Smoke Through the Pines

by Sarah Goodwin

  True to her word, once we were away from town, Laura began to teach Rachel the basics of shooting. She laid the rifle out on a blanket and showed her the different parts and the function each played. I watched too, hoping to acquire more of a knack for the skill. For a good hour, Laura explained how to clean and store a gun, the types of shot that could be bought or made, and the dangers of a neglected weapon.

  “Now, you’ve got to make your shot count,” Laura told her daughter. “It’ll take you precious time to reload and that’s time your rabbit, or deer’ll use to get away from you. Even if you manage to wound it, chance is the animal will be gone before you can get ready to fire again.”

  Rachel nodded sombrely.

  “Now, load it and show me how it’s done.”

  I watched Rachel grapple with the unfamiliar task of loading the rifle. Jamison’s gun was an 1841 “Mississippi Rifle” according to Laura, though to my eye it looked much like any gun; heavy and complicated with a wood stock and brass accoutrements.

  Rachel opened the patch box that was concealed in the stock, detached the ramrod and rammed .54 ball shot and powder down the barrel. There was a fierce look of concentration about her as she finished loading the gun and aimed it carefully towards the prairie and away from us.

  “That’s good work,” Laura said, and Rachel, thought her face did not change, seemed to straighten up under the praise.

  “Now, I’m going to put up a pole, and you can shoot it. Just the once, we can’t be wasting the ammunition. But we’ll do this once a week, and when we next need to go out and look for deer, come winter, I’ll take you and you can learn from me.”

  Laura had cut a long stick when we last passed a mound of brush growing in a shallow depression. With a spade she cut a lump of sod and stuck it on top of the stick’s end, so it looked like a thin man with an enlarged head.

  Rachel took careful aim, and Laura corrected her hold on the rifle with gentle insistence. After a few short moments, the noise of the shot, like a brick being cracked in two, split the air. The lump of sod was winged, and fell off the stick sideways. While it was by no means a direct hit, Rachel’s little bud of a mouth turned up at the edges into a satisfied smile.

  That night, Tom showed Rachel how to craft snares with her sharp steel knife, using bits of wood and wire to form the neat rabbit traps. They set them out a little way from our camp, not in serious determination to catch something, at least on Tom’s part, but more as a game to see whose snare was the better.

  While they were ducking about in the further shadows of the fire, I looked over at Laura and found her rubbing her belly absently.

  “Are you alright?” I asked, “Do you have pains?”

  “Just an ache. I’m alright.” Still her face showed her worry.

  “Maybe we should turn around and stay a while longer in town, where there are people to help if something goes wrong.”

  “I’ve had more babies than any of the people in that town,” Laura said, “and one on my own, with only Rachel to help me. But Nora was still the healthiest baby she could’ve been.” She took her hand from her belly and reached for the coffee pot, pouring herself another draft of the black liquid. “Besides, I’m not near my time yet. Won’t be ‘til late spring at least.”

  “I just worry…I’ve never had to help deliver a baby before.”

  At this Laura raised her eyebrows. “I should think you played a major part in at least one delivery.”

  I stifled a laugh, though with it came the pain of remembering my poor Charlie. “I was with the doctor when I had Charlie and he gave me some laudanum for the pain. When I next knew what was happening there was my baby, crying in a cradle, and it was the next day!”

  Laura gazed at me in unconcealed disbelief. “You slept through it?”

  “I wasn’t asleep, I don’t think. I can remember shapes and lights on the ceiling above me as people moved around and brought lamps in. I remember sounds and…hearing something like bells or chimes. From where I don’t know. It was like being drunk.”

  “When have you ever been drunk?” Laura asked.

  “When I went to town, carousing with your husband and Jamison,” I said, “they got me to drink enough of that awful whisky to make me wish for the laudanum.”

  She laughed, and it was a good sound to hear, even if as soon as it had taken wing from her, she snapped her mouth shut and looked pained.

  “It’s alright,” I said, “I know more than anyone, finding relief doesn’t mean you miss them any less.”

