A Light in the Wilderness

by Jane Kirkpatrick

  G.B. Smith and another man arrived later that day to make the inspection. She wanted them to pass without being harshed on. Tall and self-assured, G.B. wore a vest over his store-bought shirt and stiff jeans. His black beard was trimmed, unlike Davey’s. Letitia stayed off to the side trying to make herself invisible. A breeze flapped the canvas opening as she tied it back.

  “You got a second driver?” This from the secretary, all business-like.

  “I do.”

  “Let’s see your supplies. Be sure you have enough for three.” He stepped up into the back of the wagon, checking for the tar bucket on the way. He wrote down something about the butter churn hanging from the bow.

  G.B. Smith didn’t move from his stand at the side of wagon. “I see you’ve got your slave there.” The hairs on Letitia’s arm shivered. “You heard that Oregon’s provisional government passed a law excluding coloreds, requiring any brazen enough to stay be lashed twice a year until they leave. She won’t be long in that place.”

  She turned to Davey to see if that was true.

  “I heard. Also heard they declared slavery illegal, not that it matters. Letitia here is free.”

  “Is she? The worst kind of colored, if you ask me.”

  G.B. knows I free. He sees my papers.

  “Ain’t heard anybody asking you.” Davey winked at her.

  The clerk said from inside the wagon, “Who’s your backup driver?”

  “She is.” Davey said it with his jovial voice. “Saving money. Don’t have to hire her, just feed her along the way.”

  “Getting your slave out of Missouri, the way I see it,” G.B. Smith said.

  “She’s free, I tell you. No law being broken if she stayed. Free to hire on to help me head west and so she has. To help drive and build up my claim.”

  The clerk jerked his head back out from behind the canvas. “Woman driver? No, no, no. Not strong enough to handle a team nor help lift a wagon wheel if need be. That won’t work.”

  Letitia considered speaking up, though her throat felt parched as the bottom of a chicken cage. It was a constant question whether to stand up for herself or try to fit in.

  “I got three drovers. Sure enough for my twenty-two loose cows and six oxen. Couple of horses and mules too making up my thirty head of stock. A drover can help drive if need be. Let’s hurry along here.”

  Davey sounded confident. A man could stand up for himself; a woman couldn’t.

  “As for the woman, she’s small but strong. We’ll all have to help each other. It’s the law of the company, I ’spect.” Davey laughed then, a sound Letitia recognized when he was feeling nervous.

  Rothwell huddled under the wagon; his eyes watched the men just as Letitia’s did.

  “Very inventive of you, Mr. Carson.” G.B. Smith brushed dust from his new jeans, stared at Letitia’s belly. “Using your wench as both driver and bed warmer.”

  How she wished she could say “We married!” Instead she looked away.

  “Everything appears to be in order. Twenty pounds of lead; ten pounds of powder. Bacon—200 pounds; 600 pounds flour and 100 pounds of meal. Four guns.” The secretary looked at a list.

  “I added an odometer.” Davey pointed. “Did you note that there on the wheel?”

  The secretary nodded. “Still not sure about this driver.”

  “You takes on boys as drivers when they is twelve. I’s good as them.”

  “She’s right.” Davey patted the wheel. “Like you said, everything is in order.”

  The clerk pursed his lips. “Pray you don’t ever need her. But I guess if you’ve got drovers too . . .”

  G.B. Smith leaned into Davey as he followed his partner heading for the next wagon. He whispered something Letitia couldn’t hear. Letitia saw the flush on Davey’s cheeks as G.B. Smith looked at her as a hound a raccoon, enjoying the hunt. At his leaving she let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding.

  “I don’t cotton to that man.”

  “He no favorite of mine. But we through the inspection so we’s good.”

  Davey patted her back, his hand damp against her dress. “I ’spect so.”

  “Didn’t know I’s cookin’ for drovers, though.”

  “Didn’t I tell you? Yup, Knighton and Martin, though their families are going and they’ll feed ’em some, I ’spect. I’ll hire a kid if need be along the way if you can’t do it if you need to. With the baby and all.”

  “I drive the oxen. B plods good and steady.” She knew those oxen and the horses and mules. “What G.B. say to you?”

