Over the Misty Mountains (32 page)

“Could it be cholera?” Elizabeth asked with fear in her eyes.

“No, it’s not at all like cholera,” Paul said. “I’ve seen that. I don’t know what it is . . . but we’ve got to do something.”

Hawk looked at the group that had come to ask him if it would be best to return to Williamsburg. Hawk did not say anything about the broken axle or the other accidents that had happened. Most of them were to be expected. However, he and Sequatchie had been conscious that there was something strange about many of them. Now, this sickness coming on so unexpectedly alerted him.

“I don’t want to alarm you, but I think this is more than just a sickness. I think it’s something in the food—or more likely in the water.”

“What makes you think that, Hawk?” John Russell asked. All of his children were down sick, and so was his wife. “Half the people in the train have got it.”

“But it’s all in families. Some got the sickness and some don’t.”

“Most of it is in your family.” And Hawk named off four others. “You’re the sickest of all, and everybody in the family’s got it. I don’t think sickness works like that.”

“What do you think it is, then?” Patrick asked in despair. He and his family had had no sickness at all, nor had Rhoda.

Hawk said slowly, “I think somebody’s put something in the drinking water. Since we each carry our own, it would make sense to me that somebody put poison in some of the water barrels, but not in others. That’s why your whole family’s sick. You’ve all been drinking out of the same keg, John.” He named off other families, then paused and said, “And as for me, I never drink out of the kegs myself, and neither does Sequatchie, so I think it’s in the water.”

“But who would do a thing like that?” Patrick asked.

“Who would saw my axle halfway through so that it would break down?” John Russell said suddenly. “I think you may be right, Hawk.”

“Get rid of all the water in every keg,” Hawk said. “Keep a close watch on the food. Anybody that’d poison water could get to the food.”

Hawk and George chose some men to go around and empty and refill the water casks, since some of the people were too sick to move. It was three days before they finally all recovered, and Elizabeth said to Patrick, “I’m so thankful they’ve all gotten well. Who could’ve done such a terrible thing?”

“I have no idea. Taylor’s mean enough to do it. He’d kill Hawk in a minute. Have you seen how he looks at him? But I don’t think he’d put poison in our water. Besides, his own family was sick. I thought his wife was going to die.”

Rhoda, who was cooking at the fire, did not look up. She had been in total misery since the sickness came. She had kept busy nursing those who were ill, until she had lost weight. And now her heart was as heavy as a stone.

Elizabeth came over and put her hand on Rhoda’s arm. “I’ll finish this, Rhoda. You’ve worn yourself out, taking care of sick folks. Go on to bed. God knows you’ve been good to the sick in our company.”

Elizabeth’s words went like an arrow straight through Rhoda’s heart. She did not look up but turned and left at once. As she walked away, she gazed upward, saying, “Oh, God! Why did I ever do such a thing?” But it was done, and it was one more proof to her of the wickedness of her heart. She had thought much about Paul Anderson’s words about Jesus and looking to Him, but now how could she ever think to look to Jesus after what she had done?

Chapter Twenty-Two

Through Storm and Flood

“I don’t like it much!” Hawk shook his head slightly as he stared down at the line of wagons and pack animals. “Here it is the middle of September, and we’ve still got a ways to go.”

“Some of the outfits have slowed us up,” George Russell said. “Especially Zeke Taylor.” He stared at Taylor’s wagon as it wobbled by, the poor animals straining with all their might. “We ought to shoot those horses and make him pull the wagon himself.”

“I would if I thought he could,” Hawk muttered.

“Has he given you any more trouble since you put the run on him, Hawk?”

“No, but if looks could kill I’d be a dead man.”

The caravan had passed over some rough, hilly country that had wearied them all. Hawk and Sequatchie had killed game fairly regularly, including two wild turkeys the day before that had been a welcome change from the monotony of the diet.

“The food is running low, and I’m worried about the settlers making it through the winter,” Hawk said to Russell.

“We’ll make it somehow. As long as there’s bear and deer in the woods, we won’t starve to death. I’m getting awful hungry for vegetables, though,” Russell said.

“You can raise you a garden next year.” Hawk grinned. He had come to like the young man a great deal, and as the two men turned and made their way to the head of the column, they spoke of the difficulties that lay before them.

