This Road We Traveled

by Jane Kirkpatrick

  19

  The Form of Things Unknown

  In the heat of the day, exhausted men and women fell into a restless sleep inside wagons or under them. Mules scraped their front hoofs against the wagon wheels, thump, thump, demanding water.

  Pherne tossed in and out of strained sleep. She dreamed of water, flowing water, flooding over them. She awoke with a start, breathing hard. She looked around. All younger children here accounted for. The boys would have slept beside the other wagon and no sounds came from her mother’s wagon where Virgilia and Nellie had bedded down. None of them had bothered with a tent, just rolled bedding out onto the hot desert floor beneath the shade of the wagon.

  Animals bellowed. Thirsty. Virgil said they were at the halfway point, having come about twenty-five miles. Would the next thirty be as strained?

  Virgilia heard Nellie get up and relieve herself, leaving Virgilia beneath the wagon in the heat. She hadn’t been able to sleep much. She made up poems in her mind, hoping she’d remember them to write down later. It helped pass the time.

  “Virgilia?” Nellie’s soft voice sounded strained.

  “What?”

  “Don’t move.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s . . . a . . . snake. It’s . . . it’s moving toward you. Right where I was laying.”

  Virgilia whispered, “Can it . . . can it hear my heart pound?”

  “I don’t think so. Oh, Virgie . . .”

  Don’t move, don’t move. Virgilia lay as still as death. Her worst nightmare, snakes, this one seeking shade. Please keep me still. Don’t let me hiccup or sneeze. Make it go around the wagon and be gone. “Can you see it?”

  “Shhh,” Nellie whispered.

  Virgilia stayed as quiet as a sloughed-off snakeskin. She felt something near her hair, the roots grabbing at her scalp.

  “It’s . . . it’s stretching out. Right above your head, Virgie.” Nellie’s voice harbored panic.

  “Not coiling?”

  “No. It’s like it’s going to sleep. Don’t move. I’ll get your pa.”

  There was nothing to be done but wait. Could she smell the snake? No, that was her fear. Would the snake smell her? Her body wanted to shiver, but she willed it still. She heard Nellie move beyond, whispering to Gramo, maybe her mother. Buddy was with her brothers. That was good. The dog would have barked and jabbed back and forth at it, making it mad. Virgilia heard rustling and could sense her father whispering. She knew he couldn’t shoot it where it was.

  “Keep still, Virgie.” Her mother’s voice. “It senses you’re not prey. Night will come and the ground will cool and it’ll get sluggish. They don’t like vibrations. Be at ease, as though you’re floating on a pond.” How did her mother know so much about snakes?

  The ground cooled beneath her or did fear cool her skin? She must not shiver. She imagined the snake asleep, restful, just being what a snake is supposed to be. I’m too big to eat. She willed the snake to know.

  A pink-tinted sunset marked the chill. Virgilia shivered. No, she must not move.

  How could it be so hot in the day yet cool at night? She must have slept, fear forcing her mind away. Her fingers felt like frozen sticks. Was the snake still there? Her hair tingled at the roots.

  “Virgilia.” Her father had kept watch over her, her mother too. “It’s cool enough. Move away, slowly. Inch toward me.”

  With her heels, she tugged the earth with tiny steps, still lying flat as a paddle until she could no longer feel the presence of the snake against her hair. The reptile would be sluggish with the desert cold. “Far enough. Roll to your right.”

  She did, her father pulling her up and holding her to him.

  She twisted around. The snake lay stretched beneath the wagon, its triangular head facing the wagon tongue. “Five feet if it’s an inch,” her father said.

  Now Virgilia cried and her gramo hugged her and Nellie and her mother, all of them together.

  “You were delivered, Child,” her gramo said. “Now let’s do it in and have it for supper.”

  Her gramo gave her walking stick to Virgilia’s father, who lifted the snake to get it out from under the wagon. In its cooling stupor, it draped over the stick like a candlewick over a finger.

