She smiled a little self consciously. “I’ve always wanted to see something like this. Home in Holland the only time that I saw meat was when it was served. I wanted to see what everything looked like and did, but my father believed that terribly unladylike and was actually somewhat embarrassed that his daughter was curious about that type of thing. He wanted me to be well-dressed and well-mannered and not well-educated.
“Even here in America, I’ve only seen meat after it’s all cut up. You should be grateful your father encouraged your formal education. How marvelous to know, not only about animals, but about the human body as well. Our Father in Heaven has given us wonderful bodies that are miraculous in the way they function.” She hesitated. “At least I think so.”
Helping her back onto the horse, he said, “I think so too. I’m not only fascinated, but I have this need to fix it as well. There’s something in me that makes me a doctor. I’ve been that way since I was a child. Unlike you, my father encouraged me to dissect and study everything. Animal, plant, chemical. It didn’t matter. He wanted me to understand it all and I thought that was just dandy.
“I dragged Mose along with me for most everything. At first he thought I was torturing him to make him learn it all, especially after the fact that my mother made him wear shoes. When he came to live with us when he was seven, he’d never worn a pair of shoes in his life. In Georgia it was warm, and he didn’t think he should have to wear shoes unless his feet were cold. I’m afraid they butted heads over the shoe issue.”
She laughed her musical laugh almost in his ear. “Knowing Mose, your mother must have been a strong woman to win that battle.”
“My mother is definitely strong, but that’s a good thing. She had to be strong to stand up to the bigotry there and adopt a young slave boy into her family. That wasn’t done in Georgia seventeen years ago. That’s still not done in Georgia.”
Sadly, Giselle said, “That is a shame. How long will it be before we all learn to love and value each other? When that lamb will lie down with the lion and Christ can come back again?”
He shook his head. “Sometimes I wonder if we humans will ever figureit out, Elle.”
She hugged him around the waist. “Some have always had it figured out, Trace. And you’re right. Some never will. But we must do the best we can to help each other learn. As Mose would say, “It’s what Jesus would want.’”
Back in camp, they had to hurry in order to not make the other wagons wait for them. Petja had made breakfast and Josiah had milked the cow, and they headed out as soon as they could. In her hurry, Giselle didn’t eat enough, and by lunch, between the hunger and the interesting guts she had looked at that morning, she was horribly ill. Petja knew she felt awful and encouraged her to stay in the back of the wagon, where she brought food to her.
That night, Giselle struggled to make it through chores and went straight down to bed. Even at that, she had to get up to be sick in the night. When she came back to bed, Trace asked her sleepily if she was okay, and she told him she was fine, but she didn’t feel that way. She felt awful. She tried to ignore the nausea and even resorted to dwelling on Trace lying next to her to keep her mind off of the way she felt.
*****
They had been on the trail for just over a month and a half. They had made it through the dust, the rivers, and the buffalo. They’d struggled to find feed, avoid quicksand and had repaired innumerable wagon issues. They’d even learned to deal with the stubborn mule and the quarrelsome freighters. She and Trace had become fast friends, and both he and Mose felt like her family now. But she still hadn’t told him about the babies.
She was almost sure there were two of them. She never dreamed about just one. She was almost four months along now, and her dresses had all been let out to accommodate her growing tummy. It almost didn’t seem like just her tummy. Even her ribs and chest were expanding.
She was starting to feel guilty about not telling him, as close as they had become, but every time she thought about doing it, she couldn’t bring herself to. She wasn’t sure why. She just didn’t think she could explain, and she didn’t want to see the pity or revulsion that she feared in his eyes.
They had been traveling primarily over the flats of the Great Plains, and it had indeed been a great plain. From time to time, there were streams and small hills and washes, but for the most part it, had been a long, flat, monotonous pull. She had long ago learned to pick up buffalo droppings and toss them into the sling under the wagon to use for fuel for the cooking fires. That was the only option they had because trees were so rare here. She had learned to handle whatever had come her way, except for her feelings for Trace.
