Dorothy Garlock - [Wabash River] (20 page)

“Baa-a . . . baa-a . . .” Addie was taking her first bite when she heard the sheep.

“What the hell?”

“Gawdamighty—”

“Name of a cow!”

“Cow, hell! It’s gawddamn sheep!”

Bleating loudly, Mr. Jefferson, followed by Dolly and Bucket, came into camp and made a beeline for Addie. They brushed against Dillon. The beans on his plate slid into his lap and he began to bawl, his mouth open and full of food. Over his cries, Addie heard snickers from the men in the shadows. John picked the child up and set him on his lap. Red-faced and wishing she were anywhere in the world except where she was, Addie got up quickly. The sheep followed her out of the circle of light.

“Gregorio,” John yelled.

“Sí, señor.”

“You know about sheep. Take care of them so Mrs. Tallman can eat her supper.”

The Mexican youth who came out of the shadows had a large hat, riding on his back, held there by a string about his neck.

“
Señora,
wait. I get some corn and they come with me.”

Addie rubbed the heads of the sheep and murmured to them while she waited, knowing that they were as confused by their surroundings as she was. Gregorio came back with a shallow pan. He held the ground corn under Mr. Jefferson’s nose and let the ram smell it. Then he backed away and the sheep followed. Addie waited until the sheep disappeared in the darkness before she went back to the table.

Dillon was asleep on John’s lap.

*  *  *

Addie was tired in body and spirit. She was sure that once she closed her eyes she would sleep like the dead, but she could not. Behind closed lids she saw the face of a tall man with dark shoulder-length hair and dark blue eyes. Her mind whirled in confusion as she lay on the mattress beside Jane Ann and Trisha.

This was the first night since Dillon’s birth that he had not slept beside her, and she wondered why she had given in so easily to John’s request. No, she thought now, it had not been a request; it had been a decision.

“You and the girls can sleep here.” With Dillon sleeping on his shoulder, John had led the way to the tents that had been set up a short distance from the main camp. “Colin, Dillon, and I will sleep in the other one.”

“Dillon can sleep in here with us. There’s room.”

“There’ll be more room if he’s with me and Colin.”

“But . . . he’s never been away from me at night. He’ll wake up and be scared.”

“If he is, I’ll bring him to you.”

“He may have to . . . go to the bushes.”

“Colin and I will take care of him. Get some sleep, Addie. Tomorrow we’ll start getting ready for the trip.”

Trisha and Jane Ann fell asleep immediately. Addie lay with her face toward the open end of the shelter so that she could see the tent where her son lay sleeping. She had mentally prepared herself to sleep with her new husband if he demanded it. She was Addie Faye Tallman now. Kirby Hyde was no longer her husband. John Tallman was. Would he insist on his
rights
morning, noon, and night, as Kirby had after they had wed? She had come to detest that part of marriage but had resigned herself to it as she had to other unpleasant duties.

She had watched John enter the shelter with Dillon and Colin. She watched him a short time later when he came out and walked back to the cook wagon where a small fire was still burning.

Tomorrow we’ll start getting ready for the trip. The
words her new husband had spoken ran repeatedly through Addie’s mind along with the thought that time was rushing by too fast. She wanted to stop it for a little while until she could think about and become accustomed to all that had happened to her.

Do you take this man to love and obey?
Obey? Other than the two short months she had lived with Kirby, she had not had to obey anyone since her parents died. Now this man was her lawfully wedded husband and she had promised to obey him.

John Tallman, who are you? I don’t know you!

*  *  *

John laid the sleeping child down on the mattress and removed his shoes. The little bugger was tuckered out, but no more so than his mother. Her violet eyes were glazed with fatigue and ringed with dark shadows. She had made a brave effort to hold her shoulders back and her head up, but as she walked beside him to the tent, she had almost staggered. A few more hours without sleep and she would collapse.

Looking down at the sleeping child, John thought briefly of the man who had sired him. Kirby Hyde might have sown the seed, but
he
would nurture it, teach this boy to be more of a man than the one who had fathered him. Dillon was his son, now, in every way that mattered. John covered the boy and stroked his chubby cheek with the back of his hand before he got to his feet.

“I’ll be up by the cook wagon for a while, Colin.”

