The Emigrant Trail by Geraldine Bonner (most read books TXT) 📕

For I feel guilty when I think of how we left him."

"Where was the guilt? You've no right to say that. You understood we had to go. I could take no risks with you and the old man."

"Yes," she said, slowly, tempering her agreement with a self-soothing reluctance, "but even so, it seemed terrible. I often tell myself we couldn't have done anything else, but----"

Her voice dropped to silence and she sat staring out at the quiet night, her head blurred with the filaments of loosened hair.

He did not speak, gripped by his internal torment, aggravated now by torment from without. He wondered, if he told her the truth, would she understand and help him to peace. But he knew that such knowledge would set her in a new attitude toward him, an attitude of secret judgment, of distracted pity, of an agonized partisanship built on loyalty and the despairing passion of the disillusioned. He could never tell her, for he could never support the loss of her devoted belief, which was now the food of his life.

"Can I go?" she said, turning to look at him, smiling confidently as one who knows the formal demand unnecessary.

"If you want," he answered.

"Then we'll start to-morrow," she said, and, leaning down, kissed him.

He was unresponsive to the touch of her lips, lay inert as she nestled down into soft-breathing, child-like sleep. He watched the tent opening pale into a glimmering triangle wondering what their life would be with the specter of David standing in the path, an angel with a flaming sword barring the way to Paradise.

Two days later she and Daddy John, sitting on the front seat of the wagon, saw the low drab outlines of the Fort rising from the plain. Under their tree was a new encampment, one tent with the hood of a wagon behind it, and oxen grazing in the sun. As they drew near they could see the crouched forms of two children, the light filtering through the leafage on the silky flax of their heads. They were occupied over a game, evidently a serious business, its floor of operations the smooth ground worn bare about the camp fire. One of them lay flat with a careful hand patting the dust into mounds, the other squatted near by watching, a slant of white hair falling across a rounded cheek. They did not heed the creak of the wagon wheels, but as a woman's voice called from the tent, raised their heads listening, but not answering, evidently deeming silence the best safeguard against interruption.

Susan laid a clutching hand on Daddy John's arm.

"It's the children," she cried in a choked voice. "Stop, stop!" and before he could rein the mules to order she was out and running toward them, calling their names.

They made a clamor of welcome, Bob running to her and making delighted leaps up at her face, the little girl standing aloof for the first bashful moment, then sidling nearer with mouth upheld for kisses. Bella heard them and came to the tent door, gave a great cry, and ran to them. There were tears on her cheeks as she clasped Susan, held her oft and clutched her again, with panted ejaculations of "Deary me!" and "Oh, Lord, Missy, is it you?"

It was like a meeting on the other side of the grave. They babbled their news, both talking at once, not stopping to finish sentences, or wait for the answer to questions of the marches they had not shared. Over the clamor they looked at each other with faces that smiled and quivered, the tie between them strengthened by the separation when each had longed for the other, closer in understanding by the younger's added experience, both now women.

Glen was at the Fort and Daddy John rolled off to meet him there. The novelty of the moment over, the children returned sedately to their play, and the women sat together under the canopy of the tree. Bella's adventures had been few and tame, Susan's was the great story. She was not discursive about her marriage. She was still shy on the subject and sensitively aware of the disappointment that Bella was too artlessly amazed to conceal. She passed over it quickly, pretending that she did not hear Bella's astonished:

"But why did you get married at Humboldt? Why didn't you wait till you got here?"

It was the loss of David that she made the point of her narrative, anxiously impressing on her listener their need of going on. She stole quick looks at Bella, watchful for the first shade of disapprobation, with all Low's arguments ready to sweep it aside. But Bella, with maternal instincts in place of a comprehensive humanity, agreed that Low had done right. Nature, in the beginning, combined with the needs of the trail, had given her a viewpoint where expediency counted for more than altruism. She with two children and a helpless man would have gone on and left anyone to his fate. She did not say this, but Susan, with intelligence sharpened by a jealous passion, felt that there was no need to defend her husband's action. As for the rest of the world--deep in her heart she had already decided it should never know.

"You couldn't have done anything else," said Bella. "I've learned that when you're doing that sort of thing, you can't have the same feelings you can back in the States, with everything handy and comfortable. You can be fair, but you got to fight for your own. They got to come first."

