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Once Adela was gone, Mattie felt completely defenseless. Though the younger girl’s presence wasn’t any sort of protection, concern for her had served to keep the worst of Mattie’s fears at bay.
Now, they rushed in to attack without mercy, setting her heart pounding.
She shivered, and though it was only partly due to the dropping temperature, she pulled on her father’s coat. Inhaling his familiar cologne and the smell of the peppermint candies, which he’d been so fond of, made her feel he was still with her in some small way.
Would he disapprove of what she was doing? Or would he understand her reasons for persisting on this journey?
Out here, shifting shadows dominated, with only the stars to light the landscape. Though they appeared to shine brighter without the illumination from houses and businesses, the night conversely seemed darker, hiding unknown dangers from sight.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for You are with me.
She took courage from the remembered verse, determined to be strong for her sister.
Still, the responsibility weighed heavily on her. Daunting days and weeks loomed ahead. And she didn’t have anyone to share her fears and doubts with.
Her deception stood as a barrier between her and others.
Chapter Three (#u1e9a3ef5-ce9b-50ed-b715-adaa98d62fd3)
It seemed to Mattie that she’d barely slept when the camp was roused early the next morning. Exiting the wagon, she noted there was nothing more than a faint lightening of the sky over the distant horizon to herald the new day. But with animals in need of tending and a wagon to pack up before the call to move out, she dared not delay.
Rebecca arrived at the Prescotts’ campfire as promised to help Adela prepare the morning meal. Unfortunately, she wasn’t alone—Josiah had accompanied her.
His presence sounded alarm bells in Mattie’s head. What reason did he have to be here? She could only speculate—and none of the possibilities flooding her mind brought any reassurance.
“I should see to the oxen,” she said to no one in particular.
“Go ahead,” Rebecca replied, waving Mattie on her way. “Adela and I will be fine here while you’re gone. And we’ll have food waiting for your return.”
Mattie had taken only two steps when Josiah appeared at her side and kept pace with her. She opened her mouth, though she wasn’t sure what she intended to say to him.
He spoke before she could form any words. “I’ll walk with you. I need to take care of my own animals.”
Despite his perfectly reasonable explanation, she fretted over his motives for joining her. Was it truly as he’d claimed? Or something else, as yet unrevealed?
He didn’t say anything more before they parted ways to see to their own chores.
When Mattie bent to her task, she felt a curious prickling sensation at the back of her neck, as if she was being watched. Glancing up, she found Josiah looking in her direction. She ducked her head, hiding her face beneath the shadow of her hat.
There was no mistaking the fact that he’d shown a marked interest in her over the past two days. The question was, why? What was his true purpose? It likely didn’t bode well for her, whatever it might be.
Hurrying through the job, she finished up before Josiah and gladly left him behind. Once out from under his worrying silent regard, she breathed a sigh of relief.
She returned to the circle of covered wagons and found Adela alone at the campfire, stirring a skillet of scrambled eggs and bacon, Josiah’s sister-in-law nowhere in sight. “Where’s Rebecca?”
Adela pushed a lock of hair off her forehead as she glanced up. “She went back to her own wagon to cook breakfast for her family. But don’t worry, she showed me what to do and gave me strict instructions to stir the eggs so they wouldn’t burn. I haven’t stopped for even a second.”
While Mattie doubted constant stirring was precisely what the other woman had meant, she didn’t say as much to her sister. She was simply glad to see Adela had been receptive to the cooking lesson. It was clearly helping already.
“It certainly smells good. Let’s find out how it tastes.” Mattie wrapped a towel around the handle of the skillet and lifted it from the fire.
Two tin plates sat waiting on an overturned crate that had been set up to serve as a table of sorts. After spooning out equal portions, she took a bite and hummed in approval. “Do you think you can make this on your own tomorrow?”
The younger girl worried her bottom lip between her teeth. “I can try.” But her tone lacked confidence.
That was a worry for another time, however. Mattie had more immediate concerns, such as the myriad obstacles she would face during her first full day on the trail. Not the least of which was maintaining her guise as a male.
The sky grew lighter as they ate, giving Mattie a better view of the activity going on around the wagon circle. Small clusters of men stood at various campfires, nursing mugs of steaming coffee. Women tended to sleepy-eyed children who grumped over being roused at such an early hour. The little ones would undoubtedly be full of boundless energy as soon as the group got under way again, a short time from now.
There was no opportunity to enjoy a leisurely breakfast, and Mattie urged her sister to hurry after noticing her taking small, measured nibbles the way their governess had taught them. The younger girl wrinkled her nose and muttered about behaving akin to a heathen, but thankfully did as Mattie requested.
Once the meal was finished, Adela handled the cleanup and packed everything back into the wagon while Mattie retrieved the oxen. Upon her return, she was brought up short by the sight of Josiah, standing with his back to her, just a few feet from her wagon.
On the surface, his presence seemed perfectly innocent. Nothing more than a man pausing for a moment of quiet reflection as he enjoyed a mug of coffee before taking on the day ahead.
