Chapter 31 Never Getting to Carsondale
NEVER GETTING TO CARSONDALE
The interior of the stagecoach was surprisingly plush, with leather seats that bore the faint scent of saddle oil and windows shielded by delicate lace curtains.
I’d prepared for discomfort, but this was decadence on wheels, or at least the frontier version of it.
There were six passengers, far fewer than the coach’s maximum capacity, and this made all the difference.
Profit had triumphed over propriety; the company, eager to fill seats, had ignored the rigid segregation rules.
For Wells Fargo, practicality outweighed prejudice, and white and Negro passengers rode side by side.
Major’s broad back swayed outside the carriage, his spine straight, as if the least desirable seat on the entire stagecoach were some royal throne.
When the carriage jolted, he didn’t jolt inelegantly like they did inside.
Instead, he merely shifted, letting the sun catch the sharp line of his jaw, looking every bit like the self-appointed King of the West instead of a lowly Negro forced to cling to the stoop for dear life.
Out here, in the yawning vastness of the frontier, everything was so aggressively large and unorganized.
But Major was a pin in the map, a familiar grounding thing in an unfamiliar world.
The land stretched out in every direction, unbothered by human concerns.
There was simply too much of everything.
The sky, a bottomless shade of blue. There was nowhere to contain it, no neat edges, no sense of proportion.
It was, frankly, sloppy.
Lessie groaned next to me, cutting through my internal complaints about God’s maximalist architecture.
Lessie had been pleasant enough, a hearty, cheerful sort in the back of the train, even while carrying what looked to be an entire family inside her swollen belly.
But now, something was off. I noticed it immediately: the telltale darkness spreading around her neck, the unnatural sheen of sweat across her forehead.
It was not the graceful, light perspiration of a genteel woman enduring discomfort but the soaked-through sort, the kind that spoke of something systemic failing in real time.
I frowned. “You all right?” I asked, though, judging by Lessie’s complexion, she very much was not all right.
Lessie swayed slightly, her breath going shallow, and then, as the coach hit an obnoxiously large rut, one I was sure could have been avoided, she promptly collapsed onto my shoulder.
“Oh, come on, Lessie,” I muttered. We were thirty hours away. Couldn’t she hold on for two days?
I was never getting to Carsondale.
The coach gave another brutal lurch. Now actively holding up a full-grown woman, I whipped my head toward the front of the coach, motioning wildly at the nearest person who seemed to have some pull with the driver.
“Whoa!” I barked, waving my arms. “We have to stop!”
The driver did not immediately comply. Instead, he sucked his teeth, glanced over his shoulder, and then drawled, “We can’t get off schedule.”
I resisted the very real urge to throttle him. “Oh, well, let me just inform the baby that it’s a bad time!” I snapped. “Maybe it’ll climb back in for a few more miles.”
The driver did not look impressed. He looked at me.
Really looked at me, and I was once again all too aware of the wave of my hair in the stifling heat.
He was likely weighing if this cargo was worth the trouble.
The other passengers, previously content to ignore Lessie, now muttered nervously, concern bubbling up in unhelpful whispers.
I took a sharp breath, turning to look at Lessie, now fully unconscious and slipping farther down the seat. One of the many practical skills Spelman had equipped me with, including how to properly humiliate a man in polite conversation, kicked in.
I scanned the horizon, running calculations in my mind.
Ten miles back, there had been an inn and a general store, meaning water and—if we were lucky—a set of clean cloths and someone with at least one useful medical opinion.
This was a well-traveled route, which meant someone here had probably seen a baby being born before.
Or at the very least, had the common decency to panic alongside me.
“If you don’t stop,” I said, “this woman may expire in your expensive little carriage. And passengers who have gone to meet their maker don’t pay.”
The driver blinked. That got his attention.
“There is a fort a few miles up, just outside Boulder. That fort can’t supply an empty wagon, much less a wagon of nine souls. If we stop there, I’ll have to continue on without you. The horses need feed and rest.”
I sighed. “I’ll take my chances.”
“And it’ll be hell finding a wagon to stop there for…”
He didn’t have to finish: for Negro women and a baby.
When we reached what truly was an abandoned fort, the driver yanked the reins, pulling the coach to a shuddering halt.
The dust kicked up in angry little swirls, but I barely noticed.
Lessie had lost her water in a wet rush down her simple dress.
Everyone in the carriage wanted this problem gone.
I took her and was already moving, barking out orders, enlisting the help of whoever had the good sense to listen.
Major, solid thing on this whole journey, swung down from his perch and, without a word, moved to assist, his hands steady, his expression unreadable. I ignored him. Absolutely refused to acknowledge the embarrassing fact that I was damned grateful for his stabilizing presence.