Following the trail slowly, the travelers crawled across a rocky, flinty mountain ridge where a wheel from the Suttons’ wagon came off. There were no more wheels to spare, so they had to wait all night, patch the wheel together, and struggle on the next day.

In the morning, as Elizabeth stirred meal into a wooden bowl and mixed up a johnnycake, she looked down at her blistered hands. She frowned at how dirty her dress was and remembered how in Boston she’d send the children to bathe and change clothes for the least smudge. Shaking her head, Elizabeth reached up and touched her hair, which was gritty. Looking over at Patrick, who was watching her, she said, “I’m as dirty as a pig, Patrick. Wouldn’t it be nice to get into a steaming hot bath, and wash your hair, and put on nice fresh clean underthings, and a fresh dress?”

“I don’t know as I’d care for it,” Patrick said.

“You like being dirty?” she said in amazement.

“No, I don’t like being dirty, but I don’t think I’d want to put on a dress.”

“Oh, you!” She stirred the batter again and put some of it out to bake in the large frying pan. The food in their wagon had gone down alarmingly, and she knew if it had not been for the game that Sequatchie and Hawk brought in day by day, they would have been hungry long before this.

“Are you sorry that we came, sweetheart?” Patrick came over and sat beside her, put his arm around her, squatting before the fire.

“No, I’m not. It’s been the hardest time I’ve ever known physically, but—oh, it’s so exciting, Patrick!”

“I hope you’ll always feel that way. It’s been good for the kids, hasn’t it?”

“Yes, look how brown they are. Just like little Indians, almost.”

“I’m proud of both of them. I’m proud of you, too,” he said, and reached over and kissed her soundly.

By the time they finished their meal and packed up, Hawk came by saying it was time for the train to pull out again.

They were moving at a very slow pace now. One day differed from another only by the nature of the disasters. Once Sequatchie’s horse mired in a stream, and it took half a day to drag him free of the mud, and he was unable to go on for another two hours. They crossed the same stream, it seemed, numberless times, for it wound around in their way. More than once, rainstorms swept over them. Though they were all wet to the skin, they forged on as best they could. Sometimes they made only a mile a day when wagons bogged down almost to their hubs in the red claylike mud.

Sequatchie was extremely quiet one Saturday morning. He kept looking up at the sky, and finally Hawk asked, “What’s the matter? Something wrong?”

Sequatchie sniffed the air almost like a hound dog. He shook his head and said, “Storm coming.”

Hawk shrugged his broad shoulders. “We’ve had about a dozen. I guess we can take one more.” He turned in his saddle to look over the stragglers and shook his head. “I’ll be glad to get there. I’d rather try to herd a hive of bees across a desert than do this again, Sequatchie.”

Sequatchie did not answer. He kept twisting in the saddle, turning his head to one side, and finally he said, “
Bad
storm coming. Very bad.”

Hawk knew Sequatchie’s almost uncanny ability to foretell weather. He could not understand it, nor explain it, nor could the Cherokee. Sometimes as long as a week before a storm hit, Sequatchie would begin to grow edgy, and grow more so until finally it would come.

“Maybe we better find some shelter and get out of it,” Hawk said.

“Good,” Sequatchie replied. “I’ll go tell preacher Anderson to pray.”

They had not had the wagons and animals secured long before huge black clouds began rolling out of the north. Inside of them, lightning bolts flickered back and forth, reaching down with long jagged blades to stab the earth.

“How far away is that storm, Papa?” Sarah MacNeal asked her father. She was holding his hand and watching the dark clouds.

“Well, I’ll tell you how you can tell how far a storm is. Now, wait until the next lightning bolt, and as soon it comes, you start counting slowly like this. One—two—three. Like that. See?”

“All right, Papa.”

The pair watched the dark clouds, and almost immediately a monstrous finger of lightning scratched the sky and lit up the whole horizon. At once Sarah began counting, “One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . five . . .” When she said twenty-five, the air was filled with a loud rumble of thunder.

“There—the storm is five miles away. It took twenty-five seconds for the sound to get here.”

“Five miles?” Sarah’s eyes grew wide. “That’s not very far, is it?”

“Not really. It’s going to be a bad storm, I think. I want you and Andrew and your mother to get into the wagon.”

