Wagon Train Sweetheart

Chapter Three

Nathan—Emma found she thought of him by his Christian name after their late night conversation—did not rouse at all the next day as they came within sight of the Wind River Mountains, majestic snowcapped peaks miles to the north. She knew they would grow bigger as the caravan approached.

By the time they’d made camp that evening, she was exhausted from her efforts attempting to cool his fever and forcing water down his throat.

And he’d begun coughing, a deep racking cough that worried her.

Rachel came for Emma after supper. The rest of the camp was settling for the night, the sounds of conversations and music and laughter quieting as dusk deepened.

“Get out of that wagon,” Rachel ordered. “It’s time you had a break. That man isn’t going to die if you leave his side for a half hour.”

But Emma was half-afraid he might.

“He’s still burning up. His fever should have broken by now.” She was worried, her fear taking on an urgency that made her movements jerky.

After sharing a few moments of conversation with the man last night, she felt…responsible for him.

He moaned, a low, pained sound, then coughed again. She tried to support his shoulders as the hacking shook his entire body. She bit her lip, not knowing what to do…

“If bathing his face in water was going to cool him off, he’d be frozen by now. You’ve soaked his shirt through at least twice,” Rachel said.

It was true. Wetness stained the collar of his worn shirt.

When Emma still refused to disembark from the wagon, Rachel disappeared. Emma couldn’t hope it would last very long.

“Wake up, Nathan,” she whispered. If she’d hoped using his name would rouse him, it was in vain. He remained still in the wagon bed, his cheeks flushed with fever.

She brushed the damp waves of his hair away from his temple. If he’d been awake, she never would have dared so familiar a touch. But he wasn’t awake, and that was the problem, wasn’t it?

“Emma.”

Ben’s stern voice from behind startled her and she hid her hand in her skirts as if she’d been doing something improper. Which she really hadn’t been.

Her brother stood with hands on his hips. Emma could see Abby and Rachel standing shoulder to shoulder several yards behind him, both wearing matching expressions of concern.

“Come down for a while,” Ben said. Except it sounded more like an order than a request. And she was tired of others dictating her actions.

“I’ll stay for a bit—”

But her voice faded as he spoke over her. “You’ve been cooped up in the wagon for two days. It’s time to come down. Abby can sit with Mr. Reed for a few minutes.”

He hadn’t even heard her protest.

“But—” Emma swallowed back the entirety of her argument as her brother reached up and clasped her wrist.

She allowed herself to be assisted—hauled—from the wagon, but when Rachel offered to accompany her to the nearby creek, Emma insisted she stay in camp.

Perhaps Rachel sensed Emma’s upset because she didn’t follow.

The muscles in Emma’s back and legs burned as she walked briskly through the small space of prairie and then down through the brush to the meandering creek.

The tension in her shoulders remained.

There were other women nearby, some bathing protesting children in the cool, clean water, some scrubbing clothes. Emma would never have been brave enough to come alone, not with the threat of Indians. Not to mention the troublemakers among them—whoever was committing the thefts in the wagon train.

But she knelt on the bank somewhat apart from the other women. She knew many of them, had helped some of them when their children had been sick.

But she couldn’t stomach making casual conversation with anyone tonight.

She splashed water on her face, shivering at the coldness against her overwarm skin.

Ben and Rachel didn’t understand. Nathan Reed couldn’t die.

Ben hadn’t sat at their father’s side as the man who’d once been so full of life had faded away. Oh, her brother had been there at the end—those painful moments had been burned into Emma’s brain so that they were unforgettable—­but he hadn’t been constantly on call at Papa’s bedside.

Rachel couldn’t know how many hours Emma had spent praying for Papa to recover. To come back to them. And he hadn’t.

Watching Nathan Reed struggle was bringing all of those memories back. It was like living through Papa’s decline all over again. But this time, it was happening much faster.

