Diamond Springs proved an alluring charm for three other families. At supper with the Lights, Obadiah sat with Thompson while a subdued Hanna put Martha to bed.
“The Grissoms will disembark here,” Obadiah said. “Hanna is sore pressed to let go her friend Susan.”
“Bonds form quickly on the trail, I imagine,” Thompson said. “And there are few other women to visit with.”
“We were tempted as well,” Obadiah said.
“And why not?” Thompson asked. “This land recommends itself.”
“I have my heart set on the open plains. Near Walnut Creek, perhaps, or just beyond. I hear there is an army outpost in the planning.” Obadiah went to the front of his wagon and retrieved a leather pouch. “Friends in Ohio have kin in Odessa who sent them this.”
Obadiah untied the drawstring and pulled out a handful of redtinged seed and let them sift back into the bag. “A strain of wheat said to prosper in dry climates. Plant it in autumn. Sprouts early winter, goes dormant until spring. Benefits from the snows and early rains and ripens before drought sets in. I aim to try it.”
Thompson absently listened to Obadiah go on about the potential for a wheat crop, while silently grateful to have them along for some miles yet. He enjoyed their company and, unsure of his plans, uncertain whether he’d ever come upon a place that would feel right for him, he found comfort in the Lights’ unalloyed hopefulness. They dared plan a future, farming the great unplowed expanses.
The following morning, only eleven wagons departed. Two nights out from Diamond Springs, Thompson took last watch, from three until five. As dawn approached, a breeze came up from the northwest and stars began to disappear as a cloudbank rolled in. Daybreak brought rain. A steady, light shower fell early and let up, but the men all became soaked past the waist when they waded through wet grass leading the stock to harness. Rain had muddied the road as well, and travel slogged. Midmorning, high gray clouds gave way to a menacing black sheet that advanced on them from due west with a stiffening wind. They did not stop for noon. Upperdine pressed to make Cottonwood Crossing before rain, and indeed they forded just ahead of a blustery storm that churned the creek with runoff from the low banks. That evening, Upperdine confided to Thompson that he was happy to have passed Cottonwood Creek quickly lest its attraction lure yet others from the train.
“Did you notice the trees along the banks, those few log cabins on the hills?”
Thompson allowed that he had.
“That is the last community worth glancing at we’ll see before Bent’s Fort except for an outpost or two. And the last of the trees as well.”
The weather took on a pattern. Clear mornings turning hazy, and by afternoon thunderstorms came on with a vengeance, clouds booming, lightning flashing across the darkened prairie, and rain in torrents. By the time they made Turkey Creek, its banks were overflowed and six feet of brown, roiling water rushed the channel that normally held two. Thompson set camp with the Lights and they tried to dry off under the canvas of the wagon covers and eat a cold supper, cornbread and slices of dried apple. A lucky few had managed to keep bedrolls dry, but for most of the party, rain had found its way through slickers, between folds and splits in the wagon canvas, onto blankets and spare clothing and into boots. Night passed without fire, damp and shivering. Morning brought heavy drizzle and lifting skies, and they were able to light fires that put up dense smoke from sodden wood. They laid over all that day waiting for the creek to subside. Storms still raged to the northwest, and the creek ran fast and brown.
Midday, Thompson hiked to a rise and sat on his haunches and scanned the middle and far distances for game. In the gray light, the horizon blended into sky, so that he was unsure just where one ended and the other began. The grass, tall and returning to a light green from the rain, melted into the gray of the sky so that Thompson had the feeling he was staring into a flat, dimensionless sheet hanging from a line. Then, not a hundred yards away, a great beast stood from its wallow as if rising out of the prairie itself. The buffalo shook its head and its thick beard released a spray of mud and water. It started off at an angle toward the creek as another buffalo crested a small hill that Thompson had not even realized was there, and ambled after the first. Thompson kept low and maneuvered for a shot, but the animals moved with a surprising speed given their bulk and they entered the creek some hundred-fifty yards above him. The current mid-stream was fast and angry, and it pushed the buffalo downstream as they plowed forward so that they left the water on the far bank almost directly across from Thompson. They stood not forty yards from him, shaking the water from their mantles and pawing at the gravel of the creek bank. Thompson watched the two bulls. He could have taken them with his rifle but had no way of knowing when he might be able to retrieve the meat, so he passed up the shot and just watched them, all shag and sinew, until they climbed the creek bank and walked off into the high grass to the west. He wondered how they’d appeared from nowhere. An empty prairie one second and two behemoths filling his vision the next. Wondered how to develop eyesight in this strange land. A new perception required?
