Wind Walker (26 page)

“When I was walking back here from camp alone to see you, I kept thinking that she must surely be used to white women, since you two live here at Major Bridger’s fort where so many white folks come through all summer long. But I was afraid too that she’d look down her nose at me for being a silly young white woman.”

“I don’t think Waits-by-the-Water could look down her nose at anyone,” he stated. “She’s the kindest, most gentle an’ loving person I met in my whole blamed life, Amanda.”

“Wouldn’t want her thinking any less of me because I’m younger than her, white and all.”

“How old are you now?” he asked her, failing to recall.

“I turned thirty-two on the trail, Pa. Back in June, along the North Platte.”

His face screwed up a minute as he did his best ciphering right there in his head. “Thirty-two? Why, you ain’t much younger’n Waits is. She’s in her thirty-second summer.”

“Sh-she’s the same age as me?”

He nodded. “Can’t be more’n a few months older’n you, at the most. Why, that alone’ll give you two so much to talk about.”

“She speaks English?”

“Waits talks real good American. Magpie and Flea too. Jackrabbit, now he’s getting the hang of it as he gets older.”

She smiled. “Supper here sounds grand, Pa. If you don’t think we’ll be imposing on her, Waits-by-the-Water.”

“I don’t think there’s a chance of that, Amanda,” he explained. “Soon as I came back to Taos to fetch her north to her home country, I started telling her all about you, ’bout your mother and grandpa too. We even talked about me
takin’ her back to St. Louie some time, to look you up and spend some time. But … St. Louie and all them folks, all them farms an’ houses an’ crowded towns back there—just never seemed like a good enough idea for me to do.”

Amanda nodded and reached out to take one of his gritty hands in both of hers. “So, I had to come west to find you, didn’t I?”

“That what you was intendin’ to do?”

“No, I really never thought I’d see you again, Pa,” she confessed. “Figured you’d be dead, killed by Injuns or bears or froze in the mountains by now. Never figured I’d hear your name spoken again in the balance of my days.”

“Then you heard tell of Titus Bass in the store at Fort Bridger.”

She laughed. “Even heard your name cursed at Fort Laramie. The Frenchmen there swore they’d love to cut your throat, if they ever got hands on you!”

“So you figgered I’d gone under awready?”

“Chances weren’t good for a man surviving this long out here, Pa—were they?”

“No, Amanda,” he admitted. “But, I had the spirits smiling down on me ever’ since I come west in twenty-five. Ain’t no other reason I come through all the scrapes I put behind me.”

“God’s been good seeing me through this journey so far, Pa,” she said, casting down her eyes. “Lately, we haven’t had the best life, Roman and me.”

His eyes narrowed. “He ain’t been bad to you, has he?”

She looked at him again, saying, “No, no—Roman’s been a good husband. Strong and full of love, Pa. For me and the children. God knows he isn’t the brightest man I could have married, but he had the best heart.”

“Why you say you ain’t had the best life, you two?”

Shrugging her shoulders, Amanda turned slightly from her father. “Sometimes I think there’s certain people just not meant to make a go of things in life. No matter how hard they try, no matter they throw their whole heart into something … time after time.”

“There’s some folks who wander this way and that afore they eventual’ find the way of their life,” he responded after a long moment of thought. “Your own pa was that sort, Amanda.”

“There’s been times when it was real hard on the children,” she explained, looking up at him again. “Row … my Roman—sometimes he gets dark. Those were the times I could tell the failure was eating him up inside, Pa. He’d look around at other folks who had a store and they’re making a little money for their family. Or, Roman would look around and see other folks making the ground work for them, feeding their family and putting a little money away for the lean times. But … seems like it’s always been lean times for us. Never got any better. Last few years, we been going from bad times to worse times, no matter what Roman threw himself into with all his might.”

From the look on her face and the sound of her words, he was almost afraid to ask her the question, “You still love him?”

