Novel 1981 - Comstock Lode (v5.0) (4 page)

“Nineteen wagons left,” he said, “and we started with twenty-four. Buried five people along the way.”

“Is that a lot for the trip?” his father asked.

“Can’t rightly say it is. Hansen’s wife died of fever the second week, Burnside shot hisself pulling his rifle out of the wagon, muzzle first, and then there was the Hansen baby, and McCrane who wandered off.”

“Who was the fifth? I don’t recall anybody else?”

“John Helder. He died last night.” Ward glanced at Tom Trevallion. “You two take care of yourselves. I think you can make it out here, and we need good men.” He stood up, swallowed the last of his coffee and placed the cup on the ground near them. “We’ll lose some more before we see the Carson. Folks are in bad shape. Some of the womenfolks are ailin’ and there’s Thorsby. He’s coiled his rope too tight. One of these days she’s goin’ to come unwound, sudden-like.”

They slept the night, at least Val slept part of it. His father seemed to be wide awake whenever Val opened his eyes, staring up at the underside of the wagon.

The day dawned hot and still. Not a breath stirred. At noon they led the oxen to the wagon and hooked up. The horse they tied behind the wagon.

Slowly, without fanfare or confusion, the wagons moved out. Puffs of alkali dust arose from the rolling wheels and the hoofs of the animals. Nobody talked, and there was little yelling at the animals. The oxen, heads low, plodded steadily in an almost hypnotic trance. As the day wore on, the sun grew hotter. Val longed for a drink but dared not ask for one, nor take it.

He glimpsed the rib cage of a mule, half-buried in sand, and a little further along the ruins of a broken wagon, gray and splintery from long exposure. He plodded on, walking beside the lead team. The wagons rumbled along, and they mounted a low rise to look over the land ahead, and there…a miracle of miracles, a shimmering blue lake!

“Pa!
Look!
”

Others had stopped, staring. “Water! My God, it’s water and they told us—”

“Mirage,” Ward said. “It just looks like water.”

One man turned hotly. “Are you trying to tell me that isn’t a lake yonder?”

“You’ll be seein’ that every day. It’s only mirage. Caused by heat waves or such. Can’t say I understand it myself, but it’s a reg’lar thing out here. Wonder you ain’t seen it before.”

Several of the men gathered together, staring at it. Finally Tom Trevallion turned away. “Maybe it is a lake,” he said, “but it’s off the trail.”

He took up his ox goad and started his team. Reluctantly the others turned back to their teams, and one by one they started.

Suddenly, one of them shouted, “The hell you say!” Deliberately he turned his team and started out toward the shimmering blue water. Ward shouted at him, shouted again, then rode after him, but the man would not listen. “I don’t know what reason you got for lyin’,” he shouted, “but that there’s
water!
”

Hiram Ward swore bitterly. “He wouldn’t listen. He just wouldn’t listen at all! And he’s got a wife and two youngsters with him!”

“Maybe he’s right,” one man muttered. “Maybe we’re the fools.”

“He’s not right,” Ward said. “There’s a mirage out here somewhere most of the time when the sun’s high. He’ll kill himself. Worst of all, he’ll kill those youngsters.”

“If he’s wrong,” a man said, “he can always come back to the trail and follow on.”

Ward shot him an angry glance. “Did you look at his oxen? When they get into that basin they’ll never have strength enough to come out. His only chance will be to leave the wagon and mount his wife and youngsters on the oxen and try to get back. Not one chance in a hundred he’ll have sense enough to try it.”

Slowly they moved on, the heavy wagons rocking and swaying over the desert. After sundown Ward signaled a stop, and they pulled up right where they were, unyoked the oxen and carried to each one a small bundle of hay. It was not enough by far, but it was something. When they had finished, each one was given a hatful of water to drink.

“We’ll rest two hours,” Ward told them. “Then we’ll move on until after midnight. We’ll pull ahead for a few hours after a rest and take another rest just before daybreak or right after.”

“And then?”

“The Carson River by noon, if we’re lucky. Then we’ll rest.”

Val lay down in the wagon, desperately weary. He heard his father fumbling about and then no sound. The movement of the wagon startled him, and he awakened, and for a time he lay still. Had his father forgotten him? Why was he not awakened? He crawled back to the end of the wagon and got down over the tailgate.

