She stopped at the look of utter disbelief on his face.
“We could meet them all, Joshua,” she rushed on. “I know it won’t be comfortable. Not at first. But then . . .” She let her voice peter out into silence. His eyes were as hard and impla-cable as steel plates.
“You haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you?”
“I have, Joshua. I—”
He spun on his heel and stalked to the door. He yanked it open. “I’ve got six wagonloads of freight coming in. Don’t wait up for me.” He stepped out and slammed the door hard behind him.
Caroline stared at the door for a long moment, then slumped back in her chair, her face lined with weariness and filled with bitter disappointment.
* * *
It was way past eleven o’clock when Joshua returned from the freight yard. He was exhausted and still seething inside. He felt as if he had been horsewhipped, then run over six or seven times by a Conestoga wagon. He stopped on the porch and removed his boots so that he wouldn’t wake anyone. He was in no mood for additional battle. Not tonight. Morning would be soon enough.
As he moved slowly up the staircase, he winced as the third stair creaked loudly, as it always did. But he needn’t have worried. When he entered the bedroom he saw in the faint light that the bed had not been slept in. He swore, and moved quickly to the table. Fumbling, he got a match, struck it, and lit the lamp. The room was empty.
He went out and down the hall swiftly, still carrying his boots. Olivia was gone. Will was gone. Savannah was gone. As he walked back to his bedroom he hurled his boots against the wardrobe. “You want to play the hotel game, do you? Well, fine.” He started unbuttoning his shirt with vicious jerks. “You go ahead and sleep there. Then maybe I can get some sleep around here.”
* * *
“Gone? What do you mean she’s gone?”
The desk clerk of the Independence Hotel was stammering like a kid getting ready for a “lickin’ ” from his teacher. “I’m sorry, Mr. Steed. She and the children were up early and checked out.”
He felt a lurch of concern and a flash of anger at the same moment. “What time was that?”
“About six, sir.”
Six!
He couldn’t believe it. Caroline hated early mornings. It took her almost an hour every day, sliding back and forth between sleep and wakefulness, before she finally came to life again. And Joshua, who was an early-morning person, had been so mentally and physically exhausted that he had slept straight through until nine-thirty that morning. He cursed himself for not waking up earlier, then looked at the clerk. “Did she say where she was going?”
“No, sir. Not to me, Mr. Steed. But you may want to ask Mr. Cornwell. I saw her with him a little over an hour later.”
“
What?
”
The man’s hands began to flutter. “I thought you knew that, Mr. Steed. Mr. Cornwell was helping her with the wagon and the horses.”
Joshua slapped the counter so hard that it made the clerk jump, nearly dislodging the glasses perched on his nose. Joshua swore under his breath, then without another word he spun around and left the hotel. On the street he did not hesitate. He turned right, and ignoring the glances his angry muttering was garnering, he strode down Main Street toward the freight yard.
“Will you shut up and listen for a minute?”
The sharpness in Obadiah Cornwell’s voice shocked Joshua into silence.
“I didn’t give her one of our wagons. I think she knew I wouldn’t do that again.”
“You mean she bought her own wagon and horses?” Joshua looked dubious.
“That’s right. She’s got her own money. And she used it. Paid out more than three hundred dollars.”
“Why didn’t you stop her?”
“Why didn’t
you
stop her?” Cornwell shot right back at him.
Joshua glared at his partner. “Because I didn’t know she was going!”
“Did you know she was gone last night?” Cornwell asked quietly.
“I . . .” Now he was suddenly defensive. “When I came home last night, I figured she had gone to a hotel. She threatened that once before.”
“And you didn’t go looking for her?”
Joshua bristled. “It was late. You know that. We were here until past eleven.” He realized how lame he was sounding. “Then this morning I slept later than I planned,” he finished sheepishly. “When I found where she’d stayed, she was already gone.”
“Yeah, I know. She roused me out about quarter past seven. By that time she’d already been to the livery stable and picked out a wagon and team. She came to me and asked me to help outfit the rig.”
“Why in the world didn’t you come and get me?” Joshua asked, thoroughly disgusted.
