The Indifference of Tumbleweed

by Rebecca Tope

  But I was more distressed by the prospect of Abel Tennant leaving. The bewildering magnetism that flowed between us had only strengthened with the passing weeks, and although I resolved to ignore it as far as I could, I made sure of putting myself in sight of him at least once each day. More and more I anticipated the warm surging that filled my body whenever he was close. It was like a drug, and brought with it the same mixture of delight and shame as whisky or laudanum might have done. Abel himself was hard to read. I had the impression that he put himself in my way more than he might have done, and that he took something of the same pleasure in coming close as I did. Of course there was no possible way that I could ask him. Even if I did, the reply would bring either despair or terror. I wondered, in the night, whether I might be in love with him. There was no other explanation that I could think of for the powerful urges that I could not ignore. And yet he was not at all the man I had imagined as a husband. He might have no discernible vices, but neither could I see any noteworthy virtues. The whole of Abel’s appeal lay in his handsome face, especially the eyes and their effect on me. And, I told myself, that meant there had to be a fine soul behind those eyes. There had to be a smouldering invisible personality simply waiting for the chance to reveal itself. I had counted on the coming months to give us both time to understand precisely what was happening and perhaps even to do something about it.

  The recruitment officers were handsome upright men, in uniforms so clean and crisp they made us all look like ragamuffins and peasants. Even though we had dressed ourselves in the best clothes we could, most of the garments were badly creased from weeks crammed into trunks inside the wagons. Some were stained where there had been leaks. Mrs Gordon had a dark streak of ink on her skirt from where her brother-in-law had carelessly thrown his writing case on top of her clothes, in the final moments of packing. He had not felt any need to write anything since then, and the upended ink bottle had slowly shed its contents all over the fine cotton lawn. In addition, we were all burnished by the sun, however much we had pulled wide-brimmed bonnets and hats down over our faces. Noses were shining; cheeks roughened; hands especially darkened by sunlight and hard work. We were like slaves, grumbled Fanny. Her milky skin had always been her best feature, and the unaccustomed tanning had not suited her well at all.

  For myself, it had had a more fortunate consequence. Almost all of my pimples had disappeared in the last week or so. The colour wrought by being outdoors all day was much kinder to me than to my sister.

  Thanks to their good turnout and simple novelty, the officers attracted clusters of girls and young women wherever they went. There was a great deal of giggling and fatuous questioning and fluttering of eyelashes. The brothers of these females stood aside, with rueful faces. In consequence, many of them volunteered to fight, under the impression that the decision would make them more appealing to the fair sex. It was a long time before I grasped how deliberate this was on the part of the officers. The young migrants had been manipulated, and nothing their parents might say would sway them.

  Not that the parents said a great deal. Anxiety and confusion rendered them mute. My mother repeatedly took my father aside and spoke in an urgent undertone to him that none of us could hear. There was no doubting the import, however. She was doing her best to persuade him to speak to Reuben in terms that would form a resolve in my brother to remain with the wagon train. My father patted her shoulder and shook his head and said something she did not find to her taste. I thought of all the tasks that Reuben routinely performed, every one of which would grow more onerous as the weeks passed. The land rose steadily for many hundreds of miles, as we could all too clearly see from where we stood. The South Pass through the mountains was spoken of in tones of awe and bravado. I overheard one conversation, however, which very much reduced my worries.

  Jude Franklin was speaking with an older man who I took to be a scout. Jude was saying he could not settle his conscience comfortably if he left his family of women and children to the great struggle that would face them at the Pass.

  ‘The Pass is no cause for concern,’ said the scout. ‘You are imagining a narrow defile with great mountain walls on either side. It is nothing of the sort. South Pass is a gift from God, if ever there was one. No explorer or expedition has discovered another in the whole length of the Divide that will permit the passage of wagons. But here we have an easy stroll along a broad highway, that will deliver you into Oregon without losing a single ox.’

  ‘Broad highway?’ repeated Jude with a puzzled frown.

