Gone West (11 page)

“In another few years you’ll be able to do just that, son.”

“Always another few years. Why am I never the right age?”

“It will come in the fullness of time,” Johnny laughed. “But you know it wasn’t me, at all, that shot the poor beast. Even after all the fine hunting plans we’d made, we were floundering around till Sam joined us late, after he docked his wagon.”

Johnny laid a hand on Sam’s shoulder. “You took in the situation mighty fast, friend.”

“What’d Sam do, Pa?”

“Just used his good sense, Jamie. Suggested we cut a buck out of the herd. Max joined the three of us and together we did just that. We tired him out and Sam made the kill. It was the Reverend Winslow himself who shot a second. The man’s got eyes like a hawk. Sam’s kill was tidier, but Winslow, he let off a shot from an impossible distance, and made it good.” He leaned back against the wagon, relaxed and satiated. “We ought to start up a saga about all this, like Homer or the Vikings.”

“Who be Homer?” Sam asked a little suspiciously.

“Just a poet who lived back in the times of the ancient Greeks. He wrote up the history of their battles in verse. Interesting stuff. It reminds you that men don’t change much over the years.”

“I think I’d rather have a song, Pa. It would be nice under the stars.”

Johnny smiled. “The Greeks used to sing their poems, too, Jamie. But to the music of a lyre, not a banjo. Still, the banjo is sort of appropriate for our story. `The Ballad of Sam Thayer’.”

Sam groaned self-consciously.

“How about `The Ballad of Sam Thayer and Company’?” from Irish.

“How about `The Ballad of the Women Left Behind to Cook and Wash and Keep the Children from Killing Themselves’,” smiled Maggie wryly.

“Never happen, Ma,” yawned Jamie.

“And why not, young sir?”

Johnny answered for his son. “It’s not epic enough, Meg.”

Maggie glared. “What could be more epic than centuries of women washing and cooking and caring for their men and children, all the while following them to godforsaken places?”

“Oregon is not godforsaken!”

“Getting there certainly is,” Gwen added in sudden support of Maggie.

Jamie slipped away from the argument to return with the instruments. “I don’t care what you play. But we ought to be celebrating something tonight! If nothing else, it stopped raining!”

Johnny picked up the concertina and began to sing, making it up as he went along: “Ain’t gonna rain no more, no more, ain’t gonna rain no more . . .”

Maggie shrugged, laughed and joined in with the others.

There was plenty of good hard hickory wood for the taking next to the creek, and all during the next pleasant day the men and children gathered piles of it for their future fires, while most of the women sat around mending torn trail clothing and smoking strips of jerky over constant fires.

Maggie had a big soup pot going, cooking up a rich broth from the bones of the elk. On top of her other labors, she’d begged one of the skins. Now the green hide was pegged to the ground, the way her friend Flower Blossom had shown her, and Maggie was carefully scraping from it the last bits of fat preparatory to beginning the long softening process. For that softening she was boiling the elk’s brain in a little water. Flower Blossom had always averred that brain tanning made the softest skins. “Ma-gee,” she would point out, “Ma-gee, each animal has enough of the brains to tan itself. The Great Spirit thinks of everything.” Maggie smiled as her friend’s words returned to her. Then she shooed Bacon and his sharp little teeth from the irresistible edges of the skin.

“Jamie. Convince your pet that he can’t play tug-of-war with my pelt! Either that or lock him up in the wagon. If our boots give out down the trail, we’ll need every square inch of this skin for moccasins!”

Jamie had been watching her with interest each time he returned with an armful of wood for their pile. He gathered up the pup obediently, but still seemed anxious about something. As he wrestled with the pup he finally spit it out.

“I know you got moccasins in mind for that skin, Ma, but if, just if there should be enough left over . . .”

“Yes, Jamie?” She smiled at his unusual efforts at beating around the bush.

“I’d dearly love an elkskin vest, like the kind Straight Arrow and Running Bear used to wear back in Independence, with the rawhide tassels and all. `Course I’d covet a whole buckskin jacket even more, but I know there won’t be enough left for that.”

Maggie scrutinized the skin laid out before her with great seriousness. “There surely won’t be enough for a jacket, not if we’ll be needing moccasins. But there just might be enough for a vest for a very good, smallish boy.”

Jamie let out a whoop. “And maybe you could sew on a handful of those Injun beads we brought for trading? We got a whole barrel of them!”

Maggie laughed. “I think the Indians could spare a few, Jamie.”

He let out another whoop.

“But it won’t be ready for months. I’ll have to soften the skin first, and that takes a long time. There’ll be the cutting next, and the fitting and sewing~”

“Maybe by cool weather?”

“I should be able to manage it before autumn.”

“Thank you, Ma!” He bounded over to give her a big hug, crushing a yelping Bacon between them. At last he was scampering off for the trees again, Bacon now discarded to nip at his heels and follow. “Wait’ll I tell Matty and Jube! Won’t they be wantin’ ‘em, too!”

Maggie had to chuckle. Now he’d go and start something. True to her expectations, Hazel headed over from her camp across the large circle of grass between wagons not too many minutes later, her baby in her arms.

“Maggie Stuart! What have you got me into? I have no idea how to preserve a hide!”

Maggie glanced up from her work and was relieved to find Hazel smiling. “Jamie works fast. But it’s not really hard to learn how, Hazel, just tedious. And it could come in handy. Have Max put in for a skin at the next hunting. The trick is to clean it up quickly and keep it pliant.”

