Ruth had listened to the interchange first with curiosity but finally with admiration. Ruth tended to be stiff with the child, and often found Jessie's questions annoying, distracting even, taking her from her chores. But then chastising herself was nothing new to Ruth.
Ruth brushed Koda, looked at her hands. The nails were broken, and she had blisters and calluses too It was almost as she was when the twins came. She hadn't tended herself, after. Her hair wasn't done in the upsweep Zane liked so well; the house wasn't the welcoming home he had come to expect. He hadn't an inkling of the work two small babies took, to keep them fed and bathed and diapered—she never told him, of course, and he'd pressed her for another right away. “As majestic as a Madonna,” he'd said
Then John had taken sick, his three-month-old body turning wrinkled and pinched. Ruth took in a deep breath as she remembered. The horse nickered as if in comfort, twisted his neck to tug at her light-colored neckerchief stuffed in her waistband. “Not now, Koda,” she said and wondered how he knew when her thoughts turned to that time so frazzled of hope. She had hoped the child would eat and drink that night, fall asleep as she paced; that she could quiet the crying baby arching away from her breast; that she could give him all he needed. No one had told her it could be like this, that a mother could not soothe her own child.
But he had cried for no reason, nothing the doctor could find. Once or twice his piercing sobs drove her to want to shake him, to startle him into quieting, and one desperate day she'd laid him down abruptly, terrified that her fingernails had sunk into his skin. Terror flashed across his eyes for just a moment before his shrieking escalated, and she had shoved him back into the cradle and rushed from the room, holding her ears and sobbing.
She told no one How could she?
That evening, Zane had looked at her and said, “You're ill. Don't expose the children.”
And while a still, small voice told her Zane too lacked patience, her fatigue shamefully asked if he could tend John if he cried in the night.
“Of course,” he'd said. “It will be magnificent to spend time with my son.”
Ruth checked the hobbles on the horses. Walked out among the oxen lying and chewing in the distant twilight. Naomi made up their bedrolls in the grass, first beating the ground to ward off snakes. A coyote howled, and the long and plaintive wail reminded her of what became a blur of agony and loss.
From the nursery, John crying, crying; her own body so tired she could not lift her head, the baby screaming then, high-pitched and frantic, hour after hour. She'd buried her head under the pillow, didn't want to hear Zane's words sounding sharp and short. She should get up, relieve him. It was so hard, the boy's crying
And then quiet, the eerie, welcome quiet. Zane had comforted him.
Everyone does it better than me Those had been her last thoughts before she'd fallen into a fitful sleep. She'd awakened to a nightmare.
In the morning, the women bought up a few supplies at the fort, purchased maple candy for the two left behind. Lura had taken extra beans in and exchanged them for flour. Adora asked Mazy for a loan to purchase laudanum and whiskey for medicinal purposes, then asked, her eyes darting to where Tip ton stood out of hearing, if Mazy would be sure to keep them with her as “we Wilsons and Schmidtkes have a few too many baubles taking up space.”
When she saw the supply of tobacco, even at the outrageous price of a dollar a pound, Lura reached into her wrist bag for her coin purse. “Mariah, did you put my pearl combs somewhere? I declare I'm getting addled in my old age. Or do you remember me telling you what I did with them?”
Mariah looked confused.
“I was sure I put them in the dresser drawer, before your father ¨passed on.” Lura shook her head. “I know I had them when I passed money to the boys. This is so distressing.” She patted her hips, checking her sewn-in pocket
“You want the tobacco?” the sutler asked.
“No. Just thinking about those missing combs takes away my appetite for luxury,” Lura said. “They were so special.”
“Perhaps it is the Lord's way of urging you to put aside that demon,” Esther told her.
“Tobacco? Demon? Why, it keeps the mosquitoes down.”
Just before crossing back over the Platte to where Ruth and Naomi and the stock waited, they pawed through the bushelbasket of letters at the end of the store counter. They didn't really expect to find any mail for themselves, but it was what emigrants did, register their presence at one end of the sutler's store and press their fingers against pages at the other end.
