One more river to cross, p.29
One More River to Cross, page 29
John Murphy clasped Moses’s arm. “If you’re able, get Joker. I’ll get a mount too and we’ll grab a third.”
Moses wasn’t sure he was strong enough, but if he had a chance to rescue the man his sister had sent along to supply them, then he had to give it a try.
Mr. Neil had taken his six-foot-four-inch frame and climbed a tree on the island that was slowly disappearing in the river. Moses wondered how many times a man could cheat death on one journey. Trying to snowshoe out and turning back. Every day in the cabin. Yet here he was, alive, still meant for something. Even if he gave his life for this man, he would have lived well; his sister could be proud. His heart raced. He leaned forward over Joker’s neck. Neither John nor Moses said a word, but they exchanged a look that told them they were plunging into the torrent. At least one of them would make it to Neil and hopefully bring him back. It’s what a man did, lay down his life for a friend—even one he had never met.
At Sutter’s Fort
“You ought to follow them, Dr. John. Provide medical care.” Ellen said. They stood in Sutter’s courtyard.
“I . . . could have gone, of course. But food is the primary concern and they took that plus horses,” Dr. John said. “Especially if they’re in as bad a shape as Allen and Foster suggest—which they may not be. Allen likely exaggerated as an excuse for his not bringing his wife out with him, that she was too emaciated to make the trek.”
“He made no effort to go back and get her,” Ellen said. “I used to think him quite a fine husband, but now . . .”
“Never judge another’s marriage.” Dr. John wagged his finger at her.
“’Tis so. But one takes lessons from watching at a distance.”
“Still, what a joy it would mean to Moses to know a relative had come to help rescue him,” Beth said. “Your patients can spare a few days.”
“Now, my dear, men don’t think about such things as you women do. He’ll know we’ll clap him on the back and say, ‘Good work, boy.’ That’s all he’ll need from his family.”
“Sometimes—gasp—your views of what anyone needs are quite—gasp—disconcerting, dear husband. If not wrong.”
Is her breathing problem returning? Only when Dr. John’s around.
Dr. John rambled on. “I am needed here, Beth. How do you suppose we are to survive without means if I don’t work for Sutter? Why even Captain Stephens is confident everyone is good and well. He’s off marking out the land he bought from Sutter, at a fine price, I might add, since we went to war for him. We have land as well, and when spring arrives, I’ll go back for our goods and then we can settle into this fine country.”
“I had a way for us to survive, but you left the wagons behind,” Beth said. She pooched her lower lip out in a pout.
Ellen wondered if she should walk away from this marital discussion, but she stayed, more curious than ever over what Beth said.
“Yes, we were to operate a store, which we will, come spring.”
“Well . . . oh never mind. I’ll find out when Moses is rescued, which he’d better be.”
And with that, Beth swirled her skirts and left her husband’s side. “Join me,” she said to Ellen. “I shall take solace in the company of friends and horses.”
Advice for me as well.
Wagon Guard
Moses and John had saved Mr. Neil and now all were camped beside the flooding Bear River. Moses found himself a reluctant hero. He’d helped with a rescue after being rescued himself and people marveled that he was in better shape than most of the others.
“We must hear how you did it all alone those months,” Ann Jane said.
“You women survived too. There’s the real story.” Moses pointed with his chin toward BD and other Murphy children. “Had a lot more to feed than I did. And I had books.”
“Did you eat ’em?” BD asked. The child sat on a saddle Moses had resting on its pommel, the sheepskin pointing outward to the breeze to dry the sweat. The rain had stopped, the weather balmy as summer in Missouri.
“Thought about it,” Moses told him. “But no, I read. A lot. Sure glad my sister taught me how to read. You Murphy kids know your letters, don’t you? Pattersons too?” Lots of heads nodded. They were stalled at this river and food was still scarce, so distracting talk was good. Again, Moses wished that he had brought out a trap. He hoped John could bring down a goose.
“I never liked school,” one of the Pattersons said. “Mrs. Murphy taught us all kinds of things in fun ways. When we was not so hungry and able to think.”
