Journey of Honor A love story (8 page)
Lying here holding her, he wondered why in the world those Mormon men hadn't snatched her right up to marry. They were fools. She was a wonderful girl, not to mention strikingly beautiful. Even camping out for weeks hadn't dulled how exquisite she was.
He never did get back to sleep. There was just no way, and although holding her was hard, in a way, he reveled in it. He held her, marveling in her softness and the way she smelled until it was time to get up. He carefully pushed her aside so he could move and almost decided to just stay there when she sighed in her sleep and snuggled over to him again. It took all of his self control to get out of bed that morning.
Mose met him where he was starting the campfire a few minutes later and gave him a thorough checking out before saying conversationally, "You look like the wrath of Lucifer this morning. What happened to you?"
Trace chuckled at his brutal bluntness and replied with a sigh, "After the teamster commotion, Giselle had a nasty dream. I mean nasty. She was terrified. I woke her up and she spent the rest of the night with her head buried in my chest. It's amazingly hard to rest with a beautiful women glued to you. Did you know that? Not to mention that when you're married, but not really, it kind of tests your self control."
Mose laughed at him, but then said, "I feel for you, Trace. If I'd have had to keep my hands off Callie, I'd have had to move to another state."
"I am moving to another state. Unfortunately she's moving with me. Maybe it's fortunately. As it was, I seriously considered just staying in bed this morning and letting the rest of you move on without us."
This time Mose busted right up with laughter. "I can see you just lying there while the whole rest of the wagon train left without you. What would you have told her when she woke up?"
He grinned. "That I accidentally slept in?"
Shaking his head, Mose laughed again and said, "She's a bit too smart for that. You could always stay married to her, you know."
"I don't think Mormons really marry people who aren't. Plus, I've heard the weirdest s about them."
Mose shrugged his shoulders. "We've been with them for weeks now and all I've noticed is that they work hard, serve each other, never swear and don't go off and get drunk and shoot each other. Seems to me they have the key to living happily. At least they have a wonderful spirit about them."
Trace considered this. "They really do, don't they? I thought it was just that I was enamored with Giselle, but Josiah and Petja have that same spirit. I hadn't thought of it that way."
Turning to leave, Mose said over his shoulder, "You should start thinking of her that way. She's a good woman. You need her."
As he finished building up the fire for her to cook breakfast, Trace thought about that. Need was too strong a word for this situation, wasn't it? He heard a sound and turned to watch her approaching the fire. No, need was the word all right. She looked positively tempting this morning. Her hair was pulled up and twisted somehow at the back of her head and she looked soft and sweet and still a little sleepy. She looked at him as she came, and walked right up to him to look at him as hard as Mose had. After studying him for a minute she asked, "Are you okay, Trace? You're not sick are you?"
He laughed at that. "No, not sick. Just a little tired."
She dropped her eyes and then looked back up and asked earnestly, "Was it me? Waking you up last night?"
Hesitating, he wasn't sure how to answer that honestly. "Maybe a little. It was probably just those darn teamsters trying to kill themselves at the fort. I'll be fine once I'm awake. Are you okay this morning? You were pretty upset last night. What were you so afraid of? What did you dream?"
Her face clouded and she shook her head. "Just a nightmare. I have it sometimes. I'm sorry I woke you. Please forgive me." She went to turn aside and begin breakfast, but he stopped her.
"Its okay, Elle. I was glad to help you. It was awful to see you afraid, and being by me did help, didn't it?"
Looking up into his face she said, "Being by you was like heaven when I was that afraid. Thank you. I wish you would have been there the other times I've dreamed about it. Those times I wasn't able to stop being afraid like last night. You bring me peace. It's a priceless gift. I'm very grateful."
He wanted to touch her but didn't dare. Instead he just said, "You're very welcome." They looked at each other for a second or two and then turned away to get on with their morning chores. All morning she was on his mind.
