Baby On The Oregon Trail. Lynna Banning

with his pocketknife, saying nothing, while she stirred up the pancake batter and clanked the skillet over the fire.

      They ate their supper in complete silence, and after a time Jenna’s nerves were stretched so thin she fancied she could hear them humming inside her head. They had just been through a horrifying experience. Why did he say nothing about it?

      Finally she couldn’t stand it one more minute. “I’m going for a walk,” she announced.

      “No, you’re not,” he said, his gaze on the block of wood in his hands.

      “Don’t tell me what I can and cannot do. Why shouldn’t I go for a walk?”

      “Because my horse is twitchy tonight, and when he gets that way there’s usually something afoot.”

      “What kind of something?”

      “Coyotes, maybe.”

      “I may be afraid of horses, but I am not afraid of coyotes.” She moved past him.

      “Or a wolf.”

      That stopped her cold. “Wolf? There are wolves out here?”

      “And renegade Indians.”

      “Indians!” She stared at him, her heart pounding.

      “This is Sioux country.”

      “Oh.” For a long time she stood uncertainly at the edge of camp, twisting her skirt in her hands and pondering what to do. Then Tess and Mary Grace and Ruthie trooped over from the Lincoln’s wagon and with no urging whatsoever, all three climbed up into the wagon.

      “Are your dresses dry?” Jenna called.

      “All dry,” came Ruthie’s voice. “But my dolly got all wet.”

      “Are you gonna read some more about King Arthur tonight?” Mary Grace queried. “If you are, hurry up, ’cuz I’m sleepy.”

      An hour later, Jenna closed the leather-bound book, gathered up her two quilts and crawled under the wagon. A single candle burned next to Lee’s discarded boots. She found he had spread his poncho flat to serve as a ground cover and rolled his pallet out on top, and he gestured for her to do the same.

      But the poncho wasn’t large enough to reach under them both.

      “Come closer,” Lee said. “After all, there’s a loaded rifle between us.” His voice sounded tired and his eyes were already closed.

      The proposition jarred her, and she had to think it over. For one thing, being that close to him made her uneasy. It was almost harder, now that she was beginning to see the kind of man he was. But no one would know if she did as he suggested. And what if they did?

      She removed her shoes and stockings and puffed out the candle flame.

      “My mother used to wear stockings like that,” he said. “Before the War.”

      “You were watching me!” she accused.

      “Hard not to.” He went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “After the War, none of our women had stockings.”

      She floundered for something to say. “My mother was never without proper stockings,” she said at last.

      “Yeah?”

      “Yes. My mother was never without proper anything. She wanted me to be proper, too, but she certainly failed in that.”

      Why was she telling him this? She never talked about her mother, not even to Mathias. Besides, why would he care? Mama was a Yankee through and through, starched so stiff her spine crackled. Lee Carver was a Confederate, a Virginian, from a slow, genteel life she could scarcely imagine.

      Water and oil, that’s what she and Lee Carver were. Oh, well, it was only for another thousand miles or so. Then he’d ride off to raise his horses on a ranch somewhere and...

      She caught her breath. And she would have her baby. And she would have it in Oregon, in a nice, civilized, safe town.

      A town where no one could ever find her.

       Chapter Eight

      Lee was close to exhaustion, but for some reason he still couldn’t sleep. Lying on his pallet under the Borlands’ wagon, hours dragged by as he listened to Jenna’s soft breathing beside him and the night sounds around the camp. Crickets. An owl in the ash trees at the edge of camp. The rustle inside the wagon when one of the girls rolled over under her blanket.

      Sure was an odd family, he thought for the hundredth time, a young woman expecting a baby and two older stepdaughters who obviously resented her. But he’d watched the youngest, five-year-old Ruthie, gently pat Jenna’s shoulder as if she were the adult and Jenna the child.

      He puzzled over it until a new sound drifted to him, a long, mournful cry coming across the far-off plain. Tied to the wagon, Devil gave a muffled whicker; the horse had heard it, too.

      He listened for a while, his arms folded behind his head, wondering exactly where the animal was. Then another cry answered, and the first one, now longer and more drawn out, grew more intense.

      “Lee?” Jenna whispered beside him. “What is that sound?”

      “Wolf,” he answered. “Not close, just noisy.”

      “There are two of them,” she said after a moment. “They sound so forlorn.”

      “Hungry, probably. And lonely.”

      She was silent, but he could sense her listening in the dark. He hadn’t thought about being lonely since the War, but the howling from the hills sure as hell crawled under his skin.

      “Are they going to find each other?” she asked.

      The question sliced into his brain clean as a razor. “Yeah, they will. Probably going to mate.”

      He heard her breath suck in. She must be pretty ladified if the word mate brought that reaction. Made him wonder even more about her.

      “You said your mother was ‘proper,’” he ventured. “How come she let you join an emigrant train?”

      “She didn’t have a choice, really. I mean I didn’t have a choice. Mama had to let me marry Mathias and join the train.”

      “How come she let you marry a horse thief in the first place?” He held his breath, expecting an explosion of anger. No woman wanted to hear her husband called a horse thief.

      She stayed quiet for a good two minutes while he waited.

      “Again, Mama felt she had no choice.”

      “Your father still alive?”

      “No. He was killed in the War. At Antietam.”

      “Too bad. It’s hard on a woman alone. She never remarried?”

      “Mr. Carver, you ask far too many questions.”

      “Maybe. Some might say I don’t ask nearly enough.”

      “Well,” she huffed, “I would not be one of them. I thought Southern people, refined people from the state of Virginia, were too polite to probe into others’ affairs.”

      “We are, usually. No law says we can’t be curious, though. And we’re out here in the West, Mrs. Borland. Not in Virginia. We’re in Yankee country, and Yankees, I’ve observed, are often ill-mannered.”

      “That is insulting!” Her voice held more than a bit of frost. “Surely you, a supposedly genteel Southerner, recognize bad manners?”

      Lee exhaled a long sigh. “I’m less Johnny Reb now than I was a few years back. Maybe now I’m more like your bluecoats. Your husband, for instance.”

      “You are nothing like my husband,”