Heartbreak Trail Part 4

"That's it for now." Clint's easy smile gave not the slightest hint he might be annoyed by Jacob's hardheaded answer. "If all goes well, we leave in three days."

Lucy watched the visitors mount their horses and ride away. Three days! Despite all her reluctance, a little thrill ran through her. Whether she liked it or not, the biggest adventure of her life was about to begin.

Chapter 5.

Three days later at dawn, a line of forty wagons headed out from Independence amidst the din of dogs barking, cattle lowing, men shouting, shrieking children darting here and there. At last the Schneider Party had begun the long journey west, the air heavy with excitement, spirits running high.

For Lucy, the departure was bittersweet. True, a small part of her sensed the thrill of a new adventure, but when she thought how every mile they drove west took her farther away from her Boston home, she felt an overwhelming sense of loss.

Her dear brothers, sweet sister, beloved father-oh, she would never see them again! Tears welled in her eyes, but there would be no turning back. What good were they? Finally, she ordered herself to cry no more. She'd look to the future with courage and determination-never complain-rejoice in the thought that a whole new life lay ahead.

During the morning hours, she enjoyed meeting some of the people she'd be traveling with the next few months. They came from all parts of the country and all walks of life. Like Adam Janicki, an out-of-work coal miner from Pittsburgh. He and his family planned to look for free land in Oregon. So would a bankrupt storekeeper and his family from the Mississippi Valley. Some, like the three rowdy Butler Brothers from the backwoods of Tennessee, were h.e.l.l-bent on reaching the California gold fields. Jacob had already predicted that the disorderly brothers would all go straight to h.e.l.l, what with their loud cursing and heavy drinking from what seemed like bottomless jugs of corn liquor they pa.s.sed around.

As the morning wore on, Lucy's newfound determination to make the best of her lot slowly faded. At first, while Jacob drove their lead wagon, she and Noah walked alongside, easily keeping up with the slow pace of the oxen. When Noah's little legs grew tired, she lifted him up to sit beside his father on the wagon seat. After the mid-morning break, she saddled one of the horses and rode until her back began to ache so badly she had to dismount and walk again.

The trail turned muddy. In parts the mud was so deep that several times one or another of the Schneider wagons got stuck in a quagmire, causing the entire train to stop while a dozen men huffed and heaved with all their might to push them out. No one else's wagons got stuck, only Jacob's and Abner's. She couldn't help but remember Clint's warning: "Your wagons are too heavy. I advise you to lighten the loads." She didn't dare remind her husband, though. One thing she'd learned, Jacob didn't care to listen to advice or admit his mistakes. That went double for Abner, and she'd never dream of voicing her opinion to her overbearing brother-in-law.

They stopped at noon. Although tired already, she had no time to rest; she had to prepare the midday meal for the family, as well as Benjamin and Henry, their two hired hands. Both strong, healthy young men, they were working for their pa.s.sage so they could reach the gold fields. Henry was the quiet one. Lively Benjamin, a clear-eyed man of twenty-two, played the guitar.

"Mighty good tasting beans and biscuits, ma'am." Benjamin squatted beside the campfire, cleaning his plate.

"Why, thank you." Lucy knew he was just being kind. Despite her best efforts, she had yet to conquer the art of cooking while bending over an open fire with the wind blowing smoke in her face.

After lunch, she decided to try and persuade Jacob to teach her to drive the wagons. So far, he had refused. During the morning, though, she'd witnessed several women, firm hand on the reins, shouting, "Gee up!" as they cracked a whip over the oxen's heads, looking every bit as masterful as any man. If they could do it, why couldn't she?

She walked up to Jacob, who stood next to his wagon chatting with Abner. "Let me take the reins for a while. It shouldn't take long for you to show me what to do."

Jacob opened his mouth to speak. She could have sworn he was about to agree, but before he could utter a word, Abner said, "Never." He regarded her with cold, contemptuous eyes. "Driving a team of oxen is a man's job."

How dare he interfere! She could hardly quell her flash of indignation. She looked pointedly at her husband. "It's a long way to California. Surely sooner or later I'll need to know how."

"It's folly," said Abner. "G.o.d never meant for a woman to drive a wagon. They haven't the strength or the apt.i.tude. I'd certainly never allow my wife to drive a wagon. Do you not agree?"

"Quite so. I cannot imagine Martha driving the oxen." Jacob's gaze s.h.i.+fted to Lucy. "Or you. I won't permit it, now or ever. Is that clear?"

