Chapter Three
Near the Kansas border
The rain stopped during the night, but the world did not immediately become pleasant. Mud remained mud even though water was no longer falling from the sky.
Eleanor woke before the others and stepped carefully around sleeping bodies. Eight women did not fit comfortably inside one wagon. They fit even less comfortably when damp clothing hung from every available hook.
Grace slept between Martha and Lydia, exactly as Nathaniel had suggested. Her breathing sounded easier.
Eleanor was glad.
When Martha woke, she listened to Grace's breathing and pronounced the cough nearly gone. Moving her away from the damp corner had helped. Eleanor still assigned Lydia to walk beside Grace for the first mile, with orders to call Martha if the cough returned.
She was not glad that he had been right.
Outside, the eastern sky had begun to lighten. Eleanor checked the animals, stirred the coals, and put water on for coffee. By the time Caroline emerged, Eleanor had biscuits warming in a pan and bacon frying.
“You should have woken me,” Caroline said.
“You were tired.”
“So are you.”
“I am the eldest.”
“Does that prevent fatigue?”
“Yes.”
Caroline sat on an overturned bucket. “I look forward to turning twenty-nine.”
Eleanor ignored her.
Nathaniel rode through camp before breakfast was finished. He carried a small notebook and stopped at every wagon, inspecting wheels and yokes.
When he reached them, Eleanor handed him a biscuit.
“Is this another accidental extra?” he asked.
“Martha made them.”
“Then I will thank Martha.”
He did, which pleased Martha and annoyed Eleanor for reasons she could not explain.
Nathaniel checked both wagons. He tested the wheel pins, examined the harness, and studied the redistributed load.
“You moved the tools,” he said.
“I occasionally accept good advice.”
“I will record the date.”
“Do that.”
He looked at the second wagon. “You are ready.”
The simple approval warmed her more than it should have.
“We usually are,” she said.
“Usually?” Caroline asked.
Eleanor looked at her.
Caroline became interested in her breakfast.
The company moved out soon after sunrise. The road improved as the day warmed, though wheels still sank in shaded places. Nathaniel rode from front to rear, urging stragglers forward and slowing those who crowded the wagon ahead.
Near midday, an argument broke out behind the Whitaker wagons. Two men shouted about grazing rights for their animals, though Eleanor could not imagine how grass that belonged to neither of them had become a matter of honor.
Nathaniel rode back to settle it.
Before he left, he handed Eleanor a metal whistle. “Keep the spacing. Halt the rear wagons if the road narrows.”
She stared at the whistle. “You are putting me in charge?”
“I am asking you to keep people from running into one another.”
Competence did not prevent fear; it merely gave fear employment. Eleanor knew this in theory.
“That sounds like being in charge.” Eleanor closed her fingers around the whistle. It was warm from his hand.
“Do not let it ruin your disposition.”
He rode away.
“You look very pleased,” Charlotte said from beside the wagon.
“I look responsible.”
“You always look responsible. This is different.”
“Watch the road.”
Eleanor did not need to use the whistle until the train entered a stretch where trees crowded the trail. The first rear wagon moved too quickly. She signaled the driver to slow, then halted the wagons behind it until the spacing widened.
No one questioned her.
It should not have surprised her. She knew what she was doing. Still, when Nathaniel returned and saw the orderly line, she found herself waiting for his response.
“No collisions?” he asked.
“Not even one.”
“I expected at least two.”
“Then I have disappointed you.”
“Repeatedly.”
He took the whistle. Their fingers brushed.
Eleanor felt the touch all the way to her shoulder, which was ridiculous. She had touched men before. Not many men, perhaps, but enough to know fingers were merely fingers.
Nathaniel's fingers did not seem to understand that.
*****
NATHANIEL DID NOT INTEND to notice Eleanor Whitaker's earrings every time she moved her head.
He noticed anyway.
The garnets were modest, but they were entirely out of place among mud, canvas, and oxen.
Eleanor herself sometimes seemed out of place, though not because she lacked the skills for the trail.
She carried herself like a woman accustomed to managing a respectable home, not like someone who expected to sleep beneath a wagon and cook over a fire for six months.
Yet she did both without complaint.
At the noon halt, a woman ran toward him crying that her son was missing.
“He was beside the wagon,” Mrs. Turner said. “I only turned away to give the baby some milk.”
Nathaniel called for the train to remain stopped. Eleanor came immediately.
“How old?” she asked.
“Six.”
“What was he wearing?”
“A brown coat. His cap is blue.”
Eleanor looked at the ground, then toward the nearby creek. “Children go toward water. We should search there first.”
Nathaniel nodded. “Take half the women along the bank. I will take the men through the trees.”
Mrs. Turner clutched his sleeve. “Find him.”
“We will.”
Nathaniel followed small tracks through the damp soil. They led toward the creek as Eleanor had predicted. He heard her calling the boy's name downstream.
“Samuel!”
A faint cry answered.
Nathaniel ran toward the sound. Eleanor reached the bank at the same time. Across a narrow cut in the creek, Samuel clung to a small tree. Mud and water separated him from the near bank.
“I wanted to see the frogs,” the boy sobbed.
“You have seen them,” Eleanor called. “Now stay exactly where you are.”
Nathaniel studied the water. It was not deep, but the banks were slick. “I can cross upstream.”
“The current bends toward him,” Eleanor said. “If you slip, it will carry you into the cut.”
“Do you have a better idea?”
“A rope.”
She ran toward the wagons. Nathaniel called to two men nearby and told them to find a fallen branch long enough to bridge the narrowest point.
