Caught with a baby. Travis knew his mouth was hanging open, but he couldn’t shut it. He couldn’t talk either. It was as if his tongue had gone dead. He glanced over at Rose by the fire. Her face was bright with golden firelight. Her hair shined like the flame. Caught with a baby.
“That girl’s pregnant,” Whitley said, hoping to make himself understood correctly. “I don’t mean to be critical, you understand, but getting her with child ain’t the smartest thing you could do on such a long trip. You got a month or more to go before you reach California. You get down off this mountain the climate will be easier, but it’s still going to take you a while.”
“Well…uh…”
Whitley laughed again and slapped Travis on the back. “You look like you swallowed a fly, son. She’s gonna be all right. She’ll get over that sick morning stuff in a while. It don’t last forever. I figure she ain’t but a couple or three months along. See, I had a wife once--squaw woman, Shoshone. She got with three boys and a girl before she was too old. They’re all grown now, my younguns, and my wife died, but I know a pregnant woman when I see one.”
A baby! He and Rose were going to have a baby! Whitley could have told him he’d grown mule ears and a goat’s horn in the center of his head and he couldn’t have been more stunned.
Oh, what was he going to do now? He had to get her to her aunt in a hurry, in a real hurry. He walked to the hearth and ran his hand down Rose’s long hair. She looked up at him, but she didn’t smile. “It’s okay,” he said to her. “Everything’s going to be okay, Rose.”
She turned back to the fire. Travis glanced over at Whitley and thought he saw a brief look of pity cross his face.
It will be, Travis thought stubbornly. It will be all right, I swear it.
#
Broken Bear dug down into the snow until he had hollowed out a small hiding hole. He had to keep the opening clear so he wouldn’t get trapped and smothered. Once Travis had left him for dead on the mountain where he’d been shot, he had gone back to the camp and taken the hide from the buffalo. It shielded him now from the worst of the freezing cold.
He was only yards from the cabin. If he had a gun like the white men, he’d have gone in the door and shot everyone but the woman. But when there were guns involved, he had to be much more circumspect. His shoulder, cauterized and packed with healing herbs, had healed fairly well, but he still couldn’t use his arm the way he wished. And in the cold it throbbed something fierce, causing him to involuntarily growl in sporadic pain.
Travis thought he’d died. It made Broken Bear’s every day one of joy to know he was still trailing the couple and that in the end he would win this contest. When he’d come from the cave, they were already gone. They’d even buried the old gunfighter. When Broken Bear found the grave he knocked down the poorly constructed wooden cross. He stomped it until the wood splintered and then he kicked the bits away from him. He glared at the new grave. If he had had the time, he might have dug up the body and desecrated it; he really wanted to.
But his quarry was far ahead now and he had to be on his way. He took with him the buffalo hide and a hunk of meat. Following track, he got closer and closer to Travis and the Red Hair. Once he’d sampled the woman she was his, she belonged to him, and he would have her back. He conveniently forgot how sullen and unresponsive she had been. All he knew was that she was his possession. To him she was a necessary element of life like air or fire or water. He had sacrificed everything for her and he couldn’t let her go now.
He looked at the dark sky sprinkling down drifts of snow. A blizzard had trapped them all in the mountains, but the couple he tracked enjoyed a roof over their heads and a fire to warm their hands. He was relegated to a snow hole, a buffalo hide, and his anger. If they thought that was not enough to keep him warm, they were mistaken. He was tougher than the white man. He was stronger and smarter. He was a man who had broken the back of a bear.
He was invincible.
#
Whitley was less than a half mile from the cabin when he got the distinct feeling he was not alone. He had taken his rifle to hunt. The young couple in his cabin had just about eaten up the smoked meat he’d put up from the fall. He needed to supplement with some fresh meat, anyway, so he’d told Travis he’d be back in a little while.
