Far From Home (36 page)

‘We saw your smoke,’ one of the trappers said. ‘Thought it was Indians at first. Then we saw it was coming from beneath the snow. We heard the horse as we came nearer.’

Matt was giving the animal a handful of oats, little by little. It was thin, its ribs showing. It had kept alive by eating the snow which had piled up around the shelter but hadn’t covered it because of the protection of the trees.

‘Another time I’ll stay with the horse,’ Edward bantered. ‘Though I don’t suppose he’ll be very good at cards!’

The trappers came inside the cabin and Edward built up the fire and boiled a pan of snow to make coffee.

‘You did pretty well,’ said one of the trappers, looking around at the rough building. ‘Where you fellas from?’

‘Mississippi country,’ Jed said. ‘Swampsuckers all of us, ’cept fer Eddie here. He’s a city gent, down on his luck.’

‘And heading fer Californy?’ one of the others asked.

They nodded. ‘Yip. Jest waiting fer the thaw.’

‘Another couple of weeks,’ the first trapper said. ‘Then you can go. But leave your waggon. You’ll travel better without it.’

‘Go on foot?’ Edward quaked at the thought.

‘Take the horse and join up with a pack train if you can. There’ll be plenty on the trail.’ The man nodded from beneath his hood. ‘Jest keep on walking right over them mountains, across the prairie and on to Santa Fe. There’s a mission there where you can rest and get provisions in the town. It’s a civilized place,’ he said, glancing at Edward. ‘But watch out fer Navajo Indians on the trail. Don’t give them trouble. If they see you’ve nothing worth having they’ll leave you alone.’

‘How long?’ Edward asked, daunted by the prospect.

‘To Santa Fe? As long as it takes,’ he grunted.

‘And to Californy?’ Jed asked. ‘How long do ya reckon?’

The trapper shrugged. ‘Ain’t never bin, but I heard tell all kinda stories. But I guess there’ll be plenty of folks to put you right in Santa Fe.’

‘Head fer the Colorado river,’ said one of the other trappers, ‘cross over the old Spanish Trail and make fer the Sierra Nevada mountains. Aim to git there before next winter,’ he added, ‘or you’ll have to wait fer the thaw. Jest like now.’

‘We’ll be there before then,’ Larkin said. ‘Should the devil bar the way, we’ll be there by summer!’

‘Sure we will,’ Jed agreed.

To Edward the prospect seemed overwhelming. They had already suffered so much privation. They were all leaner than they had been before setting out. He flexed his fingers and looked down at his hands. They were rough and dirty, but strong. He’d sawn and chopped wood, heaved the waggon out of the swamps, tramped over dusty plains where there seemed to be no end in sight, organized the food ration so that whilst they were holed up in the cabin, everyone ate something every day. He wasn’t tired, though his limbs ached. And it came to him that he was exhilarated. The other men no longer treated him like a raw recruit, he was part of the team.

He clenched his fist and raised it in the air. ‘Sure we’ll make it!’ he exclaimed. ‘
Ho, Californy!
’

‘I think we’re lost, Kitty!’ Georgiana looked over the vista in front of them.

‘I think we are, miss.’ Kitty followed her gaze. ‘I don’t remember this at all.’

They had made their way to No-Name without any difficulty, but on arrival there found that there were only women and children at the settlement, and one or two very elderly men. The men, Little Bear explained, had gone to a meeting with other tribes and wouldn’t be back for several days.

‘We’ll chance it on our own, shall we, Kitty?’ Georgiana had said. ‘Stay here tonight and go first thing in the morning.’

Little Bear didn’t want them to go. ‘Stay,’ she had implored in her husky voice. ‘Dekan will set you on the right trail when he comes home.’

But they had decided not to wait and at first the track was as they remembered it. They climbed up stony hillsides and down into the valleys and found the stream where they had previously stopped for water, which they also did this time. They climbed again and then began a descent down the other side into the forested valley, where Lake had taken them to the cabin for shelter.

Only there was no cabin and they had emerged unexpectedly on a plateau which looked out over the tops of miles of dark green pine forest.

‘We’ve taken the wrong path. We’re too high,’ Georgiana said. ‘We should be lower down. We’ll have to turn back.’

‘But it’s getting dark,’ Kitty cautioned. ‘I don’t fancy travelling in darkness. Should we camp here and go on in the morning?’

Georgiana agreed. She was tired and anxious and trembled as she dismounted. ‘Yes, I think so. We’ll make a small fire, then move off at first light.’ What worries me, she thought, is that we might not be able to find the way back to the right track. There were hundreds of miles of forest below them and they could be wandering for days with no hope of finding their way out. We could die here and never be found. Or wolves could attack us. I could never use the knife as Lake did.

