“I must tell them. Look at them, staring at us. What shall I say?” Peacock said.
“There is only truth,” Skye said.
“Truth. That they’re pariahs? That people on this trail mean to destroy this company because they suffer, through no fault of their own, an illness that fills others with dread? Truth, is it?”
“Perhaps they know that about themselves. There is no justice, I’m afraid.” Skye eyed those pale faces. “How close is safe for me, Mister Peacock?”
“Who knows? But I think one can get close out here. This is open land, where the air blows clean.”
The two walked toward the tents that held those consumptive young people, though Mary and Victoria held back.
The Jones brothers, healthiest of these afflicted young, awaited them, almost as one would await emissaries.
“David and Lloyd, a stalker has shot one of our Morgans, as you may have surmised. Mister Skye here chased him off but the damage is done. You know why. I don’t need to tell you. We’ll carry on, and somehow we’ll get to where we’re going, and I’ll live to see each of you healed or gaining ground in a place where that is possible.”
“That horse … not that Morgan,” said Lloyd.
“Because we’re sick?” asked David.
“Someone’s afraid, so afraid they don’t think about you or your suffering or your hopes. They want distance between themselves and us,” Peacock said. “Get ahead of us where it’s safe; leave us behind. Slow us down. Stop us.”
“We’ve lost a horse. But that stalker won’t be coming around again. I nailed him. I’ll get you to the desert, and keep you as safe as I can,” Skye said.
“If I wasn’t sick, I’d go after him too,” David said.
“Good, David,” Peacock said. “You boys are my strong arm. We’ll tell the rest now.”
At the wall tent housing the women, Peacock paused. “I’ll address them, Mister Skye.”
The merchant stood outside the tent and began a quiet monologue to those hidden within. He chose an absolutely candid approach, telling them that consumption plainly terrified some people. Someone among the wagon companies had attempted to slow this party. But it was time to endure, to dream and hope, to believe that somewhere ahead would be a place of healing, their refuge, and they would all arrive there someday, somehow.
Skye marveled that the merchant could be so eloquent. He soon quieted these young people, some of them his own beloved children, and then emerged into the night.
“It’d be well, Mister Skye, not to get too close to me for a while. I shall wash, as always, but the nature of transmission is unknown; we know only that close contact is dangerous.”
“I will do that, sir.”
“Will you post a guard tonight?”
“In a way, yes. My horse, Jawbone, is a dozen sentries rolled into one. Let there be even the slightest change in the rhythms of the night and Jawbone will nudge me awake with that big snout of his.”
“I wondered about that horse. Why you keep it. Now I’m getting a lesson,” Peacock said.
“It’s a mystical brotherhood. I haven’t the faintest idea why Jawbone and I are comrades in arms. Perhaps he was my brother in some previous life.”
Peacock laughed.
“He is an army,” Skye added.
Peacock stopped, stared at Skye, and at the mysterious roan horse standing placidly nearby, looking stupid and lopeared. “So I was told in St. Louis,” he muttered.
The night passed peaceably. Even before dawn, Bright was building a cook fire and then stirring porridge. The man was a marvel, the sole person on earth, apparently, who rose even earlier than Skye.
The sick young people had worked out a whole protocol of caring for one another. The weakest did the least to wash and comfort and feed others; the stronger ones saw to the needs of the most desperate. Skye watched quietly, aware that these young people, some of them fevered, others in pain, many of them chronically coughing, most of them desperate for air, somehow managed to sustain themselves through a hard, endless journey.
Bright lifted his kettle and carried it to them. They had their own eating bowls and spoons, and he ladled porridge into each. These utensils were kept separate.
Skye watched them thoughtfully, wondering if he would ever get to know these youngsters or breach the invisible wall between him and them. Who were they? Did they dream of good things?
With the faintest hint of dawn breaking the eastern horizon, Skye patrolled the outlying bluffs, but there was no trouble there.
