by Wendy Lawton
“Enough frivolity,” Mr. Brewster announced. “Let us begin a solemn discussion about theology and try to set a few things straight.”
The-ol-uh-gee? Olive noticed several men exchange weary glances around the campfire, but no one argued with their leader. As Mr. Brewster began to drone on about “the literal meaning of the Promised Land,” Susan, Lucy, Olive, and Mary Ann slipped off toward the creek.
“Oh, how I hope we don’t have to listen to argumentation every night,” Susan said as they followed the faint trail single file through the tall grass.
“After a long day traveling, it most likely will put everyone fast asleep.” Lucy agreed, reaching out for Mary Ann’s hand. The younger sister lagged behind Lucy, and Olive kept stepping on the back of Mary Ann’s boots in the dark.
“Oh dear, it’s dark here, isn’t it?” Mary Ann said in a hushed voice, hurrying to add, “but I’m not scared.”
The three older girls laughed, but Olive understood. She also felt the depth of the darkness. A deep stillness seemed to drown out the sound of the creek splashing over the rocks. The occasional plop of something falling into the water punctuated the rhythmic lapping of the water. Olive tried to convince herself it sounded like a bullfrog. Yes, it must be a bullfrog—a snake would soundlessly pierce the water with barely a ripple. Olive hated snakes.
“I wonder if animals come here to drink,” Lucy said, squinting her eyes to try to peer into the darkness.
“What kinds of animals live out here on the prairie?” Susan asked. “I know buffalo do . . . and coyotes, foxes, and raccoons . . .”
“Do you think there are any panthers?” Olive looked hard into the darkness as they came to the creek bank. Tree branches stretched twiglike fingers over the creek. She could almost imagine the shape of a panther crouching on a sturdy limb near the trunk of the tree.
“You have such an imagination, Olive.” Lucy tried for a light tone of voice as her eyes continued to scan the far bank.
Mary Ann scooted over next to Olive. “Oh dear, what about bears?”
“Do you see a forest around here, Mary Ann?” Lucy reached over and tweaked Mary Ann’s nose. “If we keep this up, we’ll end up scaring ourselves silly. Mostly there are hoot owls and trout and frogs and . . .”
A wild cry ripped through the quiet, and Mary Ann screamed and wrapped herself around Olive. Olive’s imagination or not, it sounded just like the shriek of a panther.
“Move slowly behind me,” whispered Lucy, emphasizing each word. “We ’ll back up to the bank and gradually make our way toward the wagons.”
“Wait, Lucy.” Olive didn’t know why, but she suddenly knew this was no panther. Could it be the faint shuffling noises she heard? A panther moved soundlessly. Even more, Olive had long ago learned to trust her shivers. Whenever danger threatened, she could feel a prickle move up her spine until it raised goose flesh. Earlier she had felt that prickle of fear when she imagined the panther crouching on a branch. Now she felt nothing.
“Olive’s right.” Susan’s whisper was so low they could barely make out the words. She continued more loudly, “We must stay and fight, girls. Grab a stick. Our fathers are still at the campfire and would never hear us. And even if the big boys were around, they would be stiff with fear.”
“Let’s go, Lucy. Please.” Mary Ann’s thin voice quivered.
Olive soundlessly pulled her little sister’s face close enough to her own so that Mary Ann could see Olive wink in the darkness. Mary Ann didn’t understand what was happening, but she understood their longtime signal—the wink meant she could trust Olive and she must play along. Her stiff shoulders seemed to relax some.
“No, Mary Ann,” Lucy said, raising her voice. “We need to stand our ground. Four girls can take a panther—I just know it. And we have a duty to save Lorenzo, Charles, J. S., and the other boys. They may look big and strong, but this panther would positively terrify them if they happened upon it.”
“True enough,” Olive said. “If the boys came onto a panther they’d likely burst into big sobbing tears and the shame of it would follow them the rest of their lives.”
A rustling of brush nearby alerted the girls. “Sobbing tears, sister?” Lorenzo burst onto the bank nearby with three indignant friends in tow. “Take that back!”
