Journey of Honor A love story (6 page)

Trace heard sounds and carefully headed that way, his gun in his hand. Ahead of him, someone struck a light and he moved towards it, afraid of what he might find. Two of his teamsters were standing over a figure on the ground while Mose walked toward him from the other side of them. The four men stood and looked down at the body of Filson as he lay there in an ugly, black circle of blood. None of them bothered to check for signs of life. If he wasn’t dead, he soon would be.

The two drivers looked up and one of them asked, “Who shot him?” Mose glanced over and met Trace’s eyes and he knew that Mose also knew as well that it was Giselle.

Mose answered, “I was still trying to sneak up on him when I heard the shot. Was it you, Trace?”

Trace nodded in the affirmative, without saying anything, and Mose asked, “Do we bury him? Or send him back on his horse?”

With a sigh, Trace said, “Let’s bury him. No sense in borrowing trouble. Help me lift him would you, Mose?”

Shaking his head, Mose looked at him. “I’ll handle burying him. These boys will help me. You’d better get on back to camp and see to things there.”

Trace glanced up. “Thanks, man.” He headed back towards his wagon, wondering where Giselle had gone in the dark. Still a ways away, he heard something out in the brush and turned toward the sound. He found her on her knees being violently sick with the gun beside her. Speaking low, he came up to her and put a hand gently on the small of her back and left it there while she finished retching. Wordlessly, he handed her a handkerchief to wipe her face and mouth.

She didn’t look up, just said, “Thank you,” and then picked up the gun and turned to head back.

He reached and caught her arm and looked down into her face. For a second or two he studied her in the dark and then asked, “You okay?” She nodded, but tears welled up in her eyes and began to stream down her cheeks. Pulling her into a gentle hug, he rubbed her shoulder while she cried like her heart was broken. At length he said sadly, “I wish you wouldn’t have done that. It’s going to be hard to deal with. I know from experience.”

She shook her head against his chest. “I had to.” After a pause she took a deep breath and continued. “I couldn’t put anyone else in danger anymore and that’s too much to expect another to do for me. He was my problem. I wish he could have been removed long ago. It would have saved a lot of heartache.” She continued to cry quietly and then added, “He was a very bad person who didn’t care who he hurt. He would never have left me alone until he was forced to.” She sniffled and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

Still holding her, he asked, “How long has he been bothering you?”

“He first saw me more than a year ago. For a while he just tried to pay attention to me. Then he got more demanding. The last few months have been horrible. I couldn’t do that to all of you. He wouldn’t care who he hurt to get to me. He had to be stopped.”

He pulled back and raised her face to look at him. “It’s still going to be awful to get over, but you’re right. He did have to be stopped. I don’t believe there was any other way he could have been handled. It was what I fully intended to do when I found him tonight. It was in defense of that life and liberty that you spoke of. Remember that.” She hid her face in his chest and began to cry again.

At length she raised her head and asked, “Do they all know I did it?”

“Just Mose. We let the others think it was me.”

She shook her head again. “I can’t let you take the blame for me. If the Sheriff comes you would be in trouble.”

This time, he shook his head. “The Sheriff isn’t going to come. There’s no such thing as a Sheriff out here. I’m fine with taking the blame. I’d rather than that they thought it was you. Do you want your grandparents to know?”

“Of course not, but I should be honest. You shouldn’t be blamed for something so terrible that you didn’t do.”

“Giselle, look at me. There are some who would say what you have done is a service to society. You yourself know that to be true or you wouldn’t have done it. Let’s just let this lie as it is. If there’s ever a problem, we’ll tell everyone the truth then. How does that sound?”

For several seconds, she looked up into his eyes and finally nodded. “Good. I think it’s best this way. Do you think you can come back to bed yet?” She nodded wordlessly again and he reached down to take the gun for her and then waited while she went on ahead of him.

Camp was dark and quiet when they made their way back to their beds. He lay down, but she knelt to pray. He knew she had started to cry again as she prayed, and when she lay down and curled into a ball facing away from him, he leaned up on an elbow to whisper, “Giselle, is there any way that you could not turn away from me right now?”

