Forced into Marriage Page 3

  A contraction. That wasn’t just any kind of pain. It’d been a contraction. She’d given birth in the past. Contractions, once they started, didn’t go away. They only got worse. What if she was going to give birth today? She was in no shape to travel if the baby was going to come right now.

  The canteen fell to the ground, and she started crying. Up to now, she had held out for the hope that she might be able to get out of this marriage somehow, but if she was going into labor, she wasn’t going to be able to do it. She needed to stay.

  Another contraction took hold of her, and she gave up on the notion of escaping. She couldn’t risk it. She might not have asked for this baby, but the baby was the only thing that had gotten her through the months after her abduction. The baby was innocent of everything that had gone wrong in her life, and no matter who the father was, the baby was a part of her.

  Once the pain subsided, she untied the blanket from the horse, put the horse back into the stall, and put the food and blanket back where she’d found them. Despite her contractions, she managed to do all of this without getting caught by the preacher and Brandon.

  By the time she was settled in the chair on the porch, she had finally stopped crying. All she could do was wait. Wait for Brandon to return. Wait for the baby to be born. Wait to see how things would proceed from here. She didn’t know if Brandon would be like Orson or the preacher, but either way, she supposed it didn’t matter. Her fate wasn’t hers. She would have to do whatever he wanted. She only hoped he would be good to the baby.

  By the time a half hour passed, she realized the contractions had grown further apart. Disappointed, she slumped in the chair. So she could have gotten away. The labor wasn’t real. It’d been, as her mother had put it, a shadow of the one to soon come. Last time she’d given birth, that hadn’t been the case. The baby had come within six hours of the first contraction.

  Once more tears filled her eyes, but this time, she forced them away. What good did crying do? What good did it ever do? It didn’t change the situation she was stuck in. It only reminded her that she was no longer in control of anything that happened to her. No longer in control? Since when had she been in control of anything? Even in the tribe, the decisions had been made for her.

  The baby moved in her womb, reminding her that she wasn’t in this alone. She had someone other than herself to think about. She had a reason to keep going, to not give up.

  She took a deep breath and released it. She didn’t know what was going to happen to her and her child, but she was determined to protect her child to the best of her ability. It was all she could do.

  Closing her eyes, she settled her head on the back of the chair and continued rubbing her stomach. Soon enough, she would hold her child. Until then, she would take comfort in each movement in her body reminding her that she had things much bigger than herself to think about.

  By the time the men returned, it was mid-afternoon. She swallowed back her tears. She could have made it. She could have gotten away from here. Why? Why couldn’t she, at least once in her life, have a choice in what happened to her? Why did her false contractions have to get in her way?

  Noting the two men heading her way on their horses, she quickly brushed away her tears.

  “We got Brandon’s horse,” the preacher told her, though it was unnecessary since she could see Brandon riding the steed. “Fortunately, it was in the livery stable where he left it. I didn’t realize it’d be so late by the time we returned. Maybe you two should stay here for another night. Then you can leave in the morning.” He glanced over at Brandon. “I don’t mind.”

  Brandon shook his head. “I have everything we need for camping.” He patted the supplies that were resting behind his saddle on the horse. “We could use more food, water, and things for Lokni and baby if you got them.”

  The preacher nodded. “I’ll get them as quick as I can.” He slid off the horse and tied the reins to the post in front of the porch. “I’ll also make you both some sandwiches before you head out.”

  Brandon waited until the preacher was in the cabin before he got down from the horse. He tied the reins and then walked up the porch steps. “I hope you don’t mind heading out today, even though it’s a late start. I don’t want to take the chance those men from last night will come back.”

  Orson and the others wouldn’t return so soon, but she had no desire to stay in this cabin for another night. She had no desire to be anywhere close to town, either. What she wanted was to get as far from this area as possible. She also wanted to be safe.

  There hadn’t been a single day since her tribe had been raided that she’d felt safe. She didn’t even know if she could feel safe with Brandon, but she figured after all she’d been through, he couldn’t do more harm to her than what the others had done.

  “I’m ready to leave whenever you are,” she finally said and stood up from the chair.

  They were stuck with each other. At least for now. Maybe when they got to another town, they would reach an agreement where they would go their separate ways. No one had to know they had been forced to marry each other. She was willing to pretend the whole sordid thing never happened. Surely, there had to be something she could do to earn a living for herself and her child, even if it was something like cooking meals or cleaning houses. She’d heard of a woman who did that in another town.

  Work was hard to come by if one was a woman. It could prove even more difficult since she was Indian and had a child, but it wasn’t impossible. She couldn’t give up. She had her child to think about, and as long as she had that, she had a reason to keep going.

  “I’m going to help the preacher get everything ready,” Brandon said. “The sooner we get away from this town, the better I’ll feel. You should sit back down. Walking in your condition will probably tire you out, and I don’t know if it’s safe for you to ride a horse when you’re so far along.”