  “I just feel as if I ought to keep them in my mind,” she said softly, looking into the fire. “I’m scared I’ll forget them. Scared I’ll hate myself more if I do.”

  I reached over and took her hand in mine. “You tried your hardest. No one could hate you for not being able to change the weather or summon up food out of nothing. Least of all Beth and Nora. They loved you.”

  She let in a sharp sob of air, tears springing from her eyes. On my knees I shuffled over the blanket and took her into my arms. She clung to me and I let her bury her face in my chest and weep.

  By the time the children returned from placing their snares, she had straightened up and wiped her eyes. Yet, once she had put them to bed in the wagon, she emerged, ghostlike in her shift, and crossed the flattened grass to my makeshift tent, pushing aside the draped canvas and settling down on my bed roll.

  I was in the act of putting away the tin plates we had eaten our meal from, and my hands shook as I bundled the last of them away and doused the fire. Without the glow of the embers all was dark on the prairie, and I had to find my way by the shadows of the wagon and the picketed oxen.

  I went into the tent and let the canvas fall back behind me, shutting out the soft breeze of the night. Inside it was darker still and there was a soft rustling as Laura moved to allow me space to lie down. I pulled the blankets up over me and felt her breathe a sigh against my neck.

  “Is this alright?” she asked.

  “Of course,” I whispered. “It’s always alright.”

  *

  Following that night we shared the tent. It was a chaste arrangement, and not one that would have been thought strange by anyone happening by us during the night. Neither of us knew how to be otherwise, or cared to, in the aftermath of those awful weeks in the dustbowl our homes had become.

  Still, I had never experienced anything like it. As a child I’d had friends to stay in our home, but we had never had to share a bed. My Father’s house was big enough that a guest bed could always be made up, or the day bed wheeled into my room for my friend to occupy. Even when I had married and Charles took me to his house, I had my own rooms. Those rooms had been a prison for much of my time there, but they had offered a freedom from his bed. Indeed, when I was pushed to perform my wifely duty, I resented staying even a short time with Charles’ touch upon me.

  In fact the only time I’d felt something close to the comfort of those nights with Laura, was when my son had been born and I’d been left with him in my rooms, to slip into bed and hold him against my breast in the warm. Holding Laura brought me the same peace, the same heart-melting love that had overflowed me then. After all those months of not knowing how she fared, of seeing the evidence of her suffering on her bruised skin and pale, pinched face, I had her in the safety of my arms.

  During the day we travelled, always northwards, looking to reach Minnesota before fall. I watched as Rachel learned to shoot, and she and Tom brought many rabbits and hens to the wagon. We ate well, regaining the strength we had lost due to deprivation. Tom’s mouth learned to smile again, and he ran once more beside the wagon as we travelled. Even Rachel, though she stayed serious as a guard dog, came into a better humour. She led Tom in all their work, from gathering wood to hunting, to fishing in streams. Each skill he taught her became her own, and she flourished under her mother’s approval.

  Laura grew softer and more lovely as we travelled. Perhaps I was biased, but I think it would have been cl
ear to anyone. Without the farm to drag her down she became more involved with her children, and kinder, without the worry that had once sharpened her tongue. Her cheeks grew rosey and she swelled with child, regaining breasts and hips that hunger had carved away from her.

  As we began to reach the border, the land changed and soon there were hills and woods around us. Fall had come and was now sharpening down to a point, the air turning hard with the promise of winter. Our journey, which had seemed at its inception to be a sort of funeral march, now seemed like something wondrous and free. Though Laura still took out her Bible and held the curls she’d cut from Beth and poor Nora, I knew that she had allowed the edges of her loss to grow blunt. Though she still cried occasionally, there was laughter in her too now.

  As we asked a farmer where we might find the nearest fledgling lumber camp, I was filled with hope for the future.

  Sadly, as with everything in life I had yet experienced, the future carried its own sorrows.

  Chapter Five

  Laura

  The oxen never really recovered from their time on the prairie and the hard journey Cecelia’s brother had led them on. Near enough to our destination to be thinking on how to house and what to feed the fading animals come winter, we decided it’d be best to be rid of them. With some regret, we parted with the four of them at a shed by the roadside where a man had set himself up as part-farrier, part-slaughterhouse.

