The Quilt Walk (16 page)

It took me a while to find the quilts. By the time I did , Pa and Uncle Will had yoked the oxen and chained them to the wagon. Aunt Catherine had stored the dishes and pots and stamped out the fire. Now she was taking Tommy from Ma and helping Ma stand. “Here’s a quilt for Tommy,” I said, and handed them the bundle that was in my arms.

“Where in the world …,” Aunt Catherine said as Ma took the quilt and unfolded it.

“Oh, Emmy Blue, I couldn’t,” Ma said, holding up Agnes Ruth’s Memorial quilt, the one she had made in remembrance of my little sister after she died. It was small, just the size for a baby. “I never meant to use this.” She ran her hand over the embroidered words: “Agnes Ruth, God’s Precious Child, 1859.”

“And just why not?” Aunt Catherine asked. “What better way to remember Agnes than to use her quilt for your son. After all, Agnes is his sister every bit as much as Emmy Blue is. And Tommy is God’s precious child, too. I think Agnes would be honored that her quilt was used to keep her brother safe and warm.”

Ma thought about that for a long time, and then she smiled at me. “You are right, both of you. All of my children are precious to me. Emmy Blue, you have made Agnes a happy part of our family again.”

Chapter Eighteen

CELIA MAKES A DECISION

I
thought the days would never pass after that. Each time we came to a hill, I rushed to the top of it, hoping I’d be the first one to spot the mountains. I asked Pa if he couldn’t make the oxen go faster, but he told me we’d reach Denver soon enough.

Sometimes, I carried Tommy as I walked along, and Barebones and I showed him off to women in other wagons. My quilt walk had turned into a baby walk.

“It’s not easy having a baby on the prairie like this,” one woman said.

“We should have stopped a day for your mother to rest, but the men wouldn’t hear of it,” another added. “They’d stop for an ox with sore feet, I imagine, but not for a woman out of childbed. It’s a hardship for a woman to go west, especially with little ones. I’d be a go-back if I could.”

As I handed Tommy to Ma, I asked if
she’
d be a go-back if she could. Tommy would be a good excuse.

Ma took Tommy and held him in Agnes’s quilt, then tucked him into the box in which we’d once stored the cooking pots. Ma was afraid Tommy would get too much prairie sun, so most of the time he rode in the wagon. “No,” she replied. “Now that I have two children, I want to raise them in the clear, clean Colorado air.”

I remembered how Aunt Catherine had complained the first day of our journey, and asked her, “Do you like things better now too?”

“Lots better. Sometimes I feel almost as free as a man out here.” Then she laughed, and added, “That is, until I have to cook supper or wash clothes.”

I left them and wandered back to Celia’s wagon and climbed up to sit on the bench with her. I liked playing with the Potts children and chatting with Celia, although she’d become quiet and serious since her husband died. I wondered if she’d ever be happy again. The children were too small to walk much, and Ulysses couldn’t walk at all, so they spent most of their time in the wagon. Sometimes, when I was there to keep an eye on the three little ones, Celia got out of the wagon and walked along beside Charlie Pitkin, who drove her oxen now.

“What’s she going to do when we reach Denver?” I asked Ma and Pa.

“Oh, she’ll find something,” Pa answered.

We saw Lucy Bonner walking toward us, and I whispered, “Maybe Celia could go back, and Mrs. Bonner could go back with her.”

“That’s none of our affair,” Pa said. He didn’t see Ma catch my eye and shake her head, which I knew meant I should keep my mouth shut.

Pa flicked his whip at the oxen, and Ma and I waited for Mrs. Bonner.

“I was hoping to hold Tommy,” Mrs. Bonner said.

“I’ll get him,” I told her, and Pa stopped the oxen long enough for me to climb into the wagon for the baby.

As I got out, holding Tommy, I heard Mrs. Bonner say, “I wanted to stay with you the morning after Tommy was born. I told Owen it was the right thing to do. But he said my place was with him. And you know how anxious he is to reach Denver. So please forgive me for not being a better neighbor.”

“You helped deliver Tommy,” Ma said. “I could not have given birth to him without your help.”

“Oh yes, I think you could have.” Mrs. Bonner chuckled.

