Journey of Honor A love story (12 page)

Just when the mule pinned its ears and he thought to himself here he goes, he was able to catch the other rein. Now he just had to make it back onto the wagon without becoming tangled in the riggings and harness. When he finally made it back to the wagon seat, it felt likehe’d been hanging precariously between the wagon and mules for days.

Abruptly, he pulled the wagon out of line and stopped the team. Putting the brake on and tying off the reins, he knelt to see what had happened to Giselle. When he went to pick her up, he was horrified to see that her dress was covered in blood. He stretched her out as best he could, but he was unable to tell where it was coming from. As the wagon behind him went past, he told his driver to hurry forward and tell Mose that he was pulling off to see to the VanKomens, and to go ahead to the nooning area and he’d catch up. “Oh, and see if you can catch my horse, would you.”

He went to turn back to Giselle and Josiah leaned a weary head up over the wagon box to see what was going on. Trace turned to him and asked without preamble, “Josiah, what’s happened to Giselle? Where is she injured?” At first Josiah didn’t appear to understand what he was asking. Frustrated, Trace asked again. “The blood, Josiah. Where is she cut?”

Tiredly, Josiah replied as he looked sadly at Giselle lying on the floor of the seat. “She’s not cut, Trace. She’s losing the baby.”

Trace didn’t understand what he was saying. “She’s what?”

“The baby. For days she’s been worried that she was going to lose it. The last couple of days especially.” He sighed. “Petja and I have been heartbroken that we couldn’t help her more.”

Trace still couldn’t comprehend what he was telling him. “Baby? What baby?” He had to be mixing this up.
Giselle wasn’t the kind of girl to be pregnant .
He narrowed his eyes as he looked at the old man, questioning. “Giselle is expecting a baby?”

Gently, Josiah began to explain in a voice filled with the deepest sadness. “Filson and a mob of Mormon haters came. Giselle either happened to be in the way, or she was what they were after in the first place. I do not know which. I only know that the baby was the result of them hurting her so badly that night.”

Was he hearing what he was hearing? Trace couldn’t seem to get his brain to process this. Giselle pregnant? And by a mob of hateful men that included Filson? He sat back on his heals stunned. How had he worked and slept beside her for months without figuring this out? He was a doctor for crying out loud! Slowly, Josiah lay back down in the wagon box while Trace looked down at the unconscious and bloody girl in his arms, stunned beyond even acting. His Giselle. How had he not known this?

Mose had known. Somehow Mose had known, but hadn’t felt like he could tell him. And Giselle hadn’t told him even though they were married and he was a doctor who should have been helping her. At first the feeling of failing miserably was overwhelming, but the very volume of the blood that she was lying in spurred him to action. He had seen her this morning. All of this had been from just the last few hours. This had been going on for days?

In retrospect, he remembered thinking that she had been changing dresses more often. Now he knew why.

But this wasn’t something he could fix with a few stitches. There were places in this country they could operate on this kind of problem, but the wilds of the Wyoming territory wasn’t one of them. The only thing he could do would be to put her down flat on her back and hope that the hemorrhaging would stop before she bled to death. He rose up to look over into the wagon box. All of the bedding in sight was being used by Josiah and Petja. Giselle’s bedding was with his in his wagon ahead.

He looked around them at the country they were traveling through. It was a variable country between the baldness of the prairie and the mountains ahead. Hills and flats were interspersed with washes and gullies where streams ran through. Occasionally there had been bluffs and mesas, but immediately around them, it was just occasional low hills.

He tried to remember what the country was like directly ahead. He needed to pull off somewhere and take care of these three, but where? Where could he safely let them rest up where she wouldn’t have to be moved and jostled around? He had to find some shelter. He couldn’t bed her down in the back near her grandparents even if he’d been able to somehow find the room because they were so contagious. He’d have to keep going at least long enough to find a place to get her in out of the weather.

