Messenger by Moonlight (8 page)

The instant Shadow streaked past, Frank freed his string of ponies and spurred Outlaw into the storm, after Annie and the runaway paint. Through the pouring rain, he caught a glimpse of Shadow’s white rump just before it fell out of sight. His stomach lurched.
The draw
. And Shadow had just dropped into it.

He barely managed to pull Outlaw to a skidding stop before the two of them pitched headlong down the steep creek bank. Down below, Annie was clawing her way out of the churning waters of a creek. With a shout of relief, Frank flung himself down from the saddle and slid down the bank to his drenched sister. Cursing Shadow, he grabbed Annie in a desperate hug. “You all right?”

Annie clung to him. “J-just c-c-cold.”

The storm stopped as quickly as it had begun and the sun came out. Annie retrieved her hat and Frank helped her scramble back up to where, miraculously, Outlaw waited, his head down, his dark coat even darker where the rain had drenched him. “You’re a wonder, you crazy horse,” Frank said, patting the horse’s neck before boosting Annie into the saddle and scrambling up behind her.

“C-can’t believe he didn’t run off,” Annie chattered.

“He’s got more sense than all the others put together,” Frank replied, surprised by the affection that welled up inside
of him for the same animal that had once seemed bent on killing him. The minute he reached around Annie and took the reins, Outlaw wheeled about and headed for the others. Emmet and Jake appeared in the distance, galloping toward them—without their strings of ponies.

“Thank God,” Emmet cried out when he saw Annie. “You’re all right?”

“Nothing hurt but her pride,” Frank said before muttering to Annie, “an amazing bit of horsemanship, by the way.”

Shivering with cold, she stuttered, “I w-would have landed that jump if sh-she hadn’t jerked right so f-fast.”

“Luther’s making camp,” Emmet called. “Jake and I can chase down your ponies. Can you track Shadow?”

Frank nodded. “Soon as I get Annie situated.”

Back at camp, Annie used the wagon for cover while she changed out of her soaked clothes and wrapped up in a dry blanket. Frank spread her things on the wagon wheels to dry.

Luther was making coffee, and as soon as it was ready, Frank produced his flask and added a little whiskey to Annie’s mug. “It’ll warm you right up.”

She frowned. “How’s this fit with that oath I witnessed?”

“About as well as my swearing at the horse that nearly killed you.”

“I—I’m sorry.” Annie ducked her head. “I tried to hold her back. I just—couldn’t.”

Frank held out the tin mug. “I’m just trying to keep you from catching your death of cold. The last thing we need is for you to be too sick to do your job at Clearwater.”

Annie drew the blanket close about her shoulders and sat down by the fire. Cupping the tin mug with her hands, she sipped the toddy. With a shudder, she inched closer to the campfire. She took another sip.

Frank spoke to Luther. “I’m riding back to the draw to pick up Shadow’s trail. As for the other horses, I don’t imagine they went far. Once the sun came out, they probably forgot why they were running and went to grazing.”

Luther nodded. “It’d be good to make Valley Home before dark if we can. That’s about ten miles on up the trail.”

“We’ll do our best,” Frank said.

Once he’d put a little distance between himself and camp, he took a little sip of whiskey, grateful for the warmth it spread through his midsection.

He caught up with Shadow just before sundown. She met his approach—or, rather, Outlaw’s approach—with a welcoming nicker.

Early in the evening, a week into the ten-day journey to Clearwater, Annie and Shadow had just picked their way across a creek and come alongside Luther’s wagon when the freighter pointed at a barely discernible gray dot on the horizon. “Hollenberg Station. One of the best-run places between here and Clearwater.”

As they rode along, Luther spoke of Gerat and Sophia Hollenberg, the German couple who had, just three years previously, built a single-room log cabin at a prime spot on the California-Oregon trail. As their business grew, they added on. The single room eventually expanded to the current six-room building that, in addition to the family’s quarters, housed a grocery and dry goods store, an unofficial post office, a meal-serving tavern, and a loft offering overnight lodging. “See that barn?” He pointed at the massive structure just past the station. “Stalls for one hundred horses or mules.” He waxed positively lyrical about Mrs. Hollenberg’s cooking.

Dozens of immigrant camps dotted the landscape between the creek and the long, low building with the peaked, shingled roof. When Luther learned the barn was “full up,” he pulled his freight wagon alongside a large corral. Everyone in their train worked together, unsaddling, unharnessing, and unhitching their nearly twenty animals and turning them into the corral. By the time the horses and mules were tended
and the tack stored beneath the freight wagon, the evening star had come out.

