"Neither have I. Let's see what I've got in my saddlebag." He rested one arm across Silas' shoulders. "Then we've got us a pile of work to do."

The implement wagon was, as Silas had said, entirely safe. The speckled ox was dead, drowned in the disaster. The other two dead oxen were Whitehead's. Emmet was sure he'd be asked to pay for them, but he'd be damned if he would. A safe crossing was Colonel Whitehead's responsibility. He should have prevented the accident.

By dark the truth was clear. There was no way on God's green earth they could get the trunks and chests and what-have-you he'd salvaged into the wagon with the farm implements and supplies and Karl Rommel's tools. Something was going to have to stay behind.

"You've known Mrs. Lachlan longer than I have," he said to Silas. "If you were her, what would you throw away if you couldn't carry everything?"

"She wouldn't care much about the tools," Silas said. "Hat, she likes green, growing things. She told me once that Mr. Rommel had a gift for making pretty things, but it was a pity all he could see in a tree was wood to be cut and planed flat."

"How about the farm implements? I don't know anything about what's useful and what's not." All he knew of farming was that it kept a man in one place.

In the end they decided to keep the plowshare, the scythe blade, and any other iron parts, discarding all attached wood as easily replaced by a man handy with a carving blade. The fine black walnut chest of cabinetmaker's tools would stay behind, as would the bed frame and the mirrored birds-eye oak dresser. They'd leave the barrel holding the set of flowered dishes, but they'd take the cornmeal that cushioned the dishes.

He opened each chest and box to check its contents before choosing to keep or discard it. Emmet remembered his mother's sorrow at the loss of her family treasures and he regretted that Hattie had to suffer a similar loss. After the first few he stopped searching through each one, for Karl Rommel had been a methodical man. A list of contents lay beneath each lid.

He packed the floor of the wagon solid and built a nest of blankets for Hattie.

There was no way he could prevent her being bumped and rocked, but by God she'd ride as soft as he could manage. At last everything was packed and ready for her.

But he didn't immediately fetch her. Climbing from the wagon into the star-strewn night, Emmet was overcome with a feeling of suffocation. For an instant, he thought of grabbing his rifle, his saddlebags, and riding into the darkness, never looking back.

He wasn't fit to have the responsibility of an injured woman, a stripling, and wagons and livestock. He couldn't do it.

He could not do it! Hattie would be better off if he left her with the Stones and disappeared into the wilderness. If he stayed, if he tried to care for her, sooner or later he would fail her.

Hadn't he proved that, over and over, with his mother, with Sheila and Jonathan?

The first three days, Hattie seemed to hold her own. She roused enough to take a little broth, to sip at the tepid water he held to her lips. Martha Stone kept her dosed with an infusion of boneset and willow-bark, and she usually seemed better for a few hours after each dose.

But on the fourth day, she worsened, the mild fever she'd had since the first developing into melting heat that dried her out like a dead coyote in the sun.

Her cheeks became sunken and her eyes hollow. She tossed and muttered all day, until Emmet set Silas in the wagon beside her to make sure she didn't harm herself.

Mrs. Stone came to dose her when they stopped for the night. A few minutes later she climbed from the wagon, a worried frown on her face. "I don't like the look of her leg, Mr. Lachlan," she said. "It's swollen pretty bad, and startin' to suppurate."

"Any smell?"

Mrs. Stone shook her head. "Not yet, but it's not draining, either," and her implication was that it was only a matter of time before the infection turned to deadly gangrene.

Emmet checked her leg himself, cutting the strips that held her splints after he had tied new, looser ones on, relieving the constriction of her puffy flesh.

Once satisfied with the splint's rigidity, he carried Hattie to the hot springs, about a quarter-mile from the circle of wagons.

"She's going to be all right," he told Silas, when the boy came in from milking, "if we can get the infection down." Again the ominous feelings of inadequacy washed over him. What would he tell Silas if his planned action didn't save Hattie's life? The boy was depending on him.

All night long he kept hot, wet cloths on the injured leg. He saw little result by dawn, but the inflammation hadn't spread, either. And Hattie had taken several cups of water and broth during the night, so that her cheeks and eye sockets no longer seemed so hollow.

"You're damn right we're going on," he told the colonel the next morning. "She's no more likely to die on the trail than she is out here. I've got the wound open and draining." If he had to, he'd stop at noon to boil water for more hot compresses, but he thought morning and night might do the trick.

The motion woke Hattie. That and the heat. She felt stifled, hardly able to breathe in the dusty, closed wagon. She was bound, a prisoner in her own bed.

And her eyes were stuck shut, as if the lids were glued together with matter.

