Daughter of the Sword (44 page)

“I—I—” Her blue eyes glowed. “Oh, Doc! Doc!
Ich liebe dich!
”

Conrad said to Deborah, “Shall we take a walk?”

And so it was that two days later, leaving Ansjie and Challoner betrothed, with Mrs. Balzer moved in as a chaperone, Deborah started off to the smithy, escorted by Conrad. She had her clothes and Conrad's translations, but she'd stored Dane's sketch pad in the carved chest of household things.

It was like storing the past with a future that might never come. But it wasn't possible to shut away her love for Dane.

xix

The gardens of Friedental were green because people carried water to them from the well or creek, but away from the life-giving stream and its trees and thickets, the grass was sere and brittle, the wind a dry scourge that cracked lips and made eyes smart. Conrad had insisted that Deborah wear one of his broad-brimmed hats, but she was still dizzy from the heat when they stopped at noon to water and rest the horses.

She drank thirstily, splashed her face and hands, and held her wrists under the water for cooling. The thought of food was repulsive.

Conrad, scanning her sharply, cut off small crisp slices of apple from one of his trees and made her eat them. The tart, sweet juiciness gradually whetted her appetite, and Conrad made her lie back against the packs while he fed her bites of bread, cheese, and smoked ham, himself eating between his ministrations.

“Shall we go on now?” he asked presently. “We could wait a few hours and still be there before dark.”

“We might as well travel,” she said. “It's too hot to get much relief from it. Conrad, do you realize there hasn't been a rain that wet more than the surface in over two months?”

“I know it very well. The council has talked of little else their past few meetings.” How reassuring was that familiar smile of his! “In Germany we think we're in a drought if two weeks pass without rain. Still, our corn is fine and tall this year, and the wheat was good. It won't be a hungry winter.

But what about next? thought Deborah. What if it doesn't rain in time to help the spring crops?

She pushed the fear aside. It
would
rain. There'd be snow to melt and sink into the earth. She sighed as Conrad helped her into the saddle, smoothed Chica's sweating neck, and lifted the reins.

It was still punishingly hot when they reached the smithy in mid-afternoon, but Johnny, Maccabee, and Laddie were heating and hammering away. Johnny roared at them to go on in and make themselves at home. Several wayfarers, gold-seekers from the look of their gear, lounged under the trees, waiting to have their horses shod or other work done.

Sara came out as quickly as she could, burdened so heavily that it seemed she couldn't carry the baby much longer. In spite of her awkwardness, there was a sort of blooming about her that made her eyes shine and her skin glow.

At least she'd had her lover; at least she'd have his baby. And she was loved and protected by a man who'd cherish that child of another man's. Deborah wondered, with a cry of inner despair, if she and Dane would ever have that much.

While the women embraced and Sara drew Deborah inside, Conrad led the horses around to the stable. A safe distance from the door and curious eyes, Judith hugged Deborah, too, and announced that she and Maccabee had been married “proper and fast” by a circuit-riding Methodist preacher who'd stayed the night a few weeks ago. Deborah was glad for her and said so, but the news made her feel more solitary than ever.

Each of her friends had loved and lost a man, then found another. Their lives flowed on while hers seemed stranded on Dane's immovability and her own sworn purpose. But she was going to look for him, try to be sure that at least he was alive. And behind that resolve was the persistent, though rebuked, hope that he might change his mind, might stay with her.

Nothing had been seen or heard of him at the smithy, or of Rolf, either. Deborah learned this before Conrad joined them. There was nothing for it, then, but to borrow some of Laddie's clothes, get another Bowie, and head for Westport. After Conrad was safely gone, of course.

During and after supper they exchanged news. Dr. Challoner's offer to attend Sara was gladly accepted by Johnny, though Sara looked mutinous and said she could manage perfectly well with Judith and Deborah.

“I'd rather you had the doctor,” Deborah said so fervently that everyone laughed. “Besides, he might bring Ansjie with him, and you'd like her. They plan to marry.”

Her only other friend! Why was it that none of them had to choose between love and responsibility?

