Trail Angel (8 page)

“I don't think of anything.” Byron's deeply lined forehead creased with concern. “What do you think about?”

“Things I've done. Things I've seen.”

“Why would you do that?”

Now Josey wondered if Byron was joking. “You're a stronger man than me if you can keep from thinking on what was done to you.”

Byron held quiet a moment. When he spoke, his voice rumbled like far-off thunder. “Things they done to me, they can't do to me no more, so I don't think on them.”

Josey waited for Byron to say more but soon all he heard were his friend's steady breaths. It was like Byron to leave unsaid what Josey already knew.
I think of the things I've done because I fear I will do them again.

With Josey lost in thought, Byron rode ahead, turning one of the oxen that had strayed. He rode well enough for not having grown up with the skill, but there was a stiffness to him in the saddle that left him sore after a long day. That was why Josey did most of the hard riding, ranging ahead of the wagons, watching for trouble and scouting good campsites.

He often came across other wagon trains headed west and sometimes travelers turned the other way. They were eager to see a fresh face and generous with news about what they had seen. There were no strangers on the trail, the Colonel liked to say. Even Josey could be sociable long enough to pick up news from fellow travelers. This day had been different.

“I saw riders,” he said when Byron returned to his side. “On that ridge to the north, when I came back from scouting.”

“I didn't see them.” Byron satisfied Josey's curiosity without being asked.

“I don't think they meant to be seen. They rode off, headed north, as soon as I came into view.”

Josey circled back, guiding a pair of milk cows that belonged to the New York families. It took a few minutes before he and Byron were close enough to speak, and they resumed the conversation as if it had been uninterrupted.

“Indians?”

“No. Weren't soldiers, either.” Josey turned over in his mind something in the way the riders moved off. “Might have been once, though.”

“You ain't seen 'em before?”

Josey shook his head. So many wagon trains left Omaha they were bound to bunch together. Sometimes they saw wagons on the south side of the river, their canvas tops gleaming in the sun. At night they might see campfires twinkling on the horizon. No one had cause to hide.

Not unless they did.

The cattle were quiet. From the sounds at camp, he knew dinner would be ready soon, but neither man moved. Josey didn't like mysteries. They pricked at his mind like a sandspur on his trousers, rubbing with every step.

“I expect we'll see 'em again.”

Exhausted by long days on the trail, slumber should have come easily. Yet even after almost a week, the sensations of sleeping in the wagon were still too new. Annabelle lay awake beneath her blanket, her bones sore, muscles leaden, unable to get comfortable no matter which way she turned. Even once she found her ease, sounds that went unnoticed during the day clamored in a discordant jumble to a restless mind. Squawking chickens. Lowing cattle. Barking dogs answering howling wolves. Whispered conversations carried by a wind that set loose canvas flapping and leather harnesses creaking.

Finally smothered in blessed sleep, Annabelle awoke with a jolt, her heart racing like after a hard ride, her nightgown sticky with sweat. She lay still a few moments, disoriented in the dark by the dream, a subject she thought she had put behind her, if not literally buried. The white canvas wagon cover looked just enough like the canopy of her marriage bed to confuse her addled brain and leave her grasping to determine what was dream and what was real.

Not wishing to wake her parents, Annabelle crept from the wagon, flinching every time the wood creaked. Crawling from the wagon, the fair light cast by the silver half moon and millions of twinkling stars reassured her. Two nights earlier a storm as ferocious as any hurricane she had seen tore at their campsite. Great billows of dark clouds rolled in. Lightning played over them like holiday fireworks. The breeze whipped into a gust, washing over them the fresh smell of rain. The skies darkened as a moonless night, and the rain came as the men unhitched the teams.

They scrambled to secure the oxen and cows. A couple of the miners had set up a tent, and it blew over despite extra lines meant to hold it in place. Her father and uncle drove stakes into the ground to anchor the family's wagons while she and her mother took shelter within. Even with the anchors, the wagons rocked like wave-tossed boats. Rain blew sideways into the openings in the canvas, soaking nearly everything.

