The Long Way Home
The
Long Way
Home
Books by Lauraine Snelling
A S
ECRET
R
EFUGE
Daughter of Twin Oaks Sisters of the Confederacy
The Long Way Home
D
AKOTAH
T
REASURES
Ruby Opal
Pearl Amethyst
D
AUGHTERS OF
B
LESSING
A Promise for Ellie
R
ED
R
IVER OF THE
N
ORTH
An Untamed Land The Reapers’ Song
A New Day Rising Tender Mercies
A Land to Call Home Blessing in Disguise
R
ETURN TO
R
ED
R
IVER
A Dream to Follow Believing the Dream
More Than a Dream
H
IGH
H
URDLES
Olympic Dreams Close Quarters
DJ’s Challenge Moving Up
Setting the Pace Letting Go
Out of the Blue Raising the Bar
Storm Clouds Class Act
LAURAINE
SNELLING
The
Long Way
Home
The Long Way Home
Copyright © 2001
Lauraine Snelling
Cover design by Dan Thornberg
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher and copyright owners.
Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN-13: 978-1-55661-841-3
ISBN-10: 1-55661-841-7
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Snelling, Lauraine.
The long way home / by Lauraine Snelling.
p. cm. — (A secret refuge ; 3)
ISBN 1-55661-841-7 (pbk.)
1. Women pioneers—Fiction. 2. Overland journeys to the Pacific—
Fiction. I. Title.
PS3569.N39 L66 2001
813'.54—dc21
2001001317
The Long Way Home
is dedicated to
the glory of God and to the gift
He has given me in my Round Robin Circle.
These friends help keep me sane and on track.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE West of Fort Laramie on the Oregon Trail Late June 1863
CHAPTER TWO: Fort Laramie, Wyoming Territory
CHAPTER THREE: Richmond, Virginia July 1863
CHAPTER FOUR: West of Fort Laramie July ,1863
CHAPTER SEVEN: "Richmond, ,Virginia
CHAPTER NINE: Richmond, Virginia
CHAPTER TEN: West of Fort Laramie
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Richmond, Virginia
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Richmond, Virginia
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: On the Chugwater River August 1863
CHAPTER NINETEEN: Richmond, Virginia
CHAPTER TWENTY - TWO: On the Chugwater River August 1863
CHAPTER TWENTY - THREE: OglalaCamp
CHAPTER TWENTY - FOUR: Washington Prison
CHAPTER TWENTY - FIVE: September 1863
CHAPTER TWENTY - SIX: The White House
CHAPTER TWENTY - SEVEN: Washington
CHAPTER TWENTY - EIGHT: Returning From the Harvest
CHAPTER TWENTY - NINE: Horse Hunting on the Powder River Range September 1863
CHAPTER THIRTY: Richmond, Virginia
CHAPTER THIRTY - ONE: On the Chugwater River
CHAPTER THIRTY - TWO: Richmond, Virginia
CHAPTER THIRTY - FOUR: On the Chugwater River
CHAPTER THIRTY - FIVE: Richmond, Virginia
CHAPTER THIRTY - SIX: Richmond, Virginia
CHAPTER THIRTY - SEVENT: winOaks
EPILOGUE: Wyoming Territory Spring 1867
LAURAINE SNELLING is an award-winning author of over forty books, including fiction and nonfiction for adults and young adults. Besides writing both books and articles, she teaches at writers’ conferences across the country. She and her husband, Wayne, have TWO grown sons and four granddogs, and they make their home in California.
C
HAPTER
O
NE
West of Fort Laramie on the Oregon Trail
Late June 1 8 6 3
Gray Wolf Torstead, long dark hair tied back with a piece of latigo, topped the hill on his blood bay Appaloosa as the sun broke the horizon. Turning to look over his shoulder, he could no longer see the smoke from the campfires of the wagon train. Looking east he knew he could make it back to the fort with some days of hard riding, gather his supplies, and head home.
Home. Would his mother’s tribe’s tepees feel like home, or had he lived with the white men too long? Like he’d been trailing the wagon train too long. They didn’t need him. Jesselynn didn’t need him. Jesselynn—a much better name than Jesse. But he’d had to make sure the new wagon master knew what he was doing. They’d camped in the right places, kept watch at night, and grazed the herd. He’d even heard the fiddle singing one evening.
He knew the scouts had seen him, but then he hadn’t been trying to hide. Just making sure they were safe.
He nudged his Appaloosa into a mile-eating lope and promised himself to put Jesselynn Highwood out of his mind. Out of his heart was another matter entirely. Questions that kept time with his horse’s hooves circled round again. Why had he let her go? Why had he not at least asked her to stay, to marry him?
