Beyond the Trail. Six Short Stories Read online

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  A Rooster’s Job

  Hamilton Horse Ranch

  Baker Prairie, Oregon

  December 1852

  A gust of wind rattled the greased paper that covered the windows instead of glass. Snow drifted down the chimney, and the flames flickered and hissed.

  Luke stepped around her oldest daughter, Amy, and her herd of wooden horses and laid a fresh log on the fire, thankful for something to do. In the year since she, Nora, and the children had arrived in Oregon, temperatures had never before dropped so low. She was glad to have chopped and dried enough wood for the winter. They could keep warm at least.

  “Papa, can you make me a baby horse for Measles?” Amy asked, eyeing the wood at the side of the hearth.

  Luke had whittled her a menagerie of animals to mirror the ones on their property, but her five-year-old daughter liked the horses best, especially Measles, who was supposed to have a foal in spring.

  “Tonight,” Luke said. “I need to—”Another weak cough came from the bedroom. Oh, Nattie. The strangled sound made Luke’s chest ache as if she had been coughing and wheezing for the past two days. She thought about returning to the bedroom to stand silent vigil with Nora over their sick daughter but then stayed where she was. It hurt too much to watch the tiny chest struggle for breath.

  If only they didn’t live so far from a doctor. If only the snow melted.

  Suddenly, Luke couldn’t breathe either. The walls of the small cabin were closing in on her. She grabbed her coat and rushed to the door.

  “Papa!” Amy laid down her wooden horses and jumped up from her place next to the hearth. “Can I come too?”

  She was used to going everywhere with Luke, and normally, Luke liked to have her around and to teach her new things. But not now, not in this weather. She wouldn’t risk Amy getting sick too.

  “No. Not this time.”

  “But we could check on Measles and the other horses,” Amy said.

  “No,” Luke said again, more roughly than she had intended. “It’s too cold outside. Tell your mother I’m going to take care of the roof.” Without another word, she escaped from the cabin.

  The cold hit her like a tidal wave, but Luke ignored it and marched toward the stable. After one step, she sank knee-deep into the snow. She struggled through the white drifts, her fists clenched in the pockets of her coat.

  When she entered the barn, half a dozen horses trumpeted a hopeful whinny.

  Luke bit her lip. She didn’t have feed to offer them. As she made her way down the aisle, she forced herself not to look at the empty stalls. She reached over one of the stall doors and rubbed her hand over Measles’s shoulder, feeling bones more prominent than ever before. “I’m sorry, girl,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry. I’ll go out later and get you some more moss from the forest.”

  But first, she had to knock down some of the snow from the cabin and stable roofs before they caved in under their heavy burden. Oregon’s winters were normally mild and rainy, so Luke hadn’t built their home with so much snow in mind. The cabin wasn’t much more than provisional shelter anyway. Lichen grew on the log walls, and Nora had to sweep mushrooms off the dirt floor every morning.

  Luke had planned on installing wood floors in the new, better house she had wanted to build during their first summer in Oregon. But now that summer had passed and with so much else to do around the ranch, she hadn’t gotten around to it. “Never mind,” Jacob Garfield, their old friend whose family had settled in town, had said. “You’ll build a new house next year. You can’t do it all at once. After all, you’re just one man.”

  Her callused hand rasped over her burning eyes. You’re no man at all. In the past year, she had found peace with that fact, but now it started to feel like a failure again. If she were a man, maybe she could have built a better home, one with real windows and a cook stove so Nora wouldn’t need to cook over a fire anymore. Maybe then Nattie wouldn’t be sick all the time. If she didn’t have to hide her secret, they could have settled down in town, with neighbors and a doctor nearby, instead of living isolated from the rest of the world.

  Sometimes, Luke feared that Nora was lonely without even a post office from which to send her letters to Tess. Could she really give Nora and her daughters the life they deserved? In moments like this, she doubted it.

  The rafters above her creaked warningly.

