The Lone Western Wanderer

Chapter Twenty-One

The scouts came in near sundown with two deer slung across the back of a wagon and a wild turkey hanging by its feet from the tailboard. For a moment nobody spoke. Then the camp broke open around them.

Men left their fires. Women came from the riverbank with wet hands and skirts darkened at the hem.

Even the children rose from where they had been sitting beside the wagons.

Tucker had been whittling a stick with Clay’s old knife under Violet’s eye.

He sprang up so fast he nearly stepped in the cook fire.

“Meat,” he said, as if nobody else had seen it.

Clay was standing beside his wagon, working a knot loose from one of the oxen’s harness straps. He looked toward the deer but did not smile. The light caught in his fair hair, making it look almost white at the edges.

Samuel came behind the scouts on foot. His coat was muddy to the knees. He held his rifle low in one hand.

“What took you so long?” a man called.

Samuel did not answer him. He walked straight to Clay.

The deer were poor things. Their ribs showed beneath the hide. One had an ugly wound high in its flank, dark with dried blood and flies. The turkey’s feathers were clotted along one side, as though it had been dragged.

“It’ll feed us,” said Ben, one of the scouts. He was a broad, hard-faced man from Missouri, with a scar splitting one eyebrow. “That’s what matters.”

“It may,” Clay said.

Ben stopped near the fire. “May?”

Clay rose from the harness. “Where’d you find them?”

“North of here. In a low stand of timber.”

“Near water?”

“A creek bed.”

“Running?”

“Not much.”

Clay looked at Samuel. Samuel’s mouth had gone flat.

Clay came down from the wagon step, though he had been told twice already to rest his ankle. It had been aching since he twisted it in a gopher hole that morning. “What is it?”

Clay glanced at Samuel, then back to the carcasses. “Could’ve been sick.”

Ben gave a short laugh. “They were shot.”

“The deer was,” Clay said. “The turkey was found dead.”

“It wasn’t rotten.”

“That don’t mean it’s good.”

The hunger in the camp had a way of making people ugly.

They had been measuring water by the cup for two days before the spring Samuel found that morning.

Lydia was nursing her baby and eating less than any woman ought to.

Violet had given most of her own portion to Tucker and Brady, though she pretended otherwise.

Ben threw down his rifle. “We’ve got children crying themselves asleep from empty bellies, and you’re standing there speaking of good and bad as if you’ve got a whole smokehouse hidden in your wagon.”

“I’ve got no smokehouse,” Clay said quietly.

“Then quit acting like you know better than men who’ve hunted longer than you’ve been alive.”

Clay’s face changed very little. That was one thing Sarah had learned about him. When he was angry, he did not puff himself up or make his voice large. He went still.

Samuel stepped nearer. “Clay’s right to ask.”

“And you’re right to back him, I suppose.”

“I’m right because I saw this lot already.” Samuel wiped the back of his hand across his beard. “There were dead rabbits by that creek. A fox too. None of them touched.”

A murmur passed through the people gathered around the fire.

Ben’s eyes narrowed. “You saying I brought poison into camp?”

“I’m saying we ought to wait,” Samuel told him.

“Wait for what? A doctor?” Ben pointed west with his chin. “There ain’t one for a hundred miles.”

“We can cut it open,” Clay said. “Look at the organs. Smell it. See whether the flesh is sound.”

“That’ll tell you nothing.”

“It’s better than gambling.”

Ben shoved past him and caught hold of the turkey. “You boys can chew bark if it pleases you. I’m eating.”

He carried it to the fire. His wife, a thin woman with a baby at her breast, looked from him to the bird and then toward Clay. Her face had a pinched, frightened look.

“Ben,” she said.

“Don’t start.”

Clay took one step forward. “Nobody’s stopping you. But don’t feed it to your boy.”

Ben wheeled around. “You tellin’ me how to feed my own family?”

“No.” Clay’s voice stayed level. “I’m telling you what I’d do if he was mine.”

