American Dreams (34 page)

But there were others. There were always others. Temple tried to shut her eyes to them as they plodded, stumbled, and struggled up the long incline. The Blade carried the hobbling boy with an injured foot and an old man hung on to the horse's tail, letting it pull him along. But the rest had to manage on their own as best they could.

At the top, the ground leveled off and the horse stopped. Reluctantly, Temple let go of the saddle horn. When her feet touched the ground, her legs threatened to give way. She briefly leaned against the animal's flanks, taking advantage of its solidness, then looked up at her sister.

"There is nothing wrong with you, Xandra," she accused. "Everyone else has to walk. You should too."

There was no response, but Temple hadn't expected one. She moved away. Later, when they reached the place where they were to camp that night, she saw Xandra walking. And when they pulled out the next morning, her sister was again on foot.

 

 

 

28

 

 

Nashville, Tennessee
 

Early November 1838

 

The Blade hunched his shoulders against the chilling drizzle and held the collar of his coat tightly closed. All day a cold and misty rain had fallen from the leaden clouds overhead. His coat had the musty smell of wet wool, and the penetrating dampness went all the way to the bone. His feet, encased in the mud-soaked leather of his moccasins, felt numb as he trudged alongside his horse. A mother and three small children were piled on its back, one of them a baby a few months younger than his son and ill with a fever.

The crowded wagon ahead of them bumped and bounced over the badly rutted trail. The Blade could hear the faint moans from its cargo of sick and infirm as they were tossed and jarred by the rough passage. The thousands of hooves and feet from the caravans that had traveled over this wagon road before them had chewed up the ground, gouging out jagged furrows and mounding up humps. The steady drizzle slowly turned the trail into a morass of red mud, further impeding their progress and adding to the hardship.

The sheeting mist obscured the road ahead of him. But, with the cavalcade strung out more than a mile, The Blade doubted he could have seen the lead wagons even without the rain. Still, he was certain the first of them had reached the night's campsite outside of the place previously called French Lick and now known as Nashville.

He peered off into the distance, recalling that Andrew Jackson lived nearby. After leaving the presidency, Jackson had returned to his plantation, the Hermitage, outside of Nashville. Ten years ago this very month, he had been elected president. In his inaugural address, Jackson had stated his resolve to remove all the Indian nations to the western lands. Never once had he wavered or compromised in achieving that goal. With the Cherokees now en route, he had finally succeeded.

The Blade wondered if Jackson had ever ridden out to watch their passing caravans. He doubted it. Recently there had been reports that Jackson was in poor health—growing deaf, losing the sight in his right eye, and suffering memory lapses. Supposedly, he was having financial problems, too. Perhaps there was justice after all, The Blade thought wryly. It was certain he would receive no sympathy from the Cherokees.

Beside him, Xandra stumbled over a rut, her foot slipping on the thin layer of slick mud. He tried to catch her as she pitched forward, but his reflexes were too slow, too numbed by the damp cold, and she fell.

"Are you all right?" He crouched next to her.

She nodded affirmatively and tried to push herself up, but her hands slipped in the mud.

"I'll help." When he hooked an arm around her middle to haul her upright, his hand moved over her stomach. Momentarily he froze, feeling its firm, protruding roundness—the distinctive roundness of a woman in the middle months of pregnancy. Carefully, he altered his hold and lifted Xandra to her feet. But she hung her head and refused to look at him, pulling the blanket even farther over her head to hood her face. "Are you with child, Xandra?" He fought to keep his voice level and calm, and not betray the anger inside him.

She nodded her head once, then whispered, "No one must know."

"Xandra." He closed his eyes briefly. "They have to know."
 

"No," she sobbed and pushed away from him to hurry up the trail.

 

By the time the last stragglers arrived at the selected campsite, the drizzle had turned to a slow rain that saturated the ground, leaving not a dry place to sleep nor a dry stick to be found. They gathered wood anyway, cut shavings for kindling from the dry heart, and built small fires beneath the shelter of canvas lean-tos to cook much-needed hot meals and drive out some of the numbing dampness.

