Chapter Ten
The wagons stood in a crooked half circle beside the river, their wheels sunk a little into the damp ground.
Smoke lay flat over the camp. Somewhere near the horses, a woman was scolding a child in a low voice.
The river moved over stones with a steady sound that made Sarah want to lie down again and listen to it.
Clay was still asleep under the wagon, one arm flung across his eyes. His boots sat side by side beneath the axle. He had taken his shirt off in the night, likely because the fire had burned too hot, and it lay in a heap beside his bedroll.
Sarah looked away at once. She sat up in her own blanket.
This arrangement had begun as a lie told in front of strangers. Her husband to be. His wife to be.
She got up decisively, pressed the blanket flat over her knees and tied back her hair.
Violet was already at the river with a pail. She had tucked her skirts up above her ankles and was kneeling on a flat stone, scrubbing a shirt against a washboard she had nailed together from two pieces of wood. Her son, Brady, sat nearby with a stick, drawing lines through the wet sand.
Charlotte had set out a small kettle near the coals. She held a rag in one hand and a tin cup in the other. Noah sat on a wagon tongue with his hat pulled low, rubbing down a mule’s harness.
Women moved through camp carrying buckets, shaking out blankets, and gathering soiled cloth into piles.
A few had hung stockings and shirts on lines strung between wagon bows.
They worked without speaking much. The trail made dirt of everything.
It got beneath fingernails, into the seams of boots, along the back of the neck.
It stuck in the folds of a person’s clothes until a woman could feel it scratching at her skin even after she had washed.
Sarah had learned quickly that clean water was not always enough.
They boiled what they could. They scraped pots with sand and rinsed them downstream from where the animals drank.
They buried refuse away from camp and covered it well.
Violet made Brady wash his hands before he ate, though the boy complained each time as if it were some peculiar punishment.
Charlotte had shown Sarah how to make lye soap from the ashes after a fire burned down. It was rough on the hands, but it cut through grease. The women saved every scrap of cloth. Old petticoats became rags. Torn shirts became bandages. Nothing was thrown away if it might be useful later.
Sarah carried a pail toward the river. Violet looked up.
“You’re awake early.”
“I could say the same.”
“I have a boy who thinks daylight is something he ought to wrestle.”
Brady heard his name and looked over. He was a narrow little thing with dark hair that never stayed flat.
“I’m not wrestling it,” he said.
“You were up before the birds,” Violet told him.
“The birds are lazy.”
Sarah smiled despite herself. “That’s a grave charge.”
Brady gave her a solemn nod, as if he expected her to take it to court.
Charlotte called from the fire. “Sarah, if you’ve got the strength for it, see whether that fiancé of yours has anything worth washing. He’d sooner wear mud to California than lift a bar of soap.”
Sarah turned toward Clay’s wagon.
“He is not my fiancé.”
Charlotte’s mouth tightened in a small smile. “Of course he isn’t.”
Violet bent over her washboard, hiding her face.
Sarah took a breath through her nose. “I’ll see to the clothes.”
Clay was awake when she reached the wagon. He sat with his back against one wheel, pulling on his boots. His blond hair stood up on one side. He looked younger that way. Less like the man who had faced Everett without blinking.
He glanced up at her.
“Morning.”
“Your shirt needs washing.”
He looked toward the heap beside him. “Does it?”
“It could stand by itself.”
“That seems useful on a trail.”
Sarah held out her hand. “Give it here.”
His green eyes settled on her face. “You don’t have to wash my things.”
“I know that.”
“Then why are you?”
Because Charlotte asked. Because every woman in camp would notice if she did not. Because his shirt was filthy and she was tired of looking at it.
“Because you’re passing for a betrothed man,” she said. “Try not to make me look foolish.”
A crooked grin pulled at his mouth. His front teeth were uneven, one set apart from the other. It should have made him look boyish. It did, until he smiled like that.
“Yes, ma’am.”
He handed her the shirt. It smelled of smoke, horse, sweat, and pine needles. There was a tear at the cuff. Sarah found his trousers folded near his bedroll and lifted them by two fingers.
“You have another pair?”
“On me.”
“That was not what I meant.”
“I figured.”
She gathered the clothes before he could say anything else and walked back to the river.
Violet watched her come.
“His?” she asked.
Sarah laid the shirt down beside the washboard. “Don’t start.”
“I did not say a word.”
“You were about to.”
Violet wore an innocent expression. “I was about to ask whether he has any stockings.”
“He has stockings.”
“That’s fortunate.”
Sarah dipped the shirt into the water and began to scrub.
