Sagebrush Serenade

by Jeanie P Johnson

  Only they were not in the market for livestock. Marcel only wanted flour, coffee, pork, and sugar to add to their supply of food, along with three laying hens for eggs. She gave them the allotted amount of money asked for, for the supplies and had Raven bring them to the wagon. The hens were kept in cages that Trapper Dan attached to the outside of the wagon.

  Then they started heading northwest, across barren, sandy land, with brackish streams of bitter water, and little grass for the mules to eat. After a few days of travel, they finally looked down from a ridge between the Green and Bear rivers, into a green valley which promised to reward them with fresh grazing, once they were able to get to it. Far in the distance, Marcel could see Bear River meandering along a willow-lined bank. Rugged mountains lined either side of the valley with high snow-covered peaks.

  The descent was so steep, that Trapper Dan took half of the mules and hitched them on the back of the wagon to hold it back from cart-wheeling over the mules pulling it. Raven drove the mules in the back by foot. He couldn’t ride his horse down anyway because it was too steep. It took all day to bring the wagon down to the valley below because they had to move so slow. By the time they reach the bottom, they were ready to make camp and relax while the mules had a chance to fill their bellies again. It was a welcome reprieve.

  Ever since the argument between Marcel and Raven about the way white people treated Indians and the way Indians treated white people, Raven started sleeping under the wagon again. Marcel decided it was for the best. He was going to go back with Trapper Dan, once they got her a shelter built, and this way, it would be easier for her, when the time came for Raven to leave her for good, or at least over the winter until they returned to build on her house. That was so far off, though, no telling what would happen before then, she thought, sadly. He knew she would never come with him, and she knew he would never stay with her. They were at an impasse worse than anything nature provided for the huge wagon to overcome. No telling if they would come back in the spring or not, Marcel worried.

  The group discovered Bear River Valley was literally covered with crickets. They were blanketed over the trail and crunched beneath the wheels of the wagons and hooves of the mules.

  “Some trappers catch up the crickets in V-shaped baskets,” Trapper Dan started to explain. “When the baskets are full of crickets, they ground em up an make a meal out of em. Then they put em in water an cook it till they turn into a kind of mush with grease floatin’ on top. They seal the tops of the containers an the mush will last fer at least a year. They trade it ta the Indians who use it fer a staple food,” he told Marcel.

  Marcel looked over at Raven. “Do you actually eat awful stuff like that?” she asked.

  “The Sioux are hunters. The only time we eat something like that is if there is nothing else to eat,” he explained. “The way the whites are trampling the grasslands where our game grace, forcing them to go elsewhere, we will be reduced to eating cricket mush for the rest of our lives,” he stated.

  Marcel felt he had not gotten over his anger yet.

  As they passed along Bear River Valley, they passed through Soda Springs, which was full of geysers shooting water up in the air. Some of the fountains were boiling hot. It was so hot, Marcel could use it to make the coffee with. Other fountains were cold. Some were soda-water while others were clear. Many of them were so close together that Trapper Dan could stand by one to get water and then turn to another without moving and get water from it as well. Each one could be a different kind of water, which amazed Marcel when they discovered the strange makeup of each geyser.

  Some of the geysers were shooting high above their heads, causing rainbows to fall around them as the sun reflected through the water. Others merely bubbled up in a pool. Steamboat Springs, not far away, was shooting out streams from the top of rocks, which looked like stacks to a steamboat. Marcel saved a bottle of soda-water to use in her biscuit dough to make it rise.

  When they left Soda Springs, the land became dry again and the dust was dark and sooty. There was basalt rock all around and they could tell that this was once an ancient volcano. The fine black sand billows around them like the white alkali had, only when it stuck to their skin, it turned it black instead of white, making them all look unrecognizable.

  Finally, they turned north, leaving the black valley and traveling on to a beautiful stream, called Portneuf, where willows grew along the banks. Marcel was anxious to wash the black soot off or her body and clothes. She rushed into the water, the same as they had at Sweetwater River, splashing to remove the soot from everything. This time she was wearing a dress and the skirt got full of air and billowed around her when she plopped in the water. It took longer to get rid of the black soot than it had getting the white alkali off. Both Trapper Dan and Raven were working to wash the soot off of their bodies too.

  The three began to splash one another getting into a splashing fight. Laughter filled the air as they played like children in the water together. Eventually, Trapper Dan went back to shore, while Raven and Marcel continued to play in the water. The willow trees and bushes made the area secluded from view and soon Raven was pulling Marcel’s dress from her body, eager to touch her bare skin.

  It had been several weeks since he had felt her skin under his hand. He had been trying to get over the fact that she would never consent to become his woman, by trying to keep his distance from her. Now he was discovering that was becoming harder to do, once she was near him like this. It angered him that she had that much pull on his emotions and desires while refusing to become his wife or his woman.