He stood beneath the snowy limbs of a great, tall cedar holding his breath from making plumes in the cold air. He looked around, trying to see track. He smelled something, too, that was alien to the mountain. It was a fetid scent, like something had died and was rotting. This wasn’t right either. A wild animal would have hauled off the carcass of any prey and eaten it before it spoiled. Or the freezing temperatures would have frozen it before it gave off the smell of decay. Yet, the farther Whitley moved into the forest, the stronger the scent grew.
There was certainly someone there. Someone dying, maybe.
Whitley backed up against the cedar and gripped his gun across his chest. He didn’t like these strange things happening all at once this way. First the banging on his door and the discovery of the young couple hanging there half-frozen, seeking his help. He hadn’t had a visitor in a year or more. The sight of a stranger at his door had almost undone him. They were a nice enough couple, true, but still, it threw him off his balance to have to entertain people when he was so used to his solitude.
Now this awful smell where there shouldn’t be anything but the pristine, snow-washed air.
Whitley wasn’t used to surprises. His day-to-day routine was calm and uncluttered. He had a set way of doing things. He had his days all planned and neat. He was a little bit confused with all the changes. With his back against the tree, he stood as still as possible, squinting across the blinding white of the snowy landscape. He couldn’t make out any tracks except his own. He wished he could hear things the way he used to.
Then it struck him. Someone here---someone smelly---someone devious and skilled enough to creep near without showing track. Indian! Probably the same one Travis said had taken his woman. If he’d been shot as Travis claimed, that would account for the smell. His wound might be infected.
Now Whitley began to breathe hard. He wished he’d taken Travis with him on the hunt, but the woman was sick this morning and he left him behind to care for her. Now he was alone and being stalked by a mad savage on his own mountain. And the truth was, he wasn’t as good a shot as he used to be. Sometimes he even missed when he went hunting for game. Not only was his hearing going, but so was his vision. Sometimes he had mistaken a hummock of earth for a buffalo and mistaken a clutch of bushes for an antelope. He could see good up close, but things at a distance blurred out into shimmering dreamscapes.
He tried calming his breathing. He searched every shadow for a change. His glance bounced from one tree to another, wondering where the savage might be hiding. He swore silently at his own disadvantages. He was getting too old to be living on the mountain by himself, that was the gist of it. It had never been made clearer to him.
And he didn’t see the arrow when it was coming. It was just suddenly there, feet from him, coming so fast he didn’t have time to dodge it. It lodged in his chest, sinking inches deep. The pain caused him to double over and drop his gun in the snow. He looked down at the haft of the arrow still quivering as it stuck out of his chest. Blood poured down his clothes. He couldn’t draw a breath.
He was on his knees and still falling. He put out his hands to catch himself, but his arms sunk to the elbows in the fresh fallen snow. He tried to roll over onto his back, but it was as if his muscles had been paralyzed. Instead, he fell forward and the arrow was pushed deeper into his body. He screamed.
He felt darkness approach.
And then the dark engulfed him and he relaxed into death with one last sigh.
#
Travis found Whitley’s body by following his footprints through the snow. He’d been gone a long time and when he didn’t return by sundown, Travis set out to find him. There had been no more snow and no wind a
ll day. The tracks were easy to trace.
When Travis turned Whitley over and saw the arrow, he knew his shot had not stopped the Indian. No other tribe would have done this to the old trapper who had spent his life on the mountain. Whitley knew every tribe in the area and had made pacts with them, he’d told Travis. His wife had come from one of the tribes and they regarded him as a brother. They left him alone and he did the same for them.
This had to be the man who had abducted Rose.
Travis hauled Whitley over to a tree and leaned him against it. He was stiff with cold and rigor mortis. He needed burying, but the ground was frozen and there was great danger here in the open.
“I’m sorry, Whitley,” Travis said. “I have to leave you here. I’m really sorry I brought this on you. I never would have come if I knew this would happen.”
