“I’ve decided to take Belle with us.”
Jackson was glad she’d sought him out because he’d been on the verge of searching her out. “Is that the young woman with the reverend?”
Grace nodded.
“I thought we were full.”
“We are, but—she needs to begin life someplace new.”
Jackson sensed a seriousness in her she’d not had earlier. “Something wrong, Grace?”
“No,” she answered quietly. “It’s just funny how life can be, sometimes.”
She’d often wondered if the Reverend Petrie would ever admit that his own actions had been partially responsible for Nan’s tragic end. It had taken thirteen long years and the plight of another young woman for him to act with the charity he’d been preaching all his life.
Jackson sensed she was miles away. “Do you want to talk?”
She shook her head. “No.”
Jackson figured that was Grace the banker talking. The banker probably very rarely admitted needing help with anything. After all, the banker put the wagon train together, ordered the supplies and gathered the brides, and so far had not left one “t” uncrossed or one “i” undotted, but he didn’t think she was the banker right now; right now she was a woman who he sensed needed to talk. “Sit,” he invited softly.
Grace shook her head again. “I’m fine.”
“Sit down, hard-headed woman,” he scolded. “It’s pretty obvious you have something on your mind.”
Grace allowed herself a small smile. “And you called me bossy.”
He simply smiled.
She sat.
For a moment she didn’t say anything, then confessed, “I suppose the Reverend Petrie’s visit is the reason I’m so melancholy.”
“How do you know him?”
“His daughter Nan and I were best friends.”
“You said ‘were.’ Did the two of you have a falling out?”
“No. She’s dead, Jackson.”
She said it with such detachment, he wanted to pull her into his arms and hold her. Judging by her tone and manner, the death of her friend must’ve affected her greatly.
“How old was she?”
“Seventeen, just as I was at the time.”
“What happened to her?”
The memories came flooding back to Grace, bringing with them the pain of those times. “She was in love. I never knew his name. All she would tell me was that he was older, someone her father knew, and she was carrying his child.”
Grace paused for another moment, thinking, remembering, then she continued, “She thought the man would marry her, but when she told him—”
Jackson finished for her, “He denied it.”
Grace nodded grimly. “He told her she should talk to the other men she’d been with. But she hadn’t been with any others.”
“Quite the man.”
“Quite the man,” she echoed. “Nan was devastated, of course, and finally confided in me all that was happening.”
She looked across the fire at him. “Society can be very cruel to women bearing a child out of wedlock and she was terrified about her future. I dearly wanted to help, but I couldn’t because I didn’t know how. I wanted to enlist my father’s help, but I was certain he’d tell her folks. At the time, her father, Reverend Petrie, was the minister at the AME church.”
“Did she have other family she could’ve gone to for help?”
“Not anyone who didn’t breathe fire and brimstone like her father.”
“So what did she do?”
“Gathered her courage and confessed everything to her parents.”
Grace’s cold voice matched her eyes. “He whipped her to within an inch of her life, then put her out on the street. Told her she was dead as far as the family was concerned and he didn’t care what happened to her or where she went.”
“Glory,” Jackson whispered. “So where’d she go?”
“She showed up at our door in the middle of the night, bleeding and crying. My father immediately went for the doctor, and while the doctor was in with her, I told my father the whole story.”
Grace held Jackson’s eyes. “He said she could stay until she recovered and that he would talk with Reverend Petrie to see if a solution could be found. I think I loved him more than ever that night. He could’ve chosen not to get involved or been too afraid of the scandal it might’ve caused once word got out that he’d opened his home to Reverend Petrie’s pregnant daughter, but he was genuinely concerned about her welfare and treated Nan with respect.”
“Your father sounds like a fine man.”
“The finest.”
“What happened next?”
“About a week later, when she’d recovered sufficiently enough to be up and around, she said she had an errand to take care of and that she’d be back by supper, but she never returned. The next morning, some fishermen found her dead body floating in Lake Michigan.” Grace’s voice trailed off to a whisper. “The authorities said it was suicide.”
Jackson watched as she used the backs of her hands to staunch the tears filling the corners of her eyes. He dearly wanted to take her in his arms, but knew if they were seen by anyone in camp, it would cause talk, so he forced himself to sit quietly and ask, “How did her parents react to her death?”
Grace’s voice hardened. “The reverend told the authorities he didn’t have a daughter named Nan and refused to claim the body, so my father and I did. We arranged the burial and paid for the tombstone. She must’ve been more terrified of the future than I knew—to take her life—” Her voice trailed off again. The pain of Nan’s death was still fresh in her heart even after all these years because she hadn’t been able to help.
“You shouldn’t blame yourself. You did what you could. You and your daddy gave her a place to stay, even made sure she was buried properly. It was society weighing down on her—society and how folks view unmarried women who have children.”
“I know, but I still feel as if I could’ve done more.”
Jackson wanted to remind her that she’d been only seventeen, and seventeen-year-old females were powerless when facing the rigid dictates of society.
“So is Belle in a family way, too?”
