by Lyn Cote
Carson murmured assent. But he wasn’t thinking about breakfast. He was thinking about Mariel’s soft, willing lips. Had she really kissed him back? He thought so, but with everything that had happened, he couldn’t be sure. Mariel, why did you let me kiss you? His unruly mind added, Will you let me kiss you again?
Hours after supper that night, Emilio braced himself for what he knew he must do. For Sugar’s sake, for his own. The Quinns sat around the fire outside the wikiup. It was the quiet time in camp, just before everyone found their beds. The sound of low voices created a barrier of sound between their fire and the many German fires. The surrounding prairie had begun the climb to the Hill Country where they were headed.
Emilio cleared his throat and said in a low voice, “I have something to say.”
The easy conversation around him ceased, and every eye turned to him. Consciously he made himself look calm, but his pulse raced of its own accord. He looked to Sugar, trying to express his concern and love for her without words. “And I want to say it here in front of everyone.” He paused to say a silent prayer, then lifted his chin. “Sugar will never have peace,” he said, “until she faces the past.”
Sugar made a sound of pain.
Emilio stared into her eyes, hoping she would not freeze up, become deaf or run. “Sugar, a bad time is coming.”
He pulled out the newspaper he had bought in Montezuma and held it up. Since he’d first read this newspaper, a heavy weight had sat at the bottom of his stomach. “War is coming soon. This is why I am speaking up. We must all prepare for what is coming. You, Sugar, must prepare.”
Sugar half-rose, but her mother pulled her back down onto the log where they sat. With her lower lip quivering, little Erin looked back and forth between Emilio and Sugar.
“This isn’t just about the war, is it?” Dorritt said with a knowing look.
Emilio shook his head, smiling his chagrin at her insight. “I am a Tejano. So I think of marriage as Mexicans do. It is not just about two people in love. It concerns the whole family. I think you must know that I love and wish to marry Sugar—”
Sugar rose and rushed away into the surrounding shadows. Erin started up, but her mother restrained her. Emilio rose and hurried after Sugar. He caught up with her easily and drew her farther away into the shadows. “Sugar, do not run from me. Do not run from you, run from us.”
She let him take her hands. Still, she would not look him in the eye. “Sugar, I love you.”
Then she did look up, but she said nothing, merely opened and closed her lips; her cheeks became rosy. She had never looked more beautiful to him. “Sugar, I love you. I want you to be my wife.”
Then she closed the distance between them and came into his arms, demonstrating the love that evidently would not come to her lips. He held her close and stroked her hair, whispering words of love to her. “Estoy enamorado de ti. Mi amor, mi dulce.”
“I love you,” she finally whispered into his ear.
“Will you be my wife?” He pulled back so he could see her pale, lovely face in the faint moon and starlight.
“Yes.” She was blushing darker pink. “Sí.”
Emilio pulled her close again and kissed her. He had waited years for this moment, years for this lovely girl to become a woman. He began their first kiss gently, persuading her lips to part. He savored this moment of triumph, of coming together.
When he finally ended the kiss, he clasped her to him and whispered the words he knew she did not want to hear, the words he was forced to say. “There is one thing we must do first.”
Two days later, Mariel was walking behind the wagon where the little Braun boys were riding for a rest. Ever since Carson had kissed her, he had avoided her. She wanted to tell him that she knew it had meant nothing, that she knew he, a Ranger, was above her. But he never came near. And she missed that. She hadn’t realized that she had become so accustomed to his walking near her, watching over her. She must face reality—he was not for her. Admitting this left her cold and empty inside.
A shout came from the front. She looked up. Usually a shout set her heart to racing; this time the shout sounded different. It was not filled with fear.
“What is it, Frau Wolffe?” one of the little boys asked.
She smiled. “I don’t think it is something bad this time.”
Carson and his friend Tunney came walking their horses down the line. “We’ve made it! You’re here!” Tunney called out. “We’re just entering the land your Prince Carl bought.”