While he was still trying to figure out where to take her, Mose’s wagon pulled up beside his. Trace looked up into his eyes. He wanted to tear into him for not letting him know what was going on, but in looking into his solemn brown eyes, so filled with sadness at seeing her like this, he knew that nothing needed to be said. He was sure that Giselle not telling him was what Mose had been angry about this morning. Mose had obviously wanted her to tell him, but she hadn’t.

Even when he’d asked, she’d said she was fine. Why hadn’t she trusted him? Was it a matter of trust or simply the best way she knew how to deal with a terrible situation? Knowing her, she was simply trying to handle things without being a burden to anyone else. He gently brushed a stray strand of hair out of her face, wishing that he’d been more attentive. She slept next to him every single night. He should have been close enough to her that she could trust him to help share some of her load. He should have been, but he wasn’t.

Looking over at Mose, he got down to business. “I have to stop with her, Mose. She’s going to bleed to death if we don’t get her down and still.” He sighed. “She may bleed to death anyway. Josiah said this has been going on for days. How much bedding have you got in your wagon? Are any of the blankets we bought to take to California in yours?”

Mose tied off his reins on the brake handle and clamored into the back of his wagon and soon appeared with an armload of both blankets and sheets and a couple of feather pillows. They put their heads together to figure out if the VanKomen wagon had all the gear he’d need to stay and help care for them without catching up to the wagon train to get more. Finally, they decided to move her to the back of Mose’s wagon and go back to the rest of the train where they were nooning and get the gear he would need. Then Mose would continue on with the train and their freight and Trace would try to catch up as soon as he could.

They were within just a few weeks of making it into the valley of the Great Salt Lake, but they might as well have been in Russia, as far as finding civilization nearby. A few weeks was a few weeks, and there was no short cutting the distance they had to travel. The only place nearer than the Mormon settlement that was any settlement at all was Fort Bridger, and even it was a long, long way. Mose shifted a few itemss around and then Trace carefully lifted her across to the other wagon and they headed out.

The others were stopped only a mile or two ahead. Once they reached them, Trace went to talk briefly with John Sykes and then to his own wagon. Still wondering where he could stop to find any shelter, he worried about it out loud and Mose reminded him of a place not far ahead where there wasn’t really shelter, but there was a cliff face that was undercut with a stream nearby. It wasn’t ideal, but it would do. Tossing his own bedding and gear into Mose’s wagon, he prepared to leave ahead of the others so that he could care for her as soon as possible.

As he went to leave, Mose handed him a couple of cold biscuits, and it reminded him of the biscuit he had seen Mose give her that morning so long ago. “How long have you known, Mose? About the baby.”

Giving his friend a sad smile, Mose said, “Do you remember how sick she was the morning after Filson was killed?” Trace nodded. “That’s when I knew. She was so sick in the mornings. every morning. nauseated. But the deal was she was supposed to tell you. She just never could.”

“You’ve known this whole trip?” Trace felt more guilty than ever. “Why couldn’t she tell me? Am I that scary?”

Shaking his head, Mose replied, “You weren’t scary. Admitting to being attacked by a mob was what she couldn’t face. I get the impression that she’s tried to pretend it never happened instead of dealing with it. When you get her healthy physically, you can tackle that one next. Someday she’s going to have to face it.”

Sadly, Trace said, “I’m a good doctor, Mose, but no one but God can fix some of the horrible things this world inflicts. You of all people should know that.”

“You’re right, Trace. But you’d be amazed what a strong husband can do in a good woman’s life.” He went to turn away and then stopped. “I’ll be praying for you, friend. You and God are a majority in any struggle. But then you already know that.” Just like Callie. I’ve been taking her biscuits If she ate before she got up, she wasn’t so When he reached the undercut, Trace fixed her a bed as far under the cliff face as possible. Then he began to set up a camp of sorts while he waited for her wagon with all the rest of her things to arrive. He started dinner and put hot water on to heat; both to clean her up with and to wash out her clothing as well. When the rest of the train made it to where he was, it was the work of only minutes to drop off the VanKomen wagon and take Mose’s instead.

