by Merry Farmer
Jarvis settled the sacks in the back of the wagon, helping the older man to shift and organize a few things that were too heavy for him. By the time he finished and came around to the front of the wagon, Alice had finished talking to Mrs. Weingarten. She glanced briefly to him, then they headed inside the fort together in silence.
It wasn’t until they were through the gate that Alice said, “My husband was killed in the war, Mr. Flint,” in a tiny voice.
“That’s… that’s what I heard,” Jarvis answered, wondering what brought on her confession.
She peeked up at him with stricken eyes, grief clear in their blue depths. That shouldn’t make his heart do flips in his chest, but it did.
“Guns,” she went on, swallowing. “Gunshots make me think about what…what it must have been like for him in his last moments.”
Sad understanding filled him. “Of course,” he said. “I promise I’ll do my best to make sure that no one fires off guns unexpectedly around you.”
She blinked. “How can you do that? This is a military fort. Surely there will be guns, whether I like them or not.”
She was right.
He rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, I can try.”
The sudden, weak smile that tipped up the corners of her mouth shot straight through him.
“You’re very kind, Mr. Flint,” she said.
“Jarvis. Please call me Jarvis.”
She nodded, but that was it. She gave him one last, long look, then headed off across the fort toward the barracks where her father rested.
“Well, fancy that,” Jarvis said as he let out a breath and dropped his arm to his side. Someone somewhere was probably getting a good laugh out of the mess that had been made of his heart. But at least fate was looking out for him too. He had the distinct feeling that Mrs. Alice Porter being waylaid at Ft. Bridger wasn’t an accident. It was destiny. And he would make the most of it.
Chapter Three
By early afternoon, the best thing Alice could say about her father was that he was asleep. She placed a hand on his forehead once more, hoping that something might have changed in the last five minutes. No such luck.
“Oh, Papa,” she sighed, tucking the crisp white sheet around him, the same as she’d done ten minutes ago. “What are we going to do?”
Her father slept on, oblivious to the question.
Well, Alice knew what she wouldn’t do. She wouldn’t sit still, sinking deeper and deeper into grief and fear. A niggling worry at the back of her mind told her she’d done enough of that already. It was possible that her father had let her drift, lost in grief, for too long. She leaned forward to kiss his hot forehead, then stood.
Outside of the barracks, the fort had emptied of people. A few militiamen were hard at work reorganizing the depot after the wagon train had emptied it of stores, but most people were outside of the palisade, making last-minute preparations to leave. As she marched out to check on her family’s wagon, she met Mr. Evans heading in.
“Mrs. Porter, I was just coming to look for you,” Mr. Evans said.
“Oh?” She stopped for only a moment as they came face-to-face. That was long enough to note that Jarvis was standing only a few yards away. He was checking the yoke on a pair of oxen attached to a wagon, but once his eyes drifted up, they stayed on her. A rush of heat swept through her. She supposed it was only the weather.
“What do you want to do with your wagon?” Mr. Evans asked.
Alice forced herself to ignore Jarvis. She had work to do—real work in the real world.
“I was just coming to ask you the same thing,” she told Mr. Evans. “What am I supposed to do with it if I’m not going with you?”
Mr. Evans shifted his weight to one leg and rubbed his chin as he looked out over the sea of wagons rolling into a line. “Well, I supposed you could park it somewhere inside the fort, if the colonel will let you.”
“I suppose it would be safer.”
“It might be a piece of work getting it to—”
“I can take care of it.”
Jarvis strode up to the two of them and made his offer of help before Alice had time to work herself into worry over it.
“You will?” she asked. She absently raised a hand to rub away the odd feeling in her chest.
“You spoke to Col. Connor about letting Mrs. Porter and her father stay here?” Jarvis asked Mr. Evans.
“Sure did,” Mr. Evans asked. “He said he’d make an exception to his usual rules because Mr. Sutton is sick.”
“I’ll take care of the wagon, then,” Jarvis said. He turned his smile from Mr. Evans to Alice.