"Jacob-"

"Enough, woman." Jacob climbed into the wagon seat, took up the reins, and started off without another word. With a look of triumphant scorn, Abner walked away, leaving her standing in the dirt, clutching her fists in frustration. d.a.m.n Abner! How dare he interfere? d.a.m.n Jacob, too, for allowing his brother to rule his life. Didn't he have a mind of his own? How dare he call her "woman" in such a reproachful, degrading manner? In her whole life, she'd never been addressed that way. Acutely embarra.s.sed, she started to walk behind the wagon, hoping no one had overheard.

She tried to calm down. Jacob simply wasn't himself, she finally decided. No wonder he was cross, what with his new responsibilities and his wagons constantly getting stuck in the mud. She should ignore his coldness. He'd never act that way again.

As she walked along, calmer now, Clint Palance rode by on his Appaloosa. He'd been busy all day, riding up and down the line of wagons at least a dozen times, too busy to stop and chat. He would nod as he rode by, though. Their eyes always met, but in the most impersonal way.

Her drifting thoughts came together. She suddenly realized that no matter where she was, at what time of day, she was always aware of the precise whereabouts of Clint Palance. Whether he was ahead leading the train, or riding alongside one of the wagons, or following behind; no matter where, her eyes followed him. What on earth was she doing? Had she taken leave of her senses? Was she not Mrs. Jacob Schneider, a respectably married woman with a spotless reputation to preserve? The very thought she might become infatuated with another man was totally unacceptable, totally absurd.

Finally tired of walking, Lucy climbed into the back of the wagon to get some rest. It wasn't long before the b.u.mping and constant swaying made her nauseated. "Land sick" she supposed she would call it. She had to climb down and walk again. This was only the beginning.

At the end of the day, when the wagons had circled for the night, Lucy joined Martha, Bessie, and Cordelia's slave, Sukey, in carrying sacks to the nearby woods to collect kindling. On the way back, their sacks full, Bessie wiped her brow. "In all my born days, I ain't never been this tired. We only come ten miles the whole day."

"Give me your sack." Herself exhausted, Lucy could tell that Bessie, almost in her eighth month and heavy with child, was about to collapse.

After a weak protest, Bessie handed Lucy the sack. "I don't know how I'm going to make it. I've still got dinner to cook, and then to clean up and put the young'uns to bed."

"You're not the only one." A scowl appeared on Sukey's face. "I cook and clean for Missus Benton, then I got to put up with her little brat, Chadwick, and her nagging besides. 'Do this, Sukey, do that, Sukey,' " she mocked in a fair imitation of Cordelia's southern accent. " 'Work yourself to death, Sukey.' " She wrinkled her nose and shook her head. "I didn't want to come, but she say I'm still her slave. I wish I could go back."

"Wouldn't that serve Mrs. High-and-Mighty right if you did go back to Atlanta," Bessie exclaimed. "That would bring her down a peg or two if she had to cook her own meals and collect her own wood like the rest of us."

Lucy smiled to herself. Already the subject of Cordelia brought endless grumbling among the hardworking women of the wagon train. Not only did they heartily dislike her sn.o.bbish ways, they especially resented her having a slave to do her work while she, according to Bessie, "Just sits there in the wagon like Queen of the May."

Trudging back to camp, carrying two sacks instead of one, Lucy found that not only did her back hurt, her whole body felt engulfed in a tide of weariness. She could hardly put one foot in front of the other. Worse, her stomach threatened at any moment to heave its contents.

Bessie pointed. "Oh, look, here come Mister Dawes and Mister Palance. Don't he always look so handsome!"

Clint and Charlie rode up. "Afternoon, ladies." Clint touched the brim of his hat. "I see you've survived your first day on the trail."

Bessie c.o.c.ked her head and squinted up at him. "I heard we only come ten miles. At this rate, I'll be an old woman by the time we get to California, if I ain't dead first."

The men burst into hearty laughter. "Don't worry," Clint said. "We'll be averaging fifteen to twenty miles a day before you know it."

Charlie spoke up. "We would have done that today if it weren't for them wagons getting stuck in the mud."

Lucy felt her face go red. He meant Jacob, and Abner, too. But why should she feel any guilt? She wasn't the one who'd overloaded the wagons. Still, as Jacob's wife, she felt responsible.

