The Passionate and the Proud

by Vanessa Royall

  Ebenezer caught her staring at the bust. “So I picked the losing side.” He cackled. “So what?”

  “Oh, don’t go feeling sorry for yourself, Ebenezer. We got other problems now. Is that the girl who’s come to take care of me? Bring her over here so’s I can have a look.”

  The voice was coming from a dark bundle in the nearer of the two hammocks. Emmalee felt Ebenezer’s dry, talonlike fingers close on her arm as he guided her back into the wagon, which, even at midday, was dimly lighted. But Emmalee’s eyes adjusted and she saw Mrs. Creel, piled with blankets, looking up at her.

  Emmalee could not stifle a gasp. The woman’s face had most likely once been full, but now folds of gray skin hung from the stark structure of facial bones and her pallor was unearthly. She was wasting away.

  “What’s the matter with you, girl?” Ebenezer cackled. “This here’s my wife, Bernice. She’s a bit under the weather, but she’ll be fine once we get to that good air over the mountains.”

  Didn’t the old man realize—or didn’t he want to admit—the seriousness of his wife’s condition?

  “I’m Emmalee Alden, Mrs. Creel. How do you feel?”

  “Pretty tired all the time. But as long as I get my medicine, there isn’t too much pain.”

  “Medicine?” asked Emmalee.

  “I’ll tell you all about it,” Ebenezer said quickly. “Let’s step to the back of the wagon.”

  “You’re keeping things from me again,” whined the woman.

  “Now, you know that ain’t true, Bernice. Not a’tall.” He took Emmalee’s arm again with his bony hand, leading her away. Throwing open the Conestoga’s canvas flaps, he let down the tailgate, which provided a wide, wooden platform.

  “Have a seat, Emmalee,” he said, easing stiff-jointedly down. Emmalee joined him, her legs swinging free over the edge of the platform. Following Creel’s Conestoga was Lambert Strep’s water wagon, its great weight dragged along by six yoked oxen. Emmalee blinked in the sudden sunlight, noting that Ebenezer appeared quite spry for a man of his years. He wore a white shirt, old but well-tailored trousers, and a wide leather belt of peculiar thickness.

  “I like you, girl,” he said, putting a claw on her shoulder. “I like you right well. Now, let’s talk turkey. Obviously, Bernice is real sick. She’s got her a cancer”—he swatted his concave abdomen with his sticklike hand—“down here, an’ there ain’t much hope. But I don’t want her to know that, see?”

  “I understand.”

  “You do a real good job and”—here he fumbled with his belt, which Emmalee now saw to be notched with narrow, pocketlike openings—“an’ this’ll be yours.” He withdrew a piece of folded paper from one of the slots in his belt and waved it under Emmalee’s nose. It was a one-hundred-dollar bill. This must be what Myrtle Higgins had been hinting about!

  “I’ll do the very best I can,” promised Emmalee, wondering how many notches were in the belt, and how many more bills.

  “All you got to do,” he went on, putting the bill away, “is talk to Bernice when she wants, read her the Bible—she likes the Psalms especially—and give her the medicine when she starts complainin’ about the pain. It’s opium. Got it from an apothecary in Kansas City. It ain’t goin’ to cure her, but it holds the pain down. It’s in a bag in the wagon. I’ll show you. Just mix a spoonful into a glass of water and make her drink it.”

  “I will.”

  “So far, the opium does the trick. But if we ever get a time when it don’t, or when Bernice gets too sick to swallow the stuff, then we’re in big trouble.”

  Emmalee was touched by this hard old man’s devotion to his wife. She imagined the Creels as they might have been when they were young, and thought of all the years they’d been together, caring for each other. Perhaps Myrtle Higgins had had a point. Being alone was no picnic, and it got worse as one grew older.

  “There’s one more thing you have to do,” Creel was saying, “and it’s for me.”

  “Just ask.”

  “You know how Horace is by now, I suspect? He’s pretty much a man of the straight and narrow.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Well, I’m gettin’ on in years, and I’ve gotten used to a little nip now an’ then. Strong waters is what I’m referrin’ to. I promised Horace that I wouldn’t touch a drop—that was one of his conditions for takin’ me an’ Bernice along—but I got a barrel of it stowed on board. Don’t worry. I ain’t gonna get bent out of shape and scream and carry on. But I am gonna drink it. You got to promise not to tell nobody.”

