Chapter Two
West of Independence
Rain began before dawn and showed no inclination to stop simply because twelve wagons needed to travel west.
Eleanor stood beneath the edge of the wagon canvas and stared at the road. It had been firm the previous evening. Now it was thick brown mud that seemed determined to keep every wheel exactly where it was.
“Father's schedule does not mention rain on the second day,” Lydia said.
She was sitting inside the wagon with Grace and Lucy, all three wrapped in blankets. Eleanor turned her head slowly.
“I am beginning to suspect Father did not personally arrange the weather.”
“That seems like poor planning,” Rebecca said as she passed with an armful of damp firewood. “I expected better from a man with so many lists.”
“Can we stay here?” Lucy asked.
“We will wait for Mr. Cooper's decision.”
“I thought you did not like his decisions,” Lydia said.
Eleanor gave her a look.
Lydia smiled and pulled the blanket over her head.
Nathaniel rode into camp with water dripping from his hat. He spoke to the men nearest the front, then continued down the line. When he reached the Whitaker wagons, Eleanor stepped out to meet him.
“We will move,” he said. “Slowly. There is higher ground ahead, and this camp will become worse if we remain.”
“How far?”
“Six miles if the road holds. Less if it does not.”
“That is very reassuring.”
“I considered lying, but you strike me as a woman who would notice.”
“Eventually.”
His mouth twitched. “Keep the sisters who are not driving on foot where the ground allows it. We need less weight in the wagons. At the long rise, stronger teams will double back to help the weaker ones.”
“Our teams will manage.”
“I did not say they would not.”
“You looked at our wagons when you mentioned the weaker teams.”
“I looked at you because I was speaking to you.”
Eleanor folded her arms. He was infuriating. Worse, he was usually calm while being infuriating.
“If our teams need help,” she said, “I will ask for it.”
“If I wait for every proud emigrant to ask, we will reach Oregon sometime in 1863.”
“I am not proud.”
Caroline coughed behind her.
Eleanor did not turn around.
Nathaniel looked past her toward Caroline, who suddenly became very interested in checking a wheel. “Be ready in fifteen minutes.”
He rode away.
“You could try agreeing with him once,” Caroline said.
“I agreed that we would be ready.”
“After arguing with everything else.”
“That was not arguing. It was a discussion.”
“Did he know it was a discussion?”
Eleanor reached for her gloves. “Get the girls moving.”
The wagons rolled out in a steady rain. Eleanor drove the first while Caroline drove the second. Rebecca walked near the oxen, watching their footing. Martha kept Grace close because the girl's cough had returned during the night.
The first mile was miserable. The second was worse.
“You are enjoying being right,” Eleanor said.
“The rain has offered me very little else to enjoy,” Nathaniel said.
“Then savor it quietly.”
Mud sucked at their boots. Wheels sank to the hubs in low places. Every few minutes someone shouted for a halt while a wagon was pushed, pulled, or pried free.
Eleanor's arms ached from handling the team, but she kept her eyes on the road. She would not be the reason the train stopped.
They reached the long rise near midday.
The first wagons started up one at a time. Men walked beside wheels, pushing. Animals strained. Nathaniel stood halfway up the slope, directing teams and keeping the wagons far enough apart that one slipping backward would not strike another.
When Eleanor's turn came, he motioned for an extra team.
“We can make it,” she called.
“You can make it with help.”
“We do not need—”
A wagon above them lurched sideways.
Nathaniel shouted. Men scattered as the rear wheel slid toward the edge of the road. The family driving it cried out from inside.
Eleanor handed the reins to Rebecca and jumped down.
“Caroline, bring our second team!” she called.
“Eleanor!” Nathaniel shouted.
She ignored him. Rebecca and Eleanor led the first team forward while Caroline brought the second. Nathaniel understood what Eleanor intended before she reached him.
“Hook to the rear,” he ordered. “Keep them downhill of the wagon.”
