All Together in One Place (12 page)

“And there goes the Tipton-watching money you said we badly needed. To pay Tyrell.”

“Your arms healing. You always said you like to keep busy. Weren't too crazy to take her on in the first place, if I recall.”

“It's not my arm that troubles me. Milking Mavis and Jennifer'U be good for it, keep it limber, I imagine. It's what'U happen later. With the Wilsons arriving now, and the potential complication that causes and the delay at the crossing, these're all signs, Jeremy. Signs.” Her hands dropped to her sides and she sat. “We've erred in coming. This isn't at all what we're supposed to be doing. We're not paying attention.”

“Your worries are carried on frail legs,” Jeremy said.

“We should go back. I feel it in my bones. Something's amiss, and this might be our last chance to turn around.”

“You've got to let it go, Mazy, and just accept. There is nothing to go back to in Grant County, even if we did turn around, don't you see that? This, here and now, this is our opportunity.”

“But with Tyrell gone—”

“He isn't gone, not yet, maybe wont be. I don't want to discuss it No more, Mazy. No more!”

“They wont let us continue on without a teamster for mother's wagon.”

He lifted his hand as though to stop her talking as a man might halt a horse with an upraised palm. Elizabeth gasped at the shadow, fearing he might strike Mazy. She thought to intervene when Jeremy dropped his hand, knelt down before his wife. “We'll go on our own, then, Maze. I've heard of plenty folks with one or two make it just fine.”

Was that agony in the man's voice, such a drive to go west? Did Mazy hear it too? Elizabeth waited for her daughter's retort and found the silence deafening. She'd almost pulled at the puckering-string, to poke her head up under it and present herself a jolly interruption as though having approached just then.

“To go alone is witless, Jeremy. I will not be unattached. I'll—”

“What? Leave?” He snorted, stood. “Don't threaten, Mazy. It doesn't become you.”

“We don't even have anything waiting for us at the end. Nothing. The starting over will just keep dragging on.”

“Three hundred twenty acres await us. A new life awaits us. Let go, Maze. Move on.”

Silence followed, then the sounds of people preparing for bed Elizabeth decided not to enter that den of dissent and instead made her way back to her wagon.

This morning as Elizabeth recalled the argument, she wondered whether Jeremyd have to give the “Tipton-watching money” back if Tipton traveled now with her family. He wouldn't part with that easily. He did tend to be tight-fisted when it came to money.

She rubbed her right hip and raised her leg to hear the “pop” that greased it, had ever since she'd broken it ice skating the year after she was married. The Wilson girl still slept beside her. Poor thing. Her free and
frolicsome ways with the blacksmith were stopping quicker than a fast horse on a bridge-out road. Didn t seem fair, though the girl was but fifteen. She'd been good help. Might be her mother'd let her share this wagon still. Though it was not likely Adora had a way of hoverin a mite close and would want her daughter under her thumb, little doubt of that. Why else would she have come so far?

A blast of wind sucked the canvas sides out, followed by soft raindrops. They'd camped beneath a cottonwood, and Elizabeth hoped wet leaves and not a new storm accounted for the sound. She heard stirrings outside Dawn seeped in through the thinner dots of canvas that arched over her. She smelled the mustiness of mildew where the water had surged in during a hailstorm not many days before. The strong scent bothered her as it pasted itself to the tie rounds She rubbed her nose, wishing it were less sensitive but grateful she could smell She'd give anything for a lemon slice to rub the canvas, salt the mildew down, then spread the covering in the sun to dry—if the sun came out while they waited their turn to cross A square of Tipton's mirror reflected a shaft of sunlight—a hopeful sign.

Tipton groaned Elizabeth would miss jawing with the girl when Adora took her back, even if she spoke little of what was ever on her mind.

