Some days she’d felt just like those two oxen, as if she were pulling a crushing weight with no respite, with no encouragement from Mathias or from the girls, working until her back ached and her hands were chapped and her nose sunburned.
Lee sent her a swift look. “Think you could manage this if you had to?”
“You wouldn’t force me to, would you? As you did with your horse?”
He shook his head and bent toward her. “Just look over yonder at Tess and Mary Grace,” he intoned.
Both girls stood transfixed at the sight of Jenna scratching behind Sunflower’s ear. At least she assumed that’s what they were staring at. Or perhaps her petticoat had come unsnapped, or her drawers...
But no. The instant the traces were attached, both girls lost interest. It wasn’t her they watched; it was the oxen. And Lee Carver.
Lee offered to show her how to drive the wagon, but after the horse, she couldn’t face another challenge. The man made her nervous; he asked things of her she wasn’t ready for.
He climbed up onto the driver’s bench and looked at her expectantly. She didn’t want to sit next to him, even with Ruthie between them. Maybe it was the way he smelled.
But you like his smell. Admit it. Mathias never smelled like anything except, well, hair oil and strong spirits. Imagine, dousing oneself with hair oil on an emigrant train. There were some things about Mathias she had never understood.
One by one the wagons rolled into a long, ragged line, and the day’s journey began. Mary Grace and Tess walked on the side of the wagon opposite Jenna, occasionally stopping to pick wildflowers or collect buffalo chips in their aprons.
The route skirted the south fork of the Platte River. Lee said they would have to ford it ten miles farther on.
But after their nooning, the sky darkened and it began to rain. At first it felt refreshing. Tess and Mary Grace yanked off their poke bonnets and turned their faces up into it, but then the sky opened up and fat drops pelted down. Ten minutes later both girls were soaking wet and took shelter inside the wagon.
Lee dragged his rain poncho out of his saddlebag and sheltered Ruthie underneath it. She insisted on riding on the box with him, but Jenna gave herself up to the cleansing downpour, unbraided her thick, dark hair and let the rain wash through the dark strands. Then she shook the dust out of her skirt and held it out so the water soaked through it. If only she dared, she would strip off her dress and let the downpour cleanse her body, but when she saw Lee watching her, she gave up the idea and dropped back to the rear of the wagon.
“Tess? Mary Grace? Come on out! The water isn’t cold, and it feels wonderfully refreshing.”
Silence.
Mathias’s daughters had no sense of adventure. Well, why should they? Mathias himself had had little sense of adventure. Then why had he insisted they travel to Oregon?
“Jenna!” Lee yelled over the rumble of thunder. “Climb up here under the poncho.”
She shook her head, feeling the wind slap wet tendrils of hair across her face. “No,” she called. “I like the rain. It’s like taking a bath!”
He slowed the oxen. “There may be lightning,” he shouted. “Don’t get caught in the open.”
She nodded, then stretched out both arms and turned lazy circles in the wet. A jagged bolt of blinding white lightning cracked across the black sky, and she bolted for the wagon. Lee pulled to a stop and reached his hand down to her. She climbed up and took Ruthie on her lap, and he draped his poncho over them both.
Water sluiced off the wide brim of his hat. Jenna reached out and tugged it lower on his face, but he brushed it back with an impatient gesture. “I have to see,” he yelled. She nodded, but he didn’t turn away. Instead he stared at her for a good half minute.
Goodness, she must look a sight!
Finally he refocused his gaze on the muddy trail ahead, an odd smile playing about his mouth. Well! He’d look messy, too, if he was as wet as she was.
An hour passed, then another, and the oxen kept lumbering forward. Then Sam Lincoln rode up on his bay mare and signaled to Lee.
“River’s dead ahead,” he shouted. “Hurry it up. With this much rain there might be a flash flood.”
“Can’t,” Lee yelled back. “Oxen can only go so fast.”
Sam frowned and rode off toward the Zaberskie wagon.
When the wagons drew up along the riverbank, Lee heaved out a long sigh. “Flooding” was an understatement. Muddy brown water rushed past, swelling what had been a series of shallow rivulets and sandbars into a wide, slow-moving sea. He pulled the oxen to a halt and studied the situation until Sam reappeared.
“The rest of the men feel it’s worth a try to ford now, before it gets any worse. What do you think?”
“No,” Lee said. “Too risky.”
Sam rode off again, returning within a quarter of an hour. “We’re going across. Yours will be the last wagon over.”
It was midafternoon before all the wagons but theirs had lumbered across the swollen river, and then the rain-bedraggled wagon master returned one last time. “Hurry it up, Lee,” Sam yelled over the roaring water.
Lee clamped his teeth together. “I’ll take the girls and Jenna over on horseback first. Then I’ll drive the wagon across.”
Sam nodded and was gone.
“Jenna, get the girls dressed in warm clothes. You, too. It can get cold in the middle of a river.”
She climbed down and reached up for Ruthie. When they disappeared into the wagon, he wrapped the leather reins around the brake handle and dropped to the ground to untie Devil and throw on a harness and bridle.
“I’ll take Tess across first,” he announced to Jenna. “Then I’ll come back for Ruthie and Mary Grace.”
The rain-soaked girls nodded, biting their lips. Mary Grace began to whimper.
“Hush up,” Tess snapped. “It’s just water. Besides, I’m going first.”
“Tess, I want you to catch your dress up between your legs, like a split riding skirt,” Lee instructed. When she was ready, he lifted her onto Devil’s broad, wet back and swung up behind her. Then he walked the horse to the riverbank, now shelving off under the onslaught of rain, wrapped an arm around Tess’s middle and turned the animal into the water.
“Hold on to his mane,” he shouted. “Dig your fingers in deep.”
The current sucked at them, swirled up around his boots. He kicked Devil hard and they lurched forward. Tess was trembling, but she kept a death grip on Devil’s thick mane. He put his face near her ear. “Don’t let go, no matter what.”
Her head tipped down in a nod, and the next thing he knew Devil stepped into a rampaging freshet up to his belly. Tess yelped.
“Hold on!” he shouted.
Water flooded up to the girl’s knees, then her thighs, but she didn’t let go. Ahead of him Lee saw the other wagons lined up on the opposite bank.
The horse started to swim but was swept downstream a hundred yards. Sam Lincoln and another man rode along the bank, keeping pace with Devil as he struggled through the raging water.
At last Lee felt the stallion’s hooves hit solid ground and he dug his heels into the animal’s sides. The bank was a slurry of mud, slippery as molasses. Twice the horse tried to heave its body up onto dry land, and twice he floundered.
Tess began to gulp noisy sobs. On the third try, Devil lurched up onto the bank, and Sam and someone else, Ted Zaberskie, standing ankle-deep in mud, reached to grab Tess. She tumbled off into Sam’s