Glory (26 page)

“I don’t think that’ll happen too soon. The girls and I will have all we can handle today climbing to the divide.” He glanced at the threatening sky. “If possible, I’d like to be through it before nightfall. Having you with us will increase our chance of making good time.”

“Seems the least I can do for the kind hospitality you’ve shown me.”

Glory stepped up with the reins to Dylan’s black gelding. “I saddled your horse, Marshall. I know we’d feel better if you rode along with us.”

He smiled at her in a teasing way. “I imagine you feel better knowing you won’t be wearing my handcuffs today.”

“Yes, sir,” she replied, blushing quickly, her gaze dropping away. Everyone chuckled and smiled at Glory sympathetically.

Dylan looked at Jackson and then glanced around to include the ladies. “I accept your invitation.”

“Good.” Jackson nodded, looking relieved. “Let’s gather
round,” he began. “We’ve got maybe our toughest day ahead of us.” A gust of wind whipped around them, sending up sparks from the campfire to swirl with the snowflakes. “The weather is going to make it slick going. Each of you will have to walk as much as you can to lighten the load. The animals will struggle just to pull the weight of the wagon.” He sent a meaningful glance in Glory’s direction. “And stay close. Don’t wander away even for a minute. If you need a break, let Dylan or me know, so we can stop the wagon. Too easy to get lost in a snowfall, and it will get heavier the higher we go.”

The girls murmured their agreement and dropped their heads as Ruth, then Jackson, led them in a brief prayer for safe passage.

Because she didn’t have her stamina back, Mary was chosen to sit on the back of a mule tied behind the wagon. Glory gave her a boost, and Mary scrambled aboard, clutching the mule’s heavy leather collar for support. Patience climbed aboard the other mule to keep Mary company. The girls planned to alternate throughout the day with one or another of them sitting on the back of the other mule tied next to Mary’s. It gave them an occasional rest from walking, and the gentle mules accepted their slight weight without a problem.

On the trail, Jackson ranged ahead to check conditions while Dylan rode beside the wagon. Ruth was at the reins, and three girls walked beside the oxen, helping her keep them in the middle of the trail.

As the trail grew steeper and slicker, Ruth slapped the
reins and called encouragement to the oxen that trudged slowly, leaning into the traces, dragging the wagon behind them. Glory and Harper smacked the oxen on their wide rumps and pulled at their harnesses when they veered off the rutted trail.

Glory kept an eye on the marshall, who was riding alongside the wagon and staying real close to Ruth. As the wagon climbed higher, the wind almost snatched their breath away. Glory moved to the back of the wagon.

“Care for a break?” Dylan asked Ruth amiably, touching the brim of his hat with his right hand. “I can climb aboard and take the reins for a while. Your arms have to be tired.”

Ruth turned her head and looked into his crystal blue eyes framed by lashes dampened from the blowing snow. She stared for a long moment, then blinked suddenly and looked away. It was then that one of the oxen stepped in a hole and nearly jerked the reins out of her hands. “Ouch!” she exclaimed at the sharp tug on the leather that pulled her shoulders and lifted her off the seat for a second until she could lean back.

“Got him!” Harper shouted as she pulled up on the ox’s halter until he regained his footing.

Ruth huffed a moment, catching her breath. Then she gasped in surprise as Dylan settled his weight on the seat beside her. He leaned away to secure his horse to the side of the wagon and then turned to reach across her. His gloved hands wrapped around her gloved hands on the reins.

“I-I can handle it,” she stammered defensively, stiffening her arms to lean as far away from him as she could.

“Just trying to keep the tension on,” he said, his hands tightening on hers. “Just ease out from under me.”

Glory punched Harper, who’d join her behind the wagon, and the girls grinned.

“Looks like the marshall’s sweet on Ruth,” Harper whispered.

“It surely does,” Glory said. “Sweet as honey.”

Ruth pulled her hands out from under his as quickly as she could, but his firm grasp slowed her. “You can loosen your grip,” she said sharply.