  Dammit. I better hurry. Luke carried a ladder outside, leaned it against the side of the stable, and climbed up. A cold wind tugged on her coat. Her fingers felt frozen as she used a shovel to relieve the stable’s roof of its burden. Snow slithered into her coat sleeves and dripped down her neck as she worked, but she ignored it. Every shovelful seemed to weigh a ton, and sweat mingled with the melting snow on her skin.

  Finally, she freed the roof of most of the snow and climbed back down. Her arms protested as she dragged the ladder through the deep snow toward the cabin. Despite her exhaustion, she couldn’t allow herself to rest. She would need to chop more wood, go out to set traps in the forest, and drag home moss so the horses wouldn’t starve.

  More white drifted across the ranch yard.

  Luke frowned and stopped. That’s not snow. Lord! Are those feathers?

  Then she saw the drops of crimson that marred the treacherous innocence of the snow. The ladder slid out of her nerveless hands. She bent down and touched one of the spots, confirming that it was blood.

  Fear clutched at her as she followed the trail of blood around the corner. She already knew where it was leading. No. Please, no. Not this too. When she ducked into the henhouse, unusual silence greeted her.

  It was empty.

  Broken eggshells and tufts of bloodstained feathers littered the floor. On the perch, the battered-looking rooster flapped his wings helplessly.

  Luke stared at him. Bile rose in her throat; she forced it down. “You should have taken better care of your family,” she said. “That’s your job, you stupid rooster.”

  The rooster just crowed at her.

  “Goddammit!” Luke yelled back. She rubbed her palms over her cold face until her cheeks burned.

  A coyote had gotten into the henhouse before, but that had been last year, when the winter had been mild. This year had brought the hardest winter that settlers in Oregon could remember. The river was frozen, and eighteen inches of snow covered the pasture. Half their herd and two of their milk cows had starved because they couldn’t get to the grass. They had run out of flour a week ago, but the snow blocked the roads and made it impossible to reach town. Even if they had somehow managed to make it to the store, prices had soared, so they couldn’t afford to buy more than a few pounds anyway.

  All Luke could do was hope for spring to come soon.

  She jerked the board that had come loose next to the henhouse’s door back into place and waded through the snow to where she had left the ladder. There was no time to think about what losing the hens would mean for them or what Nora would say when she heard about it. The cabin’s roof was flat, so the snow wouldn’t slide off. If she didn’t clear it, it would pile higher and higher until the roof caved in and exposed Luke’s family to the merciless elements.

  Anger fueled her strength, and she shoveled wildly until she had scraped most of the snow off the cabin’s cedar shakes. Then she paused, still clinging to the ladder, and stared down at the snow-immersed corral, the feathers, and the trail of blood.

  * * *

  Nora shoved open the door and tucked her shawl more tightly around her shoulders. “Luke?” she called out into the white, frozen world. What was Luke doing out there for so long? Had something happened?

  “Up here,” Luke called from the side of the cabin. “Go on back inside. I’ll be down in a minute.” Her voice sounded strangely hollow to Nora.

  Nora furrowed her brow. Was it just the snow, which muffled and distorted all sounds? She didn’t think so. “Luke?” Nora called again, with more urgency. She stepped out of the doorway, let the door fall
closed behind her, and peered up.

  The ladder leaned against the cabin, with Luke perched on top.

  Luke scrambled down the ladder, her cheeks flushed with panic. “Is Nattie ...?”

  “No, no, she’s fine,” Nora said and waved at Luke to slow down before she could fall and break a leg. “Her fever finally broke, and she’s no longer coughing. She’ll be just—” The words died on her lips, and she stared at the tears that pooled in the corners of Luke’s red-rimmed eyes. Her heart plummeted. “Are you ... are you crying?”

  In the two years she’d known Luke, through a lot of hard times, she had never, ever seen Luke cry. Even when one of the horses had stepped on Luke’s little toe and crushed it, she had bravely upheld her manly image. She had cursed but never cried—until now.

  “No,” Luke said, quickly wiping her eyes. “Of course not. It’s this damn cold. It makes my eyes water.”

