Jodi Thomas (17 page)

Well after midnight, Anna crawled into her tent. After she brushed her hair, she left it flowing over her shoulders in dark masses, too tired to braid it.

Chance opened the flap, balancing two steaming cups of dark liquid in his hands. He’d worked hard for hours, but there was a twinkle in his eyes as he looked down at her. She’d been aware of him watching her all day, checking every few minutes to see if she was safe and out of danger. Now he knelt beside her. “Want some coffee?”

Anna nodded and accepted the cup. When she smelled the smoke rising from the mug, a question formed on her lips.

“It’s coffee.” Chance laughed. “They make it here from parched barley and dried sweet potatoes.”

Wrinkling her nose, Anna sipped the liquid. The warm fluid seeped through her, relaxing her limbs.

Chance settled cross-legged on his blanket. “There’s some bad talk among the men.” He hated to tell her now, but he didn’t want her to hear it from someone else. “The German Immigration Society is in big trouble. The society, as you call it, is bankrupt. There is little or no money left and the debts are adding up fast.”

“But we paid our money to come. They promised us land, a house, and food for a year until we got settled.”

Although Chance hated seeing the disillusioned look in her eyes, he had to tell her all the news. “I know. But Prince Solms, who was the first to come over, made a few mistakes. He was swindled out of a great deal of money. Now there’s not enough left to move the people to their land, much less set them up with food and equipment.”

“But my land . . . ?” Anna was near tears. She’d traveled all these months—only to meet with despair. All her life the land she’d lived on, even the house where she’d slept, had belonged to someone else. Was she never to have a home to call her own?

With a gentle touch, Chance brushed her hair off her shoulder. “The land is yours. But Tobin was right; it’s smack in the middle of Comanche hunting grounds. I talked to the new leader of your society, a John O. Meusebach. He’s an honorable man trying to do the best he can in an impossible situation.” Chance wasn’t sure she was hearing him. “Meusebach has had the land north of here surveyed. We’ll have land, but little else.”

Anna’s chin lifted. “If I have my land, I have enough. I will survive.”

Admiring her determination, Chance added, “You’ll have more than that. I’ve heard that the land along the Pedernales River is rich and well watered. There’s ample timber to build your house, and I swear you’ll have a door to bolt before the leaves fall.”

Anna brushed a tear away with her fingertip. “We’ll make it.”

“We’ll make it.” Chance tried to sound as sure of himself as she was of her future. He took the cups and placed them outside the tent. “We’d better get some sleep. There will be much to do come morning.”

With an exhausted sigh, Anna lay down on her back and watched Chance remove his gun belt and boots. The coffee had relaxed her insides and the hard work had tired her muscles. She stretched. “Do you always sleep in your clothes?”

He glanced at her. “No, but I thought it would be less embarrassing for you.”

“I’ve seen you bare-chested when we go swimming,” Anna replied. “I can’t think a nightshirt would be any worse. I’ll turn my head while you change.”

Although she turned to face the wall of the tent, she heard no movement. When she glanced back he was still sitting there, fully clothed.

“Well?” she asked.

“I don’t have a nightshirt.” Chance looked nervous, unsure of his words. “I’ve never had a nightshirt. I don’t sleep in anything if it’s hot.”

Trying not to look shocked, Anna whispered, “Nothing?”

Chance’s rich laugh filled the tent and she realized she hadn’t heard it often in their weeks together. “Maybe I’d better just sleep in my clothes.”

Anna nodded, feeling her cheeks grow warm. “Aren’t you afraid of catching a chill without wool next to your skin in winter? It’s not healthy to undress so.”

“Near as I can see, the Indians run around with less, and I’ve never seen as many of them ill as there are in this group of your people.”

Anna couldn’t argue.

As Chance stretched out on his bedroll, he reached and touched her hand. “Good night, Anna.”

“Good night.” She laughed at the thought that anyone would sleep naked. “Keep warm.”

The next few weeks flew by in a buzz of activity. The trunks were reloaded onto wagons, but no wagons rolled toward the new land because more people were coming down with the fever each day. There was only one doctor in the town, and he had been worked to exhaustion. Over a third of the new arrivals were suffering from scurvy or fever. The doctor set up huge hospital tents, but the fever spread to the townspeople as fast as a maverick grapevine climbs a tree. By the end of the first day, he was out of laudanum. The fever attacked quickly, sending people who were healthy only hours before into violent seizures of vomiting. The doctor was forced to stand by as his people were gripped with stomach cramps, and hours later their arms and legs tightened with pain.

Anna bathed the feverish, blanketed those with chills, and cleaned the beds again and again as more died and more came down with the illness. Chance spent his days burying the dead and chopping wood for wash fires. Every morning, all the sheets had to be boiled and scrubbed. He and Anna were too tired at night to speak more than a few words to one another.

On the first evening of their third week in New Braunfels, Anna straightened after scrubbing bile off a sickbed. She watched as Chance moved through the hospital tent entrance. He looked thinner, and dark circles framed his indigo eyes. She could tell by his uneasy stance that he disliked having to come into the hospital. The smell of vomit and human waste didn’t seem to bother him as much as watching Anna work until her hands were raw from cleaning. He’d do the most hated task of all, that of burying the dead, but he resented Anna seeing the horror as her countrymen died.

Walking toward him, Anna prepared herself for another lecture about how she should get away from this place for a few hours. In truth she’d tried, but there always seemed to be one more task to do, one more bed to clean. Each day she worked more hours and Chance’s anger grew. Anna hoped to start this conversation with him on neutral ground. “Have you seen Tobin?”

Chance frowned, resenting her asking about Tobin as though the man were their child. “I don’t know where he is. I wasn’t the one assigned to watch him today.”

