her.”
“Embarrassed her!”
Clearly, if Jenny got any more steamed up, she’d whistle like a teakettle.
“Jen, it’s none of your business!” he said. “Now, go back to the wagon.”
“None of my business? It’s none of my business when my own brother—?”
“I said, go back to the wagon,” he snapped, cutting her off. “Now, Jenny. I mean it.”
She must have taken his glower seriously, because she stood there a moment, her mouth hanging open, then turned away. But she stopped walking for a second, just long enough to turn back and hiss, “Coward!” at him.
Jason stood there, watching her march back across the circle, before he gratefully slid back down and landed beside Saul.
“Sorry,” he said.
“Women,” Saul said.
“Exactly. Women.”
Saul paused for a few moments before he said, “Whatever it is, you’d better fix it tonight. Be a mensch.”
Jason still hadn’t looked at him. “Yeah. I guess so.” Jenny’d been right. He was a coward. All she’d done was point it out.
Damn it. Belatedly, he looked over at Saul and raised a brow. “A mensch?”
“Be a man, Jason. A human being.”
Chapter 22
Be a mensch, he told himself as he rose and walked, like he was heading for the gallows, to his wagon. Megan was nowhere in sight, but he couldn’t think where else she would be staying other than with Jenny, what with her pa and brother having taken the upper trail.
Hell, half the time she spent the night with Jenny, anyway. Jason had been sleeping under Salmon Kendall’s wagon.
He reached the Conestoga and stood there for a moment, wondering what to do next—other than turn tail and hoof it back to the East Coast, which was his first thought.
“Welcome home.” Jenny’s voice. He turned toward it. She hung out of the back of the wagon, off the tailgate, and her face was as stern as her voice. For a moment, she wasn’t his little sister at all. She was his mother.
“You were right,” he said, attempting to keep his voice flat and even. He sure didn’t feel that way. “Where’s Megan?”
* * *
Saul shook his head as he watched their young leader. “I wouldn’t wish to be in his boots tonight for all the cream cheese in . . . where do they make cream cheese, Rachael?”
“Where they have many milk cows. Saul, don’t you think you’re taking too much on yourself?”
“Because I am curious about cream cheese?” He shrugged. “I would like some right now. From New York City, where there are no Indians.”
She felt his forehead. “Why are you talking crazy, all of a sudden?”
He reached up, took her hand, and held it in both of his. “Is it so crazy to wonder about a boy wooing a girl when it’s possible that he’s let her family stray into the hands of the heathen horde?”
Rachael rolled her eyes and withdrew her hand. “You’re talking of the MacDonalds?”
“Who else?”
Rachael pulled over her little milking stool and sat down on it. “And the Comanche?”
Saul nodded.
“We haven’t seen them for weeks,” she said. “Why should we see them now?”
“Perhaps we are too many. Perhaps young Quanah Parker spares us, for some reason known only to himself and God. Who’s to know? But out there, one wagon, alone?”
“You shouldn’t even mention it, Saul,” Rachael said with a shudder.
“Why not? You think, from my lips to God’s ears?”
“You don’t think it’s bad luck to joke about such things?”
He took her hand again and patted it. “All right, Rachael. Don’t be worrying your head.”
There was a long silence, during which they sat there, him holding her hand. And then, at last, she said, “Saul?”
“What, my love?”
“Saul, I am in a family way again.”
He looked up at her, looked up at this beautiful woman whom God had chosen for him, the woman who had left all she knew to come west with him. How had he ever deserved her?
He put his hand on her belly. It was still very flat. At least, by what he could feel through all the layers of clothing that women wore. “How soon?”
“Seven months, perhaps seven and a half. We will be settled in our new home by then. I am hoping for a girl this time. A girl is all right?”
* * *
Megan couldn’t believe what she was hearing. It didn’t make any sense. It was all she could do not to burst into tears, but she hung on, hung on because it seemed to confuse him so much when she cried. At least, that was what he was blaming for kissing her this afternoon.
Blame?
How could such a wonderful thing, such a perfect and sublime thing, need somewhere to lay blame?
�
�Do you understand, Megan?” he asked. He hadn’t touched her, not with the tiniest tip of his finger. He’d purposely stayed at the opposite end of the wagon from her. There was only one lamp lit, and she could barely make any of him out except for a glimmer of his profile. It danced with his every movement.