The news raced down the line from one end of the caravan to the other. A babble of voices sprang up all around Mariel. And then everyone was walking faster. Around the next bend the party halted to look out on their new home. It was very different from the prairie they had been walking over. She had not noticed it much; now, she realized they had been walking upland for a time.
She looked out over a striking land, no longer a gentle prairie or coastal plain but a land with low mountains in the distance. The mountains were etched with river valleys, and cypress trees grew along the shores, while spreading oaks and firs grew in the valleys and up the craggy hillsides. Mariel felt uplifted, transported out of her normal self. Schön. Beautiful.
“They expect us to farm here?” Herr Heller’s voice rang out, strong and vehement. “The soil is thin and stony.”
Herr Meuserbach leaped up on the back of the buckboard and waved his arms. When all had fallen silent, he began to speak. “Ja, we will farm here. Herr Quinn, the Ranger’s father, has told me that the land is hilly, but the soil in the valleys is gut. Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels chose this land and bought it for you with the funds from the Adelsverein. You did not think this would be like Germany, nicht wahr? Now we will thank Gott for bringing us safely here. Herr Quinn says that it is a blessing from Gott that more of us did not die on the way here.” He removed his hat and bowed his head.
Mariel bowed hers and folded her hands. All through the prayer, however, she had trouble keeping her mind on the words and phrases. She kept peeking up to take one more look at this beautiful place. Something deep inside her opened, stretched, and now sighed with deep joy. This land would be a good place to live.
The prayer ended and the people chattered on. Mariel gazed around, silent. Ahead, Carson sat upon his horse, staring at her. She knew she should look away. She couldn’t. She drank in the picture he made—so tall in the saddle, sitting with easy poise, the master of the situation. His leather hat cast his face in shadow. But she had memorized his features and could imagine them with ease.
In the days since he had kissed her, she had been unable to shut out the memory of the sensations or the thrill of being intimate with him in that way. Yet they had not spoken, and he had avoided her. She knew that kissing her had just been a momentary impulse on his part. On the other hand, she knew that it would take time for her to get over the fact that she was attracted to a man who could not be a part of her life here. Yet at this special moment in her life, she let herself savor looking at him. Soon he would leave and she would begin to seek her future here in this lovely place. She would have thought that the beauty around her would have eased the pain of knowing he must leave her. It didn’t. It made it a sharper, a keener pain.
What is, is. And I must accept it.
On the first morning, the second day of May, at the new settlement named New Braunfels, named for Prince Carl, who had chosen it for them, Mariel set out. She stayed a little behind the other women on their way to the fast-running Colorado River in the valley, cut out of the rocky landscape. They carried weeks of laundry in long cloth sacks. All around them was the sound of axes biting into wood. The men were felling trees to build cabins. At the bank of the stream, the women pulled the back hems of their skirts forward between their legs and tucked them firmly into the front of their waistbands.
Mariel shed her worn shoes and socks and walked out ankle deep into the cool water. The difference from Germany was startling. She couldn’t have gone wading
in May there. The other women were chatting away about the scenery, about family left at home and how to possibly send letters. She had noticed recently that the other women in the party were treating her with a bit more reserve, so she kept her distance, hoping that whatever tales were being spun over her leaving the Hellers would blow over. She began washing the Brauns’ clothing.
Among the little boys’ shirts and underwear, she found some of Frau Braun’s clothing. She halted for a moment, holding the clothing of the woman they had buried in that little town, so many miles back. She saw herself at the graveside.
Then the stark memory of Herr Heller’s attack tried to intrude, grab her and drag her into misery and loss. She shook it off. She found a rock, wet one of the shirts, and rubbed it with the yellow bar soap. Then she slapped the shirt on the rock and began rubbing in earnest, working out the dirt the boy had ground into the shirt, not thinking of anything, just the rock, water, soap, and cotton clothing.
“Hello.”