It was a good thing he had something nice to think about, because the whole morning was a rout. The rowdy teamsters who weren't shot were hung over, and the one who was shot was worthless. At least he was going to live. That was something. It took them an extra hour to get the train headed out that morning, and then within just another couple of hours it began to rain. It settled the dust within seconds, but then it wasn't long before the teams were slogging through mud that thickened by the minute and the drivers were soon miserable in spite of their slickers.
He was on his horse this time, scouting ahead for the best route again and he looked over at Josiah's wagon, glad to see that at least Giselle and Petja were inside out of the wet. He'd been watching Giselle earlier. She'd known it was going to rain and had been walking beside the wagon gathering firewood that she stowed in a sling Josiah had rigged up under his wagon for just that purpose. It was comforting to know that when they finally did stop for the night, at least they'd not have too much trouble making a hot dinner. Mose was right. She was a good woman.
When they finally made it into camp, they were several miles short of what he had hoped to travel that day. Giselle and Petja had them a good hot dinner in next to no time, and once again Trace was grateful for their help. They had their chores done and were settling in for the night long before the other teamsters were even close. He put a canvas ground cover down before laying out their bedding under the wagon, and then put another one over top of them to protect them from the damp. It took her a second to figure out how to pray without displacing everything, and he laughed with her as he held it still so that she could kneel.
Lying down that night with her was singularly comforting. It felt like they were in a cocoon, safe from the whole rest of the world, and they lay there all but snuggling next to each other and listened to the rain on the canvas wagon cover. Snug and warm, it was almost a soothing sound that lulled them to sleep like a lullaby. As he drifted off, he marveled at how good it was to work together as a couple to accomplish a common goal.
He'd never worked beside a woman like he was doing here, and the fact that working together proved to be so much more efficient than the other teamsters was somewhat puzzling to him. Shouldn't having the women along have been an extra burden and not a help? It had proved to be a great help to him and Mose, and as he prayed that night, he said an extra thank you for both Petja and Giselle. Especially Giselle.
That was the first night that they heard prairie wolves. The rain had been steady enough that they didn't hear them until almost morning, but once the rain tapered off, the mournful howling seemed like it was right in camp. They woke Trace up and then Dog growled and Giselle woke up as well. She looked over at him with wide eyes and he knew she was thinking about Henry Filson. The wolves howling again took her mind off of Filson, but then he could tell she was afraid of the wolves instead.
Trace sleepily reached for her hand, and then when the howling came a third time, she rolled over against him and he wrapped an arm around her as before. That seemed to be all she needed to feel secure enough to go right back to sleep, but her proximity made sleep hard for him and it took him a while. When he finally got back to sleep with her there in his arms, the two intermittent nights finally clobbered him.
The next morning she was up and gone and Mose had to come and roust him to wake him up. "Come on sleeping beauty. You waiting for breakfast in bed? What? Did you have to hug her again?"
Trace smiled tiredly. "It was my husbandly duty to protect her from the wolves."
"You probably hated that. Poor boy. You'd better get your lazy self outta bed. This train's leaving. With or without you. Lying there alone, you don't have much excuse for being left behind. You being the leader and all."
He sighed, "All right, all right. You're standing on my shirt, you big oaf. Move so I can get up. Why'd you let me sleep this long, anyway?"
Mose grinned, "When I came by the first time, you two were pretty snuggly. I figured you would hurt me if I woke you."
"Waking me I could handle. It's letting her go that would get you injured."
"Does she know that?"
"Heck, no! I'm far too afraid to tell her that. We gonna get more rain today?"
"You? Afraid? You laugh in the face of danger."
"Danger maybe; Giselle terrifies me. Where are my boots?"
"You didn't look too terrified earlier."
"No one's terrified when they're asleep, you numbskull. But you didn't see me when I was awake. I was positively petrified. And perfectly comfortable. There was no way I was movin'."
Mose looked at him. "You better get that grin off your face before she sees you. You look disgusting."
He pulled his boots on and swung his gun belt around his hips. "You jealous, Mose?"
