Baby On The Oregon Trail

“The rest of the men feel it’s worth a try to ford now, before it gets any worse. What do you think?”

“No,” Lee said. “Too risky.”

Sam rode off again, returning within a quarter of an hour. “We’re going across. Yours will be the last wagon over.”

It was midafternoon before all the wagons but theirs had lumbered across the swollen river, and then the rain-bedraggled wagon master returned one last time. “Hurry it up, Lee,” Sam yelled over the roaring water.

Lee clamped his teeth together. “I’ll take the girls and Jenna over on horseback first. Then I’ll drive the wagon across.”

Sam nodded and was gone.

“Jenna, get the girls dressed in warm clothes. You, too. It can get cold in the middle of a river.”

She climbed down and reached up for Ruthie. When they disappeared into the wagon, he wrapped the leather reins around the brake handle and dropped to the ground to untie Devil and throw on a harness and bridle.

“I’ll take Tess across first,” he announced to Jenna. “Then I’ll come back for Ruthie and Mary Grace.”

The rain-soaked girls nodded, biting their lips. Mary Grace began to whimper.

“Hush up,” Tess snapped. “It’s just water. Besides, I’m going first.”

“Tess, I want you to catch your dress up between your legs, like a split riding skirt,” Lee instructed. When she was ready, he lifted her onto Devil’s broad, wet back and swung up behind her. Then he walked the horse to the riverbank, now shelving off under the onslaught of rain, wrapped an arm around Tess’s middle and turned the animal into the water.

“Hold on to his mane,” he shouted. “Dig your fingers in deep.”

The current sucked at them, swirled up around his boots. He kicked Devil hard and they lurched forward. Tess was trembling, but she kept a death grip on Devil’s thick mane. He put his face near her ear. “Don’t let go, no matter what.”

Her head tipped down in a nod, and the next thing he knew Devil stepped into a rampaging freshet up to his belly. Tess yelped.

“Hold on!” he shouted.

Water flooded up to the girl’s knees, then her thighs, but she didn’t let go. Ahead of him Lee saw the other wagons lined up on the opposite bank.

The horse started to swim but was swept downstream a hundred yards. Sam Lincoln and another man rode along the bank, keeping pace with Devil as he struggled through the raging water.

At last Lee felt the stallion’s hooves hit solid ground and he dug his heels into the animal’s sides. The bank was a slurry of mud, slippery as molasses. Twice the horse tried to heave its body up onto dry land, and twice he floundered.

Tess began to gulp noisy sobs. On the third try, Devil lurched up onto the bank, and Sam and someone else, Ted Zaberskie, standing ankle-deep in mud, reached to grab Tess. She tumbled off into Sam’s arms.

“Wait!” Sam shouted to him. “Lee, don’t go back across.”

Lee shook his head. “Jenna and the young ones are back there, plus the wagon.” He reined back into the river without looking back.

The return trip was easier. He mounted Ruthie tight against him, then snugged Mary Grace in front and wrapped his arms around them both. Jenna gave the two girls a wobbly smile and stood back, her arms clasped across her waist, to watch them go. Her face was white with fear, and suddenly Lee wanted to kiss her. Instead, he started back across the river.

This time the river seemed less wild, or maybe he was just getting used to it. Mary Grace cried all the way across, but Ruthie maintained a stoic calm until they reached Sam and Zaberskie on the other side. Sam lifted Mary Grace off the horse and slogged up to where Tess stood, wringing her hands; Ruthie threw her little arms around Ted Zaberskie’s neck and wouldn’t let go.

The downpour increased. Hell, if the river rose any higher, the wagon would never make it. He swam the stallion back across to Jenna, who stood with the rain pounding down on her head and shoulders, calling something up to him.

“Wagon!”

“No,” he shouted. “You next.”

She pointed to herself, then cupped her hands and yelled back. “Go with wagon. You drive. Devil swim across.”

That was one smart woman, he thought. She was right. If he didn’t get the wagon across now, they would be stranded on this side with no shelter and no food.

He dismounted and slapped Devil’s rump, hard. The animal trotted down the bank and splashed into the river; with a knot in his gut, Lee watched him start to swim.

He couldn’t afford to lose that horse. But right now he had other things to worry about. He grabbed Jenna around the waist, pushed her up onto the driver’s box and climbed up after her. While she covered them both with his rain poncho, he unwound the reins and flapped them over the oxen.