Had she been ill? She couldn't remember. Annie had been so wretchedly sick that they had despaired of her...no, Annie had died. An image formed in her mind of a pitiful mound of fresh-turned earth, waiting for the wagons to be driven over it to conceal it from scavengers, both two-and four-legged.

She ached in every bone. Her face hurt, as it sometimes did when she had a head cold and felt as if her brains had swollen like a bladder full of water. And her right shoulder ached something terrible. She tried to shift to be more comfortable, but the bindings wouldn't allow her to move, not even to turn on her side.

One eyelid came slightly unstuck. The light in the wagon was brighter on one side than on the other, and golden. Dust-defined beams shone almost horizontal through tiny holes in the canopy, so it must be late afternoon. Almost time to stop for the night.

Hattie drifted, hearing but not paying attention to the sounds of encampment.

Would someone come in soon, to help her outside? Her bladder was full to bursting.

She must have slept then, for the next thing she knew was a hard palm across her tender forehead. She struggled to open her eyes, but only could see through the single slit.

"Hattie?" It was a voice she did not recognize. "Hattie, are you awake?" A large shape, a masculine shape, was between her and the light now streaming into the wagon.

Her tongue felt big and awkward in her mouth as she tried to lick her lips. And dry. Her mouth was as dry as the bones they sometimes saw lying alongside the trail.

In a moment a hand was beneath her head, lifting it slightly, and a cup was at her mouth. She reared up, wanting to gulp the cool liquid she could feel at her lips.

"Slowly," the voice said, gentle, but with a raspy harshness. "Just a sip at a time."

She sipped. Sipped again. Each drop gave her new life. With infinite patience, the owner of the voice held the cup as she slowly imbibed its contents. At last, when she felt as if she would burst if she drank more, he took it from her lips.

"That's enough, I think. Don't want you to be sick." Her head was lowered and she found she hadn't the strength to lift it again. "Sleep," she was told.

"Sleep. It's the best medicine."

The stranger came to her again in the night, to change her linens, to replace her sheet. She woke only enough to know what he was doing, but not enough to be embarrassed. And once more he gave her water. Precious water. Wonderful water.

There was a woman too. Her mind sought and found a name. Martha. Martha Stone.

And a boy. She knew the boy. Silas, who was the next thing to a brother to her.

Silas, who'd understood her need for a place of her own, for he, too, was an orphan, without family, without a home.

But the one who came to her the most often was the stranger. As her vision gradually grew clear, she came to recognize him. He was tall and hard. His face could have been cut from stone, his eyes from clear blue crystal. He never smiled, but his voice was full of compassion and caring. She felt cherished, protected, even amidst her pain.

Karl never came, and Hattie wondered why.

Somehow she was afraid to ask.

Emmet sat with Hattie long after sunset. Tomorrow they would reach the Boise River, only a few miles from Buffalo Jones' place. He would have to make a decision--whether to keep her there until she recovered or risk taking her on with the train.

Even if he went on, he wouldn't take her down the Columbia. They'd overwinter at the Whitman mission, go on to the Willamette in the spring. He hadn't looked for the responsibility, but it was his. He'd given his word.

She was restless tonight, tossing her head and muttering. The fever was less than it had been, but there was no light of recognition when she looked at him through the narrow slits of her still-swollen eyelids.

He could have been to The Dalles by now if he'd gone on, instead of being beholden to an injured, insensible wife, bound by his own promise, freely given.

He, Emmet Lachlan, who'd never owned more than a horse and a rifle in his life.

And the horse he could have walked away from, if he'd needed to.

He came alert at the sound of a footstep outside the wagon. "Lachlan?" It was Stone's voice.

"Here," he answered, rising and making his way to the front.

"There's a meetin'," Stone told him. "I think you'd better be there."

Emmet followed Stone to the fire but didn't enter the circle of its light.

Instead he stood in the shadows of a wagon, listening unseen.

"...hardest part of the road ahead," the colonel was saying. "We'll be going up the Burnt River canyon, then crossing the Blue Mountains. We'll need to lighten our wagons as much as we can, but we'll need to make sure we have enough food, too. We can restock at Fort Boise, but supplies are apt to be more dear than at Fort Hall."

Emmet snorted softly. Hell, yes! Considering the cost of packing in flour and coffee from Fort Vancouver, it was a wonder they didn't cost their weight in gold.

The colonel went on and on. "If your livestock is ailing, you might be able to trade at the Fort, like we did at Laramie. Check your ropes and harness. Get your wagons mended...."

Emmet agreed, silently thanking the dead Karl Rommel for not stinting on the quality of his wagons or his oxen.

Mentally he checked the wagon's contents. There was little he wanted to leave behind, but there was much he could abandon. Seeds and plows meant little to him. But to Hattie they might be all the difference between success and starvation.

