“Oh, how I love you,” Shirleen murmured as she gave Megan a soft hug. “You are all that I have in this world, and I must protect you, darlin’. We are going to leave soon, Megan. We are going on an adventure together. We are going on that adventure today.”
“Papa not go?” Megan asked, stroking her tiny fingers through her mother’s long, red hair.
“Papa not go,” Shirleen said, nodding. “But that is alright. We will have fun without him.”
“Can we take the baby chicks with us?” Megan asked, searching her mother’s eyes.
“No, I don’t think so,” Shirleen murmured. She fought back the tears that came so easily these past days at the thought of what she must do, and the dangers of doing it.
They lived in a wild land, where renegade Indians roamed and killed every day.
But that was the chance she must take in order to survive. She was sure that one day Earl’s meanness would end in her death.
What then would become of her precious daughter?
The thought of Megan living alone with such a man as Earl turned her insides cold. He was capable of all sorts of cruelty.
“But I love the chicks, Mama,” Megan whined. “Don’t you?”
“Yes, but I love you more, and you are all that I want to take with me on our exciting journey,” Shirleen said, still trying to make the trip ahead sound like fun to her child.
“Can I go now and play with the chicks?” Megan asked, squirming out of Shirleen’s arms.
Shirleen pushed herself up to a standing position, placed a hand at the small of her back, which ached from her morning beating, and nodded. “Yes, you can go now and see the baby chicks, but be careful when you pet them,” she said softly. “Like you, they are tiny and fragile.”
Shirleen walked Megan from the bedroom to the front door of their four-room log cabin.
“Wait, Megan,” she said. “It’s cool this morning. You’d better wear a wrap.”
She reached for a sweater she had recently finished knitting for Megan. As Megan had watched, Shirleen had embroidered tiny baby chicks on the upper left side of the sweater.
She knelt down and placed the sweater on her daughter, securing the top button, then stood and watched Megan run from the house, squealing with delight at the prospect of holding one of the tiny chicks again.
Not trusting anything her husband did these days, Shirleen peered from the door to check that the front gate was closed so that her daughter could go no farther than the yard.
She sighed with relief when she saw that Earl had latched the gate.
Now Shirleen must hurry to finish packing. The time had finally arrived. She was actually going to flee this marriage she so despised.
These past two days, it had been difficult to find moments to prepare for her departure without Earl becoming aware of it before he left for the trading post.
But she had managed to prepare a bag of provisions, which included food, clothing, blankets, and other necessities. She had hidden them beneath her bed, ready for the moment when she would leave.
She knew that she must travel by the fastest means possible in order to get as far as she could before her husband found her missing. Consequently, she had chosen to make her escape on horseback. Using a buggy would slow her down too much.
She had made a little sack from leather to put her daughter in, which would hang from the side of the horse, while on the other side she would fasten their sack of provisions.
Breathless now that the moment was finally at hand, Shirleen hurried to the bedroom and fell to her knees beside the bed. Her hand trembled as she reached beneath the bed and pulled the rest of her belongings from beneath it.
Her heart pounding, she secured a shawl around her shoulders, a bonnet on her head, then gazed at a rifle that she knew she must take with her. Who was to say who or what might become a threat?
Although she did not know how to fire a rifle, she knew that just having a gun would provide some protection. Most men would leave her alone if she was pointing a rifle at them.
As for wild animals, she’d just have to pray that she could shoot the rifle well enough to scare them away with the report of the firearm.
She grabbed it, then stepped out on the porch with Megan’s travel bag and her own, and the sack of provisions.
She sucked in a deep breath and felt the color drain from her face when she saw that the front gate was no longer closed, but gaping open. She also saw that the baby chicks were running free all over the yard.