This Road We Traveled

by Jane Kirkpatrick

  “Sarelia and Emma are pushing beetles around a little maze they built with sticks, and Nellie and Virgilia are baking a cake with some of the fine flour, hoping to cheer Nellie up. Oh.” Pherne clutched her mother’s arm. “Look. Is Beatrice . . . is she . . . ?” The bird lay beneath the wagon, flattened.

  “No. She’s just hot. Chickens do that in the heat. She does look dead, though, doesn’t she? But no, just an optical illusion.”

  “Nothing is as it seems.” Pherne shook her head while Tabby gave a gentle poke to Beatrice with her walking stick. The bird cackled and Tabby let her be.

  “I’m not sure what those parents were thinking, not making some effort to get a message to Nellie Louise. She’s gone from feeling responsible and feeling guilty to sadness, and now she’s just plain mad. Poor child.”

  “That’s how loss shows up, all right.” Pherne heard the resignation in her own voice. “A whole range of tones up and down the music scale.”

  Pherne stopped herself from saying more, not wanting to upset her mother. But she knew some of that song. Their supplies were very low. They had meat, as Clark had shot a large jackrabbit. Somehow they’d miscalculated and she supposed she ought not to have let Virgilia use the last of the fine flour for a cake. Was that her fault? They had paltry food she had to serve, and October had arrived and this so-called Willamette Valley nowhere in sight. Supposedly when they reached a single cabin built by a man named Skinner at the base of a high butte, then they’d know they’d reached the Valley. Mr. Skinner better have a lot of supplies because he’d be descended upon by over fifty wagons full of desperate people.

  “I’m glad we’re almost there.”

  “Is that what Virgil says? Good. I have no bacon left and only corn flour. My precious school bell is fully visible in the barrel. Much longer and it won’t be riding in the comfort of corn.”

  “I’m keeping Grandma’s porcelain rolling pin in my corn flour bin and it’s not long for comfort either. I’d hate to have it break. One more loss if it does.”

  “It has done its duty, Phernie. It’s only a thing.”

  The women worked the washboard. Tabby twisted her skirt to get the water out, then snapped it and laid it on the nearby bush. “So long as we each survive, that’ll mark it a treasured trip.”

  She knew her mother was right, but Pherne still liked her “things” and, like Nellie, she wasn’t ready to give up her mad yet.

  They walked back to the wagons. A certain pleasure came from clean clothes in one’s arms and quiet moments with her mother. She sent her mother to rest while she hung pants and dresses on a line stretched between wagons. She basked in the everyday moment of grace. She reached to finger her gold locket. Where was it? Her fingers grabbed at her throat. Had she removed it and put it away? Had the chain broken? She turned back to the river, rushing before the dusk took her searching light. Nothing. Maybe she hadn’t even lost it there. How could I have been so careless? Oliver’s little curl, gone. As soon as she let her guard down, pain came piercing in. What else was left to lose?

  The Siskiyou Mountains rose before them, patches of snow in the crevices up high. Cooler air woke them to a road rough, rocky, and steep. To look ahead was daunting for even Tabby, who wondered how any wagons could possibly make that grade. But on the other side surely there’d be the valley as promised. Soon.

  Mr. Scott went on ahead to secure the next leg as the group harnessed and moved out. Tabby wondered how he felt about the trail hazards. Had he been aware of the difficulties the wagons would face? Did he delude himself into thinking that wherever a horse could go, oxen and wagons could too? Or had he counted on the Applegates and the young “unencumbered men” who had left Fort Hall before them to cut the trail, make more progress? They hadn’t ever caught up to them. She thought of Orus, how he’d led them safely to Fort Hall, sending messages back, keeping in touch. Was he already in Oregon country? Waiting for them near his forest grove?

  Tabby sighed and looked up the mountainside. Like Pharaoh’s slaves, they plodded up the precipitous trail. The peaks had snow on them and wind lifted bursts of snow that swirled and disappeared. Then Mr. Scott returned from where he’d been scouting ahead.

  He shouted, “You’ve taken up the wrong path. Go back. You need to go around!” He swung his arms, his horse prancing close to the rocky edge.

  The wrong trail? We’re on the wrong road?