Darkness came quickly, but not before they had lit a fire and made up the canvas tent. They fed the horses and mule and tethered them securely.

‘If I wasn’t so scared, I could enjoy this,’ Kitty said, as they sat by the fire. ‘I’ve never seen such a wonderful sunset. It’s as if the whole forest is on fire.’

Georgiana nodded and thought about the sunrise she had shared with Lake. Will I ever see him again? she wondered. Has he gone for ever? Was he my one and only chance of love?

‘I wish Lake was here.’ Kitty echoed her thoughts. ‘Or Dekan, or Horse. Sombody, anyway! Were we very stupid setting out on our own, miss? Just two women?’

I wanted independence, Georgiana pondered. I wanted the same rights as men have. I didn’t want to be told what I could or couldn’t do. I never wanted to feel inferior. ‘No,’ she answered emphatically. ‘Not stupid. And definitely not because we are women! We are just as capable as any man would be in finding our way. Can you imagine Mr Charlesworth coming out here on his own? Would he have done any better? He wouldn’t have attempted it! But we did and we made a mistake, but in the morning we shall find the right track and go on our way.’

‘I knew it really, miss.’ Kitty gave Georgiana a warm smile. ‘But I just wanted to hear you say it!’

They both slept fitfully but fairly well, and as daylight filtered through the canvas, Georgiana opened the flap of the tent and put her head out. She gave an instant gasp, waking Kitty from her dreamy state. Standing by their merrily blazing fire was a man. A man with matted hair and a thick beard, with a wolf pelt thrown over his skin coat.

She put her hand to the knife, which she was about to strap to her ankle, and jumped to her feet to face him. He stared at her, astonishment on his face. He was extremely tall and broad in his chest, and she knew without a shadow of doubt that they would not stand a chance against him should he be aggressive.

‘Who are you?’ she demanded, trying to keep her voice steady.

His eyes narrowed and she saw him glance at her knife, still in its leather sheath. ‘Might ask you the same, lady. Who’s that with you?’ He had obviously seen movement from within the tent.

Kitty put her head out of the opening and then quickly withdrew it. Georgiana knew she would be scrabbling for her knife.

He took a step nearer. He had a rifle strapped across his back and knives on his belt. ‘Have you no man with you?’

‘No,’ she said tensely. ‘But we are armed.’ She hoped that she sounded braver than she felt.

‘What ya doing out here alone?’

‘We’re on a journey,’ she said. ‘We took a wrong path last night.’

He gave a crooked grin which she thought looked very menacing. ‘Lost, ain’t you?’

‘No. Not lost,’ she said sharply. ‘We need to retrace our steps, that’s all.’

‘Dangerous out here.’ He eyed Kitty, who was now standing outside the tent with her unsheathed knife clasped in both hands. ‘Indians. Wolves. Bears. Men who ain’t seen a woman in a long time!’

I’ll fight for my virtue, Georgiana thought. But I don’t want to die for it. She slipped the knife from the sheath. ‘We are prepared for that,’ she said. ‘Do you mean us harm?’

He made a swift movement and grabbed her wrist so that the knife dropped to the ground. Kitty dashed towards them but he grabbed her too with his other hand. ‘How did you come by the knife?’ he asked Georgiana. ‘It ain’t yours.’

She drew in her breath. His hand spanned her wrist and held it tight. She clasped her other hand into a fist and lashed out, but he saw it coming and simply moved his head away from the blow.

‘I said – where’d you git the knife, lady?’ His grip tightened and she winced.

‘It was given to me,’ she managed to say.

‘Who by?’ His grip lessened slightly.

‘Lake!’ she said vehemently. ‘And if he should hear of this—’

‘Lake?’ He dropped her hand and Kitty’s, who rubbed hers furiously. ‘You his woman?’

She lifted her chin and stared at him. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I am.’

‘Well, well! Never thought I’d see the day when Lake had a woman.’ He sat down cross-legged by the fire and they both eyed him warily. ‘Recognized that knife,’ he said. ‘It’s an Indian knife. Wondered how you came by it.’

‘I would hardly have wrestled it from him,’ Georgiana said icily.

He leered at her. ‘You might have done, lady. Wimmin gets up to all kinds o’ things when a man ain’t prepared.’

He threw the wolf skin on the ground next to him and unbuttoned his coat. ‘Got any coffee?’

