11
They passed through washed-out prairie, bleached flats, cactus and bunchgrass growing in tight fists. Sand hills and low plateaus intruded on the horizon like sea swells. Heat still burdened the land and pressed into their skulls. But Thompson knew they had been gaining elevation as they moved west, and with higher ground came an easing coolness at end of day. Imperceptibly, a few feet a mile, but mile after mile. During the day, clear skies, white heat; at dusk, the hint of chill creeping in like the melancholy memory of a lost love. In the lengthening nights, his blanket became a close companion. The high plains seemed to Thompson a desolate, wondrous cathedral. The sky a towering arched ceiling of blue, the horizon an unapproachable altar, a solemn, quiet, endless space. The vast openness, a place to ponder, to pray, although he’d all but forsaken belief.
The days passed with affirmative sameness, so when the landmark known as Big Timbers first came into view it seemed a mirage. Cottonwood trees lining both banks of the river jutted into the sky and appeared almost simultaneously with the imposition of great billowing clouds advancing from the west. What for days had been a monotonous, faded background transfigured into a landscape of radiant whites, sharp blues, subtle greens, and almost infinite shades of brown as sunlight played through the clouds and threw shadows across the plains and against the bluffs that rose from the river flats.
The five wagons crested a small rise and caught sight of Bent’s trading post, a collection of stone and wooden buildings sitting below the bluffs on a stretch of high ground. Horses grazed on the broad floodplain, and a dozen tepees occupied that same bottomland: conical, symmetrical shapes against the stark angles of the buildings. Rock and timber, hide and pole, civilization in the territory. People milled, miniature in the distance.
“A sight,” Thompson remarked to Captain Upperdine, who rode beside him next to the wagon.
“Nothing like the old fort,” Upperdine commented. “Upriver a ways. Adobe brick, walls taller than two men. Plaza could quarter a hundred-fifty men. A icehouse sunk deep beside the storage bin.”
“Plaza?” Thompson asked.
“A town square. Come in out of high country, a man could feel civilized again, for a bit. A bath, a woman if you wanted and had a coin or a pelt for trade. Conversation. Bent kept books, and periodicals.”
“What’s become of it?”
“Mountains got trapped out. Fur trade slowed. In forty-nine, Bent offered to sell it to the Army. Army declined. Figured Mr. Bent would abandon and they’d have it for free. Mr. Bent was a businessman, and that notion did not set well with him. Blew it to rubble. Moved here and took up on a smaller scale.”
Blew it to rubble. The idea that someone would destroy something he’d built with his own hands struck Thompson as almost inconceivable. Then it occurred to him with such startling clarity that he stopped in place as the oxen plodded on. It’s exactly what he had done with his own homestead, his family, his life. Blown it to rubble.
Coming into the perimeter of the trading post put Thompson ill at ease. Indians, of different ilk, distinct in skin coloring, dress, size. Mexican traders, brown like the earth. A scattering of free Negroes, scores of white men of various dress and deportment, all hard-lined and trail-worn. He noticed only three females as they came into the confines of the post, Indians, who were dressing hides in proximity of the tepees. Among the stone buildings, traders sat under lean-tos that sheltered wares and pelts. Several men squatted in the shade of a cottonwood, talking a bit too loudly, laughing, and passing a jug. Thompson’s attention drew to a cock-fighting bout underway in the stone ring: men hollering, bills scattered, blood on the sand. One cock had an eye dangling from its socket, but fought on and the crowd yelled encouragement. The noise of greeting and barter and argument ebbing and flowing in the dust-stirred air. He felt on guard, the world closing in around him, his senses assaulted after too long in solitude. He tensed, and then relaxed a bit when Upperdine moved the company through the outpost without halting.
Upperdine decided to camp west of the trading post a half-mile, where a level bench for picketing the animals held tolerable grass. As they passed the tepees below the post, Upperdine reined his horse and asked Thompson to handle the encampment. Thompson watched Upperdine dismount and walk up to three Indians who greeted him in friendly animation.
