The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters (Arbor House Library of Contemporary Americana) (26 page)

Coulter whispered, “Come on,” and parted the slit he had made in the tent. Within a few minutes, treading tiptoe, dodging the campfires out to the bushy fringe, we were back on the trail and running toward Coulter’s horse.

I was free.

Everybody was glad to see me next morning when we caught up to leave, although there was grumbling by neighbors that I had caused trouble. My father burst into tears all over again and said it was his fault because he hadn’t been both father and mother to me, but things now would be different. He had a rusty old iron ladle he’d got as a present for me, as he said, and stated that it would be useful in digging sand on the riverbanks. It seemed like an odd sort of gift, but I took it anyhow, and said it was just what I needed.

Then he walked forward, after the train began rolling and the light came, to thank Coulter, because last night Coulter had eased me into our tent, very quiet, and told me if I woke anybody up, he’d take me back to the Pawnees. He was such an unpredictable coot he might have done it, too.

Well, I followed after my father, meaning to say something on my own, and presently we saw Coulter stalking along, treading soft and graceful, leading his horse in order to save it, two hundred yards ahead of the first wagon. Suddenly it came to me that, no matter how he galled people, he was a very lonely man.

“Mr. Coulter,” my father called, coming up behind, “could I have a word?”

“Well, if it isn’t the doctor,” said Coulter, looking amused as always. “Making your rounds, doc?”

“Mr. Coulter, I wish you to know that, despite past differences, which I deplore, I am grateful to you for restoring our boy. We
are deeply in your debt, sir.” He had taken off his hat, and his face shone with earnestness.

“They tell me the dude Englishman’s valley handed in his dinner pail.”

I guess this Coulter was probably the perversest tomcat ever manufactured, and the least gracious. I hadn’t heard about Vilmer, though; it was news to me about him dying, though he had been sick since they joined. But it was true; he’d died during the night and they planned to bury him while nooning.

“Your indifference to human emotions is a pose, Mr. Coulter. You’re a good man; I know it.”

“What with him and Kennedy,” replied Coulter, “you ain’t running a very high assay, doc. You’d better change your medicine. If I get a sore toe, I’ll make my will for sure.”

“With complete disregard of your own safety,” my father continued, as determined as ever I saw him, “you went into that Indian village and performed a miracle of skill and courage. However little you may value what I’m saying, and whatever happens in the future, I shall honor your name.”

Looking up, I was thunderstruck to notice that Coulter was sweating. Little drops of moisture stood out over his forehead and upper lip. For some reason, he wasn’t comfortable. He was like a backward child that is being teased; as big and rough as he was, he seemed embarrassed; he wanted us to leave. We had got off the subject of business and touched him in a personal place. And somehow I had the feeling that it wasn’t any small thing; I couldn’t understand it at all.

“We’ll go back, Mr. Coulter,” said my father with great good cheer, “but we hope you will join our mess for dinner this evening.”

“Yes, of course. I don’t generally come without a printed invitation, but this time I’ll let it go. Would a swallow-tail coat be satisfactory?”

“Our women are fine cooks.”

“I’ll make out on sowbelly and beans. I’ve got a train to run.”

“Perhaps you may change your mind. Drop in at any time, tonight or later. You’ll always be welcome.”

I was proud of him. People in Louisville were always talking him down for one excuse or another, because he wouldn’t fit into the mold, you see, but he was the kindliest person on earth. It was funny; he was firm in some ways—he was going to like Coulter now if it killed him—and weak in others. But mainly he just wouldn’t face things. Once, after a big row, I asked him why he drank, and he said, “I have an abnormal fear of being snake-bit, and try to keep prepared”—passing it off as a joke.

Well, he
hadn’t
been drinking, or gambling either, as far as I knew. Troubles or no troubles, we were moving toward the gold fields, so my mother must have been wrong. Things weren’t simple, though. I didn’t know it then, but my Indian adventures would bother my dreams and wake me up screaming for months to come. The sight of those roasting Crows, and the boys strung up by their tendons, will likely disturb my sleep as long as I live. Many nights I woke up, covered with sweat, to see my father sitting beside me, tired as he was, speaking in a low, soothing voice and bathing my face with a rag soaked in water.

But now we were rolling through new country, our problems eased for a time. It was fun.

I sat beside Mrs. Kissel, who was curious about the Indians and said, “I hear tell the women are untidy around the house. What’s more, one of the neighbors forward—her husband’s him that wears the gray beaver and has bleeding piles—said she heard the girls go about uncovered above the waist. She got it from a Mrs. Dawson, who had a cousin that went west and married a half-breed Shoeshine.”

“I believe it’s Shoshone,” I said. “The women I saw seldom ever wash their bodies, and the only shift they make in the wigwam is to pull a person out when he’s died. The stench gets so fierce it commonly tans the hide walls.”

“You don’t say. And with food to match, I reckon.”

I was sore at those Pawnees, so I laid it on a little, telling her
about the boiling pots and the odds and ends inside. “You can imagine how a stranger feels fishing around in the soup and coming up with a foot or a pair of ears.”

“It’s scandalous, them not washing and all. I suppose they do have divine service. Indians or not, they’re the Lord’s sheep, same as us, and entitled to His guidance. What denomination are they, mostly?”

This Mrs. Kissel was so goodhearted she would give you the frock off her back, barring modesty, but up to now she hadn’t been ten miles away from their farm; she told me so. Her husband had started as a hired hand of her father’s, and lived right across the river. She got attracted to him because he wasn’t loose-tongued, and didn’t interrupt while she talked. She appreciated it because she generally talked all the time, and before Kissel there wasn’t anybody to speak of would listen. Neither had she read any books except the Bible, and it had kind of warped her viewpoint. That is, she knew exactly how old Jehosophat was when he took office, which was thirty-five, and most of the material connected with Uriah the Hittite, but she wasn’t up on any news much later than that. It placed a strain on the conversation. There were times when, much as I disliked stretching the truth, I had to invent along to keep things moving. But we had got on the subject of religion now, so I had to be careful.