Together they attached the Whitaker team to a rope fastened around the endangered wagon. Nathaniel directed the other men to brace the wheels.
“Pull!” he called.
The oxen leaned into the yoke. For one horrible moment, nothing happened.
Then the wagon shifted away from the edge.
Men shoved rocks and wood beneath the wheel. The family climbed out, shaking but unhurt.
Eleanor stroked the neck of the nearest ox. “Good boy.”
Nathaniel came to stand beside her. “You were saying something about not needing to double-team?”
She looked at him. Rain ran from his hat brim onto his nose. He looked ridiculous, which made it difficult to be properly offended.
“That was a different wagon.”
“Naturally.”
“Our team was needed elsewhere.”
“Which is why stronger teams help weaker ones.”
Eleanor sighed. “You may enjoy being right for the next five minutes.”
“Only five?”
“Do not become greedy.”
*****
NATHANIEL HAD EXPECTED trouble from Eleanor Whitaker. He had not expected her to be the first person to put her own team at risk for another family.
He should have known better.
Proud did not mean selfish. Stubborn did not mean foolish. Eleanor listened to everything, considered it, and then did whatever she believed was right. The difficulty was convincing her that someone else might also know what was right.
After he secured the endangered wagon, he sent Eleanor's first wagon up the slope with an extra team attached.
She did not protest.
That worried him more than the arguing.
He found her at the top of the rise, flexing one hand. A red mark crossed her palm where a wet line had slipped through her glove.
“Let me see.”
She closed her fist. “It is nothing.”
“That is what difficult people say when they do not want me to see something.”
“Do you have experience with difficult people?”
“I am a wagon master.”
He held out his hand. Eleanor stared at it before finally giving him hers.
Her palm was scraped but not badly cut. He took a clean cloth from his saddlebag and wrapped it around her hand.
“Keep it dry tonight.”
She looked at the rain. “I will speak to the clouds.”
“They do not listen any better than you do.”
Her eyes widened, and he waited for anger.
Instead, she laughed.
Nathaniel tied the cloth more carefully than necessary. Her hand was smaller than his but not soft. She had calluses from work, which should not have surprised him. Very little about Eleanor Whitaker matched his first assumptions.
“Thank you,” she said.
“You are welcome.”
Neither of them moved.
Nathaniel released her hand.
They continued another three miles before the ground forced them to stop. The campsite was poor, but it was higher than the land they had left. People hurried to light fires with damp wood. Children cried from cold and hunger. Oxen stood with heads low, exhausted by the mud.
Nathaniel made his rounds until dark. When he reached the Whitakers, Martha was stirring something in a large pot while the younger sisters held tin cups near the fire.
“Coffee?” Eleanor asked.
He looked at the cup she offered. “Are you attempting to make peace?”
“No. I made enough for one extra person.”
“How fortunate that I arrived.”
He took the cup.
The coffee was weak, but it was hot. Nathaniel stood near the fire while Eleanor checked Grace's cough.
“Move her sleeping place,” he said. “The rear corner of the wagon is damp.”
Eleanor looked up. “Martha?”
Martha nodded. “He is right. Grace should sleep between Lydia and me tonight.”
Eleanor agreed immediately.
Nathaniel noticed. She had not questioned him because the advice concerned her sister rather than her own authority.
“You need not look so surprised,” she said.
“Was I?”
“You expected an argument.”
“I have begun to expect them.”
“I do not argue when people are sensible.”
Rebecca choked on her coffee.
Eleanor turned. “Is something wrong?”
“Not at all,” Rebecca managed.
Nathaniel hid his smile behind his cup.
Later, after the sisters had settled, he saw Eleanor sitting alone beside the dying fire. She had removed her bonnet, and the garnet earrings caught the last orange light.
“Those are unusual things to wear on the trail,” he said.
Her hand went to one earring. “They belonged to my mother.”
“Then I understand.”
She studied him. “Do you?”
Nathaniel thought of Abigail's wedding ring stored in the bottom of his trunk. He had not looked at it in three years. “Yes.”
