Prairie Courtship

by Dorothy Clark

  “Was not listening to a word I said.” Lydia gave her a searching look. “Are you feeling all right, Emma?”

  “I am perfectly fine. Only a little weary.” She turned away from Lydia’s perusal and started walking. “What was your question?”

  “I want to know if you will come by in the morning and help me make dried apple dumplings for tomorrow’s meal for the men? Olga and Hannah are making stew.”

  Tomorrow. How would she face tomorrow? If he were here, it would be torture to be around him. And if he were gone— Yes. It would be easier if he were gone. The emptiness would be unbearable. But at least she would not have to pretend she did not love him. She looked down to hide her face from Lydia, stared at her empty hands and flexed her fingers. He had offered to carry her kettle home for her, and when she had made an excuse to linger, he had smiled and taken it from her anyway. Oh, yes. It would be much easier if Mr. Thatcher were gone tomorrow.

  “Of course I shall help you, Lydia. I will come by first thing in the morning.” She fixed a bright smile on her face, lifted her hand in farewell and walked to her wagon. She climbed to the driver’s seat and went inside. She did not want to see where he had put her kettle. She did not want to look across the river to see if he was still there. She would not!

  Her resolve lasted until she had prepared for bed. By then she could resist no longer. She turned the lamp down low, braved the cold to open the back flaps a crack and peered out. There was enough moonlight to spot the grazing horses immediately. And then she saw him. What was he— He was digging for something. It looked as if there was a hole—

  He stopped, leaned on the shovel and looked her way.

  She jerked her head back and snapped the flaps closed. Surely he had not seen that tiny crack of light? But then, with that penetrating gaze of his bright blue eyes, perhaps he had. She dared not look out again.

  She shivered her way to the bed and crawled under the covers. He was not gone. She sighed and closed her eyes. Almighty God, please exchange my weakness for Your strength. Please help me to be strong and hide my love for Mr. Thatcher if he is still here tomorrow. Or help me to accept the emptiness that will be in my heart if he is gone. Amen.

  Zach stared at the wagon cover. The slit of lamplight was gone. She had closed the flaps up tight. Had it been an accident they had been open a crack? Or had she been looking out? At him? He smiled and turned back to his digging. There was no way he could know for certain. But the possibility that his plan was working gave him pleasure enough to warm his heart all night. If Emma Allen was curious enough to spy and try and see what he was doing, she must care about him. At least a little. He would do his best to make her curiosity and her caring grow.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Her cheeks and nose were red from the cold. Emma flexed the stiffness from her fingers, pushed the combs into her hair then tied the length of dark blue ribbon around the base of the thick coil at the crown of her head to hold the tendrils from escaping. Her hands shook from the shivers coursing through her as she put away the hairbrush and mirror. The nights had been growing steadily colder, but last night had been frigid! No matter how many blankets she had piled on, she could not get truly warm. How she had longed for the fireplace that graced her bedroom at home in Philadelphia!

  She frowned and drew her thoughts away from the past. She must look to the future. She would have her cabin soon. There would be no cold air slipping beneath a canvas cover to nip at her exposed skin then. No floors from which the cold rose to chill her limbs in spite of the extra wool petticoat she wore. She would have a fireplace that would warm her as she performed her morning toilette, and warm water always ready on the hearth.

  She glanced at the water in the washbowl, shivered at the memory of its frosty touch. There had not been ice on the water in the keg, only the thin skin promise of the winter yet to come. She must remember to write and warn William and Caroline of the weather. If her ink wasn’t frozen!

  She stared in disgust at the small crock she had opened. Her hand balm was hard. She loosened a bit with the tip of her scissors, then held it in her palm to soften before she rubbed it in. Her Augusta spencer added warmth her blue wool dress alone could not provide. But even it was not enough this morning. She put on her long apron, then lifted her fur-trimmed wool cloak out of a dresser drawer and swirled it around her shoulders, tugged the hood in place. The fur lining of the hood felt wonderful against her cold ears and cheeks.

