A Light in the Wilderness (16 page)

“Her skin’s like Mama’s coffee,” Martha told Letitia as she ran her small finger down the baby’s cheek. “She puts lots and lots and lots of milk in it.”

“A weak coffee.” Nancy gazed at the child. “She’s beautiful. Look at that head of hair, so thick and sticking straight up, and those lashes. Goodness. What I wouldn’t give for those!”

Davey had stayed outside the wagon and was there when Doc Hawkins delivered Martha near dawn on June 9. Letitia heard fiddle music at the beginning of her labor, the strings still vibrating when Martha arrived a few hours later.

“I’m not sure it’s fair that your labor was so short,” Nancy teased, her eyes on Martha, the child now holding her namesake.

“Ain’t nothin’ fair ’bout child birthin’ except when it over.”

“Amen to that.” Nancy looked wistful. “Laura was a hard birth, hardest of all of them. So frail in the beginning, I even wondered if she’d live past the night.” She swallowed. “But she did, weak as a wilted bachelor button until we started on this journey. Then so lively and full of life until—”

“Best you think on that healthy chil’ and the good days you have with her.”

“Of course. I’m sorry. Here’s your joyous time and I’m mixing it with misery.”

“Can’t mix it unless I lets you. Good to let memories be salve instead of sorrow, though.” She hadn’t known she knew that before she said it. A good thing to remember for herself. “You be god-parentin’ for her?”

“Why, I’m sure Zach and I would be honored.” Nancy’s eyes teared up. “I’m happy for you, know that I am, Tish.”

“I knows. Tears mingle. Help us fly like sparrows out of the cave of darkness into a sky of light.”

Nancy squeezed Letitia’s shoulder, wiped her eyes of sadness.

Martha Hawkins spent the morning riding in the wagon with Letitia and her baby, but by noon Letitia was ready to walk. The little girl kicked dirt beside her and that was how their days went, with Martha tending to Baby Martha any way she could and Letitia loving the feel of a child in her arms and another near her knees.

“You’re a good mama.” Davey watched the child nurse. He’d been fed by the Hawkins clan and brought back a cup of soup for Letitia that he set on the wagon ledge.

“I’s practiced. You wanna—want to—hold her?”

“Aw, I’m not so good with little ones like that.”

“She don’ break.”

“She’s so . . . fragile.”

“Good-sized ham and as solid, I ’spect.” Letitia watched Davey’s eyes go from a moment of uncertainty to soft like a sunken cake as she handed the swaddled baby into his calloused hands.

He bounced the child who promptly burped up her supper. “Oh, here.” He handed the baby back.

“You just beginnin’. She make a papa out of you.” She paused. “But then you already one.”

“Now I have two. A lucky man I am.”

Davey picked up the rib of a buffalo skeleton with currant berries growing around it. They were a few days out of Fort Laramie.

“We can use it to write a message on if we need to, to those coming behind.”

She frowned.
He still hopin’ to join the faster
groups if he plannin’ how to leave messages for others
. And I thought he couldn’t write much.
She adjusted the bonnet on Martha’s face to keep out the sun.

“Or better, use it as a back scratcher.” He demonstrated and they both laughed.

Later that day they came to a deep ravine and men began the tedious task of locking wheels and lowering the wagons with ropes to the bottom of a narrow canyon bordered by a dry riverbed and steep cliff walls. Cattle had been taken a different route where the wagons couldn’t pass. They traveled beside cliffs taller than any Letitia had ever seen. Small trees grew from the crags and she could smell honeysuckle blooming on sturdy vines pushing their way through cracks far up toward the top. They’d been careful with water, but for the entire day they did not cross a stream and their throats were parched as old paper.

Davey said they were all supposed to wait once they got to Ash Hollow, but forward groups had gone on ahead. “We may as well keep going ahead too,” he said.

“But Nancy—”

“Hawkins can decide on his own. They’ll follow the north fork same as us and we’ll meet up again. In Oregon if nowhere else.”

“I thought . . . she a big help.” How could she tell him about the rare and pleasant feeling of having a woman treat her like a friend.

“We’ll hold over at Fort Laramie. You’re more a help to her than she to you anyway.”

“No. She—”

“There’s no arguing about this, Tisha. You say your good-byes. We’ll head out at first light to catch up with a forward group. You do as I say now. That’s the way it is and I’ll not have an argument. Remember you’re working for me. Man has to be the head.”

“We leavin’ you. Davey got his mind made up.” Letitia had left Baby Martha sleeping in the wagon, settled for the evening, but she felt undressed without the child in her arms, as though she’d left her apron off in the middle of the day.