Just yesterday, Nathan had been a virile, powerful man. And now he was laid weak with fever, the disease killing his body.

And she couldn’t do anything to stop it.

“God, please…” she whispered, her face nearly pressed into her knees on the creek bank. She didn’t even know what she was praying for. That Nathan would be healed, or that she would be relieved of the guilty burden she still bore from Papa’s passing?

When she couldn’t stand the heaviness in her chest any longer, she stood up on shaky legs. How long had she stayed by the water, prostrate and crying out silently? She didn’t know.

Most of the women had left, only a few remained far down the creek, speaking quietly. The dusk had deepened around her and urgency gripped Emma as her feet turned back toward the wagon. Whether it was the fear of the unknown wilderness, or fear for the man, she didn’t know.

Ben had pitched the family tent near the wagon and stood nearby, for once away from Abby.

“You should send someone for a doctor.”

Ben frowned and she rushed on, “Some of the other travelers we’ve passed said there are doctors traveling with other trains. If someone took a horse and rode ahead, we could find one and bring him back—”

“Emma, it’s almost full dark.”

“In the morning, then,” she insisted. “Nathan—” She only realized she’d used his name when Ben’s frown deepened. “Mr. Reed’s symptoms are not the same as the children’s.”

Now Ben crossed his arms over his chest. How could she convince her brother of the danger Nathan was in?

“He has measles. He’s broken out in the rash. But his unnatural fever and now his cough—those aren’t from the measles.”

“If he’s developed some other disease, you shouldn’t be around him,” Ben said, worry now creasing his brow. He started toward the wagon, taking a step and then pausing. Likely he’d just remembered his fiancée was the one in the wagon with Nathan.

“I doubt he’s contagious,” she said, and hoped with all her might that it was true. “But he needs doctoring—more than I know how to do.”

After all, she was just a woman. Not even trained to be a nurse.

She could feel Ben’s perusal and she didn’t know if he could see her expression as it was falling dark around them. As it was, it took all her might to maintain a calm facade when she wanted to demand him to understand and listen to her.

“If he isn’t better in the morning, I’ll consider it.”

It wasn’t enough. But it was something. “Thank you. I’ll relieve Abby. I’m sure you want to say good-night.”

Nathan’s condition hadn’t changed when she changed places with Abby in the wagon bed.

She prayed over him as she settled into the wagon. Her heart was fluttering, pulse thrumming.

He moaned again, his head turning toward her. Was he rousing?

His eyes didn’t open. But his lips formed a word.

“Beth…”

* * *

Nathan burned. Had he died and now was being punished for his sins?

His entire body was weighted down as though he’d been buried in a rock slide.

He rolled his head to the side, seeking some relief. The movement seemed to seep all of his energy away. And it didn’t help. The oppressive heat and darkness remained.

From far away—a memory, or reality?—he heard a laugh. It sounded like Beth.

“Beth!” he called out for her, but in his weakness he couldn’t be sure if anything emerged from his mouth at all.

A memory flickered through his consciousness, a remembrance of her as a teen, looking over her shoulder and laughing. Probably at him. He’d always been able to make his sister laugh. Until the end.

Another memory flitted through him, but this one stuck. The awful moment when he’d found her crumpled in a pool of her own blood. One hand protectively clutching her stomach—he hadn’t found out until later that she’d been trying to protect the babe in her womb from the violent blows its father had delivered.

She’d asked Nathan for help earlier, asked him for money to buy a train ticket. She’d been desperate for escape, willing to go anywhere.

“Beth,” he cried out again, the name ripped from his lips, from his very soul.

She had been the only good thing in his life.

And he’d failed her.

If this was the end of him, he deserved this torture, the all-consuming darkness. Why hadn’t he taken Beth away himself? He’d been younger, but he still could’ve protected her from that brute who was her husband. But she’d been afraid, too afraid to stay close. She’d wanted distance.

