The Quilt Walk (8 page)

Chapter Ten

A PUZZLE WITHIN
A PUZZLE

W
e left early in the morning, when Buttermilk John called out, “Wagons ho!” There were eighteen wagons, and half of them weren’t ready. The rest of us scrambled for places in the front of the train, although Buttermilk John said it didn’t matter who was first. We’d change places each day, the front wagon going to the back of the line and the rest of us moving up one place until we reached the front. That meant that each of us would be the lead wagon every eighteen days. The wagons that weren’t ready hurried to catch up with us. Some didn’t make it until our nooning.

We were number six in line, and the Bonner wagon was behind us. Ma told Aunt Catherine, whose wagon was in front of ours, that we’d be able to keep an eye on Mrs. Bonner. “She will need friends,” Ma said.

With all the commotion and the excitement, Ma forgot about Grandma Mouse’s quilt pieces, which was fine with me. At first I sat beside her on the wagon, but the seat was hard, and there was nothing to do but look at the backsides of the oxen in front of us. So after a time, when the oxen stopped for a moment, I jumped down and walked alongside Pa.

“What do you think of the wagon train, Emmy Blue?” he asked.

“I like it.” And I did. There were people and dogs and all kinds of prairie schooners. Some were well made and grand like ours. Others were rickety. One driver had already fallen out of line to fix a wobbly wheel. I liked the noise of the oxen and mules, and of the cowbells that clanked as milk cows were herded along beside the wagons. People yelled and laughed. Men shouted at the animals. One woman sang to a baby she held in her arms. I especially liked the sound of children calling, because I had been the only child from the time we left home until we crossed the Missouri.

As I walked along beside Pa, I studied the other children. There were plenty of little ones who were too young for me, and half a dozen who were almost grown, too old to want to play. I looked for a girl my size, someone like Abigail, who could be my friend. But I didn’t see anyone. Then I spotted a boy who was two wagons in front of us. He seemed about my age. He was smaller than me, and he had freckles all over his face. Like me, he was barefoot. He must have been going barefoot for a long time, because walking over the stones on the trail didn’t seem to bother his feet. I’d worn shoes until we reached the Missouri, and my feet weren’t hardened yet. I crept along, trying to avoid rocks and sharp sticks.

“See that young’un up there,” Pa said, as if he knew I was staring at the boy. “He’s Joey Schmidt. His father’s German. Mr. Schmidt is a baker, and he wants to open a confectionary shop in Colorado. His wagon’s loaded to the gills with pans and flour and spices to make breads and cake. I thought I might see if he’d like to set up shop in a fine business block in Golden. What would you say to that, Emmy Blue? Pies and cakes in our building!”

I grinned at Pa to show him that was a good idea.

“Joey Schmidt’s just about your age. His father says he’s shy. Why don’t you make friends with him?”

I shrugged and dragged my big toe in the dirt, but deep down I thought it was a good idea.

“Go on, Emmy Blue. He’s a nice boy, and I expect he’s lonely for the company of other children, just like you are.” Pa gave me a gentle shove, so I didn’t have much choice. I walked toward the Schmidt wagon, turning once to look at Pa, who waved me on. Finally I reached Joey Schmidt. “Hi,” I said, not looking at Joey.

“Hi yourself,” he said. He didn’t seem so shy.

“Pa says you’re my age.”

“I’m eight.”

I made a face. Eight was awfully young. “Well, I’m ten.”

“I’ll be nine in twenty-seven days. Papa says he’ll make a layer cake for my birthday. If you’re my friend, you can have some.”

Except for the cakes Aunt Catherine had bought at the Patee House in St. Joseph, we hadn’t had sweets since the first week of our trip, and my mouth watered. “How’s your pa going to bake a cake on the trail?”

“He’s pretty good. He will bake the cake in the coals of a campfire.”

“What about frosting?”

“Whipped cream.”

I licked my lips. “How can he do that?”

“We brought our cow with us.”

“I guess I could be your friend,” I said.

Joey nodded. “I brought my sack of marbles. Do you know how to play?” He looked at me skeptically.

“Sure.”

“You’re a girl. Girls play with dolls. And they sew.”

“I don’t sew, unless I have to.” Then I added, “My friend Betsy taught me to play marbles, but I didn’t bring any. There wasn’t room in the wagon.”

“For marbles? They don’t take up any room.”

I shrugged. “There wasn’t room for our clothes either.”

“Is that why you’re dressed funny, with all those dresses?”

I nodded.

“Our wagon’s filled with stuff so Papa can set up a bakery. Mama had to leave her rocking chair behind.”

“So did my ma.” I decided I liked Joey. We had something in common. “Pa says you’re German.”

“No, Papa is, but me and Mama are one hundred percent Americans. I don’t even sound like a German. You want to shoot marbles? You can use mine.”

“Really?”

“Sure.” Joey called up to his mother. “Mama, will you throw me down my sack of marbles?”

“You be careful, Joseph. Don’t lose them. And you keep up with the train. We don’t want to lose you, neither.” She glanced at me and added, “Be sure you count them marbles when you’re done.”

I had just met Mrs. Schmidt, and already I didn’t like her.

“She worries all the time,” Joey said to me. “She thinks an Indian’s going to snatch me up, or a bear, even though Papa says there aren’t any bears on the prairie. I’m all they’ve got, you see. My sister died of the whooping cough last year, and my brother was run over by a wagon soon after that.”

I understood. I was my parents’ only living child, too. Sometimes that was a burden.

