Wagon Trail

by Bonnie Bryant

  “That’s a good idea,” agreed Stevie. “Although I don’t think any of us would have much luck with anything named Veronica.”

  After lunch they resumed their jobs, agreeing to switch off in an hour. Stevie pulled on a pair of leather gloves she’d thrown into her backpack, so the blisters on her fingers bothered her less. Once again Jeremy rode to the head of the column, waved his hat, and shouted, “Wagons ho!” And once again they were off.

  The wagons rolled westward onto the vast plains. Miles of flat, nearly treeless land stretched to the horizon. As far as the girls could see, the long green grass was dotted with small purple wildflowers. Little yellow birds Polly Shaver called western meadowlarks chattered to each other, and the delicious smell of earth and new grass drifted on the warm breeze.

  “This doesn’t look much like Virginia, does it?” Stevie commented as Lisa tugged Veronica along.

  “No, but it’s just as pretty.” Lisa looked out over the prairie. “It’s pretty in a flatter, more open way.”

  “I wonder how far away we can see.” Carole squinted at the distant horizon from atop Nikkia’s back.

  “Maybe fifty miles,” guessed Stevie. “After all, these are the wide-open spaces.”

  Suddenly Veronica stopped dead in her tracks. She twisted her head around and pulled up a mouthful of grass. “Looks like it’s Veronica’s snack time.” Lisa shrugged at Stevie as the wagon rumbled past her. “We’ll catch up to you later.”

  “Okay.” Stevie scratched under the collar of her dress. “See you soon.”

  She and Carole rolled on until a voice came from the rear of the train. “Hey, Carole! Can you help me with this horse?”

  Carole looked over her shoulder to see a desperate-looking man on an equally desperate-looking pinto waving at her. “I think someone needs a riding lesson,” she said to Stevie as she turned Nikkia and began to trot toward the man. “I’ll be back in a few minutes!”

  “Don’t teach him anything I wouldn’t teach him!” warned Stevie with a laugh.

  Stevie drove on, content to let the sun warm her face as Yankee and Doodle followed the wagon ahead of them.

  “Hi!” she heard a small voice call.

  She looked down. Beside her wagon skipped the pretty little blond girl who’d charmed everyone at their get-acquainted breakfast.

  “Hi,” said Stevie. “You’re Eileen, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.” Eileen smiled. She held up a straw basket filled with angel-shaped cookies. “My mother baked these cookies and we were wondering if you’d like one.”

  “Sure,” said Stevie. She reached down and grabbed a cookie from the basket. “Thanks.”

  “It’s neat that you can drive a wagon and eat at the same time,” Eileen said admiringly.

  “Oh, it’s not too hard,” Stevie replied, her mouth full. “Would you like to learn how to drive?”

  “Sure.” Eileen’s eyes were bright.

  “Then climb up here and I’ll show you.” Stevie reached down to help her onto the wagon. In a moment Eileen was sitting beside her.

  “Okay, Eileen. Here’s what you do. Put the left rein over the index finger of your left hand, then put the right rein under your middle finger.” Stevie helped Eileen arrange the reins in her hand. “Then hold your hand right at your belly button with your knuckles facing the horses.”

  Eileen positioned her hand as Stevie had showed her. “Is that all?” She looked up at Stevie with pale green eyes.

  “Just about,” said Stevie.

  Eileen frowned as Yankee and Doodle trudged along. “How could you make them go faster?”

  “Oh, you just pop a whip over their heads, or you pop the reins, if you haven’t got a whip.”

  “Like this?” Eileen took the long ends of the reins and gave both horses a sudden, vicious swat on their rumps.

  “No!” Stevie cried, but it was too late. Yankee whinnied and reared in the traces, and then both horses surged forward at a gallop.

  The jolt somersaulted Eileen backward into the wagon and loosened the reins in her hand. Stevie had just enough time to grab them before they fell between the horses’ thundering feet. Quickly she grasped them in her left hand and braced herself against the footboard of the wagon. “Whoa!” she called, pulling hard on the reins. “Whoa!”

  The horses did not stop. They galloped straight for the wagon in front of them, where a little boy sat in the back, a look of terror on his face. Stevie realized she would have to turn the team quickly if she was to avoid a real disaster.