Eleanor returned with Rebecca and a coil of rope. She looped one end around a tree and tied the other around Nathaniel's waist.
“Is this another discussion?” he asked.
“No. This time you are going to do what I say.”
“I see you have taken to authority.”
“Cross before I reconsider rescuing you.”
The men placed the branch. Nathaniel used it as a narrow bridge while Eleanor and Rebecca kept the rope tight. The water rushed beneath his boots. He reached the other bank and lifted Samuel from the tree.
“You frightened your mother,” he told the boy.
“I am sorry.”
“Tell her. Often.”
He carried Samuel across. Eleanor's hands never loosened on the rope.
When he reached solid ground, Mrs. Turner took the boy and wept over him. Her husband arrived moments later.
“Thank you, Mr. Cooper,” Mr. Turner said. “I cannot say what we owe you.”
“Miss Whitaker found him,” Nathaniel said. “And the rope was her plan.”
The man turned to Eleanor. “Thank you, ma'am.”
She smiled. “Keep him away from frogs for a day or two.”
After the Turners left, Nathaniel untied the rope.
“You did not have to correct him,” Eleanor said.
“You did the work.”
“We both did.”
“Then we should both receive the blame if he wanders off again.”
She laughed.
He liked that sound far too much.
They walked back toward the wagons together. “What brought you to this?” she asked. “Being a wagon master, I mean.”
“The Army taught me to move supplies and men. After I left, leading emigrants seemed useful.”
“And your wife traveled with you?”
Nathaniel's steps slowed.
Eleanor noticed. “You need not answer.”
“Abigail died before I led my first train.”
“I am sorry.”
He nodded.
She did not ask how or when. She did not offer easy words about God's plan. She simply walked beside him.
Nathaniel had forgotten how comforting silence could be when another person chose to share it.
That night, he saw Eleanor writing in the margin of her father's schedule.
“What are you adding?” he asked.
“The truth.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“Father wrote that we would travel twelve miles today. We traveled eight, and we found a boy.”
“The boy did slow us.”
“I wrote that the distance was sufficient.”
Nathaniel smiled. “Your father may object.”
“He will have to take it up with me when I see him again.”
She closed the book gently, and Nathaniel looked away.
Eleanor Whitaker was beginning to change her father's plan.
He wondered if she realized it.
*****
BY THE THIRD EVENING, Caroline had begun keeping her own copy of Father’s mileage figures.
Eleanor discovered her beside the fire, writing on the back of an old store invoice.
“You have the route notes,” Caroline said without looking up. “I have the route reality.”
“That sounds dangerously independent.”
“I learned from my eldest sister.”
Eleanor sat beside her. “What are you recording?”
“Miles traveled. Delays. Water. Grazing. Which hills made Lydia complain.”
“You will need more paper.”
“Much more.”
Lydia, passing with an armful of wood, stopped. “I complain only when conditions deserve criticism.”
Caroline made another mark.
“What was that?”
“One complaint.”
“That was not a complaint. It was a defense.”
“Two.”
Lydia narrowed her eyes. “You are abusing mathematics.”
Caroline smiled sweetly. “Three.”
Lydia stalked away.
Eleanor laughed. “Father would approve of the mileage record.”
“He would object to my corrections.”
“He objected to everyone’s corrections.”
“Especially yours.”
Eleanor looked at the fire. “I miss arguing with him.”
“So do I.”
Caroline’s humor faded for only a moment. Then she tapped the paper. “Which is why I intend to arrive in Clover Creek with enough information to argue with his ghost accurately.”
Eleanor leaned against her shoulder.
Caroline was the sister closest to her in age, the one who remembered Mother almost as clearly, the one who could challenge Eleanor without making her feel challenged by the world.
“You know,” Caroline said, “if you keep leaning on me, people may think you require help.”
“Say that again, and I will burn your mileage record.”
“You would never.”
“No.”
“I know.”
That was the irritating thing about sisters. They knew exactly which threats were empty.
Nathaniel discovered early that Eleanor saw asking for help as a personal failing and accepting unsolicited help as an act of war.
He learned this while watching her wrestle a water barrel into position beside the wagon.
“Move,” he said.
“I have it.”
“The barrel disagrees.”
“The barrel has no opinion.”
“It is rolling toward the wheel.”
Eleanor caught it with one boot. “Managed.”
Nathaniel dismounted. “You have bruised ribs.”
“I have ribs. Their mood is irrelevant.”
“They are attached to you.”
“Unfortunately.”
He took hold of the barrel.
Eleanor kept hold of it.
For several seconds, neither moved.
Nathaniel looked at her hands. “Are we going to carry this together?”
“No.”
“Are you going to let go?”
“No.”
“Then we appear to be carrying it together.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“It is exactly the same thing.”
Caroline passed behind them with a bucket. “Should I find an impartial judge?”
“No,” Eleanor said.
“Yes,” Nathaniel said.
Caroline kept walking. “Excellent. I will fetch Lydia. She is never impartial.”
Eleanor finally released the barrel.
Nathaniel set it beside the wagon.
“There,” he said.
“I could have done that.”
“I know.”
“Then why did you interfere?”
“Because knowing you can do something does not require me to stand nearby while you hurt yourself proving it.”
Eleanor opened her mouth.
Closed it.
Nathaniel smiled. “That was almost an argument.”
“I am saving it.”
“For later?”
“When you deserve it.”
“I look forward to earning it.”
She gave him a look that should have discouraged him.
It did not.
That was becoming a problem.