A Time to Bloom (Leah's Garden #2)(19)
Dubious, RJ took the bottle. “I’m really not sure I need this.”
“Just take it,” Anders put in. “Better to have them and not use them than to need them and not have them.”
He had a point there. “All right.”
Early the next morning, Josephine’s father drove them to the train station in his buckboard. Josephine and Marcella perched on the wagon seat beside the older man, with Anders and Climie in the back. RJ rode Captain alongside, while Jonah drove another wagon just for all the seedlings and cuttings. RJ inwardly questioned the wisdom of transporting so many plants in this heat, but Nielsen determination seemed just about strong enough to carry them through. Or at least strong enough not to argue with.
As the engine belched steam and smoke like an impatient bull, RJ helped Anders and Jonah load the wooden boxes they had built to hold the tree seedlings, along with buckets and planters holding the smaller starts. Mr. Holt, the neighbor whose ranch Jonah worked on, had also sent along a young cattle dog for the sisters’ homestead, a puppy of about four or five months, who leaped and licked at everyone despite Climie’s efforts to contain him. He and Barker circled each other, tails flapping.
“He’ll keep your journey lively.” Josephine nodded at the dog, her own hands full of an excited Marcella, who seemed determined to propel herself out of her mother’s arms toward the puppy.
“I hope we don’t regret taking him along.” Anders hoisted the mass of fur and wagging tail and jerked his head back from an enthusiastic tongue bath. “We’ll try him with us in the passenger car but may have to relegate him to be with you, RJ.”
RJ shrugged. So much for quiet alone time, but nothing about the past weeks was following his expectations anyway. At least the throbbing behind his eye sockets had dulled after he acquiesced to one of the opium pills in order to sleep some hours before dawn. He didn’t like the vague fuzz that blurred the edges of his brain, but some trade-off was to be expected. And relief was not to be taken lightly. Perhaps Anders had been right to insist on a visit to the physician.
Jonah joined them. “All right, we’ve watered everything well and put two barrels of water in the car. That should tide you over till Omaha.”
Anders shook hands with his father-in-law, then embraced Jonah and his wife and child. Josephine’s smile looked wobbly, though she put on a brave face.
How long would they be gone? RJ had no notion. Nor did he particularly care at the moment, at least for himself.
Climie stood back, her face shadowed yet resolved, holding tightly to the puppy’s rope. RJ wondered if she was braver than he, fleeing an evil man who shattered bones rather than merely a fiancée who shattered dreams. But he hadn’t the mental energy to ponder it.
At a whistle from the train and a hollered “All aboard,” RJ gave nods and thanks all round, then climbed in with Captain, welcoming the darkness when the door slid shut. The pain was beginning to lance again, the opium’s fuzz wearing off. He was determined not to take more, though, not during the trip. The thought of slipping into a habit sounded warning bells in his mind that he only vaguely understood but heeded.
6
Lark had never seen anything like it. A horrid, glinting cloud, dark gray in the middle and flickering red around the edges. Like a tornado, only alive. And coming fast.
“Run,” she yelled, grabbing Sofie.
Del snatched up Robbie, and they dashed for the soddy, Jesse on their heels. They could hear the sound of the grasshoppers now, a million wings beating the air behind them like an unholy host.
Forsythia and Lilac met them at the door. “Is it grasshoppers? What do we do?”
Lark set Sofie down inside and pressed her fingers to her temples. “I-I don’t know.” She, Lark, who always knew what to do. But her mind was spinning with the roar of the devastating cloud outside until she couldn’t hear herself think.
“We’ve got to protect the garden,” Lilac said. “I’ve heard smudge pots can help ward them off.”
“Good.” Del took charge. “Lark, let’s get some milk pails, feed bins, anything metal we can find. Jesse, can you kindle fires in them?”
He nodded and dashed outside. Lark followed Del and Lilac on numb feet. Forsythia stayed inside with the little ones, closing the door and windows. There was no sense in trying to make it back to town.
All around them the grasshoppers were falling, hitting their sunbonnets, their shoulders, their hands. Already descending on any living plant.
The smattering blows roused Lark to her senses. Shielding her face from the harsh-winged insects, she dashed for the barn, joining her sisters to dump feed from metal pails and scooping manure and dirty straw inside, then back out to the garden. His hands surprisingly steady, Jesse kindled fires in each one, the damp fuel sending up smoke like little sentinels around the garden’s edge, rising like their prayers around the precious vegetables, Mama’s flowers, the seedling trees.
Yet they could already hear the sound of the grasshoppers munching, eating, devouring. Lark had heard of it but hoped never to hear it.
“Lark, the wheat!” Lilac’s cry turned them all. Part of the swarm moved toward the green-gold field, their precious cash crop for winter.
No. Lord, please, no. Lark ran for the field, flapping at the grasshoppers with her skirts, yelling herself hoarse as if she could scare them off like a flock of crows.