Mazy felt like a dragonfly skimming the surface of her life, afraid that if she touched the water she'd be sucked in. Flying higher terrified her too. A wind could whip her into the unfamiliar. So she hovered just above the waterline, appearing to be part of the life of the pond, but she wasn't. She might never be again.
Seth had led them well these past weeks, and she'd relinquished guidance to him seemingly without effort. Relieved almost. But without the weight of deciding when to hitch up, when to rest, what to do, what was next, her mind was freed, emptier than it had been since Jeremy died. The weightlessness kept her hovering, unwilling to light for fear she'd be consumed by the churning inside.
“Getting on winter,” Seth told Mazy. He led his horse now and walked beside her. She was almost as tall as him, but had to look up to see his eyes. “Got to husde ourselves along, get settled before the rains start.” He squinted through pines to a blue sky. “Could happen any time.”
“You like doing this, don't you?” Mazy asked him.
“I like a little uncertainty,” he said. “Maybe another train 11 be willing to take the cutoff and I'll get another commission from the city fathers. It's an honest living. This trip's had a nice reward, bringing you ladies to a new land. I like my gambling time, too. All I need is just one good game with the right stakes and I can set my sights on more predictable things.” He patted his vest pocket as though looking for his writing kit.
“Something inspire a poem?”
He shook his head. “Thinking to stop smoking.”
“I didn't know you did.”
“Don't now. Clouds my mind at the poker tables. Need to keep bright as a tack.”
“I believe that's ‘sharp as a tack,’ “ Mazy said. She smiled.
“Mazy Bacon,
Tall as a tree.
Eyes like a wise cat's,
Watchful and green.”
“Poems I don't need writing tools for anyway. Especially when the inspiration's right in front of me.”
Mazy blushed. “I don't feel particularly wise,” she said.
“But you are. All you've had to contend with? Boys without their fathers, sisters without their brothers, wives without—”
“We've all had losses. I don't know that I've done anything wise to help us through it.”
“Mazy Bacon. From the first, I liked your honesty, your lack of flashing eyes to get something wanted without asking for it up front. So I dont think you're expecting a compliment with that comment. But I'm going to give you one. And you listen to it and you remember it. Someone had to lead. Ain't no gathering of folks ever achieved a goal without someone reminding ‘em of where they were headed, of what mattered, of getting ‘em outside of themselves and thinking of others. Someone has to fill the holes left by the men. Got to inspire people to do more than they thought they could, to get back on the trail. They don't even know yet what they've accomplished. That'll come years later when they tell their kin. And, oh, the stories of all they did will grow bigger than a bullfrog's belly. They may forget what you did, but you best not. A good leader is ninety percent inspiration and the ability to spread it like a welcome blanket across people cold and scared and uncertain. You did that or these people behind us would never have been here, sassy and snappy as they are. There's almost no defeat in their faces. That in itself's a miracle.”
Seth swallowed, and Mazy realized his face was red and his eyes were pooled.
She didn't think she'd ever had a man sing her praises so—or anyone, for that matter. “Why, Seth, I—”
He turned to her then. “Mazy,” he said. His gloved hand pressed a lock of hair behind her ear. He brushed his lips against her forehead, light as a butterfly fluttering a blossom.
She had no idea what the rest of them would think. She wasn't sure what she thought herself.
They'd moved northwest, bypassing some tree-darkened buttes, but the rise through the Sierras felt gradual. The grass and water supply held steady. Around Black Butte, they turned at last southwest. At a slight incline, Seth suggested they lock brakes, but it was only for a short distance and the animals handled it fine.
They crossed creeks and watched clear, rushing water flow out of the sides of buttes. Yellow flowers bloomed, and the grass leaned out over stream banks like green waterfalls.
“It's beautiful here, isn't it?” Mazy asked her mother as she picked up a pine needle and used it to push some breakfast fish from the back of her tooth. It is.
They walked without talking, the silence broken by the wagon chains clattering and chatter of birds and the shouts of the children pushing Jessie in the little wheeled barrel they'd made for her, her leg sticking out in front.
“Do you suppose Sister Esther spoke with Zilah about…you know, what's beyond?” Mazy said.
“What made you think ofthat?”
“Oh, just all this splendor. It's like the Garden of Eden, I imagine. And I wonder if we're given places like this to remind us of what will yet come. I don't know. Just thinking.”
“Don't know that Sister Esther's the only one assigned to talk of spiritual things,” Elizabeth said.
“It seems like not just anyone should talk about heaven and hell. I'm not trying to avoid it. I just don't know how to say things right. I wish I'd known how to talk about…you know, when Jeremy died.” She shook her head, remembering. “It couldn't have helped him to have me talking about cows and calving times and not the state of his soul.”
“Comforted him, I'll ponder.” Her mother put her arm around her daughter's waist, pulled her to her as they walked. “He'd made his own peace, from what you said, about his saying he was going on home, alone.”