Yet she nodded her head emphatically and smiled as she said, “Oh, yes, Pa. I love him. Enough to follow him to Oregon Territory where he wants to make a new dream happen for us. Roman’s so sure that will be the place for us. You should see the way his face shines when he talks about the new life we’ll have out there.”

“Does my heart good to see that your man wants the best for his family,” Titus replied, reassured.

“He does, Pa. I know it in my heart.”

“So you’re gonna stand by him?” he asked.

“Every step of the way,” she declared with conviction. “We’re doing this for the children, going to Oregon for our family. Make a new start we haven’t been able to do anywhere else as we moved across Missouri, from one settlement to the next … hoping each new place was going to be the one where we’d really sink down roots and build up something good.”

Holding out his arms, Bass stepped toward her. Amanda came into the shelter of her father’s arms and laid her cheek
against his shoulder. He said, “Ever’thing I hear about Oregon tells me it’s the place for a farmer’s family to put down those roots and make a life for themselves.”

“We started out reading all the papers and books about Oregon we could find,” she explained. “Right from the first, Row said it got much more rain than we got back home in Missouri. Some people wrote that it didn’t take much for anything to grow out there: just scratch a hole in the ground, drop in the seed, and wait for it to sprout right up on its own!”

“Other folks what already come through this summer all said pretty much the same thing, Amanda,” he emphasized. “On their faces is writ all the much trouble they been through getting this far west, but in their eyes is still the light of where they know they’re going.”

“I never knew the journey would be this hard on us, this tough on the children,” she admitted. “Never gone through anything like this that sucks me dry of all my strength by the end of every day … laying my head down every night, knowing I gotta get back up in the morning and do it all over again.”

“Sometimes your life can seem like it’s taking you nowhere,” he agreed thoughtfully. “But you just keep putting one foot out in front of the other, then one day—you an’ Roman gonna be standing in Oregon where you was meant to be.”

She backed up a step and gazed into his eyes. “There’s been times when we made camp late in the afternoon, to give us time to cook and clean up after supper before it got dark—and we’d look back to the east. How it makes my heart sink when I can see where we got up that very morning, Pa! After miles and miles of dust and heat, rocks and creek crossings, flies and gnats, and the sun allays sucking every drop of water outta me … and I can still see where we got up that morning!”

“Them wagons, ox or mule, ain’t made for covering ground fast, Amanda,” he sympathized. “Hell, your family damn well could mount up on horses, take along some pack
animals, and light out from here to Oregon. Make it in half the time, I’d wager.”

“H-half?”

“But you’d be living off the land,” he continued. “An’ when you got to Oregon, you wouldn’t have all them things you brung with you to make that new home for yourselves when you got there.”

Staring at the ground, Amanda said, “I’ve got a set of my grandmother’s dishes in our wagon. Packed down in the flour barrel. Brought her bed and quilt too.”

“See? You couldn’t leave none of that behind!”

Nodding, she agreed, “Others, they’ve left a little here, and a little there along the trail—lightening the load the farther we went. But me, I just gotta keep up my courage for the days to come, the way I kept up my courage ever since we put Westport behind us. I can only pray to the Lord that the road’s gonna get easier from here on out.”

He took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “Truth be, Amanda … the way from here gets tougher. What you’ve come through since leaving Fort John on the Platte, it’s about the same clear on to Fort Hall. But from there to the Columbia by way of the Snake—that’s some bad, bad country.”

Her sunburned face went haggard, drawn. “We haven’t seen the worst of the trail?”

Wagging his head, Titus told his daughter, “No. There’s times out there a farmer or shopkeeper from back east gonna stop and wonder why he’s in the middle of the wilderness. It’s gonna seem like it goes on forever, with no way out, not back east or on west. That’s where your Roman is either gonna have his dream go up in smoke, or he’s gonna grip it even tighter’n he holds on to you, Amanda. Out there … where you’re taking your family to find your dream—that’s where you—
you
, Amanda—are gonna have to put your whole heart into the journey to see the rest of your family through.”

