Night Fires in the Distance

by Sarah Goodwin

  “How do you do it?” I asked. “All the work, the unending work. I’ve fair killed myself setting up my house and it’s still a board floor and a door away from habitability. Then there’s wood to cut and the barn to build and hay to get in for my mustangs…how, how do you manage to keep on with it day after day?”

  She gave me a strange look and for a moment I thought I’d pushed the bounds of my disguise too far. After a second’s pause she set down her beaker of tea and laid a hand on my arm.

  “When work is all there is between you and hunger, you find a way to get it done. Besides, sometimes you get a nice bit of butter on your bread, or a side of bacon, or a clean filled tick – and it reminds you why you work the way you do, to make them out of nothing.”

  I took her words seriously and after I’d seen her off on her way back to the house, through the waving grass that chirped with a full complement of insect life, I sat down and contemplated the hinge she’d made. When had I ever made something out of nothing? Only Charlie, and he had been taken away from me so quickly.

  Fear surged in me as I thought of him, of his tiny, motionless body. It made my hands shake and I looked down at them, clenching the fingers tight. Once more I felt the dread of his approach, the rising of the hairs on my neck as if he stood behind me. Even thinking of the possibility had my heart beating out of my chest. Even death could not inspire such despair; Charles could do far worse things.

  Chapter Twelve

  Cecelia

  At the end of my first month as a settler I had a home for myself and one for my mustangs, who I had named Edgar and Smythe, the last names of two girls I’d hated at school. My mood was crushed, for I’d seen in the building of things that my lot would be harder than just poking seeds into the ground and reaping succulent vegetables and ripe fruits. It was all very well to claim a piece of unsettled land from the savages, but keeping hold of it, farming it, looked a grave lot indeed. I began to understand why Deene was so prickly, he was on the knife edge of prosperity and going broke.

  My home was a mess, there were dirty pans to wash, and laundry to do. For the first time I began to understand the sheer weight of Laura’s work, and how Deene was a lucky man to have her to keep things neat at home.

  It took me two days to set the place to rights and those two days were filled with failures. Firstly I burnt my hand heating washing water, then I chipped an enamel mug that I’d bought new. I gouged my dirt floor with the heavy wash tub and Laura came upon me as the soap I’d been mashing with water slipped out of my hands, bowl and all, to spill all down my trousers and onto the grass.

  “For God’s sake!” I kicked the wash tub. “How did she do it?” Our girl at home had been whipcord thin and as vacant as a darkened house, yet she had managed these tasks like the donkey going into Bethlehem, never faltering, always keeping on.

  I heard Laura laugh and turned to catch her covering her mouth with her hand. I glared at her.

  “I’m starting to think I was not made for this,” I admitted.

  “It’ll come.” She came over and picked up the bowl, “I was just coming across to see if you needed anything, with the house. But it looks good and finished.”

  “I wanted a puncheon floor,” I admitted, thinking of those split logs underfoot, warm and solid and clean.

  “Wants don’t go far out here.”

  “Probably because they die of thirst.”

  Her smile was smaller, rueful. “While Will was hunting he met one of the men from town, heard some land on the other side of us has been claimed by a man from Texas. Jamison Neaps.”

  Another man to be wary of. It was the price I paid for not being able to move further west and cope with the solitude there. Outwardly I nodded my head in interest.

  “Do they speak well of him?”

  She considered. “They say he leaves a good farm behind him in Texas, managed by his brother, so he knows his business. He has a woman with him…a native woman.”

  “As a slave?”

  She shook her head. “As his wife, common-law. A lot of men do it. I met a woman like that when we were coming from Ohio, wore dresses and cooked corncake the same as any white woman.”

  I was shocked, and in a moment I saw Laura take a small step back from me and smooth her sacking apron. She’d caught herself, I saw, because she realised she was gossiping with a man, and angry with herself for doing so.

  “Better get back, Will’s off getting wood for winter, but he’ll be back soon.”

  “How are the children?”

