The Long Way Home (2 page)

She could hear her mother too.
‘‘No better time to change than right now.’’ Oh, Mother, such wisdom you had. What would you say to all this that’s gone on?

‘‘Marse Jesse, you all right?’’ Benjamin, another of her former slaves, looked at her out of the corner of his eye, as if afraid of intruding but caring enough to want to know.

‘‘Yes, I’m right as a June bug.’’ Jesselynn flashed him a smile that she’d dredged up somewhere out of her middle. ‘‘You want to drive awhile?’’ She grinned at the rolled-eye look he gave her. She knew he’d rather ride than drive any day, just like she would.

‘‘Yes, suh.’’ His sigh made her smile again. ‘‘I go tell Miss Agatha.’’ He turned his horse and rode to the wagon behind hers. Jesselynn had become Jesse instead of Jesselynn and Sir or Suh or Marse to her family to keep them all safe when they were forced to leave Twin Oaks near Midway, Kentucky. When Benjamin returned, Jesselynn whoad the oxen and leaped to the ground, her feet sending tingles up to her knees. She swung easily into the saddle and waited while Benjamin climbed up on the wagon seat and hupped the oxen forward. The wheels creaked in protest. One of the oxen bellered.

Jesselynn dropped back to the end of the wagon train and crossed to the north side. No one had reported the Indian shadowing them in the last day or so. On one hand she felt the same relief the others expressed at his supposed departure, but on the other she wished she’d known who he was and what his purpose was. When Wolf had led the wagon train, she’d not wasted time thinking on such things.

Turning Ahab, she cantered back to the herd of horses and cattle that snatched grass along the way as they trailed the train. Daniel, another of her young freedmen, and two other young men from the train kept the herd moving, watching out for danger, be it Indian or beast.

‘‘Anyone seen the Indian that followed us?’’ she asked as she drew even with Daniel riding Domino, her younger stallion. The two mares along with their foals kept to the center of the herd.

‘‘No, suh.’’ Daniel stood in his stirrups to stretch his legs. ‘‘We ain’t seen nothin’, not even a coyote. This sure do be empty land.’’

‘‘Getting rougher too.’’ Jesselynn looked westward toward the undulating hills that grew ever steeper. Black clouds billowed on top of the hills like frosting piled high on a three-layer cake, the sun stenciling the rims with silver. The cooling breeze felt welcome to her dry skin, but the thought of a thunder-and-lightning storm made her squint. Heat lightning speared the blackness.

Surely Cobalt would send others back to help with the herd.

Jesselynn saw Meshach cantering back toward them, but no one else.

‘‘Is he going to circle the wagons?’’

Meshach shook his head. ‘‘He say got to make up lost time. Keep dem wagons rollin’.’’

Jesselynn gritted her teeth. God help them if they had a runaway. Another lightning bolt streaked the sky, this time with a thunder rumble. Several of the herd leaders raised their heads, sniffing the wind. Bellows answered restless bellows.

Oxen lowed from the wagons ahead.

Meshach dropped back to speak with one of the young men and pointed out where he should ride, then did the same for the other. With the five of them circling the herd, perhaps they had a chance.

At the first heavy crack of thunder and lightning, Wolf had always circled the wagons with the herd inside. While restless at first, the herd had settled down, ignoring the rain, with the cattle chewing their cuds.

But now the pace picked up. More bawling. A horse whinnied.

Do I go confront Cobalt or not?
Ice balled in her middle. The first drops spattered her hat brim and sprinkled her hands. Cold all right. It could turn to hail real easy.

‘‘We need to settle the herd down in a low place. You want to take on Cobalt, or should I?’’ She knew better than to ask. Cobalt had already made his opinion of black men obvious. But then he’d ignored her also.

‘‘We take care de herd first,’’ Meshach said.

Jesselynn nodded. In a stampede her foals would be the first to go down. She turned and rode up beside one of the other young men with the herd. ‘‘Swing those ropes in front of the leaders and keep them calm. Whistle, sing, whatever you can do.’’

‘‘Yes, sir.’’ The boy—she couldn’t remember his name—did as told. If only some of the others in the train were as cooperative.

‘‘Over there!’’ She pointed off to what looked like a basin set among the hills. ‘‘Get the herd down there and off these hills.’’

Lightning lit the sky with blue light. She counted until the thunder crashed. Coming nearer. She drove Ahab into the center of the herd to cut out their mares. Daniel followed suit, and without adding turmoil to the tail-twitching, bawling herd, they each lassoed a mare and eased her and her foal out of the mass of animals. They still needed the filly and Roman the mule. Their loose ox would have to take his chances.