  But so many wagons had already started up they didn’t want to—or couldn’t—turn back. They trudged ahead, ignoring Scott’s shouts, until Tabby heard a crunching, grating sound: a large Conestoga-style wagon snapped its king bolt. The wagon bed began rolling back down the hill, threatening to crash into other wagons, women, and children, tumbling the oxen with them.

  “My baby’s in there!” a woman screamed.

  Fear paralyzed Tabby as she grabbed at her walking stick, shouted to Judson to hold the team.

  Tabby prayed as the mother grabbed a rock and slammed it beneath the wagon wheel, causing the vehicle to twist and stop, tipping toward the steep side like a box of precious jewels that could settle back to safety or spill its treasures over the side. The mother leapt into the wagon box, grabbed her child, and jumped back out, sinking to her knees, crying, her child in her arms. Safe. Her treasure, secured.

  Then began the arduous task of backing up, unhitching teams, reorganizing to shouts of blame and accusation, crying children, oxen bellowing their dislike. They would begin again. On the right road. It was all they could do.

  As the reconstituting wore on, Tabby thought about that mother’s actions. She’d always thought she would be good in an emergency like that mother, be able to act quickly. It gave her no comfort that no one else had moved either, to throw a rock beneath a wheel, no one except the mother. Children needed someone to look out for them. She made a vow to reach out a little more to Nellie Louise and thanked God they hadn’t all been overturned by the loose wagon.

  The broken wagon had been dismantled, everything taken out. The family would walk the rest of the way with what they could carry. And there, but for the grace of God, go I. They camped that evening without water or grass and little for their supper. It was already October 7.

  Once over the high Siskiyous, they passed through timbered country, crossing streams, stopping often as men went ahead to help clear the trail of downed trees, boulders, and tangled vines. Each day Tabby wondered if the rise of mountains and their arrival through a canyon marked the beginning of the Willamette Valley, but Mr. Scott shook his head when she spoke to him over an evening fire, his eyes carrying the weight of growing disappointment.

  The Rogue River with its sparkling rushes offered up a good ford, or so Virgil claimed. But no game. And the flour spoon now scraped the bottom of her barrel. Hunger gnawed. She had to take her needle and thread and sew up the waist of her skirt or it would have fallen to the ground.

  “You’re not in any position to help road build, John.” Tabby sounded cross even to herself as they made camp that October evening. They’d buried a girl not much younger than Nellie earlier that day. Tabby had given up boards from her wagon for the coffin. Her granddaughters were no longer interested in spelling bees or discovering new words or facts. Being tired and hungry sure affected a child’s learning spirit.

  “It’s hard work, Captain John.” Judson handed John a tin of tea as John sat on the wagon tongue. “I’m not sure you’d be up to it or should be. Don’t want to lose you like the Crowleys lost their daughter.”

  “That’s exactly why all men who can work are needed to do so, young man. You’re doing well with the oxen, so no need for you to feel pressure to do more. But what do I do all day but tire my horse and eat Tabby’s cooking?”

  “My scraps I have to offer.”

  John took a sip. “Those burns and old scorched timbers fallen across the trail make poor going. Our axes don’t do much. Who would have thought to bring long cross-cut saws? Orus sure didn’t think we’d need such things. Our littl
e carpenter saws are nearly useless in that tangle ahead.”

  “Didn’t the road builders bring equipment from Fort Hall or from their valley when they came this way?”

  “Apparently not. So, Tabitha, here is what I hear.” He lowered his voice. “Mr. Scott is alone in this. Applegate’s road builders ahead have done nothing. Blazed a tree here and there, but otherwise they pulled the anchor and left us adrift. The men aren’t talking much about it so as not to alarm you women, but that Umpqua Mountain they call it, even an old sailor like me can see it’s going to be the worst of our trip. Add to that, Scott says there is another beyond called the Calapooia. Nearly impassable with wagons.” He stared into his tea. “We’ve been snookered.”

  Tabby’s stomach clenched. “Snookered?”

  They arrived the next day at the foot of Umpqua Mountain. Walls of rock and timber. Fallen trees the size of ridge lines for a hotel splayed like children’s sticks across a path more narrow than a game trail. Thickets of tangling shrubs and vines lured like witches’ fingers.