The girls started to laugh.
“The joke is on you, boys,” Lucy said. “You tried to frighten us and ended up listening in on our private conversation. You know what Ma says, Lorenzo, ‘eavesdroppers rarely hear well of themselves.’”
Lorenzo started laughing. He understood that the boys had been bested at their own game.
“You knew it was us all the time and were just teasing, right?” Charles Metteer did not sound convinced.
“You’ll never know, now will you?” Susan flicked her hair to the back of her shoulders and laughed as the girls began walking back to camp.
As they got closer to the wagons, Olive could hear her father’s agitated voice.
“I’ve had more than enough of his high-handedness and his strange religious beliefs.” Pa rarely got angry, but Olive could tell this had been building for a long time.
“You are not the only one concerned.” The voice was that of Susan’s father. “The Wilders and the Kellys are concerned as well.”
“It looks as if we shall have to break up this company if we mean to stay the course. Brewster seems dead set on this new plan of his. It concerns me greatly.” Father paused. “He spent a year convincing us that California was to be our Promised Land. If he could change his mind that quickly over what he held to be divine direction, how can we trust him with our lives?”
Only a week out of Independence and trouble was brewing.
The days fell into a routine of sorts. Just as the sun began to lighten the sky, the pioneers prepared to move out. Lorenzo, always eager to start the day, stirred the embers of the fire and added just enough wood to coax it back to life. He filled water barrels while Ma boiled coffee and nursed the baby. Royce milked the cow, skimming the cream for the butter churn. Olive and Lucy helped mother prepare breakfast—cornmeal boiled with milk. Mary Ann looked after Charity Ann and the baby. Pa busied himself with hitching up the team and loading the wagon. The Oatmans managed to bolt down their breakfast while finishing preparations for the day’s journey. Any leftover cornmeal mush stayed in the pan to set up. It would be sliced into cold wedges and added to dinner.
Olive felt like morning was push, push, push, and rush, rush, rush. When Mr. Brewster finally cracked his whip and yelled, “Wagons ho,” harnesses clanked, oxen bellowed, wagons creaked, and wheels squeaked. When they had talked about the journey way back in Illinois, Olive pictured them flying across the prairie. If anything, the pace grew slower each day. When they came to a water crossing, the team would be unhitched and the men would attach ropes to the wagon, lower it down the bank, pull it across the river or stream, and haul it back up the far bank. The animals would then be led across and hitched back to the wagon. While the men repeated this with each wagon, the women and big girls would help the little ones across farther upstream. Charity Ann loved Olive’s piggyback rides and would squeal with delight when Olive teased her with the threat of a dunking. This late in the season the water usually came up only to Olive’s waist, but the few times they crossed deeper water, Pa and Lorenzo helped them across on horseback.
At the end of the first week, they came to a place called Council Grove. The wagon train had covered only about 100 miles. Early on the company had decided to halt on Saturdays to prepare for Sabbath observance on Sunday and not start again until Monday, but with rumblings of discord, the party decided to hunker down for a week and work out their differences. So after a long day, the travelers circled the wagons and set up tents, preparing to camp at Council Grove. Despite the now constant bickering, they planned for a Sunday service.
As soon as night fell, Olive crawled inside the wagon, wedging herself between her little sisters. She could hear her pa
rents talking softly outside. Her mother no longer trusted Mr. Brewster and seemed to think that his ideas became stranger with each day of the journey.
Pa seemed uncertain and worried. “We trusted ourselves to this train, Mary Ann. How can we break off now? Who will guide us?”
“But, Royce, we signed on to go to California. Mr. Brewster seems to change the destination every day. Every time he reads his Bible and gets out those stones,he seems to want to change directions. I feel no confidence in the man and his odd ideas.”
“We have everything tied up in this venture. We do not have enough provisions to wait for another train. Besides, it is too late in the season for the Oregon Trail, and I doubt there will be any further trains planning to take the Cooke-Kearney route this year. Mary Ann, if we break off now, who will guide us?”