And with no education and no connections to recommend him, jobs were scarce. He hadn’t been able to round up funds in time to save her.

She’d died because of him.

“Forgive me…”

But she’d gone, or her memory had, and only the darkness remained.

What would her son have been like? Or daughter? Beth had been full of life and laughter. She’d always known how to tease him out of a bad mood. She’d been the only one to tell him he didn’t have to turn out like their father—a tyrant with an affinity for moonshine and a horrible temper—or the man she had married young to escape. She’d believed in Nathan.

And look what he’d done to her. He’d failed.

He burned hotter. Hotter. Until he felt as if he would incinerate from the inside out.

He just wanted the torment to end. Wanted to forget. Wanted blessed darkness.

Wanted to end this.

“I forgive you…”

He turned his head, searching for the source of the almost ethereal whisper.

“Beth?”

Had she come to ease his passing?

But then he felt something through the haze of darkness and heat. Soft fingers gripping his hand so hard he believed she could pull him back from the brink of death.

“I forgive you,” the female voice said again. Not Beth. The cadence was wrong.

But something inside him responded, opening like a flower to the sun. Some of the weight—not all—on his chest eased. No one had ever forgiven him before.

* * *

The first rays of sunlight burst over the horizon as Nathan’s fever broke and he became drenched in sweat.

Emma would never know what woke her in that darkest part of night. She hadn’t meant to fall asleep at all, but exhaustion and worry had overcome her. She’d woken with a cramp in her neck from being bent at a wrong angle. Her left foot had been completely asleep.

But those small pains had disappeared instantly when she realized that his fever must have spiked. His breath had gone shallow, with a rasp that frightened her.

He’d murmured a woman’s name—Beth—several times, finally begging for forgiveness in a tortured whisper.

She’d been afraid he was on the verge of death. Not knowing what else to do, she had grabbed his hand and told him she forgave him.

And his fever had broken.

Now she found a dry cloth and mopped the moisture on his brow.

When her hand passed over his face, in the growing light she watched as his eyes opened.

“Hello,” she whispered, almost afraid that she was dreaming this moment.

“Seems like you’d have given up on me by now, Miss Hewitt.” His voice was raspy and she fumbled for a cup of water even as that awful racking cough took him.

She held his shoulders until it had passed, helped him to take a few sips of water, mopped his brow because the effort had made sweat bead there again.

When he’d settled again, she looked him straight in the face.

“I never give up.” She let the gravity of the moment hold in a pregnant pause and then said, “And after all that’s passed between us in the last days, I think we’re beyond using each other’s surnames, Nathan.”

One corner of his lips twitched, the closest she’d seen him come to smiling. “Yes, ma’am,” he said meekly.

Or maybe she imagined the meekness as his illness forced him to whisper.

“Good.”

And it was good. She hadn’t lost this man, who’d become more than an acquaintance. Did she dare to call him a friend?

Chapter Four

Later that morning, Emma was able to leave the wagon and assist Rachel with the breakfast preparations. Her fears had been unfounded. Nathan had revived.

“You’re humming,” Rachel observed.

Emma looked up from where she flipped bacon in the fry pan. “Was I?”

“Yes. You were.” Rachel’s pointed gaze seemed to demand Emma admit to something, but she couldn’t imagine what.

She let her eyes linger on the landscape of tall, brown summer grasses before she returned her eyes to the pot. Did even the sunlight seem brighter this morning? “I suppose I am relieved that Mr. Reed is faring better.”

“He is?” Ben’s voice rang out as he joined them.

“His fever broke just before dawn,” Emma told her brother.

“Good.” Ben reached for the plate Rachel extended to him. “I won’t have to send someone riding after a doctor.”

“His cough still worries me.”

“Sally Littleton said she’s seen pneumonia develop from measles,” Rachel said. The thirtysomething mother was one of their neighbors in the wagon train and had been friendly since they’d left Independence.

