What Once We Loved (12 page)

“I helped,” Jessie said.

“You did. And Sarah, too. And Pipsqueak there. She holds a hammer right well. You'll be glad to have her in Oregon.” Mariah blushed. Ruth supposed it was Seth's use of the nickname said most often by her brother.

Oltipa, David Taylor's wife, held her baby on her hip. She dressed not in traditional Indian clothes, but in a dress David gave her, purchased from Adoras mercantile.

Ruth was just anxious to be gone. Just making a mile or more the first day gave impetus to a journey, moved their eyes forward instead of hanging back, which was where she'd been for the last five years, always looking over her shoulder. Outdistancing her husbands betrayal. She
was past that now and liking the lightness of that burden. Moving on, that was what she wanted. Nothing to hold her back, everything to drive her forward.

“Lets us check the wagon one last time,” she told Jason loud enough for all to hear. “Poor old oxen have been yoked since noon, and they're ready to go. Cant say as I blame them.”

“Why dont you just plan to leave first thing in the morning?” Mazy asked.

“That's a good idea,” Elizabeth said. “Give you time to come on up here.” She called down from the tree house. The children had helped push her up, laughing all the way.

“Now that's just what I thought someone would offer,” Ruth said, answering Elizabeth. “But no, we've got a three-week journey, and we'd best be off. Nights are getting cool, and we could have an early winter. Wouldn't want to get stuck in the snow of the Siskiyous just because we wanted an extra piece of cake from on top a tree.”

“You're right. It won't get no easier,” Elizabeth sighed. “We'll get the rest of you up here later. We'll play plenty then.” She made her way down.

Mazy blinked back tears, and Ruth felt her eyes pool too, a sensation she tried to ignore.

“I picked up a little something for you, Ruth, and the rest of you travelers, too,” Mazy said. “Little packages you can open on the trail. Or when you arrive. Just something to remember where you came from, here. In Shasta.” Seth stood beside Mazy and put his arm around her like a big brother, pulling her into his side.

“You didn't have to do that, Mazy,” Lura told her. “But I love a good surprise.”

“I just wanted to.” Mazy shrugged off Seths arm and walked fast to a box where she pulled out packages wrapped in paper and string. It looked like lamb's ears had been set in an old boot filled with dirt. Butcher paper was stuffed around it. “You can use the paper for writing a little letter now and then,” she said, looking sideways at Ruth.

“Truth be known, she bought them at our store, she did,” Adora cooed.

“The wrappings, yes,” Mazy corrected. She carried the packages and placed them in the back of the wagon through the puckers and stood there a bit as though collecting herself before she turned to say her final good-byes.

Ruth didn't know why, but the presents annoyed her. Maybe because she hadn't thought of giving something herself to commemorate all they'd been to each other, all that had happened here at this place. Or maybe because it was one more way Mazy hung on or smoothed over a relationship too wrinkled for ironing.

Ruth did have a package of her own that had taken her a fair amount of time to gather. But it belonged to someone…deserving of its special sting, to be given when the time was just right. When they were far away. David Taylor was going to see to that.

“You'll survive, Mazy,” Seth said. “Come spring you'll have calves aplenty, and their antics'll keep us laughing.” To Ruth he said, “You just head off. You got your work cut out for you trailing jacks.” He nodded toward Ewald. “You picking up the other on the way?”

“Carmine. Yes.”

“More power to you,” Seth said. “I hope that jack's disposition is better than the family reputation.”

“Whose family?”

“Don't get defensive. I was talking about jacks and mules in general,” Seth said.

“He's a good-looking animal,” Ruth defended.

“Not saying he's not,” Seth said, pushing his hand against the air as though to calm her. “Just what I always heard was that two of them was worse than tying cougars together at the tail.”

“They act fine to me,” Ruth said. “And I have full plans to keep them separated on the trail. Once we're north, we won't be sharing pasture. Not that it's any of your account.”