His father was plodding along near the oxen, and as Val sighted him, he saw him stagger. For a moment, trembling with fear, he was afraid his father would fall, but he recovered, and plodded on.

Catching up to him, Val said, “Pa? Why don’t you get in the wagon? Why don’t you rest?”

“Don’t be a fool, boy. They’re having all they can do to pull the wagon now, let alone with me in it.”

It was after midnight when they stopped again. The night was very clear and the stars seemed close. There was nothing but the stench of dead animals and dust, ever and always, the dust.

His father sank to the ground and rested his head in his hands, and Val slowly took what remained of the hay to each of the animals, and once more filled his father’s hat with water and gave each animal just that much.

Ward stopped by. “You all right, son?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Boy, I’m gonna ride back a ways, see if I can see anything of the Thompsons. If they got back to the road they’ll need help.”

Tom Trevallion looked up. “And if they didn’t?”

“Their funeral. I can’t go killin’ a good horse an’ maybe myself to find ’em. They were warned, but he wouldn’t listen.”

He turned his horse, then stopped. “Tom? If I shouldn’t make it back, you take charge. You take them on to California.”

“Me?”

“You. You’re the steadiest man on the train, and folks listen to you. You just use your own good sense and take them on in.” He chuckled without humor. “But don’t count me out. I aim to come back.”

He walked his horse off into the night. Much later, a long way off, they heard him calling. They heard no answer.

It was daybreak before he returned, walking and leading his horse. “Get ’em moving, Tom,” he said, his voice husky with weariness, “get ’em moving or we’ll lose some more.”

“You didn’t find them?”

“No, only their tracks, and them almost wiped out by drifting dust.” He accepted the coffee Val handed him. “You see the mirage is always ahead of you. You never catch up. Toward the end…as far as I went, their wagon wheels were cutting deep, oxen were making hard work of it. They’ll mire down in the playa, an’—”

“Playa?”

“Dry lake. Only it ain’t really dry. The crust breaks through, and it’s muck, bad as quicksand. Once you get in there, it would take two or three fresh teams to haul a wagon out. They ain’t going to get out no way.”

“What can they do?”

“Mount their oxen an’ try to walk out. Can’t carry much water, and he didn’t have much hay. If he’s smart, he’ll start back. Trouble is, he ain’t smart, or he’d have listened and not gone off like that.”

“Maybe if we got a bunch together—”

“Nothing doing. I’ll not stand for it. He took this on hisself, and I’m not going to lose good men trying to save a damn’ fool. It’s tough on his family, but the men who’d go after him have families, too.”

Wearily, Ward got to his feet, staggering a little. “It’s up to them now. If they get back to the trail, they may catch a ride with somebody. Trouble is, Thompson had gear in that wagon he set store by. I don’t think he’ll leave it. He’ll keep fighting to get it out until there’s no more time.

“I give him two days if he tried to get out, and in two days he can make it afoot. If he stays there struggling to get that wagon out, he won’t last that long.”

Tom Trevallion walked along the line of wagons stirring people to move. With a jolt and a rumble they started again.

Wagon after wagon started, and at last Hiram Ward came up, leading his horse. The wind began to blow, irritating, fitful gusts that filled the eyes and ears with gray-white alkali dust that made the eyes smart and the lips crack. Time and again the oxen stopped; after a few minutes of rest, they started on again. Only a few wisps of hay were left, and almost no water. The slosh of it in the kegs was an agonizing sound.

Val walked, urging the oxen when he could, his throat sore from dryness and dust. His father, walking ahead of him, stumbled and fell. Slowly, heavily, he got to his feet.

The wagon ahead of them had stopped, and one of its oxen was down. With Tom Trevallion’s help the ox was unyoked and left to lie. A few minutes later they passed the lead wagon, circling around it as it stood in the trail.

“Trevallion? Can you take some of my gear? I can’t leave it here. It’s all I’ve got. It’s my clothes, my tools…I need ’em.”

“Make packs,” Ward advised, “put ’em on your oxen. Just let the wagon set. No use to overload another wagon and do him in, too.”

Beside the trail some books lay in the sand, a six-volume set of Rollin’s
Ancient History
. Just beyond it there was a rocking chair, an old trunk, all left behind by overloaded wagons.