Once back at the cabin, Travis began to ready their things so they could leave as soon as it was morning. Rose didn’t ask where the old man was. She still sat by the fire where he’d left her. Travis trembled at the thought he’d left her alone with the Indian around. He felt lucky he hadn’t lost her again to the barbarous savage.
He added some of Whitley’s stores to his own—a sack of ground meal, a bag of beans, and an extra blanket.
There was precious little meat left in the smokehouse, but he did find enough to supply them for a few days.
He sat all night in a chair before the front door, his rifle across his lap. When he felt himself nodding off, he jerked awake and stared hard at the door. He knew the Indian wouldn’t come through the door---it wasn’t his way. He was a stealth fighter, fond of ambush. But Travis couldn’t take a chance. It would be just like the savage to change his tactics and come charging in, hoping to find them sleeping.
When morning dawned, Travis gathered Rose and the bags of goods. On the mountain they had trouble, but he knew they had to get out of the cabin. It took them all day to make it to the summit and then the trail down the other side was almost as perilous. By nightfall they were across the mountain range and on lower ground again. There was less snow and the going was much easier. He found broken and downed tree limbs and fashioned a lean-to to hold off the wind if it were to rise during the night. He built a fire, knowing it didn’t matter since the Indian was behind them somewhere anyway. He made a meal and got Rose to eat, then covered her on a spread tarp beneath the shelter. He held her to him for warmth, feeling her soft breath against his chest. His gun lay between them, his hand on the stock. Fearing to sleep, he dozed on and off throughout the long hours, his ears attuned to the sounds in the night.
The coward had taken Rose when she was alone before. He was a sneak and a snake. He doubted he would attack when Travis was around to put up a fight. Nevertheless, it was a rough night, and Travis suspected it was only the second of many to come.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Crossing from Colorado to California took much longer than a month. It was late November when they came out of the desert and reached a forest south of a great mountain lake. Luckily, this year it was a mild winter in this part of the country. No snow had fallen since they’d left Whitley’s cabin. They met a wagon filled with a family heading for the gold fields and discovered it was about another two hundred miles to Sacramento.
“That town popped up when gold was found in the rivers,” Horace Carson said. He was a rail thin man with a starved look about him. His wife was plump and ever cheerful despite the hardships they had endured crossing the country from Pennsylvania. She went around clucking over her family like a mama hen, always busy and tending to everything. Their children included a boy of fourteen who was almost as thin as his father, two sour little girls near in age at ten and eleven, and a toddler son who was as chunky as his mother. He wore a coat too large for him and kept falling over onto his face where his mother would promptly set him on his feet again.
“Ships made port there, bringing goods and travelers all the way from China to find gold,” Horace continued in an excited voice. His brother had come west the year before and wrote home about his mining. He offered to share it if Horace wanted to join him and work his stake on the river.
Horace was just filled with information from his brother’s letters and it seemed he never wound down. He talked all day and into the night. Travis listened carefully, though, as what he found out could only help them make it to their final destination.
“That’s where we’re going,” Travis said. “My wife’s people have a stake near Sacramento, too.”
“Good luck finding them,” Horace said. “There’s thousands of people there now, both in the city and out in the hills and along the streams and rivers. Whole settlements have sprouted up with trading posts to sell to the miners. More people show up every day my brother says. Boatloads of them, wagon trains full of them. And then there’s the lone stragglers like myself---and you.”
“How’d you decide to go on your own?” Travis was a little mystified. If his own wagon train hadn’t been ambushed, he’d still be with them. Rarely did anyone try to cross the entire country alone. “With a family and all I’d think you’d stick with a wagon train.”
“Well, that’s a funny thing,” Horace said. “We tried to get on with a train in St. Louis, but the only one leaving at the right time of year wanted everyone to join their company. They planned to share whatever gold they found when they got to California. They’d written up a rulebook and had a contract they wanted us to sign. I tried to talk them into letting me pay our way and not join the company, but they wouldn’t hear of it. ‘It’s either share or don’t go with us,’ they said. ‘Try it on your own, see how far you get,’ they said.