She feared that she had fallen in love with him, which was senseless beyond belief, but try as she might, she didn’t seem to be able to tell her heart to keep its distance. She was close to her grandparents, but she couldn’t even tell them what she was feeling and was trying to figure out how to fix this all by herself. Wondering how to do that, when she’d never felt this strongly in her life, made her feel even younger than her seventeen years. Younger and more foolish than she had ever thought herself.
At least they were making good progress. They were nearing the halfway point from what she understood. Although the lateness of their trip was making feed hard to find, it was a relatively dry time of year and travel had been dusty, but steady.
They’d come more than half of the distance, but the flat prairie they’d been traveling would go faster than the hills and mountains and canyons when they reached them. The next day they were to reach something called Chimney Rock, and not far after that would be Fort Laramie and the first real settlement they had encountered in weeks.
In a way, she wanted this trip to last forever because she didn’t want Trace to be gone from her life, but in another way, the sooner they reached their destination, the less watching him drive away from her would hurt. Already it was going to kill her. By that same token, she wasn’t sure if she should be doing everything she could to distance herself from him, or enjoying every minute she had with him like it was a precious treasure that would soon run out. She’d prayed for wisdom, but her heart and her head seemed to be scrambling all of her personal inspiration.
Unsure of what to do, she turned on her side restlessly and then scooted close enough to him to just touch him with her elbow. Even that little contact with him was comforting and she was finally able to get back to sleep.
The next morning, Trace was up and gone as usual when Mose showed up with a concerned face to deliver his lifesaving biscuit. She thanked him gratefully. “What would I ever do without you, Mose?”
He stayed bent down to talk to her before he turned back around to leave. “You’d be fine. Just fine, Miss Giselle. Maybe you’d even drum up the guts to tell your husband why you’re sick. You need to. He’s going to be both mad and hurt when he finds out. The longer you go, the worse he’s going to feel.”
She nodded guiltily. “You’re right, Mose. I know you are. I just can’t figure out how to go about it. It won’t matter soon anyway. It won’t be long before it’s glaringly obvious. I can hardly bend to climb under here without ripping out my dresses already.” He didn’t say anything, just looked at her steadily and she wanted to squirm. “I’ll figure it out, Mose. As soon as I can. Honest.”
He nodded and looked up. “Now would be a good time. Here he comes.” With that, he stood up and walked away, pausing to talk to Trace for a second as they passed.
A second later, she saw Trace’s head appear under the edge of the wagon box. He noticed her biscuit and said, “Hey, what is this? Breakfast in bed? Hop out of there and I’ll roll up our gear and stow it.”
She knew she couldn’t get right up just then. She’d have thrown up on Trace’s lap. She groaned inwardly. “Can I have just another minute or two, Trace? I’ll be up in a second, I promise.”
He looked at her quizzically. “Sure. Whatever. Is something wrong?”
She glanced up to where Mose had just disappeared and sighed. “No. I’m fine. Sometimes I’m just a bit slow moving when I wake up. Give me a small moment and I’ll be up.”
He followed her glance after Mose and wondered what he was missing. “Take as long as you want, Elley. I’ll do some other stuff before the bedding.”
She nodded and he stood back up. He paused for a second. Something wasn’t right with her, but she didn’t appear to want to talk to him about it. On a hunch he went to hunt up Mose. On finding him building a fire, he asked him point blank, “Was there something wrong with Giselle this morning?”
Mose looked back at him steadily and asked, “What did she say to you?”
“Nothing, why? She just said she wanted me to give her another couple minutes in bed. But it was kind of weird. She seemed almost sad when I asked if she was okay. What’s wrong?”
Shaking his head, Mose said, “Nothing’s
wrong.
Maybe she’s just still tired. Did she sleep okay?”
Trace thought about that while he looked from his best friend to his own wagon and back. “I don’t know. She got up once, but I was tired enough that as soon as I knew she was back, I went back to sleep.” Mose was almost acting guilty or something, and Trace suddenly had a thought that really bothered him. He looked Mose right in the face and asked, “What’s going on, Mose? Why are both of you acting strange? There’s not something between you and Giselle is there?”
