The Adventures of Elizabeth Fortune



Elizabeth Fortune cover
© 2010 Kae Cheatham

Adult: L, V | Print edition: $16.95
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Excerpt


from Chapter Six

from Elizabeth's diary:
... There's a certain loneliness I can never seem to stem. I know it started when I moved to Terre Haute, but you'd think I'd be over it by now—could stop feeling like an outsider...
11 August, 1870


In any part of the country people will say, "If you don't like the weather, just blink and it will change." It's sort of a joke, but it's really the nature of nature--unpredictable. Kansas weather plays around with the joke as good as any place, so as the night wore on and folks blinked, the weather changed. The mules didn't care. They had fresh forage in a dale with a wet-weather spring. Runoff spilled into the area, but the thick prairie grass kept the ground from being pure mud.

"I'm glad to be out of night duty," Mel told Elizabeth a half mile from camp. "I'm a real light sleeper. Hear every sound. I never got much rest even when the mules was standing still." He went back to the wagon camp after giving her some particulars about night herding.

The animals settled well to their chomping, ignoring the hard breeze that blew steady from the southwest. The rain misted on Elizabeth's face. She took off her hat and worked her fingers through her hair, glad to feel the dust wash away. She sighed, able to relax for the first time since she left the Johnson's. Wind cleared the clouds. The rain stopped, and patches of stars showed in the moonlit sky. From the north, distant thunder sounded like the slight rumble of a giant's belly. The mules didn't even look up.

Elizabeth patted the gelding's neck and guided the animal down a slope to the rivulet. Once there, she dismounted on a solid mat of buffalo grass. She couldn't see the main camp. She talked to the bay a bit, a distinct loneliness creeping on her. The effort to get southwest kept the hollow feeling at bay, except for quiet times like this. She had always known not to take family for granted. Hers had been shrinking ever since she could remember. But when in '63, when Jannie Fortune died, Elizabeth had not recovered well from the compounded losses. Being with Etta Clark and becoming sibling/friend with Houston had helped, but now....She thought about the letters in her portmanteau, but knew reading those old words from her father, or even the last letter from Houston would probably make her feel worse.

She drew a shaky breath and studied her surroundings to refocus her thoughts. The layers of sweaty dirt on her seemed to reek of the camp, and the nearby trickle of water caught her eye. She smiled. In that quiet night, Elizabeth had the luxury of washing all over. She did this in sections, of course, not about to take the chance of being totally undressed if the mules decided to bolt, or coyotes came around. She was thinking of the two-legged kind: Indian hunters or men from the camp.

But the risk was worth it, and limb by limb, bit by bit, Elizabeth got clean. Her moderately clean hair dried in soft curls across her forehead as she rebound her breasts, buttoned into a fresh shirt, washed the dirty one. Escaping from her prison of grime did nearly as much to restore her peace of mind as when she learned Joe MacGrin agreed to be her ally.

She kept the gelding under saddle so she could ride out every now and then to survey the herd, and made her camp near a clump of stunted serviceberry. While she wrote a few lines in her diary, the wind blew and the sky became so clear it seemed like the stars had been polished. She lay back on her bed-roll, not terribly tired, and enjoying the pleasant night. The creek chuckled its way through the dale, the sound competing with frogs croaking and crickets' chirps.

This reverie nearly lulled her to sleep, but the gelding snorted alarm; its head went up with a jerk. Quick as a lizard, Elizabeth snapped fully awake. Although she was accustomed to vast land and enjoyed seeing horizon in every direction, she knew dangers could whip up like a summer storm. She went to the horse, heart pounding, and held the animal's nose so it wouldn't nicker. The plain-looking bay stared into the wind, ears twitching like antelope tails.

The mule herd, however, was interested only in grass, and Elizabeth became less tense. She slid her Winchester from the scabbard anyway, and with a stealth befitting her Cherokee background (or maybe Ibo or Watusi—whatever African nation spawned old George Fortune's ancestors) Elizabeth eased up the rise for a better look.

A horse whicker carried easily to Elizabeth and she worked quickly along the mushy face of the next ground swell. Twangs of protest spurted up from her feet, but she bit her tongue and, half crouched, kept going. A horse was skylined on the crest of the hill near a scraggly hackberry. Only one horse, but that didn't make Elizabeth any less wary. No saddle. Maybe Indians. The steady breeze caused rustlings in the bushes and frogs croaked down near the spring while the mules stomped and blew and ate grass. But the man-shadow she saw near the crest made her fall flat and hold her breath. The wet of the ground quickly seeped into her dry clothes. "Damn," she muttered.

She eased herself up again, just in time to see the person gathering a hat full of earth clods. He wasn't Indian and he hurled a fistful of clumps, startling a hinny, but not enough to cause a stampede.

When he scrounged for more rocks, Elizabeth levered her rifle. "Put down everything you're holding and don't reach for a gun," she said.

Her stomach knotted up tight as a vigilante's noose and she kept that rifle chest high, the stock between her arm and side to keep it steady. She aimed at the middle of the tall shadow. She knew throwing rocks at mules wasn't a shootable offense, but Elizabeth couldn't be certain that was all this vagrant was up to. If he moved wrong, she planned to pull the trigger.

The man dropped the hat, eased around and said, "Whoa up there, kid."

Elizabeth recognized Willie MacGrin's voice and that gave her a brief moment of relief, until she wondered why Willie would try to scatter the mule herd of the wagon train his daddy bossed.

"What are you doing out here?" She stood the rifle butt on the ground.

Willie's whole attitude changed. "You stupid pissant! Who the hell are you to be holding a gun on me and asking questions?" Willie had started down the hill.

"Wait a minute, Willie." She gripped the gun barrel with her left hand, her right hand still clenched on it.

He kept coming. "I've had just about enough of your high and mighty attitude!"

Willie reached to grab the youngster Zee Clark [Elizabeth's assumed name] by the shirt collar, but Elizabeth stepped aside and swung the rifle by the barrel. The stock of the gun caught Willie in the gut; he doubled over, and she knew if she brought the piece up hard under his chin while he was bent, it would probably break his jaw or at least knock him out. But she thought of Joe MacGrin who was working to protect her. She stepped in and kicked Willie's feet out from under him so he landed on his back.

Willie's head smacked the ground. He gasped for breath and then managed, "You broke my ribs!"

"You just got the wind knocked out of you," Elizabeth said. "Now get up."

"I can't! I hurt."

"Get up!"

Willie pushed up to his elbows, and Elizabeth kept the rifle pointed at his chest.

"You'd better leave," Elizabeth breathed shallowly. er hands on that gun were gritty from sweat and mud.

Willie panted while he stood up, his pains slowly fading. So what are you going to do? Tell my pa?"

"No." Elizabeth had already rejected that idea. In her current role, she had to handle this herself. She stepped back so Willie couldn't throw dirt at her and try for the gun.

He found his hat and swatted mud clots off it. "You ain't seen the last of me, Clark," he growled when he whipped up the reins of his horse.

"If you're not leaving the wagon-train, I guess that's true," she snapped.

Willie made an angry sound in his throat, threw himself onto his horse's bare back and rode off.

The clop of the horse hooves had faded before Elizabeth came out of her tense stance. She put her hand to her throat, her pulse racing. A quiver of uncertainty pulled her doubts forward again, and the rest of the night, she was restless and jumpy. She blamed it all on Willie. He had spoiled her contentment, made her muddy her fresh clothes, and put her temper on a short fuse. Luckily, nothing else bothered the mules that night, for Elizabeth would have given whatever a very hard time of it.

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