A Light in the Wilderness (12 page)

She rubbed her fingers on the soft velvety ears of her cow, an act as comforting as fingering her son’s baby quilt. The wind whipped her straw hat and it was gone, a tiny wheat-colored circle swirling on the dirty water. She’d be relegated to the bonnet now . . . or on cloudy days one of her red scarves.

Davey stood at the front by the oxen team with each animal’s newly branded horns. “So we can identify the dead ones if they get lost or stolen by Indians,” he’d explained.

Davey looked back once at her. He tipped his hat, assuring her. The adventurer in him lifted him like a boy attached to a kite, not a worry in the world. She guessed that was good that one of them
felt safe and lifted up like a cloud. She vowed to look ahead toward the shoreline and swallowed back her upset stomach.

Once across the big river they’d be no longer in the states, no longer under the “wing of the government,” as Davey said it. She’d never felt any government protection. It was her papers that would keep her safe.

“Watch that wheel chock!” someone shouted back to Davey.

He scurried around to secure the wagon, to keep it from rolling forward. Letitia gripped Charity’s halter tighter. The bell clanged at the cow’s neck as she twisted her head to lick her rough tongue at Letitia’s arm. Spray from the river sprinkled them. She could hear her heart pounding, the cowers making her dizzy and sick and full of prayers when the ferry struck the far bank, knocking her ribs against Charity. The wagon jerked but held. It was May 9.

“Top o’ the morning, we’re here!” Davey lifted his hat and swirled it. “We’ve left the states! Now the journey begins.”

Letitia couldn’t celebrate with him. She lost her breakfast over the side of the ferry.

Davey watched Letitia stand in the shadows of the wagons along with most of the women. A few trotted themselves into the voters choosing up a pilot, but none of them spoke. Davey was grateful Letitia knew her place. Nancy Hawkins was a good woman, but she chatted up Zach maybe a little too much. A man can’t let a woman run him even if the woman made good sense now and then.

Three men vied for the pilot privilege and the $250 to $500 fee they’d earn being responsible for taking people through to Fort Vancouver. Each family would be assessed a portion of the fee of whichever guide was chosen. Davey had done some guiding in the mountains of Carolina but never got that kind of money. He also wasn’t responsible for a thousand people and all the property they brought with them. It was hard to hear all the various voices raising issues, asking for hands to be lifted for votes.

He wished Junior had come along, could have shared these meetings so they could have discussed what happened later. But
maybe not having him bumping heads with Letitia was one less twisted rope he had to straighten out.

He’d just taken a seat on a barrel when someone at the edge of the group shouted, “There’s been a raid! Stock’s missing!”

“Those Caws! I knew it.”

“Now be calm, here. Caws are friendly Indians.” This from a potential pilot.

“Don’t matter!” An Iowa man spoke up. “Mount up and let’s go get ’em!”

Davey saw Letitia scowl as he mounted up. Fifty men—minus the proposed pilot—headed toward a quiet Caw village they’d passed some time before. Davey felt the rush inside him, of bringing to justice people stealing stock. The men charged into the village but Davey pulled up Fergus. Something was amiss. He watched as the Caws scattered, frightened as field mice, dipping under tents, running behind trees, women’s braids flying in the air as they grabbed children for safety, cries and shouts ringing in the morning air. He didn’t see a cow in sight.
This don’t look like
a raiding party place.

“Lookee here!” he shouted. “Let’s see if we can get answers rather than scalps.”

Swirling mounts snorted, their riders reining up as Davey conveyed concerns to the six or seven unarmed men whose village they’d invaded. At least they were talking. The elders shook their heads. To Davey, these Indians couldn’t have been the thieves. No cattle milled about. Why had he rushed to join them in the first place? He remembered Letitia’s scowl.

“There’s one! He just came back! I bet he stole ’em.” A Kentucky man, pointing, spurred his horse toward an Indian riding a mule entering the village. Greenberry Smith seized him, pulling him from his mule. “We’ll take this one back for trial.”

“He’s trying to give you his mule, G.B.,” Davey said. “He wouldn’t do that if he’d stolen cattle. Lookee here. There’s no sign of stock. They’re peaceful.”

“Quit defending this dead Indian.”

No one supported Davey, and the man was bound and led forward, a rope forcing him beside another’s horse.

At least they
aren’t going to hang him on the spot.
Calmer heads would prevail if he could ensure the man got taken back to the company. He removed his hat, wiping his forehead of sweat.

“Let’s keep him alive,” Davey said. “Give the man his day in court.”

A few days out and there were already accusations and legalities and people behaving like schoolyard kids.

Back at the wagons, the chosen judge shouted, “I call this court to order.” Judge Kindred, Hawkins’s brother-in-law, presided at the makeshift court of wagons and ropes. “Carson, ask him if he knows anything about missing cattle.”

Davey did so. The Caw shook his head, as hard as a man wrongly accused of stealing could do. “He says he knows nothing, Your Honor. And truth be, he just rode in and they were having a ceremony, so I don’t think they’d have been out rustling. Mule didn’t look to be rode like someone chasing cattle. Shucks, he even offered to give Greenberry Smith over there his mount. Why would he do that if he had been out stealing?”

“That true, G.B.?”

Smith hesitated then nodded.

