Never Look Back (55 page)

His initial view was that Mrs Jennings had to be a scheming trollop who had crept into the bed of a grieving man with the sole intention of moving up from poor relation to becoming the minister’s wife with all the benefits that would bring her. He thought he would have to watch her very closely to see she didn’t set her cap at someone else’s husband.

Yet as he watched her, he began to doubt his original opinion. She was no trollop, she had too much dignity and reserve. It was patently clear she loved the little girl, and she was intelligent, very independent, and pretty enough to win any man’s heart without guile. When he finally got her to speak of her ‘husband’, her love for him shone out in the way she praised him.

But yet another facet of her character had revealed itself today. First the shooting of the elk, as food for everyone, not for herself, for she hadn’t even demanded the best cuts or the hide, she’d just left the men to the butchering and the dividing up. Then helping Mrs Donnier with her sick children. That was an act of great kindness and courage, for the fear of infectious diseases was even greater on a wagon train than in towns and cities, and few people were prepared to put themselves or their own families at risk.

She certainly wasn’t a trollop, he decided as he saw her filling a wash-basin with water by the side of her wagon to wash her hands. She was a woman who followed her heart rather than her head, and God help him, he was falling in love with her.

James knew he created an impression that he was something of a ruffian. He’d found it was a way of hiding his true nature and his past. Being insolent, arrogant, callous and even at times brutish, spared him the attentions of gentlefolk who might wish
to draw him into their family circle. There was a bitterness within him he knew he’d got to deal with before he could allow anyone to get close to him again.

In fact James came from one of the best families in Virginia. If he’d married a girl from a similar notable family, his life would have been entirely different. But he had loved Belle, the overseer’s daughter on his family plantation since childhood, and when he graduated from West Point he married her.

The entire Russell family turned against him. Belle was ‘white trash’, so far down the social scale it sent his mother into attacks of the vapours each time her name was mentioned. James was cast out, his old friends shunned him, but he didn’t care then, he loved Belle and he thought that would be enough.

But James soon found that being a first-class soldier made no difference if he happened to have the wrong kind of wife. He got all the worst postings and there was no hope of promotion. Belle went with him wherever he was sent, even to the Mexican war, and from what James saw of the wives of the officers who had married the ‘right’ girl, it made him love Belle still more.

He was glad in many ways that he’d been disowned, for the grim postings and the views of a much larger America all helped him to see that his family’s values were warped and that their wealth had been made through human suffering. He began to see how evil slavery really was, he learned to admire and respect the Indians, but these views didn’t endear him to his superiors either.

When Belle died in childbirth, he contemplated leaving the army, but knowing he wasn’t qualified to do anything else, he stayed. What he excelled at was training enlisted men, and he might have continued along that path indefinitely, but for the Government suddenly deciding that the wagon trains going West needed officers with knowledge of the terrain and of the plains Indians to lead them.

For the most part it suited James. The people who travelled out to Oregon were courageous, decent sorts with open minds, they needed leadership, he liked the adventure and the challenge of getting them there as quickly and safely as possible. For six months of the year he could be his own man without kowtowing to senior officers who for the most part were bumbling fools. He believed he was using his talents to help people, and his country.
He had also believed up until now that he’d buried his heart down in Mexico along with Belle and his stillborn child. But a man couldn’t be right about everything.

The first of the Donnier children died that night, the second youngest, a little girl called Clara. Yet even before the little grave could be dug in the morning, her younger brother Tobias passed away too.

Captain Russell decided that they would stay another day at the creek, but as he was holding the simple funeral prayers and trying to find some words of comfort for the grieving Marie, Matilda was in the Donnier wagon minding the other three children.

The sun was so hot that the inside of the wagon was like an oven. The straw-filled mattress was soaked right through, smelling of urine and vomit, and the children were burning up. Matilda knew, just as she had with Tabitha, that their only hope of survival was to get them out of there to somewhere cooler, and quickly. Without waiting for their mother to return she picked up the youngest one, wrapped a length of cotton round her head to protect her eyes, grabbed a quilt and carried her down to the stream. She immersed her in the cold water, holding her there for some five minutes, then tucked her into the quilt under the deep shade of a tree and went back for the next.