Jenna slipped one arm around his middle, and he had to laugh. Did she think she could keep him from floating off the box? He shook the traces, and then they were rattling down the bank into the rain-swollen water.

Almost immediately the wagon hit deep water and started to lift off the bottom. Still, Sue and Sunflower plowed inexorably forward until they were chest-high in muddy river water.

Jenna’s arm tightened around him. It would feel great if he had time to relish the moment. But he didn’t.

Ahead of them he watched Devil’s dark neck drifting downriver.

“Got a whip?” he shouted.

She shook her head.

Well, hell. He needed something to urge the team on, a stick, a goad, anything. Should have thought to cut some willow switches. He yanked off his hat and swatted at their broad rumps, letting loose with some swearwords he hadn’t realized he knew.

And then the current caught them broadside and swept the wagon downriver.

Chapter Seven

The wagon slewed sideways, and Jenna bit back a scream. A surge of terror rolled through her. The weight pulled the oxen off balance, and no matter how much Lee shouted and slapped at them with his sodden hat, the animals had to struggle to keep their footing.

Suddenly he ripped off the poncho and slapped the thick leather reins into her hands. “Hold them tight,” he yelled.

He jumped down off the box into the river and fought his way through waist-deep water until he reached the oxen. He gripped the side of Sue’s wooden yoke and half pushed, half pulled the animal toward the riverbank.

The reins jerked and bucked in Jenna’s hands, but she resolved she would not let go. With Lee urging them on, Sue and Sunflower stumbled forward to a place where the bank flattened out and the exhausted animals heaved their heavy bodies up onto level land. The wagon splashed up behind them and ground to a stop just as Sam stepped forward to grip the harnesses.

Inexplicably Jenna thought of the flour barrel. Had it gotten wet? Was their bedding dry? She sat with her head down, unable to move, until she heard a voice at her side.

“You can let go now, Jenna.” Lee reached up and pried her fingers off the reins. Shaking, she inched across the driver’s box and put one foot on the iron step. Her knees turned to mush. She grabbed for the brake handle, then felt strong arms scoop her up.

At that moment the sun broke through. Rainbows arched in the distance, beautiful wide bands of color shimmering through the mist. Lee set her down in front of Emma Lincoln, who handed her a tin cup of something. “Drink it up, dearie. You earned it.”

Jenna gulped down a swallow and choked as something fiery slid past her throat. “Whiskey,” the older woman explained. “Warms your cockles.”

It certainly warmed something. After two more gulps she decided she liked the effect.

“The girls are drying off in our wagon, Jenna. Sam says as soon as you’re rested we’ll continue on for another hour and make camp early.” As she spoke, Sam stepped forward and settled his large hand on her shoulder.

“Lucky day for you, I’d say. That Virginian’s got sand, all right.”

“Sand?”

“You know, grit. Courage. Smarts, too. Good man, like I said.” He gave Jenna’s shoulder a fatherly pat and moved away.

They were lucky, she acknowledged. She glanced back at the wagon. Under the sun’s rays, steam rose from the canvas covering. She still wore Lee’s rain poncho and it, too, began to steam.

Lee collected his horse from Sam and stood scratching the animal’s ear and talking to him. Then he tied him to the wagon and swung up onto the driver’s box. Jenna set the cup of whiskey on the bench and climbed up beside him. She lifted the poncho over her head and spread it out over her knees to dry.

Lee looked pointedly at the tin cup. “You all right?” Without a word she offered him what was left. He kept his gray eyes on her and emptied the cup in one gulp.

“Didn’t know you drank, Mrs. Borland.”

“I didn’t know you had such a...colorful vocabulary, Mr. Carver. You have names for Sue and Sunflower I’ve never heard before.”

“Made your ears burn, I’ll wager.”

“And my eyes and my nose and everything else. Where did you learn such words?”

“In the War.”

After a short rest, the wagons once more began to roll along the now-muddy trail. Sue and Sunflower stepped sure-footedly over the slippery tracks ahead of them as if the day had not been the least unusual. For a split second Jenna envied them. Nothing seemed to bother them. They had no worries, really; all they had to do was follow orders and trust that the driver knew what he—or she—was doing.

