[Oregon Trail Time Travel 04.0] Angie and the Farmer

by Susan Leigh Carlton

  “You do have a sense of humor, don’t you?” he asked.

  “I try, but sometimes it’s hard. I hope I didn’t hurt your feelings, but I just… I don’t know. I tried to be honest with you.”

  “I’m disappointed, but you didn’t hurt my feelings. I’m not giving up though.”

  “Good.”

  “Let’s walk through the Hudson Bay place,” he suggested.

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  * * *

  The wagon wheels were rolling again, headed for the Snake River. Twenty five miles later, they made camp at the American Falls. “Good grass and good water,” Slade reported.

  The following day ate up another twenty-two miles that involved crossing several streams that emptied into the Snake. They camped with a train of freight haulers eastbound.

  “If you have any letters, they’ve agreed to put them in the mail when they pass the Pony Express Station,” Jed said. “Angie, if you want to write someone, just give it to me and I’ll take it to them. They’re a pretty rough bunch, so I’ll save you any contact.” He leaned over and whispered, “I know you don’t have the means, so I’ll take care of the postage.”

  He wasn’t prepared for the wave of sadness that washed over her face. “What’s the matter? Did I say something wrong?”

  She shook her head and said, “No,” then turned away.

  “I don’t know what I did,” he told Mandy. “I offered to mail anything she wanted to send back home. Honestly, I don’t understand her. I’m always upsetting her one way or another. Maybe it would be best if I just didn’t say anything.”

  “You didn’t do or say anything, Jed. She doesn’t have anyone left to write.”

  “I didn’t know that. I sure stepped in it this time,” he said.

  “It’s not your fault any more than it is hers. You just go on being nice. She’s having a really hard time.”

  Later…

  The camp had settled in for the night when a series of shots rang out from the area where the stock was bedded down. From her sleeping place under the wagon, Angie watched the men running to the sound.

  “What’s going on?” she asked Seth, as he got out of the wagon and pulled his shoes on.

  “Sounds like someone’s after the horses,” he answered and ran to the commotion.

  Within minutes, he was back, leading one of his horses. He saddled the horse and rode off with nine other men. “Indians are trying to run off with the horses,” he shouted.

  It was three hours before the men returned. During their absence, the freighters had harnessed their oxen and headed east for Fort Hall, leaving only the wagons of Major Adams caravan.

  The Indian rustlers had driven the horses and cattle into a box canyon, and set up an ambush for their pursuers at the entrance. Two members of the caravan had been shot in the melee, one of whom was Seth Gilley. Two horses had been lost, driven off by escaping Indians.

  The wounded were brought back to camp. Mrs. Parsons was called to look at Seth.

  “Son,” she said to Jed, “get me some whiskey. Miz Gilley, can you git me a piece of cloth or something for him to bite on.”

  They sprang to do her bidding. “Is there anything I can do?” Angie asked.

  “When I get him drunk enough, I’m gonna need a hot iron to cauterize the hole the arrow made.” Angie went for the iron.

  Four men were enlisted to hold Seth down. “Git me the hot iron,” Mrs. Parsons directed.

  “”I’ll help you,” Jed told Angie. He put a rod that was used to stir the fire into the hot coals.

  “What is she going to do?” she asked Jed.

  “She’s going to use the iron to cauterize where the arrow hit.”

  “She’s going to burn him?”

  “They do it to stop the bleeding and try to keep it from getting infected.”

  “I don’t want to watch this,” she said.

  “You stay with Miss Polly and Mama. I’m going to help hold him down.”

  Seth’s scream when the hot iron was applied to the wound drowned all other sounds, until mercifully, he passed out. Polly and Angie were both crying, holding each other.

  “How are we going to manage without him to do for us?” Polly asked.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll manage,” Angie said. “You just worry about yourself and Seth. I’ll take care of everything else,” Angie told her.

  The next morning…

  Major Adams called for a layover the next day to allow the wounded a chance to recover. Angie and Polly had packed the things they had used to prepare the food. “Angie, I don’t have any idea what to do in order to move out.”

  Jed walked up to them. “Miss Polly, you stay in the wagon and take care of Seth. I’ll get the oxen hitched, and we’ll be ready to go.” He tied the horse to the back of the wagon, and hitched the oxen. The other wagons began moving, with the Gilley wagon falling about one hundred yards behind.

  “Thank you Jed. We would have been left behind,” Angie said, walking alongside as he led the oxen.

  “You wouldn’t have been left. Major Adams wouldn’t have let that happen. I wouldn’t have either, for that matter. I had told him I would be here.”

  “I’m grateful,” she said.

  “I don’t want to get surprised by anyone trying to take advantage of us as stragglers so keep an eye out to the side and back until we catch up.

  “Do you think they might come back?”

  “I doubt it, but if we see anything, I’ll get the attention of the others by firing the rifle.”

  Groans came from the wagon as Seth regained consciousness. “That just chills my soul,” Angie said. “He must be in terrible pain.”

  She heard Polly trying to comfort her husband.

  Chapter eighteen

  The Barlow or the River

  The trail more or less followed the Snake River for more than three hundred miles over a three-week span.

