Janet Quin-Harkin (11 page)

“What an absurd idea,” Libby said shortly.

Rival went on chuckling. “So you really want me to believe there’s a devoted little husband waiting for you, sweating in the California sunshine?”

“You can believe what you like,” Libby said, stirring the stew savagely. “Where I come from, you can trust the word of a gentleman or a lady, but then I don’t suppose you’ve had much experience with either.”

“Watch that soup, it’s bubbling over,” Rival snapped. “Get on with your job.”

“Gladly,
sir
,” Libby said and went on stirring.

It rained hard all night. Libby cuddled close to her little girls while the wind blew in through the joints in the canvas and rain dripped from spots which had not been properly waterproofed. In the morning the rain eased to a fine drizzle but as they set out, they found that the track before them had turned to a sea of mud. The ox teams strained, the drivers cracked whips and cursed, but one by one, the wagons slithered and got stuck.

Jimmy rode up to Sheldon Rival. “Just like I told you, you’ve got them loaded too heavily,” he shouted. “You’ll have to lighten the load.”

“I’m not lightening any load,” Rival yelled back. “Why do you think I’ve got all this stuff along? For my own pleasure? The only reason for going is to sell it in California.”

“You won’t make it to the first ferry, let alone California, if you don’t leave some of it behind,” Jimmy said.

“Then take out all your own personal stuff and make the people walk.”

“They are all walking, except for Jackson and he’s down with a fever.”

“Cholera? If you’re keeping cholera from me, I’ll have you horsewhipped.”

“It’s not cholera, keep your hair on,” Jimmy said. “It’s a marsh fever. He’s got the shivers.”

“Give him a mule and send him back to Independence,” Rival barked. “I’m taking no liabilities and no sick passengers along with me. I’m taking no risks, understand me, boy?”

“But Mr. Rival . . .” Jimmy began.

“Remember who’s paying you, boy,” Rival snapped. “Get rid of him and tell the men to carry their own stuff until we’re out of this mud.”

“We won’t be out of this mud,” Jimmy said. “Every wagon that’s gone ahead of us will have churned up the track until it’s impassable. You’ve got to lighten now or we’ll never make it. Do you want to come with me now and tell me what you want left behind or do you want me to do it for you?”

The two men glared at each other like fighting dogs, then Rival stepped down from his wagon. “We’ll redistribute,” he said. “I’m not leaving one shovel or one sack of flour.”

They started down the train, past the straining and sweating oxen. Libby held her breath as they came closer to her wagon.

“Maybe you could get rid of some of this food,” she heard Jimmy say. “You’ve got an awful lot to feed just one person. Maybe you’ll have to go without some of those luxuries.”

“Very well, very well,” Sheldon Rival said with a sigh. “I suppose I can sacrifice as well as the next man. This is one wagon I want to get through without mishap. What do you think I’ve got too much of?”

Jimmy leaped up onto the back of the wagon. “Well for a start,” he began, then he pulled away a sack and stopped. “What have we here?” he asked.

Eden and Bliss crept out, wide-eyed with fear. Libby jumped and grabbed them. “They are my children,” she said. “Mr. Rival wanted me to leave them behind. I couldn’t do it.”

Sheldon Rival’s face was almost purple with anger. “You dared to try and trick me?” he asked. “When I said no brats, I meant no brats.”

“They’ll be no trouble,” Libby said. “They can walk. They do not need to ride in your precious wagons. They can eat from my portion of food. We will ask nothing of you.”

“Absolutely right that you’ll ask nothing,” Rival shouted, “and nothing’s what you’ll get. You can take them and . . .”

The sentence was cut off because Gabe Foster came riding up, pushing his horse between Rival and Libby. “Hey, there they are,” he said, bending to scoop Eden and Bliss up onto his saddle. “My two favorite ladies. I knew they couldn’t be far away. Come along, I’ve been telling all the guys about you and they want to meet the prettiest girls between here and California. They’re all looking forward to hearing you sing to them at the campfire tonight.”

He turned his horse and started to head back down the wagons again. “Even you couldn’t be that much of a rat, Rival,” he muttered over his shoulder.

Sheldon scowled after him as he watched his guards crowd around the little girls and heard high childish laughter.

