The Indifference of Tumbleweed (21 page)

‘Hey!' shouted the little Fields boy. ‘Let's all push it straight!' And before anyone could move, he and his two small sisters were shouldering the lower wheel in an entirely useless attempt to straighten the heavy wagon.

‘No!' shouted Mr Franklin, first to grasp the danger. He began to run back, followed rather slowly by Mr Fields. Before they could save the situation, the ox had been arrested in his tracks by a jab from a sharp pole which Mrs Fields had extracted from the inside of the wagon. He jumped, and the wagon lurched again, back into its rightful track. Then it rolled perhaps two feet backwards, as it settled.

The screams were enough to alert every Indian in the country, and send every bird and snake into hiding. The noise took our breath away, so that everything else was silent. Then there was shouting and crying and calling for assistance. Abel Tennant, my father and Mr Fields took their places in a human team led by Mr Franklin and they lifted the wheel clear of the child, while her mother and Hope Gordon lifted her clear. My grandmother elbowed her way through the gathering crowd, only to make a sound of horror and pity that I shall never forget.

The bone of Susanna's upper leg was crushed, with shards protruding from the skin. Her face was grey and she sagged lifelessly from her mother's arms. There was blood on the woman's dress, and trickling steadily to the dusty ground. The little girl looked like a broken doll, small and insignificant.

But Grandma was undaunted. Clearing a space, and demanding a clean blanket on which to lay her patient, she knelt over the injury. ‘Bandages, splints, spirits, hot water' she ordered, and within moments she had what she needed. She stemmed the bleeding and cleaned away the dust and grit. Then she pulled the leg as straight as she could, with the help of my father, and fastened splints on both sides, tying them with strips of cloth, above and below the break. The little foot remained at a strange unnatural angle, even after these attentions, but the leg itself already seemed better.

‘It is the best I can do,' said the old woman. ‘She may not survive, I warn you. ‘Tis a terrible wound, so it is.'

The Fields family were almost as grey-faced as their child. The little boy was sobbing softly, ignored by his mother. Their stepfather was transfixed by the suddenness of the accident, seemingly unable to speak or think or move. His wife, eventually, began to berate the ox. ‘That cursed animal,' she raved. ‘This is all his doing.' She grabbed her pointed pole and started jabbing viciously at the creature's flank. ‘You killed my baby, you monster,' she gasped. ‘Now I'll kill you for it.'

Mr Franklin swiftly removed the weapon from her hands and pushed her away. The ox had plunged free from his faulty harness and was trotting down the trail, swishing his tail and shaking his head in bewilderment. His partner gave a low groan of sympathy.

Willing hands captured the abused beast and yoked him securely back into place. His sides were anointed with balm, where long scratches showed. Susanna was moved to one of the Tennant wagons, which had become the occasional sanctuary for anyone ill or hurt, over the past months. Esther, wife of Barty and mother of the noisy twins, took charge of the little patient.

Most of the train had continued to move forward, trusting that our party could resolve our own difficulties, and catch up by sundown. In varying degrees of upset, we began to straggle on, Mr Bricewood's wagon leading the way, and the Fields' coming last. Those parties behind us had been forced to wait for us to get going, since the trail was narrow at that point, with no opportunity to pass. This, of course, partly explained the accident. The children had already been walking dangerously close to the wagon before the trouble began. It had seemed to them a simple, almost natural, act to make an attempt to push it straight.

I heard Mr Fields trying to persuade the distraught Jimmy of this truth. ‘No blame attaches to you,' he said. ‘You were aiming to help, after all.'

‘But I knew we must not touch the wheels,' the boy wept. ‘We have been told it many a time.'

‘What's done is done,' sighed the man. ‘And I wager you won't do it again.'

The words sounded callous to my ear, but the boy looked up with something like amusement on his tear-stained face. ‘True, sir,' he said.

I lingered close to them, wishing to express my sympathies. Jimmy was sent to watch over his remaining sister and Mr Fields met my eyes. ‘Miss Collins,' he nodded. ‘We must seem a very ill-fated family to you.'

