Up ahead, Inga, Johannes, and Rebecca stood by their wagon. Reuben was unsaddling Lahn. Just getting back from his pistol practice, Sarah realized. Rebecca, watching her as she approached, waved and as Sarah neared their fire, smiled a sincere, warm welcome— not her typical biting smile. “Why are you shaking your head to yourself as you walk, Sarah? Is this wilderness driving you daffy?”
Everyone laughed. Reuben winked at her, and she felt a thrilling stir but quickly averted her eyes. “Actually, Rebecca,” she replied, “the further west we go, the more I see the country open up, the more convinced I become that this is the sanest, insane thing I’ve ever done.”
Inga walked over and put her arm around Sarah’s shoulders. Sarah looked up into the taller woman’s face and smiled. “I feel the same, Sarah. I truly look forward to each day. I thought the excitement would wear off, but I think it’s just the opposite.”
Reuben looked at each of them, but his eyes lingered on Rebecca. “There is an energy to this land. That is certain. You would have to have armor over your heart not to feel it.” Rebecca impassively returned his stare.
“I was really in no hurry to get back to my wagon…”
Rebecca turned her gaze back to Sarah. “And that nasty, maniac demon,” she added.
Sarah nodded. “Certainly that, too. I thought I would help you prepare supper since Inga was kind enough to invite me.”
Inga laughed and spread her arms wide toward the fire. “We’ve planned a very special repast. Pemmican stew, with pemmican stew on the side with hardtack biscuits. And then, we have hardtack biscuits and some beans.”
“Now that sounds special, Inga!” laughed Johannes in a jovial tone tinged with sarcasm.
“We do have quite a bit of bacon left. It is going to spoil if we don’t use it. When Rebecca and I bought it we didn’t know that Reuben does not eat bacon.” Inga turned to Reuben. “I’m sorry, Reuben, I should’ve realized it to begin with, and certainly after the campfire, when I noticed you had none of Mac’s pig.”
Reuben smiled good-naturedly. “It’s difficult to keep customs on the trail, and I imagine it won’t be much easier when we finally get west. If there are a few simple traditions I can adhere to, I will. But you folks chow down on the bacon. It does not bother me,” he laughed, “and I love the smell!”
Inga turned to Rebecca. “Then let’s make one batch of stew with bacon, and a smaller batch for Reuben without bacon. Rebecca, what would you prefer?”
There was an awkward silence between the five of them. Rebecca looked surprised by the question. Her eyes moved to Reuben who stood watching her, his arms crossed over his chest, the Colt dangling at an angle off his hip, and the brim of his hat set low enough so that his eyes were in shadow.
She opened her mouth but abruptly closed it, returning her gaze to Inga. “Well, Inga, the bacon has certainly been tasty up to this point. But I think I, too, shall forgo bacon for the rest of the journey.”
Sarah felt a little knot in her gut. Her eyes darted from Rebecca to Reuben and back to Rebecca. There was no communication between them whatsoever, yet there was. Her thought was interrupted by Johannes’ exclamation, “Where did you get those moccasins? I’m jealous. Exactly what I think we will all be needing.”
He walked over to Sarah. Glad for the diversion, she held out her new footgear so he could see them better. “Would you like to take a look?”
Johannes reached out eagerly for the moccasins, turning them over in his hands, looking at the soles, running one of his long fingers along the stitching. He whistled. “Whoever made these knows what they’re doing. Double-stitched, extra thick, double-soled, rolled edges. If these were a pair of horses, I’d call them a fine thoroughbred team!”
The others had come over to see the moccasins also, and they passed them around to one another with similar laudatory comments. Inga reached over and touched her arm, “Is this why Zeb came up to us at the river?” she asked, keeping her voice low. “To give you the moccasins?”
Sarah nodded. She knew that despite herself, her face had a slightly dreamy quality. Inga’s smile seemed all-knowing. Johannes, still engrossed in the moccasins, completely missed the look that passed between the women. “That old devil,” he said, “wonder if I can talk him into making me a pair?”
Reuben laughed. “I’m not sure you could talk him into making anything, Viking. But, if you suggested, and then threw something his way he might want to barter for, you might have a chance.”