A shout in the distance,
ait gees
and
haws
and slaps of hats to thighs moving wagons to the river told her she'd best get up. Pulling or driving the herds of people and cattle across the Missouri was going to be quite an adventure, what with the river running so dirty and high. Jeremy said he didn't like the idea of paying the Mormons their ferrying fee. Well, she'd spend her own money on the ferry if need be—if she could find the bulk of it

Her stomach hurt with that thought, and she hiccuped. How it came to be that her perished husband had created this new pressure before he died still rankled her What was he thinking of, putting their home in Jeremy's name? And not telling her or him either, if she believed her son-in-law. As far as she was concerned, it was still her
money. She'd think of it as a scavenger hunt, guessing what few places he really had to hide a sum of bills and coins between their two wagons. At least Jeremy hadn't argued about her need for a wagon. And he said he'd hold the remainder of the house-sale money for “safekeeping.”

Today she'd check the flour barrel to see if what belonged to her lay buried deep beneath the grain And once they crossed the river, she'd look to see how much of her money was left.

The girl beside her made soft sounds with her mouth, and Elizabeth smiled. It reminded her of Mazy making noises in her sleep. Mazy'd been an easy care, a baby sleeping through the night within the first month. Elizabeth had often lowered her face over the cradle to be sure she breathed, she had lain so still, her birth and life such a mystery. Then in the second or third month, as though to quiet her mother's fears, the child began making sounds, little mews and smacks in her sleep, so Elizabeth could lie beside her husband and listen and know the child lived. Mazy seemed early destined to be looking after others.

Mazy didn't know when she'd begun talking more to the dog and the cow and even the brute than to her husband. She had always shared her thoughts with Pig, but the cow brute was new, and exchanging pleasantries with Mavis or Jennifer, as she'd named them, stretched her understanding. Her head bent into the hams of the cow, Mavis's tail swishing and catching in the braid of Mazy s hair. Agitated, the cow stepped from foot to foot.

“Oh, Mavis, now, let's calm, let's calm. No need to be sashaying without music”

The cow turned its head and stared at her, not chewing its cud “Wish we had a calf for you to be licking while I milk. That would settle you. Or maybe I should milk beside you.” Mazy wondered how the cow would adjust to such a change. “At least I'd be less at risk of getting your hoof inside my mouth, right, Mavis, girl?”

The cow relaxed as Mazy spoke, chattered, and then hummed a lullaby. The wooden bucket filled, the cows teat changing from firm to flaccid in her hand. Foam settled on the side, then disappeared into a pond of white, releasing with it a scent that usually gave no bother. This morning, however, it made her swallow, and she wondered if she'd be able to keep her breakfast down. She panted like a dog, as her mother had taught her. It kept the bile from rising. Then she pushed her shoulder over the bucket to keep Mavis's manure-clotted tail from dipping into it and ruining a morning's work.

Pig lay not far away, one eyebrow raised each time Mazy spoke. He'd always been a fine listener, following Mazy about or lying near her feet, so close she sometimes stumbled and found herself apologizing, or she would ask him if he wanted a scrap as though he could answer. Once or twice, Jeremy had even looked up from his paper, adjusted his glasses and said, “What is it? I didn't hear you,” then adding “oh,” before dropping his eyes, realizing her words had been for the dog.

As for the cow brute, even he seemed less lawless, though Mazy walked a wide berth around him as she did now. Jeremy'd kept him in a separate corral, not wanting him damaged by the horns of other cattle. It meant more care, but giving it made Jeremy's nose run and his head hurt, so Mazy took over the task

Yesterday, she and Tyrell and Elizabeth had hitched up the wagon and driven to a green knoll. They'd cut and bound several bundles and brought them back for the stock. Fine stems of grass dribbled from her dress, still brushed along the wagon floor despite her sweeping. She couldn't imagine keeping the stock separated like that from those out grazing all the way west.

The brute's eyes followed her now as she headed back. She talked and he chewed his cud, his head like a heavy load being pulled up by his neck. It must have been the fright, Mazy thought, the newness of it all, that made him go daft upon their first meeting. She wasn't all that unlike him, wanting to lash out in uncertainty. He didn't seem that troubled now.