“Let’s take it slow. Wouldn’t want those oxen to take a crazy notion and run off now, would we?” He chuckled. When he glanced her way, their faces were scarcely inches apart.

She cleared her throat and slid to the far edge of the wagon seat. “I hardly think the oxen could run anywhere at this point.” Ruth’s face flushed despite the icy snow pelting it.

“I’m kidding, Ruth,” he said reassuringly. “It is Ruth, isn’t it?”

“It is.” She rubbed her shoulders with her hands.

“You okay?”

“Oh yes, fine,” she said quickly. An awkward silence stretched between them. “Uh, I want to thank you for the way you treated Glory last night.”

He nodded. “She seems like a fine girl, more sincere than most folks I meet.”

Ruth’s eyebrows shot up. “You mean more sincere than most criminals, don’t you?”

“I generally say what I mean, ma’am,” Dylan responded evenly.

“Well,” Ruth said with a sigh, “it’s a good thing you know this Charlie Gulch.” She paused a beat before continuing, “If you hadn’t, I dare say you would have arrested her, right?”

“I . . . I hope it wouldn’t have come to that. I’d have had a long chat with her.”

“An interrogation, I believe it’s called.”

His head swung around, but Ruth’s gaze was fixed on the snowy trail ahead. “It would have been more of a conversation,” he explained, “much like the one we had last night.”

Ruth nodded. “So after you’d arrested her—”

“I don’t think it would have come to that.”

Ruth shrugged. “If you’d arrested her,” she persisted, “you would have hauled her back to Squatter’s Bend.”

“Where she would have been cleared and released.”

“Then she would have been separated by hundreds of miles from the only friends she has. It would have been too late to make the journey to Colorado this year. As it is, we’re hitting the passes a little late.”

“It’s my job.” He snapped the reins. “I don’t always like it.”

Glory punched Harper again. “That’s real nice of Ruth to take up for me like that.”

Harper nodded. “Push!”

Ruth ignored his remark and continued, “On the other hand, if Charlie Gulch had died from the head wound she gave him, what would’ve happened to her then?”

“I think they would have weighed the circumstances.”

“Of course, he’s a town resident; she’s a stranger.”

Dylan whistled to the oxen to move them up the steep slope. “I’m not the judge and jury, ma’am.”

“No,” Ruth agreed, “but it’s not hard to see her motivation. Glory makes no pretenses. It would be your choice to let her go.”

He shook his head. “Not my call.”

“And if she found herself at the end of a rope?” She looked at him directly. “And you knew in your heart that she was innocent of murder, despite what she claimed in her statement?”

He shifted his shoulders, looking somewhat uncomfortable. “If it had come to that, I would’ve spoken in her behalf.”

“That girl is no threat to society, no matter what happens to the likes of Charlie Gulch.”

“Not the way the law works, ma’am.”

“Hmmm. I imagine there are a goodly number of fugitives who move out West to start a new life and do so successfully.”

He nodded. “I imagine so.”

“Unless, of course, they are arrested and taken back to stand trial.”

“You’re a hard woman, Ruth.”

“On the contrary, Marshall McCall. I happen to believe that vengeance belongs to the Lord.”

“Well, miss, it’s not within my authority to choose whom to arrest and whom to let go.”

“Forgiveness is appropriate in some circumstances, don’t you think?”

“I’d have to agree, but in our country that’s up to a court of law.” He lifted his shoulders. “Just stating a fact, miss. Don’t shoot the messenger.”

Suddenly the oxen hit an icy patch. As their feet began to slip, they balked. The wagon wheels locked and started sliding sideways. Dylan slapped the reins and shouted, but the oxen were paralyzed with fear. Glory and Harper jumped aside as the wagon slid another couple of feet and a back wheel dropped off the edge of the trail. The undercarriage of the wagon slammed down on the ice at a precarious angle.

Dylan grabbed Ruth to keep her from falling out as she looked down to see that the drop-off was hundreds of feet straight down the mountain. “Oh, my,” she exclaimed, desperately throwing her arms around his neck.

