Jodi Thomas (2 page)

Even if he were somehow waiting in Santa Fe, he’d never accept her as a bride when he learned of the trouble she’d caused the night she left Independence. She hadn’t left with her father’s blessing, but with his curse. Francis wasn’t the kind of man to overlook a mistake.

In a gust of wind the thin image on tin flicked from her fingers and splashed into the water. Bailee didn’t even try to grab at the treasure she’d held dear for so long. She let it float away, along with her dream of marriage and family.

She stared down at the outline of herself in the dark water. She would be twenty-six her next birthday. Her father always said she was lucky: being sensible was far more important than being pretty. It was time to face the truth and stop running toward a man who wasn’t waiting for her. The one dream she’d ever let herself believe in was that she’d marry, and now that would always be a dream, nothing more.

Slowly Bailee stood and walked back to the others. Lacy had stopped crying and was building a fire. Sarah already curled into her blankets, so thin beneath them her body appeared more a twisting of sheets than a person.

“We have beans and cornbread,” Lacy said as the fire sparked. “If we’re careful and eat only once a day, the supplies will last a few weeks. By then another train is bound to come along.” Hard times were nothing new for Lacy; she’d told of being on her own since her mother died five years ago. She’d had her cry, now it was time to get on with surviving.

Bailee shook her head. The Roland train left late in the year. Some said if they didn’t reach the Rockies by August first, they’d never make it across before snow buried them. The chances of another wagon train following so late in the year were slight and cattle drives that crossed this trail heading north mostly traveled in the spring.

Lacy worked around the campfire, building her hopes as she built a meal. “I know they feared Sarah has the fever, but she won’t give us nothing. I can feel it in my bones.”

Bailee managed a smile. “Your feeling it in your bones is one of the reasons you got left behind with Sarah and me. They feared Sarah might give them the fever, but they knew you gave them the shakes with your talk.”

Lacy made a face. “Hush your teasing or I’ll cast my evil eye on you.”

“And what?” Bailee laughed out loud. “Make me an old maid, lost out here in the middle of nowhere with a sick woman and a girl?”

“I’m fully grown,” Lacy corrected. Huge brown eyes turned up to Bailee. “Do you really think we’re going to die out here?”

“No.” Bailee made up her mind about an idea that had been rolling around in her thoughts all afternoon. “And we’re not staying here hoping someone will save us.”

Catching Bailee’s determination, Lacy nodded.

“Come morning, we’re loading up with wood and water and heading back the half day to where we saw the red barrel for mail at that crossroads. From there, we’ll turn our wagon south.”

Lacy’s smile faded into panic. “South?”

Bailee tried to sound determined. “That’s right. Come morning, the three of us are heading straight for Texas. We’ve got two weeks to get there before we starve.”

Lacy’s mouth opened, but no sound came out.

She didn’t need to say a word; Bailee read her thoughts in her stare. She’d just named the one place lower than hell in Lacy’s mind. The one fate that might be worse than starvation.

Texas.

T
HE WINDS HOWLED ACROSS THE OPEN COUNTRY. Bailee slept little, feeling she had to keep watch over the others. She was the oldest, therefore somehow silently appointed the leader. Sarah and Lacy were her family now. Her father had turned his back, and she knew, no matter what, she could never return home.

Just before dark Bailee had found a board down by the stream. It had probably been left from some other abandoned wagon that camped as they did, beside a stream too small to be worthy of an entire train stopping. Or maybe the piece of wood fell from one of the supply buckboards that followed cattle drives through this area. It was weathered and rotted in a few spots, but her grip molded around one end perfectly, and it stretched the length of a cane at her side. She’d found her weapon. She could stand guard.

Sarah Andrews, despite her weak condition, insisted on sleeping by the fire with the others. Bailee couldn’t help but wonder if Sarah felt the loneliness from the missing wagons as dearly as she did.

They’d traveled in a village for weeks now, always hearing the sounds of people and animals moving about them. Now the air was no longer thick with smells, and the invisible safety blanket that came with the crowd had disappeared.

The three women formed a triangle around the small campfire. Three souls holding to one another when no one else wanted them.

