Boone's Lick (16 page)

“Seth, watch your talk,” Ma said.

That night we made our first campfire in Nebraska, using driftwood we found along the Platte River. Father Villy sat up late, teaching Neva French songs, of which he knew a bunch. Uncle Seth would usually jump into any sing-along, but this time he didn't. All evening, while the fire crackled, he hardly said a word.

“The stars are brighter in Nebraska,” G.T. said. “Some of those stars look as big as rocks.”

Ma kept her eyes on Uncle Seth—I think she may have felt that she had been too hard on him. At one point she offered him more coffee, but he just shook his head. I think that tussle of wills, between the two of them, had fairly worn him out.

I
HAVEN'T
seen a tree since Wednesday—nearly a week,” Ma said. “I never expected to be in a place where I wouldn't see a tree in a week. It's spooking me, Seth.”

It was spooking me too, and Neva and G.T. as well. When we first left Omaha there were plenty of trees along the Platte, but after ten days or so they began to thin out. Then we seemed to have passed the last one. All we could see in any direction were little round, bumpy hills, covered with brown grass. There were bushes and reeds along the Platte—but that was all. G.T. had yet to catch a single crawdad in it, or even a good-sized frog.

“Rest your mind, Mary Margaret,” Uncle Seth said. “There are trees farther west—plenty of them.”

“How much farther west?” Ma wanted to know.

“Six weeks should put us in some good thick trees,” Uncle Seth said. “Let's just plug along and get to Fort Laramie. Then we might need to study the maps.”

“Do you think Dick will be there?” Ma asked.

“No, but that's where we can pick up some useful news,” Uncle Seth said. “There's be somebody at Fort Laramie who can help locate just about anybody you might name.”

Ma didn't press the matter. After her set-to with Uncle Seth in Omaha they had soon got back on good terms—better terms than they had been on for a while, we all thought. At night Ma and Uncle Seth would still be sitting by the fire together, talking, when the rest of us got too tired to stay awake.

That was how it had been at home, for most of our lives—the sound of the two of them talking was usually the last thing we heard before we went to sleep.

What they talked about so much, I never knew, but the sound of their two voices made a good sound to go to sleep by—soothing, like the sound of rain.

That night it came a hard frost—hard enough to freeze the Platte, not to mention those of us in the wagon. The ducks that had been paddling around on the river the day before were walking around on solid ice, quacking and complaining. That was the day we learned what the sacks were for, that Uncle Seth had bought in Omaha. He gave one to me, one to G.T., and one to Neva.

“Turds,” he said. “Go gather them. I imagine you'll be finding cow turds mostly, with maybe a pile of horse pods now and then. I'll give a dime to anyone who finds a buffalo chip.”

For ten days we'd been following an immigrant train—a large one, with more than one hundred wagons in it. Every time we topped a hill we would see it, way off ahead. Neva was wild to catch up with them—she thought there'd be boys to play with—but Ma made no effort to catch up.

“When winter's coming and you're in country without wood it's fine luck to be behind a wagon train that big,” Uncle Seth said. “A train that size will spew out droppings all day long. You three get to be our turd gatherers. Fill up your sacks and we'll have a fine campfire tonight.”

“You mean we're going to burn turds?” G.T. asked. “We never burned turds in Missouri.”

“You oaf, that was because we had
wood
, in Missouri,” Neva said.

“This hard freeze will make your task easy,” Uncle Seth said. “The droppings will be froze hard.”

He was right on that point. The three of us filled several sacks with frozen droppings, and it didn't even take us much of the day. Once when we were a good distance from the wagon we heard a gunshot, which scared us good, but it was only Charlie Seven Days, who had managed to stalk a little antelope.

Though it warmed up considerably during the day, the wind rose just before sunset and some rolling black clouds began to spit little pellets of sleet at us.

“Ow, it's like needles,” G.T. said. That
was
what the sleet felt like.

“Get behind your mules,” Uncle Seth advised. “Let them take the brunt of it.”