“You better keep them well away from me,” he said, “and you try and trick me on anything else and I’ll forget you’re a lady, so help me.”

“Don’t worry,” Libby said. “I have no further reason not to be straight with you.”

L
IBBY’S DIARY
:
June 10, 1849. We do not seem to be progressing westward very quickly. Already we have become bogged down in terrible mud. The whole trail is churned up and littered. It is not pleasant walking through sticky mud, and the mosquitoes particularly seem to love our fair northern skin. The children and I are covered in bites which are soothed somewhat by plastering wet mud on them, making us look like strange, primitive tribes-people!

It took a while to get going again after some of Rival’s goods had been taken out to lighten the loads. The men had to bring up the spare ox teams to drag the wagons, one by one, through each patch of mud, and even when they spread out sacking over the track, it was hard going. It was clear that every party ahead of them had to similarly lighten loads to get through. All along the trail was a litter of abandoned articles—sacks of bacon, fancy clothing, even an iron stove.

“Pity I didn’t bring an extra wagon just for the purpose,” Sheldon Rival muttered. “Or even a fleet of extra wagons. I have a feeling I could have sold people back their own stuff when we reached California.”

“You’re all heart,” Libby said, making him laugh.

When they camped for the night everyone was exhausted and even Sheldon Rival was too tired to complain about his food. They had only covered twelve miles in twenty-four hours.

Later the next day they came to the first ferry. Wagons were lined up for a mile or more along the bank. Men sat in the sunshine making repairs to wagon wheels, sewing up canvas into bags or shelters. Others stood waist deep in the river, washing clothes. Everyone seemed to be occupied with a huge spring cleaning.

They had to wait three days for their turn to cross. Rival offered to pay extra to the ferrymen to cut to the head of the line, but there were enough men waiting who stood fingering their rifles to convince him to get back to his place. Finally it was their turn to cross. The ferry was simply eight dugout canoes lashed together with planks on top. Onto this they loaded the wagons and swam the oxen and mules across. Libby thought the whole contraption looked very flimsy and would almost rather have swum across with the mules. She held on tightly to the children as the water lapped at the ferry boards, but all of Sheldon Rival’s company made it across and struck out westward again.

Soon after, the soft, wooded countryside came to an end. Ahead was a sea of grass, waist high and sighing in the light wind. They could see wagons from companies ahead of them, their bowed canvas tops now truly looking like white sails on a green-golden ocean. Through the middle of this endless prairie a new line of brown was now drawn where countless wagons had already created deep parallel ruts in the rich soil. Sheldon Rival’s wagons now started across this, the rocking of the wagons each adding to the illusion of sailing. Libby found all this evoked more painful memories of home; the creaking of sailing ships in Boston Harbor, the tangy ocean breeze, the beach at Cape Cod, picnics, beach parties—all so civilized and safe. All along this prairie trail were constant reminders of how very precarious life was at the present; not just castoff furniture, photos in heavy frames, sacks of food or tools, but graves, every mile or so, covered with new soil and primitive wooden crosses with crudely scrawled inscriptions on them—Josiah Weldon from Buffalo, New York. Died May 28, 1849. Aged 17 Years.

Libby looked carefully at each one, hoping not to see Hugh’s name. As she stared down at the fresh red earth a new and more disturbing thought came into her mind. She found herself almost hoping that she would come across Hugh’s name so that she need not subject her children to the terrible unknown ahead and could go home again with clear conscience.

“Poor devil,” Gabe said, riding up beside her as she stared at a grave, lost in thought. “To think that his family back in New York is still imagining him filling his pockets with gold.” He shook his head. “This whole thing is madness.”

“But you chose to subject yourself to it?”

Gabe gave her that easy, laconic smile. “Don’t you know the devil always protects his own?”

“Don’t say things like that, even in jest,” she said, shivering. She watched his back as he rode up and talked to Eden and Bliss, perched in the back of the wagon. She saw their faces light up and heard their laughter as he spoke with them. I don’t know what to make of you, Mr. Gabriel Foster, she said to herself. I’ve never met anyone who confuses me as much as you do.

When they stopped to camp that evening, Jimmy had the wagons drawn into a circle. “We’re moving into Pawnee country,” he said.