  “I think the closer we get to Oregon, the worse the roads are,” Angie observed. She was startled as Seth screamed after the wagon rolled over a rock.

  “I feel sorry for him,” Jed observed. “I know he feels bad about having to rely on someone to do things he feels he should be doing. It wouldn’t do any good to tell him though. It’s got to be rough on Miss Polly too. Being great with child, she has to be uncomfortable, but I haven’t heard one word of complaint from her. All of the jarring and bumping must be getting her down, but she doesn’t let him see it.”

  “That’s one of her ways of showing her love for him. She’s more concerned for him than she is for herself.” Angie looked at Jed. “That’s love. She loves him with everything she has, with no regard for herself.”

  “Don’t take this wrong, but shouldn’t she be concerned for her baby too?”

  “She is,” Angie said. “We talked about it the other night. She doesn’t want to let him know because she doesn’t want to add to his pain.”

  “Is there anything else we can do to help?” he asked.

  “If there is, I don’t know what it is.” She looked at his face. He is sincere and he cares. There’s more to him than I thought. I shouldn’t be surprised. Mandy is the same way and so is their mother. They have surely been nice to me.

  * * *

  A council meeting…

  “We’re finally done with the Snake,” Major Adams told them. “We’ve got about five days along the Burnt River to the Powder, and then eight or ten days to the Dalles. There’s a trading post there and according to my guide book, you can take a boat down the Columbia or take the Barlow Road. The book says the Barlow is one of the hardest parts of the trail.”

  “Wouldn’t that take a lot of boats to carry the wagons?” Harve Winston asked.

  “Here’s the thing, Harve,” Major Adams said. “It’s expensive on the river. The book says fifty dollars a wagon, and ten dollars a person. That’s probably changed, more than likely gone higher. The other way is the Barlow Road around the south flank of Mount Hood. It s
ays the roads are poor, and steep. They’re hard on the livestock.

  “The way I feel is, I wouldn’t want to get to the end with nothing left and winter coming. I would take the road and save the money. It won’t be easy and we’ve got the Blue Mountains and the Cascades ahead of us. One other thing, there is a five dollar toll on the Barlow.”

  The Lewis family…

  “I’m thinking hard about the river route,” Hiram Lewis told his family that night. “Clint said the book says it’s much easier and saves time.”

  “We could save a good bit of money going by land,” Jed said. “We’ve already come through some rough times. We can handle the mountains.”

  “We have had it rough at times. Maybe it’s time for us to take it easy,” Hiram said.

  “I’m going to stay with Angie and the Gilley’s. I don’t think they can afford to pay that much, even if it would be easier.”

  “Think about what you’re saying, son. We could be there and working on shelter before the train even gets there,” Hiram told him.

  “I’m going overland,” Jed said, with finality.

  “I’m proud of you,” Mandy said.

  “If you try to kiss me, I’ll slug you,” he promised.

  The next morning…

  “Did Polly and Seth talk about going on the river or over the mountains?” Mandy asked Angie.

  “They did, but said they didn’t want to use any more money than they had to. I wonder what they would do if I weren’t here.”

  “You’ve earned your way several times over,” Mandy assured her. “Papa’s thinking about it, but Jed flat out said he’s going over land. He said he didn’t think they could afford it, even if it would be easier on them both.”

  “That’s so sweet,” Angie said.

  “That’s so like Jed,” Mandy told her. “I told him I was proud of him.”

  “What did he say?”

  Mandy grinned. “He said if I tried to kiss him, he’d slug me.”

  “Wonder if he’d slug me?”

  “Try it and see,” Mandy said.

  “I just might.”

  That evening…

  After Jed had taken on the task of leading the Gilley oxen when Seth had been injured, they spent more time together. They began taking walks in the evening after Seth resumed leading his team.

  “Mandy told me what you said last night,” Angie said.

  “Mandy’s got a big mouth. It’s going to get her in trouble someday.”

  She stopped and looked up at him. “Jed?” She wrapped her arms around his neck, pulled his head down and kissed him on the lips.

  He was flabbergasted, and at a loss for words. “You didn’t slug me,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Mandy said you told her you’d slug her if she tried to kiss you. You didn’t slug me.”

  His cheeks were flame red. He looked around.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked.

  “What if someone saw that?” he asked. “What would they think?”

  “They would think it was a boy kissing his girl. Does that bother you? What they think, I mean?”

  “I wouldn’t want them to think I was trying to force myself on you.”

  “If they were watching, they would have seen it was the other way around. I’m not ashamed of it. What if I yelled it out? Would that embarrass you?”

  “You wouldn’t do that.”

  “Dare me?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” he said.

  “When you dare someone to do something, they’re a coward if they don’t do it.”

  “Well, I’m not going to dare you.”

  An impish grin spread across her face, causing her green eyes to sparkle. “I would.”

  “You wouldn’t,” he said.

  “Dare me,” she challenged.

  Chapter nineteen

  This is Me

  Jed didn’t pick up the gauntlet she had thrown down. “I don’t think I will do that.”

