Courage to Love (Flynn Family Saga) (3 page)

Billy nodded and smiled.

*  *  *

 Six weeks later, the Flynn wagon train camped beside the Blue River.  Forty-eight wagons stood alone, a small, fragile circle of light against the darkness.

Ben took a forkful of stew and made a face.  “Frank, that’s the worst stew you’ve ever made.”

“Yeah?  Well, if you and Flynn would get me some fresh meat, I could make you a real stew.”

Flynn took a sip of the coffee and made a face.  “Frank, did you even bother to measure how much coffee you put into this?”

“Well, if you’d stop spooning with your new wife,
you
could make the coffee.”  Frank winked at Maggie to let her know he wasn’t serious.

Maggie smiled back.  The familiar banter was as comforting as the return of spring.

And then, suddenly, an arrow appeared out of the darkness, a burning torch that struck her wagon and kindled the canvas into flame.

Frank picked up the coffee pot and tossed the contents onto the flames.  Maggie ran to the side of the wagon and plunged a bucket into the water barrel.

Flynn took the bucket from her hand.  “I’ll take care of the wagon.  You take care of the people."

Maggie nodded.  “Ben, you go left.  Barricades and water and rifles.”

“Yes ma’am.”

Maggie picked up the rod and clanged it around and around the inside of the metal triangle that hung from the wagon.  “Indians!  This is not a drill, people.  Get your weapons.  Abby!”

Abby Barrett ran up to her.  “Yes, Maggie?”

“You get the women and children and bring them to the center of the circle.”

Abby nodded.  She ran to the next wagon, while Maggie and Ben supervised the building of barricades.  Frank organized the bucket brigade, while Flynn made sure that everyone had rifles and ammunition.

Despite the pounding of her heart, Maggie noticed how smoothly they worked together, and she felt a thrill of pride.

And then, she heard the war cries.  She shivered and pumped her own rifle.  “Don’t fire until you get my signal!”

She drew a deep breath and let it out slowly.  A little of the tension ebbed out of her.  Her hands were steady, and her pulse slowed to normal.

The moments crawled by.  Then, she saw the first warrior, lit by the light of the fire.  His face was streaked with brightly colored paint.  She swallowed hard and waited until he was so close even David Ellis couldn’t miss him.  “Fire!”

Rifles fired in a ragged volley.  The Lakota warriors fell, silently.  As Maggie watched, the lead horse struck his fallen rider’s head with his left hind foot, crushing the man’s skull.  She winced and fired again, and another young man fell.  Maggie lost count of the number of times she fired, but not of the men who fell.

Finally, the cries ended.

Two dozen Lakota lay dead around the wagons.

Maggie swallowed hard.  “Flynn, these men belong to your brother’s tribe.  What happened?”

His face was as hard as stone.  “I don’t know.”

She sighed.  Still carrying her rifle, she turned to check the dead and wounded.  Mary Ellis had a flesh wound, but Peter and David were unharmed.

“Mrs. Flynn!  You should have seen Mama!  She stood there and loaded the rifle with blood dripping down her arm!”  Peter’s eyes were large with excitement.

Maggie shut her eyes for a moment.  “I’m glad she was so brave.”  She opened her eyes and started to dress the wound.

“Mrs. Flynn!  Come quick!  It’s Diana!”

Maggie tightened the bandage on Mary’s arm and ran toward Riordan Brennan.  Diana lay beside the Brennan wagon.  Maggie knelt beside her.  An arrow had pierced the girl’s chest.  Caitlin Brennan knelt beside her child.  She raised her face to look pleadingly at Maggie.

Maggie’s throat tightened as she cut Diana’s calico dress.  The wound went deep.  She bit her lip.

A shadow fell over her.  She turned.

Ben stood behind her.  “Maggie?”

Maggie sighed.  “I don’t know whether to try to cut out the arrow head or...”

“There are other people who need your help, Maggie.”

Maggie nodded.  She pushed the arrow through the little girl’s body until the arrowhead protruded from her back.  She cut off the arrowhead and pulled the shaft back through her chest.  She bandaged the wound and turned to Diana’s mother.  “Keep pressure on both sides.  If the bleeding doesn’t stop, come and get me.”

Mrs. Brennan nodded stoically.

Maggie turned to the next casualty.

The eastern sky was turning gray by the time she closed the eyes of Ella Williams.  She stood and walked back to the Brennan wagon.

A sheet covered Diana’s small body.

Maggie wanted to cry.  She wanted to shake her fists at the sky.  Instead, she knocked on the side of the wagon.  “Mrs. Brennan?  Are you all right?”