‘Yes! Yes, we have.’ Kitty bustled up in an attempt to placate him. ‘I’ll make some.’ She filled a small pan from the water bottle and placed it on the fire. ‘Where’ve you come from? Where’s your horse?’

He pointed a thumb over his shoulder. ‘Back there. Followed your tracks. Wondered who it was coming up to this place. There’s no way down from here.’

‘Are you a trapper?’ Georgiana asked. ‘Like Lake?’

He pursed his lips and hesitated slightly, then nodded. ‘Yip, of a sort. Do whatever I can to eat and drink. Mainly, though, I’m a guide. Take folks like you across the prairie or mountains. Where you from?’ he asked suddenly. ‘You from England? I met somebody some time back who talked just like you do, all
la-di-da
. He was from England. Going to try his luck in Californy.’

He gave a guttural laugh, and took the metal cup into which Kitty had poured coffee. ‘Doubt he’d make it. He was stuck in the snow with some swampsuckers. Not even halfway there!’

‘We have to be going,’ Georgiana interrupted briskly. ‘So when you’ve finished your coffee . . .’

He took his time drinking, then drained his cup and got to his feet. ‘Want me to escort you back?’

‘No, thank you,’ she said with as much dignity as she could muster. ‘We can manage.’

‘Suit yourself.’ He shrugged. Then he grinned. ‘I’ll tell Lake I saw you.’ He moved nearer to Georgiana. ‘Want me to give him a message?’

She stepped back and at the same time bent to pick up the pan of coffee from the fire. ‘You can tell him where you saw us,’ she said calmly. ‘And say that he was right about New York.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ he growled.

‘He’ll understand,’ she said. ‘Now, if you will excuse us. We need to break camp.’

‘Miss Georgiana,’ Kitty breathed after he’d gone, ‘shouldn’t we have let him show us the way?’

‘To where, Kitty?’ Georgiana hoisted one pack onto the mule. ‘Not to Dreumel’s Creek, because he won’t know of it, and I wouldn’t have wanted to tell him.’ And besides, she thought, he would have wanted some kind of payment, he didn’t look the sort who would be prepared to help anyone out of the kindness of his heart.

Aloud she said, ‘We’ll find our way back to the track. I’m convinced of it.’ She secured the other pack. ‘And anyway,’ she gritted her teeth, ‘I’m going to give Hetty her head and see if she remembers the way.’

It took them most of the morning to retrace their route down and Kitty kept looking back to see if they were being followed by the wild man, as they had named him. Eventually she declared that he hadn’t followed them after all and had gone on somewhere else.

‘I thought that was very clever of you to say you were Lake’s woman, Miss Georgiana,’ she said after a while. ‘He didn’t want to get ’wrong side of Lake, you could tell.’

‘Yes,’ Georgiana agreed after a second, and gave a laugh. ‘It was inspirational, wasn’t it! I guessed that Lake might be held in some kind of esteem. Look,’ she said, as they came to a small clearing. ‘Here are the diverging paths. We took the wrong one. This one goes downhill.’ She clicked her tongue at Hetty. ‘Come on, girl, is this it?’

Hetty snickered and blew, then, as Georgiana shook the reins, she set off on the downward track, picking her way over fallen branches.

They came at last into the forested valley and made their way to where the creek and cabin were situated. As night was falling they decided to stay there until morning. ‘I think we’ll be all right now, Kitty.’ Georgiana felt exhilarated by their success. ‘Though I remember wondering how Lake found his way when he brought us.’

‘He was looking for signs, miss,’ Kitty said. ‘I noticed because I was riding up behind him. He was watching out for breaks in the forest floor and where some of the trees divided off the tracks.’

‘I should have looked more closely,’ Georgiana admitted. ‘I just put myself in his hands and trusted that what he did was right. But now we are quite alone and must make our own decisions.’

Once more they lit fires, both outside and inside the cabin. Georgiana recalled the rabid wolf which Lake had shot, and firmly shut and bolted the cabin door from the inside. They had brought their own candle and lit it from the lucifer. ‘If we are attacked, Kitty, by man or beast, we must act together and use our knives.’ And if we ever get safely to Dreumel’s Creek, she decided, I shall ask someone to teach me how to use a gun.

‘An hour, Kitty,’ she said the next morning as they set off. ‘That’s how long it took us last time before we began to climb.’ But now it took longer because they kept stopping before deciding if they were going the right way. Eventually they recognized some of the landmarks, the streams and rock slides, and they started to climb. They looked at each other triumphantly and in another hour they came out into the clearing where below, miles below, they could see the waggon trail. They both shouted exultantly at the tops of their voices.