Brides of Prairie Gold (11 page)

Jane started talking before she reached them. "I've spent all my life in towns. Before this, I'd never ridden in a covered wagon, had never driven oxen, never cooked outside or slept outside. I've known hardship, but nothing like this!"

Hilda slid a quick look at Perrin, then backed away. "I'll finish packing for the crossing." She hurried toward the wagons.

"I would never have agreed to join this train had I known that I'd be doing all the work! I was told I would have a wagon partner who would share in the duties!"

"Jane"

"I can't continue. I'm exhausted! And look at my hands." Jerking off her gloves, she extended shaking palms smeared with the bloody fluid of broken blisters. "And look at this!" She held out her skirt to show Perrin burned spots along the hem where sparks from open fires had charred the wool. "Everyone else gets a rest from driving the oxen, gets to walk a bit behind the wagons and visit awhile. But not me. Winnie can't drive, couldn't be trusted to drive if she would try. And everyone else takes turns doing the cooking or the laundry or setting up the tent or milking in the mornings or baking or searching for firewood. But I have to do it all because Winnie Larson can't do anything !" Her hands flew up to cover her face, and her shoulders shook. Her voice cracked and sank to a whisper. "This isn't fair!"

"No, it isn't," Perrin gently agreed. Stepping forward, she hesitated, then placed an arm around Jane's trembling shoulders and led her toward an abandoned water barrel. When Jane was seated, Perrin knelt at her side.

"It's only been three weeks, but I'm so exhausted that I'm afraid I'll fall asleep at the reins. I'm too tired even to eat. Last night rain washed inside our tent and soaked our bedrolls, and I slept through it." Jane covered her eyes with a shaking hand. "Then this morning, I had to spread out our blankets and sheets to dry. But it's going to snow or rain again and they'll never get dry. Tonight we'll sleep in cold wet blankets, and it's just the last the last I just can't do this!"

Dropping her hand from her face, she gripped Perrin's fingers so hard that Perrin couldn't suppress a wince. "Please. I can't go back, I just can't! Oh, God, I don't know what to do! I can't go back, but I can't make it all the way to Oregon doing the work of two people!"

Withdrawing her hands from Jane's grip, Perrin patted her shoulder. "I'll speak to Winnie again," she said, frowning toward the line of wagons. Winnie Larson sat on the tailgate of the wagon she shared with Jane. The distance was too great for Perrin to see what object Winnie held in her hand, but it seemed to absorb her attention to the exclusion of all else. She appeared oblivious to the frenzied preparations occurring around her. She wore no shawl or hat, apparently unaware of the wind and cold.

"Talking does no good," Jane cried, anguish lifting her voice. "You must know that by now! The only thing that's going to help is for someone to take the laudanum away from her!"

Perrin's head jerked up. "What are you talking about?"

"Winnie is a laudanum addict!" Jane wiped her eyes and returned Perrin's incredulous stare. "You didn't know?" Sudden confusion drew her eyebrows together. "But I thought you all know each other, so I assumed"

"Oh, Jane. You thought we burdened you with Winnie because none of us wanted the extra work of taking care of her?"

When Jane nodded, carefully watching her expression, Perrin shook her head and took the other woman's hands in hers.

"I swear to you, this is the first I've heard about Winnie and laudanum. I know Winnie's father is the chemist in Chastity, and I've run into Winnie and her mother in Brady's Mercantile, but until this journey, I'd never actually met her or exchanged a word with her." She considered a moment. "It's my guess that few of the others know her well either."

Jane's shoulders collapsed and she pulled one trembling hand free and pressed it against her eyelids. "If that's true, then I've done all of you an injustice. I've been so angry because I thought" She waved a hand and shook her head, then gazed into Perrin's wide eyes. "I don't know what to do."

Perrin's first anxious instinct was to run pell-mell toward the wagons and throw this problem at Cody. She checked the urge with difficulty. "Did you tell Mr. Snow about Winnie?"

"I didn't get that far before he sent me to you."

Think it through, Perrin urged herself, wringing her hands. If Cody knew about Winnie, what would he expect her to do?

Rocking back on her heels, she studied the dark clouds scudding low to the earth. The sky was gray, the river gleamed like bands of gray ribbon, her thoughts were gray. She didn't have the faintest idea how to approach this problem. But she knew she needed to solve it herself, without asking Cody's advice.