Pneumonia. The word silenced the three of them. At the end, Papa had contracted pneumonia and never recovered.

“We’ll pray it isn’t that.” Ben’s voice remained grave. “I can’t spare any men to ride out. We need everyone on guard against the thief.” The last was said quietly, as if to keep the words from prying ears.

Emma set aside her spoon. “It isn’t Mr. Reed.” She had no evidence, but somehow she didn’t believe the man who’d been compassionate enough to comfort her through her fears of the storm could do such a thing. “I think Mr. Reed must have had a difficult life. But I don’t believe he is a thief.”

* * *

Nathan sat upright in the Hewitts’ wagon bed, bracing his hands against the sideboard, panting from just that little exertion.

And completely floored by Emma’s quiet, resolute statement, by her faith in him.

He’d done nothing to deserve it. In the face of her unexpected…friendship, he was ashamed of how he’d acted before this illness, brushing off and ignoring her attempts at kindness.

How long had it been since he’d known someone he counted as a friend? His childhood, twenty years ago. Or more.

And she was wrong. He’d done his share of thieving. When his pa had drunk away any money they would have used for food. As an adult, when his belly had been so empty he’d had actual pangs of hunger.

Having Emma’s faith in him, even if it lasted only for this moment and no longer, made him feel as though he could face whatever punishment the wagon train committee deemed necessary. It made him feel as if maybe there was a chance that he could really be forgiven. Be redeemed.

And that was dangerous thinking. He, more than any other, knew how black his soul was. And that good things didn’t come his way.

But then he heard Ben Hewitt’s next words through his swirling thoughts. “Someone stole a wad of cash out of the Ericksons’ wagon the night of the storm, during the fire.”

“It couldn’t have been Mr. Reed,” Emma’s sister chimed in. “You were with him in the wagon.”

“Yes,” Emma agreed.

“Whoever did it is sly,” Hewitt said. “Every able-bodied man was working the bucket brigade—or so we thought. Mr. Erickson didn’t notice the cash was missing until this morning. He thought his wife had it—she thought her husband had hidden it in their belongings. But it’s definitely missing.”

“How awful for them.”

The three siblings kept talking, but their voices faded out of Nathan’s head as he tried to scoot toward the tailgate.

If he was cleared, then he might still have a paying gig driving the Binghams’ wagon to Oregon. He’d taken the chance of joining up with the wagon train, knowing that if he could earn enough for a stake, he might get the fresh start he needed when the caravan arrived at its destination.

He could drive…if he could get his bearings. His head was swimming. He felt off-kilter, a little afraid he was going to fall out of the wagon if he got too close to the edge.

And then his hopes for a silent getaway went up in smoke as he started coughing. And couldn’t stop.

When he finally got his breath back, he was gripping one of the bows that supported the canvas, and Emma and her brother stood watching him from just outside the back flap.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Emma asked, her words more like a demand. Or those of a concerned sister.

“I thought I would—” A cough surprised him and cut off his sentence, though thankfully this one didn’t last long. “Head back to the Binghams’ wagon. Hitch up the oxen and get ready to pull out.”

Emma’s expression had turned into a thunderhead to rival what they’d seen the other day. Hewitt coughed, but when Nathan’s gaze slid to the other man, Hewitt had his hat off and was hiding behind it. Was he…chuckling?

“I figured I’d get out of your way, now that I’m better.”

Her frown only intensified.

“Better?” she echoed. The word sounded more disbelieving than questioning.

Maybe if he wasn’t so dizzy, he could follow the conversation a little better. Although that wasn’t a guarantee because he was awful rusty at talking to folks.

She stepped up onto a crate that must’ve been put in place to help her reach or get up into the wagon. She was muttering to herself, something that sounded suspiciously like, “If this is what your thinking gets you, I recommend you stop.”

But that couldn’t be right. He’d only ever heard Emma speak kind words, not sarcastic ones.

“Lie back down.”

