Plum Creek

The woman opened her mouth enough Benjamin could push in half of the small piece of johnnycake. He had to help her bite down by pushing on her chin, but once it was in her mouth, her eyes opened wider and she began chewing. A second later, she swallowed and opened her mouth again. Benjamin slipped in the rest of the small piece and smiled when she chewed it and then opened her mouth again.

He was able to feed her about a quarter of one of the johnnycakes before she closed her eyes again, but he'd expected as much. Starvation made you feel exhausted even if you weren't doing anything. He knew she'd wake up a little later and want more. While she slept, he ate three of the johnnycakes and the bacon, then drank a cup of coffee.

It was dark when Benjamin unsaddled Blue and took the blankets off the bay mare. That night, they'd stay tied close to his fire. The next morning, he'd hobble Blue and turn him out to graze on the prairie grass. He didn't have hobbles for the mare, but he'd used some of the rope he'd taken from the wagon to make a set of hobbles so she couldn't run. He knew Blue would stay close by, but he wasn't sure about the mare, and it looked like he might need her more now than ever.

The woman was awake when he came back from working with the horses. Benjamin fed her another quarter of a johnnycake and then brought her a drink of water in his coffee cup. As soon as she took a couple sips of water, she went back to sleep. Benjamin covered her with one of the blankets he'd used to pad the mare's back, then spread another out beside the woman for himself.

He didn't sleep that night. He knew from his own experience at being starved that she'd wake up again and want more to eat. Instead, he fed his fire and wondered how this woman got there. She'd just appeared out of nowhere, pointed her rifle at him, and then collapsed. After he'd tied up Blue and the mare, he'd looked around a little but didn't see a cabin or even a tent.

It looked to him like she hadn't eaten much in at least a month, but it could have been longer. He'd known men to survive for several months by drinking water and eating what little they could find, but those men had been in good shape when they got to Andersonville, big and strong. He doubted the woman had ever been very big or strong.

About every couple of hours, as well as Benjamin could guess, the woman woke up. By the light of the fire, he'd feed her another piece of a johnnycake and give her a drink of water. Then, she'd go to sleep again.

The sun was just peeking over the prairie when the woman tried to sit up. Benjamin pushed her back down and said, "You need to stay down, Ma'am. I know you feel better, but you're not. I'll fix us some more johnnycakes."

Her voice was a little stronger than the night before.

"No, I need to sit up and I can do it."

Benjamin chuckled.

"You'll just fall down again. I know."

The woman shook her head and tried to sit up by herself. She made it half way, but then fell back down again.

"See", chuckled Benjamin. "I said you weren't strong enough yet. Maybe tonight, but not before then."

The woman closed her eyes then, so Benjamin set his skillet on the coals and then went back to the creek for fresh water. When he came back, the woman was sitting up. She was wobbling all over the place, but she was sitting up.

She looked at Benjamin.

"I told you I could sit up."

Benjamin smiled.

"Well, you look like you're gonna fall back down again. I'm glad you feel good enough to try though."

The woman started to fall sideways, but caught herself. She looked back up at Benjamin.

"I'll feel a lot better if I can have some of that bacon I smell."

Benjamin shook his head.

"I don't know. How do you feel?"

The woman slowly leaned forward a little more, then caught herself.

"I feel like I could eat a whole hog."

Benjamin nodded.

"I know, but that would be bad for you. We'll try some bacon though."

This time, the woman ate two slices of bacon and a whole johnnycake, then asked for drink of water. She didn't go to sleep right away either, and that pleased Benjamin. If she was strong enough to sit up and didn't fall asleep right after eating, she wasn't as starved as he'd thought.

After he cleaned the johnnycake batter from his bowl, Benjamin tossed in a double handful of dried beans, filled the bowl with water, and set it near the coals to warm up and soak the beans. Then he ate the rest of the bacon he'd fried and the last of the johnnycakes. While he ate, he really looked at the woman for the first time.

He thought she'd probably have been pretty before. Her face was delicate even though her cheeks were a little sunk in, and he figured if she brushed her long, dark brown hair, it would look pretty nice too. Right now though, her hair was dirty and her clothes were filthy.

