Journey to Bliss (Saskatchewan Saga Book #3) (27 page)

“Of the rasping, rubbing hands?”

“The same Mr. Whidby. I’m grateful he has given me the chance in the dining room. I was sick and tired of peeling vegetables! And you know what, Tierney? I’m not nearly as afeart of men as I was. Mr. Whidby, laughable though he is and a pest in some ways, has taught me how to stand up to all these farmers and trappers and salesmen who coom through here.”

“Oh, Annie, I’m so glad! I hated to see you so scared and intimidated!”

“Men!” Anne sniffed. “They’re not as impossible as I thought. You know, Tierney, a lot of their ways are just put on.” Anne was removing her wraps as she talked. “They are, mostly, far from home and wife or mither, and they love to tease. I’m learnin’ to tease back, or ignore them, or, in some cases slap a hand. In fun, of course,” she added quickly, seeing Tierney’s shocked face, “and I get away with it!”

“Tha’s . . . tha’s good, Annie,” Tierney said. Annie, slapping a man? If she’d only had some of that spunk where Lucian was concerned. But of course she had! She had fought tooth and nail, like a tiger, and she had kept her virginity no doubt because of it. Yes, Annie had been through the gamut of experiences. But it seemed she was coming out on top, her old self again. It was worth the trip just to find this out, Tierney
thought, grateful she could relax her worries over her friend, in one way at least. Now, if she just didn’t look so tired. . . .

In spite of her physical weariness, it seemed Anne was doing well. “Look here,” she said, reaching a hand into her skirt pocket and producing a handful of change, walking to the dresser, and dropping it into a jar of coins.

“Are those . . .”

“Aye, tips. They call ’em tips, Tierney.”

“And what do ye do to get ’em?” Tierney asked a trifle grimly.

Anne’s laughter, tired though she was, trilled out blithely. “Naething, ye silly gowk! At least naething but give ’em good service. Oh, Tierney, ye should live in the city . . . weel, town, as I do.”

Tierney glanced around the room, barren of anything homey—hosiery drying on a line across the corner; teacups stacked on the small table along with tea, bread, crackers, and a few other items of food; two straight-backed chairs.

“We’re goin’ to get a couple o’ rocking chairs,” Anne defended, rightly interpreting her friend’s glance. “Wi’ the fire lit, and the lamp, and a good book from the library—you would really love the library, Tierney—we are verra comfortable.”

But Tierney thought of the Ketchum home, the love and accord there, her own room clean and attractive, the abundant food, the warm fireside, and wouldn’t have changed places with Annie for anything.

“Weel, we’re each contented then,” she said. “An’ so, it seems, is our Pearly. An’ have ye heard anything from home?”

Anne had not. But there was much to talk about, so much in fact that they forgot about Tierney’s supper until Fria came in, bearing a pail of hot soup. Greetings over, “There’s plenty of soup for you, too,” she said to Tierney.

There was a warm camaraderie around the small heater, Tierney and Fria eating soup and crackers at the table, Anne sitting on the bed nearby, all chattering a mile a minute.

Once again, at bedtime, it was three to a bed. But with the room cooling quickly as the fire was damped and the night wind
howled around, they were grateful for the extra body warmth and soon drifted off to sleep.

The next day, with directions from Anne, Tierney located a shoe store and purchased the overshoes she needed. In fact, she put them on and wore them. The wind was fierce, and her feet were freezing. After that she located a general store where she picked up a few personal items, found a top for Buster, and a book—
Medical Companion and Household Physician
—for Will and Lavinia, who had bemoaned their need of such a treatise several times. It pledged a concise presentation of “The Causes, the Symptoms and Treatment, demonstrating the cure of the various ills humanity is subject to.” Following that, Tierney spent a good hour searching for and selecting something for each member of the family for Christmas; she’d not get back to town before then.