  “Nothing a lady should hear. Just be relieved, Tish. We passed the inspection.”

  This one. But she suspected there’d be all kinds of inspections with G.B. along.

  Davey cleared his throat. “You spoke up for yourself.”

  “Yessuh.”

  He scratched at his beard. “Not sure . . . not sure that’s good for us, Tish.”

  “They accept me sayin’ I’s as good as a twelve-year-old boy.”

  “On the surface, yes. But you challenged G.B. too. He’s not one to forget that a woman spoke up to him.”

  Letitia wanted to keep her hands busy. It helped relieve the cowers—the quivers and chills of the unknown that came when G.B. Smith sniffed around. She wasn’t sure why she’d spoken up at all. It wasn’t her way. Or hadn’t been.

  Nancy Hawkins approached Letitia as she sewed on the tent they’d use for sleeping. Letitia could see a few freckles on Nancy’s creamy skin. She must have had her poke bonnet off. Letitia relied on her straw hat to block the sun. Edward waddled beside her and Nancy Jane rode on her mother’s hip, her bonnet bow shading her baby face. The other children had already found playmates and were chasing a hapless frog. Even Laura skipped around, dirt on her dimpled face.

  “How are you faring?” Nancy brushed puffs of dust into the clear morning air.

  “’Spect I survive.”

  “Goodness, yes. Praise God for that.” She shifted Nancy Jane to the other side. “I confess I am already tired and we’ve only begun.” When she smiled, dimples pressed into her pretty face.

  “Maybe as we get into habits things be better.”

  Nancy nodded.

  “How many there be?”

  “Zach says thousands. But we’ll be in different companies. And he said not to let the children run ahead to another group of wagons as we could lose sight of them and we might not see them until we reach Laramie. Can you imagine losing your child like that? One day there and the next, gone?”

  Letitia could imagine.

  “Oh, Tisha, I’m so sorry.” Nancy placed a hand on Letitia’s arm. “How thoughtless of me. I didn’t intend—”

  “I knows. I keeps my eyes on the little ones. You gots full hands.”

  Nancy laughed. “I do that. And I notice that Zach is not nearly so helpful when there are other men around to join him fishing in the evening or jawing as he calls it, when he isn’t mending up some break or wound. We used to spend our evenings together, building quilt frames and planning things and laughing at the children’s antics when he wasn’t hauled out to mend someone up.” She sighed. “Now he’s surrounded by potential patients and fishing and hunting partners. Samuel’s just as bad. It’ll be worse when my brothers and their families join us.”

  “Men be different when women around.”

  “They are indeed.” She shifted her child again. Letitia offered to hold her, but Nancy said, “I’d best get back and make sure everything’s ready. You be sure to call on me if you’re feeling poorly.” She watched Letitia’s hands make the stitches on the tent. “A tear already?”

  “No. I makin’ the seams stronger ’fore I wax ’em.”

  “You can wax mine when you’re finished,” Nancy teased.

  “I be pleasured to. I’d be pleased.” Letitia tried to remember to speak the way Nancy and Davey did, in an educated way.

  “Oh, Letitia, I was fooling you. I can do the waxing. I hadn’t thought of i
t. You have enough to do. Sometimes you’re too generous.”

  “I be pleasured to help you any way I can. You . . . you the kindest woman I knows.” She looked up at Nancy.

  “Oh, paw.” Nancy dismissed the words, but Letitia could see a slight flush at the compliment. She hadn’t meant it as a compliment but as truth. Kindness wasn’t easy to find in this company of strangers, but it lived inside Nancy Hawkins.

  There were G.B. Smith’s slurs and those of other men who watched her with wolfish looks as she climbed out of the wagon with streaked meat for supper. She didn’t tell Nancy about the woman who demanded she help lift a heavy pot onto the andirons over her campfire. When Letitia resisted, saying she carried a child, the woman had sniffed and told her, “Your little black offspring isn’t my concern. Feeding my children is. Now you help me or I’ll complain about you to the captain.” Letitia would have offered to help if she’d had a moment, before being ordered to do it.