As he watched her occasionally lean and then catch herself to keep from falling, he thought she must have a lot of grit too. She was too weak to do much of anything else, but she wouldn't let herself fall. That impressed him.

The woman saw him watching her and frowned.

"Why are you looking at me?"

Benjamin shrugged.

"Well Ma'am, I didn't get much of a chance to see you last night. I was too busy getting some food into you and it was dark most of the time. I just want to see how you're doing, that's all."

The woman didn't say anything else for a while, and Benjamin wondered what she was thinking. He could imagine she was afraid of him. Most women in her situation, alone and half starved to death, would have been. That had to be the reason she'd pointed the rifle at him. He hoped she wasn't still afraid.

He wondered again how such a young woman had ended up alone out here in the middle of the Nebraska prairie. Since she was still sitting up, he decided to find out more about her.

"Ma'am, I didn't get a chance to get your name last night. I told you I'm Benjamin Roswell, but you probably don't remember that. What's your name?"

"Catherine...Catherine Richards."

"Well, Catherine, I didn't expect to find anybody here by this creek. How'd you get here?"

"I walked."

Benjamin smiled. Her voice sounded a lot stronger than before.

"You walked? From where?"

"From our wagon."

Benjamin smiled again, but he'd expected to hear more than that.

"Did your wagon break down somewhere? Where's the rest of your family?"

The woman shook her head.

"It didn't break down. I just left. Mama and Daddy are dead."

The woman almost fell down then. She looked at Benjamin and said, "I think I need to rest again." After that, she eased back down on his bedroll and closed her eyes.

She left Benjamin with more questions than answers. Why would she leave a wagon that offered food and shelter? If she'd have stayed with the wagon and kept going, she'd probably have come to one of the small settlements that he'd skirted along the way or at least a homestead. At either place, she'd have been able to get help, but she'd just walked away. How long had it been? He'd guessed maybe a month the night before, but she looked in better shape than that. He thought maybe two weeks.

Catherine had laid back down mostly because she didn't want to talk about what had happened to her. She'd run out of food after two weeks, and since then, her mind hadn't worked right. She thought she'd been living by the creek for about a month. The last time she'd counted the marks on the tree branch she'd counted twenty-two, but she knew there were days when she either forgot to make the mark on the tree branch or was too weak to do it. If she talked about that now, she might say something to make Benjamin leave her.

Why had God made this happen to her? She'd always gone to church and tried to do what the Bible said. First it was losing her brother to the war. Then both her mother and father were struck down before they were even halfway to Oregon. It had only taken two days. One day, her father said he felt sick. The next morning, he was dead. The same thing happened to her mother a day later. Now, instead of crossing the mountains, they were lying side by side in the dirt of the trail.

Why did God let her live? She'd asked that question time and time again and couldn't find an answer that made sense. It seemed like God had let her live and then given her a choice to make with no good options. She couldn't go on, not after what had happened, but leaving meant she would die too.

Who was this man and why had he found her? He looked like a kind man and he'd taken care of her, but would he still be that way when she was well? If he was like the other men, it would have been better if she had died.

Those thoughts kept racing around in Catherine's head until she drifted off to sleep.

The next day was about the same. Benjamin fixed meals for them both and checked on the horses after each meal. The horses needed a good rest anyway, he told himself, so staying at his camp really didn't hurt anything. He'd stay until the woman was able to travel and then take her to the first settlement or homestead he found.

On the third day right before they ate their noon meal, Catherine asked Benjamin to help her stand up. When he hesitated, she said she had something she needed to do. It took a couple of seconds before he figured out what that probably was, and even after that, he asked if she was sure she'd be all right. Catherine said she thought she would, so Benjamin helped her to her feet.

She was shaky and walked from tree to tree and then rested for a while, but she was soon out of sight. Benjamin was about to search for her when she came back to the camp the same way -- walking slowly from tree to tree. He helped her sit down on his bedroll.

"Catherine, if you need to do something again, just tell me and I'll help you."

For the first time since he'd seen her, Catherine smiled.

