Chapter II The Grave in the Desert
As Joshua Peniman and his two older sons stood looking down upon the dead man, the delicate-featured, high-browed, thoughtful face of a scholar, upon the hands, smooth, white, tapering, with well-kept nails and soft palms, the body worn and thin almost to emaciation, the waxen cheeks hollow and sunken under the blue-rimmed eyes, a strange sense of awe and wonder passed over them.
What was this man—this delicate, scholarly-appearing individual with his soft hands and emaciated body—doing in an emigrant wagon crossing the trackless plains?
Who was the woman who was with him—that young, beautiful, delicately-clad and delicately nurtured woman, whose sobs and moans they could hear from the other side of the wagon?
As these questions forced themselves through the mind of Joshua Peniman the woman came rushing around the end of the wagon and cast herself down beside the body.
“Lee, Lee, Lee!” she shrieked. “Oh, he is not dead, he is not dead! Surely God could not be so cruel as to take him from me! Oh, Lee, my husband, my own, my only love!”
Her voice had risen into a high, wailing cry. Suddenly from the rear end of the wagon from which they had taken the dead man a head appeared.
To the startled eyes of the boys who first saw it it seemed the most beautiful head and face they had ever seen.
It was a small head, fine and delicate, set like a flower on a little swan-like throat, and covered with short curls of sunny gold. Beneath the shining halo of curls a face looked out, pitifully small and frightened, with great terrified violet eyes, a quivering rose-bud mouth, and a skin as fair and delicate as the petals of a flower.
“Father—Mother!” cried a quivering, childish voice, “oh, what is the matter? what has happened? what are you crying so for, Mother?” Then, as the terrified violet eyes caught sight of the body, she leaped to the ground and threw herself upon it with a cry that Joe could never forget.
The children who had gathered about stood transfixed, but Hannah Peniman moved swiftly to the child and took her in her arms.
“Thy father has gone away, dear child,” she whispered in her soft, motherly voice. “But thee must be very brave for thy poor young mother’s sake. Thou must help her to bear it.”
The child uttered a wild sob, then fled to her mother and clasped her arms about her neck.
They clung to each other sobbing bitterly for a time. The boys turned away, and Joe found a lump too big to swallow choking his throat.
After a time Joshua Peniman bent to the woman tenderly.
“Was thy husband ill, my child?” he asked gently.
“Oh yes, yes, very ill,” she answered between her sobs. “They told me he had tuberculosis. He was a writer. You must have heard of him. The doctors sent us out West. They told him to get a wagon and spend the whole summer traveling across the plains. We were on our way to Colorado for his health. We have been out three weeks, and he was better, oh, very, very much better. And then yesterday we were driving along near a creek and some Indians set upon us——”
“Indians?” cried Joshua Peniman, remembering that the dying man had answered his question with a shake of the head.
“Yes, Indians—a whole band of them. They began shooting at us. Nina and I happened to be inside the wagon, but Lee—my poor Lee—was on the driver’s seat. I don’t know when he was hit. I don’t know that he knew himself. He shouted out to me to hide, and to hide Nina, and I did, I hid her under the blankets beneath the seat——”
“And you are sure it was Indians that attacked you?” asked Joshua Peniman, while a cold hand of terror clutched his wife’s heart.
“Yes, I’m sure. I saw them. I heard them. Oh, they were horrible! Lee never made a sound when he was struck. All at once I saw him reel and totter on the seat, then he came tumbling backward, and I saw the arrow in his breast. I tried to pull it out, but I couldn’t, and it bled fearfully, so I stopped. He was conscious then, and said, ‘Drive—hurry—wagon ahead!’ I got up on the seat and whipped up the horses and drove and drove as fast as I could make them go. The heat was terrible. I thought I should die. But I saw your tracks, and at last I saw the smoke of your fire and knew there was help at hand. I thought I should kill the horses, but I didn’t care, all I could think of was help—help for my poor Lee!”
As she said the last words she uttered a long wail, threw her arms above her head and plunged forward over the dead body.
Joshua Peniman lifted her tenderly and bore her in his arms to their own wagon.
All night they worked over her, with every remedy at their command, but before the grey dawn of morning they knew that she would join her husband before many hours.
Heat, exhaustion, terror, the strain of agony and fear, the shock to an already weakened and overstrained heart, were more than nature could bear.
Shortly before daylight she opened her eyes and looked up into the face of Hannah Peniman, who bent above her.
“Who are you?” she asked faintly. “Where do you come from?”
“Our name is Peniman, Hannah and Joshua Peniman. And these are our children. We come from the Muskingum Valley in Ohio.”
“You are Quakers?”
“Yes. My husband was a leader in the Society of Friends.”
