The Quilt Walk (5 page)

W
e reached the Mississippi in the early afternoon, and it took us the rest of the day to cross it. The Mississippi river was a mile wide, far too wide for the animals to swim across. Besides, Pa said, we’d only just started out.

So we took the ferry across. It was a large, flat boat, like a giant raft, and it was big enough for more than one wagon, but many people were ahead of us, so we had to wait our turn. I’d seen the Mississippi plenty of times, but I was still awed by how wide it was. I remembered Pa talking about the size of the buffalo herds and wondered if a herd could fill up the river. If so, we could drive across on their backs, instead of waiting for the ferry.

We took our place in the line of prairie schooners at the ferry landing. We pulled in behind a wagon with a dairy cow tied to the back. Ma and I climbed down, and Ma patted the cow on the side. “Soo, Bossy,” she said. “We sold our cows before we left. I miss fresh milk already,” Ma told the woman from the wagon.

“I’d share with you, but the young ’uns drank up what we got from the morning milking, and I used the cream to make butter,” the woman said.

“Where in the world do you find time to churn?” Ma asked.

“Oh, I don’t.” The woman went to a bucket hanging from the back of the wagon and lifted the lid. “Lookit here. I put the cream in this morning, and the rocking of the wagon churned it for me.”

Ma and I peered into the bucket and saw clumps of yellow butter. “Why, I expect that’s the best thing yet I’ve heard about going to Colorado Territory!” Ma said.

The woman beamed and sat down on our wagon tongue, pulling a quilt square from her pocket. “This is what I like best. There’s time to do my piecing while I’m sitting on the wagon seat. I guess I’ll have the whole quilt done by the time we reach the gold country.”

“What a fine idea,” Ma cried. “Emmy Blue, look at her cunning stitches.”

“You stitch, do you?” the woman asked.

“Ma likes it better than supper,” I piped up.

The woman laughed. “That’s the way of it, isn’t it? I guess I can make my home anywhere if I have my quilting.”

“Let me show you something,” Ma said, and she went to the back of our wagon and took down the Friendship Quilt. I helped her unfold it and hold it out, and the woman ran her hand over the squares, touching the embroidered names. “Why, there’s nothing in the world I’d treasure more. It’s like taking home with you all the way to the gold fields,” she said.

“What a lovely way to put it!” Ma replied. The two of them chatted until we reached the water’s edge.

When our turn came for the ferry, Pa and Uncle Will drove the wagons onto the big wooden platform made of boards and propelled by men with long poles. The ferrymen pushed off, and in a moment, we were on the muddy water, making our way to the other side of the Mississippi. I stared upstream, watching for trees in the current that would overturn the raft, then turned and looked at the Illinois shore as it got smaller and smaller.

“What do you think of this for an adventure?” Pa asked.

I wanted to tell him it was scary, that I was afraid one of the oxen would bump up against me and push me into the river. The water was so dirty, no one would ever see me if I went under. But I didn’t want to admit I was afraid, so I asked, “Does Colorado have big rivers like this?”

“Only the Platte, but it isn’t much of a river, a mile wide but only an inch deep, they say,” Pa told me.

“Then I wouldn’t mind falling into it,” I told him.

“Hold on to the wagon wheel. It’s chained to the ferry. Don’t you worry, Emmy Blue. These river rats know what they’re doing,” he told me, and pointed with his chin to the two men in charge of the raft.

I turned and watched the Missouri side of the river come closer and closer, until finally we bumped against the shore. Pa and Uncle Will led the oxen off the ferry, and before I knew it, we were looking for a campsite.

“Ho for Colorado!” Pa said. I didn’t respond this time. Like Aunt Catherine, I was beginning to get tired of hearing that.

Pa said we were making good time through Missouri, going twelve or fifteen miles a day. Horses would have gone faster, but oxen were better suited for the Great Plains, even if they were slow and too stupid to swat flies with their tails. Another advantage, Pa said, was that while the Indians might shoot oxen, they wouldn’t steal them because they had no use for them. Even Aunt Catherine laughed at the idea of an Indian man on an ox, riding across the prairie.