"It wasn't that hard. I just had to rest sometimes. Thank you for helping me."

Benjamin was a little embarrassed at being thanked, and fumbled what he said.

"Well, you just ask any time you need anything...whatever you want...well...what I mean is if it's something I can...I wouldn't do anything you don't want me to do...but you just ask and I'll do it. Whatever you want."

Catherine smiled again.

"You don't talk very good sometimes, do you?"

That embarrassed Benjamin even more, and he looked at his feet when he answered.

"Well...I never found a woman half-starved to death before."

Catherine's chuckle made him look at her.

"I imagine I looked a fright, Benjamin. I couldn't have blamed you if you just left me here."

Benjamin shook his head.

"No, I couldn't have done that...not to a woman. Not to a man either. I saw too much of that."

"You saw people starving? Where?"

"Catherine, you need to rest again and I'd rather not talk about it."

Catherine lay back down, but smiled again.

"I'll rest, but sooner or later you're going to have to tell me."

As Benjamin added more wood to his fire so he'd have coals to cook supper, he wondered if he could tell her about Andersonville. He'd almost forgotten about it since he'd found her, and telling her might bring back the dreams. Would she understand?

By noon of the fifth day since Benjamin found her, Catherine was sitting by the fire and eating the same food as he was. Benjamin wouldn't let her eat as much as she wanted, and Catherine asked him why since she felt well. Benjamin decided it was time to tell her.

"It's because I saw men who were starving die after they ate too much. It did something to their insides I guess, but they were doing pretty good, and then they died."

"Where did you see this?"

Benjamin took a deep breath.

"I was in the Union Army and got captured. The Confederates took me to the prisoner of war camp at Andersonville in Georgia. I watched a lot of men die because they didn't give us much to eat. I watched others die after we were liberated too. When they got something to eat, they ate until they were full...and then they just fell over and died."

Catherine stared at Benjamin for a while, and her voice was shaky when she spoke.

"You were in the Union Army?"

"Yes. Why?"

"My brother was in the Confederate Army, and he got killed in the battle at Stones River. Were you there too?"

Benjamin shook his head.

"No. I'd just enlisted and was still in training."

"Did you shoot anybody in the war?"

"I don't really know. There was always so much smoke it was hard to tell. We just aimed and fired, reloaded, aimed and fired."

Catherine didn't say anything for a while, and the reason was after her brother was killed, she hated anybody from the Union. She had hated the men in blue uniforms that had come to the small town in Tennessee and started telling everyone what they could and could not do. She had hated the carpetbaggers from the North who came there after the war was over and bought up as much land as they could by pressuring the southern landowners to sell cheap. Before the war, her father had been a sharecropper on a farm owned by a man in Nashville. He didn't make much money at farming, but they lived well on what the farm could produce. A man from New York had come and bought the farm and told her father he had to leave. That was why they'd started for Oregon. Her father couldn't find another farm in Tennessee and wouldn't live where Union people were running everything.

She was trying to figure out if she should hate Benjamin or not. She owed him her life, so it wouldn't have been Christian to hate him, but he'd been part of the army that killed her brother and she didn't think she could forgive him for that.

Catherine looked at Benjamin and he was frowning. Maybe he had figured out what she was thinking. If he had, would he leave her there by herself again? Catherine couldn't believe God would send Benjamin to save her only to leave her again. Maybe Benjamin wasn't like her father had thought all Union people were. Maybe he was as kind inside as he acted. One way or the other, she had to know.

"Benjamin, until you found me, I hated anybody who was from the North because they killed my brother. You're from the North, but you saved me from starving to death. Now, I don't know what I'm supposed to think. All I know is I don't want you to leave me here by myself again."

Benjamin smiled because he understood. He'd had the same feelings about the guards at Andersonville. If he had had the opportunity, he'd have killed every last one. After the war was over though, he realized the Confederate soldiers he fought against were probably doing exactly what he'd been doing, just trying to stay alive. The guards at Andersonville were brutal, but most of them had been taken care of when the camp was liberated.