  “I won’t. You have my word.”

  “Good. Ain’t nobody on this train drinks liquor anyway, not that I know of. ’Cept one of the scouts. He’s damn good company for an old codger like me.”

  “Mr. Cassidy?”

  “Hell, no. I’m talkin’ about that smart young feller, sharp as a whip.”

  “I don’t think I know who you mean,” lied Emmalee.

  “Landar’s his name. He’ll be around from time to time. But he won’t pay you no never-mind. You ain’t his type at all.”

  “I’m not?” asked Emmalee, startled. The elderly sometimes took the liberty of making gratuitous judgments, but Ebenezer’s casual dictum caught her off guard.

  “Naw.” Ebenezer cackled. “Landar’s pa was an outlaw an’ his ma was a hoor. So I heard. He’s bright and tough, an’ he’s goin’ on to be a big man in this country one of these years, like Jefferson Davis.”

  “Oh, Davis was splendid,” said Emmalee. “He was fortunate not to have been hanged!”

  “Just had bad luck, that’s all. He was a great man. I’m talkin’ ’bout great men. An’ you’re the sweet, innocent kind of female who ought to marry one of these farmers on the train, settle down, and have a passel of kids.”

  Emmalee was a little offended; Ebenezer Creel was reading her wrong. He didn’t even know her. Who was he to think about marrying her off?

  “Now I’ll show you where Bernice’s medicine is stashed and then you can read her a little something from the Bible.”

  Emmalee went to the chuckwagon and carried a tin of rabbit broth back to Bernice Creel. The sick woman didn’t want any supper at all, but Emmalee convinced her to swallow spoonful after slow spoonful, and even a few bits of broth-soaked bread. Then, with Mrs. Creel asleep and Ebenezer nodding over a tin cup full of his medicine, Emmalee set off toward the campfire, anticipating with pleasure the company of Randy Clay, looking forward with curiosity to the meeting Torquist had called.

  During the nights, the wagons were drawn up into three concentric circles on the prairie. A huge campfire was kindled in the center. No Indians had been encountered as yet, and everybody prayed that none would be, but the tribes that roamed the high plains of Kansas and Colorado were as untamed as they were unpredictable. Ten or fifteen or twenty trains might make the passage west with complete safety, with nary a glimpse of the Red Man, and then for no apparent reason, without provocation, the next expedition would be attacked and decimated. The most-feared predator in these regions was an Arapaho chieftain Fire-On-The-Moon, whose warriors crushed the skulls of children, roasted men over slow flames, and carried women away into violation and servitude.

  So it was rumored, at any rate. Emmalee didn’t believe a word of it. Things that horrible just wouldn’t happen in modern times.

  Anyway, this was not a night designed for rapine or plunder. The sky was cloudless, bedazzled with stars, and a three-quarter moon rose, slowly bathing the plains and the low purple hills in luminous glow. The hint of a fragrant breeze came out of the west, down from the far Rockies, and Emmalee smelled—or imagined that she smelled—a hint of pine in the very air. She walked softly through the dreamy half-darkness and experienced a formless yearning, a tender desire, that quickened her body as pleasure might and shot her soul through with wonder. She remembered—her body remembered—what it had felt like to be pressed close to Val Jannings in the hay-piled sleigh, and—

  “Em! Em, I�
�m over here!’

  Randy. He had washed up and put on a new blue shirt. Without his hat, long blond curls fell almost to his shoulders. He was seated near the campfire, two mugs of coffee on the ground in front of him. He gave Emmalee one of the cups when she joined him.

  “Thought you weren’t goin’ to make it.”

  “I had to wait until Mrs. Creel went to sleep. I’m taking care of her. Thank you for the coffee.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  “Did anything happen yet?” asked Emmalee, sipping the coffee. It was cold. She smiled as she realized that Randy had arrived early, so as not to miss her.

  “No. I heard that Mr. Torquist and the other scouts are waitin’ on Garn Landar. He rode off and hasn’t come back yet.”

  “Is that right?” asked Emmalee, wondering what Garn was up to now.

  “You know, Em, I was thinking…”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s too bad about that two-year contract you signed with Mr. Torquist.”

  “Don’t I know it!”

