Baby on the Oregon Trail Read online

  New Year, new family!

  Heading West, pregnant widow Jenna Borland’s life surely can’t get any more complicated—until fate throws Lee Carver across her path. She resents his help, but she needs him to drive her wagon over the Great Plains.

  Lee can’t fathom why this prickly woman gets under his skin. But as the journey brings these two outsiders together, he wonders if Jenna and her baby could be just what he needs to begin a new life with a brand-new family!

  Lee pulled her close, holding her as if she were made of flower petals.

  She didn’t want this dance to end. Jenna wanted to keep her eyes closed and keep moving in Lee’s arms.

  But of course it had to end. She was acting like a silly, addlepated girl, and she would never be that young again. She was wiser now. She knew better than to let herself become involved with a man. It never turned out the way you thought it would.

  The musicians started to pack up their instruments, and the crowd thinned and then began to disperse.

  Lee kept her hand in his as they walked back to the wagons. They had not spoken to each other all evening, had not needed to. But there were things that had to be said out loud, and it was going to be tonight.

  Author Note

  My great-grandparents came to Oregon in a covered wagon along the Oregon Trail from Independence, Missouri, to Oregon City and the Willamette Valley. Great-grandfather Edgar Boessen was an immigrant from Germany; Great-grandmother Maia Bruhn came from Denmark. Their descendants now number in the thousands.

  There is an old, very romantic family story about how Edgar and Maia met and fell in love; I’m sure it is probably little different from hundreds of other treasured family tales. I hope you will find Jenna’s story, told here, to be one that touches your heart.

  Typical of those intrepid travelers who came west on the Oregon Trail is the following diary entry:

  “Friday, October 27. Arrived at Oregon City at the falls of the Willamette.

  Saturday, October 28. Went to work.”

  —James W. Nesmith, 1843

  LYNNA

  BANNING

  Baby on the

  Oregon Trail

  Lynna Banning combined a lifelong love of history and literature into a satisfying career as a writer. Born in Oregon, she graduated from Scripps College and embarked on a career as an editor and technical writer and later as a high school English teacher. She enjoys hearing from her readers. You may write to her directly at PO Box 324, Felton, CA 95018, USA, email her at [email protected] or visit Lynna’s website at lynnabanning.net.

  Books by Lynna Banning

  Harlequin Historical

  The Ranger and the Redhead

  Loner’s Lady

  Crusader’s Lady

  Templar Knight, Forbidden Bride

  Lady Lavender

  Happily Ever After in the West

  “The Maverick and Miss Prim”

  Smoke River Bride

  The Lone Sheriff

  Wild West Christmas

  “Christmas in Smoke River”

  Dreaming of a Western Christmas

  “His Christmas Belle”

  Smoke River Family

  Western Spring Weddings

  “The City Girl and the Rancher”

  Printer in Petticoats

  Her Sheriff Bodyguard

  Baby on the Oregon Trail

  Visit the Author Profile page

  at Harlequin.com for more titles.

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  To those from the many countries that make up America who have had the courage to forge new paths and start new lives.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from The Wedding Game by Christine Merrill

  Chapter One

  Oregon Trail, 1867

  “Miz Borland?”

  Jenna smoothed the threadbare apron over her swelling belly and turned to see Sam Lincoln, the wagon train leader. The big man removed his stained leather hat and stood uncertainly beside the wagon.

  “Hello, Sam. Would you join us for supper?”

  “No, thanks. I—” His sunburned face looked strained, and suddenly Jenna’s breath jerked inward.

  “Sam? What is it?”

  He turned the hat brim around and around in his hands. “Don’t rightly know how to say it.”

  Oh, God. Something had happened. “Is it about one of the girls? Ruthie?”

  The leader took a step closer. “Not the girls, no.”

  “Mathias?” she whispered.

  “’Fraid so. He’s...well, he’s been shot.”

  “Shot!” Jenna closed her eyes. Surely she was dreaming.

  Sam stepped forward and laid both his weathered hands on her forearms. “He’s dead, Jenna.”

  She felt suddenly cold, as if all the blood in her body was draining away. “What?”

  “He was caught stealing a horse. The owner killed him.”

  She pulled away from Sam’s steadying grip and abruptly sat down on the bare ground. Dead? It wasn’t possible. And stealing a horse? It made no sense.

  “Where is he?” she asked, her voice unsteady.

  “In our wagon. My Emma’s, uh, laying him out. I expect you’ll want to see him.”

  “Not yet. I have to tell the... His daughters.”

  “Ruthie’s over visiting with the Langley girl,” Sam volunteered. “The two older ones are down wading in the creek.”

  She nodded. Dead. Mathias was dead. Dear God, what would they do now?

  “I’ll tell ’em about their pa if you want, Jenna.”

