A Clearing in the Wild (19 page)

“We decide together.”

But I hadn’t seen it.

Neither did I see the discussion that led to my now riding Opal instead of my horse, Fred. One morning Fred stood packed and Opal saddled while Christian helped me up. Christian rode the traded-for-mule and had for several days.

“The mule’s gait is better,” he said. “It’ll be an easier ride for you.”

When we came to a gradual uphill slope some days later that Christian said must be South Pass, I didn’t know how he knew that, either,
until we reached the top, and I could see streams flowing west now instead of east. We’d arrived at the Continental Divide.

I noted graves along the trail, and further into the mountains, large granite boulders shaded a portion of our journey. I longed for the vista offered a few weeks back by Independence Rock. These rocks closed in. I had the fleeting thought that it might be a grand place for an ambush by Indians, something we were told to be wary of at each wagon stop, where we encountered the outside world. I preferred it when we camped away from that sort of thinking. Maybe, like me, travelers thought the worst in order to keep it from happening.

A few days later, we entered a narrow opening through the mountains. The horses and mules pulled back, sidestepped or tried to. They whinnied and strained against the reins. Hans’s horse shied first and stumbled sideways, though it kept its footing. That abrupt action appeared to startle the horse behind him and then the one behind it, causing the pack animals to yank their lead ropes. Even steady Opal pranced and swished her tail. “
Ach
, be good now,” I chastened her.

Hans Stauffer shouted to move the animals on out faster, if possible, to get into the wider opening where we could find out what troubled them. Perhaps a burr worked its way under a saddle, or maybe a pack slipped. Maybe they smelled an Indian ambush. I looked up. Bare, pinkish rocks rounded over us. I could see a patch of sky, but nothing out of the ordinary on the rock ledges.

Then Opal bolted, pushing her way along the narrow path occupied by the horses ahead. She attempted passage to the right of John Genger’s horse directly ahead of me, so both my legs pushed against his horse rather than the rock wall that Opal grazed. I pushed back with
my knees and my hands, but the sidesaddle pitched me forward, out of balance, and I let loose the pack animal and hung with both hands onto the pommel.

Unable to squeeze forward, Opal bolted back, making odd sounds of distress, attempting to rear up. Then she bucked, and before I knew what had happened, I’d landed on my back in the dust left behind by Opal, the packhorse running loose behind her. The world swam around as the packhorse’s hooves threw pebbles at me as it tried to avoid me. I couldn’t catch my breath. It felt like drowning, I imagined, with no way to take air.

Christian’s mule barely avoided stepping on me as Christian raced up behind. He jumped off in an instant.

“Emma!” I waved at him, unable to get my breath.

“Stay calm. The air will return,” he assured me. At last air filled my lungs, never more sweet, though it was laced with dust. He brushed the dirt from my wrapper as he helped me stand.

Christian’s mule bolted past both of us now, the packhorse running loose behind it. “What’s wrong with them? What’s happening?”

We heard shouts and wailing animal screams coming from the area in front of us. Clouds of dust billowed like fog. Adam Knight shouted. Christian held my elbow and we stumbled forward.

Through the dust, the men had drawn their weapons, but I couldn’t see the enemy. One of the packhorses lay on its side, breathing hard, blood in long scratches oozing from its neck.

Through the haze I spied Opal in erratic motions. She stomped with her front feet, pummeling something beige on the ground. Braying sounds pierced the air. “Oh, ho!” Joe Knight shouted.

The creature that lay before Opal attempted to get up, and she bit at its neck, then lifted it, and like a mother cat shaking a mouse to its
death to provide lunch for her
Kinder
, she shook the animal back and forth until it hung limp. Then she dropped it.

A young mountain cat lay in the dust. Opal had stomped and bitten and shaken it to death.

I’d never seen a mountain lion before, let alone watched a mule kill one. The wind moved the fine hair of the lion. It had paws as big as my palm.

There were dangers in this landscape I had no knowledge of, dangers in confined spaces, in narrow places without vistas. I knew then that the Lord must lead us scouts to a landscape where we could see for miles, so we could always see ahead to dangers lurking.

We made adjustments with one fewer pack animal, the cat’s last prey. We dried the meat. It was my first taste of mule meat, but George Link said we must never waste what God provided. Piecing together what had happened, the men decided that the mountain lion must have lain in wait, hunkered down above us as we moved through the narrow place. The horses and the mules soon got its scent, and it was Opal who proved the most indignant at this interruption. Opal stood out.

The feast we held that night brought out harmonicas, and Hans and George Link and the Knight brothers danced jigs arm in arm to the sizzle of meat at the fire. Other scouts not dancing or playing clapped. We rejoiced in our safe keeping and our “guard mule,” as we now called Opal. “Didn’t need a dog to tree that cat,” Joe Knight said, his finger held up to the wind.

“But a dog might have forewarned us,” I said. “I still hope we can find a lost pup somewhere.”

“At least we were spared,” John Genger said. He sat with his ankles crossed, a cup of coffee in his hands and his Pennsylvania Long Rifle lying beside him. He didn’t play the harmonica. I didn’t disagree with him, though I had a bruise the size of Missouri—and still growing—on
my backside, and the infant hadn’t let me have more than a taste of the meat before it began its kicking again.

“We’ve been looked after,” Christian said. And I agreed, even knowing he hadn’t seen the bruise yet.

We headed north toward Fort Hall, where we hoped to restock our meager supply of cornmeal, among other things. At one point along the trail, a man with vegetables, onions and carrots and tomatoes, sat beneath a shaded tent. He smiled as he took our money, said something back to Christian, and they laughed. “He’s Mormon, up from their place at the Salt Lake,” Christian interpreted for us. Later Christian said they’d laughed because the Mormon said his vegetables were so good and so long-lasting that our baby would probably be holding a carrot in his hand when he arrived in this world.

