Lauri Robinson - Her Cheyenne Warrior

Lorna pulled the pencil away from her lips and twirled it between her thumb and fingers. She made a note of some sort every night, and felt compelled to do so again. Perhaps because it was habit or maybe because it marked that she’d lived through another day. Despite the past. Despite the odds. Despite the obstacles.

In fact, her notations were proof they were all still alive, and that in itself said something. The four of them might be misfits in some senses of the word, but they were resilient and determined.

Meg O’Brien was most definitely determined. She was over near the fire, brushing her long black hair. Something she did every night. The care she gave her hair seemed odd considering it was covered all day and night by the heavy nun’s habit. Then again, the nun’s outfits had been Meg’s idea, and the disguises had worked for the most part. Soon Meg would plait her hair into a single braid and cover it with the black cloth, a sign her musing was over for the evening. Though boisterous and opinionated, Meg sat by herself for a spell each night. Lorna wondered what Meg thought about when she sat there, brushing her hair and staring into the fire, but never asked. Just as Meg never asked what Lorna wrote about in her diary each night.

Lorna figured Meg had a lot of secrets she didn’t want anyone to know about, and could accept that. After all, they all had secrets. Her own were the reason she was in the middle of Nebraska with this misfit band.

She and Meg had met in Missouri, when Meg had answered Lorna’s advertisement seeking passage on a wagon train. The railroad didn’t go all the way to California. A stagecoach had been her original plan, but the exorbitant cost of traveling on a stage all the way to California was well beyond her financial resources, thus joining a wagon train had become her only choice. When she’d answered the knock on her hotel room door, Meg had barreled into the room asking, “You trying to get yourself killed?”

Lorna had pulled her advertisement right after Meg had explained that wagon trains heading west had slowed considerably since the country was at war and that Lorna would not want to be associated with the ones who would respond to her advertisement. Meg had been right, and Lorna would be forever grateful to her. They’d formed a fast friendship that very first meeting, even though they had absolutely nothing in common.

The clink and clatter coming from inside the wagon, against which Lorna was leaning, said Betty Wren was still fluttering about, rearranging the pots and pans they’d used for the evening meal. Betty liked things neat and orderly and knew at any given moment precisely where every last item of their meager possessions and supplies was located. Too bad she hadn’t known where that nest of ground bees had been. Perhaps then her husband, Christopher, wouldn’t have stepped on it.

The wagon train had only been a week out of Missouri, and Christopher had been their first fatality. He’d died within an hour of stepping on that bee’s nest. Others had been stung as well, but none like him. Lorna had never seen a body swell like Christopher’s had. A truly unidentifiable corpse had been buried in that grave. She’d never seen a woman more brokenhearted than Betty, either, and was glad that Betty only cried occasionally these days.

Betty’s heart was healing.

They eventually did. Hearts, that was. They healed. Whether a person wanted them to or not. Even hate faded. That was something she hadn’t known a year ago. A tightening in Lorna’s chest had her glancing back down at the notation in her diary. The desire for retribution, she had discovered, grew stronger with each day that passed.

“Can’t think of anything to write about?”

That was the final member of their group speaking, Tillie Smith. She, too, had lost her husband shortly after the trip started, while crossing a river. The water wasn’t deep, but Adam Smith had been trapped beneath the back wheel of his wagon, and it was too late by the time the others had got the wagon off him. Trapped on his back, he’d drowned in less than two feet of water. It had been a terrifying and tragic event.

“I guess not,” Lorna answered, shifting to look at Tillie, who was under the wagon and wrapped in a blanket. More to keep the bugs from biting than for warmth. The heat of the days barely eased when the sun went down, but the bugs came out, and they were always hungry. How they managed to bite through the heavy black material of the nun outfits was astonishing.

“You could write that I say I’m sorry,” Tillie said.

“I will not,” Lorna insisted. “You have nothing to be sorry about.”

Tillie wiggled her small frame from under the wagon, pulling the blanket behind her. Once sitting next to Lorna with her back against the same wheel, she wrapped the blanket around her shoulders. “Yes, I do. If not for me, the rest of you would still be with the wagon train. You should have left me behind.”

Lorna set her pencil in her diary, and closed the book. After the death of her husband, pregnant Tillie had started to hemorrhage. The doctor traveling on the train—a disgusting little man who never washed his hands—said nothing could be done for her. In great disagreement, Lorna and Meg, as well as Betty, who’d latched on to her and Meg for protection as well as friendship by that time, had chosen to take matters into their own hands. The small town they’d found and the doctor there had tried, but Tillie had lost her baby a week later. It had taken another three weeks—since Tillie had almost died, too—before the doctor had declared she could travel again. The wagon train had long since left without them, so only the four women and their two wagons remained. That was also why she and Meg only had one dress each. They’d started the trip with two each, but had given the extra dresses and habits to Betty and Tillie. Four nuns traveling alone were safer than four single women. That was what Meg had said and they all believed she was right.

“Leaving you behind was never an option,” Lorna said. “And we are all better off being separated from the train. They were nothing more than army deserters and leeches. There wasn’t a man on that train I trusted, and very few women.”

“You got that right,” Meg said, joining her and Tillie on the ground.

“Furthermore,” Betty said, sticking her head out the back of the wagon, “taking you to see Dr. Wayne was our chance to escape.”

Lorna turned to Meg, and they read each other’s minds. Neither of them would have guessed that little Betty, heartbroken and quieter than a rabbit, had known of the dangers staying with the wagon train would have brought. Lorna and Meg had, and had been seeking an excuse to leave the group before Tillie had lost her husband and become ill.

Betty climbed out of the wagon and sat down with the rest of them. “I wasn’t able to sleep at night with the way Jacob Lerber leered at me during the day. Me! With Christopher barely cold in his grave.”

The contempt in Betty’s voice caused Lorna and Meg to share another knowing glance. Jacob Lerber had done more than leer. Both of them had stopped him from following Betty too closely on more than one occasion when she’d gone for water or firewood. Gratitude for the nun’s outfits had begun long before then. Everyone had been a bit wary of her and Meg, and kept their distance, afraid of being sent to hell and damnation on the spot. When Tillie had become ill, no one had protested against two nuns taking her to find a doctor. In fact, most of the others on the train had appeared happy at the prospect.

“But,” Tillie said softly, “because of me, we might not get to California before winter. It’s midsummer and we aren’t even to Wyoming yet.” Glancing toward Meg, Tillie added, “Are we?”