Johannes looked up at his friend with a grin, “Isn’t that the truth.”
Sarah realized Rebecca was keenly watching Reuben, who was staring at her. She thought quickly. “May I put my laundry canvas over by the wheel?”
Inga gestured, “If you want, Sarah, you can lay out your laundry on the other side of the wagon. That’s what I did. Might as well get it started drying so it doesn’t mildew in that bag.”
Rebecca had detached herself from the group and was surveying the encampment. She sighed, and turned to Sarah and Inga. “If you don’t mind my not helping with supper, I really would like some time to myself down by the water before it gets dark. I did not realize how I had taken being near to the river every day for granted until we spent the last three days in that waterless wasteland. After the last few days in those conditions, I need to freshen up and clear my nose from the smell of this afternoon and the dust of Kansas. Every time I moved today, the wind seemed to shift and along with it the smell of burning wood and red-hot iron.”
“Please do, Milady Marx. Sarah and I can get the food prepared and if we are lucky, we might have some help from the men.”
Rebecca’s eyes moved to Johannes and then to Reuben. The two men exchanged a resigned glance. Reuben spoke up, “Would you like some company, Rebecca? I’m not sure it’s completely safe to be down there on your own.”
Reuben’s arms had dropped from their fold over his chest to his sides, where they were suspended from his gun belt by two thumbs dug in behind the shiny row of metal capped cartridges.
Rebecca smiled, “That’s kind of you, Reuben, but I would rather some time alone.” She walked over to the wagon and plucked her Sharps rifle from its leaning position behind the front wheel. “Besides, I will not be completely alone. I should be utterly safe.”
Reuben nodded and turned to Inga “You’re in charge, Miss Norway. Tell me and the Viking what you would like us to do.”
The exchange made Sarah a bit nervous, but she couldn’t quite pinpoint the reason. She watched Rebecca tuck an embroidered handkerchief in the sleeve of her woolen dress, then turned to help Inga begin dinner preparations.
Rebecca smiled to herself as she walked away from the wagon and entered the scattered trees that separated the circular encampment from the river. She reached the edge of the river, drew up the hem of her skirt, and shook her head at the tiny explosion of trail dust from the fabric. Leaning her Sharps against a cluster of boulders, she checked carefully for nettles before easing herself down in a small grassy nook between the rocks. The circle of wagons was not more than two hundred feet away, but she felt almost as if they did not exist. She was alone in a vast empty space on the edges of the Big Nemahaw, five thousand miles from the expansive city she called home. Or had called home. She furrowed her brow at the thought.
Above the gentle murmur of the river current where it caressed the shore, she heard the faint crackle of the campfires, occasional laughter, and the clang of stirring ladles chiming dully against interiors of the great iron pots suspended from tripods as supper was prepared. Every so often, muted male voices cursed softly in unison with snorts of horses and the low brays of oxen as men carried water buckets to the stock. Downriver, the diffused steel-grey curtain of dusk stole toward her like a phantom from the east, gradually swallowing the golden waves of the prairie grasses visible in breaks in the mixed deciduous cover. To the west, the last rim of retreating sun blazed in an orange glory, its rings of shallow red, then fading pink and pale yellow, b
idding farewell to the day in concentric arcs of flaming color.
The vastness, the emptiness, the sheer space enveloped her. The promise of tomorrow, etched in the direction of the dying sun, stirred a feeling of excitement. She sighed almost reluctantly at the remnants of disappearing blue as the evening sky darkened. She tried to remember home—her bedroom, and the cobblestone street lined by similar stately row houses outside the great front door of their elegant London abode. I wonder how you are, Mother? She closed her eyes and lifted her face to the cooling breeze to focus on the memory of crowds, city noise and fine linens, but the images remained distant, as if from a long-ago dream.
Her mind drifted back to the conversation at the wagon a few minutes before. She had every intention of answering Inga’s question in the affirmative until, her eyes on Reuben, she opened her mouth and what came out was not at all what she expected. I shall forego bacon for the rest of the journey. Was it Reuben’s presence? Or, after all these years of ignoring it, did the realization that out here, in the middle of nowhere, she had only herself, her friends and her God? She shook her head. She would piece together the puzzle later. Right now, there was the evening, the river, the solitude, and the setting sun.