“So I had to make a decision. Beth there told me we’d do okay on our own. She’s as good a shot as I am, maybe better, and strong as two men. I’m a lucky man,” he added as an aside. “Finally, we couldn’t wait any longer, the season was getting late, so we bought our supplies and hauled the devil out of there. You should have seen St. Louis. It was overflowing with people wanting to head west. The docks and streets were full, the stores were selling everything at godawful expensive prices, and you couldn’t find a room for the night if you begged for one.
“We followed the wagon train I mentioned had formed a company. We kept them in sight for weeks, but finally they got ahead of us and we lost them. Fact is, I think I lost the trail.”
Horace looked down in embarrassment. “We ought to be north of here, I think, but I saw those mighty mountains in our way and the trail petered out to hardly a path. I just couldn’t stomach it. Beth said let’s go south then, so that’s what we done and here we are. There’s two accepted trails west, and this ain’t one of them, but so far I think it’s been probably the best route. We’ve had good luck all the way.”
Travis told him about his own journey from Galveston. He left out the fact of the Indian on their trail all the way, seeing no reason to upset the man and his family. Travis meant to leave them in the morning anyway and go ahead. He and Rose could travel much faster than the wagon. They’d done all right so far on their own, and it was only two hundred more miles.
That night when Horace finally let him go to bed, Travis found Rose still awake. She had begun speaking a little in the past month, but she still wasn’t herself. He had longed to touch her, but feared she’d push him away after what happened with the Indian. He knew the savage had done terrible things to her and maybe turned her against love making for the rest of her life. It made Travis sad when he thought that and he prayed he was wrong. He loved Rose and loving her, he wanted her. He was like a furnace lit with heaps of coal that wouldn’t die down.
He crawled inside the small tent he had gotten from Horace. It was going to be wonderful to have some kind of roof over them, some kind of protection from the elements. When he saw Rose’s eyes glistening from the moonlight coming through the slit in the tent flaps, he said, “You’re still awake?”
“Travis, it is true I’m going to have a baby?”
H
e’d told her about it for weeks, but she never responded. He hadn’t been sure she’d been listening, or if she was, she didn’t care what he said. This was the first time she’d directly confronted the situation and had spoken of it. He took that as a very good sign.
“Yes, honey, you are.”
She threw back the blankets and smoothed the cloth of her under slip over her belly. It was swollen now and rounded, about the size of a small watermelon, Travis thought, and growing by the day.
“What if it’s his?”
Rose’s words went right through his heart. Travis had thought of that just once and he’d put it from mind immediately. The baby couldn’t belong to the Indian. He just didn’t know how he would feel if it did.
“It isn’t. It’s ours, Rose. It’s mine.”
“But what if it is?” she persisted.
Travis shrugged as nonchalantly as he could manage. “Then…well…it’s still ours. It’s our baby, Rose. It’s mine.”
And he meant it. They wouldn’t know until the baby was born who it belonged to, who had fathered it, and he knew he had to be ready if the child’s skin was darker than his own, if the eyes were dark and the hair was straight and black. He thought he could love it just as much, but what man knew that for sure, he wondered? Then he scoffed at himself and realized the baby was part of Rose. Anything that was part of Rose was a thing he loved.
She must have heard the certainty in his voice. She scooted close to him and let him take her into his arms. “You’re a good man, Travis,” she said. “The best man.”
“I just love you, Rose. I really love you.”
That’s when she lifted her face to his and kissed him. He felt heat break out all over his body and he grasped her close and lost himself in her lips. Did she want him? Did she finally and truly want him now? He had missed her so…
He kissed her cheeks and moved down her neck to the tops of her breasts. They were larger than before, swollen and ripe and luscious. He took them into his hands and buried his face in them. Rose arched her body. He slid one arm behind her and lifted her buttocks and lay her down. He kissed her mouth again and felt her hands reaching for the buttons on his pants.
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