The grass still held the rain so that by the time he returned to the company early in the evening, Thompson again was soaked. He sparked his campfire to life, fed it dry grass he pulled from under the shelter of the wagon, then small twigs, then limbs. He removed his outer tunic and propped it on two sticks close to the fire to dry, and pulled on his one spare shirt. Afterward, he thought to inform Captain Upperdine about the buffalo, but he saw Obadiah talking with him. They looked in earnest discussion and rather than disturb them, he walked to the Lights’ wagon and found Hanna at the back gate, tending to Martha. She’d wrapped her in a blanket against the dampness and had nestled her on a straw mattress. Hanna had placed a camphor poultice on the child’s chest and was mopping her forehead with a wet cloth.
“A little sage tea,” she said, to herself. She hadn’t noticed Thompson approach.
“I’ll watch her,” he said. She started at his voice.
“I’ll just brew up a little sage tea,” she repeated, “and return shortly.”
Martha appeared feverish to Thompson. Her hand was at her throat, massaging it. Her neck looked swollen. He stroked her head. He cooed, and then clucked like a chicken and Martha looked up at him and giggled. A little.
“Caught a chill from the rain, is all,” Hanna said, coming up beside him, placing her hands to the small of her back, arching. A grimace. Her pregnant belly swollen. Would she birth on the trail, Thompson wondered?
“She’ll be fine,” Thompson assured, and nodded to Obadiah who had returned from his visit with Upperdine.
A squall blew up at sunset. Winds carried a drenching rain, slanted and malevolent, as if seeking out every dry space, every comfortable nook. Campfires extinguished, paths mired, blankets soggy. They scrambled for cover under the canvas, under the wagons themselves. The rain sought them out and saturated them. Wet and chilled, they passed the night. Thompson crouched by his cold fire, the charred remains not even smoldering, stone cold. A flashing in the west, thunder. He nodded off sometime during the darkest watch.
Martha was dead by morning.
Thompson heard keening from the Lights’ wagon at daybreak, and Captain Upperdine came to him shortly thereafter. “It’s the diphtheria, I think,” he told Thompson. “Comes on fast, can take the little ones hardly before you know it.”
“Others?” Thompson asked, thickly. The word stuck in his throat. A glutinous, ugly sound. He feared the reply. The air heavy with mist, a veiled world. Where was he?
“None that I know of. The older boy, Joseph, shows no symptoms. A few others was around their camp yesterday. I will check on their condition, but I believe them to be spared. Thus far. But we should not tarry.”
Thompson registered the salmon smudge on the eastern horizon. He focused on that thin line of color beneath a bruised sky. Concentrated on the far distance while hearing himself speak. “I’ll see about a spade, maybe a place o
n the rise over there?” He vaguely pointed to the crest of a small hill.
“Not too close to the river,” Upperdine advised. “And afterwards, make sure the men tamp it firm. River rocks, perhaps. Keep it from the prairie wolves.”