Startled, Mariel looked up to see that Carson’s mother, Sugar, and Erin had joined them. “Guten Morgen,” Mariel stuttered. “I mean, good morning.”
“Guten Morgen!” Erin called out cheerfully. The little girl was picking up German easily and seemed to enjoy learning the new language as an interesting game.
“I came to do a bit of laundry too.” Mrs. Quinn folded up her skirt in the same way that Mariel had, then shed the leather moccasins she wore. Erin followed Mrs. Quinn’s actions and waded into the water behind her mother, who carried a sack of clothing tied over one shoulder. The little girl bent over and began picking up rocks, worn smooth from the water.
Sugar hung back and leaned against a tree. Mariel wondered why Sugar seemed so crushed, listless. She knew it must have something to do with her nightmare and that old woman in Montezuma, but Mariel didn’t quite understand it all.
Mrs. Quinn chose a large flat rock nearby and began to wash feminine underclothing. “I’m looking forward to getting home.”
The mention of her leaving brought a sharp pang to Mariel. When this woman left, her family and no doubt the Ranger would also depart. A pit of loneliness opened within Mariel; she couldn’t say anything more than, “Oh?”
The woman nodded, beckoning Erin to come learn how to scrub an undershirt. “I can’t wait to be in my own house again.”
Mariel could only imagine what it felt like to have a real home to go to and a family there. She shook this off. Life was what it was, and there was no use crying. Isn’t that what her mother had told her over and over?
Then Mariel gazed around, letting the beautiful, rugged landscape rising from the valley draw her eyes heavenward. Fresh spring water poured from rocky hillsides. Still, the feeling of impending loss dogged her. She added more soap and scrubbed the underarms of the little shirt. And she tried to rid herself of the low current within her, the current that wanted to drag her into gloom. She hoped she didn’t appear as downhearted as Sugar.
“It’s a lovely place, isn’t it?” Mrs. Quinn commented.
“Ja, but…it is so wild, so empty.” Mariel grasped this topic, a distraction. At home, she had taken for granted the centuries that had shaped the town and the surrounding valleys. Here she felt as if she were among the first people to ever walk these hillsides or use this creek to wash clothing. Mariel struggled to find the words to express this. “I see no sign people…live here. Do people live here?”
Mrs. Quinn didn’t look up from her washing. “Yes, Comanche have lived here, and probably Waco and Kiowa bands. Indians live on the land without leaving a trace. They wander, following the herds of buffalo.”
Mariel tried to imagine life wandering from place to place, living in that strange type of tent the Quinns had. It was not easy. Then she realized that she would probably live and die without leaving much of a trace herself—just a gravestone that would eventually list and crumble into the earth. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. Her mind repeated her grossmutter’s verse that had been just at the back of her mind since leaving Galveston. “Trust in the LORD, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land.” Her mind added more this time: “But the humble shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace….”
She shoved these thoughts aside, trying to concentrate on their conversation. She couldn’t imagine living a life following buffalo. “I would not like to live, never stopping or staying.”
Erin piped up, “Our house is not like the ones in east Texas and not a cabin either. It is a ranch house, a hacienda, only one floor high, and it has stone floors, not wooden.” Erin looked up from the chemise she was scrubbing and grinned broadly. “And at home I don’t have to do the laundry. Conchita does the laundry while I do my lessons.”
“It doesn’t hurt you to learn how to do laundry,” Mrs. Quinn said, shaking her finger playfully at Erin. “Someday you might not have Conchita to help you.”
This didn’t surprise Mariel. Of course the Quinns would have servants. Without much success, she tried to imagine the kind of house Erin had described.
Mariel had finally rubbed the perspiration stain out of the shirt when Mrs. Quinn said, “I’m hoping you’ll come home with us for a visit. Erin will miss her German lessons.”
“Ja!” the little girl said, grinning, “Bitte. Please come with us. You’ll like our hacienda. Please. Bitte.”
Surprised by the invitation, Mariel straightened up. And froze in place by what she saw.