  “Good for rendering, if nothing else,” he said, looking over their glazed eyes and bony hips.

  The idea of the oxen that had pulled us so far, from hell itself, being rendered to glue, was saddening, but sentiment had no place in such a deal. We gave the animals in part trade for two horses which, while they were certainly not young, were healthy and strong. Both were a rather plain brown, but had soft eyes and proud necks, I knew we’d get along just fine.

  The lumber camp came on us from nowhere. One moment we were plodding along a narrow path in the woods, the next we heard the oaths and bellows of men. We rounded a bend and found almost thirty men in dirty clothes pointing and shouting and sawing and swinging axes, all in every direction imaginable. Those nearest to us looked up but did not stop their work. The creaking and snapping of a great trunk drowned out all but the loudest of them, and the tree came down with ropes about it, guiding its fall.

  “I believe this must be the place,” Cecelia said, as we continued down the path. “There should be a new camp around here, with some kind of manager we can speak to.”

  I pulled my shawl tight around my shoulders against the cold wind and nodded. We carried on until the track widened into a rough yard of sorts. All around was trodden earth, frozen into peaks and troughs by that season’s first hard frost. Stumps were here and there, blackened holes left where some had been burnt out. Close against the furthest edge of the clearing were two buildings, both constructed of unpeeled logs and roofed in tarpaper. Around one was a small forest of tents, beside the other, a water trough.

  Cecelia halted the wagon and climbed down. I followed after her and helped the children down. Together we approached the building surrounded by tents. Part of the front stuck out, a shed tacked on the side. It was in here that we found an old and distinctly whisky soaked man by the name of Clarence Leehorn. The owner of the camp.

  I would lay money that Clarence had never been what you’d call handsome. He had a crooked jaw that stuck out to one side, gravestone teeth and a nose like a rat skull. His clothes were old furs and the kind of buckskin leggings any self-respecting Indian would’ve burned. His dirty grey beard matched the greasy coonskin hat on his head, and his horny yellow fingernails were perfectly matched in colour to his teeth and the ‘whites’ of his eyes.

  Despite, or because of his trollish aspect, he was one of the only true gentlemen I’ve ever met in my life.

  “Ladies, why, tis a pleasure to have such company,” he beamed as we pushed open his door and called a general hello. “Young’uns too, you must come on in out o’ the cold and sit yeselves down.”

  His shed was a combination of office, bedroom and bar. He showed Cecelia and I to a wooden plank that hung on chains from a wall. Another such plank was made up as a bunk on the other side of the small room. Between these was a table of thick stump pieces, topped with bits of packing crate. The table held papers, dirty dishes, bottles, dice, cards and a thousand other discarded items. In the corner a tiny stove grudgingly turned out some heat, and a deal more smoke. Tom and Rachel stood beside it, Tom ogling the coonskin hat without shame.

  “Good morning, Mr…”

  “Leehorn, Madam, Clarence Leehorn, but to most I’m just Lee around here.”

  “Mr Leehorn,” Cecelia continued. “I’m sorry to impose upon you, but the fact is that we have come from Indian Territory to provide services to a fledgling camp such as yours. We’d like to winter here in exchange for a percentage of our profits.”

  “You don’t sound like no farmer’s woman, if you beg my pardon Ma’am.”

  “I’m from Ohio originally,” Cecelia said, “but both of us are from the territory, and sadly we find ourselves needing to earn our own living.”

  “Lots of men from down that way’ve come here this winter,” Leehorn said, scratching in his beard, “heard farms went bust, some kinda grasshopper swarm ate all them crops up. Lots’ve the men out there now’ve lost wives and young’uns, ‘s well as their farms.”

  Cecelia put her hand on mine. “Yes, it was a terrible summer.”

  Leehorn nodded. “Well, what kind of services are you proposing to bring? We’re in sore need of everything up here, as you can no doubt see. I only started this camp two months since and with more men than ever before.”

