Free Bright Morning Star by J. R. Biery Page A

lowered that aching leg as she struggled with the other and began to explain. “Bonnie, dearest Bonnie, I’m sorry. Yesterday when I saw how hard your work is, I promised myself to thank you and hug your neck. You just do everything so easily, and you never complain.” She turned to look beside the wagon but her friend was gone.
    Ahead she saw Bonnie walking back to help the boys connect their oxen to the wagon. Mary Anne ran up to her and Bonnie caught the sweet girl in a hug.
    “I can drive today, if you need me,” Mary Anne said.
    Laughing, Bonnie swung the child up onto the wagon seat. “I certainly do.”
    Claire felt like crying. She had meant to say all those things, to do more for Bonnie. Instead, she had insulted and yelled at her.
    If it had changed her mood, Bonnie didn’t show it. Singing Goodbye Liza Jane, in her strong voice, Bonnie led her team onto the road. Claire smiled as the children joined in the song and the boys took their position beside each of the trailing wagons.
    When Father and Henry rode by, they looked different. Each wore pistols on their hips and carried a rifle in a saddle scabbard. Resting in the wagon boxes, ready to pull out if needed, were the loaded shotguns. Claire’s hand was still sore from the pistol. She hadn’t dared to try the shotgun yesterday. The Lieutenant had told her to have Bonnie show her later, when she felt better. For some reason, that had made her even more jealous.
    Claire looked back to the campsite, the only sign that they had been there was the circle of ashes in the center of the trampled and eaten grass. Claire could still see the handsome Lieutenant standing beside her tall friend, excited to lead the still dazed looking girl back into the shadows to say Goodnight. What had he said to Bonnie, and why was he so attentive to her. He had ignored Claire completely? Determined, she climbed carefully over the locked wagon tongue into the other wagon and worked her way through her parents’ neat quarters.
    Claire emerged onto the wagon seat beside her mother, who patted her daughter’s knee and smiled. “It’s hard to stay angry isn’t it, when the day is so beautiful,” Mother said.
    As they rode to the top of the little rise, they were surrounded by rolling fields of blue-green grass on one side, a pine thicket on the other.
    Bonnie’s song changed to In the Pines , and the children’s sweet voices filled in around her lower, vibrating one.
    Suddenly Claire swore and twisted on the seat, trying to see the girl singing. “Switch sides, Mother,” she ordered and her Mother shook her head, but obliged by sliding under her impatient daughter. Claire leaned out and stared back up the trail. At the top of the rise, Bonnie stood illuminated by the soft glow of morning. “I knew it,” she stomped her foot and turned around, gripping the seat beneath her in anger.
    “Darling, what is wrong with you today?”
    “Don’t you hear her, don’t you know what it means?” Claire cried.
    Claire’s mother looked completely baffled.
    Claire sulked, making a fist to prop her chin on. “Bonnie never sings. The last time she was happy all the time, was when she was falling in love with that horrible, Tarn Micheals.”
    “No, you mean that nice Lieutenant Douglas is another bastard.”
    “No, but he is handsome. Why would two handsome men fall in love with Bonnie?”
    Mother stared at her pretty daughter, heard the unspoken complaint, ‘and why not me.’
    “Well, Bonnie is loving, sweet, patient, hard-working and smart.”
    “No, she barely had better marks than me. Lynne was the smart one. How smart can Bonnie be, if she married a bounder like Tarn?”
    “Have you forgotten, you were pretty taken with him for a while yourself,” her Mother said.
    Claire knew it was true, didn’t see the point of arguing. “But Bonnie is so tall and plain and her clothes are horrible. What do they see?”
    As their wagon wound up the next hill, Mother Wimberley leaned