“Oh, Letitia!” Nancy hugged her. “I’ll have Zach talk to him.”

“It won’t do no good. He get his back up about somethin’ and—”

Nancy sighed and nodded. “The life of a wife. Maryanne, get Tish a cup of my tea.”

“I’ll miss Martha helpin’ me and all you do.” Even now Martha sat in the Carson wagon making sure the baby didn’t tumble off of the cot, the child not believing that a baby that young couldn’t roll over. Even Rothwell felt safe enough to leave the baby in Martha’s care. He’d trotted along with Letitia to the Hawkinses’ wagons.

“Have you told Martha?”

Letitia shook her head no.

“She’ll be at a loss, poor thing. She’s found a balm in looking after your baby. I’d let Martha go with you ’til Laramie but—”

“No, no. Too hard for you wonderin’ about her.”

“She’d be in good hands with you and I wouldn’t have to see those sad eyes staring guilt into me like an arrow to a target.”

“You keep your kin just fine. Martha need you.”

The women hugged again. There were still leavings to deal with and would be their whole lives.

“I hopes there are lots of trees so I bypass that fundamental circle.” Letitia made it sound light but she chewed on her lip. She wasn’t sure she’d find people to be a shelter with. And now, with a pecan-colored baby, there might be even more raised eyebrows and painful words spit her way. White folks didn’t like seeing more black folks join the world unless they owned them.

“Maybe . . .” Could she ask to travel with the Hawkins clan instead of with Davey? Davey would do fine without her. He had for years before she came along and even on this journey he handled the oxen himself. She’d been of little help of late because of her carrying and then the new baby. He wouldn’t have to deal with any comments about his “black woman” and child if she wasn’t around. Nor would she. Folks would assume for certain that she was a nanny of the Hawkinses and she could disappear inside their large family. She could offer comfort to Nancy and Martha too. She could milk the cows, Charity included. Davey would let her take Charity.

“Maybe you could come with us,” Nancy said.

Had she spoken her wish out loud? Letitia chewed on her lower lip.

“I was thinkin’ to ask.” She looked down. Some things are better left as wishes. “But truth is, I takes a vow and now I gots a family of more than Davey. And he makes a promise to me too. We get mixed up with you again in Oregon, Davey says.” She’d pray for that.

Ducks flew overhead as The Woman dipped water from the bubbling springs to give to Little Shoot to drink. The smell pricked at her nose. “Those leaves are not friendly,” she told him.

“They grow thick like mosquitoes.”

“Ayee.” Poison oak did grow thick in this place, but so did many good plants. “One must learn ways to live with good and bad.”

Little Shoot still suffered from the poison oak, though the scratching lessened and the bubbling water at the springs seemed to help. For many days now they had eaten the trout from the streams by taking all the parts, the head and eggs, and then drying the flesh. Today she put one of the dried fish heads in a basket with hot rocks to make a boiled soup. Then she added a ball of baked camas into the bubbling mix. They would eat well, the entire clan spending a few days at this place of encircling hills.

The fish eggs they’d save and eat in the winter, along with long strips of dried fish flesh. These fish were not big as the salmon on the Willamette River, but added up they would be enough for a long, rainy winter.

“You are well enough to do more?”

Little Shoot groaned. “I still need rest.”

She wasn’t sure if he teased her or not, but perhaps they had accomplished enough for one day. They made their way back toward the encampment where several families had built rounded shelters of hazel branches covered with tule mats and grasses. The Woman knew all the people were needed when they prepared the camas bulbs they’d dug or to grind the acorns into a meal. But she also liked the time alone with her grandson where he learned from her and not from the boys who knew better how to play than how to feed themselves.

Back at the camp, a pig snorted into a clearing. She had seen such an animal at the mission. This one must have escaped from far away. It sought acorns and belonged to the land. Little Shoot and several other boys chased it.

“Ayee. My grandson is feeling better.”

The Woman set about showing the boys how to make a fence from the saplings and grasses. “You will watch him and move the fence with him so he can eat the acorns. He will give himself up to us this fall, if we can keep him around.”

The boys did not look happy. Little Shoot told her later that the chase was more fun than what happened after the capture.

“It is good you learn this now and maybe, if you are wise, you make the capture interesting too. There is always room to find a new way to treasure a gift arriving unexpected.”

The next weeks felt harder to Letitia as she walked the trail without Nancy. They passed a wagon now and then, and she asked Davey if she and Martha could ride then. “It keeps the dust from the baby’s eyes.”

“Doesn’t take that long to pass a wagon.” But Davey agreed, stopping the ox team for her to get into the back under the bows as they came upon another family.