He caught Peacock. “How are you going to proceed with only one Morgan?” Skye asked.
“How level is the land here?”
“There are some long grades.”
“The wagon’s heavy. I need the three yokes of oxen I have to draw it. On level ground, the living Morgan can draw the light wagon. We’ll need to do something when we reach a grade.”
But Enoch Bright had already begun doing things his own way. He drilled a hole in the wagon bed, crafted a kingpin, and soon hooked the light wagon’s singletree to the rear of the heavy wagon, and then yoked the oxen.
“On grades, I’ll use the Morgan to give the oxen an assist,” he said. “I’ll keep steam in the boilers, Mister Skye.”
Skye and Hiram Peacock watched without objection as the mechanic rigged things his way.
“I know who the chief is around here,” Victoria said. “It ain’t you. It ain’t that Peacock.”
Skye laughed.
He had spent a quiet night in his lodge with his family. His son crawled around on the thick buffalo robes spread across the earth, while Mary and Victoria heated some stew for them all.
“Why did a man kill that good horse?” Mary asked. She was worried.
“White men have memories of plagues, of times when most of us get sick and die. We are afraid.”
“And he kills a horse? Does this take the disease away?”
Skye answered sadly: “No, it takes us away. It was intended to stop or slow this party.”
“White men are crazy,” Victoria said.
Now a great malaise lay upon this small company of the ill, and Skye felt it as the day quickened.
It occurred to him that he had not examined the booty of war he had taken the previous night. He had stowed it in his saddle sheath.
To his astonishment it proved to be a new Sharps. A brass vault in the stock held its unique caps and balls. He poked and probed and aimed and dry-fired. How he had longed for just such a weapon but had never been able to afford even a tenth of the cost. He would learn how to use it, and maybe with luck he could replenish the caps and balls at Bridger’s Fort, or Salt Lake.
Even as they prepared to move, another immigrant train whipped by them, its people frowning and cold. Word had passed up and down the California Trail. Skye sensed there would be more trouble, but there was little he could do. Hiram Peacock was the ambassador. Maybe he could quiet all these people.
Skye and his women fell in, and they started west once again, toward a fate no one could know or even guess.
twelve
They were slowed. Three span of oxen weren’t enough to drag that supply wagon and the light one behind it. Skye saw it, and so did the rest. The beasts would give out eventually unless they were relieved of their burden.
Still, they toiled along the North Platte River, pausing frequently. Other trains passed them. Clearly, word had spread back and forth. Some sent riders forward to inquire.
“This is a plague party,” one rough man announced.
“It is a party with some consumptives, sir,” Peacock replied, as quietly as he could.
“Poisoning the water!”
“Have you proof of it? Has anyone ahead of us taken sick?”
“Plenty of sickness along this trail, and you’re the cause. Fresh graves, that’s all we see.”
“From consumption gotten from us, sir?”
“It figures, that’s all I’m going to say. What right have you to
poison the road with sickness?”
“We’re taking sick people to a place of healing. I think you’d like that done for you if you had the disease.”
“I don’t and I won’t unless I catch the devil’s own from these filthy squaws. This is the damnedest outfit ever to come down the trail, spreading your sickness. Why don’t you turn off and let decent people by?”
Skye bristled but held his peace.
Peacock smiled. “We’re here, resting. Go on around, get ahead.”
“We’ll certainly do that, and a curse on you!”
The fierce man kicked the ribs of his gaunt horse and forced it back toward the wagon train waiting two hundred yards distant. Skye watched as the man gesticulated wildly, waving an arm in the direction of the New Bedford Infirmary Company. Several of them collected firearms from their wagons and posted themselves between the train and Peacock’s party, for what purpose Skye could not fathom. But fear exacted its own madness.
Then the party of outraged migrants thundered past at almost a gallop, the oxen slobbering and foaming, the sentries forming a wall between their party and Skye’s, as if somehow Peacock’s wagons and people would descend upon them all and inflict disease and death upon them.