Mazy read the addresses, pronounced the names out loud, and imagined the writers sending thoughts all these miles hoping to catch some loved one, someone held dear, to let them know they were thought of even though they weren't near.
She nearly choked, then stumbled over the words: “Sister Esther Maeves.”
“You have a letter, Sister Esther!” Mariah squealed.
“Nonsense.” The woman bent at her waist to secure the missive from where Mazy squatted at the baskets edge.
“Oh, it isn't bad news, is it?” Adora said.
Esther turned the battered envelope over in her long, bony fingers.
“Open it,” Mariah said.
“Is there one for me in there?” Jessie asked. “Is there a letter for me?”
“Hush, child,” Betha told her. “Its for big people.”
Betha lifted the quill pen to register, then became distracted by the discovery of letters. Jessie slipped her lower lip out, looked around for Clayton and Zilah, then headed off toward the ferry.
Sister Esther stared into pairs of expectant eyes. “I'll review it later,” she said.
“Oh, drats,” Lura said. “I was hoping for something exciting.”
“Just getting a message way out here's that,” Elizabeth said, “no matter who its from. Let me paw through that basket some more.”
“Here's one,” Mazy said, standing, her voice distant to her own ears. “For Jeremy. From California.” She held the envelope in her hand. It was fat and looked official. Her heart began to pound and her fingers shook.
Betha bought a bushel of dried apples for twelve and a half cents, and all agreed she'd made the best bargain. “Good for you,” Ruth said.
“They weren't grown local,” Elizabeth said. “Looks like nothing grows here.”
“They must have some fresh vegetables,” Mazy said. “See that plowed field above the fort?” She pointed.
“Some rosy-eyed thinker living there,” her mother said. “Thank goodness the world seems full of'em.”
“The soldiers looked kind of puny, if truth be known,” Adora said.
“That man who bothered you last evening, Suzanne, he said that scurvy is a problem here. It's hard to get fruits or things like that to grow. He said California was the place for good health. He was from the Ohio Valley himself, looking for cropland.”
“You returned to the dance, Tipton?” Suzanne asked, surprise in her voice
“No. That man, he had a mule to be reshod, and I was, well, watching the blacksmith work just before we left. He seemed nice enough, when he wasn't accosting ladies,” she added.
“You met someone?” Mazy asked.
“Pig didn't like him,” Suzanne said. “Maybe Pig needs his vocabulary expanded,” she said scratching at the dog's neck. “Probably doesn't understand things like ‘I am in awe’ or ‘majestic Madonna.’”
“In reference to other than the Virgin Mary that would be a sacrilege,” Esther said, lips pursed.
“Did he wear black?” Ruth said, rising from where she checked Koda's new shoe.
“No, all in white,” Tipton told her. “Even his cape and his cane”
Back across the river they held a discussion that resulted not in a vote but in an agreement.
“We've done well, just us,” Lura said. “And most folks I talked with at the fort said their groups have grown and shrunk like women with child finally giving birth. So we could join up with
someone but then have a falling out. I like it that we've got ourselves a group we trust already.”
“Seems chirk that we're women, mostly,” Mariah said. “Gives us something dandy.”
“A dandy headache,” Adora said, “if we find ourselves in trouble and wish we had some men around to help us out.”
“That Pawnee that helped return the oxen was a man,” Jason noted.
Betha ruffled his hair. “So he was. And you boys fit that model, don't you now? I say let's head out with what we got. Stay on this Council Bluffs road to South Pass.”
“I agree,” Ruth said. “Let's push a bit more. Longer days would be good.”
“I should stay here then,” Suzanne said, “Have the baby where there's a doctor and all, not hold you back.”
“You making the offer to be kind?” Elizabeth asked. “Or because you want out of this clan?”
