Dorothy Garlock (12 page)

“Oh, Zan . . .” Annie Lash took his hand and held it in both of hers.

He opened his eyes and grinned weakly. “Ol’ Zan got a mite careless.”

“Are you hurt bad?” Her sight was blurred by her tears. She sniffed and wiped her face on her sleeve.

“Hit could be a sight worse. I could be dead.”

“Don’t say that, Zan Thatcher! You make me so mad when you joke about things like . . . this.” She raised her eyes to Light, who was staring off into the woods. Angered, she jerked on his trousers that were tucked into his knee-high moccasins. He looked down, then knelt beside her. “What happened to him?” she demanded.

“Knife.”

“Who did it?”

“Feller what got his head blowed off,” Zan said weakly. “Gal, quit yore frettin’. What’s done’s done.” He rolled his head so he could see Jeff. “Heared rifle fire. That was two more.”

“We got them, Zan. One was on a mule under a tarp. Annie Lash spotted him and yelled a warning. We got both of them.” He looked at Annie Lash. She avoided his gaze.

Zan closed his eyes wearily. “I tol’ ya my little gal ain’t no rattlehead.”

“You were right.” Jeff reached out and clasped his shoulder. “We’ll make a place for you in the wagon. If the rain holds off we can be home by morning.”

“It’ll be a heap a trouble fer ya, Jeff, but I’d be obliged. I want ta see where my Annie will be.” His voice was strong, determined. “Ain’t had me so much ’tention in all my born days. I even got me a purty little gal a blubberin’ over me.”

“I ought to hit you, Zan, is what I ought to do. You scared the daylights out of me.”

Zan let out a half snort of disgust and winced. “Hush yore prattle, gal, and wrap a rag ’round me.”

Annie Lash smiled through her tears. “I’m not tearing up a good petticoat to wrap you, Zan Thatcher,” she teased to hide her fear. “A piece of old tablecloth will do.”

His eyes flew open. “Not the one Lettie put the fancy stitches on!”

For a moment Annie Lash was so surprised he had mentioned her mother’s name and remembered the cloth that she couldn’t answer. When she did it was with an excessive tone of exasperation in her voice.

“I should say not! It’ll be the cloth you put your knife through when you picked out walnut meats last Thanksgiving.”

The once sharp old eyes held hers before they closed. Oh, Lordy, she thought. He looks so old! She hadn’t thought about him being old. He must be older than her pa was, she thought suddenly. She glanced up to catch Jeff exchanging a look with Light and her heart plunged. Zan couldn’t die! Dear Lord in Heaven, she prayed, don’t let Zan die. She clutched his hand and peered into his face.
She wouldn’t let him die, damnit! She wouldn’t!

Oxen can pull a heavier load than mules, so some of the barrels were transferred to that wagon to make room for Zan. While Light and Jeff cut pine boughs to cushion the bed, Silas and Isaac dug a shallow grave for the men who had attacked them.

Annie Lash was too busy with Zan to question why the three men had made and tried to execute such a complicated plan to kill Jeff. She had overheard Light telling Jeff that Zan had found where they had camped and the horses hidden in the brush. He knew two of the men had ridden away on a horse and a mule and the other lay in wait down the trail. He was scouting to locate the waylayer’s position when he was discovered. They fought and the man got his knife into Zan before he could get his gun into position to fire. Light found him shortly afterward and stopped the flow of blood with moss or he would have bled to death.

Annie Lash watched the sky anxiously. A breeze had come out of the southeast and seemed to be pushing the rain clouds around them. Jeff had assured her that Zan would be kept dry. If necessary, they would use the canvas from the pack mule. Annie Lash looked at the blood-splattered cloth and shuddered.

The would-be assailants’ personal possessions, guns, and provisions had been rolled in the canvas and thrust beneath the wagon seat. In the wilderness nothing was discarded that could be used. The only thing the men took with them to their graves were the clothes they were wearing. Light rode ahead, leading a horse and the mule. The other two horses were tied to the back of the wagon pulled by the oxen.

Evening came. They didn’t stop for a meal. Just before dark they reached a clear stream that flowed out of the hills toward the river. Jeff stopped the wagons to allow the stock to drink. He dug into his pack for a pewter cup, filled it with cool, fresh water, and carried it to Annie Lash. She drank it gratefully. When the wagons started up again she had a flask of water beside her. Zan lay quiet and uncomplaining on the bed of pine boughs. In their haste to make as good time as possible, the wagon wheels would occasionally strike a rock and jolt the wagon. At first Zan would wince or a faint groan would escape his lips, but after the first hour he seemed to be sleeping and Annie Lash was grateful that he was no longer suffering.

