The morning air lay hot and still over the camp. Nothing moved. No birds sang. Not one breath of wind stirred the elm leaves over her head. Despite the heat, Constance shivered on the wagon bench.
Far ahead she heard Mr. Duquette’s gutteral shout, and one by one the wagons rolled forward. She craned her neck to see if her bread still rested in the crotch of the tree. On a day this stifling, the loaf would be bone-dry in an hour, even with the damp tea towel she’d wrapped it in. Still, she felt good about the gesture. No man, Indian or white, deserved to starve.
The Nylands’ wagon ahead of her jerked and moved forward. She lifted the whip; their turn was next.
Nettie rode inside the wagon. Yesterday she had fainted in the heat, and now she lay stretched out on her thin mattress while the young Ramsey girls sat beside her, waving a damp cloth over her head. Constance could hear their voices, like water murmuring over small stones. It sounded like music.
She closed her eyes, imagined Mama smoothing her hair and telling her stories or reading from the poetry book on a summer night. The sound of women’s voices was the most beautiful sound in the world.
She and Nettie used to talk together like that. For the past day and a half, however, they had not spoken one word to each other. She opened her eyes and stared at the blurred grasslands.
Two hours passed. Three. Then four. There would be no nooning until they had crossed to the north side of the Platte River. Major Montgomery and Billy had selected the fording place, just east of O’Fallon’s Bluff.
The undertaking filled her with dread. For miles and miles the river meandered lazily beside them, widening into shallow marshlands, then narrowing into confused freshets crisscrossed by sandbars. The water was too shallow for a ferry, too boggy to keep the overloaded wagons from sinking. Quicksand, Billy West had hinted.
Constance clamped her teeth together and squinted into the sun. How would their oxen manage if the river was deeper than it looked? Could oxen swim when collared to a load?
The wagon train was strung out along the bank, eleven cumbersome, top-heavy wooden structures with sun-bleached canvas bonnets. They looked so small, so insignificant compared to the river. Like the stars in the dark heavens at night.
The sky turned yellow. A sudden breeze skittered the leaves of the elm trees, and then the wind picked up, bending the long grass into rippling gray-green waves. Constance pulled the oxen to a halt.
Every nerve in her body prickled. It was too quiet. Something was about to happen, she could feel it in her bones. On impulse, she set the brake and climbed down from the bench. She knew Nettie was safe in the wagon, but something about the day felt wrong.
Joshua Duquette barreled toward her, his boots scuffing up black dust. “What’re you stopping for?” he yelled. “Get your damn wagon moving!”
Constance stared at him, but her mind was not on the wagon master. It was the utter silence that drew her attention. That was what was different—the silence.
“Listen,” she said.
“Listen, hell. Get your wagon rolling before I—”
She raised one hand. “Listen,” she insisted.
“There’s nuthin’ to hear, missy.”
“Exactly,” she said.
Duquette opened his mouth, then snapped it shut as the major rode up. “Circle the wagons,” he shouted.
“What the hell for?” the wagon master shot back.
“Just do it. And do it now!”
Duquette spit off to one side. “Over my dead bod—”
“Suit yourself, Duquette. Constance, round up the Ramsey children. Quick.”
She didn’t question the order, just picked up her skirt and ran toward the three boys playing Keep-away with a dried buffalo chip. “Parker. Elijah. Jamie. Get to your wagon. Hurry.”
Three blank white faces stared up at her.
“Hurry! Run as fast as you can!” She scooped up the youngest, Jamie, and raced across the flattening grass.
“Whatsa matter, Miss Constance?” Jamie cried. “Is it woofs or Injuns?”
“I don’t know.” She gasped out the words. “Just do what the major says.”
Her breath hitched. Jamie whimpered and wound his arms around her neck, and she kept running.
By the time she’d hefted all three boys into the back of their wagon and the waiting arms of Clara Ramsey, she could scarcely breathe. Her chest heaving, she stood while the other ten wagons pulled into a ragged circle around her Conestoga. Nettie will love being at the center, she thought irrationally.
All at once she felt entirely alone. Nettie was safe, the children were safe. She alone was responsible for herself.
She spotted the major driving the Ollesens’ horses into a hastily rigged rope corral inside the wagon circle. Merciful heaven, the cow! She’d forgotten all about Molly. The speckled Jersey stood fifty yards beyond the wagons, placidly chewing her cud in the shade of a sycamore tree.
Constance started toward her. The sky darkened as if a kettle lid had been slapped over the sun. The wind tore at her skirt with such force she could scarcely take two steps in succession. She heard a shout and looked up to see the major’s horse thundering toward her. He dismounted before the animal skidded to a stop and began to shout at her.
