Never Look Back (58 page)

At night they camped out in a crude makeshift tent in dense forest. Insects bit them, they heard wolves howling, imagined bears setting about them, and each time the baby woke yelling for more food White Bear would peer into the tent. By day Matilda knew this was out of concern for her and both her children, but in the darkness his silent movements and unintelligible language brought on panic and she wished she had defied James and insisted Treacle came with them. Tabitha caught a bad
cold, turning hot then cold with fever, but still smiled bravely as if they were on a Sunday school picnic.

After so many terrifying patches of white water, long climbs down over rocks, with little Amelia strapped to a board on her back like an Indian papoose, Matilda ached all over for a bath, dry clothes, a warm bed, a cup of hot, sweet tea, and another English-speaking adult to reassure her it would soon be over. Only grim determination and the knowledge that if she broke down they would be lost, kept her going.

But they made it to Oregon City. The minister and his wife there took them in and at last she could have a real bath, dry napkins properly, feed Amelia in comfort, and pamper Tabitha as they waited for the wagon, oxen and Treacle to come down on a raft.

Autumn came in with a vengeance, bringing endless rain and cold winds, but safe in a real house, sitting by a fire, with the baby safe in her arms and Tabitha glowing with health beside her, Matilda could only thank God for getting them there.

It was still raining hard when the wagon arrived and many of their belongings had been damaged by river water, but Treacle’s delight to see them again was so very cheering. Matilda had only the sketchiest of maps to the Duncans’ house, drawn by the minister, only Treacle as a protector, but her old enthusiasm and optimism were back. The rain had finally stopped, the countryside was beautiful, and even the oxen seemed to sense they were nearly there, picking up a little speed.

‘There’s someone up there,’ Tabitha exclaimed suddenly. ‘He’s got red hair. Is it Sidney?’

As the boy began to move towards them, Matilda laughed. ‘It is,’ she said, waving her hand at him. He faltered, peering at them and shielding his eyes from the afternoon sun. ‘It’s me, Sidney,’ she yelled at the top of her voice. ‘Matty!’

‘Matty!’ he yelled back with a tone of disbelief, then ran back to the cabin like a hare, screaming out for Cissie. The moment she appeared in the doorway with a baby on her hip, he turned again to run back down the path towards Matilda.

No reunion was ever sweeter than the moment Sidney held up his arms to help her down and she fell into them laughing and
crying at the same time. He was firing questions at her that she couldn’t yet answer, and all at once Cissie flew down the hill, her child jiggling on her hip.

She stopped short by the oxen, looking up at Tabitha holding the baby in her arms. ‘A baby!’ she said incredulously.

Matilda nodded and reached up to take Amelia from Tabitha.

‘Where’s Giles?’ Cissie asked.

‘He was killed, Cissie,’ she said, hardly able to get the words out. ‘Just after my last letter. Before we could even get married. I had to come to you. You were the only person I knew would understand. I couldn’t warn you, a letter would have taken as long as me to get here. Is it all right?’

Cissie just gaped at her in shock for a moment. Suddenly her green eyes brimmed with tears, and shifting her own plump little dark-haired girl more firmly on to her hip, she held out her free arm for Matilda. ‘All right?’ she whispered hoarsely. I’d have been madder than a hornet if you hadn’t come to me. You just come on in, all of you’s, and tell me all about it.’

The log cabin was just one main room with Cissie and John’s bed in a curtained-off area, and a smaller bed and a cot at the far end, but after the wagon it felt like a mansion. There were two small windows, a plank floor, a table and benches, and a real stove. Cissie proudly informed them that John had made the furniture, and they were the only people around to have real glass windows and a stove. He was at the place where he was building his sawmill, Peter was with him, and they would be back around seven o’clock for supper.

‘It’s so lovely,’ Matilda said, suddenly feeling very awkward about arriving here unannounced. She could see that the bright rag rugs and the curtains were Cissie’s handiwork, her appearance too was much more matronly, with her dark curly hair pulled back tightly into a bun. Now that Cissie had become respectable she might just have developed a prudish nature too!

Cissie seemed to sense her friend’s anxiety, so instead of questioning her further, she suggested Sidney should take Tabitha outside to unyoke the oxen, sat Susanna on the floor with some wood blocks, took Amelia from her mother’s arms, quickly changed her napkin and tucked her into a wooden box to sleep.