  She didn’t share with Nancy her cowers of how the women would respond once her baby was born. She hoped it would be a girl. Girl babies were less threatening than boy babies, especially if their color was black as coal like hers.

  The sounds along with the smells and chaos at Capler’s Landing made Letitia ill. Cattle bawled their unhappiness while children cried louder than men shouting orders. Dust rose up to coat her teeth as the wagons rolled onto the ferry that bobbed in the dark swirling waters of the Missouri. The river seemed to leer at her on this “jumping off” place, as the ferry transports were called. She watched a man with apple saplings wet the roots with burlap that had been dipped in the river. He was taking hope with him.

  So was she with this baby waiting to be born free. The water made her breathe prayers of safety. She’d rarely been across such a wide expanse of river with muddy waves slopping against the wooden craft that set out now groaning against the cable. The current was so strong it pushed the ferry downriver before the clang of the cable snapped the ferry back upstream, knocking her off balance for a bit.

  She caught her breath, leaned into Charity, grabbing the leather collar that held her bell. The iron held and the oxen on the other side working the cable bent their shoulders and circled, each time bringing the Carson wagon and two others toward the opposite shore. Rothwell panted beneath the wagon, his pink tongue hanging out from his tan and white muzzle. He’d found sparse shade while Davey calmed the oxen team, mules, and horses. The loose cattle would come on another ferry, the drovers moving the other cows, oxen, and additional mules and horses mixed in with other travelers.

  She rubbed her fingers on the soft velvety ears of her cow, an act as comforting as fingering her son’s baby quilt. The wind whipped her straw hat and it was gone, a tiny wheat-colored circle swirling on the dirty water. She’d be relegated to the bonnet now . . . or on cloudy days one of her red scarves.

  Davey stood at the front by the oxen team with each animal’s newly branded horns. “So we can identify the dead ones if they get lost or stolen by Indians,” he’d explained.

  Davey looked back once at her. He tipped his hat, assuring her. The adventurer in him lifted him like a boy attached to a kite, not a worry in the world. She guessed that was good that one of them felt safe and lifted up like a cloud. She vowed to look ahead toward the shoreline and swallowed back her upset stomach.

  Once across the big river they’d be no longer in the states, no longer under the “wing of the government,” as Davey said it. She’d never felt any government protection. It was her papers that would keep her safe.

  “Watch that wheel chock!” someone shouted back to Davey.

  He scurried around to secure the wagon, to keep it from rolling forward. Letitia gripped Charity’s halter tighter. The bell clanged at the cow’s neck as she twisted her head to lick her rough tongue at Letitia’s arm. Spray from the river sprinkled them. She could hear her heart pounding, the cowers making her dizzy and sick and full of prayers when the ferry struck the far bank, knocking her ribs against Charity. The wagon jerked but held. It was May 9.

  “Top o’ the morning, we’re here!” Davey lifted his hat and swirled it. “We’ve left the states! Now the journey begins.”

  Letitia couldn’t celebrate with him. She lost her breakfast over the side of the ferry.

  12

  Uncharted Sentiment

  Davey watched Letitia stand in the shadows of the wagons along with most of the women. A few trotted themselves into the voters choosing up a pilot, but none of them spoke. Davey was grateful Letitia knew her place. Nancy Hawkins was a good woman, but she chatted up Zach maybe a little too much. A man can’t let a woman run him even if the woman made good sense now and then.

  Three men vied for the pilot privilege and the $250 to $500 fee they’d earn being responsible for taking people through to Fort Vancouver. Each family would be assessed a portion of the fee of whichever guide was chosen. Davey had done some guiding in the mountains of Carolina but never got that kind of money. He also wasn’t responsible for a thousand people and all the property they brought with them. It was hard to hear all the various voices raising issues, asking for hands to be lifted for votes.

  He wished Junior had come along, could have shared these meetings so they could have discussed what happened later. But maybe not having him bumping heads with Letitia was one less twisted rope he had to straighten out.

  He’d just taken a seat on a barrel when someone at the edge of the group shouted, “There’s been a raid! Stock’s missing!”

  “Those Caws! I knew it.”

