Led to the Slaughter

by Duncan McGeary

  “Show me how to use the whip,” I ordered. He hesitated, then passed the whip to me, put his right arm around me, and showed me how to snap the end of the leather lash. After several lame attempts, I succeeded in creating a sharp sound that made the oxen start and speed up. It was unexpectedly thrilling.

  We reached a low point in the road that was covered by small logs, which squished into the mud as the wagon clattered across them. I started to say something, but the jouncing made me bite my tongue, so I decided to wait. It was hard to converse in the wagons at the best of times. The road was always rutted, and as we lurched here and there, the groaning and rattling of the wagons swallowed our words. It was no better off to the side of the main trail, because others who had had the same idea had churned up that ground as well.

  “Did you go to school in Springfield?” I asked when I could safely speak again.

  “School?” he asked in disbelief. “Do I look like I went to school?

  No, I thought with annoyance, if you had gone to school, you might have learned some manners.

  Bayliss and I sat next to each other in awkward silence for a time, and finally, I excused myself. That might have been the end of it, but a week later, as I was walking along the trail, I happened to look up, and saw him staring down at me from his perch on the wagon. His bandana was around his neck, and he was smiling. He gave me a jaunty wave. He seemed almost friendly.

  I blushed and gave him a quick smile in return, but that was all, for I couldn’t be certain he wouldn’t turn cold on me again.

  As we continued on, I often found myself walking next to his wagon. I’m not sure he noticed, but I suppose he must have. During some of our meals, he sat near me––on purpose, I thought. Though he never sat close enough to converse with, I took it as an invitation. One night, I got up the courage to sit next to him. “Hello, Bayliss.”

  “Miss,” he answered politely. The firelight flickered on his face, and I thought I caught a quick smile. Someone on the other side of the fire threw a fresh buffalo chip on the flames, and soon we were coughing and laughing at the sudden smoke and stink.

  We exchanged a long look, then looked away when neither of us could think of anything to say. The Dutch oven was nearby, and I got up and gave the coals a quick stir. I saw Mother raise her eyebrows, because I avoided cooking whenever possible.

  I sat down next to Bayliss again, and this time I felt pretty comfortable, as if he was already on old friend. But it wasn’t quite like that, either, for I also felt a strange thrill.

  “Have you driven the big wagon yet?” I asked. “What do you think of it?”

  “I admit, your family wagon is the biggest I have ever seen,” he said. “I have been hoping Mister Reed will give me a turn at driving it. The other drivers can’t stop talking about how fancy it is.”

  “Well, it isn’t because we are being ostentatious,” I said defensively. “The builder decided that Father deserved a grand wagon, because he so obviously has a grand future, so he insisted on building it that way.” In truth, I suspected that the builder Father had engaged didn’t know what he was doing and had accidentally built it using oversized proportions.

  “Os… osten… tatious?”

  “I mean, we are not showing off. Really, we aren’t! My mother is sickly, and you know how ill my Grandy was. Father promised them back in Springfield that he would make the journey as comfortable as possible.”

  “But he did not promise you?” he asked, smiling.

  I didn’t know what to say to that.

  “He treats you almost like a son,” Bayliss said admiringly. “I don’t think he worries much about you. I believe he thinks you can take care of yourself.”

  Now I was even more speechless.

  “I can see why he thinks that,” Bayliss continued.

  “The promise was to Mother,” I insisted, finding my tongue. “It was the only way he could get her to agree to this journey.”

  “He should never have promised that,” Bayliss said. “This is not an easy journey for anyone. Rich or poor, we’ll all get thirsty and tired, dirty, and hungry before we reach California. Indian arrows aren’t picky. Rivers drown highborn and lowborn alike. It will take hard work and luck for all of us to survive.”

  “I am not afraid of a little hard work,” I said, ready to take offense. “I was in charge of the milking back at our farm.” Well, I did milk most mornings, even if I wasn’t really in charge.