  Hot desire raced through his veins, the moment Marcel’s body was exposed to his view. All he could think of was having her, while not wanting to fall under her spell. In a moment, he was pulling her down, wanting only to satisfy the driving need he felt. At first, she smiled, but then she looked frightened when he made no effort to prepare her for that uncontrollable need that prodded him on. Instead, he was taking her without ceremony or little warning.

  Marcel gasped at the unfeeling way Raven was handling her. He was not hurting her, but he seemed only caught up in his own satisfaction. She barely had a chance to realize what was happening when it was over with and he was pulling away from her, looking sadly down at her shocked expression.

  “You have brought me to this,” he blamed her. “All I can think of is having you, yet you won’t allow me to have you in the way I wish to have you. You hold me away with your insistence that I am a wild person that is not worthy to have a white woman as his wife. You look down on my people with disdain thinking our life is so far below your own life, that you would not want to dirty your foot to step into a life such as ours. The only real way I can have you is to take you like this. Otherwise, I would fall in love too deeply to ever survive when you are no longer near me.”

  “You want to make me hate you, so you can stop loving me?” Marcel asked in confusion. “Yet you still want my body! Perhaps it has only been my body that you craved,” Marcel accused. “I should have known a wild thing like you was too unpredictable to trust!”

  “I have never harmed you!” Raven bellowed. “I have shown you pleasure at every touch.”

  “Yet now you treat me as though all of that never mattered,” Marcel cried.

  “What matters is that you shun me while claiming you love me,” Raven accused.

  “You are the one claiming to love me,” Marcel countered. “You offered to come to protect me, and now you act like I tried to trick you into coming with me. If you hate me being near you to cause you to act like the savage you really are, you don’t have to remain. I never begged you to come, even though I have appreciated it.”

  Raven’s eyes flashed at her. “I agreed to come and help you build a shelter. Trapper Dan and I decided it was the right thing to do. You said you wished to repay us for helping you. I will take my pay in this way since you won’t give me your love freely,” he told her.

  Raven stepped forward and grabbed Ma
rcel up to him, crushing her mouth beneath his own, splashing back down in the water with her, pulling her up to the shore, until he had her beneath him again. Marcel could feel his desperateness as he forced her to his will on purpose to punish her somehow for not loving him in the way he expected her to. However, she knew she loved him too much and had been fighting against all her senses to try and block that love out of her head. She wanted to pretend like it didn’t exist so she could go on with her life without the pain of losing the one thing that was starting to mean more to her than even all of her belongings in the wagon.

  Although Raven seemed to be forcing her, she did not struggle to free herself. If it was the only way she could have him, she was willing to accept it until this life-changing journey was at its end. When he finished with her the second time, never once trying to enhance her own pleasure, he rose from her and turned his back, wading back through the water, as he pulled his breechcloth back on. Marcel lay sprawled beside her wet clothes, trying to calm her breathing and the broken beat of her heart. Somehow she knew her relationship with Raven would never be the same again. It was as well as over.

  She lay there for a long time trying to collect her thoughts. The will to go on had to be dragged from the center of her being. Her brother had betrayed her, and now it seemed like Raven was betraying her as well. Her heart ached too much to even have the strength to pull her clothes on again.

  Marcel looked up to see Trapper Dan standing over her. “What ails ya child?” he asked as he knelt beside her, taking her dress and laying it over her nude body. “Did Raven harm ya? If e has, ya better believe I will punish em fer it.”

  “No one has hurt me but myself,” Marcel said, at last, sitting up and pulling her dress down over her head, and grabbing her underclothes up in her hand. “We argued is all,” she said.

  Trapper Dan gave her a hand up. “Ya know e’s crazy in love with ya,” he told Marcel.

  “I know. He just has a strange way of showing it. He’s angry that I won’t agree to become an Indian like him. He thinks I believe I am better than he is. That is not what I think, Trapper Dan. I just know I can’t live like an Indian. And if he can’t live like a white person, all the love in the world is not going to change anything between us.”

  “Star-crossed lovers,” Trapper Dan muttered. “That’s whatcha be.”

  “It doesn’t matter. All the stars in heaven can’t change it. I might as well face up to it, and Raven will have to accept it as well.”

  As the two came into camp, Raven could see the angry look on Trapper Dan’s face. His obsession over Marcel was going to ruin his relationship with Trapper Dan as well, he thought with a sinking heart. He stepped up to Marcel and touched her on the shoulder.

  “Forgive me for what I have done,” he mumbled. “It won’t happen again.”

  Marcel looked up into his face with a smile. “If that is the only way I can have you, I wouldn’t mind if it did,” Marcel said softly. “You are forgiven.”

  “Wait,” Raven said, grabbing her hand. “I want to make it up to you,” he said in her ear, and led her to the wagon, removing her wet clothes before he lifted her up over the back gate, then followed her in.

  “I don’t want you to hate me, Marcel. I just fear you will never love me the way I love you.”