While the others explored the trading post, Thompson remained in camp. He watched the comings and goings from a distance, heavy Murphy wagons pulled by six teams of oxen, wiry Indian ponies flying among the plodding mules on the grazing fields. He walked along the river to where bluffs threw both banks into shadow and the temperature cooled by at least ten degrees. He discovered geometric designs carved into the rock face by ancients, he supposed. On the plains, he walked a land of low hills and ridges rising from the expanse of dry flatlands, and he began to notice details he’d neglected while in constant movement on the trail: shallow depressions where jackrabbits might nest; the whirring sound of prairie chickens flushed from the sagebrush; turkey roosts in low timber along the river and in thickets clogging the side channels; how a scrub patch in the distance might lead him to a pothole or a seasonal pool holding water, or, perhaps a mallard. He had a notion to winter somewhere near, and he needed to become familiar with the land.
For two days, Upperdine stayed away with the Indians and Thompson ate with Hanna and Joseph. The others were rarely in camp. The two miners, Rice and Perkins, had met several prospectors at Bent’s Fort who were preparing to set out for the foothills to the north and west. They talked excitedly of gold nuggets the size of pigeon eggs strewn along the stream banks just waiting for the plucking. Pauperbaugh, the hatter, had negotiated a license to market at the fort and was busy during the day disassembling his wagon for the ready planks with which to begin building a display table and trade booth. Thompson kept close watch on the Lights, and he slept nearby, and guardedly. Men from the post had heard that a white woman was traveling with the company and a steady stream of hungry-eyed, wolfish strangers crabbed about, hoping to catch sight of her.
The layover provided Thompson opportunity to meet an obligation he’d been putting off while on the trail. The afternoon of the first night at Bent’s Fort, he spent a few of his coppers to purchase a pen, paper, and postage. He wrote a letter to his father, a straightforward, unemotional account of his life since that past spring. He repeated what he suspected his father had already been informed, that he had lost his family and abandoned his farm, and in the letter he renounced any inheritance due him. He would not be returning home. He offered his best wishes to the Reverend and to his brother, Jacob, and he signed off. He deposited the letter in the leather mail pouch that hung from a peg in the trade room.
He’d written the letter without sentiment but later in the evening as so often happened, his mood darkened with the ebbing day. His thoughts carried eastward: Jacob biding time in Philadelphia, waiting for the day the estate would come into his possession and provide for him a comfortable city life either through sale or tenancy. Thompson did not begrudge his brother that future, but he did mourn the forfeiture of his own due to covetous greed. Had he not lingered on his father’s estate, he possibly could have saved his family, nursed them, or, failing, died with them in honor. Yet, filled with self-loathing as he was, when he wandered in memory over the ripe fields and green pastures of his boyhood home a yearning came over him almost like love-sickness.
The morning of their third day at the fort, Upperdine rode up to Thompson while he was sitting on his heels by the fire, drinking coffee. The Captain dismounted and accepted a cup from Thompson.
“I plan on striking for home first light tomorrow. Except for you and the Lights, the company has dispersed.”
“I’d noticed as much.” Thompson glanced toward the fort. Curiosity loosened his tongue. “Acquaintances there?”
“In the Indian camp. I paid respects to the elders, learned of news across their range, and attempted to secure pledges of peace through the winte
r. I believe I succeeded.”
Thompson offered a hard biscuit, which Upperdine accepted.
“So, you get along with the Indians?”
“For the most part. The Cheyenne and the Arapahoe. The Comanche is a wild card.” He retrieved two strips of jerked venison from a pouch at his belt, gave one to Thompson, and absently gnawed on the other. “When I first come out here, I was with Mr. Bent when he hid a couple Cheyenne from the Comanche. I ended up marrying into the tribe.”
“You took an Indian wife?”
“I did. Weren’t no churches out here, but yes, I took her. And she did right by me. Strong worker, obedient. She was a good woman.”
“Was?”