  Her father took it a distance, dropped it, then whacked it with a shovel, announcing, “Orus says rattlesnake tastes like chicken.”

  The word went up and down the line that Virgilia Pringle had slept with a rattler and lived to tell. “A brave girl,” people said. “Amazing,” spoke others. “How did you stay so quiet?” Virgilia knew it was a distraction, something to think about besides the desert ahead and that’s why people carried on so about it. Albro, her animal-loving brother, wondered why it had to die. “Couldn’t Pa have tossed it in the desert and let it be? We’re the invaders.”

  Virgilia didn’t feel much pity for the snake and she didn’t feel brave. Fear had immobilized her. She couldn’t have moved before she did, even if she had wanted to. What looked to others like something noble, well, it wasn’t, not even close. It bothered her, though, that she was afraid of snakes and that’s what had shown up. Would her life be made up of having to face the very things she feared the most? If so, she’d better stop naming other scary things, like being without family, being alone.

  They traveled again through the night. Pherne’s body wanted water but they had little to spare. They all complained of a dry mouth. One trouble with the hours of boredom was one had time to brood, to indulge in self-pity. She pulled her shawl around her. It was cooler to move at night but not by much. A pink-tinted dawn spread across the landscape palette. Pherne watched as the light struck the black rock toward which they moved. When they reached it and the teams were unyoked to rest, she found her pencils and sketched the landmark bathed in light, not letting go of the miracle that had kept Virgilia safe and was getting them through the desert. The snake incident had taken her mind through a million terrors, but her mother had been right: Virgilia had been delivered and she had to believe that they would all be allowed to live through this valley of the shadow of death. Sketching it reduced the fear to size.

  At least that cursed black rock offered shade, and there was water (and gravel) for Beatrice and people. Tabby watched the antics of the children with her chicken. They’d reached the rock a little after eight o’clock in the morning, having traveled through the night again. They each found ways to find respite. John hobbled over and leaned against the black basalt that rose sixty feet above them. He looked down to check for snakes. They were all doing that now.

  “Not much cooler in the shade,” John shouted.

  Levi Scott had led them this far and they would rest the day and that night to give the stock reprieve. One of Scott’s companions had remained behind at the fork to make sure another group of wagons who had said they’d follow would be able to find the route. And there were men ahead cutting the trail through the timber when they got that far. Here, a good spring with grass around it welcomed them. This was truly the oasis in the desert, like the kind Tabby had read about existing in Palestine and Persia.

  After nooning, she and Pherne and the children and some of the other women explored a cave, not very deep, but still intriguing. Looking out, the cave opening framed the desert they’d crossed, making it a picture small enough to grasp, the vastness diminished. It was something Pherne might like to draw. Tabby wandered over to Pherne and Virgil’s wagon, carrying Beatrice. Her grandchildren lounged, though there was little ease in their motions. Pherne held her lead, and Tabby was pleased to see her daughter return to something she’d liked to do as a girl, something else she was good at.

  “We’ve nothing to do, Mama.” Sarelia laid her head on her mother’s shoulder.

  Pherne put her sketch pad away, patted her daughter’s thin shoulders.

  “Not bored, are you? There’s a remedy for that,” Tabby said.

  “Imagination. I remember.” The child sighed.

  “How about this. Pherne,
do you have a few scraps of cloth to spare? Your gramo has a doily or two she’s not wearing.”

  “What for?” Emma sat up, interested.

  Beatrice cluck-clucked in Tabby’s arms as she buried her head in the bird’s reddish neck feathers. The tips of her red comb looped over in the heat. Then, “I think it’s time to see how Beatrice looks in proper clothes.”

  Pherne laughed out loud. “We used to dress up the kittens and the chickens when we lived at the glebe, I remember that.”

  “Maybe we can get Buddy to let Beatrice ride on his back.” This from Virgilia. “Make a little riding outfit for her.” Emma laughed.