Grace nodded. “I promised Belle you’d be the only person I’d tell.”
Jackson’s heart swelled in response to her trust, but he found Nan’s story very sad. He now understood why Grace had agreed to take Belle on. “I’ll keep her condition in mind during the training sessions.”
“Thank you.”
He leaned over and peered into her face. “Talking with me make you feel better?”
She nodded. He withdrew a clean handkerchief from the pocket in his black shirt and handed it to her. Grateful, she wiped at her teary eyes, then blew her nose.
Since they were on the subject of no good men, he wanted to ask about the coyote who’d left her at the altar, but now was not the time. He didn’t like seeing her sad, he was beginning to realize.
Grace had a question. “Women always find you this easy to talk to?”
“Just those who want to talk.”
Grace grinned and rolled her eyes. “And he’s modest, too. Who’d have ever thought?”
The fire reflected on his smiling face.
She slowly rose to her feet. She thought back on their first meeting that night in his room and how angry she’d been upon leaving. Back then, had anyone told her that she’d end up talking with him this way, she’d’ve asked what they’d been drinking. “Thanks for listening.”
“Anytime.”
“I should be getting back. We’ve a full day ahead of us tomorrow. Goodnight, Jackson.”
“Goodnight, Grace. Sweet dreams.”
He watched her until she disappeared into the night. The first night they’d met, all he’d wanted to do was throttle her for nearly knocking him out cold with that lethal handbag—and now, now he wanted to teach her to ride the winds of passion and hear her whisper his name in the
dark.
After breakfast the next morning, Mr. Drain arrived with the horses and mules. He had them strung together like a remuda and they were being watched over by three men on horseback. After close inspection, Jackson determined the animals were indeed the ones he and Grace had chosen and that there wasn’t a ringer in the bunch. Drain and his men led the pack down into the valley and into the makeshift pen put up by Martin Abbott and his men before they left. Another pen would have to be constructed to hold the horses that wouldn’t fit comfortably, but that could be dealt with later. A grateful Grace handed Drain the bank draft for the balance due and he and his men rode off with a wave.
For the rest of the morning, they were given instructions by both Jackson and their animal nurse, Daisy Green, on the proper care and feeding of the fifty or so animals.
Jackson announced, “And you ladies should get used to stepping in pies, because by the time we head out this valley is going to be full of horse—” He caught himself just in time. “Well—you know.”
They did.
He scanned the group. “So, are there any questions?”
There weren’t any.
Under a grueling afternoon sun they tackled their next task, learning how to put the bridles and leads on the teams, and the proper way to remove them. The tack was heavy, the animals uncooperative, and Jackson made them do it again and again and again. Grace knew he couldn’t help but hear the grumbling and the angry mutters the hot and frustrated women were offering up, but he seemed intent upon ignoring their fits of pique.
“The sooner you ladies can do this, the sooner we can move on to something new,” he told them. Jackson wondered if they knew how angry they looked. From the tight jaws and the threatening eyes being shot his way, he decided it best to keep the question unasked.
Grace’s patience had worn thin over an hour ago. “Jackson, we can do this in our sleep.”
“Prove it.”
She blinked. Once she got over the shock of his words, she asked, “How?”
Grace never learned the answer, because a half second later, the tall Tess Dubois crumpled to the ground like a wet sheet. Women sprang to her side, but Jackson got there first.
“Somebody get me some water, quick!” he barked, gently lifting Tess’s head so he could cradle her against his arm. It was quite obvious she’d fainted from the heat. While schoolteacher Ruby O’Neal vaulted up the hill to the deserted church to get water from the pump to fill a canteen, he looked up, spotted Grace’s concerned face, and said, “Get her out of this damn corset so she can breathe.”
Grace thought that a brilliant suggestion and hastened to his side. She took on the chore of holding Tess’s head and he backed out of the way while the women formed a circle around the fallen Tess. They all stretched wide their skirts, creating a shield around Loreli and Daisy as they opened Tess’s clothes. Ruby returned with the now filled canteen and slid into the circle’s interior.
Standing a respectful distance away, Jackson was admittedly impressed seeing them rally on behalf of a fallen companion, and he thought maybe they were beginning to form the camaraderie Grace had hoped for, but wondered where the women had learned to use their skirts in such a manner and if it was something females learned while growing up. He put that thought aside. He was about to announce his first real wagonmaster edict, and he knew they were going to go through the roof.
Once the groggy Tess was helped to her feet and escorted back to her tent by Daisy and Belle, Jackson looked out on the small sea of female faces and declared, “Ladies, from now on, it would be better if you went without your corsets.”
For a moment there was a stunned silence, until a suspicious sounding Grace asked, “Why?”
“Because once we get on the road, we aren’t going to have the time to stop twenty or thirty times a day to revive fainters. You’re going to be working like men, and you need to be able to breathe like men. After driving six, eight hours a day, those teams aren’t going to care whether your waist is eighteen inches or not, but your lungs will.”
His voice and manner made it easy to determine that this was not a request, but Grace spoke on behalf of her brides. “Jackson, we are not going without proper undergarments.”