“Wouldn’t they eat them?” I asked.

“They’d have to be awfully hungry,” Pa replied.

Aunt Catherine perked up after we crossed the Mississippi. Every day she was happier and more helpful, and she even made jokes, asking, “If we just crossed Mrs. Sippi, where do you suppose Mr. Sippi has got to?”

Uncle Will slapped his knee and laughed. The joke wasn’t all that funny. I think he was just glad that Aunt Catherine was back to her old self.

Aunt Catherine began doing some of the cooking, telling Ma, “Now, Meggie, you know you shouldn’t overdo it. Save your strength. You’ll need it.”

“What’s wrong with you, Ma?” I asked.

“Oh, I’m fine, Emmy Blue. Don’t you worry about me.”

Pa said to enjoy the trip while we could, because it would get harder once we were through Missouri and across the Missouri River. “These are easy days,” he said, and they were. The road was smooth, with farms along the way. Sometimes we stopped at barnyard wells to water the stock, and the farm wives invited us to rest a spell.

The farmers gathered around the wagons and asked Pa and Uncle Will where they were going. “You been to Colorado before? You find a mine, did you?” one asked.

“Why, I’d give you this whole farm for just one bucket of Pike’s Peak nuggets,” another farmer said.

At a farm where several children played, a girl about my age asked me, “You like going west?”

“It’s better than threading needles for Ma’s quilting group,” I told her.

The girl giggled. “I don’t care for that, either. What’s it like riding in a covered wagon?”

“I walk with Pa most of the time,” I said, feeling grown up. “Who wants to sit on a seat as hard as a milking stool all day?”

“I guess you like it right well.”

“I guess I do.”

Ma and Aunt Catherine talked with the women. “Why’d you agree to uproot and go to Colorado?” one asked them.

Ma replied, “We thought we’d have a better living out there.”

But another woman said, “Laws, how I’d like to go along. Sometimes I think if I have to gather one more egg, I’ll throw it to the cats and take off walking. Imagine the chance to look in a gold pan and find a thousand dollars.”

“You’d give up your home?” Aunt Catherine asked.

“Faster than you could say, ‘Pickled peppers.’”

After we were on our way again, Aunt Catherine asked Ma, “Do you think that woman would run off?”

Ma laughed, but then she turned and looked back in the direction of the farm. “Maybe not this afternoon, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we spotted her in Golden one day.”

Chapter Seven

OUR ADVENTURE IN ST. JOE

T
he weather was good in Missouri, warm but not hot enough to make us uncomfortable in all our clothes. Even though there was a tiny bit of room in the wagon, now that we had eaten some of the food given to us by our neighbors and friends. Ma still insisted we wear all our clothes. I heard her tell Aunt Catherine she was afraid Pa would make her throw out the extra dresses if she asked to store them in the Conestoga. “We’ll wait. I promised I’d wear all the dresses,” she said.

“I think Thomas would find room now if you asked him.”

“Well, I won’t,” Ma said. “I believe he and Will must have laughed at us wearing all these clothes, thinking we’d beg for a place to store them. Well, we’ll show them.”

“
We?
” Aunt Catherine asked, and laughed. “Thomas is not the only one who is stubborn.”

So far we didn’t have worries from Indians, we were able to find water, and we didn’t run into any rattlesnakes, as Pa thought we would, and it seemed like we flew as fast as birds across the state. It wasn’t even a month—it was April now—before we reached St. Joseph, or St. Joe. That’s where Pa said we would get the plans for the business block. He had written to a friend who was set up in St. Joe as a builder and had promised to draw them up. We would hook up with a wagon train there, too.

“We’ve done all right on our own. Why do we need to join a train with all that dust and animals milling around and not a moment of privacy?” Aunt Catherine asked.

“It’s dangerous to cross alone. There are Indians, and what if one of us fell under the wagon or got snake bit? Neither Will nor I know about doctoring. And if the wagon breaks down, there’ll be someone to help us. Besides, Meggie ought to have other women with her,” Pa explained.