She had neither seen nor heard anything of David. No rumor of a man held captive by the Indians had reached their train. She tried not to let Susan see that she believed the worst. But her melancholy headshake and murmured "Poor David--and him such a kind, whole-hearted man" was as an obituary on the dead.

"Well," she said in pensive comment when Susan had got to the end of her history, "you can't get through a journey like that without some one coming to grief. It's not in human nature. But your father--that grand man! And then the young feller that would have made you such a good husband--" Susan moved warningly--"Not but what I'm sure you've got as good a one as it is. And we've got to take what we can get in this world," she added, spoiling it all by the philosophical acceptance of what she evidently regarded as a make-shift adjusting to Nature's needs.

When the men came back Glen had heard all about the gold in the river and was athirst to get there. Work at his trade could wait, and, anyway, he had been in Sacramento and found, while his services were in demand on every side, the materials wherewith he was to help raise a weatherproof city were not to be had. Men were content to live in tents and cloth shacks until the day of lumber and sawmills dawned, and why wait for this millennium when the river called from its golden sands?

No one had news of David. Daddy John had questioned the captains of two recently arrived convoys, but learned nothing. The men thought it likely he was dead. They agreed as to the possibility of the Indian abduction and his future reappearance. Such things had happened. But it was too late now to do anything. No search party could be sent out at this season when at any day the mountain trails might be neck high in snow. There was nothing to do but wait till the spring.

Susan listened with lowered brows. It was heavy news. She did not know how she had hoped till she heard that all hope must lie in abeyance for at least six months. It was a long time to be patient. She was selfishly desirous to have her anxieties at rest, for, as she had told her husband, they were the only cloud on her happiness, and she wanted that happiness complete. It was not necessary for her peace to see David again. To know he was safe somewhere would have satisfied her.

The fifth day after leaving the camp they sighted the pitted shores of their own diggings. Sitting in the McMurdos' wagon they had speculated gayly on Low's surprise. Susan, on the seat beside Glen, had been joyously full of the anticipation of it, wondered what he would say, and then fell to imagining it with closed lips and dancing eyes. When the road reached the last concealing buttress she climbed down and mounted beside Daddy John, whose wagon was some distance in advance.

"It's going to be a surprise for Low," she said in the voice of a mischievous child. "You mustn't say anything. Let me tell him."

The old man, squinting sideways at her, gave his wry smile. It was good to see his Missy this way again, in bloom like a refreshed flower.

"Look," she cried, as her husband's figure came into view kneeling by the rocker. "There he is, and he doesn't see us. Stop!"

Courant heard their wheels and, turning, started to his feet and came forward, the light in his face leaping to hers. She sprang down and ran toward him, her arms out. Daddy John, slashing the wayside bushes with his whip, looked reflectively at the bending twigs while the embrace lasted. The McMurdos' curiosity was not restrained by any such inconvenient delicacy. They peeped from under the wagon hood, grinning appreciatively, Bella the while maintaining a silent fight with the children, who struggled for an exit. None of them could hear what the girl said, but they saw Courant suddenly look with a changed face, its light extinguished, at the second wagon.

"He don't seem so terrible glad to see us," said Glen. "I guess he wanted to keep the place for himself."

Bella noted the look and snorted.

"He's a cross-grained thing," she said; "I don't see what got into her to marry him when she could have had David."

"She can't have him when he ain't round to be had," her husband answered. "Low's better than a man that's either a prisoner with the Indians or dead somewhere. David was a good boy, but I don't seem to see he'd be much use to her now."

Bella sniffed again, and let the squirming children go to get what good they could out of the unpromising moment of the surprise.

What Low had said to Susan was an angry,

"Why did you bring them?"

She fell back from him not so crestfallen at his words as at his dark frown of disapproval.

"Why, I wanted them," she faltered, bewildered by his obvious displeasure at what she thought would be welcome news, "and I thought you would."

"I'd rather you hadn't. Aren't we enough by ourselves?"

"Yes, of course. But they're our friends. We traveled with them for days and weeks, and it's made them like relations. I was so glad to see them I cried when I saw Bella. Oh, do try and seem more as if you liked it. They're here and I've brought them."

He slouched forward to greet them. She was