  “Nearly impassable,” Virgil said in a voice Tabby hoped not too many had heard.

  The physical work of chopping at logs, dragging them aside, managing restless stock, then moving wagons forward a few feet at a time took its toll on tempers. They made camps and prepared what food they had while stalled on narrow strips of land beside rushing streams. Sleep escaped on rocky beds beneath the wagons. How could rivers look so inviting, sparkling with rocky bottoms, then be such challenges to cross? The streams in this Cow Creek, Umpqua, and Rogue country were slashed by trees whose leaves were washed away by high water and wind, leaving river trash caught in the tree crotches that once held hawk and eagle nests. The plan had been to drive beside the rivers all flowing toward the Willamette. But the entanglements . . . Tabby thought it like warring factions, wooden wagons against rivers; hunger against dwindling rations.

  “Is it true, Mother Brown? Are we going to die?” Nellie’s dark eyes pleaded for the right answer. It was morning, though daylight acted too frightened to present herself fully, shrouded instead in rainy mist. They’d be entering another canyon with a creek, this one said to be the most difficult so far.

  Tabby poked at the fire. She shivered. “We’re all going to die, Child. That’s a given.”

  “I know, but I mean today, when we try to get through that canyon.”

  “We’ve had rough spots before.” She patted the girl’s cold hands. “Let’s not borrow trouble, Nellie. Just pray we’ll have the stamina to make it.”

  “I’ll look after you, Nellie.” Judson rubbed his fingers across the brim of his hat, not removing it as he would have if the drizzle wasn’t so steady. Water dribbled off the brim. Manners didn’t matter much in these circumstances. Tabby was grateful for her wool, but the cold seeped through to her bones.

  Nellie dropped her eyes and pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders. The wooden brim of her bonnet kept the rain from her eyes. “Thank you.”

  “We’ll do it together,” Tabby told her. The girl had been spending more time in Tabby’s company. Maybe the girls had had a falling out. The conditions strained marriages, so why not friendships too? Virgil sent word back that they’d be starting out. Tabby was beginning to hate these “canyons.” Cow Creek a few days before had seen the oxen with water up to the animals’ bellies. They slogged through mud once they reached the other side. At a place the men called Canyon Creek, Virgil told them they would have to get out of the wagons and carry whatever they cared about on top of their heads to keep their treasures dry as they crossed the creek. Grumbling shared their sloshing through the cold current.

  “Never thought I’d see the day,” Pherne said when she reached the other side carrying her grandmother’s rolling pin. She didn’t need to explain what she meant as they stood in the chill, wet beneath large trees dripping rain off their faded reds and browns while the men fed warming fires.

  A few days before, several emigrants and a few women whose wagons had already been lost had been dispatched by Mr. Scott to take the stock—the sheep and milk cows—and their families and walk on ahead of the wagons. That meant no milk, not that the cows would give it up anyway. Tabby missed the pale offering. Milk never seemed so precious. Life never seemed so precious.

  The Rogue River had a perfect name in Tabby’s mind: rough and unpredictable with its rapids surging over boulders and running high from fall rains. Tabby had remained in her wagon and her faithful oxen brought them across, though her trunks were soaked. Now here they were at yet another canyon with a creek running along the bottom as narrow as a house gutter.

  Virgil’s wagons were at the front of both parties. One of his would lead, followed by Tabby’s, then the second Pringle wagon. They had already lightened the loads as much as they could. Tabby had fought for and retained the school bell, but heavy trunks were discarded, clothing left to lie in the wagon bed along with anything else deemed essential. She’d carry it herself as she walked. There’d be no sitting on that harp-back chair, which so far hadn’t been stripped and abandoned, probably because no one had the energy. Tabby would hobble or ride John’s horse. Virgil’s cough deepened and they could hear him approaching before they saw him. He didn’t join the men cutting the road ahead to make even one revolution of the wheels. At the end of the first day, they had gone a mile, having tried to go around boulders big as a buckboard. Discussions about how to take the boulder or maneuver the wagons delayed them more, but those shared minds meant a better chance of success. They tried to make the creek bed into a road, and once Mr. Scott said, “If only we had more gunpowder,” but of course that was in scant supply.