Chapter 8

As Trace watched the rest of the train leave without them, he had mixed feelings. He hated being left behind when time was so scarce, but he vowed here and now to take better care of Giselle. Granted, he hadn’t known what delicate shape she was in, but he should have. He was a skilled physician. He should have realized what was going on.

In the last hour, he’d had to get honest with himself and admit that part of the problem had been that he cared about her so much that he had almost been avoiding her. That was backward, but it had been his way of protecting himself from getting even more attached to her when he knew that he was going to have to leave her behind in a few weeks.

That had been a good plan, but it had almost cost her life because he hadn’t been close enough to see how weak and sick she had become. From here on out, he was going to take the best care of her whether it ripped his heart out later or not. Keeping his distance had been pure selfishness on his part.

After first checking on Josiah and Petja, he began to get Giselle cleaned up and changed. He needed to know exactly how much she was still bleeding to know how she was doing. Dressed only in her underclothing, it was obvious that she was expecting a baby. He had no idea how far along she was, but seeing that distinctive tummy brought his feeling of guilt one more time. Theirs hadn’t been a real marriage in every sense, but he should have known. He should have known.

She didn’t regain consciousness that day at all, and by that night as he and Dog sat up beside his fire, he finally had to let the past go. He hadn’t meant to neglect her, but beating himself up mentally for not understanding would do no one any good. He had been praying for all of them all evening, and finally, as he lay down next to her and pulled her into a gentle embrace, he felt a sense of peace that, even if everything didn’t work out the way he wanted, at least he could rest assured that God was in control here and was aware of them and their troubles.

Holding her now, he wished he could apologize for all the mistakes he had made with her these past months. If he had known what she was going through he would have done so many things differently. Now all he could do was to try to make things up to her as well as their circumstances would allow. That included being willing to be close enough to her to let her trust him, and to know what she needed without necessarily having to be told.

All night long he held her. She didn’t ever wake up, and he was more than a little afraid that it was already too late and that she would die right there in his arms. When the sky began to lighten in the east, he got up and began doing all the things that needed doing to take care of three gravely ill people, as well as the mules and their cow and calf. When it was clear daylight, he fed Josiah and Petja as well as they could be fed in their illness. In looking for clothing for Giselle, he found a canvas bag that was filled to overflowing with blood soaked petticoats, and realizing anew how much blood she had lost, he became even more worried that she would never wake up.

He did more laundry and strung up a rope line to hang the clean clothes and then went to sit beside Giselle again. In the wagon, he’d found a book that he realized to be a journal of sorts that both Josiah and Petja had been keeping for a number of years. It began clear back when they were in Holland before they had even heard about the Mormon religion. He wondered if they would mind if he read it while he was here in camp, and in thinking about the kindly older couple, he didn’t think they would care at all. Maybe it would give him some insight into why they had left their home and families and come here to this time and place. And maybe it would help him better understand Giselle and what she had been through.

They didn’t write in it every day. In fact, there were times they only wrote a time or two in a whole month. And then there were times that they wrote at length about what had been going on in their lives. He began to read and found that it was a fascinating tale of both heartache and a deep and strong love shared by the sweet couple.

After a couple of hours, he put the book aside to attend to Giselle and the others again and fix a noon meal. He’d fed Josiah and Petja and had eaten himself, when he heard the first sound out of Giselle in more than twenty-four hours. She moaned and sighed and turned onto her side, and it was the sweetest sound he had ever heard. It was the first indication that she wasn’t just fading away from him.

He didn’t know if she could hear him or not, but he hoped she could. There was so much that he wanted to tell her. Sitting down on the bed next to her, he tried to tell her how sorry he was that he had let her down and not understood what she had been going through this whole time. He told her to be strong and think positively so that she would heal and be able to move on with all the exciting things that God had planned for her life. He even told her how much he cared about her and how he wished that she had felt like she could talk to him about possibly losing this baby, and even being with child in the first place.