A Path Worth Taking Read online

  Whatever was wrong with Nate, Beth considered it her duty to stay with him even after he had sold their land and not shared any of the proceeds with her. He said until she married, he was responsible for her. If truth be told, Nate had shown little or no responsibility before he had left the farm and even less since his return.

  As she watched the exchange of money between the wagon master and her brother, Beth wondered again if she had made the right decision to go west with Nate. She had been offered a job as a governess to a wealthy family who had moved into the Barnesville area. When she had suggested to her brother she might be interested in the position, he had gone into one of his rages accusing her of deserting him to work for a carpetbagger. He was her brother, and he had been to war. It was her duty to stick by him.

  Nate handed Beth the contract and climbed into the wagon. She knew he was lying down on the small cot inside. She read the contract. It was the first she had seen it, and she could not believe what she was reading. For the duration of the journey, they were under the direct orders of Captain Claude Howell. His orders were to be followed without question. She climbed into the wagon and confronted Nate.

  “Did you read this?” she demanded. “Is it too late to get our money returned?”

  “The deal is signed, Beth. I won’t go back on my word.”

  “You have enslaved us to Captain Howell,” Beth exclaimed. “You’ve agreed to follow his orders even if he takes us into hell.”

  “There’s no need to be so melodramatic. Every man on the train has agreed to the same terms.”

  “Look around you, Nate. These people are mostly immigrants. I doubt half these men can read. Have you read these terms?” Beth exclaimed, pointing to the contract. “Captain Howell has the right to hang a man if his orders aren’t obeyed. This list of disciplinary actions is outrageous. He has listed crimes and the punishments. What happened to guilty until proven innocent?”

  “He knows what he’s doing,” Nate said, snatching the contract away from her. “These actions are necessary. Killing is punishable by hanging, rape is sixty lashes, stealing is twenty. Men aren’t stupid, Beth. No one will break these rules knowing the consequences.”

  “Did you read the part where men are responsible for controlling and disciplining their wives and children?” Beth demanded. “It’s written right there. Husbands are responsible for disciplining their wife and offspring. If the Captain deems it necessary, punishment will be carried out in public. It’s barbaric!”

  “It’s necessary,” Nate disagreed. “Captain Howell is responsible for all our lives. He knows what he is doing. If we don’t break the rules, there won’t be a problem!”

  ***

  Garret Wakefield knew Bethany St. Claire was a member of the wagon train. He had seen her, and the first thing he had done was ask about her name. He discovered she was traveling with her brother and still carrying the last name of St. Claire. She had not married, yet. He was not sure why but the news pleased him.

  His job as scout kept him riding ahead of the wagons, sometimes he was gone days at a time. He had only seen her from a distance. She was thinner than when he had known her before, frail with the strained look people had when they were perpetually hungry.

  He avoided her when he reported to Captain Howell to give his reports and yet he looked for her. He saw her walking alongside the train as most women did to avoid the bone-jarring ride. Sometimes, she drove the wagon or tended to the animals. Those were jobs for a man, not an undersized young woman. The one person Garret had not seen often was her brother. The word in the camp was that he was a lazy and pampered man. Garret tended to have a low opinion of the kind of man who would let a woman do the hard work intended for men.

  Captain Howell was openly antagonistic toward Beth. He had mentioned her several times, claiming an unmarried woman was trouble. As far as Garret knew, she had not caused any.

  This was Garret’s second and last stint as a scout for Captain Claude Howell. He just plain disliked the man. Garret did his job, though, and he was well paid for it. The only reason he had agreed to scout for Howell a second time was because his wagon would be separated from the rest in a couple weeks. He planned to jump off and take a southern route into the Territory of Colorado. Until then, Garret had hired the oldest son of another family on the train to drive his wagon for him. He would continue to scout for Howell until they reached the Denver Trail when a young man he had been training as the new scout would take his place.

