Chapter 23
Ansel Crenshaw looked defeated before anyone said a word.
He sat across from Phineas with Verity pressed close beside him, her hands folded in her lap. The children had been settled in the wagon by the time everyone got to their campsite.
The fire had burned low. Ansel's shoulders were rounded inward, his hands clasped so tightly between his knees that his knuckles had gone pale.
When Phineas finished explaining what Jem said, Ansel closed his eyes.
Nobody spoke. Besides Theda, Phineas, Della and Oren, a few other travelers stood on the outskirts, waiting to hear an explanation. Some had joined the search for Tolliver.
Ansel let out a long breath.
“I do have the diamonds that Tolliver was looking for.” His voice was flat. “Sewn into the lining of Verity's trunk.”
Verity didn't look up.
“I had a business partner in St. Louis,” Ansel continued. “When I decided to leave for Oregon, I took them with me.” He rubbed a hand slowly across his face. “Part of them were mine. That's what I told myself.”
“You stole them,” Phineas announced, running a hand through his hair in frustration.
Ansel winced but didn't disagree.
Theda kept her expression still. Diamonds. That explained why someone was after the Crenshaw family.
“My partner isn't the sort to come himself,” Ansel looked up uncertainly. “But he knows men who would. I thought if we got far enough west, far enough away--” He stopped. “I was wrong.”
Verity's jaw tightened. She hadn't spoken once. Theda watched her and thought about all the nights Verity had mentioned Ansel not sleeping. Theda thought of the way he'd been checking the trunk.
The scouts Phineas sent out to find Tolliver came back empty handed. Murmurs made their way through the small group.
Phineas clasped his hands behind his back the way he did when he was thinking.
“We add a watch tonight,” he said. “Two men at a time, rotating every two hours. I want someone at each end of the line.” He looked at the two men who had come back empty-handed. “Henderson, you take the first rotation with Declan. Wake the Farley brothers at midnight.”
Henderson nodded.
“What about Tolliver's things?” the second man asked.
“Leave them where they are until morning. I want to go through them in the daylight.” Phineas' gaze moved briefly to the dark beyond the wagons, then back. “If he comes back tonight, we'll deal with it then. If he doesn't, we deal with it in the morning.”
Theda watched her brother.
His eyes were the thing that gave him away most. Even as he spoke, they moved. To the far end of the wagon line. To the gap between the Crenshaw and Fetterly wagons. He was worried.
“Four days from the fort,” he said to himself. Then, louder, “We push the pace tomorrow. I want to make up the distance.”
“You think Tolliver will come back with more men?” Henderson asked.
Phineas considered the question.
“I think we don't wait around to find out. We’re talking about a lot of money, and who knows how many people know about it.” He looked at Henderson evenly. “Get some rest before your watch. Both of you.”
The men moved off.
Phineas turned his attention back to Ansel and Verity.
“You should get some rest. We’ll have a lot to discuss and plenty of decisions to make tomorrow.”
Ansel and Verity retreated into their wagon without another word, the canvas dropping closed behind them. The fire popped and settled. Everyone else followed suit. For a moment it was just Phineas and Theda and Jem standing in the quiet.
Phineas looked up at the stars. His jaw tightened once, briefly, and then he looked away from them.
Theda touched her brother's arm.
“Are you all right?”
“Fine.” He said it the same way Jem had. She didn’t believe him.
“Phineas.”
He looked at her then, really looked at her, and for just a moment she saw how tired he was beneath all of it.
“I'll handle it,” he said quietly. “Go get some rest.”
She wanted to argue. But he needed to manage the situation his way, and hovering wouldn't help him do it.
She looked around for Jem.
He had stepped away and stood a short distance off, just at the edge of the firelight. He was staring at the ground, and whatever he was seeing, it wasn't anything in front of him. His arms were crossed, one hand pressed against his injured side.
Theda crossed to him.
