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“Mathias?” she whispered.
“’Fraid so. He’s...well, he’s been shot.”
“Shot!” Jenna closed her eyes. Surely she was dreaming.
Sam stepped forward and laid both his weathered hands on her forearms. “He’s dead, Jenna.”
She felt suddenly cold, as if all the blood in her body was draining away. “What?”
“He was caught stealing a horse. The owner killed him.”
She pulled away from Sam’s steadying grip and abruptly sat down on the bare ground. Dead? It wasn’t possible. And stealing a horse? It made no sense.
“Where is he?” she asked, her voice unsteady.
“In our wagon. My Emma’s, uh, laying him out. I expect you’ll want to see him.”
“Not yet. I have to tell the... His daughters.”
“Ruthie’s over visiting with the Langley girl,” Sam volunteered. “The two older ones are down wading in the creek.”
She nodded. Dead. Mathias was dead. Dear God, what would they do now?
“I’ll tell ’em about their pa if you want, Jenna.”
Jenna fought waves of blackness at the edge of her vision. “No. I’ll tell them, Sam. Just...just give me a minute.”
Ten minutes passed before she could stand and make her way to the Lincolns’ camp. She hesitated before the large canvas-covered wagon and clenched her jaw so hard her teeth ached. She couldn’t look at him. Then she resolutely mounted the step, drew back the curtain and stepped inside.
Round-faced Emma Lincoln rose and without a word laid her freckled hand on Jenna’s arm. The older woman tipped her head to indicate the still form stretched out on the bedroll, and Jenna forced herself to look.
She hadn’t remembered Mathias being so tall. Or so pale. In death his features had relaxed from the perpetual scowl he had worn; now he looked almost peaceful. She scanned his body for signs of blood but saw no stains. At her questioning look, Emma took her hand.
“The bullet entered his temple, Jenna. Killed him instantly. I cleaned up the... I cleaned him up.”
“Thank God,” Jenna murmured. Oh, yes, thank You, God. There would be no messy remains for his daughters to see. An unnatural feeling of calm flowed over her, along with an inexplicable sense of...what? Relief? Dear God, how could she feel this, as if a huge weight had suddenly lifted from her shoulders? It made no sense.
Or maybe it did. Mathias had not been pleased with her of late. Maybe he had never been pleased with her.
She drew in several deep breaths before she risked speaking. “Emma, thank you for doing this for Mathias. I must find the girls and tell... They will want to see their father.”
“Sam says if it’s all right with you, they’ll bury your husband at dawn, before we pull out. And tonight Sam and I will sleep under our wagon.”
Jenna nodded and climbed down from the wagon to do what she must. She’d gone only a few yards when Ruthie danced up. “What’s wrong, Jenna? You look all white and funny.”
She knelt before her stepdaughter and struggled to compose herself. “Ruthie, I want you to find your sisters. I have something important to tell you all.”
* * *
“Dead?” Tess screeched. “What do you mean Papa is dead?”
Eleven-year-old Mary Grace began to sob.
“I mean...” Jenna began. She glimpsed Ruthie’s stricken face and the words froze on her tongue. She swallowed hard and knelt before them.
“Your father has been killed. Accidentally shot by...well, it doesn’t matter who.”
Tess swayed forward and Jenna reached up to support her. Mary Grace wrapped her thin arms around her middle, but Ruthie just stared at her with horrified blue eyes.
“You...” Jenna’s voice broke. “You girls can see him if you wish. He’s laid out in the Lincolns’ wagon.”
“I don’t want to see him,” Mary Grace sobbed.
Jenna folded her into her arms. “You might want to, honey. You will want to have seen him after we leave in the morning.” She pressed her lips shut and walked them over to the wagon, where she stood with them beside their father’s body in the fading light.
“Papa don’t look dead,” Ruthie said after a time.
“Doesn’t,” Tess snapped.
“Well, he do—doesn’t. He looks like he’s sleeping.”
Jenna patted Ruthie’s thin shoulder. “Let’s remember him that way, as if he is just...asleep.”
At her side, Mary Grace jerked. “How come there’s no blood or anything?”
Jenna drew in an unsteady breath. “Well, Mrs. Lincoln said the...the bullet hit his temple, so there wasn’t very much bl—” Her voice choked off. What could she say to them?