  Jenna fought waves of blackness at the edge of her vision. “No. I’ll tell them, Sam. Just...just give me a minute.”

  Ten minutes passed before she could stand and make her way to the Lincolns’ camp. She hesitated before the large canvas-covered wagon and clenched her jaw so hard her teeth ached. She couldn’t look at him. Then she resolutely mounted the step, drew back the curtain and stepped inside.

  Round-faced Emma Lincoln rose and without a word laid her freckled
hand on Jenna’s arm. The older woman tipped her head to indicate the still form stretched out on the bedroll, and Jenna forced herself to look.

  She hadn’t remembered Mathias being so tall. Or so pale. In death his features had relaxed from the perpetual scowl he had worn; now he looked almost peaceful. She scanned his body for signs of blood but saw no stains. At her questioning look, Emma took her hand.

  “The bullet entered his temple, Jenna. Killed him instantly. I cleaned up the... I cleaned him up.”

  “Thank God,” Jenna murmured. Oh, yes, thank You, God. There would be no messy remains for his daughters to see. An unnatural feeling of calm flowed over her, along with an inexplicable sense of...what? Relief? Dear God, how could she feel this, as if a huge weight had suddenly lifted from her shoulders? It made no sense.

  Or maybe it did. Mathias had not been pleased with her of late. Maybe he had never been pleased with her.

  She drew in several deep breaths before she risked speaking. “Emma, thank you for doing this for Mathias. I must find the girls and tell... They will want to see their father.”

  “Sam says if it’s all right with you, they’ll bury your husband at dawn, before we pull out. And tonight Sam and I will sleep under our wagon.”

  Jenna nodded and climbed down from the wagon to do what she must. She’d gone only a few yards when Ruthie danced up. “What’s wrong, Jenna? You look all white and funny.”

  She knelt before her stepdaughter and struggled to compose herself. “Ruthie, I want you to find your sisters. I have something important to tell you all.”

  * * *

  “Dead?” Tess screeched. “What do you mean Papa is dead?”

  Eleven-year-old Mary Grace began to sob.

  “I mean...” Jenna began. She glimpsed Ruthie’s stricken face and the words froze on her tongue. She swallowed hard and knelt before them.

  “Your father has been killed. Accidentally shot by...well, it doesn’t matter who.”

  Tess swayed forward and Jenna reached up to support her. Mary Grace wrapped her thin arms around her middle, but Ruthie just stared at her with horrified blue eyes.

  “You...” Jenna’s voice broke. “You girls can see him if you wish. He’s laid out in the Lincolns’ wagon.”

  “I don’t want to see him,” Mary Grace sobbed.

  Jenna folded her into her arms. “You might want to, honey. You will want to have seen him after we leave in the morning.” She pressed her lips shut and walked them over to the wagon, where she stood with them beside their father’s body in the fading light.

  “Papa don’t look dead,” Ruthie said after a time.

  “Doesn’t,” Tess snapped.

  “Well, he do—doesn’t. He looks like he’s sleeping.”

  Jenna patted Ruthie’s thin shoulder. “Let’s remember him that way, as if he is just...asleep.”

  At her side, Mary Grace jerked. “How come there’s no blood or anything?”

  Jenna drew in an unsteady breath. “Well, Mrs. Lincoln said the...the bullet hit his temple, so there wasn’t very much bl—” Her voice choked off. What could she say to them?

  “Come on,” Tess said, her voice tight. “Let’s go back to camp.” Without waiting for Jenna, she herded her younger sisters outside and started across the compound.

  Dear God in heaven, what should she do? The girls had resented her from the moment she had married their father, and now she was solely responsible for them. By the time they reached Oregon they would hate her.

  A cold chill snaked into her belly. And they would hate her baby.

  Chapter Two

  The following morning, Sam Lincoln and four other men dug a grave and laid Mathias to rest. Jenna watched them, her hands curved around Ruthie’s narrow shoulders, while Mary Grace and Tess looked on in stony silence.

  Reverend Fredericks read some verses from the Bible, something about there being a time for everything under the sun. Then clods of earth thudded onto the blanket-wrapped corpse of her husband. It was an awful sound, terrible and final. Jenna clamped her jaw shut and pressed her palms over Ruthie’s ears.

  Finally the last shovelful of fresh earth was heaped onto the mound and her fellow travelers drifted back to their wagons. Ruthie stepped forward and laid a ragged handful of scarlet Indian paintbrush on her father’s grave. Jenna’s heart lurched as if cracking into two jagged pieces.

  “Come, girls,” she managed. “We must pack up our things.”

  Ruthie turned her face into Jenna’s blue homespun skirt. “I don’t want to leave Papa here all alone.”

  Tess leveled a venomous look at her sister. “Then you’re nothing but a big baby.”

