The Quilt Walk (11 page)

“Be still!” he yelled at her. “Don’t you know when to be still? You got no business speaking against your husband. You hear me?”

Mrs. Bonner looked down at her hands and said nothing.

“Never would I have a thing to do with that man if it wasn’t for his wife!” Ma said under her breath. “Lord forgive me, but I shouldn’t mind if he got trampled by his own oxen. And the way he hits the poor animals, he just might.” Ma turned to me. “Emmy Blue, it’s time you learned there are some things a woman shouldn’t have to abide by, and that man is one of them.”

“I said, get behind me, Bonner,” Pa said. He didn’t yell. In fact, I had to strain to hear him. But there was anger in his voice that I had heard only two or three times in my life, once when a man was beating a dog. Pa’s eyes were hard, and he stood with his feet apart, his fist clinched. Because Pa limped, some men might have thought he was weak. Not Pa! I knew he could whip Mr. Bonner. I’d never seen Pa fight, but I’d heard Grandma Mouse say that when he was younger, Pa was a good man with his fists.

Mr. Bonner held his whip in one hand while he seemed to size up Pa. I didn’t take my eyes off Mr. Bonner, but out of the corner of my eye I saw that other men had stopped what they were doing and were watching. Two of them had left their wagons and went to stand behind Pa. Mr. Bonner shifted from one foot to the other, his eyes darting from one man to another. It looked like he wasn’t sure what to do.

Slowly, Pa reached for his own whip, which was on the wagon seat. At first, I was afraid he would strike Mr. Bonner with it, but instead, he tapped it on the rump of our lead ox and said, “Giddup.” Our wagon swung out into the lead position. After a time, Mr. Bonner pulled his wagon in behind us. The others went back to their wagons, nodding their approval, and a few minutes later, Buttermilk John rode up to Pa and said, “Ye be smart about that, old son.”

I was still shaking a little bit as I walked beside Pa. “Why didn’t you fight Mr. Bonner?” I asked. “You could have beat him easy,” I said. “It would show him right.”

“Maybe so, Emmy Blue, but that would have made him even madder than he already is. He’d take it out on us in some way, and maybe on Mrs. Bonner, too. You have to stand your ground, but there’s no reason to rile folks unless you have to.”

“I bet he fights dirty,” I said.

“That’s a bet you’d win. Just look at his wife.”

“Why does he hit her?”

Pa thought that over. “Some men are just no good.”

“Can’t you do something about it?”

“I don’t believe it’s my place to interfere between a man and his wife.” He paused. “But I have a feeling your ma doesn’t agree with me on that.”

I didn’t agree with him, either.

Chapter Thirteen

HURRAH FOR SURPRISE

W
e had gone only a little ways when Buttermilk John came up to our wagon. “There’s animals got loose in last night’s storm. A few of us are going after them. We’d be obliged if ye’d be one. I got a horse for ye to ride.”

Pa looked at Ma and asked, “Can you lead the team without me?”

“Of course,” Ma replied. “I have Emmy Blue to help me.” Ma had walked beside the oxen before when Pa went hunting, so it wouldn’t be the first time she and I had been alone with the team.

“We won’t be gone long,” Pa said. “The trail’s almost dry now. And the oxen will be easy, now that they’ve had water to drink.” He glanced at me and grinned. “I believe Emmy Blue could handle the team on her own, if she had to.”

“We’ll be all right,” Ma said.

Pa turned to look at Mr. Bonner behind us. “If he gives you any trouble, just raise your voice. He’s a coward. I don’t want to leave you, but the folks in the train are our neighbors. It’ll be hard-going for them if they’ve lost some of their oxen. “They’ll have to lighten their wagons. They might even have to throw out their quilts.”

He smiled at his joke, but Ma didn’t. Pa’d made her discard some of her quilts before we even left Quincy, and I knew she hadn’t forgot that.

Ma, too, had a hard time turning down anyone in need, which Pa knew, and she said, “Go along, Thomas.”

“You’re a good woman, Meggie.” He cleared his throat. “We’re halfway to Golden, and we’ve lightened the load, what with the flour and bacon and other things we’ve eaten. I think there’s room in the wagon for your extra dresses now. You don’t have to wear all of them anymore.”

