A Woman Alone

Along with six other wagons the Jackson family had been on the trail for weeks and grueling weeks now. The little house back in Decatur had been sold to Jacob’s sister and her husband. There would be no turning back. The wind swept prairie was behind them now and the Rocky Mountains lay ahead. Surely after a solid meal and a good night’s rest her husband would get most of his strength back. …. Late that afternoon most of those on the wagon train stood around a freshly dug grave. Two doves cooed from a nearby tree. The gray clouds that hovered low all morning and earlier that afternoon were now black and rain came down in big fat drops. Ben Handover read the twenty-third psalms from his Bible and then said a few kind words about his friend Jacob Jackson. He talked about what a fair man Jacob had been as well as a hard worker. Then there was only the sound of rain splashing off of umbrellas for a full minute before a woman’s beautiful voice alone sang the fi rst verse of ‘Amazing Grace’ and then the others joined in. The day seemed like a nightmare to Lydia. Between tears she tried to comfort Jacobs’s two children. … With objections from the majority of their fellow travelers Lydia and the children were allowed to continue on with the wagon train. At the end of the trail Lydia and the children set up a comfortable home in the small log cabin build on the land that Jacob had registered to homestead on. He had staked the land out on his previous trip to the Oregon territory. She knew before they started the new adventure that life in the wilds was going to be harsh; but this wasn’t the way it was supposed go. This was Jacob’s dream.