She couldn’t understand what he was saying and shook her head.
His voice finally came to her, a single word floating on the wind. “Constance.”
“What is it?” she screamed. “What is happening?”
He ran toward her, still shouting. “Dust storm.”
By now the wind whined across the prairie like a hurt animal.
“My cow,” she yelled. “Got to get Molly.”
“No.” He grabbed her upper arm. “Come with me.”
They fought their way toward his mare, the wind snapping her skirt into his legs, tearing the breath from her mouth. She struggled to keep her eyes open.
The sky turned to clay and she looked up. A huge black ball rolled in front of the sun and kept coming toward them.
She felt his arm around her shoulder. “Get to the horse,” he yelled.
“I can’t see.” She tried to make him hear, but he tipped his head into the wind and half pushed, half dragged her forward. She closed her eyes and let him guide her.
She could smell the mare. He scrabbled for something, then pulled a blanket over her head. “It’ll be all right,” he said into her ear. “Just face into the horse.”
He pushed her forehead against the mare’s warm neck.
Then, his arms braced on either side of her, he stepped in close. “Breathe through your mouth.”
The wind howled, ripping at the covering that sheltered them. The horse stood still, but her breaths grew gusty and labored.
“She’s choking,” Constance said. “Cover her nose.”
“Already did.”
Under the quilt the air grew thick and gritty. She tasted dust on her tongue. And salt.
“Nettie?” she gasped.
“Billy’s with her.”
His low, calm voice made her light-headed with relief.
She would live through this. She would keep her mouth open, as he said. She would draw air in and out and she would survive. Nettie would survive. Her sister would be terrified, but Mr. West would be there.
At her back she felt the warmth of the major’s hard body pressed against hers, felt his arms touching her hair.
“How long?” she managed to ask.
“Sometimes four, five hours.”
“I can’t…”
“Yes, you can. Don’t think. Just keep breathing.”
Obviously the major had experienced dust storms before. But he could not begin to imagine how frightened she was. It was as if the earth itself was shaking its feathers to rid itself of the flotsam that clung to its skin.
The wind dropped to a moan, then a whisper, and then was suddenly still. Neither of them moved.
She strained her ears, listening. All she could hear was the unsteady rasping of the man who imprisoned her. And at that exact moment the only thing she was conscious of feeling was his heartbeat thumping steadily against her spine.
Dear Lord, the man was holding her in his arms. Protecting her.
A hiccupy sob broke from her throat. How wonderful, how comforting it was to be held by a man, to feel his body hard and warm against hers. His forearms grazed her cheeks. For the first time in her life she acknowledged the ache of hunger for physical connection with another human being. If she moved a fraction of an inch in any direction she would touch this man’s body.
How could she be so wanton!
Easily, she decided. Oh, so easily. The scent of his breath, his skin, the pungent spice-and-sweat smell of his clothes, his body, made her insides flutter. She heard him murmur a word at her back.
“Constance.”
“Yes?”
A long, long silence.
“Don’t—” He cleared his throat. “—don’t move just yet. Don’t turn around.”
“Yes,” she whispered. The last thing she wanted to do was break the spell that bound them. She waited.
“Oh, hell,” he muttered at last. He turned her into his arms and bent his head.
She forgot about the dust and grit in her hair, about the wind, the horse. Even her sister seemed far away. She thought only of his mouth, the coffee and salt taste of his lips and tongue, the sharp, sweet jolt of pleasure that flared in her belly.
“Damn,” she heard him whisper. And then he kissed her again, slower. Deeper.
In that moment, she knew nothing would ever be the same again.
Seven hours later, the wagons creaked into their last campsite before crossing the Platte. Nettie insisted on taking a bath. Constance brushed and brushed at the sand peppering Molly’s hide. And after a supper of fried rabbit, which Billy West had snared and insisted on cooking with his “granddaddy’s special sauce” of whiskey and chili peppers and the last of the molasses, Constance crawled into her pallet underneath the wagon.
She could not erase the memory of the major’s firm, warm lips on hers, or control the erratic rhythm of her heart when she remembered how she had felt just then—as if a steam engine had scooped her up onto the cowcatcher and was now climbing up, up to the top of the hill, toward…toward…
She could not even name it. She just knew that it was there, just over the horizon, waiting for her. She stared up at the underbelly of the wagon, thinking not of Nettie, as she usually did, but of the major.
And when she awoke the next morning, an even more startling surprise awaited her.