The night was agonizingly long. The only good thing about it was that the sky cleared and the stars came out. The moon, obscured occasionally by a thin drifting cloud, hung like a giant orb over the treetops. When Annie Lash could no longer endure the cramped position beside Zan, she got out and walked, her hand holding to the end of the wagon, her eyes and ears alert for any sound or movement from the old man. At times Jeff led the way and Light rode behind. At other times it was reversed. In her anxiety about Zan, Annie Lash forgot her anger at Jeff and her desire to go back to Saint Louis.

“We should reach the Cornick farm in about an hour. It’ll be daylight by then.” Jeff was walking beside her, leading his horse.

“Will we stop there?” Fatigue had almost numbed her and she spoke tiredly.

“I wanted to talk with you about that. I think that, as long as we’re moving, we should go on. Zan wanted to see my place.”

It took a while for the import of his words to reach her stupefied senses. When they did, she looked up, trying to see his face, but only his light hair was visible in the moonlight.

“You think he’ll die.” It was a whispered statement.

“We must face the possibility, Annie Lash,” he said gently.

A sob rose in her throat. “We’ve got to do . . . something!”

“Light has already done all that we can do. His quick thinking has kept him alive this long. It’s a bad wound and Zan’s not a young man.”

“You’re wrong! He won’t die.” Oh, Lordy, she hurt all over; her head, her feet, but mostly her heart. She was unable to stop the tears that spilled down her cheeks. In her grief she turned angrily to the person who had brought them to this wilderness. “I wish I hadn’t come with you! If I’d said no Zan and I would be back in Saint Louis and he wouldn’t be about to . . . die!”

“Zan wanted to come. He was itching to get back in the woods and get you out of Saint Louis. If you had stayed he’d have been killed trying to keep the rivermen away from you.”

“He’ll die anyway, and it’s your fault!” She lashed out unreasonably and she knew it, but couldn’t stop herself. She wanted him to be angry, to defend himself.

“I’m aware of that and I’ll regret it all my life. Zan saved my hide more than once. Without Zan I’d never have made it over the mountain.” His sincere words took some of the anger from her.

She bit back more harsh words, and instead she asked, “How far to your place from Silas’s?”

“A little over an hour.”

They walked in silence. The sky was getting lighter in the east. Birds were beginning to wake with pleasant chirps and rustlings. Distant colonies of ducks quacked companionably as the new day arrived.

First she heard a dog yap, then the squealing of pigs. A rooster announced his superiority over the clucking, quarreling hens. The wagon creaked to a stop beside a split rail fence and a woman came out of the low, log-hewed house and stood wiping her hands on her apron. A tall lad came from a brush-covered shed with a bucket in his hand. His shout of “Pa’s home” brought two more boys out, and all three came on the run toward the wagons.

Silas greeted his wife with hugs and kisses and then embraced each of his sons. Annie Lash stood at the end of the wagon beside Jeff. Silas spoke with his wife, then urged her forward with his arm about her waist.

She was the plainest woman Annie Lash had ever seen, young or old. She was a thin shadow with sharp features and thin lips. She wore a butternut-dyed dress and a black apron. Her hair was pulled back into a tight, round knob that sat on the back of her head, and her eyes, which were bright blue, homed in on Annie Lash and played up and down and over her like a blue flame. Her taut face relaxed, and when she spoke her voice was like music.

“Landsakes, child! You look all tuckered out! Why, I do declare, a good meal is what you need . . . but Silas says you got to push on to Jeff’s. Let me run and get you a hoe cake while them boys are changing the mules. Ain’t that right, Jeff? This child needs somethin’ in her stomach. Well, Lordy me, you men thinks us women ain’t got no quit a’tall!” Her light, lilting voice seemed to drone on and on, around and over Annie Lash.

“Thank you, Mrs. Cornick, I—”

“Call me Biedy. Lester,” she called, “wrap some hoe cakes in a towel and bring a jar of that fresh milk. Hurry, now.” Her bright eyes fastened on Jeff. “Things is fine at yore place. Me and the boys been over to chew the fat with Callie. My land, that girl’s thin.”

“This is Annie Lash Jester, Biedy. She’s come out to stay with Callie.”

Again the birdlike eyes searched her face. “Ain’t she pretty? Not silly pretty, like some, but pretty.” Biedy sighed. “I always did want me a girl. I love my boys, but they won’t let me fuss on ’em.” Instantly, she turned to Jeff. “Is there nothin’ I can do for the hurt man?”