  Bayliss backed down, nodding agreeably. “Oh, I can see that you don’t mind doing your share,” he said. “I’ve been watching you. You are not the little princess I thought you were.”

  Well, I never! I wanted to jest. I could see he had meant it as a compliment.

  “Your daddy shouldn’t have been so ostentatious,” Bayliss said. “The bigger the wagon, the slower it goes. Many wagon trains wouldn’t have allowed it.”

  I didn’t respond, even to his mocking use of the word “ostentatious,” because I knew he was right. Smaller wagons made good time, and as it turned out, many of the extra supplies we had brought along thinking to sell along the way were already rotting on the side of the trail.

  We sat companionably after that. The adults were having another one of their arguments, and as we fell silent, their words drifted over to us: angry words. Instead of having dinner with their families, as usual, the leaders of all the households were gathered beside our giant wagon. Blame was being cast for something, and Father seemed to be the focus of much of the anger.

  It was high summer by then, and extremely hot. Hailstorms had pounded down on us over the past week, pelting us with huge balls of dirty, frozen water. Everyone was tired from the constant river crossings and the necessity of repairing broken wheels and axles every evening.

  Every day, the scenery was both the same––mostly flat and dirty––and different, sometimes breathtakingly spectacular. One day, we came upon the grand pinnacles of Chimney Rock rising over the endless plains, and not long after that, we saw Courthouse Rock and Scott’s Bluff. Even the barren desert had unexpectedly wondrous curves and surprising colors, reds and greens and yellows.

  Every day was much the same, beginning with a chilly and often rainy morning spent trying to start a fire to cook with and eating cold food if that was impossible. If it wasn’t raining, the sun was beating down on us. No matter the temperature, the high winds never seemed to abate. We rode in the wet or stiflingly hot wagons, or walked in the mud or dust, and though the days seemed endless, darkness would always come sooner than we expected, and we never traveled as far as we hoped.

  The next morning, the women would again try to start fires, and if successful, would cook over them. Cooking over open fires was a new experience for most of us, and we’d often end up eating black cinders mixed in with our food, but at the end of a long, hard day, it would always taste good anyway.

  Mother tried at first to keep up appearances, but eventually she settled on one black dress, which trailed in the dust and constantly needed to be mended. Her one vanity was a cameo brooch she wore at her throat. I, too, settled on one dress, and though mine started off a more colorful blue, it soon looked as black as Mother’s.

  There were an endless number of rivers to cross, all of them different, but all depressingly similar. When one blocked our way, we’d first have to unload the wagons. A few of the wagon beds were watertight, sealed with tar from the barrels that hung from their sides. That smell, the smell of the tar, is one that has never left me. I can smell it even now.

  We would then launch these wagon beds into the river, reload them, attach a rope to each side, and laboriously pull the makeshift rafts back and forth across the river until all the supplies were on the other side. Then all the wagons would have to be reassembled and the contents loaded back up.

  It was the women who did most of the loading and unloading, the men who made the perilous crossings. It still frightens me to think of it. Our party was lucky; we didn’t lose any of our menfolk to the rapi
ds, but other parties had men swept away in full view of their horrified loved ones, and most times, there was nothing anyone could do to save them.

  We often heard stories of the trail from the wagons ahead of us or the ones behind, for wagon trains were constantly passing each other, shedding members and adding new ones, depending on how fast or slow the travelers were going.

  And always, there were graves by the side of the road. Sometimes there would be one, alone and forlorn; other times there would be a bunch of them. Often, the graves were dug up: by Indians or wolves, we never knew. Our fear of wolves began with those dug-up graves and grew with every passing mile, as if they were pursuing us in both life and death.

  My diary entries from this time often consist of little more than a record of the miles traveled and the number of graves passed. If I sometimes seem unemotional about such things, it was just the way we were back then. To dwell on tragedy was to admit weakness, and there was no room for weakness on the trail. Everyone trudged on stoically, and everyone was equally in danger.

