Evan Hunter - The Chisholms - A novel of the journey West

“I don’t know what he’s told you.”

“That you’re a big riverboat gambler—”

“Hah!” Lester said.

“And a sharpshooter had himself a Kentucky rifle and two Spanish pistols.”

“I had the guns, true enough,” Lester said, “but I couldn’t hit the side of a barn with them.”

“Went off to fight in the Black Hawk War...”

“Yes, that’s true.”

“What war was that?” Bonnie Sue asked.

“Why, the war against Black Hawk,” he said, and smiled.

“An Indian?”

“An Indian.”

“I never heard of him,” she said.

“You weren’t more than a toddler. I was only seventeen myself,” Lester said.

“Did you kill anyone?”

“I killed my share.”

“How many?”

“Three braves and a woman.”

She turned to look at him.

“She was an Indian same as the others,” Lester said flatly. “When I shot her she was about to stab a soldier on the ground.”

Bonnie Sue said nothing. They stood in the road, she looked up into his face. In the tall grass a cricket chirped. Ahead, the wagon creaked and rocked and the mules’ hoofs pounded a steady rhythm on the hard-packed dirt. A cloud passed over the sun. They were suddenly in shadow.

He kissed her. She clung to him an instant, and then pulled away. “No, please,” she said, but threw herself into his arms again at once and again kissed him. And looked swiftly toward the wagon ahead. And scanned the horizon for any sign of her brothers on horseback. And kissed him again, fiercely.

When it rained the women slept inside the wagon, and the men slept under it on ground cloths, with blankets hanging from the sides to keep out wind and water. The wagon was long enough and wide enough to accommodate four men beneath it. Two would lie side by side, fully covered by the wagon bed above them. Another two would lie with their heads against the feet of the first pair, their own legs jutting out beyond the tailgate. There were five men counting Lester; when it rained they drew straws to see who would have to build a sapling lean-to under which to sleep.

When the weather was good, all of them — men and women alike — slept on the ground around a fire, radiating from it like the spokes of a wheel from its hub. They fed the fire to blazing before they retired, and it was either dead ashes or scarcely smoldering embers by morning. The women usually went to bed first. For all the men’s grumbling about saddle sores and rein blisters, the women were most tired by day’s end. Usually, the men sat around the fire an hour or more after the women were asleep.

She lay beneath her blanket, listening for Lester’s voice.

In the cabin back home, you could hear every sound. There were two rooms and a sleeping loft. Her mother and father slept in the bigger room, and she and Annabel slept in the room next door. Her three brothers shared the loft. At night, you heard whispers. Noises. Someone getting up to use the chamber pot. Beds creaking. When Elizabeth was alive, she and Will used to use the underbed in the bigger room. Pull it out each night, drag it across the cabin to the other side of the room, near where Minerva’s good dresser stood against the wall. Part of her dower, only sawed-lumber piece of furniture in the house, eight slats of thick cherry-wood with the hinges hidden on the underside of the cover.

Used to moan a lot, Elizabeth. Bonnie Sue was just a little girl, thought her sister-in-law was sick first time she heard her moaning in the night. When she died in childbirth, Will went back to sleeping in the loft again. Three beds up there, all of them sitting right on the floor without a headboard or footboard, but comfortable anyway. At night, she’d hear her brothers talking up there before they fell asleep. One time, Gideon and Will were teasing Bobbo about taking him to meet some woman. Said they’d arranged with Squire Bailey to go downriver with him next time he traveled to New Orleans. Told him the squire knew a nice little redhead would teach Bobbo all there was to know. Aw, come on, Bobbo said. Or he knows some nice blondes, too, Gideon said. Aw, come on, Bobbo said.

She listened to them now.

Though the mules had bolted three days ago, they were still arguing the matter, Lester maintaining flatly that oxen did not stampede as easily as mules. Will counterarguing that when oxen did stampede, they ran much wilder. Her father asked how Will happened to know, since there’d never been an ox in the Chisholm family from the time they’d moved down the Delaware to Virginia...

In a little while, she fell asleep.

In her dreams, Lester Hackett made passionate love to her.

Not the way Sean Cassada had, his hands alone inside her bodice or under her skirt, but instead a thorough consummation blazing fiercely hot as all the fires of hell. In her dreams, her lips were a thread of scarlet, her breasts young roes that were twins feeding among the lilies. In her dreams, Lester was a bundle of myrrh that lay betwixt her breasts, Lester was a cluster of camphire, Lester leaped upon the mountains and skipped upon the hills, Lester’s hands were as gold rings set with the beryl, his belly was as bright ivory overlaid with sapphires, his legs pillars of marble, his mouth most sweet — he was altogether lovely. She longed to go out early with him to the vineyards, to see whether the vines had flourished or the pomegranates budded forth. She longed for him to go down to his garden, to the beds of spices, to feed in the gardens and to gather lilies. I am my beloved’s, she said in her dreams, and my beloved is mine: he feedeth among the lilies .

They came to within a half day’s journey of St. Louis by the nineteenth of May, which was a Sunday, and attended church services in a small clapboard building set on a grassy knoll. There was an organ inside the church. Fat sonorous notes floated out on the air as they came down the church steps and onto the sloping path to where they’d hitched the wagon.

“Nice sermon,” Lester said.

“Yes,” Bonnie Sue said.

“Your father seemed to enjoy it, too.”

“Nothin he likes better than a good one,” she said. “Nor worse than a bad one,” she added, and smiled.

“We’ll be parting company tomorrow,” he said. “I suppose you realize that.”

“Yes, Lester.”

“I feel I scarcely know you,” he said.

“I feel I know you well.”

“Do you now?”

“Yes, Lester.”

“And yet...” He hesitated. She waited. He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter,” he said.

“What were you about to say?”

“I have no right; you’re still a child.”

“I’m a woman.”

“Then...”

“Yes?”

“When they’re asleep tonight — no, never mind.”

“Lester...”

He moved away from her suddenly, walking ahead of her to the wagon. Annabel came running up to clutch her hand.

“Bonnie Sue?” she said. “Do you like going west?”

“Yes,” Bonnie Sue said, staring off after Lester.

“You do?”

“What?” Bonnie Sue said. “I’m sorry.”

“I thought it’d be more exciting,” Annabel said.

At sunset, they pulled the wagon off the road and unhitched the mules, picketing them and the horses on good grazing ground. They built themselves a blazing fire then, and took their supper in the gathering dusk. There was a crescent moon showing even before the sky was black. Stars appeared.

Bonnie Sue lay awake in the darkness, her feet toward the fire, the blanket covering her to her chin. She had taken off her bodice, skirt and shoes, and wore only her petticoat and underdrawers. She’d not put on a pair of stockings since they’d disembarked at Evansville, her mother telling her the open road was no place for good cotton hose, especially with the weather so warm. That was before the rains hit them, though certainly enough the weather had turned fine again afterward. She listened to the sounds around her and judged everyone asleep, but she waited, not wanting to make a move that could be rightly read by anyone still awake. She hoped, she prayed that Lester alone was still awake, and still desiring her. She waited.