Rexanne Becnel (21 page)

Abby studied him. “You mean like my father is doing now?”

He nodded. “Prayer. Reading the Bible. Long talks with my minister. They are what saved my sanity. I turned to the church and became the minister you see before you now.”

Abby smiled at his good and open countenance. “And shall your church in Oregon have a different style window in every opening?”

He laughed, then nearly slipped in a shallow puddle. “Unfortunately a church must be dignified. All the windows will be alike. But they shall be beautiful just the same.”

From ahead of them a slight figure approached. Rebecca Godwin, Abby recognized, though the scarf covering her head and bonnet hid half her face. How wonderful that she had emerged from the seclusion of her wagon.

“Hello, Miss Abigail. Reverend Harrison,” the girl added with a shy smile at Dexter.

“Good day to you, Rebecca.” Dexter nodded a friendly greeting. “Have you come to keep us company, then?”

“If it’s not an intrusion,” she answered, a little timidly.

“Of course it’s no intrusion,” Abby replied. “I’m so glad to see you. How have you been?”

“Much better, thank you.” The girl fell in step on the other side of Dexter, and her eyes darted back to him. “I read the passages you recommended. I especially like the one about Job.” Rebecca’s face grew serious, and Abby caught a glimpse of the woman she soon would become. “He suffered—terribly—but he rose beyond it and was better for it. I thought about that all night and … and I have decided to follow his example.”

Abby listened as the two of them talked, and watched in amazement as the shadows fell away from Rebecca and the ebullience of youth once more colored her face. Dexter, in his own gentle way, was the exact sort of balm the brutalized girl needed, she realized. Not all men were cruel. Some were kind and careful and nurturing, like Dexter. And under his attention young Rebecca was healing.

Perhaps in a few years, if Dexter had not already taken a wife, he and Rebecca …

“If you two will excuse me.” Abby made her way to where her father sat, nodding in the driver’s box. “Papa. Papa!” she called. “Why don’t you lie down? You’ll rest much better that way.”

She expected an argument, but he only gave her a somewhat confused look, then nodded and climbed over the seat back and into the wagon. Abby continued to walk alongside the oxen, keeping them moving by her presence. As she trudged along, she worried, though. Dexter had done wonders for the young Rebecca’s melancholia. As time went on, he would do the same for her father; she was certain of it. If only her father didn’t succumb to ill health before then.

But by evening Abby’s worst fears threatened to overwhelm her. Two wagons ahead of them a child had died of cholera. When they circled up for camp, she heard from down the line that a man and his wife both lay in the final throes of that same violent illness.

She busied herself with preparing the meal, but as she worked, she watched in fear as a huddle of mourners cut a shallow grave for the child. It had started to drizzle again, and as Abby watched from a distance, she found the absence of human sound the saddest thing of all. The sky wept for the little boy, but his parents stood there, numb in their grief. Silent.

Blinking back her tears, she sent a prayer aloft for the innocent child stripped so abruptly of his life. Though she knew he now rested in the arms of his heavenly Father and that she should rejoice for his eternal soul, there was that part of her that could not see it as anything but unfair. A child deserved to live, to grow up and have a full life, to love and marry and have a family. But that was not to be for this little boy.

It was God’s will, she tried to tell herself. God’s will. But when she climbed into the wagon to check on her father, that sentiment was forgotten. Her father’s brow was hot—clammy. And his color—

She drew back in horror. She wanted to run and hide from the terrible possibility that lay before her. Her father had been weak for days. And now he had all the symptoms of cholera.

Even as she tried to deny the awful reality, he groaned and turned on his side. Then he drew his knees up as a cramp tightened his stomach and an agonized moan filled the wagon tent.

“Abigail. Abby …” he weakly called out to her once he recovered enough to catch his breath. But he was caught just as quickly in another painful spasm.

“I’m here, Papa. I’m here.” She knelt beside him and clutched his hands. “Try to relax—”

“Abby—” He broke off as his entire body strained against the wave of pain that rushed through him. His hands tightened so hard on hers that she cried out from the pain too. But his pain was so much worse, she would willingly take any part of it that she could.

“Dexter. Dexter!” she cried out for the reverend’s help, though she knew he could do nothing.