  I open my diary at random:

  June 5: Traveled sixteen miles today. Passed a new graveyard of ten graves. Father is sick, coughing, but refuses to rest.

  June 7: A good day. Three dead cattle. Traveled twenty miles, and no gravesites. Father is still looking wan, but I heard him laugh today.

  June 10: Traveled fifteen miles, passed a single grave. The marker was gone and the dirt was turned up. I saw a pretty red fabric, dusty and torn, peeking out of the dirt. Next to the grave was a piano, and I wondered if it was discarded because the member of the family who could play it was gone.

  There are not only graveyards for humans, but for their possessions as well: stoves that had been dragged for hundreds of miles, now tipped on their sides beside the trail; dressers and cabinets and tables, undoubtedly precious heirlooms, now left to their fate.

  June 12: Traveled eighteen miles. A dead mule, half eaten by animals. Passed four graves, new, with cairns for headstones. Patty seems to have caught Father’s illness, but she is not so stoic as him. She asked to ride in the back of the wagon today, and Mother let her. Found an entire set of china plates, carefully placed on top of a flat rock as if on offer, but no one stopped to take them. I wonder how long they will sit there unbroken before some child dashes them against the rocks.

  CHAPTER 9

  The Reed Family, The Oregon Trail, Spring, 1846

  After a discouraging day in which we traveled only eight miles, we camped by the banks of a wide, unnamed river. We were falling further and further behind on our schedule.

  The elders gathered to discuss the matter, and we younger ones were left with the chores, or in my case, with trying to eavesdrop without being noticed. The wagons were arranged in a circle around the fire, and most of the men and women were sitting on the tongues, which was cleaner than sitting on the ground, though not as comfortable.

  “We are still two weeks from Fort Laramie,” Patrick Breen was saying, pacing next the bonfire. The smoke seemed to follow him wherever he went, and his reddened eyes were blinking frantically. “That pace will put us at the base of the passes in late October, which may be too late.”

  “I’ve been told it doesn’t snow until late November,” Jacob Donner said. “We should be able to make it.”

  “Then again,” Breen said, “you never know with the weather, now do you?”

  Father’s voice boomed over the others. “What of the Hastings Cutoff? I have met Lansford Hastings, and he claims he has a route that will shave weeks off the journey.”

  “Then why has no one taken it, if I may ask?” This was the Widow Murphy, who was the head of a family that numbered thirteen. Her daughters were married, but there was no doubt who spoke for the family, and it wasn’t any of the menfolk.

  “Because they’re too timid, that’s why.” This was Dutch Charley, who was the driver for the Wolfinger family. Because the German couple could not express themselves well in English, he had become their spokesman. “Most folks just keep following the other sheep on the longer route because it’s safe. But nothing was ever gained in this world by playing it safe. I’ve read Emigrant’s Guide to Oregon and California from beginning to end, and I tell you, this Hastings fellow knows what he’s talking about.”

  “I would not mind saving a few miles of hard travel,” said Lewis Keseberg, the man I’d encountered in the tent that day in Independence. He was also a German, well spoken, though he had a strong accent. He had a young wife and two small children, one of whom, a boy, had been born on the trail. One thing he did not have, I noticed for the first time, was a kennel of dogs. I wondered what had happened to them. I wondered if they had ended up in some of the evening meals.

  Keseberg was an ugly man, not unlike Mister Lincoln, I suddenly realized. But whereas Mister Lincoln’s ugliness concealed a kind spirit, Keseberg’s disagreeable appearance was almost certainly the outward manifestation of the meanness within.

  I had caught him staring at me more than once on the trail, then looking away when I glanced at him. He was wondering what I had seen back in Independence, I believe, which only made me wonder more myself. But there was more to that offensively speculative look. I was becoming a young woman and was well aware of what that stare meant. From the boys and younger men, I expected it, but not from a married man with a family.

  “I intend to go to California, not Oregon,” Father was saying. “The more I travel westward, the more I want to see it. We will have to split up at some point. I would rather not have to detour to Oregon first.”

