The Lost Wagon Part 48

Ellis said, "We never reached Laramie. The snow caught us close to that cabin under the knoll." Joe remembered the cabin; they'd seen buffalo near it. Ellis finished, "We had to spend the night there."

An iron band tightened around Joe's heart. He gulped and wondered how he would tell this to Emma.

"No fireplace thar." Snedeker a.s.serted. "No wood nuther. How'd you keep warm?"

Ellis said, "We spread buffalo robes on the floor, covered ourselves with others and lay together to keep each other warm." He looked squarely at Joe. "It was the only way."

Their faces were weary. But somehow they were s.h.i.+ning and happy and there was only innocence written upon them. Joe's heart sank again.

Barbara edged very close to Ellis, took his arm, and laughed.

"We ate the rest of mother's lunch for breakfast. Daddy! Ham sandwiches for breakfast are wonderful if you're hungry enough!"

Joe said sympathetically, "It must have been a terrible night."

"Best night of my life." Ellis smiled with his whole face. "I asked Barbara again and this time she said yes."

"Lordy, lordy," breathed Jim Snedeker.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Spring

Spring was heralded by a soft and gentle south wind. It ruffled the pines and stooped to caress the s...o...b..nks. Crusted snow softened and water gathered in every little ditch and depression. Ice melted from Joe's log slide, leaving last year's dead gra.s.s brown and forlorn between s...o...b..nks. Walked on all winter, and getting the sun's full force for half a day, the snow in the cabin yard melted and the younger children could play there.

Inside the cabin, the door of which swung open so they could watch the children, Emma and Barbara were mending clothes. A pair of Joe's trousers in her lap, Emma's needle flew as she st.i.tched a patch over a torn knee. She had had some forebodings concerning worn-out clothing and the availability of new cloth, but she needn't have worried. There had been bolts of cloth at Laramie. Even Snedeker had some in stock and he had a.s.sured her that most trading posts carried it.

Across the table, Barbara was mending one of Tad's s.h.i.+rts. Emma looked at her daughter and smiled.

"It's almost the last one, isn't it?"

"It is the last."

"Good." Emma breathed her fill of the balmy air that came in a gentle stream through the door. "Isn't this weather wonderful?"

"It's heavenly!" Barbara sighed.

Emma hid a smile. Barbara had walked light-footed and light hearted for most of the winter, and nothing had worn a plain face since the night of the storm. She saw beauty in everything, even the cabin's rough-hewn rafters, and Emma had done nothing to mar her joy. Hurt would come to Barbara as it came to everyone, but hurt, work and struggling were some of the catalysts that fused a marriage. Emma worked busily on.

She was happy for Barbara and Ellis, but she knew that Ellis retained a streak of wildness. That was not extraordinary; no young man worth his salt is contented to plod along like an ox or a cow. Emma had been pretty much satisfied with her son-in-law-to-be since Christmas Eve when she'd talked to him and she felt reasonably sure he'd outgrow his wildness, but she did not discount the possibility that Ellis's temper and impulsiveness might lead him astray, or cause the engagement to be broken before he'd had time to outgrow it. She laid the mended trousers on the table and thrust her threaded needle into her ap.r.o.n front.

Barbara finished Tad's s.h.i.+rt and hung it on a peg.

"That's all, Mother."

"We do seem to be caught up." Emma glanced critically at Barbara's mending and found it good. "But let me show you something."

She went to her trunk and from it took three partial bolts of gingham, one blue, one brown and one tan, and unfolded a strip of each one as she laid them on the table.

"What do you think of it?"

Barbara's eyes sparkled. She touched the cloth with gentle fingers and stroked it.

"It's lovely! What are you going to do with it?"

"Housewives need house dresses, darling."

"But, Mother you've several now."

Emma laughed. "It's you I'm thinking of. You didn't suppose I was going to let you come all the way to Oregon to languish in a cabin, did you? I bought this from Lester Tenney two days before we left."

"Mother!" To Barbara every evidence that she would some day actually be married to Ellis had a kind of magic in it, and she touched the cloth again, a benediction. Life was full of the most beautiful promise. Even the small threat that Hugo Gearey might come again to plague her had been dispelled by news of his transfer. The future held no blemish.

Knife on one side of his belt, hatchet on the other, Tad came into the cabin. He looked at Barbara with a smile that was half a leer, and Emma knitted vexed brows. Tad seemed to derive a vast amus.e.m.e.nt from Barbara's and Ellis's engagement, but what Emma did not know was that, one evening when they thought they were alone, Tad had happened on Ellis kissing his sister. He hadn't made his presence known, he had slipped away as quietly as he came, and he had never told anyone. Why any man should kiss a girl at all was beyond his comprehension. Why Ellis, to whom Tad had looked up but who had since fallen several notches in Tad's estimation, should bother kissing Barbara, was a complete mystery. But it was a hilarious mystery and one that had furnished Tad no end of private amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Hi," he said.

Emma said, "Tad! How many times must I tell you to wipe the mud from your shoes before you come in?"

"Oh, yeah." Tad looked down at his muddy boots. "Well, I was goin' right out again anyhow."

He scooted out the door and Emma sighed, "That boy can't sit still a minute!"

She went to the door to see where he had gone but he was already out of sight. The younger children, supervised by little Joe, were building a house from stray pieces of wood that they picked up in the yard. Emma looked down to where Joe worked, and for a moment her eyes dwelt warmly on him.

She went back inside to cut the patterns for Barbara's house dresses.

Joe, Ellis and Jim Snedeker, were notching the logs that Joe and Ellis had cut and brought in. An old man, Snedeker was by no means feeble.

Though not as active as either Joe or Ellis, he had used an ax for more years than Joe was old and he made up in skill what he lacked in agility. Though Joe was the best ax man of the trio, Snedeker notched almost as many logs as Ellis.

Joe worked willingly, happily, for this was work he liked. But within him was again a mighty restlessness and he kept his face turned to the south wind. Every tiny variation in it became almost a personal issue, for they had set out from Missouri to build a new life in Oregon and nothing must interfere. When the snow melted gra.s.s would grow, and the snow would melt if the south wind blew. As soon as there was enough gra.s.s they could be on their way.

Near where they were working, a group of quaking aspens, their trunks and branches already colored with spring's green hue, trembled in the wind. A hare hopped among them, crouched at the base of a tree and sat perfectly still. A happy canine grin on his face, ears p.r.i.c.ked up, Mike ran through the soggy snow to give chase and the two disappeared.

Snedeker rested his ax on a log.

"Wish I'd kep' count of the piddlin' little critters that dog of your'n has took after, Joe. He has done naught else sinst you fetched him here."

"He's been chasing them all the way from Missouri," Joe said. "The darn dog's probably run far enough to get him to Oregon and back six times over. But he hasn't caught anything yet."

"That don't stop his tryin'," Snedeker grunted. "Puts me in mind of a trapper I knowed. He ketched more beaver'n anybody elst, an' when n.o.body in the hul show could find buffalo, he could. But what he wanted was a white b'ar. The place was thick with 'em, but his medicine wasn't right for white b'ar. Ever'body elst run on 'em, but not Piegan Kelley. Got so he'd rush through his traps, skin out his pelts, an' rush off to find a white b'ar. Finally he found one. B'ar found him the same time. When I come up the b'ar was layin' dead as a stone an' Piegan was almost so.

But he was grinnin' like a coyote that just ketched an antelope kid.

'Got my b'ar,' says he to me, I can die happy now.' He did, too. That's the way 'twill be with your dog."

The aspen branches rattled more violently. Joe looked toward them.