Caitlin Brennan came out of the wagon.  Her face was pale, and her eyes were red, but she was calm.  She nodded.  “She isn’t the first child I buried, Mrs. Flynn.  But I fear she’ll be the last.”

Maggie swallowed hard.  “I’m so sorry.”

Caitlin shrugged.  “It’s not your fault.  You took out the arrow and staunched the wound.  The bleeding had stopped, you see, but she—she couldn’t breathe.”  Caitlin’s voice broke.

Maggie patted her hand.  “I’m sorry.”

Caitlin nodded.  She climbed, stiffly, into the wagon.

Maggie sighed.  She turned to Ben.  “Get the wagons hitched up.”

Ben nodded.

Maggie walked back to the lead wagon.  Frank already had her team hitched up.  Maggie smiled wanly at him.  “Thank you, Frank.”

He nodded solemnly.

Maggie walked over to Sebastian and rubbed his nose.  Her horse nuzzled her gently.  She held out a sugar lump on the palm of her hand and he took it from her delicately.  She looked around for Flynn, but he wasn’t there.  Her heart skipped a beat.  She walked along the circle of wagons, but there was no sign of him.  She drew a deep breath and went back to the place where they had stood.  She found his footprints and followed them outside the circle.

Flynn stood over the body of a young Lakota.  His face was pale and drawn.

Maggie’s heart clenched.  She touched his back with a trembling hand.  “You knew him?”

Flynn nodded.  “He was...”  He shook his head.  “The closest word in English is cousin, but it’s not exactly right.”

Maggie nodded back.  “He was part of your
tiyospaye
.”

“Yes.”  Flynn’s voice was hoarse.  “Maggie, I may have killed him.”

Maggie shook her head.  “No.  I did.  I—I remember.”  She didn’t trust herself to finish the sentence.  She drew a deep breath.  “Flynn, I’m sorry.  But we have to move out.”

He nodded.  “Yes.”  He ran his hand through his hair.  “All right.  I’ll saddle Wakta.  And Patches.”  He regarded her solemnly.  “Are you all right, Magpie?”

She drew a deep breath.  “Yes, I’m all right.”

He smiled faintly.  “Liar.”

Maggie smiled back, but her mouth felt stiff.  “You know me too well.”  She sobered.  “Flynn, can you keep an eye on things here for me?”

He nodded and went down the line to help the settlers hitch up their teams.

Maggie knelt beside the young man she had killed and bowed her head.  “I wish knew the words to the Lakota prayer for the dead.  I—I’m sorry I killed you, but I needed to protect my people, my—my
tiyospaye
.”

“I know.”

Maggie turned with her pistol drawn.

Sees Far, Flynn’s stepbrother, stood behind her.  His face was bare of war paint, and he looked as tired as she felt.  “Hello, Fire-haired Woman.”

Maggie’s hand tightened on her gun.  “What do you want?”

“Nothing.  I have come to offer you my son as reparation.  These were renegades.  I did not authorize this raid.”  A little boy peeked around his father’s buckskin-clad legs.

Tears burned her eyes.  She shook her head.  “I do not hold you responsible for their actions, much less your child.”  She drew a deep breath.  “Tell Woman Who Dreams that I miss my sister-friend.”

“I will.  And I will not forget your mercy, Fire-haired Woman.”  He sighed.  “I cannot control them any longer.  Tell the other wagon trains that it is no longer safe for them to travel this trail.”

Maggie nodded.  “I will.  In a little while, I will move our wagons so you can collect your dead.”

He nodded back.  “Thank you.”  Then, he disappeared into the shadows.

Maggie sighed and went back to the wagons.  She mounted Patches and raised her arm.  “Wagons, ho!”

They did not go far, less than a mile.  Maggie called a halt at a bend in the river.  Frank lit a fire and started to make coffee.  Flynn took the pot out of his hands and shook his head.

Frank didn’t even argue.

Flynn made the coffee carefully.  Frank made bacon and eggs, but Maggie could not eat.

Frank squeezed her shoulder.  “Are you all right?”

Maggie shook her head.  “No.”  She sighed.  “But I have to pretend to be.”

Frank nodded.

Maggie ran into the bushes and threw up.  Then, she climbed into the wagon and changed into her black dress.  She came out carrying Sam’s Bible.  She waited until Ben came back, carrying a shovel.  He nodded to her.  She nodded back.  She walked slowly to the graves.  Her throat ached with grief when she saw Diana’s small body, wrapped in an old sheet.  She walked with her back straight to the open graves.