An hour later the wagon master called a halt. Jenna climbed into the wagon bed and checked over everything—food barrels, bedding, even the canvas sacks of beans and cornmeal. Amazingly, everything was dry except for Ruthie’s yellow poke bonnet, which had fallen onto the wet floor. Jenna laid it outside in the fading sun to dry.

Evening fell. The air smelled sweet and fresh until smoke from the campfires drifted into a gray haze. Emma and Sam invited the girls to take supper with them, and all at once Jenna realized she was alone with Lee. She studied his tall form as he stood brushing his horse and drying off the saddle he stored in the rope rigging underneath the wagon.

He would expect her to cook something. Pancakes, that was it. Rolled up, with blackberry jelly, if she could unearth the jar from inside the wagon. And coffee. Nothing could keep her awake tonight; she was so tired she ached all over.

Lee brought water from the stream, poured some into a bowl for Devil and dipped enough into the coffeepot to half fill it, then set the bucket near the rock fireplace he had cobbled together. He had not spoken one word.

After all that yelling and swearing in the river, it was strange he was so quiet in camp. He sat on the sturdy apple crate they used for a chair, whittling on something with his pocketknife, saying nothing, while she stirred up the pancake batter and clanked the skillet over the fire.

They ate their supper in complete silence, and after a time Jenna’s nerves were stretched so thin she fancied she could hear them humming inside her head. They had just been through a horrifying experience. Why did he say nothing about it?

Finally she couldn’t stand it one more minute. “I’m going for a walk,” she announced.

“No, you’re not,” he said, his gaze on the block of wood in his hands.

“Don’t tell me what I can and cannot do. Why shouldn’t I go for a walk?”

“Because my horse is twitchy tonight, and when he gets that way there’s usually something afoot.”

“What kind of something?”

“Coyotes, maybe.”

“I may be afraid of horses, but I am not afraid of coyotes.” She moved past him.

“Or a wolf.”

That stopped her cold. “Wolf? There are wolves out here?”

“And renegade Indians.”

“Indians!” She stared at him, her heart pounding.

“This is Sioux country.”

“Oh.” For a long time she stood uncertainly at the edge of camp, twisting her skirt in her hands and pondering what to do. Then Tess and Mary Grace and Ruthie trooped over from the Lincoln’s wagon and with no urging whatsoever, all three climbed up into the wagon.

“Are your dresses dry?” Jenna called.

“All dry,” came Ruthie’s voice. “But my dolly got all wet.”

“Are you gonna read some more about King Arthur tonight?” Mary Grace queried. “If you are, hurry up, ’cuz I’m sleepy.”

An hour later, Jenna closed the leather-bound book, gathered up her two quilts and crawled under the wagon. A single candle burned next to Lee’s discarded boots. She found he had spread his poncho flat to serve as a ground cover and rolled his pallet out on top, and he gestured for her to do the same.

But the poncho wasn’t large enough to reach under them both.

“Come closer,” Lee said. “After all, there’s a loaded rifle between us.” His voice sounded tired and his eyes were already closed.

The proposition jarred her, and she had to think it over. For one thing, being that close to him made her uneasy. It was almost harder, now that she was beginning to see the kind of man he was. But no one would know if she did as he suggested. And what if they did?

She removed her shoes and stockings and puffed out the candle flame.

“My mother used to wear stockings like that,” he said. “Before the War.”

“You were watching me!” she accused.

“Hard not to.” He went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “After the War, none of our women had stockings.”

She floundered for something to say. “My mother was never without proper stockings,” she said at last.

“Yeah?”

“Yes. My mother was never without proper anything. She wanted me to be proper, too, but she certainly failed in that.”

Why was she telling him this? She never talked about her mother, not even to Mathias. Besides, why would he care? Mama was a Yankee through and through, starched so stiff her spine crackled. Lee Carver was a Confederate, a Virginian, from a slow, genteel life she could scarcely imagine.

Water and oil, that’s what she and Lee Carver were. Oh, well, it was only for another thousand miles or so. Then he’d ride off to raise his horses on a ranch somewhere and...

She caught her breath. And she would have her baby. And she would have it in Oregon, in a nice, civilized, safe town.

A town where no one could ever find her.