Mazy nodded, giving her mother's words some ofthat “pondering” she always advised. “But why wouldn't he have told me about his first wife? And that he had a child? Or that the cows might not even be ours? Why wouldn't he at that moment of his life so close to the end, why wouldn't he have brushed the nap to lay everything right?”
Elizabeth bent to pick up a white rock. She pulled her arm back and threw it as far as she could. “Still throw one as good as the boys,” she said. They walked in silence. “Don't guess we get the answers here,” she said then. “Remember that old song? ‘Farther along, we'll understand why’ We only get the wonder of the questions here.”
“So I shouldn't seek answers?”
“Just meant your husband must have had his reasons. Might not be good ones, mind you. Not ones we'd understand if he'd said ‘em out before he died. Maybe he was saving you, child.”
“From what?”
“Your memory of him clouded with unhappy things. He didn't expect you'd read that letter. And if he'd lived, he probably would have tucked that thing away faster than a dog burying the first Christmas bone. Probably someday he would have told the story of this child, the other wife.” Mazy looked at her mother and frowned. “He might have. Fact is, he didn't know he needed to leave explanations after him. He never knew that you'd be pondering the life he had before he met you— at least without him being around to provide the sorting of it.”
“It does make me wonder. How old she is. Funny how I think it's a girl. And in Oregon. How did she get there? Don't you wonder? Maybe I should have gone north.”
“We were wanting to be all together this first winter, and I think that was wise.”
“I'd have to go to Sacramento this fall yet,” Mazy said. “Before the snow flies. I don't think I'm ready for that. Too much to do, getting settled.”
Elizabeth patted her daughter's hand, held it in her own. “Don't deprive yourself too long of something that might please you, just because you're afraid it won't.”
“Maybe next spring we should go see what we can find out.”
“Go where?” Adora asked as she caught up with them.
“Mazy's just thinking about the far future,” Elizabeth told her.
“I'll just be pleased to arrive in Shasta City,” Adora said. “Seth says they have bookstores there. I
magine that, in a little mining town.”
“That was one of the worst things to leave behind, all of Papas medical books and the others he loved,” Mazy said.
“And your own,” her mother answered.
“And my books. Yes.” Mazy held her skirts out to the dusky breeze. She watched as Pig led Suzanne across the hard ground, followed by Sister Esther and Naomi carrying the baby, Sason.
“Maybe this journey 11 inspire you to write a book,” Elizabeth said, releasing Mazy's hand. “You've kept your journal pages, haven't you?”
“Folded over and creased,” Mazy said.
“Writing's a good way to work things through,” she said. “I see Seth carries a writing set in his vest pocket. You and him have things in common.”
“Now don't you be getting her hopes up,” Adora said. “If truth be known, I think my Tip ton's got Mr. Forrester already smitten.”
At a distance, Mazy heard Ruth's raised voice, and she let herself drop back a bit to listen. The walk had been steady but easy, and she'd spent the morning more focused on the past than the present. Mazy wondered just how many miles she'd put on her callused feet. She'd have to start wearing those thin-soled shoes just to keep her toes from freezing soon. She heard voices raised in irritation.
“Why are you talking about this without Suzanne here?” Ruth asked.
“We don't want to hurt her feelings,” Lura said. The woman chewed on her clay pipe but didn't smoke it. “Keep your voice down.”
“Wanting to avoid a sharp-tongued retort?” Ruth countered.
“She can't do things on her own,” Adora said. “Even Pig's not enough to keep her out of trouble what with a baby. Yesterday Tipton took an earring away from Clayton—he could have choked. And that little one will be crawling soon, wanting out ofthat…thing your mother made for her to carry on her back.”
“We've got to look after her and those children like they were all our own—or she'll never get them raised,” Lura insisted. “Got to just tell her what to do with them.”
“I agree with Lura,” Adora said. “We should take turns riding in her wagon. And if truth be known, Ruth, you ought to stay with Jessie in Esther's wagon. Put less pressure on poor Suzanne.”
“When did she become ‘poor Suzanne’?” Mazy asked, unable to stay out of the conversation.
“Oh!” Adora said, her shoulders sinking in a way of shame as she saw Mazy. “Don't sneak up on a person like that. Now that you're here, though, you should consider moving Suzanne in with you in California. You have no children, and it'd be—”
“It would bother me if others made decisions for me,” Ruth interrupted. “Without my say-so.”
Adora opened her mouth as though to retort, but Mei-Ling interrupted, “Not good talk with no Missy Sue ears. Ear same like eye. Missy Sue need ear to see.”
Imagine, the quietest one of them speaking up for the woman who had been the crankiest not long ago. There was a change in the landscape, Mazy decided. They all looked a bit guilty then, and Mazy suggested they have a meeting to talk of what they'd do—for each other—once they reached the new landscape called Shasta.
“That would be better than this gossip,” she said.
Sister Esther joined Mazy at the morning fire, a shawl wrapped around her against the cool air. The world was awash with pink and purple as the sun lifted over the horizon.
“I'm sorry. I didn't hear you,” Mazy said, looking up. The woman's hands were folded in front of her as though in prayer.