Cornwell stood up slowly and leaned over the desk. “Look, Joshua,” he said in a tight voice. “I’m not your mother and I’m not your employee anymore. Caroline is my friend as much as you are.” He straightened, his face reproving. “She said to tell you that if you had come for her she might have changed her mind. But you didn’t.”
Joshua sat down heavily in the wooden chair across from the desk. “And she’s going to Far West.” It wasn’t a question.
Cornwell nodded. “Ain’t no secret about that. She wanted you to know so that if you change your mind you’ll know where to find her.”
“Well, it’ll be a cold day in hell when I change my mind.”
Cornwell gave him a long, appraising look, then shook his head at his old friend and partner. “It’s a good thing I’m
not
your mother.”
Joshua looked up, his thoughts only half on Cornwell.
“If I were I’d take you out in the woodshed and bust a stout piece of oak across your backside. Or maybe on your head.”
Joshua shot to his feet. “Well, you’re not my mother,” he said hotly. “And judging from this morning, you’re not much of a friend either.” He kicked the chair back, almost knocking it over. He glared one last time at Cornwell, then left, slamming the door behind him.
* * *
On a gentle knoll that poked its nose into the valley of Adam-ondi-Ahman sat the beginnings of the new Mormon settlement which the Saints had affectionately named Di-Ahman. It was a striking setting. The valley—no more than a mile wide—followed the meanderings of the Grand River, whose course was marked by thick stands of willow, cottonwood, river birch, and heavy undergrowth. The valley floor was flat and rich and fertile, the results of the numberless times over the centuries that the river had flooded its banks. Once only grassland and low brush, now some of the valley’s expanse was marked off in patches and squares stitched together by knee-high strips of prairie grass left to mark property lines. Some of the fields, plowed too recently to be planted this year, showed almost jet black. They would lie fallow over the winter to let the thick sod start to decay and break down. But elsewhere, where the earlier settlers had been given land, various crops were responding to the richness of the deep and fertile topsoil. Here there was waist-high corn, there the deeper green of a potato patch. Two or three fields showed a lighter yellow-green, the winter wheat just starting to turn toward the golden brown that would mark its harvest time.
On the bluffs north of the river, at a point not too far from the road that led south to Gallatin and Far West, signs of a vigorous human presence were everywhere apparent. Simple sod huts were the most frequent form of buildings; but there were also several log cabins, and there was one frame building that housed the store. The wagon tracks were quickly becoming roads, and the narrow pathways broadening to become hardened dirt sidewalks. About half a mile from the main center of Di-Ahman, on a small lot marked off not too far from the top of the bluff, a shell of a sod hut was nearly completed.
“All right. One. Two. Three. Heave!”
The two Ingalls brothers swung their arms in unison, and the chunk of sod—nearly a foot wide, and two feet long, and six inches thick, and weighing close to fifty pounds—went up and onto the top of the back wall of the hut. The wall was well over five feet high now, and Peter couldn’t quite reach it. His end of the sod draped over the side and started to pull the rest of it over and down into his face. But Derek stepped to the side quickly, caught it, and pushed it back up into place. He lined it up carefully with the other sod bricks, then tamped it down into place.
Finally, he stepped back, wiping at his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt. “Done,” he said with great satisfaction.
“Done?” Peter cried. “We’ve still got to do the whole roof.”
“I know that,” Derek replied, a touch impatiently, “but the walls are done. When we get back from Far West, Lyman Wight and the other brethren will help us put the roof on.”
“And what if it rains while we’re gone?”
“Then the inside will get wet. It’s not like we’ve got a lot in there that will be hurt.”
Peter had a petulant look on his face. “The Independence Day celebration isn’t until Wednesday afternoon. That’s five more days, countin’ today. Why can’t we finish the roof first and just go down on Tuesday?”
Derek sighed wearily. “The first reason is that it’s not really five days. Today’s already half over. Tomorrow is the Sabbath, and we can’t work then. The second reason is that some of the brethren are leaving early too and won’t be here to help us if we do stay. And you know we can’t do the roof by ourselves. We don’t know how to do it.”
“And the third reason,” Peter said, “is that yesterday my brother heard that there’s a young man from Tennessee who’s recently moved to Far West and is takin’ a great interest in Miss Rebecca Steed.”