I handed the baby to Mrs. Bonner, who touched Tommy’s tiny forehead with her fingers and sang him part of a lullaby. “I wish Owen liked children,” she said, more to herself than to us. “He told me he’d as soon throw them to the dogs.”

Ma and I stared at each other. I’d never heard such a horrible thing.

“And me with them. My husband does not believe I am a very good wife.” Tears began to roll down Mrs. Bonner’s cheeks, and she rubbed her eyes. “Oh, the dust is bad here. It makes me cry.” But I knew that was not why she was crying.

When she had wiped away the tears, Mrs. Bonner raised her head and said, “He is right. A good wife would never complain about her husband, as I am doing. I am untrue to Owen in that way.”

“And he is untrue to you in treating you in such a beastly manner,” Ma told her.

Instead of being angry with Ma, Mrs. Bonner burst out, “Oh, Meggie, marriage is not what I thought. I should never have married without knowing him better. I have done a terrible thing, and now I shall spend my life regretting it.”

Ma put her arm around Mrs. Bonner.

“I should not burden you with this,” Mrs. Bonner continued, “but you, Catherine, and Celia are my only friends now that I have left home. I don’t know how I shall go on. Once we reach the mountain camps, when there is no one around to come to my aid, I fear for my safety.”

“He has already shown he is not a good man,” Ma said. “You must rid yourself of him.”

“You mean leave him?” Mrs. Bonner looked confused. “How can I do that? We are married. I would be disgraced. My family would never take me back.”

“Would you rather they take you back in a wooden box?” Ma asked firmly. “If your husband continues to beat you as he does, he may inflict serious harm. Forgive me for speaking frankly, Lucy. Thomas says it is not our affair, but how can it not be? A man’s ill treatment of his wife should be
everyone’s
affair.”

“You know the truth of it, then,” Mrs. Bonner said quietly.

“Of course we know.”

Mrs. Bonner turned away. “I am so ashamed.”

“And why should you be? It is your husband who bears the shame.”

Tommy cried out, and Mrs. Bonner rocked him back and forth in her arms. “I had hoped for just such a son. Oh, I was foolish. But when I read Owen’s letters, I dreamed of a family. I thought I would be as happy as Celia Potts when her husband was alive. I brought my mother’s silver teapot with me and her best china cups. I have the pot yet, but Owen broke the cups. When I said I would buy new ones once we reached Denver, he asked where I would get the money. ‘Why, I have given you my money for safe-keeping,’ I told him. He only laughed and said I would never see a penny of it.”

“Once we reach Denver, you must leave him,” Ma told her again.

“But how can I? He is my husband. Besides, I have just told you, he will not give me back a cent of my money. And without it, what could I do? I can’t teach or do laundry, and I don’t have the money to open a boarding house. I am even worse prepared to earn my living than Celia. At least she can paint china.”

Mrs. Bonner put her cheek against Tommy’s before she held him out to Ma.

“We will think of something,” Ma said.

She seemed about to say more, when I cried, “Look, mountains! I can see the mountains.”

Ma and Mrs. Bonner turned and stared at the western horizon. “Are those really the mountains?” Ma asked. She sounded disappointed, and I was, too, a little. They weren’t very impressive, just a line of dark blue. I had seen pictures of mountains in books and thought they were huge snow-covered rocky hills that reached high into the sky.

Pa came up to us then. “Do you see them, the mountains?” he asked us. He sounded very excited. When I said they didn’t look like much, he told me, “Just you wait, Emmy Blue. When we get closer, you’ll see how big they really are.”

“As big as a barn?”

“Bigger than that.”

“As big as the bluffs on the Mississippi?”

“Even bigger.”

I was doubtful, but Pa never lied, and I would see for myself when we got close to them.

Mrs. Bonner had left us to go back to her wagon, and Ma said, “I believe her husband will do her great harm one day.”

“Crossing the prairie isn’t easy for a man,” Pa said. “Maybe he’ll be all right once he reaches Denver.” Then he glanced at Ma. “I know it isn’t easy for a woman either. I guess I should have said it isn’t easy for anybody.”

