She looked back over her shoulder and saw Nora follow silently behind her. She knew that Nora would try to seduce her again. Seduction had been her primary means of survival for so long that she knew no other way to convince Luke of her worth as a woman and wife. The journey to Oregon would be a long one indeed.

  South Platte Crossing,

  June 10th, 1851

  Nora chuckled as she watched her daughter make a game out of gathering buffalo chips. Since traveling along the Platte, the scarcity of wood had forced them to resort to using dry buffalo dung for building fires. After leaving Fort Kearny, the landscape had changed. Long, green grass had given way to short, brown grass, and the road was very sandy. Sagebrush and thin-bladed yucca plants had taken the place of the cottonwoods.

  Amy and the other girls raced around their camp, trying to see who could fill the sack hanging from the side of their wagons the fastest. Nora had gathered chips all day while she walked because she knew that they would burn so rapidly that she would need three whole baskets to cook their dinner.

  She grinned to herself. Just a few weeks ago, she would have refused to touch the dried buffalo droppings with her smooth hands that were a requirement for her former profession. Now her hands were covered in calluses, and she picked up the buffalo chips without hesitation.

  She winked at Bernice as she carried another basket back to the camp. “More wood of the cow.”

  Bernice laughed. “Gives the food its own special touch, doesn’t it?”

  “Oh, yes.” If Mother could see me now, she would be horrified. But then again, her mother would have been horrified about a lot of things Nora had done in the last three years. Nora directed her thoughts back to the task at hand. She dug a trench to prevent the wind from blowing away the burning chips, then lit a fire with a skillful stroke of flint and steel. What a difference to her first pitiful attempt at building a fire.

  Under Luke’s patient guidance and with Bernice’s help, she had learned a lot about living on the trail. Since her last failed attempt to seduce her husband, she had even tripled her efforts to learn. She wanted to be the best wife he could wish for and make herself indispensable for him until he no longer thought about annulling their marriage.

  While Bill Larson in the wagon behind them constantly complained that eating his wife’s food was like chewing shoe leather, Luke had repeatedly praised Nora’s pancakes, and he always took a second helping of her stew.

  Learning to cook over the campfire was even more challenging than Nora had thought. Her first attempts at baking bread had resulted in a lump that was burned on the outside and still doughy on the inside, but now she was finally beginning to master it.

  Nora ignored the shouting that once again came from the Larsons’ wagon while she chopped up bits of antelope meat and added it to the boiling pot of beans. Finally, she seasoned the meal with wild onions that she had found while she walked.

  She spread freshly churned butter on a slice of bread and handed it to Amy.

  Buttered bread in hand, Amy ran toward the riverbank. Nora tensed when she saw her running toward the river’s edge until she noticed that Luke was standing there, talking with some of the other men. Luke’s initially nonexistent protective instincts had gotten much better in the last few weeks. Nora blew out a breath as he caught Amy before she could slip in the mud near the water. He swung her up into his arms and playfully took a bite from her bread before he sent her back to the wagons.

  Sometimes, he still seemed a little clumsy and uncomfortable when dealing with a child, but he treated Amy with a patience and gentleness that she had never witnessed from a man toward a child that was not his own. He might act tough and aloof, but Nora sensed his sensitivity and compassion.

  She didn’t love him—and had never expected to—but she was convinced that she would never find a better husband, and she was determined to wear him down until he gave in. If her job in Tess’s brothel had taught her one thing, it was to be perceptive about the wants and desires of the men she had serviced. That night at the river, she had sensed that he was not as indifferent toward her feminine charms as he pretended to be.

  When she saw the men walk back toward the camp, she began to ladle the stew onto tin plates.

  Jacob Garfield and three of the other men took their own plates from their wives but then walked over to the Hamilton fire. “That’s one crossing that shouldn’t be too difficult,” one of the men said. “What do you think, Luke?”

  The three men stopped eating and looked up from their plates, waiting for Luke’s answer.

