The Fugitive Son (24 page)

“Of course, especially if you’re preparing it,” Elsie said with a laugh. “I guess since I invited myself along on this journey, I should be doing the cooking.”

“Nope. I invited myself to escort you. I’ll do the cooking for the next few days,” he insisted.

She giggled again. “Probably scared to try my cooking, right?”

It was Trip’s turn to laugh. “It had crossed my mind that you haven’t had a lot of experience cooking over a campfire.”

“True. But I think I could figure it out. At least let me help clean up.”

“I’ll agree to that,” he said. “I figure we’ve got about three more days to travel. If we eat a hearty breakfast, we can skip the nooning and set up camp for supper in the early evening. How does that sound?”

Elsie looked at her raw hands, then quickly tucked them in the folds of her skirt so Trip wouldn’t see them. She hoped she could handle the reins all day without too much pain and torture, but no way would she complain and try to get sympathy. After all, she was a pioneer now. She wouldn’t let a couple of sore hands slow her down.

They watched as the flames slowly crackled down into embers. It was a lovely evening, one that lent itself to sharing confidences. Trip glanced at her. “You said you didn’t have many visitors at the plantation. Did you count all your handsome young swains in that?”

Elsie shook her head. “No young swains, handsome or otherwise. With my stern father and over-protective big brothers, I think young men were afraid to come calling. Being a devout Methodist, I only attended one or two balls, and I didn’t follow the local custom of having a debutante ball.”

“There aren’t many young men of your social class in Santa Fe,” Trip offered. “But the fellas who are there will beat a path to your door, I’m sure.”

“I’m not looking for a man,” she insisted. “I’ve got my heart set on establishing the mercantile and running my own business.”

“Your brothers may have other plans for their baby sister…” Trip stopped suddenly in mid-sentence, as if he had said too much.

Too late. Elsie had already latched onto his words. She looked at him with a quizzical expression. “You know my brothers?”

Trip looked uncomfortable and busied himself poking the embers. Ignoring her question, he asked one of his own. “Why are you interested in the Mormons?”

Deciding to let him remain silent on the subject of her brothers, Elsie replied, “I’m not really. But Sara and Cindy, and even Sally Poteet, for that matter, talked about them a lot. As did my friends on the steamboat.”

“Doesn’t surprise me. With Gen. Johnston’s armies marching across Kansas toward Utah, the Mormons are in all the papers. Buchanan really doesn’t think much of their prophet, Brigham Young, so he’s always accusing him of some weird stuff.”

“Do you think there will really be a war in Utah?” Elsie shivered and pulled her shawl around her shoulders against the night air.

“If there is, it won’t be much of a war,” Trip said. “Buchanan’s got a lot more than the Mormons to deal with, so they’ll probably call some kind of truce and drop it. And old Brigham isn’t going to risk his kingdom and all his wives on a fight with the United States Army! He’s got too much to lose. That doesn’t mean he won’t create all the havoc he can in the meantime. I hear he’s a devious one.”

Elsie shuddered. “I can’t understand why there’s always so much talk of going to war.” She looked off in the distance when a coyote howled. “That’s the main reason I had to leave the plantation – all the rumors about the states going to war against each other.”

“So you don’t believe in war?”

“I just know that going to war over every disagreement is just plain silly. I declare, if women were in charge of the government, I’m sure there wouldn’t be any more wars.”

“You’re quite an interesting bundle of ideas.” Trip sounded bemused.

“Should I take that as a compliment or an insult?”

“I’m serious. You’re unlike any woman I’ve met before. You fascinate me.”

Was he flirting with her? Or simply being truthful? Suddenly Elsie felt out of her depth. Should she flirt back? Or would that encourage something she might not want? Trip was good-looking, but he hadn’t told her anything of his personal life. Was he hiding something?

She decided to go with honest sharing rather than flirtatious banter. “Why haven’t you ever married?” she asked boldly.

Trip studied her for a moment. “And who says I haven’t?”

“Are you? Married, I mean.”

He considered her question for a long pause, making her feel guilty that she had pried into his personal life. A lady simply didn’t ask such questions.

“Not really,” he answered.

That left her with even more questions. What did “not really” mean? Was he just being evasive? Was he betrothed? Or had he been married before? Dozens of questions, no answers.

Trip doused the remaining embers of the campfire and headed toward his wagon. “Guess we’d better turn in if we want to get an early morning start.”

The first gray streaks of dawn were rising over the distant bluffs when Elsie smelled the scents of breakfast wafting over their campsite. “Ummmmm, coffee,” she murmured, stepping up close to the fire Trip had already started. “You weren’t joking about an early morning start, were you?” she said, yawning sleepily.

Trip pointed to a ridge in the distance. “That’s Wagon Mound over there,” he said. “It’s one of the major landmarks on the Santa Fe Trail. Folks know they’re getting within a few days of the end of the trail when they see that.”

Elsie looked toward where he pointed. “You said ‘Wagon Mound?’ It does sort of resemble the top of a covered wagon, doesn’t it? Is that where it gets its name?”