“Abby? What’s wrong?”

A man’s face appeared at the back of the tent. Not Dexter, but Tanner.

Tanner.

“I think …” She stared helplessly at him, wanting him to tell her she was wrong. “I think he has the cholera.”

He was beside her in an instant, testing her father’s brow with a sure hand. When his sympathetic eyes met hers, however, confirming her diagnosis when what she wanted was for him to refute it, the bottom dropped out of her world.

“He’s burning up.”

Abby took her father’s hand, wanting it not to be true. But the evidence was overwhelming. Her father’s skin was unnaturally hot. In just the few minutes since the onset of his fever, it had risen dangerously high.

“Papa, no!” she futilely ordered. “Don’t do this to me. Don’t do it!”

His eyes opened and for a moment their gazes held, though his was filled with pain. But the whites of his eyes were bloodshot, and the fever lent a glassiness to his normally direct stare.

“I’ll be with Margaret,” he whispered in parched, cracking tones. “Margaret.” He even smiled a little before another spasm rocked through him.

“What about me?” she whimpered, through a haze of stinging tears. “I need you, too, Papa.”

Before she could completely dissolve in a panicked fit of weeping, Tanner took her by the shoulders. “Get water and rags. And whatever you have for pain. Whiskey will do.”

When she only stared numbly up at him, though, he gave her a hard shake. “Don’t give up on me now, Abby. Don’t give up on him.”

Choking back a sob, Abby nodded. Like a blind woman she stumbled from the wagon, found two buckets, and filled them from the water casket. In the distance she saw the small funeral party returning and she easily picked out Dexter among them. Would he be saying words over her father’s grave next?

Abby tried to push that unthinkable fear away, but it lurked at the edges of her consciousness even as she shoved the buckets into the wagon and searched desperately for laudanum and a spoon.

Tanner bathed her father’s arms and neck while Abby tried to get the medicine down him. But her father fought them, thrashing one moment, drawn up into a shivering ball of misery the next.

“Papa, please. Just open your mouth. You need this. You’ll feel better.”

But it would only mask the pain. It wouldn’t make him better. Still, as his body convulsed in the illness’s wracking spasms, masking the pain seemed worthwhile enough to Abby. She couldn’t bear to see him suffer so.

It took Tanner’s forcible effort to hold her father still enough for Abby to pour a triple dose of laudanum down his throat. By the time Dexter returned to their campsite, her father had just slumped back as the first effects of the laudanum set in.

“Abigail? Mr. Morgan?”

“Keep away, Harrison,” Tanner ordered before Abby could respond.

“Is that you, McKnight? Where is Miss Morgan—?” Dexter broke off when he peered into the wagon and spied Abby and Tanner together. For an instant an expression of outrage lit his normally placid features. “What is going on here? It’s bad enough the talk going around—” He broke off when he spied her father’s prostrate form, and his vexation turned to concern. “Abigail, has your father taken a turn for the worse?”

Abby nodded, too fearful even to speak. Tanner answered the preacher. “It’s cholera. There’s no need for you to be exposed to it, however.”

“Can I do anything to help?”

“Pray for him,” Abby whispered. “Pray for him to survive.”

“Make some coffee. Cook some beans,” Tanner added.

Word spread quickly. Cholera was the biggest fear of the travelers, worse than floods, or stampedes, or even Indians. People stayed away from a stricken wagon, but Sarah came by with biscuits and gravy, and Rebecca sent word that she was praying for a miracle.

Yet as the evening progressed and darkness fell, damp and dismal, Abby was forced to accept the bitter truth. A miracle was unlikely. Her father had already been weak; now he would not even last the night. Though the laudanum eased his torture and occasionally he slept, it could not change the progress of the disease. Fever. Sweating. Then complete dehydration. Come morning they would bury him. Then the wagons would move on as before, and all that would remain of Robert Bliss would be a marker beside the muddy road west.

Abby simply could not bear the thought.

She sat beside her father in the close quarters of the wagon, holding his hands and silently praying. At the foot end of her father’s bed Tanner shifted in the chair he’d positioned there and stretched his injured side. His eyes were on her, and when she met his gaze, some long, unspoken message passed between them. He was there for her, that look seemed to say. How could she ever convey to him how much that meant to her?

