Trail Angel (16 page)

“Come quick. My brother's been hurt. Bad.”

In the morning, they had a body but no coffin, no grave and no clergyman.

Josey had been so intent on protecting these people from road agents, wild animals and Indians he never stopped to think of the everyday places where danger lay.

Stephen Chestnut had no experience with guns, but he thought it necessary to have one to protect his family. His teenage son, Burton, had even less experience in handling the weapon. He probably didn't know his father had left the rifle loaded after encountering the Indians. Josey imagined the boy's death almost as if he'd been there: Hearing multiple shots on the other side of camp, the boy feared the wagons were under attack. He must have triggered the gun when he grabbed it. The shot tore away half his face. No one could do anything for him.

In their shared grief, the wagon train came together. Annabelle, wearing black again, cleaned and wrapped the body with her mother and aunt. The rest of the women took on extra cooking and cleaning to help the family. Ben Miller led the miners in digging a grave. Fearing wild animals might dig up the body, no one liked the idea of a burial without a coffin. George Franklin came forward with a solution. The Yankee known for his frugality had a double floor in his wagon. By repacking things, he removed the wood used to construct the second level. Caleb Williams and the Daggett boys used it to build a coffin. Langdon Rutledge and his brother-in-law formed a marker in the shape of a cross from extra pieces of wood. Alexander Brewster prepared a eulogy.

Frontiersmen might be quick to condemn city folk who seek to make their way in the west, he told the grieving parents, but it takes a special kind of bravery for such men to strike out into a new world.

“Burton Chestnut's final thoughts had been for the safety of his family and friends,” Brewster concluded. “He may have been afraid, but he didn't let his fear stop him from taking action.”

Josey thought it a fine eulogy. There wasn't a dry eye among the women—and many of the men as well. He helped place the coffin into the ground. As soon as they covered the coffin, the families prepared to move on. They couldn't stop to mourn, even for a day.

Before dawn the next morning Josey lingered over a cup of warm milk when Mary Rutledge joined him by the fire. He listened as she spoke of the funeral, realizing she'd been unable to bury the two sons she lost.

“I suppose you get used to funerals in the army,” she said.

“Not really.” Josey recalled fields that appeared carpeted with corpses. Dead buried in mass graves. Grave diggers dumping bodies into a hole. A man leaping on top, compressing the pile so more bodies would fit. “War doesn't leave much time for proper mourning. I expect it's harder on those at home. Your sons. Annabelle's husband.” He watched her as he said the last but saw no reaction. “She must have loved him dearly, to mourn so long.”

“I'm not sure she ever loved him.”

Josey's pulse quickened at her response. More questions popped into his mind, but he feared asking might appear unseemly. He relaxed when Mrs. Rutledge continued without prodding.

“I blame myself for permitting the match. Richard was a strange man. He was handsome, came from a good family and could be charming as the devil. But I don't think it was in him to give himself to another. He married Annabelle for Langdon's money and to appease his own father more than anything she meant to him. Annabelle and I have never talked about it, but after Richard's father died and his inheritance was secure, I don't think he cared to be married any longer.”

“But she is so beautiful, why—” Josey stopped as Mrs. Rut-ledge looked to him, her eyes alert to his curiosity. In the first hint of a smile, he saw Annabelle in her mother's lean face. Mrs. Rutledge—Mary—would have been just as beautiful once, was still beautiful, in truth.

Mary cocked her head as she looked at him, leaving Josey with the uncomfortable sense that he was being judged. “Have you ever been married?”

Josey nearly choked on his negative response.

“Ever been in love?”

He squirmed under the woman's gaze, unable to recall when he'd last been so uncomfortable. She waited, one eyebrow cocked in anticipation. He didn't see an alternative but to answer. “There was a woman.”

“That's not what I asked.”

Even with the passage of almost two years, the answer was complicated in Josey's mind. When Josey met her, the woman lived alone near the border between Kansas and Missouri. He'd never been clear about which side. She was older than Josey, and she was married. Or had been married. Josey never asked. “I cared for a woman.”

Mary Rutledge watched him closely. “You must have cared a lot.”

“I don't think there was enough time to call it love.”

“Love can happen fast.”

“How do you know?”

She merely smiled at him.

The woman lived on a small farm, little more than a cabin with a barn and a field. After Josey ran off the bummers who harassed her, he should have never seen her again.

Yet she occupied his mind that afternoon when he took aim at the deer. Even as he shot, he knew it had no more chance of filling the army's larders than the silverware the soldiers had intended to steal from her.

The woman greeted him at the door with a flintlock pistol pointed in his face.

“What do you want?”

“Nothing. Want to give you something.” He returned to his horse. She stepped onto the porch to watch him. He hoisted the buck onto his shoulders. “Somewhere I can hang this?”

She motioned with her head toward the barn. “Out back. There's water and a tree.” She turned and went into the house, closing the door.

It was dark by the time he finished and knocked on the door. The pistol was gone. Her straw-colored hair was dark around her face where she had washed. She wore a clean dress, white with a pattern of flowers on the cloth. Josey figured she didn't wear it much.

“You should let it hang for a few days—” The look she gave cut him off. She knew how to butcher a deer.

“I'm sorry about before,” she said, not meeting his eyes. “It was kind of you to come back. I guess I'm not accustomed to kindnesses.”

