Where the Trail Ends: American Tapestries (13 page)

Jack surveyed their small camp. “Is everyone all right?”

“I believe so,” Mr. Kneedler said.

“Can I come out now?” Micah asked, his voice small.

“Go back to sleep,” she commanded, though she knew sleep would be impossible for any of them.

Boaz shuffled up beside her, and she hugged his neck, clinging to him. Then she looked toward Papa’s candle box...and Papa.

He was on the ground.

She knelt as her father rocked back and forth, balled up over his left arm.

She put her arm on his shoulder. “Did it hurt you?”

Papa looked up at her, and she could see the agony straining his face. “It’s just a scratch.”

“Let me see.”

In the candlelight she could see the blood on his shirt, and her eyes widened in fear. “Did it bite you?”

“It all happened so fast—”

She tore back his shirt and saw the deep lacerations that shredded his skin, the blood pooling over them. Her stomach rolled. “Oh, Papa.”

He clenched his teeth and groaned in pain before he spoke again. “I’ll be fine.”

She turned from him and dug through the wagon until she uncovered the laudanum and the bottle of whiskey. Papa didn’t argue when she offered the whiskey to him. He took a long sip, and then she poured the alcohol over his wound.

His scream pierced her ears.

Micah was beside her, clinging to her arm as she tried to comfort her father, but there was nothing she could do to make Papa’s pain go away. She had to clean the wound, and yet fear paralyzed her. How could she cause him more pain?

He leaned back against the wagon wheel and drifted into a blessed unconsciousness, but she still couldn’t look at his arm. Micah cried beside her, and tears began to stream down her cheeks too.

Mama had only been gone a year. She couldn’t think about losing Papa too.

She felt a hand on her shoulder, and she looked up to see Jack.

“Let me help you,” he said.

She nodded and watched as he dabbed at Papa’s arm with a dusty cloth. If only they had enough water to boil. She could clean the dirt from the cloth first and then off his arm.

Micah snuggled in beside Papa as Jack bandaged the wound with strips he made from the remains of Papa’s shirt.

“Where did you learn to do that?” she asked.

He shrugged. “From taking care of the animals at home.”

They worked together to move first Papa’s bedroll and then Papa into the tent.

Thankfully the laudanum helped Papa sleep, but Samantha couldn’t rest. Boaz lay at her side, under the wagon where Papa had been, and she listened to the peculiar sounds of the wilderness, home to fierce creatures like the bear.

Was anyone else out there, watching them? Jack told them all to rest a few hours more. Miles Oxford and Neill Parker guarded the camp for the remainder of the night while Jack slept. Papa slept as well.

In the early morning hours, the two men trekked down to the stream and retrieved water. After their party feasted on bear stew, they reserved the bear tallow for making candles and for greasing their wagon wheels. The animal’s pelt was given to the Oxford family to use as a blanket.

The feast lasted for hours, but Papa never woke.

If they had stayed with Captain Loewe and the others, would the bear have attacked such a large company?

She would never know the answer to that question, but it was too late for regrets now. The Doyle party was strong. They’d worked
together to defeat this bear before it destroyed them. Micah was going to recover, and so was Papa.

The Waldron family would make it safely to the Willamette before the winter storms arrived.

Alex dug his hand into the pocket of his cloak on the peg, but instead of touching his watch, he touched something that squirmed in his hand. He jumped back, his heart racing.

One of the laborers in the warehouse looked over at him. “Something the matter?”

He eyed the cloak. “I am not certain.”

“You had some visitors while you were in the back room. Some of your pupils.”

He almost said that they weren’t his pupils, but until McLoughlin returned, he supposed they were. “Boys or girls?”

“One of each, I believe. They were looking for you.”

“Did they ask about my cloak?”

The man shrugged. “I don’t think they needed to ask. You’re the only one in here with such a fine coat.”

What had his students left for him?

“I will be back,” he said, taking the coat by its collar. He held it away from him as he walked toward the door, his eyes focused on the squirming pocket.

When he walked outside, a cluster of four children stood to the side of the warehouse, pretending to ignore him as they whispered. He waved at them and then hurried around the corner. As soon as they were out of his sight, he threw his cloak on the pebbled pathway. A green snake slithered out of his pocket.

Clearly, they loved their new teacher.

He picked up his coat, and as he shook it upside down, he heard laughter behind him. Turning, he saw the group of students. They hurried around the side of the warehouse as he pulled on the sleeves of his cloak, but he could still hear their laughter.

Sighing, he walked slowly back to his room at Bachelor’s Hall. He’d always thought that he’d like to be a father one day, a completely different kind of father from the one who’d raised him in his early years, but perhaps he would never know how to relate to children. Perhaps it was a skill that had to be taught when one was young.

It was too bad. Judith would make a fine mother, but he had no idea how to raise a child.

“Mister,” a girl said as she stepped out in front of him. It was the same girl who’d asked him to write a longer passage on the board.

He stopped beside her. “Did you like the passage I wrote?”

She blushed, looking down at the ground. Pieces of her honey-brown hair were tied in two braids, but most of it was tangled around her scrawny shoulders. “I just wanted to say thank ya for trying to teach us.”

He shook his head. “I failed quite miserably.”

“No teacher has ever passed the test.”

He bent his neck down a few inches. “Test?”

She shrugged. “Ain’t no one ever gonna pass it, either.”

He supposed all the teachers before him had failed as well.

“What should I do next time?” he asked.

Before she responded, the bell rang out above the fort and she ran away. He hurried toward the business gate at the front of the fort.

At least one of his pupils seemed to appreciate his effort.

The watchman, a large man of mixed Spanish and Indian descent named Daniel, was standing beside the open gate.