Ma nodded. She didn’t smile, but when she turned to me I saw her eyes flash as if she’d won some contest. “Whatever you think best, Thomas,” she said.

As soon as Pa went off with Buttermilk John and three other men—they didn’t invite Mr. Bonner to join them—I asked Ma, “Does Pa really mean it? May I wear just one dress now?”

Ma nodded, and then she smiled. “We kept our promise, Emmy Blue. And we kept all of our clothes, too.”

I started to take off my top dress, but Ma said it wasn’t proper to undress right out there in the open. I’d have to wait until nooning. As we walked along beside the oxen, me holding the whip and tapping the lead ox every now and then, I wondered if Ma, in her good mood, would let me out of making all fourteen quilt squares. Maybe she would settle for eight or ten. But I knew she wouldn’t.

Pa was right. The travel was easy that day. The air was cool, and the sun didn’t beat down on us as it had for the last few days. In a mile or two, the mud turned hard, and the oxen moved more quickly. I wanted to find Joey and run off onto the prairie to search for birds’ eggs or pick wildflowers, to dig my toes into the soft dirt and maybe lie down on my back in the prairie grass and look up at the clouds. Joey and I found wagons and animals and faces in the clouds, and we pointed them out to each other. Just the day before, he’d said, “That cloud looks like one of my pa’s layer cakes!”

Today I knew I had to stay with the wagon. Pa had asked me to, and Ma was walking slower than usual. “You all right, Ma?” I asked.

“Of course, I am. What makes you ask?”

“I’m just asking,” I said, but in truth I was worried about her. We walked along in the damp earth, that made my feet and ankles and legs muddy. I hoped we’d come to a river before long and I’d be able to wash them. As the sun was reaching the top of the sky, I heard a shout and saw Pa and the other men returning. I called a halt, tapping our lead ox on the head with the whip and yelling, “Whoa.”

“No need to stop, girlie,” Mr. Bonner yelled at me. “Let them as was careless catch up with us.”

I looked at Ma to tell me whether I should start up again, but Buttermilk John came abreast of us. “Ye called it right, Miss Hatchett. Time for our nooning,” he said. He held up his arm as a signal, and the wagons came to a stop, turning out so that the women could prepare dinner and the men could unhitch the animals to graze.

Pa came toward us, huddled on the horse he had borrowed, and I thought maybe he’d been hurt. Ma did, too, because she quickly climbed down from the wagon, with the skillet in her hand and a worried look on her face. “Thomas?” she said.

Pa grinned as he opened his coat. Sitting on the saddle, shivering, was the sorriest dog I’d ever seen. He was an ugly mutt the size of a lamb, and he quivered when he looked up at Pa, his tail as limp as my sunbonnet had been in the rain. His coat was matted with dirt and burs, and he was so thin that his ribs stuck out. Pa let go of him, but the dog shook and didn’t want to jump down. Pa nudged him off the saddle, and the dog huddled on the ground, looking up at Pa as if begging him for something.

“What in the world?” Ma said.

“It’s a dog.”

“I can see that. Whose dog?”

Pa shrugged.

“What are you doing with him?”

“I found him under a bush when we were searching for the runaway animals. I couldn’t just leave him there to starve. Emmy Blue, get him a pan of water and one of your ma’s cold biscuits.”

I poured water into our skillet, and the dog lapped it up. Pa told me to fill it again.

Ma said, “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Thomas. How can I use a pan that some stray dog’s been drinking out of? Who knows what kind of sickness he’s carrying.”

“He needs water and food,” was all Pa said.

I’d taken two biscuits left over from breakfast out of our food box and tossed them one at a time to the dog. He ate each in a single gulp and looked for more.

“Maybe he belonged to an Indian,” Ma said.

“I doubt it,” Pa answered. “He wandered off from a wagon train is my guess. Look, you can see a bit of rope tied about his neck.”

“Well, wherever he came from, we’re not taking him in. You said yourself, Thomas, we have no room.” Ma looked a little triumphant at that. It was the first time she’d pointed out to him that we didn’t have room in the wagon for something of his. Ma was stubborn. Although Pa had finally allowed a place for our clothes in the wagon, Ma wasn’t ready to ease up on him.

“I want him, Ma,” I suddenly said. “I had to give away Skiddles, and Pa wouldn’t let me take the turtle we saw along the road. May I keep him?”

