All Together in One Place (50 page)

“That man who bothered you last evening, Suzanne, he said that scurvy is a problem here. It's hard to get fruits or things like that to grow. He said California was the place for good health. He was from the Ohio Valley himself, looking for cropland.”

“You returned to the dance, Tipton?” Suzanne asked, surprise in her voice

“No. That man, he had a mule to be reshod, and I was, well, watching the blacksmith work just before we left. He seemed nice enough, when he wasn't accosting ladies,” she added.

“You met someone?” Mazy asked.

“Pig didn't like him,” Suzanne said. “Maybe Pig needs his vocabulary expanded,” she said scratching at the dog's neck. “Probably doesn't understand things like ‘I am in awe’ or ‘majestic Madonna.’”

“In reference to other than the Virgin Mary that would be a sacrilege,” Esther said, lips pursed.

“Did he wear black?” Ruth said, rising from where she checked Koda's new shoe.

“No, all in white,” Tipton told her. “Even his cape and his cane”

Back across the river they held a discussion that resulted not in a vote but in an agreement.

“We've done well, just us,” Lura said. “And most folks I talked with at the fort said their groups have grown and shrunk like women with child finally giving birth. So we could join up with someone but then have a falling out. I like it that we've got ourselves a group we trust already.”

“Seems chirk that we're women, mostly,” Mariah said. “Gives us something dandy.”

“A dandy headache,” Adora said, “if we find ourselves in trouble and wish we had some men around to help us out.”

“That Pawnee that helped return the oxen was a man,” Jason noted.

Betha ruffled his hair. “So he was. And you boys fit that model, don't you now? I say let's head out with what we got. Stay on this Council Bluffs road to South Pass.”

“I agree,” Ruth said. “Let's push a bit more. Longer days would be good.”

“I should stay here then,” Suzanne said, “Have the baby where there's a doctor and all, not hold you back.”

“You making the offer to be kind?” Elizabeth asked. “Or because you want out of this clan?”

Mazy scanned the group that lounged around the wagons, some sitting, some kicking feet on a box, some standing with coffee in hand. Tiny strings of smoke from Indian camps lifted to the sky against rock formations both vivid and bold.

Suzanne took in a big breath. “I worry that keeping track of Clayton will be a strain on everyone. You have to watch out for both of us. And then there'll be the baby. It's too much to ask of family, let alone total strangers.”

“Total strangers?” Mazy said. “Is that how you see us?”

“You're not family,” Suzanne said.

“We're all you got,” Elizabeth said. “All any of us has, here.”

“People who recognize each other as they are and still can love, that is a community not unlike a family,” Sister Esther said.

“Well spoke,” Elizabeth told her. “And unless you're planning to divorce us all between here and the ocean, you're coming with us.”

“But we've got to settle on Clayton's care,” Mazy said. “To reduce Suzanne's worrying, if nothing else. Mine, too.”

“Zilah would care for child,” Deborah said. “But she is necessary for help as Sister Esther is alone, with only me and bees if Zilah leaves.”

“I would make the exchange,” Naomi offered. “Zilah for me until Oregon.”

Oregon. Hadrit the CelestiaL phnned to head for California?
Mazy thought. It was Ruth and Betha, she and her mother who spoke of the
Donation Land Claims, the 320 acres Oregon promised to any soul hardy enough to stay. They could deal with that later, Mazy decided. What mattered now was settling Suzanne's mind.

“Looks like we have a plan,” Mazy said. “That covers all the essentials.”

“You would have loved the stables,” Mariah told Ruth when they were underway again. “They had lots of nice horses. Could you see anything except the wall of the fort from here?”

“Enough,” Ruth said. “We could hear the artillery drilling this morning, early. Watched the stars and stripes go up. They must have dragged that pole all the way from Laramie Peak since there's no timber in these parts. We did fine. Naomi let the bees out an hour or so before dusk, and they came back as planned.”

The girl beamed. “Now I learn to churn cream.”

“You didn't register, did you, Betha? At the fort?