“Why is the bell ringing?” Alex asked Daniel.

“A messenger just arrived,” Daniel said. “McLoughlin is on his way home.”

Alex felt like cheering. Surely the governor would relieve him of this new duty before the children subjected him to another of their tests.

Chapter Eleven

Thankfully, Miles Oxford’s saw had remained intact after the loss of his wagon, and thankfully, Jack had carried the saw with his things. On the sixteenth morning of October, with fog lingering over the treetops and veiling the mountain in their path, Samantha watched as Miles, Jack, and Neill transformed the four remaining wagons into two-wheeled oxcarts.

They’d crossed over mountains in their wagons, inched down canyons, and forded rivers and streams, but the next mountain was too steep for the tired oxen to pull their loads over it. They were to pare down their belongings once again, this time to what they could carry in these carts.

The oxen and horses that weren’t pulling carts would carry bags of supplies. Many of the remaining oxen looked like they wouldn’t last much longer without a grassy field to graze in for a few days and plenty of good water.

Samantha’s feet were blistered and sore from climbing up and down the mountains, though she was grateful for her moccasins. Her swollen feet would no longer fit into the shoes she’d brought from Ohio. Boaz’s feet were bound in buckskin, and Papa’s arm was tightly wrapped. He said he wasn’t in pain, but Samantha didn’t believe him. He’d ridden on their palomino for the past hour, commanding the oxen to keep moving, but she’d seen him clutching his arm when he didn’t realize she was watching.

She glanced around the party as they unloaded their wagons
once more. Most of them had started this journey as clean city folk, filled with unbridled optimism about their new life in the West. A thread of that optimism still ran through some of them, but they were all exhausted. Their men looked much more like vagabonds than an attorney, farmer, preacher, carpenter, and bookkeeper.

Jack and the other men had searched and searched for a better trail, but they hadn’t found one. This morning they’d found the Morrison wagon, though, discarded in the trees. Then they’d found two more wagons from the Loewe party. Jack said the Doyle party could no longer travel with their wagons either.

They’d also found the remains of a horse. And a freshly dug grave.

Who else had died on the trail?

She’d averted her eyes from the grave as they passed, afraid it was Lucille they were leaving behind.

Samantha stared at the back of their wagon. They’d already had to unload almost half of their belongings along the trail. At every stop, she and Papa agonized over what was necessary to take with them, but they were learning that not everything was as necessary as they’d once thought.

Captain Loewe and the other men had thought it was a ploy when the traders back at Fort Hall encouraged them to sell their things at ridiculously low prices, but even a little money would have been much better than dumping barrels of food, tools, and furniture in the forest.

“Can we bring this?” Micah asked, holding up the elephant from his Noah’s Ark set.

She glanced at her father and then back at Micah, whispering, “Only if you can carry it.”

“How about this?” This time it was a camel.

“Will it fit?”

He pushed the camel into the knapsack and cinched it shut again.
Micah was still sore from his fall, but his strength had returned. She’d given him a change of clothes to add to whatever was in his sack along with a tin cup, a tin plate, and several small bags full of dried jerky, corn, and coffee. She placed his wide-brimmed hat over hair that had grown to his shoulders, and he tied his coat around the pole of his knapsack, pronouncing that he was ready to walk.

“Stay close by,” she said.

He nodded.

While Micah petted Boaz, she packed their cooking stove, a buffalo pelt, and an iron skillet in their new cart. Papa’s arm was still bandaged, but he added two burlap bags of seeds they would need in order to plant wheat in the Willamette, and she put in the little that remained of their flour and sugar supplies along with the dried food. He added several small bags of seeds to the cart, and she picked one of them up.

“What are these, Papa?”

His smile was strained. “Those are a surprise.”

“Don’t you think we’ve had enough surprises?”

“Not enough good ones.”

She kissed his cheek before she continued packing, wrapping Grandmother’s quilt and a blanket around the Waldron family Bible. She packed the tinderbox, candle box, matches, candles, a small bar of soap, and several changes of clothes for when they arrived in the Willamette. Then she added her sewing kit along with a bag of fishhooks and tobacco to trade with the Indians, their bedrolls and tent, and both a pail and a canteen for carrying water between stops.

Jack thought they must be close to the Columbia now. Once they reached the river, he said, they wouldn’t have to think again about packing water with them.

She tried stacking the coffeepot on top of the cart, but it kept slipping off.

“Let me help you,” Papa said. He grimaced as he tied the pot to the top of their load with a rope.

“Do you want more laudanum?” she asked.

He shook his head as he scratched his arm. “It just itches.”

“We can buy more medicine at the fort.”

He refused the laudanum again as he helped her cover their supplies with animal skins and a big piece of canvas from their wagon’s bonnet to keep out any rain.

Samantha kissed her hand and touched the box of their wagon, their home for six months now. She said good-bye to Mama’s rocking chair, their feather tick, and the water barrel. There was no longer any need for the extra wagon wheel or the other tools to repair their wagon. And they were leaving Papa’s farming tools in the wagon.

Their entire journey seemed to be about leaving people and things behind. Saying good-bye.

She was ready to be in the Willamette, settling in their new home. Once they arrived, she didn’t think she would want another adventure for the rest of her life. They’d walked at least eighteen hundred miles now, seeing places and things that most Americans had never seen. Perhaps she could settle down and marry and be satisfied for the rest of her life in this new place, even without her things.

She reached back into the wagon and dug through the linens until she found the shawl Mama had worn on her wedding day. Tears began to well in her eyes, and she blinked them back as she took the shawl to the oxcart, folding it gently and tucking it by one of the burlap bags. She could cry plenty after they got to the Willamette, but right now she needed her strength for another long day of walking through the mountains.