  “We’re honest women, looking to take in mending, sell a few needful items and cook up meals for your men. On tally of course, ‘til the end of the season” I said. “If that’s useful to you, we’d like to camp here with you.”

  “That’s useful to me, useful indeed,” Leehorn said, “my only worry for you is, with all the men about, and you having no men yourselves…” he looked at Tom, clearly seeing him as a boy of no use to us. Tom looked back levelly.

  “We have guns,” I said.

  “And a great deal of shot,” Cecelia said.

  “And we both shoot,” Tom said, nodded at Rachel.

  “Well then, look as though we have ourselves an arrangement,” Leehorn beamed, “I’ll show you ladies around the place.”

  This tour did not take long. Outside he indicated the bunkhouse behind his little office, and then showed us the barn beside it, where the oxen were kept at night. Aside from that there was only the stream in the woods to alert us to, used by the whole camp for clean water, and the outhouse beyond the two buildings, which we could smell a clear fifty feet away, and which we all decided we would not be using.

  “Ain’t got a cookhouse yet, but that’s almost done,” Leehorn pointed out a half-walled cabin in the shadows at the other side of the clearing to the barn. “Now, the men don’t get their pay ‘til the end of the season. They’ll be wanting to settle up with you then. I can take your ledger and dock their pay before they gets it, otherwise they’re liable to run off on you. Lessen my percentage of course…which we’ll call…one quarter share?”

  “A fifth,” Cecelia said, looking him dead in the eye like a lawyer or some kind of card sharp.

  “Reasonable, reasonable,” Leehorn said, scratching at his beard. “When I’ve had my camps before I’ve sold a bit ‘o this ’n’ that, but they’ve cleaned me out in only a month or so, most’ve ‘em didn’t come with anything but their clothes…I’d say we have a deal.”

  “If you have a cookhouse, I suppose you provide the stores to produce food?”

  “Anything dried, we’ve got,” Leehorn said, with a great deal of confidence.

  “We’ll find a place to put the wagon in that case,” Cecelia said, “we’d best get started if we’re to have a meal ready when your men return.”

  Lee
horn beamed, showing all his yellowed teeth. “That’d be just the thing Ma’am, I’ve had a few men leave already, the chuck’s not been up to much.”

  “What’ve they been eating?” I asked.

  “They make their own fires and boil they beans,” Leehorn said.

  The state of the outhouse made a good deal more sense.

  *

  For the rest of the morning and into the afternoon, we were at work setting up a camp. The wagon was too small to hold our belongings, stock, and the four of us, so it was to be given over to the children. I’d wanted one of us to sleep there, to guard the stock which would be tempting to the men, but Cecelia argued that the wagon would be warmer and safer for the children, and that if anyone tried to break in we would be roused by Tom or Rachel, who were light sleepers.

  Our own resting place was to be a more sturdy type of tent, like those favoured by the blanket Indians, though made with a deal less skill on our part. Wood was easy to find and we made a frame from green poles. The tent was rounded, raised to a point where smoke could get out through a hole, over the poles we threw blankets and then packed a layer of straw from the stable, topping it with our canvas cover. Inside we dug a hole for the stove to sit, the pipe sticking up straight to the hole in the roof. The ground we covered in pine boughs and sacks that had once held fodder for the camp oxen.

  I was reminded how little we had that was actually ours once we’d unpacked our things into the tent. One sack of bedding, another of clothes and a small heap of cooking utensils and pans formed the bulk of our belongings. A few tools, the guns and personal items barely half-filled a wooden box a quarter the size of a coffin.

  I took out the Bible, which I’d wrapped away carefully in a shawl. In the front cover were pressed the locks of hair taken from Beth and Nora before we’d buried them, tied with ribbon. Already their scent had faded from the curls, and when I held them to my nose I could only detect the musk of old paper and leather binding. Tears sprang to my eyes and I tried to remember the smell of Nora’s head, all softness and milk. Beth’s scent of crushed grass from her little pretend houses, of the straw in her tick and the lavender flowers I’d stuffed into her rag doll.