“I’m certainly not giving up mine,” Sarah Mitchell huffed.
“And neither am I,” her sister pledged.
The only woman who didn’t appear angry was Loreli Winters, and she said matter-of-factly, “For what it’s worth, I agree with him.”
Silence descended, and in unison the women all turned to stare.
“I think corsets are the number one menace to female society,” Loreli said. “You can’t breathe, they leave you scarred. Who needs them? The first time I wore one was the only time I wore one. I can’t abide the things.”
The women looked at each other as if trying to decide whether to declare Loreli a traitor.
The well-endowed Trudy Berry said coolly, “That’s all well and good, Loreli, but what about those of us who have a bit more to offer, shall we say? I can’t bounce all the way to Kansas City!”
“Then bind yourself,” Loreli encouraged. “We’ve all done it before at one time or another. Even bound you’ll be a lot more comfortable.”
Jackson could’ve kissed her, but his voice was firm as he added, “And ladies, any cheating, and you’ll be on pie-shoveling detail.”
Grace stared at him as if he’d lost his mind. Her hands went to her hips and she stood there a moment. Granted, he might have their health in mind, but to issue threats! He was not the type to blow smoke, so she had no trouble believing he would do what he’d pledged, but she swore if any brides decided to back out of the venture because of Jackson’s methods she’d feed his ears to the mules.
Jackson could see the volatility in Grace’s eyes but he paid it no mind. She hadn’t hired him to mollycoddle these women. She’d hired him to get them to Kansas City, but they weren’t going anywhere if everybody started dropping like flies. Preparing himself for a visit from the fire ant later, he told everyone, “Let’s get finished up here.”
So for another hour and a half, they put tack on, they took tack off. They threaded reins through the teams of horses, they unthreaded reins through the teams. They hooked teams to the wagons, they unhooked teams to the wagons. Only when they had him convinced that they could indeed do the tasks in their sleep did he dismiss them.
“The rest of the day is yours. Grace, I need to see you later.”
“And I wish to speak with you, too,” she said with a false brightness. “Now.”
He had the nerve to smile her way, then walked back toward his tent.
When he was out of earshot, Sarah Miller asked, “Surely you are not going to let him run roughshod over us this way. What will he demand next, that we go without our drawers?”
The stout Sarah Mitchell turned her angry gaze Loreli’s way. “I can’t believe you took his side on the corsets.”
“I’m probably going to do a lot of things you won’t believe before we get to Kansas City,” Loreli tossed back. “But that’s what we no-corset-wearing, gambling women do.”
Grace held up her hands. “Ladies.”
Sarah Mitchell huffed and turned her head.
Loreli had a smile on her ivory face that did not reach her eyes.
Hoping this wouldn’t lead to a serious spat, Grace said, “I’m going to speak with Mr. Blake.”
“I’d rather he be boiled in oil,” Fanny declared.
“Hear! Hear!” schoolteacher Ruby O’Neal called out. “I’m so tired, I’ll probably never walk again!”
Everyone laughed at that and as the chuckles faded away, Grace looked out over the assemblage and saw the dirt-stained clothes and sweaty faces that verified how hard they’d worked. “You ladies did well today. Everything we learn and everyday that passes put us one step closer to Kansas. Be proud of yourselves.”
She saw a few smiles, and that buoyed her spirits. “Now, our general has given us the rest o
f the day off, so go enjoy yourselves and we’ll see everyone at dinner.”
As the woman trailed away, Grace set out for Jackson’s tent. He was behind it chopping firewood. “You were quite short with us back there.”
He put down the ax, then wiped his brow on his sleeve. “Was I?”
“Yes.”
For a moment he studied her silently, then asked seriously, “Do you want the women to be prepared for this journey or not?”
She thought that a rather silly question. “Of course I do.”
“Then let me prepare them.”
“But—”
“They won’t be ready if I have to talk softly or kiss skinned knees all the time.”
“No one’s ask—”
“Grace,” he said calmly, cutting her off.
She snapped her mouth shut. “What?”
“I’m going to be tough on everyone, including you, because their lives, your life, may depend on how well you learn. If I’m rude, it’s because I want it done right. If anything happens, I don’t want it to be because you and the ladies couldn’t tie a proper knot, couldn’t control your teams, or couldn’t breathe…”
“You make it sound as if we’re enlistees.”
“In a way, you are, and I’m first in command.”
Grace didn’t think she liked his attitude at all. “You and I are going to fight a lot, if that’s going to be your thinking.”
“We’ve already conceded that point, remember?”
She did.
“If the thought of my doing something like forbidding corsets keeps someone from fainting and maybe injuring herself or the animals or someone else, so be it. You aren’t paying me to be liked, either.” He went back to his chopping.
“If I were, you’d already be shown the door.”
He smiled and paused. “You don’t like me in my general’s hat.”
She didn’t lie. “No, I don’t.”
“Well, when we get to Kansas City, I’ll burn it, but until then, this is the way it’ll have to be. I’m responsible for this train, and I take that very seriously.”