The Quilt Walk (3 page)

I had stared at him. “Not take Skiddles? I’ve had him since I was a baby. Grandma Mouse gave him to me.”

“I know you love that cat, but there’s no way we can take him to Colorado. He’d get lost or eaten by a coyote. What if the wagon ran over him? He might even end up in an Indian’s soup pot.”

“Now, Thomas,” Mother had warned. “No need to scare the girl.”

“I’ll carry him,” I had said. “I’ll hold him all the way to Golden.”

“But you can’t,” Pa had told me, and as if to prove him right, Skiddles had jumped out of my arms and rushed through the door.

“I’m sorry, Emmy Blue,” Pa had said gently. “You can’t take a cat on such a long trip, and that’s that. I thought your mother told you.”

“I never,” Ma’d said, but when she saw Pa frown, she had stopped. “We’ll have to find him a good home, maybe with Abigail. She loves that cat.”

“Skiddles is our family,” I had cried, but Pa just shook his head, and I knew that Skiddles wasn’t going into our wagon any more than the trunk with the EB initials on it. Ma and I took Skiddles and his bowl to the Stark house and asked if my friend would take him.

“Could we?” Abigail asked her mother.

“I guess one more cat wouldn’t eat us out of house and home,” Mrs. Stark said. “We’ll take good care of him, Emmy.”

When they reached us now, Abigail’s mother thrust a bundle into Ma’s arms. “I’m late because I had to add just one more stitch,” she explained, and I realized she had brought us a quilt. Ma had tears in her eyes as she glanced at Pa, and I knew why. She was wondering how she could tell Mrs. Stark that there wasn’t room in the wagon for anything more, especially a quilt. Pa had already fussed about the number of quilts we’d packed.

“Let’s open it,” Mrs. Stark said. Two of the women began to unfold the quilt. Others took the sides and spread it out. Ma looked at it and gasped. “Oh, my!” she said. “Oh, my, Emmy Blue, it’s a Friendship Quilt.” She looked around the circle of friends, her eyes shining. “You made this for me?”

“We wanted you to have it to remember us by. Each of us made a block and signed it. When you lie on the prairie at night, you can touch the names and think of us,” said Mrs. Stark.

Ma turned to Pa and explained. “The pattern is called Chimney Sweep. We make these quilts so that friends going away won’t forget us—as if I need a quilt to remember my dear friends!”

“We have stitched our heartache at your leaving into this quilt,” Mrs. Stark said.

“I brought you something, too,” Abigail whispered to me. She handed me a folded piece of cloth. I opened it and found a single Chimney Sweep square. “It’s for Waxy. I made it myself,” she said, although I already knew she had, because the corners didn’t meet, and the stitching was uneven.

“Oh, Abigail, it’s beautiful.” I ran my hand over the square, just the way Ma had run her hand over the quilt, thinking what a wonderful gift this was. I knew Abigail didn’t like to sew any more than I did. “But you didn’t sign it.”

“That’s because I don’t know how. I can’t write, you know. But you can tell it’s from me because of the bad stitching.” Then she whispered, “I only just learned to thread a needle,” and we both laughed, remembering our afternoon under the quilt frame.

As Ma was folding the quilt, Pa said, “There’s not room to pack another thing, Meggie.”

“Then I shall carry it,” Ma said firmly. “Carry it or stay home. I may have to leave my friends behind, but I will not abandon their Friendship Quilt.”

“Perhaps it will fit on top of the medicine chest then.” Pa sighed as he took the precious quilt.

Just as we climbed onto the wagon seat, Grandpa Blue-stone and Grandma Mouse arrived. Pa grumbled that they were only making us late. Ma told him we were late because he had insisted on repacking the wagon.

Ma was happy to see her parents, and stepped on a spoke of the wagon wheel to get down off the box. Grandpa rushed to help her, giving Pa an angry look. “You could have waited. She’ll need her mother and the other women when her time comes. And Emmy Blue, who knows what dangers she’ll face.”

“We’ve been over that, Father Bluestone,” Pa said.

“Boy, you are taking your family into the jaws of death,” Grandpa Bluestone told him. Grandpa was always saying things like that.

“Father,” Ma said. “Thomas has taken every consideration for our safety.”

“Humph,” Grandpa protested. Then he took a deep breath and said, “I suppose you have indeed done that, Thomas. Well, if I can’t talk you into staying, then I’ll wish you luck.”