‘The poor child,' I murmured. ‘Such pain! And so long before she can hope to heal.'

‘Indeed. The brightest and healthiest of the bunch, at that. My wife will take it hard.'

I wanted to say it was all the stupid woman's fault. She ought to have kept better control of the beasts. She was weak and inattentive and altogether lacking in brains. But I could not criticise her under such circumstances, so kept my counsel.

He read my thoughts anyway. ‘She is unwell,' he said, as if in justification. ‘And she has nothing to occupy her hands or thoughts. I fear this migration is sending her a little mad.'

Mad? I looked at him in surprise. Madness was something as greatly feared as physical hurt. A mad woman might hurt her own child, or herself, or run barefoot into the forest. She might stab at her precious oxen with a sharp stick. ‘Oh,' I said. ‘I pray that is not the case.' My words came pat, bearing little relation to my actual thoughts. If Mrs Fields went mad, she would be worse than useless to her family. She would bring trouble onto everyone around her.

It would, I could not help thinking, be an interesting diversion from the usual run of things.

Fort Bridger was a forlorn establishment, compared to Fort Laramie. A huddle of mud-brick shacks, surrounded by Indian dwellings, and thronged with trappers who showed even more contempt for us than those of a month earlier had done. Somehow, in the meantime, all that had been forgotten, and the occupants of the wagon train bounded joyfully up to its walls, expecting to be greeted with approval and interest. Instead we were shown to a wide area set aside for our camp, and told there were only the basics available by way of provisions. There were many single travellers on horseback, with scarcely any possessions, as there had been at Laramie. There were scouts hoping for work, if those who had brought us thus far chose to abandon us and return to Missouri for another group of emigrants heading southwards through Oklahoma, where the trail was easier and the lateness of the summer scarcely a matter of concern.

Henry Bricewood had been giving me increasingly direct looks over the past week, his head on one side in a plain question. Others too had begun to notice my change in manner and appearance. I saw no reason to conceal my unhappiness and found myself hoping that my father or mother would challenge me directly, and force an explanation from me as to what might be the trouble. My grandmother's diagnosis of a tapeworm dashed such hope, however. The assumption was made that I had a debilitating parasite that explained my lack of colour and appetite – although Lizzie did say, ‘But I thought a tapeworm made a person more hungry, not less?'

It was on our first evening at Fort Bridger that Henry approached me. I had let the oxen loose on a patch of good pasture, and was sitting on a small slope aimlessly picking up small stones and tossing them into the air, waiting for a chance to crawl into the tent and try to sleep. Instead Henry quietly sat down beside me, slightly below me, as if hoping to avoid frightening me away. ‘You are troubled,' he murmured.

I was slow to see my chance, but after a silence, I asked him, ‘Would they hang a man for fornication?'

He breathed out, a long sigh. ‘Ah! Now I understand. You speak of Abel Tennant.'

My heart filled my breast, preventing me from breathing or speaking. I felt fear and shame and a kind of horror. ‘You know?' I managed.

‘Several of us do,' he nodded. ‘He has bragged about it.'

‘Bragged?' I could not comprehend how that could be so. ‘And gone unpunished?'

‘He is careful who he shares his bragging with. Myself and younger boys.'

‘Does he cast calumny onto my sister, then? Does he speak of her as an easy woman?'

Henry's face was full of the most painful embarrassment. ‘I cannot say,' he managed. ‘But I can understand your distress.' He put a gentle hand on my knee. ‘Indeed I can.'

His sympathy undid me completely. His knowledge convinced me that I had not dreamed or imagined the affair, while at the same time assuring me that there was nothing straightforward about it.

‘What should I do?' I wept. ‘Tell me what I should do.'

‘What is the nature of your dilemma?'

I blinked at him, and dashed away my tears. ‘Is it not clear that my duty is to do all I can to prevent further sin? I feel sure I ought to tell my father…' I looked down at his hand still on my leg and sniffed.

‘If it were as clear as that, you would surely have taken the step already? When did you become aware of the…facts?'

‘At Independence Rock. Eight, nine days…' I was unsure of the period that had passed. It felt like years to me then.