“Come on,” Tess said, her voice tight. “Let’s go back to camp.” Without waiting for Jenna, she herded her younger sisters outside and started across the compound.
Dear God in heaven, what should she do? The girls had resented her from the moment she had married their father, and now she was solely responsible for them. By the time they reached Oregon they would hate her.
A cold chill snaked into her belly. And they would hate her baby.
Chapter Two (#u4a7374b9-9d6e-53f3-a3a5-8cb6860618be)
The following morning, Sam Lincoln and four other men dug a grave and laid Mathias to rest. Jenna watched them, her hands curved around Ruthie’s narrow shoulders, while Mary Grace and Tess looked on in stony silence.
Reverend Fredericks read some verses from the Bible, something about there being a time for everything under the sun. Then clods of earth thudded onto the blanket-wrapped corpse of her husband. It was an awful sound, terrible and final. Jenna clamped her jaw shut and pressed her palms over Ruthie’s ears.
Finally the last shovelful of fresh earth was heaped onto the mound and her fellow travelers drifted back to their wagons. Ruthie stepped forward and laid a ragged handful of scarlet Indian paintbrush on her father’s grave. Jenna’s heart lurched as if cracking into two jagged pieces.
“Come, girls,” she managed. “We must pack up our things.”
Ruthie turned her face into Jenna’s blue homespun skirt. “I don’t want to leave Papa here all alone.”
Tess leveled a venomous look at her sister. “Then you’re nothing but a big baby.”
Jenna fought an urge to sharply reprimand the girl, but concentrated on wrapping her hands around Ruthie’s quivering frame. She had never disciplined Mathias’s daughters, and besides, what good would it do now?
“Tess.” She addressed the girl over Ruthie’s blond curls. “That is unkind. Your sister, all of us, are hurting. You know how hard it is to leave your father here.”
Tess bowed her head. “Sorry, Ruthie. You’re not a baby, I guess. Come on, Mary Grace.” The two older girls walked off, leaving Jenna standing by the grave with her youngest stepdaughter.
She stared at the wildflowers, wishing she had thought to gather some as well, but she’d been so busy frying the breakfast bacon and rolling up the bedding inside the wagon there had been no time. And anyway, Mathias would not care. The flowers were really for Ruthie, a way to say goodbye.
Jenna closed her eyes briefly, then turned toward their camp. She felt numb, unreal, as if this were happening to someone else.
Emma Lincoln stopped her. “Jenna, at the meeting this morning, Sam asked the men for a volunteer to drive your wagon. In about half an hour the man will come to hitch up your oxen. If you’d like to be alone for a while I could take the girls in our wagon.”
Jenna studied the woman. What a kind soul the trail master’s wife had been, right from the very beginning. How she wished some of that generosity of spirit would rub off on Tess!
“No, thank you, Emma. I am quite all right.” She wasn’t, really. She dreaded the days ahead, but she could not admit this to anyone. How would she manage without Mathias?
A blade of anger sliced into her belly. Mathias had talked and cajoled and pushed until she finally agreed to join the wagon train and come west. And now here she was, embarked on an unwanted journey she had no choice but to continue; once a wagon train started out across the prairie, there was no way to get off. No way to go back to Ohio.
Another woman, Sophia Zaberskie, thrust a loaf of fresh-baked bread into her hands. “You eat,” she grated in her perpetually hoarse voice. “Keeping belly full makes to heal.”
Jenna pressed Sophia’s meaty arm. Sophia should know; she had lost one child to cholera before the emigrant train was even under way, and another child, a boy, died two weeks later when a wagon wheel rolled over him and crushed his chest. If Sophia could survive, so could she.
She took Ruthie by the hand and walked to their camp. Tess and Mary Grace looked up but did not speak, both keeping their faces resolutely turned away from her while she moved about packing the skillet and the Dutch oven inside the wagon. Tess grumbled at her request to fill two buckets with springwater and dump them into the water barrel strapped to the wagon box; Mary Grace walked listlessly at her sister’s side, kicking at stones.
When the last of their belongings were stowed away, Jenna surveyed the tangle of ropes and harnesses and wood oxen yokes stashed under the wagon and her heart sank as if weighted with lead. She had no idea how to hitch up the team. Mathias might have taught her. Why hadn’t he?
It was hard to accept that he was gone, that he would never again snap at her for forgetting to fold a blanket in his particular way or serving him dumplings with his stew when he preferred biscuits. She knew she had been a disappointment to him; she often felt small, as if she didn’t matter.