“He’s sleepin’, Biedy.”

“No, I . . . ain’t.” Zan’s voice rasped weakly.

“Zan! Oh, Zan! I thought you were asleep.”

“I need a swaller of water, gal.”

Annie Lash lifted his head and held the flask to his lips. The water slushed into his mouth and down on his beard. He drank thirstily, then she lowered his head gently. He closed his eyes wearily and sucked air in through his open mouth.

“Oh! My goodness sakes alive!” Biedy chirped. “I know you got to be gettin’ on. Annie, you ’n me will have us a talkin’ get-together some other time. I’ll build a fire under them boys o’mine so they’ll stop diddlin’.” She turned, threw her hands in the air, and issued orders like a drill sergeant. Her boys didn’t seem to mind in the least. “Get to changin’ that team, now. Move those mules on in here, Martin. You’n Walter, get to humpin’. Help him, Walter! What’er you standin’ there for? Landsakes! You boys is slow as a ol’ woman at times.”

While the Cornick boys moved out the tired team of mules and hitched a fresh span, Jeff took the canvas with the dead men’s belongings from under the wagon seat and gave them to Silas.

“You take their plunder, the mule and one of the horses, Silas. They had some good guns, powder, and shot.”

“If’n that’s what ya want, Jeff. Me’n Biedy will be acomin’ along. If’n there’s anythin’ we can do, anythin’ a’tall—”

“I’ll come arunnin’ if’n ya need me, Annie,” Biedy said. “Tell a hello to Callie.”

“I’ll tell her. Good-bye.”

The wagon moved with Jeff at the reins and Light leading the spare horses. Annie Lash sat beside Zan and waved to the bright, perky woman who stood beside her husband and tall sons. Under different circumstances she would have enjoyed visiting with Mrs. Cornick, but now . . . Her eyes mirrored her distress.

“Somethin’ I’d like to say fer what’er hit’s worth,” Zan said clearly.

Annie Lash peered sharply at him. “Yes, Zan?” she asked quietly.

“Ya got’a goodly supply of pride, gal. Hit could be Jeff’s stuck on ya. Don’t get stiff-necked and prideful. Give yoreself time to . . .” His voice deserted him, but his lips still moved. Then he closed his eyes.

Annie Lash held his hand and watched his labored breathing. The agony within her clawed fiercely.

Emptiness, heavy as a stone, pressed against Annie Lash’s heart. The speech she had rehearsed to urge Zan to take her back to Saint Louis now seemed foolishly childish. She tried to close her mind to the agony that Zan was going to die and leave her alone in the sparsely settled wilderness with a man she had known less than a week. She had never allowed herself the luxury of self-pity, but now, as she held Zan’s gnarled, work-roughened hand, she cried silently for herself and for Zan.
Don’t die and leave me, Zan. Please don’t die!
She had never felt so utterly helpless nor had tears that came so easily.

From far away she heard a wild turkey gobble. There came an answering gobble, then another and another. Everything has something, or someone, she thought. She had her ma and pa, then her pa and Zan. Now only Zan. A poignant wave of homesickness came over her and she longed with all her heart to be a little girl again back home in Virginia with her mother and father.

Zan stirred restlessly and she dampened a cloth with the water from the canteen and wiped his face. His brown, leathery skin was cold to her touch. She folded the cloth and let it rest on his forehead. Then she noticed his eyes were not fully closed. It was too late to wipe the tears from her face.

“So you caught me bawling, Zan Thatcher. Shame on you for watching me when I thought you were asleep.” Her nose was stuffy and she sniffed as she strove to control her quivering voice.

“I ain’t n’er seed ya bawl, gal. Not e’en when yore pa died.”

“He was in such pain and wanted to be released from it. But I did bawl. I just didn’t let you see me with my eyes all red and my nose running.”

“Ya’ll be a’right, Annie Lash. Jeff’ll take keer a ya. It’s a heap more’n I’d hoped fer.”

His eyes looked extra bright. Oh, Lordy! He’d got the fever on him. She controlled her panic with forceful words.

“Don’t be making any matches for me, Zan Thatcher,” she said scathingly and was rewarded with a twitch of a grin on his lips. “And don’t think for a minute I don’t know what you’re up to. I can work and look after myself. I hired on to work for my keep and that’s what I’ll do. Cooking and washing and taking care of younguns is better than marrying Walt Ransom!” She forced a laugh that didn’t come out quite as convincingly as she hoped.