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Chapter One
The Bozeman Trail
Somewhere south of Placerton, Montana Territory
1865
“Aiiieeee!”
Emmaline Wagner jumped at the sound of a bloodcurdling scream. She dropped the pail she’d been carrying and turned around to stare at her family’s prairie schooner. It was a stone’s throw away, and in the pitch black of midnight, her mother’s silhouette was drawn sharp and clear against the gold of the lighted wagon.
Her mother hunched down rocked back and forth, crying and moaning, and Emmaline went hot with dismay. At nineteen, she was uncomfortably conscious of what others thought of her family. Her eyes moved to the other wagons in the train. She wondered if any of their fellow travelers had heard her mother weeping and wailing, and what they must be thinking.
Her parents’ wagon was always at the back of the line for a reason.
Emmaline took a step toward the wagon, pausing as her father’s silhouette entered and crouched down beside her mother’s. His shadow took her mother’s in its arms and rocked her back and forth.
Emmaline picked up the bucket and walked toward the wagon, slowly and reluctantly. She didn’t like to eavesdrop, but she could hardly help hearing the conversation.
Their neighbors certainly did.
“Hush, hush,” her father’s voice soothed. “Calm down, Clara. There’s nothing to it, I’ve told you a hundred times. It’s nonsense. Moonshine!”
“No, it isn’t,” her mother sobbed, and her silhouette pulled back from her father’s embrace. “It always comes true, I tell you. And this time—schrecklich, horrible!”
Her father’s shadow reached down and picked something out of her mother’s hand. “I told you to throw these cards away.” He sighed, and his voice sounded sad.
Her mother’s head had been bowed, but at that, it came up. “I won’t, Franz!” she flashed out. “It’s the biggest help we have out here in the middle of nowhere, with no police and no army to protect us. It’s the only help!”
“That’s not true,” her father replied softly. “You pick up these cards when you’re sad. When you’re afraid.” He shook them in the air. “All they do is make you think you can see the future, but you can’t. No one can. These cards can’t protect you from bad things. They can’t comfort you. Only one can do that.”
Her mother’s voice jumped to a shout. “Don’t talk to me about your God; I don’t want to hear it again! I know what I saw. I once asked the cards about your brother’s family, and they said he’d make the trip out to Montana safe, that he’d be successful. He was successful—he bought a big farm!”
“Lots of people are successful in Placerton,” Franz replied in a weary tone. “It’s a boom town. But even supposing you were right, is that anything to cry about? Why are you so upset tonight?”
Emmaline frowned to see her mother’s silhouette return to nervous rocking. “I just asked the cards about your brother’s family,” she moaned. “And this time—oh, this time they showed me death, death, death!” She jabbed a shaking finger at the cards in Franz’s hand. “Something terrible has happened, I know it in my bones! The cards showed me death, and loss, and grieving! We’re going to Placerton to find your brother’s family dead!”
Her father’s voice was stern. “Stop it, Clara! I won’t hear any more of that foolishness tonight. It’s bad enough that you torment yourself with these cursed superstitions. I won’t let you torment Emmaline!”
He stood up, and Clara raised her head. “Where are you going?”
Franz’s shadow shook the cards again. “I’m going to throw these evil things in the fire. This is the last time they’re going to upset you!”
Her mother jumped up and threw herself on his arm. “No, no, Franz, don’t do it. It’ll bring down terrible luck on us!”
Emmaline looked away in dismay, glancing across the wagon parked closest to them. In the light of the moon, she saw the canvas flap twitch aside. A neighbor child’s face peeked out.
The little girl watched in round-eyed awe as Franz climbed down out of their wagon, stalked over to the fire, and tossed the tarot cards in. The cards withered up with a sizzle and a hiss, and Emmaline went hot with embarrassment to see another face appear out of the back of their neighbor’s wagon. This time, it was the little girl’s mother.
Emmaline’s heart sank into her boots. She had no doubt that her family was the talk of the whole wagon train. One of the young women her own age, a blonde girl named Celeste, had already asked her if her mother was really a witch.
That was the gossip circulating about them. And after that night, her mother’s terrified shrieks would no doubt confirm it for everyone within hearing distance.
They were already outsiders, German immigrants not long off the boat. Strangers who could barely speak English.
Emmaline stood there in the moonlight with the pail in her hands, and her father turned and caught sight of her. He clapped the grit off his palms and came walking over.