Seth raised an eyebrow but didn't speak. Ruth wondered if she sounded spiteful. Men often raised an eyebrow when she spoke more forceful than she meant to. She was just sharing information, that was all, telling things to peoples eyes. Men did that all the time and expected people to just accept it. When a woman spoke her mind, they acted as if she was some kind of…wild one. People took her wrongly, but she couldn't account for how other people listened. She had things on her mind, and they'd just have to accept that.

She motioned for Jason to join her. The boy came, along with Jessie. They stuck their heads in the back of the wagon and with Ruth scanned the trunks and boxes there, a wooden rake, pack boxes with tack. Her eye lit on the one she knew held a few bones and the tail hairs of Jumper.
Taking you with us.
She was glad again for her decision. Everything they needed was loaded, including Lura's knife sharpener and flour and salt to last them a couple of months.

Koda stood saddled and tied to the wagon along with two other green-broke mares that Mariah and the boys would ride. Jessie had chosen the wagon seat where Lura and Sarah would sit, a move that surprised Ruth. She'd always been so willing and wanting to ride. Now it appeared she preferred sidling up next to Lura.

“Let's head out,” Matthew said then, and Ruth shot him a grateful glance.

Matthew moved toward his mother who was hugging Adora and patting little Ben on the head and making the rounds to Elizabeth and the rest. He touched her elbow, and the woman nodded. Sarah approached and Matthew lifted her like a paper fan, her little pinafore billowed out as she stepped down into the box. Then he unhitched his big gray gelding named Sailor and said, “Step along, boys. Ma. Come on now.”

“I don't believe I'm ready to leave just yet,” Lura said. She lifted a mug of cider she'd placed in the box and drank from it. Lura's cheeks were pink. Perhaps from her singing “Pop Goes the Weasel” with the
children not long before. “Got my pipe to chew on. I'm ready. Feels like I been living out of a wagon for over a year now.”

“Let's be mounting up, children,” Ruth said.

A kind of frenzy began then, with David helping Seth check the harnessing of the oxen, Elizabeth carrying last-minute food bags from the cabin. Mazy, too, busied herself, scraping butter from the mold and wrapping it in wet cheesecloth and placing it in the wagon.

Matthew sat with his hands crossed over the saddle pommel.

“I thank you,” Elizabeth said. “For the laughter and the special thoughts and all the rest you gave us to ponder by your presence. And we ask for traveling mercies for you all.”

“We'll think of you every time we make angel pie,” Sarah said, waving down at Elizabeth. “Won't we, Jessie?”

Ruth thought the girl would be crying any second, and she cleared her throat, hoping she wouldn't do the same. She brushed up against Mazy setting the butter into a camp box. Ruth heard her sniff.

“Let's just get these hugs and holds and good-byes said fast as we can,” Mazy said then, stepping away from the wagon, nearly stumbling over Jessie who'd slipped out and come to wrap her arms around Mazy's apron. The woman knelt down so she could pull the child to her, kissed her head. Ned came next to brush against her, stick his hand to Seth's to shake.

“We'll float that wagon away if we're not careful,” Mazy said, dabbing at her eyes with her apron. “You wont be able to drive it off.”

“Thought that might be what you had in mind,” Mazy's mother said.

“I can accept the inevitable,” Mazy said, pushing against her knees to stand. Her eyes glistened. “But I don't have to like it.”

Mazy stepped over to Ruth then, fingered the rawhide hanging from the front rigging ring of the saddle. “You take care of yourself now,” she whispered, looking up at her. “You write. When you're ready.”

Ruth felt a tearing at the fabric of her heart. These were people she'd come to love, she realized. They were as much a part of her family as her
brother and his wife had been, stitched to her through service, caring, and time. Ruth wanted to say something, to make this easier for Mazy—she had always been kind to her—but Ruth wasn't confident of speech. She swallowed, touched Mazy s cheek with her palm.

The familiar faces looking up to her sitting atop Koda blurred. She had to leave. She reined the horse north.

“And before that?” Suzanne asked. “Where were you employed?”

“That were my first job, Missis Cullver. Before that, my pappy paid me good to look after his kin.”

“They weren't…your kin?”