Derek’s eyebrows lowered and the irritation flashed across his face. “That’s got nothin’ to do with it. What Miss Rebecca Steed does is her business.”
“Yeah, sure,” Peter said soberly, mocking his brother’s seriousness.
Derek bent over and wiped the Missouri dirt from his hands on the prairie grass. “What’s got into you, anyway? I thought you wanted to go to Far West for the celebration.”
“I do. But if we wait we can get a ride with one of the families. If we go today, we have to walk.”
Derek suddenly laughed. “Is that all that’s botherin’ you? Didn’t I tell you? Brother Wight is going down this afternoon. He says we’re welcome to ride with him.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
“Well, all right,” Peter said happily. “Then let’s go today.”
Derek boxed at his ears playfully. “Since you’ve come to America you’ve gotten to be kind of a lazy bloke, you know that?”
Peter cocked his head. “Eh? What’s that, mate?” Then he jumped quickly as Derek swung at him.
“Come on,” Derek said. “Let’s get down to the river and wash up. Brother Wight said he’d be passing by here about two o’clock.”
“We’d better,” Peter said. “If we don’t get some of that dirt and sweat off you, Rebecca isn’t even goin’ to let you into the same house with her.”
He gave a yelp and darted away as Derek picked up a clod of dirt and sidearmed it at him, smacking him on the back. Derek stepped inside the sod hut and grabbed the one towel they owned between them, then with a shout started after his brother, who was hightailing it down the hillside and across the fields toward the trees that lined the riverbank.
* * *
It was Saturday night in Independence, and Jackson County’s saloons were jumping with activity. The laughter and raucous merriment spilled out of the open doors and into the streets, beckoning any passersby to enter in and partake. But Joshua Steed passed them by. He didn’t even raise his head. He was in no mood for merriment, and he was bone-tired from throwing himself into the work at the freight yard with an intensity that had shocked the boys and men who worked for him. Now all he wanted was to take off his boots and lie out on the bed. So he walked on swiftly, trying not to think about having to face an empty house for the second night in a row.
The spacious two-story house looked like a barn in the darkness. It looked particularly foreboding with all its windows dark. Caroline always left at least one lamp on for him so that there would be light in the house no matter what time he arrived home.
He pushed the thoughts of her aside angrily as he climbed the steps to the porch and opened the front door. He had vowed he was not going to mope. When she came home—and he knew she would eventually—there would be much to straighten out. His only fear was that somehow this time the rift would not completely heal. He wasn’t sure it would for him. The duplicity she had shown in going to Far West was too deep, the perfidy too damaging. Once inside, he turned, and twisted the lock on the door with a hard snap.
For a moment he stood there, debating whether to go into the kitchen and find something to curb the hunger that was gnawing at his stomach. But then he shook his head. He could wait until breakfast. Tonight what he needed was bed. Without bothering to light a lamp, he climbed the stairs and went into his bedroom.
He walked to a basin and pitcher of water that stood on the night table and poured some water into the bowl. For a moment he stared balefully at himself in the small mirror hung on the wall, then he leaned over and scooped up handsful of water and started washing his face. Suddenly he straightened with a jerk. He cocked his head to one side, listening intently. There was nothing. He grabbed the towel in disgust. Was his imagination betraying him now too?
But then it came again. Someone was rapping sharply on the front door downstairs. With a surge of hope, he swung around, toweling his face rapidly. He had locked the door. If she had returned, Caroline could not get in. He threw the towel in the direction of the bed and walked swiftly out, taking the stairs two at a time. But as he reached the entry hall, his pace slowed. Through the glass he could make out a dark shape against the moonlit background. It was too big to be Caroline. He stopped, the disappointment in him sharp and hard.
He almost turned away. He couldn’t imagine who might be calling—it was already past ten—and he had no desire to see anyone. But the shape through the glass moved and the knocking began again, this time even more sharply and insistent. Joshua realized that his nighttime caller had heard him come down and now was surprised that he had not yet opened the door. With an angry shake of his head, he stepped forward, turned the lock, and opened the door.