A Light in the Wilderness (11 page)

She pulled away. “Your daddy promise to care for his
young
kin and for me. But he want you in his life so we make a peace. For his sake.” She looked back down. “I’s not one for trouble, Mistah Carson. Seekin’ good mixin’ is all.”

He squeezed her arm harder, then tossed it aside like kindling. He wiped at his cheek. “Don’t ever expect me to mix in with the likes of you.”

She lifted her eyes to his. “Then maybe one of us needs to put our feets in another direction.”

One reddish eyebrow raised.

“And my feets and mixin’ bowls are headin’ west.”

Such a fractious thing to argue about and yet they had. Davey drove the team and wagon to the meeting place in Weston. All preparations had gone well and then Junior insisted on taking only a shotgun and pistols. But the governing rules said each man was to have a caplock rifle with gunpowder in barrels as well. Junior had balked at the requirement.

“You know how to shoot. What’s the matter with you?”

They’d already gathered up with two hundred other wagons near the Missouri, campfires glowing with children like puppets dancing before them. Davey and Junior had come back from a meeting to choose their captains and whatnot on April 5 at Wolf River. The Carsons and Hawkinses would be joining up with Stephen Staats
from New York who was under Tetherow. Davey had been elected to the executive council. He wouldn’t tell Letitia yet. It would mean he’d have duties and wouldn’t always be around. G.B. Smith was going too. That one had made his pitch to be a sub-captain but he’d been outvoted. Smith had no family with him, though Davey had seen him around the Hugharts’ oldest girl and she couldn’t be more than fifteen; such a frail birdlike child. He hoped her father would keep a close eye on her.

Everything had been going as planned and then Junior decides the rule of carrying the caplock along with a shotgun was “Stupid. I don’t wanna travel with people making stupid rules.”

Maybe Junior ran a fever from the bramble scratch on his cheek. It did look festered and he’d refused to let Letitia put one of her salves on it. He said as much and Junior touched his cheek, barked that his temperament had nothing to do with this. It was the guns. But then Davey had caught him looking at Tish as she crossed behind the campfire, his blue eyes dark as an angry sea. The look brought a shiver to Davey.

“I’ll take the extra gun. Time comes you’ll want to use it,” Davey said. “That way we meet the regulations.”

“Got no time for men who make policies like that. I’ve changed my mind about going at all.”

“Lookee here, son. I need you to drive. I need you to help out. Thought we’d get our family back together.”

“Looks like you got yourself one.”

“You getting on well with Tish, ain’t you? Why desert us now?”

“If you make it, maybe I’ll come see you. Maybe travel around the horn instead of nine months with you and your N . . . wench. See your little ‘family’ all cozy in Oregon.”

Davey grimaced. He looked across the fire to see if Letitia might have heard. She wasn’t anywhere around. Seemed like except at meals she and Junior never stood in the same firelight.

“Now, son, we’ve got on well since you showed up. Shame having you decide to back off.”

“You’ll get over it. You did before.”

Davey felt the blow in his chest.

Junior walked around to the end of the wagon and grabbed his pack. Then without another word he mounted his horse, tipped his hand to his hat, and rode away.

“I know you feelin’ harshed by Junior’s leavin’.” Letitia stood to blow out the candlelight, bringing the moonless night inside their tent. “Maybe . . . my fault. We toss words back and forth.”

“No. It was the rules. He was never one to follow any. If it hadn’t been the guns, it’d be something else before long. Was why he ran off in the first place, having to comply.” He patted her hip as they lay in the bedroll beneath the tent. A cool breeze rustled the canvas, caused a small flare in the campfire now just embers. “Wasn’t your fault. Biggest problem now is finding a second driver this late. That’s one rule they won’t abide being broken.”

She wondered if she should mention the idea she had when he first told her Junior was gone. It would be worth saying out loud. “What if I back your drivin’?”

“Doubt they’d allow that. Wives aren’t permitted such things. They got to be cooking and whatnot.”

“But if I’s your . . . employee. Could they refuse that?”

He lifted up on one elbow looking down at her. Firelight lit her face. “But you’re my . . . you know.”

“Might be safer if peoples think I your slave.” It would grate like rocks on glass not to say she was free, but it would be safer if they allowed the story. Her stomach clenched and the baby moved. “We gots an agreement. I cook and tend you on the journey and clear ground when we gets to the Territory, help prove up your land claim. You s’posed to write down that you provide for me and our children if somethin’ happen to you. Paper could tell ’em that I work for you. They have to let you hire who you want.”

“But the child . . . people will know that—”

“Child be born and I mother him. Not the first time Missouri folk see a mulatto in their midst. They find a way to avoid him. Or her. And if you sick and I drive, I put the baby in a bag like I do my boys when they’s little and I work for the Bowmans. Happy as a little kitten snuggled up against me. Nancy Hawkins help with my child.”