The words settled over the camp.

Tucker had come to stand beside Clay without anyone noticing. He took hold of Clay’s coat near the hip. Clay rested one hand on the boy’s hair absent-mindedly, his eyes still on Ben.

Ben turned back to the fire.

The argument did not end. It broke into smaller arguments, sharper because people were hungry.

Some said game was game and the Lord had sent it.

Others said the Lord did not ask a person to swallow what might kill him.

Ben’s wife began plucking the turkey because her husband told her to.

Two other women went to help, their hands moving quickly despite their uncertainty.

Clay and Samuel dragged one deer away from the firelight.

Clay opened it with his skinning knife. Sarah did not go close.

She watched from beside the wagon as he worked, his sleeves pushed to the elbow, his hands red to the wrist. He examined the meat and the belly cavity without saying much. Once, he bent low and shook his head.

Samuel crouched beside him.

“Well?” Sarah asked when they came back.

Clay washed his hands with a cupful of water, using less than she thought he needed. “Don’t eat it.”

“That is all you can tell us?”

“It’s all I know.”

The turkey began to smell good before it was done. That was the worst of it. Fat hissed into the coals. Someone set strips of venison in an iron skillet. The smell made Sarah’s stomach tighten so hard she had to press a hand against it.

Clay saw.

“You’ve still got that bread?” he asked.

“A heel.”

“And beans.”

“A spoonful, perhaps.”

He nodded toward the wagon. “Bring them out.”

Sarah stared at him. “You mean to eat those while everyone else has meat?”

“I mean to eat what I trust.”

“You don’t know that the meat is bad.”

“No.”

“Then you could be wrong.”

“I could.”

The honesty of it irritated her more than certainty would have. “You’ve decided the rest of us ought to go hungry because you’ve got a feeling.”

Clay picked up the water cup and handed it to her. “I didn’t say the rest of you ought to do anything.”

“You told people not to eat.”

“I told them what I thought.”

“And if you are wrong?”

His green eyes held hers. They were tired eyes that evening. He had not slept much since the night watches began, and he had spent the afternoon repairing a broken wheel pin for the Prices.

“Then I’ll be wrong,” he said.

It was such a simple answer that Sarah had no response ready for it.

Tucker tugged her skirt. “Miss Sarah?”

“Yes?”

“Can I have some of the bread if Clay’s having it?”

Clay looked down at him. “You can have half mine.”

Tucker brightened, then glanced toward the turkey. “I don’t want to make Ben mad.”

“You won’t,” Clay said. “You can eat in the wagon.”

“I’m not a baby.”

“No,” Clay said. “But you’re a mighty hungry boy.”

That settled it for Tucker. He climbed into the wagon without further protest.

Sarah stood in the dirt while the others made their choices around them.

Lydia took a little venison for Malcolm, who had returned pale and shaking from the hunt, but she did not eat any herself.

Violet accepted turkey for Brady after smelling it twice and looking close to tears.

Charlotte took nothing. She had not been eating enough since Noah died, though she kept busy from daylight until dark.

Sarah hated that she could not tell Charlotte what to do. She hated that Clay could not tell anyone either.

At last she climbed into the wagon and fetched the bread.

It was hard as wood around the edges. She softened the beans with a little water in a tin cup and warmed them over the small stove Clay had fixed beneath the wagon’s rear flap.

The air inside was close with canvas, wool blankets, leather, and the faint sweet smell of the dried apples Tucker had been saving.

Outside, laughter began near Ben’s fire. It sounded wrong to her. Too loud.

Clay ducked through the opening after a while, bringing Tucker with him. The boy had fallen asleep against his shoulder before Clay got him laid down beneath the blankets.

“He’ll wake hungry,” Sarah said.

“He’ll wake.”

Clay tucked the blanket around Tucker’s feet. He did it carefully, though Tucker had kicked it away twice already.

Sarah divided the bread. Clay took the smaller piece before she could stop him.