  ***

  Beth rubbed salve into her hands and pulled on thick gloves to cover them. Nate was sick today. The previous evening, he had yelled at her when she tried to enter the wagon. He told her to sleep under the wagon and tossed a quilt out to her. In the morning, he ignored her efforts to make him rise and had stayed in the wagon most of the day. With no choice left her, she had driven the team of horses herself.

  When the wagon train stopped for the noontime meal, she fixed fried bread and salt back pork and carried Nate’s plate to him. She gagged from the stench and realized her brother was lying in pools of vomit and diarrhea. She moved closer to check on him, shaking him and speaking to him. He made no response to her efforts. His eyes were sunken, and his skin was cold and clammy. She saw the skin on his hands was wrinkled, meaning he had lost too much fluid from his body.

  Beth stumbled away from her brother in shock. He had the symptoms of cholera. She climbed out of the wagon and ran to find the wagon master.

  “I need a doctor!”

  “What’s wrong?” Captain Howell demanded.

  “I think it’s cholera,” Beth announced.

  Three men stepped away from her, one being Claude Howell.

  “Get Doctor Harper,” he ordered one of his men.

  Beth followed the group of men who stopped short of twenty feet from her wagon. None were willing to go inside. When the doctor arrived, he also refused to enter the wagon.

  “I’ve told you a dozen times. I am a dentist, not a doctor,” Dr. Wilber Harper complained. “If it’s cholera, I’m not putting myself or my family in danger. You need to separate the wagon from the train and hope it doesn't spread.”

  “Where’s the real doctor?” Beth demanded of Captain Howell. “You promised a doctor would be among the members of the train. It was written in the contract.”

  “We ain’t got one,” the Captain snapped. He turned to his men. “Cut her wagon out of line and tell everyone to stay clear of it.”

  Beth followed on foot as the men moved their wagon to the end of the train and didn’t stop there. They kept going until it was hundreds of feet behind the last wagon.

  “What about my brother?” Beth demanded. “He needs a doctor!”

  “Watch you mouth, woman,” Captain Howell growled. “You tend him. I’ll move out at a slower pace for three days. It’s on you to keep up. If he ain’t better by then, we are moving on. Whether he lives, or he dies, I’ve got a train to move. No one is going near you or your wagon.”

  Beth seethed as she returned to their wagon. Captain Howell was proving to be a liar. How could anyone expect people to live through the hardships of traveling the Oregon Trail without a doctor available to them?

  She rolled up her sleeves and nursed her brother. She carried water from the nearest stream and bathed him. She kept him clean and tended, and drove the team of horses. She desperately tried to keep the last wagon in sight. Nate only got worse by the hour. On the evening of the second day, she entered the wagon to find her brother cold. He was gone, dead in less than forty-eight hours from the onset of the disease. She walked toward the wagon train to tell them the news. However, Captain Howell’s men kept her from coming close.

  She watched in horror as those same men set fire to her wagon and created a funeral pyre of her brother’s body and all of their belongings.

  Captain Claude Howell rode across the prairie to talk to her, not bothering to dismount.

  “I’ll provide a tent for you to sleep in. You can keep yo
ur riding horse and follow the train, but keep your distance. A breakout of cholera could wipe out the whole train.”

  “I don’t have cholera,” Beth complained.

  “Shut up, girl, and do as you’re told,” Howell growled. “Otherwise, I’ll leave you out here stranded! We’ll take the draft horses with us and make use of them as needed.”

  Beth objected to the requisition of her horses, but as the wagon master had burned her wagon and her supplies, she had no grain to care for them. There were not as many teams of horses on the wagon train as there were oxen and mules. Both of the latter were the animals of choice for pulling the heavy wagons. Oxen could survive on the dry prairie grasses. Horses required grain to be brought along as part of the supplies. Most people could not afford either the cost of the feed or the space and weight it took in the wagon. She had tried to explain those actuaries to her brother, as it was written in the pamphlets they had been given to read. Still, he had insisted on horses.

