Journey of Honor A love story (11 page)

She bled enough that morning that, at lunch, she had to climb into the wagon and change clothes before heading back onto the trail that afternoon. Her grandmother woke up as she was changing, and Giselle asked her about the bleeding and if this much was normal. Even as sick as she was, Petja seemed concerned and told her she didn’t think it was okay. She was upset enough about it that Giselle decided asking had been a mistake and resolved to protect them from worry better in the future.

It had been a good theory, but over the next several days, the hemorrhaging continued and got worse to the point that there was no hiding it from either of her grandparents. In fact, even with padding her underclothing with toweling rags, it took changing her petticoats and slips multiple times a day to keep Trace and Mose and the others from knowing as well.

At length, Petja told her with a deep sadness in her voice, “I’m afraid you may be losing your baby, my dear. I don’t know what else would be causing this severe of bleeding. And here we lay unable to even help in your time of need. I’m so sorry, dear Elle. Please forgive your grandfather and me for our weakness.”

Giselle leaned to kiss her soft forehead. “You must worry about getting better and not about me, Nanna. The good Lord will watch over me. He is aware of all of this and I have faith that He will help me.” She patted the small bulge under her dress. “We will be fine. You’ll see. Just get yourself better, do you hear me?” She tried to pretend to be scolding, but could never have sounded stern with these two dear people who had been willing to give up everything to accompany her here to America.

She had been having to spend the noon time in helping her grandparents eat and then changing her underclothing. Her mid-day meal had become only a bite or two, if she had time for even that as the train got under way again. She assumed it was skipping this meal that was making her feel so weak and lightheaded when she went to stand up, and she told herself she would do better about eating. One good thing was that she had become more slender, and the dresses that had been threatening to rip had become looser again. This was indeed a blessing because she hadn’t been able to start making any bigger dresses since she’d bought the fabric at Fort Laramie those weeks ago.

Twice that week in the evenings, she heated water in the big kettle and did laundry to wash out her petticoats, but she still found herself resorting to borrowing some of Petja’s to tide her over between launderings.

What had started out as intermittent spotting had progressed to steady bleeding. It had been happening for nine days when Trace stopped her one morning as she made breakfast and stood looking at her for a second before asking. “Are you okay, Elley? You don’t have your usual color in your cheeks.”

She simply smiled and said, “It must be all that rain last week. I had gotten shamefully brown on this trip. Being paler is much more proper for women anyway.” Trace looked a little skeptical, but didn’t comment further.

It felt good to be asked after. The pace of the train had picked up with the cooling of the weather into fall, the rougher terrain and the shorter days. The men had been as busy trying to push on as quickly as possible as she had been caring for Josiah and Petja. She and Trace rarely had time to visit anymore, except for a few quiet words spoken before they dropped off to sleep from exhaustion at night.

As hard as the rigorous pace had become, it did help her to put her feelings for Trace into better perspective. There hadn’t been time to think about how much she enjoyed him, or how much she would have liked to be a real wife, when every waking moment had been used up.

Even sleeping had become an urgent need that left little energy for dreams or wakefulness, regardless of what fearful things lurked in the dark. The wolves and coyotes no longer frightened her because she always knew that Trace was there beside her. His strength had taken most of her fears of physical dangers away completely.

Now if she could just find a way to make getting up in the mornings a little easier. Waking and getting up had become a grueling feat. The fatigue from working too hard and not eating or sleeping enough had become almost overwhelming. Sometimes she wondered if she would have ever made it up if it hadn’t been for Mose coming by with her cold biscuit.

One morning he commented on it. He’d bent to wake her, and when she finally groaned and opened her eyes, he studied her for a minute and then said, “Miss Giselle, you need to tell Trace. He’s going to be one offended husband when he does find out. And he’d make you take it easier than you’ve been if he knew, which would be a good thing.”

