They rode back toward camp side by side, not talking, while the sun bathed the morning with soft gold light and bees hummed among the tall purple cone-flowers. They were so close their knees could almost touch, so attuned to each other they breathed in and out as one being. A mile from camp they reined in their mounts and reached out to each other for one final embrace.
The major’s face was strained, his blue eyes carefully expressionless, his mouth twisting. Constance felt his arms tighten about her, his lips settle over hers for a brief, intense moment. Tears spilled from under her closed eyelids.
“Live well,” he whispered.
He broke from her, kicked his mare and wheeled away to the south. He would not return to camp for three hours, and then he would arrive from a different direction.
She watched the tall figure ride away from her and fought the wave of longing in her belly. You are mine, he had said. Mine. He said it again and again during the hours they had been together. She knew why. Possession, belonging to each other in the way they now did, would make it possible for him to leave.
But knowing it did not help. Pain like a white-hot lance split her heart.
She walked the spotted horse into camp, reached the blue Conestoga before anyone was stirring except for the chattering sparrows. Even Billy still slept underneath the wagon, and last night’s cook fire was nothing but gray ash.
She dismounted, looped the mare’s reins over the hand brake and stirred up the fire. Still-warm coals emerged from beneath the banked ashes. Trying to forget the ache in her throat, she fed them a twist of dry grass and then a quarter-round of wood Billy had split the night before.
Please, Lord, just let me get through this one day.
She lifted her blue muslin apron from its nail at the back of the wagon, tied it on over her work skirt and wiped her eyes with the hem. She must manage somehow to breathe in, breathe out. Walk. Speak. Eat breakfast without betraying the anguish that tore at her insides.
She would even help Nettie dress for the wedding. She closed her eyes at the insistent pain that flowered in her stomach.
The next thing she knew, Billy stood beside her, scratching his belly. With his sleep-tousled taffy-colored hair and his bare toes peeking from under his trouser legs he didn’t look much older than the major.
“Ya see what Yellow Wolf done left for ya?”
“Yellow Wolf?” She’d left three loaves of bread in the crotch of an oak tree the day before they reached Fort Laramie. “Yellow Wolf was here?” She couldn’t get her mind to make a connection.
Billy nodded. “Come last night, he did. Listened to my fiddle for a while, but didn’t show hisself. I knowed he was there, though. Man smells like a bucket of bear grease.”
“Did Nettie—?”
“Aw, heck no. I watched her close. She never put a foot outside that wagon, just sat and sewed till past midnight. Plumb wore my bowing arm out keepin’ her entertained.”
“You said Yellow Wolf left something?”
Billy’s pale blue eyes danced. “Around t’other side of the wagon.”
Constance tiptoed past the closed canvas bonnet and peeked around the corner. Tethered to the rear wagon wheel was an elegant little gray pony with black mane and tail.
“Oh, how beautiful! It’s a horse, Billy!”
“Sure ’nuf looks like one,” Billy said with a grin.
“But…why?”
Billy crawled back under the wagon to find his boots. “Weddin’ present.” His voice sounded as if he were upside down.
Her heart leaped and then plummeted to her stomach in the space of a second. “It’s for Nettie, then. Not me.”
“Nope. It’s fer you, all right.”
“But I’m not m-marrying the major. My sister is.”
Billy poked his head out from under the wagon. “You know that, an’ I know that. But Yellow Wolf, he don’t know that. He left the pony for you.”
“But…but…”
“I seed it right off, I did. Now, when the major gets here he kin read the picture writing painted on that animal’s hind quarters.”
“Just where is the major?” a clear voice asked. Nettie stood in the wagon entrance, her face still creased from sleep, her golden hair in disarray.
“He’ll be along,” Billy replied. He shot Constance a quick look. “Bein’ a major an’ all, he sleeps at the officers’ quarters.”
“Cissy, I can’t get the hem right on Mama’s dress. I need you to pin it up for me.”
Billy caught her gaze once more. His clear blue eyes shone with a mixture of sympathy, exasperation and amusement. He propped his hands on his hips, waiting for her reply.
The memory of the night she had spent with John, the wonder of their being together dissolved the knot of anger against Nettie she had held inside her. Nettie would never know John, would never be loved or cherished by him, as she was. Her resentment toward her sister melted.
She climbed into the jockey box and put her arms around Nettie. “After breakfast, pet. You can stand on the flour barrel and I will measure the hem and baste it up.”
Throughout the morning, Constance kept herself busy with the milking and making breakfast and helping Nettie stitch the wedding gown. When John finally rode in, he wolfed down six biscuits and two mugs of black coffee without looking at her. He didn’t stay long enough to read the pony’s markings, but at half past eleven, disappeared somewhere with Billy.
And then all at once the morning had flown by and it was time for the ceremony.
“Oh,” Nettie exclaimed, her round blue eyes flashing. “So soon? Oh good. It is all happening just as I planned.”
Not soon enough, Constance thought. Every minute of this day was a bittersweet agony. She loved John. She had willingly, joyfully given herself to him. But in an hour’s time he would bind himself not to her, but to her sister.
And then he would mount his horse and ride away, out of her life.
She lifted their mother’s ivory lace gown and settled it over Nettie’s head, arranged the folds of the skirt and buttoned the ruffled cuffs at her wrists. She dressed herself in her yellow muslin. Her heart felt as if it were squeezing smaller and smaller beneath her rib cage.