On the top of the rise above the creek was what must be die Indianer. He sat upon a horse. His black hair was long and tied into tails. “Oh,” Mariel said with a gasp, pointing toward him. And then she blinked and he was gone.
Then she heard the babble of voices around her. Carson had warned them that this land belonged to Comanche. The women around her gathered their wet clothing and raced, shouting, toward where the men were felling trees.
Mariel remained where she was, ankle deep in the cool, rushing water. Mrs. Quinn and Erin did not look frightened, merely interested. There had been nothing to prevent die Indianer’s doing something to them had he wanted to, but he had merely looked curious. Mariel turned toward Mrs. Quinn. “What does this mean?”
“It means that the Comanche have just let you know that they know you are on their land.”
“They will come and…” She tried to imagine what a fight with Inderin would be like, but she couldn’t. She had just been thinking about how beautiful, how peaceful this valley was. And that she might live in this land with peace.
“Don’t be frightened,” Erin said. “Carson and Emilio and my father will protect us.”
Mariel forced a smile. Yes, but they will not be here forever.
That evening when Mariel tucked the two Braun boys into their blankets, they begged to hear more about the Indian she had seen. “I only saw him for a moment. He had black hair and wore it in two tails like horse tails, and his chest was bare.”
“Did he try to scalp you?” one asked, looking horrified and fascinated at the same time.
“No, of course not. We are going to make peace with the Comanche. Now go to sleep, Kinder.” She patted both their heads. Since their mother’s death, she had tried to show a bit of affection to each child. Not much, because she did not want them to become attached to her. Their father would probably remarry as soon as was proper. Mariel had noticed that some of the other unmarried women who had come with their families had taken to chatting with him along the trail.
She rose, turned, and found Herr Braun right there. “Oh! Excuse me. I didn’t see you.”
“We must talk,” he said in a low voice.
She didn’t try to hide her surprise. Had she done something wrong with the children? She let him draw her aside under a nearby tree.
“Frau Wolffe, I think that we better marry. Soon.”
Mariel looked at him, dumbstruck. “What?” she whispered finally.
He grimaced. “I will need a wife. You are good with my sons. And when I build
my cabin, how can you live in it with me and not be my wife?”
“I thought I could live with another family but work for you.” She didn’t like how agitated the man seemed. “Is everything all right?”
“No.” He looked even more uncomfortable. Then he admitted, “There has been talk. About why you left the Hellers’ employ.”
Though this is exactly what Mariel had dreaded, it was still an unpleasant shock, a jolt to hear it said aloud. “What do they say?” she asked, her mouth dry.
The man appeared to be in pain, his face twisted so. “They say that you must have…made overtures to Herr Heller or you wouldn’t have been dismissed.”
“I was not dismissed.” I left because Herr Heller did more than make overtures to me. Of course, she couldn’t say that. No one would believe her. It was always easier to blacken the name of a defenseless woman without a family to defend her than to confront the man who could strike back. Wolves always went for the weakest.
“I know that,” Herr Braun agreed. “And I know that you are not the kind of woman who would do…do anything of that nature. So I think that we should marry. Though how to do that out here in the wilderness, I don’t know.” He threw up his hands, demonstrating his ignorance in this setting.
Mariel tasted blood and realized she’d just bitten her lower lip. “Herr Braun, you have been a good employer, but I don’t wish to marry any man now.” She ignored her lie. “Why can’t we just continue as we have—”
“I’ve just told you why. It isn’t fair. It isn’t right. But you must marry me or someone—before you have no reputation left to lose.” He shook his head, then walked away from her.
She turned and looked over the people in the encampment around her. Many looked away.
That told her all she needed to know. Her spirits tumbled. She nearly groaned aloud. So the gossip had become more than whispers. And the gossips had twisted the bare facts into a story that she had tried to seduce Herr Heller. How could people believe such rubbish? And what could she do to stop it? Herr Braun was a good man, but she had no desire to marry him. And not out of necessity. But what could she do?