The oxen had never been so pokey. I prodded them with a stick, but it was almost as if they knew our journey was nearly over and they were slowing down to make it longer. The men with mule-drawn wagons had pulled out of line and moved ahead of us. We passed farms now and way stations where we could buy meals or sleep in beds, but Pa said the food wasn’t as good as what we cook over our campfire and the beds most likely had bugs. He didn’t want to waste money, either.

At last, Pa pointed to a few log cabins scattered on the prairie. “There it is. Denver.”

Ma squinted at the dreary sight. “I thought it would look like Quincy,” she said. I could hear the disappointment in her voice.

“Oh, Meggie, don’t be discouraged. That’s not the main part of the city. It’s much finer. Just wait until we get there. You’ll see,” Pa said.

Buttermilk John told us he would lead us to the Elephant Corral, which was in the heart of Denver. Then we would be on our own.

“Do they keep elephants there?” I asked. I’d never seen an elephant.

“The Elephant Corral is a stable,” Pa explained with a laugh. “It’s called that because it’s so big.”

Soon, Buttermilk John led us through streets that were crowded with prospectors, who were carrying big, round gold pans and picks and shovels. We saw freighters, men who loaded all sorts of things for transports, carrying long whips. There were mountain men like Buttermilk John, wearing suits of deer hide decorated with beads, and bearded men with guns, their chests crisscrossed with leather belts that held bullets. We also saw men in huge aprons standing in front of shops, urging people to come inside and eat. Loud music and laughter came from storefronts. The whole city was crowded and noisy, and after the quiet of the plains, Ma put her hands over her ears to block out the sound. But I liked the excitement. Everywhere I looked, I saw something new.

“Oh, Ma, look,” I said as we passed a street of frame-and-log buildings. A wire was stretched across the street, and a woman was balanced on it. She took a step forward, and I cried out, “She’ll fall.”

Ma stopped and stared, her mouth open. “What is she doing?”

“She’s a tightrope walker,” Pa said. “She can walk all the way across that wire. She does it every day at noon, or so I’ve been told.”

“Look at the short skirts,” I said.

“Why, it’s scandalous,” Ma told us.

“It’s Denver,” Pa said, laughing.

When we reached the Elephant Corral, Pa said we’d leave the oxen there for the night and find a place to stay. Golden was ten miles away, so we’d go on in the morning. “I expect you’d like a real bath,” he told Ma. “There’s enough dirt on all of us to grow wheat!”

“Why, I think I would trade your son for a bath,” she replied, and when I looked startled, she added, “That was only a joke, Emmy Blue.”

Some of the wagons were continuing on, and we called, “Good luck!” and “Godspeed!” to them.

Mrs. Bonner hurried over to us. “I have some good news,” she told us. “We are going to Golden, too. Owen says he will meet some associates there. I believe he wants to go into the mountains later on, but at least I shall have a little more time to spend with my dear friends.”

Ma smiled at her. “I hope you can persuade him to stay in Golden.”

“That would be my fondest wish,” Mrs. Bonner said.

As we talked with Mrs. Bonner, Celia approached, holding Ulysses, with Bert and Honor beside her.

“We are all going to Golden,” Aunt Catherine told her. “Would you come there, too, or will you stay in Denver?”

“We would try to find some work for you,” Ma added. “Perhaps in a boardinghouse. Thomas says miners will pay a gold nugget to have a shirt washed and ironed by a woman. You could set up a laundry.”

Celia shook her head. “How can I, with the care of three children? There is nothing I can do to support us. Besides, I have already made a decision.” She smiled a big, genuine, happy smile. The first happy smile we’d seen from her since her husband died. “I am to marry Charlie Pitkin,” she told us. “The children and I will go with him and his brother to farm north of here.”

“Why?” I burst out without thinking.

Ma touched my arm so that I wouldn’t say more. “I thought as much,” she told Celia. “He is a good man. You are a fortunate woman.”

“I am that,” Celia said. “Charlie and Paul have gone to find a clergyman. Charlie and I will be married before the day is out. He will make a good father, and he is gentle. I should like you to stand up with me, Meggie. You have been so good to me that I should like you to be my attendant at the marriage ceremony.”