I remembered, from several years ago, a family we had known a little whose fortunes in the city had suddenly collapsed; they had left in these same wagons with this same group. It had never occurred to me then to consider the possibility that we might one day follow them.
Greatheart clopped along, nearly asleep, chewing meditatively on his bits; one of his easy strides reached as far as two of the small, sturdy wagon horses’. There had been a little difficulty about bringing him at all, for a riding horse was an expensive luxury; he was also a very visible incentive to any bold thief who might be watching us. But spring was well advanced, so there was no shortage of fresh fodder fo r my massive horse’s matching appetite, and I promised to break him to harness as soon as we were moved into our new home. Gervain shook his head over us, but I don’t think he ever meant to suggest that Greatheart be left behind. The wagoners shook their heads too, and muttered loudly that they who could afford to own a horse like that one could afford to travel in a parry of their own, with hired guards, and not disturb their humble company with flashy lures to robbers and cutthroats. But the train was doing some business for Tom Black’s stable too, and the story must have come out, for several of the wagoners came up to us during the first few days to look at Greatheart a little more carefully, and with a little more sympathy—and curiosity.
One of them said to me: “And so this is the horse that wouldn’t eat if you left him behind, eh, missy?”
and slapped the horse’s neck jovially. His name was Tom, also, Tom Bradley; and he began to come to our campfire in the evenings sometimes as the days of the journey mellowed into weeks and we all grew more accustomed to one another. Most of the wagoners kept to themselves; they had seen too many travelers in reduced circumstances going to new, unknown homes and destinies to be particularly interested in them. They ignored us, not unkindly but with indifference, as they ignored almost everything but the arrangement of harness and the stacking of loads, the condition of the horses and wagons, the roads, and the weather. Tom Bradley’s visits were very welcome to us, then, because even with Gervain’s ready cheerfulness and optimism we were all inclined to gloom. None of us was accustomed to long, bruising hours either on horseback—which was preferable—or in the wagon, which was built to carry heavy loads, and not sprung or cushioned for tender human freight.
“Eh, now,” Tom would say; “you’re doing none so bad; and it’ll get better in a week or two, as you get used to the way of it. Have a bit of stew, now, you’ll feel good as new.” Tom knew all there was to know about cooking in a single pot over a small fire, and taught us how to bury potatoes in the embers.
And when Grace’s saddle sores grew so painful that she could get no sleep at night, he mysteriously found her a sheepskin to sit on, and would take no payment for it. “They call me the nurse-maid,” he said with a grin, “the rest of ‘em do; but I don’t mind it. Somebody has to look out for you innocents —if nobody—did there’d be trouble soon because you’ve no proper notion how to take care of yourselves.
Excepting of course you, sir,” he said with a nod to Ger, who gave a short laugh.
“I’m no less grateful for your help than the others, Tom,” he said. “I know little about wagons, as you’ve found out by now.”
Tom chuckled. “Ah, well, I’ve been twenty—nearer thirty—years at this, and there’s little I don’t know about wagons, or shouldn’t be, for shame. I’ve no family I go home to, you see, so I take to whoever needs me on these journeys. And I’ll say this to you now, as I’ll say it again when you leave us to go your way: I’m wishing you the best of good luck, and I don’t say that often. Nursemaiding is a mixed blessing, more often than not. But I’ll be sorry to see the last of you folks.”
The journey lasted two long months, and by the time we parted company with the wagoners we were all covered with saddle sores, lame and aching in every inch of bone, muscle, and skin, from sleeping on the ground, and heartily sick of the whole business. The only ones relatively unaffected by what seemed to us girls to be desperate hardship were Gervain and Greatheart; Ger was still as certain and cheerful as he had been ever since he first entered our town parlour over three months ago, and Greatheart still strode amiably along at the tail of the train as if he hadn’t a care in the world. We were all thinner, harder, and shaggier. Tom shook hands all around, and tickled Greatheart under his whiskery chin; wished us good luck as he had promised; and said that he’d see us in about six months. He would be coming to say hello, and to collect the wagon and pair of horses we were taking with us now.
The unaccustomed rigours of travel had deadened us to much looking around at the countryside we passed. Mostly we noticed the ruts in the road, the rocks under our bl ankets, and the way the leaves on the trees we chose to lie under always dripped dew. As we turned off the main road towards our new home, now only a few miles away, we looked around with the first real interest we had felt for the land we were traveling over.
We were well inland now, far from any sight or smell of the sea; and it was a hilly country, unlike the low-lying and many-rivered area we had left. We parted from our companions of the road at dawn, and in the late afternoon we found ourselves on the main, and only, street of Blue Hill. Children had cried a warning .of our approach, and men had looked up, shading their eyes to stare across their small, hilly, carefully cut and tilled fields. We saw young wheat growing, and corn, oats, and barley; there were cattle and sheep and pigs and goats, and a few sturdy, shaggy horses in harness. Most of the men went back to their work; newcomers would keep, but the daylight wouldn’t; but in town there were a dozen or more people collected and waiting to welcome us, and to look us over.
Ger, wizard-like, produced an aunt with six children, who ran the tiny public house; it was she who had heard that he wanted to bring a new bride back to the hills he’d grown up in, and had written him about the empty smithy in her home town. Her smile made us, waifs in the wilderness, feel that perhaps we weren’t utterly lost and forsaken after all. She introduced us to the other people who were standing around, several of whom recognized Ger, or pretended to, as the young lad from over the next hill who’d gone south to the city over ten years ago. Ger’s birthplace and childhood home, Goose Landing, named for the fine winter hunting, and our new home, Blue Hill, had no particular boundaries beyond the little main streets; the farms and fields spread themselves disinterestedly between the Sign of the Dancing Cat, in Goose Landing, and the Red Griffin, Ger’s aunt’s establishment.