“Lost her to the cholera one spring when she went to visit her people. That all was years ago. But the Cheyenne remember me.”
“That is comforting news.”
“It is, for now. But I do fret. They are nervous about the numbers of whites they see crossing the trail. They have heard that a man found gold north of here. They had a strong wish to kill him before he passed on the news, but failed.”
Thompson stood and tossed the dregs of his coffee into the fire. “Rice and Perkins have heard the same rumors.”
“No good will come of it for the Indians. They’re concerned about the spider people overrunning their land.”
“The spider people?”
“That would be us.” Upperdine paused, removed his hat and scratched his scalp, eyed Thompson. “But misfortune for some could mean opportunity for others.”
“Others?”
“I got plans. The Arapaho have been in council with the Cheyenne. Prospectors are already coming onto their lands. Not many, yet.”
“Then it’s true? There is gold to be had?”
“Don’t matter to me one way or the other. If there isn’t, a lot of people will have wasted their time. If there is, the Big Bugs in the states will get hold of it before the scratch miner has a chance to sneeze. But I been through the rush of forty-nine, and I seen enough to know that it’s not emigrants who will prosper but those that provide for them. They come ill-prepared for life out here. Linen shirts, poor tools, few provisions.”
“A trade post where they stake out claims?”
“I don’t know. Just rumors so far. But if they come, opportunities will arise.”
“Sounds like you got it figured out.”
“I’ll need help.”
“I’m neither teamster nor trader.”
“I have land on the Purgatoire. Hay that needs cutting, wood split for winter, stock to tend. Help with my fields while I am away. Winter over, and then decide your future.”
Thompson thought over the offer for a few minutes before answering. A part of him wanted nothing more than to work the fields again; he was not by nature a wanderer. But another part felt responsibilities weighing on him.
“I cannot leave the Lights. I have no solution for their circumstances.”
Upperdine stood and paced, frowning. “I told you, this is no place for a boy and a woman, let alone one so incapacitated with melancholy.”
“I cannot abandon them.”
“Eastbound wagon trains stop at Bent’s Fort, for another few months, until the weather turns. They can join one and return home.”
“The boy is also damaged in spirit, not ready to cut loose to his own devices. There’s an anger inside that could cause him hard times.” Thompson knew that with Hanna incapable of handling their affairs, they’d be taken advantage of. “If they decide to return, I’ll have to accompany them.”
Even as he said it, Thompson dreaded the thought. But what choice? He’d traveled with them for weeks, grown fond of the family, and Joseph needed watching, and guidance. Moody like all boys his age, but normal until his injury. Thompson remembered his own awkward age, how he and Rachel had played together as children, their families close neighbors and Anglicans, both, until one day almost simultaneously with hair appearing on his body, chest, armpit, crotch, he began to notice her in a different light altogether from that which illuminated their adolescence. He too had grown moody almost overnight, fidgeted in church, and in school, barely able to sit, wanting only to run, to test his legs, his breath, to feel the energy surge. When in Rachel’s presence, some unknown and frightening urgency to seek her glance, to contact her, a brushing of arms. What outlet for his energy had Joseph? And Hanna? What of Hanna?
Upperdine spat. “Damn it all, bring them along.” He spoke with vehemence. “We’ll find quarters for them until she gives birth and hopefully recovers her mind.”
“It’s not my decision to make,” Thompson answered evenly. “But I will attempt to learn their desires.” How, he did not know, but before reticence dissuaded him, he walked the short distance to the Lights’ camp. He found Hanna on a campstool, mending a shirt. Her belly was heavy now and served as a shelf for her sewing. Joseph was not around that he could see. He’d shown excited interest in the trading post, the exotic sights and activities, and spent much of each day there. Thompson approached Hanna, who glanced up from her work. He crouched so he could talk softly and levelly with her, explained patiently what he and Upperdine had discussed.
“I will see you through,” Thompson said. “Wherever you decide to go. But I must know your wishes. To remain here a while? To return to your home back East, your people? Some other destination? What do you want?”