Inside, she didn’t have to feel the piercing hurt when a woman “hallo-ed” her and then stopped waving when Letitia turned her dark face toward the westerly-heading wife. She had yet to see another colored woman in all the wagons they’d passed. She longed to share a mother’s stories, how Martha curled herself into Letitia’s breast, how she nursed, soft and gentle, never greedy, as though she knew her mother had more than enough to give this child. But the women had turned aside.

Letitia wondered if she’d have any colored neighbors once they
reached the territory, not that having them meant they’d be speak-to neighbors. Or if she’d have any speak-to neighbors at all.

Somewhere east of Laramie, Davey developed a cough and sore throat that she treated with an herb tea. He improved and told her he was grateful, patting her hip as they lay beside each other in the tent, Martha cooing between them in the crook of Letitia’s arm. Davey hacked through the night while Rothwell snored his level of concern outside the tent.

New challenges of the trail hardened the demand on the overlanders. One long route of fifty miles was made without any water for oxen, dogs, or people. The guide book Davey read from said it would be thirty miles. High clouds did little to soften the heat, and trees became scarce through much of the landscape before Fort Laramie. A strange high-peaked rock shot out of the land like a giant chimney in the distance and she didn’t have to ask its name. Davey had been saying they’d see Chimney Rock before long. She wished she could be there when the Hawkinses’ Martha first saw the pillar. The child’s eyes would be wide with wonder.

She found she talked to Baby Martha as though she was Nancy, holding her up to the landscapes, chatting away about the weather or Davey’s mumbling as he harnessed the oxen; even when she milked Charity and the baby stared with wide eyes at her from the cradle basket, she talked. “I spend more time talkin’ with you than your daddy. Guess you know afore him we still got cornmeal but gettin’ low on flour.” It was easier discussing a meal or dwindling supplies with another woman. Davey pooh-poohed any worries she raised or told her how he’d fix whatever troubled her. It was a part of him that annoyed like a too-tight shoe. She didn’t want to take it off, but she wished it would stretch a bit, give a little more room for the walking.

“We’ll resupply the flour at Fort Laramie.”

“What if they out or the price too high?”

“Then we’ll get corn. You can fix corn pone instead of biscuits. I’ll live.” He lifted her chin and smiled. “You worry overmuch.”

Sometimes she didn’t want a concern she raised to be fixed; she wanted someone to listen to her thoughts spoken out loud without dismissing them because the listener didn’t feel they carried any weight.

Teepees with decorations of feathers and black drawings on hides welcomed them as they approached the fort. The triangle-shaped structures sat like cone hats surrounding the adobe buildings of Fort Laramie. Davey and Letitia arrived with Captain Rigg’s group following another terrible wind and hailstorm that left their Bethel wagon with a split wheel. While Davey sought out the blacksmith, Letitia wandered across the courtyard to the bakery, the scent of fresh-baked bread with poppy seeds watering her mouth. If they stayed three or four days here, she’d look big as when she carried Martha.

But the Hawkinses’ wagon might well catch up too.

The baker hesitated before giving her the bread but must have decided her money was as good as any white person’s. “Ain’t seen many like you.” He handed her the string-wrapped package.

“Ain’t seen many mothers? Our camp full of ’em.”

The baker grinned. “I had that coming.”

She’d save the package wrapping. Maybe Davey would write a letter for her, leave it for the Hawkinses. No, he didn’t write well, he’d said. And she had no one else to ask.

Later she carried her washboard and a basket of clothes on her head to the Laramie River while Martha snuggled at her chest. She heard stories while she ran Davey’s pants against the washboard, her knuckles catching the rough tin now and then. At least they hadn’t lost an ox the way one of the travelers had, the poor animal breaking its neck in the midst of a stampede.

One woman told of trading with the Indians for a beaded purse she planned to send home to her mother in Iowa. Letitia had seen the Indian women carrying their babies in a wood-framed cradle on
their backs, and she thought she might go there to see if she could trade for one. But she wasn’t sure what she had to trade except one of Davey’s flannel shirts. She listened as she worked, to stories of escape during a stampede and runaway.

“Captain Barlow yelled for people to drop their wagon tongues to hold them back, but by then it was too late. They overrun us all,” the woman who had escaped told the washing women.

“It’s a wonder any of us lived.” A slender woman snapped an apron, laying it on the shrub beside the river. “I declare I would not have come if it hadn’t meant I’d have stayed in Kentucky alone, that man was so committed to this journey.”

“I heard one company was exposed to measles,” Letitia offered, working up her courage to join in the conversation.

The women turned as one to her. Several frowned.

“Ain’t heard that,” the Kentucky woman said.