That morning, Thompson and Ned went to high ground, to a level spot that had a nice view of the creek, and dug the hole. As he labored, Thompson found himself in Deep Woods, Indiana, digging beneath the persimmon tree, full summer now, the oval leaves providing shade from the high sun, the fruit just beginning to set. He looked down the hill toward his cabin, hoping to catch sight of Rachel hanging wash, but instead saw only the charred remains of his home, the chimney stones still in place, rising from the blackened heap. Of course, he thought, and he could imagine it perfectly. After he’d been gone a week, a committee from town, the pastor, the merchant Henderson, and Constable Fletcher went to the farm. They found the dried-off milk cow in the pasture but never did locate the horse they knew he owned. They sopped grain from the bin and fed the hogs, and untethered the mule from the lean-to, and between them determined a schedule to look after the livestock. After Thompson had been gone a month, they voted to keep the mule and the plow as community property, to divide the hand tools and the chickens, and to draw lots for the hogs. From outside, they covetously inventoried the farm house interior, the furniture and tableware, but none dared enter. Caution outweighed cupidity. Instead, they burned it. Burned it to white ash and black cinders in hopes the perdition that inhabited the rooms might leave them in peace.
“They burned it,” he said aloud.
“Come again?” Ned asked.
Thompson, returned to Kansas Territory, shook his head. “Nothing,” he said, and resumed digging.
Shortly, Ned set aside his shovel and went in search of a tree and felled a middling cottonwood, which he hauled back to camp with a borrowed mule. He cut a four-foot length, hewed out the core to form a coffin, and used his saw and adze to cut and shape rough planks for the lid. Some in the company debated the wisdom of keeping the girl and her disease above ground until the coffin could be finished, but Ned would not be dissuaded. “No, sir, this here girl to be seen off right. Need a coffin to cross over in.” While he worked, Obadiah hacked limbs from the tree and with rawhide lashings pieced together a cross upon which he carved his girl’s name.
Hanna would not be consoled. She sat by the fire, silent, staring into the embers until Thompson came with Obadiah to collect her for the service. She went with them silently, wrapped in a cloak Obadiah brought from the wagon. Even though the skies had cleared and the sun was throwing down heat, she shivered. After that first pre-dawn wailing, she had not spoken, neither at the grave nor after Captain Upperdine read a few verses from the Book nor as the men filled the hole that held her child. She did not speak but neither did she allow Obadiah to lead her from the grave. She would not be comforted and she would not be moved. She sat by the grave through the day.
6
Captain Upperdine decided to lay over an additional day even though the stream had receded to fording level. Early the following morning, storm clouds again building in the west, he could wait no longer. Hanna Light had stayed the night on the hill beside a fire Obadiah built for her and she showed no sign of giving up her post.
Thompson was helping Upperdine hitch the wagon when Obadiah approached from the hill.
“We must strike camp,” Upperdine explained to Obadiah. “The weather threatens to strand us and we cannot afford another indefinite delay.”
“I understand, of course,” Obadiah said. “We’ll catch up as soon as we can. Sometimes it’s hard for a person to let go.”
Upperdine gathered the wagons and directed the ford without incident and as the company reconvened on the western shore and assembled for departure, Thompson approached Upperdine.
“I’ll be staying with the Lights until Hanna can see fit to be done with it,” he said.
“I don’t like being short another man,” Upperdine said, “but I’d guessed your intentions.”
“It’s what a neighbor does.”
“I’ll not attempt to turn your mind.”
“I’ll push them hard as soon as they are ready to travel until we overtake the company.”
Upperdine went into his saddle bag and retrieved a six-barreled Allen pistol. “I believe Obadiah carries only a fowling piece with him. Take this.”
Thompson took the blocky pistol and a bag of caps and shot. The gun felt awkward in his hand, unbalanced. He held it at arm’s length and appraised it with disapproval.
“It is an unsightly piece, and inaccurate at any distance,” Upperdine said. “But it will do in close quarters, and may discourage someone from evil intentions.”
The Captain stood his horse and took leave. The collection of wagons passed from view and the prairie grew still. Without dust rising above the trail to betray their proximity, once the creaking of the wheels and the clanging of the gear died away, the vast and empty expanse seemed to Thompson at once both utterly lonesome and intimidating. Although dark clouds rose in the west, the breeze did not pick up. Rain and wind held off and throughout the afternoon only the whirling of the grasshoppers and the occasional caw from a crow interrupted the silence. Obadiah and Hanna kept watch over the grave. Thompson and Ned minded the animals and Thompson cooked for them, a pot of beans and rice. They ate little and conversed less and evening fell solemnly on the camp. Joseph kept off to himself most of the day. Toward evening, Thompson carried food to Obadiah and Hanna but did not sit with them. He stood apart on the hill and looked out over the still plains until night closed in around him and he returned to the wagon. Ned busied himself with his tools, sharpening, oiling. The silhouettes of Obadiah and Hanna faded into the night and without speaking Thompson and Ned and Joseph rolled themselves into their blankets and rested with their private thoughts.
