All Together in One Place (39 page)

Lura shrank from the heat of the blind woman's tongue even though she was sure it wasn't directed at her. She surprised herself by speaking up. “Now, we just don't know what others can hear. I have the worst hearing, for example,” Lura said. “Oh, I can hear sounds all right, but I run them together Why, one time I remember someone handed me a bowl of black-eyed peas and they looked me in the eye and said, Tat it ‘ Well, I did wonder why anyone would want to pat a pan of peas, but I tried to oblige I patted the sides ofthat tin treating it like a baby's bottom ‘til they looked at me as though I was a worm and said clear as could be that time: ‘I said pass it, not pat it.’ So Suzanne just might hear what others of us can't.”

She'd never spoken so much at once in her whole life, she didn't think. And about what? Nonsense. Antone would have said it was all nonsense. He said that often, now that she recalled. It may have been why she had stopped talking and just started knitting. And forgetting. Her lip trembled but she didn't cry.

Swipes of black and white and red streaked across the Indian's face. His eyes, vacant and moist, stared up at them. A dark patch of red oozed from behind his throat. The body lay twisted and still glistening from the sweat his fear and anguish had produced just moments before his death. The skirmish raged around him, but for this man, this warrior, it had ended.

Ruth put her finger up to her mouth to signal silence to Mariah.
How she wished the girl had not been here! Ruth held Koda, brushing his soft nose as a reminder to be still, but he stood uneasily, the smell of blood and death and uncertainty moving in the muscles of his chest, in the tilt of his ears, and the rolling of his eyes.

The dead mans horse had found him.

They II come for the horse and see us, hear us
, Ruth thought. Ruth noticed a rider approaching. Arrows whizzed by before him. He ducked, his head dropped to the side of the pony he rode. He started down the hillside toward Mariah and Ruth.

Better here than at the wagons
She didn't think the wagons were in danger What did they have that anyone would want? The stock was most desirable, and it had vanished, scattered, except for these two they held. These might be of value, but not likely. Emigrant horses didn't acclimate well to this prairie grass.

What did it matter now? He was on his way to where they hunkered down.

The mans black hair flowed out behind him as he rode hard toward the cluster of brambles and roses then slipped off his pony in one fluid motion One hand held a long knife, and with the other he lifted the dead mans head, prepared to cut the scalp with a quick slice.

Mariah whimpered, her fist tight inside her mouth. She almost swooned. Ruth stepped in front of Mariah to shield her from the slaughter. Then the man looked up.

“We shall begin in prayer,” Sister Esther announced, louder than she needed, Mazy thought. Who would protest? It did no harm; just did no helping either.

The women in the circle, arms around children loosely laid, bowed their heads. They had not prayed as a group since they had placed their loved ones in the ground.

“Heavenly Father, we thank thee for your many blessings on our days. We thank thee for permitting us to gather here, for all thou hast provided. We ask thee to provide safekeeping for your servants Ruth and Mariah. Please return them with our stock as many as thou feelest we need. We pray thee send thy Spirit to reside among us as we gather here. Help us put our own small needs aside and allow us to be stretched to fill the plans thou placest before us. Thou knowest our lot. Thou mak-est our boundaries fall on pleasant places, Lord. Amen.”

Their heads came up all together, and something in the movement, something in the unison of it, the simplicity and grace, made Mazy ache in longing, blink back burning tears

“Six wagons are no longer in service,” Sister Esther announced. “It appears that the wagons still able to move out belong to me, Betha, and Ruth. Both of the Wilsons’ and one of the Schmidtkes’ are all right.” She nodded toward Deborah. “The bees, miraculously, survived. Currently, we have no stock, but I am prayerful that Ruth and Mariah will return with answered prayers pushed before them.”

“This could be beneficial,” Mazy offered, surprising herself by talking. “It will allow us to move faster with fewer wagons to tend to.”

“Truth be known, we should have done that when we first turned back,” Adora offered. “Tipton, sit up, dear. Take this all in. It affects you. However, ours are the only wagons with mules, assuming we get a span back.”

“What difference does that make?” Lura asked.

“The difference,” Adora said, “is that mules travel faster and cant be teamed with oxen, of course. So we'd either trail them, or ride them if our wagons had been destroyed. This way, we can keep going, regardless. If we get mules back.” She twirled her parasol. Setting sun broke through a low cloud, casting a spiraling shadow off the parasols top. “That would be more difficult for those with oxen. They cannot be ridden.”

“We all keep going, yes, Missy Esther?”

