All Together in One Place (26 page)

It was with Mazy s arm around her that Tipton gazed at last on her intended.

Together, they watched Charles ride in from a distance, leading a mule. Tipton stared at the familiar clothing, squinting, assessing what was out of place. Sunburst spurs hung from Charles's saddlehorn. Diggers, Tyrell called them, an old term he said was more descriptive than a spur. Then her fingers found their way into her mouth, pressed the flesh against her teeth until the pain exploded in her brain.

Mazy tried to pull her back while Matt Schmidtke and Joe Pepin lowered the body of Tyrell onto the grass, his face a distorted pulp of black powder and flesh.

“Took a shot at a buck,” Charles said as though discussing a sudden change in the weather. He sat atop his horse, gloved hands loosely holding the reins, crossed and resting on the saddle pommel. His horse lifted a back leg to scratch at a fly, stomped back, and Charles settled, shifted without effort. “Blew in the barrel before reloading. Charge hadn't fired, and it discharged into his mouth. Stupid,” Charles said.

“We all do it,” Joe Pepin defended. “Have myself often enough with a flintlock.”

“Still stupid. Hows Father?” Charles asked then.

“Your pa went home this morning,” Joe Pepin told him, Adams apple bobbing. “Sorry, son.”

Charles's face didn't change, but his words took on a swampy edge. “Your fault,” he said. He blew air of disgust through his nostrils.

“Mine?” Joe said, his bushy eyebrows raised in question.

Tipton knew her brother spoke to her.

“Father would still be here. But no, you had to have your way, had to go with Tyrell. Now see what that's gotten you? You've killed him, too.

Tipton covered Tyrell's body with her own then, tried to pull him to her chest, rocking, moaning now, a haunting, distant wail. She stroked her beloved and sobbed.

“He was always looking after Tipton,” Charles said. “Who's going to do that now?”

Tipton turned to her brother, watched the tensed shoulders, the bright red of his mottled skin, the throbbing of that vein in his short, tanned neck.

“Mother insisted Father find you, so she wouldn't be without her Tipton.” He spit the word that was her name, a family name.

What would Tyrell do, what would Tyrell say to stop her thudding heart? Tipton didn't know and couldn't pull it forth.

“Tipton this, and Tipton that.”

“Charles. Stop,” Mazy said.

He continued his steely tirade, spittle forming at the corners of his mouth Tipton could see his lips move, his eyes dark, hooded. The words ran together like thick cotton pressed into her ears. “No,” she whispered, looking up into Mazy's eyes. “No.” Mazy bent over her and loosened Tipton's distorted fingers from her intended's lifeless body.

“Tyrell neither!” Charles shouted, breaking through. “Went west to please you, make a life for you, Papa and Tyrell did. Always taking care of Tipton, that's what killed Papa.”

“Charles,” Mazy said, her arms wrapped around a wispy Tipton. “Enough”

Charles wiped the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand.
Tipton wanted him finished of saying out loud the painful words she said now to herself “You'll pay for this someday. You will,” he said.

“I already am,” she whispered.

Mazy turned the girl toward the Wilson wagon. Tipton moved as though through mud, her feet heavy. She held her breath as Tyrell once told her to do. Still, her fingers contorted into a crone s hand, the thumb and index finger spread out, the others cupped and rigid. Her breath came short, and she felt the numbness creeping down her shoulder.

“I got his spurs,” Charles said. “I'll take ‘em in trade for bringing him back.”

“Charles,” Mazy said. “Please. It's all she's got left of him.”

“Not much of him left,” Charles said. “Like I said, stupid, in more ways than one.”

Tipton moved in a nightmare. She saw Elizabeth striding toward her, arms outstretched. She searched for her mother, her father, then remembered. The silver rowels spun as Charles yanked on his horse's bit and trotted away. Tipton felt weightless, as if the wind could lift her. She prayed it would, lift her and take her away.

Help me, help me, help me.

Mazy held her up.

“What's happening?” Jeremy asked her. “Why aren't we moving?”

Mazy wiped his forehead with a cool rag, ran it around his neck and over his chest. He shook, his teeth chattering even as his body oozed perspiration.

“We've decided to stop. Hathaway Wilson's died. Antone Schmidtke, too, and Mariah, their daughters peaked.” She busied herself with rinsing the rag, twisted the water out, letting her hands cool before turning back to her husband. “Tyrell's gone,” she said. “Passed on.”

“He was sick? I didn't…I've missed days?”

Mazy shook her head. “Not from this, whatever it is. An accident.” Even as she told him, it made no sense—Tyrell was such a careful man, so methodical.

“Guidebook…”

“I know. More die of accidents than illness. Tipton's beside herself. Adoras of no help what with Hathaway gone too. Oh, Jeremy, you ve just got to get better.” She heard the desperation in her voice, vowed to change it. She took a deep breath to slow her words. “So we re staying, just for a day or two. I dont know what will happen now. I suppose someone will step forward to take Antone s place.”

“Maybe…I'll improve ” He grimaced.

“I'd not oppose it this time, that's sure.”

“Timing's, essential,” Jeremy said. He shook and sucked air in through his teeth

She spooned soup into his mouth. His skin looked blue in the frangible light filtered through the canvas amber. She felt a tightness in her throat as she helped him lay his head down on the rolled blanket, settled it beneath his neck. He looked older than she remembered, and his skin puckered the color of her father's—just before he died.