She rolled over and faced him with her tear filled eyes. “What?”

Gently, he said. “Don’t try to face this by yourself tonight, Elle. At least let me be your friend through it. It’s hard enough, without feeling like you’re alone.” She nodded and he reached for her hand. “Pray for peace, Elle. I’ll pray for you too. And I’m sure Mose is praying as well. It might be a long night, but we’ll get through it.”

She turned on her side and moved her head over next to his shoulder. “Thanks, Trace. For everything. I’m sorry for the trouble. Good night.”

“You’re welcome. And the trouble’s okay. That particular one is over anyway.” He squeezed her hand. “Good night, Elle.”

Once in the night he heard her crying again and rolled over and put his arm across her. When he awoke in the last dark before dawn, he was surprised to see Dog curled up beside her. Dog actually had his head on her arm and Trace wondered if he had known that she was deeply sad somehow. He must have, because he was fairly haunting her as she cooked when Trace came back through a few minutes later.

Her bedroll still lay beside his under the wagon and he quickly rolled them both up and tossed them inside his wagon before coming to the fire. He stopped beside her and she looked up at him steadily. She looked like she’d been upset, but she was going to be okay. He could see that in the resolute expression in her eyes. He dropped a hand to her shoulder and gave it a squeeze as she handed him a plate and cup. “Thanks, Giselle. It looks and smells wonderful.”

*****

Giselle didn’t think it smelled wonderful. After having thrown up in the night, this morning her stomach was roiling. It had been this way off and on during this pregnancy, but never as bad as it was this morning. She got breakfast ready, but after handing Trace his, she had to hurry to get out of camp before she was sick again in the brush beside the nearby stream. When she was finished, she was embarrassed to see that Mose was not far away and had seen how sick she was. He came to her and gently asked, “You okay?”

Nodding, she said, “I’m fine,” and hurried back toward camp. That morning after chores were done, and they pulled out, she talked to her grandparents for a while on the wagon seat as they drove. Josiah asked about the shooting the night before, and she told him that Filson had been killed and left it at that. Just thinking about it made her nauseous again and she had to climb down from the wagon and run to be sick. She knew Mose had seen it again, but there was nothing she could do about that.

Once back aboard, she felt awful and her grandmother encouraged her to climb into the back and try to find a place to rest as they traveled. Giselle gladly took her up on her offer. She was still there when they stopped for lunch and her grandmother brought her some food, hoping it would be easier to keep down while the wagon was still for a few minutes. Both Trace and Mose looked in on her, which made her feel both better and worse. It was great to be taken such good care of, but she so regretted bringing trouble into their train.

The afternoon went a little better, and by the time they stopped to circle into camp, she was able to face cooking again. She ate a minimal dinner, finished the chores of cleaning up and milking, and then went to bed immediately after praying to do better the next day.

After gratefully sleeping through an uneventful night, the next day did go better. She was sick again very first thing, but then was able to make breakfast, do the milking, and pack their lunch without having to run back out of camp again. She slept part of the afternoon in the back of the wagon too and that helped. This baby—or babies—made her so tired that she could hardly fathom it. That evening her grandmother did most of the cooking, but Giselle was able to get the other chores done and, after eating, went straight back to bed. She was sleeping so hard that she didn’t even know if Trace came to sleep by her because he was up and gone when she dragged out of bed the next morning.

Once more sick to the core, she rushed out of camp to be ill. Afterwards, she sat on a big flat rock on the way back to rest for just a second. She pulled her legs up beside her and bowed her head, knowing that she needed some help to get the terrible nausea under control. She needed to feel better than this to be able to handle all that this trip to Zion required of her, and no matter what, she didn’t want to become a burden that would slow them down. She heard a sound and opened her eyes to see Mose looking at her from across the little clearing.

She quickly got up and began to walk back to camp, but had to stop again before she made it very far. She had already lost what little was in her stomach this morning, so why was she still so green? Being caught by Mose again made her a little embarrassed around him later when she handed him his breakfast.