Mose shook his head. "No. I still love Callie too much to be jealous. Just happy for you. But I'm sure I never had that sappy, mindless look when I was in love."
"Sappy? Mindless? Oh brother! Do I really look that bad?"
They stood up and Mose looked at him. "Yeah. Pretty much." He looked up as Giselle headed their way with Trace's breakfast. "You're gonna get busted, too."
She came up to them and stopped to look at Trace for a second. "You okay, Trace? You look a little… I don't know. Strange."
Mose laughed and Trace said, "What do you mean? Strange?"
"I don't know." She paused, studying him. "Strange happy. I brought you your breakfast since you didn't come in, so I can clean up." She handed him the plate and cup and then leaned under the wagon and began folding the canvases and rolling their beds. Mose began to chuckle and then coughed to disguise it as he walked away. Trace shook his head and smiled and walked around to set his cup on the wagon tongue. Between not sleeping and then being teased, these two were going to kill him.
Trace was on horseback again that day and it was a good thing. They’d crossed any number of streams, and the Platte river a couple of times, but today it was high from the rain and it got a little rough before everyone was safely across. They would probably have lost Josiah’s calf if Trace hadn’t rescued it from horseback as it was swept away. Back safely on relatively dry ground on the far side of the river, he took a minute to stop and say a prayer of thanks that everyone was safe before heading back out on the trail.
Later that afternoon, they saw their first buffalo of the trip. The vast numbers of the past were mostly gone now, but there were still some huge herds that roamed the plains and this was one of them. It was probably the reason they’d heard the wolves last night. The wolf pack was likely hanging around the herd, waiting to pick off a calf or sickly old bull. While the animals were still just a black shadow on the western horizon, Trace rode over near Josiah’s wagon. He wanted to see the VanKomens’ faces when they saw their first buffalo herd. The massive beasts were probably something these kindly Dutch folks had never seen before.
As the afternoon wound down, the black shadow grew and sharpened until finally it became a herd of individual, shaggy, black and brown creatures. Giselle’s eyes grew wide as the first wagons headed into the gap created when the buffalo gave way to the approaching wagon train. There were thousands of them on both sides for nearly as far as the eye could see, and as soon as the last wagon passed, the gap gradually closed back up and the train was entirely swallowed by the sea of ragged black.
Dark fell before they were out of the herd. Trace had them continue on until the buffalo petered out before circling to make camp. The buffalo probably wouldn’t have even noticed if they had camped in their midst, but their own stock would have been skittish and a herd that size could have literally wiped their camps out if they had decided to stampede. For that matter, they still could, but at least out of the middle of the herd the wagon train was safer.
Trace had them circle on a hill above a small stream. As they were setting up camp, he heard something further up the water course and he went to investigate.
Half a mile away, off by themselves, was a buffalo trio consisting of a young bull, a cow, and a calf, hanging out in the willows on the creek bank. The young bull and cow were grunting and pawing the mud and dust up over their backs, while the four hundred and fifty pound calf of the year grazed nearby.
Sneaking to within sixty yards of them, Trace shot the calf and then headed back to camp to get a team of mules to bring it in. After he and Mose cleaned, skinned and quartered it, they brought the meat and hide back into camp to cut up and distribute.. Fresh meat was always appreciated out on the trail. He spread the hide out, hair side down, to dry. Later he would try to trade it to an Indian at one of the trading posts or forts.
Giselle was fascinated by the buffalo, and even the slaughtering process—although Trace wondered for a second if she was going to be sick again. She was looking a little green around the gills when she headed off to bed. Early the next morning, she asked him to take her and show her the great beast’s innards. He thought that was strange, but he agreed and helped her up on the back of his horse and took her to see it.
She walked around the huge, smelly gut pile, and taking a stick, tried to poke around to inspect every little thing about it. Finally, Trace began to point out the different parts of it, explaining what each was and what it did in the animal’s body. She was inordinately interested in it and, finally, he asked her why.