“Well, with his second wife, yes'urn. But his third, well, them were her children he paid me to tend. He didn't have no young uns with her. Now his fourth wife, she were younger than me, but they had one. So I got baby time, too. That's how I got such good ideas for herding little tykes, like what I told ya.”

“Indeed. You did.” Suzanne took a deep breath. The woman before her was barely grown herself, judging from the pitch of her voice. She smelled of lavender, fresh and tidy, and probably worked hard to look proper for her interview. But she wasn't right for what Suzanne needed, what her boys needed.

These interviews were just going nowhere. Surely there were educated women in Sacramento who, like herself, had come west with their husbands hoping for wealth and who woke up only to discover they'd not find it in the rushing streams of this state. Surely they'd be seeking something more to feed their children.

That was the other problem she'd discovered in the interviewing: People wished to bring their own children with them. Suzanne wasn't prepared for the taking on of an entire household. Esther had said the
fire last winter had wiped out a goodly number of business establishments, and they hadn't all come back full force. So there had to be people interested in work, especially work that kept them indoors, warm through the winter, and well fed. Suzanne was offering a profession here, of tutoring and training. It required respectable women.

Even Esty had come up empty. She hadnt found a single reference from the women whose hats she created at her little shop, not one woman she could send to Suzanne with at least some kind of letter of introduction. All the young girls Suzanne had interviewed had arrived in response to the ad Esther placed. Esther said the Sacramento
Daily Californian
ran her advertisement right next to notices written by husbands back in the States offering rewards for their “runaway wives.” Maybe they thought her job announcement a trick of some kind, so only women of insufficient skill applied. She hadn't thought ofthat.

“Missis? You all right?”

“I'm fine. I'm sorry. I got distracted. Just one last question. If I asked your…pappy to describe you to me, not how you look, but your virtues, what's inside you that drives you toward your wishes, what three adjectives might he use?”

Pig snored at Suzanne's feet, the only break in the silence.
At least she must be a kind girl or Pig would not be sleeping

“I'm guessing I don't know for sure what that word
ad-chutives
means, ma'am,” she said at last. “But I'm pretty sure I don't got any of them ver-chews. I never did take up chewing or smoking tobaccy, either, and I been real healthy. I wouldn't bring no nits or worms into your house. No need to keep valerean around neither. I don't have no hysteria or nervous disorders needing such kind of herbs. I'm sound as a trail-sawy ox. See, got all my teeth yet. Oh, you can't see. Want to feel them?”

“Thank you, Miss Edina. I'm sure you are…quite capable. Just tell me what your pappy might say about you, if he wished to compliment you, say something nice.”

“He wouldn't cotton to such talk, Missis. It be prideful to speak kindly of kin.”

Suzanne remembered to make herself smile. “I'd say you're honest and sincere. And since I'm not kin, I can tell you that and hope you hear it.”

“My hearing's real good, Missis. Was you wondering over that?”

“I think that's all for now, Miss Edina. Can you find your way out? I'll be in contact if I need to speak to you further.”

“Yes'urn. Thank you, ma'am. And tell your boy it were real nice to shake his little hand.”

Suzanne heard the swish of Miss Edina's skirts and the heavy thump of the girl's feet as she left. A large girl, most likely. Able to lift Clayton or Sason if need be. But certainly she'd be unable to teach them a thing about good grammar. Suzanne had thought to tell her to stay, that she'd find some work for her, even if it weren't teaching her children.

No, she had to find the right person, not jump in too soon, not get frustrated and slip off a rock in her haste to make it across this stream. At least Miss Edina was the last interview for the day. Suzanne had forgotten how much energy it took to listen to everything a new person said, to hear the lilt in their voice, the length of a pause, the boldness of a question. What did the shuffle of their feet mean? If Pig barked but thumped his tail on the floor, was that different than if he stood and slobbered at the person's skirts? If they paused, were they thinking, or scheming, about how to answer? Did they sneak little candies from the bowl right in front of her, or did they sit and look at her as though she could see even though she couldn't? She hadn't realized the comfort that came in familiarity, in not having to wonder about every detail of a relationship. She removed her dark glasses and rubbed at her eyes. How could they tire when they did nothing all day?