“We’ll be all right, Mr. Tallman. I’ll take care of Dillon.”

“You don’t have to call me Mr. Tallman, Colin.”

“Ah . . . I . . . Miss Addie don’t let me call grown-ups by their first names.”

“Well, don’t worry about it. Usually that sort of thing works itself out.”

“The Renshaws was comin’ to get me, wasn’t they?”

“They were coming to get Trisha for shooting that no-good kin of theirs.”

“Trisha did it to keep ’em from takin’ me.”

“I know. I saw it. She’s a spunky girl.”

“But . . . but Miss Addie had to leave her farm because of me.” There was real sorrow in the boy’s voice. “She said she didn’t, but I think she did.”

“It was partly because of you, I guess. But also because Preacher Sikes wanted to get Dillon away from her. He thought she was unfit to raise him because of the men who went out to the house.”

“That wasn’t her fault . . . or Trisha’s. They never let nobody in.”

“The talk in the town was that they did. The preacher spoke to the magistrate, after Addie gave him that dressing down, about you going to the Renshaws and after he heard Dillon’s father wasn’t coming back.”

“Do
you
believe it?”

“Would I have taken her for my wife if I thought she was a loose woman?”

“I . . . had to ask.”

“It’s all right. You can ask me anything.”

“Miss Addie didn’t tell me that old turd was going to take Dillon.”

“I guess she didn’t want to worry you.”

“She was awful worried about you. What happened with the Renshaws? Did you shoot ’em?”

“Naw. It’s best not to shoot if there’s another way. We tossed them in the creek, made them sit there, and ran off their horses. Buffer was right when he said they were a stupid bunch. They’d not last in the territories. Within a week’s time their scalps would be hanging from a lodgepole.”

“Ah . . . sir?” Colin’s hesitant voice stopped John as he was about to leave. “I was wonderin’ if . . . if me and Jane Ann—”

“You and your sister will have a home with us for as long as you want.”

John had been raised in the security of a loving family, always knowing that his ma and pa were there to rely on, but still he understood the uncertainty Colin was feeling.

“When I asked Addie to marry me, she told me that she had three children and Trisha. I took it as an honor that she not only trusted her life to me but the lives of her children and Trisha. Addie’s children are now my children, Colin. That means you and Jane Ann as well as Dillon. You’ll live with me and Addie in our home until you’re old enough to take care of yourselves.”

“I’ll try not to . . . be any trouble.”

“Don’t try too hard, son. It’ll take all the fun out of it.” In spite of his exhaustion, John grinned broadly. He clasped the boy’s shoulder. “I remember my pa saying that when I was your age he was sure that I didn’t have enough sense to come in out of the rain.”

“Is he still livin’?”

“Very much so. He’ll take to you.” John chuckled. “The first thing he’ll teach you is how to bring down a turkey or a jackrabbit with an arrow. He’ll teach you how to make a fish hook out of a turkey bone and how to creep up on a deer and skin out a rattler. He was raised by the Shawnee and has more woods sense than any man I know.”

“Golly,” Colin whispered in awe.

“There’ll be plenty of time for me to tell you about him before we get home. Go on to bed. I’ll be back in a little while.”

*  14  *

T
he coffeepot, blackened by many fires, stood in the coals on a flat stone. John took a tin cup from a sack hanging on the side of the cook wagon and filled it with strong black coffee. Only three men had waited beside the fire. The others had taken their bedrolls and gone off into the darkness, knowing the boss was less than happy about the way his wife had been treated.

John looked across the campfire at the silent men. They were a chosen group, selected because they were experienced and able to face the ordeals and trials of a dangerous journey, and, more important, because they were trustworthy. John would trust his life to any one of them and, at one time or the other, had done so.

Cleve Stark was a lean, cold-eyed man of thirty years who feared God and nothing else. He carried his rifle like an extension of his arm, as indeed it was, and he was the sort of man who would last in any venture. Any softness in him had been drained out of his hard, sinewy body by hard living and hard fighting. His dark red hair and mustache had earned him the nickname Red Dog among the Apache and the Navajo. He was constantly alert, as was common among men of his breed. Had he not been, he would not have survived the massacre of his family during the vicious raids by Mexican outlaws and the final destruction of his ranch by the Chiricahua Apache. He was rawhide-tough and durable and was second in command of the bull train.