  Luke scooped a large forkful of beans into his mouth and chewed thoroughly as if stalling for an answer.

  Nora had often watched how he kept himself apart from his fellow travelers, never taking part in any of the social gatherings. She didn’t understand his tendency to keep people at a distance. After being shunned by the citizens of Independence and the forced seclusion of her life in the brothel, she enjoyed being part of a community.

  On the trail, the importance of status and the veneer of respectability faded while they shared their struggle to survive. As Luke’s wife, she even enjoyed a certain standing in the wagon train. Despite his attempts to separate himself from the rest of them, the others came to him for advice. He seemed to know even more than the captain about the Oregon Trail and all the things they encountered on their journey. With every mile, he became more and more of a natural leader for them.

  Nora studied him while he sat with the other men. Most of the men were taller, but Luke had a powerful, if unassuming presence to him. He was a man of few words, but when he spoke, everyone listened. Nora took a certain pride in belonging to a husband like that.

  “Don’t underestimate the South Platte,” Luke said.

  “Hamilton, you yellowbelly!” Bill Larson strutted over to their fire and looked down at Luke as if Luke were a handful of buffalo dung. “You are not afraid of that little river, are you? It’s shallow, with gentle banks, and not moving too fast. But, of course, if you’re scared, I could take your wagon and your wife over for you.”

  The other men around the fire tensed, but Luke never even looked up. He kept eating as if Larson had never spoken.

  A part of Nora was glad that her husband was too levelheaded to engage in fistfights. In the brothel, she had seen so many brawls that she didn’t find them heroic anymore. But another part of her couldn’t understand that he would sit quietly while Larson insulted him. He hadn’t even reacted to Larson’s thinly veiled threat to take Nora away from him.

  Nora shuddered, and her stomach flipped at the mere thought of that.

  “All I’m saying is that we should be careful,” Luke said without raising his voice or looking at Bill Larson. “The river bottom is partly quicksand, and if a wagon gets mired down in it…”

  Nora looked at the deceivingly harmless river. She had learned to trust Luke’s assessment, and that made her dread the river crossing. Still, they had no choice but to cross the river. The Platte River divided into a north and a south branch at this point, and they had to cross the South Platte to gain access to the north branch of the river, which would lead them west.

  After the midday meal, they raised the beds of the wagons a few inches by putting blocks under them. Nora hoped that it would be enough to keep their belongings and the food that was stored in the wagon dry.

  Bill Larson’s wagon was the first in line to cross. They double-teamed, so that now six yoke of oxen were pulling the wagon across the river. Walking next to the wagon, Larson forced the oxen through the murky water with an iron hand.

  As they had learned to do, the wagon crossed at an angle, first going downstream, then upstream so that they would land across the river from where they had started. When Larson reached the middle of the river, he turned the oxen upstream to finish the crossing. He paused for a moment, throwing a triumphant glance back at Luke, who was watching from the bank.

  “Keep them moving, or you’ll get stuck,” Luke shouted.

  Larson flicked his whip. The oxen strained against the harness but didn’t succeed in moving the wagon forward. The wagon wheels only sank deeper into the quicksand of the riverbed. The more Larson yelled and the more the oxen struggled to free themselves, the more the sand held and sucked them deeper. Water smashed against the wagon, nearly upsetting it. The oxen bellowed.

  “He’s mired,” Luke shouted and waved at his neighbors. “Jacob, Tom, Gus. I need some help here.” Without hesitation, he waded into the river.

  The three other men followed him.

  The water rose on Luke’s chest as he struggled against the current to reach the mired wagon.

  Nora watched with growing concern. She clutched Amy’s hand when Luke and the other men finally had to swim.

  “Mama.” Amy looked up at her with wide eyes.

  “It’s all right, sweetie.” Nora gently stroked the red curls. “Luke will be back soon. He’ll be fine.” She prayed that fate wouldn’t make her a liar.