It was some time later over tea and thick slices of freshly made fruit loaf that Matilda gradually found herself able to explain what had happened since she last wrote, before Giles was killed.

‘I can’t tell you how terrible it was when he was killed, and then I found I was carrying his child,’ she blurted out. ‘I couldn’t stay in Independence, I’m sure you know how it would have been. But I can see how you’re fixed here, Cissie, just say if you want us to go. I only came because there was no one else to turn to.’

Cissie stood up, putting her hands on her hips with that familiar defiant expression in her green eyes. ‘Now look here, Matty,’ she said. ‘Don’t you go thinking I’ve got all stuck up, I’m still the same old Cissie even if I’ve got a wedding ring on me finger now, and a house of me own. I ain’t never going to forget who the person was that helped me out of that cellar. I owe you, and now’s my chance to pay you back. So don’t you go talking about moving on. You and yours is staying here, for as long as you need us.’

By the time John came in, supper, a big pot of chicken stew, was on the table, and Cissie had moved Susanna’s cot close to the bed Sidney shared with Peter, got the mattress out of the wagon, and made up a bed for Matilda and Tabitha on the floor. She said John would soon make another real bed, and they’d all be snug as bugs over the winter.

John’s welcome was every bit as warm as Cissie’s. He was terribly shocked to hear of Giles’s death, even more so to find Matilda had a baby, but he quickly recovered and his words echoed his wife’s.

‘If it wasn’t for you and the Reverend,’ he said, reaching out to pat her hand reassuringly, ‘I doubt Peter would have survived, and I wouldn’t have met Cissie. So I’m glad to be able to take care of you and your children, Matty. Besides, Cissie and me love company. I really appreciate those fruit trees too, I can’t believe not one died on the way.’

‘I thought I was going to sometimes,’ Matilda admitted with a chuckle. ‘But I guess the trees didn’t have to do anything other than guzzle up the water.’

Over supper they compared horror stories about their trips, all laughing at them now they were well behind them. It warmed Matilda’s heart to see how happy John and Cissie were together,
and how Sidney was as important to them as Peter and Susanna. He spooned food into the little girl’s mouth as he ate his own, and it was he who changed her napkin and put her to bed in her cot.

‘We’d have found it very hard when we first got here without him,’ John said, smiling fondly as the boy tucked Susanna under a quilt. ‘Cissie couldn’t do much with the baby always in her arms. He chopped trees down with me, chained them up behind the oxen to haul them here, and worked like two grown men. Now I’m out at the sawmill getting that going, he does almost everything around here. I just hope he never wants to leave us.’

Sidney’s head jerked up at that last statement and he grinned sheepishly. ‘Nothing would make me leave you,’ he said. ‘You’re my family now.’

Matilda’s last thoughts as she drifted off to sleep that night with Tabitha and Amelia beside her were about Sidney’s remark. She too felt as if she was with family. It was a good, safe feeling, as if nothing could ever hurt her again.

The next morning after John had gone off to the sawmill, and Sidney had taken Peter and Tabitha out to feed the animals, Matilda was sitting by the stove feeding Amelia while Cissie began to clear away the breakfast things.

‘Tell me more about this Captain Russell?’ Cissie suddenly asked.

‘I told you everything about him last night,’ Matilda replied in some surprise.

‘No you didn’t,’ Cissie retorted. ‘You said who he was, and that he was kind to you, but it sounded to me as if he were a bit more than a wagon master.’

Matilda giggled. Cissie had changed beyond recognition since her early days at the Home, yet even sober clothes and her dark hair tucked under a cap couldn’t quite eradicate the street girl within her. There had always been her rather sly sideways glances, the ribald comments, the flash of mischief in her green eyes. To a certain extent it had still been apparent in Independence, but so muted that only someone who knew her well would notice it.

Now there was nothing to distinguish her from any other wife and mother. She was plump, and gently spoken, and her grey
dress, spotless apron and the way her dark curly hair was restrained all spoke of complete respectability. Yet that last incisive remark about Captain Russell proved she hadn’t quite forgotten her roots.

Oh Cissie!’ Matilda exclaimed. ‘I was hardly likely to think of any man in
that
way in my situation. I just liked him. He became a real friend.’

Cissie rolled her eyes impatiently. ‘You ain’t talkin’ to one of them Bible-punchers now,’ she said. ‘It’s me you’re talkin’ to! You took a fancy to him, I know you did, and from what you’ve said he was sweet on you an’ all.’

