When the Splendor Falls (66 page)

And now it had become their land, Leigh thought.

Fortunately, they’d had more room in their wagons than most wayfarers facing the uncertainties of crossing the plains and, eventually, the new life that lured them with the promise of a golden future. There had been no need to take up valuable space for the furnishings and household goods necessary to set up housekeeping when they arrived, or rope to their wagons’ sides the building materials and farming implements that would be indispensable to survival when the settlers reached trail’s end.

Their wagons had ridden light, an easy load for the six-yoke team of oxen, and although the wagons weren’t even five feet wide and a little over ten feet long, there was ample room inside, with a frame of hickory bows covered in canvas rising protectively overhead. They managed to store within the wagons’ narrow sides most of the comforts of home. Cooking utensils that gladdened Jolie’s heart were piled in the back along with their trunks. There were big ladling spoons and butchering knives, a great pot, a kettle, and a skillet, a dutch oven, a teapot and coffeepot, coffee grinder, butter churn, and tableware, all the basics for preparing a feast—even a white tablecloth to spread over the crates and barrels for the evening meal by lantern light.

And the supplies had indeed seemed bountiful to them, when for the last four years in Virginia, sugar and flour, rice and beans, salt and baking powder, eggs, bacon, molasses, coffee, tea, and dried fruit had been at times impossible to come by.

A mound of quilts and blankets and pillows made the night’s rest come more easily on the feather beds that often were set up beneath tents, which had been folded and packed with poles, stakes, and rope inside the wagons. Lashed to the sides and wedged into whatever space could be found were barrels of water, and the tools and equipment that might be needed on the trail to make repairs: extra oxbows and ox shoes, spokes, axles, linchpins, and other necessary parts for the wagons.

Leigh had shared one of the wagons with Althea, Jolie, and the children; the baby’s cradle rocking gently as the big-spoked, ironbound wheels creaked day after day, rolling steadily westward, the grease from the bucket hanging from the back axle silencing the groaning for only a few hours at a time.

The little pony, the cow, and Guy’s two hounds had survived to cross the plains. The pony, already too ornery and stubborn to be inconvenienced, the cow, too disinterested to be concerned, and the hounds, too loyal to their master to complain, had fared better than Leigh thought they would. First they’d been in the hold of a ship during a storm-driven voyage off the Atlantic coast, then they’d traveled through the North alongside some of the Union’s finest cavalry horses, having joined the other animals stabled in the back of railroad cars.

But once on the plains, Leigh watched in amazement as Pumpkin grew fat on sweet buffalo grass, his short legs never seeming to tire as he stomped alongside the wagon. His bosom companion, the fawn-colored Guernsey, had never shown such contentment, nor given quite so much milk; the cream rising thickly to the top of every pitcher, the rich butterfat keeping them busy churning it into frothy, sweet-tasting golden-hued butter. And Guy’s two hounds had raced around the wagons, barking excitedly as they chased long-earred jackrabbits and curious prairie dogs back into their burrows; but the litter of brown and white pups, born after two months on the trail, kept the two dogs closer to the wagons at night, and growling when a coyote’s howl sounded too close.

It had been the mare that had worried Leigh the most. Although she had always been a gentle creature, she was still a high-strung, easily excitable Thoroughbred. The terrors of the battlefield, where death had surrounded her, had scarred her spirit as permanently as the spur marks that had bloodied her flanks. Leigh had spent hours in the hold trying to calm her when Damascena’s terrified screams threatened to drown out the roar of the sea as the storm raged around them, tossing the ship like so much driftwood. And the journey across the North had been no easier for the panicked mare, stabled in the back of a drafty, noisy baggage car.

The cacophony of the rails had driven her into wildness, with the piston-turned wheels clattering against steel and the clash of metal striking metal shuddering through the length of the train with the coupling and uncoupling of cars. Leigh placed a blindfold over the mare’s eyes as the black, soot-filled smoke lit by fiery sparks billowed past the train in great clouds from the heaving smokestacks as the engine’s boiler was kept fueled and the train kept rolling through the night; but the shrill whistle had pierced the darkness. It was a constant reminder to all aboard of how far from home they were—the sights and sounds assailing them no less strange and fearful to her than they’d been to the frightened mare, Leigh recalled.