He tugged at his beard. “They might go for it. I could be convincing. And I have hired Knighton and Martin as drovers. Might find a third to rotate with driving if need be. Especially when you’re, well, fixing with the baby.”

“Tell ’em you have a paper claimin’ our agreement.”

“They won’t ask.” She could see him thinking. “Truth is, Tish, I don’t write so well. Barely read.” He cleared his throat. “I’ll get Zach to write and witness it and give the paper to you. First thing in the morning. Anyone asks, you’re my . . . hired-on.”

In the morning Davey put a document into Letitia’s hands.

“This it? It say what we agreed?”

“Had Zach write it out this morning while we were at the corrals getting our oxen ready. There’s my signature.” He pointed. “So you put it with your things.”

She held the paper to her heart with quivering hands.
Wish
I could read it . . .
“I gots room for your citizenship papers too.”

“They’ll do fine where they are.”

Davey left to finish his work and she considered then where to put the safety papers, as she thought of them. She laid them out lengthwise onto a piece of cloth, what was left of Nathan’s little baby quilt. She had a strip that would fold over the papers. She rolled them into a ball the size of her fist then tied them with a ribbon. Now where to keep it. She looked around the wagon. Maybe in her sewing kit. No, too obvious and she’d be taking needles in and out and the small ball of cloth might get tossed aside by mistake. At home, she’d put her paper in a tin hidden in the rafters, but no rafters in the wagon.
The flour barrel.
A perfect place, way down at the bottom. Nancy told her she’d put some of her best
china in her flour barrel. “Zach doesn’t need to even know.” Davey wouldn’t need to know either.

She hadn’t prayed that Junior wouldn’t join them, but perhaps God had heard her silent plea. That Junior had chosen to leave made it easier for her to comfort Davey when for a second time his son deserted him. Now here she was with the precious papers. A gift beyond measure. She stuffed the roll of cloth into the flour barrel. Out of the sorrow at Christmastime had come what she’d hoped for: safety. She brushed the flour away from her bodice and loosened the linen wrapper swaddling her belly. She began to swing and sway, singing, “Oh religion is a fortune, I really do believe.” She had her papers, a baby on its way, and with God’s guiding, she was heading toward real freedom. What more could she want?

The Woman and the boy finished burning out the rotten log.

“Now add dirt. Make sure to mix ashes good. Then we add seeds.”

Before long they would have tobacco plants growing for easy harvest. They already had another burned-out log where the leaves grew tall, and they’d harvested those the year before, new plants coming back now. They’d mix the harvested leaves with bearberry leaves that were always green. Kinnikinnick, the trappers called it. They traded for more when the kinnikinnick was added to tobacco to sweeten the taste and change the smell that no one liked.

“You find the bearberry?” The Woman motioned with her chin to Little Shoot. He hunched his shoulders down, his face wearing a scowl. He stopped, stood in a low mat of green leaves with pink berries shaped like the traders’ lanterns. Later there’d be red berries and stems that tangled like strands of hair over his face.

“Why do we make so much, Kasa? We can’t smoke it.”

“We smoke only a little. Give more to the old ones in the village to comfort their days. No, we trade the rest.”

“The few trappers left?” The boy’s words challenged.

“At the Big River of the dalles we meet people who trade for our tobacco. And more will come. The Others will come. Before long, we will not be alone.”

“Good tobacco will make them want to stay.”

“We do not own the tobacco. We only prepare it. The Others could do it and not need us to trade with them.”

“Hmmph.”

They gathered the shiny leaves, and with the tobacco leaves they’d harvested and dried earlier, they dumped them into water she’d heated to boiling with hot stones. The bearberry greens and dried tobacco swirled into a mass.

“I tell you now so you prepare.” She motioned him to stir with the stick. “The Missionaries tell us, Others will come and many, like them, will stay. We want no trouble with them. Their coming will sharpen us.”

“I am sharp enough.” He held up the stirring stick in his skinny arms above his head. A boy in triumph. “Ayee. This is a thing to remember.”

The Woman watched the boy gain strength. And she smiled that he was beginning to know what things were worthy of remembering.

“I’ve been elected to the executive council. Made a captain.” Davey returned from his evening meeting at Wolf River, a quiet stream that flowed into the Missouri. They waited for others to join them before the large group would head west. He accepted the tin cup of coffee Letitia handed him, then sat on the wagon tongue. He patted the iron, urging her to sit beside him.

“G.B. Smith made the case for himself to captain, but folks selected me.”

It was the first she’d heard that Greenberry Smith would join their company. “He patrollin’?”

“No, no patrols, nothing like that. This ain’t a slave train. ’Cept to guard the cattle and watch for Indian trouble. He’ll be a good patroller at that.” Davey bent to secure the odometer attached to the wheel. “Officers will make final inspections to be sure everyone has the necessary supplies. I’ll be doing it for others, but they’ll select a couple of men to check ours. No favorites being played here.”