“Weren’t so hungry,” his mother corrected. Moses thought Mrs. Patterson looked the most changed of all, with her clothes hanging from her shoulders like a coat tree and her eyes so hollowed out.
That evening they gave out rations. The men talked about options—going back and following the Yuba, or going upriver looking for a better place to cross or just waiting. He noticed they talked loud enough that the women could hear and they even listened to suggestions the women made. He’d remember that. He wondered if Dr. John would listen more to his sister after she had survived just fine, or so he’d been told. Where is Dr. John? He would have thought he’d have come along to see to the health of these Murphys and Pattersons and him, for that matter. Dr. John was probably busy jawing. “Talk often but never long.” He’d read that in Lord Chesterfield’s letters about conduct. “Tell stories very seldom . . . and beware of digressions. To have frequent recourse to narrative betrays great want of imagination.” Moses wasn’t so sure about that last. Every single person on this westward trip had a narrative to tell and it had nothing to do with a failure of the imagination.
“We stay here. Wait.” Martin Murphy Sr. spoke the final decision.
The river kept rising and they moved their camp back. They could barely see the other bank now, the water flattening the landscape to a lake of brown. Mr. Hitchcock concurred, along with Mr. Martin and the younger men. The women seemed mollified. Perhaps they’d become accustomed to hunger while waiting for nature to cease its demands. Once these people had all run together in Moses’s head, but now he saw them distinctively: Junior—the father and husband he hoped one day he could be. Mr. Hitchcock, the explorer and survivor and grandfather he could aspire to. Even Mr. Martin, who was kind of a curmudgeon. (There was a word his sister would be proud he knew.) But Mr. Martin played the bodhran and music fed the spirit too.
“You know it’s March 1,” Mr. Martin said. “A year since we started out from Missouri. And we ain’t made it yet.”
“We’re in California, Da,” Dennis said.
“Don’t have much to speak for itself, does it?” his father said.
“You’ll be happy when we reach Sutter’s. It’s summer there. You’ll love it. No more achy bones from the cold. Bridges or ferries to get us across.”
“The cold I can handle, it’s this empty stomach that I’ve wearied over.”
“That’ll change too.” Dennis patted his shoulder.
“You’ll all be shedding sweaters soon and wearing sombreros like the Mexicans,” Junior told the children. He pantomimed the wide brim. They giggled.
“Can I borrow your knife, Mr. Moses?” BD tugged on Moses’s sleeve.
“Sure, but what will you do with it?”
“Make a toothpick,” the little boy said.
“Well, aren’t you the optimist.” Hungry as the boy must be, he still had room to imagine a time when he would need a toothpick. Moses would remember that. It was all right to think about the future if it was a happy call. Maybe that was what having faith was all about.
Wintering Women
They waited. Maolisa scraped her baby’s napkin, rinsed it at the water’s edge, and spread it on brushes back away from the flooding water. She drew on every strength of faith and fortitude she had to keep their spirits up as they waited for the river to recede. They were so close now, and it was almost worse having had a taste of sustenance only to live again with none.
Two deer had been shot, a couple of grouse taken; but with so many people—fourteen children, plus their parents and rescuers—the rationed morsels hardly whet their appetites. Sutter’s horses roamed the area, no cattle, though they’d seen a bloated one, legs up, float by on the flooding river the men called Bear. Men with guns planned to head out this third day to search for game.
“If we can’t find any, we’ll have to shoot a horse, love,” Junior told his wife as he saddled his mount, tightened the cinch.
“Your father won’t eat it,” Maolisa told him. “You know how he feels.”
“He won’t know, Pet. I’ll make sure he hunts far from me.”
“You’d deceive him?”
“It’s been three days of waiting without food. And you women are already thin as reeds.” He kissed her nose and mounted up. “We’ll do what we must.”
Maolisa guessed he was right. A little lie might have to be told to serve the greater good. And keeping them all alive was the greater good.