Chapter Eight

Lee was close to exhaustion, but for some reason he still couldn’t sleep. Lying on his pallet under the Borlands’ wagon, hours dragged by as he listened to Jenna’s soft breathing beside him and the night sounds around the camp. Crickets. An owl in the ash trees at the edge of camp. The rustle inside the wagon when one of the girls rolled over under her blanket.

Sure was an odd family, he thought for the hundredth time, a young woman expecting a baby and two older stepdaughters who obviously resented her. But he’d watched the youngest, five-year-old Ruthie, gently pat Jenna’s shoulder as if she were the adult and Jenna the child.

He puzzled over it until a new sound drifted to him, a long, mournful cry coming across the far-off plain. Tied to the wagon, Devil gave a muffled whicker; the horse had heard it, too.

He listened for a while, his arms folded behind his head, wondering exactly where the animal was. Then another cry answered, and the first one, now longer and more drawn out, grew more intense.

“Lee?” Jenna whispered beside him. “What is that sound?”

“Wolf,” he answered. “Not close, just noisy.”

“There are two of them,” she said after a moment. “They sound so forlorn.”

“Hungry, probably. And lonely.”

She was silent, but he could sense her listening in the dark. He hadn’t thought about being lonely since the War, but the howling from the hills sure as hell crawled under his skin.

“Are they going to find each other?” she asked.

The question sliced into his brain clean as a razor. “Yeah, they will. Probably going to mate.”

He heard her breath suck in. She must be pretty ladified if the word mate brought that reaction. Made him wonder even more about her.

“You said your mother was ‘proper,’” he ventured. “How come she let you join an emigrant train?”

“She didn’t have a choice, really. I mean I didn’t have a choice. Mama had to let me marry Mathias and join the train.”

“How come she let you marry a horse thief in the first place?” He held his breath, expecting an explosion of anger. No woman wanted to hear her husband called a horse thief.

She stayed quiet for a good two minutes while he waited.

“Again, Mama felt she had no choice.”

“Your father still alive?”

“No. He was killed in the War. At Antietam.”

“Too bad. It’s hard on a woman alone. She never remarried?”

“Mr. Carver, you ask far too many questions.”

“Maybe. Some might say I don’t ask nearly enough.”

“Well,” she huffed, “I would not be one of them. I thought Southern people, refined people from the state of Virginia, were too polite to probe into others’ affairs.”

“We are, usually. No law says we can’t be curious, though. And we’re out here in the West, Mrs. Borland. Not in Virginia. We’re in Yankee country, and Yankees, I’ve observed, are often ill-mannered.”

“That is insulting!” Her voice held more than a bit of frost. “Surely you, a supposedly genteel Southerner, recognize bad manners?”

Lee exhaled a long sigh. “I’m less Johnny Reb now than I was a few years back. Maybe now I’m more like your bluecoats. Your husband, for instance.”

“You are nothing like my husband,” she countered, punching out the words. “Nothing at all.”

He laughed quietly. “I’ll take that as a compliment, if you don’t mind. I didn’t like your husband.”

“I do mind,” she retorted. “You didn’t even know my husband.”

Lee chose his next words with care. “I knew him enough to see some things.”

“What things?” Her tone went from frosty to cold, stinging sleet in sixty seconds.

“For one, he had no business bringing his family on a wagon train with as little preparation as he’d made.”

“What do you mean?” Her voice rose. “Mathias prepared for this trip.”

“Then I’d have to say he didn’t have much experience. And for another thing, looks to me like you’re gonna run out of food before you get halfway to Oregon. Your man didn’t plan far enough ahead.”

Her voice turned to steel. “I’ll thank you to shut your mouth, Mr. Carver.”

Again he laughed. “You know, whenever you’re mad, it’s ‘Mr. Carver.’ And when you’re learning something, or scared, it’s ‘Lee.’”

“I cannot make up my mind about you, Mr. Carver.” She bit his name out in hard, clearly enunciated syllables.

“You might want to hurry that up a little, Mrs. Borland. We’re going to be in each other’s back pockets for another two months.”

That seemed to shut her up. He closed his eyes, listening to her uneven breathing. He knew she wasn’t asleep because she kept twitching under her quilt.

The wolves were crooning loud and long by now. Lee let himself listen and thought about Jenna, about what she’d sound like if... Ah, hell. That wasn’t any way to get to sleep.