G.B. Smith and another man arrived later that day to make the
inspection. She wanted them to pass without being harshed on. Tall and self-assured, G.B. wore a vest over his store-bought shirt and stiff jeans. His black beard was trimmed, unlike Davey’s. Letitia stayed off to the side trying to make herself invisible. A breeze flapped the canvas opening as she tied it back.

“You got a second driver?” This from the secretary, all business-like.

“I do.”

“Let’s see your supplies. Be sure you have enough for three.” He stepped up into the back of the wagon, checking for the tar bucket on the way. He wrote down something about the butter churn hanging from the bow.

G.B. Smith didn’t move from his stand at the side of wagon. “I see you’ve got your slave there.” The hairs on Letitia’s arm shivered. “You heard that Oregon’s provisional government passed a law excluding coloreds, requiring any brazen enough to stay be lashed twice a year until they leave. She won’t be long in that place.”

She turned to Davey to see if that was true.

“I heard. Also heard they declared slavery illegal, not that it matters. Letitia here is free.”

“Is she? The worst kind of colored, if you ask me.”

G.B. knows I
free. He sees my papers.

“Ain’t heard anybody asking you.” Davey winked at her.

The clerk said from inside the wagon, “Who’s your backup driver?”

“She is.” Davey said it with his jovial voice. “Saving money. Don’t have to hire her, just feed her along the way.”

“Getting your slave out of Missouri, the way I see it,” G.B. Smith said.

“She’s free, I tell you. No law being broken if she stayed. Free to hire on to help me head west and so she has. To help drive and build up my claim.”

The clerk jerked his head back out from behind the canvas. “Woman driver? No, no, no. Not strong enough to handle a team nor help lift a wagon wheel if need be. That won’t work.”

Letitia considered speaking up, though her throat felt parched as the bottom of a chicken cage. It was a constant question whether to stand up for herself or try to fit in.

“I got three drovers. Sure enough for my twenty-two loose cows and six oxen. Couple of horses and mules too making up my thirty head of stock. A drover can help drive if need be. Let’s hurry along here.”

Davey sounded confident. A man could stand up for himself; a woman couldn’t.

“As for the woman, she’s small but strong. We’ll all have to help each other. It’s the law of the company, I ’spect.” Davey laughed then, a sound Letitia recognized when he was feeling nervous.

Rothwell huddled under the wagon; his eyes watched the men just as Letitia’s did.

“Very inventive of you, Mr. Carson.” G.B. Smith brushed dust from his new jeans, stared at Letitia’s belly. “Using your wench as both driver and bed warmer.”

How she wished she could say “We married!” Instead she looked away.

“Everything appears to be in order. Twenty pounds of lead; ten pounds of powder. Bacon—200 pounds; 600 pounds flour and 100 pounds of meal. Four guns.” The secretary looked at a list.

“I added an odometer.” Davey pointed. “Did you note that there on the wheel?”

The secretary nodded. “Still not sure about this driver.”

“You takes on boys as drivers when they is twelve. I’s good as them.”

“She’s right.” Davey patted the wheel. “Like you said, everything is in order.”

The clerk pursed his lips. “Pray you don’t ever need her. But I guess if you’ve got drovers too . . .”

G.B. Smith leaned into Davey as he followed his partner heading for the next wagon. He whispered something Letitia couldn’t hear. Letitia saw the flush on Davey’s cheeks as G.B. Smith looked
at her as a hound a raccoon, enjoying the hunt. At his leaving she let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding.

“I don’t cotton to that man.”

“He no favorite of mine. But we through the inspection so we’s good.”

Davey patted her back, his hand damp against her dress. “I ’spect so.”

“Didn’t know I’s cookin’ for drovers, though.”

“Didn’t I tell you? Yup, Knighton and Martin, though their families are going and they’ll feed ’em some, I ’spect. I’ll hire a kid if need be along the way if you can’t do it if you need to. With the baby and all.”

“I drive the oxen. B plods good and steady.” She knew those oxen and the horses and mules. “What G.B. say to you?”

“Nothing a lady should hear. Just be relieved, Tish. We passed the inspection.”

This
one.
But she suspected there’d be all kinds of
inspections
with G.B. along.

Davey cleared his throat. “You spoke up for yourself.”

“Yessuh.”

He scratched at his beard. “Not sure . . . not sure that’s good for us, Tish.”

“They accept me sayin’ I’s as good as a twelve-year-old boy.”

“On the surface, yes. But you challenged G.B. too. He’s not one to forget that a woman spoke up to him.”