“Good.” Mr. Evans slapped Jarvis on the back, then started off. “I’ve got to get this train moving again if we’re gonna make it across the Rockies before the bad weather sets in. Hear that folks?” he called aloud. “Let’s move out.”
Alice lifted a hand to her forehead to shield her eyes from the sun as she watched Mr. Evans stride out to meet the line of wagons. The first of them had already started rolling on around the fort as the rest of them formed up. Something about the sight caused a hard lump to form in her throat, one that expanded to her chest.
“Something wrong?” Jarvis asked.
He had the most gentle, coaxing voice she’d ever heard. If he told the wind to be quiet, Alice was half sure it would obey him.
She let out a breath, lowered her hand, and turned to him.
“That wagon train is all I’ve known for the past two months and more,” she admitted in a tiny voice. “It’s been my home. It seems as though every time I get settled, I find myself saying goodbye to my home.”
A warm smile lit his solid, handsome face, and he glanced down. “I know what you mean,” he said. “I left home twice in California before coming out here with the militia. In fact—”
“Mr. Flint,” Mr. Evans called from the rolling line of wagons. “I hate to interrupt, but I need you to move Mrs. Porter’s wagon so we can get the others going.”
“Yes, sir,” Jarvis called back. He sent Alice a sheepish look. Somehow it looked charming on a man of his age and size. “I’d better do the job I’ve been set to do,” he said, saluted her, then marched off to where her wagon was parked farther down the palisade wall.
“Thank you,” Alice managed to say far too late.
Jarvis had already moved out of hearing of her small voice. She shook her head at herself and bit her lip as she watched him. Someone had gone through the trouble of yoking her family’s oxen back together and attaching the yoke to the tongue to pull the wagon. All Jarvis had to do was call to the placid beasts to get them to follow his commands. She sighed at the sight of her wagon. It wasn’t in the best of shape. The canvas still needed repairing. She supposed she should be concerned about whether anyone had snuck in and stolen her things after she had left the wagon unattended, but at the moment, she couldn’t bring herself to care.
In spite of the heat of the Wyoming afternoon, Alice felt a chill. She rubbed her arms and turned away from Jarvis and his work with her wagon. The wagons that held everyone she’d known, everyone who had made up her world, for months were slipping away. Without purpose, she found herself walking with them, following alongside a few of the more respectable farming families. Walking with the wagons was all she had known for weeks.
“It’s mighty nice of you to come see us off, Mrs. Porter.”
Mr. Evans surprised her as the tail end of the wagon train rounded the corner of the fort. He was mounted on his trusty old horse now, and had to keep the gelding from dancing from side to side. The horse, at least, was eager to move on.
“How much longer do you think it will be before you reach Oregon?” she asked, if only to have something to say.
Mr. Evans shrugged, steadying his horse enough to walk beside her, away from the fort. “Another month. Possibly more, depending on what we come across in the mountains.”
Alice nodded. She didn’t know what else to say. Ahead of her, the Wyoming wildern
ess stretched away to the horizon. The line of wagons cut across the wilderness. They looked as though they were heading off into the unknown. Even though she wasn’t going with them, the same feeling took hold of her.
“I’m a mite worried about you, Mrs. Porter,” Mr. Evans went on, trotting ahead of her when she slowed to a stop at the far end of the fort. “I’m gonna send back for word on how you and your pa are getting along once I’m in Seattle. I hope you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind at all,” she said. The smile that came to her lips was genuine. “That’s very kind of you. You’ve been so kind.”
“Yeah, well,” he drawled, “this hasn’t been the easiest wagon train to lead. You and your family and your friends deserved better. You still deserve better, and I hope you find it.”
He nodded and touched the brim of his hat, then nudged his horse forward to chase after the retreating line of wagons. The last one had passed Alice while she’d been standing there talking. She took a few more steps forward, hugging herself as she wandered across the sunbaked grass outside of the fort. The land around her as far as she could see was rugged, flat in some places, with rock formations and scrubby stands of trees here and there. The summer heat and humidity made the air heavy, but as she watched the wagons roll away, it was almost as if they lifted something off of her and carried it away with them.