He would keep what he'd brought this far. One way or another, he'd get it all over the Blues. If Hattie lived.

His attention was caught by Wilbur Coonrad's nasal whine. "What about the Rommel woman? Are we gonna let her keep on holdin' us back?"

"Yeah," another man, one Emmet had noticed was rarely about when hard work was to be done, said, "she's already slowed us more than once. We're not gonna wait on her any more."

There were other agreements, only a few who defended Hattie's right to stay with the train. Eventually the colonel held up his hands for silence and said, "All right. All right. We'll hold a vote. All you who believe Mrs. Rom-- I mean, Mrs.

Lachlan should be let to stay with us, step over on that side." He pointed to the left of the bonfire. "And them that thinks she ought to be expelled, step over here by me."

The crowd separated. From the first, Emmet saw that Hattie's supporters were outnumbered by those who had no compassion for her circumstances. And these people called themselves Christians. He'd known so-called savages with more of the milk of human kindness.

He walked into the light. "Don't I get a say in this?"

All motion ceased. He stood before the colonel, looking up at the pompous bastard, daring him to say no.

Before Whitehead could answer, someone called out, "He didn't sign the agreement."

"Got no claim on us," another said.

"Mrs. Rommel's husband was one of us," the colonel said, a frown on his face, "but you aren't. You can talk, but it won't do you any good. Not if our people vote against you."

Emmet wanted to wipe that self-satisfied smirk off his face. With a fist.

He looked around. Fully two-thirds of the men of the wagon train were on Whitehead's side of the bonfire. The women huddled together in the middle, some of them looking pleadingly at their men.

Sneering at their selfishness, Emmet said, "So be it. We'll cut our stock from the herd first thing in the morning."

"I... ah... I don't think I can let you do that," the colonel said. "The agreement was that if we saw fit to expel someone from the train, a portion of their stock and their supplies went to compensate us for the inconvenience of reorganizing."

Emmet looked at Eli Stone, one of Hattie's supporters. "Is that right?"

"I think so," Stone said, "but I never meant it to be used that way. It was to protect us from cheats, not to punish the helpless."

"Right." He looked back at the colonel, still standing on his wagon seat, still as imposing as ever, but somehow looking less noble and brave than he had a few minutes ago. "Well, let me tell you this, old man," Emmet said, stalking toward him. "Let just one man lay a finger on anything belonging tomy wife--just one little finger--and he'll pull back a bloody stump." He pulled his knife free of its sheath and inspected its shiny blade. "Is that clear?"

"You can't threaten us like that," the colonel blustered.

Emmet laughed. "I just did," he said, fading back into the darkness.

Chapter Four.

Emmet approached Buffalo Jones's cabin slowly, on foot. The old man had a habit of shooting first, although Emmet didn't think he'd ever killed a caller outright. He just believed that it was good to let people know where he stood--and Buff stood for being left alone and not bothered.

When no bullets whistled above his head, he crept closer. The corral at the mouth of the short canyon was empty, in disrepair. Buff's bathtub was likewise empty, a sure sign the old trapper wasn't at home. Buff did like his soaks.

Still, it didn't hurt to be cautious. Kicking open the door, Emmet stood quietly beside it for several moments, out of the line of fire. But the only sound he heard was a scurry of tiny, clawed feet.

He entered, unsurprised at the mess. Little rodent teeth had gnawed through the lid of an almost empty flour keg, busy critter feet had scattered its contents across the packed sand floor. As usual, loose sand extended out from under the back wall, built flush against the eroding sandstone hillside. Mouse biscuits lay on every flat surface and crunched under his feet. But the wooden pole bunks were intact and the rawhide-laced chair still sat before the river rock fireplace.

While Silas brought the wagon closer, Emmet used a handful of willow branches to sweep the place out. It would do. There was water close at hand, and it wouldn't take more than a few minutes' work to have Buff's bathtub ready to fill. There was firewood easily come by, deadfalls and snags in the stand of cottonwoods extending from here to the river, more than a mile away. And there was food--fish in the river, roots and berries if he had the patience to collect them, deer in the valleys and elk and bear in the higher hills.

He'd hunt before sending Silas on to Grande Ronde. It would be a while before he felt right about leaving Hattie alone.

Hattie remembered pain. A feeling of burning up. There had been weight on the screaming agony in her leg, and hot pressure that somehow silenced the scream.

Days and nights had flowed together, the only difference the brightness of the red haze behind her swollen eyelids. And there had been gentle hands and a deep voice, pulling her back from a morass of hot, red agony.

Through it all had been the rocking, swaying, bouncing that tossed her tormented body back and forth, back and forth, until she wanted to beg, to plead, to pray for rest.