Letitia wanted to keep her hands busy. It helped relieve the
cowers
—the quivers and chills of the unknown that came when G.B. Smith sniffed around. She wasn’t sure why she’d spoken up at all. It wasn’t her way. Or hadn’t been.

Nancy Hawkins approached Letitia as she sewed on the tent they’d use for sleeping. Letitia could see a few freckles on Nancy’s creamy skin. She must have had her poke bonnet off. Letitia relied
on her straw hat to block the sun. Edward waddled beside her and Nancy Jane rode on her mother’s hip, her bonnet bow shading her baby face. The other children had already found playmates and were chasing a hapless frog. Even Laura skipped around, dirt on her dimpled face.

“How are you faring?” Nancy brushed puffs of dust into the clear morning air.

“’Spect I survive.”

“Goodness, yes. Praise God for that.” She shifted Nancy Jane to the other side. “I confess I am already tired and we’ve only begun.” When she smiled, dimples pressed into her pretty face.

“Maybe as we get into habits things be better.”

Nancy nodded.

“How many there be?”

“Zach says thousands. But we’ll be in different companies. And he said not to let the children run ahead to another group of wagons as we could lose sight of them and we might not see them until we reach Laramie. Can you imagine losing your child like that? One day there and the next, gone?”

Letitia could imagine.

“Oh, Tisha, I’m so sorry.” Nancy placed a hand on Letitia’s arm. “How thoughtless of me. I didn’t intend—”

“I knows. I keeps my eyes on the little ones. You gots full hands.”

Nancy laughed. “I do that. And I notice that Zach is not nearly so helpful when there are other men around to join him fishing in the evening or jawing as he calls it, when he isn’t mending up some break or wound. We used to spend our evenings together, building quilt frames and planning things and laughing at the children’s antics when he wasn’t hauled out to mend someone up.” She sighed. “Now he’s surrounded by potential patients and fishing and hunting partners. Samuel’s just as bad. It’ll be worse when my brothers and their families join us.”

“Men be different when women around.”

“They are indeed.” She shifted her child again. Letitia offered to
hold her, but Nancy said, “I’d best get back and make sure everything’s ready. You be sure to call on me if you’re feeling poorly.” She watched Letitia’s hands make the stitches on the tent. “A tear already?”

“No. I makin’ the seams stronger ’fore I wax ’em.”

“You can wax mine when you’re finished,” Nancy teased.

“I be pleasured to. I’d be pleased.” Letitia tried to remember to speak the way Nancy and Davey did, in an educated way.

“Oh, Letitia, I was fooling you. I can do the waxing. I hadn’t thought of it. You have enough to do. Sometimes you’re too generous.”

“I be pleasured to help you any way I can. You . . . you the kindest woman I knows.” She looked up at Nancy.

“Oh, paw.” Nancy dismissed the words, but Letitia could see a slight flush at the compliment. She hadn’t meant it as a compliment but as truth. Kindness wasn’t easy to find in this company of strangers, but it lived inside Nancy Hawkins.

There were G.B. Smith’s slurs and those of other men who watched her with wolfish looks as she climbed out of the wagon with streaked meat for supper. She didn’t tell Nancy about the woman who demanded she help lift a heavy pot onto the andirons over her campfire. When Letitia resisted, saying she carried a child, the woman had sniffed and told her, “Your little black offspring isn’t my concern. Feeding my children is. Now you help me or I’ll complain about you to the captain.” Letitia would have offered to help if she’d had a moment, before being ordered to do it.

She didn’t share with Nancy her cowers of how the women would respond once her baby was born. She hoped it would be a girl. Girl babies were less threatening than boy babies, especially if their color was black as coal like hers.

The sounds along with the smells and chaos at Capler’s Landing made Letitia ill. Cattle bawled their unhappiness while children
cried louder than men shouting orders. Dust rose up to coat her teeth as the wagons rolled onto the ferry that bobbed in the dark swirling waters of the Missouri. The river seemed to leer at her on this “jumping off” place, as the ferry transports were called. She watched a man with apple saplings wet the roots with burlap that had been dipped in the river. He was taking hope with him.

So was she with this baby waiting to be born free. The water made her breathe prayers of safety. She’d rarely been across such a wide expanse of river with muddy waves slopping against the wooden craft that set out now groaning against the cable. The current was so strong it pushed the ferry downriver before the 
clang
of the cable snapped the ferry back upstream, knocking her off balance for a bit.

She caught her breath, leaned into Charity, grabbing the leather collar that held her bell. The iron held and the oxen on the other side working the cable bent their shoulders and circled, each time bringing the Carson wagon and two others toward the opposite shore. Rothwell panted beneath the wagon, his pink tongue hanging out from his tan and white muzzle. He’d found sparse shade while Davey calmed the oxen team, mules, and horses. The loose cattle would come on another ferry, the drovers moving the other cows, oxen, and additional mules and horses mixed in with other travelers.