Matilda blushed, but knowing Cissie wouldn’t let the subject drop she told her a bit more about him, including that he was the only one on the wagon train who knew she wasn’t a widow.

‘Well, how did you leave it then?’ Cissie asked, sitting down at the still uncleared table and looking hard at her friend. ‘Did he say he would look you up?’

Matilda shook her head. ‘When we parted at The Dalles, he kissed all of us and wished us well. I asked him to write. He nodded. That was all.’

Cissie smiled. ‘That’s good enough. He’ll turn up one day’

Matilda laughed, she thought her friend was getting carried away. ‘Of course he won’t. He’s got better things to do than look up a woman like me with two children in tow.’

Cissie could only smile knowingly at her friend. Her time as a prostitute had taught her a great deal about men. From everything Matty had told her she guessed this Captain Russell had fallen for her. She wondered if Matty had any real idea how truly lovely she was, not just her looks, though her blonde hair, pretty face and blue eyes would be enough for most men, it was what came from within that was her biggest asset.

In Cissie’s view, Matty had an intriguing blend of innocence and earthy sensuality. She looked prissy and demure in her shapeless shabby dress, her hair all braided neatly, until she spoke and fixed people with that direct unwavering look that said she was afraid of nobody. It wouldn’t take any man long to see her strong will, courage or kindliness, especially one as smart as Captain Russell sounded.

‘Take my word for it, he’ll turn up,’ she repeated.

Amelia had fallen asleep at Matilda’s breast. She gently lifted
her away, buttoned up her dress, and then wrapping her in a shawl laid her down in her box.

‘I can’t love another man,’ she said with a sigh. ‘There’s nothing left inside me now.’

Cissie heard the truth in that statement and saw the depth of sadness in her friend’s eyes. She got up and went over to her, laying one hand on her shoulder. ‘You might think that now, but it won’t be that way for ever,’ she said softly. ‘Six months’ time everything will be different.’

On 1 April 1849, Matilda stood at the door of the cabin sniffing the good earthy smell of spring, and those words of Cissie’s when she’d first arrived six months earlier came back to her sharply. Cissie was right, everything was different now. She might still not want a man to love – Amelia, Tabitha and Cissie’s family were quite enough for her. But she knew the time had come when she must think of her future.

A pale green haze of new leaves was on the trees, the grass was growing again, and the stream was heavily swollen from ice melting in the mountains. The winter had been very mild here compared with New York. There hadn’t even been frost, just a great deal of rain, and she had heard men could grow corn all year round. The sow had produced fourteen piglets the other day, and the cow had two calves, and Tabitha was so entranced with them it was hard to drag her away. They would never starve here, the rivers were full of fish, there were rabbits, hares and deer everywhere, and so many different berries to pick they were spoilt for choice.

She loved it here, the beauty of the scenery, the cosiness of the cabin, the feeling of security in sharing a home with Cissie and John, and the happiness of watching the children playing together. Tabitha was nine now and shadow to fourteen-year-old Sidney. She’d become quite the little tomboy, choosing to wear a pair of boy’s dungarees instead of a dress. Amelia was almost sitting up on her own now, and she liked nothing better than to be lying on a blanket near Susanna and Peter so she could watch them.

By day Matilda worked alongside Cissie, digging, planting vegetables, washing, cleaning and baking. By night they mended and made clothes for the children, as John worked away making
something. He’d made a bed for Matilda and Tabitha, a fine pine one with the wood as smooth as a piece of satin. Amelia had moved on into Susanna’s cot, when her father made her a bed of her own. He’d made a swing chair for out on the porch, and a cherrywood dressing table for Cissie which was as fine as anything Matilda had ever seen back in New York. Almost every day he talked of enlarging the cabin and making real bedrooms, his way of telling her he expected her to stay for ever.

On top of all this contentment there was the joy she got from Amelia. She was such a happy, contented baby, full of smiles and baby chatter. Often late at night Matilda would hang over the cot, just watching her sleeping. Her eyelashes were black, thick and long, like fans on her plump rosy cheeks, her eyes were dark blue, and her hair had remained as dark as Giles’s and curly like his too. But even as she looked at her, Matilda knew Giles would want more for both her and Tabitha than growing up half wild in a log cabin.