The Bear River still swirled its muddy waters as they made their way downstream and approached the confluence of another river, also in flood stage. Mr. Neil called it the Feather, and Maolisa set about organizing, getting the children to look for things to burn, while Isabella Patterson fetched water they boiled to drink and Ann Jane convinced her father to play a bit on the bodhran as her brother Dennis took out his whistle. A little Irish jig. Just what this party needed, Maolisa thought. She couldn’t see a way to make a table, so her cloth stayed rolled up in her bedroll.
A cheer went up when Moses Schallenberger and Patrick brought in game. It was one of Sutter’s wild horses Moses had shot. They were already roasting it when Mr. Murphy rode in dejected, without having hunting success himself.
“Well done, boy. Good for you,” Mr. Murphy said as he saw the roasting meat. “Looks like a good-sized heifer. I’m sure Sutter won’t begrudge us.” He rubbed his hands together in anticipation of food.
“Hope not, sir,” Moses said. They all passed glances of loyalty to the conspiracy of never letting Mr. Murphy know that he was about to eat a horse. Especially after he ate the roasted meat and claimed it mighty tasty.
Then James Miller spilled the secret—and Mr. Murphy spilled his vittles.
Maolisa didn’t know how much nutrition her father-in-law maintained. She felt bad for him, yet grateful that he didn’t have to try roasted pine needles or boiled hides as the women had. The taste had not been to her liking, but she had discovered this winter that by faith, one can take steps never before imagined. After all, they’d crossed a continent. She’d delivered a baby into a winter storm, sent her husband off not knowing if he’d return. Her child lived, her husband returned, and because of it, she could dream of something more.
The rivers roiled on out of their banks, but it was part of a river’s nature. She had a feeling—she thought of Ailbe and her forebodings—but Maolisa’s sense was that God was with them despite the turmoil and trial. They had gotten on a craft called faith and pushed out onto a river. Sometimes the stream flowed calm and restful and sometimes it meandered and swirled the craft about. But it always took them to where they needed to go. Sometimes they’d end up at a ferry landing they hadn’t known they were meant to reach. She couldn’t organize everything. The future held surprises. She was almost excited about what was next in store.
35
Homecoming
At Sutter’s Fort
Sarah had dressed and walked across the courtyard as the sun rose over the flagpole. She loved the early morning in this country with the gentle breeze, bees humming at their blooms and birds chirping as they flitted from California lilac to a manzanita bush. She wore a new wheat-colored muslin dress with a scooped neck and a bright red sash around her waist. California was all about color—in people’s skin, in the greenery of growth, in the flourish of fabrics that Sutter sold and kindly gave to these new American women so destitute upon arrival. Sarah had been sewing muslin and calico dresses, embroidering flowers and birds at the hems, on the bodices. It had kept her busy and she delighted in hearing the oohs and aahs from both native women and Americans arriving by ship or south from Oregon Territory.
“Buenos días,” she said to one of the native women waiting at the well as Sarah now did. Mary still taught her how to read, and she, Ailbe, Beth, and Ellen and Mary, too, were all learning how to speak the new language, though she couldn’t say much more than “good morning” in Spanish. While she waited for her turn to pull up the bucket, she went through the alphabet in her mind, remembering the sounds Mary Sullivan had taught her.
“A is for apple,” Mary had told her.
“A is for animal,” Sarah said.
“That’s right. A is for animal and apricot, though that’s a tricky one because some people say ay-pricot and others say ah-pricot—” and they’d be off writing words that Sarah would try to remember that began with that first letter, a. Anxiety. Aggravated. Abandoned. But such words were harder to learn to print out because there was no object she could look at to remind her—only an emotion.
The line of women seeking buckets of water moved closer to the well, and Sarah had been about to move on to b when she saw riders come through the gate. One sat tall. He had a full beard and short mustache without braids. She’d know him anywhere. “A is for Allen,” she whispered.
The men dismounted and went in to Sutter’s offices. Sarah slipped toward the door, listened, her heart pounding.
“We’ve seen a large party with horses and children . . . a dozen or more babes. It has to be the rescuers of the Murphy party.” Sarah recognized his voice, the deepness of it, the warmth. What will I say to him?