  “Walking will be fine,” she replied. “I can walk for long periods of time without getting tired.”

  “Yes, but you have a little one to think about. That changes things.”

  It was on the tip of her tongue to ask him how he’d know that since he wasn’t a woman and had never carried a baby, but then she caught the concerned expression on his face and realized he was worried about her and the child. He hadn’t been trying to be condescending like other men in her life had been. He was trying to be kind. And that being the case, she returned to the chair.

  “I’ll see if I can get the preacher to hurry things along,” he added. “I have a feeling he’s the type who likes to take his time doing everything. While in town, he stopped to talk to a few people. I didn’t think we’d ever get back here.”

  Brandon went into the cabin, and once more, she was left alone with nothing but her thoughts.

  ***

  They didn’t get to leave as soon as Brandon had hoped. The preacher was far too reluctant to let them go, saying that it might be best to stay one more night and start out in the morning. Brandon had to remind him four times that he had been helping Joe Otto with a wagon train before he came to this small town. Never mind why Joe had left him here. The preacher didn’t need to know that. All he needed to know was that Brandon knew how to survive in the wilderness.

  And finally, the preacher relented and stopped trying to talk him out of it. Brandon had no idea if the preacher understood that men like the kind who’d made him marry Lokni were capable of returning to do more harm. He didn’t know what the nature of the harm would be, but he wouldn’t put anything past them.

  It wasn’t until Brandon and Lokni were leaving the preacher’s cabin that Brandon began to relax. He couldn’t relax completely. The men could very well be on their way back, and if so, they would catch up to him and Lokni. But at least they were walking away from the cabin. The preacher ought to be relieved, too, since he shouldn’t come to any harm with them gone. He wasn’t sure why he worried so much about the men coming back for them. It was just an unsettling f
eeling in his gut that he’d been unable to get rid of, and the more the day went on, the worse the feeling had gotten.

  As he and Lokni walked together, with the horse between them, he glanced back at the cabin. The preacher stood on the porch, watching them. The preacher waved.

  To be polite, Brandon waved back, but under his breath, he muttered, “Why doesn’t he just go into the cabin or take care of his horses? It isn’t going to do him any good to stand there all afternoon.”

  “I think he wants us to go back,” Lokni spoke up, surprising him since she hadn’t said much the entire day.

  He turned his attention to her. “If we go back, it could very well be his undoing. Does he honestly believe those men won’t come looking for us?”

  “He’s a man of God,” she said. “He thinks prayer will take care of everything.”

  He snorted. “Prayer isn’t any good if you don’t use common sense. Those men aren’t ones to let a matter go quietly.”

  From there, the two grew silent and continued heading southwest. By the time the sun was setting, the preacher’s house was finally far enough that Brandon could barely make it out across the prairie land.

  “We should stop for the night,” he said.

  Besides telling her when it was time to take a break, he had kept quiet. There was a lot of silence in the process of traveling. The wagon train had been no different. Most of the time, people had been content to keep quiet as they walked, probably thinking over what their lives would be like in California. California was all he had focused on…when he wasn’t thinking over his past.

  One question that haunted him above all others had been whether or not he could have done anything to make it so that his wife hadn’t felt the need to sleep with another man. Had he been too focused on his work at the mercantile that he had unwittingly ignored her? He knew he’d been gone for most of the day, and when he came home, he’d been exhausted. Running a business had taken a lot out of him. Or maybe she had been in love with his friend far longer than he realized and the affair would have happened regardless of what he did or didn’t do.

  With a sigh, he led the horse to a tree and wrapped the reins around it. There was no going back and changing the past. As much as he wanted to, it wouldn’t happen. And he was tired of living in the past of what-ifs and if-onlys. The best thing he could do, given the situation he was now stuck in, was to take care of Lokni and her child. It would be his child, too, now that they were married. He wasn’t sure he would make a good father, but his feeling of inadequacy was no excuse to avoid his responsibilities.

  He pulled down their things from the horse and set up his bedroll for him and the preacher’s two thick blankets for her. After that, he set up a small campfire.

  “Do you want me to cook the food?” Lokni asked.

  Up to now, she’d been standing nearby. Just watching but not interrupting him.

  He shook his head. “There’s not much to this. I’ve done it so much that I have the process down to a few minutes. Cooking over a campfire is different from cooking in a kitchen.”

  “I’ve made things over a fire,” she replied. “My tribe slept in tepees. We didn’t have kitchens like white men do.”

  He glanced over at her as he took out the beans and jerky from his leather pouch and showed them to her. “As you can see, this isn’t complicated. If you want, you can make breakfast in the morning. You can cook up the eggs the preacher gave us.” Then as an afterthought, he asked, “Do you know how to cook eggs?”

  “I know how to cook a lot of things.” She settled on the blankets that would be her bedding for the night. “I can even skin animals and cook the meat. We did a lot of that in my tribe. I also know how to make clothing and moccasins from the skin.”