As if sensing her embarra.s.sment, Clint created a distraction by leaning from his horse and sweeping up the sacks of kindling from Lucy's grasp. "Here, let me take those." In the process, his hand brushed hers. His touch, so unexpected, gave her a thrill of excitement. Their gazes met. For a long, unguarded moment, she looked deep into his eyes, catching the spark of some indefinable emotion. Hastily, she looked away, wondering, what had he seen in her eyes?

They had started back to camp when Lucy realized that while talking to Clint, she had subconsciously tugged up the waistband of her white, starched ap.r.o.n, then spread her hand over the swell of her stomach beneath as if to conceal it. She glanced at Bessie whose stomach was so hugely distorted she didn't walk, she waddled. In a few months, she would be waddling, too, so what was she trying to accomplish by hiding her condition from Clint?

She knew the answer, and she didn't want to think about it.

Riding alongside Charlie, Clint s.h.i.+fted the two sacks of kindling across the saddle. They were heavy. Mrs. Schneider shouldn't be lifting them. He didn't like to think of all the misery she'd be enduring before the journey's end. That jacka.s.s husband of hers wasn't going to help; he could tell.

"Crazy white women," muttered Charlie Dawes.

"What do you mean?"

"Did you see Mrs. Schneider trying to hide the fact she's got a loaf in the oven?"

"It's their culture. Women in our society are taught to believe their bodily functions are so shameful they should be hidden and not discussed. That includes childbirth."

"Hogwash." Charlie spat a chaw of chewing tobacco. "They want us to think they're all virgins? Like they never went to bed with a man?"

Charlie's remarks filled Clint's head with an image of Lucy in bed with that jacka.s.s husband and ... No, don't think about it. He blanked the image out. "Indian women have the right idea. To them, having a baby is as natural as breathing. They don't try to conceal it, like it's something disgraceful."

They reached the circle of wagons, handed the sacks back, and watched the women go their respective ways. For a few moments, Charlie rode on in silence, appearing to be in deep thought. "You know what I suspect?"

"What?"

"I suspect you're taken with that pretty Mrs. Schneider." He slanted a sly glance at Clint. "Ain't you now?"

Only the clip-clop of the horses' hooves broke the silence as Clint rode along, staring straight ahead. "Don't give me any lectures."

"Wasn't going to. The stupidest man in the world would know not to mess around with a married woman, and you ain't stupid."

Clint nodded agreeably. No, he wasn't stupid, and Charlie was right. Any special feelings he had for Mrs. Jacob Schneider-whatever they were-had to stop right there.

Later that night, legs aching with fatigue, Lucy crawled into the tent Jacob had pitched next to the wagon. Never in her life had she toiled as hard as she had today. Ah, just to lay her head on the pillow would be heaven! Not to mention how much she'd enjoy the luxury of sleeping soundly until dawn. She lay down next to Jacob and had half drifted to sleep when she felt a tug at her nightgown and a hand creeping beneath. Oh, please, not tonight! She didn't think she could bear another of his near-nightly invasions of those personal, private parts of herself she had always kept sacred. Never had she refused him, but she was just so very tired ... "Jacob, please, I would rather not."

His hand kept creeping. "Now, be a good wife," he whispered as he climbed atop her.

She stifled a sigh and submitted, as she always did. At least she knew he'd be quick. Then she could roll over and get some precious sleep.

A few nights later, while most of the members of the party were gathered around the campfire after supper, a wagon headed in the opposite direction arrived. The owner, a tall, one-armed man named Augustus Turner, asked and received permission for himself, his wife, and three children to join the circle for the night.

"I don't care beans about going west anymore," Augustus said. He and his family had joined the others around the nightly campfire. "I just want to get back to Ohio."

Millicent, his grim-face wife, nodded vigorously. "I knew it would be bad from almost the very start, when we started following the Platte. We started pa.s.sing lots of dead animals-cattle, oxen, and such-and then there were the graves by the side of the trail. It was just the saddest sight you ever did see. Not a day went by when I didn't see one or more. Sometimes the name was marked on a board, but some weren't marked at all."

"Most of the graves were shallow," Augustus went on. "Like the people didn't have the time or inclination to dig a deep enough hole."

"It was just terrible," Millicent said. "Some of the corpses were dug up by animals. Other times the Indians dug them up and stole their clothes."

A collective gasp went up from the listeners around the campfire. Bad enough to die on the trail, but how awful to have some savage dig you up and strip you bare.

"We crossed river after river," Augustus continued. "At one, the current was so swift that we lost our other wagon, two oxen, and a horse."

