Lacy Williams - Wagon Train Sweetheart

He might’ve fainted from the fever or lack of sleep or food, but the marks inside his mouth confirmed what she’d already guessed. The contagious disease that had plagued their caravan had claimed another victim.

“It’s measles,” she murmured.

Her brother crouched at her side, Ben’s presence reassuring. “You sure?”

She was. “Some of the children had the same white spots on their gums. See there?”

Ben’s nose wrinkled and he only glanced cursorily into Mr. Reed’s mouth.

“What do we do now?” Stillwell demanded.

Before she could think to prevent it, he raised his hand and slapped Mr. Reed’s cheek. His dark head knocked to one side.

Emma gasped.

She could not abide injustice. In any form.

“Don’t touch him like that again,” she commanded.

But maybe Stillwell hadn’t heard her. His eyes passed over her almost as if she wasn’t there at all.

Stillwell stood, directing his words to the other men. “He’s a thief—”

It was easier for Emma to direct her words to the unconscious man on the ground. “Whether or not he’s a criminal, he’s still a human being and deserves basic kindness. And care.”

She looked up and met Ben’s gaze. The men stood behind him, none paying attention. She’d spoken so softly that likely many of them hadn’t heard her.

That was normal. Her opinions were rarely heard. And for a long time, it hadn’t mattered to her. It did now.

But when Ben spoke, people listened. And he spoke now. “Emma’s right. We can’t punish a man in this condition. We’ll stay the verdict until he’s on his feet again.”

The group of men grumbled. “What’re we going to do with him?”

“We should just leave him behind,” Mr. Stillwell said.

“You can’t,” she cried. “How would he survive?”

But perhaps her distressed cry had only been loud in her own mind. Because again Mr. Stillwell did not pay her any heed, only turned his back to talk to the other men.

Nathan Reed moaned, a low, pained sound that seemed as if it came from the depths of his soul, instead of from suffering a simple fever. He did not return to consciousness, and that worried Emma the most.

“He needs care,” Emma insisted.

Ben nodded to her. He’d heard, at least. He argued with the men and left her with the prone Mr. Reed.

Emma was not a nurse. She’d had no formal training, only the difficult duty of being constantly at her father’s bedside those final years.

Yet she was an expert at completing tasks that no one else wanted to do. At being available when there was no one else.

And since she’d nursed many of the children in the wagon train when they’d been afflicted with measles, it did not surprise her when the men agreed to leave Mr. Reed under Ben’s care and delay his sentence until the time that he awoke. Ben would be busy driving the family wagon and carrying out his duties as a committeeman, so caring for Mr. Reed would fall to her. Ben did not ask for her agreement. He assumed she would consent.

It was unsurprising, but a bit disappointing. Of course she would have agreed to help Mr. Reed. But the fact that she hadn’t been consulted rankled, just the tiniest bit.

Maybe it was because, as one of the committeemen, Ben needed to make a quick decision so the wagon train could move out for the day, under the guide Sam Weston’s direction.

Or maybe it was because her siblings had come to rely on her without having to ask. That was a family blessing. And also a pain.

Her brother and sister were the only people with whom Emma’s natural timidness didn’t manifest itself. Most of the time. Sometimes, she still felt she couldn’t speak up, even to them.

In the safety of her journal, Emma wished she could find her backbone. Had she gotten in the habit of being so very quiet at her father’s bedside that now no one listened?

Sometimes she feared her voice would fade away completely. That no one would hear her or see her at all.

Ben returned and reached out a hand to draw her up from where she knelt next to Mr. Reed. “They’ve agreed to stay the verdict until he recovers. I’ve sent Cavanaugh to bring a stretcher.”

She stood, her eyes lingering on Nathan, his dark head lolled to the side. “Where will he stay?”

“With Abby’s family.”

She opened her mouth to argue, but Miles Cavanaugh and two other men arrived and Ben was distracted with helping roll Mr. Reed onto the canvas draped over two long poles.

Ben’s fiancée was Abigail Bingham Black. They had been sweethearts years before, until circumstances—and Abby’s mother—had driven them apart. Widowed and back in her parents’ household, Abby had been on the wagon train and she and Ben had reconnected. And fallen in love all over again.

Mr. Bingham had had trouble driving the oxen and Nathan Reed had arrived in the wagon train as a hired driver. With no wagon of his own, she knew he’d slept in the open air most of the time. But that wasn’t an option now.

If the disease followed the same course it had with the children, he would be incapacitated with fever and weakness for a day or more. And remembering the glimpse Emma had had of the interior of the Binghams’ wagon revealed the difficulty Ben hadn’t thought of; their wagon had been overstuffed with all the things Abby’s now-deceased mother hadn’t wanted to leave behind.

She trailed the men carrying the still-unconscious Mr. Reed through the bustling camp. Women doused their cookfires, men harnessed oxen, children ran among the lot, all in anticipation of the call to ride out. They all worked with intent.

Was it only Emma who felt as lacking in direction as a puff of dandelion blowing in the wind? She needed to find her purpose again. For so long, her purpose had been caring for her father. Praying, hoping, believing that one day he would recover.

After his death, she’d been lost, drifting. Until she’d found the orphanage in the town nearest to their ranch, a small affair that had been run by one very motivated woman. And Emma had believed she’d found a new purpose.

Until the day her brother had come into the house, waving Grayson’s letter. Ben and Rachel had been so excited about the trip, about leaving behind the difficult memories. About starting a new life.

But Emma hadn’t been sure.

And she’d hesitated too long to mention that she didn’t want to go West. Once plans were made, she hadn’t felt she could broach the subject, not without sounding selfish and petty.

Her own fault. Now where was she to find a purpose? Was it possible that she could find it with a family of her own?

Her eldest brother, Grayson, had written of the widowed local sheriff, Tristan McCullough, who had become his close friend in the Oregon Territory. Tristan had three young daughters who needed a mother. Both Grayson and Ben seemed in agreement that the man was a match for Emma.

She wasn’t entirely convinced that this was her purpose, even if her brothers seemed to be certain. She would wait until she met the man before she decided what to do.

Unanswered questions swirled in Emma’s head as she trailed the men carting Mr. Reed to their wagon, but the biggest remained: Where would Mr. Reed stay? Obviously, he couldn’t walk to guide the Binghams’ oxen.

And from what she knew of Abby’s wagon, there wasn’t room for a mouse, much less a man as tall as Mr. Reed.

Ben had made himself Mr. Reed’s caretaker when he’d stood up for the ill man. Would Ben—and Emma by association—­­be forced to keep Mr. Reed in the Hewitts’ wagon? If he must stay in their wagon, the precious little privacy she fought for on this dusty wilderness trail would be gone.

When they arrived at the family campsite, Rachel and Abby were there, packing up the breakfast dishes.