  She tipped her head a little to one side. “Well. Though Beth’s gone sickly. Still, she’s a tough thing.”

  I nodded. “Well, I hope she gets better soon.”

  Laura smiled, and we parted company. Just hearing another voice had lifted my spirits and to see a smile directed at me almost had me in tears. My talks with Franklyn had been less comforting since the building of the house. More often than not I ranted to him, asked him how he had missed my unhappiness, how could he have failed to see how much I hated and feared my husband? I knew, deep down, that he would side with Charles against me, a mere woman telling tales, and that made me feel lonelier than ever. I was glad Laura had come to call.

  I did my washing with increased vigour, in a better mood for having seen a friendly face. Cutting wood was another job that I’d need to do before winter and there was no time like the present. I hitched up the mustangs, only making two mistakes with the harnesses, and drove them warily away from the soddie.

  “To think Smythe, that I used to sit and read of an afternoon, under the arbour, with tea and warm scones.” The horse twitched its ears but offered no comment.

  Rocking on the hard seat of the schooner, dust trailing behind me, I rubbed a roughened hand over my sunburnt face. It was likely that I’d never wear a dress again, clean or otherwise. No woman would be allowed to own land and farm it herself. Besides, even in trousers I was afraid Charles would find me, I didn’t have the courage to be myself again. The next person to see me as Cecelia would most likely be my undertaker.

  It was a fair ride out to the creek bottoms, and once there I drove along beside the ravine until I found a broad ramp of earth that led down to the water. Having backed the mustangs down it gingerly, I took out my rifle and my new axe, and set about finding my first tree.

  To call them trees was rather overstating them, they were more woody shrubs than full trees. I’d heard of the fires that gripped the prairie if but one fire or lantern was left unattended, eating up mile after mile of grass and homes and families. Perhaps those fires were the reason the trees were so small, if they’d grown to the top of the ravine, the fire would have taken them.

  I’d envisioned myself felling a tree with a few hard blows. Evidently the muscle of my imagination was better developed than those of my body. It took me a hail of blows to get even halfway through a single trunk and once I’d caught my breath, begun again and finally felled the thing, there were branches to strip, and lengths to cut off, and then the whole lot had to be loaded into the schooner.

  The horses whickered for their freedom but I ignored them. I’d had enough trouble getting them hitched to the schooner, I was not going to free them only to have a wolf come upon us. I wanted a chance of a swift escape.

  I cut more wood, moving slower as my palms began to blister, and my back started to ache. Angry at my own weakness I put more energy into swinging the axe, and had a good pile of wood in the schooner by the time I had to admit defeat.

  I sat down by the rear wheel, leaning my back against it, the rifle in my lap. What would it be like in the winter, I wondered, not speaking to anyone for months instead of days? I didn’t want to think about it too much, the idea of it made me want to run straight back to town.

  The scrub across the creek parted and before I could jump or make a sound, a deer had made its way to the creek. It was a large animal, not the first I’d seen, but the only one I’d been so close to. While Cecelia held her breath a
t its beauty, the part of James Clappe that resided in me said, ‘shoot it you idiot, that’s meat you’ll need to survive’.

  The rifle came up and I aimed. The deer glanced up, I fired.

  It took me a while to drag the body through the creek and up into the schooner and by then the disgust I felt for its bleeding, warm corpse had faded a little through familiarity as it had fallen on me twice in the lifting. I knew nothing about skinning or gutting a deer or how to preserve its meat for winter without help. It would be wasted. Perhaps Laura would accept half of the meat in exchange for her help with the butchering.

  As I drew the rocking schooner up by the Deene soddie, I saw that their wagon box was still absent; William hadn’t yet returned from collecting his own wood. It was probable that he would have to chop a great number of trees, to cook and boil water for such a big family.

  I climbed down from the seat just as Thomas came running from the house.

  “Mr Clappe, Beth’s sick.”

  “How bad is she?” I asked.