“God is indeed an author,” Esther said, staring at the brilliant view. “Authors want readers to be…inspired, comforted, challenged by what they read, isn't that so? Surely God's writing should do no less.” She nodded, her eyes scanning the sun as it struck the western slopes. Her lips pursed tight as though sewn. “This land was written by God's hand. Some deciphering is required, but the spirit of the author is present everywhere. In the consistency of the seasons and the reliability of the stars.”
“In good things that happen for no reason at all,” Mazy said. “Like the brass tacks promising us currency without our knowing it.”
“Like that.”
They watched the subtle light change what they were seeing, each thinking her own thoughts, and Mazy marveled again how this woman who could be so rigid and regulated had become someone she could confer with over words.
Esther sighed. “I do wonder, though, how far the money we get for those tacks will carry us, divided as it must be.”
“Maybe your share will be enough for you to return the contract money,” Mazy said.
Esther dabbed at her eyes with her fingers. “He never gives more than we can manage, Scripture says.” She sighed. “Sometimes I do wonder why he thinks I am so strong.”
Mazy waited to see if Esther would share more. In the silence, Mazy stood, straightened the shawl around the older woman's bony shoulders, and said, “It's God's landscape. Let's look for the pleasant vistas in it.”
The water in the bucket had a thin covering of ice when Ruth pushed her hand into it that morning. She shivered. “What is it, Auntie Ruth?” Sarah asked. The girl stood behind her, her narrow shoulders hunched beneath her shivering thin nightgown, her feet almost white from the cold of the ground.
“Get yourself dressed,” Ruth said.
Sarahs eyes clouded over, her lower lip squeezed out.
“That's not a scolding,” Ruth said. “I just mean it's cold here. Look at your feet. Guess we're higher up than we've been, and it's getting later in the year. So it's cold. Go on, now. Skedaddle. Get your jumper on and your wool socks. At least until it warms up.”
The girl brightened some, pulled her thin shawl around her, and disappeared back inside the tent. Ruth shook her head. Pretty thin skin, that one, Ruth thought.
She splashed water onto her face, liking the numbing of it. She wiped her eyes with her fingertips, shook her head to dry, then replaced Zane's floppy felt hat on her head. Sarah was a fragile thing, so easily offended by Ruths stark words. Today Ruth vowed to talk with Mazy and Elizabeth about caring for the children while she headed to Oregon to find her horses in Matt Schmidtke's care. She needed to give the women time to consider. The talk of what to do with Suzanne spurred her on.
She knew Mazy liked Suzanne and she might commit herself to the blind woman's care, leaving no room to look after Ruth's children. Elizabeth was good with little tykes, even demanding ones like Jessie, and for a brief moment Ruth wondered if Mazy might have been a demanding child. She doubted it. Mazy might be strong-willed and a bit stubborn, but Ruth couldn't imagine her being rude the way Jessie could be. How had Betha handled that kind of behavior? Ruth thought back. She hadn't ever noticed Jessie whine about her discomfort with Betha the way she did with her.
Yesterday, Jessie'd demanded a different quilt be put beneath her legs, had shouted so loudly Seth had ridden back to see if she'd been injured again.
“My leg, my leg! Put something soft under it,” she said. “Get me your quilt, Auntie Ruth.”
“Your Auntie Ruth needs that to sleep with,” Elizabeth told the girl. “Its all she's got for a bedroll. You've got this nice cornhusk mattress that was your mama's. Now don't you be taking from someone else what little they got.”
“She's s'posed to take care of me. My mama said she would if anything happened to her and Papa.”
“And so she is,” Elizabeth said, holding up a warning finger.
Jessie had actually struck at Elizabeth then, the action so quick and stunning, Ruth had jumped back as Elizabeth did. “I'll go get the quilt,” Ruth said.
“Don't you be letting this girl herd you like a cow, Ruthie,” Elizabeth said. “She ain't no general positioning her troops, either. You need your only quilt, and she don't need to be rewarded for her nasty behavior. She needs to accommodate. Yes, you do.” She turned to Jessie, whose lower lip stuck out while her eyes were black as hard coal. “Best lesson a child can learn, to bend a little, tailor herself stead of waiting for othe
rs to make the perfect fit. Something the rest of us has to learn too. The world don't make many changes for us; we got to make it ourselves.”
Ruth considered Elizabeth's words. Then later, as they'd made their way up a rocky swath of ground with Mazy exclaiming over black-eyed yellow plants she'd never seen before, talking about the maple tree they'd planted and carried now in a bucket, she heard Jessie complain again. She made her way to the wagon in time to hear her say, “These dolls are bad! Look. See the stickers they gived me?”
“The boys made them especially for you, Jessie.” It was Suzanne's voice offering explanation. “They told me all about it. I suggested the dresses for them. I thought it was something you'd like.”
“What do you know?” she sassed at Suzanne. “You got no eyes! You can't take my stickers out!”
The next thing Ruth knew she was ducking as the twists of pine needle dolls were hurled through the puckered canvas opening. Wagon wheels crushed them.