Eleanor seemed about to ask a question, but he was not ready to answer it.
“Get some rest,” he said. “Tomorrow may be dry.”
“Is that your professional opinion?”
“It is a desperate hope.”
He walked away before the firelight and garnets could make her appear any warmer.
*****
THE MORNING INSPECTION produced a problem Eleanor had not included on any list: Lydia had bartered two buttons for a tin whistle from a boy in the Turner family.
Eleanor discovered this when a shrill note sounded from beneath the second wagon.
“Lydia.”
The whistle sounded again.
“Lydia Whitaker.”
Her sister’s head appeared beneath the wagon. “Yes?”
“What is that?”
“A whistle.”
“I can see that.”
“Then I am confused by the question.”
Rebecca turned away, shoulders shaking.
Eleanor held out her hand. “Give it to me.”
Lydia surrendered it with exaggerated sorrow. “Samuel says every wagon train needs music.”
“Samuel is six. Yesterday he wandered toward a creek because of frogs.”
“That does not make him wrong about music.”
Nathaniel rode up in time to hear her. “What music?”
“No music,” Eleanor said.
Lydia pointed at the whistle. “She has crushed the arts.”
Nathaniel considered this. “A serious charge.”
“Do not encourage her.”
“I would not dream of interfering in family discipline.”
“You interfere in everything else.”
“Only wagon-related matters.”
Lydia brightened. “The whistle came west in a wagon.”
Nathaniel coughed into his fist.
Eleanor stared at both of them. “I suddenly understand why some people choose to travel alone.”
“Too late,” Rebecca said. “You brought seven of us.”
Lucy grinned. “You would miss us.”
“Eventually.”
Nathaniel’s smile followed Eleanor for the next half mile, which was irritating because she found herself smiling too.
Later that morning, Eleanor found Nathaniel showing two drivers how to check a wheel pin before it worked loose. She stopped because she wanted to learn, not because she wanted to watch his hands. At least that was what she told herself.
“Miss Whitaker,” he said without looking up. “Are you supervising?”
“I am observing.”
“Is there a difference?”
“A supervisor expects obedience.”
He glanced at her. “Then I am relieved.” Nathaniel tapped the pin. “If this begins walking outward, stop before the wheel decides to continue to Oregon without the wagon.”
“That has happened?”
“Twice.”
“To you?”
“To men who assured me they knew better.”
“Ah. Men.”
“Do not sound so pleased.”
“I am merely collecting evidence that stubbornness is not confined to women.”
“I could have told you that.”
“I prefer independent verification.”
He showed her how to test the pin, then handed her the tool instead of doing the work for her. Eleanor corrected her angle after one quiet suggestion and finished the check herself.
Nathaniel nodded. “Good.”
That simple confidence in her competence warmed Eleanor far more than it should have.
At breakfast, Rebecca pushed the bacon toward Lydia.
Lydia stared at it. “That piece is burned.”
“It is cooked.”
“It has passed cooked and entered geology.”
Martha took it and ate it.
Lydia looked betrayed. “You cannot reward Rebecca.”
Charlotte said, “We have consumed more bacon than Father estimated.”
Eleanor immediately looked over.
Charlotte smiled faintly. “I wanted to see how quickly you would become concerned.”
Caroline laughed. “Charlotte is developing a sense of humor.”
“I have always had one.”
“No,” Rebecca said. “You have had arithmetic.”
Nathaniel walked past with coffee.
Lydia called, “Mr. Cooper, is burned bacon edible?”
He studied the piece. “That may have been bacon once.”
Rebecca pointed at him. “Traitor.”
“I am wagon master, not judge.”
Eleanor said, “You spend most of your day judging.”
“Only roads, wagons, animals, drivers, weather, loads, campsites, and occasionally you.”
“Occasionally?”
“Frequently.”
“At least you admit it.”
“I am learning honesty.”
Lydia looked between them. “This is more entertaining than breakfast.”