The Indifference of Tumbleweed

by Rebecca Tope

  But now was my chance, and I took it. ‘Can I assist you?’ I asked the half-breed, who was dropping small dumplings into the oven, and stirring it much too rapidly. ‘It is a strange time for a hot meal.’

  He groaned softly. ‘There was nothing last evening, and merely a bite of bread this morning. We are all in need of nourishment now.’

  I nodded. ‘Stir it more slowly,’ I told him.

  ‘Oh!’ He dropped the wooden stick and stood back. ‘I think it could be ready now.’

  I took the stick and dipped it into the stew. The meat was in large chunks, with roughly-chopped potatoes and onions with it, in a watery gravy. There was no sign that it had come close to boiling point since it had been set on the fire – which itself was unimpressive, giving off little heat. I withdrew the stick and tasted it carefully.

  ‘Not ready,’ I judged. ‘And the meat smells rather bad. How long have you had it?’

  He spread his hands to display his ignorance. I was surprised that someone of Indian origins could be so poor at preparing food. Somehow I had thought that the men in the tribes not only hunted for meat, but also took a large part in its preparation. Why I should think this was obscure to me, on reflection.

  ‘It will poison you all,’ I warned. ‘In such heat, you cannot keep food for long. Meat will go rotten in three days if unsalted. What else do you have?’

  ‘Flour.’ He indicated his hands, still white from making the dumplings. ‘Potatoes. A little salt bacon. Hardtack. Still two big sacks of hardtack.’ He sighed.

  ‘Why so much?’

  ‘We none of us likes it,’ he admitted. ‘It is food fit only for the starving. We have not yet reached that sorry state.’

  ‘You brought it from Westport?’

  He nodded ruefully, and I laughed.

  ‘I admit it was at my own insistence. Jane did say it would be left uneaten, so long as we could find fresh meat regularly.’

  ‘And you are skilled with the bow,’ I said. ‘This meat is from the buck you shot, I suppose?’

  ‘Four weeks since,’ he admitted. ‘It has served us well. Perhaps Mr Bricewood’s dog would finish it for us.’

  ‘I think he might. He never refuses a contribution.’ Melchior had grown stiff from his wounded shoulder, but received very little extra sustenance from his master. The whole party gave him secret meals which kept him in fair condition. He had finally endeared himself to Lizzie’s Bathsheba and they would lope along side-by-side, her head barely level with his shoulder.

  ‘Salt bacon would serve your family better,’ I suggested. ‘If it yields a good quantity of fat, you might try dipping the hardtack into it, to soften it a little.’

  He rolled his eyes. ‘Nothing will do that. Our teeth are less hard than that stuff.’

  He made no move to fetch the bacon, and I was hesitant to enter the wagon and start a search amongst their goods. Every family’s wagon was their private sanctuary, where nobody would go without express invitation. ‘So…’ I urged. ‘Perhaps you could find some?’

  His head drooped wearily and I wondered whether he had the same grippe as his wife. ‘Are you also sick?’ I asked.

  ‘A little,’ he confessed. ‘My head pains me and I find movement disagreeable.’

  His pockmarked face was a much better colour than his wife’s, but his demeanour was not suggestive of healthy good cheer. His head hung heavy on his sinewy neck, and his shoulders slumped. Sickness was a great inconvenience, and for the only two adults in a party to be afflicted at the same time was a disaster, greatly worsened by the needs of their injured little daughter. ‘Were you proposing to ask us for help?’ I wondered. ‘I have only learned of your new trouble by happenstance. What were you thinking?’

  ‘That the oxen knew what was required of them by this time, and that we might well have to break out the hardtack within a day or so, if Jane and I were both so incapacitated as to be unable to carry the oven or build a fire. I have no doubt we would have managed well enough. It is hardly a matter of life and death. For Jane and me, at least,’ he added sadly. ‘I fear there is scant hope for the little one. She is fading more and more each day.’

  ‘Your beasts must be harnessed and unharnessed, watered, fed, tethered. However obedient and eager to please, they can scarcely accomplish all that for themselves.’