  She reached up to the lamp that dangled from a hook in one of the hickory ribs that supported the wagon cover and extinguished the flame, then stepped to the front of the wagon and untied the canvas flaps. Cold air rushed at her. She glanced at the Hargroves’ chimney. There was smoke rising like a gray column toward the lightening sky. She secured the flaps, climbed from the wagon and hurried toward the warmth of their cabin.

  Not once did she allow herself to look across the river. She reached to pull aside the blanket that served as the Hargroves’ door, heard a deep, rich voice and jerked her hand back. He was there. She spun about to go back to her wagon.

  Who shall abide in the Lord’s tabernacle, children? He that sweareth to his own hurt and changeth not. If you make a promise, you must keep it.

  Lydia was expecting her. Emma clenched her hands and gritted her teeth. Why had her mother been so diligent in teaching them God’s Word? Why could she not ignore it? She took a deep breath, turned back and stepped inside. The fire was burning. But it was the look in Zachary Thatcher’s eyes as he looked her way and rose to his feet that brought warmth to her. She was suddenly thankful for the cold that had turned her cheeks red. It would mask the blush that was making them burn. She lifted her chin.

  “Come in, Emma. I have already started soaking the apples.”

  “Coming, Lydia.” She glanced at John Hargrove, who, as usual, did not bother to hide his displeasure at her coming. “Forgive me if I interrupted your conversation.” She stepped into the room, gave a polite nod of greeting in Zachary Thatcher’s direction and removed her cloak. She hung it over the back of Lydia’s rocking chair and joined her friend. “What shall I do, Lydia?”

  “You can help me make the dough to wrap the apples in.” The older woman dumped some flour in a large crockery bowl and reached for the saleratus. “That other bowl is for you to use.”

  “—Fletcher cabin will be finished today, Thatcher. It’s taking longer because it’s a big one. The Sutton and Mur—”

  “Make the dough the same as for biscuits, Emma. Only use a bit more lard.”

  She nodded, turned her back toward the men and dumped some flour in the bowl, trying not to pay attention to their conversation, but unable to avoid hearing bits and snatches of it in the close quarters of the room.

  “—my guess is six or seven days. We can start on yours—”

  Her hand jerked. “Yours?” The word escaped. There was no choice but to turn and face him. “I could not help but overhear, Mr. Thatcher—though I believe my ears deceive me. I thought I heard Mr. Hargrove say you were going to build a cabin. A strange occupation for a man who wants no fetters.”

  His gaze held hers. “As is making biscuits for a doctor, Miss Allen.”

  “You’ve got a mite too much saleratus in there, Emma.”

  She turned around, saw Lydia’s curious gaze and looked down. “Yes. I—it was an accident.” She picked up a spoon and scooped out some of the saleratus to save for the next batch of dough. Zachary Thatcher’s deep voice rumbled in the background. She abandoned politeness and tilted her head to better hear.

  “I’m not sure I want—”

  “We’ll be rolling it out thin.”

  Oh, Lydia, please do not talk!

  Lydia grabbed a handful of flour, sprinkled it on the table, then scraped the dough out of her bowl on top of it. “Joseph Lewis made this table out of our wagon’s tailboard and some sturdy pine limbs. You should have him make one for you when you are in your cabin, Emma. It works fine.”

 
; “—to Fletcher’s and start working.” Zachary Thatcher’s voice raised. “I will look forward to eating some of those apple dumplings at supper, ladies.” There was a soft swish and a draft of cold air as he lifted the blanket and stepped outside.

  The conversation was over, and still she did not know if he would stay or go. He had not answered her query. She dusted the table with flour, dumped out her dough, made a fist and thumped it—hard.

  She was so beautiful. His heart had almost stopped when he looked up and saw her standing there in that fur-lined cloak. Zach frowned, wrapped the rope around the split log and tied it off. He had almost blurted out the truth right then. But he had caught himself in time. Still… “Haul away!” He stepped to the side and prepared to steady the log as Nathan Fenton urged the oxen to pull. Something of what he was feeling must have shown on his face the way her eyes had widened, and that proud little chin of hers had lifted. She had been more cool than normal to him after that. Still, she was curious as to his intent. Perhaps more than curious. He had seen her back stiffen when Hargrove mentioned him building a cabin. And he had seen the flash of frustration in her eyes when he evaded answering her query. But there had been a challenge in her question—and hurt. It was not time to declare himself openly. He would continue working his plan until— “Whoa! That’s far enough, Nathan!”