“I kept hoping …”—her voice sounded small and weakened as she stared at the anvil—“that when we got halfway,
the road would get better, easier on the animals and the wagons, easier on us, too. Ever since I couldn’t see Westport behind us no more, I’ve been praying that the way would get better.”

“But I’ll bet you got harder, toughened up, as you come west, Amanda,” he attempted to cheer her. “And what you come through awready is gonna make you able to last out the hard scrapes that lay ahead of you.”

She reached down and took one of his hands in both of hers. “I’ve got a good husband, a loving man. In my heart I know he’s gonna get us to Oregon. And the Lord is gonna watch over us—see us all the way through.”

Smiling, Titus told his daughter, “Don’t you feel your heart jump when you think about making this journey to a new home, Amanda?”

“It’s about the only thing helps me get back up in the darkness before sunrise every morning, Pa. I look out there ahead of us, and think to myself: ‘Just over that next hill I’m gonna see our new home.’ Then we make it to the top of that rise, so—I pick out another hill to look at and dream on. Over and over I do the same thing through the day till we finally stop for the night, when I can shake the dust outta my hair and clothes, put some salve on the sunburn and them bites the flies gave me.”

“That’s the way I done for myself all these years,” he declared. “Take a day at a time, take a hill at a time if I have to. Best part is seeing some new country, Amanda. Where I ain’t never been before—”

“Why don’t you come with us?” she blurted out, hope filling her eyes.

He could only stare at her dumbfounded.

“Bring your family,” Amanda pleaded. “There’s gotta be some new country for you to roam between here and there, Pa. Come see it for yourself.”

“I don’t think I wanna ever go to Oregon again, Amanda,” he tried to explain. “It’s become a place for settlers and sodbusters. Not the place for a wanderin’ man like me.”

Pressing her lips together, Amanda nodded. “You weren’t
the settling-down kind back when you knew my mother. Likely you never will be, Pa.”

“But that don’t make me no better or worse’n a farmer like your Roman,” he explained. “Just differ’nt. I ain’t never been the sort to want those things, Amanda. I run away from farming back in Kaintuck when I was sixteen. About the age you run away from your ma.”

Taking a step toward him, Amanda looped an arm through one of his. “Won’t do me any good to try talking you into bringing your family to Oregon with us?”

He gazed down into her green eyes and shook his head. “Can’t. This here’s where I wanna stay. Ain’t never thought about leaving the mountains.”

Disappointment clouded her eyes. “I won’t say anything more about it, because I can remember how anxious you were to get healed up enough so you could get out of St. Louis and back to the mountains.”

“Back to my wife, and where I was s’posed to be,” he confided. “Now, you best be on your way to fetch up that family an’ have ’em back here afore suppertime.”

She took a few steps, then turned to him once more. “Pa, I need to ask you a favor. Please don’t say nothing to Roman about what I said of me ever being afraid of us going to Oregon.”

“I unnerstand,” Titus agreed. “Just atween you an’ me.”

Interlocking her fingers again, Amanda appeared nervous. “I can’t imagine what it’d do to Row if he was to find out I’ve been afraid of us finding a place to live out our lives. If he learned that I was able to tell you things I haven’t said to no one in so long.”

“That makes your pa proud to be the ears you told. We’ll keep our talk atween ourselves. No one else need know. Now, you best get along back to camp so you’re here before supper.”

“I can’t wait to meet my brothers and my new sister,” she said, her eyes growing a little misty as she stood there at the border of shadow and sunlight. “I … I never had no brothers and sisters before, Pa.”

“You do now, Amanda.”

She asked, “And you know what you got in turn?”

“What?”

“You got four grandchildren.”

That took his breath a moment, struck with the sudden sureness of the revelation.

“Damn, if I don’t,” he exclaimed quietly. “Here I am, ’bout to have my fifth child come this winter … an’ I got four grandpups awready! If that don’t shine!”