Anna didn’t smile at his attempt at humor for she saw no laughter in his stare.

“You look tired,” she said as she pressed her hands against the small of her back. She’d felt a pulling in her back for days, and twinges in her stomach, but she wasn’t about to complain about such minor ailments.

“I’m fine,” Chance snapped.

Anna finally took exception to his tone. “You don’t look fine. Your clothes are filthy from digging and you haven’t shaved in days.” She knew she shouldn’t find fault with him. He was working harder than most to fight the fever, but he had no right to snap at her.

Removing his hat, he ran his fingers through his dust-coated hair. “Tell me, Anna. Is there ever anything about me that’s right? Since we’ve met you’ve managed to criticize just about everything from my manners to the way I dress.”

Anna couldn’t believe he was talking to her this way in front of the others. Even knowing that many didn’t understand English or were too sick to hear did little to stop the crimson spreading across her cheeks. “I don’t wish to discuss this,” she said, lifting her head.

Chance crammed his hat on. “I take it, then, that I’ve been dismissed.”

“Take it any way you like.”

He stormed out of the hospital without another word. Hours later, when Anna crawled into her tent, Chance’s bedroll was gone. Wiping the sweat from her forehead, she tried to remember if her words had been bad enough to make him leave. But she was too tired to care tonight. Whatever their misunderstanding, it could be solved tomorrow when they’d had some sleep.

But the morning brought no answer. Chance wasn’t at breakfast, and he didn’t bring her wood for the wash fires as he had every morning. At noon he wasn’t among the men returning from the cemetery, and when the evening fires were built she couldn’t see him among the tents.

He seemed to have disappeared. She asked about him but no one had seen him, and as night fell on the second day he’d been gone, fear began to creep into Anna’s heart. What if he’d had enough of her and the troubles in the camp? What if he could take no more of the illness and disillusionment? She’d heard the other men talk in angry voices filled with hate and heartbreak about the bankrupt settlement. What if Chance saw no way the settlement would survive? Could he have vanished as quickly as he’d appeared the night they’d met?

In the dark solitude of her tent, Anna gripped Chance’s knife. “He wouldn’t leave without this,” she whispered. “He said he’d be here when I needed him.” Turning her face toward the wall of the tent, Anna refused to allow tears to fall. “He’ll come back,” she said over and over, trying to convince herself, but the tent was smothered in loneliness. The ground felt harder and the night seemed colder than before—and all because Chance was missing.

By the third morning of his absence, Anna’s worry had turned to anger. She stormed around the camp looking for him like a mother bear in search of her missing cub. She didn’t care if people stared, or even laughed. She would find Chance if he were avoiding her even if she had to search every house and tent. If he had left her over a little argument, she’d give him another to send him on his way.

Finally, she trudged down the muddy road to the cemetery. She’d looked everywhere else; he had to be among the workers. But as Anna neared, her hopes fell. All the men digging graves were short or old. She could tell Chance wasn’t among them even before she reached the cemetery gate.

One old man layered with dirt waved an arm in greeting. “Howdy, miss. Can I help you?”

Anna swallowed her pride. “I’m looking for my husband. He’s tall and thin and has black hair.”
And he’s proud and as stubborn as a mule,
she added to herself.

The man shook his head. “I know the man you mean, but I haven’t seen him for three days or more. He was a good worker, but last time I saw him he was riding a bay off toward those trees.”

Thanking the man, Anna walked toward the trees he had indicated. She knew it was pointless, but she had nowhere else to turn. Chance had ridden off just as she’d feared, leaving her without a word, and she couldn’t even remember what they’d fought about. He’d lied when he’d said she’d have a cabin by the fall, lied just like every man she’d ever known. Why was she surprised? Why had she depended on him?

She moved among the trees, not feeling the cool shade or the branches brushing her face. She’d made it to within a few days of getting her land and now had no one to help her get started. There was no doubt in her mind that she could run the farm once it was settled, but she couldn’t build a cabin and a corral. She couldn’t clear the land in her pregnant state. Now her choices were simple: marry Walter, or remain in New Braunfels and depend on charity.

A horse’s snort startled Anna out of her self-pity. Quickly, she moved through the branches toward the noise. The sound came again, closer this time. Anna tried to understand the animal’s cry. It could be a horse trapped in the brush, or a wild burro lost from the herd she’d seen roaming the river.

Lifting her skirts, Anna climbed over a fallen log to where the shadows grew as deep as those of the evening. The warm morning air was thick with humidity; it stuck to her flesh like a spider’s web.

Anna pulled a thick oak branch away from her path. There before her stood Cyoty. The great bay shook his head in greeting, then stomped and jerked his neck on the rope that bound him to a tree.

Anna rushed forward, startling the animal with her sudden movement. “Cyoty.” She held her hand, palm up, to allow him to recognize her. “Cyoty, what are you doing here?” She said the words as though the horse could understand her. “Who tied you up?” His line was long enough to reach both water and grass, but the half-wild animal had pulled at the rope until his neck was raw.

Unmindful of her clothes, Anna scooped a handful of cool mud from the creek and smeared it along his neck so insects wouldn’t bite into the raw flesh. Cyoty seemed to understand her kindness and stopped stomping.

This made no sense. Who would tie Cyoty out here away from camp? Had someone stolen him? No one could have done that if Chance was alive. He wouldn’t have allowed it. She remembered how he’d fought Walks Tall for the horse. A man would have had to hit him from behind to best Chance in a fight . . . or shoot him.

A knot formed in the pit of her stomach, spreading dread through her veins. Chance’s body must be somewhere nearby. He must have been killed when he’d entered the woods. Fighting the urge to run, Anna forced herself to look around. She had to know if he was alive or dead.