Sister Esther turned to Deborah. “Yes. I believe we are all together in this. That has not changed.”

Something subtle had changed, Mazy realized, in the Sisters allowing the Association girls to have their say.

“What if some wish…change?” Zilah asked. Her face looked less pocked in the fading light. A patch of skin stretched out from her nose and made her face seem wide and flat, her eyes far apart.

“We will all be forced to alter where we have been riding or keeping our things or walking,” Sister Esther said. “The storm has seen to that.”

“What if some wish sun finds us in new place?” Zilah persisted, looking over at Naomi.

Mazy felt her heart begin to pound. It was as though her body knew before her mind when fright or flight demanded choice.

“Now, that'd be crazy,” Adora said. “Can't change the direction the sun comes up.”

“Some would turn again, west,” Deborah said. She lowered her head. “Change the suns direction.”

“Well, of course, we're going back west,” Adora said. “We just come here to tend the graves”

Ruth had not prayed for many years, not since John's death, not since she had faced the trial and her greatest agony, the deepest betrayal that any woman could endure. Afterward, she had struggled to understand the kind of woman she'd become: a woman who could still love a man who had harmed her child.

She prayed now, a silent prayer that they be made invisible, that the man who stared into her face would be struck blind, not see Mariah, not see her own form stiff before him, not smell their fear nor taste the fruit of victory by carrying off the downed man's scalp. Or worse, take their horses or their lives.
Make him deaf and blind, Lord, if only for the moment

Her prayers were seldom answered, and this one was wrought with selfishness and a lack of gratitude, but it was fervent and, she hoped, heard.

Time drifted over them on the scent of wild roses.

The warrior turned, confusion on his face. He looked straight at Ruth, into her hazel
eyes
, into her soul. He did not move. She could not breathe. But she knew she lived because she could still hear her heart; knew he lived, too, because his heavy breathing broke the silence, breathing from the effort of his wars.

The dead man's pony stomped behind him. The warrior turned to look at it, shook his head as though to ward off a pesky fly, then dropped the dead mans head, scalp still intact. He reached for the pony instead, swung up, and whistled a plaintive call through his fingers. He turned, his own horse followed him up the hill, kicking out little clumps of mud as they cleared the mound and disappeared beyond it.

Ruth's heart rejoiced, sang inside with gratitude for grace!

Mazy s words sounded defeated, even to herself “Turn west? For what? We haven't far back to go to Kanesville. We can walk it if we have to. Hitch up with others heading back.”

“Lura, what's your opinion on the matter?” It was Elizabeth asking.

“Oh, well, I think it's too soon to know. We can't decide anything until we find out whether we're walking or not. Our cattle are heading west, Mazy. You remember that? Your cow brute too. Still, I don't relish walking east or west though I've heard some have done it.”

“You've been walking,” Ned said. “Every day beside the oxen. I'd like going on, Ma,” Ned said “It's what Pa wanted, something new for us in Oregon. And Auntie Ruth, she wanted it too. She'd say so if she was here to speak it.”

“I want what Auntie wants,” Jessie said.

“Of course. We know that, Worm.” It was Jason, but his chide to
his sister held gentleness instead of whine. He'd found string and wound it into a cat's cradle for Jessie and Sarah to watch while the women talked. Sarah tired of it, stood to check her partially finished sampler spread on a line to dry.

“It frightens me to go west,” Betha said. She sighed. “But encourages, too. I spent some time today at Jed's grave. It was peaceful. It is here now too, with all of you.”

“This is insane,” Suzanne said, “but—”

“Thank you,” Mazy interrupted. “I couldn't agree more. We've been through this. We know what to expect heading east.”

“Didn't know this was coming,” Lura said.

“Actually, you might not like what I have to say,” Suzanne said. “I'm going to ¨there'll be another member of the party before long—”

“Which means getting back to civilization, people, doctors, mid-wives. That's what's important,” Mazy said.

“Oh, I can midwife just fine,” Elizabeth said, “when it comes to that.”

“Mother!”

“I mean I can't be doing it alone,” Suzanne said. “I'm like a turtle turned upside down, and my child, my Clayton, he's needing all of you, every one of you. There's nothing in the direction we're headed now. The world as I knew it there ended when we left. The world with Bryce ended a week ago. It did end. For all of us. No amount of turning will bring that back”

The intensity of her voice, the wavering of the final sentence forced a thinking.

“Start again in Kanesville,” Mazy said to Suzanne. “No one knows you there.”