“Gut, ja. Food is plenty at the Hock Farm. I will send ferry to help them cross. You, take word back to do everything for them. Supplies from here—dried food, blankets, sweets for the children. Food from the farm. Go, go now.”
“And dresses for the women,” Sarah said as she stepped inside.
“Ja, ja, that’s gut.”
“Sarah, I—” Allen hesitated, and then he lifted her up and kissed her. “I’ve missed you.” He set her down, hands still on her shoulders.
“And I, you.” She didn’t say he wouldn’t have had to miss her. She didn’t chastise him for his absence. Her anger had been spent weeks before. She was wounded, but she was also wiser. She loved him, but love had many dimensions and believing in her own resilience had kept her from disappearing inside herself or becoming isolated on an island she’d let Allen make. She could create her own ferry to cross from abandonment to strength.
“I’ll be back in a few days. We’ll talk then.” He no longer braided his mustache ends. So he had changed too.
“I’m going with you,” Sarah said. “You can tell me where you’ve been along the way and I’ll tell you what I’ve been doing. Like you, I haven’t been idle.”
“Did he say what condition they were in?” Mary Sullivan asked. Sarah had awakened all the Stephens-Murphy-Townsend party women at the fort and they clustered inside Ailbe’s quarters.
“Did they see a baby? My Indie? Does her father have her? James is with them, isn’t he?” Ailbe rushed her questions. “Maolisa and her baby. They’ve made it?”
“Allen didn’t say. Only that he was sure it was the rest of us.”
The rest of us. What a comforting image, Mary thought. They’d be whole at last, all together. Blood no longer defined the community. She thought of Peter, who was likely preparing the packs the men would take to Sutter’s farm called Hock.
Ailbe hugged a sleepy-eyed child to her side.
“I don’t know the details,” Sarah said. “I only know I’m going with them to the Bear and Feather confluence. That’s where they’re crossing.”
“Is it flooded, like the others are?”
“I imagine so.” Ellen wore a colorful dress with stripes of red and yellow running around the hem and a belt to match. She pulled on leather boots. “Carlos said all the rivers are in flood stage.”
“Carlos, is it?” Mary teased as Ellen blushed. Karl Weber—sometimes known as Carlos—had spent a fair amount of time with Ellen who rarely mentioned running a mercantile for Dr. Townsend now. She talked of farming and running a hacienda. And here was Mary, the former farmer, now dreaming of a mercantile operated with her soon-to-be husband, Peter Sherrebeck.
“Yes. Carlos. He’s educating me about this country.” Ellen blushed. “He says the rivers always overflow this time of year because of the snowmelt in the mountains.”
“And Moses is with them?” Beth didn’t wait for an answer. “I know, Allen didn’t know.” She put her hand to her heart. “If Dennis Martin made it. If Mr. Neil got them supplies. Then Moses is with them. He has to be.”
“I, for one, am going to the Hock Farm,” Mary said. “To welcome our family.”
“But what of your little brothers?” Johanna asked.
“I’ll take them along,” Mary said. “They miss the Patterson children.” She pulled her long skirt up between her legs and tucked it into her belt so she looked as though she wore Persian pants. Not a woman batted an eye at her impropriety. People did things differently in this California place. “Who’s coming with us?” Mary had ridden the forty miles to the Hock Farm with Peter, so she knew the way. After all they’d been through, the Stephens-Murphy-Townsend women could make this last trek easily.
“I am,” Ailbe said. “Let’s fill the canteens.”
“You can’t leave me behind,” Beth said.
Chica barked at the excitement.
Ailbe’s two-year-old turned over in his sleep and moaned.
“I’ll have to wait,” Ailbe said. Her shoulders sank. “I’ve the younger ones to tend.”
“I can watch them,” Johanna said. She tightened her belt around her now slender waist. “You go, Ailbe. All of you go. And bring back Da and the brothers and sisters all. Someone needs to remain behind. To look after things.”
Yes. They looked out for each other, paid attention to what another needed. Family, Mary thought. From the Latin word famalus, meaning “servant.”
