Gone West (5 page)

“We should have brought chickens, Johnny. I could have made a cage for the caravan. We could have had fresh eggs.”

“There wouldn’t have been room for the extra grain, Meg. And you’re the expert on farmstock, but it occurs to me that they wouldn’t have done much laying. They’d be too unsettled by the ride.”

Maggie was kneeling by the stove, stuffing it with wood she’d been hoping to save for future emergencies. “In that case we could have
eaten
them. It seems like a year already since we’ve had fresh meat.” She felt in her skirt folds for the hidden pocket, her fingers finding the match safe.

“If I can get this going, it’ll have to be johnnycakes.”

Her breath held until a flame took hold on the grass tinder she’d pushed between the sticks of wood. On her feet again, she found a bowl and mixed cornmeal and water with the sureness of long practice, dreaming all the time of roast chicken, with gravy drippings, and maybe a side dish of mashed potatoes and fresh greens.

The cakes were in the pan, starting to sizzle pleasantly in a little bacon grease, and the tiny, overstuffed cabin was beginning to dry out from the damp, beginning to feel cosy again. Johnny was entertaining the children with a spirited rendition of
Turkey in the Straw
, and Maggie had almost worked herself out of her ill humor.

Then the knock came, between the onslaughts of nature.

“It’s the door, Ma. Shall I get it?” Jamie’s legs were already slipping down the sides of the bunk.

“Stay put, for mercy’s sake. I’ll only trip over you.”

Maggie wiped her floury hands on her skirt and moved the few yards to the door. She opened it a crack. The weather blew it wide and the soft lamplight of the cabin revealed a dumpling shape concealed in a ground cloth.

Maggie started. “Come out of the weather, if you can manage it.”

A grunt came and the wagon swayed. A hand reached out to slam the door, and the covering was pulled off to reveal a fleshy, gray-haired little woman. She stood dripping, blinking through fogged spectacles. Maggie handed her a clean rag.

“What brings you out in this weather, Mrs. Richman?”

“Many kindly thanks.” She patted Maggie’s arm and nodded a hello to Johnny on his perch. “Might as well call me Grandma, like most folks do, Maggie. Eudora never agreed much with me, and Mrs. Richman is a mite highfallutin’ for a neighbor come to beg your mercies.” She caught a drip edging down her nose with the cloth.

“Truly amazin’ weather. Hard rain weren’t enough, the Lord’s gotta throw in some hail as well. Don’t like to complain, but the timing could be better.”

She stopped a moment to take in the pocket-sized cabin and collect her thoughts. “I was casting about for a live fire and saw the smoke from your wagon by the lightning. Got me a grandson just slithered outen the wagon as the commotion in the sky was startin’ up. Landed bad on his arm, he did, and the bone broke, clear through the skin.” She glanced up at Jamie peering down at her.

“Not much older’n your boy up there, Jubal is. Might’ve seen the two of ‘em chasing around with that Kreller girl. Got him splintered up, best I could, but he’s painin’ bad, with a fever startin’ in and the cold he picked up last few days not aidin’ none, neither.” She paused. “Thought a hot poultice might help.”

Jamie’s eyes had widened. “Is Jube going to be all right?”

“Won’t be havin’ no jumpin’ contests with you for a while, if’n that’s what you mean, boy. But he should heal by and by. Trussed up lots of broken bones in my sixty-five years, I have, childern an’ livestock alike. Mostly they healed up fine.”

Maggie pulled a coffeepot from its hook on the wall and began to fill it with water from the barrel crammed between flour sacks on the floor. “Let’s start him off with hot tea. I’ve some mint that will calm him. Then we can make a poultice of mustard and angelica. Angelica is excellent for soothing inflammations.”

“Bless you, dear. I’ve brought some mustards, but can’t say I’ve ever tried angelica.” Grandma pulled a parcel from under her shawl and presented it to Maggie. Her mission accomplished, she squinted at the little stove while trying to rub the last rain-splotches from her eyeglasses. “But you haven’t finished feeding your family yet!”

