Gone West (4 page)

“The Kreller girls up toward the front of the train. They’re fun. Especially Matty. I promised to show her my bow and arrows from Straight Arrow and Running Bear. I might even let her try it out. She’s my age and can do almost anything I can.”

“Only almost?”

“Well, she
is
a girl, Ma!”

“And what about me, young man?”

“You
can
do anything, but mothers are different.”

Maggie shot a glance at Johnny, who was biting back laughter.

“Go ahead, son, but head back as soon as you see the camp shifting. We may need you.”

“Thanks, Pa!”

“Johnny~”

“He’ll learn exactly what girls can do soon enough, Meg. Let him feel superior for at least another year!” Amidst laughter, Johnny eased his much longer frame onto the ground in imitation of Irish.

“The trip timing is good.” Irish blew out a smoke ring thoughtfully. “If we arrive in October, like everyone expects, there’ll be the whole winter to fuss with a proper kiln before I have to worry about getting some planting done.”

“You think you can make a business out of it?”

Irish tapped at his ash. “Not right off. Just for my own use and pleasure. In another few years I figure there’ll be a need. When more folks follow us out.”

“It should be the same with the books,” Johnny thought aloud. “But if I can’t find enough interest I’ll just drum some up.”

“How you planning on doing that?”

“There must be upwards of five thousand Americans in the Willamette Valley and spread out beyond, and if they’ve little interest, I’ll just teach the Indians to read.”

Gwen, following the conversation as she and Maggie cleaned up after the meal looked horrified. “You’d teach the Indians?”

“Why not? They’ve minds and souls the same as we.”

“But, but . . .”

“But what? They’re heathens? Let me tell you about a few members of the Kansas tribe we knew back in Independence~”

Just then, however, the call to move floated back to them. Groaning, the two men got up to yoke their teams. Also on schedule, Maggie heard a cry of protest from Charlotte in the cabin. It was time to face the rest of the day.

Spirits were high in the prairie camp that night. The long, cold winter was over, and solid weeks of rains seemed finished, too. The prairie hay was greening fast. They’d made twelve miles on the trail. There were reasons for optimism.

The Stuart family lazed under a full moon, Charlotte crawling around a blanket, eager to get the exercise she’d been denied all day. Johnny and Maggie watched her with pride while Jamie practiced jumps from the wagon traces to the soft grass below.

“Doesn’t that boy ever tire?” Johnny asked. “He’s already put in twice the amount of exercise we have today running between the wagons.”

“He’s young and growing.” Maggie was tucked snugly next to Johnny’s body, his arm comfortably around her shoulder. “In a few minutes he’ll just drop in his tracks and sleep till morning.”

Johnny glanced up at the sky. “I’m tired enough for that myself. But with a soft breeze and such a moon, somehow I can’t set my mind to sleep.” He stretched a little. “Jamie!”

“Yes, Pa?”

“Think you can locate the instruments in the wagon?”

Jamie’s face lit up with pleasure.

“Yes, Sir!”

In a moment he returned, laden, to hand a concertina to his father, and a banjo to his mother. He kept the recorder for himself.

“With all the excitement I near forgot about the music, Pa. What shall we start with, the one about the pioneers coming to Ohio Territory?”

Maggie smiled as she pulled herself from her husband’s half embrace. “That sounds perfect.”

Soon they started in, Maggie’s lovely voice singing out clear and strong:

“Rise you up my dearest dear, and present to me your hand,

And we’ll all run away to some far and distant land.”

At the end of the first verse the Stuarts were pleasantly surprised to find new voices, particularly the strong tenor of Irish Hardisty, join in on `And we’ll ramble in the canebrake, and shoot the buffalo.’ When the song was completed they’d drawn a crowd around them, most of the faces new ones, all of them making cries for another song.

“What shall it be, then?” Johnny spoke up cheerfully.

A surprising request came from a big, broad man standing shyly at the edge of the crowd.

“
Home, Sweet Home
, please.”

“Come on, you’re never homesick already, are you?” joshed someone else.

Johnny quickly intervened. “It’s a fine American song, and we’ll do it on the understanding that it be dedicated to our new homes in Oregon.” And nodding to Maggie, he started in. By the end of the song the crowd was silent. It was Irish who saved a few potential tears from being shed.

“Know the one about the cork leg, Johnny?”

Johnny grinned knowingly. “You bet I do,” and launched into a rousing version of the gentleman who had quaffed one too many during an evening’s entertainment. The audience was growing larger now, and all joined in with “He clung to a lamp post to stay his pace, But the leg wouldn’t stay, but kept on the chase.”

All were laughing good-naturedly at the end, enjoying their new camaraderie when a tall, distinguished man shoved through the group. He stood before Johnny and Maggie glowering, moonbeams outlining the stark nose, the gray at his temples, the unhealthy glint in his eyes.

“Know you not that tomorrow is the Sabbath? Would you insult the Lord with such drivel?”

“I don’t believe I’ve made your acquaintance, sir,” offered Johnny, concertina poised on his lap for a new onslaught of merriment.

“I am the Reverend Josiah Winslow, embarked with my family for the Whitman Mission in the country of the heathen.”