“That was not the arrangement,” she said.

“You didn’t make an arrangement.”

“You always do that.”

“Do what?”

“Take less as if nobody will notice.”

He looked at the bread in his hand. “I notice.”

The wagon shifted when he sat opposite her. His knee brushed hers in the narrow space. Neither of them moved away at once.

Outside, plates clinked.

Sarah ate a mouthful of beans. They had no salt left in them. “When we had no water,” she said, “I thought we would die.”

Clay looked toward the wagon opening.

“We might have,” he said.

“You did not seem afraid.”

“I was.”

Sarah watched his face. “You never said so.”

“Didn’t see what good it would do.”

“It might have been the truth.”

“It was the truth.”

“No. You said we’d find water.”

“I thought we would.”

“You thought,” she repeated.

He gave her a tired half-smile. “You don’t like that much, do you?”

“I don’t like trusting a thought when people’s lives depend upon it.”

The smile left him.

Sarah wished she had not said it.

Clay had been carrying water to the sick horse, fixing wheels, checking every child before sleep, setting watches against Everett’s men. He had taken on all of it as if it belonged to him. Still, that did not make him right about the meat. It did not make any of them safe.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

He shook his head. “You shouldn’t be.”

“I did not mean—”

“I know what you meant.” He rubbed his thumb over a crack in the bread crust. “I don’t always know the right thing. I just try to listen when something feels wrong.”

“To what?”

“To God, maybe. To sense. To the memory of my old pal, Jesse, even when he’s been gone so long I can’t rightly say what he’d tell me.”

He looked up then, and his expression had opened in a way Sarah had not seen before.

“I used to think being alone was simpler. You only had yourself to answer for.”

“Then Tucker came along. And you. Malcolm and Lydia. Charlotte. All of them.” He glanced at the sleeping boy. “Seems to me when you help somebody, God puts the right people in your path. Not because you deserve it. Just because nobody was meant to carry every hard thing by himself.”

His hand rested on the wagon floor between them. Rough knuckles. A fresh cut crossing one finger from dressing the deer.

Sarah had heard Jacob’s voice often enough in her own head. Telling her what a woman alone was worth. Telling her that any kindness from a man came with a hook hidden inside it.

Clay had never asked her to be smaller. He had stood beside her when she was afraid, and when she was angry, and when she was foolish enough to mistake one for the other.

“You make it sound easy,” she said.

“It ain’t easy.”

“No.”

He leaned back against the wagon wall. “You don’t have to trust me just because I say something.”

“I know.”

“But don’t go hungry to prove you can do without me either.”

Despite herself, Sarah smiled.

The wagon was quiet again. Tucker breathed through his nose beneath the blanket. Beyond the canvas, somebody began singing a hymn. Others joined, uncertainly at first, then steadier. The tune drifted through the campfire smoke.

Clay was still watching her.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“You are looking.”

“I am.”

Sarah’s face warmed. She hated that he could make it do that.

He moved his hand, slowly enough that she could have pulled hers away. His fingers touched the back of her hand.

“Sarah,” he said.

There was no joke in his voice.

She turned her hand beneath his and held on.

He leaned toward her. She could see the small gap between his front teeth when his lips parted, and the faint line of dirt still caught near his jaw despite the water he had used. He looked young then. Not like the man she saw now.

His first kiss was careful. It barely touched her before he drew back, as though he feared he had mistaken her silence.

Sarah caught the front of his shirt and kissed him again.

The bread slipped from his hand onto the blanket. He made a quiet sound against her mouth, surprised more than anything. His other hand came up to her cheek, stopping there as if he did not know whether he had the right.

She did not know either. She only knew she wanted him to stay.

Clay’s forehead rested against hers when they finally pulled apart.

“You all right?” he whispered.

Sarah nodded, though her breath was uneven.

His thumb brushed once beneath her eye, then he took his hand away and reached for the fallen bread.

She looked down at it and laughed.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

He smiled, and this time she did not look away.