  ‘Jimmy will have to see to it, then,’ he said. ‘If that is what it comes to. But we are running ahead of ourselves. I am quite capable of simple tasks and believe I am unlikely to worsen. We have been in this state for more than two days already, and have most likely turned the corner.’

  ‘You perhaps. I would not vouch for your wife.’

  He frowned at my directness. ‘She will soon be herself again,’ he said.

  ‘With my grandmother’s ministrations, perhaps she will,’ I conceded.

  Seeing that he showed little intention to continue to struggle to provide edible food for his family, I took over the work. It was a greasy business, but I successfully griddled some rashers of bacon over the embers of his reluctant fire, and found some rather stale bread that was nonetheless more palatable than the hardtack. I warily explored the contents of a few sacks halfway down one side of their wagon, finding nothing to tempt a feeble appetite. The barely-cooked potatoes in the oven were left for the dogs, along with the meat. Ellie joined me and fished for the onions, which she said were still raw, but not unpleasant. They had bought them at Fort Hall, from a trader with black and broken teeth and foul breath, who had been avoided by most of the migrants in their purchasing.

  Mrs Fields ate almost nothing, but my grandmother forced a little bread smeared with fat down her throat, amidst protests. The bread we Collins made was second to none. It was a skill we all possessed, although we could not have quite said what our secret might be. Fanny swore by the use of tepid water in the mixture, while Grandma insisted it was in the extra five minutes of kneading she gave it. My mother had the perfect method for proving, in a tin box close to the dying night-time fire, with a cloth over the open top. The baking was a regular twice-weekly event, using the Dutch oven, sometimes two or three batches in a single day. The loaves were kept in a cool corner of the wagon, wrapped in muslin and greased paper, so they remained fresh.

  It fell to me to tend to Susanna. I quickly called on Mrs Tennant for some milk, which she gave with an unusually good grace. ‘God help the poor child,’ she said piously. ‘How it must grieve her family, to see her so poorly.’ I lifted the little head to the cup, and carefully poured in a little at a time. She swallowed willingly and I gave her high praise.

  ‘I be dying,’ she said, in a small clear voice. ‘I shall see the angels.’

  I knew I ought to contradict her. A person should not be permitted to anticipate their own end so starkly. It was deemed helpful to insist on improvement in the face of the most obvious imminence of death. It was also a natural instinct. But the blue eyes were fixed so openly on mine, with no sign of fear or pleading, that I could not prevaricate.

  ‘Perhaps you will,’ I murmured. ‘You are such a good girl.’

  She smiled and sank back and for a moment I thought she had died in my arms. But she breathed lightly and her hands moved a little. I left her with a sense of helplessness. The cold clutching hands of Death should be sent far away from her, and yet none of us knew how that might be achieved.

  Mr Fields was not seriously ill, if I was any judge. He sat down with the two children and consumed a good quantity of bacon, despite claiming a sore throat. His affection for them was a matter-of-fact business, with a cuffed head to be expected by the boy if he made too much noise or was slow to obey an order. Ellie, who was perhaps six or seven, exchanged a smile with him now and then, and brought him a cup of ale without being asked. Nam had melted back to our own wagon and all around us were sounds indicative of an imminent resumption of our daily walk, with the nooning practically over. It had seemed longer than normal – an impression that was confirmed by Mr Fields. ‘No great h
urry, seemingly,’ he said, glancing up at the sun. ‘Fort Boise calls but softly, then.’

  ‘Forts are best when there is a month between them,’ I said. ‘Two within ten days is more than we can stomach.’

  But I had reason to revise my opinion, two days later.

  Chapter Fifteen

  1st August

  We spent two days at Fort Boise, where there are friendly Sandwich Islanders working as traders, as well as cultivating a small patch of land. The fort is well built, with tall poles making a stout palisade. Great rivers on all sides lead to good pasture, and our beasts have been well fed and rested.

  Two letters awaited us from Reuben, who was well at the time of writing and learning the skills of soldiering. He had seen no action in battle when he wrote.