“Thought the Whitmans were out in Oregon,” piped up a bystander.

Winslow whipped around. “I carry my mission to bring Word of the Lord to those poor demented souls less fortunate than ourselves, while there still be time to save them, but it would appear that my services are wanting in this very train as well.”

“Where are you wife and children, Reverend?” asked Maggie with complete innocence. “I’m sure they’d like a little joyful music, too. Even on the eve of the Sabbath I know the Lord wouldn’t begrudge us that after a hard day’s labor.”

He stared down at her. “My family, thank you, is by our campfire, studying their scripture.” His head slowly made a circumference of those around him. “As all of you should be doing. Know you not that besides the consideration of the Sabbath Eve, it be unhealthy to make such a row out here?”

“Bosh! Ain’t a soul aside from us for miles around!” threw in someone.

“I beg to differ with you, sir,” Winslow countered darkly. “There could be Indians sneaking around, and maybe even~” his voice lowered, “~maybe even
Mormons
!”

His words were received with blank stares. It was the big man who’d requested
Home, Sweet Home
who spoke up slowly and with consideration.

“Mormons be considerable north of us, Reverend. Maybe a hundred, hundred-fifty miles or more to Iowa. ‘Sides, from what I last heard, they got their own troubles to contend with. I can’t picture ‘em sneakin’ around the prairie at night spyin’ on a friendly train of emigrants. Ain’t like any of us is from Illinois and got a bone to pick with ‘em.”

There were a few `Hear, Hears!’ before the preacher chose to answer.

“The Saints do their own bone-picking, I assure you. They’ll be short on provisions with tens of thousands of them barely across the river from Nauvoo, sitting there in hunger these past two months. They’ll be sending out parties to plunder in the unholy names of their prophets and their god.” He glanced around the darkness. “Just mark my words, all of you. If you won’t honor the Lord, at least consider your own earthly possessions!”

Johnny looked as if he didn’t care for the feet beginning to shuffle uncomfortably around him. Fear~particularly unfounded fear~was not a useful emotion with which to begin a two thousand mile pilgrimage.

“I’m sure we’ll take all that under advisement, Reverend, as soon as our musical soiree is finished. But we’ve really only just begun. Right, folks?” Johnny grinned mischievously at the group highlighted by the campfires surrounding them. “In fact, some of our new friends were about to haul out their own pieces and join in.” His eyes caught those of the shy giant who’d spoken up in defense of the Mormons. “You there, sir. You look like a man with music hiding in your bones. Have you nothing to contribute to our group?”

The big man shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Sam Thayer, I be. And I ain’t exactly inspired with it, but I do have me a harmonica.”

“Haul it out, Sam, and drag it over here with your body.” Johnny turned to the others. “What do you say. The trip will be long. Best to start now in organizing a little entertainment of an evening.”

There were several prodding elbows, more embarrassed grins, and in a few minutes a fiddle, a guitar, a bugle and a washtub had been added to the proceedings. The Reverend Josiah Winslow, pained, took his leave with small grace.

Maggie alone watched his departure. Johnny’s response had been good for the general morale of the camp. But she didn’t care for the disposition of this Winslow. She recognized the type. The Reverend Winslow was a hard man, like her own father. There’d been no music or singing in her own childhood, either. But although stern to fault, James McDonald had also been fair, and increasingly open to new thoughts as Maggie had grown. Winslow, however, appeared completely single-minded. He could make a difficult enemy. She pitied the Indians he’d come to save, and wondered what had transpired between Winslow and the Mormons to elicit such obvious hatred.

Then she forgot about the man. Charlotte was asleep in her skirts and Jamie nodding off against her shoulder. She joined in on another song.

The rains came again. It was later in the week, at evening, in a show of might and fury. The dinner fires were extinguished, leaving only the fire in the sky to light up the darkened camp.

Maggie raced sopping into the caravan, Johnny just behind. They dripped on the clutter together.

“Maybe we should have left the children out,” Johnny joked. “They could stand a bath, too.”

“Really, Pa? May I go stand out in the storm?”

“No!” Maggie glared, at wit’s end after the day on the trail. Her vehemence shocked Jamie into silence, and set Charlotte into howls in her hammock.

“Lord. I’m beginning to sound just like the Jarboe and Simpson women.”

“We’re all hungry and tired, love,” tried Johnny in a soothing voice. “Why don’t I fire up the stove for you?”.

Maggie glanced at the little pot-bellied Franklin stove. “I’m afraid of burning us and the caravan down. It’s just too tight in here, Johnny! It was so much simpler before~”

“Come on, Jamie,” her husband tried another tack. “Up on the top bunk with me. Hand me Charlotte to entertain, Meg. Then you can shove her hammock out of the way and at least try to get another dinner organized.”

Maggie managed a thin smile as things were rearranged around her. Why was she being so ill-natured? Her mother
had
warned her on her wedding day there would be times like this. She found a piece of hardened crust for Charlotte to teeth on, then, on second thought, found another for Jamie.

“It’s the last of the real bread from Independence. Savour it.”

The last of the bread, the last of civilization. Maggie stubbed her toes on stacks of grain bags lining most of the walking space before she was able to let down the little table from its travelling spot on the wall between the two windows.