Maggie expertly scooped the cakes onto plates, poured a little honey atop them and handed them up to Johnny. “This will hold my men. I’ll send Johnny over with the medicines later. Where are you camped?”

“Just to the north of you, dear. Three wagons up.” Grandma Richman pulled the ground sheet over her head again. “Crowded as it is, wisht we had this snug cabin tonight. The weather comes into them prairie schooners something fierce, even with blankets pulled over the openings. Guess oiled linen’ll get you only so far in a mean storm like this one. And I thought the rains had finally stopped.”

“If there be one righteous person, the rain falls for his sake,” commented Johnny placidly from the top bunk between mouthfuls of dinner.

Grandma Richman’s already hooded eyes looked up. “Is that from the Bible? Don’t recognize it.”

“Alas, Madam, it was spoken by Buddha, somewhat in advance of the New Testament.” With consideration he stared at his empty plate. “The rains will stop soon enough and we’ll be praying for them once more. You’d better set out your barrels for filling.”

“Tosh. Never heard of your Buddha. Be happy to see the end of the rain and the sniffles, though. Well, I’d best be getting back to the youngsters. Cold, wet and hungry as they are they’ll give young Jubal no ground, even in his condition. And their father ain’t got the sense I bore him with, neither. Can’t control them nohow.” She sighed and reached for the door. “Pity his wife died over the winter. And me the only thing keeping them all going. At my age, too!”

The door slammed behind her and Maggie shot a glance at Johnny, hunched over beneath the roof.

“You had to quote
Buddha
to old Mrs. Richman? That gets out they’ll all think we’re a bunch of heathens, worse than the Indians.”

Johnny grinned endearingly. “Old habits die hard. The first week on the road my mind’s been working out the new necessaries of the trip. Now the pattern’s under my belt, these things just start to pop out again. You always claimed you married me for my mind and my books, anyhow.”

Maggie shook her head. “More likely it was the bright lights of civilization you promised me. And I guess I’m finally getting my due. This train is becoming more like a small town every day~making up for all that solitude I grew up with back on the farm. Hand me that bunch of dried mint hanging right above your head, will you? Next to the marigold and mallow. We’ve got to help fix up young Jubal. It could have been our Jamie.”

Jubal was still in pain the next morning when Maggie checked on him, his injured arm swollen to almost twice its normal size. Maggie felt his brow, and lifted her hand away from the heat in concern. His eyes were dull and wide with it. She gave his grandmother a questioning look.

“Freshened up the poultice with the breakfast this morning, Maggie, and gave him a good dose of laudanum, too. Don’t know how much else is to be done.”

The opiate would account for the dazed expression. Maggie didn’t hold with giving it to children~or anyone else, for that matter.

“It will be very uncomfortable for him to be jouncing along in the wagon bed all day~”

“I know, dearie, but there don’t seem to be no other choice.”

Maggie thought of Charlotte, and her gently swaying hammock. “Couldn’t we fashion a pallet for Jubal, something like my baby’s hammock? A little rope, a few blankets~”

“Hal!” Grandma’s yell stopped her before she’d finished. “Hal! Get in here to help fix up a travellin’ bed for your poor son!”

Hal Richman appeared, a thin, balding, weak-looking man. Maggie wondered briefly how he’d ever had the energy to father so many children. His head dripped water from the rains into the wagon opening. He took one look at his aggressive mother, another at the ailing son~surrounded by scuffling younger children swinging from the rims of the roof and crawling over a monumentally heavy, ornate bureau of drawers. Shaking his head, he reached unerringly for a jug tucked into the nearest corner. He paused to orient the jug appropriately in the triangle of his left arm, elevate his elbow to the proper height, and take a long swallow.

Grandma bristled. “That demon rum ain’t gonna make your problems disappear, son, just blur ‘em a little. Now Maggie here come up with a good idea, and we need you seeing steady to implement it. Tuck that jug away!”