Luther led the way up the hill to the clapboard building. Opening the main door, he waved Annie in ahead of him. She stepped into a large room with gleaming, whitewashed walls. An open door in the far wall revealed shelves laden with goods. A tidy woman dressed in an indigo calico dress and a spotless apron stood behind a counter to the left of that doorway, talking to a buckskin-clad customer. Nearby, a two-burner stove radiated warmth. Luther pointed to a door to their right, “The stairs to the loft—the ‘hotel’ part of the operation.”

At the sound of Luther’s voice, the woman behind the counter looked up with a welcoming smile. “Luther Mufsy! You are in luck! Today we have dumplings.” She handed a small cloth bag to her customer and stepped out from behind the counter. Without waiting for an introduction, she motioned for everyone to follow her as she led the way past the small stove and into the next room, where a large cookstove dominated the far wall and a rustic table and two benches provided seating for at least a dozen.

“I’ve been telling them they’re in for a treat,” Luther said, as everyone took a seat at the table. “Frank, Emmet, and Jake are the latest Pony Express riders. Jake’s for Liberty Farm up in Nebraska. The Paxtons are going on to Clearwater. Annie’s the new cook there.”

Mrs. Hollenberg looked Annie up and down and, without comment, retrieved bowls from a corner shelf and began to ladle dumplings out of a massive stew pot on the stove. As she set Annie’s bowl before her, she asked, “So. She is to be working”—she glanced over wire-rimmed spectacles at Luther—“for George Morgan?”

Luther nodded and clapped Frank on the back—a little too heartily, Annie thought. “Frank and Emmet weren’t about to leave their sister alone in St. Jo.”

Mrs. Hollenberg only grunted as she retrieved spoons from a drawer in the same cupboard housing stacked white dishes. She poured fresh buttermilk from a large white pitcher into tin mugs. Plunking the pitcher down on the table, she sat down across from Annie. “Is hard life,
Fräulein
.” She looked over at Luther. “Is too much for young girl.”

Annoyed at being so quickly dismissed, Annie said, “I’ve been cooking for my family since I was nine years old.”

Mrs. Hollenberg pursed her lips. “How many in this family?”

“Pa and Frank and Emmet and me.”

Mrs. Hollenberg counted silently, tapping each tip of the fingers on her left hand. “Four.”

Annie nodded.

Mrs. Hollenberg pushed herself to her feet. “Most days I am feeding many times that. I am having also Mr. Hollenberg’s niece, Louisa, to help with cooking, cleaning, washing, tending chickens—and garden. She works very hard. I work very hard. Still, is not so easy to keep up.” Again, she looked at Luther. “Is too much for one tiny woman.” After the pronouncement, she rose and busied herself on the kitchen side of the room, rattling this and tasting that.

Annie defended herself—perhaps a little too loudly. She was young—she emphasized the word
young
perhaps a little too strenuously, but honestly Mrs. Hollenberg was, if not old, at least middle-aged. Definitely past her prime. Annie was young, healthy, and “perfectly capable of cooking for
fifty
people if the job demands it.”

Mrs. Hollenberg said nothing.

When Annie opened her mouth to say more, Luther nudged her with his elbow and muttered, “Have a dumpling.”

Annie scowled at him. Jake asked for more to eat. Mrs. Hollenberg served it, and then moved back to the stove and opened the oven door. When the aroma of fresh baked bread wafted into the room, Annie’s mouth began to water. Her stomach growled. Mrs. Hollenberg served up thick slices of fresh bread, each one slathered with butter. Annie swallowed a spoonful of the broth in the bowl. She ate a dumpling. And another. She savored the tang of salted butter and the yeasty warmth of bread. The older woman might be outspoken to the point of rudeness, but there was no denying she was a wonderful cook. Annie dared a question. “Would you tell me how to make your dumplings before we leave in the morning?”

Mrs. Hollenberg turned around, a shocked look on her face. “You don’t know to make
dumplings
?”

Annie bristled. “
Anyone
can make dumplings. But I see flecks of green, and it doesn’t taste like parsley. Sage, maybe?”
There
. At least the old woman knew she wasn’t a complete idiot.

Mrs. Hollenberg studied her for a moment before responding. “Also bread crumbs fried in butter for stuffing. I can teach,” she said, but then waved the idea way. “But there is no point. George Morgan don’t keep chickens.”

Annie looked over at Luther for confirmation. He shrugged. She looked back at Mrs. Hollenberg. “Maybe I’ll make Clearwater famous for
buffalo
and dumplings.”

Mrs. Hollenberg glanced over at Luther. Looked back at Annie. Finally, with a low laugh, she pointed at Annie’s bowl. “Eat. Dumplings aren’t so good cold.” She spoke to the men. “Who wishes for more?” After serving thirds to Jake
and seconds to everyone else, she went into the other room. When she returned a few moments later, she set a note on the table beside Annie.