She invited him in. Her soft voice carried a hint of accent that made Josey think she must be from farther south. They stood in a large central room. A doorway in the back led to a darkened bedroom near stairs to a loft. He expected she had a husband and children but saw no evidence of anyone else. She stood close enough he could smell fresh soap and something else, like flowers, maybe lavender. His hands fidgeted, and he crossed his arms to still them.

She moved past him toward a stone hearth where a kettle hung over a fire. “I've started a stew,” she said, lifting the lid and stirring. “It's nothing much, but I managed to keep some things from your friends.”

“They weren't my friends.” His stomach rumbled at the smell of the stew. “I should go.”

“Your stomach disagrees.” Her laughter melted some of his awkwardness. She studied him a moment, then looked away. “There's a bath behind the screen. The water's no longer hot, but it's mostly clean.”

He took the hint. He watched over the top of the screen as she sliced bread, humming softly as she worked. He undressed slowly, feeling exposed even with the screen.

As he bathed, she called from the other side of the room. “I brought you some clothes. They may be a little big, but they will be more comfortable than that dirty uniform.” He laughed at the sight of her clean white hands reaching blindly around the screen to leave the clothes. “Don't be rude,” she said, a note of gaiety in her voice.

The clothes were too big.
Her husband's?
Like a child in his father's flannel shirt, he rolled up the sleeves and tucked the extra folds into the pants. She managed not to laugh as she gave an appraising look. “How long have you been growing that beard?”

Josey shrugged, moved his hands over the patch of whiskers.

“I think it's time you gave it up.” She smiled so the words wouldn't offend. “Will you let me? We have time while the stew cooks.” She set him at the table and covered his clean shirt with an apron. “I've been warming water for tea.” She slipped a hot, wet cloth over his face. “This is more important.”

As she soaped him, Josey saw her in glimpses, like pieces in a puzzle. Her eyes were a cornflower blue. Her long, narrow face probably gave her a gaunt look even when food wasn't scarce. A few strands of gray stood out in the hair pushed back behind her ears. A simple silver band adorned one finger. The skin on her hands and neck was sun-darkened, but when she leaned over him with the straight razor, her dress fell forward enough for him to glimpse the pale skin and a splash of freckles beneath. She did not speak as she worked. Her hands were steady—she had done this before—and Josey's breath grew irregular as she leaned against him.

“Don't move.” Her voice whispered against his ear. The razor scratched against his neck, but he barely felt it move. She finished too fast. Josey could have sat there all night.

Leaning before him, she seemed pleased with her handiwork. “It's as I thought: You're much too handsome for a beard.” Her hands traced the contours of his face, feeling for stubble. He wanted to pull her toward him but feared moving. She leaned closer. Watched his eyes. Their mouths met and she fell against him.

The rest of the night was a blur of twining limbs and fevered thrashing. It struck Josey as a cruel curse that he recalled skirmishes in painful detail but remembered only stray moments from the happiest night of his life. He couldn't say how they got from the chair to the bedroom or almost anything of what happened there. At some point, spent, they went to the table and ate. She talked. He listened. She asked questions. He answered. They talked of so many things, but he remembered best what they didn't talk about. She never spoke of her husband. He never spoke of the war.

After eating, they went back to bed, and eventually she slept. He watched how her body moved with each breath, her head against his chest as he matched his breaths to hers so as not to disturb her. As dawn spilled into the room through the open doorway, his chest filled and he drew her in. No matter how tightly he held, he couldn't feel close enough.

He saw his life stretch before him, like chapters in a book already written. He would plow fields, milk cows, raise chickens and pigs. If he failed at that, he would start a store, like his father. He would tend its shelves and sweep its floors and everything else he had once pronounced too banal to hold him. A year at war had cured him of any boyhood illusions that life needed to be exciting. This was life, in this room, with this woman, and it was all the excitement he would ever need again.

“Are you all right?”

He hadn't meant to wake her, but the harder he clung to her, the weaker his grip on the moment became. He wanted to stop time, to never again feel the emptiness of life without the promise of her body pressed to his. He opened his mouth to tell her this, but all he managed was, “I love you.”

“Oh, you sweet boy.” She rose from his grip and kissed his forehead.

The response deflated him, but as she moved, her breasts pressed against him. He lowered his head and kissed the nipples, one after the other, then turned her onto her back and kissed some more. She repeated herself, but the words sounded different and carried a new meaning the second time.

“Oh, you sweet boy.”

Josey had been a boy that morning in the woman's farmhouse. A silly boy, she might have said, though the woman was too kind. As he shifted on the packing crate, aware of Mary Rut-ledge watching him, he imagined her capable of reading minds.

“What's the matter?”

He shook his head, but he knew she wouldn't let it go. He should make up an excuse to leave, but he couldn't move. He was accustomed to not sleeping much, but his legs were leaden, his head so heavy he couldn't even look up.

“You lose something when you bind yourself to another.” He risked a glance. Sadness pinched her features.

“Oh, but you can find so much more.”

Pain.
That's what you find. Loving someone was like standing in the open during a firefight. Men in formation ramming their rifles while everyone around them fell. You bared your chest and waited for love to take a shot at you.

“What happened to her?”

Josey didn't know where to begin. The story included more than a woman needed to hear, more than he wanted to hear. He said simply, “She died.”

He rose. “I need to go.” His voice sounded strange.

“Wait—” Mary Rutledge wanted to say something. Something motherly and wise. Maybe something poignant about a generation who knew more of mourning and hurt than of love and hope. But there was nothing to say. He saw that. So she remained silent, and it was Josey who spoke.