© 2006 by Gilbert Morris
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN: 978-0-8054-3289-3
Published by B & H Publishing Group
Nashville, Tennessee
Dewey Decimal Classification: F
Subject Headings:
WEST (U.S.)—FICTION
OVERLAND JOURNEYS TO THE PACIFIC—FICTION
FRONTIER AND PIONEER LIFE—FICTION
Contents
PART ONE End of a Life
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
PART TWO The Wagon Master
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
PART THREE Along the Arkansas
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
PART FOUR Journey’s End
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
to Mike Hollingshead
This is a dark world we are living in, but from time to time
I meet someone whose spirit produces a light.
Thanks, Mike, for being one of those rare individuals
who gives off a glow. You are a friend indeed,
and I am thankful for your friendship.
PART ONE
End of a Life
Chapter One
AS JORI HAYDEN EMERGED from the house, she was met by a sharp, cold wind. The winter of 1822 had struck Arkansas with a blunt force, so that now all around Little Rock the creeks and rivers were frozen hard enough to support a heavily laden wagon. She noted thick columns of smoke rising straight from chimney tops only to be blown into formless masses that immingled with low-lying clouds.
Ignoring the freezing wind, Jori moved toward the stable, noting the breath of the cattle in the fields rising in little puffs. Entering the stable, she greeted the man who turned to face her. “Good morning, Caleb.”
“Not so good, Miss Jori.” Caleb House shook his head glumly. He was a short man with the shoulders of a wrestler. He stroked his droopy mustache with his thick fingers, adding, “Too cold for you to ride this morning. You could get pneumonia.”
“You’re a prophet of doom, Caleb,” Jori smiled. “It’s a fine day for a ride.” At the age of twenty-two, she had a curved, womanly figure with brilliant black hair. Her face was too square for beauty, but her eyes were so unusual that most never noticed that. Large, well spaced, and shaped like almonds, her eyes were a striking shade of sea green with flecks of gray. They were sharp and alert, at times flaring with anger, but now were dancing with humor. “Your favorite book in the Bible must be Lamentations, Caleb. It’s a beautiful world, and you need to see it.”
“When you’ve been flattened by this ‘beautiful’ world a few times, you’ll see it different,” Caleb said morosely. “I suppose you want me to saddle the mare?”
“Yes, please.” Turning to make her way to a stall, she reached out and stroked the silky nose of the mare that arched her neck over the gate. “Ready for a run, girl?” She laughed as the mare nibbled her fingers, then reached into her side pocket and brought out the quartered slices of apple. She stepped aside and watched as Caleb put on the saddle and bridle, then, without waiting, hoisted herself at once into the saddle. “Thanks, Caleb,” she called, then shot out of the stable, putting the mare into a fast gallop.
Caleb stared after the young woman dolefully, then shook his head. “Going to break her neck riding like that! She’s had it too easy and thinks the world’s a playground. She’ll get that knocked out of her one day—just like we all do.” He spoke to the large, mustard-colored dog who sat watching him, then turned and moved down into the depths of the stable.
* * *
THE COLD HAD ROUGED Jori’s cheeks and put a sparkle in her eyes. She was a young woman of great vitality, generous and capable of robust emotion. She loved challenges, and now her blood was up as the mare drove forward. Jori felt the strength of the horse flowing up, touching her legs, and coursing through her body. “Go, Princess!” she cried, and leaned forward delighting in the speed of the mare. She was vaguely aware of the trees on each side that stood stiffly reaching upward and of the gusting wind that sent up the dead leaves in a whirlwind cloud. It was a gaunt world, but when Jori was astride a fine horse, weather meant nothing.
Looking up, Jori saw Gerald Carter, her fiancé, and Clyde Hammond waiting for her. Pulling Princess up shortly, she kicked her feet free from the stirrups and slid to the ground still holding the reins tightly. Her face was flushed, and she made an attractive picture as she stood there. Her black hair escaped from beneath her green cap, and her green eyes were sparkling. “Gerald, did you see us?”
“Should think I did, but you moved so fast I almost missed you.” Gerald Carter was no more than five eight, exactly Jori’s height. He was not particularly good-looking but had a pleasant, thin face. His eyes were well shaped and of an attractive blue color, and there was an air of gentleness about him. He was wearing a dark brown overcoat and a hat made out of prime beaver. A large diamond sparkled from his left hand as he raised it and stroked his cheek. “A bit cold for trying out horses,” he suggested.
“No, any day’s a good day for fine horse flesh.” Clyde Hammond was a large man made more bulky by multiple sweaters covered by a buffalo overcoat. The tip of his cigar made a red dot against the gray surroundings. His nose was lined with veins, and his eyes were red rimmed. The odor of alcohol was strong on him, but despite his drinking habits, he was known as the best judge of horse flesh in the state. He had brought the mare to the Hayden stables in hopes of selling her. “How did you like her, Miss Jori?”
“She’s a fine one, Clyde,” Jori said, her eyes dancing. She reached up and patted the horse on the neck. “I’ve got to have her! Come now, give me a good price.”
