Chapter Fourteen
The rain had not stopped for three days.
It came down hard in the mornings, then thinned to a gray mist that found its way through canvas seams and under wagon covers.
By night it gathered itself again. The ground around the wagons had turned to black churned mud.
Wheels sank to their hubs. The animals stood with their heads down, rain darkening their backs.
Nobody spoke much before noon anymore.
Clay stepped from his wagon with a length of rope over one shoulder. His boots made a sucking sound in the mud. The fire at the center of their little camp had gone low again. Samuel was crouched near it, holding a piece of split wood beneath his coat before feeding it to the flame.
“Any dry left?” Clay asked.
Samuel looked into the wood box.
“Enough for today.”
Clay gave him a small look. Samuel’s beard had collected rainwater along the edge of his jaw. He looked tired, though he would not have said so.
Beyond the fire, Charlotte was trying to shake water from a blanket.
The cloth hung heavy as a dead thing. Noah sat inside their wagon with the flap tied open, wrapped in his coat and another blanket besides.
His face had gone a shade too pale. Each time he coughed, he turned away from Charlotte as if he could spare her the sound.
He could not.
Clay walked over.
“Morning, Mr. Granger.”
Noah lifted two fingers from beneath the blanket. “If it is, it’s a mean one.”
Charlotte looked up. Her hair had come loose beneath her bonnet. “He says he’s fine.”
“I am fine,” Noah said.
A cough caught him before he could finish it. It bent him forward. Clay waited until it passed. There was a wet rattle in it that he did not like.
“You got water?” Clay asked.
“Some,” Charlotte said. “It’s cold.”
Clay looked into the wagon. A tin cup sat beside Noah’s knee. The water in it was clear enough, but the cup itself was cold to the touch. So was the old man’s hand when Clay took it.
“I’ll warm some.”
“No need to fuss,” Noah said.
“I’m not fussing.”
“You’ve been fussing over every soul in camp since this weather set in.”
Clay met the old man’s eyes. “That’s because none of you have the sense God gave a crow.”
Noah’s mouth pulled at one corner. The effort cost him. He leaned back against the wagon wall.
Clay took the cup and headed toward the fire.
Tucker was there already, kneeling beside Samuel with a stick in his hand.
His hearing had come back little by little since the lightning strike weeks before.
At first he had only watched people’s mouths and nodded when he thought it was proper.
Now he heard well enough to talk more than anyone needed.
“Mr. Granger sick?” he asked.
“He’s got a cough.”
“Will he die?”
Samuel looked at the boy.
Clay set the cup near the edge of the coals. “That is not a thing we decide.”
Tucker considered that. “All right.”
“You eaten?”
“A biscuit.”
“That’s not eating.”
Tucker reached under his coat and brought out half another biscuit. “I was saving it.”
“For who?”
He looked over toward the Grangers’ wagon. “Mr. Noah.”
Clay took the biscuit from the boy, broke it in half, and handed one piece back.
“You eat yours,” he said. “I’ll see he gets something softer.”
Tucker nodded. He did not argue.
A horse whinnied sharply at the far end of camp.
Clay saw Sarah there, one hand on the mare’s neck while she checked the knot at the hitching line.
Her brown hair was braided down her back, though curls had escaped around her face in the damp.
She wore Clay’s old coat over her dress.
The sleeves were too long. She had rolled them twice at the wrist.
She glanced up and found him looking.
“What?” she called.
“Nothing.”
“You’ve got that look.”
“I do not.”
“You do.”
Samuel stirred the fire with a poker. “You both sound like you been married years already.”
Sarah’s face changed at once. Not much. Just a small smirk around her mouth.
Clay bent over the steaming cup. “You mind your fire, Samuel.”
Samuel’s eyes stayed on the coals. “That is what I am doing.”
Sarah walked over through the mud. She had a bundle of damp grass and leaves tucked beneath one arm.
“What’s that?” Clay asked.
“Willow bark. Some horehound. I found plantain near the creek yesterday.”
