All Together in One Place (21 page)

“In the new year,” Mazy said. “When we're in our new place.” The statement felt right, certain.

The conversation continued in a patter as gentle as spring rain against canvas until each woman had taken her turn behind the skirts. Mazy wondered about Suzanne and vowed to check on her, see how she managed her necessary time. Finished, they wandered back, not anxious to return to the work of washing and resettling supplies.

Mariah, her long braids dropping to the grasses, stooped to pick blue wildflowers. She stuck a blossom in her hair behind her ear and did a little dance. Sarah with the stiff braids and Jessie with the dimples joined her. The women applauded; the girls bowed low before all returned to their tasks of rudiment and routine.

By dusk, after the stew had been heated and thickened well past its prime and each family had consumed as much as they wished, Mazy s mother had still not returned.

It was then they discussed forming a search party.

Antone vetoed it. “Lose a bunch more in the dark night to snakes and stumbles too,” he said. “We wait until morning, yah. That's the best way to work this. She may be back. She likes to wander?”

“She does that,” Adora Wilson piped in. “An irresponsible sort.” Mazy stared at her. “Well, she is, for her age.”

“That's it, then,” Antone said.

Lura, Antone's little wife, chewed her pipe, shrugged her shoulders at Mazy when her husband announced his decision. Her handsome children looked the other way as though accustomed to nonnegotiable pronouncements by their father.

“He's quite right, Maze,” Jeremy said, lifting the bucket of milk from the stream to separate for cream. “Usually its the children who wander off. If she'd stayed to help, this wouldn't have happened.”

“I'm going to look for her,” Mazy said, needing to take some action.

“Your mother's got a sound head. May well have decided to spend the night when she got so far out,” Jeremy said.

“But she could be hurt, out there alone. You'd look for me, wouldn't you? Not just let me wander”

“You wouldn't be so foolish,” Jeremy said. Mazy took in a deep breath to protest, but his upraised palms silenced her. “You do what you want. You always have,” he said

“I wouldn't be here if I'd done what I wanted,” she said and turned toward the stock.

Crickets chirped louder than the frogs as she walked. A coyote called. Mazy's shoulders dropped, and she shook her head. When had her mother begun this behavior? Before this journey, had she pressed forward onto trails only the brave or foolhardy traveled? All she'd ever known for years was that house and the sick and needy people her father brought home.

“Careful now. Light's fading,” Ruth Martin said from out of the darkness. “You're headed somewhere, hard.”

“Oh! You startled me!” Mazy said. “I'm looking for my mother.”

“The lady with the dolls?”

“I'm sure she didn't bring any of them along.”

“Just what our Jessie calls her.”

“I'm sorry. I never even asked,” Mazy said. “Is Jessie better? Did Dr. Masters help?”

Ruth snorted. “Masters is a quack. Said he could bleed her or offer
calomel or laudanum. Like most, he probably got his license in a week.” Mazy watched a look of disgust flash across her face in the twilight. “The child's flush seems to come and go. Someone suggested mountain fever, but I dont think so. Maybe its the climate change. At home, Betha used to bathe the children daily, odd as that sounds to some.”

“I feel better after a bath,” Mazy said.

“I think it kept them healthy. I'm hoping it's just an ague that'll disappear once we get to higher altitudes. Seems like she'd do better if we took the time to heat water and wash her clean regular.”

It was the longest speech Mazy had heard Ruth make.

As though she noticed her exposure too, Ruth changed the subject by asking a question. “Has your mother ever gone off before?”

Mazy nodded “Not for all night. I don't think she'd want to worry me. She knows I would. There's a moon coming up; at least I'll have some light.”

“I admire your spirit,” Ruth said. “But you won't do much good looking now.” Her words lacked the clipped cadence of bristle she used when she talked about the doctor. “I think the men are right, much as it galls me. We might start a fire, though, burn it higher. It could offer a beacon to her. I'll go out with you in the morning if she's still not here, if you'd like.”

Mazy sighed, allowing herself to feel the tiredness that always leaned on her shoulders now.

They built a fire, and Mazy sat caressing Pig's ears in her lap between adding buffalo chips to the flames. Several others came by to say good night. Even Charles made his way, his hat pushed back on his head, one foot up on their sitting log. He spoke mostly to Ruth about horses and such and offered to move out Ruth's wagon in the morning if she decided to help search for Mazy's mother.

“He didn't offer to search, though,” Ruth said when he'd left.

“He'd have to find something in it for himself,” Mazy said. “At least that's my view of Charles.”

When the moon globed high, Jeremy brought the wedding-ring quilt out and draped it around Mazy's shoulders. He sat beside her for a time, his arm around her.

“Your mothers on a good mule. Ink hasn't come back without her.”

“Maybe they're both dead, got in the way of Indians.”

“More people have died falling off wagons or blowing against black powder than by Indians’ hands out here,” Ruth offered.

“My mother encountered Indians,” Mazy challenged. “Maybe she went back. Got into trouble this time.”

“You're not thinking logical,” Jeremy told her. “You're tired.”

“Why shouldn't I be?” she said. “Day after day of dust.”

He kissed the soft place at the side of her face then, and she almost relented, almost allowed him to comfort her. His mustache prickled, and she brushed at her face. He stood, wiped at his nose, squeezed her shoulder with his well-tapered nails, then headed back to the wagon.

“You've been together a while,” Ruth said after he'd left. She held a bridle and rubbed a salvelike substance into the cheek piece. The scent of it tickled Mazy's nose.

