From the Back Cover
One of the incidents that made a profound impression upon the minds of all: the meeting of eleven wagons returning and not a man left in the entire train; all had died, and been buried on the way, and the women returning alone.
--from the journals of Ezra Meeker, 1852
THEIR LIVES WOULD BE TEMPERED BY ADVERSITY, EXPANDED BY FAITH, POLISHED BY PERSEVERANCE--
For Madison "Mazy" Bacon, a young wife living in southern Wisconsin, the future appears every bit as promising as it is reassuringly predictable. A loving marriage, a well-organized home, the pleasure of planting an early spring garden--these are the carefully-tended dreams that sustain her heart and nourish her soul.
But when her husband of two years sells the homestead and informs her that they are heading west, Mazy's life is ripped down the middle like a poorly mended sheet forgotten in a midwestern storm. Her love is tried, her boundaries stretched, and the fabric of her faith tested. At the same time, she and eleven extraordinary women are pulled toward an uncertain destiny--one that binds them together through reluctance and longing and into acceptance and renewal.
Based on an actual 1852 Oregon Trail incident, All Together in One Place, Book One in the Kinship and Courage series, speaks to the strength in every woman and celebrates the promise of hope that unfailingly blooms amidst tragedy and challenge.
About the Author
Jane Kirkpatrick is the award-winning author of several nonfiction books and four novels, including A Sweetness to the Soul, and numerous articles and essays. A speaker and retreat leader, Jane also works as a mental-health consultant on an Indian reservation. She and her husband, Jerry, reside in Oregon.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
1
Mazy Bacon’ s Place
April 1852
Mazy Bacon embraced her life inside a pause that lacked premonition.
Warm sun spilled on her neck as she bent over seedlings she’d nurtured in walnut shells and pumpkin halves through a blustery winter. Humming a German song her mother’d taught her, she celebrated the plants’ survival and the scent of sweet earth at her feet. Pig, her dog, lay beside her, his black head resting on paws, his brown eyes watching plump robins peck at worms in the newly tilled garden soil. She relished her life. Everything smelled of promise.
Around her legs, the wind whipped the red bloomers her mother had given her for Christmas the year before.
“Red? Mother,” she had said, pulling them from the string-tied wrapping. “Hardly anyone wears them at all, let alone ones as red as radishes.”
“You was needing some seasoning in your days,” her mother said. “A little spice now and then, that’s good. You’re young. You can wear ’em.”
Today, for the first time, Mazy’d donned those loose folds that billowed out at her hips, stayed tight at her sturdy ankles. She didn’t wear the jacket, choosing a cream chemise instead. Her muscular arms, laid bare to the sun, already showed signs of spring freckles. And her hair, the color of earth and as unruly as wind, fluffed free of its usual braid.
Her wooden spade cut the soil. Mazy thought of the fat rattlers that moved lazily in summer sun, pleased they’d still be sleeping in the limestone rocks and caves and not surprising her. She disliked surprises. She knelt, planted, and pressed dirt around her precious love apples. Tomatoes, some called them now. They’d be fat and plump earlier than ever before.
Finished, Mazy stood, brushed dirt from her ample knees. Ample. Ever since she was twelve years old and stood head to head with her father’s five-foot-nine-inch frame, she’d thought of herself as ample. By the time she turned seventeen and married Jeremy Bacon, a man twice her age and exactly her height, the image of herself as large was as set as a wagon wheel in Wisconsin’s spring mud.
Jeremy, her husband of two years, said she was “like fine pine formed from sturdy stock.” Mazy loved him for that and for his melting smile and for treating her as fine china. He’d been gone two weeks, but he’d be back anytime, today for certain. It was their second anniversary.
Mazy longed for the stroke of his smooth finger at her temple, the brush of his unbearded cheek against hers. She sighed. She’d prepared for him the perfect anniversary gift—a newly planted garden with the promise of abundance. His gift to her would be the Ayrshire seed cow, the “brute” Marvel, as Jeremy called him, and with it, an expansion of their herd and home.
“I am richly blessed, Pig,” Mazy said.
The big dog lifted one eye and thumped his tail, then yawned. A Newfoundland, with a bearlike head, Pig had tiny ears that prompted his naming when Jeremy’d brought the ball of fur home to his wife. Mazy liked the word “Pig.” Not the image of a coarse-haired shoat, but the sound itself: a light and airy word that puffed off her tongue. “Pig,” she said out loud, “they should have named bubbles ‘pigs.’ We’d say ‘Look at that baby blow pigs! Pig, pig, pig.’” Mazy laughed as the dog cocked his head from side to side at the repeated sound of his name.
Mazy stood, stretched, her fingers spread at her hips, bare toes wiggling in warm earth. A breeze dried the beads of perspiration at her temples, and she lifted the bonnet hanging loose at the back of her neck to let the air whisper it cool. Blackbirds chirped as they darted toward earth.
“The Lord knows my lot,” she said aloud. “He makes my boundaries fall on pleasant places.” She’d read the Psalm the day she arrived at this site not far from the Mississippi River near Cassville, Wisconsin; had found it again that morning. The verse read “lines” where Mazy had remembered “boundaries,” but both meant limits to her, the safety of places secured by fences of faith.
“I won’t say anything to Jeremy about fencing in the garden until after he finishes the scarecrows,” Mazy told Pig. She brushed her hands toward birds trying to steal her newly planted seeds. Pig startled and took chase as the flock of intruders soared over bluffs that shadowed the house. “Good work, Pig!” she shouted as she watched the dog disappear from sight.
Later, she would be filled with ifs, the stuffing of regret, but at that moment, Mazy Bacon rested inside contentment.
An unfamiliar sound made her stand and turn toward the wooded trail. Anticipation preceded puzzlement. Was it a woman’s voice? A shout or grunt? She couldn’t see anyone and no one used her name; a neighbor would have called her name. Her skin prickled at her neck. She felt large and exposed in her bloomers.
“Jeremy?”
A breeze washed through the pines, gave no answer.
Suddenly, something slashed through timber, loud and unruly. She caught a flash of rust and white, braiding through the shadow of birches, poplars, and pines. Her eyes followed the sound as it shifted in the wooded thickness. She willed herself to see what she heard. She couldn’t.
“Jeremy? Is that you?” She shaded the sun from her eyes with her hand, aware that her heart pounded. Sweat dribbled at her breast, her hands felt damp, her body responding to danger before her mind could make sense.
A sound behind her didn’t match with the clatter coming from the timber. She twisted in the dirt. Spiders of fear inched up her spine as the truth of its source stung clear.
. . .
Jeremy Bacon cursed the branches swiping at his face. How had the animal gotten away from him? So close to home but the cow brute wasn’t familiar with this corral, so he wouldn’t head home on his own. He would frenzy himself in the trees, move out and be lost forever, Jeremy’s investment, gone, unless he could catch up the cows and hope the brute would come to them. With all the ruckus, the milk cows had bolted too. The hemp lines trailed behind them, threatening to catch in the trees and the brambles.
If only Mazy had agreed to come along! She could have helped. Instead what he had was misery, multiplied by frantic stock. He had to get them to the corral. His eye caught something through the trees near the meadow and he stopped. What was Mazy doing in those blasted bloomers? He shouted but she turned from him. He strained to see what took her attention. When he caught sight of it, his heart thudded to his knees.