"Can you manage a little longer?" she inquired finally, lowering her gaze to Jane's face. "I need to think about this."

Jane turned weary eyes toward the low banks beyond the two-mile expanse of water. Every inch of the crossing was fraught with dangerous possibilities, promised to be a battle. The other brides would have help from their partner or at least encouragement. But she would endure the ordeal alone, with Winnie daydreaming in a makeshift bed in the back of the wagon.

Finally she nodded. Lowering her head, she examined the raw blisters on her palms. "I'm so tired," she whispered. "So bone-deep tired. But I can go a little farther if I know an end is coming." Lifting her head, she stared hard into Perm's eyes. "I can't go back to Missouri. That's impossible. But it will break my health to continue like this. Please help me."

"I will," Perrin promised. She pressed Jane's hands, then released them and helped her to stand.

Alone on the riverbank, she watched Jane return to the wagons, her hem and steps dragging. With all her worried heart, Perrin wished she knew what to do. But there was a bole in her mind where a solution should have been. This problem was too large to grasp.

Then she spotted Cody, watching her. He stood beside one of the teamsters, a bucket of tar in his hand. For a long moment they gazed at each other across the broad expanse of muddy earth.

Still watching her, Cody removed his hat and waved it in the air to alert Smokey Joe. Smokey Joe pounded his dinner gong, signaling it was time for the women to return to the wagons. As Perrin hurried toward her wagon, she noticed that Cody still watched her. His hard scrutiny should have worried her, and it did, but it also gave her a tiny secret thrill of pleasure.

Her heart sank. There was something about dangerous roguish men that had always appealed to her. Perhaps it was their stubborn refusal to be manipulated or their relentless confidence or their disregard for rules other than their own. Perhaps it was the open speculation that smoldered in their eyes when they gazed at a woman who intrigued their interest.

Face flaming, Perrin hastily pulled herself onto the wagon seat, where she could no longer see him.

Several trains camped near Fort Kearney, resting from the arduous river crossing, drying goods soaked by rain or river water, and crowding the post stores to replenish provisions.

After three weeks on the trail, most immigrants discovered they had overestimated the need for some items and had seriously underestimated the need for others. Consequently, the post stores conducted a brisk business, callously charging outrageously high prices, secure in the knowledge that travelers were at least five weeks away from the next opportunity to purchase supplies.

Augusta's frustration was like a vise tightening around her chest, anxious tears clogging her throat. Simply everything was going wrong.

First, the tar had not held on the bottom of her wagon and river water had seeped into the bed, soaking her good linens. Worse, twenty pounds of sugar, her entire supply, had rolled out of the gutta-percha bag that was supposed to protect it. The sugar had dissolved and flowed away. The twenty-pound sack should have lasted the entire journey; now it was gone.

Next, Cora had gotten frightened and drew up on the reins, causing them to stall on a sand bank in the middle of the Platte. The teamsters rode into the river to assist them, but they couldn't help the ox, who, stupid thing, was sinking in a bog of quicksand. All they could do was cut the ox from the yoke and watch helplessly as the heavy animal sank beneath the water.

Then, as if there hadn't been enough misfortune, icy rain poured from the skies in buckets, drenching them before they completed the crossing. Later, Cora tried to cook their supper in streaming rainan impossible taskso they had gone to bed hungry, trying to sleep with half-frozen raindrops soaking through their tent and dripping on their faces all night.

And the final disappointmentafter days of anticipation, Fort Kearney had turned out to be nothing more than a dismal collection of log shacks set alongside a square that was a sea of churned-up mud, horse droppings, and tobacco juice.

Augusta stepped up on the boardwalk erected before the stores and stared down at the disgusting mess clinging to her boots. The tassels were ruined and so was her sodden hem.

She swallowed hard and blinked against the tears stinging her eyelids. She would not cry, she absolutely would not .

"Well? Are we going inside the store, or ain't we?" Cora asked crossly. Rain had all but melted the pasteboard lining of her sunbonnet, and the brim now sagged and flopped in her eyes.