Johnny told how Doy had been tried again in June and sentenced to the penitentiary. Free Staters had met at Elwood and crossed into Missouri on Saturday, July 23, getting the lay of the town. That night, during a storm, they came to the jail, pretending to have a horse-thief prisoner. When the jailer let them in, they held a gun on him and made him release Doy. Mingling outside with crowds just getting out of the theater, they managed to get away and escape into Kansas.

Friends met them at the river. They triumphantly took Doy to Lawrence and celebrated his liberation with a big reception.

“Was John Brown in on that?” Deborah asked.

Johnny shook his head. “Don't think he's been in Kansas since he got away with that bunch of slaves. Probably chasin' around up north raisin' money from the abolitionists and cookin' up some prairie fire scheme.” He looked thoughtfully from Conrad to Deborah. “So you think it's time to come back, honey?”

She nodded. “I can't hide away forever.”

“Wouldn't exactly call it hidin',” Johnny chided. “I bet the way you taught their children had somethin' to do with the Friedentalers voting to be an underground station.”

“It did,” said Conrad to her surprise. “If Deborah hadn't made the Territory's problems real to them, it would've been easy to decide to keep clear.”

With mixed feelings, she pondered that. She was grateful if she'd had anything to do with the decision to shelter runaways, but feeling the weight. If that peaceful valley were ravaged as her home had been—It couldn't happen! Missourians had never raided that far. Besides, Friedental was tucked far away from the main routes, scarcely known about.

But concern for the village had been irrevocably added to her other debts.

Johnny said the village could probably get an anvil from the new foundry in town, but he could swap them about everything else they'd need to set Rebe up. “Glad you've got a smith,” he said. “I'm snowed under, what with all these folks goin' west, and about the time we see the last of
them,
everyone'll be bringin' in their butcherin' tools or needin' new ones. And, of course, they'll tote along every dad-burned broken chain, hook, shaft, plowshare, or axe that they've been gettin' by with all summer while they were too busy to bring 'em in.” He snorted. “So I'll have to pound on their stuff all winter whilst they lounge between their barn and house just waitin' for spring so they can bust everything up again!”

“But Johnny,” remonstrated Sara, smoothing his sideburns, “if people didn't need new things or old ones fixed, you'd have no trade.”

He looked astounded. “
Cesli tatanka!
You're a smart
wastewin
on top of bein' pretty!”

“Pretty?” She laughed, ruefully glancing at her ripening belly. “I'm bigger than a buffalo!”

“Hell, you're goin' to have a big strong boy! And it's time you went to bed! You gals're goin' to have plenty of time to catch up on all your chatter.”

“First let me be sure Laddie hasn't made the bedroom a pigpen,” Sara insisted. As she and Deborah went down the covered passage to the small separate cabin, Sara asked, “You sent Dane Hunter away? Again?”

“I had to. He still wanted me to leave.”

“Stiff-necked creatures! Both of you!”

Deborah let that pass. She helped Sara toss Laddie's things to one end of the partitioned room and put fresh sheets on what had been Sara's bed. “I'm worried about Dane, Sara. I want to go look for him.”

Straightening in shock, Sara gazed in disbelief. “Look for him? In those rough hangouts where he's hunting his no-good brother?”

“Yes.”

“
Meshema
, you're crazy!”

“I have to know if he's all right.”

Starting to argue, Sara frowned, then shrugged. “Wait till Johnny's work lets up. Then he'll go.”

“That'll be weeks yet! Besides, you heard him saying tonight there won't be much of an improvement. And the baby's coming. No, Sara, I'm the one who has to know, so it's up to me to find out!”

“If you travel alone and poke into the kind of places where men hang out, you'll be taken for a prostitute.”

Deborah laughed. “Not if I borrow some of Laddie's clothes.”

Sara sank down on the bed. “Crazy! Plain crazy!” She pointed at Deborah's breasts. “What'll you do about those?”

“Wrap a cloth around to flatten me. And I'll cut my hair.”

“Would you like to glue on some of Johnny's beard?”

“It'll work, Sara.” She peered in the mirror. “With my hair short, I'll look almost like Thos when he was about fourteen.”