“Little over two years,” Mazy said. “Known him longer. Nursed him back to health. At leasf my father did. Papa was a doctor. My mother did the nursing.”

Ruth paused. “I meant no offense,” she said, “About what I said earlier, about doctors.”

“None taken.”

“She'll know what to do then, if she's had a fall.”

“Since we began this journey, she's been so much more…oh, unpredictable than I remember her being.”

“I guess we're all a little different in unfamiliar places,” Ruth said.

“She helped my father every day, and as a child she worked in the tobacco fields, she tells me. And as a cook in a Southern home.”

“Maybe she sees this trip as a…pleasantry.”

“One of the few who do, if that s so. Not very agreeable when the child has to worry over the adult.” Mazy threw a broken piece of dried buffalo chip into the flames. “Turned around, I'd say.”

“Your mothers an independent sort,” Ruth said. “They sometimes get mistaken for being self-centered.”

Ruth set the bridle to the side and began oiling the reins. A coyote barked in the distance, answered by several more. Pig gave a low
gruff, gruff but
didn't move from his place at Mazy s feet. The air chilled a bit, and Mazy pulled the quilt around her, gazing out at the moonlight reflecting against the cattle's horns like white dashes written on a dark slate.

“If you want to heat the water,” Ruth offered, “I'd pitcher it over your hair. Always makes me feel better.”

“I wouldn't want to be a bother.”

“Wouldn't be. Pass the time.”

The warm water felt good over Mazy's head. Ruth had strong hands and used something sweet-smelling with the henna she rubbed into Mazy's hair. Later, Mazy stood, her head bent to the fire, the heat and breeze brushing it dry.

“Can I return the favor?”

“Washed mine this morning, but thanks,” Ruth said.

“I appreciate the company,” Mazy said, surprised that she said it. “Think I'll get my book and write some. Maybe I can sleep. You should too.

“Never much got into writing,” Ruth told her. She sipped a hot liquid. “Do most of my communicating with horses. Taught them lots but not how to read yet.”

In a while, Mazy walked back to her wagon where she found a sleeping husband. She retrieved her writing book and returned to stare into the fire, smelling the oil Ruth's hand rubbed into leather. Through the evening as the moon rose and then set, the women disclosed a hope or two, expressed a worry, offered solace, just being there together giving comfort. It was how they fed the night.

“Would you like a large family?” Tipton asked. Tyrell hung the heavy braces across the oxen's neck while dark still brushed against dawn. Tipton stood beside him, snatching up precious moments of his time. “A dozen or more?”

“Not so many,” he said. “One or two would be fine.”

“Boys or girls?”

“Not something we have a say about.”

“A man always wants a son to carry on his name. That's what Charles tells me. To keep me in my place, I'd guess.”

“Probably feels a bit uncertain of where he fits in your father's eyes,” Tyrell said.

“Why should he? He's the oldest. The boy. He'll inherit whatever my father has. Charles'll be taken care of. And he knows how to take care of himself, I'd say.”

“So will you,” Tyrell said. “It's a father's job until his daughter marries. Then it's her husband's responsibility.” He paused to lift her chin. “I'm not afraid ofthat task.” He brushed her nose with his finger, then kissed it.

“You aren't?” She pressed her fingers on his arm, feeling the tensed muscles through the homespun shirt.

“But you need to eat better, Tip. A strong wind'll think you're a kite.” Tyrell touched her hand as if patting a small child before lifting it from his arm, turning back to the yoke.

Tipton allowed her lower lip to pout out. She felt a desperation inside her, a clutching after clues of ways to make sure she and Tyrell were together, no matter where her family ended up. It took up so much of her thinking, she had no time to eat. She just nibbled at her bread and wouldn't touch the beans, ever, not with how they made her stomach feel, so large and protruding. Her hair felt brittle when she pulled it straight back from her face, and little clumps stayed in her combs when she removed them at night. Mrs. Mueller said it came from “poor feed,”
but it didn't matter. Some plans took great diligence before they ever met fruition

At dawn, Ruth and Mazy saddled two of Ruths mounts and prepared to look for Elizabeth and Inks tracks. Antone said the wagons would have to move on. “We spend one day now, resting, so we need to go, yah. Even your husband thinks that.”

“Your mother will likely ride in before long,” Jeremy told her.

“The women should not go alone,” Antone persisted. “We are not seeking a little child lost here but a grown-up woman. Only men should look for her if there be trouble.”

“And we should just what, sit and wait?” Ruth said.

Jeremy started to agree, but his words stopped with the set jaw and piercing look that flashed across Mazy s face.

“All right,” Antone said. “All right, then. We wait and start a litde late.”

“I'll ride a piece with you,” Charles said. “Hunt some along the way. Well head back by noon?”

“Agreed, Mazy?” Jeremy asked. Mazy nodded. “Stay within sight of me,” Jeremy directed, and for once Mazy didn't protest his command.

They fanned out and rode over the first dip of land with pink light spilling onto the grasses and a rock formation in the far distance. Mazy tried not to think of the worst, of stumbling across her mother facedown in the grass; of seeing her injured, snakebitten perhaps, unable to move, maybe even captured, the victim of some dispute between warring factions. She might even have become ill. Elizabeth had described what sounded like measles scabs on the Indian woman's hands. Perhaps her mother had gotten their disease.

“Don't think about it,” Jeremy said, riding closer to her on one of the mules. Mazy raised her eyebrows in question. “You're biting your lip. That's how I can tell,” he said.