Lacy Williams - Wagon Train Sweetheart

“Emma.”

Ben’s stern voice from behind startled her and she hid her hand in her skirts as if she’d been doing something improper. Which she really hadn’t been.

Her brother stood with hands on his hips. Emma could see Abby and Rachel standing shoulder to shoulder several yards behind him, both wearing matching expressions of concern.

“Come down for a while,” Ben said. Except it sounded more like an order than a request. And she was tired of others dictating her actions.

“I’ll stay for a bit—”

But her voice faded as he spoke over her. “You’ve been cooped up in the wagon for two days. It’s time to come down. Abby can sit with Mr. Reed for a few minutes.”

He hadn’t even heard her protest.

“But—” Emma swallowed back the entirety of her argument as her brother reached up and clasped her wrist.

She allowed herself to be assisted—hauled—from the wagon, but when Rachel offered to accompany her to the nearby creek, Emma insisted she stay in camp.

Perhaps Rachel sensed Emma’s upset because she didn’t follow.

The muscles in Emma’s back and legs burned as she walked briskly through the small space of prairie and then down through the brush to the meandering creek.

The tension in her shoulders remained.

There were other women nearby, some bathing protesting children in the cool, clean water, some scrubbing clothes. Emma would never have been brave enough to come alone, not with the threat of Indians. Not to mention the troublemakers among them—whoever was committing the thefts in the wagon train.

But she knelt on the bank somewhat apart from the other women. She knew many of them, had helped some of them when their children had been sick.

But she couldn’t stomach making casual conversation with anyone tonight.

She splashed water on her face, shivering at the coldness against her overwarm skin.

Ben and Rachel didn’t understand. Nathan Reed couldn’t die.

Ben hadn’t sat at their father’s side as the man who’d once been so full of life had faded away. Oh, her brother had been there at the end—those painful moments had been burned into Emma’s brain so that they were unforgettable—­but he hadn’t been constantly on call at Papa’s bedside.

Rachel couldn’t know how many hours Emma had spent praying for Papa to recover. To come back to them. And he hadn’t.

Watching Nathan Reed struggle was bringing all of those memories back. It was like living through Papa’s decline all over again. But this time, it was happening much faster.

Just yesterday, Nathan had been a virile, powerful man. And now he was laid weak with fever, the disease killing his body.

And she couldn’t do anything to stop it.

“God, please…” she whispered, her face nearly pressed into her knees on the creek bank. She didn’t even know what she was praying for. That Nathan would be healed, or that she would be relieved of the guilty burden she still bore from Papa’s passing?

When she couldn’t stand the heaviness in her chest any longer, she stood up on shaky legs. How long had she stayed by the water, prostrate and crying out silently? She didn’t know.

Most of the women had left, only a few remained far down the creek, speaking quietly. The dusk had deepened around her and urgency gripped Emma as her feet turned back toward the wagon. Whether it was the fear of the unknown wilderness, or fear for the man, she didn’t know.

Ben had pitched the family tent near the wagon and stood nearby, for once away from Abby.

“You should send someone for a doctor.”

Ben frowned and she rushed on, “Some of the other travelers we’ve passed said there are doctors traveling with other trains. If someone took a horse and rode ahead, we could find one and bring him back—”

“Emma, it’s almost full dark.”

“In the morning, then,” she insisted. “Nathan—” She only realized she’d used his name when Ben’s frown deepened. “Mr. Reed’s symptoms are not the same as the children’s.”

Now Ben crossed his arms over his chest. How could she convince her brother of the danger Nathan was in?

“He has measles. He’s broken out in the rash. But his unnatural fever and now his cough—those aren’t from the measles.”

“If he’s developed some other disease, you shouldn’t be around him,” Ben said, worry now creasing his brow. He started toward the wagon, taking a step and then pausing. Likely he’d just remembered his fiancée was the one in the wagon with Nathan.

“I doubt he’s contagious,” she said, and hoped with all her might that it was true. “But he needs doctoring—more than I know how to do.”

After all, she was just a woman. Not even trained to be a nurse.

She could feel Ben’s perusal and she didn’t know if he could see her expression as it was falling dark around them. As it was, it took all her might to maintain a calm facade when she wanted to demand him to understand and listen to her.

“If he isn’t better in the morning, I’ll consider it.”

It wasn’t enough. But it was something. “Thank you. I’ll relieve Abby. I’m sure you want to say good-night.”

Nathan’s condition hadn’t changed when she changed places with Abby in the wagon bed.

She prayed over him as she settled into the wagon. Her heart was fluttering, pulse thrumming.

He moaned again, his head turning toward her. Was he rousing?

His eyes didn’t open. But his lips formed a word.

“Beth…”

* * *

Nathan burned. Had he died and now was being punished for his sins?

His entire body was weighted down as though he’d been buried in a rock slide.

He rolled his head to the side, seeking some relief. The movement seemed to seep all of his energy away. And it didn’t help. The oppressive heat and darkness remained.

From far away—a memory, or reality?—he heard a laugh. It sounded like Beth.

“Beth!” he called out for her, but in his weakness he couldn’t be sure if anything emerged from his mouth at all.

A memory flickered through his consciousness, a remembrance of her as a teen, looking over her shoulder and laughing. Probably at him. He’d always been able to make his sister laugh. Until the end.

Another memory flitted through him, but this one stuck. The awful moment when he’d found her crumpled in a pool of her own blood. One hand protectively clutching her stomach—he hadn’t found out until later that she’d been trying to protect the babe in her womb from the violent blows its father had delivered.

She’d asked Nathan for help earlier, asked him for money to buy a train ticket. She’d been desperate for escape, willing to go anywhere.

“Beth,” he cried out again, the name ripped from his lips, from his very soul.

She had been the only good thing in his life.

And he’d failed her.

If this was the end of him, he deserved this torture, the all-consuming darkness. Why hadn’t he taken Beth away himself? He’d been younger, but he still could’ve protected her from that brute who was her husband. But she’d been afraid, too afraid to stay close. She’d wanted distance.

And with no education and no connections to recommend him, jobs were scarce. He hadn’t been able to round up funds in time to save her.

She’d died because of him.

“Forgive me…”

But she’d gone, or her memory had, and only the darkness remained.

What would her son have been like? Or daughter? Beth had been full of life and laughter. She’d always known how to tease him out of a bad mood. She’d been the only one to tell him he didn’t have to turn out like their father—a tyrant with an affinity for moonshine and a horrible temper—or the man she had married young to escape. She’d believed in Nathan.