Glory (11 page)

The brush paused. “I suppose it would, but where are you going to get that kind of money? Tom Wyatt pays a good price for his mail-order brides.”

She took a pouch from her pocket and approached him. Extending the poke, she asked softly, “Have I got enough in here to pay my own way?”

Jackson stared at the bulging sack. By the looks of it, she
had enough to buy half the state, with money left over. “Where did you get that kind of money?”

She drew the sack to her chest, looking cautious now. “It’s mine. Poppy gave it to me—I didn’t steal it.”

“Let me see that.” He took the sack from her, untied it, and spread out the gold ore in the palm of his hand. “How many people know you have this?”

“No one . . . except Poppy’s brother . . . but he doesn’t care.”

Jackson shook out a small nugget, examined it, and then stuck it in his pocket. Yanking the string on the pouch closed, he met her expectant gaze. “One nugget is all I need, and I’ll owe you some at that.”

A relieved grin broke across her freckled face. “Then you’ll take me with no strings attached? I don’t have to take a man if I don’t want one?”

“You’ve paid your way; I have no say over what you do when you get there.”

She flashed another grin. “No, sir. You don’t.” She whirled and started off, turning back around when his voice stopped her.

“I may not have any say when you get there, but as long as you’re in my care, you play by my rules, agreed?”

Glory’s grin faded, but she nodded. “Agreed.”

“And another thing. Don’t be showing this money to anyone, you hear? Not to Mary, or Patience, or Ruth, or Harper, or Lily. No one—do you understand? You keep it
hidden somewhere where no one but you can get to it.”

Young, rich, and naive—he couldn’t think of a worse combination for a woman alone. He couldn’t think of a worse combination for him. Now he had to worry about the girls’ safety and roughly twenty thousand dollars worth of gold ore.

“Yes, sir.” She cocked a brow. “Figure I can start a new life in Colorado as good as right here.”

His features sobered. “I’ll get you to Colorado. Once we’re there, you’ll be responsible for your own protection.” He turned back to the horse, but she stuck her hand out and insisted that he shake on it.

“We got us a deal.” Her eyes searched his in the lantern light.

“We got ourselves a deal,” he murmured without much enthusiasm.

She started off for the fire but turned a second time. “Mr. Lincoln?”

“Yes?”

“This Colorado town—is it anything like Heaven?”

“Heaven?” He frowned.

“Yes, sir. One night in Squatter’s Bend, I heard these people in a building singing about a place called Heaven. Sounded real nice, real pretty—sort of like Colorado, I’d imagine. Is it?”

He turned around to face her. Was she serious?

“Well?” she asked.

“Colorado isn’t a town; it’s a territory. It’s real pretty, but I don’t imagine it can hold a candle to heaven.”

“Really? You been there?”

“To
heaven
?”

“No, to Colorado.” She frowned. “Sounds to me like it’s a tad harder to get to than Heaven.” She looked up, studying the sky. The building storm shot fingers of light in the distance. “Wonder what it’s like there in Heaven.”

“I imagine no one complains.”

“Yes, sir. Imagine they don’t.” She hitched up her britches with a look of satisfaction. “Well, I feel a whole lot better about everything. How about you?”

Actually, he felt a whole lot worse, but he was hired for a job he intended to complete, no matter what happened. The gold nugget weighed heavy in his pocket.

Lord, I don’t know what you’re doing here, and I still don’t like it. Sir.

Glory walked back to camp feeling a sight better. Thunder rolled in the distance, and she shivered. Truth be told, she was glad Jackson had come after her. Loneliness was a powerful thing, a hurtful thing, and she’d just as soon be through with it. Now that Jackson didn’t expect her to take a husband, it made things a whole lot easier. Once she got to Colorado, she’d get busy making a new life. Until then, she’d enjoy her new friends with no false expectations
on their part. The others might want a man in their life, but one would only clutter up hers.

