THE FIRE HAD DIED DOWN to embers. Thompson could not sleep. Memories too near the surface. Indecision about Upperdine’s offer. His mind drifting from past to present and back again. After a time, a full moon rose and washed the meadow in soft lambency. On impulse, Thompson retrieved the traveling Bible from his rucksack to test the moonlight. The passage he randomly opened to read clearly, “Two are better than one … woe to him that is alone when he falleth.” A prophecy? Thompson decided to join the company. Two may in fact be better than one. For how long he had no idea, but for a time at least. He pulled his blanket close and fell almost immediately asleep. Sometime during the night he awoke to the sound of a cannon booming far in the distance. Independence Day in Westport? A groggy question, and he fell back into undisturbed rest.
Thompson woke later than was his custom, made coffee and stood watching the camp stir: three women returning from the stream hauling buckets; a man emerging from the woods with a fowling piece over his shoulder and carrying a turkey by the neck. In the pasture a clutch of men stood closely bunched. The stiffness of their postures, their gesturing, captured Thompson’s attention. He set his cup on one of the firestones and walked to the men. As he approached, he recognized Obadiah. Ned and Joseph stood behind him. Confronting them were four men Thompson did not recognize. One of the strangers poked a finger in Obadiah’s chest.
“Enough. I’m taking that there beast.”
“It’s not yours to take,” said Obadiah. “The ox is mine.”
“Get hold his nose rope, boys,” the stranger said.
Obadiah stepped forward to claim the rope and another of the men pushed him aside, a beefy man, low to the ground and barrel-chested, himself resembling the ox he commandeered. Ned came up beside Obadiah and one of the men put his hand to the hilt of his knife and said, “Just give me the excuse, nigger.”
Joseph sprang at the man who had pushed his father and the man cuffed him on the ear, knocking him to the ground. Joseph rose and lunged for the man again and the man knocked him down again. Joseph bled from the nose and his lip was split, and he stayed on his knees.
While the men were distracted, Thompson took the rope and led the oxen by the nose ring away from the ruckus.
“Hold on there,” one of the strangers called. “Just what in the hell do you think you are doing?”
“Removing the cause for disagreement,” Thompson said, and kept walking.
“The hell you will,” said the ox-like man, and charged Thompson, head down like a battering ram. Thompson let drop the lead rope, sidestepped the man, and brought his knee up into the man’s face as he passed. The man dropped, stunned, to all fours, and Thompson kicked him in the ribs, tilting him onto his side. Thompson suddenly felt rage, unfocused, not directed at this man specifically but at some unseen torment, and he kicked again, a cracking sound from the man’s midsection. Another man advanced on him and Thompson’s elbows flailed, finding nose, cartilage, an eye socket. Again he sensed an assault from behind him and attempted to swing, to kick, but he could do neither. Arms like staves encircled him, held him tight and immobile. He waited for the blows, but they did not come. Ned talked to him quietly. “Easy, sir. It’s done. Easy.”
Thompson relaxed, and Ned released him. Two strangers lay on the ground, groggy and bleeding. The two others showed little inclination to pursue the confrontation.
“I don’t know who you are, but it is not finished. That ox is ours.”
“Do you belong to a company?” Thompson asked.
The man jerked his chin in the direction of the larger congregation.
“And have you a wagon master?”
“Solomon Crank.”
“This issue is best left for the wagonmasters to sort,” Thompson said.
The two men on the ground were up now and the four started back to their side of the meadow. The one who had been talking said to Thompson, “You take up with their kind, no good will come of it.”
“We shall see.”
Thompson walked the ox to the vicinity of the Lights’ wagon and set its picket.
“You will inform Captain Upperdine about the dispute when he returns?”
“I will,” Obadiah said.
Thompson nodded and walked back to his fire to re-heat his coffee. He worried about Obadiah’s lack of assertiveness with the men. He feared for a timid soul in this territory.
