Dorothy Garlock - [Wabash River] (21 page)

“Wasn’t this . . . ah . . . weddin’ kinda sudden, boss?” the cook asked.

John’s cold dark eyes settled on Bill. “If it was, it makes it no less legal.”

“She bein’ a widder woman with younguns . . . do make it hard to get along.” BIll finished lamely because what he had meant to say was that the widow was lucky to latch on to a man like John.

“The little boy is hers. The other two children are orphans she’s taken to raise. The girl has been with her for a long time. They are her family. Mine now. If you have any objection to my wife and family being with us, now is the time to say so.”

“Hellfire!” Bill exclaimed. “It ain’t no business a ours if’n ya up and marry a . . . widder. It jist—wal, took us by surprise. Nobody knew ya was thinkin’ of marryin’ up.”

“No, it isn’t any business of yours or anyone else’s.”

“The men are eyein’ that gal. Pretty a piece as I ever did see,” Rolly said. “Could be she’ll cause a ruckus once we get strung out on the trail.”

“If any man makes a disrespectful move toward that girl, he’ll answer to me.” John’s tone left no doubt as to his meaning.

“About today . . . when she came in—” Rolly wanted to get the unpleasant part of the talk over with.

“Yes. What about that?” John asked, tight-lipped.

Rolly looked at the other two men for help. Cleve lifted his brows in a gesture that said Rolly had stuck his head into the lion’s mouth and would have to pull it out. Bill glanced up at the moon hanging above the treetops and refused to look at him.

“She . . . ah . . . came bustin’ in, horses lathered and all, and said ya was havin’ a little set-to down the road a ways with a few Arkies. Not even askin’, mind ya, ordered us to ride on down there and save yore bacon. Course, we knew ya’d not want us to leave the wagons.”

“And you explained that to her?” John asked quietly.

“Well, we just said ya’d not need no help—”

“—And that I’d not marry a woman with a ‘flock’ a younguns.”

“I don’t know who said that. She warn’t takin’ no fer a answer. Was goin’ to take the whip to us.” Rolly grinned before he realized how dangerous it was.

“You laughed at her. I suppose that was when you accused her of trying to draw you off so her friends could steal the freight.”

“If ya’d a-been here and seen how it was—”

“What about it, Cleve?” John asked quietly.

“I wasn’t here when they arrived, but it’s as Rolly said. The woman—”

“—Mrs. Tallman,” John interrupted.

“I asked her if you’d sent her to fetch us. She said no. We figured that if you’d needed help you’d’ve asked for it. She let go and started bawlin’ when it was plain we wasn’t goin’. We thought it a way to . . . well . . . get us to seein’ thin’s her way. That’s when the boy whipped up the team and took off.”

“You let them sit down there all afternoon without food or water. They would have been there all night if I hadn’t gotten back.” John’s voice was getting quieter and quieter, the sign that his anger was rising.

“I tried to talk to ’em. The girl run me off with the rifle. That gal is feisty as a lone flea on a dog’s back.”

“She would have shot you; make no mistake about that. She shot a man back in Freepoint who was trying to take Colin, the older boy. It was the man’s kin that was after us.”

“We meant no disrespect to Mrs. Tallman,” Cleve said. “Under the same circumstances ya could’a done as we did.”

Cleve Stark was the one man in the outfit who stood his ground against the Tallmans. He was not a man to back up and take water if he believed himself to be right. If there were going to be hard feelings over the way the woman had been treated, he wanted to know it now.

He looked directly at the man whom he loved like a brother. John was fast becoming a legend in New Mexico. The vaqueros who worked his rancho swore that he could hit targets no one else could see and that he could track a horse on a pitch-black night in pouring rain. He was a tough but fair man. Rain Tallman had not only seen to that but had given his son a powerful body, a strong feeling for the underdog, deep-seated respect for women, and stubborn determination. From his mother, Amy Tallman, John had inherited his fierce pride and undying loyalty to his family and friends.

John studied his friend Cleve’s confident, tough-looking, windburned face; and, although he was certain he would
not
have acted as they had done when a woman came into camp asking for help, he decided it was time to let the matter drop. How Cleve and the other men treated his family in the future was what was important. He swiveled his head and looked at the cook.

“Is there anyone here you would choose to replace Harrison?”

“I ain’t give it no thought. Harrison’s a good man, jist got a fondness for the bottle.”