The head bull-whacker, Dal Rolly, got up to refill his coffee cup. He was in charge of the bull-whackers and the oxen. One man was assigned to each of the sixteen wagons, with six substitutes in case of accident or sickness. The substitutes worked along with the herders to drive the extra animals and as night herders. As the drivers began their day, the night herders turned in to sleep in the supply wagon. Rolly expected every man to do his work without complaint.

Built like a grizzly bear, Rolly had a face full of barn-brown whiskers but little hair atop his head. He was also the wheelwright. With proper tools and a supply of seasoned oak, he kept the wagons repaired. A skilled packer, Rolly balanced the weight and bulk of goods in the wagons to prevent spillage or cargo spoilage if water entered the wagon box when it forded a stream. Just under six feet tall, he weighed nearly two hundred pounds. He was taciturn, patient, and, like many big men, friendly and even-tempered. He constantly pushed his men to break their record of moving out in less than sixteen minutes after “yoke up” call.

The cook, Bill Wassall, nicknamed Sweet William because of his fondness for pouring molasses or honey on everything from beans to cornbread to buffalo steaks, rose before daylight each morning and pulled the ashes from the coals of his fire, sometimes retrieving a kettle of red Mexican beans he had left simmering through the night. After adding wood to the fire, he would grind a pound of coffee beans and start the pots boiling.

When breakfast was ready, he woke the men by ringing a cowbell and shouting, “Rise and shine! Come and get it or I’ll throw it away.” Sometimes he would burst into song, usually his own raunchy version of “The Yellow Rose of Texas.”

He had authority in the camp area. Gray-haired, squint-eyed, he appeared slow and clumsy, but he knew how to get things done. He took great pride in his work and was considered a first-rate cook, which was one of the reasons why John and Rain Tallman had hired him for the trip. Well-fed men were more content and better able to do the jobs they had been hired to do. Another reason was that Bill Wassall was a tough old bird who could handle himself in almost any situation.

The three men waited for John to speak. They all knew he was angry enough to bite the head off a rattler. A quiet man, John didn’t get angry very often, but when he did, he acted with either a cold, biting calm or a hot, quick fury.

When John finally spoke, it was to Cleve.

“You got my message before you left Saint Louis?”

“I got the word. We’re to meet a judge and his party here and they’ll trail with us to the Santa Fe.”

“The man who rode in with me has been hired by Judge Van Winkle to hunt for his party.”

“How big is his party, for chrissake?” Rolly asked.

“He’ll have six wagons, all in tip-top condition, a total of fourteen people including the judge and his niece—fifteen, counting Buffer Simmons.”

Rolly snorted. “No younguns in diapers?”

John turned his cold, hard stare on the bull-whacker.

“Will having the children along keep you from doing your job?”

“Naw. It’s jist . . . well—” Realizing he had trodden on dangerous ground, Rolly’s reply stammered to a halt.

“I’m thinkin’ the judge’s party’ll not be trailin’ us for long. They ain’t gonna want to eat our dust,” Cleve said, hoping to cover the awkward moment. “More’n likely we’ll be trailin’ them.”

“My cousin, Zachary Quill, served during the war with the judge’s brother-in-law, Harold Read. Captain Read saved Zack’s life and later lost his own. As a favor to Zack, I consented to let the judge and Read’s daughter trail with us to Santa Fe. They’ll be a completely separate party from ours, traveling near us for safety’s sake.”

“I’ve heard of Buffer Simmons.” Cleve pulled a burning stick from the fire to light a fat cigar. “He could take them across the territory without any help from us—faster, too. Does the judge know that we’ll do good to make ten or twelve miles a day and that our day starts between three and four in the morning and that we take a break in the middle of the day to rest the animals?”

“If Zack hasn’t told him, I will.”

Bill Wassall hadn’t said a word, but his knowing eyes had caught John glancing toward the tents where the new arrivals were sleeping.

“Tomorrow or the next day,” John said, “I’m going into Van Buren to get a rig for my wife and the children. Look over the wagon we came in, Rolly, and do what you have to do to beef it up before we reload it for the trip.”