“Don’t even mention such a thing, girl. That’s all we’d need way out here.”

“Who’s got a good pie recipe for dried currants?”

A breeze cooled Letitia’s hot face. Martha cried from her sack then and the women returned to their chatter, their voices lower but still carrying across the water. Maybe talking about the terrible things that could happen and putting worries in a bucket to carry around to share wasn’t a good idea. Listening to the women’s laments, Letitia decided she was in a better place than many of them. She had chosen to come with Davey, chosen to make a new life with him.

She spread her wet laundry over the bushes, watched as the sun shimmered against the water, the reflection fluttering the leaves like a mist that never disappeared.

The Kentucky woman carried her basket of wet clothes on her hip, but she stopped and looked at Martha. “She’s adorable. She’ll crush some man’s heart with those long eyelashes flashing.”

“Yes ma’am, she will.” Letitia wiped her daughter’s chin of drool.

The woman moved away, leaving behind a wake of kinship. Letitia would savor those ripples in her sea of uncertainty, reminding herself that she’d made a choice to come.

“We’ll be leaving tomorrow morning, with Captain English,” Davey told Letitia as she moved a firkin so she could put the scrub board away. He hoped she wouldn’t resist his decision. “English has but twenty-six wagons including ours and 300 head of cattle. We’ll still be part of Tetherow’s main group under Meek’s guidance but able to move faster. I’ve picked up flour, sugar, salt, tea, coffee, and tobacco. And lead. It’s good we’re here ahead of others.” He pulled up his neck bandana and coughed. “Dang dust here. They’ll run out of sugar sure thing and the hind companies will have to pay twice my eight cents a pound for flour.”

“You done a good job of tradin’.” She lifted the flour barrel cover. “Good to see a full supply. I tries to trade your shirt for one of those cradleboards the Indians use.”

“You went to the Indian camp? So that’s where you were. Brave of you.” He poured himself fresh coffee, the scent rising in the morning air.

“Jus’ curious. Mrs. Meek go with me. Her husband say it safe. She speaks like she from the provinces, north.”

“I ’spect she’s French.”

“A board leaned against the teepee. I shows ’em your shirt but a woman shakes her head no.”

“Those boards are pretty special. Made for an individual child. Probably didn’t want to part with it.”

Then she pressed the point he’d hoped to avoid. “Can we wait? One more day? For the Hawkinses?”

“Now lookee, Letitia.” She could be as persistent as a mosquito once she got something into her head. “We got to keep going.”

“We makin’ good time. Mr. Meek say so.”

“Letitia. I’ve decided.”

But in the morning Davey awoke with swollen eyes, a sore throat, and a persistent cough. Letitia went with him to the fort hospital.

“Measles?”

“Buried a boy from an earlier party and a company just came in has the disease as well,” the fort doctor told them. “Your master could get pretty sick.” He nodded toward Letitia.

“Maybe we stay. I finds out if Nancy with the group of last evenin’. You have treatment?”

“Very little.” The doctor washed his hands in a basin. “Keep the temperature down with cool baths. Keep your baby clear of him. If you can. Blotches will appear in three or four days. They’ll itch. Try not to scratch them. It’ll prolong the disease. I’d recommend staying here until the fever breaks.”

“Yessuh.”

“Lookee here. We got to get going.” Davey let Letitia help him back to the wagon.

“Doc Hawkins treat you if we wait.”

“We ain’t waiting, Tish.” Speaking tired him. “You’ll have to drive. The drovers are so far behind. It might be three days before they catch up. I want out of here now. And don’t say nothing to nobody about measles.”

“Can’t tend you well if I’s drivin’.”

“It’s the end of June and we’re only 650 miles from home. I’ll push through this. May not even be measles.” His breath came short. “You drive.”

“You too weak today.”

He cursed and Letitia startled.

“Sorry.”

She rarely stood up to him. But maybe she was right. “OK. For a day. I don’t like this delaying.”

“You be stronger come mornin’. Maybe somethin’ good come of it.”

He knew she spoke of the Hawkinses or the drovers catching
up. Maybe she was right. “We’re only waiting ’cuz the day’s nearly passed.”

Letitia settled Davey in the wagon. In the morning she brought him a thin soup he fed himself while she hitched the oxen. She did it alone but her eyes throbbed with the effort. This would not be an easy journey, and truth was, she wasn’t sure she could handle the teams. She wasn’t that strong and there was Martha needing feeding and rocking if she cried. Her heart beat faster when she remembered the stampedes or quick orders from the captains to “Circle up!” She so hoped the Hawkinses would catch up. Troubles seemed lighter with someone to share them, even if they couldn’t change the trial.