All the night through they had been seeing the stark white bones of long-dead animals as well as others, not long dead, but stripped by buzzard and coyote until only bones remained.

They stopped again in the gray hours of the morning. His father dipped out enough water for coffee and took the rest to the oxen. There was less than a half-hatful for each.

“How far?”

Ward shrugged. “Ten mile, maybe more. They’ll smell water about midmorning, and you’ll have to hold ’em, if you can. They’ll stampede for it.”

Parkins, now driving the wagon ahead of them, shook his head. “They haven’t strength enough, Hiram. If my stock tries to run, they’ll fall down.”

“When they smell water, it gives them strength. You mark my words. If they start to run, just pile in the wagon and hang on!”

Red-eyed with weariness, their faces, their hair, and their clothing gray with dust, they started on. Now each step was an ordeal, each step a victory. Twice Val fell, and each time he crawled to his feet in time to avoid being walked over by the following team.

From beside the wagon, he looked back. The once long train of wagons was pitifully short now. Where had they all gone? How many had dropped off during the night that he had not even seen?

Midmorning came and passed, and still the oxen plodded steadily, hypnotically onward, heads low, leaning dumbly into their yokes.

All about them was gray desolation littered with dead animals, parched and shriveled hides clinging to stark white bones, broken wagons, blankets, tools, odd bits of furniture, and the stuff of people’s lives now abandoned.

Suddenly there was a sharp gust of wind, a brief spatter of rain that vanished as soon as it came, and then the wind.…

Val had only time to see a vast billowing cloud, black and ugly, rolling down upon them, and then it hit. Sharp particles of sand stung his face. He glimpsed his father struggling to pull his kerchief up over his mouth and nose, and he did likewise. In the midst of it, he heard a weird sound, a low moan from the nearest ox, a moan that swept through them, and all back down the line. Their pace quickened, suddenly they began to trot. He lunged for the tailgate of the wagon and pulled himself over it, and then they were running.

Rolling, rumbling, bouncing off occasional rocks. He clung to the wagon-bow and prayed the wagon would not break up. Around him other wagons were rumbling and bouncing, banging into each other. Dust filled the wagon, choking dust that had him coughing and gagging. Everything inside the wagon was thrown together. The shotgun fell into the bedding, and the stove door slammed open, and it was with difficulty he got it closed, while ashes spilled over everything. Fortunately the stove had been for days unused, so no fire remained.

From the right Val heard a splintering crash and a scream of pain, and he caught one wild, fleeting glimpse out of the back of the wagon of another, turned on its side, wheels spinning, the oxen gone.

They raced on, and he clung to the wagon in an agony of fear. Would it never stop? Would it never end? Where was pa?

Suddenly, it did stop. Val felt a delicious coolness coming into the wagon, and crawling to the back, he peered out. The oxen were knee-deep in water, their heads plunged into it. Slipping over the tailgate, he crouched down into the water himself, scooping great handfuls into his mouth, throwing it over him, dipping his head into it.

To left and right were other wagons. A few yards away Dottie Parkins stood in the water, her dress sopping, clinging to her figure in every shocking detail. Amazed, he stared at her, and seeing him, she laughed, smoothing the dress over her breasts. Val turned his head quickly away and she laughed again. Dottie Parkins was sixteen, and he was three, almost four years younger. She had always seemed serene, quiet, and very much the prim young lady.

He got up from the water, and, rescuing his ox-goad from the wagon, he went around to the lead team to get them out of the water.

His father was nowhere around.

He heard a sharp gasp from Dottie Parkins and looked around to see a rider had pulled up on the bank of the river and was staring at her.

“Got quite a figger there, missy,” the rider said.

“It’s none of your business!” she flared.

Val reached into the back of his wagon and handed her a blanket which she hastily wrapped around herself.

The man looked from her to Val, and Val felt a queer, sharp pang of recognition.

He
knew
him! One of the men who attacked and killed his mother!

Turning, Val lunged at the wagon and grabbed for the shotgun. It came free of the wagon and he turned with it in his hands. Seeing it, the man touched a spur to his horse and was gone.

Dottie stared at him, her eyes wide. “Why! Why, you were going to fight for me!” she said. “Well, I never! Val Trevallion, I never thought—Why, you were
wonderful!
Just
wonderful!
”