Who indeed?Olive worried about that more and more these days. With so much disagreement, she felt as though they were pushing forward without even knowing where they headed for sure.
After a long silence Ma asked, “What about turning back, Royce?”
“It would take every penny we have to go back, and when we got there, what would we live on? We sold our place.” He sighed deeply enough for Olive to hear. “There is no turning back, only forward.”
Olive finally felt herself drifting asleep to the murmuring sounds of her parents, as she longed for her home back in Illinois.
With dawn came the first Sunday on the trail. It felt good to know that they wouldn’t have to bolt from bed and begin preparations to move out. In fact, Olive remembered, they would camp here for the better part of the week.
As they gathered after breakfast to sing hymns of praise, Olive felt her lungs expand to take in the whole of God’s creation. James Brewster stood up to sermonize, but Olive concentrated instead on the vastness of God. Ma didn’t trust Mr. Brewster any longer. As Olive looked past their leader to the west, she saw the plain stretching on forever, dotted with oak, hickory, walnut, and butternut trees. Flowering shrubs and wildflowers of every kind followed the winding creek. The grasses stood tall, and, as a breeze blew, it created waves of movement across the grass. Olive could almost imagine they were on an ocean voyage.
As the waves rolled across the prairie again, she saw a massive outcropping of granite near the creek. Rock. It reminded her of the psalm she had memorized back in Illinois:“The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust . . .”
Yes,thought Olive. That is who will guide us. Even if Mr. Brewster turns out to be untrustworthy, God will deliver us. She kept turning the thought around in her head. She had never really thought about it in that way before. The more she thought about it, the more the worry that marked this journey seemed to lift.
They stayed at Council Grove for the entire week. Olive, Lucy, Susan, and Mary Ann found much to do, including riding ponies across the prairies, weaving wildflowers into wreaths, and playing hide and seek in the tall grass.
Over the course of the week tempers calmed and the sense of adventure returned. As the time came to resume the journey, a renewed feeling of camaraderie seemed to settle over the company.
With the cry of “Wagons ho,” they headed due west toward the Big Bend of the Arkansas River and Indian Territory.
Trouble on the Horizon
Indians. Although the emigrants still saw no trace of Indians, the anticipation of meeting them monopolized the travelers’ thoughts. Day and night guards were posted to watch the livestock, since the inhabitants of the Indian Territories seemed to think that livestock entering their lands was fair game.
Olive wondered when they would see their first Indian. She didn’t know what to expect. If one were to believe even half the stories that circulated, a person would never dare set foot in the Indian Territory. Some travelers in their company considered the Indians savages—lumping all the different tribes together; others, including her father, considered them a noble race—misunderstood, but not much different from those in the wagon train.
Sometimes at night Olive heard the hoot of an owl or the call of a coyote and recalled the boys’ mimicking of a panther cry. Could those sounds actually be the call of an Indian? Olive wished she knew more about these natives and wondered if they were the heroic figures her father thought or the cruel savages others in their company thought. She guessed the truth might lie somewhere in between.
Olive usually joined Susan and Lucy as they walked. Most days the girls ran far ahead, so they could find a place to pick flowers, share secrets, laugh, and try to startle the older boys as they approached with the horses. Once Susan jumped out from behind a rock in front of J. S., and, instead of alarming him, she startled the horses and they bolted. It took the boys all afternoon to round them up and settle them down. Susan’s parents made her formally apologize to the boys.
Sometimes Susan and Lucy told each other so many secrets that Olive felt like an outsider. She knew they didn’t intend to ignore her, but much of their time was taken up in discussing what they referred to as “possible beaus.”
During extended beau discussions, Olive stayed close to her mother or gathered the smaller children into games along the trail. As they moved deeper into Indian Territory, parents insisted the children stick close by.
On one of those days Olive walked alongside as her mother sat inside the wagon, holding the reins loosely in one hand and the baby in the other. Ma rarely sat on the seat since she preferred to sit under the canvas. A lady always tried to protect her complexion from the damaging sun. Olive loved talking to her mother, and, on the trail, time for talking was plentiful.