“In this rain?”
“I did not ask the rain for permission.”
He looked at the bundle. “For Noah?”
“Yes.”
“He needs something warm first.”
“I know.”
There was a sharpness in her answer, but she took the cup from the coals and tested it with one finger. Then she looked toward the Grangers’ wagon.
“I’ll bring it to him.”
Clay held on to the cup a moment longer. “It’s hot.”
“I have handled hot water before, Clay.”
“I meant—”
She waited.
He let go of the cup. “Never mind.”
Sarah walked away with it.
Clay watched her step carefully through the mud. She did not hurry. At the wagon, she ducked beneath the canvas, set the cup down, then laid the back of her hand against Noah’s forehead. Charlotte spoke to her. Sarah listened with her head inclined.
A gust of wind pushed rain beneath the wagon cover. Sarah reached up and tightened the flap where it had loosened.
Clay picked up the rope again.
“Make sure the Grangers’ wheels are chocked,” Samuel said.
Clay left him by the fire.
The storm had kept them stranded in a narrow stand of pines above a creek that had swollen brown and fast. The road ahead had disappeared beneath water during the first day.
On the second, a wagon horse broke its trace and nearly dragged the Harper wagon sideways in the mud.
They had got it tied again, but Violet had spent the rest of the afternoon sitting inside with Brady pressed against her skirts, her face white from the fright.
Now every canvas roof sagged under wet weight.
The ox they had found weeks ago stood with Clay’s mare beneath a rough lean-to made of branches and a spare tarp.
Clay checked the knots one by one. He pressed the chocks deeper against the Grangers’ wheels.
He helped Charlotte’s old mule clear a tangle of harness where it had rubbed raw at the shoulder.
Sarah had the small cook pot set over a separate flame now.
She crushed leaves between her palms and dropped them into the water.
Steam lifted around her face. Charlotte sat on an overturned crate beside her, holding the cloth over her hair to keep off the rain.
Violet had come from her wagon with Brady beside her, the boy wrapped in a patched blanket and sucking solemnly at a strip of dried apple.
Sarah looked up as Clay came near.
“He’s got a fever,” she said.
“How bad?”
Charlotte rubbed both hands together. “Noah’s had coughs before. They come every winter when the cold settles in his chest.”
“This ain’t winter,” Clay said.
“No,” Charlotte answered. “But it feels like it.”
He crouched beside the fire. “We ought to keep him warm. Get dry things around him.”
“There aren’t many dry things left,” Sarah said.
Clay looked toward his wagon. “I have a wool blanket in my chest.”
Sarah’s lips pressed together. She knew he was not going to be moved. After a moment, she said, “Bring it, then.”
He did. It was thin as paper.
***
Later, when the tea was steeping and Noah had finally fallen into a quieter sleep, Clay took Samuel and two men to inspect the road.
They returned with mud halfway to their knees and no good news.
A fallen pine lay across the narrow track ahead.
Beyond it, the ground had washed out in a low place where the wagons would need to pass.
“We can clear the tree,” Samuel said. “But not today.”
“Tomorrow?” Clay asked.
“If the rain holds.”
He spent the rest of the afternoon cutting branches from the fallen pine with the others. His hands ached by the time he returned to camp. Dusk had come early beneath the clouds. Firelight shone from the Grangers’ wagon.
He went toward it, intending only to ask after Noah.
Inside were Sarah, Charlotte, and Violet. Brady and Tucker slept together beneath a blanket at the far end, their feet tangled. Noah lay with his eyes closed. His breathing was still rough, but not as ragged as before.
Clay started to back away.
“Stay,” Charlotte said quietly.
Sarah sat beside the teapot, pulling leaves apart. She did not look at him.
“I should see to the mare.”
“She’ll stand one night without you staring at her,” Violet said.
Clay leaned against the wagon frame. “She has standards.”
“Then she and Sarah may get along.”
Sarah looked up. “Violet.”
“What?” Violet asked mildly. “You do have standards.”