This place was not like anything she envisioned. The journey was not what she expected. Despite her initial wish to remain aloof, the bond between friends strengthened every day. The fast budding friendships between her and Sarah, and Sarah and Inga, had taken her by surprise. Just six months prior she had been caught up in the society, and the shallow give-and-take of the city, exchanges always underlain by business or personal ulterior motive, and the continual cacophony of the crowded urban environment. Despite her resistance, her respect for the commoners in the other wagons, their spirit and courage, was growing.
She had not even felt a twinge of remorse when Mac announced they would avoid Kansas City, St. Joseph, and Independence, instead sending Reuben, John, and Charlie into “KC,” as Mac called it, for certain supplies and parts with a stern warning to not mention the wagon train.
At first, she had listened begrudgingly, unable to imagine silence like this. That it would now whisper to her soul with such insistence was a revelation, as was this completely different world she had never known existed. Nor had she cared.
She closed her eyes as the last flame of color faded from the sky and struggled to remember exactly what their wise, old, prescient, aborigine servant, Adam, had told her as she boarded the carriage for the Edinburgh. His tone had been so earnest that it had momentarily diverted her from her poor mum sobbing at the top of the steps. Despite her father’s insistence that the aborigine had a gift for seeing the future, she had dismissed Adam’s words as gibberish. “I assure you, Adam, I’ll be back in London, my goals accomplished, by the late fall.” She had not even thought about that moment until now. What were they?
His deep baritone voice, thick with the accent of his native land, suddenly swam back into her memory, and her eyes opened wide, staring unseeing into the first twinkle of stars to the east. “It will be a different life, Mistress, but you shall prosper. The power of the land and the man will hold you.”
She rose, feeling a bit unsteady. Adam’s serious face, knowing tone, and the conviction in his words swirled round and round in her head. She knelt at the water’s edge and withdrew the handkerchief from her sleeve, then rolled both sleeves up to her elbows. Leaning over the water, she rinsed her hands, then splashed water on her face. Drying her eyes with the handkerchief, she looked down at her reflection, barely visible in the remaining light. The mirrors of her uneasy eyes danced back and forth across the moving current.
Rising, she bent over and picked up the Sharps, stood, and took one last look downstream, where the Nemahaw disappeared into the darkness toward the Missouri. She took a deep breath, shook her head, and headed back to the wagon.
Inga and Sarah greeted her with smiles as she walked into the light of the small fire, “Perfect timing, Milady Marx. We just began serving.” Johannes and Reuben merely nodded, their attention buried in their plates. The coffee chugged in the tin kettle, and the faint bubble of the pemmican stew, mingling with the smell of frying bacon in one skillet, and extra desiccated onions in the other, stirred her hunger.
She leaned the Sharps against the inside of the wagon wheel and accepted a modestly piled plate from Inga, thanking her, then looked around for a place to sit. Reuben was perched on his bed roll, leaning against his saddle, which was separated from the ground by a blanket. She walked over and stood in front of him. “May I join you?”
His head snapped up at the request. His eyes fixed on the wide, warm smile Rebecca knew she was wearing, and he stopped chewing. There was a moment of silence before he scrambled to his feet and extended an arm toward his makeshift seat, “Yes…I…Yes, please do.”
CHAPTER 23
APRIL 25, 1855
MAPS OF FATE
The afternoon was warm, sunny, and almost cloudless. The wagons had circled. Children ran here and there through the camp chasing one another, laughing and shouting, sometimes drawing exasperated looks from adults busy with pre-evening chores. Rebecca stretched, trying to soothe her bones from the jarring, daylong ride in the wagon. Inga was inside the wagon, straightening their slightly disarrayed belongings.
