Journey of Honor A love story by Jaclyn M. Hawkes Page A

wait for them. Petja had made breakfast and Josiah had milked the cow, and they headed out as soon as they could. In her hurry, Giselle didn’t eat enough, and by lunch, between the hunger and the interesting guts she had looked at that morning, she was horribly ill. Petja knew she felt awful and encouraged her to stay in the back of the wagon, where she brought food to her.
    That night, Giselle struggled to make it through chores and went straight down to bed. Even at that, she had to get up to be sick in the night. When she came back to bed, Trace asked her sleepily if she was okay, and she told him she was fine, but she didn’t feel that way. She felt awful. She tried to ignore the nausea and even resorted to dwelling on Trace lying next to her to keep her mind off of the way she felt.
    *****
    They had been on the trail for just over a month and a half. They had made it through the dust, the rivers, and the buffalo. They’d struggled to find feed, avoid quicksand and had repaired innumerable wagon issues. They’d even learned to deal with the stubborn mule and the quarrelsome freighters. She and Trace had become fast friends, and both he and Mose felt like her family now. But she still hadn’t told him about the babies.
    She was almost sure there were two of them. She never dreamed about just one. She was almost four months along now, and her dresses had all been let out to accommodate her growing tummy. It almost didn’t seem like just her tummy. Even her ribs and chest were expanding.
    She was starting to feel guilty about not telling him, as close as they had become, but every time she thought about doing it, she couldn’t bring herself to. She wasn’t sure why. She just didn’t think she could explain, and she didn’t want to see the pity or revulsion that she feared in his eyes.
    They had been traveling primarily over the flats of the Great Plains, and it had indeed been a great plain. From time to time, there were streams and small hills and washes, but for the most part it, had been a long, flat, monotonous pull. She had long ago learned to pick up buffalo droppings and toss them into the sling under the wagon to use for fuel for the cooking fires. That was the only option they had because trees were so rare here. She had learned to handle whatever had come her way, except for her feelings for Trace.
    She feared that she had fallen in love with him, which was senseless beyond belief, but try as she might, she didn’t seem to be able to tell her heart to keep its distance. She was close to her grandparents, but she couldn’t even tell them what she was feeling and was trying to figure out how to fix this all by herself. Wondering how to do that, when she’d never felt this strongly in her life, made her feel even younger than her seventeen years. Younger and more foolish than she had ever thought herself.
    At least they were making good progress. They were nearing the halfway point from what she understood. Although the lateness of their trip was making feed hard to find, it was a relatively dry time of year and travel had been dusty, but steady.
    They’d come more than half of the distance, but the flat prairie they’d been traveling would go faster than the hills and mountains and canyons when they reached them. The next day they were to reach something called Chimney Rock, and not far after that would be Fort Laramie and the first real settlement they had encountered in weeks.
    In a way, she wanted this trip to last forever because she didn’t want Trace to be gone from her life, but in another way, the sooner they reached their destination, the less watching him drive away from her would hurt. Already it was going to kill her. By that same token, she wasn’t sure if she should be doing everything she could to distance herself from him, or enjoying every minute she had with him like it was a precious treasure that would soon run out. She’d prayed for wisdom, but her heart and her head seemed to