Sweet Sarah Ross. Julie Tetel

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СКАЧАТЬ and if she didn’t say something soon, Mr. Powell would think her an even bigger idiot than he already did—not that she cared.

      “Chimney Rock?” he repeated under his breath.

      Hoping that the landmark was ahead of them rather than one they had already passed, she repeated with confidence, “Yes, Chimney Rock. Is there something that troubles you in that, sir?”

      “Nothing beyond the fact that it lies some two hundred miles and more to the west of here. Did you not identify more proximate meeting points? Windlass Hill, perhaps? Ash Hollow?”

      “Ah, yes, Windlass Hill,” she said, picking the landmark that sounded the closest. “I had forgotten.”

      “You don’t have the faintest idea of a meeting point, do you?” he snapped. “No, don’t answer that question! Tell me instead whether, in one of your two trips to the Widower Reynolds’s wagon, you bothered to notice the direction of the tracks of the wagons that had fled the scene?”

      She interpreted this question as just another one of his gratuitous attempts to expose her ignorance. She composed herself before answering, “The character of the know-it-all is one of society’s least attractive types, in case you didn’t know it, Mr. Powell. Now, you might have asked me to notice the direction of the wagon tracks earlier in the day, if you had wanted the information, and you will not waste your breath asking me any more questions of this type if you know—and I make no secret of it—that I didn’t want to make this trip in the first place and would far, far rather be in Baltimore!”

      He grumbled inarticulately, but she caught several syllables. Although her lady’s ears were offended, she guessed that he was cursing himself for having failed to ask her to investigate what seemed, to his mind at any rate, important clues left at the previous day’s wagon site. After a few more paces he turned away from the riverbank and made his way up the slope. She supposed she was to follow him, but his long legs scissored through the tall grasses at a faster clip than she could sustain, so she stopped not far from the top of the slope and hung back while he tramped around the wagon site, his head bent toward the earth. After a while, he stopped that activity and stood looking into the distance. He was facing toward the sun, which had set beyond the horizon but which was still streaking the open sky with broad strokes of pink and orange, while the earth below was bedding down in layers of gray shadows.

      She refrained from calling out and asking him if she should come over to him or if he was going to return to her or what she should do. She was rewarded for her forbearance when, about ten minutes later, he returned to her side and said, rather grimly, that they would follow the river only for another mile or so. She also forbore to ask what they would do after that, thinking she’d find out soon enough, which she did. A mile, she had already learned, was not a considerable distance in this part of the world, even when one was on foot.

      They traipsed along at the water’s edge, hidden from sight by the slight slope that rose on either side of the broad river. The air was getting chillier by the minute. She knew that although the temperature had dipped into the cool range the night before, it had not become uncomfortablycold. She was hungry, having only nibbled at a little jackrabbit all day, but she refrained from asking about food on the perfectly good grounds that if she brought up the subject, the perverse Mr. Powell was sure to concoct something disgusting to eat. She would wait until he got hungry, then eat what he ate.

      At length he stopped abruptly. Looked down at her. In the light of the rising moon the planes of his face were sharp-etched, his expression somber. He nodded to the slope of the bank, which was steeper at this point than at their hiding place downriver. He climbed up high enough to be able to toss the sack over the edge, then moved back down and offered her a hand. She accepted his strong clasp gratefully, didn’t protest at the harsh squeeze he gave her or the rough tug that got her up and over the top of the slope.

      Once again on her feet, she brushed her skirts off at her knees. He picked up the sack, shouldered it. They were looking out over the valley of the Platte, an enormous table of land that rolled away and merged with the whole of the darkened horizon. By day she knew the land was tufted with green and yellow grass. At night it looked to her more like the surface of the moon, cratered with every shade of gray, or a paradoxically dry ocean, whose dips and rises had been made solid.

      When she noticed the direction of his gaze and followed it with her eyes, she saw two patches of white, not far off, crowded up against a slight rise in the landscape. The patches looked like the broken sails of two shipwrecked vessels. Her heart caught at the implications of that pathetic scene.

      He didn’t say anything. He didn’t look at her. Nor did he immediately move. It was as if he was allowing her to come to terms with the possibilities of the scene that lay ahead before actually confronting the reality of it.

      After several long moments passed, he said quietly, “It’s as I thought. Back at the wagon site, I saw the two white dots in the distance and suspected something like this. Tell me when you’re ready to go over there.”

      She summoned strength from the General, the father she had never known. She straightened her backbone, squared her shoulders. “I’m ready now.”

      Together they crossed the open expanse. She feared. She hoped. As they approached the pitiful remains of two covered wagons, she experienced a kind of death herself. Resisted it with every particle of her being. But she didn’t resist looking upon the brute scene of the bodies of her former traveling companions, which littered the ground around the two disabled wagons. There were five, stretched this way and that. Some facedown, some faceup, caught in their scattered, equally ineffective paths of flight. Without blinking, she looked at each body in turn. Every moment that passed brought her new life and new hope.

      She made the gruesome rounds twice, just to assure herself that hope and the moonlight weren’t playing tricks with her eyes.

      She pronounced, “So far, so good.” Then she laughed at what she had said. “Of course, nothing good has happened to these poor folks, but at least none of them are from my family! It’s awful to say such a thing aloud, but I’m happy that if misfortune was to visit our wagon train, it has fallen on others.”

      Powell didn’t reply. He had put his sack on the ground and climbed into one wagon wreck, then the other.

      On a hope and a prayer she repeated, “So far, so good. At least as far as I know for now.”

      He climbed back out of the wagon nearest her, jumped down on the ground. “Nothing,” he reported. “Not a pot or pan or sack of flour to be found.” He walked over to her. “Don’t feel bad about being happy your family isn’t among the slain, although it may feel odd to be so happy in the midst of this misery.”

      She nodded and voiced her puzzlement about another matter. “Two others from this wagon are missing. You see, here are the Kelly brothers.” She gestured toward a trio of bodies. “They were traveling together and had left their aging parents behind in Ohio. Now, beyond the second wagon lie Mr. Clark and his grown son Jack, but Mrs. Clark and her daughter aren’t there. I’m wondering whether they might have escaped.”

      “Possibly.”

      “Which means they might be roaming the hills,” she said. “Perhaps we should look for them.”

      “They might have been captured,” Powell replied. “Or they might be lying dead yonder, out of our sight.”

      “Still, I’m wondering why it is only the men who have been killed outright, and none of the women.”

      Powell СКАЧАТЬ