  “The possibilities are endless, though that may be a little more than I have doilies for. But doesn’t doing something fun put a little spirit to our steps?”

  “I just hope Beatrice feels the same way,” Albro said. He tossed his knife into the dirt, retrieved it, tossed it again.

  “You’re the keeper of the animals, my grandson,” Tabby said. “We’ll expect you to step in if Buddy complains or Beatrice loses her riding habit.”

  Pherne shook her head. “Mother, you have the ability to turn sour into sweet. I wish I had half of that imaginative stew.”

  “You do. With your pencils and paper. See if you can capture a bit of Beatrice’s experience in the Black Rock Desert. You’ll preserve some of ours when you do.” It was good to see her daughter smile and the children hustle about with purpose.

  At suppertime, Virgilia and Nellie and Sarelia joined Judson, John, and her.

  John started it in between a stroke of his bow on the violin strings. “I’m hungry for dandelion greens and potatoes, that’s what I’d like.” He gave the bow a bounce. “How about you, Judson?”

  “Oh, maybe a nice piece of ham with apples and potatoes. A little molasses to sweeten the sauce.” Another musical punctuation.

  “Sweet potato pudding, like Gramo makes.” This from Sarelia. “Or fried peaches.”

  “You have a sweet tooth, little sister.” Sarelia gripped her front teeth, grown back in now, and Virgilia laughed. “What about you, Gramo, what are you hungry for?”

  Before she could answer, Nellie Louise spoke with sadness in her voice. “I’m not so sure it’s a good idea to be longing for what we can’t have.”

  Tabby missed that sweet giggle and confidence she’d displayed on those early days. Family nurturing close by had a way of being humus for good growth. The child was missing that now. “It might not be, Nellie, but it’s a better alternative than lamenting our present circumstances. That kind of grieving robs us of the very energy we need to keep going through this endless desert. So me, hmm. Persimmon pudding with a foamy hard sauce.” John played a short jig to Tabby’s offering. “A little of the Pringle cow’s cream and Beatrice’s egg—if she ever lays again—and a couple of spoonfuls of butter, all whipped up with a scrap of brown sugar from the cone.”

  “I see where you get your sweet tooth from, Sarelia.” John took the violin from beneath his chin. “Your very own gramo.”

  Tabby patted the ground next to her and Sarelia moved over to cuddle beneath her armpit.

  “Forget food. I’d like a good cigar.”

  “I didn’t know you smoked, Captain,” Judson said.

  “I don’t. It keeps my mouth happy just chewing.”

  “You can’t eat that, Uncle John.” Sarelia shook her finger at him.

  “No, I can’t, but it would make me forget how hungry I am.”

  “At least we have provisions and it’s only the heat making us weary. Mr. Scott says we should be in the Willamette Valley by the first of October. That’s less than a month away.” Tabby counted on her fingers. “We can all surely make a couple more weeks. We might not have to ration our supplies at all.”

  “And we never have to ration our imaginations, right, Gramo?”

  “Right you are, Sarelia. Right you are.”

  Tabby hadn’t considered imagination as an essential on this journey, but the girl was right. They could imagine their way through a desert and imagine a better life. Whatever did people do who took this trek because they felt compelled to? Or who escaped something in their past? Or who failed to put imagination into their trunks? One needed dreaming for the grand adventures, to spread one’s wings and one day fly.

  20

  It Comes to This

  In the morning, the wagons rolled out, leaving some stock behind, too weakened to continue. Pherne expressed gratitude that morning that their oxen still dragged their vehicles along. They squeezed one wagon at a time through an opening in the black rock that was so narrow the wheels on either side scraped the massive walls. Pherne sat on the wagon seat with Emma beside her, holding her breath that they would not get stuck there. She marveled how she found little comfort in knowing others had already done this—but not in wagons.