The sound of her mother’s moans and soft weeping wafted out from the wagon, and they both stood there in the moonlight listening to it for a long moment. Then her father put his hand lightly on her shoulder.
“Don’t mind your mother, Emmaline,” he said softly. “This is her way of… of trying to get over her fear. She’s angry at God, and so she comforts herself with cards, with superstitions. But that’s all it is. There’s no reason to be afraid.”
Emmaline looked down at her feet and said nothing, and her father sighed and let his hand fall from her shoulder. “Go and get some rest. I’ll be out here if you need anything.”
“Guten nacht, Papa.”
Emmaline walked back to the wagon and set the pail down on the ground. Glancing back over her shoulder, she watched her big father unfurl his bedroll on the ground before she turned to climb up into their wagon.
The lamp was still burning, and her mother was lying on a narrow mattress with her face turned to the side of the wagon. Her beautiful jet-black hair spilled over her shoulders, and she was still crying softly. Emmaline’s heart sank.
She wished she knew what to say to her mother to comfort her. But since her grandmother had died, nothing comforted her mother. Not the church, not their family or friends, not even her father.
If none of them had found the right words, how could she hope to find them?
Emmaline gazed down on her mother sadly, then leaned over to blow out the lantern. She undressed in the darkness, slipped into her nightgown, and crawled onto the little mattress on the opposite side of the wagon.
But she laid awake for a long time after, listening to her mother’s hushed sobs and moans. They continued even after Clara fell asleep, and when Emmaline did drop off at last, the sound of them gave her very troubled dreams.
Chapter Two
Emmaline set a cup of hot coffee on the floor next to her mother’s bed and balanced a plate full of eggs and bacon on her arm. Her mother was still lying on the bed inside their wagon, listless and silent. Emmaline cleared her throat.
“Mama, I made breakfast for you.”
Her mother turned her face into her pillow. “Go away,” she mumbled.
Emmaline blinked back tears but ventured, “It will make you feel better to eat, Mama. Aren’t you hungry?”
There was no answer, and Emmaline stared down at her mother sadly before carrying the plate to the back of the wagon. She set it down, climbed out of the wagon, and reached for it again.
Her mother had fallen into a deep melancholy, and it broke Emmaline’s heart to see her lying in bed, too listless even to eat. She walked around the wagon to their campfire, where her father was finishing the last of his breakfast. The sky was pink with dawn, and soon they would hitch up the oxen and be on their way again.
Emmaline sank onto a log in front of the fire and began to eat the food her mother had refused. Her father glanced at her face and replied to the look on it.
“We must be patient with your mother, Emmaline,” he told her in a gruff voice. “She is still grieving Oma. It isn’t easy to lose someone you love very dearly. Sometimes people… do strange things to comfort themselves.”
Emmaline nodded mutely. It was true. Her mother had been very close to her grandmother. Oma had become sick and had died after a long year of pain and suffering. It had aged her mother ten years. Changed her.
Clara had been happy and cheerful before Oma had fallen ill. But none of them had guessed how bitterly she resented Oma’s suffering, or how angry she would become at her death. She blamed God for letting Oma suffer and die.
She had cursed the vicar when he came to comfort them, vowing never to set foot in any church again. She had even refused to go to Oma’s funeral because it had been held in one.
It upset her father very much, but he always told her that her mother was not herself. That a grieving person was in pain, like a wolf with its foot caught in a trap or a man with an arrow in his stomach.
He told her that she should not distance herself from her mother for the things she might cry out in her suffering, or even for the things she might do.
Emmaline stared down at her food without seeing it. She was trying hard not to let the change in her mother upset her, but it was an extra challenge on top of all the difficulties of their long journey.
The trip from their beautiful home in the Black Forest of Germany to a strange land and a savage wilderness had not been easy. Papa had always planned to follow his brother Heinrich to America, and everything had been ready when Oma had fallen sick.
They had stayed behind a year later than they had planned to let her mother nurse Oma. When Oma died, her father thought it would be a good time for them to go to their new home—a fresh place with nothing to remind them of their sadness. But they were all learning that a sad heart was heavy no matter where it went.
The sound of a man’s voice interrupted Emmaline’s somber thoughts. She looked up from her plate to see the wagon master, Mr. O’Keefe. He was a big man with a bushy moustache and fierce eyes, and he frightened Emmaline a little. He reminded her of a big, woolly bear.