Harper and Glory were up front now, pulling on the oxen to no avail. Jackson galloped back to the wagon. “Hang on,” he shouted as he shook out his lasso, tied it securely to the back of the wagon, and looped it around his saddle horn. He backed his mare, keeping the rope taut as Glory rushed to his side. “Hold my horse steady,” he told her as he slid to the ground.

Mary and Patience had slid down off the mules tied
behind the wagon. “Untie the mule team, girls,” Jackson ordered as he moved to the back of the wagon. “Bring them to me. Now back them up and hold them steady.” Jackson secured the mules’ harness to the corner of the wagon where he’d tied his rope to stop the slide. “Now, girls, lead those mules toward Glory. Steady, steady,” he repeated, as the mules began to pull the wagon as far back onto the trail as the dropped wheel would allow. “Whoa,” he called. “Hold them right there.”

With that, he untied a long wooden pole strapped to the side of the wagon and pried it under the corner of the wagon that was resting on the edge of the precipice. Leaning hard, he applied all the pressure he could. Harper and Lily joined him. Pushing down on the end of the pole together, they got enough leverage to lift the corner of the wagon. When it was high enough, Jackson called to Glory, Mary, and Patience to lead the mules a couple of yards farther, which pulled the wagon the rest of the way onto the trail.

Everyone was exhausted from the effort. Dylan climbed down from the wagon seat and helped a shaky Ruth to the ground. Jackson and Glory switched the oxen for the mule team to pull the wagon the last hundred yards to the summit.

The snow stopped shortly after they passed the summit. They made camp that night a few miles down the trail under a clear sky. After a warm supper, an air of hope and celebration filled the air. Dylan took out his harmonica and played a square-dance tune, and Jackson took turns dancing
with each girl, one at a time, saving Glory for last. As she twirled in his arms under a million stars, she felt like the happiest girl alive.

Ruth, Patience, and Glory were the last to bed that evening. The wind shifted, and clouds rolled in for a second time that day. As she changed clothes inside the wagon, Ruth had talked nonstop about Dylan. Dylan this and Dylan that. The conversation itself was unusual, especially since Glory usually had to pry a discussion out of her after a long day. Seemed she thought the handsome marshall was overly arrogant and overly confident. Seemed to Glory that Dylan was only doing his job, but she’d been too tired to argue.

“I think I’ll check on Jackson—see if he’s warm enough.” Before anyone could object, Glory slipped out the back of the wagon and closed the canvas.

Frigid air blew up Glory’s skirt as she hurried toward the front of the wagon. Sleet fell in prickly sheets, howling through the boulders. She’d never seen weather change so fast, and dresses were nothing but a nuisance! If her two pairs of trousers weren’t so dirty that they could stand alone, she’d never have consented to wearing Patience’s hand-me-downs. The bodice was too tight, and the dress made her look girlie—too girlie—but it was much too cold to do wash.

Rounding the schooner, she spotted a light in the
distance.
Jackson must be visiting with Dylan.
She supposed that he was enjoying time with a peer—especially since he’d been confined to female companionship for the past four months. Jealousy suddenly surged through her, but she pushed it aside.
Lord, I’m trying hard to be content with what you give me and not be envious of Jackson’s time with others.

Lately, she’d found it easier to talk to the Lord in a natural way, as if she’d known him as well as Ruth did. In many ways she was creeping closer to Ruth’s certainty of belief. Sometimes Ruth spent extra time with her reading lessons; nowadays she could understand the words in almost half a Bible chapter without stumbling. Stories about the women in the Bible—Miriam, Deborah, and Esther—fascinated her; she never tired of reading about them.

Shivering, she pulled her jacket tighter, thankful that the Lord had answered her prayer and seen them safely through the high divide. With the worsening weather, even one day would have made the passage more difficult, if not impossible. Denver City was only two days away now. Two days was all the time she had left with Jackson.

She paused, wincing as icy pellets struck her, watching the light of the lantern bobbing toward her. Jackson’s tall form, bent against the wind, came into view. When he spotted her, he quickened his pace, his boots crunching atop the thin icy glaze.