Following the “shopping spree,” Tierney stopped by the Madeleine and the dining room, as Anne had suggested. At Anne’s recommendation she did it in the middle of the afternoon, when business in the dining room was slowest. Anne, having obtained Mr. Whidby’s graciously granted permission, took Tierney back to the kitchen and introduced her to the crew there, particularly Mrs. Corcoran and Spalpeen, whose shenanigans filled parts of every letter Anne wrote and kept Tierney amused as well as the hotel staff.

Nothing would do but Mrs. Corcoran, also ready for a break, would serve up—not only a glorious pot of tea, but, when she realized Tierney was staying at the hostel—a great platter of food, roast beef, pickles, cheese, boiled egg, and urged Tierney to “tuck in.” And when Tierney left, it was with a package of dessert, doughnuts, tarts, fruit cake, plenty for treats that evening and to take back home to the farm with her.

“What a dear she is,” Tierney said to Anne as she slipped on her coat again and prepared to go back to the room.

“I couldna have made it without her, the darlin’,” Anne acknowledged. “Now, when ye get there, build up the fire and sit doon and read one o’ the books. That’ll keep ye goin’ until I get back.”

Another evening, a few more good laughs, much sharing, a few tears, and it was bedtime and sleep. The following morning, before eyes were hardly open and clothes donned, Will was there, knocking on the door.

“Five minutes,” he said cheerily.

The short deadline was a good thing. It allowed for no weeping and few words. With one last hug Tierney was on her way, insisting Annie stay in by the fire, and bustling off with her packages, her overshoes on her feet and a new tight-fitting knitted cap on her head.

If she had thought the wind bitter when they came in, if she had thought the frozen roads rough, if she had supposed things couldn’t get any worse, she had a lesson in store for her.

“I don’t like this,” Will declared, pulling an extra blanket up around his own legs, having first tucked Tierney in. “We better make tracks. Trouble is, the team can only go so fast, given the distance and the weather.”

Perched on the wagon seat, the wind whipping around, snatching at the blankets, tossing the team’s manes and tails, frosting Will’s eyebrows, and in spite of hat and gloves and Lavinia’s heavy coat sending shivers up and down her body, Tierney thought of Pearly and her prayers. What a shame that she, Tierney, hadn’t been in a position to pray a few words of comfort over Anne when they parted; what a pity that she couldn’t whisper a request for mercy as they tussled their way through the wind and the cold.

Perhaps she was too intent on the fact that God wouldn’t hear if her heart wasn’t right, and not bold enough when it came to her needs in the face of what seemed to be a near state of emergency. Certainly her heart was filled with uneasiness; certainly it was a time to pray, from desperation if not from faith.

She’d give it a try; it couldn’t hurt, it might help. Squeezing her eyes shut against the storm, Tierney whispered a prayer that seemed, to her doubting heart, to be caught away in a whisk of wind, never to be heard by man, but perhaps by God, if He were being magnanimous.

W
hen they reached the coulee, it promised to be a heart-clutching and body-wrenching experience to descend to the refuge below. But the team needed a rest, and so did the driver, of this Tierney was certain. Will was rigid and frigid, especially his hands, which had been holding the reins all the way and must be numb and stiff.

He drew the team to a halt momentarily and studied the trail down. The ground was frozen solid, lumpy and icy.

“I think,” he said to Tierney, “I’ll unhitch and lead the horses down. To try and wrestle the wagon down would be disastrous, I’m afraid, and I wonder if we’d ever get back up. Yet the team needs a drink and a rest.”

Tierney nodded, peering out of the blanket she had finally pulled up around her, squawlike, for protection.

“I’d suggest you come on down, too,” Will said, speaking into the wind. “It won’t be easy, but you need the exercise—it’ll get the blood flowing good again, and bring more feeling into your arms and, er, lower limbs.”

As Will was unhitching the horses, Tierney unwrapped herself and clumsily climbed out of the wagon, realizing it was the height of foolishness to expect Will to be a gentleman under such circumstances and help her down. Just before clambering over the wheel, she thought of food and knew it wasn’t likely Will would come back and rummage around for cheese and crackers or whatever.