Mazy scanned the group that lounged around the wagons, some sitting, some kicking feet on a box, some standing with coffee in hand. Tiny strings of smoke from Indian camps lifted to the sky against rock formations both vivid and bold.
Suzanne took in a big breath. “I worry that keeping track of Clayton will be a strain on everyone. You have to watch out for both of us. And then there'll be the baby. It's too much to ask of family, let alone total strangers.”
“Total strangers?” Mazy said. “Is that how you see us?”
“You're not family,” Suzanne said.
“We're all you got,” Elizabeth said. “All any of us has, here.”
“People who recognize each other as they are and still can love, that is a community not unlike a family,” Sister Esther said.
“Well spoke,” Elizabeth told her. “And unless you're planning to divorce us all between here and the ocean, you're coming with us.”
“But we've got to settle on Clayton's care,” Mazy said. “To reduce Suzanne's worrying, if nothing else. Mine, too.”
“Zilah would care for child,” Deborah said. “But she is necessary for help as Sister Esther is alone, with only me and bees if Zilah leaves.”
“I would make the exchange,” Naomi offered. “Zilah for me until Oregon.”
Oregon. Hadrit the CelestiaL phnned to head for California? Mazy thought. It was Ruth and Betha, she and her mother who spoke of the Donation Land Claims, the 320 acres Oregon promised to any soul hardy enough to stay. They could deal with that later, Mazy decided. What mattered now was settling Suzanne's mind.
“Looks like we have a plan,” Mazy said. “That covers all the essentials.”
“You would have loved the stables,” Mariah told Ruth when they were underway again. “They had lots of nice horses. Could you see anything except the wall of the fort from here?”
“Enough,” Ruth said. “We could hear the artillery drilling this morning, early. Watched the stars and stripes go up. They must have dragged that pole all the way from Laramie Peak since there's no timber in these parts. We did fine. Naomi let the bees out an hour or so before dusk, and they came back as planned.”
The girl beamed. “Now I learn to churn cream.”
“You didn't register, did you, Betha? At the fort?
“Oh no,” Betha told her. “But Mattie did. Left word saying when he hoped to see you too! Such a thoughtful boy.”
Snow covered Laramie Peak in the distance. The women moved in that direction, still following the Platte, the wagons lumbering to a rhythm of familiar creak and crunch. They were truly emigrants now, among the best who came west and, having reached Laramie alive, could “spit in the elephant's eye,” Elizabeth said. The West—the elephant. Hung over, hung on to, and hugely expanding a dream, a dream to include this grand adventure of all who sought to cross the Great Divide, a dream to make anything that mattered, happen.
They made a good two days, twenty miles each on the odometer. This day began with new sounds and shouts from distant wagons. It had taken a minute of beating hearts before Suzanne explained it, “It's the Fourth of July. They're celebrating Independence Day outside of the States.”
Pig's ears stiffened, and he barked his warning bark but settled back when Suzanne reached up her sleeve and brought out some beef jerky for him. Soon the distant pop-pop became routine.
The dog and the woman were one, it seemed, and Suzanne actually had taken to practicing commands to get the dog to stop, come, lie down, wait. He panted happily and, even when off the harness, never strayed far from Suzanne's side.
Mazy wondered how she'd give the dog up when Suzanne went south with him She shook her head, the thought too painful and narrow to move through, like the rock walls of reds with streaks of butternut and black they had woven through that day.
How close would Zane be? Would Matt's note to her signal her presence, even though she used a false last name? She should have changed Ruth into Zipporah, not just turned “Randolph” into “Martin.” Maybe he s still at the Fort, wining and dining Madonnas, she thought.
If only Matt hadn't mentioned the horses in his note; but Betha said he had. Ruth shook her head as she walked beside the horse, giving his foot a good rest. “Your foot! Did he recognize you, Koda, when Tipton got your foot fixed? Oh, Koda, what are we going to do?”
She bent her head to the horse's side. Are you there, Zane? All dressed in awe that Fve made it this far? Ruth shivered. He had no way of knowing her name. He might still be waiting at the fort or headed south. Her heart hammered against the anvil of her spirit.