‘‘Worryin’ gots you lower den a turtle belly.’’
Jesselynn Highwood looked over at the smiling black face of Meshach, who used to be overseer at her home in Kentucky. Now he was a freedman and her friend. ‘‘I’m not worrying. I’m thinking.’’ She tucked her slouch hat, which looked to have been wheel fodder, between her britches-covered knees and finger combed her shaggy hair back off her forehead. The hat kept her hair out of her eyes at least, dark blond hair now barely stained by walnut dye. Masquerading as a male to keep her people safe took a lot of sacrifices, especially for a nineteen-year-old Southern woman.
I thought you gave up lying
. That little voice inside woke from a nap and, smirking, tapped her on the shoulder.
Jesselynn, her elbows propped on her knees, the reins to the two span of oxen loose in her fingers, stared out over the backs of her trudging bovines. Dust from the wagons ahead of her wore her face dry and crunched between her teeth. She’d lost the juice to swallow with, and the sun hadn’t come on eleven yet.
‘‘Whoa, son.’’ Meshach gentled Ahab, the Thoroughbred stallion that would be the foundation of their horse farm when they made it to Oregon Territory and a new start—away from the war.
Right now, after weeks on the trail, Oregon seemed farther away than ever.
Meshach kept the horse even with the left front wheel of their lead wagon. ‘‘Looks like worryin’ to me.’’
Jesselynn kept the bite out of her voice with great effort. ‘‘I said I’m not worrying.’’ The emphasis on the last word rang hollow even to her own ears. If this wasn’t worrying, what was it? She chewed on the thoughts like a hound dog with a knucklebone.
‘‘I don’t trust Jason Cobalt.’’ She said the words loud enough for Meshach’s ears alone.
‘‘They say he be a good man.’’
‘‘I don’t doubt that. I just doubt his ability to guide this wagon train through to Oregon. Last night they were talking about taking a shortcut.’’
‘‘I heard.’’
‘‘Wolf said that shortcut was short on water and the hills steeper.’’ That was her
real
problem—Mr. Gray Wolf Torstead, better known as Wolf. She knew it down to the stitching on her boots. Why had he left the train and his job as wagon master? She thought she understood the answer to that too, thanks to a conversation with an Indian scout. Wolf had felt a call to return to the land of his mother, an Oglala Sioux who died when he was a youth. However, understanding and agreeing were two entirely different things. She wished she understood all the scout had said.
But if she dug deep enough, and she did that only in the still hours of the morning before the rising sun dimmed the starlight, she knew the
real
question. Why? Why had he left
her
? Thanks to that one embrace they’d shared, she’d dreamed of more. More embraces, perhaps a life together. After all, she didn’t take embraces lightly, not when they made her breathless. Seemed like his had. She let her head drop forward like a heavy blossom on a slender stalk. Why had he left?
Meshach was entirely too perceptive. Aunt Agatha would be on her back next. Keeping her feelings from her nosy aunt would take some doing. Pious, upright, Southern to the smallest bone, Aunt Agatha would definitely not approve of the direction her niece’s thoughts were taking in regard to a halfwhite, half-Sioux man named Wolf. No matter how much Agatha had changed since the early days of Springfield, with these woman-man thoughts, Jesselynn was seriously transgressing.
Jesselynn forced her head upright and a smile to her lips. Wolf was a moot point anyway. He’d left the train, left her, and all she had to do was keep her sights on Oregon.
Am I not sufficient for thee?
At the gentle reminder, she shook her head.
Of course you are, Lord, but you know what I mean. I . . . I thought maybe—okay, I don’t know
. The sigh came from the balls of her feet.
He’s a good man, and I hope and pray he will be happy up there with his mother’s people
. She glanced ahead to see that Meshach now rode beside the McPhereson wagon. Something Mrs. Mac said made him throw his head back and laugh, a hearty laugh that said more about the man than the joke. Meshach laughed a lot more on the trail than she’d ever heard him laugh at Twin Oaks. His body-shaking laugh drew in others like bees to blossoms. One would have to be carrying a huge lump of a heart to not laugh along with Meshach.
Jesselynn saw it all and tucked it away to ponder later. Is this what freedom did to a man once enslaved? He’d told her once that Christ set him free long before she did, but she knew she witnessed the change.
Do others see that joy in me?
The thought made her flinch. The last three days had been particularly empty of any emotion that bore even a fleeting reminiscence of joy. ‘‘Sorry,’’ she said aloud and shook her head as she flipped a glance heavenward.
Praise ye the Lord
. Meshach had read that in a psalm the night before. She’d heard it with only half an ear. She had a feeling God would rather she not only heard but did as He commanded.