Where the Trail Ends: American Tapestries (22 page)

Samantha blinked at the man towering over her.

Where had she seen him before? His dark brown hair and sideburns were neatly trimmed, his piercing green eyes quite serious as he studied her.

Perhaps she’d met him on their journey.

Her heart began to race as she scanned the room, struggling to remember who he was. And where she was.

A fire blazed in the hearth, and a thick blanket kept her warm. It was all she’d imagined it would be like when she was finally home, but the last she remembered, she and Micah had been walking on a path by the Columbia.

How had she gotten here?

She blinked at the man and tried to inch herself up on the pillows. “Where’s Micah?”

He pointed toward the window. “He is playing with the other children.”

A smile crept up her face as she eased back into the pillows. Playing. Her brother hadn’t played with other children in such a long time.

“And Boaz?”

The man glanced back at the door, and her dog lifted his head.

She closed her eyes again for a moment, trying to remember how she got here. There had been a canoe and lots of water. She’d been kicking, and she’d felt so weak. Someone picked her up. Someone strong.

A man.

Her eyes flashed open again. Was it this man standing over her? The one holding her hand?

Memories flooded back to her. She’d sunk deep into this man’s chest, letting him carry her the last steps of their journey. What must he think of her? So weak that she couldn’t even walk to the fort. So cold. She’d thought she could never be warm again.

But now, as he held her hand, she felt plenty warm.

He dropped her hand onto the covers, as if he’d forgotten that he was holding it.

“You’re the one who rescued us,” she whispered.

The slightest of smiles played on his lips. “I believe you gave me no choice.”

Her gaze wandered back to the window as she remembered his harsh words after they got to the shore, the lecture he’d given her about taking Micah across the river. He’d called Micah her son.

Micah was small for his seven years, but she shuddered to think that she looked old enough to have even a four- or a five-year-old. The trail must have aged her, although she didn’t know how she appeared now. She hadn’t looked in a glass for seven months...or maybe it was longer.

How long had she been at the fort?

The memory of losing Papa washed over her as well. They’d had to leave his body, covered in rocks and sticks on the trail.

This man was right. She never should have come to Oregon.

Boaz nudged her hand, his tail thumping against the side of her bed, and she reached for him. His gray fur was wonderfully dry. He’d worked so hard at getting them there, protecting them. She knew he would have carried them across the river if he could have.

She looked back up at the man. He looked very proper in his black broadcloth suit and knotted cravat. His green eyes were strong, almost severe, but she saw kindness in them too.

“Where is Jack?” she asked.

“He went to search for you.”

A breath of relief escaped from her lips. Jack hadn’t left them on the trail to die. “When did he leave?”

“Three days past.”

“How long have I been here?”

“Three days as well.”

She should be ready to walk another thousand miles, but she wasn’t sure if she could cross the room to the window. “Did the others make it?”

He nodded. “Some of them came here, but they have already gone on to the Willamette Valley.”

Without her
.

She thought back to the grave she’d seen in the Blues. “Was there a woman named Lucille McLean with them?”

He shook his head. “I do not know.”

He studied her, and she couldn’t read what was behind the intensity of his stare.

“Alex,” another man called from the open doorway, “McLoughlin is looking for you.”

He stepped away from her bed.

“Thank you for rescuing me,” she said again.

He paused at the doorway, looking back at her one more time.

This time he said she was welcome.

The cave was hidden far back in the ravine. Aliyah lit a tallow candle inside the entrance and led Jack through a narrow passage until they reached a large room.

Furs were strewn across the rocky floor, and colorful shells and porcupine quills hung along the walls. Herbs were strung between two poles, and chopped wood was stacked neatly at the side. In the middle of the room was a stone pit dusted with ashes.

Aliyah stacked several pieces of wood in the pit and lit some dried leaves to start the fire. The smoke curled up into the darkness.

Jack admired some of the sketches on the rocks, drawings of people and animals. “Did you draw these?”

She nodded. “It makes it feel more like home.”

He set his pack on one of the furs. “Where is the rest of your tribe?”

“A long way from here.” She tossed him a fur blanket. “You need to dry your clothes, Jack Doyle.”

He glanced around the room, shadows from the fire dancing on the wall. It was cool in the cave, but at least they were out of the rain.

She pointed to the back of the cave. “You can change there.”

He moved into the darkness and peeled off his sopping trousers and jacket that had done little to repel the rain. After he dried his skin with the blanket, he wrapped it around his waist and lingered in the shadows.

He could see Aliyah’s lovely form adding more wood to the fire. How had he gotten here, alone in a cave with this elegant native woman? She hadn’t as much as smiled at him, but in her brown eyes he saw honesty and trust.

Aliyah disappeared into the darkness on the opposite side of the cave, and with the fur blanket wrapped around him, he returned
slowly to the center to warm himself by the fire. When she returned, she was wearing a blue calico dress.

His thoughts tangled together, confused. Was this woman English or Indian? And did it matter? Back in Terre Haute, it would matter very much, but perhaps not so much out here.

She hung his clothes on a line and then used two sticks to place hot rocks from the fire into a leather bag filled with water. She crumbled herbs into the bag, and after it steeped, she poured the hot drink into a hollowed gourd and handed it to him. It tasted like raspberries and black tea.

She sipped from her gourd and then eyed his pack. “Did you bring food from the fort?”

He nodded. “Dried salmon and sea biscuits.” He glanced around the room again but didn’t see any food hanging among the herbs. “Would you like some?”

A smile crept up her slender face, lighting her eyes. “Just the dried salmon, please.”