He balked at the order and this time he heard Hewitt laugh.

She blocked him from moving anywhere but backward, deeper into the wagon. She’d pulled her hair up in a severe style since he’d seen her at dawn, the sun breaking behind her and casting a halo of light around her mussed hair.

He sent a glare over her shoulder at Hewitt. The man only shrugged, leaving Nathan to wonder if she made a habit of bossing him, too.

“As far as I’m concerned, you’re cleared of the thefts,” Hewitt said. “I’ll speak to the committee when I’m able.”

Nathan nodded his thanks, unsmiling. If Hewitt would’ve investigated better, maybe Nathan wouldn’t have been blamed in the first place.

But he knew better than to expect an apology for the unfounded accusation or the manhandling of his meager belongings as if they had had the right to do so.

They might’ve found him innocent, but Nathan knew he did not have the respect of most of the men.

But a sudden weakness took his limbs. He wavered, and for a moment wanted nothing more than to lie down like Emma had told him to.

“Get some rest,” Hewitt said. “You can drive when you’re up to it.”

The man walked off and Nathan wanted nothing more than to be able to do the same, to find somewhere private to lick his wounds, as it were.

But he was still near face-to-face with Emma, who remained half in and half out of the wagon, waiting for him to lie back.

He acquiesced, only because he didn’t think his legs would hold him if he tried to climb out of the wagon. He stared up at the white underside of the bonnet, unsure whether, if he looked at Emma, he would see her disappointed that he hadn’t been more grateful to her brother.

He wasn’t good at this, at being friendly with people.

“It’s good you’ve been cleared,” she said. He heard the clink of a fork against a plate and smelled something that had his gut twisting in a reminder that he hadn’t eaten in two days.

But he still couldn’t look at her.

“I imagine Stillwell was disappointed.” Nathan was surprised that the words emerged so easily when he hadn’t intended to say anything at all.

“Why?”

He wasn’t going to answer, but she touched his forehead, a gentle brush of her fingertips, and his eyes flicked to her of their own accord.

Her gaze reflected only sincere curiosity and he found himself saying, “He seems to have it in for me.”

He watched a tiny crease form between her eyebrows, just above the bridge of her nose.

But she didn’t laugh at him, she didn’t dismiss his statement out of hand.

“Are you certain you’re not…” She hesitated.

Her voice trailed off, but he could guess what she’d been going to say.

“Imagining that he dislikes me?”

He couldn’t hold her gaze and turned his head to stare at the opposite sideboard. His cheeks burned with embarrassment.

Was he imagining Stillwell’s watchful, suspicious gazes? No. The man expressed more suspicion toward Nathan than most folks, who tended to simply avoid him.

When she spoke again, her voice sounded cheery, as if the previous conversation hadn’t occurred. “The good news is you won’t have to bear my company all day.”

It was a relief. He didn’t know how to act around her.

But he also felt a small twinge of disappointment.

It was better this way. Better not to learn to enjoy her company, even for a few hours.

“What am I supposed to do, confined to the wagon all day?” he asked.

“You could sing,” she suggested.

“Sing?” he repeated.

“Sing. Rachel and I would be cheered if you were to serenade us as we walk.”

He stared dumbly at her until her lips turned up in a smile and then she dissolved into giggles.

Her mirth was contagious—how long had it been since he’d made anyone smile?—but he prevailed against the urge to smile.

She finally controlled herself, hiding her remaining smile behind her hand. “I suppose you’ll have to read to pass the time.”

“Read?”

“You can’t read?”

His education had been spotty at best. But he’d spent several years of his adult life teaching himself to read, not wanting to be cheated by those he traded with.

And it was a matter of pride for him. A man should know how to read.

“I can read,” he told her.

And if there was a flash of admiration in her eyes, he didn’t feel a responding flash of pride.

She rustled around in the belongings packed against the opposite sideboard. What must it be like to own so many things?