‘Does your faith decree that you should monitor your sister's moral wellbeing? Does it insist that you bring trouble upon her when she is, to all appearances, perfectly happy? Are you persuaded that you can prevent further evil by speaking out?'

‘Not persuaded, quite.' I managed a wry smile. ‘I would not impede a true affair of the heart. But Fanny says nothing of love. It is all a matter of fleshly delight to her.'

‘A delight that you and I know nothing of,' he summed up gravely.

I looked sharply at him. Was I as much a freak as he, then? Was I doomed to spinsterhood, for reasons I could not grasp? The remark had been kindly meant, I supposed, but yet it rankled.

Henry saw my reaction and quickly added, ‘All I mean is, we are both unwed – and likely to remain so, in my own case. You, Miss Charity, will marry well, I have no doubt.'

‘You think they would not hang him, then?' I returned to the main question. ‘I could not endure for that to be the consequence of my actions.'

‘There is no law, Charity, against what Abel has done.'

His use of my Christian name further disarmed me. Here was kindness personified, as well as something more robust and useful. Henry possessed information of which I felt an urgent need.

‘But the leaders – our fathers – they would surely condemn it? The Church is emphatic that it is a sin.'

Henry pursed his lips, plainly weighing his words. ‘It is impossible to say for certain how much of the old ways we take with us into this new land. There will be different priorities from before. And perhaps you would say that when the Founding Fathers set up their colony, two centuries past, they were implacable in their morality. But it is different now. The Mormons take several wives. The Spanish have a reputation for wildness and promiscuity. I dare say we will all have to revise our attitudes to many aspects of our lives.'

I pondered these words carefully. ‘Is this another part of your philosophy of the basic evil in humanity?' I asked. ‘That there are no firm and everlasting laws that will govern us wherever we go? That it is all shifting and ill-founded?'

‘We shall see,' he said, spreading his hands as if relinquishing any personal concern or responsibility.

‘You do not care,' I accused. ‘You watch and form theories, as if nothing matters to you yourself.'

He grimaced. ‘I care that you have been so upset by this business. But I care little for Abel, I must confess. It is also my belief that the affair is general knowledge throughout our party and a blind eye is turned towards it. That is how it would be handled in your father's home country, according to tales I have heard. The priest would keep a watchful eye on the young people, and in due course arrange a marriage that makes everything right.'

‘And here everyone is a priest?' I felt bitterness at my needless anguish. The whole party was ahead of me in understanding and awareness. ‘And my parents? They too know full well what Fanny is about?'

‘Perhaps not, although I fancy your grandmother sees a great deal. In any event, I beg you to take it more lightly. We will reach Fort Hall in another two days, in Snake County, where the travelling becomes considerably harder. It is barely three years since the first wagons forged a way through to the Columbia, and it is nowhere near so smooth and easy as what we have known. All our energy must go to the needs of
the day – the essentials for life. Survival becomes a fragile matter in these regions. Smaller issues can be brushed aside for the time being.'

This was at odds with the homily we had been given at the outset by Mr Tennant. He had made it clear that the normal rules of decency must be adhered to at all times. No fighting, stealing, deceiving or adultery would be permitted. Arguments must be resolved in a civilised manner and it should always be remembered that we depended each on the others, so that every member of the party had a value. I had listened with a feeling that we were secure on this foundation of integrity where rightness could be relied upon. ‘That is not what we were told at the start,' I protested.

‘Fanny and Abel have not broken any of the laws we were given,' Henry reminded me. ‘There was no mention of fornication.'

The word had the power to disable me, even though I had found the courage to utter it myself, ten minutes earlier. ‘Oh,' I managed. ‘It is all so
vile.'

‘Please – I implore you to have faith that all will be well. Look outwards, at Nature's bounty. You will never pass this way again. No woman makes this journey twice.'

I was distracted, as he had intended. ‘Is that true?'

‘Indian squaws, and perhaps a few pioneer wives will traverse it on horseback, but the wagons are another matter. A wagon train moves only in one direction. If you elect to quit Oregon in the future, I advise you to do it by sea.'