  Once through, a new line of mountains, not so black, broke the horizon. The desert continued until a slow rise began that strained the weakened oxen. They plodded up the side of the barren ridge, a diagonal line of white covers against the brown landscape. Everyone walked to lighten the loads, and one of the emigrants tugged at a heavy sideboard and abandoned it beside the trail. It looked a lot like the one Pherne had left behind in Missouri.

  On the other side of the grade, a grassy section offered promise, but the road was dusty and the clouds in the distance loomed dark, seething of snow. Someone rode up to tell them an ox had been killed with arrows. Had they gotten too far ahead of the herd of sheep and cows and relief stock? Where had the Indians come from? Mr. Scott had said the Indians along here fought with each other rather than poking at emigrants, but the arrows proved him wrong. Grumbling began against Mr. Scott, but since he was the only person who knew where they were headed, the complaints moved through the camp like low smoke waiting to stir up flames.

  By mid-September more grass appeared and they were through the mountains and making fifteen miles a day again. They must be getting close, Virgilia thought, because it was nearing the end of the month. On the twenty-seventh, her father had written about a pretty lake they camped beside called Goose. Hundreds of geese called above them, chattering and blackening the sky. She’d heard Uncle John say that Mr. Scott thought they’d be in the Willamette Valley by October. A bit of an extension to the time, but still within reason. The drudgery of the trip would soon be over.

  Then, a few days later, they caught up with the other group that had left Fort Hall before them. Fifty wagons now teamed up together, following the Klamath River, her father called it. The thing that bothered her was that when they caught up with the forward party, Mr. Applegate was not with them.

  Neither was Nellie’s family.

  “They, they must have gone into California.” Nellie choked back tears. “I was counting on catching up and finding them.”

  What kind of comfort could Virgilia offer?

  “Letters. We can write letters and send them to the mission or forts or whatever they have in California. Let’s go do that.”

  “No. I don’t want to write them a letter. They left me, Virgilia. They didn’t even think about me or come to look for me. It wasn’t a mistake. They did it on purpose.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense. Remember when my cousin Charles traveled with us for a couple of weeks? I think that’s what happened. They thought you were with their group.” What else could she say that was reassuring? “You helped a lot with your brothers and sisters. Your mama would be missing you terribly.”

  “For the work I might do.” Nellie Louise clenched her jaw, pushed her bonnet back off her head, the ribbon ties pulling against her throat. “I’m surprised they didn’t try to marry me off to someone, for a price.” She yanked her shawl around her, tied the ends in a knot over her breast.

  So trying to convince Nellie with words wasn’t helpful. Maybe she needed better words. She prayed for that, to ease the terrible distress her friend carried now like burning fire, every attempt at Virgilia’s calming j
ust flaming it further. Give me healing words, please.

  What she received was silence. Maybe that was the best thing she could offer.

  In the night, Pherne had heard the commotion and so had Virgil. He cursed as he grabbed for his gun, but it was too late. Mr. Scott had ordered guards to watch the cattle while he looked for the trail signs ahead but no guard had been posted, the men being weary. Or perhaps the small rations had begun to affect their judgment. Indians came and drove off stock. They’d have to spend the day trying to get some of the animals back.

  Uncle John had hobbled Schooner, keeping him close to her mother’s wagon, and this had saved that animal from being taken.

  “I told you,” Mr. Scott scolded when he returned. “I will not be your captain if you don’t do what I order.” Her husband nodded and told Pherne later how foolish they’d been. Weariness taxed their thinking. And Virgil’s cough grew worse.

  Pherne planned to wash clothes while the men hunted stock, keeping her eyes scanning in case of their own Indian trouble while the men were away. She stopped at her mother’s wagon and asked for her underdrawers and her alternate dress, the one she wore every other day.

  “I can do it myself, Phernie. You have enough laundry to do. But if you’ll help me down from here, that’s good.” She stood at the back of the wagon and grabbed her walking stick as her daughter reached for her hand. “There. We can go together. Where are your girls?”