  Zach slid out on the ridge beam, yanked on the rope end to undo the knot and dropped the rope to the ground. It took a little maneuvering but he finally got in position to wrap his arm about the half log and lift the end enough he could slide it into the notch. That was the last one. They could put the roof planks on now. Then tomorrow they could start building the Sutton cabin. It could not be soon enough for him.

  He slid back off the ridge beam and went hand over hand down the climbing rope to help get the first roof plank in place. Tonight, he would finish planting his apple seedlings. And tomorrow night he would show her he was a man with a future.

  “Is there something wrong, Emma?”

  “Wrong?” Emma lifted the last apple dumpling in the pan onto the large ironstone platter and shook her head. “No. There is nothing wrong. Why do you ask?”

  “You seem quiet, but…touchy.” Lydia fixed an assessing gaze on her. “Like you were when you were around Mr. Thatcher yesterday.”

  “Why, that is—” She looked at Lydia’s raised eyebrows and gave a little laugh. She could not let her guess how she truly felt about Zachary Thatcher. She did not care to be an object of pity. “All right, I confess. I find Mr. Thatcher’s low opinion of me…annoying.” She pushed the emptied pan to Lydia’s side to be refilled with the raw dumplings they had made and piled in the middle of the table. Now for another. She grabbed the hem of her long apron, leaned down and removed the lid from another pan on the hearth to see if the dumplings were done.

  “Hmm. He’s mighty quick to speak up for you for someone who holds you in low regard.”

  “Whatever are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about yesterday, when John named you ‘hysterical’ to Mr. Thatcher. He told him how you come runnin’ over here in the middle of the night carryin’ a pistol and ravin’ about imagined ‘hoofbeats’ and gettin’ everyone all stirred up.”

  Emma drew up straight as an arrow and looked at the older woman. “It was not the middle of the night!”

  Lydia grinned. “That’s what Mr. Thatcher told John. And he told him you weren’t hysterical either.” She nestled the raw dumplings close together in the pan, poured in a bit of boiling water from her iron teapot. “He said it was him you heard riding in. And that you were wise to raise an alarm, ’cause it was better to lose sleep than to lose your scalp.” The lid of the iron spider clanged against the rim of the pan.

  Emma stared at her, the dumplings she’d been checking forgotten. “He said I was wise?” She frowned when the older woman smiled and nodded. “Well, I cannot imagine why. He certainly did not think I was wise when we were coming west! He opposed my every request for my patients.”

  Lydia nodded, glanced down. “The dumplings in that pan done?”

  Emma flushed, put down the lid she held and lifted the pan to the table. “It was obvious that Mr. Thatcher shared most men’s disdain for women doctors.” The spoon clanged against the pan as she lifted out a dumpling to put on the platter.

  “Or that he was only trying to do what we hired him to do, keep us all safe.” Lydia raked a fresh batch of coals out onto the hearth, set the refilled spider on them and covered the lid with more coals. “If I recollect right, when little Jenny Lewis injured her head so severe you said the joltin’ around of ridin’ in a wagon would kill her, it was Mr. Thatcher that come up with the idea of that ‘swing’ bed that made it possible for her to ride without being hurt.”

  Emma stared at her. “I—I had not thought of it that way. I thought…”

  “That Mr. Thatcher was fightin’ you because of you bein’ a woman doctor.”

  “Yes.”

  Lydia wrapped her apron hem around her hand, reached across the table and pulled the iron pan to her side of the table. “It appears to me, he respected your doctorin’ skills so much he figured out a way to follow ’em and still move the wagons forward like needed to be done.”

  Could that be possible? Emma searched her memory, trying to find a flaw in that argument.