Hal Richman took another nip, then plugged the jug with its cork. “I be with ye, even though inside the wagon is women’s work. But make it quick. Train’s fixin’ to move on.”

Grandma Richman had more to contend with than Maggie had anticipated. Why was Hal Richman bothering with the journey? A man like this could find defeat anywhere. Oregon would not be covered with six-foot high clover, or have game and fish for the plucking. It was just another new place at the end of the line, a new place that needed clear heads and hard work. Maggie squared her shoulders.

“We need two good lengths of rope, Mr. Richman, and a spare piece of canvas large enough to set your son Jubal on.”

He grunted and began his search.

Just past the Little Vermillion Creek crossing Maggie’s oxen blundered into a huge mudhole she’d missed. The book caravan lurched to a halt, and Maggie could almost hear the mud greedily swallow the front hubs. The sudden silence also allowed her to hear ravenous yells from the baby inside. A moment later, Jamie was poking his head around the corner of the wagon.

“Charlotte’s hungry, Ma, and I’ve memorized three poems from
McGuffey’s
, like you asked, plus read most of the stories. I don’t care if it is raining again. I got to get out!” He stopped as he noticed his mother’s face.

“We bogged down?”

Maggie stood studying the reddish-brown slush oozing past the upper spokes of the front wheels. “Run for your father. I don’t think I can handle this one. But cover your head first!”

Too late. He was already sprinting into the rain. With a shrug of her shoulders Maggie waited for Johnny. He came, took one look at her predicament and sent her to deal with the baby.

She’d finished feeding Charlotte and even tucked her back up and still the wagon hadn’t moved. Maggie returned to the weather. The wheels were in worse shape than before.

“Guess I’ll have to unyoke my oxen and bring them back to help haul. We’ve already been passed up by just about the whole train.”

Just then a final wagon ponderously caught up with them, hesitated, and stopped. Sam Thayer appeared through the downpour.

“Trouble?”

Johnny brightened. “Usually comes swifter than the things we desire. Can’t get loose of the muck. I was just going to fetch my team and haul them over.”

“Let me get my extra pair. They’re fresher.”

“Much obliged, Sam.”

Maggie stayed to watch the new team hooked up, to hear the unexpected oaths coming from the lips of both men as they lunged with the animals. Even Johnny’s vocabulary had found new directions in which to expand. Maggie shook her head, and honed in on a patch of wild onions.

The last of the hoarded wood was sacrificed to get the potbellied stove fired again that night. It was still raining hard, and if they didn’t get dried out now, the Stuart family would be sick soon, like the others. Maggie was not about to let that happen. She pitied every woman on the train without a stove. Each would be struggling over faltering fires, or just giving up and serving another cold meal.

Maggie got soup going, rich with several pounds of the wild onions she’d gathered. With the broth simmering at last, she turned to Johnny.

“I’m going to take the umbrella and check on Jubal. Do you think we could cram Sam Thayer in here if I offered him some soup? It must be hard for him to have to do for himself without a woman. And he did help us this afternoon.”

Johnny lit up. “Did you see him just lift the whole wheel towards the end? The man has no idea of his strength. He saved me hours.”

“Then it’s all right,” Maggie smiled. “Jamie, would you like a walk? Pick a handful of apricots and prunes for Jubal. It might help to cheer him.”

Jamie tripped over himself and most of their belongings in his enthusiasm. He’d been too long cooped up. “Can I quote some of my poems on the way, Ma?”

“Surely. Come now, before Charlotte wakes and looks for me.”

Outside the wagon, Jamie raised his face to the downpour, glorying in it. “One of my poems was about worse weather than this, Ma:

“It snows!” cries the Widow, “O God!” and her sighs

Have stifled the voice of her prayer . . .

Maggie cast a sharp glance in his direction. “Are you sure that was in
McGuffey’s
, Jamie? And get your head under this umbrella. Now!”