She looked up as she walked, studying the sky. She’d never thought about having a home of her own or babies—never seemed to need it. Poppy had been her life, and the animals her friends. Now they were all gone—but where? Where’d a soul go when the body died?

To Heaven, silly.
Wasn’t that what the song said? The tune hummed in her head:
“When we all get to Heaven, what a day of rejoicing that will be! When we all see Jesus . . .”

Jesus. Now who was that? Since Poppy had died, she was finding out there were a lot of folks she didn’t know. Had Poppy known about these things and neglected to tell her? She made a mental note to ask Ruth about Jesus. Ruth read from the black book each night and seemed to be real knowledgeable about it. Ruth was much smarter than she. Glory hardly knew anything she should know, and she’d proven it today. Falling in the river, nearly drowning . . . she could swim as well as a fish; why hadn’t she been able to swim this morning? The current was swift, but she was strong, able to swim the width of the river when she and Poppy had gone fishing. Her heart ached when she thought about how Jackson had dismissed her as a careless fool. She cringed when she thought of the anger she’d heard in his voice this morning. She didn’t like him to be mad at her. She might not be as smart as Ruth, but she wasn’t a fool, and sometime during the trip to Colorado, she was going to prove it.

When Glory returned to the fire, Mary glanced up from
her sewing. Her cough was worse tonight; Glory could hear the dry rasps a distance away. Ruth was reading the Bible; Harper was putting a pan of bread aside to rise for breakfast. Patience and Lily were bent over the tub, washing out a few things by hand.

“Going to rain,” Glory announced.

Ruth glanced up, scanning the sky. “Still a few hours away.” Her gaze switched back to Glory. “Where’s Jackson?”

“Tending the horse.” Glory sat down before the fire, warming her hands.

Harper covered the pan of bread with a cloth and then straightened, pressing her hand to the center of her back. “A bath would feel mighty good right now.”

The others murmured in agreement—all except Glory, who stared at the fire, her mind still on the day’s events.

Ruth glanced at the other women. “Doesn’t a bath sound good, Glory?”

“Told you, took my bath a few months back,” she said absently, then looked up, still deep in concentration. “How did Jackson get his name?”

“Get his name?” Lily laughed. “Why, I suppose his mother gave it to him. Why?”

“No reason. Just thinking aloud.” Jackson Lincoln. The name fit him: a good strong name for a good strong man. She thought about the play of muscles she’d seen in his forearms as he brushed the horse and wondered if Jackson Lincoln had a woman of his own. Didn’t matter, she guessed.
Spoken for or not, he’d never look at her the way he looked at Ruth or most likely any other woman.

Ruth pulled her light wrap closer. “His mother named him after two of our presidents: Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln. President Jackson served our country in her father’s time, and Mr. Lincoln served her state in the Illinois House of Representatives from ’47 to ’49. I believe his mother’s father knew Mr. Lincoln personally and thought highly of him. When he was elected president of the United States in ’61, Jackson said he and his mother attended the inaugural festivities.”

Harper turned to stare at Ruth. “How do you know all of that?”

Color dotted Ruth’s cheeks. “Jackson told me. Seems he and his mother don’t get along anymore. He rarely talks about her.”

The admission caught Glory’s interest. “He told you they don’t get along?”

Ruth shrugged. “Not in so many words, but I could tell by the things he was saying.”

Harper sniffed. “Lots of folks don’t get along. Don’t mean a thing.”

“Ruth? Things such as . . . ?” Lily asked.

“Such as she’s domineering and complains all the time. They had words a few years back, and he hasn’t seen her since. Said she drove his father away when he was a young boy. It’s such a pity—mother and son losing contact with each other. She must miss him something terrible.”

The girls fell silent, contemplating the situation. Glory finally broke the hush. “What’s a president?”

Lily and Patience giggled. Ruth shot them a disapproving scowl. “You don’t know, Glory?”

Glory blinked. “Is it something bad?”

“Bad?” Harper scoffed. “Girl, you been livin’ under a rock?”