“Almighty God, there is no human comfort possible for the loss of a child.  So I ask you to be with Riordan and Caitlin Brennan while they heal, just as I ask you to be with Paula Masters and Tom Williams and Madeleine Crain.  I watched these people as they learned how to fire their weapons, and I asked myself how they would fare if they were ever put to the test.  Well, last night they fared well, I am proud of them.  Ella Williams reloaded her husband’s weapon again and again with a steady hand and without complaint.  Ed Masters and Jim Crain stood shoulder to shoulder, setting aside their differences in defense of their own families and every family on this train.  They were tested early, and they did well.

“And now it is time to lay to rest our loved ones.  May they find the peace that was denied to us last night.  Amen”

A ragged chorus of amens echoed hers.

Maggie nodded.  Gently, reverently, Ben and Frank laid the bodies into the waiting graves.  She watched as one by one, the survivors threw dirt into the graves.  She shut her eyes and saw the bodies of Lucy and Michael O’Brien, her flesh-and-blood parents who died on her first journey from St. Jo to Sacramento.  She stood, without moving as Ben and Frank buried the dead.

Then, Flynn pounded the crosses into the soft earth.  Madeleine Crain began to sing.  “Eternal Father, strong to save...”

Maggie walked among the families of the fallen, murmuring the words she had heard Sam utter a hundred times.  She wondered if he felt this empty, this useless.

Maggie walked back to Frank’s cook fire.  She poured herself a mug of tea and tried to keep it down.

“Mrs. Flynn!”

At the sound of Samantha Worthington’s voice, Maggie jaw tightened.  “Yes, Mrs. Worthington?”

Samantha folded her arms across her chest.  “I thought we were paying you for protection on this trip.”

“That’s right, Mrs. Worthington.  What makes you think that you have been cheated?”  Maggie stood up.  The two women were exactly the same height.

Samantha had light brown hair and blue eyes.  She met Maggie’s gaze levelly.  “I thought these—these men that Mr. Brewster is in charge of were supposed to protect us from the Indians.  My husband actually had to fire a rifle!”

Maggie sighed.  “Mrs. Worthington, we defend ourselves.  All of us.”

Samantha blinked.  “What about the constables?”

Ben choked on his coffee, and Flynn pounded his back mercilessly.

Maggie bit her tongue.  “There’s is no police force on the prairie, Mrs. Worthington.  That’s part of what you are paying us for, to train you how to defend yourself.  By the time you reach your San Francisco, you will be prepared for almost anything.”

The blood left Samantha’s face.  “I didn’t—I thought—”

Abigail Barrett stepped out of the shadows and touched Samantha’s hand.  “Mrs. Worthington, I understand that you come from one of the first families in Philadelphia.”

Samantha nodded.

Abby smiled at her.  “Then you know the respect you and your descendants will have because you made this dangerous and difficult journey.”

Samantha opened her mouth and shut it.  “Mrs. Barrett, I don’t know what to say.”

Abby led her away.

“I’ll bet you five dollars that the Worthingtons leave the train at Fort Kearny,” Ben said softly.

Maggie sat down with a sigh and picked up her tea, but she smiled.  “You’re on, Ben.  I think, for all her faults, she’s made of the same stuff as Abby.”  Maggie finished her tea and walked along the line of wagons, reassuring her people that they would be safe.  Finally, Maggie walked wearily to her own bedroll and lay down.  A little while later, Flynn lay down beside her.  “I checked the tracks.  We killed them all.”  His tone was unemotional, but deep lines of pain bracketed his mouth.

Maggie touched his face.

He rolled over with his back to her.

Maggie bit her lip.  Disappointment jabbed her.  She sighed and rolled over with her back to her husband.  She cried, silently, the way she had learned to when her father came home drunk.

*  *  *

In the morning, Maggie tried to eat, but she couldn’t.  Once again, she had to run to the bushes without taking a bite.

Someone touched her back.

She turned with her pistol drawn in her shaking hand.

Flynn stood behind her.  He frowned.  “Maggie, are you sick?”

Maggie blushed.  “Not exactly.  I—we—”

Slowly, Flynn smiled.  He touched her belly.  “We’re going to have a baby?”

Maggie nodded.

He picked her up and swung her around.  Then, stricken, he set her on her feet again.  “I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to—is it safe?”

Maggie laughed.  “There’s no danger to the child for months yet.”

Flynn nodded solemnly.  “Maggie, maybe you should stay at Fort Kearny.”

Maggie tilted her chin up and shook her head.