  “Even so,” the Widow Murphy said, “there is a well-beaten path to California, even if you do have to go a little ways north first.”

  “I begrudge any delay,” Father said. “I do not believe the Mexicans can hold onto California much longer, but must soon relinquish it. I want to be there when that happens.”

  “Really, Mister Reed.” Tamsen Donner, who didn’t usually speak at these meetings, sounded exasperated. “I have no wish to arrive at my new home in the middle of a war. I say we should stick to the proven trails and not stray. We are making adequate time.”

  “Adequate?” Father exclaimed.

  Tamsen ignored him. “I have to say,” she continued, “if this is all the worse it gets, then most of the difficulties were in the getting started. We are on our way. Let’s stick to the plan.”

  It wasn’t a new argument. The adults had been wrangling back and forth over the route for days.

  I yawned. Bayliss bumped me with his shoulder and I turned to look at him. He nodded toward one side of the camp. He got up, and a few discreet minutes later, I followed him.

  It was a black night; the moon was but a sliver. I almost stumbled into him. He was standing so near me, I was glad of the darkness that hid my reddened cheeks.

  “I wanted to get away from all that stuffy talk,” he said in the softest voice I’d ever heard him use. A thrill went through me as I realized he was courting me. We were alone in the dark and he was courting me, and he was a handsome boy, if a little rude.

  He reached out with his callused hand and took mine, and led me down the trail. We walked hand in hand for what seemed like miles. Once our eyes became accustomed to the darkness, the little bit of moonlight was enough for us to see the trail.

  He wants to kiss me, I thought with a shiver of delight. I want him to kiss me! But I wasn’t going to encourage him. I was enjoying the anticipation, waiting to see what he would do. To my great disappointment, he kept delaying the attempt. Don’t be afraid, I wanted to say, but I knew it would embarrass him.

  Eventually, we started back. Bayliss’s shoulders were slumped, and I wished I could be the one to initiate a kiss. No, I decided. I was a little miffed that he hadn’t made his move. The first boy brave enough to try to kiss me is the first boy who will kiss me.

  I chattered nervously about not much at all, and he stayed silent. The fires of the camp were only a few hundred feet away when he whirled me ar
ound to face him. I caught my breath.

  The howl of a wolf interrupted that nearly happy moment. It sounded as if it was only yards away. I suddenly realized that I had moved into Bayliss’s arms and was clutching him tightly.

  “What was that?” he whispered. I knew by the fright in his voice that the moment had passed and that my first kiss would have to wait.

  “It sounded like it came from the German encampment,” I whispered, not certain why we were whispering. Apparently, the big meeting had broken up and the different factions had gone back to their own camps. The Wolfingers and Kesebergs and their drivers, Dutch Charley, Augustus Spitzer, and Joseph Reinhardt, had set up camp together. Hardkoop, the Belgian, was also with them.

  We hurried to the side of the trail so that we would bypass the stretch where it intersected the German camp. From a distance, we could hear the sound of voices and could see movement.

  “The others are waiting for us.” It sounded like Keseberg speaking. “They should all be gathered by now.”

  His voice was even more heavily accented than usual and more guttural, almost grunting. Their fire had gone out and I strained to see them in the dim moonlight. Why were they meeting in the dark?

  “We can pull some of them away from the main group, I’m sure of it.” It was Dutch Charley, and he too sounded different, as if he was snarling. They were moving in an odd way, circling each other, almost as if they were dancing. I could see their outlines, and it seemed they weren’t wearing clothing––no, that wasn’t it; it was more like their clothing was torn and hanging in shreds from their bodies.

  “I think that pompous ass Reed is already half convinced,” Keseberg said. “He speaks loudly and often. I think with a small nudge, he will end up do the convincing for us.”

  “I’ll work to persuade him,” said a new voice, and I thought it sounded like Spitzer. “Best let him take the blame when everything goes wrong. James Reed is the kind of man people like to blame: sure of himself and sure he knows what’s best for everyone else.”