“Too fond. I’ll not tolerate drink on the trail or a man who drinks himself into a such a state that he can’t do his job. Harrison goes. In the morning.”

The cook shrugged. “Paco’d be a’right.”

John nodded. “My wife may want to have her own cookfire. She and the children will not hold up this train or disrupt the running of it. Each of you has your responsibilities.
They
are mine,” he said flatly, leaving no room for argument. He stood, rinsed his cup in the pot of water beside the campfire, and dropped it back in the sack. To Cleve he said: “We’d better look for a couple more men between here and Fort Gibson.”

“What’re ya thinkin’, Cleve?” Rolly asked, a few minutes after John had left the campfire.

“ ’Bout what?”

“Ya know. ’Bout John marryin’ up with that woman all a sudden an’ takin’ her and the younguns home with ’im.”

“John don’t go off half-cocked and do somethin’ as final as gettin’ married unless he’s give it serious thought. He must’ve wanted her for his wife.”

“I remember he talked once a fillin’ that hacienda of his with younguns. I thought he was talkin’ ’bout
his
younguns.” Rolly rubbed his whiskered chin.

“They left Freepoint in a yank.” Bill poured dried peaches into a pot of water to soak overnight. “That wagon he brought in wasn’t packed for a long haul, that’s certain.”

“It’s not our business, Bill,” Cleve said, as he knocked the fire from the end of his cigar and pinched it carefully to make sure it was out, then put it back in his pocket. “John will see to it that his family stays out of the way. You won’t even have to cook for them.”

“I ain’t a-meanin’ that,” Bill retorted irritably.

“He’s touchy ’bout ’em.” Rolly stood and stretched his massive frame. “Somethin’ more here than him wantin’ to get in that woman’s drawers. Hell! She’d have to be something special for me to take on three younguns and a girl and drag ’em eight hundred miles across Indian country when I could have my pick of women at home.”

“Ya’d be smart to keep your opinions to yourself,” Cleve said as he walked away.

“That jist what I’m gonna do. Ya can bet on it. Sure would like to know, though, where he run into that woman and what caused him to up and wed her.”

*  *  *

“Dillon! Stay where I can see you.” Addie and Trisha were sorting and repacking the contents of the wagon that had been pulled up near the tents. “If I have to draw a line on the ground, I will,” she threatened.

A line drawn in the dirt with a stick served as an invisible fence. A step across the line meant going to bed a half-hour early. Once, to test his mother, Dillon had repeatedly crossed the line—and had gone to bed at three o’clock in the afternoon, without his supper. It was a dreaded punishment that put a strong restraint on the younger children.

“Don’t draw a line, Muvver. I was gettin’ my turtle.”

“You was not!” Jane Ann said spitefully. Then to Addie, “He went behind a tree and peed.”

“You . . . shut up!” Dillon yelled.

“That’s enough. Jane Ann, you mustn’t tattle. It’s all right if Dillon relieves himself behind the tree. There’s no privy here.”

“But I saw him . . . do it.” Jane Ann’s lips quivered.

“You should have turned away quickly when you saw what he was doing.”

“She follered me. When I saw her I couldn’t stop,” Dillon wailed.

“After this come tell me you’re going to the bushes and I’ll see that Jane Ann stays with me. Go play now. Don’t go near the cook wagon, and stay where I can see you. Trisha, don’t try to lift that trunk by yourself.”

Addie took the end of the trunk and the two women lifted it off the washbench.

“If we hadn’t took that churn a milk to that cook man, we could’a drank us a bit of buttermilk and not had to go up thar for supper like beggars lookin’ for a handout.” Trisha had gone reluctantly to breakfast when John had come for them. “Can’t we do our own fixin’?”

“I’m hoping we can get set up for it. Have you ever cooked over a campfire?”

“No. But we’d get the hang of it in no time. I’m thinkin’ that cook man ain’t wantin’ nothin’ to do with us a’tall. And I ain’t wantin’ nothin’ to do with
him.
Miss Addie, I feel like we’s . . . bein’ pushed on folks what don’t want us. Like we’s . . . throwaways, like Colin and Jane Ann. Colin sure took to that passerby, though. He sticks to ’im like a burr on a dog’s back. Where’ve they gone off to now?”

“Colin’s over there with Mr. Rolly. He’s taking the wheels off our wagon and doing something to them.” Addie looked up as she saw a man approaching. “Here comes Mr. Stark, the man we met this morning. Be nice, Trisha.”