They stood at a rounded rock the guidebook called “Independence,” which rose up from the desert floor. “Too bad we weren't here on the Fourth,” Jason said, running his hands over the carved initials of so many who passed before them.
“Well, go ahead with your knife,” Betha said. “Your initials probably wont last that long anyway. Put your JB in it.”
The boys entertained themselves, and even Tipton and Mariah acted like the children they were, scampering at the base of the rock, climbing and shouting down from what looked like the back of a giant sleeping mole. They'd spent only twenty minutes climbing to the top with Sarah and Jessie following them up.
Sister Esther considered reading the letter while they climbed—but waited.
She didn't read it when they turned south around the great bend of the Platte nor when the oxen's feet pushed rocks that echoed to the Sweet Water River below. She still hadn't read it in the shadow of the Rockies on the way to South Pass, where the terrain proved more gentle than her thoughts. They neared the Great Divide, that place where water turned around, ran west and east, two hundred miles or more beyond Laramie. They were awakened one morning to low clouds that lifted like gossamer to reveal the shadow and valleys below. Esther picked that moment to know.
Seven thousand feet she sat at, her shawl pulled around her bony shoulders, her black cap tied beneath her chin. The slope was gentle there, rising to a long, wide flat of sandy, sagebrush country, and at first she did not believe this could be the place where the waters divided, where everything changed. It wasn't dramatic enough. The climb so gradual, she barely noticed. But once there, she could see that the headwaters of two rivers ran in opposite directions. A paradox, Sister Esther thought. Right here in the middle of nowhere.
That's what her letter was as well. Perhaps the altitude addled her brain, perhaps she didn't understand what it meant.
We regret to inform you that two of the assigned contracts have been dissolved. It will not be necessary for your charges to repay the expenses of their journey. However, at your earliest convenience, please proceed with negotiating the repayment of the contract portions advanced to the womens families. The Association assumes no responsibility for this unfortunate event
Please respond at your earliest convenience regarding the matter of your success
Respectfully I remain, Benjamin Fumas, Esquire, Caroline Fry Marriage Association, Inc.
At her earliest convenience? What was convenient? To not be told why or which ones? To be given no names as though the
women all ran together? Esther shook her head, fanned herself with the thin pages. She hadn't told the Association that one of the women had died That was an error. So was not reading this letter until now. She should have written to get clarification before they reached California Delaying did not increase one's control.
She would have to pray to make sense of this, find a way to protect her charges, and still meet her obligations.
No one asked her about the letter's contents. She kept it in her pocket when they'd crossed Dry Sandy Creek, the wheels finally tightening up against the iron rims after several days of dry heat. The soaking kept the wheels on her wagon from shrinking further. Afterwards, she and Naomi packed the space between the shrinking wheels and the rims with strips of Elizabeth's soaked buffalo hide to keep the wheel tight against the iron. She did not want the wheels to break, the wagon to drop, or anything to happen that might upset Deborah's bees.
The insects had taken extra tending through the driest areas. One day they had gone thirty-six miles, Mazy said, because there were no water holes between. The bees had become agitated, and when Deborah lifted the lid to add more water, she heard their angry tone rise an octave.
“It is the warning!” Deborah shouted. “They will sting. Back away, Missy Esther. Away!”
As she tried to lower the lid, Deborah struck some of the bees. They stung her close to her eyes, then another at her wrist, the soft spot at her ear, the warning already sent to the others, frantic now, being caught up as she tried to secure the lid. Deborah slammed it now and struck at the loose bees flying and darting, knowing those who stung her would die an agonizing death unless she could kill them. Esther sat splayed against the side of the wagon, her heart pounding, while Deborah rescued the bees and her future.
Perhaps losing the bees would be a penance for her delaying, for not being truthful with the Association about Cynthia's death. But perhaps it didn't matter, if what was in the letter was a truth and not a lie.