The Blade poured more coffee into his tin mug, then set the pot on a flat stone next to the feebly burning fire. In the far corner beneath the sloping canvas roof, Xandra sat huddled in a tight ball beyond the reach of the small fire's glow and heat. She had avoided him ever since The Blade had discovered the secret she had tried to hide beneath the loose folds of her long dress and blanket.

He knew she was there, but it was the canvas flap of a nearby wagon that he watched, waiting for Eliza to emerge. She had gone inside several minutes ago carrying a tin plate of hot mush for Victoria.

Temple ducked under the dripping edge of the lean-to's roof. She glanced his way briefly, then moved to the fire and held out her hands to its rising warmth, shivering convulsively. He wanted to go to her and rub warmth back into her body, but she had made it plain to him, both at the detention camp and on the trail, that she didn't want his company or his affection.

Which made it all the harder for him to accept seeing her talk to that army lieutenant Jed Parmelee. She had to know the man was still in love with her. Temple was many things—willful, headstrong, volatile—but she wasn't blind. Why would she encourage him if it wasn't what she wanted? He was surprised Parmelee wasn't at their campfire tonight. But the night wasn't over yet.

A blanketed figure lifted aside the canvas flap and clambered down from the wagon. The Blade set his cup on the flat top of an upended cask and moved out from beneath the leanto's shelter into the rain. Striding quickly through the sucking mud, he crossed to the wagon, passing Kipp as he returned with an armload of wet firewood. Eliza nearly ran into him in her haste to escape the cold raindrops.

She stopped abruptly when she found him in her path, and she tilted her head up, the blanket slipping back to reveal the tightly curling ringlets of her damp hair. "You startled me," she declared, adding a shaky laugh.

"Sorry." From the wagon came the sound of a racking cough. The Blade glanced toward the flap, then at the plate in Eliza's hand and the rain-diluted mush only half gone. "How is she?"

Eliza hesitated, her shoulders moving faintly in the suggestion of a shrug. "She was jolted around a lot today. And this cold, damp weather ... it seems to aggravate her cough."

He checked the movement Eliza made toward the lean-to. "I need to speak to you privately for a moment."

"Of course." She paused, studying him curiously and losing much of her drawn and tired look in the process. "What about?"

"Xandra. She is with child." He needed the bluntness to take the edge off his anger.

"No." Eliza stared at him in shock, then turned toward the huddled figure tucked deep in the shadows of the lean-to, her expression ranging from sorrow to pity and covering all the shades in between.

"She is frightened and ashamed. She needs a woman. She needs you, Eliza."

He didn't have to say more. Eliza walked past him, slowly at first, then quickening her steps to dash across the mud. When she reached the canvas shelter, she paused and shook the water from her blanket, then laid the plate on the stone next to the fire.

Over and over again the same phrase kept running through her mind:
Poor Xandra, poor, dear Xandra.
It wasn't fair. The girl had suffered enough. They all had. But pity wasn't what she needed, Eliza knew that. She walked slowly over to the girl and crouched down, catching her long skirt up and tucking it under her knees to keep it out of the mud. Xandra bowed her head even lower, the hooding blanket hiding most of her face. She was trembling. Whether from the cold or from fear, Eliza couldn't tell.

"Xandra, I know," she said gently. "The Blade told me." The blanket started to shake harder. "Will you look at me?" When she received no response, Eliza framed Xandra's blanketed head in her hands and forced it up. Tears streamed from Xandra's tightly closed eyes, her chin and lips quivering. "Look at me, please. It is going to be all right."

"No, it isn't," Xandra mumbled.

But Eliza wanted to cry with relief. Those were the first words Xandra had spoken to her since that awful incident had occurred. "Of course it will," she insisted. "No matter what you think, we still love you. We always will."

Xandra opened her eyes, though only to slits veiled with tears. She pressed her lips tightly together, her face contorting and twisting as violent, silent sobs racked her body. With tears now running from her own eyes, Eliza gathered Xandra into her arms and hugged her close, pressing her blanketed head to her shoulder.

