New chapter time! I promise I'll get Fire of Unknown Origin updated within a couple of days. And in addition, for those of you on Twitter, I have a new account WBTP_Fanfiction just for my fanfic updates, so if you don't get on here regulary, or want to know what to expect updated next, you can check there. : )
I still don't own anything. Dang, that's depressing.
Sunday was a day of rest. Teresa was glad of this, it was the way God intended for them to live, but she could tell that stopping for the day was distressing her husband. "We left late already," he said, pacing in front of her. "We'll be caught in the mountains for the winter."
"Jane," she said, stepping closer to his pace line and wondering, as she did on occasion, why she insisted on calling him by his surname. "Jane, it's going to be okay."
He stopped and looked at her. "We left civilization almost a full month after the big, organized party did. It's always a concern, getting there before winter. We're really in danger of not making it."
When he put it like that…Teresa bit her lip. "I'm sure Bertram knows what he's doing," she reasoned. "Maybe a break now so we can push hard the last few weeks."
"Eh," Jane said, still looking discontented. "Well, I suppose I'm going to go hunt, you know, for when we're starving to death in the mountains in the middle of the winter."
Teresa didn't bother telling him that anything he caught now would be long eaten by the time they reached the mountains. She knew he wasn't likely to bring any game back, anyway.
After Madeline read from the Holy Book, the train members dispersed, some retreated to their wagons, others wandered off into the grass, and still others spread out blankets on the grass and began to sew. Teresa noticed that Summer Edgecomb was with them, but she wasn't sewing. She was fiddling with the dress in her hands as if to play act.
Teresa cocked her head. Knowing Patrick Jane for three years and being his wife for one more made her always search for the one thing that was out of place. The hint to a person's true intention.
Summer Edgecomb's true intention was not to sew that morning.
Teresa saw her continually glance over at her grandfather's wagon. The old man was lying under it, reading the Bible. As the minutes rolled on, he appeared to grow sleepy, and eventually his head nodded forward and the book slowly tilted.
Teresa looked back to his wagon, and a slow smile came over her face. She jumped up, bunched the dress into a wad, and tip toed over to her wagon, tossing it inside and then taking off for the other end of the wagon circle.
"Hey, Ma?"
Grace stood next to her, the man called Craig in tow. "I want you to meet Craig. Officially, I mean."
"Craig O'Laughlin," he said, holding out his hand. "It's nice to meet you."
"Likewise," she said, accepting the hand shake. "I notice you've been dancing with my daughter."
"Well, she's a good dancer," said Craig. Grace smiled broadly.
"Well, she doesn't take after her mother," Teresa said, tilting her head and smiling.
"Aw, nonsense, mother," Wayne said, jumping out of the wagon. "You're a fine dancer."
Teresa wasn't listening to her son. "What are you doing?" she demanded of him.
"What?"
"What's with the gun?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Oh," he said. "I was going to hunt."
"Father is hunting," Teresa said.
Wayne looked confused. "Um…no he's not. I have the gun."
"Son of a bitch," Teresa mumbled. "Give me the gun. I'm going to shoot him." Wayne handed it over, looking slightly uncomfortable. Craig and Grace stood awkwardly beside them.
A shot rang out. Near. Too near. Craig dove for cover, Wayne grabbed his sister and threw her toward the wagon, hurtling toward it himself. Teresa dropped to her knees, still holding the gun, shifting it to the ready position.
Someone was screaming. "Wayne, get your sister into the wagon now!" Teresa shouted, feeling red in the face from the effort. "Now!"
Another shot. This time, Teresa was able to tell where it had come from. Jumping to her feet, and keeping her gun up, she ran with some others to near the front of the train, where one of the boys that Wayne had walked with the first day was lying in a pool of his own blood. One bullet wound sliced through his stomach, the other solidly between his eyes. She closed her eyes as it became clear what the aimed bullet was for.
A younger boy, considerably younger than even Grace, was in his mother's arms, screaming and crying. "He picked up his daddy's gun," came a voice. "Hit his older brother right in the gut."