He never stopped to talk. He always got right to the point.
He gestured over his shoulder toward the front of the wagon train. “Meet up in the clearing ahead in fifteen minutes,” he announced. “I’m going to make an announcement.”
Franz frowned at him in concern. “Is there some trouble, sir?”
The big man snorted and turned on his heel, and they were left to make of that what they could. Emmaline looked at her father and was startled to see him look almost old.
Her father was only forty-five, but in that moment his eyes were as tired as an elderly man’s. He seemed to feel her gaze on him, because he sat up and squared his shoulders.
“Finish your breakfast and gather up our things in the wagon, Emmaline. I’m going to hitch up the oxen.”
Emmaline watched him go with sympathy. The tired slump of his shoulders went to her heart. But she poured water on the fire, gathered up the cooking pans and plates and cups, and quickly washed and dried them.
She had just finished packing their utensils into the wagon, and had climbed up into the front seat, when her father brought their oxen back from the makeshift pen where they had been grazing. He yoked them together, hitching them to the wagon.
He climbed up onto the seat beside her, took the reins, and flicked them. The wagon wheels creaked and groaned, and they slowly lumbered down the trail, following the other wagons already gathered in a huge circle up ahead.
The meadow slumbered at the foot of massive brown mountains studded with dark green firs and pines. They weren’t like the mountains in Germany, not so tall and snowy, but they had a rough beauty that she had come to admire.
Fifty wagons circled at their feet was a sight to behold, and Emmaline forgot her worries for a moment to admire a pretty picture. It put heart into her.
The sun was just coming up over the shoulder of the mountains, and the big meadow was fragrant of new grass and wet with dew. The sound of oxen lowing, children’s piping voices, and horses riding past was music to Emmaline’s ears. There was strength in numbers.
Mr. O’Keefe rode out into the middle of the big circle, raised his arm, and yelled:
“We’ve been out in the wilderness a long time, out in the Indian country. But now we’re coming into the settled parts. You’re gonna be tempted to let down your guard, but don’t. This territory still has Indians, in spite of the towns. It’s gold country, and that means bandits. Especially around Placerton, there’s more road agents than people. You need to be careful.”
Emmaline gave her father a worried glance, and he put a reassuring arm around her shoulder.
“There are some folks in this train who are new to this country. Some of you don’t know that we’re fighting a war back east, North against South, and there’s plenty of hard feelings even out here. Placerton has lots of folk who want the South to win, and plenty more who want the North to come out tops. My advice is to stay away from politics. You can get shot taking sides around here.”
He turned his horse around in a circle and added, “Keep your guns handy. If you got family or friends out here, be sure to settle close to ‘em, or to each other. You’re new out here. Don’t forget it.”
He rode out to the north of the meadow and disappeared beyond the ring of wagons, and the circle slowly dispersed as the schooners turned and fell into line to follow.
Emmaline stared after him with a frown. It wasn’t a very encouraging speech, and it made Placerton sound like a den of robbers and violent, angry people.
She was glad her Uncle Heinrich and Aunt Ola and her cousins lived there already and would steer them away from any pitfalls. They would settle in snugly, right next door to their family. Maybe some of their fellow travelers would settle close by, too. There was strength in numbers.
A sound from inside the wagon made Emmaline turn her head, and she was surprised to see her mother sitting on the floor of the wagon behind them. Her expression suggested that she’d heard Mr. O’Keefe’s speech, and her eyes were shadowed and haggard.
But Emmaline seized the opportunity.
“I saved you some breakfast, Mama,” she said softly, reaching for some bread and bacon tied up in a napkin. She twisted around and offered it to Clara, heartened when her mother took it, untied the napkin, and put a biscuit into her mouth.
But Clara said not a word, and Emmaline’s flicker of hope slowly faded into a glowing ember. She wouldn’t let it die, but it was burning at its lowest since they’d arrived in America.
Her mother’s haunted eyes, fixed blankly on some point up ahead, gave her little reason to imagine that things would go back to normal soon.
OFFER: A BRAND NEW SERIES AND 2 FREEBIES FOR YOU!
Grab my new series, "Grit and Glory on the Frontier", and get 2 FREE novels as a gift! Have a look here!
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