Meshach brought the filly out and handed his rope to Daniel. ‘‘I’ll get de mule.’’

‘‘No!’’ Jesselynn had to shout to be heard, close as they were. ‘‘Save the herd.’’

Never had she wished for another rope as much as now. Lightning flashed again, thunder rolled and boomed with another crack right after. The lead cow broke into a trot. Jesselynn handed her lead rope to Daniel and pointed to an arroyo that cut off to the north. ‘‘Get the horses up in that arroyo and hold them there.’’

Knowing he would follow orders, she whistled for Patch, their cow dog, and broke into a canter, heading for the leaders of the trotting herd. ‘‘Swing them in a circle. Now!’’ Thunder and splattering rain drowned out her shout. She whipped her hat off and waved it at the still-milling cattle. ‘‘
Hai, hayup!
’’ Patch headed for the leaders. Ahab shook his head but obeyed her squeezing legs and edged closer to the herd. Seeing what she and Meshach were doing, the other two herders followed suit, and the herd surged over the rise and down into the depression. With Patch barking and nipping when necessary, they turned the front-runners and got them circling with the riders loping around them. Sheltered by the hills in the shallow valley, Jesselynn breathed a sigh of relief. They could catch up with the train later.

Lightning turned the darkness into day, a blue day with the smell of lightning and rain on the air. The crack near to broke her eardrums. Ahab half reared, and only Jesselynn’s hands clenched on the reins and her legs clamped to his sides kept him from bolting. She fought him back to a standstill, her voice calm in spite of the terror that set her heart to racing.

‘‘That was a strike for sure. I’m goin’ to check on the wagons. Can you hold them here?’’

Meshach nodded, so Jesselynn reined Ahab away from the herd and trotted him up the rise, lightning flashes illuminating her way. Ducking her head to keep the rain from blinding her, she broke into a canter now that she was beyond the distance of panicking the herd.

This time she saw it. A forked bolt of lightning cracked the heavens, blued the world, and struck the ground up toward the front of the wagon train. The sound set the earth to ringing like an earthquake rolled through. Ahab leaped forward, his shrill whistle adding to the panic in Jesselynn’s heart. She clung like a burr, her ‘‘Oh, God, oh, God’’ the only prayer she could offer.

Fire flared from the lead wagon. Screams rent the air. Teams broke loose from the train and drove ahead in all directions, wagons rocking and bucking over the rough ground.

Ahab slowed at her fierce hold on the reins, and they pulled even with the last of the wagons. The wagon drivers near the end of the train had gotten a strong enough hold on the reins that they were already stopping.

‘‘Pull into a circle and unyoke!’’

Aunt Agatha, white faced but able, pulled her oxen to the right, Benjamin right behind her. For once being at the rear of the train proved to be a blessing. She could hear Ophelia singing and praying loud enough to scare away thunder. The sound brought a smile to Jesselynn’s face. She caught up with Nate Lyons, who waved when he saw her, and his grandson, Mark, clutching the seat beside him.

‘‘Go on back. Benjamin and Agatha are circling.’’

‘‘What we shoulda done some time ago, that . . .’’ Lyons, whom Agatha referred to as Brushface, cut off his sentence, but Jesselynn had a pretty good idea what he was thinking. He waved her on.

She pointed another wagon back to the circle and cantered on. A long storage box smashed open on the ground forced Ahab into the air in a jump that sent Jesselynn clinging upon his neck. She pulled him to a stop, settled herself in the saddle again, and peered through the sheeting rain, waiting for another heavenly candle to light the sky.

When it did, she blinked, trying to dislodge the eerie sight. Broken wagons and suffering oxen littered the land. Slowly picking her way among split barrels, soaked bedding, and a splintered rocking chair, she searched for injured people. One wagon missing a rear wheel stood upright, its driver unyoking the oxen, one down, one holding up a foreleg.

‘‘Are you folks hurt?’’ Jesselynn paused by the man.

‘‘Only shook up. Better’n some of the others.’’

Jesselynn touched her hat and nudged Ahab forward. The next wagon lay on its side, hoops crushed like paper. A limping man struggled to release the braces that held a thrashing ox to its still mate. A child’s cries caught her attention from a nearby heap of debris.

‘‘I’ll be right back,’’ she told the man and nudged Ahab forward. He snorted and trembled as they approached the shattered wagon bed. ‘‘Hello, anyone here?’’

The cries rose louder.