“Harper,” Mary rebuked softly, “Glory hasn’t had our advantages.” She turned to Glory and smiled. “A president is a man whom the people elect to run the country.”

“What’s a country?”

Ruth stopped the astonished looks with another stern look. “Lily, tell Glory what a country is.”

“Well . . . a country is where we live. We live in the United States of America. Actually, our forefathers first set sail to this land in 1492. But it took a war with the British to gain our independence, and we became a country on July 4, 1776. We are the people of this country, and the people elect a president every four years. All told, we’ve had seventeen presidents.”

“Did you know these presidents?”

“Oh, my, no!” Ruth laughed. “Most of us were infants when Lincoln served, and Mr. Jackson was elected in 1829 and was our president until 1837. President Lincoln was assassinated by a man named John Wilkes Booth while he attended a play at Ford’s Theater on April 14, 1865. It was a terrible loss for the whole country.”

Glory stared at her blankly.

“Assassinated—shot to death,” Ruth informed her.

“Oh.” Glory didn’t know anything about assassination. It sounded downright mean-spirited to her, but now she knew what a president was. “You reckon this Mr. Lincoln went to Heaven?”

“President Lincoln was a fine Christian man. I believe heaven is his new home.” Ruth smiled.

“And Jackson’s mother favored Mr. Jackson and Mr. Lincoln particularly.”

Lily nodded. “It seems that way. She named her son after them. His full name is Jackson Lincoln Montgomery, but we call him Jackson or Mr. Lincoln.”

“Jackson Lincoln Montgomery.” Jackson had three names, and she had only one. She looked up and grinned. “It’s a fine name.” And it confirmed what she’d known all along. Jackson Lincoln was different from other men. Why, he was almost presidential.

Regardless, he shouldn’t feel bad toward his mother. Glory didn’t know what had taken place to anger him, but whatever it was, it couldn’t be bad enough to cause a parting.

“At least he had a mother,” Harper murmured.

“One that didn’t give him away,” Mary said, shifting and adjusting her blanket. “If I have a child with a cough, I’ll love it no matter what. I’ll never give it away.”

Ruth glanced at Mary. “Perhaps there was a reason your mother felt she couldn’t keep you, Mary. I suspect that if she could have, she would have kept you. It can’t be easy for a mother to part with a child. I’ve never known anyone
who did things without a reason, and I’m sure your mother had a very good reason.”

“Maybe,” Mary conceded. “But I would never leave my child.”

“Never say never, Mary. None of us knows what lies around the corner.”

Scooting closer to the fire, Glory thought about the girls and their lives. She’d never once felt bad toward her real folks. She’d thought about them once in a while, wondered where they were and if they were sad about losing her. But Poppy had treated her well and given her enough love for two parents. She guessed a woman didn’t have to carry a child in her stomach and birth it in order to love it as much as her own.

“Guess we all wish for things we can’t have.” Patience stood up and stretched. “I feel like Ruth. I wish my pa would have lived and my ma could have kept me, but since that didn’t happen, I’m thankful for people like Mr. Potter and the others at the orphanage. They were kind to us, gave us a home when we had none.”

“Amen,” Ruth seconded. “I wish my parents hadn’t died so young, but they did. Our lives could be a lot worse.”

“A lot worse,” Glory conceded, her thoughts returning to Squatter’s Bend. Hers would likely get a lot worse if Amos or the man from Squatter’s Bend caught up with her.

Chapter Seven

When Jackson returned to camp, Glory was putting dishes in the dry box. He noticed the other girls were clustered upwind. He shook his head. There was no getting around it; something needed to be done about the stink. You’d think after a near drowning in the river she’d smell a sight better. If anything, she smelled worse. Without soap, wet only made things worse.

He busied himself checking the harness for damage from the river crossing, grinning when he heard the girls dropping hints Glory should be able to catch.

“You know, Glory,” Mary began gently, “after all the bruises you got in the river today, a pleasant bath in the stream with some nice castile soap would feel mighty soothing. We have an extra one-pound bar that could be yours.”