For the past several weeks, with increasing frequency, Johannes and Reuben had entrusted the wagon driving to her and Inga. Having had experience, she was comfortable with control of the rig from the beginning, and Inga was becoming quite proficient. When the trail was a bit less bumpy, all relatively speaking, of course, Rebecca had enough faith in Inga’s prowess to occasionally doze off, only to be inevitably awakened by a particularly vicious jounce of the springs.
They had crossed the Osage weeks ago, the Big Nemahaw, several days ago, and a number of smaller rivers without incident. Rebecca noticed that Mac usually stopped travel an hour or so early the day before a crossing to afford the pioneers more time to prepare. Reuben had mentioned that the next river, the Little Blue, was yet several days travel.
Before attempting to cross the deep, wide Osage weeks prior, Mac had ordered all the prairie schooners and Conestogas blocked up with large square pieces of wood, placed at each corner between the rockers and the wagon beds. She applauded his foresight for caching these blocks near the entry point on previous trips. During the daylong extensive preparations, he gave strict instructions to the men. “Detach the teams from the smaller wagons. Empty out all supplies, the water kegs, too. Lash those so their lower edges are at the bottom level of the wagon beds—four to each larger wagon.”
The seven smaller, makeshift wagons in the train, including Sarah and Jacob’s, were stripped of their canvas tops, which were coated with linseed oil. “It will save you this chore a few weeks from now,” Mac had joked with the astonished group of small rig owners. He then divided the people between the larger wagons, and increased their teams with the animals from the smaller wagons. Pointing to six men, he instructed, “Wrap the oiled canvas around the exteriors of the smaller ones, loose ends in the wagon bed.” Then he, Reuben, Johannes, Charlie, and John, with a number of other men, had lashed the canvas, along with six empty water kegs, on each.
Charlie and John swam their horses across with several long hemp ropes, their stiff, heavy-trailing ends tied off to trees at the entry points to the crossing. One rope was stretched taut about six feet above the current. The other was tied to the front of what had become wagon boats. Zeb’s mule packs were placed in the eight smaller wagon barges with the other supplies needing protection.
Rebecca found herself fascinated by the process and impressed by Mac’s ingenuity. Each wagon barge was accompanied by one man. Just in case, Rebecca presumed. She saw Zeb, Reuben, and Mac in a huddle by the barge containing Zeb’s mule packs, talking conspiratorially. Reuben had his wool coat on one arm and the old leather case he seemed protective of, in the other. He was apparently insisting to Mac that he be the “captain” of the ba
rge. She watched as he carefully rolled his coat and the case in a gutta-percha, tying it securely with rawhide. Intriguing, I really have to find out more, she thought. Charlie and John, joined by Zeb and his mules, towed the boats across from the opposite bank.
Eight men and two oxen anchored the rear of the wagons from the near bank with yet another thick, coarse, piece of two-hundred-foot hemp. Two loops of rope were bolted to the top of the same side of the wagon bed rims, which were reinforced with planking in and out. The guide ropes, as Mac called them, were looped over the dry elevated rope, which stretched like a golden thread across the muddy blue of the river. These kept the converted wagons from being swept downstream.
The supplies had made it safely to the other side and then the larger wagons and their fortified teams, driven by anxious drivers, Inga and herself included, had crossed one by one, sometimes bouncing on the stream bed, other times literally floating, buoyed by the water kegs, and pulled by the swimming teams with the assist of the men, beasts, and ropes on either side of the river.
Her aching joints reminded her how glad she was that crossing the Little Blue was yet several days travel. Reuben and Johannes rode up on Lahn and Bente, breaking her reverie. Johannes maneuvered his horse to the back of the wagon where he could see inside the open flap and called a cheerful hello to Inga. They engaged in conversation, their sing-song Scandinavian dialect punctuated by Inga’s giggles and Johannes’ laughter.
Rebecca couldn’t understand the language, but Johannes’ provocative tone and Inga’s breathless replies, imported the gist of the conversation. She chuckled to herself and shook her head. Reuben dismounted at the front of the team, Lahn waiting patiently as he began the work of unharnessing for the night. Rebecca walked over to the horse, gently took his reins and stroked his neck. His warm, moist muzzle brushed her cheek, and his thick pink tongue lapped against her jaw.
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