Finally, this day went better than the last couple and she felt so much stronger that she hoped she could put the worst of the morning sickness behind her again and get back to focusing on what needed to be done. That evening after dinner and the regular chores, she hurried to heat water in the big kettle to wash some laundry before dropping into bed dead tired again.

Whether it was the laundry or just being with child, the next morning, she was up even before Trace, being ill in the dark as far from camp as she was able to make it before she had to stop. She tried to be completely quiet, but apparently she wasn’t quiet enough, because a minute or two later, Mose appeared out of the pre-dawn gray. He walked up to her and handed her a handkerchief and a cold biscuit without saying a word, and then stood there with her while she wiped her mouth and moved to a nearby fallen tree to sit down. She started to eat the biscuit, praying it would somehow help her feel good enough to make it back to camp and through the morning.

Surprisingly, the biscuit did help. She finished it and then stayed seated for a minute to let it settle before starting back towards the wagons to get breakfast. Mose had just been looking at her this whole time and she wondered what she should say when, out of the blue, he said, “I was married once. Did you know that?” His voice was tired when he said it.

She looked up at him, but it was hard to read his expression in the dim light. “Was? You’re not anymore?”

He shook his head and then went on in an incredibly sad voice, “She died.”

Giselle didn’t know what to say or why he had told her that just now. “I’m so sorry, Mose.”

“Me too.” He almost whispered it. After a long pause he continued in a more conversational tone, looking her in the face all the while. “She was expecting a baby before she died. She was sick just like this.” He gestured towards Giselle and then waited for her to say something.

She looked up at him again, loathe to speak out loud the devastating truth that so far she’d only shared with her grandparents. She had no idea how to go about telling something so hard to face. Especially not to someone who she hadn’t known long. Before she had figured out how to answer him, he came right out and asked, “Where is the father?”

Dropping her eyes, she shook her head and said in a voice as sad as his was, “I was in the wrong place at the wrong time when a mob of Mormon haters came, Mose. I don’t even know which one of them was the father. The only one I even knew was Filson. He was the leader.”

There was what felt like a long, long pause before he said, “You need to tell Trace. He’d want to know.”

She was finally able to look up. “I can’t.” She hesitated and then shook her head again. “I can’t. And there’s no need. Eventually, I won’t be able to hide it and our marriage will be annulled and you’ll both be in California long before it’s due anyway. I’m sorry. I can’t face Trace just yet. The only ones other than you now that know are my grandparents.”

He was more adamant this time. “He’d want to know, Miss Giselle. He really is a doctor. A very good one. He would want to be able to take better care of you. There’s a reason they call it a delicate condition. And even though your marriage is a little unusual, you are married.”

She shook her head. “Not really, Mose. And that’s not the point anyway. Whether it’s a delicate condition or not doesn’t change what I need to do to help get west as fast as possible. Delay could well mean our lives. All of our lives.”

“Miss Giselle, it’s none of my business, but there’s no reason in the world not to adjust a few things to take better care of you.”

She raised her chin. “I’m absolutely fine, just as things are. So I’m sick when I get up and I tire easily. That’s nothing I can’t handle.” She got up. “Let’s don’t talk about this anymore. It’s better if I try not to think about it.”

Stopping her, he said, “No, Giselle, even if it was conceived in a horrible situation, a baby is a blessing from God. It was not its fault. And a new life should be celebrated.”

“That’s easy for you to say, Mose. Sometimes reality isn’t everything it should be.” She turned to go and then paused and turned back to him. “Mose, where is your baby?”

His face clouded. “The baby died too, Giselle. But it wasn’t mine. My wife was a slave. She died trying to deliver her master’s child.”

Her eyes flew to his. After a few seconds she said in almost wonder, “But you would have celebrated its new life.” It wasn’t a question.

He hesitated. “I’m no saint, Miss Giselle, but the life of a slave is hard enough. Add to that the stigma of being a mixed race child born in those circumstances. That child would have had enough trouble without being rejected by its own father. And I would have been its father just as Callie would have been its mother. Jesus would have wanted it that way.”