“Then you are good—good and kind, I know,” she whispered brokenly. Then clutching Hannah Peniman’s hand and fixing her beautiful, burning eyes upon her face she hurried on: “My child—my little Nina—what will become of her? I am going—going to Lee—I could not live without him. Our name is Carroll. My husband was Lee Carroll—a writer—and I am Marian Carroll. The little girl’s name is Nina. Will you take her—will you take her with you to the nearest Mission? I know it is asking a good deal with your big family—but you will do it—I know you will do it—for my poor little orphaned child. I will explain to her—give her papers and addresses and all—and they can send her home from there. Our people are all—all——”
She stopped, gasping and struggling for breath. Joshua Peniman lifted her and held a heart stimulant to her lips. After an interval, when they feared all was over, she again opened her eyes. Mother love was stronger than death. “Send—her—to me,” she gasped—“I have not long—to—be—with—her.”
They laid her back upon the bed, then sent the child to her.
For some moments they heard the low murmur of voices, the sobbing of the child. Then when there had been silence for some time Hannah Peniman quietly parted the curtains of the wagon and looked in.
The young mother lay white and still, her beautiful delicately carved face looking like sculptured marble in the dim grey light of morning, the child with her arms tight clasped about her neck, her cheek on the fast-chilling cheek of her dead mother, sobbing by her side.
Hannah Peniman took her in her arms and carried her out of the wagon. Apart from her own brood of little ones she sat down, the little girl still in her arms, and rocked and crooned to her, talking to her in gentle, soothing tones, telling her of the great happiness her young parents would feel in their reunion, in that place where there is no more parting, no more sickness or suffering or death.
When the sun had risen they buried the man and woman side by side in a grave dug in the virgin soil of the prairie. Over it the sun rose, shining down upon the two pitiful mounds of earth in the loneliness of the desert land, and bringing out upon the two wooden crosses at their head the inscription Joshua Peniman had painted upon them, “Lee and Marian Carroll. Died July 20th, 1856. Buried by Joshua Peniman, emigrant, on way to Nebraska.”
Below in smaller letters he had printed the cause of the death. That was all that he knew about them.
He had drawn the arrow from the breast of the dead man before wrapping the still form in the blanket that was its only coffin and shroud, and without asking himself the reason why he preserved the arrow carefully, putting it away in a chest under the seat of his wagon.
The whole family gathered about the graves, while the gentle Quaker said over them the simple, earnest prayer of the Friends, then turned sadly toward the wagons, which were ready to start again on their westward journey.
As they turned away from the lonely graves the child broke from them and with a wild cry ran back and threw herself face downward upon them.
Ruth and Sara broke into loud sobbing, and even the boys were obliged to turn aside.
Hannah Peniman went to the child and raised her.
“Come, little one,” she said with tear-wet eyes, “thee must come away. Thy dear parents are not there. That is only the old garments they have laid down to go to the new home that awaits them. They are together now, and will always be happy and well. They are not far away. They will watch over thee. Their spirits will always be near thee. Thou art young, life will bring many joys to thee, of which thy parents will be glad. Come now, little girl, the sun grows high, the day will be hot, and we must be on our way.”
As the child, sobbing bitterly and clinging to her, turned toward the wagon that had belonged to her parents, which was hitched on behind the one driven by Joshua Peniman, Mrs. Peniman drew her away.
“Will thee ride in the big wagon with my little girls?” she asked gently; “they would be very glad to have thee.”
The child raised her pretty head, looked at the Peniman children with her beautiful, tear-filled eyes, then slowly shook her head.
“I will ride with that boy,” she said, pointing to Joe, who, seated on the driver’s seat of his own wagon, was valiantly striving to appear manly and keep back his tears. He blushed up to the roots of his fair hair, then leaped down from the seat and very tenderly lifted the little stranger up on the seat of the wagon.
As the cavalcade started forward, now quite a procession with the three teams and wagons, the cow following behind, the collie dog leaping and barking beside the wagons, the faces of all were turned backward and their eyes rested on the lonely mounds on the prairie as long as they were in sight.
The little girl, sitting beside Joe on the high seat with her trimly-dressed little feet swinging far above the wagon-bed, kept her head buried in her arms, and sobbed as if her heart would break. Gentle-hearted Ruth cried with her, Lige beat a hasty retreat to the back of the wagon, while tender-hearted Sam slipped a sympathetic freckled hand into hers and wept openly as he smoothed and patted it.
Joe could do nothing but sit soddenly, with a lump in his throat so big that he could neither speak nor swallow. But his eyes had in them all the sympathy that his lips could not speak, and when the little girl at last looked up it was straight into those bright, wistful, moist grey eyes, after which she snuggled up against him and laid her head against his arm.