But they passed. And Skye sensed that this would not be the end of it. A sort of hysteria had gripped the companies on the trail this time, whipped by wild rumor and their own hardship. For it was true that the trail took its toll, and there were graves everywhere, fathers, mothers, grandparents, children, all hastily wrapped in blankets and buried in shallow pits, with a few words mumbled over them, before the weary travelers toiled west once again.
Still, that encounter was the worst of the morning. Another company of Philadelphians gave Peacock’s party wide berth but sent an emissary over to see if they could help.
“Yes,” Skye said. “A span of oxen if you have it. I have a Sharps rifle to trade for it.”
Victoria heard it and stared.
“We have not one spare animal, sorry,” the Pennsylvania man said. “But I hope you succeed. I lost my mother to the galloping kind, the consumption that suddenly destroys a mortal. We’re Friends. I’ll ask ahead about spans of oxen and what you’re offering, if that would help.”
“It would, sir,” Skye said. “And who are you?”
“Lethbridge, sir. Salton Lethbridge, and this is the Bryn Mawr Company, Oregon bound.”
“I am Mister Skye.”
“That’s a name to reckon with, or so I’m told.”
Skye smiled. “People know more about me than I know about myself.”
Lethbridge laughed, and trotted his chestnut horse toward his company.
That was the only company that day that showed some civility or mercy. The rest passed with a curse and a whip.
They struggled on, resting frequently, until they reached LaBonte Creek at sundown. There were two companies camped there, but room for more upstream. Unlike most camps in that barren land, this had abundant firewood and even some grass in the moist bottoms. The weary oxen and the remaining Morgan needed both.
Skye surveyed the quiet camps, seeing people settling down for the short summer’s night, taking care of livestock, cooking, doing the endless chores.
“We’ll go upstream. It means another mile, but we’ll have the camp we need,” Skye said to Peacock.
There was a way around these bustling camps near the trail, and Skye took it. But no sooner did his weary company turn off the trail than the shouting began, and distant men collected, armed themselves, and began hiking toward Skye’s company, spread out in a military assault line.
More trouble.
“Keep moving,” Skye said. “Get to good ground upstream.”
“You’re more of an optimist than I am,” Peacock said, but he motioned his weary assemblage forward along a hillside trail that plainly had seen use in recent days.
There was shouting from the approaching men.
“Keep moving, don’t stop,” Skye said.
Peacock shook his head, but he continued.
Skye peered about sharply. Victoria had strung her small bow and was ready, a quiet ace in the hole. Enoch Bright focused intently on the oxen and ignored the mounting hubbub. The Jones brothers stuck dutifully to their teamstering. The other young people stared, sick with fear.
“I say, stop or we’ll shoot!” bawled a bearded man in a slouch hat, probably the captain of one of the wagon trains.
Skye turned Jawbone straight toward the man.
“We are heading for the free campground upriver. Is there a problem?”
“The plague party! You’re going nowhere.”
“I don’t know of any plague in our party, sir. My name is Mister Skye. And yours?”
“Captain Reece. You’re going to go back where you came from.”
“Or?”
“Or face the consequences.”
The consequences were considerable. There were now about thirty armed men, rifles ready, with more rushing forward.
“What consequences, sir?”
Reece paused a second. “Try it and see,” he snapped.
These men were beyond argument but Skye thought things needed to be said. Peacock had stopped his party. Enoch Bright at last turned to face this mob. The young people, peering from under the wagon sheet, looked scared. Victoria had slid into shadow. No one paid any attention to her.
The all-male crowd milled at a distance, not wanting to get closer to the sick. Beyond, at the camp, women and children collected to watch. Now the second company, just upstream, was alerted and more men were racing toward the open field where all this was building into trouble. Thirty rifles now, another thirty soon.
“Our young people are tired and need to stop here. They’re consumptives, and need all the rest they can get.”
“Get them out of here!” someone shouted.
