Stephanie Grace Whitson - [Quilt Chronicles 03] (40 page)

Grace pulled her trembling hands into her lap and sat, unable to speak. Ladora knew. Who else knew? Did Josiah know?

“Nobody knows but me, and I’m not tellin’. You got nothin’ to worry about, Grace. Move on. It’s done.” Ladora returned to the nook and sat back down. After a moment she said, “I guess you’re shocked I picked up on it.”

Grace didn’t move.

“I wasn’t always a housekeeper, you know. The colonel pulled me out of a deep and miry pit once. And I ain’t never looked back. You don’t have to look back, either. That’s in the Bible. ‘forgetting those things which are behind…I press toward the mark.’”

Grace couldn’t get past the idea that Ladora knew. Had known. Would always know. “You knew?”

“Not until you put it back,” Ladora said. “I really never suspicioned you. But then I saw you put it back.” She suppressed a smile. “I thought it right funny of God to see to it you had to take it to the bank.”

Grace hung her head. “I’ve never regretted anything so much. I don’t know why I did it.”

“’Cause you was scared,” Ladora said. “You didn’t know what your brother was like. You was remembering someone else. And you was scared about what that might mean for you. But he’s changed. God changed him, and God changed me, and God can change you. You just got to let Him in. Why, truth be told, I think He’s already been changing you. You just don’t want to admit it.”

Ladora rose and went into Josiah’s office. Presently, she returned with a book in hand. “Before, when you was reading this, it was so’s you could learn how to play-act. So’s you could fool us.” She set the volume of Spurgeon’s sermons before Grace. “You should try reading them again. For a different reason. Start with the one on page ninety-two.”

With a little frown, Grace opened the book to page ninety-two. “Sincere Seekers Assured Finders.”

“You just read that one,” Ladora said. “Over and over. Till it makes sense.” She smiled. “You’re gonna be just fine, Grace Barton. You just don’t know it yet.”

N
o letter. There was no letter waiting when Emilie reached Long Pine. Of course Noah and the colonel wouldn’t have so much as reached their first stop on their trek yet. Still, she’d hoped. The colonel had said it would be a week before he and Noah got to Fort Kearny. Even if Noah wrote her then, he probably wouldn’t post it until they reached the city of Kearney the next day. The soonest she should expect to receive a letter would be in the final days of the Long Pine Chautauqua. Still…she’d hoped. In spite of logical explanations and reasonable observations. She’d hoped.

Noah’s body was beginning to acclimate to the demands of the trail about the time the tops of the cottonwoods around what had been the parade ground at Fort Kearney came into view. It had been a week since he and Colonel Barton rode out of Beatrice.

“The military reservation was ten miles square,” the colonel said as they rode along. “In fact, we’re on it now. The post itself is on a slight elevation. That afforded an excellent view of the surrounding country. This was all Pawnee land before…before things changed. Of course the Sioux and the Cheyenne hunted buffalo all across the plains. All three tribes were traditional enemies, and there was always competition for buffalo, for horses, for good grazing. Then we came along and insisted on drawing imaginary lines across the earth, expecting our ideas about things to be adopted and respected.” The colonel was quiet for a moment before he motioned around them.

“These trees had already been here for twenty years when I came in the ‘60s.” He began to point to where various structures had been. “Barracks. Sutler’s. Post commander. Stables.” He paused. “It really was quite a place. Imagine what a welcome sight a busy fort would have been to people who’d been crawling across a treeless prairie for weeks. Especially in a time when hostilities were on the rise and they had to be constantly watchful—constantly fearful of being attacked.” He nodded toward the south. “Your mother would have spent most of her time near that copse of small trees and brush. Laundry row was there. Little more than shacks by our standards today.”

Noah wondered at the idea of women standing over vats of boiling water when the weather was like it was today—the heat made even more oppressive by a hot wind. “What happened to all the buildings?”

“Sold to the highest bidder, I imagine. Torn down for the lumber—maybe moved intact to some neighboring farms.” The colonel nodded to the west. “Ben Holladay had a stage station not forty rods that way. A storehouse, office, eating station—all from cedar logs Holladay hauled in from nearly a hundred miles away.”

“It’s hard to imagine such a deserted place ever being very important,” Noah said.

“All the Platte Valley traffic came by here. Hundreds of wagons a day. Freighters, Concord stages, and the prairie schooners everyone remembers with such romanticism. The Pony Express passed by, too, and then the telegraph.” The colonel paused. “Nearly all the military expeditions involved in the territory back then moved out from here. During the worst times of hostilities, we’d hold wagons back until there were a few dozen to travel together. And we stationed squads every few miles along the Platte, all the way from here to Julesburg.”