He laughed. “You’ve had the biscuits before, haven’t you?”

She nodded. “The trappers may call them biscuits, but they don’t taste anything like the biscuits my mother used to make.”

He leaned forward, wanting to hear more of her story. How did such a woman end up living in a cave alone?

She tore up the salmon and added it to another water bag. Before she put the hot rocks inside the bag, she left the fire for a moment and returned with two purple-skinned vegetables.

“Are those turnips?” he asked.

She shook her head as she put them in the water with the salmon. “They are called
wapatos.
”

“I’ve never heard of wapatos.”

She shrugged. “They grow wild in the valleys.”

They waited quietly as the meal cooked, and then she spooned out the cooked wapatos to eat on the tin plate he retrieved from his pack.
The vegetables tasted to him like potatoes, and after they were gone, they both sipped the salmon soup from the bag.

The meal might have been miserly in any other circumstance, but it satisfied him. Or maybe his contentment came from the fire and the dry cave and the woman who shared supper with him.

He leaned back against a rock that was covered with a coarse wolf pelt. “How did you find Samantha and her brother?”

She shrugged. “I saw them when I was out gathering moss. I followed them to make sure they were safe.”

“You helped them, didn’t you?”

“Of course.” She sounded insulted.

A wave of guilt crossed over him again. “Why did you help them?”

“I had a son once.” Her gaze wandered to the fire. “And I was all alone, like her.”

Her words washed over him in the silence, a hundred questions playing on his tongue. Where had she come from, and what happened to her boy? Then he wondered how she had helped the Waldrons and why she’d followed him through the gorge.

Instead he asked, “How old are you, Aliyah?”

“Twenty-three.”

He studied her face again, her slender nose and tanned skin. She looked so much younger, but there was a maturity in her eyes that the unmarried women in their wagon train didn’t have. “Were you born near here?”

She laughed again. “You ask a lot of questions.”

He shifted under his blanket, his skin warm from the fire. “I was born in Indiana.”

She nodded. “My father told me about this Indiana.”

“It’s a land of farmers. My parents planted eighty acres of wheat and reared five children. I was anxious to leave, but then I married.” He cleared his throat. “Jenny died when she was your age.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It was a long time ago.”

“Perhaps, but some wounds never seem to heal.”

He glanced back at her and knew—she’d been wounded too.

“Jack Doyle,” she said slowly, like she was practicing his name, “why were this Samantha and her brother alone?”

He squeezed his eyes closed, the events from last week replaying themselves in his mind. He had plenty of excuses. Getting Mrs. Kneedler to a doctor, fear of the snow, exhaustion of his mind and body. But none of them seemed right to him now.

“I left them behind,” he said slowly. “Their father was going to die, and I wanted them to come with our company. Samantha wouldn’t leave him. I knew she wouldn’t do it, but I felt responsible for getting the others to safety.”

He hated the words as he spoke them. He hated himself for what he’d done. Glancing at Aliyah, he expected to see disdain in her eyes, but instead he saw empathy.

She looked down at the fire. “It’s hard to leave behind those you love.”

Had he loved Samantha? He’d respected her determination and enjoyed her company, but he hadn’t loved her as he had his first wife. Nor had she seemed to love him.

He leaned forward. “Who did you leave behind?”

She threw a stick on the fire, and it sparked. “My son.”

He could feel the pain in her voice deep within him.

He swallowed. “Your son?”

“I didn’t think I had a choice, but I had a choice all along. I could have stayed.”

“Stayed where?”

Silence was her answer.

He saw the pain in her eyes and shook his head. “You don’t have to tell me.”

She refilled the gourds with tea. “My mother was from the Cheyenne tribe. My father was an American who worked with the Office of Indian Affairs, but he spent so much time with the Cheyenne people that he looked and sounded like an Indian. When he met my mother, he decided to stay with our tribe.” Her voice grew sad. “For a season.”

“Do you remember your father?” he asked, his voice a whisper.

She smiled. “I remember his beard. It would tickle my face when he held me. And I remember the wooden horse he built for me. I kept it for years until—”

He wished he could pull her close to him, wash away the sadness in her voice, but he didn’t want to frighten her. “Until?”

“We had friends among the other Indian tribes, and we had enemies. My father left when I was twelve and then—” She paused and took a long sip from her gourd. “When I was sixteen, I was gathering herbs near our village. One of our enemies kidnapped me...and their chief kept me as his slave for three years.”

Jack didn’t mean to gasp, but her words shocked him. His stomach plunged at the thought of her being held captive. “I’m sorry.”

“I had my son while I was a slave. They took him away when he was nine months old.” Her voice quivered. “It broke my heart to leave him. But the man who called himself my husband rarely let me near him. Visits with my baby were rewards for what he considered good behavior. He and the others thought I would never leave the tribe as long as they had my son.”

He bowed his head slightly. “The hardest of choices.”

She nodded. “I pray for him every day, that God will protect him since I cannot. And that I can help protect others.”

Chapter Nineteen

Alex stood on the wooden planks of the boat landing and scanned the mighty river for any sign of Jack Doyle. Brilliant yellows and oranges from the sunlight danced across the glistening river and the cottonwood timber that lined its banks, but he didn’t see any boats paddling down the water.

When Doyle didn’t find Mrs. Waldron on the trail, Alex hoped he would hire an Indian guide to quickly paddle him back to the fort, but he wasn’t sure how far east the man would walk before he turned around.

When Doyle did return, Alex hoped he could take Mrs. Waldron and her son to the valley and provide a nice home for them through the winter. And then perhaps they could return to the safety of the United States in the spring.