She began to talk then, repeating and rapid, of the routine and everyday. She spoke of Sister Esther and the honeybees and the antelope's antics scattering pots and pans when it followed Elizabeth about, leaving her mother panting as she pounced on the animal's tether rope. She talked of the tomato, how her mother confessed that she'd sprinkled flour dust on it now and again when she made a pie, just to keep Mazy puzzling. Something to think about besides the blisters.

“One cow, Mavis,” Mazy said, “I think she's been bred. She'll calve a month or two after our baby's born. Isn't that lovely? I think it's lovely. Do you want more soup? Oh, Jeremy, what can I do?” Her speech rushed as though utterance and disallowance could prevent from happening what she knew was now truth.

“When should I re-breed her, Jeremy? How many days after she calves?”

He answered with a thick tongue, and she knew when he did that he knew the inevitable too. “Breed her,” he said, “so she conceives, seventy-five to one hundred days…after she calves. It will give”—he stopped to take a deeper breath—”the greatest milk. The eighty-fifth day it will be twelve months…between calves. Keep records, Mazy. Cant remember Double the herd…still sell…milk.”

“The eighty-fifth day. I'll remember,” she said and felt the tears press against her nose and
eyes.

The Lord knows my lot, the Lord knows my ht.

She wondered at what she chose to tell him, there was so little time. She couldn't say the words, didn't want to say out loud that this might be their last discussion over anything at all.

“Go on,” Jeremy told her. He had thrown up the little soup she'd gotten down him, and now perspiration soaked him and the linens. “Donation Land Claim. You. Your mother ¨stay. Just three years. There's money. To prove up.”

“Don't talk ofthat now.”

“Money. In the wagon. False floor. A thousand dollars.”

“Where did it come from? Jeremy?”

“Go on, Mazy. Don't turn back.”

“But is it from the sale of the farm? Where?”

He shook his head, struggled to talk. “Just keep going, promise me

She didn't want their last exchange to be of something so mundane as money, of calving and cows; she didn't want to make any promises she couldn't keep.

She squeezed the water from the rag, dipped it into fresh, and laid it back across his wide forehead. He looked stripped without his glasses, vulnerable and small. If she pretended not to hear him, then none of this would happen. She had to give God time to perform his miracle of
healing. She prayed. She believed. All she wanted was her husband well and his arms around her heart.

Shadows flickered against the canvas that bounded them like a cave of thinnest bone Candle wax smelled strong, his breathing raspy.

Suddenly, she had to know, had to find an answer to a question she had harbored in her heart.

“Would you have gone without me, Jeremy? If I hadn't agreed to leave the bluffs, the river, would you have gone on without me?”

“I am going on…without you, Maze,” he said.

“But would you? If I had stood firm. I need to know, to know if I could have prevented this if I had just refused, been stubborn, and insisted that we stay home.”

“I'm going home.” He lifted his hand to her head, as gentle as a butterfly landing.

“Please, Jeremy, tell me.”

“I would have left,” he said then. “It was in my blood, to come. No regrets for leaving home; but for being willing, .to leave you for it, for not loving you…enough to stay For that I ask…forgiveness. Think God's given it.”

He lifted her hand to his lips then, gazed at her. She thought she nodded to him. His eyes looked as though to sink inside hers. “You're…a big girl, Mazy,” he rattled from his chest. “You can do this.” He took one, then two last halting breaths before his labored breathing ended

It could be sliced with an icicle, Ruth thought, as the emptiness of death settled on them, heavy as any snowfall back in the States. This time of grieving brought all that back, that winter past when she couldn't lift her legs without them aching, pushing against the wet and heavy drifts to feed the horses. The next day she'd done it all again, not because
she wanted to or thought her body could, but because to succumb meant a loss too great to imagine; animals down or dead, her own desire defeated

This time shadowed that. Her brother, gone. Her gentle, caring brother, dead, and now others, people new to her but somehow connected like the spokes of a wheel all bound to a hub. What Ruth could offer was a push to action. That was what countered grief.

Tomorrow, they'd get through the burials. So many. Sister Esther's second brother dead too Ferrel, his name was. The Sister's face carried the look of a frustrated cat about to pounce on something. Antone, Tyrell, Hathaway, and Jeremy.

Then Ruth would press to convene a meeting, provide relief with the presentation of a plan. Move forward. They'd slip through the grip of grief as long as they headed on. She was as sure ofthat as she was that the Platte harbored quicksand.

She'd talk with Matt and that Pepin man about taking the cattle ahead, to make faster time to Fort Laramie. Some of her horses could go too, send packs full of grain from her wagon. She'd bring Jed and Betha's and meet up with them later. Maybe the Bacon bull could go with them, be less of a trouble for them. They'd have to combine wagons.

Ruth made her way past Suzanne's wagon, surprised to see the Bacons’ dog lying there, what with Jeremy passed on. She checked on Betha, brushed the hair from her nephew's puffed
eyes
, let the children cling to her. She looked for Sarah, who asked for so little, and held her, too. Jessie had begged to come with her for the night, and she'd agreed. She liked the action of tucking the coverlet around the child as she crawled into the bed. She'd pulled the flannel up to the girl's chin. Jessie flipped it back. “Too hot,” she said, then closed her eyes to sleep.

In her bedroll, Ruth listened to the crickets and swatted at the buzzing of mosquitoes, wanting to drown out the sounds of sadness she heard from wagons beyond. Jessie slept beside her. She'd concentrate on
the child's safe, even breathing. A tiny island of joy in this sea of frozen grief.