“Oh no,” Betha told her. “But Mattie did. Left word saying when he hoped to see you too! Such a thoughtful boy.”

Snow covered Laramie Peak in the distance. The women moved in that direction, still following the Platte, the wagons lumbering to a rhythm of familiar creak and crunch. They were truly emigrants now, among the best who came west and, having reached Laramie alive, could “spit in the elephant's eye,” Elizabeth said. The West—the elephant. Hung over, hung on to, and hugely expanding a dream, a dream to include this grand adventure of all who sought to cross the Great Divide, a dream to make anything that mattered, happen.

They made a good two days, twenty miles each on the odometer.
This day began with new sounds and shouts from distant wagons. It had taken a minute of beating hearts before Suzanne explained it, “It's the Fourth of July. They're celebrating Independence Day outside of the States.”

Pig's ears stiffened, and he barked his warning bark but settled back when Suzanne reached up her sleeve and brought out some beef jerky for him. Soon the distant
pop-pop
became routine.

The dog and the woman were one, it seemed, and Suzanne actually had taken to practicing commands to get the dog to stop, come, lie down, wait. He panted happily and, even when off the harness, never strayed far from Suzanne's side.

Mazy wondered how she'd give the dog up when Suzanne went south with him She shook her head, the thought too painful and narrow to move through, like the rock walls of reds with streaks of butternut and black they had woven through that day.

How close would Zane be? Would Matt's note to her signal her presence, even though she used a false last name? She should have changed Ruth into Zipporah, not just turned “Randolph” into “Martin.”
Maybe he s still at the Fort, wining and dining Madonnas
, she thought.

If only Matt hadn't mentioned the horses in his note; but Betha said he had. Ruth shook her head as she walked beside the horse, giving his foot a good rest. “Your foot! Did he recognize you, Koda, when Tipton got your foot fixed? Oh, Koda, what are we going to do?”

She bent her head to the horse's side.
Are you there, Zane? All dressed in awe that Fve made it this far?
Ruth shivered. He had no way of knowing her name. He might still be waiting at the fort or headed south. Her heart hammered against the anvil of her spirit.

They stood at a rounded rock the guidebook called “Independence,” which rose up from the desert floor. “Too bad we weren't here on the Fourth,” Jason said, running his hands over the carved initials of so many who passed before them.

“Well, go ahead with your knife,” Betha said. “Your initials probably wont last that long anyway. Put your JB in it.”

The boys entertained themselves, and even Tipton and Mariah acted like the children they were, scampering at the base of the rock, climbing and shouting down from what looked like the back of a giant sleeping mole. They'd spent only twenty minutes climbing to the top with Sarah and Jessie following them up.

Sister Esther considered reading the letter while they climbed—but waited.

She didn't read it when they turned south around the great bend of the Platte nor when the oxen's feet pushed rocks that echoed to the Sweet Water River below. She still hadn't read it in the shadow of the Rockies on the way to South Pass, where the terrain proved more gentle than her thoughts. They neared the Great Divide, that place where water turned around, ran west and east, two hundred miles or more beyond Laramie. They were awakened one morning to low clouds that lifted like gossamer to reveal the shadow and valleys below. Esther picked that moment to know.

Seven thousand feet she sat at, her shawl pulled around her bony shoulders, her black cap tied beneath her chin. The slope was gentle there, rising to a long, wide flat of sandy, sagebrush country, and at first she did not believe this could be the place where the waters divided, where everything changed. It wasn't dramatic enough. The climb so gradual, she barely noticed. But once there, she could see that the headwaters of two rivers ran in opposite directions.
A paradox
, Sister Esther thought.
Right here in the middle of nowhere.

That's what her letter was as well. Perhaps the altitude addled her brain, perhaps she didn't understand what it meant.

We regret to inform you that two of the assigned contracts have been dissolved. It will not be necessary for your charges to repay the expenses of their journey. However, at your earliest convenience, please proceed with negotiating the repayment of the contract portions advanced to the womens families. The Association assumes no responsibility for this unfortunate event

Please respond at your earliest convenience regarding the matter of your success