Upperdine returned to camp late afternoon. Thompson watched him ride in on his horse and saw Obadiah Light approach him before the Captain unsaddled and watched the Captain ride off in the direction of the larger camp. He thought about following but decided against it. Captain Upperdine appeared more than capable of managing for himself. Thompson instead took up his rifle and stalked the border between wood and meadow and returned in an hour with a cottontail. While it was grilling over the coals, Captain Upperdine walked up.
“Heard you had a little set-to this morning,” Upperdine said.
“I regret losing my temper.”
“Solomon Crank bemoaned your lack of restraint.”
“I do not believe I initiated the skirmish,” Thompson said.
Upperdine chuckled. “I’ve adjudicated the matter.” He did not elaborate, and Thompson thought it advisable not to inquire further. “The stock is grazed and the streams are down. We depart early.”
Thompson informed Upperdine of his decision to join them and Upperdine nodded in approval.
“I want to be on the trail ahead of the Crank party,” Upperdine said. “Would hate to suck their dust, and we need to secure good grazing ahead of them. Grass been chawed out over the summer.”
“Sounds reasonable.”
“Our oxen are slower than their mules, but we are a smaller group by far and will be in motion long before they can organize their numbers.”
“You do not use mules?” Thompson asked.
“Not for the trail. Oxen hold up better on the rough forage and they travel well over sandy soil.”
Upperdine glanced at the grazing mules, spread out over the pasture. “We’ll strike camp quietly. Pass the word wagon to wagon. Two in the morning, full moon, we should make do.”
“I’ll be about. Lend a hand where I’m needed.”
“It would be appreciated.”
“One question?”
“Of course,” Upperdine said.
“One of the men today cautioned me about mixing in with ‘those types’?”
“Abolitionists.”
Thompson turned the rabbit on the skewer. The Reverend would approve. He must write his father about the events in Deep Woods.
“So, the larger company is pro-slave?” Thompson asked.
“Free-soil republicans,” Upperdine said. “Want the territory free of slaves but free of the Negro as well.”
“I see.”
“Pro-slave ruffians are a sight rougher lot than you met today.”
“That is not comforting news.”
“I don’t expect trouble. But I’ll tell you this. Until I have this company a goodly distance from the Missouri line, I’ll swear an oath to either side to see us safe on our journey.”
Thompson tested the rabbit by poking and took up the skewer and offered a leg to Captain Upperdine. He declined. “Tomorrow, then,” Upperdine said.
After dark, men went into the pasture and led the oxen to their wagons and yoked them while women and children loaded the cookware, tents and awnings, washbasins, churns, and other equipment that had been set out during layover. They slept lightly for a few hours in the open, and at two, Upperdine set the camp in motion. By first light the fifteen wagons had already covered several miles, and Upperdine continued to push them until late morning when they nooned beside a stream with good water. Far in the distance they could see dust raised by the large train, and Thompson was grateful they were making trail ahead of them.
Upperdine set the order of travel. Up at five, moving by six-thirty, nooning during the heat of high sun, resting the oxen, letting them graze unhar
nessed for a few hours, pushing on to a stopping point by early evening. They continued to catch sight of the larger wagon train by the dust signature, but each day it grew fainter until finally disappearing altogether. Their wagon train alone now on the prairie, a town on wheels, a town rolling inexorably westward with each passing day, it struck Thompson that he traveled with a community approximately the same population as the one he had abandoned. At ease with the idea or not, he’d rejoined the living.
4
They walked over rolling prairie and the unimposing flint hills of eastern Kansas Territory. It seemed impossible to imagine, those first days, that lack of good grazing could ever become a concern. Big Bluestem and Indian Grass grew as tall as a man’s shoulder. When Thompson rested with Obadiah and his family, they had to keep watch on Hanna’s little one lest she wander just a short distance and become lost entirely in the thick growth.
They walked beside their wagons at the slow, even pace of the oxen that pulled their every possession westward. The driver walked at the flanks of his team barking commands, “haw,” “gee,” his stock whip, or a prod, ready encouragement. The small children rode in the box. Older children at turns rode and walked with their parents or together in groups. The company: fifteen wagons, seventy-five Durham oxen, cattle, a few mules and horses, an assortment of dogs, fifteen families, sixty-seven people.