Few slept that night. They rose to a dreary morning, their camp practically in ruins. They might have lost all the stock but for a cow that wandered into camp to be milked. The scouts followed its tracks to find the rest of the herd.

Thick mud made the road nearly impassable, sucking at the hooves of the oxen. Damp seeped into everything. At the midday break, Annabelle and her mother spread out their bedding to dry in the sun. They wiped down everything inside the wagon with a water and vinegar mix to prevent the spread of mildew. They hung sodden clothes from the wagon's canvas to dry in the wind.

Two days later, it was so dry wagon drivers raced to move out first and avoid swallowing the dust of the wagons in front. The emigrants prayed for a light rain to tamp the trail and break the midday heat, but it seemed nothing came in half measure in these western lands.

Except for sleep. Annabelle believed a good night's sleep was a palliative for nearly any adversity, and she remained confident she soon would adjust to her new environment. Hoping the cool air would aid in recapturing sleep without any cursed dreams, she carried her blanket, pillow and an old quilt to spread on the ground. Her eyes sharpened by the darkness, she maneuvered easily in the night. As she sought a soft spot near the wagons, the discreet rumble of a man clearing his throat startled her.

“If you're going to sleep outside, lie under the wagon. It's safer.”

The Colonel reclined on the ground beside the orange glow of the cook fire. Annabelle wasn't sure whether she recognized him by his lean form or the harshness of his Yankee accent. She shuffled forward, wrapping herself more tightly in the blanket and quilt.

He must have registered her confusion as she considered the unseen danger his advice implied. “The stock.” He nodded in the direction of the animals. “If anything should startle them into a stampede, you'll be safer under a wagon.”

“Wonderful. Another worry to keep me awake. The wolves and rain storms weren't enough.”

He tipped his hat. “All part of the service, ma'am.”

“At least it's a lovely night.” She found a spot near the fire to lay her quilt.

“You've had trouble sleeping?” The Colonel lit his pipe, his face hidden behind the flare of the match.

“I don't think we slept a wink the first night. Father discovered an ax next to Mother's side of the bed. She is terrified of an Indian attack. Father was more afraid of Mother waking from a wolf or coyote howl in such a state that she might dismember a limb—his or hers—before she knew what she was doing.”

The Colonel stifled his laughter to keep from waking the others, his amusement prompting a hoarse cough.

“Why aren't you sleeping?” she asked. “I can't believe you're unaccustomed to sleeping outdoors.”

“Old men like me don't need to sleep much.” In the glow of his pipe she saw his mustache rise into a smile. “Which is a good thing given how many times we have to piss in the night.” A look of alarm passed over his face. “Excuse my language, ma'am. I've been living among uncouth soldiers for too long.”

“Your language is not alien to me.” Annabelle liked how he called her “ma'am” even though he was older than her father. His manners reminded her of Southern gentlemen. “Once I can sleep better, I think I might come to enjoy our travels.”

“Is it bad dreams that bother you?” the Colonel asked.

Annabelle shifted. “Why would you think that?”

“They are common enough these days.”

She wondered if he spoke of the war in general or Josey Angel. Annabelle rarely saw the young scout among the wagons. He usually rode ahead and showed up only to report to the Colonel before riding away again. His long absences did not remove him from Annabelle's mind, but she resisted asking the Colonel about him. Instead she asked, “Do bad dreams keep you awake?”

“Me?” He chuckled. “When you reach my age, you stop worrying about your dreams. You're just grateful to still have them.”

Annabelle stretched, feeling refreshed despite her abbreviated sleep. The camp would stir soon. Light appeared long before the sun, and the emigrants took advantage of every minute in the cool morning. Rising from her seat by the fire, she bid the Colonel a good day. “I may as well start getting dressed.”

“I should go, too.” He tipped his hat and rose with some difficulty on knees that seemed to waggle.

