Free Jo's Triumph by Nikki Tate

here?”
    I explained and Sarah shook her head. “This is a hard path you have chosen to get to California.”
    I had to laugh at that.
    â€œI am pleased our men found you. The wagon trail is like this—” She made a slashing motion with her hand side to side through the air. “And you are going like this—” The second line she made was just below and parallel to the first. The way I’d been travelling I might never have crossed the trail.
    â€œHe will show you,” she said, nod-ding toward one of the men who had found me. “I cannot come. My grand-father, Truckee, is very sick. We, the old, the women and children, and a few men have been hiding here, away from the fighting at Pyramid Lake. But Grandfather is very ill. We have lit fires in the hills to call our people in so they might—” Her voice cracked. “—so they might say goodbye.”
    â€œSarah — ”
    â€œShh. Say nothing. There is nothing to say. But I must stay with him.”
    I nodded. How well I understood. Ma, Pa, and even Baby Grace, whom I had known such a short time, had not passed over to God’s care alone.
    Sarah glanced back over her shoulder at the hut where her grandfather lay dying, her eyes brimming with tears. She turned back to me and took my hands in hers.
    â€œYou know what you must say about seeing us here.”
    I nodded. “Nothing.”
    â€œAnd when my people are friends once again with yours, I never met a girl called Joselyn on a Pony Express horse.”
    We both smiled. “I’d like to go back to California one day. Maybe I will see you there.”
    â€œI’d like that,” I said and squeezed her hands.
    She nodded, then pulled away and returned to her grandfather.
    I mounted my horse once again. The man who was to be my guide said nothing but nudged my knee with something solid. My pistol.
    â€œThank you,” I said as I took it from him.
    He indicated I should follow him and then led me some distance beforesaying, “Go past there.” He pointed at a single scraggly pine tree in the distance, a black shape against the night sky.
    I thanked him again. He patted Luke on the rump and disappeared into the darkness.
    Never in my life had I felt so alone.

Chapter Eleven

    â€œCome on, Luke. If he says to go past the tree, we go past the tree. We’ll find the trail and the station. What a good feed you’ll have … What a bed there will be for me!”
    Sounding cheerful was a strain, but I needed to keep my spirits up as we set off, uphill, toward the big tree.
    When we finally stood atop the ridge, we were both blowing and panting. I opened my jacket to the chill pre-dawn air. Back toward the east, the under sides of the gray clouds were tingedwith pink and yellow. As I watched, the colors warmed until the clouds were a deep blush of rose.
    Turning my back on the rising sun and the scraggly pine, I urged Luke into a plodding trot.
    The morning was the strangest I had ever seen. Even as the sun rose higher in the sky, the clouds thickened and built so the day hardly grew brighter. Within an hour a bitter, freezing rain was falling. I pulled my collar up around my neck, my hat down over my ears and hunched into the saddle. Soon the relentless pelt of raindrops had mixed with snow and soaked us both.
    Though I wore thick calfskin gloves, my fingers grew numb. I had to tuck first one hand and then the other inside my jacket to keep them from freezing. I imagined James arriving at the stinky ponds and wondered what he’d do when he saw I wasn’t there.
    The mud froze into treacherous ruts and bumps. These became more and more difficult to see as the snowthickened and blanketed everything. We pressed on, eyes slits against the driving snow. Once Luke stopped and looked back at me, his long eyelashes white with frost. Every step became a torment as Luke slipped and slid. We had long passed the tree and still there