She slowed her ambling to a stop and glanced around. Wilderness. Solitude. The sky and the grass. The rattle of the wagon train faded until there was nothing left to listen to but the wind, the cry of birds, and the chattering of insects in the undergrowth.
For the first time since the army courier had brought the letter announcing Harry’s death, Alice was alone. She drew in a breath, held it, then let it out. A few weeks shy of a year. In all that time, no one had dared to leave her alone. Her mother had hovered relentlessly in those first few months. Emma had been her constant companion, no matter how reserved her dear sister was. Every step of the journey from New York City to Independence had been a bustle of travelers, tradesmen, and soldiers. The wagon train itself was a never-ending thrum of activity. But now? Now she was by herself. Now she could hear herself think.
She closed her eyes and tipped her face up to the heavens. Why did you leave me alone, Harry? The question ripped out of her heart before she could stop it. She felt tears sting behind her eyes, but she didn’t want to shed them. She didn’t want to feel grief anymore. Her soul felt empty, hollow, but at least it wasn’t as filled with sadness as it had been at the beginning of the journey.
She let out a breath and opened her eyes, looking around her. No, she wasn’t completely empty. There was something in the air, something in the promise of the wild Wyoming landscape. Hugging herself again, she turned and started back to the whitewashed haven that was Ft. Bridger. There was something about the way the sunlight shone off of the buildings that stirred feelings in her gut that she had thought were dead, along with Harry. Her father would brush the idea off as nonsense. Her mother would ask if she was sure the fluttery feeling wasn’t just a stomach ache. Emma might understand, but she wasn’t there. Wyoming held some sort of promise for Alice, as if she was meant to be there.
On second thought, maybe it was her restlessness speaking. Now that the wagons were gone and the Weingartens no longer needed her help, she needed to find something else to do. Idle hands were more than just the Devil’s playthings, they were the lodestone that kept grief stuck to her, but kept her from finding her way. If she was going to be stuck at Ft. Bridger until her mother and sister showed up, she needed to find something to do.
Target practice had never been one of Jarvis’s favorite activities. Try as he did, he could never get the image that his father was standing by with a scowl out of his head as he fired at the hay-stuffed dummies set up across the range outside of the fort. Every time he missed, that image in his head clucked his tongue and frowned.
Jarvis took a deep breath, raised his Winchester to aim, let out his breath and—
—and caught a swish of black skirts out of the corner of his eye as Alice Porter walked past, several yards to the side. He squeezed the trigger as he peeked up to look at her, and his bullet veered wildly off-target.
“Whoa, Jarvis,” Nick exclaimed, laughing. “You trying to shoot an Injun none of us can see?”
Are you trying to destroy an entire vineyard with your stupidity, boy?
Jarvis swallowed the echo of his father’s harsh words. He forced himself to laugh along with Nick and the others. Every time. It didn’t matter how many times he hit the targets square-on. Each time he missed, his father’s voice scolded him the way it had for more than twenty years.
“I think our young hero was distracted,” another of his friends, sharp-eyed Billy, said with a wink. “By a blackbird.”
Billy cocked his head to the side. Jarvis, Nick, and the others twisted and craned their necks to get a glimpse of Alice, who was now at the far end of the palisade wall. Jarvis wondered if target practice had upset her, like the gunshot had yesterday before the wagon train departed. He wondered if she was thinking of her husband, or worrying about her father. He wondered if there was something he could do to help her.
“Oh, Jarvis?”
He barely heard Nick’s teasing call. He wondered why Alice was carrying a laundry basket full of wet things. He’d seen her washing her clothes and her father’s that morning, then her father’s sheets. They hung from the line that had been strung up at the end of the palisade, blowing in the afternoon breeze. What else could she have to wash?