  We have eaten salmon fish, prepared by the islanders in a delicious fashion. Fanny declares that it is food from heaven.

  Mr Tennant is unwell. A large rock crushed his foot, three days since, and it has turned black and pains him enormously. This has been the second severe accident in our party, and we are all greatly concerned for him, since the child Susanna Fields is expected to expire at any moment. These calamities have knocked our confidence to withstand severe injuries. It is fortunate that we are at a fort, where there are medicines and a doctor, who has been working with Indians until recently.

  The warm weather has deserted us, and there have been clouds overhead for some days now, with light rain at times.

  My father no longer examined my journal entries, but I was aware that he would advise the deletion of the line concerning Fanny and the salmon. I had included it on a whim, perhaps thinking that future generations might not have otherwise understood the joy of such fresh flavoursome food after weeks of dreary stew, with bland bread and potatoes.

  The cloudy weather was not unwelcome after weeks of uncomfortable heat, but it added a sense of urgency to our progress amongst the scouts and party leaders. We had another seven or eight weeks of travel, it was thought, and late September might bring a wide range of challenging conditions, from night-time frost to heavy thunderstorms.

  Mr Tennant’s foot was everyone’s abiding concern. He sat in his big chair with it stretched out before him, for all to inspect. Bandages had been applied at first, but he could not endure the pressure, so it was simply covered with a loose cloth. It had swollen to twice its natural size, at least, and the crushed bones were lost in the pulpy dark flesh. The accident had been a shock in itself, on a fine afternoon with no hint of trouble to it. He had been walking with Abel, one on either side of their oxen as was their usual practice. The wagon ahead of them took a slight detour around a group of rocks that looked to have rolled down from the mountains at some earlier point in time. There were ruts, as always, to show where hundreds of wagons had passed. The wagon in front of the Tennants’ lurched for some reason, giving its axle a jolt that made all who saw it suck in their breath and wait for it to crack. I was a few yards away, walking on the softer ground between the trail and the river, as was the custom for almost all the women and children.

  Mr Tennant took hold of the ox closest to him and ordered it to stop while he waited to see the fate of his predecessor. A minute later, all was normal again, the axle undamaged, the train moving ever onwards. But Mr Tennant did not want the same thing to happen to his wagon, and so he pulled the ox a little towards him, closer to the rocks, hoping to avoid the deep rut that had caused the lurch.

  There was a large round stone, with bands of grey running through it, balanced on top of two others. Three yards before the oxen and the two men drew level with it, the rock – like a living thing – simply rolled off its perch and crunched a short path directly onto Mr Tennant’s foot. The previous wagon, we said afterwards, must have somehow nudged it as it passed, and shaken it out of its delicate equilibrium. The land sloped; the ruts provided a pathway and the man’s foot was simply in its line of travel.

  It was roughly the size of a Dutch oven, which was large, but well short of a boulder, and it did not look unduly heavy as it rolled along. But sheer ill fortune ordained that another much smaller rock lay behind Mr Tennant’s heel, so his foot was trapped. He screamed, on a note higher than I thought a man could reach. Abel and Henry leapt forward to release him, while his dumb oxen tried to continue on their way. The lads pushed aside the rock and helped him to hop down to the river, where his soft boot and sock were removed. That, we said later, was the last time the foot would wear any covering. The bruising was already showing, all around the ankle and then down to the toes. My grandmother diagnosed a number of broken bones, which were far beyond her powers to mend. Even if he somehow kept his foot, it would never be the normal shape again, she believed.

  The doctor at the fort was a man in his fifties, accustomed to injuries of every kind. He had a young Indian assistant who was learning the way of the white man’s medicine – which Henry suggested had most likely not endeared him to his tribe. Our party was given special treatment, due to our leader having such a need for help, which we enjoyed, despite the worry over poor Mr Tennant.

  The word amputation could be heard here and there, with grim-faced knowledge of the implications. A man with a foot missing would be useless on the migration and fit for little when he reached Oregon. My grandmother made so bold as to accost the doctor after his first examination and enquire as to his conclusions.