Annie suppressed a smile when she read the reminder regarding buffalo meat. The nonspecific word
herbs
was more than a little disappointing, but it paled in importance in light of Mrs. Hollenberg’s pronouncement about chickens and George Morgan. He didn’t keep chickens? She couldn’t possibly do without eggs—not for two years.

As the party finished eating and rose to leave, Annie thanked Mrs. Hollenberg for the recipe and tucked it in her skirt pocket. Once outside, she followed the men down to their camp, her mind whirling with doubt.
No eggs
. She’d taken chickens for granted. If Clearwater didn’t have a chicken coop… she hurried to catch up with Luther. “Do you know if there’s a milk cow at Clearwater?”

“Could be one now, I suppose.”

“But there wasn’t the last time you were there.”

Luther shook his head. “No, Ma’am. Not as of last October.”

“And no chickens.”

“It’d be a hard place to keep chickens. Hot, hot, summers. Cold, cold winters. Hawks in the air, varmints on the ground.
Not to say it can’t be done, mind you, but it’d take time and determination. I don’t think Clearwater’s ever had a cook with much of either. Most don’t stay on through the winter. Far as I know, you’ll be the first.”

“But—how do I keep hungry men well fed without eggs—let alone without milk or butter?”

“Just keep it simple. Beans. Ham. Grits. Repeat.” Luther busied himself building a small campfire to fight the chill of the early spring night.

Annie had hoped to take advantage of the “loft to let” over the Hollenberg’s main rooms, but the men wanted to keep an eye on the animals. Pulling her bedroll out from beneath the wagon, she wrapped herself up in it. The mournful sound of a mouth harp floated up from someone’s camp. She looked toward the other campfires glowing in the night. From the sounds of that music, someone over there felt the same way she did tonight. She was beginning to have her own doubts. And why had Mrs. Hollenberg spoken George Morgan’s name in that tone of voice?

Annie woke long before dawn. The moment she saw golden light flickering in the kitchen window up at Hollenberg Station, she rose and made her way to the well pump to wash up. Frank must not have slept well, either, for when she returned to the wagon to roll up her bedroll, it had already been done for her.

“There’s a light in the kitchen window up the hill,” he said in a low voice. “Won’t be long and there’ll be coffee. Want to walk up with me?”

Emmet, Jake, and Luther joined Frank and Annie at breakfast, this meal served by Mrs. Hollenberg’s niece, Louisa, who
did not seem particularly happy to be doing it as she shuffled back and forth between the stove and the table with plates of Johnny cakes and fried ham. When Frank’s attempts to flirt were met with blank stares, he gulped his meal and excused himself.

Luther must have thought they were taking too long at breakfast, because Emmet, Jake, and Frank were still sorting horses in the corral when he set off up the trail.

“Is Luther upset about something?” Annie asked, as she saddled Shadow.

Frank shrugged. “Didn’t say much. Just headed out.”

Annie decided to ride with Frank for a while, but just as she’d passed the station, someone called her name. When she looked back, Mrs. Hollenberg was standing at the back door of the gray building, waving a white handkerchief in the air to get her attention. As soon as Annie got close, the older woman held up a battered coffee tin filled with dirt—and a barely sprouted plant.

“Rosemary,” she said as she handed it up. “For dumplings.” She smiled. “Is to be our secret,
ja
? You keep inside for at least four weeks more. Too much cold and it will die.”

Annie swallowed a lump in her throat. This was the kind of thing that could happen every day if only they lived in town. Neighbors sharing a cutting from the garden. Women giving each other advice. “Thank you. Very much.”

Mrs. Hollenberg’s voice was gentle when she said, “You will be all right,
Fräulein
. Is much hard work, but those brothers? They are good boys. I see they care for their sister.”

Annie nodded. She peered into the woman’s blue eyes. “You don’t like Mr. Morgan. Why not?”

“
Ach
,” the old woman shook her head. “I don’t know so much as that. Is most probably gossip. Don’t be frightened.”
She smiled. “You make buffalo and Sophia’s dumplings, yes? You will do well.”

Annie blurted out the truth. “I never wanted to go west. I wanted to stay in St. Joseph. But”—she looked toward the trail—“I couldn’t let them go without me. They’re all I have.”

The older woman nodded. “When I am young, I dream of nice little house in village. Many friends. Many children. God gives instead much work. No neighbors. No children.” She smiled. “But also much blessing.” She pulled an envelope from her apron pocket and tucked it into Annie’s saddlebag. “Flower seeds from Sophia for to make you smile.” She took a step back. “Now you must go. But also you must visit Sophia when you are coming back, yes?”

Annie nodded. “I will. I promise.”

“Is
gut
. Maybe you are bringing me new herb you find in that Nebraska,
ja
? New secret ingredient.” She nodded. “Go with
Gott
,
Fräulein
. For you I am praying.”