But when they left Westport, Leigh began to notice a difference in the mare. She’d calmed down, her eyes no longer rolling wildly at an unexpected sound, her coat no longer lathered from the fear that covered her trembling body in sweat. Grazing each day on prairie grass with its nutty taste, and a plentiful supply of oats, her sides began to fill out and her coat once again bore its healthy sheen.

Leigh watched her stretch her long, sleek neck, raising her small, proud head, her nostrils flaring as she sniffed the air, her deep chest expanding as she filled her lungs with breath untainted by fire and smoke, and death, her delicately pointed ears twitching slightly as she listened to the breeze murmuring softly through the tall grasses of the peaceful prairie.

Leigh knew she wanted to run, to stretch her long legs, to feel the wind in her mane. They began to ride, slowly at first, and for only a short while at a time. They started out walking, Leigh’s softly spoken words soothing when the mare turned skittish, but when she felt the muscles quivering beneath her, and not from fear but eagerness, they began to canter, then, finally, when Damascena fought the hand holding her reins, her hooves prancing impatiently, Leigh let her have her head, and they raced the wind across the wide land before them.

It had been a healing time for both of them. Each day Leigh watched the sun’s course across the skies, feeling her blood quicken as the shadows were left behind and she lifted her face to the warmth shining down. She felt as if she could ride forever across the open plains, racing the sun until she rode it down. But, always, Nathaniel, or one of his
vaqueros
had been close behind. Leigh sometimes wondered if he’d known that if she wished, they would never have caught her. Ever aware, however, of the dangers that lurked in the tall grasses, whether an Indian, or a snake, or a prairie dog hole—that if stepped in could snap a horse’s leg like so much kindling wood—Leigh bided her time, content just to feel the wind caressing her.

More circumspectly, Guy and Stephen had ridden in the wagon behind, followed by a small train of wagons loaded down with freight being shipped to Santa Fe. Nathaniel, sitting straight-backed and ever-vigilant in the saddle whether it was early morning or close to sundown, led them. A number of his
vaqueros
, attired in their short, silver-buttoned jackets and
calzoneras
—the fitted, flare-bottomed trousers—and sitting their horses straight-legged, their roweled-spurred, booted feet thrust forward in the stirrups, had ridden back and forth along the line of wagons to keep any stragglers from falling too far behind.

Leigh had wished Guy, who’d sat patiently day after day in the wagon, could have seen them, for the
vaqueros
were splendid horsemen. Their saddles had high pommels and cantles, and were richly carved, with colorful blankets rolled up behind, and their horses’ bridles gleamed with silver. Their mounts were sure-footed and fast, showing their Spanish ancestry, the Arab and Barb bloodlines, in stamina and sturdiness, and their Thoroughbred lineage in speed. It was a tough-bred quarter horse they rode, intelligent and even-tempered, with its stocky, firmly muscled hindquarters giving it the ability to respond instantly to its rider’s slightest weight shift, and its iron-hard hooves allowing it to carry its rider across the roughest terrain without mishap. Although Royal Bay had bred some of the finest quarter horses in the South, Leigh had never really seen one proving itself.

She’d been watching in admiration one day as one of the
vaqueros
walked his horse alongside the train, when suddenly horse and rider shot forward, the stocky horse’s strides carrying his flying hooves into a full gallop within seconds. Then the rider pulled up on the reins, halting his mount and turning him on his haunches quickly, then covered the same short distance at a fast gallop; safely returning a stray steer back into the herd of cattle being driven along with the train.

After leaving the wooded banks of the Neosho River and the little town of Council Grove, which had been their last sight of civilization, the wide expanse of rolling plain had stretched before them, broken only by straggly cottonwoods climbing up from rocky-bottomed creeks. Halfway between Council Grove and the Arkansas River, they forded Cottonwood Creek, which was always a difficult crossing, but especially so when the waters were flooding after a violent rainstorm. Waiting for the waters to run off, they camped overnight above the creek’s high sloping banks, the cattle and oxen herded into the shelter provided by the curving streambed. Reaching the Arkansas at the big bend in the river, they followed its course southwestward, toward the plains rising across the hazy distance, and staying within easy reach of the plentiful water supply for themselves and their livestock.