  “That’s a heap of money. You know it had occurred to me that if two people were to claim sections of land right next to each other, that would be three hundred and twenty acres. And that’d be the foundation of a very substantial farm. It’d produce a big cash crop.”

  “It certainly would,” said Emmalee, turning to look at him. She thought she knew the two people he had in mind, a suspicion he confirmed when he met her gaze with his serious blue eyes.

  “You know, Em,” he said, “I think what I want even more than land is a good solid home and a family.”

  “I think most everybody wants those things.”

  “Do you, Em?” He was looking at her intently. “Do you want them?”

  “Of course I do.”

  There was no mistaking Randy’s intentions. He wanted to see if she shared his kind of dreams, ambitions, desires. And Emmalee did, but…but not yet. He was sitting there next to her, holding his coffee cup, half smiling, his physical presence very appealing and even comforting. She liked being with him, felt flattered by his attentions, and, yes, she sensed that he would be a loving husband and a good father. But, she thought, I’m not ready yet to be a wife or a mother. I’ve barely had time to be a girl, much less to grow into womanhood. A husband, a home, children: These were pleasing but shadowy insubstantialities in a vague, glowing future. She wasn’t as ready as Randy for those things, but she didn’t quite know how to say so without discouraging his interest in her.

  “After Mr. Torquist gets through talking to us,” Randy was saying, “why don’t you and I take a little stroll out onto the prairie? It’s a real nice night…”

  Emmalee considered her response. A stroll in the moonlight with a man who looked like a young blond angel would not be hard to bear, and it was a wonderful night…

  “I reckon everybody’s here who could make it,” proclaimed Horace Torquist then, striding in front of the campfire. “Let me discuss with you a few important matters so you can get to your bedrolls for a good night’s sleep.”

  The crowd, which numbered upward of four hundred people, quieted to listen. They were good, decent, hardworking people—the women in bonnets and kerchiefs, the men in overalls or rude trail garb—and obedience to authority was a part of their creed. Torquist, by virtue of will, money, bearing, and education exerted upon them a natural dominance, which they both welcomed and required.

  There was Lambert Strep, of Tennessee. And Jasper Heaton, an Indiana farmer down on his luck. Virgil Waters and his wife, Elvira, formerly of Maine, regarded Torquist almost as if he were a man of the cloth. Elvira held their two-year-old son over the heads of the people for a moment, so he could see Torquist there at the fire. Lawrence Redding, the blacksmith, was present, and so were Wayne and Mildred Reed, failed Kentucky pig farmers, and Willard Buttlesworth, who dreamed of founding a sawmill in Olympia to replace the one that had burned in Wisconsin. All these people, and many more, had come to St. Joe from across the eastern United States, and now they stood, past lives cast off, the future beyond grasp, on a patch of the Kansas prairie, their dreams, frail or vibrant, pinned to the destiny of Horace Torquist. If he had “gone sour” on the people of Galena, Ohio, as Randy Clay had suggested, then over four hundred people whose lives had gone sour in one way or another were here with him on a quest to forge a better world, to build a singing dream.

  “First off,” called Torquist, “I want you to meet our scouts. We had to leave St. Joe in such a hurry that getting to know each other wasn’t possible.”

  The four men Emmalee had seen earlier that day stepped forward, and Torquist gave their names. Red Cassidy and Hap Ryder, J. C. Steele and Tip Mexx. Each man nodded grimly, outlined against sundown, reddened by flickering campfire light.

  “Randy Clay also scouts for us,” said Torquist, locating Randy by the fire, showing a certain surprise when he spotted Emmalee there too, “and another of our scouts, Garn Landar, is out there somewhere on the plains, doing his job even as I speak. I’ve called you all together,” Mr. Torquist said, “for the purpose of making our journey a success. And, as we are all aware, success means beating Burt Pennington to Olympia.”

  The people gave a small cheer. They were not the kind, by nature or training, to show emotion readily. The cheer was a show of fortitude and spirit.

  “First of all, water is getting to be more of a problem than it was. Until we reach the Smoky Hill River, which should only be three or four more days, there will be no bathing.”

  A small groan arose, but the wagonmaster waved the protest aside.