  “It’s the fever. She wasn’t so bad this morning, but it’s worse now.” Thomas was pale and I guessed that he’d been sitting by his sister, feeling helpless and waiting for his father to return.

  “Will?” Laura came to the door, her skirt wet on one side, with what I couldn’t tell, “James! Beth’s got the fever, she needs quinine but we never bought any.”

  Neither had I. It hadn’t crossed my mind to bring back anything other than castor oil.

  “I need to get her to town,” Laura said, “Will has the wagon. He should’ve been back by now.”

  “Get her,” I said, “Thomas, get the deer off the back of the schooner,” I ran around and started flinging the wood onto the ground. “It’s too heavy to go fast.”

  I couldn’t see if Laura had gone for Beth, but Thomas was already dragging the deer away. I had most of the wood off when Laura returned, cradling Beth in her arms. I leapt from the back of the schooner and took Thomas by the arm.

  “You take care of your sisters, make a start on that deer and your father will be home before you know it. You have a gun?”

  He shook his head. “Just an axe.”

  Neither would be much use to him if danger came calling.

  “I daren’t leave the baby,” Laura said and I saw for the first time how pale she was under her layer of dust.

  “Go,” I said and she ran back to the house to fetch Nora. I knew that if we were attacked by wolves or Indians I would hardly be able to protect myself, let alone Laura and her two children.

  “Thomas, you’re in charge until your father comes, understood?”

  Laura came hurrying with the baby in a sling. She’d propped Beth on the seat in the schooner and now climbed up and put her arms around her, talking softly. I climbed up and took the reins.

  As I turned the schooner and started in the direction of town, I dearly hoped that all four of us would return.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Laura

  I should’ve been praying to God to spare my daughter, but all I could do was curse a bottle of whiskey that’d already been drunk up and pissed back into the ground. If it weren’t for that whiskey or Rachel’s damn gilded buttons, we could have afforded the quinine. I would’ve given up the cook stove and endured cooking in the lean-to and chilblains all through the winter if it would’ve spared my daughter.

  James stopped the mustangs at his soddie and ran to get a bottle of castor oil, I dosed Beth with it as we started on our way to town. It would take hours to get there. I tried to remember what it’d been like for Will when he’d had the ague. There’d been the aches, the chills, and I cursed myself for not spotting it in Beth when she’d started crying from the cold. Her bowls were loose, purging the sickness.

  Night was coming fast. James wasn’t too good with horses, but he had his mustangs going as fast as he could. I wished we could have left the schooner behind and ridden, but I never would have been able to keep Beth stable, weak as she was.

  That castor made her stomach worse but we couldn’t stop. I made a napkin of my apron. The smell was enough to strip paint, but James didn’t say a word.

  “Shush now,” I murmured to Nora as she wailed in hunger.

  “You know,” James said after long minutes of Nora’s screaming, “it’s so dark out here, I can hardly see you.”

  He was giving me a kind of promise that he wouldn’t look and I took it gratefully, putting Nora to my breast and letting her suck. Beth was weak in my other arm, burning up with fever. Her lips were so very dry, like grasshopper wings.

  Never had a journey taken so long. I swear we could have made it to Ohio twice in the time it took to reach town. No sooner had the schooner rolled to a stop outside the pharmacist’s house than James leapt down to bang upon the door, shouting for the owner.

  I carried Beth, Nora anchored to my chest. Beth was out like a drunk, her head resting on my shoulder, skin hot and dry as a bake stone. The door of the pharmacy opened, and a small man in a nightshirt appeared with a lamp. His face, angry at all the hubbub, changed when James told him about Beth. He motioned us inside.

  “I’ve given her castor oil,” I said, laying Beth on the table in a little room behind the shop. Around us were bottles and jars, a desk piled with books and papers.

  “She’ll need quinine, something to bring down the fever,” the man shook his head, “I’ll do what I can, but there’s no doctor here you see.”