The river was cold enough to make her hands ache.
She worked at the collar and underarms first, then rubbed lye soap into the stained cloth.
Clay’s shirt had been mended at least twice.
The stitches were neat but uneven. He had done them himself.
She paused over the cuff.
“You sew,” Violet said.
“I can sew a straight seam.”
“Can Clay?”
“He can mend badly.”
“That is still more than most men.”
Sarah did not answer. She scrubbed harder.
Brady had wandered closer. He stood at the edge of the water and poked at a drowned beetle with his stick.
“Don’t get your shoes wet,” Violet said.
“I won’t.”
“You said that yesterday.”
“Yesterday was different.”
“Why?”
“The river was lower.”
Violet gave Sarah a look. Sarah understood it well enough. A child could make every foolish decision sound sensible if given time.
Clay came down the bank carrying a battered tin cup. He had put on a clean shirt, though it was no cleaner than the one Sarah was washing. His rifle rested across one shoulder. Tucker trailed behind him, chewing on a piece of hard biscuit.
Tucker had grown used to being underfoot in every part of camp. He stopped beside Sarah and looked at the clothes.
“Clay’s shirt looks dead.”
“It isn’t dead,” Clay said.
“It smells dead.”
“That’s because you’ve got a fine education.”
Tucker grinned. “I got educated in an orphanage.”
Clay tipped his head toward him. “There’s no arguing with that.”
Sarah shook out the shirt and reached for the trousers. Clay crouched beside the river to fill his cup. When he rose, he took the far end of the wet shirt without asking and held it up for her.
“I can manage,” Sarah said.
“I see that.”
“Then let go.”
“You’ll drop it in the mud.”
“I will not.”
He held on. “You might.”
Sarah tugged. The cloth slipped in her wet hands. Clay caught it before it fell, and his fingers closed over hers.
For a moment neither of them moved.
His hand was rough. There was a fresh split in the skin near his thumb, likely from rope or wood. The warmth of him stayed against her knuckles despite the river water.
Sarah drew her hand back.
“You needn’t hover over every little thing,” she said.
Clay let the shirt hang between them. “I was holding a shirt.”
“You make a habit of being irritating.”
“I do my best.”
“That is plain.”
He looked as if he might laugh. The sight of it made her more annoyed than it ought to have.
“You’re a fool,” she said.
Tucker choked on his biscuit.
Clay blinked. “That’s a strong judgment over laundry.”
“You sleep in the dirt, wear the same clothes until they walk away on their own, and think a river is a proper bath.”
“I bathed three days ago.”
“That does not help your case.”
Violet covered her smile with the back of her wrist.
Clay looked down at his shirt. “I’ll try to improve myself bride-to-be.”
Sarah snatched the shirt from him. “Don’t call me that.”
“Then you’d better stop washing my clothes.”
He walked away before she could find an answer.
Tucker stayed where he was, studying Sarah with too much interest.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“That means something.”
He looked toward Clay’s back. “He likes you.”
Sarah wrung out the shirt. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know when a person likes somebody.”
“You are nine years old.”
“I was seven once too.”
“That is not wisdom.”
Tucker shrugged, unconcerned. “You like him some.”
Sarah flicked water at him. He yelped and ran up the bank, laughing.
By midmorning the camp had settled into work.
Men checked wheels, repaired traces, sharpened knives.
Samuel and two others took the horses farther along the river where the grass was better.
Noah sat with Clay near a broken wagon tongue, both of them bent over a cracked iron fitting.
Their heads were close as Clay pointed something out with a nail.
Sarah carried the clean clothes back to Clay’s wagon. She hung his shirt over the sideboard to dry in the sun and laid his trousers across a blanket.
There was little enough privacy on the trail. Still, she felt she had stepped into something private when she saw his things gathered there.
A small carving knife. A whetstone. A coil of cord. A square of oilcloth wrapped around two hooks and fishing line. A wooden horse, roughly carved but carefully smoothed, lay beside the bedroll. Its little legs were stout. There was a nick in one ear.
Tucker must have left it there.
Sarah picked it up. The wood was warm from the sun.
“You found my best horse.”
She set it down too quickly. “It has three good legs.”
“Four. That one’s just shorter.”
“It looks lame.”
“He’s resting.”
She turned. “Do you make these?”
“Sometimes.”
“For Tucker?”
“For whoever needs one.”
His eyes moved briefly toward Tucker, who was trying to throw pebbles into a tin cup set on a stump.
“You’re good with him,” Sarah said.
Clay seemed to consider that. “He’s a good boy.”
A shout came from the river, Brady’s voice.