And still
, Noah thought,
Ma’s wagon train was attacked and burned.

They lingered at the site of the old fort for just a few minutes before heading for Kearney, where Noah would post his first letter to Emilie. As they rode along, the colonel regaled him with tales of Dobytown. “Fourteen saloons run by six families.”

“And you know that because…?” Noah teased.

The colonel looked over with a sad smile. “Experience, son. Sad, lasting experience.”

As they neared the Platte River, he pointed to a thicket of cottonwoods. “There used to be a house over there. Dirty Woman’s Ranch, we called it.”

“That sounds bad,” Noah said.

“
I
was bad.” After a moment, the colonel smiled. “I once was lost, but now am found. Was blind, but now I see.”

“Maybe you should write about that,” Noah said.

“Maybe I should.”

The river was little more than a few rivulets of water meandering between islands of sand peppered with stands of grass and saplings. “Not much of a river,” Noah said as the horses made their way across.

The colonel nodded. “We’ve had a dry year. When snowmelt’s rushing down from the Rockies, the water moves fast. I’ve seen this river run a mile wide. Hard to imagine right now, but at times like that, there’s quicksand to be considered. Makes me think of a time when…” And the colonel launched into another tale of the West that helped Noah ignore his aching muscles and bruised backside.

The Spring Sisters had been at Long Pine for nearly a week when, late one night, Emilie ducked out of the cabin and stood, looking up at the night sky. Locusts buzzed. In the distance, someone was playing a guitar. And somewhere…somewhere Noah was looking up at this same sky. Was he thinking of her?

Try as she would to “just do the next thing,” Emilie was failing, and she knew it. Her appetite was nonexistent. She was having trouble sleeping, and she’d botched the piano part on one of the Spring Sisters’ songs tonight.

Just before retiring this evening, Mother had put her hand to Emilie’s forehead. “Maybe we should check in with the doctor,” she’d said.

“I’ll be fine,” Emilie replied. “Maybe I’ll ‘take the waters’ myself tomorrow, and write a first-hand account of the healthful benefits of the Long Pine springs.” But she hadn’t sounded very convincing.

A rustling behind her signaled that she wasn’t the only one awake. Hurrying down the cabin steps, Emilie headed off into the night in the direction of the creek. Perching in the shadow of a moonlit rock, she drew her knees up and, wrapping her arms about them, rested her forehead against her knees. Trying to pray.
You have to help me. I know I should trust You, but I can’t. What if Noah doesn’t come back? What if—
Tears threatened.

“You have to stop this.” May sat down next to her. “You have to let us help you.”

“You can’t. There’s nothing anyone can do. At least not right now.”

“I’ll speak with Mama,” May said. “I’ll go with you.”

Frowning, Emilie looked over. “Go with me…where?”

“Wherever,” May said. “There’s the Friendship Home up in Lincoln, although I suppose you’ll want to go farther away than that.” She touched Emilie’s shoulder. “You won’t have to be alone, Em. I promise.”

“What—what are you talking about?”

May’s voice wavered. “The baby.” She reached for Emilie’s hand.

“What?! Why on earth would you think—a baby!”

May sounded defensive. “Noah isn’t writing. You aren’t eating. You aren’t sleeping. You’re half sick. What else could it be?”

“I’ve only known him for six weeks. That’s hardly—” Emilie could feel herself blushing. “There’s no baby. A baby would be easy. We’d get married right away, and no one would object. Oh, they’d whisper behind our backs, but—” A baby. May thought she was
enceinte.
Did Mother? Goodness.

“Don’t be angry,” May said quickly. “I just thought—I mean—you’re a mess, Em. It had to be something bad. And after what happened last year to Garnet Davies—”

Garnet Davies. The classmate who had put on so much weight and then quite suddenly gone on a trip to visit a distant aunt. And come back, pale and thin and…sad. So sad. Emilie shook her head. And then, in the midst of tears and sobs, she blurted everything out. All of it, in a rush, with May just sitting there beside her, not moving, not saying a word. “And so he’s off on a quest to trace his mother’s steps. And maybe to meet his father. I told him it doesn’t matter. He said it does. He said it changes everything.” She said the ugly words Noah had used. “He said that about himself. And he hasn’t written, and I don’t know what to think.” She hid her face in her hands.

“Oh, Em.” May offered a hug. “It’s going to be all right, Em. I don’t know how, but it will. You’ll see. We love you. We like Noah. Everyone does. It’s going to be all right. It has to.”

Emilie cried for a few more minutes. She talked. May listened. Finally they got up and returned to the cabin. The next morning, Emilie managed to eat something. She and May set off together to take advantage of the “healing springs.” Somehow, Emilie felt better. May knew. Emilie wasn’t alone in it anymore.