Glory by Lori Copeland

down with something every time she was around him—something feverish and bad. Like right now, her mouth was dry as day-old bread, and her stomach felt like she’d eaten something sour though she’d barely eaten at all.
    Glory studied his large hands gutting and cleaning out the squirrels’ entrails, pitching them aside for a wild animal to find later. Her mind worked furiously to think of something interesting to say—she wasn’t much on conversation and didn’t know a lot about many a thing. Sometimes she and Poppy sat for days on end and never said a word; reckon they’d about said everything there was to say before he’d died. But there were a lot of things she didn’t know about Jackson Lincoln. A lot of things she’d like to know.
    “Did you know that Lily wanted me to take a bath today?” She eyed Jackson at a slant to see if he thought the idea was as outrageous as she did.
    “That right?” He pitched a skin onto the bank.
    “Told her I’d had my bath—bathed twice this spring already. Once at the usual time and once the day I buried Poppy.” She’d thought that was proper in view of the sadness of the circumstance.
    Jackson smiled and kept working. “The girls take a bath once a week and take a sponge bath nightly. They evenwash their clothes twice a week in that big tub hanging on the side of the wagon, if the weather cooperates.”
    Glory turned to look at the object. “Once a week?”
    “Once a week.”
    “Don’t that plumb wear their hide clean off?”
    “Nope.” Jackson rinsed the blade of the knife and then washed his hands in the stream. “Their skins are pretty as a picture. The young ladies like to keep themselves smelling good.”
    Glory stared at the gurgling water. Did she smell good? She’d had those two baths—surely she did. “If I was to change my mind about coming with you, would I have to wash once a week?”
    Jackson grinned and handed her a pan of fresh squirrel. “Yes, you would.”
    Well, then, that was one more reason for her to stay put.
    She trailed him up the steep bank, and an hour later the party was sitting around the fire, lazy and replete from fried squirrel and gravy that Ruth had prepared. Lily picked up a guitar and strummed it, joining with the chorus of night creatures enfolding the camp in peaceful solitude.
    Glory saw Ruth open the Bible and read to herself for a few minutes. That Ruth was real regular with her reading. She was smart, book smart. Glory admired that, though she didn’t have any book learning herself.
    Glory nodded in Ruth’s direction. “Why does she do that every night?”
    Mary stirred, her cough more pronounced tonight. “Ruthloves the Lord; she wouldn’t miss reading his Word.” Getting more comfortable, Mary laid her head on her forearm and stared at Glory across the fire. “You don’t know much about the Lord, do you?”
    Glory shook her head. She’d heard Poppy mention the name when he talked about that town called Heaven.
    “He’s our heavenly Father,” Mary murmured. She closed her eyes, and Glory watched the fire pop. Everyone seemed to know about that town except her. Her eyes roamed the sleepy group. Tonight was a far cry from the terror she’d felt last night; she wondered about each of her friends, where they’d come from, what they hoped to find once they reached Colorado.
    “Mary? Tell me about the others.”
    “Ummm,” Mary said softly. “Well, Ruth came to the orphanage about a year after me. We’ll be sixteen on our birthday. Ruth’s folks and two brothers died during an outbreak of cholera. She was the only one left. A Sioux warrior brought her to the orphanage and left her on the doorstep.
    “Lily came when she was five. Her ma couldn’t keep her after her pa was killed in an accident.” The girl’s eyes shifted to Harper, sitting away from the others, huddled in a blanket.
    “Why is she so cross?”
    “Just her way. She really isn’t so bad once you get to know her. She keeps her