Walk by Faith by Rosanne Bittner

Author:Rosanne Bittner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Steeple Hill
Published: 2005-09-19T04:00:00+00:00

Trust in God at all times, my people.

Tell Him all your troubles, For He is our refuge.

—Psalms 62:8

Chapter Seventeen

June 8, 1863

Haans Buettner left the wagon train, taking his remaining two children with him. He was simply too brokenhearted to continue the journey, for he’d planned to settle in Montana and build a new life with his beloved wife. Now that she and his little Ruth were both gone, he didn’t have the heart to go on. He took Florence’s wrapped body with him when he left, planning to find Ruth’s grave and bury her mother beside her.

It was painful to watch the man leave them, and it reminded Clarissa how lucky she was that Sophie was alive. Eric Buettner decided to go on with the supply wagon and open his supply store as planned. After a matter of time, Haans would come back west, after the children had time to heal and get over their mother’s and sister’s deaths.

Zeb and Dawson both spent the next eight days after the attack riding ahead and behind the train, keeping watch both ways and staying in the saddle from dawn to dusk. Dawson was right in telling Sophie that she wouldn’t see much of him, and Clarissa suspected he was glad for the excuse to stay away. Sophie’s remark about wanting him to be her daddy had embarrassed him as well as herself, although there were moments when she could not help wondering how nice that might be, if Dawson Clements truly knew what he wanted out of life.

Sophie recovered well, thank goodness. The girl had begun talking about Dawson often, asking when he would stop and talk to her again. After having her own daddy walk out on her, Clarissa wondered how Sophie would handle it when this trip was over and Dawson Clements went his own way. She wasn’t sure how she would feel about that herself. It was becoming more and more difficult to picture him riding out of her life, and that was a dangerous way to feel about a man.

They followed the Platte day after day, allowed to take one afternoon to wash some clothes in the river and take a half-day’s rest. Clarissa could tell her clothes were beginning to hang on her. All the walking had caused her to lose weight. Most everyone else was looking the same, mostly tired and gaunt despite having enough food.

Most of the travelers had never done so much walking or worked so hard day after day. There were no front porches to sit on, no casual evening socials, no comfortable beds to sleep in, no tables to sit at, no way to wash or for a woman to fix her hair fancy or wear a pretty dress.

It had come to the point where no one much cared how they looked, and it had grown so hot that most of the women had given up wearing several underslips. Mosquitoes were becoming a huge problem, so much so that people seldom sat around long at night.

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