  “Now be calm, here. Caws are friendly Indians.” This from a potential pilot.

  “Don’t matter!” An Iowa man spoke up. “Mount up and let’s go get ’em!”

  Davey saw Letitia scowl as he mounted up. Fifty men—minus the proposed pilot—headed toward a quiet Caw village they’d passed some time before. Davey felt the rush inside him, of bringing to justice people stealing stock. The men charged into the village but Davey pulled up Fergus. Something was amiss. He watched as the Caws scattered, frightened as field mice, dipping under tents, running behind trees, women’s braids flying in the air as they grabbed children for safety, cries and shouts ringing in the morning air. He didn’t see a cow in sight. This don’t look like a raiding party place.

  “Lookee here!” he shouted. “Let’s see if we can get answers rather than scalps.”

  Swirling mounts snorted, their riders reining up as Davey conveyed concerns to the six or seven unarmed men whose village they’d invaded. At least they were talking. The elders shook their heads. To Davey, these Indians couldn’t have been the thieves. No cattle milled about. Why had he rushed to join them in the first place? He remembered Letitia’s scowl.

  “There’s one! He just came back! I bet he stole ’em.” A Kentucky man, pointing, spurred his horse toward an Indian riding a mule entering the village. Greenberry Smith seized him, pulling him from his mule. “We’ll take this one back for trial.”

  “He’s trying to give you his mule, G.B.,” Davey said. “He wouldn’t do that if he’d stolen cattle. Lookee here. There’s no sign of stock. They’re peaceful.”

  “Quit defending this dead Indian.”

  No one supported Davey, and the man was bound and led forward, a rope forcing him beside another’s horse.

  At least they aren’t going to hang him on the spot. Calmer heads would prevail if he could ensure the man got taken back to the company. He removed his hat, wiping his forehead of sweat.

  “Let’s keep him alive,” Davey said. “Give the man his day in court.”

  A few days out and there were already accusations and legalities and people behaving like schoolyard kids.

  Back at the wagons, the chosen judge shouted, “I call this court to order.” Judge Kindred, Hawkins’s brother-in-law, presided at the makeshift court of wagons and ropes. “Carson, ask him if he knows anything about missing cattle.”

  Davey did so. The Caw shook his head, as hard as a man wrongly ac
cused of stealing could do. “He says he knows nothing, Your Honor. And truth be, he just rode in and they were having a ceremony, so I don’t think they’d have been out rustling. Mule didn’t look to be rode like someone chasing cattle. Shucks, he even offered to give Greenberry Smith over there his mount. Why would he do that if he had been out stealing?”

  “That true, G.B.?”

  Smith hesitated then nodded.

  “A man hates to be charged with something he didn’t do.” Davey thought of that minx Eliza who had challenged his reputation.

  “Truth is, the drovers count all the cattle still here, Judge.” Sheepish words from one of his own drovers.

  There wasn’t even a theft?

  “Not guilty!” declared the judge. “Get the man something to eat. See if we take the scare out of him, poor fellow.”

  No one seemed to have anything more to say about the so-called trial. They resumed the meeting, though Davey thought they might have been a little shamed for riding off all wild over nothing, scaring women and children mostly. He was.

  Letitia reached down deep into the flour barrel and felt the cloth tied with the red ribbon that encircled her papers. She didn’t open the cloth. She needed the reassurance the papers were there. They were “evidence” of her freedom. Without evidence she might not be able to defend herself over whatever strange charges could happen on this journey. That poor Caw was at the mercy of the court, though thank goodness he had Davey’s level head to defend him. She never wanted to be at the mercy of others.

  She pulled her arm out of the deep part of the flour, brushed the powder from her elbow, and plopped a handful in the bowl to mix up johnnycakes, humming to her child as she worked.

  In the morning they heard the guides compete again, and this time Stephen Meek stood on a barrel and shouted, “By eternal Moses, I been thar . . .” He raved about the disasters they could encounter and ride out only if “by eternal Moses you listen to me!” And for some reason, he won the Oregon Emigrating Group over. Another company said they’d go without a guide. Davey told her he just “wanted to get going. All this chattering is taking precious time and supplies.”