The mail coach had come to a river, and Laura clenched her teeth in anticipation of what was to come.  She had lost count of the rivers and streams they had crossed, though she'd managed to keep track of the days--twenty-three since they'd started down the Santa Fé Trail from Independence--as if the knowledge would help her should she have to find her way back to civilization.
     "Water's high," her uncle said, leaning across his neighbor to peer out of the window.  "Don't worry, my dear.  The river bottom is solid rock here.  No fear of getting stuck again."
     Laura nodded, unable to speak.  A dull ache filled her head.  She had, in the past few days, begun to wonder if she would die, and if that would be easier than enduring the rest of the journey.
     The elegant wooden mantel clock in her lap clanked softly as the coach started down the riverbank.  Laura held it close, lifting it to soften the impact of the bumps.  Sometimes she felt it as if preserving her father's clock was the only reason for her continued existence.  It was all she had left of him, save for a small daguerrotype framed in silver.
     She found old nursery songs running through her mind, tunes she hadn't thought of since her mother had died so many years ago.  Father had comforted her then.  Now she had no one to turn to, except the uncle whom she had never met until he had greeted her train in St. Louis.  She glanced at him, still craning to see out of the window.  Wallace Howland was a man of few graces.  He did not, as Laura had hoped he might, resemble her departed father, having neither the fineness of form nor the refinement of mind that had characterized his elder brother.  Laura did not wish to appear ungrateful, so she strove to conceal her disappointment.
     The coach tilted forward to enter the water, and Laura pressed her heels against floor to keep from sliding off the bench.  The front wheels hit bottom, and with a splash they were into the river and starting across.  Shouts and another splash drifted back over the noise of the coach and the water; the second coach, full of mail and provisions, had followed them into the river.  The guards on the roof over Laura's head whooped as they neared the bank, and the driver snapped his whip at the mules.  The coach bumped, tipped back, leaned crazily toward the water for a heart-stopping moment, then groaned and lurched its way up the bank, to rumble at last to a stop.
     Laura closed her eyes and let out her breath in a sigh.  The shouting began anew, and she didn't need to hear the words to know what the argument was about.  The sergeant in charge of the military escort wanted to halt again to let the animals graze and rest, and the coachmen wanted to press on to the next stage stop.  They were making poor time, but the mules were tired; the same teams had pulled the coaches and the military escort's wagon all the way from Fort Larned.  In the end, a halt was called.
     As the door was pulled open, Laura blinked at the bright sun--so much more intense than in Boston--and drew her black veil over her face.  The other passengers--all men--got out first, leaving Laura her choice of privacy in the coach or a walk in the sunshine.  No words were spoken; by now it was all habit.  In three weeks the travelers had exhausted their small talk and now merely tolerated each other as they tolerated the hardships of travel.
     Laura shaded her eyes with a hand and peered out of the window.  The line of blue mountains in the west seemed no nearer.  The plains were beginning to be broken up by long, flat rock outcrops, rising slowly westward.  The land still seemed empty, with not a green thing to be seen save the few shrubs and trees that clung to the river banks.  Laura leaned in the corner of the bench seat and tried to sleep.  She had learned to snatch what moments of rest she could get, but they were few.  Even when the coach stopped for the night, even when a mattress on a dirt floor in a stage station had been offered (though it was some time since she'd had that luxury), her weary mind would not let her rest, taunting her with the past, haunting her with specters of the future.
     Laura sat up.  Impossible to sleep; she gave up and left the coach to walk the cramps out of her legs.  Her traveling hoops were too narrow for her black dress, and the hem was laden with dust from brushing along the ground.  The veil kept out only some of the dust and sun, but it did shield her from the prying eyes of the soldiers in the escort.  They had climbed out of their wagon and stood stretching, eight pairs of eyes following her, though the men kept a respectful distance.  She glanced at their faces--hard faces--worn and weathered though not old.  They were not like any of the soldiers she had known back in Boston.  She had been to the State Encampment and seen dozens of eager recruits all in shining new uniforms, and had wished she were a man so she could join them.  They were no more like these weary, dusty soldiers than were the old heroes of the Mexican War--friends of her father--who had enlivened their parlor with tales of heroics.  These soldiers did not look like heroes.  They only looked tired.
     The thought of home caused Laura's throat to tighten, and she blinked several times to keep back sudden tears.  She pushed away memories of the funeral, months ago now, though it seemed only yesterday.  She had been left to settle her father's affairs; not so difficult, as she had kept house for him since Mother's death, but hard to bear in her grief.  She had dealt with the letters, the agents, the sale of his meager belongings, the removal of her own few things from Church Street to a modest hotel, and the growing fear of being reduced to labor for her own survival.  Then hope had arrived, in the form of a letter from her Uncle Wallace Howland in Santa Fé, the last of her immediate family, offering to take her in.  She had written her grateful acceptance, said her goodbyes, and undertaken the long journey by train, steamboat, and now stagecoach.  During that journey a war had begun, but Laura had no grief to spare for her tortured country.  She had come to realize how much she had depended on her father, not only as a provider, but as a friend.  Now, surrounded by strangers in a foreign country, Laura paced along the riverbank hugging her father's clock tight to her chest, fearing that if she ceased to move she would crumble altogether.
     Her uncle approached and fell into step beside her.  "Are you are tired, my poor child?" he asked.  "May I take that clock for you?"
     "No, thank you," Laura answered.  "It isn't heavy."
     "You're a good girl," her uncle said, to which Laura could think of no reply.  He was, after all, a stranger, to all intents and purposes.  Laura reminded herself that he had offered her a home, and had gone to great trouble and expense to meet her at Independence and accompany her on the last portion of the journey to Santa Fé.  The thought of that city was her brightest hope.  It would not be like Boston, she knew, but it was a city, with shops and hotels and people.  She must be grateful.
     "Cheer up, my dear," he said.  "We shall reach Fort Union tomorrow, most likely."
     Laura nodded, and made an effort to smile.
     "Have I mentioned to you my young friend who is there?  Lieutenant Owens?  A delightful young fellow," her uncle went on without waiting for an answer.  "Quite the gentleman.  I have told him of you, and he is most anxious to meet you."
     "I shall be happy to make his acquaintance," Laura managed to say.  Her uncle had mentioned Lieutenant Owens at least once every day since they'd left Independence, and she had begun, simply and irrationally, to hate the man.  She began to hum the tune that was foremost in her mind, a lullaby her mother had sung when she was small.
     Hushabye, don't you cry--
     "Care for a little refresher?"
     Laura stopped, staring in astonishment at the flask her uncle proffered.  It was uncapped and she could smell the bitter whiskey.  It made her feel ill.
     "No, thank you," she said, and continued walking.
     "All right, then," Uncle Wallace called after her.  "You can always change your mind."
     When you awake, you shall have cake--
     "Board up," the driver called, words Laura had come to dread.  She turned to face the ordeal once more.
     The coach will be shadier, she told herself, looking for the best of the situation.  As she walked toward it, the armed guard to whom the driver referred as "shotgun" began hitching up the team.  The mules seemed hard, lean, as drained of life by this wasteland as Laura felt.
     --and all the pretty little horses.

Next stop:  Fort Union

Copyright © 1998 by P.G. Nagle. All rights reserved.