We huddled up behind the mules and crowded as close to them as we could. When the moon finally came up and the sleet stopped, the plains had a white, icy look—yet Father Villy was still walking around barefoot, indifferent to the fact that he was walking on sleet.

I don't think G.T. really believed that cow turds would burn, but they did. The priest and Uncle Seth banked the fire so skillfully that we were soon as warm as if we were burning wood.

Ma cooked part of Charlie's antelope, which was very tasty, but there was not much singing around the campfire that night. The hard freeze and the sleet reminded us that we were out in the middle of a bald plain, with no shelter except a wagon—and there was colder weather still to come.

“I wish you'd left me at home, Ma,” G.T. said. “It's too chilly out here.”

“Don't be a complainer,” Ma said mildly. “You're safer with us than you would be at home.”

“I guess I won't be, when the Indians come and cut off my ears,” G.T. said.

“You oaf, why would they want your dirty ears?” Neva asked.

“Neva, stop calling him an oaf every minute,” Ma said. “It's grating on my nerves.”

“Mine too,” I said—Neva gave me a black look.

What happened next reminded me of that day on
the river when G.T. said he was a poor fisherman and then immediately landed a big catfish. He had no sooner mentioned Indians when twenty or more came riding over the nearest ridge, their horses crunching the sleet under their hooves. We had seen an Indian or two, as we came along the trail, but to have twenty or more suddenly show up, when we were alone on a frozen plain at night, was such a shock that my hair stood up. G.T. was so scared he couldn't close his mouth. Neva was the opposite—she buttoned her lip. There were several dogs traveling with the Indians, barking and howling: the sound carried far over the prairies.

All that saved us kids from panic was that none of our men seemed alarmed. In fact, they didn't even seem surprised, though they all did get to their feet to greet the newcomers.

“I believe it's our Pawnee brethren,” Father Villy said. “I wondered when they'd be paying us a visit.”

“Do you speak the tongue, Charlie?” Uncle Seth asked. “I have only a smattering, myself.”

Charlie shook his head. He wasn't pleased to see the Pawnees, but he wasn't scared, either.

Our menfolk may not have been scared, but our mules were—either the smell of the Indian horses or the howling of their dogs upset the mules greatly. They were snorting and straining at their ropes. Charlie and Uncle Seth went over to quiet them down, while Father Villy and the rest of us watched the Pawnees slip and slide down the sleety ridge.

Ma had baby Marcy in her arms, wrapped up tight against the chill.

“There's no cause for alarm, ma'am,” Father Villy assured her.

“I'm not alarmed,” Ma said. “What do they want, barging in this time of night?”

Father Villy seemed startled that Ma would bring up the time.

“You'll not find too many red men who worry much about the time,” he told Ma. “Time is just of a piece to them. They don't clock it apart, like we do.”

“You'd think anybody could see it's bedtime,” Ma said. “If those dogs don't quiet down they'll wake this baby.”

“These Pawnee boys ain't hostile, but they're sly thieves,” Father Villy said. “We need to guard our goods.”

“Good advice,” Uncle Seth said. “A quick Pawnee can steal the socks off a preacher—maybe that's why Villy goes barefoot. Probably lost so many socks he decided to give up on footware.”

A minute later we had a passel of Indians crowding around us, horses snorting, dogs barking, the whole crowd smelling pretty rank. Four or five Indians tried to warm themselves by our fire, but most of them were eyeballing our equipment, crowding around the wagon and examining what they could find. Baby Marcy soon woke up and began to howl, a development that annoyed Ma.

Uncle Seth and Father Villy made an effort to be polite to the Pawnees, talking in sign to the skinny old fellow who seemed to be their headman. He
wore an old black hat and had a string of yellow bear teeth around his neck. He chattered away but I had no idea what he was saying. Meanwhile, Charlie planted himself by our horses and mules and kept a close watch on them.

“I've met this old rascal,” Uncle Seth said. “He was at Fort Laramie for one of the big pows. His name is Nose Turns Down. His notion is that we should give him a mule.”

“He won't get a mule, but he might get a piece of my mind if he doesn't get out of here and let us get some rest,” Ma said.