  ‘Twenty miles wide,’ nodded the man. ‘Ask anybody. You emigrants like to alarm yourselves needlessly, I know. All those terrors about Indians, bears, wolves, snakes. City folk, most of you, so it ain’t your fault exactly. Or else they’ll be farmers from some soft settled state like Pennsylvania, wishing life was somewhat more adventurous. Just listen to me. In a month, give or take, these wagons will be at the top of the world, looking down into the new lands, with the Pacific Ocean right ahead of you.’

  ‘You think it can be done with most of the young men missing?’

  The scout scratched his head. ‘More work for the likes of me, I shouldn’t wonder.’ He noticed my eavesdropping and pointed an impolite finger my way. ‘And there are plenty of sturdy young women, I see, who can harness oxen and carry water when needed.’

  ‘More feeble old women and helpless babes,’ Jude shot back.

  The scout rolled his eyes. ‘Your choice, son. I trust you were never promised a bed of roses, back there in Westport? The notion of manifest destiny is all very fine, and true enough, seems to me. But there’s a price to pay for so much cheap land as fertile as the Garden of Eden, and a secure future living on that good ground. You’ll value it all the more highly if you’ve had to wrestle a bit for it.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be wrestling, would I? I’d be far away killing Mexicans and never knowing what had befallen my family.’

  ‘Buying safety, son. Peace and prosperity can’t be had without a degree of killing. Look at your history books and see if I ain’t right.’

  I smiled to think of this grizzled man, with his sun-baked face showing white furrows where he squinted into the distance, reading history books by his camp fire.

  I drifted away, the conversation concluded. Was the South Pass really such an easy matter, I wondered. If we were likely to reach it by the end of July, that meant there was still close to a thousand miles yet to go from there. But Oregon was not part of the United States. The Indians knew this full well and had considerably less reason to respect our rights to be flooding their lands. There surely would be bears, wolves, great birds of prey and other wild creatures unminded to welcome us unless it be as food. Disputes between emigrants could only be settled amongst themselves, with no appeal to the law of the land.

  For all this glimpse of a daunting reality, my mood was one of almost bewildering excitement. Not simply the unknown future, but the sights and sounds of Fort John itself, made my head whirl. There were dozens of Indian lodges pitched all around the central building, which was constructed of baked mud, the thick walls a smooth grey-brown, with small windows and a flat roof. On all sides, in heaps on the ground or on trestles in the open courtyard, there were goods for purchase, which acted as a magnet to us all. We would visit and revisit, fingering the furs and trying to make sensible choices from the dried and preserved foodstuffs. The Indians – who wore extremely scanty clothing and moved so silently they seemed like ghosts – offered skins, moccasins, beadwork and other tempting goods. The moccasins were especially popular amongst the women, who were finding their boots too warm in the summer temperatures.

  The sudden cessation of our daily travelling had the unforeseen effect of making everyone feel intensely weary. With no need to rise early and set out to walk twelve or fifteen miles, we lay in our bedrolls until the sun was high in the sky. Then we played and purchased, and whispered about the Indians and how they lived. The war with Mexico was made more pertinent b
y the presence of several individuals from that land. They, it seemed, had built the fort in a style that was natural to them. They inhabited all the regions to the west of the Divide – Colorado, Nevada and other huge desert areas that were yet to be fully discovered by the emigrants. My father murmured that it might not be an easy thing to defeat them in battle, so very numerous and resourceful were they.

  On the second day, the recruitment officers announced that they would have to leave at dawn next day with their new soldiers. Our caravan, they said, was the last they would be greeting in this way, since there was urgent need for a “Missouri army” as they termed themselves. Young men had been garnered and assembled from across the Great Plains and the resulting band was due to begin training very shortly. Allen and Jude Franklin were both joining up, plus Benjamin Bricewood and Luke Tennant, Abel’s father. Luke had been assumed to be too old to go, but word spread that he had been a soldier in his youth and was therefore likely to be useful now. Abel, however, was spared, in exchange for his father. The Tennants were thus left with the old man, his son Barty and grandson Abel as well as numerous women and children. He had called to my father, across the heads of a number of migrants, to say that there should be no hesitation in sending Reuben off to fight, since he could spare Abel now and then to take his place for heavy work. It was a clever move, as we slowly realised.