  “Same as when baby Isaac come down with the measles, and Mr. Thatcher held that meetin’ tellin’ everyone about your idea for a movin’ quarantine to keep people from gettin’ sick.” Lydia lifted a dumpling to the platter, scooped up another. “When Tom Swinton challenged your sayin’ Isaac had measles when he didn’t have spots, Mr. Thatcher told him that him and anyone else that didn’t believe you had to leave the train and not come back. And he was right rigid about enforcing that movin’ quarantine. Seems to me he wouldn’t have done all that if he didn’t respect your doctoring.”

  Yes, but the moving quarantine was because he would not stop as she—

  “Seems to me, you two worked hand in hand to make that whole nasty situation come out right well.”

  Hand in hand. A sick feeling hit the pit of her stomach. Had she been so angry and close-minded because of the way men sneered at her for being a doctor, she hadn’t seen the truth?

  “You gonna let them dumplins burn?”

  “What?” Emma looked down at the pan Lydia was refilling. The dumplings! “No. No, of course not.” She whirled to the hearth, snatched hold of the end of her apron and lifted a lid from one of the pans.

  Emma cut the pans of corn bread into generous squares, then placed the knife on the table and walked away. The preparation for today’s supper was finished, and she needed to be alone.

  She hurried up the path being worn into the grass-covered plain. By the time the Sutton and Murray cabins were finished, the wagon wheels and the people’s footsteps would have turned the path into a road, one that sandwiched the cabins between it and the river. Already it had the look of a village.

  Promise.

  But perhaps not for her.

  Tears stung her eyes. She blinked them away and hurried on to her wagon, went to the stone circle that held the banked coals. She needed the comfort and warmth of a fire to chase away the shivers that trembled through her.

  Could she have been so wrong? Had she seen Zachary Thatcher’s actions through the haze of past disdain and scorn, through the hurt of rejection? Had she unwittingly destroyed any personal regard he may have felt for her by her stubborn insistence on having her doctoring skills acknowledged? Had her calling as a doctor cost her the possibility of a shared love?

  She went to her knees, heedless of the fine dusting of gray ash on the ground beneath her, and breathed the fire to life. She fed the flames wood until they leaped with unrestrained joy and threw sparks of celebration into the growing dusk.

  She stared into the flames and shivered. What was she to do? Every time she saw Zachary Thatcher the ache in her heart grew more acute. And now, it se
emed, he was going to stay in Promise. He was going to build his own cabin, on his own land.

  I’ll leave the founding of towns and empire building to Hargrove and Applegate and the others. It is these mountains that call to me. All I want is to be to be free and unfettered to roam them as I will.

  She rose and looked across the river to the plain where his packhorse grazed, then turned and looked up at the rugged Blue Mountains. What had changed? Why had he returned? Why—

  The thud of Comanche’s hoofs against the ground warned her.

  She closed her eyes and clenched her hands. There were miles and miles of river. Why must he cross here? She squared her shoulders, arranged her features into a cool, polite expression and turned.

  He had dismounted and was standing behind her. So close. If she lifted her hand she could touch him. Her fingers twitched with the memory of clinging to his shirt when he saved her from sliding into the river, of the feel of his hand holding hers. Her heart raced with the knowledge of the warmth and strength of his arms holding her close. She swallowed the swelling lump in her throat and blinked her eyes.

  Comanche gave a low nicker, stretched his nose to ward her. She reached out and stroked his velvet muzzle, turned to slip her hand beneath his dark mane. Bless you, Comanche. Bless you for giving me a reason to turn away.

  “He likes you. He’s never been like this with anyone but me.”

  Zachary Thatcher’s deep, rich voice flowed over her. She took a breath to steady her own. “He likes the oats and honey I fed him when—” Oh dear! She swallowed again. Took another breath. Kept her face turned toward Comanche’s side. It didn’t work. He walked around to Comanche’s other side, rested his hand on the saddle. She could feel his gaze on her face. She did not dare look up.

  “When what?”

  “When you were ill.”

  “You did that?”

  She nodded, dredged up a smidgen of courage and looked up at him. Her knees slacked with that odd weakness at the blue, smoky look in his eyes. She grabbed the edge of the saddle.