  “Haw!” she cried as loudly as she could, using both hands to turn the horses to the left. “Haw, Yankee! Haw, Doodle!”

  The horses drew closer. Just as they were about to lunge into the wagon, Doodle pulled to the left. Yankee followed. Stevie’s wagon flew past the other wagon in a blur, stirring up a huge cloud of yellow dust.

  “Hey!” Stevie heard an angry voice shout over the sound of other horses whinnying. “No racing! You’re messing up the order of the train!”

  “I’m not racing!” Stevie said through gritted teeth as she pulled back on the reins with all her strength. “I’m trying to stop!”

  Finally Yankee and Doodle slowed to a trot, and Stevie managed to pull them to a stop just as they drew up even with the lead wagon. For a moment it was all she could do just to breathe through the thick dust.

  “Everything okay here?” Jeremy galloped up on his paint, frowning.

  “Fine, now,” gasped Stevie, red-faced and still out of breath.

  “Well, take your place back in line when you can,” he said firmly as he turned back to the head of the column.

  “Just a minute.” Stevie heard a small voice behind her. Eileen scrambled out from inside the wagon and climbed to the ground. “Some driving teacher you are,” she said, glaring up at Stevie. “Look what you did to my angel cookies!” She held up the basket of broken cookies for Stevie to see.

  “Well, gosh, so sorry,” Stevie muttered. She started to add that she and Eileen could have wound up as crumbled as the cookies, but Eileen was already running back to the other wagons. Stevie shook her head and pulled Yankee and Doodle around, waiting to take her place in the line. As she waited, she watched Eileen run up and down the wagon train, showing everybody her broken cookies and pointing at Stevie.

  “Some little angel you turned out to be,” Stevie whispered. “From now on it’ll just be heavenly if you stay away from me.”

  WHEN THE THICK yellow dust finally settled, Stevie saw her old place in the line and maneuvered the horses back into it. The little boy still looked out the back of the wagon she followed, only now he shook his finger at Stevie, as if she’d done something very bad.

  Stevie wanted to make a face at the kid, but instead she gave him a sweet smile and kept Yankee and Doodle at a safe distance. There was no point in acting like a jerk to a little kid who didn’t realize what had really happened. She took a deep breath and was trying to relax back into the bumpy rhythm of the wagon when she saw Gabriel riding toward her. He sat easily in the saddle as his bay horse loped along, and he wore his cowboy hat tilted forward on his head.

  “You need to keep these horses in line,” he said, reining up beside her. “We ride this way for a reason. And green drivers like you shouldn’t be trying to race. It makes the other horses nervous and scares everybody on the wagons.”

  “Green drivers?” Stevie squawked, barely believing her ears. This arrogant tinhorn thought she was green!

  “Yeah. Green drivers. No experienced driver would have done what you did. You can harness horses up okay, but I don’t think you know a thing about driving them.” He gave her a tight smile. “Just keep in line and follow the wagon in front of you. Do that and you’ll be fine.”

  Stevie glared at him. She wanted to explain what had really happened, but she was so angry she could barely speak. “Well, thanks for your advice, Mr. Assistant Trail Boss,” she finally managed to say. “I never would have figured it out all by myself.” />
  “Just trying to help a lady.” Smugly Gabriel tipped his hat and turned his horse back to the front of the line.

  Stevie was so furious she thought she might explode. What an idiot! she fumed silently as she watched him ride away. He’s as bad as the kid in the next wagon. They both think they know exactly what happened when they know nothing at all!

  After Stevie had counted to ten several times, she calmed down enough to enjoy the rest of the afternoon. Yankee and Doodle pulled the wagon steadily, and as the sun began to set behind the far hills, Jeremy waved his hat around his head, the signal for everyone to circle up for the night. Stevie pulled into place and the girls began to work at making their camp. Stevie unhitched the team, fed them, and turned them out in the makeshift corral. Lisa watered Veronica and hitched her to the wagon wheel while Carole unsaddled Nikkia and gave him a good brushing. When they had finished taking care of their livestock, they wearily washed the gritty dust from their faces in a small creek and decided it might be a good night to sleep under the stars.