  She’d heard of three children behind them catching mice in fallen logs and roasting them, hunger creeping like a pox upon them. At least they weren’t that destitute, yet. But spending more time at the Pringle wagons made her wonder. They lacked flour too, and unless they killed a deer, oxen would be their only meat. No salt or fat or sugar in the larder either.

  Tabby heard the sickening sounds of wood splitting when wagons toppled behind them, breaking on the boulders they had to squeeze around, or worse, tried to go over. The animals protested through their bellowing. At night they chained the poor oxen to trees, as there was nowhere to either graze or circle up. At least dust did not clog their noses.

  The next day found Tabby in the wagon as John needed to rest his foot. He used his cane less for show now, but because he, too, limped. Tabby’s foot hurt too, and she’d been the day in the drizzle, sitting in her harp-back chair.

  “You’ll have to get off, Mrs. Brown,” Judson shouted to her. “Captain John too. Maybe rest aside here while Octavius and I bring the wagon through this pile of boulders. If I can follow where Mr. Pringle took his. We’ll be all right, but it ain’t safe for you up there.”

  “Isn’t safe.”

  She heard John moan as he made his way out the back of the wagon that was pitched uphill on a bank above the stream. She pushed against the arms of the chair to stand.

  Maybe it was the movement of John in the wagon bed, or Tabby’s clambering to the side. Maybe it was the fatigue of days, weariness of hunger and exhaustion, or perhaps it was the animals being asked to trudge yet another day over impossible trails. Whatever it was, the oxen bolted, yanked forward, bellowed, and shook their big heads.

  The movement pitched Tabby forward as the wagon wheels rolled up against a boulder as steep as a cow’s face. She shouted, grabbed the dashboard, her walking stick gaining wings.

  “Grandma Brown!”

  In slow motion, she watched the world turn topsy-turvy. Nellie’s scream. Her heart pounded in her ears. Judson shouted—at her, at the oxen, she didn’t know which. So it comes to this, Lord? Well, you’re in charge.

  21

  Great Acts of Loving

  She felt strong arms snatch her from the leaning wagon as it pitched. Wood tore. Oxen bellowed, forced as they were against the wagon tongue that splintered, allowing the bolster an
d wagon bed to topple. Chains snapped, men shouted, Judson jumped with her and they watched bow tip over box. Beatrice squawked somewhere in the distance, and Tabby watched as her wagon rolled up the side of the boulder, then over, landing upside down beside the creek bed, what had been left in her wagon now scattered like chicken feed down the side of the bank. Tabby’s fall on the ice had been like this: one moment fine—the next, her world askew.

  John! Had he gotten out? Tabby caught her breath, her arm against young Judson’s chest. He handed her over to Nellie, and by then Virgil and Clark had made their way back and supported John, staring at the wounded wagon. Thank goodness she’d taken Beatrice off earlier and Sarelia had been carrying the bird. Several other men looked the situation over, their faces drawn in hunger and defeat.

  “Never saw a wagon fly before,” John said. His voice shook.

  “Mrs. B, you almost . . .”

  “But I didn’t. And now here I am. I’m all right. With a wrecked wagon is all. Fiddlesticks.”

  She looked where the wagon lay like a beetle with wheels on its back, partway down the bank. Buddy barked at the commotion, and behind them Octavius brought the Pringle wagon up and moved into the space her wagon had left.

  “I’ll go get your walking stick, Gramo.” Albro stepped forward.

  “No, no, you help Judson with the oxen there. They’re pretty flummoxed. Good thing the chains broke or they’d have . . . I . . . I can go there and—”

  “I’ll go.” Nellie scrambled toward the wagon.

  “Be careful,” Judson shouted. “It could pitch on over.”

  Pherne and Virgilia joined Tabby, her granddaughter hugging her tight. “Are you hurt, Mother?”

  “No, nothing wrong. Judson there caught me before I went over with it, or worse, got pitched under the oxen’s feet. My, my, what a day and it’s only begun.” She put her hands to her chest, took a deep breath. Her cap strings fluttered at her neck. “Oh, I see the walking stick. There.” She pointed. “It’s leaned itself up against a rock like I put it there myself.” Her eyes searched like a lighthouse beam. “Can you find my school bell?”