“I’d like to see any damn Pawnee try to mess with me,” Sheldon Rival said. “We’ve enough firepower here to blast the whole Pawnee nation to kingdom come.”

“I’m not worried about an attack,” Jimmy said. “I’m more concerned with a sneak raid in the night that carries off all our mules.”

He came over to Libby. “From now on you start collecting buffalo chips,” he said. “You won’t see more than five trees between here and the Rockies.”

“Come children,” Libby called to the little girls. “You can help Mama get fuel for the fire.”

“Watch them, though,” Jimmy called after her. “You don’t want them stepping on a rattlesnake. Keep them close to you.”

“There are snakes here?” Libby asked, suddenly not anxious to leave the rutted camping area and set off into the waving grass.

Jimmy grinned, a very boyish grin in a weathered man’s face. “Don’t worry. They won’t hurt you if you don’t hurt them, but they do object to being stepped on.”

Libby took down an empty sack. “Maybe you ought to stay and play here, girls,” she said. “I don’t want to be worrying about you when I have to work.”

“We’ll be very good and careful, Mama,” Eden said. “We’ll stay right beside you as Mr. Jimmy said we should.”

“Yes, Mama, we want to come,” Bliss added, not wanting to be left out.

“All right, come on then,” Libby said.

In half an hour they had filled the sack with buffalo chips. They were not as disgusting as Libby had feared they would be, but hard and herb-smelling. The girls, not knowing what they were touching, filled the sack while Libby searched.

Libby had gone a little way ahead, leaving the girls sitting beside the sack when she heard a sudden yell. “Mama! A snake! I’ve been bitten by a snake!”

Libby rushed back to see a terrified Eden jumping up and down, slapping at her legs. “Mama, it’s biting me. Make it stop biting me!”

“Where? Where?” Libby struggled with Eden’s pantaloons.

“On my legs. It’s biting my legs.”

“Both legs?” Libby succeeded in pulling down the long cotton panties.

“There’s no snake here,” she said.

“But it hurts, it’s biting me,” Eden protested, almost hysterical now. “Make it go away.”

Little red wheals were appearing all over Eden’s calves. Libby, calmer now that she could see no snake, spotted the problem. “It’s only ants,” she said. “Look, nasty little red ants. Hold still and I’ll brush them all away.”

“They hurt like snakes,” Eden complained, scowling down at her legs.

“I’m sure they did,” Libby said soothingly. “Let’s go back to camp and we’ll put some nice cold water on the bites.”

She led the children back, glad that she had not obeyed her first impulse to yell for help. She could imagine how Jimmy would have grinned if she had panicked over a few ants.

For the next few days life settled into a pattern with nothing to break the monotony. They broke camp early in the morning and marched until the heat of the day became unbearable. Then they marched again at midafternoon before finding a safe camping spot for the night.

In her diary Libby wrote:
June 15, 1849. In the middle of nowhere, between Independence and Fort Kearny. I had thought dangers would be the worst part of the journey, but I can see that boredom is far worse an enemy. Nothing changes from day to day. The sun rises, the sun sets and we don’t seem to have progressed at all. How I long for something to change the monotony. Anything to speed up the pace of this journey. How will I endure three months of this
?

The sun shone down on the back of necks and bare arms, turning them from white to red to brown. Libby kept her bonnet pulled forward over her face in the hope of at least keeping her complexion pale, but she noticed as she peered into her little hand mirror that there were already unsightly freckles over her nose. Apart from that minor tragedy, she was now getting used to the journey. Her feet no longer throbbed with blisters at the unaccustomed walking. She had managed to bake bread in the dutch oven. She was even developing muscles from scouring out the blackened, sticky cooking pots and was feeling rather proud of the way she was coping.

If Father could only see me now, she thought with a smile.

The little girls were also looking well, choosing to walk with Libby rather than ride in the wagon. Libby was fanatical about selecting what they ate and drank, always aware of those cholera graves beside the track.

From time to time they overtook other groups that had stopped to mend broken wagon shafts or change wheels. The strangers often invited them to share a cup of coffee, but Sheldon Rival always insisted on pushing on, showing no interest in either socializing or helping his fellow travellers. Once they overtook a party down with fever. Rival made his drivers push on the teams with all speed and he kept his handkerchief clamped over his own mouth until they were far away.