“Hah!”

“
Hah
all you want, but I'm going.”

“Johnny'll have a fit!”

“Johnny doesn't have to know. You can just say I forgot something and went to look for it. He'll think I'm at Friedental and won't worry if I'm slow coming back.”

“That's the same as lying!”

Deborah picked up a relatively clean pair of brown corduroy pants and an old red shirt. “Would you rather bend the truth a little or have Johnny get mixed up in something that's not his problem at all?”

Sara didn't answer for a moment. Then she said, “When do you do this crazy thing?”

“Conrad should leave tomorrow. So I'll start very early the next morning.”

“Sneaking off from your friends,” reproached Sara.

Deborah held the clothes up against her, nodding approval. “Just so,” she said.

Conrad set off after breakfast, saying he'd send someone with a wagon for the smithy tools. After their good-byes, Sara shooed the others away so that Deborah was left looking up at him, heart unbearably heavy at the parting. She loved him, not as she did Dane, but as a friend who'd sustained her through a time when without his special understanding, her inner self might have curled up tight and withered.

Something of a father, something of a brother, something of a lover. Wholly a wise, strong, and gentle man.

“I can never thank you,” she said, tears coming to her eyes. “But at least we'll see each other sometimes.”

He smiled. “We will. So let's not be sad.” His eyes changed. One hand dropped to her shoulder while the other tilted up her face. “Farewells have their sweet parts,” he said, and he kissed her.

His mouth was cool and firm, till with an incaught breath, he swept her against him and his lips grew searching, hungry, demanding, rousing sensations in her that she tried to escape by pushing at him, trying to twist away.

He took away his mouth and held her till she was quiet, sobbing. “Oh, my love!” he said, stroking her hair. “Thorny wild rose! Does it distress you so much to think that if you let me, I could make you love me?”

She couldn't answer. He dropped a light kiss on her cheek, and swung up on his big gray horse. She felt a terrible sense of loss as he rode away. Turning back to the cabin, she went swiftly to work, and she put him and that shattering kiss determinedly from her mind.

It was necessary for one person to know what she was doing in order to keep the others from looking for her, but Deborah decided not to tell Judith. She'd only argue, perhaps try to come along. Then Maccabee would have to know and there'd be a mess.

Sara had put some food in a bag and told Deborah to take blankets and whatever else she needed, all the while asserting that this was the most hare-brained notion she'd ever heard of.

“I expect so, Deborah soothed. “But there are lots of boys this age looking for work or running away west. No one'll pay any attention to me.”

“Cesli tatanka!”
Sara replied.

Deborah had her pack ready: food, canteen, bedroll, extra socks and underwear. Sara's shears were hidden under the bed for use first thing next morning. She wished for a change of clothes, but though Laddie probably wouldn't miss one set of garments, he hadn't so many that more could vanish without his noticing.

That day she'd asked Johnny for a plain Bowie and he'd loaned her an old one, promising to make her one as fancy as that which Rolf had taken when work slacked off a trifle. Deborah felt guilty at deceiving him, but she knew he'd never let her go alone. Long after Laddie was breathing heavily beyond the partition, she lay awake, alternately exhilarated and frightened.

She wasn't too nervous about masquerading as a boy. Growing up with Thos made it easy to swagger a bit, whistle, thrust hands in pockets, sprawl when sitting. But would she find Dane? And supposing she met Rolf? Shorn hair and trousers wouldn't fool him.

Still, she never seriously thought of abandoning her scheme. She'd waited long enough. This was the kind of adventure Thos would've loved. She seemed to feel the closeness of his eager, questing spirit.

Ride with me, Thos,
she told him.
You understand. And you know about your baby, don't you? He'll be born soon and we'll all love him just as we loved you.
Her brother seemed to smile at her, silently tell her she should seek her love, and she drifted deeper and deeper into sleep.

She kept rousing, though, her senses alerted for the faintest light, and at last, though she didn't know what time it was, she rose, made the bed, and dressed in the dark except for the boots Lorenz Schroeder had made for her.