Even with so small a party, oftentimes the train spread out for a mile or more—a sore hoof, an axle in need of grease, an obstinate team—and Thompson found himself drifting from one family to another to help out, and he learned their stories. The emigrants were men who had made a go of it, for the most part, in the East but dreamed of more. They had to be well off enough to outfit the crossing and afford a year’s stake in the new land before their first harvest. The Barksdale family, old Tom, fifty-four years, grizzled, a gray beard reaching down his shirtfront, widowed, led his five boys, stair-stepped in age. He planned to send for his young second wife and two infants in Springfield once the second crop came in. Hiram Calderwood was a wheelwright bound for Bent’s new fort with his two oldest sons. Burrows Grissom traveled with his wife, Susan, and two oldest, but had left their three younger ones in Indiana with her sister. He first had come west in ’48 for the California adventure and had lost his left arm at the elbow. He’d sliced his forearm while trying to separate a land turtle from its shell for stew. Infection. The West had gotten into his blood, but Susan refused to let him come alone again. Said she couldn’t afford to lose any more of him than she already had.
Much of the walking was spent in silence, the creaking of wheels, the squeal of the brake lever on steeper downgrades, an occasional shouted command. They made good time, twelve, fourteen miles a day, dust always with them, coating their clothes, hair, beards. Although raw country, they still traveled within the bounds of civilization and they passed through land in places broken by fields of corn growing in ordered rows, an odd and incongruous sight in this unordered country. Log and wood shanties dotted the hills, fenced gardens growing root vegetables and bush beans.
Weather continued hot and dry, the trail dust-choked but firm as a barn floor. The miles passed. Water ran clear, and the bottomland still provided sufficient deadfall to feed cooking fires. Thompson proved an appreciated hunter for the company, killing a black-tailed deer one evening that provided small portions for each wagon. Another morning, three turkeys he’d called from a hackberry thicket just after sunup. He found comfort wandering alone in the wilds. Often without warning a dark memory would cloud his awareness for no reason other than he’d allowed his mind to wander back to Indiana before he’d thought to check it, and some unreasoned but necessary instinct would turn him away from the wagons and he would disappear into the grass or down a gully only to regain his senses hours later and miles away.
But on the days he remained clear-headed, he guided Captain Upperdine’s wagon during the march, freeing the Captain to scout ahead on horseback or to check the position of other wagon trains along the trail. And, on those good days, he often supped with the Lights, drawn to the reassuring ideal of family. They’d sit together in the growing dusk and Thompson would race beetles against Joseph. They’d draw a circle in the dirt and spend considerable time selecting their specimen from the insects that were ubiquitous along the trail, feeding on the droppings of the thousands of animals that passed by.
“This one here is a brute,” Thompson might say. “Bigger across than my thumbnail.”
“But mine’s sleek,” Joseph might counter. “Built for speed.”
They’d place the two insects together in the center of the circle and wager future riches on the first to break from the ring. Hanna expressed mild disapproval of their gambling, even on imaginary stakes, but did not forbid their game. Joseph quickly became a millionaire at Thompson’s expense.
Other evenings, Thompson might spend time with little Martha, braiding necklaces from grass and wildflowers or whittling a stick figure for her. He’d linger around the camp watching Hanna put Martha to bed, and then perhaps he’d sit while Obadiah was at his pipe before retiring to his own fire, either to sleep or to lie awake into the night, staring into the endless black sky, imagining a life in Indiana no longer within his reach, as distant and inaccessible as the stars overhead.
Whenever they could, the company set camp beside water where trees might provide shade and where there was good forage. Evenings, Thompson took to walking out into the tall grass, to whatever rise might present itself, to scout for game. If he suspected upland birds or waterfowl, he borrowed a fowling piece from Upperdine; if larger game, his own long rifle. On occasion, Obadiah’s son, Joseph, accompanied him. Thompson found he enjoyed the boy’s company because Joseph, like Thompson, had little use for extended conversation. Still, Thompson learned a little about him on their hunts. Sitting one evening on a hill looking out over an open meadow, Thompson asked:
“An expansive land, don’t you think, Joseph?”