  The current nearly swept Luke past the wagon. At the last moment, he grabbed hold of the wagon box. He straightened and shook himself.

  The three other men reached the wagon and clung to it too.

  “Grab the wheels, boys,” Luke shouted. “Bill, move the oxen!”

  They put their shoulders to the wheels.

  For a moment, nothing happened. Then the wagon shot forward.

  Tom Buchanan lost his hold on the wheel and splashed into the river. He reappeared a few yards downstream and managed to make his way back to shore.

  Nora breathed a sigh of relief when Luke swam back and finally emerged from the river, stumbling up the bank in sodden clothes. With Amy at her side, she ran to meet him halfway. She had planned on offering him dry clothes, but instead she found herself saying something else. “Why did you risk your life for him?” She jerked her head in the direction of Bill Larson, who had safely reached the other side by now. “Just an hour ago, he called you a coward in front of the entire wagon train, and now you…” Nora trailed off, feeling as if she didn’t understand her husband one iota better than on the day she had met him. He certainly didn’t understand how afraid she was that something would happen to him, leaving her and Amy without a protector and provider.

  He looked up, pushing wet strands of hair from his face with a weary hand. “I didn’t,” he said as he fell into step next to her.

  Nora shot him an incredulous glance.

  “I didn’t do it for Larson,” Luke said. “I did it for his wife.”

  Nora stopped walking for a second, then hastened to catch up with him. “You wouldn’t have swum out to rescue him if Emeline hadn’t been in the wagon?”

  Luke didn’t answer.

  He didn’t need to, as far as Nora was concerned. She was certain that she already knew. He would have waded out to save Larson’s life. He’s just that kind of man. She wasn’t sure whether that was a good or a bad thing. “You should change into some dry clothes,” she said as they reached their wagon.

  Luke shook his head. “No sense in that. I have to wade right back in, ’cause we’re the next to cross the river.” He glanced inside the wagon. “We should leave a few things behind to make the wagon lighter. Every extra ounce could cause us to get stuck.”

  Nora swallowed. The abandoned items that littered the side of the trail had become an everyday occurrence. She had seen stoves, trunks, anvils, china plates, and even food left behind to lighten the load of the weary oxen, but this would be the first time that she had to leave something behind.

  She turned back the flap and looked into the wagon, studying each item. Unlike most other emigrants, Luke had packed wisely and without overloading the wagon, so now she was at a complete loss as to what she should discard.

  She didn’t dare to leave any of the sacks or kegs of food behind. The cooking utensils, Luke’s weapons, their bedding, and some extra clothing were also indispensable, and they would need the tools once they reached Oregon.

  With a sigh, Nora lifted the fine linens that Tess had given her as a wedding gift as well as the heavy trunk that came with them and set both down on the sandy ground. After a second’s hesitation, she put her leather-bound diary down on top of it. Quickly, she turned around before she could change her mind.

  Her heart pounding in her throat, Nora perched on the wagon seat with Amy behind her in the wagon. She stared down as their wagon reached the river’s edge and began to travel through the moving mass of sand that was the river bottom. The water became deeper and deeper as they traversed the river diagonally down with the current. She glanced longingly at the other side, more than three-quarters of a mile away.

  A few times, she felt sand give way beneath the wheels, jarring the wagon, but Luke kept the oxen moving. If they stopped for even a moment, the wheels would bog down.

  Amy squeaked when a flood of water soaked her feet, but then they were finally past the halfway point, and Luke turned the oxen, making them struggle back up against the current. After forty endless minutes, they reached the opposite bank.

  By the time all wagons were safely on the other side of the river, the oxen and mules were exhausted. Each animal had been double-teamed and used repeatedly to haul the wagons across. As soon as the last wagon struggled up the bank, Captain McLoughlin gave the go-ahead to make camp for the rest of the day.