  ***

  Garret met the wagon train and rode alongside the lead wagon as Captain Howell gave orders to stop for the night. He had been in the saddle ten days, and he was tired and hungry. Although he had not meant to check, he noticed right away the St. Claire wagon was missing.

  After making his report, he asked. “Where’s the St. Claire wagon?”

  “She’s out there,” Captain Howell said with a jerk of his head. “Her fool brother died seven days ago.”

  “Of what?”

  “Cholera.”

  “Is she sick?” Garret demanded.

  “No, she seems healthy,” answered Joe Braxton. He had joined them on horseback wanting to hear the report from the scout.

  “Then why has she been removed from the train?” Garret demanded.

  “She ain’t got a wagon or a man to take care of her,” the Captain snapped.

  “You burned her outfit, Captain,” Joe Braxton said giving Howell a barely disguised look of disgust. “It ain’t right to burn her wagon and cast her out.”

  “She’s got the two of you besotted. She’s carrying the disease. Do you want to infect the whole wagon train?”

  “How long has it been?” Garret asked Joe.

  “We set fire to the wagon and the body three days after you left.”

  “Hell!” Garret swore. “You’ve kept her separated from the group since then? What’s wrong with you?”

  “I ain’t having no unmarried woman on the train. It’s bad luck, and it’s trouble. We ain’t been on the trail a month, and we already had cholera, broken axels, and several oxen died. She’s a jinx!”

  “What kind of nonsense are you talking? If Miss St. Claire were sick, she would have shown signs of it by now. Do you want her killed or carried off by Indians?” Garret demanded.

  “She ain’t got no business here if she ain’t got a man to take care of her,” Howell snapped. “I run this train, Wakefield, not you.”

  “I have a wagon on this train. Miss St. Claire will be in it and under my protection by nightfall,” Garret snarled in the wagon master’s face before reining his horse to search for her.

  Beth had ridden parallel to the train for days sitting astride Nate’s horse. The only dress she had to her name was the one she was wearing. Everything else of what she and Nate owned had been in their wagon when it had been burned.

  She heard the hoof beats of a horse coming out to meet her. The wagon train was stopping for the night, and the drivers were positioning their outfits in a large circle. She was keeping her distance as ordered. Every evening someone rode out and provided her with a sack of provisions. They were not overly generous. It was barely enough to keep her going.

  This rider came to a stop and sat on his horse. They usually dropped the sack and immediately rode off. She shaded her eyes against the setting sun. The sun was to his back, and she could not make out his face as he dismounted and came toward her.

  “Are you ready to let me return to the train?”

  “Yes,” the man stepped forward blocking the setting sun behind him with his wide shoulders and Beth gasped.

  “Hello, Bethany St. Claire.”

  She stepped away from him. “You!”

  “Me,” he agreed.

  “Where did you come from?”

  “I’m a scout for Howell. I’m taking you to my wagon camp,” Garret said. “I have a wagon on this train being driven by a hired man. You can claim it for a while. You need to be back on the train where it’s safe.”

  “Captain Howell is the one who put me out here,” Beth said bitterly. “The bastard burned our wagon and my brother’s body.”

  “Don’t talk dirty, Beth, you’re still a lady. Some men panic when it’s a disease that spreads. If you were going to get cholera, you would have come down with it by now. You can travel in my wagon. I’m gone most of the time, scouting ahead. I’m sorry about your brother.”

  “Thank you,” Beth said as her lower lip trembled and she began to cry. “They set fire to his body and never stopped long enough to say words over his ashes. What kind of a devil is he?”

  Garret stepped forward, hauled Beth into his arms, and hugged her. “Come on, Beth, we will sort this out later. You need to get settled in my wagon.”

  Garret mounted and pulled Beth into the saddle behind him. He wrapped the reins of her horse around his pommel to lead him as they rode to his wagon. The young man driving his wagon had pulled it into position and was unharnessing the team of oxen. Garret dropped Beth onto the ground gently. “Johnny, see Miss St. Claire gets settled here for the night. Beth, I will talk to you later.”