  Her attempts to hide her feelings hurt as much as seeing Luke suffer, but Nora let it go. Right now, making sure that Luke was all right was more important. “What happened?” She touched Luke’s hand. The gentle strength of that hand had comforted and loved her for many months now, but this time, Luke didn’t curl her fingers around hers in silent communication. They remained frozen.

  What’s going on? Nora studied Luke more closely. Her eyes widened as she detected the red stains on Luke’s coat sleeve. “Lord! You’re hurt.” Her insides trembled, and she reached for Luke’s hand again.

  “No.” Now Luke intertwined her fingers with Nora’s, instinctively soothing. “It’s not my blood. It’s ...” Luke closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, she looked toward the henhouse.

  Her silence said it all.

  “The chickens?” Nora whispered. “All of them?”

  “All but that goddamn useless rooster.”

  Nora took a deep breath. Then another. “Well,” she finally said and forced a smile, “I bet he’s not so useless when it comes to preparing chicken fixings. We could have potatoes, steamed squash, and turnips with it.” That was about all that was left in their pantry—that and the can of peaches Nora was saving for Luke’s birthday.

  Her words didn’t have the desired effect. Luke didn’t smile; she didn’t even make eye contact. “As soon as the snow melts away a little, you and the girls should move to town,” Luke said. “I’m sure you could stay with the Garfields for a while.”

  “What?”

  “Just until spring.” Under Nora’s incredulous gaze, Luke shuffled her booted feet. “Just until I can build a better house for us.”

  A sigh formed a cloud of mist in front of Nora’s face. “Luke, we talked about this before. The answer is still no.”

  “But before, we hadn’t lost the hens and two of the cows,” Luke said.

  Nora was still shaking her head. Now that she had found a home and the love of her life, she wouldn’t leave either of them.

  Snow sprayed both of them when Luke kicked one of the white drifts. “What else needs to happen before you leave?” The normally gentle Luke was shouting now.

  “You’d have to leave too,” Nora said without flinching back. “We’re either all going or all staying. I’m not leaving you behind. Through the good times and the bad, remember?”

  Luke stared down into the snow and mumbled into her coat, “You made that promise when you still thought I was a man who could take care of you and the girls.”

  “I’m not talking about our marriage vows,” Nora said. Back then, she’d had no earthly clue about love. She’d married Luke to give her children a better future in a new home. But somewhere along the two thousand miles from Missouri to Oregon, she had fallen in love. “Do you remember last year, when we stopped the oxen on that hill over there and looked down at this very place? Do you remember what I said?”

  Luke’s gaze wandered over to the hill hidden beneath the heavy snow cover, then came to rest on Nora. For a moment, her eyes were alight with the memory and a slight smile trembled on her lips. “Of course I do. You told me you’d love me forever, through the good times and the bad, until the end of time.”

  “That I did. And while this,” Nora swept her arm over the frozen landscape, “might look like the Last Days, I’m sure it’s not, so my promise still holds true.” She reached out and touched Luke’s cheek, feeling the dampness of sweat, snow—and, yes, tears. “Luke, what’s this about? What’s going on in here?” She slid her hand down the thick coat and rested it on one bound breast, directly over Luke’s heart.

  Two cold hands closed around Nora’s. “I just want you to be safe. It would be better for you and the girls to live in a real house and have flour and eggs and milk. I can’t give you any of that right now.” Luke dropped her hands from Nora’s and looked away.

  “And you somehow think people in town and on the other farms aren’t suffering this winter? Most of our neighbors lost more stock than we did.” Just a few days before, Luke had found two of the Buchanans’ cows dead on their north pasture. At least they would provide meat for both families for a while. “These things are out of your control, Luke. There would be nothing you could do about them even if you were a man. Or do you think that Jacob or Tom would be able to melt away the snow with just the heat of their manly gazes?”

  “Of course not,” Luke said, but her guarded expression never changed.

  Lord. Why did I have to go and marry such a pigheaded person? Nora smiled inwardly. Maybe because she’s also such an honorable and loving person. “Luke, things aren’t that bad. So what if we have to eat potatoes, turnips, and boiled wheat for a few weeks longer? We have more than enough food to survive this winter. It just won’t be the most varied of cuisine.” She nudged Luke, trying to establish eye contact. “If we run out of beef, you could go out and hunt. I hear the coyotes are well-nourished around here.”