She was returning for the third and last child as the Donniers came back. Marie just looked at her with pain-filled eyes, but her husband asked Matilda what she thought she was doing.

‘Cooling them down,’ she said curtly. He was a big, rough-looking type with unkempt fair hair and black teeth. ‘I’ve bathed the two younger ones and put them in the shade to sleep. I’m just going to take John too.’

‘No one takes my little’uns anywhere without my say-so,’ he said, blowing out his barrel chest and folding his muscular arms across it. ‘You leave them be, Marie will see to ‘em.’

‘Marie is in no fit state to do anything more,’ she said, putting a hand on to his chest to push her way past him. ‘If you care anything for your children you’ll help, or at least get out of the way.’

‘I don’t stand that sort of talk from any woman,’ he said. ‘Clear off out of it.’

‘Marie, run down and stay with the other children, give them some water,’ she said, looking fiercely at the woman and willing her to do as she was told.

Marie made a timid yelp of fear and ran off.

‘Come back here, woman,’ Mr Donnier shouted at her, ‘or I’ll whup you.’

Matilda could not hold back her anger at him any longer. ‘You pig,’ she hissed at him. ‘You have just returned from burying two of your children and you talk of whipping your wife! Have you anything inside that head of yours other than bone? You’ve lost two children, the other three are seriously ill, what does it take to stir you into some action?’

He clenched his fist and took a step nearer her.

‘Hit me and I swear I’ll kill you,’ she said, and meant it. ‘Get into that wagon, get your son out and carry him down to the stream. Now!’

She was aware a crowd was gathering to watch, but getting the child out was all that mattered to her, and he was too heavy for her to carry alone.

‘You’ll pay for this,’ he said through clenched teeth, but he got up into the wagon.

‘Cover his eyes before you bring him out,’ she shouted.

The man did as he was told, but went to move off the second she was holding the boy in the water.

‘Not so fast,’ she yelled at him, up to her waist in water. ‘You’ll clear that filthy straw mattress out, burn it and wash the wagon with vinegar and water, and bring all the dirty covers down here to be washed.’

He disappeared, and Matilda was left holding the coughing, struggling seven-year-old in the water. Marie was sitting beside the two younger ones on the grass, crying hard. The crowd had moved down to watch the proceedings but none of them were coming near for fear of catching the disease.

‘Someone help me!’ Matilda called out. She could hold John easily enough in the water, even though he was struggling, but she hadn’t got the strength to lift him out on to the bank.

No one moved, and her anger rose up and spilled over.

‘You lily-livered bunch of arse-wipes!’ she screamed at them.

Captain Russell came elbowing his way through the crowd, jumped down into the creek and waded out to her. ‘Arse-wipes!’
he whispered to her. ‘Now they’ll know you aren’t a real lady.’

His tone was only teasing and it defused some of her anger. ‘I know worse things to call them than that,’ she whispered back.

‘I do believe you do, Mrs Jennings,’ he smiled.

The stony bed of the creek was uneven, and as she held out the child to the Captain her foot slipped, and she wobbled sideways. The Captain caught her with one arm, circling it round her waist. For a moment or two he just held her and the child close to him.

‘Are you going to take the boy, or are we going to stay here making a spectacle of ourselves?’ she said, only too aware of his hard body so close to hers, and the eyes on them from the bank.

‘Just steadying you,’ he said. Then, taking the child from her arms, he turned and waded away with him.

The crowd of people began to move away almost as soon as he’d laid the boy beside his brother and sister, and the Captain followed quickly after saying something about getting a dry blanket for them all.

He didn’t return with anything dry, so once Matilda had established that all three children were breathing more easily, she left Marie to mind them and made her way back through the middle of the circle of wagons.