  Jenna fought an urge to sharply reprimand the girl, but concentrated on wrapping her hands around Ruthie’s quivering frame. She had never disciplined Mathias’s daughters, and besides, what good would it do now?

  “Tess.” She addressed the girl over Ruthie’s blond curls. “That is unkind. Your sister, all of us, are hurting. You know how hard it is to leave your father here.”

  Tess bowed her head. “Sorry, Ruthie. You’re not a baby, I guess. Come on, Mary Grace.” The two older girls walked off, leaving Jenna standing by the grave with her youngest stepdaughter.

  She stared at the wildflowers, wishing she had thought to gather some as well, but she’d been so busy frying the breakfast bacon and rolling up the bedding inside the wagon there had been no time. And anyway, Mathias would not care. The flowers were really for Ruthie, a way to say goodbye.

  Jenna closed her eyes briefly, then turned toward their camp. She felt numb, unreal, as if this were happening to someone else.

  Emma Lincoln stopped her. “Jenna, at the meeting this morning, Sam asked the men for a volunteer to drive your wagon. In about half an hour the man will come to hitch up your oxen. If you’d like to be alone for a while I could take the girls in our wagon.”

  Jenna studied the woman. What a kind soul the trail master’s wife had been, right from the very beginning. How she wished some of that generosity of spirit would rub off on Tess!

  “No, thank you, Emma. I am quite all right.” She wasn’t, really. She dreaded the days ahead, but she could not admit this to anyone. How would she manage without Mathias?

  A blade of anger sliced into her belly. Mathias had talked and cajoled and pushed until she finally agreed to join the wagon train and come west. And now here she was, embarked on an unwanted journey she had no choice but to continue; once a wagon train started out across the prairie, there was no way to get off. No way to go back to Ohio.

  Another woman, Sophia Zaberskie, thrust a loaf of fresh-baked bread into her hands. “You eat,” she grated in her perpetually hoarse voice. “Keeping belly full makes to heal.”

  Jenna pressed Sophia’s meaty arm. Sophia should know; she had lost one child to cholera before the emigrant train was even under way, and another child, a boy, died two weeks later when a wagon wheel rolled over him and crushed his chest. If Sophia could survive, so could she.

  She took Ruthie by the hand and walked to their camp. Tess and Mary Grace looked up but did not speak, both keeping their faces resolutely turned away from her while she moved about packing the skillet and the Dutch oven inside the wagon. Tess grumbled at her request to fill two buckets with springwater and dump them into the water barrel strapped to the wagon box; Mary Grace walked listlessly at her sister’s side, kicking at stones.

  When the last of their belongings were stowed away, Jenna surveyed the tangle of ropes and harnesses and wood oxen yokes stashed under the wagon and her heart sank as if weighted with lead. She had no idea how to hitch up the team. Mathias might have taught her. Why hadn’t he?

  It was hard to accept that he was gone, that he would never again snap at her for forgetting to fold a blanket in his particular way or serving h
im dumplings with his stew when he preferred biscuits. She knew she had been a disappointment to him; she often felt small, as if she didn’t matter.

  Ruthie’s small hand patted her skirt. “Jenna, are you crying?”

  “N-no, honey. I’m not crying, just feeling a bit sad.”

  “Me, too. Tessie won’t talk to me and Mary Grace is too busy. And I’m scared.”

  Jenna went down on her knees before the girl. “I’m a little scared, too. But we will be all right, just you wait and see.”

  A shadow fell over her. “Mrs. Borland?”

  She jerked to her feet. The man was tall, with overlong dark hair and steady eyes that were a soft gray. He held his broad-brimmed hat down by his thigh.

  “Sorry to startle you, ma’am. My name’s Carver.”

  “I know who you are, Mr. Carver.”

  He’d joined the wagon train at Fort Kearney. A former Confederate soldier, Emma had confided. A Virginian. From a slave-holding plantation, no doubt. Jenna’s father had fought for the Union; he’d been killed at Antietam.

  “I’ve come to yoke up your team.”

  Her stomach clenched, and it must have shown on her face.

  “Ma’am? Are you unwell?”

  “Mr. Carver, surely someone other than you volunteered?”

  His gaze flicked to the back of the wagon, where Tess’s face was peeking out from the curtain. “Mrs. Borland, is there someplace we can talk in private?”

  “Why?”

  Gently he grasped her elbow and moved her away from camp. “I want to tell you why I volunteered.”

  “I don’t really care why, Mr. Carver.”

  “I think you may when you hear what I have to say,” he said quietly. “You see, it was my horse your husband was stealing. I was the one who shot him.”

  Jenna stared at him until her eyes began to burn. “Dear God in heaven, why would I want anything, anything at all, to do with the man who killed my husband?”

  A flash of pain crossed his tanned face. “You probably don’t, Mrs. Borland. And I can’t blame you. But I’d sure appreciate it if you’d hear me out.”