Mona Hodgson - [Hearts Seeking Home 01] (28 page)

“I’ll be back in a few minutes, then.” Relief washed over Anna as she strolled through the trees on a footpath that would eventually take her to the river. She was sorry Großvater’s timepiece was missing but not sorry for the delay in discussing Mutter’s request that they remain in Independence.

Mutter wouldn’t be put off for very long. She’d have her say. In the meantime, Anna intended to enjoy a little peace and quiet. She allowed herself to wander down the path, looking under bushes and in low branches for feathers and anything else she could collect in her sack and use to make an interesting arrangement on a hat. She stopped and peeked into a hole in a blackberry vine that hid an empty bird’s nest.

She’d just bent to pick it up when she heard twigs snapping behind her. Only a few yards away, by her judgment.

A bear. They were still in the woods of Missouri, where they’d had a black bear raid their camp. How could she have been so careless? She didn’t have any pots and pans. Only a pail, a cloth sack, and a few feathers.

The uneven footfalls came closer. Maybe if she stayed low and still, it wouldn’t find her. A reasonable plan, except for the pounding of her heart.

Caleb stood in the river, his boots off and his pant legs rolled to his knees. He took the block of lye soap to the muddy trousers he had splayed across a rock and began scrubbing. Finished with his current camp duties and unable to escape his thoughts, he’d decided to take care of one of his personal chores.

He shook the trousers in the running water and watched the brown suds flow downstream. If only redemption were as easy as dunking and scrubbing. What he wouldn’t give to watch his past wash away like unwanted mud. He swallowed another chaw of regret. What was done was done. And even if he could undo the last eleven days since Otto’s illness to protect Anna’s heart, he wasn’t sure he would. But neither could he go on living a lie and still look into Anna’s pure blue eyes.

Caleb slapped the trousers against the rock and scrubbed some more.
Finally satisfied he’d done all the scrubbing needed, he dunked the pants in the river for a rinse, then wrung them out. Back at the shore where he’d left his socks and boots, he laid the wet trousers over a bush and pulled his boots on. He was about to unroll his pant legs when a piercing scream tore through the air.

A woman was in trouble. And she was close. The scream had come from behind him, upstream and in the thick woods. Leaving the soap and the clean trousers behind, Caleb bolted up the bank and into the trees.

Where was she?

“Stay away!” He knew that voice.

A loud grunt followed the yell, and Caleb’s legs couldn’t carry him fast enough.

“Anna?”

“Caleb!”

He turned toward the voice and fairly leapt the last few yards to the edge of a small clearing. Anna stood at the far side. Because of the shadows in the trees on the other side of her, he couldn’t make out who or what had frightened her.

Caleb pulled his knife from its sheath at his waist. He could see that Anna wasn’t moving, and neither was her apparent attacker. Calling up on his wartime training, he made his way around the clearing, staying just inside the trees. As he drew closer, even in the waning light, he could make out the trapper he’d encountered the night before. Anna held an empty pail between her and the trapper as if it were a medieval shield, while the mountain man stood in front of her, his arms raised in surrender.

Caleb stepped into the clearing. “Skins?”

Anna glanced at Caleb, still wielding the bucket. “You know this man?”

“He came to camp last night. Had supper with me and Isaac.” Caleb glanced around them. “I thought you went to town. What are you doing out here?”

“We returned.” Her lips were trembling. “I was collecting feathers to make more hats.”

Caleb studied Skins. “What happened?”

The trapper shrugged.

“I bent down to pick up an abandoned bird’s nest and heard something
coming. I stayed down, hoping whoever or whatever it was wouldn’t see me. When I did finally look up, he was towering over me.”

Skins grunted and shrugged. “Quiet like a mouse, this girl.” He looked at the blackberry bush at Anna’s feet. “Had no idea she was down there.”

Caleb nodded. “Anna, I’m sure Skins didn’t mean any harm.”

“I didn’t know that.” She drew in a shuddering breath and set the pail down.

Skins tugged his buckskin jacket straight. “I’ll be by your camp for a plate.”

“We’ll have one for you.” Caleb and Anna both watched as the trapper ambled back into the forest.

“When I first heard his footfalls, I thought it might be a bear.”

“He does look a bit like one.”

“Back in Saint Charles, I was used to seeing river rats, as Großvater liked to call them. But not mountain men.” Anna shook her head. “What was all that?”

“The reason I called him Skins. A raccoon-pelt hat. A bear-hide coat. And I’m guessing there’s some skunk in there somewhere.”

She smiled, thinning her lips. “I’m sorry I screamed and scared you.”

“I’m just thankful you’re all right.” He took a step toward her. “Anna?”

She nodded.

He placed his fingertip under her chin and lifted it.

The bucket hit the ground.

He leaned in closer, his lips touching hers.

Anna had just sunk her fingers into the hair at his neck, when the sound of someone or something fast approaching jerked them both to attention.

Boney stumbled to a stop in front of them, huffing and puffing, and staring at Caleb then at Anna. “I thought I heard you scream.”

Caleb backed away from Anna. “She did. You did.”

“Yes.” Anna moistened her lips and glanced at Caleb. “A mountain man surprised me.”

“I take it she ain’t talkin’ about you?”

Caleb shook his head, thinking about how cold and dry his lips felt right now. “Skins. The fellow from last night. I told the boss about him.”

Boney glanced back at the trees and then out into the clearing.

“He’s gone now.”

“Yes.” Anna moistened her lips again and smiled. “And everything is fine.”

“Is it, now?” Boney looked them both up and down. “You sure?”

“I’m sure.” Anna didn’t take her gaze from Caleb.