"Catherine, I didn't kill your brother, and I never went into a battle intending to kill anybody. All I wanted to do was stay alive. That meant I had to shoot at the other side, so I did. I figure most men on both sides were doing the same thing. I don't like it that a lot of my friends got killed, but I can't really blame the men in the Confederate army for that. War makes a man do things he wouldn't normally do.

"As for leaving you here, if I was going to do that, I'd have left you when you fell down when you were going to shoot me. That, or I'd have shot you before you could shoot me. I didn't do either did I?"

Catherine began to cry then.

"No. It's just that those other men...I want to trust you, but..."

Benjamin put his hands on Catherine's shoulders and turned her so he was looking at her face.

"What other men, Catherine?"

"I can't tell you. It sounds too horrible."

Benjamin gently rubbed Catherine's shoulders.

"I told you why I couldn't leave you. Now, tell me what happened that got you here."

Catherine took a deep breath.

"Daddy didn't want to go to Oregon with a wagon train because the one that was leaving had people from the North in it. He asked around and found a family from Virginia and a man and his son from North Carolina who were going. They agreed we could go with them.

"Everything was going pretty well until Daddy said he felt sick. By that night, Mama was sick too. Daddy died the next day and Mama the day after that. That left me alone.

"The man and his son said they'd take me the rest of the way to Oregon in exchange for what was in our wagon. I didn't have much of a choice. The other wagon was a family with four children but none of them was old enough to drive my wagon and I didn't know how. I said I would do that. The man drove my wagon and the son drove theirs.

"After about three days, the man told me he needed a wife and he thought I'd make a good one. I said I'd have to think about that since he was a lot older than me. He just said we had a long time for me to make up my mind and he could wait, but a woman alone in Oregon didn't have much of a future.

"That night, I fixed supper for the man and his son and when we finished eating, they sat down by the fire with a bottle of whiskey like they did every night, and started talking. I went to wash the pot and everything in the creek. When I came back, I heard the man say it didn't matter if I married him or not. He was still going to have me as his wife. He told his son that if I didn't marry him, he'd share me until his son could find a wife of his own. The son asked him what that meant, and the man laughed and said every man needed a woman once in a while.

"I knew what was going to happen to me. That night after they went to sleep, I took Daddy's rifle and his bullets and a sack with as much food as I could carry. Then I walked into the creek so I wouldn't leave any footprints. I walked in the creek until the moon was pretty high and then got out and started walking away from it and back the way we'd come. I walked until it was almost daylight and then looked for a place to hide in case they came looking for me.

"I know they did look for me because I saw them, but they were a long ways away and gave up before they even got close. When I couldn't see them anymore, I started walking until I found this creek. I've been here since then.

"It wasn't too bad for a while. I climbed up a tree every night to sleep, and I had water to drink. If it rained, I got wet, but I dried out when it stopped. My food lasted me about two weeks and after the first week, I tried to hunt so I'd have more to eat. I'd never shot a rifle before, so I missed a lot. About two weeks ago, I'd used all my bullets and I'd eaten all my food. I tried eating grass, but it just made me sick. I thought I was going to die when I heard you ride into the trees, but I didn't think I could trust you. That's why I pointed my rifle at you."

Benjamin had listened to everything she said, and when she finished, he just looked at her while he thought about what she'd said.

He'd been right about her having grit. Most women he had known would have accepted their fate in exchange for the security of being with a man. Catherine hadn't. She'd fought back by using the only way she saw open to her -- running away. Even though she was half-dead from starvation, she was still strong enough to try to defend herself when he rode into the trees. He had to admire that.

When he remembered her standing there trying to level her rifle at him, he chuckled.

"You pointed a rifle with no cartridges at me?"

Catherine nodded.

"I wanted to scare you away."

Benjamin gently squeezed Catherine's shoulders.

"Well, it's lucky for you I don't scare that easy. It's also lucky it was me and not one of those other men that found you. I won't leave you here, Catherine, and I won't do what they were going to do to you. I think it'll be about another week before you're strong enough to travel very far. You think about what you want to do. We'll decide what we're going to do then. I'll help you do whatever you want."