The board lay beside Bailee’s bedroll as she watched the stars arrive and listened to the haunting sounds just beyond the campfire’s light. During the day the vast plains seemed empty, but at night Bailee heard movement in the tall grasses and splashing at the water’s edge. A lone wolf cried somewhere in the blackness. His howl carried on the wind a homeless echo. An owl circled back and forth across the moon, then plummeted to earth. Bailee covered her ears, not wanting to hear the scream of its tiny prey.

“Tomorrow,” she whispered, “tomorrow, we’ll go to Texas.” Her one hope was no more than a flicker, but it was all she had.

“To Texas?” Lacy asked from a few feet away. She didn’t sound like she had been asleep, either. “I hear there are Indians in Texas and men so mean they’ll shoot you for talking too much. I heard the only people who live in Texas are folks nobody else would put up with. The cast-offs of all other places.”

Bailee laughed. “That’s us. We should fit right in.”

Lacy didn’t see the humor. “We ain’t bad. You know I ain’t got no witchin’ in me, and Sarah’s just heartsick, that’s all. She doesn’t have the fever, she just lost her fighting spirit since her baby died and she ain’t got no man to hold her while she grieves.”

Lacy stared at Bailee through the dying fire. “I don’t know what you done to get left behind with us two, but I’m sure it’s not any more true than our crimes.” Lacy hesitated in her attempt to cheer herself up, then asked, “What did a right proper lady like you do, Bailee, to make them so mad at you?”

“Does it matter?” How could Bailee ever tell them, or anyone, her crime? Even Broken-Hand Harrison, when he was ranting to the council, only said that she was undesirable, no more. Maybe he figured if he told the truth about being paid off to take Bailee along before the sheriff arrested her, the council might have voted to hang her and not simply dump her at the watering hole. Harrison had known the truth when he took the money from her father that night before the wagons pulled out. “I’ll see she gets to California,” he’d promised. “And never returns,” her father had added.

“No,” Lacy answered with the honesty of a true friend. “It doesn’t matter what they think you done, Miss Bailee. I saw what you did for Sarah, trying to help her, even letting her ride in your wagon after they burned hers to get rid of the fever. That alone is enough to let you tiptoe right into heaven, no matter what anyone accused you of doing.”

“Thanks.” Bailee took a deep breath and relaxed for the first time since all the trouble started. Maybe this time she could leave her past behind. Surely, no one in Texas would know or care that she was a criminal on the run. Harrison was the last person to know she might have been charged with a murder if she’d stayed home, and he was already miles away into the sunset.

He’d be the last person who would ever know, she swore. Let people guess, if they must, but she’d never tell anyone.

“Bailee?” Lacy whispered. “Do you think they want us to die out here? I heard one of the women say the council wasn’t doing nothing but throwing out the trash when they dropped us off. ‘Let them rot in the sun,’ she said without looking me in the face.”

“They probably do,” Sarah answered from across the fire. Her voice grew softer with each day of her illness. “But you’re going to fool them, both of you.” Sarah sounded determined to believe. “You’ll go to Texas and catch you a wild man, and make a husband out of him, and have a herd of kids.”

Bailee agreed, knowing Lacy loved children dearly. “You’ll have so many kids, Lacy, you’ll run out of names and start numbering them.”

Lacy giggled. “I heard someone say you have to bite the ear of a wild mustang to tame him. You think the same thing might be true of Texans?”

Suddenly adventure danced into Bailee’s soul. The flicker of her dream sparked amid the ashes. “I’ll do what I have to do,” she swore, enjoying the game. “Even if they start calling my husband ‘Nibbled Ears.’ ”

Lacy giggled again, forgetting her troubles as only the very young can do. “There’s bound to be three men in a state so big who need wives.”

“Two men,” Sarah whispered. “I’ve had my chance at love. I’ll not marry again.”

“I’m almost past the age of marrying also.” Bailee forced herself to be practical. She might be able to wipe the slate clean of the crime she committed, but she couldn’t change her age or make herself pretty. Once she’d asked her father if she was beautiful, and he’d said her black hair was prettier than most.

