One more river to cross, p.9
One More River to Cross, page 9
“He wanted me to take my younger brothers and go with Miss Murphy and Mrs. Townsend. He would have allowed that separation. But I . . . overruled him.” Mary ducked her head. I mustn’t sound prideful. “He won’t let me be on my own unless it’s his way. But he also won’t let me forget that he has to ‘take care of me.’ I take care of myself.”
“We women all do.” Sarah brushed snow from the hem of her heavy skirt, pulled up her socks. “I like a challenge myself now and then, but to learn something new, get my brain working rather than making my body earn bunions and blisters.”
“Surviving the winter in a makeshift cabin in the wilderness probably does involve both mind and matter,” Mary said. “Your Allen will discover that.”
They stared at the rock ahead, framed by the wagon’s opening.
“Formidable,” Mary said. “I hate the thought of turning back.”
“Indeed.”
“I think that’s the Greenwoods,” Mary said and she stood. “And there are only two.”
Seeing Old Greenwood with a grin caused Capt’s relief—short-lived though it was. “It ain’t wide but we led the horses through it and there was a little room, so the ox’s horns’ll scrape the sides but they can make it. Won’t like it. Have to be gentled through. Probably good that they’re thinner than when we started,” Old Greenwood added.
“We rode by it twice,” his son said. “Pa and us’n headed here to bring the bad news when Britain looked behind. The light hit the rock funny, made a shadow. We turned back to check it out and there it was. Like a door stuffed with snow but opening just a crack.”
“Praise God.” Martin Murphy crossed his heart. Capt nodded. He’d have to take this praying thing more seriously.
“We left Britain there, so’s we wouldn’t lose sight of the cleft again.”
“How far from here is it?” James Miller asked.
“Mile, mile and a half around the base.”
“That’s doable for the women and children. And the depth of the opening?”
“Forty-fifty feet through the narrows, then it widens. We wound our way up to the top.”
“We just abandon all the wagons?” Townsend spoke up.
“No. We drop chains from the top,” Capt said. “Haul each wagon up that way.”
“Believe so.” Old Greenwood spit his tobacco.
All eyes turned again to the rock face.
“We’d best get going,” Capt said. “Unload. Everything will be carried, but we get the oxen through first. Start with the strongest.”
“Those would be ours,” Mary Sullivan said. “And I’m going to lead them.”
Mary knew what she had to do. She’d stood awaiting her fate by decisions of the men, as was her usual pattern. She stomped her feet to keep warm, checked on her younger brothers. Even children—boys at least—were closer to the inner circle of men talking than the women were allowed to be. They’d get told the result when all decisions were made. Seemed foolish to her to ignore half the members of the group. Sarah had had to speak up to offer her suggestion and it hadn’t been heeded. Mary didn’t expect it to be.
But faced with an inhuman task, she’d found a challenge worthy of a Sullivan. If they succeeded, there’d be stories of great endurance to tell. She guessed the entire trip could be such a story, but the idea of them getting wagons up and over that rock face was an astonishing achievement. She felt . . . invigorated, odd as that seemed to her. The preceding demanding days had been drudgery, but this, this would be a remarkable feat—if they accomplished it. What choice do we have?
“Let your brother John lead,” Capt shouted after her. But she’d already headed toward their wagon and began unhitching Pierre.
“Mary. You can’t. Let me take them.” John tried to push her aside.
“You bring Prince or take the harness. Pierre and I are going through.” John was speechless. She supposed that radical actions did silence men unaccustomed to dealing with a woman with a singular cause.
“My brother’s bringing the mate,” she announced as she led the animal by the captain standing with his mouth open. She carried grain in a bag over her shoulder—they didn’t have much left. “Point the way,” she told the younger Greenwood.
“Just follow our tracks,” he said.
Sometimes one just had to take the ox by the horns, she thought, and smiled.
The animal followed her as she tugged on the lead rope, and she heard the sounds of others getting their stock moving. She wasn’t tired at all. She hadn’t been as awakened by anything like this except that summer she had taken a canoe on the Gatineau River after John told her she couldn’t. Or rather she shouldn’t.