“You must have been frightened,” she told him. “People do strange things when they are, and I suspect bovines do too.”

“You dont look the part of someone knowledgeable of fright, nor that of a milkmaid either, though the scarf is becoming.”

The mans words startled Mazy. “Pig, you didn't warn me.” She turned to look into the open, tanned face of a man Jeremy d pointed out to her during the dance, said it was the face of a “white-collared” man. He removed his hat, revealing hair parted in the center with gentle waves flowing out to either side. Mazy realized she had to look up to see into his eyes, something she seldom had the delight to do.

“I've been a milkmaid for some time now,” she said

“And the fright?”

“That's newly arrived, I'd say.” She wondered at her own boldness in talking to a strange man, but she liked the quiet of his eyes, the forth-Tightness that pooled behind them. He must have used his shaving cup often as he wore no beard.

“I'm Seth Forrester. And you must be…?”

“Mazy Bacon. Mrs. Mazy Bacon.”

“Ah, yes, the sage advisor of our meeting past.”

Mazy blushed. “It was just an offer, a way around a thing.”

“Admirable, though. I didn't relish sitting through a tedious discussion of the merits of men's leadership while a fiddle warmed up. I believe you're right, command reveals itself in action more than words, so perhaps today we'll see. You're planning to farm in California?”

“My husband wishes to build a dairy, but I believe he has his heart set on Oregon,” she said.

“And your heart? Where is it set?”

The question came from a place of genuineness, the way her father might have spoken to her, helped her find her depth within a subject, urged her to risk searching deeper by his listening with his head and heart to what she had to say.

“Home, actually,” she said before she could think. She looked away, took a deep breath. “I've thought we might do well in California,
providing dairy for the mining camps, though I haven't a suggestion of how the land lays there, what it might be like for cows or families either. Ayrshires are said to be excellent grazers, though. They can survive where other breeds might not. We've read more of Oregon Territory, of course.”

“They say there's a sign beyond Fort Laramie that points north with this way to Oregon written on it, so those who can read end up there and the rest head into California.” He smiled, and his thick eyebrows the color of clover honey lifted above amber eyes.

“They'll have to rely on their compass headings, the Californians, then, won't they?” Mazy said to Seth's laughter. “That's where you're going?” Mazy asked “To California?”

“My kind of occupation thrives in places where people are willing to take risks. The territory is of little matter, though I do like to read.”

“And that occupation is…?”

A flicker of disappointment crossed his face. “I suspect you know, Mrs Bacon, as most people do.”

Mazy dropped her eyes, not because she spoke with a gambler and a man who was not her husband but because he'd caught her being less than true.

“I do,” she said and faced forward. “And it sorrows me a bit, to see so many people taking chances. Now I'm among them.” She untied Mavis and slapped the cow's bony back. She'd be glad when Mavis came into her heat so she could be bred and the milking could stop for a time. “I'd best be heading back. We might cross today,” she said, nodding toward the river.

“So we might.” Seth reached to carry the bucket, and she let him take it, looking up again as he placed his black high top hat on his head.

“A beaverskin hat, isn't it?”

He nodded. “Got to have the trappings of the best,” he said. “People like to play poker with someone they think is a worthy opponent. Makes them think they're special when they best me…in the early hands. I don't like to disappoint them.”

“I imagine not.”

Pig stood and trailed behind them. As they walked toward the wagons, they spoke of little things, the weather, she of her Wisconsin, he of Virginia, the state of his birth. It was a pleasant conversation between friends, more than talking to the dog. At the wagon, Seth handed her back the bucket. “Perhaps we'll chat again someday, Mrs. Bacon. It's been my pleasure. Pig,” he said, and dipped his hat to the dog

“Mine, too,” she said as he tipped his fingers to the brim and strode away.