“Since I’m having lots of kids, then you’ll both come live with me,” Lacy answered. “I’ll need help with all those babies. I swear, as long as I live, my house will be yours.”

“And mine will be yours,” Sarah answered. “If I ever have one.”

“You’ll both be welcome in mine.” Bailee said the promise as though she believed she might someday have a place to call hers.

“Go to sleep.” Sarah’s low voice sounded deadly tired. “We’ve got a long day ahead of us tomorrow.”

“I agree. Before we find Lacy her wild man, we’ve got to get to Texas.” Bailee closed her eyes and let the spark of hope die within her as she echoed Sarah’s words. “Tomorrow will be a long day.”

Neither woman knew how hard the next day would be. By nightfall they were all too exhausted to undress before crawling into their bedrolls.

Hitching the team had taken half the morning. A job that looked easy when watching the Roland wranglers do it now proved near impossible. If Sarah hadn’t climbed from her bed to help, they might have never pulled away from the stream.

Once moving, Bailee followed the tracks back to the red barrel at the crossroads where people often left mail. Cattlemen would pick up letters from folks heading west and drop them off in Dodge. Folks on the wagon trains would leave papers they’d left with for others to read.

From the barrel the three women turned south. Bailee guessed they were a hundred miles from Texas and should make it easy in a week. If it didn’t rain.

She stared up at the endless blue sky. It never rained here, she decided. Never. Late summer had been so dry she could sometimes hear the wind snapping the tall grass. The land had turned from green to brown. Drying in the sun. Dying in the sun.

The days passed without any sign of civilization. First they rationed food, then water. Lacy and Bailee agreed Sarah should have a double portion, for her body had thinned to bone.

By the end of the second week they were out of food and following a trail so faint Bailee couldn’t be sure if it had been made by men or animals. They saw antelope and buffalo, but without a gun, had no way of killing them. The rabbits were long eared and thin, never drawing close enough to catch.

They crossed shallow streams that allowed them to refill their water supply, but no one had the energy to stop and do laundry. The few clothes they owned faded into the same red-brown color of the sandy earth.

Bailee tried to keep up everyone’s spirits, but even the joke about biting a Texan no longer made Lacy smile. Bailee didn’t bother carrying the board she’d found by the stream. After the first few days, the fear of starvation became far greater than anything that might attack in the night. She knew there were ways to survive in open country, but she was the daughter of a bank accountant, not a mountain man. She’d grown up keeping house for her father and knew nothing of building a fire in open country or living off the land.

Sarah, though only twenty, knew more than the others, but she was so weak she made little effort to talk. She wanted to help them survive, but had no desire to live herself.

One morning Bailee sat alone by a cold fire and watched the dawn. She’d lost track of how many days they’d been on their own. Was it twenty, or twenty-one? Sarah and Lacy were still asleep. It seemed cruel to wake them from dreams. At least for a few hours they weren’t tired or hungry or frightened.

For the first morning in two months the sky didn’t lighten bright and warm. Clouds hung along the horizon like a white mountain range in the distance, and the breeze smelled of rain.

As the air slowly thickened with moisture, Bailee watched a lone figure moving toward them from the south. At first she didn’t respond, unsure if it were man or beast. But the creature ventured closer, growing bigger as it neared.

“Lacy,” Bailee whispered. “Lacy, look. Someone or something is coming.”

The young girl rolled from her blankets and squinted in the direction Bailee pointed. “A man!” she shouted. “We’ve reached civilization.”

But as he drew closer, neither woman felt so sure. A light drizzle distorted him, making it seem as if he weaved back and forth as he walked. Covered in animal hides, they smelled him long before they could make out the features of his face. He looked hairy enough to keep warm without clothes and so dirty it would take more than a drizzle to clean him. A beard the color of mud covered half his broad chest.

Sarah climbed in the wagon to keep dry while she watched, but Lacy and Bailee stood in the rain waiting to greet him. Lacy tied back her hair, trying to be more presentable, but Bailee knew she could do nothing that would matter to change the way she looked. In Sunday best she was plain. She’d be the same in rags and dirt.