“Olive!” Mary Ann’s voice carried from the grove up ahead along with the younger boys’ version of Indian war whoops. “Help me!”
Mother sighed. “Will you see what those children are up to now, Olive?”
Olive crossed behind the wagon and ran over to the trees. The boys had tied Mary Ann to a sapling and danced around her, flailing the air and hitting the ground with sticks.
“All right boys,” Olive said. “Untie Mary Ann.”
“She’s our captive,” Royce said without missing a step. “You have to pay us a ransom for her.”
“A ransom? Where did you ever hear about a ransom, young man?”
“That pam-plit of Mr. Brinshall’s showed white men giving Indians beads and things to pay ransom for a captive.”
“Pam-plit?” Olive couldn’t figure out what he was saying. “Oh, you mean pamphlet.”
“Yup. Indians don’t give back prisoners without a ransom.”
Olive reached down and picked up some small stones. “Here. Now let Mary Ann go. Can’t you see she’s getting upset?”
“Not for rocks, Olive.” Royce was clearly upset. “That’s not fair. That’s not the way it works.”
“OK.” Olive decided to be creative so as not to entirely spoil their game. “Even better than a ransom is a substitution, you know.”
“A substitution?” Royce was interested.
“Yes. The very best ransom of all is when someone more important than the captive offers her life in exchange.”
“Is that for real, Olive?”
“Do you remember our history lesson back in Illinois about Captain John Smith of Jamestown colony?”
“I think so.”
“Chief Powhattan held Captain Smith captive, and his life was only spared when Powhattan’s daughter Pocahontas pleaded for his life and offered to take his place.” Olive paused. “I may not be a chief ’s daughter, but I am older than Mary Ann and can do more things. That makes me more valuable as a prisoner. Will you take me captive and free Mary Ann?”
Royce gathered the other boys together as Mary Ann grew ever more antsy. “We agree with your trade,” he finally announced. “Braves, cut down the captive and let her go free.”
Two boys untied Mary Ann while two more took Olive by her arms and led her to another tree. Mary Ann ran off toward the wagon train, yelling, “I’m going
to tell Ma, Royce.”
As the boys tied Olive’s hands behind the tree, she felt a moment of unreasonable panic. Telltale shivers ran across her shoulders, and her scalp got tight, raising the hairs on her head. What a silly reaction to a little boy’s game,she told herself. What’s wrong with you, Olive Ann Oatman?
As soon as they finished tying her and began their dance once more, Olive worked her hands loose and, dropping the twine, ran through their circle toward the wagons.
“Come back, Olive,” Royce yelled. “You’re our captive fair and square.”
“But if the captive outsmarts the braves and escapes,she’s free!”
“No fair!” Royce yelled as he and the boys came running after her.
The wagons had circled for the noon meal, and Olive’s escape was soon forgotten in the preparations for dinner. One of the men had shot and dressed a deer the day before, so today’s meal would be one of plenty. The smell of venison roasting on a makeshift spit was enough to interest any number of hungry boys.
For some reason, though, Olive could not shake her uneasy feeling. She hoped that a good meal would help restore her carefree disposition.
By the time Olive finally sat down with a plate of food, however, most of the adults had lost interest in food. Another disagreement had been brewing all morning, and in the heat of midday it had burst into a full-blown argument.
Mr. Brewster paced angrily through the camp. “You pioneers signed on under my leadership and my authority,” he began.
“We certainly did not sign on to a dictatorship,” Mr. Thompson replied, getting close to Mr. Brewster and punctuating certain words with a jab of his finger. “We paid you to guide us, not to bully us.”
“Your strange views make us more uncomfortable with each mile, sir,” Pa said quietly. “You continue to change your mind and insist that new revelations are leading you in entirely new directions. We all agreed to go to California.”
“You simply refuse to acknowledge a true prophet.” Brewster’s anger reached a new pitch. “If you are not open to the leading of a visionary, then I . . . I . . .” Without finishing his sentence, he stomped off into the trees by the water.