“Emmy Blue, I almost forgot,” Grandma Mouse interrupted. “I’ve got a surprise for you. You can open it after you cross the Missouri River and not a minute before.”

“What is it?” I asked. Grandma Mouse gave me the best presents, well most of the time. She had given me white gloves and
The Girls’ Own Book
, too. It told how little girls were to make themselves useful. (I was glad to leave that behind.) But she’d also given me Waxy and clothes for my doll, hair ribbons, and hard candy. Now she took a small calico seed bag from the basket in her wagon and handed it to me.

“Something for you to do as you travel west.”

I began to loosen the drawstring on the bag, but Grandma Mouse said, “No, I told you not yet. You can’t open it until you cross the Missouri River. With everything to see on the trail, you’ll be too busy looking around to have time for it.”

I started to put it into the pocket of my top dress, but Ma told me to secure it to the bottom dress instead, “So you won’t be tempted to peek,” she told me.

Grandma Mouse watched as I did so, then turned to Ma. “Meggie, I’ll miss you.” She wiped away tears.

“I’ll write you letters, Mother,” Ma said, rubbing her own eyes. “And I’ll send them through the new overland mail delivery.”

“It’s not the same. You’re our only daughter.”

“You can take the train to visit us,” I said, pleased that my suggestion would make them both feel better.

“There isn’t any train. There isn’t a train in the world that goes to Colorado Territory,” Grandma Mouse said.

I’d never thought about that. I knew we were going a long way off. I knew we were traveling in a covered wagon, a “prairie schooner,” Pa called it, because it was like a big ship and Pa had said we’d be driving it through a sea of grass. But until then, it hadn’t occurred to me that we were going to a place so far away that no one could visit by train, only wagon.

I glanced around our farm, at the white house where I had been born and lived all of my life, the place I called home. And suddenly our move to Golden didn’t seem like such a wonderful adventure anymore. I looked up at my room, at the two windows with the pointed tops that made them look like church windows. For as long as I could remember, I had slept on the feather tick in that room, under a quilt with blue stars on it that Ma had made. Skiddles had slept on my feet, crawling under the covers on winter mornings to warm me. When I would wake at dawn, I would see Pa coming from the barn with a pail of milk or eggs that he had just gathered.

But now, Skiddles was gone, and we were leaving the house behind. In fact, it didn’t belong to us any more. Pa had sold it to buy supplies for his business block in Golden. For the first time, I wondered where I would sleep after we reached Colorado. I reached for Ma’s hand. I was confused about whether I wanted to go to Colorado Territory. Part of me was like Pa, wanting the excitement of going to a new place where we might become rich. But the other part wanted to stay in Quincy with my friends and grandparents, with everything I knew, where I would be safe. “Good-bye, little house,” I whispered, my voice low and trembling.

----------

It was mid-morning by the time we left Quincy. Pa shouted, “Ho for Colorado!” and tapped his whip on the rump of the lead ox, telling him to giddup. The six oxen started up, but they didn’t go very fast. Pa said a two-legged dog could run faster than those oxen.

The crowd of neighbors stood aside to let us pass. “Be sure to send us some gold dust,” a man told Pa.

“They say you need to take a wheelbarrow with you to haul all those solid-gold Pike’s Peak nuggets,” another yelled. Pa had told me the Colorado gold country was called “Pike’s Peak” for a big mountain that the travelers could see from far away.

A neighbor asked Pa how many miles he expected to cover in a day, and Pa replied ten to fifteen.

“Well, now, won’t that be traveling!” the neighbor said. “You’ll go like the wind.”

The women didn’t call out. Instead, they stood silently, trying to smile, but they knew Ma would miss them. The women stood with Grandpa Bluestone and Grandma Mouse, who waved her handkerchief.

Abigail ran alongside the wagon until we reached the edge of our property. Then she stood at the fence post and waved. She took the arm of her doll and waved it, too, and I waved Waxy’s arm back at her. Ma waved, also, but not Pa, who walked along beside the oxen, not looking back.

“We’re off to Colorado,” Pa said after the road turned, blocking our view of the people who had come to see us off.

“We are indeed,” Ma said, then turned to me. “We’re off on an adventure, Emmy Blue. Do you know how many Americans would like to pull up stakes and go west? And we are lucky enough to do it.”

