Free Wild Rose by Sharon Butala Page B

her – his wife, his one true love?
    Now, all the fear and anger, the pain and disbelief retreated. It was as if she were floating above the turmoil far below her, and she moved to gather belongings, thinking only of how best to do that, conscious – ridiculously – of her own still youthful body, of her baby’s heft, of how easily her fingers worked to lift garments, to fold them neatly, to place them in her portmanteau. How cleverly her hands worked, she thought, as she lifted, discarded, chose, folded cloth creaselessly.
    At first it went through her mind that she wouldn’t need to take the heavier things with her, her dishes, her frying pan and pots, she could get them later, that is, if Campion would let her, or when Pierre returned… If… Yes, she admitted to herself, but distantly, idly, Pierre was capable, in a fit of rage and when she and his son were not in his line of sight, of doing what Mr. Campion claimed he had done. Maybe she would never see this place again. But even this thought failed to halt her in her careful choosing, lifting, arranging.
    How well I am doing, she thought, pleased at her own cleverness. She had taken Charles’ clothing and what little she had of her own, plus her two pieces of jewelry – her earrings with tiny diamonds in them that had been her mother’s inexplicably she put on – and a pretty brooch, a wedding gift from Pierre’s family. She was about to leave the bedroom when her eye fell on the barrel on which her few family pictures stood on a cloth she had herself, before her marriage, embroidered. The barrel contained her china dishes, Sèvres, that had come from relatives in France to celebrate her grandparents’ wedding, the porcelain so thin as to be nearly translucent, painted with bright pictures, and edged with gold.
    She had remembered them in those confusing days before she left, knew them to be hers because they had been given to Julie, her real grandmother, and her grandfather for a wedding gift, long before she had been born. She wondered if her grandmother had packed them away this way when she married grandfather, because Sophie knew of them, but had never seen them used and without giving it much thought, had attributed this failure to use them to a combination of grandmother’s stinginess, and her love of her own dishes that had the family initial and crest on them… This man, Campion, would not have her dishes. Useless, she had to admit, as they had so far been in this wild country. The dishes themselves, though, now served to bring her back to the solidity of the rough floor beneath her feet, to the cabin’s stifling heat, and she moved more slowly, the turmoil returning.
    Campion had vanished. Glancing out the window, she saw his hat over the poles of the corral and she understood that he was surveying the farm that was now his. Probably watering his own horses, maybe letting them graze a little while he waited for her, corralling and putting out feed for the saddle horse, the cow, and chickens, she thought, shutting them up so the wolves and coyotes won’t get them tonight, maybe even milking the cow yet again. Maybe he would bring in their five cows that grazed far out on the prairie. Who would care for the delicate Fleurette, whom she loved, and for Pierre’s beautiful Tonerre?
    At last, the buggy laden with the two adults and the child, and the few belongings she was taking in the portmanteau she had carried on the train West and since hardly used tucked in at her feet, the barrel of china wedged behind the seat and the back wall of the buggy, the great bay horse to whom this load was nothing, at Campion’s command, pulled away from the cabin and from the farm to which she and Pierre had given, for four long years, every ounce of their strength and courage. She wanted to look back, but remembered Lot’s wife, who looked back and was turned into a pillar of salt.
    But she couldn’t stop herself; as the horse picked up speed, beginning to jog