  “I understand now why the pioneers turned in early,” said Carole as she pulled her sleeping bag out of the wagon.

  “Why?” asked Lisa.

  “Because look at all this work we’ve done just to get ready to go to bed, and we still have to help with supper.”

  “I know,” said Stevie, grabbing her own sleeping bag and wincing from the blisters on her fingers. “I sure do miss Deborah. She would have been an extra pair of hands.”

  After the girls had joined some other campers in helping Shelly Bean with dinner, they took their seats around the campfire. Mr. Cate played his harmonica while Jeremy sat on a log, telling more history of the Oregon Trail.

  “In the early 1800s, Lewis and Clark, helped by the Shoshone woman Sacagawea, charted the trail to the Northwest. After that, there was a big dispute over whether the land there really belonged to England or the United States. In 1841 the first group of settlers left the banks of the Missouri River and headed west toward the promised land of Oregon.” Jeremy gazed into the crackling fire. “Those pioneers pushed the western boundary of America to the Pacific Ocean, and Oregon joined the union in 1859.”

  The girls’ eyes glowed with admiration at what these brave pioneers had accomplished so many years before, and they listened carefully as Jeremy spoke of some of the more famous settlers who might have camped in that very spot. Finally, as the embers of the fire began to die, Lisa yawned and stood up.

  “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m beat,” she said. “My shoulders hurt from tugging Veronica, my feet hurt from walking, and my legs hurt from doing everything else. I’m going to bed.”

  “Me too,” said Carole, joining her in a yawn. “All the same parts of me ache as well. How about you, Stevie?”

  “Count me in.” Stevie got up slowly. “And ditto on the body parts. I sure wish we had a big feather bed to sleep in.”

  The girls walked over to their wagon. They had just arranged their sleeping bags on a soft bit of ground when Jeremy walked up.

  “Hi, girls.” He took off his cowboy hat. “I wanted to let you know that I just got a call from Deborah on my cell phone. She got back to Virginia safely and she’s with her parents. Her dad’s got a few broken bones and he’s real sore, but he’s going to be fine. And her mother’s much calmer now that Deborah’s there.”

  “That’s wonderful news,” said Carole.

  Jeremy nodded. “She said to tell you three to be brave pioneers.”

  “Hey, speaking of being brave pioneers,” Stevie said suddenly, “I’d like to explain what happened today, Jeremy. I wasn’t trying to race with the other wagons. I was just showing that little girl Eileen how to hold the reins when she slapped both horses on their rumps. Yankee reared and bolted, and Doodle took off right along with him. I’m sorry if I scared the other people on the wagon train.”

  Jeremy’s eyes grew serious. “Stevie, you don’t need to apologize. I saw the whole thing. You were trying to be nice to Eileen, and you simply misjudged her capacity for misbehavior. I thought you did a fine job of getting your team back under control. You’re probably one of the few people on this trip who could have done that.”

  Stevie began to blush. “Thanks.”

  Jeremy smiled and put his hat back on. “Well, you girls get a good night’s sleep. You know how early five-thirty comes.”

  “Good night, Jeremy,” they called as he walked over to his own camp.

  The girls climbed into their sleeping bags. Above them, filmy clouds floated across the moon, and the sounds of Mr. Cate’s harmonica floated over the campsite. Stevie lit her tiny oil lamp and pulled her journal from beneath her pillow.

  “Stevie, are you writing again tonight?” Carole yawned.

  “Just for a few minutes,” replied Stevie. She read over what she’d written the night before, then turned to a fresh page. Day Two, she wrote at the top.

  Today was very exciting. Yankee and Doodle ran away with the wagon. Though it was really scary, I got them back under control. Then Mr. Know-It-All Gabriel rode up and told me that I was a green driver who didn’t know anything. I was furious! He is the most arrogant, obnoxious person I’ve ever met. But when he told me how I really didn’t know what I was doing, his eyes turned this deep shade of blue, and when he rode away, he sat on the horse like his legs had been made for the saddle. And he wears his cowboy hat this really neat way that makes him look so cool.