  The public encouragement was a plain challenge to my father, as well as to Reuben himself. My brother was close by, his hair in his eyes, his hands hanging loose at his sides. ‘I don’t mind, Pa,’ he said.

  ‘You don’t mind what?’ flashed my father, goaded into a rare anger against his docile son.

  ‘Don’t mind soldiering,’ said Reuben. He smiled cautiously. ‘They pay us for it. Good money, the man said.’

  My father closed his eyes, perhaps to avoid the interested stares of the surrounding people. There was much he would have said privately that could not be uttered amongst so many listeners. He would have enlisted our mother to help, but she was obliviously away somewhere with Lizzie and Nam. Instead, by this terrible casual exchange that said nothing at all, it was decided that Reuben should go. Even my brother was shocked, his expression more stunned than normal, when he understood what had happened.

  But that evening, when the truth had sunk in, my mother became loud in her protests. ‘No!’ she cried, her voice painful to hear, as it so often was. ‘He is too young. How will he manage himself? Look at him.’

  Reuben himself was the only one capable of consoling her. ‘Ma, I be eighteen and a half already. It pains me to leave you all here without me, with the stock needing so much care, and such. But go I must. I shall write to you, every time I can, to say how we be driving back them Mexicans and keeping America for the people who oughta have it.’

  She had both her hands on his arm, shaking him as if to stop the words. ‘They have no need of you,’ she insisted. ‘What kind of a soldier would you make? Guns and killing – they’re not your world, my sweet boy.’

  Reuben nodded slowly. ‘They are, Ma. Now they are. You canna stop me going. ’Tis all decided now. In the morning, we leave to join the army.’

  She released him, defeated but dignified. ‘Then it’s proud I shall be of you, Reuben Collins. Go with God’s good blessing, and may you stay safe until we see you again.’

  They rode out next morning, some on horseback, some in open carts drawn by mules, with the sun beating down on them. They were gone at a pace we could hardly credit, having grown accustomed to our lumbering oxen. Reuben had nodded vaguely at all the last-minute instructions he had been given: ‘Be sure to write when you can.’ ‘Do everything they tell you.’ ‘Stay with Allen and Jude if you’re permitted.’ ‘Take every chance you get to eat and sleep.’ My father was babbling, trying to make up for his earlier silence. Everything he had heard about the United States army flooded back to him: the unreliable food supplies and harsh punishment for disobedience. Reuben had always needed to be told things twice, at least. The full horror of it only hit us after they were all gone and it was too late for any kind of remedy.

  ‘Reuben a soldier,’ my father groaned repeatedly. ‘I never thought I’d see the day.’

  Soldiering had not been a feature of our lives until then. We had no uncles or cousins engaged in battles. None of our forbears had fought in Kabul or India or even France. The Irish, it was generally agreed, did not make good recruits and history had mostly left them alone in this respect.

  My mother was dry-eyed, which was another surprise on that day of drama. She pulled Nam to her side, touching the child’s arm and cheek. My little sister resisted, unused to such a display of affection, and she was released after a moment. My grandmother, who had been overlooked completely, came forward and addressed her son’s wife. ‘Every mother knows she will lose her son, sooner or later,’ she said. ‘’Tis nature. They grow into men, and we let them go.’

  My mother gave her a sceptical look and nodded towards my father. ‘Except that for you, that is not true,’ she pointed out.

  Grandma grinned. ‘Then let me be the exception that proves the rule. Could be ’tis my recompense for the little’uns I lost.’ I recalled again the ‘blue babies’ and opened my mouth to ask for some further explanation, but the moment was plainly not an apt one. My mother looked at us, her four girls, and sighed. ‘’Tis unjust,’ she said. ‘Henry Bricewood is two years older, and Abel Tennant is six months younger, and both remain in safety.’