“No, I don’t understand, Jason. Explain again how your kissing me affects some college back East?”
Once again, he bumbled into a long, convoluted explanation that made no sense whatsoever. But she understood that she was listening to a young man desperately trying to talk himself out of loving her. Without much success, it seemed.
She clasped her hands in her lap and said, “You love me, Jason. And I love you, too.”
* * *
Far away on the upper trail, Hamish MacDonald poured himself another cup of coffee. “And Megan said we couldn’t feed ourselves without her!”
Sitting across the small fire, Matt lit a cigarette. He hadn’t been much for smoking before, but ever since he’d learned that Nordstrom’s extra wagon carried an ample supply of ready-mades, he’d gone to town on them. He threw the twig he’d used to light it back into the fire, and said, “She was just about right, too.”
His father said, “I’ll grant you, I’ve had better jackrabbit on this journey—”
“Didn’t help that it fell in the fire,” Matt cut in.
“—but not all that much superior.”
“Also didn’t help that you didn’t notice it for a good fifteen minutes.”
His father shot him a glance that fairly blistered, and Matt quickly added, “Or me, either.”
Hamish’s scowl evaporated. “That’s right, by God. You didn’t notice it, either, laddie.”
“No, Pa.” His father had been touchy all day. No use in baiting him now.
“That’s more like it,” Hamish said in a grumble, and pulled out a cigar.
“When you think we’ll make Santa Fe?” Matt asked.
Hamish searched the edge of the fire for a twig, then gave up and pulled out a match. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
Hamish puffed at the cigar, lighting it. Why did he have to smoke that smelly tobacco? Lord knows, he could afford better. Judging from the fumes, it had to taste awful, like a mouthful of pig swill, Matt imagined. But if it was the cheapest possible but looked good, his pa would buy it.
That was how his pa did everything—shit on the inside, gold foil on the outside.
Except for those Morgan mares of his. They were bred to the nines, each and every one. Matt had nearly wet himself when he learned what his father had paid for just one mare. Funny, him leaving them behind with the herd and the main wagon train when he was so sure he had found a superior route.
Superior route? Hell, Hamish and that damned wagon had nearly fallen down the mountain at least three times today. Once, Matt had to hitch his saddle horse to the front end of the team to help get the Conestoga back up on the trail. It was the last thing that Matt wanted to admit, but he wished his father had listened to Jason Fury this time.
The trail was terrible—narrow and rocky and rutted—and they had several times seen the traces of scraped earth left by some long-ago, ill-fated wagon that had tumbled over the edge, dislodging rock as it went. If it weren’t for his father’s wishes—and the fact that he knew it would tick Jason Fury off—he’d be down below, taking the easier trail with the rest of the party. And to tell the truth, he had come more to irritate Jason than to please his father.
Too bad that Jenny had to be a Fury, Matt thought. She was a little young, but she was sure a looker. If you liked the wholesome type, which Matt usually didn’t.
But he figured he could make an exception for Jenny Fury.
Sooner or later, that stuck-up, pigheaded brother of hers would head back East to go to some fancy college, and Matt figured that by the time that happened, Jenny would be more than willing to stay behind. With him, and as a MacDonald.
“What are you thinking about?” came his father’s rumbling voice. “You look like the cat who swallowed the canary bird.”
“Nothing,” Matt said, embarrassed to have been betrayed by his own expression. “Just thinkin’, that’s all.”
“Well, don’t look so damned smug.”
Matt exhaled his last lungful of smoke through his nose in two jets of yellowish air. Smug, indeed! He ought to be smug. Pretty soon he’d be in California, set with a wife, rid of Jason Fury, and first in line to inherit enough good cattle and horses to make him a big man, no matter where they settled.
That is, if his father didn’t get them both killed on this mountain trail.
Chapter 23
Olympia Morelli saw it first, and screamed. Dr. Morelli, driving the wagon, saw where she was looking and immediately hauled back hard on the team’s reins, crying, “Look out, look out!”
Having managed to halt his wagon in time, Morelli leapt down to see to Olympia. She was mere days away from giving birth, and had only just climbed down from the wagon to stretch her legs. Now she stood about twenty feet away from the wagon, hands over her mouth, and she would not stop screaming.
Other women took up the cry as Conestogas hastily pulled out of line to avoid the hail of wagon parts and tumbling livestock and broken furniture and stray rock that came down the mountainside like so much confetti, thrown by a careless giant.
