Page 3 of Wagon Train Dreams
“What did you say?” She stopped to listen more closely, trying to make out his words.
Big warrior!
Of course. Because Joe called Petey Little Warrior, it made perfect sense. A smile flicked over her lips. She hugged her son. “You’re very clever. Did you know that?”
Petey nodded.
She hugged him again. What would she do without this little life she’d brought into the world? He was her reason for living and for the decisions she made.
“Down.” He squirmed, and she released him.
By the time she’d washed her own hands and face again, the bucket of water stood almost empty. Ma and Angela hovered over the fire preparing the evening meal. Irene had gone with Walt, supposedly to check on the oxen, but Hazel understood she couldn’t bear to be away from her husband. Something Hazel missed. Though she’d always had to make Peter pause to kiss her goodbye as he left to tend the store.
A glance around the camp didn’t reveal where the others were. Not that it mattered.
“Let’s get more water.” She scooped up her son, perched him on one hip, took up the empty pail, and headed for the stream, angling up from where the oxen grazed.
The sinking sun cast skinny shadows along her path. A breeze whispered through the trees, tossing the leaves back and forth on their branches.
She set Petey on the ground several feet from the water’s edge. “Stay here.” After moving along the gravelly verge, she reached the water and dipped the pail to fill it. Turning, she gasped. Petey had disappeared. When she spied him a few feet away, safe and sound amidst a field of pale purple flowers, her tension raced out so fast her knees shook.
Flowers waving their heads at about the same height as Petey’s head invited her for a closer look. She’d take the water back later. She left the bucket on the grassy verge to join him.
“Pretty flowers.” The color sent a burst of pleasure through her.
“Petty,” Petey echoed, touching the purple skirt of the blossom nearest him. From the center rose a greenish-brown cone.
“Looks like a dancing lady,” she murmured, sitting beside him to admire the scene. A whole field of dancing, bowing, twirling ladies. She trailed her fingertips over the nearest blossoms. Her sigh carried with it a good deal of regret. Her drawn-in breath brought hope.
If God so?—
Her thoughts halted at the soft thud of a footfall nearby, and her muscles coiled, ready to escape. But it was only Joe.
“Petty fowers.” Petey babbled a few more words.
Joe always appeared to be listening and, on many occasions, surprised Hazel by understanding Petey’s baby talk.He hunkered down beside her son. Close enough she felt the warmth from his body and breathed in the scent of his fringed leather vest.
“They are more than pretty.” Soft words whispered from his lips. “They are good for a wound. Early leaves good for tea.”
The day’s heat lingered in the grass, and Hazel lifted her chin to allow the evening air to kiss her skin.
Lulled by the stillness around her, she finished what had been in her mind when Joe startled her thoughts from her. “‘If God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall He not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?’” Her whispered words drifted across the flowers. She swallowed hard. Why had she said them aloud?
Other than because they were bottled up inside her. Saying them brought a degree of release for the myriad of locked-inside feelings.
Joe didn’t say anything. He just sat and stretched his long legs out in front of him.
She kept her gaze on his moccasins. What would he think if he learned she’d embroidered a likeness of them on a quilt square?
“My father said God cared for little things as much as He did big things.”
She’d never heard him mention his father before. Or anything about his family. Of course, being the scout, he didn’t spend a lot of time making small talk. Ducking her face to hide her grin, she acknowledged that he was a man of few words. But each one like…
A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver.Her father had said that verse often. Heat rushed up her cheeks as she thought how Joe might react if she told him what she was thinking. “How much longer until we reach Fort Taylor?” Seemed like a safe subject.
“We have many wonders yet to see.”
“Wonders? I hope you don’t mean alkali flats or flooded rivers.” She shuddered.