Hanna looked up from her needlework and for the first time since her ordeal regarded him straight on, unblinking, and her eyes spoke to him as clearly and as persuasively as any conversation possibly could. They shone with a controlled but pervasive sorrow and with resignation and with a determination that communicated clearly her intent. She held his gaze, forever it seemed, and he could not look away. And slowly he intuited a distinct sense of this woman. Her tranquil expression, face softened by grief but unlined, revealed a younger Hanna than Thompson had taken her to be, perhaps only a few years older than himself. He’d never appraised her so closely before. She’d always been Obadiah’s wife, or Martha’s mother, or the widow, ravished in body and spirit. She must have been young when she came into Obadiah’s household. She must have had to deal with Joseph’s cold reception and jealous guardianship of his father’s attention. Obadiah, older by a decade, must have served her both as counselor and husband. Thompson understood that there was no home to return to back East in Obadiah’s absence, and that she both loathed this new land for its mournful bequest and determined to make something of her husband’s dream. Other truths about Hanna he struggled to bring into focus, but they remained murky and unarticulated. Truths like a forgotten name, on the tip of the tongue, but irretrievable.
So, a decision reached, all without a word between them. He stood, felt momentarily lightheaded, and walked back to his camp.
12
They departed the following morning, the two wagons only. Without the others, they pushed the teams hard and covered ground quickly, eighteen miles the first day, stopping only because the oxen appeared worked out. The trip had covered more than five hundred miles, and the animals had lost one-third of their body weight. They had departed Westport stocky, with glossy hides and clear eyes, but now ribs protruded around their midsections like the staves of a barrel and they moved with a shuffle that kicked up dust with every step.
Two days out of Bent’s Fort, they came to the confluence of the Arkansas and Purgatoire rivers. Captain Upperdine halted the wagons and rode down the embankment and urged his horse into the Arkansas upstream from the junction. His horse struggled mid-river but made the ford. Upperdine remained on the far bank for several minutes, riding upstream and back, testing the banks, and then he re-crossed and returned to the wagons.
“Fresh teams, I’d ford here and make for home,” he said. “It’s only a few miles down. But I won’t risk my trade, not on this team. They’re done for.” Upperdine’s wagon was laden with eastern goods highly prized in the western territories: factory-made clothing, machined tools, mi
lled lumber, glass window panes, books and maps of newly surveyed territories, sulfur-tipped matches. Thompson recognized Upperdine’s cautiousness as their travels neared completion.
“There’s a good natural ford farther upstream,” Upperdine said. “We’ll double back.”
Early the following day the wagons had passed the rubble of Bent’s old fort, a mound of broken adobe and blackened rafters. Upperdine did not slow his team and he barely glanced at the wreckage. Thompson studied the ruins until they disappeared from sight around a curve in the trail. His homestead in Indiana a similar ruin. With the new fort downstream, no one would likely rebuild here, as no one would reclaim the burned cabin in Indiana. His fields in time would return to forest. No trace that a family had once built a life there; that laughter had echoed from the woods and dreams seeded the fields.
Just southwest of the fort the banks of the Arkansas leveled and Upperdine led the wagons across at a point where water would not threaten the storage beds and footing was sure for the oxen. Thompson crossed the river standing on the Lights’ wagon tongue, encouraging the oxen with his prod. Joseph stood beside him, and Hanna sat in the back.
On the south bank, they camped one final night. The four sat into the night, each quiet in their own thoughts. Thompson experienced no rush of excitement or anticipation, only a vague melancholy. His travels were over, for the present, but what now? Could he remain in one place without memories overtaking him? How to fill the hours, how to avoid wandering back into the past as he had yesterday upon catching sight of Bent’s ruins?
The next morning they turned east and doubled back on the south side of the river until they met with the Purgatoire. Captain Upperdine halted the wagon and his sweeping arm panned from the river along the floodplain to low rises in the west.
Crossing Purgatory Page 9