  “I started to tell you something a while back, but when you didn’t promise to keep it a secret, I held back. Instead, I told Mandy. She and Major Adams are the only people I’ve told what I’m going to tell you now. I trust you enough to keep it to yourself.

  “You will have trouble believing what I’m about to say, but it is the truth. If you can believe it, then it will explain many of the strange things that surround me. Don’t interrupt me and I’ll try to answer any questions you have when I’m finished.

  First, my name is Angela Thornton and my parents and I were caught in a flash flood. We had gone from Brevard to the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. I was a good athlete in high school. Just in case you don’t know, an athlete is someone who is good in sports.

  “I was better than good. I was very good, good enough that several colleges wanted to pay for my college tuition and expenses just to play for their schools. I can probably outrun you, and out jump you. We both know I can swim better than you.

  “Anyway, we were on our way home when Dad hit water flowing across the road and lost control of the car and we went into the flood waters. We weren’t in a wagon. We were in a car.” He started to say something, but she held up her hand to stop him.

  “A car is a machine that is driven by an engine running on gasoline. They can travel fast. Really fast. It took us about three hours to go the 200 miles to Lincoln.

  “When we hit the water, the car began floating in the current. I managed to climb through a window and onto the top of the car. Dad was trying to help Mom get out. They were both knocked into the water by an overhanging limb. I don’t think they made it. The same limb hit me, but I managed to hold on. I was caught in a notch of the tree. That’s where Jeremy found me.”

  “Angie, it hadn’t rained for days when we found you.”

  “Think back… I asked Major Adams to feel my shoes. They were wet.”

  “Yes, but…”

  “Let me go on. I’m seventeen years old. I was born January 27… 1998. In Brevard, Missouri.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  She looked to see if anyone was around. They were alone, so she pulled her iPhone from her pocket. It was fully charged.

  “This is called an iPhone. It’s made by a company called Apple and won’t be invented for another one hundred-forty years. With it, I could have talked to anyone in the world if I had their telephone number. It says “No service” now because there are no others yet to connect with.”

  She touched the illuminated screen in several places. “This is our house, and the red thing is one of our cars. The one we were riding in when we went into the water. This is a picture of my Mom and Dad.” She swiped her finger across the screen and Major Adams’ picture appeared. One more swipe and there was the picture of a puzzled Mandy beside Angie.

  “Come close to me, and put your arm around my waist. Closer than that. Come on. Act like you mean it.”

  She held the iPhone in front of her. The bright flash startled Jed, and caused Angie to smile. “Look at this.”

  The image of the two of them stared Jed in the face. “That is absolutely unbelievable,” he said, emphasizing each word.”

  “There is a lot more I could tell you that would be more unbelievable. Now you know just about everything there is to know about Angela Thornton. It’s up to you whether to believe it or not. I know you have doubts, so it’s all right with me if you want to talk to Mandy. She promised not to talk about it with anyone, but I’ll tell her it’s okay to talk to you.”

  “I don’t understand any of this,” he said.

  “You don’t understand it? Try living it. I don’t know whether my parents are living or dead or in still another time.”

  “What was it like?”

  “There’s so much difference, it’s hard to pick any one thing. Incredible things have happened.” She pointed to the moon overhead. “Men from the United States will go there in 1969, walk on the surface and come back to earth.”

  “As
strange as it all sounds, I believe you,” Jed said. “It does explain a lot of things.”

  “Thank you. It’s important to me that you do believe me.”

  The next morning…

  “Papa has decided to go the Barlow Road,” Mandy told Angie.

  “Why did he change his mind?”

  “He found out the river is easier going, but dangerous. There are several falls. The main thing was everyone else is going on the Barlow, and he didn’t want to give up his friends.”

  “I’m glad you’re going this way. You and Jed are the only friends I have. I like Polly and Seth, but it’s different.

  “By the way, I told Jed my story last night, so it’s okay for you to talk to him about it. He had trouble believing it at first, but I think he did.”

  “You are getting along pretty well with him aren’t you?”

  “Yes. I like him. In fact, I like him a lot. It isn’t love yet, but it could be some day. Compared to him, I feel like a girl.”

  “Actually, he was born in ’48. You’re 148 years older.”

  “I know. Right now, my feet feel every year too. Physically he’s seven or eight months older, but it seems a lot more.

  “That’s strange, isn’t it? I guess it’s because of where I came from. Boys become men quicker now than in my time.”

  “This is your time now,” Mandy reminded her.

  “I know that, but I still think I might wake up and find is all a dream. A long dream that is tougher than anything I could have imagined.”

  “Don’t let him get away. You won’t find a nicer boy anywhere,” Mandy told her.

  “That’s part of my problem. He’s not a boy, he’s a man, and I’m not ready for a relationship with a man.”

  Chapter twenty

  The Home Stretch

  The end of the Barlow Road…

  “Less than a week left on the trail,” Angie said to Jed. “What is it going to be like to wake up knowing we don’t have to walk fifteen or twenty miles?”

  “Heaven. It’s going to be heaven. We’re out of the mountains and the hills are becoming less steep,” he told her. “Tomorrow, the last of them will be behind us. Slade says two days to Sandy and one more to Oregon City.