But she couldn’t help suspecting him of deliberately loitering nearby.
She quickly pushed the troubling thought aside. She’d drive herself quite mad searching his every action for hidden meaning. And she needed her wits about her.
Josiah glanced over his shoulder and spotted her, then turned and moved closer. Patting the lead oxen, he subtly urged it in the right direction. “I’m happy to help, if you need a hand.”
“Thanks, but I can handle it.” She wanted to prove—no, she needed to prove that she could do it on her own.
Wordlessly accepting her refusal, he stepped back and gave her some space to work. But he didn’t leave.
She preferred to do this without an audience and attempted to prod him on his way. “Shouldn’t you be getting your horses ready?”
“I have plenty of time yet. It won’t take long.” He finished his coffee, then tossed out the dregs.
But still, he remained.
Fortunately, the oxen didn’t give her any difficulty as she worked to hitch them to the wagon.
Josiah crossed his arms over his chest, a slight grin stretching the corners of his mouth. “I see the oxen are behaving for you today.”
“I was worried they might turn stubborn again after stopping for so long overnight, the way they did yesterday before the ferry crossing,” she admitted aloud, now that possibility hadn’t come to pass.
“You’ll be an old hand at this in no time,” he predicted.
That was her hope.
Once the team was in position, it was a simple matter to reverse the process of the previous night.
Now, if only the rest of the day would prove as trouble-free.
* * *
Once out on the trail, Josiah stuck close to the line of covered wagons despite the fact that his horses could travel at a much faster pace than the slow-moving oxen teams.
He kept an unobtrusive eye on the Prescotts. Although Matt had done all right so far, Josiah wasn’t quite ready to leave the kid completely on his own. This was a foreign environment to the boy and his sister. One filled with obstacles that could easily spell injury or worse for the unwary.
Miles from the nearest town or settlement, their group had nobody to depend upon other than one another. It was only right that Josiah should watch out for all his fellow travelers and, even more so, for a pair of siblings without any other family to back them.
His eyes swept along the line of wagons stretched out a goodly distance across the prairie, cutting a swath through the tall grasses. There wasn’t a tree in sight. Or anything else that cast a shadow big enough to offer a moment’s relief from the rays of the sun, climbing steadily higher in the sky. The day had turned warm already, and it would grow even hotter by the time the sun reached its zenith.
Josiah returned his gaze to the Prescotts’ covered wagon, near the end of the line. Doubtless, neither Matt nor his sister were used to spending hours out of doors with little protection from the unrelenting elements. But Matt trekked gamely ahead without complaint.
His sister had again taken up a position atop the wagon seat, parasol in hand. Tugging free the lace-edged handkerchief tucked at her wrist, she placed the material over her nose and mouth and daintily coughed into it. “Isn’t there anything you can do about this dust, Mattie?”
“Nope.” Matt reached under his hat brim and wiped a trickle of moisture from his temple, then adjusted the hat to shield his eyes from the glare of sunlight reflecting off the pale canvas wagon bonnets in front of him. “But if you get down and walk you’ll stay out of the worst of the dust cloud.”
Adela flapped her handkerchief in front of her face, but she wasn’t waving it as a white flag in surrender. “Walking in this heat would be even more miserable.”
“The other women clearly don’t think so,” Matt pointed out.
“All the same, I’ll stay here.”
“Suit yourself.”
Adela lapsed into silence. A few minutes later, her expression suddenly brightened when she sighted a small girl walking alongside their covered wagon. “Hello again,” she greeted the child. “I remember you from yesterday. I’m Adela.”
The little girl trailed her hand through the high grasses as she moved forward. “’ello, Dela.”
Adela’s smile stretched wider at the shortened version of her name. “And this is Mattie.” She indicated her brother with a flutter of her handkerchief.
“Matt,” he interposed, plainly not liking his sister’s nickname. Perhaps he thought it made him sound like a child rather than a man.
“’ello, Matt.” The child’s eyes shifted from the boy back to his sister, her little face tilted upward as she focused on Adela perched high above her on the wagon seat.
But she wasn’t paying proper attention to how close she was getting to the wagon wheels, which were taller than she was. And neither Matt nor Adela seemed to comprehend the deadly hazard the wagon presented to the little girl.
Josiah was all too aware of the danger, however. Moving quickly, he scooped up the child and settled her in front of him on the saddle.
She tipped her head back and looked at him with big, surprised eyes. Though her name escaped him at the moment, he recognized her as one of the Bakers’ brood. She was a miniature copy of her mama, unlike the rest of her siblings who took after their father in coloring. A large heavyset man, George Baker had black hair and a thick beard that reached halfway down his shirtfront.
Urging his horses to a faster pace, Josiah traveled up the line to reach her family’s covered wagon. After depositing her next to her mother, he cautioned Edith Baker to keep a closer watch on her child. The woman expressed effusive gratitude, but he waved it off and led his string of horses back down the line.