“You’re a fool,” he’d said. They’d stood at the shoreline where the river ran smooth, but she could hear the rush of rapids farther along before the river joined up with the Ottawa in western Quebec.
“We could both go, see who gets through the rapids first.”
“Why is everything a competition with you?” John scowled.
“It isn’t. Not really. I just like the . . . excitement. It beats looking for eggs and feeding chickens.”
“You’ll have that. Those rapids twist and fall, swirl around rocks and threaten any craft bold enough to try to pierce their watery flesh.”
“Have you ever run them?”
“No. Foolish, like I said.” He’d kicked at pebbles on the shoreline. Was he actually worried about her?
“Well, I’m going to do it.”
“Mama and Papa won’t like it.”
“They’ll never know.”
“If you die, they’ll figure it out.”
Mary was a strong swimmer, so if she did get plunged into the water, she was sure she could survive, let the current carry her into calmer water and slosh her way to the tree-and-rock-lined shore. But yes, there was the risk of losing her life.
It had been a harrowing ride, water splashing, the roar of the water plunging over rocks pounding in her ears. The current shot like an arrow through narrow channels that threatened to spin her and her craft around. Her heart pounded and she wanted to whoop with the sheer ecstasy of facing danger. She didn’t think about death.
And she’d succeeded.
She’d lost all that drive to feel life fully when her parents had died. An enemy she had no power over had won. Riding the river rapids had been the last time she’d felt excitement. Everything since then had simply been work. Grief. Giving in, letting John have his way about what they’d do—coming west, which fork in the trail to take. She hadn’t blamed him for the struggle on this journey. She’d been . . . apathetic.
The ox bawled and balked. “Come on, Pierre,” she said. The snow was fluffy and her thighs were tired. She yanked her skirt hem up into her waistband, making a pants-like arrangement. It would be easier to clamber through. Ahead stood Britain, the Greenwood brother.
“You lost?”
“Just the first to arrive. I’ll follow you.” They entered the shadowed granite lane. The ox’s horns did scrape the sides and Pierre resisted. “Come on, boy. It’s all right. I’m right here.” She scratched the ridge between his eyes. “Come.” She used her firmest voice. Pierre moved again. Just needed a little encouragement. Mary smacked her lips with the glycerin she’d put on that morning. Such a little thing, the scent of it. She’d forgotten small treasures like the smell of a river rock in spring or the racing of her heart when she canoed through calm waters but could see white water in the distance, could feel her craft moving more swiftly, being pulled toward as-yet-unseen waters she had no control over. Just like now.
Pierre sped up. When paired, Pierre had carried an extra iron pad around his neck, and Mary could see the scars from equipment meant to keep him from open sores. Mary had treated them, but it was Captain Stephens, weeks before, who had pounded out an iron neck piece to lay beneath it that had saved the beloved ox.
“Mama and Papa,” she said. “You never knew it, but once, I conquered a river rapid. And now I’ll defeat a mountain.” Pierre bawled again, but he kept following her, one foot in front of the other. It was how they’d all meet the next challenge.
11
We Are Here, I Am Here
Sarah thought Mary Sullivan looked as sweet as butterscotch when she grinned—which she had as she led her ox first toward the cleft. Mary hadn’t even waited for their wagon to be called. She headed out before anyone could stop her. That was probably the best way to make something happen: act and deal with the consequences later.
Sarah began unloading the Sullivan supplies, removing her own things first. She noticed men unhitching the forward wagons after pulling as close to the base of the mountain as they could. The Sullivan vehicle pitched at an angle several back from the front. All but a few oxen would be taken through the cleft, leaving one team to pull each wagon closer to the base. Sarah carried food packs, quilts (those were essentials), sweaters. Some of the Sullivan essentials she removed and piled in the snow. She’d come back for them later. She encouraged the little boys with their shoulder sacks to wait. Then after Allen dragged harnesses through the cleft, she and the boys entered the dark, narrow alley.