“A empty one, I’ll give you that.”
“You don’t see opportunity out here?”
“No, sir; I see a whole lot of nothing.”
They sat in silence. Thompson pointed to a shadow at the far end of the meadow. A black bear edged from shadow into light and back into shadow.
“Should we pursue?” Joseph asked. Thompson shook his head, no. Joseph seemed disappointed, looking first at the bear and then to Thompson, like a pup begging to retrieve.
“It is moving away from us and we are losing the day,” Thompson explained. “Your mother would worry if we were long past dark chasing the beast.”
Joseph laughed derisively, surprising Thompson. “Not likely,” Joseph said.
They returned to camp and Joseph went to a cold supper while Obadiah greeted Thompson.
“Good of you to let the boy tag along with you.”
“He seems unenthused about your journey,” Thompson said.
“Difficult for him. He’s of an age. Left his pards back home. May have been sweet on some girl, I don’t know.”
Thompson nodded. “It hurts to leave someone behind.” He turned from the Lights’ camp and walked alone into the outlying country as the day ended. The prairie sun had begun to burn the grass brown, but wildflowers were in bloom still, the goldenrod, the pink and purple four o’clock, and the brilliant blue flax. Many evenings when the press of other people tightened his chest, Thompson would sit alone out of view of the caravan and watch the blooms fold with the day and feel like the only human being on the face of the earth, utterly alone but at once filled with his surroundings, a bearable solitude.
THE COMPANY PUSHED ON, HOUR after hour, mile upon mile. Some days clouds brought shade, some days none. Most days brought wind, and, with it, dust. The settlers came to pray for the occasional shower that cooled the land and tamed the dust. But rain came at a cost. At first the drizzle was welcomed. Often, however, drizzle turned to rain, sometimes driving, and soon the road became slick on the grades and muddy on fl
at stretches. Progress slowed, boots caked with muck, wagon wheels mired. One discomfort exchanged for another. Day after day, a new challenge, a new test.
As they sank into the routine, travel grew tedious because of the mud, or because of the dust, tedium the one constant.
5
They came eventually into the valley of the Neosho River, an oasis of wooded draws and cultivated fields: corn and hay in the lowlands, cattle on the hillsides. They arrived in Council Grove midday and some wanted to pause, but Captain Upperdine pushed them through.
“River flow is unpredictable. We’ll cross while the water allows.”
They camped a few miles outside of town. Some of the men, Tom Barksdale’s two oldest, the wheelwright Calderwood, and one other Thompson did not know well approached him after supper. The wheelwright spoke.
“Few of us of a mind to see what Council Grove is about, if you care to join us.”
Passing through earlier in the day, Thompson had noticed the graceful set of the town, the wide main street, and the whitewashed shops advertising everything from sacks of oats to fine whiskey. He had use for neither, although he understood the men’s curiosity.
“Obliged, but I have things to look to.”
The following morning, Thompson noticed a group of men congregated around Captain Upperdine’s cook fire, and he walked over. The men dispersed before Thompson arrived. Upperdine looked perplexed.
“Trouble?” Thompson asked.
“No more than expected. Calderwood has decided to forgo his plans for Bent’s Fort and to establish his trade here.”
“It’s unfortunate to lose a wheelwright,” Thompson said.
“Can’t shackle him, I guess.”
The company broke camp with one wagon fewer and pushed on to Diamond Springs, named after its clear, good water. The area was more sparsely inhabited than Council Grove, but a scattering of small farms dotted the landscape and the fields looked healthy. Upperdine laid over a day to graze the stock, and he bought a few sacks of feed at a fair price for insurance against barren stretches he knew the company would soon encounter.
Crossing Purgatory Page 4