She struggled to sit up and leaned against the wagon wheel for a minute until she wasn’t so light-headed and replied, “You’re wrong, Mose. I need to do more, not less. You’ve heard the stories of the Donner and Reed party in forty-six in the California mountains. Granted, they used less judgment than you and Trace, but still, delay could cost your lives. Or all of ours if we don’t make it over the Rocky Mountains in time. I can’t be whining and asking to be babied. Especially with my grandparents already not helping.”

For once Mose put his foot down. In a voice that brooked no argument he said, “No, Miss Giselle. It’s past time. I’ll give you another two days. If you haven’t told him, which is your place and you know it, then I will. And in the meantime, I’m going to be taking over milking that cow and caring for your chickens. Enough is enough.”

Honestly, she didn’t have the energy to argue. “Okay, Mose. I’ll tell him. And thank you for your help. I’ll accept it gladly.” He left and she sighed. How was she ever going to tell Trace?

Even though he couldn’t hear what was being said, Trace was surprised to hear the tone of voice that Mose was using with Giselle. Mose was incredibly even-tempered. In all his life, Trace had never heard him talk to a woman in any kind of a short tone. This morning he sounded like her father reprimanding her. When Mose came back over to their wagon, Trace asked him about it. “What’s going on? What are you upset with Giselle about?”

Mose glanced over to where she was starting breakfast and said, “I’m sorry, Trace. I’m not at liberty to say what I’m upset about. You might ask Miss Giselle though. She could tell you.”

Surprised that he wouldn’t say more than that, Trace went to help Giselle at the fire and asked her the same thing. She paused for a moment like she was thinking, and then shook her head and turned away. “He’s just upset because he thinks there are some things I should be doing that I’m not. I’ll take care of it.” She leaned down to turn the hot cakes on her griddle.

Trace wasn’t sure whether to delve or not. Somehow, he’d almost gotten the impression from Mose that he needed to know whatever it was that they had been talking so heatedly about, but Giselle didn’t seem to think that way. Wondering what to do and what his role was here, he let it go for the time being. Later he’d pick at Mose a little more for answers.

In the meantime, Giselle looked awful and he worried about her. He crouched down beside her and took her pancake turner. When she looked up at him, he said, “At least your grandparents don’t seem to be getting any worse. How are you doing? Are you holding out taking care of them? I know that caring for the sick can be hard at times.”

Stirring a pan of scrambled eggs, she didn’t look up at him as she said, “I’m fine, but thank you for asking. How are we doing traveling? Are we going to make it over the mountains on time?”

That was a good question, but only God truly knew the answer. “We’re traveling as fast as we can. Whether that will prove to be fast enough will depend completely on what kind of fall we have. If the weather stays good, we’ll be fine. If winter hits early, we’ll be in trouble either this side of the valley of the Great Salt Lake or in the mountains on the other side. Either way, we need to go as fast as we can.”

Finally, she looked up. “I’ve been praying all will be well. I’ll keep praying.”

“I will too, Elle. I will too.”

He was surprised to see Mose milking her cow, and later as Trace rode his horse beside the train, he came alongside Mose’s wagon. For several minutes he just rode with him in silence. Finally, Mose asked, “Did she say anything when you asked?”

Trace was noncommittal. “About as much as you did when I asked. Why were you milking this morning?”

“Because I think she’s doing too much and I’m worried about her. When I try to encourage her to go easier she always brings up the danger of getting caught in the snow in the mountains.”

Thoughtfully, Trace said, “Yeah, she said something about that to me, too. She’s looking a little rough lately. I mean as rough as a woman that beautiful can look. Is that what’s wrong? She’s doing too much?”

Mose shrugged. “You’re the doctor. You tell me. A little rough isn’t what I’m seeing. I’m seeing full-blown exhausted.”

Trace was quiet for a while, thinking. He hadn’t noticed her all that exhausted, but then maybe he just wasn’t seeing things very clearly. She always looked great to him. Too great. His feelings for her had become so strong that he’d begun to almost try to avoid her to dampen them. How he was ever going to be able to walk away from her to continue on to California was beyond him, the way he felt about her.