  The corners of Luke’s gray eyes crinkled as her concerned features relaxed into a tentative smile.

  “And spring comes early here in Oregon,” Nora added. “The snow could be gone by the New Year, and then everything will look different.”

  The cabin’s door creaked open. “Mama? Papa?” Amy’s worried voice drifted over to them.

  “We’re here, Amy,” Nora said.

  Amy leaned forward, both hands clutching the doorway, and peered at them, her lower body still within the cabin. They had forbidden her from setting one foot outside the cabin without them, and Amy was taking that order very seriously. Her eyes widened. “Papa, are you all right?”

  “Yes, sweetie, I’m—”

  Nora knew what was coming. She had heard that reassurance a thousand times before. Most of the time, Nora thought a little white lie to avoid worrying the children was fine, but she didn’t want Luke to think that she had to pretend all the time. “Papa is sad because the hens are gone,” she said before Luke could finish her sentence.

  “Oh, no!” Amy’s happy little face transformed into a frowning one. “What happened to them?”

  “I’ll explain later,” Nora said. “Now go back inside where it’s warm. Be a dear and keep an eye on your sister. We’ll be with you in a minute.”

  After a second’s hesitation, Amy closed the door.

  Luke and Nora were left standing in the snow, staring at each other. More snowflakes dusted Luke’s shoulders, and Nora brushed them away. “You are a hard worker, a wonderful parent, and the best husband I could wish for,” Nora said. “But I don’t expect you to have all the answers and all the solutions for every problem. I won’t think any less of you if you don’t know what to do every once in a while. You don’t have to be strong all the time.”

  “But if I don’t—”

  One finger against Luke’s bluish lips stopped the words. “We’ll figure it out together, all right?” Nora took her hand away and waited.

  Luke exhaled sharply, and the forming cloud mingled with Nora’s condensed breath.

  The image made Nora smile. She bridged the space between them and pressed her lips t
o Luke’s. “All right?” she asked again.

  “All right,” Luke whispered against her lips.

  * * *

  Luke leaned in the doorway, one arm wrapped tightly around Nora, and watched Nattie sleep. The rhythmic movements of the covers lulled her heart to a calmer beat. Finally, she let herself believe that everything would be all right. She vowed to get started on the new house as soon as the snow melted away and the ground dried.

  “Here, Papa,” Amy said next to her. “For you.”

  Something was slid into her hand, and Luke instinctively curled her fingers around it. She looked down into Amy’s earnest green eyes.

  “Don’t be sad about the hens, Papa. You can have one of my animals.”

  Luke lifted the wooden animal to study it in the dim light filtering in from the fireplace. It wasn’t just any of Amy’s carved animals. Her fingers rubbed over the tiny spots on the horse’s flank. “Measles,” Luke said. Her throat constricted. A soft squeeze from Nora finally propelled her into action. She let go of Nora and knelt down to be at eye level with Amy. “Thank you, Amy,” she said. Her voice trembled. Get yourself together. You can’t let her see you—Then she paused and glanced at Nora’s hand resting on her shoulder.

  You don’t have to be strong all the time, Nora had said. I won’t think any less of you.

  “I can’t take your horse from you, sweetie,” Luke said.

  Amy reached out, about to take her beloved toy horse, but then she stopped and looked back and forth between Luke and the wooden animal. After one last longing glance at the horse figure, she pulled back her hand. “But I don’t want you to be sad.”

  “Know what would make me feel better?”

  “A hug?”

  Luke nodded. “A big hug from you.”

  With a squeal, Amy threw herself into Luke’s arms.

  The trusting warmth of Amy’s small body made Luke close her eyes. Maybe, she thought as she laid her cheek against Amy’s soft curls, maybe I really am a good father and provider. We must be doing something right if we have a daughter like this. She opened her eyes and met Nora’s smile with one of her own.