Caleb smiled. “Well, then, we’d better get back.”

“Good idea.” Boney glanced up at the sky. “It’ll be dark soon.”

Anna cleared her throat in a most unladylike manner. “I need to get supper before the meeting.”

When Boney showed no signs of leaving without them, Anna smiled and took the first step back toward camp.

Caleb motioned for Boney to follow her, then fell in line behind them and brushed his lips with the back of his hand. He’d wanted to tell Anna the truth about himself today, but their kiss was almost enough to give him hope that his past mistakes couldn’t change the way Anna felt about him.

G
arrett stood beside his campfire and looked out over the Boone’s Lick Company gathered before him, most seated on stools or chairs. A few folks had ridden into town before supper, but as far as he could tell, everyone else was accounted for. Anna Goben was easy to find with Caleb wedged between her and Otto. She and her mother had obviously returned from town. And so had the Rengler brothers and Arven and Lorelei, the younger Mr. and Mrs. Beck. And there was Dr. Le Beau, scarcely visible standing behind his wife. The children played off to the side with a wooden hoop and a leather ball except for young Alfonzo Zanzucchi, who had remained with his parents to translate.

Garrett looked up at the graying sky and cleared his throat. “We’d best get started. Many of you have children to settle into bed.”

Mrs. Kamden waved her arm.

“A question, Mrs. Kamden?”

“Tomorrow is Sunday, Captain. You do intend to observe the Sabbath, do you not?”

“Yes ma’am.” Garrett was careful not to look directly at the woman standing beside her, for Caroline Milburn was a different kind of distraction altogether. “We’ll hold our camp until Monday morning. From here we’ll head to the river and stay there overnight.”

“Captain, Papa wants to know, are we making good time?” At seventeen, Camille Le Beau had the poise and maturity of a much older lady. “We are to pick up more medical supplies at Fort Kearney. We will arrive there the beginning of June?”

Not with all these interruptions, they wouldn’t. Garrett forced a smile.
“We are making good time, but we have only just begun.” He waited for her to translate into French, and the Zanzucchi boy into Italian. “We could encounter difficulties that slow us down. But hopefully we will not.”

Emery Beck stood, holding his whittling knife in one hand and a half-carved wooden shoe in the other. He looked directly at the doctor. “Difficulties with animals that aren’t fit to haul a loaded wagon over a frontier trail, for instance?”

Garrett gave the ruddy-faced Mr. Beck a sharp look and drew in a deep breath. “So far, all the animals are faring well, including the doctor’s horses. And your concerns about them are old news.”

Dr. Le Beau jumped to his feet, shaking a fist. Apparently, his daughter had translated the cobbler’s comment. The doctor rattled off several chains of words in French.

Garrett didn’t know French, but he knew enough about body language to know the doctor wasn’t merely reciting the finer qualities of his six quarter horses.

Apparently, Emery Beck knew it too. His eyes steely, he shook the wooden shoe at Le Beau. “Being a doctor doesn’t give him the right to spread his shoulders and go against policy.”

“Captain.” Camille Le Beau’s sharp voice silenced the crowd. The young woman stood beside her father, already two inches taller than him. “Papa said Mr. Beck should take more care with the knife he’s wielding and the wood he’s butchering, and leave the horses to us.”

“Butchering?” Emery huffed. A muscle twitched in his jaw. “Well, the doctor can ride his uppity horses to the nearest port.” He dropped his knife and marched toward Le Beau. “Go home.”

Tiny stepped in front of the cobbler, elbows out. The cobbler halted midstep. The other trail hands fanned out. Caleb and Frank with the Le Beaus. Boney and Isaac stood on either side of the fray.

Hattie’s brother, Charles, appeared beside Camille, towering over everyone around him. His shoulders squared, he faced Emery Beck. “All this bluster … coming from a German immigrant.”

Hattie’s gasp was one among a chorus.

Emery Beck looked around Tiny. “You say that as if I’m Irish.” He jerked his gaze to where the Zanzucchis stood. “Or Italian, for that matter.”

The boy didn’t translate, but still Mrs. Zanzucchi offered a rebuttal in Italian. Her husband tugged at her coat sleeve, a wasted gesture.

Emery’s chest puffed out. “Charles, you didn’t seem to mind when Germans stocked dry goods for your trip”—he looked at Otto Goben—“or caned chairs for you.”

Charles shook his head. “I only meant that neither you nor any of us have the right to point a finger at someone else and declare them unworthy of equal rights.”

“Well said, Charles. Thank you.” Garrett waved his slouch hat. “Gentlemen, we’ll have no more outbursts. Understood?”

The doctor and Emery Beck gave him a tight nod and returned to their stools. Le Doc had no sooner settled than Caroline Milburn stepped up beside Camille Le Beau and spoke in whispers. Garrett followed their gaze to Ian Kamden who walked away from the crowd, his arm bracing his wife. Le Beau took quick steps to his wagon while Caroline accompanied his daughter to the Kamdens’ Conestoga.

If the younger Mrs. Kamden had fallen ill, he needed to know about it. All the more reason to get on with this meeting.

“Folks, my concerns lie with the threat of illness and accidents, raging rivers, and howling winds that can splinter even the sturdiest of wagons.” Garrett returned the hat to his head. “My intention is to keep you all informed of our progress, and any new developments. That is the reason for our gathering this evening. These next several weeks, the settlements and stage stops will peter out. Water is in short supply on the prairie, so make sure your water barrels are in good shape and topped up before we roll Monday morning.”

The majority of the Company nodded, and family members whispered to one another, no doubt assigning additional duties. Good. He needed them to take the real issues seriously.