“Where are your brothers?” I will be giving Webb and Will and Wyatt a talking-to.
“I took their clothes. They’re all in their underthings, shivering beneath their blankets in the wagons.” She snickers.
“That’s where you should be,” I say.
“I can sit in the wagon and be miserable, or I can do the wash and be miserable. At least this way, the clothes are getting clean.”
“If the wind picks up, those lines won’t hold, and your laundry will be in the mud.”
“Then I’d best hurry,” she says without rancor.
“ka’a,” I grunt again. I cannot leave her, so I might as well help.
The rain is beating down so hard that wringing the clothes is futile, but I do it anyway, twisting and shaking the suds and soil from the wash as she scrubs away beneath the deluge. When the last shirt is lathered and wrung, I upend the barrel of dirty water, and she piles the clothing inside of it, the garments sopping but remarkably clean.
“I’ll hang them to dry when the skies clear,” she says as I push her back toward her father’s wagon. She thanks me with a wide smile, makes me promise I will come to supper the next time she invites me, and finally takes cover.
“You sweet on the pretty widow, Junior?” Abbott asks as I roll back beneath the wagon and begin to strip off my sodden clothes. For a moment I still, the word widow clanging in my head. I am no longer cold.
“I got some dirty clothes if you got a hankerin’ to do the wash,” Abbott chortles. I ignore him, pulling dry trousers and a shirt from my saddlebags. Both are immediately damp, but I wriggle into them, tugging my woolen poncho over my head and toeing off my waterlogged boots.
“You shoulda stayed here. She didn’t ask for your help, and you can bet everyone was watchin’ you two carrying on out there. You just called all sorts of attention to yourself. Mr. Caldwell isn’t a man you want to make an enemy of. She was married to his son, and he still considers her his property.”
“Then why wasn’t he out helping her?” I grumble.
Abbott snorts, but he shakes his finger at me. “Stay away, son. She ain’t for you.”
I bristle, but I don’t respond. After wringing out my hat, I shove it on my head, pulling the brim over my eyes the way it was before I was so rudely interrupted. I sink back against my saddle and prepare to wait out the storm with my eyes closed.
“Doin’ laundry in the rain. Damn fool thing to do,” Abbott mutters. “If you get sick, don’t expect me to be your nursemaid.”
“I never get sick,” I say, parroting Naomi May, and stiffen when Abbott laughs.
“You already are. Lovesick. I can see it all over your face.”
The storms have turned the Big Blue, usually only a few feet deep, into a raging torrent. Wagons are gathered on the banks in both directions, and from the clouds churning overhead and threatening rain, I know the river is only going to get worse if we wait to cross. Abbott agrees, and he’s quick to instruct the company to start unloading their wagons so the supplies can be ferried across. The men waste an hour haggling over the best place to cross and the wisest way to attempt it. Even with the elevated water levels, the wagons have to be lowered down the banks with ropes, one by one, to avoid them crashing into the river below.
A half dozen Kanzas Indians, stripped down to a bit of fabric looped between their legs and moccasins to protect their feet from the rocks, have constructed crude rafts to ferry people and supplies across and are charging four dollars per wagon and a dollar per person. The animals can swim across for no charge, but they want a cloth shirt for every load of supplies. The people hesitate at the prices and try to bargain with the Kanzas, but the moment a wagon tips over, spilling a family and all their worldly goods into the river, the emigrants decide it’s money well spent.
My mules halt at the edge of the water, but I give them plenty of slack, wading out until the water laps at my chest, my arms extended, showing them it’s safe. When I give a little tug, Dame follows me without protest. She begins to swim, her long lead rope stretching to the suspicious mules watching her from the banks. Pott and Kettle, my jacks, take a few steps and enter the river, kicking their way toward me, their heads high, their ears perked. The mules, strung in a long line, take to the water immediately after, as if shamed by the donkeys and my mare.
I leave the wagons and supplies to the Kanzas and the company and instead spend two hours swimming animals across—oxen and horses, sheep and cattle—and the men of the company leave me to it. Everyone except Mr. Caldwell, who, just as Abbott predicted, has not stopped glowering at me since I helped Naomi do the wash. Mr. Caldwell is convinced he knows best and bellows and beats at his animals, which he has kept harnessed to his wagon. His mules balk despite his whip, and I reach for the first one, murmuring softly.
Mr. Caldwell’s whip slashes down and catches the brim of my hat and snaps across my face. I can feel a welt rising on my cheeks, but I don’t release the reins. Instead, I snag the end of the whip and yank it from Mr. Caldwell’s hands.
“They won’t be goaded, Mr. Caldwell. They’re bigger than you and stronger than you, and if you whip them, you’ll have trouble at every stream and creek you cross for the next two thousand miles. You want to convince them there’s nothing to fear from you or the water. I’ll swim them across. You don’t even have to unhitch them.”
“Damn grifters. I can get my own team across,” Mr. Caldwell yells.
“Mr. Caldwell, let the man help. He’s good with the mules,” Naomi insists as she picks her way down the bank toward us. I thought she had crossed hours ago. I’d walked Webb across on my back, and Will and Wyatt had waded over on Trick and Tumble around the same time.
“I am not paying this half breed or any of the others to do what I can damn well do myself,” Mr. Caldwell argues. Mrs. Elmeda Caldwell is sitting beside him on the seat, and her face is as white as the canvas cover that frames them both.
“Come, Elmeda,” Naomi says primly, moving to Caldwell’s wagon. “Come down from there. Ma and I are walking across. If Mr. Caldwell wants to upend your wagon in the river, I’d just as soon not have you in it.”
Mr. Caldwell sputters and glares at her. “Elmeda will be just fine, Widow Caldwell,” he barks, and his eyes shift back to me. He yanks at his reins once more.
“I don’t want your money, Mr. Caldwell,” I say. I don’t either. I just don’t like him waling on his mules. “I’ll swim your team across. Let go of the reins and hold on to the box. Mrs. Caldwell will be just fine there beside you.”
Naomi shoots me a look I cannot decipher, a look both curious and cautious, as if she isn’t sure where and how I fit. It is a look she’s worn before. I reach for the harnesses on Caldwell’s mules once more, and this time he doesn’t argue but watches me with his lips tight and his hands a bit looser on the reins.
I coax Mr. Caldwell’s mules into the river without a quirt or a quibble, showing them exactly what I want and what I expect, and before long I have the wagon, the mules, and the Caldwells on the opposite bank. Mr. Caldwell does not thank me, but Elmeda allows me to help her from the seat and clings to my arm for a moment as she steadies her legs.