He thought back to what Mose had said about her. Trace knew that she was sleeping hard lately, and for a while he’d wondered if she was putting on weight, but lately her face was almost too slender. And she was paler, but she had attributed that to the rain and Trace had accepted that logic. He decided that come lunch time, he would look at her more closely, and see what he really thought.

*****

As Giselle drove that morning, she felt horrible. Her whole body ached from the cramps in her stomach and lower back, and she felt ridiculously guilty for telling Trace that she was fine. That was the closest to telling an outright lie that she had ever come.

Even telling herself that it was necessary to keep things running as smoothly with the wagon train as possible didn’t make it seem any less dishonest. She wasn’t fine, and the blood that she knew was soaking through her petticoats and skirt right now was more than evidence of that.

She wondered how much a person could bleed before it would make them sick. In a way, she knew that Mose was right and that she needed to tell Trace right away, but if what her grandmother suspected was true and she’d lost these babies, then telling him would be pointless anyway.

She was dizzy and light-headed and almost nauseous today, and with the pain, she could be honest at least with herself and admit that she had never felt so weak and sick in her life. It was all she could do to hold on to the reins this morning, and every bump that the wagon hit made the pain in her back radiate outward. Several times she caught herself groaning when her tummy would cramp up, and she wished that she could rest during the coming noon instead of feeding and helping her grandparents.

Towards late morning, she began to know that something was seriously wrong, and when she found herself with black dots dancing in front of her eyes, she worried in earnest. She was too weak to call out to Mose in the wagon in front, and Trace was riding along somewhere behind. Neither of her grandparents were in any shape to help her, and when she knew that she was indeed blacking out, the only thing she could do was slip from the seat of the wagon to the floor in front of it, hoping that she wouldn’t fall underneath the mules or the wheels.

Chapter 7

Trace had spent the morning scouting ahead for the best route for the day, and then riding up and down the length of the train checking with the drivers and the wagon master as he went. Everything seemed to be going well down the whole length of it, but still he couldn’t shake this feeling that he was missing something that was out of place. Looking around for a clue to what was nagging him, he noticed that Giselle’s wagon was pulling wide for some reason. He started forward to see what the problem was, but it pulled right back into place again and he held back.

Must be that stupid, ornery mule again. From time to time it got some fool notion in its head to act up, even after nearly two and a half months on the trail. He should have encouraged Josiah to sell it back in the settlements and get another that wouldn’t be so much trouble. Twenty minutes later, she did it again, and this time the wagon pulled wide and then went back into line only to go wide the other direction. What was she doing? She’d been driving by herself for weeks now and she’d done a great job. He wondered why she was having trouble today.

He kicked his horse into a trot to go check with her. If he had his druthers, he’d ride right beside her all day, but that hadn’t been much of an option and it wouldn’t have been wise anyway. He had known all along that they would be parting ways in the Mormon’s Zion, and falling so hard for her so fast had made him feel almost like he shouldn’t spend time with her at all.

Coming up alongside her wagon, he was shocked to realize that she wasn’t in the driver’s seat, and he wondered what had happened that was such an emergency that she’d let the mules have their heads while she climbed into the back. He was just about to call out to her when he realized that she wasn’t in the back at all, she was lying in a heap on the floor in front of the seat. One of the reins to the mule team was dangling over the front of the wagon and the other was dragging on the ground back under the wagon box itself. That was what was making the team veer left or right. Every time the dragging rein hung up on something, the team would pull that direction.

Instantly sick at heart and wondering what in the world had happened, he rode as close as he dared to the side of the wagon and then jumped from the horse and pulled himself up to the seat. The one rein was easy, but to get hold of the other he had to climb clear in front of the wagon and try to balance on the single trees in front of it. Even then he couldn’t reach the rein and had to climb even further out over the wagon tongue. He was watching the rogue mule, wondering if he was going to be able to do this without the mule coming unglued at the seams.