Shaking the dust from her quilt, Annabelle watched distant lightning strikes flash on the horizon. She hoped the sight didn't portend another storm. The lights reminded her of the shelling in Charleston, carried her back to another time. It had been months since she last dreamed of her husband. Richard had been so angry in her dream. She wasn't sure why.
For selling the family land? For giving him up for dead?
There were too many possibilities, some she even blocked from her mind.

Annabelle remembered the day he left, so handsome in his uniform, his wide shoulders gilded with fringed epaulets, a plumed hat making him look even taller in the saddle. He wore a red sash about his waist and carried his father's sword and pearl inlay revolver. The sun shone and he looked the very image of Southern gallantry.

Yet it wasn't until he disappeared from view that Annabelle permitted a smile.
Couldn't restrain it, really.
If she'd been troubled by guilt at the moment, the feeling disappeared in the relief at his departure. She might have felt differently if she'd known he wasn't coming back. That moment of pleasure left her no defense against his anger in her dream.

“You never came home,” she said in the dream.

“I've been here all along,” her husband responded. He reached toward her in the dream, and she pulled back, tripped, her leg jolting for balance with a sudden movement that woke her.

It's better to be awake if that's what sleep brings.
That he should hold such sway over her after all this time proved how deeply he wounded her. He had been dead nearly two years now. She would never know precisely how long. The uncertainty made her envy widows who received accounts of their husband's deaths. As difficult as those letters were to read, at least they delivered a sense of finality. The women grieved and moved on. Annabelle never had that. She imagined Richard's death a thousand ways, sometimes, in her darkest moments, wishing him the pain in death he had thrust on her in life.

Such thoughts always wracked her with remorse and left her more vulnerable to the nightmares. He had come to her, angry, his comely face twisted into a mask of hatred she had never understood.

No. That wasn't right.
She understood why he hated her. Perhaps the mystery was in how much.
Where was the forgiveness? Where was the healing of time?
She feared she would never understand that.

The wagons typically stopped late in the day, depending on where the scouts found a good campsite. They had left behind Fremont, a settlement of maybe two hundred souls. Two weeks out from Omaha, the scouts brought back word that they'd passed the westernmost point of the Union-Pacific railroad construction site. They were still at least a week away from Fort Kearny. The monotonous routine and vast distances sobered Annabelle, like crossing an ocean in a rowboat with only a vague faith that land waited on the other side.

Yet the journey brought its own pleasures. Evenings were Annabelle's favorite time. While the men unhitched the wagons and moved the stock to graze, the women and children gathered fuel and started cook fires. Trees were still plentiful near the river when they first left Omaha, but they began to see fewer, then hardly any. Earlier travelers had cut down what few trees there had been, the Colonel explained. Before that, great herds of buffalo ate or rubbed down whatever shoots came up long before they grew into trees.

A stream of emigrants with rifles had run off those herds, yet plenty of evidence remained of their migrating through the area between seasons. When dry, great piles of dung could be burned, putting off enough smoky heat for cooking. The boys in particular enjoyed gathering the dried buffalo chips, even if they spent as much time flinging them at each other as adding them to their cart.

Each evening, her father and Luke took the end board from one of the wagons and placed it across two provision boxes. The women set the “table” with tin plates and cups. Without chairs, most sat on small boxes. After supper, while the women cleaned up, the men oiled harnesses and saw to repairs. Later, they played cards or got out their dice to play chuck-a-luck. Sometimes they visited with other families. On fair nights, the emigrants came together at one fire. They talked of family and loves left behind or spoke dreamily of their hopes for the new land.

One warm night when the mosquitoes were scarce, they made music. Caroline had a beautiful voice and, despite her youth, played the best fiddle among them. Others improvised instruments from washboards, spoons and kettles. Some of the couples managed to dance a few steps in a dusty clearing near the fire. The Colonel sat to the side, tapping his knee in rhythm with Luke's spoons. Caroline asked if he knew a song.