“Let me look at your ribs.”
He met her gaze. “They're all right.”
“You said that last time too.” She kept her voice quiet. “Come to the wagon.”
He didn't argue. She walked beside him through the dark camp, and he was so quiet the whole way that she found herself glancing over at him twice. His expression was heavy.
The wagon was quiet when they reached it.
Theda climbed up first and lit the small lantern, then turned and waited while Jem pulled himself up after her. He moved carefully, one hand bracing against the wagon frame, and she noticed but didn't say anything yet.
“Sit.” She pointed to the familiar place near her Bible on the floor, where she’d always treated him. He listened and got situated.
She started with his ribs, pressing her fingers along each one methodically the way her father taught her, watching his face for the places that made him tighten.
He was good at keeping still, but she'd been working with people long enough to read the small things.
The slight catch in his breath at the third rib.
The way his jaw shifted when she pressed higher.
“Nothing's broken,” she said finally. “But you've set yourself back.” She moved the lantern closer and turned his face toward the light, checking his hairline, pressing gently along his temple and the back of his skull. A bruise was already forming above his ear.
“That's from the wagon floor,” he said.
“I know what it's from.” She finished her examination and sat back. Jem was looking at his hands again, the way he'd been looking at them since she'd found him at the edge of the firelight. The shadows under his eyes had nothing to do with the bruise.
“What's wrong?” she asked. “And I don't mean your ribs.”
He didn't answer.
“You've been somewhere else since the incident at the Crenshaw wagon,” she said. “Did Tolliver say something? Besides what you told Phineas?”
Jem was quiet for a long moment.
“Tolliver said a lot of things.” Jem stopped. His eyes came up to hers, and what she saw in them made her chest ache. “Things that made me wonder.” Another pause. “Who am I, Theda?”
The fear in his voice made her voice hitch.
She held his gaze. She reached out and let her hand rest against his cheek.
“You're a good man,” she smiled. “That’s who you are to me, Jem.”
Something moved through his expression.
“I want to believe that,” he said quietly. “But Tolliver said things, and I couldn't…” He stopped again and looked away from her. “I couldn't tell him he was wrong.”
Theda kept her hand where it was for a moment longer, then lowered it slowly to her lap.
She wanted to tell him that Tolliver was a thief who'd come to rob a family in the dark, that nothing a man like that said deserved any weight at all.
It was too much to think about, too much for her to decide all at once.
“Your ribs need rest,” she swallowed hard. “And so do you.” She began putting her supplies away. “We'll talk in the morning. Before we start moving in the morning, come find me, and we'll talk.”
He nodded but avoided her gaze.
“Go on,” she said gently.
He climbed down from the wagon, then looked over his shoulder. “Goodnight, Theda.”
She watched the canvas settle behind him, and listened to his footsteps retreating.
Then she sat alone in the small circle of lantern light.
I couldn't tell him he was wrong.
She turned the words over slowly. Whatever Tolliver said to Jem, he'd said it to rattle him, to get inside his head and leave something behind.
She pressed her hands together in her lap and stared at the lantern flame.
She thought about every moment she'd spent with Jem. The flowers pressed between bark. The carved horse. The way he'd held Nora's hand and told her a story while she stitched the girl's arm. The morning he'd waded into the Platte after two children without stopping to think about his own ribs.
That was the version she believed of him.
In the quiet of the wagon, with the lantern burning low and Jem's words still sitting in the air, she found herself wondering, for the first time since she'd pulled him half-drowned out of the storm, what could she really trust?
She closed her eyes in the dark.
Lord, I don't know what's true and what isn't. I don't know who Jem is, or who he was, or what any of it means. But You do. So if I'm wrong about him, show me. And if I'm not, give me the courage to trust what I've seen. Either way, don't let me be a fool about it. Guide me right.
She opened her eyes.
She pulled her blanket up and lay down, then she reached over and turned the lantern down until the flame went out.