“He was somebody’s pet, Meggie,” Pa told her. “He’ll make a good companion for Emmy Blue.”

Ma put her hands to the small of her back and stretched. “Oh, I don’t know. He’s just another mouth to feed.” Ma straightened up and twisted her hands in her apron.

“I’ll take care of him,” I pleaded.

The dog went up to Ma and whined, then sat down on top of her bare feet and looked up at her. While Ma stared at him, Aunt Catherine came up next to her. She had walked up from the back of the wagon train.

“He likes you, Meggie,” Aunt Catherine said. “Whose dog is he?”

“He wants to be Emmy Blue’s. Thomas found him when he was out looking for the runaway animals this morning. But I think he’s just one more creature I’ll have to care for.”

“Emmy Blue will do it. Just look at how much she’s helped on this trip. She’s a responsible girl,” Aunt Catherine said.

Ma studied me a moment. “She is that.”

“Does that mean I can keep him?” I asked. The dog came up to me and thumped his tail. Maybe he knew I was defending him.

“He’d be good protection for Emmy Blue,” Uncle Will spoke up. I hadn’t seen him standing behind Aunt Catherine.

“Not much of one,” Ma said. “He’s just a bare-bones creature. I doubt he could walk all the way to Golden.”

“I’ll carry him,” I said.

Ma looked around at all of us staring at her, then sighed. “It’s four against one. Emmy Blue. I suppose you’ve got yourself a dog.”

I grinned at Ma, then squatted down beside the dog and hugged him, feeling his bones through his coat. He needed a good scrubbing and his coat well combed, but I’d clean him up the next time we crossed a river. I’d wash him with the soap Ma had made from ashes before we’d left Quincy, and I’d use Pa’s currycomb.

“What will you name him?” Pa asked.

“How about Wanderer,” Aunt Catherine suggested.

“Or Brownie, because of the color of his coat,” Uncle Will said.

Pa suggested Lucky.

But I had already heard Ma call the dog by his name. “I’m going to call him Barebones,” I said.

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After I fed Barebones some of my buckwheat cakes for lunch, he was my dog, and he followed me everywhere. I brushed his coat to get out the sticks and prickers, then used soap and water to wash him in our basin. He’d get a proper bath later. Except for being dirty and hungry, Barebones seemed to be healthy.

“Got you a mongrel, did you?” Mr. Bonner asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Most likely an Indian dog. You be careful. He’s likely to go after you in the night. Might be crazy, too. Watch that he don’t foam at the mouth. He bites one of my oxen, I’ll put him down.”

“Yes, sir.” Ma had told me to be polite to Mr. Bonner and not to talk back to him. We didn’t want to rile him for fear he’d turn on us—or Mrs. Bonner. But he made me angry, because I knew Barebones wasn’t a wild dog. He’d been somebody’s pet, because when I told him to stay or to sit, he minded me. And he knew how to play fetch. When I threw a stick, he brought it back. Barebones learned his name right off, and came whenever I called him, although I didn’t have to do that very often because he stuck by my side.

“I believe Will was right. He will be good protection for Emmy Blue,” Ma admitted after a few days.

“Ugly as he is, nobody will want to mess with him,” Pa said, as he winked at me. We both knew that Ma had grown as fond of Barebones as we had. She fixed extra biscuits and pancakes every day to feed him, and after Pa shot an antelope, she put aside the bones for my dog.

Barebones followed me when I wandered away from the wagon train to search for buffalo chips. There were few trees on the prairie, so we couldn’t use wood for our campfire. Sometimes we’d find a stick or a broken branch that we picked up along the trail, but now we had to burn buffalo chips, the huge circles of buffalo dung that dotted the prairie. They made a good fire and burned white hot. At first, Ma had refused to use them, but she’d learned that she didn’t have any choice. It was either buffalo chips or no fire at all. Pa already knew that, so before we left Quincy, he’d packed a huge grain sack for collecting them.

It was my job to gather the chips. Joey collected them for his family, too. Each morning, we took our sacks and searched the prairie for the dung. The chips were good fuel, but they burned quickly, so we needed to gather all we could find. We looked for dried chips, because they burned better and were lighter weight. Barebones came with us. He thought we were playing and picked up sticks for me to throw to him.