“See, boys?” Nick went on. “He’s plumb gone on that little wisp of a thing.”
“Yeah, but who can blame him?” Billy answered.
Jarvis should have set them in their places, but there was something else he needed to do first.
“Here.” He thrust his rifle at Nick. “Watch this for me.”
Without checking to see what Nick thought of having a hot-barreled rifle thrust at him, Jarvis marched away from the target range and toward the rows of laundry lines at the far end of the fort.
Sure enough, Alice was hard at work, her sleeves rolled up as she shook out someone’s clean, damp shirt. She had to lift to her toes to clip it to the wash-line.
“Is that your father’s shirt?” he asked, forgetting to say hello.
Alice started. She peeked around the side of the shirt, now hanging and swaying in the breeze.
“Mr. Flint.” Her delicate brow flew up.
“Jarvis,” he corrected her. “Remember?”
Her cheeks flushed pink. “Jarvis. Yes. I remember. No, these aren’t my father’s shirts. What can I do for you?”
She was only still for a moment. As soon as her question was asked, she bent to retrieve another shirt from the basket at her feet. The basket was full, and not just with shirts. Jarvis spotted a few pieces of uniforms, trousers and jackets, freshly laundered and ready to be hung out to dry.
He blinked and crossed his arms. “Mrs. Porter, you don’t have to do laundry, you know.”
“Alice,” she said on the other side of the next shirt as she clipped it to the line. “If I’m going to call you Jarvis, it’s only right that you call me Alice.”
Dammit all, but that simple sentence made his heart beat faster.
“Alice, you’re a guest here. You don’t have to work for your room and board like this.”
When she came out from behind the shirt, she wore a frown. She sent him a brief glance before bending and pulling a pair of trousers from the laundry basket.
“I don’t mind working,” she said.
Jarvis let his arms drop to the sides. “Guests shouldn’t work. That’s the first rule of hospitality. You shouldn’t be straining yourself like this.”
It was the wrong thing to say. Her lips pressed flat as she jammed the clothespins around the trousers, pinning them to the line.
“I need to work,” she said, so quiet he almost didn’t hear.
But he did hea
r her. He heard her all too well.
The urge to do something, to help her or at the very least take her in his arms and tell her everything would be all right, struck him again out of nowhere. He’d done his fair share of working to keep from thinking about things in his day. Heck, he’d joined the militia to keep from thinking about things.
“Alice,” he said her name with all the reverence he felt as she dipped back into the laundry basket, “I wish you would tell me why you’re so sad.”
She straightened so fast he thought he should hear her back crack. Her eyes flared wide, then narrowed.
“I’m sad because my father is sick, my mother and sister are lost, and my husband is dead. Isn’t that enough for you?”
Jarvis winced. Alice did too. In fact, her expression flittered through half a dozen emotions, from annoyance to something that brushed close to surprise.
“I’m sorry,” she said, settling on bewildered regret. “I didn’t mean to snap. I haven’t snapped at anyone in….” She let her sentence drop with a huff and bent to take another pair of trousers from her laundry basket.
“I don’t mind,” he said. “Snap all you like. I remember when my sister died.”
Alice’s eyebrow arched with interest as she took the trousers over to the line, though she didn’t look at him.
“I knew none of it could be helped, but along with the sadness, I just felt so angry and frustrated. It’s better to be angry than sad sometimes, right?”
She didn’t answer. Her lips remained closed tight. As far as Jarvis was concerned, that meant he was getting somewhere.
“So I guess what I mean is that if you need to be angry at someone for a while to help you get over it, you can be angry at me.”
As soon as the words were out, Jarvis wanted to shake his head at himself. Who in their right mind invited a pretty girl to be angry with them?
If Alice thought he was a fool, she didn’t let on. “Thanks,” she said, voice tiny once more.
“How long has it been?” he asked. There was an even chance that his prying would earn him an earful, but maybe that’s what Alice needed to get some of herself back.