Hammond took his cigar out, examined it thoughtfully as if the price lay there, then shrugged his beefy shoulders. “Couldn’t part with her for less than fifteen hundred.”
“Fifteen hundred dollars!” Gerald Carter was shocked. He was generally shocked at the price of horses, for he knew almost nothing about them. For him, horses were a means of getting from one place to another, and he could never understand how Jori loved them with such passion. “Why, you could buy a nice house for that!”
Jori handed the lines of the mare over to Clyde and took Gerald’s arm. She enjoyed making bargains, and both the men were aware of the rich, racy current of vitality in her. “But you couldn’t ride a house the way I’ve just ridden Princess there.”
“No, but if that animal got sick and died, you’d be out fifteen hundred dollars.”
“Oh, don’t be such a fussbudget, Gerald!” Turning to Hammond, Jori said, “I’ll think about it, Clyde. You’ll have to do a little bit better on the price.”
“Not for this animal, Miss Jori,” Hammond shook his head woefully. “I’ll be losing money on her as it is.”
“That’ll be the day when you lose money on a horse! Come along, Gerald.”
The two left, and as they made their way toward the buggy that waited over by the stable, Jori spoke enthusiastically about the speed and the beauty of the mare. “She’s exactly what I want, Gerald. Surely you can see that.”
“She costs too much.”
Gerald handed her into the buggy, then walked around and got inside. He took up the lines, but before he spoke to the horse, he turned to her. “You know, Jori, this has been a bad year for business. A lot of them have gone down. You need to be more careful about money.”
“You worry too much.” Jori suddenly reached over, took his chin, and turning his head to face her, she gave him a light kiss. “After we’re married I’ll be demanding all kinds of expensive things.”
Gerald could only grin in a doubtful fashion. He knew the two of them were very different and, at times, felt uneasy about how they would get on. But now the dance of laughter in her green eyes and the humor in the set of her lips caught at him. “I expect that’s your plan. But it won’t be like that. You can do as you please before we’re married, but afterward I will expect you to be a beautiful wife, meek and humble.”
Jori was feeling exuberant after her ride and paid no heed to Gerald’s warning. She reached over and took the line from him. “Let me drive,” she said.
“You drive too fast.”
“There’s no such thing as driving too fast.” Jori spoke to the horse sharply and slapped the lines against his back, and the two were thrown backward as the horse leaned forward suddenly against the harness.
The ride home was quicker than if Gerald had been driving. When they pulled into the circular driveway in front of her home, Gerald heaved a sigh of relief. “Well, we didn’t get killed.” He took the lines from her, but for a moment he sat there looking at the house. “That’s a beautiful home your family has.”
“Been in our family forever. My great-grandfather built it for my great-grandmother. He was very romantic.”
The structure was a very large three-story frame house painted a lucent white, featuring a gambrel roof and a large interior chimney. The windows were all narrow but very long with dark green shutters flanking each side, and the front entrance to the house featured fluted white columns on either side of the massive door.
Gerald admired the house momentarily, then turned to her and said, “Jori, I really don’t think you should buy that horse. Have you been reading the papers lately? A lot of businesses have gone belly-up.”
“Things are going to get better. They always do.”
“Well, you will have the horse, I suppose. Your father hasn’t refused you anything since you were six years old.”
“Oh, long before that! I’m totally spoiled.”
Gerald resisted the temptation to agree wholeheartedly. Instead he put his arms around her and drew her close. “When are you going to set the date, Jori?”
Jori saw he was serious. She often wished that he was not quite so serious. Spending your life with a man who had so little sense of humor was one problem with marrying Gerald Carter. On the other hand, he came from a good family with a great deal of money, more than the Haydens by far! His courtship had been sedate enough, and she had been vaguely disappointed that he was not more daring. It would have given her pleasure to have repelled all borders, so to speak. But he was the more proper one of the two of them.
“I’ll marry you when the leaves fall.”
“You string me up and let me twist in the wind.” Gerald shook his head ruefully. “You mean the maple leaves that fall early or the pine tree that never has leaves?”
“That’s for you to find out.”
Gerald reached forward and put his arms around her, and she surrendered herself to his kiss. It was not the kind of kiss that she enjoyed although she could not have explained why. There was something almost passive in Gerald’s kisses, and he was always the first one to break them off. Jori had a wild impulse to throw her arms around his neck and grind her mouth against his and put herself against him, but she knew this would confuse him.
When Gerald drew back, he said, “I’ll be looking forward to the ball at the Hanfords.”
“Don’t buy any new clothes.You always outshine me. I’ve got a new dress, and I want to be the prettiest of the two of us.”
“You haven’t answered me about the date of our marriage. I’d like an answer.”
“Don’t be impatient.” She patted his arm and said,“Don’t get out. I can make it.” She jumped out of the buggy and gave him a brilliant smile. “Remember, try not to dress more spectacularly than I do, Gerald.”
“All right,” he said, taking her literally. “I’ll just wear one of my old suits.”