"Everybody will know, won't they?" Xandra moaned softly and brokenly. "They will know. I am so ashamed."
 

"Shhh, now. It will be all right."

"They will look at me just like they look at The Blade. They will hate me, too."
 

"No, darling. No."

But Xandra wouldn't listen to her. Eliza let her cry for now and simply held her, rocking back and forth and feeling sorry, sorry for so many things. She felt a hand touch her shoulder and looked up.

"What's wrong?" Temple bent down.

Eliza hesitated, aware that she couldn't leave Temple's question unanswered, and aware that somehow she had to reassure Xandra. She chose her words carefully, trying to satisfy both. "Your sister is going to have a baby."

"She told you that?"

Eliza shook her head and nodded in The Blade's direction. "She thinks we will all hate her now, but I have told her she is being silly. Isn't that right?"

"Yes. Yes, it is," Temple murmured, stunned by her husband's choice of confidantes.

Temple straightened, then slowly turned. The Blade was drinking something and watching her, his rain-wet hair glistening blackly in the firelight. Angry and hurt, she walked over to him.

"Why?" Temple demanded, her voice choking on the thickness in her throat. "Why did you tell Eliza? I am Xandra's sister. Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because ... I believed Eliza could give her the kind of understanding and support that Xandra needed."

"And you thought I couldn't?"

"Not as well as Eliza."

"How would you know?"

"I think I proved my choice was the right one. Your sister needs you, but it is Eliza who is with her. You are standing here talking to me. Why? Because your feelings were hurt. You don't care about anyone's feelings but your own."

"That is not true!"

"You never gave a damn about mine when you left. And you haven't since." He set the cup down and turned to leave her, all in one motion.

She wanted to shout at him that she did care about his feelings. She cared too much. That's why she was so hurt when he hadn't come to see her. And it was also why she went back to her sister and helped Eliza dry her eyes.

 

For three days, they remained at the Nashville encampment, resting from the arduous trek over the Cumberlands. They tended to their sick and injured, repaired their wagons, and purchased more provisions to carry them over the next leg. A cold rain fell two of those days. Not until the third were they able to dry out their clothes and blankets.

With winter approaching and less than a third of the trail traversed, the lack of adequate clothing became obvious. Seized in the summer and forced to march to the detention camps with only the clothes on their backs, the people had little to protect them from the cold but the blankets issued by the government. Some were without shoes, or, like Temple and Eliza with their cloth half-boots, they had holes in the soles and the material was rotting from the mud and streams they had waded through.

Overexertion and fatigue, constant exposure to the elements, lack of rest from trying to sleep on cold wet ground, and a summer spent in deplorable circumstances lowered their resistance. Many were already sick when they started out from Nashville following a northwest course to Kentucky.

Graves began to mark the route, graves of their dead and the dead of the caravans that had preceded them. Near Hopkinsville, a white flag hung limply over a wooden marker painted to look like marble, identifying the grave of White Path, one of their aged leaders. As their detachment passed it, Temple paused with her father to pray for the venerable old man—and for themselves.

The reports filtering back from the contingents ahead of them spoke of discouragement and despair. Many feared the claims for abandoned property they had submitted to the federally appointed commissioners prior to their departure would not be fairly settled, and that they would be cheated out of their just compensation by whites falsely dunning them.

But they had already come more than two hundred miles. There was no turning back. They trudged on, traveling on a road that was sometimes frozen solid and other times a mire of cold mud. And always, it seemed, with a bitter wind blowing in their faces.

 

 

 

29

 

 

Illinois Side of the Mississippi River
 

January 1839

 

The slow, rhythmic thud of the pickax reminded Eliza of the mournful sound of a bass drum beating out a funeral cadence. She watched silently as The Blade, Deu, and Shadrach chiseled a grave out of the frozen, snow-covered ground. Nearby lay the blanket-wrapped body waiting to be interred. Black Cassie knelt beside her dead husband, Ike, and rocked slowly back and forth, ignoring all of Phoebe's attempts to comfort her. Her low moans mingled with the keening sound of the wind.