  The pharmacist, Greaves, roused his wife and together they gathered fresh rags to clean Beth and the medicines to administer. They made her a bed by the hearth in hopes of breaking her fever. It was all I could do to change her soiled napkin and hold her in my arms, my hand keeping a cool cloth on her face.

  Mrs Greaves, her face pale and all her dark hair tangled with sleep, brought me bread and butter, but I couldn’t eat it, couldn’t do more than sip a cup of tea with my free hand. She sat beside me, her large thighs quaking beneath her nightgown as she lowed herself to the rug.

  “Dear, it’ll be alright, Arnold knows the fever, he nursed two of our own children through it when they were only small,” she showed me pictures in a small brass locket, one of a stiff faced man, the other a small boy, with a halo of white-blond hair like cotton.

  “But he…” I said, knowing from that old picture that the boy had never grown up, never sat for another photograph.

  Mrs Greaves nodded sadly, “He’s never lost a child to fever since Rupert. We were new to America then, he didn’t know much about the medicine here, the herbs that grow. We were low on stocks, didn’t have the supplies to treat our own sons. After Rupert died Arnold was desperate, rode to a trading post and begged some Indians for help. If they hadn’t been the friendly sort Lord knows what might’ve happened. They helped him find what he needed to save John, my dear, and it’s what’ll save your little girl. Even now, my John’s in New York State, apprenticed to a doctor.”

  I clasped her doughy hand in mine and for a moment, then Beth cried out at the pains in her legs and I went to rub them, trying to soothe her.

  When William had suffered the ague and fever, he’d recovered from the worst of it soon enough, but the fever that had troubled him raged in Beth. Her whole body was dry and hot, wracked with shivers as the chills set in.

  Mr Greaves kept her dosed with quinine, castor oil and a tea to help with the fever. His wife bathed her and helped cleaned up her mess. Through it all I couldn’t leave her side.

  At some point in that long night, James wrapped a blanket round my shoulders and sat with me. He didn’t move save to freshen the rag which cooled Beth’s head, or to bring me more tea, laced with brandy.

  “Laura, perhaps you ought to get some sleep,” Mrs Greaves said, laying a hand on my shoulder. She’d prepared a stack of clean rags and a basin of cool water to wash Beth with.

  “I’m not so tired.”

  “I burnt myself out watching over my boys when there was nothing I could do. I know it’s hard
to turn your eyes from her for a minute, but I will take good care of her while you rest.”

  I shook my head. I had to watch her or who knew what would happen.

  “Maybe just go outside for a moment,” James suggested quietly, “get some air and wash your face, you’ll feel better.” He touched my hand. “It’s something my mother used to say.”

  I needed to use the outhouse, still I hesitated.

  “Mrs Greaves will come and get you if anything changes,” James said firmly. “I need some air myself.”

  He stood and took my hand, helping me to my feet. My legs shook after sitting so long, crouched by the bed they’d made for Beth by the fire. I walked with him to the rear of the little room, through the door into the kitchen and out into the small garden beyond. I went straight to the little outhouse around back of the garden. When I came out, I went to the garden pump and washed my face with a handful of cold water. My eyes felt sandy and my dress was sticking to me.

  James was sitting on a low stone wall by the pump.

  “I’m so sorry this happened,” he said. I could see the worry on his face. Too young to have whiskers grow over night. “I only wish I’d never gone to cut wood, that I might have been there when she was taken sick.”

  “It’s not your job to be there,” I said, my voice cracking from thirst. How long had it been since I’d had a cup of tea pressed on me? It felt like days.

  “I feel as if it is,” he said, “since I’ve been on the prairie…you’ve shown me such kindness, and your children…I feel as if I know them all. I would never have any harm come to them, if I could help it.”

  He was so earnest. I could see how young he was, thinking that what was happening to my little Beth was a rare thing. I’d lost children before, for no reason anyone could give me. I’d known other children bit by snakes and dead in a moment, or caught by all manner of illnesses. Travelling west we’d seen little graves as often as we saw motherless families.