  “The horses and oxen need the water,” he pointed out. “If they don’t get it, none of us survive. Also, beginning tomorrow, we will no longer be stopping for a midday meal. We can’t afford the time. Burt Pennington, you see, has swung north off the trail into rough country, and this is a God-given chance to overtake him. We’ll get first crack at supplies and fresh animals in Denver, and after that—”

  Torquist was interrupted by the sound of hoofbeats on the prairie. The sound grew louder and louder—a powerful horse urged onward at top speed—and then Garn Landar came galloping into camp astride his magnificent black. He pulled up at the campfire, reined his horse to a prancing halt, and leaped down from the saddle. The horse gleamed with sweat, and so did Garn. He nodded to Torquist.

  “Horace, we better talk,” Garn said.

  Emmalee saw that Garn had removed his buckskin jacket. His tight, black riding trousers were soaked with the sweat of the horse, and his expensive, ivory-colored shirt stuck to his own sweat-soaked skin. The single vacant space stood out starkly in his silver hatband.

  “What’s it about?” Torquist demanded.

  “If I could just have a private word…” Garn suggested.

  “This is a community,” Torquist preached. “And it is as a community that we stand or fall. I have just been describing the providential boon with which we have been visited. I refer, of course, to Burt Pennington’s alteration of route…”

  “All right,” Garn said, “but the community better know that Pennington pulled off the trail because Chief Fire-On-The-Moon and his Arapaho are lying in wait for us up ahead.”

  “I don’t believe it!” Torquist cried, as the scouts looked at one another in alarm and the people exchanged expressions of consternation.

  “It’s true,” Garn said.

  “Hold on just a minute here, Landar,” interrupted Tip Mexx, who wore a long knife in his boot and a longer one at his belt. “Did you actually see any of these here Indians?”

  “Yes, and so did Otis, the guy who scouts for Pennington. We can’t get to Olympia, first, last, or in between, if we’re dead. I recommend we head north and avoid a clash with Fire-On-The-Moon.”

  “No!” cried Horace Torquist. “This may be our one and only chance of overtaking Pennington!”

  Emmalee noticed that Cassidy had squared off, facing Garn, and that his hand hovered just above the butt of his revolver. �
�It was well known in St. Joe that you were going to scout for Pennington. I smell something fishy about what you’re saying.”

  “Is that true?” Torquist asked Garn. “You were planning to scout for Pennington? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Garn kept his eye on Cassidy. “A man looking for a job doesn’t exactly advertise his firings,” he told the wagonboss. “But what I say is true. I’ve observed Arapaho. They’re up ahead, all right.”

  “He’s a liar,” Cassidy said, making the accusation that no man could allow to stand lest he forfeit his right to honor. “Me an’ the boys guarantee there ain’t no redskins up ahead.”

  Cassidy’s hand dangled over the handle of his gun. The other scouts nodded.

  Emmalee felt the tense silence of the crowd, sensed also the acute tension of Randy beside her. He said nothing. She was afraid of what would happen. Garn was young, fast, and no stranger to violence. He would draw his weapon and blow Red Cassidy’s head off.

  But he did not.

  “We’ve got enough problems as it is without fighting among ourselves,” he said. “I’ve done my job. I’ve warned you about the Arapaho. They may leave us alone. You know where to find me if they don’t.”

  With that, he turned and led his horse away into the gathering darkness.

  “Damn coward,” muttered Cassidy, grinning.

  “I believe the matter has been settled then,” decreed Torquist. “We’ll push on. Go to your wagons now and get some rest. But just to be on the safe side, make sure that no one wanders away from the wagons. Not for any reason.”

  His followers complied, but a pall of fear hung over the encampment.

  “Landar won’t dare stay around after what happened,” observed Randy. “It was incredible the way he backed off when Cassidy faced him down.”

  “He probably just didn’t want to hurt anybody,” suggested Emmalee.

  “Come on, you know better than that. Why would he let Cassidy call him a liar unless he is one? And a coward to boot.”

  He was walking Emmalee back to the Creels’ wagon. She wanted to check on Mrs. Creel before going to her own bedroll. In truth, she was puzzled. She’d already judged that Garn was different from other men—more recklessly daring than most, certainly—thus his retreat from a situation in which reckless courage ought to have served him well was more than a little puzzling. Once again she had an inkling that there was more to him than he let on, something she’d sensed earlier when Garn had spoken of finding something to care about.