An Indian came up to me and felt the buttons of my coat—another did the same to G.T., and one even pulled a comb out of Neva's hair. I guess he just wanted to look at it because he soon handed it back. I think Neva was startled that anyone would be so bold as to take a comb out of her hair.

It seemed like the old Pawnee in the black hat went on jabbering at Uncle Seth for an hour, though I suppose it was really only several minutes. Although Uncle Seth was perfectly polite I could see the vein working on the top of his nose.

“I think we better give them a plug of tobacco,” he said—we had laid in several plugs when we passed through Omaha.

“Why?” Ma asked. “I wouldn't give
you
a plug, if you woke my baby.”

“It's the custom, ma'am,” Father Villy said.

“That's right—the custom,” Uncle Seth said. “Throw in a little coffee too, Villy—but I think we better balk if they ask for bullets.”

I guess the Pawnee did ask for bullets, because
the palaver went on for a good while, with the old headman doing the talking and the other Indians just prowling around, looking under the wagon and examining the mule harness. Finally Uncle Seth handed over the plug of tobacco, while Father Villy filled a little pouch with coffee beans.

“Go light on the coffee, Father,” Ma said. “If I have to travel in a place with no trees without my coffee you'll all have to put up with a cranky woman—Seth knows how I get when I don't have my coffee.”

“She's a regular Comanche when she's coffee starved,” Uncle Seth said.

It was plain that the Pawnees had expected more in the way of presents than a plug of tobacco and a little pouch full of coffee beans, but that was all they got. The old headman grumbled, but once the warriors had fingered everything two or three times, they rode off toward the river, which was two or three miles south. Even after they slipped over the next ridge we could still hear the sleet crunching under their horses' hooves.

The plains were vast and white and gloomy, but at least the Indians were gone.

“Think how cold your head would be if they pulled your scalp off in weather like this,” G.T. said, at which point Neva gave him the blackest look yet.

I
T
was such a relief to us children to have the Indians gone that we all started yawning and could have gone right to sleep, had it not been that the adults took a different view of the matter.

“Now don't be yawning, boys—you've got to help Charlie guard the mules,” Uncle Seth said. “I'll help Mary Margaret keep a lookout on the wagon, and Neva and Villy can just be general guards.”

G.T. was much put out by that command.

“But the Indians left,” he said. “You can hear them. They're heading for the river.”

“Don't be presuming to instruct your elders, G.T.,” Uncle Seth said. “Bothersome as the Pawnee is when you've got him in your camp, it's
once he's left that you really have to worry. Go help Charlie with the mules.”

“The clouds are coming back,” Charlie said. “It won't be moonlight much longer—once it's dark they might try for a mule—I'm going to bring them in close to the wagon.”

“I have never liked to sleep with a mule breathing on me,” Ma said. “But I guess I can stand it if that's the best way to secure them.”

The moon soon went behind a cloud, as Charlie had predicted; the only light was the faint white of the sleet and the flickers of our campfire. We hitched all six mules to the wagon, in a line—the two horses also. I stood between two mules, shivering, and G.T. did the same. Then I heard coyotes yipping. When I strained my eyes I thought I saw forms creeping around on the plain.

“Are those Pawnees?” I whispered to Charlie. I was sure we were about to be in a battle.

“No, those are coyotes,” Charlie said.

Ma sat by the campfire, keeping the baby warm. She fed cow chips into the flames, one or two at a time.

It was during that night on the sleety prairies—it seemed to last for a week—that I really learned what cold was. All that saved me—and G.T. too—was the fact of being between the two mules. The cold just got colder and colder—the temperature dropped and dropped. It wasn't just my hands and feet that froze—it was my cheeks and eyelids, my forehead, my ears. It felt like the blood was freezing inside me. From time to time I stopped to rub my freezing cheeks against a warm mule.

G.T. had an even worse time than me. He forgot and grabbed his gun barrel with his bare hand: of course, he stuck to his gun and peeled a good strip of skin off two fingers when he tried to get loose. Ma rubbed a little antelope tallow on the skinned place. It was not until the first faint light came that Charlie told us we could go get warm.