Joey and I found a flat, hard place just off the trail, and he opened the sack and let the marbles fall to the ground. “That’s my best marble, my shooter,” he said, picking up one that was black with a white spot on it. “You can use the next best.” He pointed to a red one.

As I reached for it, our wagon passed, and Pa called, “Don’t fall too far behind, Emmy Blue.”

I barely paid Pa any attention, because Joey was down on one knee, his black-and-white marble in his hand. He was good. If I’d had my own marbles with me, he’d have won most of them. But after a time, I got comfortable shooting, and I won some of the marbles. Of course, they weren’t mine to keep. Joey had only loaned them to me. We played until the last wagon passed. Then we picked up the marbles and ran to catch up. “Did you count them?” I asked, remembering Joey’s mother.

“Nah. I trust you. Do you want to play tomorrow?” Joey asked as I stopped beside Pa. “We can play something besides marbles, if you got anything.”

But all I had was Waxy—and those darn quilt pieces. No boy would want to sit on a wagon seat and stitch. “No,” I told him. “I don’t have anything to play with.”

After our nooning, and when we were on the trail again, Ma took out the seed sack, which she had tucked into a side pocket of the wagon. She put the square Grandma Mouse had completed on the wagon seat, then unpinned one of the bunches of tiny quilt pieces that Grandma Mouse had cut out. I had already counted the bundles. There were fourteen of them, fifteen if you counted the one Grandma Mouse had already made. And when they were finished, the squares had to be stitched together.

“Aunt Catherine is right. This is a Log Cabin pattern. Grandma Mouse made it small, just the right size for Waxy. Wasn’t that clever of her?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I replied, thinking Grandma Mouse was clever all right. Because of her, I was stuck with making a quilt!

Ma laid out the pieces of a single quilt square on the wagon seat, sixteen strips and a bright red square. “Now, we’ll figure out just how they fit together. The red square always goes in the center, because red stands for the hearth, which is the center of any home,” she explained. “Now, find the smallest piece and lay it beside the square.”

I went through the tiny strips until I found one that was white with light green flowers in it and laid it next to the square.

“Good. Now the next smallest one.”

I found a blue strip and laid it across the ends of the red square and the white piece, but it was too long. I looked through the pieces until I came across another white strip, this one with blue dots. It was the perfect length for the other two.

“You see, you’re circling around the red square.”

A dust devil blew up and lifted one of the quilt pieces, and I made a grab for it before I thought I should have let it blow away and be trampled in the road. That would have meant one less quilt square to make. But then I realized Ma would have used her own fabric to cut a strip to replace the missing piece.

Ma put the scissors down on the quilt pieces that we had laid out so the wind wouldn’t catch them. “What about the next piece, Emmy Blue?” she asked.

I searched through the strips and picked out a plain dark blue strip of calico. And then, without Ma asking, I picked the next piece, a brown with black flowers, and finished off the square. I frowned at the pieces of material I’d laid out. “How come the first two are light and the next two are dark?” I asked.

“It’s part of the pattern, the darks on one side, the lights on the other. When you join the quilt squares together, you’ll lay them out in such a way that the darks and lights form a pattern themselves. A Log Cabin quilt is a puzzle within a puzzle.”

But not a very good one, I thought. Who wanted to put together fourteen puzzles that were just the same, and stitch them at that? I started to stuff the pieces into the sack, but Ma put out her hand. “Not so fast, Emmy Blue. Grandma Mouse gave this to you so that you could quilt on the way to Colorado Territory. It would be ungracious of you not to do as she wants. You don’t have to sit all day and quilt. I know that would tax you. But I expect you to make a full circle of quilt strips each day. That means today you will start out by sewing four pieces around the red center. Tomorrow you can make a second circle of pieces. Why, in four days, you’ll have completed one square. So your quilt top will be done before we reach Golden.”

“Will you help me?” I asked. Ma was so fast she could be done with all fourteen squares before I finished one.

But Ma saw what I was up to and gave me a smile. “I will check that each one is done properly, else it will have to be taken out and re-stitched the next day. But I won’t do the stitching myself. There’re many women out there who would refuse to have another woman take a single stitch in her quilt.”

“Not me.”

Ma laughed at that. “No, not you, but in time.”

I turned away, because I wanted to get down from the wagon and find Joey. He didn’t have to sit on the seat and sew. Ma grabbed my dress. “The best time to start is now, Emmy Blue.”

Ma was firm. So I sighed to show her I was not happy. She took out a threaded needle that was pinned to the underside of her collar—she kept it there so that she could sew whenever she could—and handed it to me. “You can sit beside me on the wagon seat and work.”

“Or you can quilt as you walk along,” Aunt Catherine said as she walked up beside us. She explained she was tired of sitting and had come to see if Ma wanted to walk with her. Aunt Catherine changed her mind about asking Ma when she saw the pieces of fabric spread out on the wagon seat. “You come with me, Emmy Blue. I have my sewing and you can bring yours. We’ll take a quilt walk.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, glancing ahead at Joey’s wagon. I’d told him I didn’t sew unless I had to, so I didn’t want him to see me on any quilt walk.

Chapter Eleven

PA DOES MR. BONNER’S WORK

I
finished the first quilt square in three days! It was not because I liked quilting, of course. I knew that the faster I stitched, the sooner the quilt would be done and I could think about other things. So I stitched as I walked along, sometimes with Aunt Catherine, sometimes alone. I even stitched with Joey, who didn’t seem to mind that I was sewing. The piecing went quicker than I’d thought—too fast, Ma said one evening as she examined the quilt square by the light of our campfire.