Jesselynn dismounted and, looping Ahab’s reins over her arm, dug into the mess. Lifting a soggy sack of grain, then assorted clothing, she found a young child dressed in the shift of all small children. She knelt beside the screaming, arm-flailing little one, seeing the right leg twisted at an angle.

‘‘Easy, child, easy.’’ The child opened its eyes and choked on a scream, reaching for her with both arms and a plaintive wail.

‘‘Ma-a-a. Want Ma.’’ A hiccup followed.

Jesselynn ignored the rain pelting them both and took the child’s hands in hers. ‘‘Easy, baby. I can’t pick you up until I make sure there’s nothing else broken.’’ The child’s hands in one of hers, Jesselynn used her other to explore the child’s body, watching for any signs of pain at her probing. ‘‘Now, you lie still and let me do something about that leg, you hear?’’

But the child clung like mistletoe, refusing to let loose of her hand.

Jesselynn looked up, hoping and praying someone else would come by and help her. ‘‘Father, what do I do? I’ve got to get this child out of the rain, or we’ll have more problems than just a broken leg.’’ She glanced back to see if her wagons were in shouting distance. Barely able to see them through the curtain of rain, she figured not. A man shouted for help from some distance.

Thunder rolled again but heading east. The rain continued unabated. She pulled a piece of material from under more debris, ripped it in strips and, taking a piece of a shattered wagon board, folded part of the cloth around the board, then laid it beside the child’s leg. ‘‘All right, little one, this is going to hurt again.’’ With infinite gentleness, she slipped the board under the twisted leg.

The child screamed. Jesselynn bit her lip and whimpered herself. ‘‘Please, Father, guide my hands. Make this work. If you’re near my mother, sure wish you could send her here to help.’’ All the while she murmured soothing sounds to the child and reiterated in her mind her mother’s instructions on setting a broken bone.
‘‘Pull steady on the joint on either side until the break slips back in.’’
‘‘Now we got to wrap this all the way up your leg, and then I can carry you to Ophelia. She’ll help make it better.

I know she will.’’ With the last knot tied, Jesselynn slid her arms under the child’s body and, holding the leg steady with the other hand, rose to an upright position. Trying not to jar the leg, she covered the ground to her wagon as swiftly as possible.

‘‘Oh, dear Lord, what have we here?’’ Aunt Agatha, oilcloth cape over her shoulders, reached for the burden.

‘‘No, I’ll lay her down. I didn’t set the leg. We’ll have to do that later.’’ She laid the child on top of a wooden box in the rear. ‘‘I’ve got to check on the others.’’ She glanced up to see six wagons now in the circle and another approaching. ‘‘You seen Cobalt?’’

Agatha turned from comforting the child whose weak ‘‘Ma-a’’ tore at Jesselynn’s heart. ‘‘No, and don’t say I care if’n I ever do,’’ Agatha retorted.

‘‘I know, me too.’’ Jesselynn swung back on Ahab. ‘‘If Meshach comes, send him on to help me. Oh, and get my medicine box out when you can. We’re going to be needing all the supplies we can find.’’

She made her way from wagon to wagon, assessing the damage. When she reached what had been the lead wagon, she asked one of the men what happened.

‘‘Struck by lightning. Hit that first hoop, and the noise scattered all the critters. Never seen such a awful mess in all my born days.’’

‘‘The driver’s dead?’’

‘‘Umm. And the two rear oxen.’’ He pointed to the two carcasses. ‘‘The others burnt some but alive.’’

Jesselynn studied the scorched wagon, burned at the bolts, the joinings, the wheels.

‘‘The man have a family?’’

‘‘Uh, yup. Someone come and took the missus and the little boy. They was stunned bad but sittin’ in the back outa the rain kept ’em alive.’’

‘‘Better cut the throats of those two dead ox. Let them bleed out so they can use the meat.’’

‘‘Uh, yup. That’s what I come to do. Can’t waste the meat in spite of all the tragedies.’’ The man went about his task, and Jesselynn cantered off to help wherever she could. Jesselynn cantered off to help wherever The downpour continued.

She’d just checked the last wagon when Meshach caught up with her. ‘‘Herd safe. Good thing Daniel brought our horses back to the herd. Gully washer come through dat arroyo not long after.’’

‘‘Thank the Lord above.’’ Jesselynn reined Ahab so they rode knee to knee to be heard over the drumming rain. ‘‘At least there will be oxen able to pull the wagons that can go on. I think at least four are totally wrecked. Not sure how many people dead, or animals. Still haven’t seen that so-called wagon master.’’