Sarah’s stomach growled and she longed for a flake or two of maple sugar, but she couldn’t take any out of the mouths of the Sullivan boys, or anyone else for that matter. The Canadians had brought maple cones with them and Mary Sullivan had been generous with sharing the brown pyramids. When they got to California, Sarah determined she’d never be without maple sugar. Nor butterscotch. She’d packed butterscotch candies but had none left. She couldn’t believe she’d eaten them all, but then sometimes she did mindless things without realizing it, especially around food. Even worse was that she never felt full, never knew when her meal was “over.” Maybe she was pregnant? No, it was more that she didn’t know how to end her eating. Or maybe end anything? What do I hang on to? These past weeks, with rations being questioned given the delays on the trail, she’d paid more attention to what she was eating, savoring it as the larders shrank. Once she had a flake of maple sugar, though, she always wanted more. She shook her head. She had to stop, think about something else. Then Allen came to her mind again and how she’d soon be missing him. She ached so hard that thinking of food seemed easier.
Isabella Patterson shifted her load carried at her hips and held her breath when they lowered the first chains, lengths to equal the drop over the side of the ridge. Men standing below, her father included, latched the chain to the wagon tongue, securing it with ropes too. She’d have thought they’d put the chains under the wagon like a harness, but the men knew how to make this work. Then the oxen above—she didn’t know how many—began the laborious task of inching the wagon up the side of the rock face, wooden wheels screeching against the stone. She could hear the men shouting to the poor beasts to “Pull! Pull! Pull!”—as they never had before. If a link broke or it slipped, the wagon would crash to the bottom in splinters, so the rest of the party had to remain back a ways. The wheels clanked against the rock face, scraping up the side like brown beetles inching along.
Ailbe held her infant, little Ellen Independence, while standing beside goods from their wagon not yet carried around and up. The Miller wagon would be next.
Like everyone else’s, the Miller goods would be hand carried. Featherbeds. Sheet-iron stoves. Trunks of clothing. Food boxes—lighter now than at any time on their journey. Bags of rice, cornmeal, what bacon they had left. Dried venison. All were stacked in a pile surrounded by snow that an occasional blast of wind whipped up so one could barely see. Isabella sighed and lifted her bag of flour onto her shoulder. “Lydia, Isaac, what can you carry?”
Two of her children dragged a box of clothing by rope handles. Once at the cleft, she’d have to pull it on through behind her. She watched the wagon scrape upward. Isabella thought of her dear husband, Andrew. He would have loved this spectacle, this act of man taming the landscape, conquering it. He’d say it was an American way of doing things, seeing something that needed to be done and not wasting time lamenting how the situation had come to pass, laying no blame, simply reclaiming a goal. He had quoted the lyrical words of the poet Von Goethe who said that once one made a commitment to something, then “Providence moves and things begin to happen one might otherwise never could have imagined.” Who could have imagined they’d be here at this juncture, facing this test? Her Andrew would have approved of how the group responded, with invention and bravery.
How she missed that man! He was always creating things for her, humming at his work, doing everything he could to bring the eight children from his first marriage into the fold of their own five over the years. It had been awkward at times. He was older than her by quite a few years. His oldest child, Judson, was even older than she was when they married. More than once when Isabella and Andrew had walked on the streets of Jackson, Missouri, people had tipped their hat and said things like “Lovely daughter you have there, Patterson.” She’d been mortified at first, but Andrew didn’t seem to mind. He actually beamed, and once he’d said to her, “It’s amazing to me that a woman like you would find solace with a man like me.”
Solace. That was what she sought now. She didn’t dare let herself think too far ahead to what they’d face in California. Of course, they had to get there first, but solace would be so lovely.
Her father had spent time in the mountains, trapping, though not into the California of the Spanish. It was odd that he had returned into her life just as Andrew left it. He’d helped her negotiate the estate, as Andrew had failed to leave a will and there were many claims by his first family—which is how she thought of those eight earlier offspring. They hadn’t been unkind, but every dollar they took wrenched morsels from her children’s mouths. Her father had been a godsend and she had trusted him when he said they could find land in the West, make a new life. She could midwife as she had in Missouri and in Tennessee before that. As Andrew had found satisfaction in his unique encounters, she had sought fulfillment in helping a woman deliver a child, being a part of those first signs of life. And she’d been gifted with that very opportunity with Ailbe Miller’s baby born at Independence Rock on July fourth. She still remembered the first breath of the infant separate from her mother’s when she’d done the unorthodox thing—she’d tickled the child’s feet and the baby had gasped, took in air in surprise, rather than pain making her cry as a spank would have done.