Mose looked him squarely in the eyes and said earnestly, “Of course not, Trace. Not only is she your wife, but I would never do something like that. If you think about it, you know that.”
“I didn’t think you would. So what is going on? Is something going on?”
After hesitating a few seconds, Mose looked out at the lightening horizon. “If something is going on, Trace, it’s going on with her. There’s nothing that has anything to do with me.”
Still confused, Trace said, “Okay… So do I ask her? Or what?”
Mose looked back at him and smiled. “I’m not the official expert on what to do if women act strange, Trace. Maybe she’s just a little under the weather. Ask her. Or wait until she volunteers something. I don’t know. Who does know about women?”
Trace sighed. “Not me. That’s for sure.”
He was still standing there thinking a few minutes later when Giselle walked up with a perfectly normal and pleasant, “Good morning,” and started getting ready to cook breakfast. Trace glanced over at Mose who raised his eyebrows and shrugged. More confused than ever, Trace went and rolled the bedding and went back to morning chores to get ready to go. Jehosaphat! How had the men of this species muddled through this woman thing since the beginning of time? He was completely lost! Something had been wrong. He was sure of it. But apparently she was fine now.
*****
Giselle felt guilty the whole morning and probably would have all afternoon as well except that a couple of striking things happened. Just after lunch as they were traveling, her grandmother turned to her grandfather and said, "Josiah. I do believe it’s time that you baptized me into the Church.”
Giselle was floored, but her grandfather didn’t seem the least bit surprised. “Very well, Petja. We aren’t where we can ask the brethren for their approval, but I’m sure they would give us their blessing. We shall take care of you as soon as we come to another stream, dear.”
Giselle didn’t say anything, just sat there in shock. She had finally come to the conclusion that her grandmother would never be baptized in this life and she would have to do that work for her after she was dead.
After all they had been through with the Saints and the Mormons haters and the mobs and the cold and disease, she’d been convinced that if her grandmother was going to join them, she would have already done it long ago. It had actually been good that she hadn’t, because her non-Mormon status and the fact that Josiah had been willing to support and love her anyway—and accompany her to different churches—had been the reason he had been successful in obtaining some of the Saints’ money for their lands.
As Giselle thought about that, she wondered if that hadn’t been the Lord’s plan all along. As soon as she had that thought, she was sure of it. Somehow, her grandparents had been in tune with the Spirit enough to let God use them for his purposes with a happy heart, and now it was all working out in the end. Giselle sat there on the wagon seat beside them and started to cry. She tried to stop, but she couldn’t do a thing about the tears that streamed down her face.
Her grandfather noticed her sobbing and reached to put a patient and kind arm around her with a knowing smile. “It’s been a long time coming, hasn’t it Giselle, dear? But I never doubted that it would. The Lord needed your grandmother to help His saints in their time of need. Her work is now done and He wants her safely in his fold before she does anything more in this life.”
Even the fact that they saw their first ever real Indian didn’t stop the emotional storm that fell from her eyes. She watched as the group of three mounted Indians came down and met with Trace and Mose and John a little ways out from the wagon train, but still her tears flowed down her cheeks. She had heard that expecting a baby made women cry, but after more than an hour she felt foolish. Yet she couldn’t do anything but blow her nose and wipe her eyes.
The Indians came and talked and then left peaceably, and when they went into their camp circle that night, Trace didn’t seem nearly as concerned about them as he was about Giselle crying on and off all the way through making and eating dinner. Before she was even finished eating, he sent her to go lie down on the bedding he had already put out for her, promising her that he’d take care of the cow for her that night.
When he came to bed an hour later, she was still a little weepy and he put a hand to her cheek and asked, “Are you going to be okay, Elley? Is this the same thing that made you upset this morning or is this something else?”
He could tell that she was deciding what to tell him and wondered if she would level with him this time. Finally, she said as she dissolved into tears again, “My grandmother is finally going to join the Church, Trace. After being willing to leave all of her family, dealing with the mobs and this mess with me, and struggling to make it to Zion. After everything, she’s still going to become a member. Finally. I know you don’t understand that or what a big deal it is to us, but it… it… it matters so much to me.”