  She introduced herself to the young man driving Garret’s team and setting up camp. Johnny Ross was about seventeen and not much of a talker. He was more concerned with getting his job done. The young man unhitched the oxen and took them off to be watered and hobbled for the night. When he returned, he removed his hat respectfully. “I will be leaving, now, ma’am. I eat with my ma and pa. You can come eat with us, although there are plenty of provisions in the wagon. Mr. Wakefield mostly takes his meals at the chuck wagon.”

  “Thank you,” Beth said. She understood the young man was merely trying to be polite. He could not invite her to his family’s fire without his parents’ permission. They were only a few weeks into their journey and provisions were rationed carefully so the families would make it through to their destination without starving.

  She climbed over the seat into the wagon and rummaged until she found a slab of salted bacon, a frying pan, and a small barrel of hardtack biscuits.

  Garret spent time talking to the second in command, Joe Braxton. Afterward, he went to the chuck wagon and filled two plates, nearly overflowing with beans and cornbread. He smiled when he walked into his campsite. He generally ate with the hired men when he was in camp, so there was never a campfire or food cooking at his campsite. He found it welcoming.

  “Should I apologize for using your supplies?” Beth asked.

  He shook his head and handed her a plate of food. “No, there’s plenty, and I think you’ve been shorting your own rations in favor of feeding your brother.”

  Beth’s eyes flashed instantly in anger at his words and then saddened in sorrow. “It did no good. Nate didn’t do well after he returned from the war. He was well-fed and a little on the chubby side before the war, he returned emaciated.”

  “A lot of men suffered, Beth,” Garret said. “You shouldn’t have been doing without to give him more. You’re too thin, and you will make yourself sick.”

  “How did you know?”

  He shrugged. “I’ve been keeping an eye on you.”

  She stared into the fire. In the light of the flames, he saw her grief. “Nate was such a nice young man before he went away.”

  Garret went to the wagon, hauled himself inside, and brought out two small crates and a blanket. He wrapped the blanket around Beth’s shoulders and motioned for her to sit. “We need to talk.”

  She hesitantly raised her eyes to meet hi
s and then quickly looked away.

  “Do you have any family?” Garret asked.

  She shook her head no. “My father joined the local militia not long after Nate enlisted. He was too old for such nonsense.” She smiled at her memory of her father. “To hear him tell it, he would win the war singlehandedly. The doctor said the marching and drills were too much for him. He collapsed and never recovered. He died in December of ’61.”

  “Is there no one else?” Garret asked.

  Again, she shook her head no.

  “We have a problem.”

  “I have a problem,” Beth corrected him fiercely. “Captain Howell burned my wagon and my supplies. How am I to survive?”

  Their conversation was interrupted by a commotion a few wagons ahead, which drew their attention. They saw Captain Howell and several men walk by. Beth and Garret followed the growing procession of people.

  Beth watched in disbelief as two men pulled their wives out of their wagons, removed their belts, and began to whip the women.

  “Oh no,” Beth exclaimed turning away.

  Captain Howell seemed to know she was horrified. He waited until the women were crying and pleading with their husbands to stop when he glared directly at Beth. “Women!” he shouted. “You pay heed. This is what comes of gossiping and not obeying your men. I will not be disobeyed! These women are sentenced to three whippings, one each night for three days. I won’t have meddling women ignoring my orders!”

  Beth turned away and closed her eyes. She put her hands over her ears to block out the women’s cries. “Dear God, the man is mad, and so are the fools following him,” she whispered.

  The crowd began to disperse. The women looked scared, some of the men looked disgusted. Garret followed Beth back to his campsite.

  “I won’t let anything happen to you,” Garret said. “Your problem is bigger than…” he stopped and got to his feet as a group of five men entered their camp space.

  Beth stood facing Captain Howell, Sergeant Braxton, and three men she did not know. They stopped at the edge of the campfire.