“Yep.” He bent over, picked up a stick and began drawing a map of sorts in the sandy dirt. “I take it you don’t know much about the trail, so I’ll show you what we’ve got coming up.” He drew a long line, showing the trail from its stretch across western Kansas to where they had said goodbye to the Fanchers.

“And here,” he pointed to another intersection where he had drawn in a line heading north again, “is the settlement of Watrous where the Old Santa Fe Trail joins back in with the Cimarron Cutoff, which we’re on.”

“A village? You mean there’s actually civilization this far out?” she asked, excited to think they might actually meet more people.

“Not much of one. But before we reach it, we’ll stop at Fort Union, so you’ll get to meet some officers – if they haven’t left to join Johnston’s army to fight the Mormons.” As if replying to his own suggestion, he added, “I doubt if any of them will be assigned to the Mormon War. Their duty is to protect travelers along the trail and prevent Indian raids on the few settlements and ranches around the area.”

He went back to his map. “After we stop at the fort to drop off some of the supplies I’ve brought, our next stop will be a little place called Las Vegas, another trading center I’m supplying, then on to Pecos Pueblo. It’s not a trading center anymore – been abandoned for years – but it makes a great campsite. Wouldn’t be surprised if a few wagon trains are pulled off there before the last big push into Santa Fe.”

“So we’ll get to Pecos by nightfall?”

“Nope. By time I stop and make my deliveries, it will probably be a couple more nights before we make it to Pecos, then one more day into Santa Fe.”

Elsie looked at her sore, red hands. All the ointment she had rubbed into them last night hadn’t seemed to help much. Trip saw her hands before she could hide them in her skirt. “Good grief, woman!” he sputtered. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

He rushed into his wagon and pulled out a medical kit of sorts. He tenderly wrapped clean white bandages around her hands after slathering them in a soothing salve. “Now put these gloves on,” he insisted. “We don’t want your hands getting infected.”

Elsie thanked him profusely, feeling somewhat shamed that she had needed his help. “You certainly are my guardian angel,” she confessed, “taking care of every problem that comes my way.”

He simply grunted in reply and began picking up, washing up their few breakfast utensils so she wouldn’t get her hands wet in the dishwater.

“Time to head out,” he said, stalking off toward his wagon.

Parowan, Utah Territory

A
NDY WAS
surprised to find Aunt Hettie sitting outside her cabin when he pulled into her yard. “What are you doing up so late?” he asked.

“Waiting for you.” Matter-of-fact as ever, she put her fingers to her lips in a shushing sound. “Kids are all asleep in there, and I don’t want them waking up. The less they know about what’s going on, the safer they’ll be.”

Remembering Pa’s warning not to mention the day’s events to anyone, Andy wondered how Hettie already knew something bad had happened.

As if in answer to his unspoken question, she said, “Already heard all about the goings on down in the meadow. My place has been a regular hospital all afternoon. Chief Kanosh and his warriors came by early on, some of them pretty shot up. They left the battle early, so they didn’t know the full story, but they’re bound to get blamed for whatever happened, so they were hurrying back to their village.”

Andy considered her comment. His initial assumption had been correct – Kanosh and his men were the ones he saw leaving the meadow after shooting a few cattle. He was relieved to know the Indian chief had kept his word not to do any killing.

“Then that young friend of yours, Jim Pierce, dropped in. His face was shot up pretty bad.” She shook her head in disbelief. “How a man can try to shoot his own son in the back is beyond me! Just ain’t natural.”

“Jim Pierce came by here? How bad were his wounds?”

“Let’s just say it’s a good thing his old man is such a bad shot. Jim said he was trying to get away from the horrible scene and managed to get some distance between himself and his father before he was discovered running away. Jim Senior plugged him but missed the back of his head when he ducked. He’ll have an ugly scar on his face, but he’s gonna live.”

Andy breathed a prayer of thanksgiving. “So where is he headed?”

Hettie studied him, as if to figure out how far she could trust him.

“It’s okay,” he assured her. “I’m leaving myself, just as soon as I can get packed up. Pa won’t be here until morning, and I want to be long gone before then. Just let him think I headed back up north.”

“I was hoping that’s what you planned, especially after young Jim was here. I’m convinced your pa would try to shoot you out of the saddle, too, if he thought you’d breathe a word about what happened today,” she admitted. “So I’ve already got you all packed up, got you a fresh horse ready, and your saddle bags full of food to sustain you for a few days.”

“Bless you,” Andy said, giving her a grateful hug. “Pa sure doesn’t know what a treasure he has in you. But will this get you in trouble for helping me?”

“Nah, I’ll just let him think you slipped out in the middle of the night without telling me you were leaving.”

All the time they were talking, Hettie kept busy loading up his vittles and bedroll, which she had had the foresight to set outside as soon as the children had gone to sleep. “Jim is heading north toward Oregon,” she offered. “But I expect you’re going east?”