“She’ll be a happy child,” Isabella had told Mrs. Miller, who had responded with a smile of her own and a “Well, I never . . .”
It was one of Isabella’s trademarks, that tickling over spanking, and she believed pregnant women sought her out because of it. A gasp of surprise into life. And out. Andrew had looked up, a smile formed on his face before he said his last “Fare thee well” and then he was gone.
She heard the scrape of wheels against the rock face, men shouting. Then in what seemed like hours but was only part of one, the first wagon disappeared up and over the summit’s edge.
Why wasn’t anyone clapping with the success? Maybe they were waiting until all the wagons were claimed on top, but it was never too early to cheer.
She wouldn’t wait. “Hallelujah!”
“What’s wrong?” This from Dennis Martin, who had walked up beside her. “Are you all right, Mrs. Patterson?”
“I am indeed. I just think we should shout hurrah or hallelujah, don’t you think? The first wagon survived its new trial.”
Dennis shouted too then, and the men getting ready with the next wagon turned to him.
“Celebrate it!” Dennis said. “One down. Four to go.”
It was like being a midwife, Isabella thought. One has to celebrate all along the journey and not just when the infant arrived.
Horseback Party
Ellen led Joker in the snow, insisting she could take her turn in the rotation of breaking the trail for the others. Before lay vast pillows of white, mounds and valleys darkened by shadows as clouds moved across the sky. Who knew how deep the snow was here? She poked with a branch before leading the animals forward. She tapped for something solid beneath them. Were avalanches possible in lands where deep snow met with fresh fluffy snow? She took a step forward, tapped with a stick, the rein held loosely in her hand. She’d been testing the terrain like that all day. Safe. Step. Safe. Step.
Joker’ pulled back, slipped, knocked her off balance. “Whoa, whoa!” The reins burned through her hands as the big horse fell to his side, then slid down a steep angle to within a few feet of the edge of a tree well.
“Are you all right?” Daniel yelled from the end of the pack line.
Ellen’s heart pounded, the cold air hurt her lungs as she shouted, “I’m going after him.”
The rest of the group could see what had happened. The horse struggled and pushed, made grunting sounds but not squealing as though in pain. If he continued, he’d go into the well.
“Easy, Joker, easy.” What had spooked him? It didn’t matter.
“Non, let me.” Oliver was the first to reach her.
“He knows me,” Ellen insisted. “I’ll see if I can get him calm enough to check him over, try to lead him back up.”
He couldn’t break a leg, he just couldn’t. Moses would be devastated, but so would she. He was the strongest horse and had pushed the snow, making all of their paths easier. She started down, slipping, snow up to her waist, easing her way around the now broken lip of snow that had given out from his weight. She moved with care, hoping not to end up sliding as Joker had. Her boots sank into the white, her woolen skirt a nuisance. She wouldn’t let herself think about what they’d do if the horse was fatally injured. “I’ll be there, Joker. I’ll be there.”
When she reached him, sweat formed a white sheath on his neck. His eyes were wide, frightened, his head lifting, then lying back in the snow. Ellen clucked soft sounds, knelt, touched the horse’s mane as he struggled, nickered. “No, no. Just be still.” He lay on his side, nostrils opening and closing like a blacksmith’s bellows. He pushed to get up again. “Shh-shh.” Kneeling beside him, she ran her hand down his chest, his flank, his forelegs, talking all the while, then eased her way around to his rump to check his back legs, speaking as though to a frightened child. His tail lay cropped close almost under him, a sign of his fright, if not his pain. One false move and he could knock her over with his force right into that tree well. She could fall in and it would be a misery to get her out—assuming snow didn’t follow her and suffocate her. She guessed it was eight feet deep. But not as big a misery as getting Joker out if he slid in.