Ruthie’s small hand patted her skirt. “Jenna, are you crying?”
“N-no, honey. I’m not crying, just feeling a bit sad.”
“Me, too. Tessie won’t talk to me and Mary Grace is too busy. And I’m scared.”
Jenna went down on her knees before the girl. “I’m a little scared, too. But we will be all right, just you wait and see.”
A shadow fell over her. “Mrs. Borland?”
She jerked to her feet. The man was tall, with overlong dark hair and steady eyes that were a soft gray. He held his broad-brimmed hat down by his thigh.
“Sorry to startle you, ma’am. My name’s Carver.”
“I know who you are, Mr. Carver.”
He’d joined the wagon train at Fort Kearney. A former Confederate soldier, Emma had confided. A Virginian. From a slave-holding plantation, no doubt. Jenna’s father had fought for the Union; he’d been killed at Antietam.
“I’ve come to yoke up your team.”
Her stomach clenched, and it must have shown on her face.
“Ma’am? Are you unwell?”
“Mr. Carver, surely someone other than you volunteered?”
His gaze flicked to the back of the wagon, where Tess’s face was peeking out from the curtain. “Mrs. Borland, is there someplace we can talk in private?”
“Why?”
Gently he grasped her elbow and moved her away from camp. “I want to tell you why I volunteered.”
“I don’t really care why, Mr. Carver.”
“I think you may when you hear what I have to say,” he said quietly. “You see, it was my horse your husband was stealing. I was the one who shot him.”
Jenna stared at him until her eyes began to burn. “Dear God in heaven, why would I want anything, anything at all, to do with the man who killed my husband?”
A flash of pain crossed his tanned face. “You probably don’t, Mrs. Borland. And I can’t blame you. But I’d sure appreciate it if you’d hear me out.”
Shaking with fury, Jenna propped her fists at her waist and waited. She could scarcely stand to look at him.
“I didn’t know who was taking my horse,” he said after a moment. “Didn’t recognize the man. But I knew my horse. The rider was heading hell-for-leather—Excuse me, ma’am. He was riding toward the trading post we passed yesterday morning. I fired my rifle and he went down.”
“You killed him.”
“Yes, I did. I’m sorry he turned out to be your husband, and the father of your girls there.” He inclined his head toward the wagon where three heads now poked out from the rear bonnet.
“‘Sorry,’ Mr. Carver, is not enough,” she snapped.
“I realize that. I know nothing can ever replace your husband, but I’d like the chance to do what I can to make it up to you. That’s why I volunteered to drive your rig.”
“You cannot ‘make it up’ to me, Mr. Carver. Ever. Don’t you understand that?” She clamped her lips together, afraid she would cry.
“I mean to try, Mrs. Borland. Where’s your yoke and the harnesses for the oxen?”
“Did you not hear me?” Her voice went out of control, rising to a shout. She hated him! He was a cold-blooded killer. “I do not want your help!”
He turned his back on her and peered under the wagon. Mary Grace stuck her tongue out at him, but he paid no attention. Instead, he snaked an arm out to capture the tack and moved off to where the oxen grazed inside the circle of wagons. He moved with such assurance she wanted to toss the hot coals from her morning cook fire into his face.
The instant he was out of sight, Tess scrambled down and planted herself in front of Jenna. “You can’t let him do this!” she screamed. “He was my father, and that man killed him. He has no right to be here, touching Papa’s animals.”
Jenna sucked in an uneven breath and wrapped both arms across her waist. “Perhaps not, Tess. But neither of us can yoke up the oxen, and he has volunteered. I will speak to Mr. Lincoln tonight and ask for someone else.”
The girl’s face flushed, but Jenna was suddenly too weary to care. Her shoulders ached. Her head felt as if it were stuffed with sharp-pointed rocks.
“Take Ruthie down to the latrine, then get in the wagon.”
She paced around and around their small campsite until Tess and Ruthie returned and Mr. Carver appeared, tugging the oxen, Sue and Sunflower, by their lead ropes. He said nothing, just moved past her, positioned the two animals in front of the wagon and went about jockeying the yoke into place and adjusting the harnesses, his motions unhurried.
Jenna stepped closer to watch what he did.
He paused and his gray eyes sought hers. “Want me to teach you and your oldest girl how to do this?”