"Is that when you turned back?" Jacob asked.

Augustus shook his head. "We kept going, and then-" his voice choked.

"We lost our little girl." Millicent's voice wavered. "Our little Leanna was just five. It happened so fast I couldn't do a thing. One minute she was a'settin' on the wagon seat, and the next, out she fell and got run over by a wheel."

Amidst murmurs of sympathy, Augustus took up the tale. "She died right then. We had to bury her by the side of the trail."

"Is that when you turned back?"

"We kept on." Augustus brushed a tear away with the back of his hand. "It was tough going. By then, you should've seen all the furniture 'n' books 'n' bedding 'n' I don't know what, all thrown overboard from the wagons that had gone before ours. People are dumb, thinking they can haul all their fancy possessions clear to California."

"I find that hard to believe." As usual, Cordelia had not failed to dress for the evening and looked quite elegant in her hoop-skirted blue taffeta dress. She cast a skeptical gaze at Augustus.

"It's true, ma'am. I even seen a piano thrown away. You see, there was times we went days without gra.s.s and water for the animals. They got weak, and when that happened, they couldn't pull a full load. Nothing folks could do but throw their things away."

Jacob asked, "So is that when you turned back?"

"We kept going. Then the Indians attacked. Comanche most likely." He touched his empty sleeve. "Got an arrow in my arm."

Millicent cast a pained gaze at her husband. "His arm got them red streaks, then it started turning black." She shuddered. "I can still hear his screams when they took it off."

Augustus cast a rueful look at his empty right sleeve. "That's when we turned back."

Later, before turning in, Bessie said, "Did you hear what the Turners said? Oh, Lucy, I'm so scared. When I think of the months ahead and what could happen ... I'll never make it to California!"

Lucy patted her shoulder. "Don't you worry. The Turners had some really bad luck, that's all. It's not going to happen to us. I'm not the least bit concerned, and you shouldn't be, either."

What a lie. Although Lucy had put on her most confident voice, the Turner's sad tale had shaken her as well. The Schneider Party had only begun their journey. Fear knotted inside her when she thought of all the terrible things that could happen during the long months ahead.

Next morning, Lucy woke to the sound of hysterical screams. A woman's voice ... it was Cordelia! "Something's wrong," she called to Jacob. They quickly pulled on their clothes and hurried outside where they discovered an empty s.p.a.ce where the Turner wagon had been parked. In its place stood Cordelia, wild-eyed, clenching her fists.

"What's happened?" Lucy asked.

"Sukey's gone," Cordelia screeched. "They took my cook!"

"Who took your cook?" asked Jacob.

Cordelia pointed a shaking finger southeast in the general direction the Turners must be traveling. "Sukey had the nerve, the audacity, to leave with the Turners. She left a note, hardly readable, I might add. I cannot believe this. She said she was tired of me, tired of cooking, tired of my darling Chadwick, and wanted to go to Ohio with the Turners." Panic filled Cordelia's eyes. "Sukey's gone. I can't cook! Captain, I must have her back."

"That is impossible."

"You must go after them! Tell Sukey I'll even pay her wages, anything she asks." Cordelia hesitated. "Within reason, of course."

Jacob firmly shook his head. "Sorry, but we can't hold up the others because you've lost your cook."

By then, a sympathetic crowd had gathered, including Bessie, Hannah and her husband, Elija, and Agnes and William Applegate. Lucy noticed immediately that Clint Palance and Charlie Dawes had joined the crowd.

William Applegate said, "Turner couldn't have gone far. Why not send someone back, or go back yourself?"

Jacob looked down his nose at William Applegate, a blunt, ill-mannered man he despised. "The sooner we reach the Platte, the better. That's my plan. I won't deviate."

"Please, Captain," begged Cordelia.

John Potts stepped forward. "h.e.l.ls fire, we don't mind waiting." The crowd murmured its agreement.

"Well, perhaps ..." Jacob's face softened. Relieved, Lucy observed he was about to give in.

"We shall not turn back!" came Abner's thunderous voice.

In dismay, Lucy watched her brother-in-law lift his head and a.s.sume his I-am-the-prophet stance, a sure sign he was about to quote a scripture. Now was not the time. He wasn't ... he couldn't ... Lord help us, he was.

"Philippians two, Verse fourteen. 'Do all things without murmurings and disputing.' " Abner cast a stern glance at his brother. "Is that not so?"