  ‘He will do his utmost to save the limb,’ she reported back to a group of us. ‘He believes there is no reason to make a hasty judgement. The flesh is not rotting, and there is sensation in his toes.’

  Hazy as our understanding might be, most of us had an awareness of gangrene, where an extremity would turn black and stinking and cause death if not removed by a surgeon. The first thought, seldom spoken aloud, after any accident, was ‘Please God, let me not need it cut off.’ Even a finger was a substantial loss, and its removal cause for extreme pain that was universally dreaded. To have a saw cleave through one’s leg was close to the worst thing that could befall a person. It was also well known that the shock and agony of such a procedure could kill the patient as surely as the gangrene would have done.

  Mr Tennant himself kept cheerful, puffing feverishly on his pipe and issuing orders that meant very little, other than an assertion of his own status. Nobody had yet voiced the question as to whether he should be replaced as leader of our party and if so, was it plain that his successor should be Mr Bricewood? Speculation was all in silent glances and eager interrogation of the doctor. The fort was a place of relaxation in the main, with easy trading for additional luxuries that had not been thought of at Fort Hall. Spare pairs of moccasins were acquired, and a few items of fur, especially mittens with leather palms and fur backs which many of the women deemed fashionable and potentially useful if we encountered cold weather.

  The rain slowly cleared, as we moved into the first week of August, and the whole area was swathed with lush growth, some of it bearing berries. I found myself increasingly interested in naming the plants that could be found within a few yards of our camp, and hoped that Henry would be of assistance. To my disappointment he could identify only the most obvious trees – maple, juniper, fir. On a brief walk made at my behest, we found yarrow, which reminded me of the long-ago day when Melchior bit Nam’s hand. Henry turned back, and I explored further, wading through the sagebrush, which was the most ubiquitous plant I ever knew, and found small sweet strawberries, as well as honeysuckle and sweet cicely, which I recalled from the garden we had in Providence. Henry was manifestly not interested and my grandmother only concerned herself with plants she could use as medicines. It was Mr Fields who eventually noticed my investigations, and approached me one morning amongst the rich scents and variegated colours of a summer wilderness. Within ten minutes he had pointed out and named a dozen or more new species. Squaw apple; bright yellow rabbitbrush; red berries I took to be raspberries until he corrected me and named them thimbleberry. He placed one on his thumb, to demonstrate the
accuracy of the name. He found huckleberry and whortleberry; fleabane and desert parsley – he gently fingered the stems, leaves and fruit of one after another, and gave himself up to an obvious nostalgia. ‘My mother taught me them all, when I was a lad,’ he explained. ‘But I never did see so many all together. We might have a day’s search to gather even half this variety where I used to live.’

  Everything smelled sweet and sharp and spicy; the scents of a thousand flowers filling the still hot air. Mr Fields plucked a length of honeysuckle with a handsome flower on it, and held it beneath his nose. ‘My wife wore this in her hair, just a year ago, for our wedding,’ he said.

  ‘Just a year! You have been married just a year?’ It seemed impossible that the two were newlyweds.

  ‘August 2nd 1845,’ he confirmed. ‘We lived half a year in Illinois, then came west.’

  ‘The children’s father died, then.’ It was a flat statement of the obvious. ‘Do they remember him?’

  ‘He was my friend. Thaddeus Reynolds, a Welsh Baptist. He taught me a great deal. Young Jimmy resembles him very closely. He was taken by cholera. They do, of course, remember him quite clearly.’

  ‘But the family escaped the sickness. How fortunate!’

  ‘He was away from them at the time. I was present when word came of his passing, and Jane clung to me for her very life.’ I could detect no regret in his tone, no hint that he had been forced into a marriage with an older woman that he would have preferred to avoid.

  ‘And now she is ill,’ I murmured.

  ‘She is not so bad today. The days here at the fort are providing a welcome rest. Her lungs are congested, but the fever has subsided, and there are no more aches. She is beside herself about Susanna, this morning. Cradles the little thing to her breast and speaks to nobody. It cannot last many more hours, I fear. It is a heavy blow – worse since she knows the accident was her doing.’