Teresa turned. "Madeline." She looked back at the body. "Oh, this is awful, God rest him."
"Amen," Madeline said, making the sign of the cross. "We're not even to Chimney Rock yet. They say the worst part of the trail is farther along. More death, destruction…" she trailed off. "But it's still the best bet for my kids."
Teresa wanted to tell the woman that she thought her children were beautiful, but it wasn't the time. The crying brother was shaking in his mother's arms; the woman, looking too young to have children of this age and at the same time looking old and worn, was crying without tears. An older man, probably her husband, was on his knees near the body.
"Teresa!"
She turned. Her husband was running toward her, looking out of breath. "What happened? Oh…" he trailed off, taking a step back and putting the back of his hand to his mouth. "Oh, that's…" He grabbed his wife's arm. "Come on."
She let him pull her away from the scene. She couldn't do anything anyway, and she was sure the sight reminded him of when his daughter – Charlotte, that is – had been so terribly murdered. "You okay?" she asked him, gently loosening her arm from his grasp.
He raised his eyebrows and gave her a smile. "Never better."
"Well," she said, "that's good, because you seem to have forgotten to take your gun out on this hunt of yours."
"Yeah, I wasn't hunting," Jane said. "Not important, Teresa, a life just ended and you're concerned about where I was? For the love of…"
"Oh, his poor brother," Teresa said, dropping to the ground. "He's going to have to live knowing that…" she trailed off, realizing that her comment would hit home with her husband, and hard.
He gave her a grim smile, settling down next to her. "His father would do him a lot of good placing one between the eyes like he did the older one."
"Jane!"
"All right, maybe a little harsh," her husband admitted. "But honestly, in the days, months Angela and Charlotte died, if I had gotten my hands on a gun, I would have done it. There was a time I almost succeeded anyway, with nothing but a spoon and half a shoelace."
"Don't talk about that," Teresa said. She hadn't known him in those days, but he had told her the story before. She didn't need to hear it again, of the dark times before they met, when he'd lived off the edge of control and only a mental institution in Pennsylvania, as wretched as the conditions were, had saved him. She already felt like it was her duty to keep him from dangling off that cliff again, hearing the stories of what could happen to him if he lost his mind again were too terrifying.
By nightfall, the unfortunate boy was buried, and his father, mother, and young brother were turning their wagon around. "We're going back to Carolina," the father had said. "It's bad enough we're leaving Wade's grave behind. We're not leaving our Carolina along with it."
"All right, y'all," Bertram had said, addressing the group once they were minus one wagon. "What happened today…just awful. This is a friendly reminder to all parents to keep guns, dynamite, and any other weapon away from anyone who is young. We've got months of travel ahead of us, and aside from not wanting any more tragic accidents like this, we can't afford to lose any cattle. Understood?"
Wayne came up to his mother's side and put a hand on her elbow. "Ma," he said. "Ma. I…I realize that this might not be the time, but…"
"Then it probably isn't," Teresa said. "After what happened today, Wayne…"
"It…it is about today." Wayne shifted his weight. "When that shot rang out, I jumped to cover Grace."
"You did," Teresa said, realizing she had not praised her boy for that yet. "You're a good brother, Wayne."
"The thing is," the boy continued, looking uncomfortable, "Craig dove the other way. He didn't care one bit about protecting her."
Teresa looked at him for a long moment, trying to remember that afternoon. Now that she thought about it, Craig had jumped the other way. But she barely knew the boy; there were explanations, maybe he saw Wayne dive for his sister, maybe he was already moving that way and the shot forced him to accelerate. He wasn't necessarily not concerned for her daughter's safety.
Wayne's comment did bother her, though; as a mother, she just couldn't help but worry a bit. That night, when she and Jane crawled inside their tent, she lay awake long after his breathing became slow and regular, thinking about her children, thinking about her husband, thinking about Madeline and Craig and Summer and that girl Rigsby danced with sometime that she still didn't know the name of, and thinking about how many miles they had to go before winter.
And deciding that Jane was right. They needed to speed up, or they'd never make it. Not at the rate that they were going.