But he couldn’t help thinking about it. He smiled up at the shadowy underside of the wagon and closed his eyes.

* * *

Odious man. He was laughing at her, and if there was one thing Jenna hated it was being laughed at. Who did he think he was, anyway? She would never last another two months in the company of this man with his outspoken ways and his subtle goading.

The South had lost the War, hadn’t it? Mathias always said the Confederate soldiers should have slunk back to their ruined plantations and done some honest work. At the moment she half agreed with him.

On the other hand, some of the things Mathias said, which he’d expressed often and crudely, were things she could not agree with. Now that he was gone, she could try to erase some of the hateful poison he’d spewed into the minds of his daughters. It hadn’t all been about her; mostly it was about how worthless other people were. How they owed him something. How he was better than they were.

“Jenna.”

“Oh, what is it?” she said sharply. She clamped her jaw shut. At least he hadn’t called her “Mrs. Borland.”

“I owe you an apology. I had no right to question you in that manner.”

“Oh.” Instantly her annoyance began to fade, but she couldn’t resist one last jab. “Tit for tat, Mr. Carver. The next time we converse it will be my turn to pry.”

He chuckled. “I will look forward to it, Jenna. Good night.”

She debated making a retort until she heard him roll over on his pallet. “Good night,” she said at last. After a long pause, she added, “Lee.”

His soft laugh made her grit her teeth. Why, why was it that he got under her skin? Tomorrow, when he least expected it, she would find some way to make him squirm. She could hardly wait.

Chapter Nine

Ruthie gazed up at Lee with round blue eyes. “Mister, I heard funny noises last night.”

Lee snapped his pocketknife closed. “Noises like what?”

“Like something crying.”

“Do you know what a wolf is?”

The girl shook her head. “Tell me ’bout a woof.”

“A wolf is like a dog, honey. In fact, a long, long time ago, dogs were wolves.”

“What happened to them?”

“I guess they grew up. Some of them got to be dogs, and others stayed wild.”

“I want one,” Ruthie announced. “A big one.”

Lee swallowed a smile. “Would you like a new doll instead?” From his shirt pocket he produced the small figure he’d been carving.

Her eyes grew larger. “A dolly? For me?” She reached out her small hand and touched it with one finger. “Is it a boy doll or a girl doll?”

“A girl doll, I think. See, she has on a dress.” From the corner of his eye he saw Jenna watching them, her hands propped at her waist. But her eyes looked soft and kind of shiny.

Ruthie flung her arms around his neck and smacked a kiss onto his stubbly cheek. “Gosh, mister, you’re all scratchy.”

“Yeah. Guess I’d better shave, huh?”

“Oh, goody. Can I watch?”

Over the girl’s blond curls he saw Jenna shake her head.

“Maybe another time,” he said. “What will you name your doll?”

“I’m gonna call her Lee.”

“What? Lee is a boy’s name. My name is Lee.”

“You’re not a boy, mister. You’re a man.”

At Jenna’s burst of laughter he felt a rush of relief. From the moment she rolled out of bed at dawn, she had been glowering at him, all through their breakfast of cornmeal mush, right up to the moment Ruthie had interrupted his wood carving. Didn’t take a genius to see Jenna had something stuck in her craw.

He rose, pressed “Lee” into Ruthie’s hands and strode off to the creek to shave. As he scraped away at his chin he thought about Tess and Mary Grace and what he had planned for them this morning.

And Jenna. That is, if he could he persuade her to do it.

* * *

“Not on your life,” Jenna announced an hour later. “No. No. No. Never.”

“Listen,” he said, his voice oozing patience. “The girls will learn, and that will make your presence out here on the plains a good deal safer.”

“I understand that,” she said. “But you don’t need extra hands for firearms we don’t have. We have only your three weapons.”

He shook his head. She knew what he was thinking, that Mathias had not taken proper steps to protect his family. In that, perhaps, the Virginian was correct.

She watched him walk Tess and Mary Grace off some fifty yards away from the wagons, nail a scrap of white cloth to a tree stump for a target and direct the girls’ attention to his revolver.

With a sniff, Jenna turned back to the fire pit where the kettle of beans sat soaking.

A single gunshot cracked into the quiet, and she looked across the plain to see Tess standing with Lee’s Colt gripped in both long-fingered hands. Lee was bending to show her how to reload.