“You told him about—”

“He can see,
Liebchen
. Your round face, the gap in your wrapper.” He tugged at the gusset I’d had to sew in to ease the tightness across my breast. The infant had six months by my calculations and would be good size if these past weeks of his kicking and growing foretold it. “He’s a man with a good eye.” Christian winked, the first sign since I’d disclosed my deception that he found pleasure having with him a wife who would one day bear his child. He handed me many carrots, using one to shake his finger at me, the carrot as limp as resting reins.

After Fort Hall, we heard more rumors of Indian unrest, more than we’d heard on the plains during all the previous weeks. We could take no action, such a powerless state. I made myself think of more pleasant things—part of my new effort to control the future—and posted a letter back to my parents and to Mary and Sebastian Giesy, telling them about our child.

We headed on to Fort Boise, following the Snake River with its deep chasms and frothy, uncontrollable currents. All new things to see.
I tried not to think about crossing that wild stream, something Christian said we’d have to do, and we did when the time came. Here, too, rumors of drowning abounded, but we crossed without trial.

The number of rivers and streams needing fording increased as we headed west. We learned their names, later trying to match up Alder Springs and Burnt River, Mud Springs and the Powder, with stories told by other travelers we encountered.

Even the Blue Mountains gave us little to remember except for their beauty—a lovely spring at the summit, where other emigrants spent the night, and that hazy color people told us came from the Indians burning trees and shrubs to make way for spring grass for their horses. The Nez Perce were said to have many horses.

The terrain changed again after we crossed those mountains, winding down a long hill almost devoid of trees. At the base, it opened to expansive high plains. We encountered round, wide-faced Indians there who watched as we silently rode by. Sometimes in the mornings we’d see their camp smoke not far behind us. Christian said we’d double the evening guards, but they never shortened the distance between us, probably deciding wisely that we had little they might need for barter or theft. They never knew we carried medicinal whiskey, or that Opal was a guard mule of exceptional skill.

For several days we paralleled the river they called the Columbia, crossing the John Day River at Leonard’s Ferry. I kept my eyes straight toward the willows fanned out on the far shore, my cheek tight against Opal’s. I held my breath as the rickety craft pulled into the current and down to the landing, exhaling as I stepped on the muddy shore. We rode up another bare hill, rested at springs near the top, then headed west, spending the next night at the Des Chutes River, where the rolling water poured into the Columbia. Here we’d either need to swim
or pay the ferryman. Fortunately, John Genger agreed we could pay. I was always so grateful when we could pay.

In late September, a snowcapped mountain became our beacon. After crossing Fifteen Mile Creek and then Eight Mile Creek, riding up to the top of a bluff that overlooked the Columbia, we reached Dalles City, right on the river, where the water spilled among huge rocks like strands of a woman’s white hair draped in a man’s knuckles. They called it Celilo Falls.

Dalles City, or Fort Dalles Landing as some called the town, grew around an army fort, as far as I could tell. Over the post office door a sign read Wascopam, and the postmaster told us in no uncertain terms that we should tell our friends to post letters to that name and no other. Since we didn’t plan to stay, I let his invigorated opinion waft by along with his tobacco smoke. Apparently, there were arguments about what the town should be called. Later someone said it had endured ten different names already. At least our colonists never wasted time in such decisions; our leader decided the names.

Dozens of Indian people of various shapes and sizes wandered near the post office and in the town itself. A baker stepped out of a shop with the name
W. L. DeMoss
over the door and offered me a warm piece of soft saleratus bread, the first I’d had since we left Missouri. I took it as a gift divine, the dough as soft as angel’s wings against my tongue.
What is it about fresh bread that brings peace to a woman’s soul? “Danke
,” I said, taking my husband’s arm as we moved on.

Dogs sniffed from around various corners of framed buildings; their slender tails rose as they moved in small packs. I wondered out loud if we might rescue one to call our own, but Christian said, “We have enough to worry about just getting ourselves settled in with a babe without a pup in tow.”

We passed a marketplace with Indians and others bartering baskets and dried fish, perhaps for canoe rides down the river. Some of the natives had foreheads pitched as steep as a cow’s face, while many round-faced Indians stood heads down on a platform as men in the audience appeared to be shouting out bids.
Slavery, here? Wouldn’t it be ironic if we colonists left Missouri to avoid a battle involving slaves only to step into another war right here?
I couldn’t be sure what transpired, and I vowed to learn more English before the winter turned to spring. So much went on in this “outside world” that I couldn’t decipher. To understand this new land and live well here, I needed to interpret for myself the words being said. I couldn’t always rely on the interpretations of my husband.

The Indian bartering went on well into the night, along with drums and singing. We slept on the ground a little distance from the town, and Joe Knight suggested we all go down to where the music seemed to rise from. I thought that a grand idea, but this time the scouts reached the consensus that we remain safe where we were. I still didn’t know how these things got decided, but Joe looked a little down as he pushed his night pack up against his saddle, punching it more than once for good measure.

Major Rains, the commander of the fort, had a doctor at his disposal. A family doctor also served the town, and in the morning, Christian insisted that I let myself be examined by Dr. C. W. Shaug, though I felt fine. The bruise that had spread like spilled ink across my back from when Opal upended me lingered. I still ached some at my lower back, but I decided it might be the baby protesting the long hours of riding even on a soft-gaited mule.

Dr. Shaug proved to be a big man, kindly, and he did all his examinations with a nurse present and with my wrapper on. Christian stayed to translate.