“If they were your children, sir, would you be saying that?”
“I don’t have plague children.”
“They need food and water. A safe place to sleep.”
“Go back! You will not infect us!”
“You will not be infected if you keep apart.”
“You will infect the water above us. No, squaw man, no. That’s final. Go!”
Skye lifted his top hat and settled it. “Mister Peacock,” he said softly, “proceed.”
Peacock seemed scared. As well he should. Skye was scared. The children were frightened. His wives looked resolute but he thought Victoria might be whispering her death song.
“Yes, Mister Skye,” Peacock said, and proceeded. Enoch started his ox team. The wagon rolled forward, followed by the cart.
Scores of rifles lifted, their barrels pointing straight at them all.
“Would you kill the sick children?” Skye asked softly in the deepening taut silence.
“No, squaw man, just you.”
“We’ll kill your oxen,” another shouted.
“I see,” said Mister Skye. “We will proceed. Go ahead, Mister Peacock. They plan to kill me. And after that, your oxen, and then it’ll be up to you to care for the sick and weak.”
Skye had to give the merchant credit. He bawled at the oxen and the wagon again rolled forward.
Behind, in the cart, soft sobs were eddying out on the meadow.
“Men, do your duty!” the captain yelled.
Men aimed rifles. Peacock stopped.
Then, at his urging, the sick children slid one by one to the ground and stood beside the wagon, gaunt, fevered, their pale faces tear-streaked. Sterling Peacock helped Samantha Peacock stand. Eliza Bridge and Mary Bridge slipped off the tailgate and stood, shyly. Grant and Ashley Tucker slid to the grass, unable to stand for more than a few moments. Peter Sturgeon sat down in the grass also. And Anna Bennett stood, proudly.
“Bring Samantha to me,” Skye said quietly.
When her brother half dragged, half carried her to him, he dismounted from Jawbone, lifted her into the saddle, where she clung, her bre
ath labored and her small face pinched and wet with tears.
“Come, let us put you to bed, Samantha. You are a brave girl, and soon you will be in a good place, where the dry, warm air will give you life again,” Skye said.
Hiram Peacock, brave man that he was, hawed the oxen to life and the wagon rolled forward, inching past the company of angry men, following a rutted road that took them wide around the two camps. Enoch Bright led the Morgan horse on foot. The cart followed, the Jones brothers hawing the oxen, and then Skye’s wives and ponies.
One by one, the angry travelers lowered their rifles.
No shot destroyed life and hope that moment. In a few minutes they reached an open glade, settled there, the children bundled in their blankets, their tears washed away. The horses were picketed on adequate grass. A fire sprang up, and soon would heat some broth. Skye carefully washed at the creek, and returned to camp.
Victoria and Mary abandoned their cook fire, slipped close to him, each catching a hand, and held him.
thirteen
Samantha didn′t wake up. A while after the rest had stirred in the early dawn, someone realized that the girl lay still.
Hiram Peacock shook the girl, who lay curled up in a bloodstained blanket, but she didn’t stir. Her mouth formed an O, and her body was chill. She stared up at him from sightless eyes.
“Oh, Samantha,” he said. “Oh, my little one.”
He knelt beside her, absorbing once again the triumph of his ancient enemy, death. Then he turned to those solemn young people who had gathered around the wagon and shook his head. Samantha had survived only thirteen years, robbed by an insidious disease of all the joys and comforts of life; robbed of adulthood, robbed even of childhood, because she had been sick for three years.
Two beloved children dead this trip. They had buried his youngest, Raphael, near Fort Kearney. Now his second-youngest. He slumped against the wagon, almost unable to go on. Had he driven them to their deaths? Had the ordeal of travel worn them to nothing?
He felt the need to walk away and be by himself for a time, and he did, hiking down to LaBonte Creek, apart from the silent camp. It was late. The other companies had already departed, leaving only this group of fragile mortals beside the creek.
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