Jori watched him as he drove off, and a sense of disappointment came to her. I wish one time, she thought, he would do something totally unexpected—even shocking. A shadow touched her eyes, but she turned aside thinking of Princess and what fun she would have with her new toy.
* * *
LELAND HAYDEN HAD ONCE remarked, “It’s hard to decide which is the messiest, my daughter Carleen’s room or the way she dresses.” Indeed, Carleen Hayden, at the age of ten, was in a constant state of disarray. She cared not at all for clothes and was perfectly content to wear some old clothes that her brother Mark had worn as a teenager. Since she spent every available moment outside, the party dresses and fine clothes that her sister Jori insisted on buying for her were mostly unused.
Carleen sat at a table while the pencil in her left hand moved over the paper before her. She wrote as she did everything else—with great enthusiasm. This made for rather sloppy handwriting, which was a matter of despair for her tutor, Mrs. Elmus Satterfield. Mrs. Satterfield sat beside Carleen watching her pupil’s progress with something like despair. She was a tall, angular woman with sharp features, especially her nose. It had a red point on it constantly, hot weather or cold, and her eyes were sharp as ice picks. She seemed to have only one dress, which she wore every time she came to the Hayden mansion to give Carleen her lessons. The dress was dark gray with a high neck and long sleeves. The bodice fit loosely as did the skirt that came down to her ankles, and the entire dress was free from any decoration. Her hair was approximately the color of old burlap sacks that had been left out in the weather too long, and she kept it bound tightly up in a huge bun in the back. Her only ornament was a bosom watch that she looked at from time to time where it was pinned on her flat chest.
Occasionally Mrs. Satterfield looked around the room with an air of obvious displeasure. Carleen’s room was full but not of bedroom furniture. Every available space was taken up with “trophies,” including bird nests that covered the top of her bureau, a cage with a canary that twittered almost constantly, and a glass tank with turtles over by the window. Carleen had fished them out of the river and fed them with worms dug out of the garden. Hanging from the ceiling were several hornets’ nests. Just beside the door on a table was a stuffed fox, his eyes looking bright and eager. Her bird’s egg collection filled the drawers of the chest on which the fox kept eternal vigilance. Other trophies included various unusual plants stuffed into glass bottles and any sort of vessel that Carleen could find. The bed itself was the only piece of furniture in the room that was not covered with part of Carleen’s collection.
As Carleen leaned over, her hand moving rapidly, Mrs. Satterfield saw her tongue emerge from the left side of her mouth. “Pull your tongue back in your mouth, girl!” she said sharply.
Carleen blinked and gave the woman a resentful look. Her hair, as red as hair can possibly be, she hated—though she liked her green eyes. Actually, this made a fine combination of coloring. She had gotten the red hair from her mother, and she spent some time each day bemoaning the fact that she didn’t have black hair like her sister Jori.
“I don’t know why I have to know all this old stuff, Mrs. Satterfield.”
“A young lady needs to know a great deal about the world in which she lives.” Mrs. Satterfield leaned over and put the tip of her bony fingertip on the paper. “And this is not correct. The American Revolution was not fought in 1666. It was 1776.”
A grimace twisted Carleen’s lips to one side. “Well, what difference does it make? Who cares what dead peop
le did? I’m interested in people that are alive.” She turned to Mrs. Satterfield and said, “Why can’t I learn something that I need to know?”
“And what do you propose that might be since you don’t think history is a needful subject?”
“Well,” Carleen said thoughtfully and put the end of the pencil in her mouth. “My sister’s getting married. She’ll be having babies. It would help me to know something about that. How do babies get born?”
The ordinary shade of Elmus Satterfield’s face was something like the color of an aged biscuit. Now it turned scarlet. “That’s—that’s not for me to say. And take that pencil out of your mouth. Where are your other pencils?”
“Over there in that box on the table.”
Mrs. Satterfield rose from the chair and moved over to the wall. She had to move a dried frog from the top of the box, and she did this simply by brushing it to one side. She opened the box and reached in, turning to say, “And your pencils are never sharp.”
Suddenly a piercing scream broke from Mrs. Satterfield’s throat. It seemed to increase in pitch so that it filled the room. As she screamed, she fell backward waving her hands wildly in an erratic fashion.
“What’s the matter?” Carleen yelped, getting to her feet.
Mrs. Satterfield could not answer. Her mouth was opening and closing, but all that came out was unintelligible garbage. “The box!” she cried.
Carleen walked over to the box and grinned. She reached in and pulled out a small green snake no more than twelve inches long. It was an attractive green color, almost the color of Carleen’s eyes. “It’s just an old garter snake,” she said. “It wouldn’t hurt anybody.”
But Mrs. Satterfield was not in the least interested in hearing that. She was moving rapidly toward the door when it abruptly opened and a tall, strongly built woman entered. She was wearing a crisp black dress, and her left hand was somehow crippled so that it made a closed fist. She had a wealth of light brown hair and a pair of striking gray eyes, well shaped and set far apart. Her features were pleasant, but now she was staring at Mrs. Satterfield with consternation. “What in the world are you screaming about, Mrs. Satterfield?”
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