When it was all done, Hamish MacDonald was in their midst again, although only his scraped and twisted corpse. He rolled and bumped to a halt against the off-lead horse of Salmon Kendall’s wagon, spooking the animal so badly that Salmon nearly lost his rig, too.
Dodging flying chunks of wagon, Morelli left his wife and ran to the body, but there was nothing that could be done. Hamish’s face was pulp—raw flesh, decorated here and there by cactus thorns—and he no longer breathed.
For not the first time in his career, Morelli saw death as a blessing. He could tell with a quick glance that aside from the surface damage, Hamish had sustained two broken arms—both compound fractures—and a leg broken so badly that it was twisted like a licorice stick.
Morelli didn’t have time to look very long, though. Salmon Kendall grabbed him by the arm and yanked an instant before part of a wheel landed on the corpse, followed by a broken axle.
“Thank you, Salmon,” he yelled. All that debris coming down the mountainside made a deadly rumble and racket.
Salmon nodded at him, then pulled him farther toward the back of the wagon, around it, and then off the trail. Olympia was still there, although she wasn’t standing any longer. She was on the ground. He ran toward her.
“I’m sorry, Michael,” she said when he got there. “My water broke.”
As the last of the debris thudded and skittered down upon them, he helped her to her feet and to their wagon, where their children waited, huddled and afraid.
* * *
“Pa!” Matt called down the mountainside.
No answer, except for the retreating noise of torn rock and a wagon turned into toothpicks. Everything that was his and Megan’s in this world, including their father.
To him, the wagon had simply disappeared after its outside wheels slipped off the trail. The Conestoga skidded and tumbled, turning twice over and spewing its contents like a burst canning jar before it went over the abrupt edge of a cliff.
From then on out, he only heard its progress.
Roughly, he wiped at his face, but he was still shaking from the shock, his burning eyes still brimming from the loss. He swung down off his horse, but his legs didn’t hold him up. He sat down on the trail, just where his boots landed, and he began to sob.
This is that damn Jason Fury’s fault!
* * *
Below, the wagons had finally pulled clear of the section of trail where the remains of Hamish MacDonald’s wagon rested. A grave had been quickly, if not easily, dug, and Hamish himself had been buried and spoken over, and the grave marked by a crude cross.
His dead and battered draft animals had
been covered over with kerosene and brush and set alight, and a weeping Megan—aided by Jenny and a few of the women—had picked up the precious few items not ruined and stowed them in the Furys’ wagon.
But Hamish’s belongings weren’t the only ones to suffer. Carrie English’s wagon had been plowed into by the front half of Hamish’s Conestoga, crushing her front wheel, and again they had a wheel to change. Fortunately, she was carrying a spare.
One of Hamish’s dead horses had slammed into the Milchers’ team and broken the leg of the off-wheel horse, necessitating its being shot. Assorted wagon debris had landed on Randall Nordstrom’s second wagon and broken two of the wooden hoops that held the canvas up. Nordstrom had tried to figure how to fix them for the longest time, then given up and just strapped the canvas down, over the load.
And Jason kicked himself. Why had he dared Hamish to go up there in the first place? He should have just knocked him out and thrown him in his own wagon, then let Megan drive it. By the time Hamish came around again, they would have been well enough along that he wouldn’t have turned back.
Everybody would be safe and sound.
And they wouldn’t be stopped again, here in this clearing, trying to put themselves back together while Hamish’s horses sent up pillars of blackish smoke in the distance, and Mr. Morelli delivered his wife, and the Widow English nursed a broken arm.
And where the heck was Matt MacDonald? Not that Jason really cared. He supposed Matt was still up there, someplace. Alone.
And for a moment, he did care about Matt. He knew what it was like to lose your father. He wouldn’t want to be alone at such a time as this.
“Jason?”
He turned his head. “Yes, Jenny?”
She looked overly tired and washed out. “The Morellis. They’ve had a little boy. His name is Rubio. Mrs. Wheeler helped midwife.”
“Congratulations to the Morellis, then,” he replied, although he lacked enthusiasm. Somehow, he couldn’t drum up much for a new life when so many people were leaving this world in such a hurry. Hell, if he hadn’t known better, he would have thought there was a going-out-of-business sale up in heaven.
“How’s Megan doing?” he asked.
A Town Called Fury Page 14