As he neared the Prescotts’ wagon, Matt called out to him.
Reining in next to the kid, Josiah matched his horse’s pace to Matt’s on foot. From his greater height atop his mount, he couldn’t see much of the boy’s expression, blocked as it was by the wide brim of his hat.
But Matt’s stiff posture telegraphed his discontent. “Why did you whisk that child away? You acted as if you feared we might taint her somehow.”
“It was nothing against you,” he refuted, stunned at the conclusion the kid had drawn from his actions. “I was simply trying to keep her safe.”
“Safe from what? I don’t understand.” Though Matt tipped his head up toward Josiah, half his face remained in shadow.
“A fully loaded wagon is hard to stop, and if that child had ventured too close to the wheels, she would’ve been run over and crushed.”
Adela gasped, her face contorting into a mask of horror. “Dear God, no.” She leaned to the side in an attempt to see down the line of wagons in front of her, but the canvas cover immediately ahead blocked her view.
“She’s safely back with her mother now,” Josiah reassured her. “But that type of accident’s all too common out here on the trail.”
“How do you know that?” Matt questioned. “Have you completed this trip before?”
“No, but when Rebecca’s family made the journey two years ago, her sister wrote dozens of letters about the experience. Rebecca shared several of them with me.” They had given him a firsthand account of the many perils another group of travelers had encountered along the trail. “Most people have no idea what they’re in for. But they soon learn. Just as you will.”
Matt ducked his head and his face disappeared completely beneath the brim of his hat. “Well, thank you for what you did. I’d never forgive myself if my ignorance was the cause of a child’s death.” Strong emotion roughened his voice.
Josiah shifted in the saddle. “No harm done this time. And now you’ll know to be careful in the future.”
Matt bobbed his head and didn’t say anything more.
With their conversation at an end, Josiah guided his string of horses a ways from the dust kicked up by the oxen teams and covered wagons.
The remainder of the morning passed uneventfully. At midday, Miles called the wagon train to a halt, allowing people the opportunity to eat a cold meal while the animals took a short rest.
And after the noon stop, Adela opted to walk instead of continuing to ride in the wagon. Though her parasol remained very much in evidence, it drew fewer stares and sniggers than it had the day before—most likely because she’d volunteered to help keep an eye on the smaller children now that she knew about the potential dangers.
Several little ones surrounded her as she strolled along at the plodding pace set by the oxen. She led one toddler by the hand, and a handful of other children trailed behind while she regaled the group with tales of daring adventure. Judging by her expression, Adela plainly found as much enjoyment in the pastime as the youngsters did.
Which served as proof that both she and her brother had begun to adjust to trail life. Admittedly, Adela at a significantly slower rate than Matt. But it was progress.
There was hope for the Prescotts yet.
* * *
The fourth night on the trail, Mattie perched on a slight rise overlooking their campsite. She was in the company of Josiah—though not by her choice. Miles Carpenter had put them together for guard duty.
She suspected Josiah might have had something to do with their pairing. But, despite that, there was no denying his presence calmed the worst of her fears about leaving the safety of the wagon circle.
Unfortunately, after settling at their post he’d seemed bent on passing the time in conversation.
The need to watch her every word made silence easier, but imprudent, as Adela had pointed out a few days ago.
Since staying mute wasn’t the wisest course, she might as well make the most of this opportunity to learn all she could, given that Josiah was more knowledgeable about life on the trail. Besides, if she was the one directing the discussion, she could keep the focus away from thorny areas, such as “Matt’s” past.
Her fingers flexed around the barrel of her father’s rifle. “I know we’re guarding the wagons and livestock.” That much was obvious even to her. “But what exactly are we guarding against?” She hoped the darkness hid the flush that heated her cheeks at voicing a question that so starkly revealed her ignorance.
“Coyotes and other critters. They might go after the smaller animals, or search for scraps of food around the campfires. Also, sounds travel far out here, and any sudden noise could spook the livestock and make them bolt. If they do, someone needs to be close by to round up the animals before they get too far.” He tilted his head back and glanced overhead. “The sky looks clear tonight, but a sudden thunderstorm could cause a stampede if we’re caught unawares. Trouble’s more easily averted when you see it coming.”
She fiddled with the bottom button on her father’s coat. “Just out of curiosity, in any of those letters did Rebecca’s sister write about a catastrophe befalling the group because somebody performed poorly during guard duty?”
Josiah turned his head, his gaze coming to rest on her again. “She didn’t mention it. Are you worried something like that might happen?”
Her hand curled into a fist, and the button she’d forgotten she was clenching popped off. She hastily stuffed it into her coat pocket. “Well, it’s possible, isn’t it?”
“I suppose. But don’t brood overmuch about it. As long as we keep our eyes open, it’s a simple enough job. Most nights the most difficult task you’ll face is ensuring you don’t nod off.” Josiah’s teeth flashed white in the darkness. “But talking helps with that. Plus, wild animals are more likely to keep their distance if they hear voices.”