We had found a place along the east side of the Missouri River to camp. It was filled with wagons and tents, and Pa went in search of a wagon train to join. He came back an hour later and told us, “Good news! There is a train leaving in two days for Denver City, which is the big town close to Golden. We are welcome to join it. All we have to do is get ourselves across the river.” I was too big to be picked up, but Pa did just that. “Emmy Blue, there are children in that train, so you won’t have to spend your time with us old people.”

We had passed through the streets of St. Joe on our way to the camp, and I was anxious to explore the town. I’d seen men in buckskin pants embroidered with beads and a family of Indians sitting in the dirt, begging for “beeskit.”

“Look, Indians,” I’d cried.

Pa shook his head. “The coming of the white man has not been a good thing for those poor folks. You’ll see grand Indians out on the plains, Emmy Blue, the finest specimen of men, whose skill with horses beats any I ever saw. But these Indians”—he nodded at the family—“are no more than dirty beggars, as bad as any white bum you ever saw at home. The men—and the women, too—are addicted to whiskey.”

“You mean they’re like Betsy Pride’s father?” Betsy was a girl who lived in a shack with her father on a rundown farm not far from where we had lived. Her mother was dead, her brother had run off, and she lived alone with her father, who was a drunkard. Sometimes Ma hired Betsy to help with the cleaning and the cooking. Ma treated her kindly. She gave her a dress she said she was tired of, combed her hair to get out the twigs and burs, and insisted she spend the night when she worked late. I thought she was the sorriest girl I ever met and asked Ma what I could do.

“Be a friend to her,” Ma had said.

And so whenever I met her on the street, I was friendly. Once when Abigail and I took a picnic into the woods, I invited Betsy to go with us, although she was almost a grown-up. She taught me how to shoot marbles and whittle with a knife.

“Yes, these Indians are no better than Betsy Pride’s father,” Pa told me. “He was a worthless old thing.”

“Who?” Ma asked, coming up to us.

“We were talking about Hal Pride.”

Ma shook her head. “Poor Betsy. She never had a chance.”

“Will and I are going into town,” Pa said, changing the subject. “St. Joe is no place for a lady. Besides, somebody has to stay and guard the wagons. Who knows what could be stolen.”

I was disappointed, because I wanted to see St. Joe. I didn’t care that it was rough or that bad people lived there. But I knew better than to beg Pa to go.

“I’ll stay,” Ma said, and I knew that was the end of it.

As Ma and I watched the men go off, Aunt Catherine came up to us. “They’re going without us?” she asked.

“I promised to watch the wagons. Besides, Thomas says St. Joe is no place for a lady.”

Aunt Catherine put her hands on her hips. “I didn’t promise any such thing. And if your husband believes it is all right for a lady to face drought and wind and Indians and wild animals, I see no reason why we should be protected against whatever dangers St. Joe has. After these dull days, I would welcome a bit of excitement. Come along, Emmy Blue. I am in need of a spool of thread, which I daresay your Uncle Will would approve of because he has torn his shirt and I have nothing to stitch it up with. You and I can see the sights on the way to the store.”

I stared at her, my mouth open. Then I turned to Ma, who would surely say no. But instead, Ma smiled at me. “I promised
I
would stay. I didn’t say anything about you. It may be your last look at civilization, such as it is. But try to come back ahead of the men.”

So Aunt Catherine took my hand, and we walked toward the center of St. Joe, making sure we kept well behind Pa and Uncle Will.

St. Joe wasn’t that much different from Quincy, the town near our farm that we’d visit two or three times a year. In fact, it wasn’t even as nice. There were new brick buildings and a big hotel on streets that were dusty and rutted from the wagons passing through. Houses were being built of brick and stone. The town was crowded with people dressed in all sorts of clothing—overalls, suits, fur, and buckskin embroidered with beads and pieces of calico. There were ladies in lace and satin and men in flowered vests under what Aunt Catherine called frock coats. As I stopped to take everything in, a delivery wagon shot past us, churning mud. I jumped back as the driver yelled, “Watch it, girlie.”