“A man hates to be charged with something he didn’t do.” Davey thought of that minx Eliza who had challenged his reputation.

“Truth is, the drovers count all the cattle still here, Judge.” Sheepish words from one of his own drovers.

There wasn’t even a theft?

“Not guilty!” declared the judge. “Get the man something to eat. See if we take the scare out of him, poor fellow.”

No one seemed to have anything more to say about the so-called trial. They resumed the meeting, though Davey thought they might have been a little shamed for riding off all wild over nothing, scaring women and children mostly. He was.

Letitia reached down deep into the flour barrel and felt the cloth tied with the red ribbon that encircled her papers. She didn’t open the cloth. She needed the reassurance the papers were there. They were “evidence” of her freedom. Without evidence she might not be able to defend herself over whatever strange charges could happen on this journey. That poor Caw was at the mercy of the court, though thank goodness he had Davey’s level head to defend him. She never wanted to be at the mercy of others.

She pulled her arm out of the deep part of the flour, brushed the powder from her elbow, and plopped a handful in the bowl to mix up johnnycakes, humming to her child as she worked.

In the morning they heard the guides compete again, and this time Stephen Meek stood on a barrel and shouted, “By eternal Moses, I been thar . . .” He raved about the disasters they could encounter and ride out only if “by eternal Moses you listen to me!” And for some reason, he won the Oregon Emigrating Group over. Another company said they’d go without a guide. Davey told her he just “wanted to get going. All this chattering is taking precious time and supplies.”

A part of her wished they could stay a few more days and she could deliver this baby. She felt like a watermelon, every step a waddle.

On their way now, morning routines began before dawn. Nancy Hawkins thought it strange that the men kept changing companies to travel with.
That
company had fewer cattle to watch after or
this
company moved faster. She shook her head. And they say women had fickle ways. After crossing the Missouri River, the Carson and Hawkins families traveled northwest, meeting up with Solomon
Tetherow and Stephen Staats as captains now. Davey Carson told Zach he was happy to turn his captaining over to others, be responsible for his own instead of many.

Nancy walked beside the wagon, scruffs of dust billowing up to make her cough. When the baby slept she could quilt a block or sometimes crochet a little lace as she walked. She pushed the side of her bonnet back so she could see better to her side, freckles or not. The bonnets made her feel like she lived in a tunnel. She hated having to turn her head to see what dangers might lurk at her side or even to greet a friend. Nancy’s mother and sister and two brothers—one everyone called “Judge”—and their families had joined. The gathering of more family added comfort. She had in-laws, nieces, nephews, one little niece, Mary Margaret, born in March not long before they’d left. Nancy got on well with her mother-in-law, exchanging suggestions as the two cared for infants.

Birds twittered from the bushes beside the Kansas River they followed into a hazy sky. She stepped away from the dusty road, careful not to step in front of another wagon, her eyes first scanning to see where the children were. That Laura. Such a scamp. Inside the cabin she had been all quiet and frail, while out here in the wide-open spaces the child had become a fluff of dandelion hair, racing after dogs, jumping off the wagon and back on, holding a stick to the wheel to hear it
tick-tick-tick
. She’d have to keep an eye on that girl, give her little tasks to keep her out of trouble.

She was surprised at how relieved she felt to be in a daily routine. No more planning or choosing what to leave behind. What they had now was all they’d have, and each would have to adjust to the dwindling supplies or the weather reversals such as Sarah had written of in her letter. Nancy liked the sounds of the harness and hames, the lowing of cattle, and the tick of the odometer as the wheel turned to mark their miles. She carried Nancy Jane bundled in a cloth tied to her front, patting the child’s bottom as she walked talking to her sister.

On a small rise Nancy looked outward. “Oh look.” She clutched
her sister’s arm. The world opened up before her. Like strands of oatmeal-colored yarn furled along bright green prairie grass, the wagons spread out across the landscape, not in a single line but several. The river bordered in blue. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” This would be their lives now, a steady walk through new landscapes sashaying into the hopefulness of the unknown.
One day I’ll weave that image into a quilt
.
She’d add a daisy or two, even though they weren’t growing here.

She already had ideas to break up the monotonous days once these vistas became familiar. She’d plan special celebrations for the children’s birthdays and make up flour pastes to color with wildflower blossoms to give the children things to do when the weather turned foul and they were stuck traveling inside the wagon. She shifted Nancy Jane in the carrying sack that lodged her youngest and brushed back the tawny hair from Nancy Jane’s forehead.
Hot.
Maybe from the sun. She’d have to make sure her bonnet offered cooling shade for the child. She cuddled the baby closer. At the wagon, from one of her many petticoats, she tore a strip of cloth, dipped it into cool water from the barrel to relieve the child’s flushed face.

“I’m worried over Nancy Jane,” Nancy told her husband that evening.

The children had been put to bed in their own tent while she and Zach and the baby and Edward stayed in another. Dogs barked in the distance. They hadn’t brought their dog. Zach had said the companies didn’t really want them. “They scare the cattle.” But Nancy missed their old hound. Letitia helped her find a home for him at the hotel with two young colored girls.

Somewhere farther away a fiddler played a happy tune. “Seems like she’s fevered even though I wash her with cool water. I hoped she’d be a healthy baby. Laura’s the one I worry over with her little wild side. Goodness. Now I have two that trouble my thoughts.”