Next morning, Obadiah came down the hill to sit with Thompson and drink a cup of coffee.
“She cried last night,” Obadiah said. “A weeping so deep I was brought low. Brought down as low as a believing man might be expected to fall.”
“It’s hard,” said Thompson.
“I fear that some sin of the father has been visited upon the child.”
“I’ve wondered the same before.”
“She blames herself. And me, perhaps, for bringing us out here.”
“Perhaps,” Thompson said.
“I came to tell you, though, that she is ready to let go. I don’t know if from weariness or resignation, or from the tears, but she allowed so to me.”
Thompson stood and nudged a smoldering stick deeper into the embers of the fire with the toe of his boot.
“At daybreak, I saw some antelope down creek, watering. I’ll see about getting us some fresh meat for the trail. Maybe ford the creek midday. Put this place out of sight before camping.”
Thompson took up his rifle and set out across the creek, now shallow running and slow, so different from a few days earlier, and up a low bluff on the far side. From the crest, on his belly in the tall grass, he caught sight of the small antelope herd, fourteen he counted, grazing below. Perhaps a half-mile distant. He kept low in the grass and moved toward them in a duck-step. As he approached, an antelope raised its head from the grass and looked in Thompson’s direction. Thompson waited motionless for several minutes until the animal returned to grazing, and then he inched forward. For an hour he crept in this manner. Finally he approached within rifle shot of the near animals. Back and knee joints stiff, he eased into a kneeling position, gun just even with the top of the grass, and sighted down his barrel and cocked the hammer. An antelope’s flank twitched and its ears pricked but it did not bolt. Just as his finger cupped the trigger, the herd was spooked by a sharp popping sound, then another and a third, like firecrackers in the distance, and they bounded away.
Thompson lowered the hammer and watched the herd disappear into the grass. Then it registered. Gunfire. He took off at full sprint back
toward camp. He almost fell splashing across the creek, and bloodied a hand on an exposed root while stumbling up the bank. He crested the rise leading down into camp and pulled up short at what he saw below him. A man’s body lay prone on the ground beside the oxen. Another off to the side of the wagon. Three men were horseback. One held a rope that had been wrapped around the pommel of his saddle. At the end of the rope Joseph had been tied and had fallen and the man was dragging him in the dirt. As Thompson watched, the boy’s head struck the wagon’s rear wheel and the man continued to drag him. A fourth man had dismounted and stood hunched over Hanna Light, whom he’d bent face-down over the traveling trunk they had pulled from the wagon.
Some unrecognizable and horrible animal sound came from Thompson and he charged down the hill. One of the men on horseback raised his rifle as Thompson dropped into a buffalo wallow. Thompson saw a puff of smoke from the barrel and a shot buzzed past his ear, a sound like an angry insect. He propped his elbows against the lip of the wallow and aimed for the man reloading his rifle and fired before it even registered with him what it was he was aiming at. The hammer plinked against the nipple without discharging his load. He’d lost the percussion cap during his scramble. He pulled another cap from his pouch and jammed it onto the nipple and raised the rifle as the man in the distance fired again. Grit flew up into Thompson’s eyes just as he pulled his trigger, and his own rifle resounded in answer to the stranger’s muffled report. For a second, Thompson could not see. He set aside his rifle and rubbed at his eyes and through a teary film, he frantically struggled to reload. He glanced up expecting another round to come at him, but the man just sat motionless, staring in Thompson’s direction as if trying to locate him hidden in the wallow. Then he let fall his weapon and rolled backward from his horse onto the ground.
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