  “You know more than I do then. I can kill an animal and cook the meat, but I don’t know the first thing about making clothes or shoes.”

  He set the beans into the small pan over the fire and handed her some jerky. Then he retrieved their canteens and gave one to her so she had some water. “Do you know anything about taking care of babies?” he asked as he sat in front of the campfire.

  She drank some water then nodded. “I helped other women in the tribe with their babies.”

  “I’m glad to hear that because I don’t know the first thing about caring for a baby.”

  “No man does. It’s a woman’s task to do that.”

  He couldn’t argue with her since he couldn’t think of a single man who did anything with a baby. He’d always seen the mothers tending to the little ones.

  He bit into a piece of his jerky and glanced at her belly. “When do you expect the child to be born?”

  “I thought I was going to have the child today, but the pain went away.”

  He swallowed. “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “It wouldn’t have made any difference. The baby isn’t ready, and if it isn’t ready, there’s nothing to do but wait.”

  “When were you in pain today?”

  “While you and the preacher were in town. It was long gone by the time you returned.”

  He took another bite of the jerky and slowly chewed it. If she had almost gone into labor today, then the baby would definitely be coming at any time. The only question was, how far could they go before the birth. As soon as she had the baby, their progress would be considerably slower. And they would need a water source. Preferably, they would find a river or stream.

  He got up and searched through another pouch he had. After a moment, he found the map folded in one of the pockets. He pulled it out. The sunlight was waning, so he had to use the campfire to see the rivers that were marked out on the paper.

  He considered where they were in position to the small town they’d just left. Fortunately, it had been marked on the map because this was what men used for the wagon trains, and it was necessary to know where the next town would be so people could get more supplies and trade animals if needed.

  With a glance at the direction the sun was setting, he estimated where they were and turned his attention back to the map.

  She went to the pot and poured the beans into the two tin bowls next to his things. In his worry over finding a water source, he’d forgotten he’d been cooking beans.

  “Thank you,” he said as she handed him his bowl and spoon.

  She nodded and returned to her blankets to quietly eat her meal.

  After studying the map for a few minutes, he tracked the best path to get to the nearest river that would take them further south. “If you can hold off on having the baby for a week, we’ll reach a good water source,” he told her. “Do you think you can do that?”

  She looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “I can’t make the baby wait. When the baby is ready, there’s no stopping the birth.”

  That was what he was afraid of. Just like with an animal, one couldn’t control it. “Well, I hope the baby can wait for a week. I don’t dare push you so hard in your condition.”

  She didn’t reply, but he caught the exasperation on her face. She thought he was expecting too much, and maybe she was right. There was a good reason why some wagon train masters refused to take expectant women along on the trails. If the women gave birth at the wrong time, it could mean the difference between life and death.

  Before leaving Omaha early that spring, Joe Otto had refused to take a certain family to California because the wife was far into her pregnancy. When Brandon asked him about it, he said there had been an expectant woman on one of his past wagon trains who had given birth too early and had died as a result.

  “I think the trip was too much for her,” Joe had told him. “I might be wrong. She might not have survived childbirth even if she hadn’t been on the trail, but that’s something I’ll never know. The last thing I want to do is bury another body.”

  Now Brandon could understand why that was Joe’s stance on the issue, but he didn’t dare stay near the town. Not with the unsettling feeling in his gut gnawing at him for
most of the day. They had to get away from there. He was just going to have to hope he wasn’t making a huge mistake. He might not know Lokni, but he didn’t want anything bad to happen to her.

  Turning his attention back to the map, he planned out the route that would get them to the river in the quickest time possible, praying as he did so that they would make it there before the child was born.

  Chapter Four

  The next day, Lokni walked in silence with Brandon. Once again, he chose to walk, leading the horse by the reins and using a leisurely pace that wouldn’t put any stress on her. From time to time, he would glance behind them as if Orson and his friends were closing in on them. But for the moment, she knew they were safe.

  They had taken breaks every hour, and when the sun was high in the sky, Brandon made them lunch. The jerky was tough. She’d made better in the past, but it was edible and quick. Both were careful with their use of their drinking water, though she noted that Brandon encouraged her to drink more than he did. “For the baby,” he added when she said she didn’t need more. Since he had expressed concern over her child, she decided to take another swallow from the canteen.

  Soon, they were heading down the empty prairie again. There was no trail made out for them, so he was using his compass and the map to make sure they weren’t veering off course.

  She didn’t mind the silence. It was nice to be able to take her time and think over how she would make a life for her and her child when they came to the next town. She didn’t tell him her plans. In her experience, men couldn’t be trusted. Who knew if he wouldn’t hurt her because she didn’t want to be his slave?

  For once, she was going to make decisions for herself, and it was necessary she make the right ones for her child. The movement in her womb directed her attention to her stomach. She brought her hand to the area where the baby had kicked and rubbed it, thinking her child might find it soothing.