“What are you going to do, Papa?”

“The horses might get real jumpy with that lightning flashing around. I’ll tend to them.”

Hawk galloped his horse down the train, saying, “Tie everything down! This is going to be a bad blow!” He stopped to say to the Russells, “As a matter of fact, if we had time, I wouldn’t mind tying the wagons to trees.”

“You think it’s a tornado?” John Russell asked with alarm.

“I don’t know what it is, but if Sequatchie says it’s a bad one—well, you can count on it being a bad one!”

Within minutes the wind struck with a gale force that was almost unbelievable. The canvas tied across the wagon ends ripped loose of several wagons at once, and the tremendous deluge poured in, half drowning the occupants and soaking everything. It was futile to try to tie the canvas down, and those who lost the tops simply huddled together, shaking from the cold rain.

Hawk and Sequatchie had tied their horses down securely, and now Hawk ran from wagon to wagon shouting, “Get under the wagon! You could get hit by lightning!”

When he got to the Taylor wagon, he saw that Taylor was almost paralyzed with fear.

“We’re all gonna die,” Taylor said, sitting with his head buried in his hands.

“We’re not going to die! Get out here and unhitch this team! We’ve got to get them tied off! They might run away! You should’ve already done that!”

But Taylor was beyond helping himself, so Hawk and George Russell unhitched the team and tied them. Then they helped Mrs. Taylor and Amanda get under the wagon.

“What about him?” Russell asked Hawk, nodding to Taylor, who shook at each peal of thunder.

“I don’t care if he does get hit by lightning,” Hawk murmured.

“It’s a bad one, ain’t it?” Russell muttered. The water was running off of his hat in a cascade, and he, like all the others, was as wet as if he’d been thrown into a river.

“Yes, it’s going to get worse, I reckon.” Hawk said.

The winds howled with a tornadolike force, although the travelers saw no funnels, which they all dreaded. Hawk leaned against the wind and made his way to the MacNeal wagon, where he found them all huddled underneath except Patrick. “Are you all right under there?” he yelled against the screaming of the wind.

“We’re all right,” Elizabeth said. “Come on under here.”

“No, I’ll help Patrick with the horses.” He looked over and saw Rhoda, who was holding Sarah MacNeal. The girl had buried her face against the woman. Andrew was watching with enormous eyes, and Hawk reached over and gently punched him. “It’ll be all right, Andy. Just another storm. It’ll pass by, and tomorrow the sun will be out shining.”

The words immediately drove the fear out of the boy, and he said, “Can I come out and help you and Pa with the horses?”

“No, you stay here and take care of your mother, son. A woman needs a man with her at a time like this.”

At once Andrew said, “Sure, Hawk,” and moved over and put his arm around his mother.

Elizabeth winked at Hawk and said, “You’re right about that. Andrew will take care of me.”

Finally the wind began to lessen, and Sequatchie wiped the water from his face. He wore no hat and rivulets ran down his face and neck. “Good,” he said. “It’s over now.”

Thirty minutes later, the rains slacked off and then stopped completely. Paul Anderson came struggling out, covered with mud, from where he had been lying under the wagon.

Hawk reached down and helped him to his feet. “Well, preacher. You look like one of those mud cats we used to catch out of the river, except you’re uglier!”

Anderson grinned, his teeth white against his muddy face. “I guess I am,” he said. “It was bad, wasn’t it?”

“It was one of the worst I’ve seen, but I think the wagons are all intact.” He looked at Paul and said, “Did you do your praying like Sequatchie asked?”

“Yes, I did. I know you don’t believe, but I believe in praying about everything—including storms.”

“I hope you always believe like that, Paul,” Hawk said simply. He slapped his friend on the shoulder and said, “I’ll tell you what. I think we ought to get some fires going and dry everything out before we go any farther. Everybody’s had a bad drenching.”

****

Hawk wisely decided that the morale of the train had deteriorated to such an extent that they needed a few days to rest. He amazed them by going around to each wagon and starting a fire, though every stick of wood in the forest seemed drenched. Finally, he showed them how to make racks out of saplings to dry their clothes. He and the men cut down trees and brought in enough firewood to make huge bonfires. He directed the women in cooking what food was left, then he and Sequatchie went out and an hour later came back with the carcass of a huge bear!