Remembering the items Mrs. Corcoran had sent along, Tierney located the bag under the seat of the wagon where she had dropped it. She picked it up clumsily, tucked it under her arm, and prepared to climb over the wheel. One leg over the edge of the wagon, the wind found an entrance, and she caught her breath in a gasp as it swept up and under her full skirts, billowing them like a tent and chilling her in an instant. Startled, her gloved hand slipped from its grip, her foot slid off the hub, and she crashed to the ground. But she was down and apparently intact. And that included her dignity, for Will had not seen.

And she had the sack with her. Unfortunately it had opened in the fall and the tarts and doughnuts had scattered out like small wheels rolling across the prairie. And no wonder—they were frozen solid. She gathered them up and thrust them back in the bag, wondering if they could possibly be eaten. Of course she hadn’t thought to get a cup or any means by which to get a drink.
Fine pioneer! My first emergency, and I lose my wits! And my balance!

Stumbling over the broken clods of frozen ground that Will and the team had left behind as they half slid their way down the embankment, Tierney arrived at the bottom, more quickly than she had planned, but again, she was down, and again she was safe.

Sheltered as it was from the wind, still the coulee was cold, and the stream no longer ran, unless it did so under the ice.

Slipping and sliding down the side of the coulee, Will had followed the horses, to indeed find the stream frozen, but not solidly. Stamping and kicking, he broke the crust, and the
horses lowered their frosty muzzles into the icy water. When they were finished drinking, he pulled them over to where dried grasses offered some sort of fodder, and they fell to nuzzling and eating.

Huddled under the bare branches of a bush of one sort or another, Tierney opened the sack, removed a doughnut, and passed the sack to Will. His expression as his teeth skidded off his first bite was enough to make her laugh, in spite of wind and weather and miserable circumstances.

Will, too, managed a grin. “I’ll just chaw away at it,” he decided and suited action to words. Gnawing and chewing, they managed some small sustenance. Will, never mentioning the missing cup, knelt on the frosted ground at the stream’s edge, cupped his hand, and drank. Thirsty and having no other choice, Tierney did the same. Her hand tingled with cold and, before she put her glove back on, she slipped her hand inside her coat and into her armpit and shuddered again as another frisson of shivers ran over her.

Not caring to wait too long, the weather being what it was, Will led the horses above as soon as he could, Tierney following, the sack of goodies in one hand as, with the other, she clutched weeds and bushes along the trail to help herself up the bank. Will was, by then, hitching up the team, and Tierney climbed back into the wagon.

“Why don’t you sit on the bottom,” Will suggested, “instead of the seat? I would do it myself if I could trust the horses to make it home.” But the trail over the prairie was indistinct, and there was too much at stake to delay even for a few minutes.

Tierney found a place among the horse blankets and quilts in the bottom of the wagon and hunkered down out of the worst of the wind. But she felt great sympathy for Will as he took his place again, to be battered by the fierce wind, and she watched him bow his head as though struggling through the gale. Ahead of him the horses bent their heads into the harness in much the same fashion and pulled doggedly onward.

It was the middle of the afternoon that the first flakes fell, softly at first, too light and dainty to be dangerous. Or so one would think, catching a single flake on the palm of a dark glove and examining it. But the glove, unwarmed by the hand within, was too cold to melt the unique thing, and one realized its potential for danger. Tierney blew the snowflake away, shivered again, and tucked herself more securely under the blanket. She tried leaning back against the side of the wagon, but the jouncing was terrific as the wagon made its way over a road turned solid, with no give to it whatsoever.

Frightening in their silent purpose the flakes fell. They swirled around the faces of Will and Tierney, they piled on the seat beside Will, on the wagon floor beside Tierney. Soon the road became obliterated and there were no landmarks, insofar as Tierney could see when she peeped over the edge of the wagon, looking with awe at the scene—white as far as the eye could see, and all within an hour of the first flake.