While Nettie fussed with her unruly blond curls, Constance unbound the thick single braid she wore and brushed her hair left-handed until her arm tingled. She looked up to find Nettie staring at her.
“Cissy, do you hate me for marrying the major?”
Her brushing arm dropped to her side. “My heart hurts, yes. But I do not hate you, Nettie. You are my sister. I am distressed and angry, but I do not—”
“You wanted him, didn’t you?”
Constance looked straight into her sister’s face. “Yes. I did.”
“And…and it’s too late now. Isn’t it?”
She felt sick inside. “You carry a child, Sister. John has offered you, and the baby, his name.”
Nettie gave her a slow smile. “Just think, Cissy. All my life I’ve been your baby sister. Now, in just a few moments I will be a grown-up married woman.”
Constance bit the inside of her cheek. “You will be my married sister, yes. The ‘grown-up’ part may take more than just reciting your vows.”
“Do you not think life is funny, the way it turns things upside down at times?”
Constance made no reply. Only for the very young and irresponsible could life be considered ‘funny.’ Life was unexpected. Glorious at times. Heartbreaking.
But not funny.
“It’s near noon, Nettie. The major will be waiting.”
What am I to do? God forgive me, but for the first time in my life I wish to be free of Nettie. I do not want to be responsible for her. I can scarcely bring myself to look in her face come the morning.
My heart aches. My head pounds as if an ax were beating at my temples. I can see no way out of this trap my sister has woven with her lies and her wheedling. I am angry, so very angry at her selfishness. How I wish I could hate her. Oh Papa, Papa, I feel she has killed us both.
What am I to do? There is nothing. Nothing!
Constance moved past whitewashed clay out-buildings and two large white frame houses in the inner compound, feeling as if time had slowed to a snail’s crawl. Never in her entire life had her legs felt so wooden.
It was a short walk from the wagon across the parade grounds to the two-story house that served as officers’ quarters. On the lower floor was a large reception room where the ceremony would be held.
Through the open doorway, she glimpsed rows of wooden benches and a motley assortment of straight-backed chairs arranged to make an informal aisle. At the far end stood a cloth-draped table with a large black leather-bound Bible resting on top. Nettie gripped Constance’s hand.
Every single seat was occupied, and some of the soldiers even stood around the perimeter of the room. The preacher, in an outdated black frock coat, waited off to one side with a scrubbed and clean-shaven Billy West. The major stood next to him, erect and unsmiling in a crisp blue military uniform with multiple stripes of gold braid at the shoulders and on the high collar.
“You go in first, Cissy,” Nettie whispered. “You’re to stand up with me.”
Unable to utter a word over the lump in her throat, she gave her sister’s soft hand a final squeeze and stepped into the doorway. At the sight of her, the Ramsey children scurried to their seats and sat in rapt silence.
Constance moved on into the room. She did not dare look at John for fear her feet would refuse to obey her. She looked instead at Billy, took a second step forward, then a third, and started down the aisle.
The wiry army man wore a clean gray military shirt and blue trousers. In one hand he held a dress gray hat she had never seen him wear. In the other he clutched two bouquets of wildflowers, small white roses and purple coneflowers, tied with a white ribbon. When she drew near, he stepped forward and pressed the smaller bunch into her hand.
A soft “aah” rose behind her, and she knew Nettie had entered. Constance turned to watch.
Her sister drifted toward her, graciously acknowledging the smiles and murmurs of approval with a radiant smile. Mrs. Nyland dabbed at her eyes with a lace-edged handkerchief, and Constance felt her own eyes fill with tears.
Ruth Ramsey poked her sister Essie. “B is for bee-you-ti-ful,” the twins chimed in unison. Laughter rippled among the assembled onlookers.
Nettie gazed straight ahead. When she had almost reached the preacher, Billy again stepped forward and presented her with the wedding bouquet. Someone blew his nose, a man Constance guessed by the drawn-out sound, and at the back of the room someone got the hiccups. One of the Ramsey boys, probably. She smiled in spite of herself.
Life went on, in large ways and small, no matter how one’s heart ached.
Nettie stepped up to the preacher and took the major’s proffered arm. Billy and Constance positioned themselves on either side of the couple.
I will not think of John, she resolved. I will think instead of Nettie and her need. Her happiness.
The preacher opened the thick black book, splayed his manicured fingers across the back of the binding and cleared his throat.
“Dearly beloved…”
Constance’s chest constricted. She shut her eyes, forced herself to concentrate.
“…come now before us to be united in holy matrimony.”
Nettie moved a step closer to the major, who stood at rigid attention.
“…if there are any among you who know of any impediment…”
Her mind felt light, as if she were outside herself, watching. She saw herself in the yellow muslin dress, standing beside her sister who was wearing Mama’s wedding gown. She looked down on Nettie, on John and Billy West, as if she were floating above them.
And in that instant everything became clear.
Impediment? Of course there is an impediment.
It was all wrong. All upside down, as Nettie had said. She had spent so many years catering to her sister’s needs and wants she had not recognized the unvarnished truth of her own life until this moment.
I deserve more than this. More than second-best.
“…impediment to this union, let him speak now or forever hold his peace.”
A silence as thick as buttermilk fell. One breath in. Out. Two breaths in…
And then three voices broke the stillness at the same time.
“I object.”
“I speak out to object.”
“By God, I say no.”