In other circumstances, Augusta might have laughed. Still, by choosing to wear a bonnet that was already ruined, Cora didn't have to worry about spoiling a good one. But then, Cora didn't concern herself with maintaining the standards of gentility. A gravedigger's daughter had no family name to live up to.

"I haven't decided if I'll purchase anything," Augusta said, turning her eyes away from the tempting items arrayed in the store window. Soldiers and travelers clogged the square, further churning the mud. Wagons piled high with provisions moved out the open end and empty wagons rolled in to take their place.

Cora leaned to examine the goods in the window, then threw out her hands. "We can't go all the way to Oregon without sugar," she said in a voice sulky with impatience. "You might believe you can sweeten your coffee merely by sticking your finger in it, but believe me, it ain't going to happen that way. Plus, you need to replace the ox we lost."

"And whose fault was that?" Augusta snapped, stepping aside to allow a man and a woman to enter the store. Before the door closed, she caught a tantalizing glimpse of cloth bolts and medicals and intriguing barrels and leather goods.

Cora stared at her. "Maybe if you'd take the reins once in a while, you'd find out it ain't so easy to drive several yokes of oxen! Especially when the wagon is mostly floating and there's water rushing all around you!"

Augusta lifted her chin. "Some people make do with only six oxen, so we can get along nicely with seven."

Discreet inquiries had elicited the shocking information that the price of an ox could run as high as eleven dollars. It wasn't fair. The silly animals were prone to foot disease, could go lame in a heartbeat, and were dumber than an earthworm.

"Well, we do need sugar." Cora entered the store and let the door bang behind her.

Grinding her teeth, Augusta squeezed the little purse dangling from her wrist and fervently wished it would magically grow fat beneath her anxious fingers. Sugar, she had learned, was selling for the dismaying price of twenty cents a pound. To replace what the river had stolen would cost four dollars. And to buy fresh eggs, which made her salivate and nearly swoon to think about, would cost fifteen cents a dozen.

Biting her lip to hold back tears of anger and self-pity, she paced along the mud-caked boardwalk, performing the arithmetic again and again in her mind.

Shock glazed her blue eyes. She had thirty-five dollars to see her through five months and two thousand miles. "Oops." Mem Grant caught Augusta's arm as they collided near the store's entry. When Augusta didn't apologize, Mem did, speaking in a cool voice. "I beg your pardon. I fear I wasn't paying attention."

Augusta acknowledged the apology with a distracted nod, then turned toward a voice speaking above her hat.

"Good afternoon, ladies."

Both women looked up at Webb Coate as he tipped his hat and smiled. Augusta caught a breath and felt Mem do the same. She had an impression of flowing dark hair, lustrous black eyes, and white, white teeth in a darkly bronzed face. A warm shiver skittered toward her toes.

Webb's gaze skimmed her ornate bonnet and the gauze tied beneath her chin. "I'd suggest that you ladies buy the widest-brimmed hats you can find. We'll be into hot weather soon."

"Dry warm weather can't come soon enough for me." Mem lifted her damp skirts and laughed at the mud pasting the folds together. "A little sunshine sounds like a boon from heaven."

Webb smiled, seeming to notice Mem for the first time.

"If you aren't carrying lip salve, it would be wise to buy some while you can. Wind and that sunshine you're so eager to see can wreak havoc on a pale complexion."

Augusta gasped. She could not believe her ears. Quivering with indignation, she drew to her full height. "Your advice is neither wanted nor welcome," she snapped, letting her eyes go frosty with offense. "Should you make intimate remarks in the future, we will complain to Mr. Snow!"

Webb stared at her and something dark and challenging gleamed in his black eyes. Then he touched his fingertips to his hat brim, nodded, and stepped off the boardwalk. He crossed the square toward the saddle shop where Cody waited.

The instant he turned his back, Mem's fingers dug into Augusta's arm. "You are the rudest, most self-inflated woman I have ever had the misfortune to encounter!"

"I beg your pardon! That half-breed mentioned our lips and our complexions! Such personal remarks are not to be tolerated from a white man, let alone an Indian!"

Mem leaned down until her eyes reached a level with Augusta's. "Don't evernot ever again!include me in anything you say. Don't presume to say 'we.' You speak solely for yourself, Miss Boyd. You do not speak for Mem Grant!"