“I did not say I didn’t.”
Charlotte’s fingers moved through the dried herbs in her lap. “A woman ought to have them.”
“That is easy for you to say,” Sarah replied. “You married Noah.”
Charlotte looked toward her husband. “It was not easy at first.”
Clay saw Sarah’s hands pause over the herbs.
Violet settled Brady’s blanket more firmly over his shoulder. “Was he handsome?”
“Noah?” Charlotte smiled. “He had one good shirt. I thought him very fine.”
“And did he court you proper?” Violet asked.
“In his way.”
Sarah’s mouth curved.
Charlotte glanced at Clay. “He wasn’t much for words, either. Not at nineteen.”
Clay straightened. “I have plenty of words.”
“Most of them unnecessary,” Sarah said.
Violet laughed softly. “There. See? She knows you well already.”
The smile left Sarah’s face.
Clay felt it happen. The false claim between them had lived too long to be harmless. At first it had been a shield. Now it sat among them like a loaded pistol no one wished to touch.
Charlotte seemed not to notice the change, or chose kindness over it. “Did he write you often, Sarah? Before you found one another again?”
Sarah went still.
The rain ticked against the canvas. Somewhere outside, a mule stamped and shook its harness.
Violet looked from Charlotte to Sarah, her eyes slightly wide. “He must have. A young man with so many words.”
Clay’s throat tightened. He could have lied for her. The lie was already waiting, simple and ready. But Sarah looked at him then, and he saw she did not want it.
Not from him.
“I—” she began.
Her fingers closed around a piece of willow bark until it snapped.
Charlotte’s expression changed. “You need not answer, child.”
Sarah looked away.
“I never met a nice man before Clay.”
“Who raised you?” Charlotte asked, “You’re so kind; I would have assumed your father a wise man.”
“That’s funny you say I’m nice. My uncle always said I was trouble.
Too loud. Too stubborn. Too much like a boy when I ought to have known better.
” Her voice lowered. “When I was ten, he taught me to shoot because he said a girl with no sense had better learn one useful thing. I thought that meant he cared for me in his own fashion.”
Clay’s jaw tightened.
Sarah kept going, as if stopping would be worse.
“My mother used to tell me not to listen when he spoke that way. She said he was a bitter man. She said bitterness made a person cruel if they fed it long enough.” She gave a small, humorless breath.
“Then she was killed on the road into town. A robbery. Jacob had sent her for flour and lamp oil. He was too drunk to go himself.”
Charlotte’s hand covered Sarah’s.
Sarah looked at it but did not pull away.
“After she was gone, there was no one to tell him to stop. So he did not.” She looked toward Noah, sleeping beneath Clay’s blanket.
“One night, I’d had enough. I packed what belonged to my mother.
A few things. Her brooch. Her Bible. Some money she had hidden for me.
I thought I could leave before he woke.”
Clay knew before she said it that she had not.
“He caught me outside town. He hit me. Then he gave me my mother’s things and told me to go. He said I would find some man to take me, because that was all I was fit for.” Her mouth trembled once. She pressed it flat. “He said I would go willingly.”
Violet’s face had gone hard.
Charlotte held Sarah’s hand tighter.
Clay stood in the wagon doorway with rainwater cooling on the back of his neck. He thought of Sarah alone on the road. He thought of Everett reaching for her. He thought of the way she fought every offered hand as if it might close around her throat.
Sarah looked up at last. Her eyes found Clay’s.
He shook his head once.
“You did not owe them your whole life.”
For the first time, something almost like relief crossed her face. It was gone quickly.
Clay stepped inside and crouched beside the teapot. He took the broken willow bark from her fingers before she could cut herself again. Then he put it with the rest.
“You deserved better than him,” he told her.
Sarah looked away.
He did not reach for her. Not there. Not with everyone watching. He only set his hand on the floorboards between them, close enough that she could see it.
After a moment, her little finger touched the side of his hand.
Outside, the rain began again.