  ‘Never seek for justice. That way lies disappointment,’ said Grandma flatly.

  In the case of Henry, there did seem to be cause for complaint. He had simply absented himself from the recruiting speeches and the steady assembling of volunteers. The officers had overlooked him repeatedly. I had caught his eye one time, a second before he turned his back and began to swing his arms in a strange fashion. Then he kicked a small stone, following it across the sandy ground as if nothing else in the world mattered to him. It came to me that he was acting like a young boy, aimless and undisciplined. I was in grave doubt as to what to think of this. I admired his cunning, but deplored it too. It left me clear about his own preferences, at least. Henry Bricewood did not wish to go and fight with his fellows. He was therefore unpatriotic and rather deceitful.

  But I was glad he was remaining with us. I had silently prayed that this would be so, and consequently felt myself somehow responsible when it happened as I had wished. Similarly, I had found myself fervently begging the Lord to spare Abel, too. I had not seen how anything could save him, and so when it happened so easily, I was dumbfounded. The double response from heaven made me giddy. Was I such a paragon that my prayers were so quickly answered? If so, perhaps I could ensure a smooth passage all the way to the Pacific Ocean for my family and all the others.

  A total of sixty men from our wagon train went off to fight the Mexicans. Many more had been enlisted from farms in Missouri and Illinois, as well as other settlers on other trails and individual pioneers and adventurers of all kinds. A letter from Reuben awaited us at the next trading post, written barely a week after we parted from him, in which he gave us some of these figures and talked of men he had befriended.

  Laramie - or Fort John, as it was known at the time - continued to fascinate us all. The Indians alone were amusement enough. They seemed to be in some ways the aristocracy of the whole camp, in a bizarre equality with the French-Canadians who were in charge. The two sets of people could not have been more different, but neither had any regard for ‘the families’ as they termed us. The Indians, we learned, had arrived in large numbers, barely an hour ahead of us, specifically to get what they could from us. Our camp was a short distance from the fort itself, and on the eve of the second day, in the midst of our despondency over the imminent loss of my brother, a large party of savages paid us a visit. We had been warned to expect this, but it was still extremely strange. The purpose of the visit was to receive food, and rows of them sat down and waited for coffee and cookies. We sta
red at them and they stared at us, with minimal levels of mutual understanding. Many of the women and children brought dogs with them, including young puppies. Our Melchior and a few others from the wagons took exception to this, and a great dog fight suddenly erupted, causing screams from both humans and animals. Men on both sides were slow to intervene, grinning with excitement at the violence and noise, but some women took courage and pulled the slavering creatures apart. Not before poor Melchior had lost half an ear, however, and suffered a long gash on his shoulder. Mrs Bricewood, who had never showed any particular fondness for him, cradled him tearfully and said some harsh things to the Indians, her tone unmistakable, even if the words were not understood. For a moment there was a crackling tension, in which breath was held and men made fists, or fingered knives in their belts. There was no actual violence, but the party declined into a scrappy grabbing of food by the Indians and an abandonment of any attempt to be hospitable on our part.

  There were two storeys to the main fort building, the upper one with balconies overlooking the courtyard. The ground floor was divided into innumerable small dwellings, full of families that mostly comprised a European man with an Indian wife and many half-breed children. We migrants were consumed with curiosity about how everything was arranged and who all these people might be. The French-Canadians were rough bearded men, speaking in a language as strange to us as the Indians’. And amongst all this confusion was a tall English-speaking man who strode to and fro, speaking mainly with the senior Indian men, and often pausing to write something in a leather-bound notebook rather similar to my journal. He held the travelling families in transparent disdain and did his best to avoid us. We discovered that he lived in one of the most handsome rooms on the upper floor of the fort, with two other men, both Canadian. We none of us knew what to make of him, since he was so much more civilised than anyone else we saw. ‘An explorer,’ said Henry, who had been following the man with interest. ‘And a writer.’ When we saw the man ride away over the hills with two Indians, Henry guessed that he was being invited to visit the native villages that lay a few miles away, and was plainly envious.