“I haven’t asked how you’re healing,” she began quietly.

“I’m fine. Almost back to normal.”

She smiled, though her eyes remained grave. “And Tulip?”

He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “She’s going to be fine. Still limping. And I wouldn’t try to ride her just yet. But the swelling’s gone down, and the fever in her leg is gone.”

“I’m so glad. I would hate for her to have died because of me.”

A short silence fell between them. The rain came down fitfully now. An occasional voice carried on the sporadic wind. But for the most part they were all alone. Even Dexter, concerned as much by the cholera as by propriety, had turned in elsewhere. He slept tonight near the Godwin wagon.

“Abby, we need to talk.”

Abby looked up at Tanner’s odd tone. His face appeared serious; his eyes were dark in the pale glow of the small oil lantern. She couldn’t mistake the concern in his expression, and it touched her as nothing else could. Despite his words to the contrary, he
did
care about her future. Maybe there was some hope for them.

“I know, Tanner. I know he’s going to …” She couldn’t say the word, for quick tears clogged her throat and flooded her eyes.

“What will you do?”

She took a shaky breath and wiped her face with an old crumpled handkerchief. “I don’t know. I … I can’t think that far ahead.”

“You don’t have to go on to Oregon, you know. You could turn back.”

At that surprising suggestion Abby straightened. “Turn back? What do you mean? Return to Lebanon?”

“Is that where you’re from? I thought you said you were from Arkansas.”

Abby’s lower lip trembled. What was the point of lying anymore? But before she could begin to explain, Tanner spoke again.

“How about Chicago? There are publishers there.”

Abby shook her head. “I can’t think about that now. I can’t.”

He reached out and took her hand as fresh tears blurred her vision. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I shouldn’t have brought the subject up.”

“Abby?”

Her father’s wavering call drew both their attention. “Yes, Papa. I’m right here.”

She took his burning hand in hers and felt the tremulous flutter of his pulse. How much more could he take of this torture?

“Bring me my Bible.”

“It’s here, Papa. Right beside you.” She laid his hand upon it. “Would you like me to read something to you?”

“Later … maybe later.” His eyes remained closed, and as the silence stretched out, Abby thought he’d drifted back to sleep again. Then his fingers tightened on hers, and she anxiously leaned forward.

“Make me a promise,” he whispered. His eyelids lifted and his fever-bright eyes clung to her frightened stare.

“Anything,” she choked out. “Anything.”

His hand trembled in hers. “Promise me you’ll marry Dexter.”

Abby’s shocked reaction must have been reflected on her face, for he repeated his words, more forcefully. “I need to know you’ll be taken care of. He still wants to marry you, Abby. He told me so. Just say you will. It’s my only request of you. Say you’ll marry him.”

His only request. His dying request. Abby was too horrified by his calm acceptance of his impending death to agree. “Don’t talk that way, Papa. Not to me.”

He subsided into the feather bed; his body seemed literally to shrink even as she watched, and his eyes fell closed. “If you knew … maybe I should tell you …” He trailed off, and Abby leaned forward, afraid for him but wanting to know what it was he should tell her. Then he rallied again.

“I need to know you will be all right, Abby girl. Say you’ll marry him. For me.” With an effort he opened his eyes again, and in them Abby saw not fear for himself but fear for her. It was that which was her final undoing.

“If that’s what you want,” she whispered. Then she flung her arms around him and began to cry. “But please don’t leave me. Don’t leave me.”

Tanner sat in the back entrance to the wagon, watching Robert Bliss die in his daughter’s arms. He heard the man exact the promise from Abby. He listened as she began to recite the Lord’s Prayer with him, her father’s voice hardly there, just a faint movement of his lips, and Abby’s voice a soft, trembling thread of sound. Yet the prayer, broken and almost impossible to follow, touched him profoundly.

How must it be to find so much comfort in mere words, to find solace in a faith that went soul deep? To find joy even in the midst of pain and misery, just in one person’s touch. One special person’s presence.

He sat rooted to the chair, a voyeur to the most personal melding of two souls he’d ever witnessed. Abby loved her father, and her father loved her. It changed nothing of course. The one would die; the other would continue on. That was the way of the world.