Pa reached up and squeezed Ma’s hand. “You’ll see, Meggie. There’s not a place in the world as beautiful as the mountains of Colorado. They’ll be right at our doorstep.”

Ma smiled, and I thought again about what she’d said about dandelions and learning to enjoy them if we couldn’t do anything about them. I wondered if that strange place called Colorado Territory even had dandelions. I wondered if I should have brought some seeds.

Chapter Four

OUR JOURNEY BEGINS

W
e plodded along a road that was as familiar to me as the lane in front of our house, because we had visited my aunt and uncle on that road many times. The oxen were slow and didn’t seem to like being yoked together, and I could have gotten there faster if I’d walked. At last we met up with Aunt Catherine and Uncle Will, and by then, I was hot under my three layers of clothes. Aunt Catherine looked hot, too, because they had been waiting at the end of their farm road since early morning.

“Thomas had to rearrange the wagon,” Ma told Aunt Catherine, explaining our delay.

“Will was up in the middle of the night to repack ours, although I do not believe he found one more inch of space,” Aunt Catherine said as she helped Ma down from the wagon. Wearing all her dresses, Aunt Catherine looked fat, although not as big as Ma.

Pa and Uncle Will walked around the oxen, checking the heavy wooden yokes, tightening the ropes on the wagon, which Pa had already tightened just before we left. Then the two of them leaned against Uncle Will’s wagon and talked a moment about the road ahead. I was by myself on the wagon seat. Ma had Aunt Catherine, Pa had Uncle Will, but Skiddles was gone, and all I had was Waxy, who wasn’t much for conversation. I wished again that Abigail and her parents could have gone west with us.

“You’re all I’ve got, Waxy,” I said. She just looked at me and didn’t reply. Then because Waxy looked warm, I decided to take off one of her dresses. If she got too hot, her face would melt. I put the dress into the pocket of my top apron. Ma and Aunt Catherine and I might have to wear all our clothes, but I didn’t see any reason why Waxy should. I was glad
I
wasn’t in danger of melting.

“Westward ho!” Pa called at last, and I heard Aunt Catherine ask under her breath if Pa was going to talk like that all the way to Colorado. But I liked the sound of it, and I shouted back, “Westward ho, Pa.”

He grinned and said, “How about walking alongside the oxen with me, Emmy Blue? It wouldn’t hurt for you to learn to drive them.”

“Isn’t it dangerous?” Ma asked, climbing up the spokes of the wheel so that she could reach the wagon seat.

“More dangerous if she doesn’t know. She needs to learn how to drive them, and you do, too, Meggie. After all, there will be times when I’ll be called away—to hunt or to scout ahead. You and Emmy Blue will have charge of the wagon then.”

“I suppose.” Ma did not sound quite so sure.

Pa shouted, “Move out! Giddup!” to the oxen. He tapped the lead ox on the head with the handle of his whip. The two of us walked along beside the oxen as Pa explained the commands he gave them—“giddup” with a tap on the rump and “whoa” with a tap on the head. “Haw” with a touch on the right ear made the team turn left. “Gee” and a touch on the left ear made them turn right.

“Can you make them go backward?” I asked.

Pa nodded. “Tap the lead ox on the chest or the knees and yell, ‘Back.’”

Pa warned me to stay out from under the animals’ hooves. “Be careful around the wagon, too. With that heavy load, the wagon will kill you if you fall under it, or cripple you if it runs over your foot or your leg. There’s more than one little girl that’s got crushed by being run over by a wagon.”

“Yes, Pa.”

“And here’s another thing. Don’t jump off the wagon when it’s moving. You could catch your dress and fall under the wheels.”

“Dress
es
,” I muttered, then said, “I won’t get hurt.”

We were keeping pace with the oxen, Pa walking next to them with his whip in his hand. He limped from a wound he’d gotten in the war, fighting for the Union. Pa’d enlisted in the war against the South as soon as it had started. He didn’t believe anybody should be a slave, and that was why he’d joined up. But he’d gotten hurt in a battle and been discharged. The wound didn’t seem to slow him much. He turned to look at me. “Emmy Blue, listen to what I say. There’s plenty of danger on the trail, not just wagons and oxen, but runaway horses, rattlesnakes, fire, scorpions, floods—anything you can think of.”