  “Wait a minute.” Stevie blinked, rereading the words she’d just written. “This isn’t what I wanted to say at all.” She stared at the writing and wondered if she should cross it out or just start all over on a fresh page. Finally she tore the page out of the book and wadded it into a ball. I’ll toss that one into the campfire tomorrow morning, she thought as she rolled over to sleep. And maybe overnight I’ll think of what I really want to say.

  From her own sleeping bag, Lisa heard Stevie rip the page from her book and then turn over to go to sleep. She smiled. Stevie must be having a hard time driving a wagon all day and writing about it at night. Lisa didn’t blame her. She felt as if she was having a hard time doing everything from keeping up with Veronica to washing her face in the cold, muddy creeks. She sighed. How wonderful it would be to jump into a steaming hot shower and then into a soft, cozy bed. You must be more like your mother than you thought, a little voice whispered to her just as she was falling asleep. All these modern comforts are as important to you as they are to her.

  No, they’re not, Lisa protested sleepily. Showers and beds and indoor toilets aren’t important at all when you can look at the stars at night and smell the breeze that blows over the plains and listen to meadowlarks singing in the trees. The little voice kept whispering, though, until Lisa finally rolled over in her sleeping bag and pulled the blankets to her chin. Just as she felt herself falling into a deep and restful sleep, something cold and wet splashed on her cheek. She opened her eyes. Another wet something hit her, then another after that. She sat up. A gentle but insistent rain had begun to fall.

  “Stevie! Carole! Wake up!” Lisa shook her friends. “It’s raining. We need to get under some shelter.”

  Fumbling in the dark, the girls got up, pulled their sleeping bags beneath the wagon, and settled down again to sleep. The ground was a lot harder under the wagon, and what felt like a dozen small rocks dug into Lisa’s back. Be brave, she told herself, twisting and turning as she tried to get comfortable. The pioneers had to cope with rain and pain and tiredness, and you can, too.

  “IS ANYBODY AWAKE but me?” Lisa rose up on one elbow and peered through the dim light.

  “I am,” muttered Carole. “I woke up when that darn prairie chicken started chirping.”

  “I’m not.” Stevie’s voice was muffled by her sleeping bag. “I’m having a nightmare that I’m awake. I’m actually still sound asleep.”

  Lisa ran one hand through her short, sun-streaked hair. “I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t think I slept a wink
all night. It felt like a small river was flowing underneath me.”

  Stevie sat up and felt the underside of her sleeping bag. “I think we must have slept downhill from some runoff,” she said. “My sleeping bag is soggy.”

  “Let’s get dressed,” said Carole. “That way at least our outside clothes will help get us warm and dry.”

  Lisa watched as Stevie and Carole scrambled out from under the wagon; then she followed them. The night before, her arms had ached from tugging Veronica along. Now her back was sore from having slept on the rocky ground. As she slowly pulled her sleeping bag from beneath the wagon, she wished, for an instant, that this wagon train reenactment was over and that she was back in civilization, sleeping in a soft bed in warm, dry pajamas.

  You really are like your mother, the little voice chirped inside her head.

  No, I’m not, she argued silently. I left all those spoiled ideas back in Virginia, just like I left my suitcases stashed in Stevie’s closet.

  I don’t think so, said the singsong voice. Yes, I did, Lisa insisted, refusing to listen anymore. She threw her sleeping bag into the wagon and climbed up after it. She was determined not to complain about anything that day, especially things as silly as wet clothes and a sore back.

  “Yuck,” Stevie said as she pulled her dress on over her head. “This scratchy old dress feels awful against my skin.”

  “I know.” Carole buttoned her blue shirt. “And this wagon is so dark you can barely see what you’re putting on.” She zipped her jeans. “I don’t guess that matters, though, since we only have one outfit to wear.”

  “Oh, it’s not so bad.” Lisa tried her best to sound cheerful. “I mean, the pioneers had to dress in here, and their wagons were a lot more crowded with stuff than ours is.” She held up her blue dress and noticed that the hem was covered with mud and that dust had settled in the fringes around the collar. “After all, we’re here to get a taste of what pioneer life was like. They didn’t have umbrellas and hair dryers and microwaves. All they had was what they could carry, and they couldn’t carry much in these little wagons.”