“I ain’t gonna bite him even if ’n I want to.” Trisha cast an angry glance at Cleve Stark, then moved away and turned her back.

“Howdy.” Cleve removed his hat. His hair was streaked with gray, making him appear much older than when he had his hat on.

“Mr. Stark,” Addie replied politely.

“I spoke to John about the sheep. He said to talk to you.”

“What about them?”

“Do you intend to take them with you?”

“Well, I’d—hoped to. Mr. Tallman didn’t tell me that I couldn’t take them.”

“They’ll have to be watched pretty close. A timber wolf will pull one down the first chance it gets.”

“Heavens! I hadn’t thought of that. They’ve been like part of the family.”

“Yes’m. Sometimes it don’t pay to make pets of yore animals.” He was watching her with a curiously expectant expression.

“We don’t want to be a bother to you, Mr. Stark.”

“It ain’t that, ma’am. If John says so, we’ll put a man on ’em—”

“No! I don’t want him to do that. If they could follow along behind the wagon, Trisha, Colin, or I could walk along with them.”

“It’s a long way, ma’am. We’ll make twelve to fourteen miles a day. I’m thinkin’ it’d be hard for ’em to keep up. The night herders keep the oxen bunched, and the mules are picketed. How did you plan to pen your sheep?”

“I’ll talk to Mr. Tallman about it.”

As Cleve stood holding his hat in his hands, his eyes went to Trisha, who had turned her back, then back to Addie.

“About yesterday. We meant no disrespect. We were taken aback is all, or we’d not have acted as we did. We’d not the slightest notion John had took a wife.”

“That was yesterday, Mr. Stark. I try not to look back on what I cannot change.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He put his hat on and tipped it politely.

“I realize that you and the other men hadn’t planned on having women and children on this trip. As I said before, we’ll try not to be a disruption.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

*  15  *

A
ddie sat beside John on the seat of the old wagon that had been in her family for years. The tired, sway-backed team that pulled it were like dear friends. She and her new husband were on their way to Van Buren to trade the wagon and the horses for a covered wagon that would take her and the children across hundreds of miles to their new home in New Mexico Territory.

She looked back and waved at the little group standing beside the tents.

“They’ll be all right, Addie. Trisha is perfectly able to take care of the children.”

“I know . . . but overnight—”

“They’ll be safer with Cleve, Rolly, and the others than they would be with us.”

“Trisha was scared for me to leave, but she wouldn’t say so.”

“Don’t worry about her being bothered by the men.”

“I can’t help but worry a little. She’s a loyal friend.”

“I know. You told me.”

“I promised her that she could stay with me for as long as she wants to, not because I owe her a lot, but because I love her as I do Colin and Jane Ann.”

“I know that too. She’ll be welcome in our home.”

“She puts on a brave act, but on the inside she’s scared to death.”

“She’s got grit. She’ll make out all right.”

“She’s afraid she’ll end up in a . . . brothel.”

“If she does, it will be her choice. She can’t hold onto your skirt-tail all her life.”

“She doesn’t hold onto my skirt-tail!”

“What would you call it? She’s like your shadow.”

“She has no one else. She’s been through a lot.”

“So have you and your troubles have made you stronger. Now let’s not talk about Trisha. She’ll marry someday and have a family of her own.”

“I doubt that.”

“Buffer Simmons admires her.”

“A lot of men
admire
her.”

“It’s more than that. I think he’s really sweet on her.”

“Did he tell you that?”

“No. But when a man asks as many questions about a woman as he did, he’s got something in mind.”

“He’s got something in mind all right, and it isn’t marriage. He knows she’s got colored blood. Preacher Sikes saw to it that everyone in town knew it.”

“I don’t think that would stop Simmons if he wanted to marry her.”

“He only wants what other men have wanted when they saw how pretty she was.” Addie glanced at John to see how he reacted to her statement. He was looking straight ahead. “They all had
something
in mind,” Addie added dryly.

John was silent. The talk about Trisha had kept their minds occupied while they were leaving. But now they were out of sight of the camp, and at last he had his wife to himself. He wanted to use this time to get acquainted with her, really get to know her. He wanted to know what she thought about, dreamed about—how she felt about him. Even more important, he wanted to know why she had married a bastard like Kirby Hyde.