To her surprise a large crowd was gathered further along, and she guessed a fight was in progress. Pushing her way through the crowd, she saw it was Captain Russell and Donnier, both stripped to the waist and punching each other. It seemed to her that Donnier, who was heavier, had started out with the advantage, for the Captain had one eye almost closed and blood was trickling down his cheek. But although lighter and thinner he was a fancy mover, dancing around Donnier and hitting out with greater accuracy, and Donnier kept reeling back from the force of his blows.

As she watched, the Captain caught Donnier by the shoulder and drove his fist into the man’s stomach like a sledge-hammer. Donnier staggered back and fell over, remaining motionless on the ground.

The Captain calmly went over and picked up a bucket of water. Stopping for a moment to splash some on his own face, he then emptied the entire pail on to the prone man. ‘Get up, you dog,’ he growled at him. ‘Do what you were told, burn the mattress
and clean the wagon out. I’ll be round later to make sure you’ve done it.’

Tabitha was already in bed, and Matilda was sitting outside the wagon writing up her diary by the light of a candle in a jar, when the Captain came past, doing his rounds before turning in himself.

‘Still up?’ he said. ‘I thought you’d have been tucked up hours ago after all the ruckus today.’

She had washed all Marie’s bedding and hung it up to dry, then stayed with the woman by the stream with the children until it was cooler, when they’d carried them back to the wagon, which was now clean and smelling strongly of vinegar.

‘I guess I had to write down my thoughts about that dreadful man,’ she said. ‘Poor Marie, I hope he doesn’t take it out on her.’

‘He won’t dare while I’m around,’ he said, squatting down beside her. ‘What puzzles me is why a woman would choose a man like that in the first place.’

‘She told me her parents picked him for her. They thought as he was big and strong he’d work on their farm and be good to them all. But her father died just a few months after the wedding, and her mother quickly followed him. Donnier let the farm go to ruin, then sold the land and insisted they move on. It’s been like that ever since for her.’

‘I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard similar stories,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘It’s an unfair world, that’s for sure. I sure am glad I wasn’t born a woman.’

His sympathetic tone surprised her. She had expected him to claim Marie was at fault.

‘The awful thing is that there is no way out for her,’ Matilda said, looking up at the Captain with concerned eyes. ‘Her life is hell with him, but if she left him how could she manage to bring up her children?’

‘How are you going to bring up yours?’ he asked.

Although a week ago she would have bristled at that question, she sensed now that he meant it kindly.

‘I’m not made of the same stuff as Marie,’ she said. ‘I was making my own living right from a child. I can’t say I know how I’m going to do it just now, but I’ll find a way.’

She caught him looking at her intently. She expected that he
would say she must find herself a husband, and she was ready to snap at him if he did.

‘I believe you will find a way,’ he said, taking her by surprise. ‘A woman who can shoot straight, drive a wagon, nurse a stranger’s children and still be a picture to look at, sure ain’t gonna come to much grief.’

‘Well, thankee kindly, sir, for that pretty compliment,’ she said in her mock Southern accent. ‘I do believe you are a gentleman after all.’

They both laughed and something warm and sweet ran between them.

‘Goodnight, ma’am,’ he said, getting up and lifting his hat to her. ‘Sleep tight tonight.’

Chapter Fifteen

Matilda waved goodbye as ten wagons forked off from the main party to go north to Whitmans’ Mission in Oregon’s Walla Walla Valley, part of her wishing she was with them.

It was September now, the birth of her child imminent, and the Mission was only a relatively short distance away. But Narcissa and Marcus Whitman, who had founded the Mission, and eleven other people had been massacred by the Cayuse Indians last year, and many others taken as hostages. Those who had decided to go there had relatives and friends in the area and they believed that the army would protect them from any further hostilities. Captain Russell agreed this was probably correct, and that the new people at the Mission would offer Matilda shelter and care, but in his opinion it was far more sensible for her to press on to The Dalles by the Columbia river. Although it meant a much longer journey now, it was a well-established town and she would be safer there if bad weather came and she couldn’t make it all the way to her friends in the Willamette Valley.