  “Only you don’t realize that I probably love you more than you love me,” Marcel whispered. “Only I try not to. Forgive me, Raven. I can’t let myself love you the way you want me to. Trapper Dan says we are star-crossed lovers. That means we are lovers that will never come together, the way we should. It is just not in the stars. We come from different worlds.”

  Marcel saw a tear trickle down Raven’s cheek. Then he was lying down beside her, pulling her into his arms and trying to erase everything he had done to her at the river. Trapper Dan was right. He was crazy in love with her, and it just made him crazier when he thought he couldn’t have her with him for the rest of his life.

  CHAPTER NINE

  y morning, most of the damage between Marcel and Raven had been repaired. Although Marcel did not expect Raven to remain with her, once she settled in Oregon, she was at least happy that he wished to be near her as they traveled and the strain that had built up between them had lightened. Once breakfast was finished, they continued on their way, being greeted by more willows and cottonwoods with lush growth about them. Even though it was the beginning of summer and the air was starting to get hot, they could see snow-covered mountains in the distance, which gave contrast to the verdant greenery that surrounded them. Their path eventually led into a valley where Fort Hall was located.

  The fort was quite a respectably good-sized outpost, located a few miles northwest of Portneuf and Snake River junction. It was built with sun-baked bricks and resembled Fort Laramie. Green pastures covered a broad, level bottomland where grazing cattle, left by companies who came before them, grew fat. Trapper Dan explained that many times companies would be forced to leave lame cattle behind and, there, they could trade them for other cattle to take their place. The valley, where the fort was located, was surrounded by the snow-covered mountains they had seen earlier.

  Like other outposts, many Indians inhabited the country. Although they were still numerous in that area, they were declining in number because of continued wars with the Sioux, Crow, and Blackfeet tribes. Many of the friendly Indians that lived near the fort were anxious to trade with those passing through. However, they frowned at Raven, when they saw him, knowing by his dress that he was from one of their enemy tribes.

  When the lone wagon approached, an old mountain man with a long white beard came out to greet them. He informed them his name was Mr. Greenwood and many of the people from other companies, who stopped there, had gone on with one of his sons to California, instead of Oregon. He told them it was not safe to follow the Oregon trail because it was hard going and the Indians were on the uprise about so many people passing through their land. He tried to convince them it would be better to go to California, where the Mexicans had given him land he wanted to be settled.

  Marcel wondered if Josiah had joined those going to California? He had said they should build their houses close enough together so they could visit each other. Now she wondered if that was actually going to happen if he had decided to change his plans and go to California instead? The only way she was going to discover it was when she finally arrived in Oregon, she decided. It made her worry even more that she would be all alone, once she got to Oregon.

  Because Raven was with her, she did not fear the Indians Mr. Greenwood spoke of. She was sure Raven could keep angry Indians from attacking her wagon. Since she knew nothing about California, she decided to stick to her original plan and continue on to Oregon.

  When they left the fort, they followed the Snake River as planned. However, even though they followed the river, it was impossible to remain next to it because sometimes, the river fell between huge ridges of rock while their trail led up as the river fell downward. Other times, the river was so shallow, it appeared like a lake. However, no one could get near it because the banks on either side, for several yards, were too muddy. The rocks along the trail were sharp and the only thing that saved the Mule’s hooves were their shoes. Even then, Trapper Dan had to check them regularly to make sure no sharp stones were lodged under their shoes.

  When they reached Salmon Creek Falls, there were several Indians who had been fishing for Salmon. They held up the fish, calling out, “Swap, swap,” saying they would take anything in trade for the fish. Marcel gave them some material since they looked so poorly dressed, and then made plans to have fish for supper when they stopped.

  The next morning, their path led them down a canyon until they reached brush-covered plains. The brush was so thick that the sharp branches cut and scraped the legs of the mules. Raven told Marcel to find something to warp the legs of the horses and mules with to protect them as much as possible.

  Trapper Dan informed Marcel that they would have to
cross yet another river. Only this time, the water was deep and the current was rather swift. There was no wood for building rafts there so they would just have to ford the river. He said the wagon was high enough that they didn’t have to worry about anything getting wet, but just in case, Marcel was to put any food that would be destroyed if it got wet, up high in the wagon.

  Marcel worried, remembering her last experience of crossing a swift-moving river, only this time, she would be in the wagon rather than on horseback. Back then, though, the wagon had been on a raft. Now, it would be slogging through the river and anything could happen, the thought. What if it got stuck or tipped over, she worried? She would end up losing everything if that happened.

  Raven rode his horse out in the water first, to check the depth and make sure there were no deep holes that would cause the wheels to fall or get caught. He managed to find where all the deep holes were, some of which were six feet wide.

  “You are going to have to help,” Raven told Marcel when he came back to the wagon. “There are places where the water is deep, and if the mules need to swim, we need to be on either side of the lead mules to guide them in the right direction so the wagon misses the deep holes. You might as well put your trousers on again and get on Pebbles’ back.