The Promised Land (Destiny's Dreamers Book 2) Read Online Free Page B

release Johnny’s attentions from the abduction and subsequent events. She was praying for a little piece of eastern civilization in the midst of the desolate lands they travelled through. Something to remind them of home. Something to bind them together again.
    Sam was praying for a binding, too. Gwen had given her word that if a suitable clergyman were present, she would consent to marriage at last. Unbeknownst to Sam, Gwen had been up late nights for the past week. She was using up precious candles stitching together an appropriate wedding dress from a bolt of cloth tucked in her wagon. Sam was not the only one whose heart was set on Fort Laramie.
    Irish had thought about Fort Laramie, and thought about Sue Chandler. He’d also thought quite a bit about the proximity of Papa Chandler’s shotgun. Truth to say, he liked what he saw in the girl, but would have preferred to test the product first. He saw before him a most pleasant piece of clay, but how would it fire? Irish liked to experiment with his materials. He was not committing himself yet.
    Grandma Richman was running out of clothing for her eight charges. Even with her experience she never would have guessed the trail would take such a toll on their britches. Shucks, the soles of their feet were hardened enough for the prairie dust, and even the rocks of the badlands now, but would their shoes fit come cold weather? Even with the food coming and going in fits and spurts like feast or famine, the younguns were still growing. And she hadn’t any decent piece of money, either. Maybe she could trade off something, like that big old cherry dresser they’d been carting so far. Make more room in the wagon, give the stock less to haul, too. But would anyone at the fort want it? They’d begun passing the droppings of last year’s wagons. Right pretty delicate, claw-footed chairs and tables~even carved dressers close on to hers~studded the trail at intervals, all worn by the wind and weather. Her own grandpa had imported that dresser direct from England. It had been her mother’s joy. It would hurt. It was hard to leave pieces of yourself behind. But she’d already left her son. And no-account that he’d been, there wasn’t nothing harder than that.
    Hazel Kreller was fixed on the fort, too. Her milk was drying up. She’d thought it was just from the cows slacking off, producing less and less as the way became harder, giving her less to drink. Now she knew the truth. She was pregnant again. Little Irene would have to grow fond of porridge and the remaining squeezings of cow’s milk mighty soon. The trouble was the baby was fighting it, and Hazel couldn’t blame her. She’d nursed the other girls till they were past two. It was a hard thing, making her ache for the child. She hadn’t told Max yet, either. He’d been busy fussing over his sickening horses, worrying like they were his own flesh and blood. Laramie seemed to be a kind of breaking point in her mind. She saw it as a real town, like the little one in Pennsylvania where they’d come from. Somehow she’d already decorated it with neat houses, green trees~even vegetable patches. They’d walk through the streets, she and Max, hand in hand, like they used to when they were courting. She’d tell him then.
    Ruth Winslow was praying hard over Laramie. Her husband had changed since they’d begun this missionary journey. Certainly, the change had started sooner, back in Illinois in that summer of ‘44. If she’d been a cursing woman she would have damned Joseph Smith to Hell faster than her husband’s assassination plot had. But the damage was long since done~the damage that had made her husband more difficult every blessed day of their lives since Carthage. How he’d cried, actually cried in her arms when he’d come home shaking from that long ago mission . He’d confessed the whole thing to her. How he’d helped to plan it, but hadn’t actually raised his own arm in violence. It had been the one