They reached the safety of Fort Larned, the dangers of Pawnee Rock left behind without even catching sight of an Indian, and crossed the tributary of the Arkansas easier than they had the countless creeks and rivers that cut through the three hundred miles of wilderness prairie between Pawnee Fork and Westport.

Leaving Fort Larned, instead of taking the northerly route along the Arkansas toward the western plains, and the numerous forts that offered protection on the trail from Indians and lawless raiders, then following the rock-strewn trail into New Mexico through the high Raton Pass, Nathaniel led them south at the Cimarron crossing of the Arkansas. Years before, on the sweep of desolate plain between the two rivers, the Pawnee, Kiowa, Ute, and Comanche had warred, and later turned their fury against the white-skinned interlopers, with the Apache striking deeper into the valley of the Canadian.

But Nathaniel knew the land; it was his land, and he rode across it as if he dared anyone to stop him. He wasn’t a man of foolhardy courage and too little caution, and with plenty of food and water, and healthy oxen to pull the wagons, and every man armed as if going into battle, he had carefully planned for any mischance.

They crossed the heat and dust of the Cimarron, the searing sweep of land and sky seeming to stretch beyond the horizon. To the southeast lay the
Llano Estacado
, the Staked Plain of west Texas, where once the great herds of buffalo had sounded like thunder rolling across the land, and to the east rose the snowy peaks of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, which turned bloodred at sunset. Between the mountains and the high plains, the Comanche were still feared, their raids leaving a bloodstained path through the land where once they had been lords but now had become outcasts, to be driven from the land like the buffalo.

Leigh shuddered, remembering the desolateness that had surrounded them, unable to forget the lonely, forgotten crosses stabbed into the unforgiving earth, and marking another, less fortunate traveler’s crossing of the Cimarron. Despite his wishes, she had accompanied Nathaniel when he’d climbed a barren, cone-shaped peak, the dead volcano giving a vantage point where he could spy out the trail ahead. Breathless, she’d stared in disbelief at the empty vastness that reached to the southern slopes of the Rocky Mountains. For as far as the eye could see, there had been nothing but a sunbaked land full of silence.

But even this inhospitable land possessed a beauty, and dawn and twilight had been her favorite times, the peaceful times when the desert air was cool from the night’s caress and a delicate shade of lavender washed the eastern sky, or the blaze of a fiery sunset lingered in streaks of scarlet and purple, the earth bathed in a warm, coppery glow as the first stars of night began to appear in the darkening skies.

Only a hundred miles or so from Santa Fe, a mesa that resembled a wagon had risen from the wasteland, looking as if it were guiding the weary the last desperate miles.

Past Wagon Mound, they came under the protection of Fort Union, where two years earlier the federal troops stationed there had defeated the Confederate forces in a decisive battle in Apache Canyon. It was also where the Cimarron cutoff they had followed across the desert joined with the mountainous route wending down from Raton Pass. It was here that an Overland Mail & Express coach, pulled by a team of six lathering horses, the crack of the driver’s nine-foot-long whip sounding like a gunshot, careened past, disappearing out of sight long before the dust settled from their abrupt passage. Nathaniel had shaken his silvered head, saying something in Spanish to one of his
vaqueros
, who laughed, then shot forward on his horse and scooped from the dust a gentleman’s fashionably dapper, black felt hat that had blown from the stage. Leigh had seen the round-brimmed hat moments earlier adorning the bobbing head of one of the passengers as he’d leaned precariously from the window, waving to them as the stage flew past. Baggage had been piled high on top, almost hiding the man riding shotgun next to the corduroy-uniformed driver wearing a wide-brimmed
sombrero
.

Fifteen days, traveling night and day, it took, from Westport to Santa Fe, Nathaniel had told her, eyeing her curiously; they’d been on the trail for over three months.

Leigh remembered holding his gaze for a long moment, then smiling at him, and he had smiled back at her for the first time. No words had been necessary between them. They both remembered the glorious dawn that had broken that morning, and the embers of the campfire that had glowed late into the night a month earlier on the prairie, when one of the
vaqueros
had sung softly, quieting the cattle as a storm threatened with a low, distant thunder, and flashes of lightning lit the underbelly of the clouds hanging low over the plains.