Hazel squatted down next to the skin. “How’d you do that?”

“Save some brains or even bone marrow and keep rubbing it in. You make a mix of it with a little moss,” Maggie demonstrated as she caked up her elk brains like a bar of lye soap. “Then find a nice palm-sized sandstone, like this one,” she flourished the stone she’d chosen for the task. “You keep running it over the skin till it softens up. After I finish cleaning the hide, I’ll have Johnny make me a stretcher for it. We can mount it outside the white top on dry days and have a go at it now and again.”

“How you make everything sound so easy beats me. Max will get me a skin eventually, but I’m bound to mess it up.”

“Have more faith in yourself, Hazel!”

Maggie eased back from her tiring task to stretch her shoulders and pick up Charlotte from the corral next to her. The two women began to companionably nurse their daughters.

“The way I look at it, you’ll never know how hard or easy a task is until you set your mind to it. If you stop worrying and just lay into it, it will come out better than you thought. And it’s the only way to learn.”

Hazel accepted her words as they sat watching the bustling scene around them. Grandma Richman must have done another load of washing, for she was trying to drape an armful of wet laundry over her wagon while chasing two grandchildren away from their family fire. Ruth Winslow had a Bible spread out on her wagon tongue and kept going from it to her own fire with a frown of concentration on her face. The Peterson and Jarboe and Simpson women were working on dinner, and Josh Chandler’s wife and elder daughters were busy stitching. Hazel followed Maggie’s eyes.

“Gwen don’t seem to be around. She off scrounging for wood with the men?”

“Could be. Then again, maybe she’s walking with Sam Thayer.”

“Sam Thayer?” Hazel’s eyes widened with anticipation. “You don’t suppose~”

Maggie grinned. “I did happen to spot Sam, hat in hand, shyly approach the Hardisty wagon earlier this morning.”

“Sam couldn’t ever be courting Gwen, could he? In his own good time and way?”

Maggie allowed her mind to speed ahead with the idea. “Sam’s about thirty-five, Hazel. It’s a perfect age for Gwen.”

“He’s a good, solid, steady man, too, Maggie. And neither of them too old yet to be starting a family.”

Maggie laughed out loud. “Indeed. All in all, it could be a most satisfactory arrangement.” It was also one most pleasing to her sense of fitness and romance. Since she was so happy with her own husband, she felt that everyone should have the same opportunity to be cherished and loved. Enjoying the idea more and more, Maggie sat with Hazel beaming over it, thoroughly content with the day.

Eventually the babies finished their nursing and Hazel wandered back to her own camp to tend her midday meal. Maggie strapped Charlotte to her back, slung her gathering bag around her shoulder and went in search of something green to throw in her soup pot.

It surely was glorious weather after all the rains. And it was a pleasure to be wandering almost for the sake of it, rather than eternally beside her teams of recalcitrant oxen.

Maggie lifted her eyes to watch the stock grazing placidly on the verdant grass around the outer limits of the camp, loosely guarded by the camp’s older boys. The grass just seemed to go on forever, off into the prairie horizon, green blending into a sea of sky blue. Bees hovered over blossoms and quick, darting birds dove for insects. Maggie knelt to study a vividly colored butterfly as it feasted on a dandelion blossom. Unthinking, she held out her hand and it flew to her. Charlotte reached over her mother’s shoulder to grab at the resting bit of orange and yellow loveliness. The butterfly fluttered its wings and took flight once more. Maggie followed its arc.

“It seems perfect, daughter. Everything is perfect, just as God made it.”

Charlotte crowed her delighted agreement.

The day of rest passed with tranquility. When they rose in the morning to cross the Big Vermillion, humans and stock alike went at it with new enthusiasm.

Two days later, under a still smiling sky, the Chandler Party paused for nooning at an unusual rock formation that jutted from the east bank of the Big Blue River. There was rumored to be a spring of clear, cool water nearby and a waterfall of some twelve feet, surrounded by a little grove of cottonwood and cedar trees.

When Maggie searched for Jamie to collect wood, she found him already gone. Maggie unstrapped the baby from her back, tucked her into the cabin for a nap, and went off to collect branches herself. Soon she heard the whoops of laughing children. Following the sounds she came upon the falls, first tripping on a pile of hastily discarded clothing. Her missing son~and most of the other children~were buck naked, playing tag under the cascading water.

Maggie grinned at their delight, wishing she could discard her own skirts and join in on the fun. It was a joy to watch the youngsters all become children again for a brief time, stripped of their chores as well as their raiments. She was reaching a handkerchief into the cool water to wash her own face when a strong, strident step sounded behind her. It was the Reverend Winslow, with a freshly cut switch in hand and a thunderous expression upon his face. What now? Hadn’t he seen children frolicking before?

“Jedediah Winslow!” he roared. “Get thee hither! Also Jonah, Job and Jeremiah!”

Four skinny boys emerged from the water, crestfallen. The eldest dared to speak.

“But Father, we were doing no harm. We hardly spoke to the others, and certainly nothing about~”

Before he could finish, the switch was cracked across the oldest boy’s buttocks, five times. Breathing heavily, the Reverend Winslow lowered his stick to point mutely at the pile of clothing. The other three boys stood in line patiently for their own punishment.

Maggie watched with horror, too surprised by the action to respond until Winslow worked his way to the smallest, not more than four years old. Helpless to do anything else, she put out her arms in an attempt to save the trembling child.

“Out from my way, woman, lest I strike thee as well with my just fury!”