  Luke disappeared into the wagon while Nora was busy building a fire. When she put on a pot of coffee to brew, Emeline Larson’s surprised gasp came from the wagon. “Oh, I…I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I just wanted to…”

  Nora turned to see what was going on.

  Luke emerged from the wagon, quickly closing the top button on his shirt and slipping into the vest, while Emeline Larson looked away.

  Nora grinned when she saw both of them blush. Have I ever been that innocent?

  “I just came over to tell you…to thank you,” Emeline stammered, still not raising her gaze to Luke’s face. “You saved our wagon today…and probably our lives.”

  Luke nearly crumpled his hat between his hands and studied the tips of his boots. “You don’t need to thank me, ma’am.” He seemed almost embarrassed at Emeline’s thankfulness, and if Nora hadn’t known how confident he could be, she would have thought he was shy. Once again, she wondered just how much experience with women he had. Had he ever lain with a woman besides Tess?

  “Here,” Luke said, pressing something into Nora’s hands as he shouldered past her on his way to take care of the oxen.

  When Nora looked down, she discovered that she was holding her leather-bound diary that she had left behind on the other side of the river. Smoothing her hands over the leather, she looked up at Luke with a question in her eyes.

  Luke seemed to feel her gaze on him. He shrugged and said back over his shoulder, “I threw out two cans of peaches instead.”

  Canned peaches. Nora pressed the diary against her chest. He can’t read, so the diary holds no importance to him, yet he traded it for the canned peaches. She knew it was quite a sacrifice for the man with the sweet tooth.

  “He’s a good man,” Emeline Larson whispered next to her.

  Nora saw the longing and the sadness in her eyes. She just nodded. Better than yours, you mean. With a sigh, she went back to work.

  California Hill,

  June 11th, 1851

  Nora gasped for breath, struggling to keep up with Bernice as they trudged up a long, steep grade. After crossing the South Platte, the scenery had changed from flat, open prairie to steep hills with deep ruts. Nora was so exhausted that she sometimes nodded off while sitting down for a bowl of beans and pork at noon. This is the first hilly terrain since Blue Mound. You just have to get used to it again.

  She had attempted to ride in the wagon for a while, but the constant jolting motion of the wagon had made her queasy, so she had climbed back down. Wiping a damp strand of hair away from her overheated face, she looked back over her shoulder and gave Luke a small nod. She was glad that he had offered to carry Amy because if she was honest with herself, she wouldn’t have been able to carry the extra weight up the hill.

  After what seemed like hours to Nora, the terrain finally stretched out into a high, flat tableland. She gratefully accepted the canteen that Bernice offered her. “Thanks.” She took a large swallow. The tepid water made her gag, so she handed the canteen back.

  “You can take a little more,” Bernice said.

  “No, it’s all right.” Nora wiped her mouth, hoping that her nervous stomach would finally settle down. “Luke said that we won’t find fresh water until we reach the North Platte tonight. We have to make do with what we have.”

  Bernice gripped her elbow and turned her around to face her. “Are you all right?” She lightly cupped her cheek, and for a moment, Nora allowed herself to lean into the motherly touch. “I noticed you barely touched your breakfast this morning.”

  Nora swallowed. Her stomach roiled at the mere thought of food. “I’m fine.”

  The older woman squinted at her. “Do you have a stomach ache?”

  With a sigh, Nora nodded. “It’s not too bad. Probably just all these beans we’re eating.”

  “Vomiting?” Bernice asked.

  Nora hesitated. Anyone would have vomited after traveling in that stuffy, bumpy wagon, right?

  “Convulsions?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Diarrhea?” Bernice asked.

  Nora shook her head. Whatever might have been going on with her, she hadn’t experienced that. “What are you getting at?”

  “Well, you know what they’ve told us about cholera.”

  Nora’s head jerked around, and she swayed for a moment as a wave of dizziness hit her. “You think I have cholera?”

  “Are you sure that’s not it?” Bernice’s brow knitted as she studied her.

 

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