The Hunger(6)

But she didn’t regret motherhood. Maybe it was one of the only things she didn’t regret. She was proud of her girls, in fact: had placed honey on their tongues when they were babies, as the Indian servant in Tamsen’s childhood home had taught her, so they would grow up sweet; had braided ropes of balsam fir and tucked it in their blankets so they would grow up strong.

They would always have options; they’d never be yoked into marriage, as she had been not once, but twice.

But Tamsen had her way of getting even, as some might call it.

Stanton met Tamsen’s eyes again. Betsy had gone ahead to catch up with her children, and so this time Tamsen didn’t look away, not until he did.

She reached out and let her fingertips dance over the wildflower blossoms. For a moment, she thought of the yellow coneflowers that dotted her brother Jory’s vast wheat fields, untamable and abundant. She knew home was ahead of her and not behind, that she should banish memories of Jory’s farm—and all thoughts of her life before—from her mind, but she couldn’t just now.

The blossoms bent and swayed at her touch, so delicate they almost tickled.





CHAPTER THREE





Mary Graves knelt in the grass and set down her metal tub beside the river. It was a peaceable stretch of the North Platte, slow and gentle, but maybe that was because summer had taken a bite out of it already. The land had all the earmarks of a coming drought.

Doing the washing for the large Graves family was one of Mary’s many responsibilities. Twelve people—her mother and father, five sisters and three brothers, not to mention her older sister Sarah’s husband—meant a lot of dirty clothes and linens, and Mary preferred to do a little every night rather than let it pile up. It was one of the few times she could be by herself. Her entire day, it seemed, was spent in the company of her family: minding her younger siblings, preparing meals alongside her mother, sitting with her sister by the fire in the evenings to mend clothes. From the minute she rose in the morning until she took to her bedroll, she was surrounded by a clutter of other people, assailed by voices and needs, stories and complaints. Sometimes it made her feel as if she were constantly standing in the middle of a hard wind, blown in every direction. Even from this distance the sound of raucous laughter and shouting carried to her from the encampment.

Normally she escaped just for the sheer pleasure of standing in silence, listening to nothing but the soft rustling of tall weeds in the breeze. Tonight, however, the reminder of the wagon line nearby didn’t bother her so much. The missing boy had left everyone spooked, even her. Poor Willem Nystrom. His family was part of the original wagon party and because there was little mixing with the newcomers, Mary had only ever seen him from a distance. But he seemed like a sweet boy, always playing and laughing, six years old and hair so blond it was almost white. Her brothers Jonathan and Franklin Junior were right around that age, and her heart jumped up in her throat at the thought of one of them simply vanishing from the middle of the camp. It was like one of those old fairy tales, of children suddenly whisked away into a netherworld, taken by angry spirits.

She took comfort in the campfires visible in the distance. The men were driving the cattle out to the taller grass to graze for the evening, hobbling horses so they wouldn’t wander off. They inspected axles and wheels for signs of wear and checked over the harnesses so all would be ready for the next day’s march. Children were returning to camp with armloads of firewood and kindling. She’d left her little brothers drawing the figure of a wheel in the dirt for a game of Fox and Geese. As much as possible, everyone was keeping to routine.

Mary had just started scrubbing the first item of clothing—her brother William’s shirt, stiff with dried sweat—when she saw two young women, Harriet Pike and Elitha Donner, coming toward her through the high grass, carrying washtubs. With a sense of relief that surprised her, Mary waved to them.

“Good evening, Mary,” Harriet said stiffly. She and Harriet were close in age but barely knew each other. Mary thought Harriet acted far older than her twenty years, which she attributed to the fact that Harriet was already married with children. It was strange to see her with Elitha Donner, who was not only seven or eight years her junior but, most people said, acted even younger.

“You came just in time,” Mary said, trying to sound cheerful. “The light’s going fast.”

Harriet gave Elitha a long sideways look as she sorted through clothing. “Well, it’s not of my choosing. I wasn’t planning to do my washing tonight, but Elitha begged me to come with her. She was too afraid to come down by herself.”

Elitha said nothing as she worked in the shallow water, but her shoulders were hunched high about her ears. Elitha Donner was fidgety and nervous, like a spooky horse. “Is that so, Elitha?” Mary asked. “Is it because of that boy? There’s no shame in that. I think it’s put everyone on edge.”

The girl only shook her head, so Mary tried again. “Is it the Indians, then?” Mary was actually excited by the idea of finally getting to meet an Indian. They’d seen a few in the distance the first day they’d entered Indian Territory, a group of Pawnee coolly watching from horseback as the wagon train meandered through a valley. But they hadn’t come any closer.

Most of the people in the party were scared of Indians, always telling stories of raids on livestock and white children being taken captive, but Mary wasn’t. One of the settlers on the Little Blue River had told her that among the Pawnee, the women were in charge. The men did the hunting and went to war, but it was the women who made the decisions.