“Pawnees?” I said. “They aren’t
any
denomination. They’re got their own, and it’s about the crudest worship you ever struck. You probably wouldn’t believe it.”

“Well, if they’re worse than the Campbellites, I’d like to know. Do they immerse or sprinkle?”

“Neither. When a child joins up, and not all of them by any manner of means
do
join up, they generally notch his ears.”

“Goodness gracious me! I take back what I said about the Campbellites. What about prayers? Do they favor an open meeting or lone efforts while on their knees in a closet?
Deuteronomy!
You leave go of Micah’s hair or I’ll call your paw!”

I glanced back at the quartet, which was swatting each other
with everything except the water barrel, and said, “As far as prayers go, they don’t bother at all unless they’re in some kind of a jam, such as a rain drought, when they customarily burn a dog.”

“Burn a d—! Well, I never as long as I lived. Those poor creeturs need help, and the next time we camp within hollering distance, I’m going to visit among them and read Scripture.”

She meant it, too. She was just that unselfish. But I told her the Pawnees would welcome her into camp, hold a short prayer meeting, and unhook her scalp.

“They’re past saving,” I said. “There wouldn’t be any use to bother. You don’t know those skunks like I do. I’ve been there; I’ve
seen
them.”

“Why, they wouldn’t harm a messenger from the Almighty! Surely when they saw I was toting a Bible—”

“Bible! They’d use it to start fires with. Why, they were having a kind of revival while I was there, and some visiting preachers came in, and they ate them. Didn’t give them any show at all.”

“Ate
them! They were likely starved, the poor wretches. I’ll take a side of bacon along, and some beans. It’s pitiful to think of a people so racked by hunger they’d eat a preacher. It’s almost sacrilegious.”

I got down off the wagon to walk awhile. Why argue? She was so good she couldn’t see bad in anybody. If we ever
did
run across an Indian camp, she’d take her Bible and go charging right in. There wasn’t any doubt about it. I made a note to tell her husband and a couple of others, if it became necessary, and they’d likely get a rope and hog-tie her. It was the only way.

Walking forward to catch my father, who was talking to Kissel and Brice, I had a chance to smell the country, which was interesting along here, though not so green and growy. It was different. The prairies lay mostly behind us—we were pushing into the alkali plains, the soda wells, and salt fiats. We’d heard about them, nothing cheerful.

On my right the Platte rippled along in the sun, with little islands full of trees sticking up here and there. It was an odd
river—one night it rose seventeen inches. The trail lay on a grassy bluff, but close to the left the grass thinned out and became poorly. We began to see the prickly plants they called cactus; an emigrant’s wife, a Mrs. Goodings, had sat on one a day or so before, somebody said, and some women had to take her behind a bush and put her in working order. At the time of the accident, her husband surveyed her and stated he wasn’t up to the job; he said she resembled a kind of “double-barreled pincushion”; those are the very words he used.

In a while we should reach the junction of the north and south forks of the Platte, where there’s a well of pure spring water, icy-cold. A notice of it was stuck in one of those post-office buffalo skulls. Everybody looked forward to this well. On the trail you drink whatever’s handy, but you don’t get used to it. People take good water for granted until they haven’t got it any more.

Well, my father, when I caught up, had Ware’s
Guide
out and was going at it strong. Now that the grassless patches were over for a while, and Ware had hit a right thing or two, he was back on him as admiring and complimentary as if he was quoting from the Old Testament.

“ ‘To the head of the island, twenty miles, the road is good,’ ” he read, showing the book to both Kissel and Brice, as if they wouldn’t believe him for some reason. “That’s been borne out, I think you’ll agree; he’s a hundred per cent accurate so far, and here’s what’s coming: ‘From the “head” to the forks of the Platte, ninety miles, the emigrant can supply himself with fuel from the island, or with buffalo chips. Buffalo are sometimes plenty here.’

“Exactly what yesterday’s note said. The day I purchased this book was my lucky day,” said my father. “It’s an aggravation to me to think how little faith some people have. Not two weeks past, half the men in this wagon train were damning and blasting the
Guide
as if it were the devil’s handbook. Yes, and Coul—”

He’d almost forgot his new vow and jumped on Coulter again, which was as natural as eating to him, but he caught himself just in time.

“Yes, we three and Coulter—that was the hard nucleus of the steadfast group. I admire him for it; he’s nobody’s fool, is Mr. Coulter.”

Brice had been stumbling along in a reverie, but it soaked in now what they were talking about, so he spoke up. “That was a humorous turn of yours about the novel, doctor. I remember it well.”

A thing like this didn’t faze my father. He cleared his throat and said, “I repeat, and I’ll repeat it again and again. A novel constructed from the material in Ware’s book could be a unique contribution to the world’s store of great literature. Think of it—the classic ingredients of the work—the new country, hardships, the rough characters, the little humorous incidents along the trail, the inevitable call of romance among the youngsters, the suspense before finding gold, the disappointments, and, at last, the great discoveries, riches, and the full life to follow.”

He whisked out a note pad and jotted down a memorandum. “By George, I’ve got to remind myself to block out such a book while we’re still on the trail. I’ll complete it in the first free time after our strike. ‘Do—novel—based—on—Ware’s—book—and—journals—of—self,’ ” he wrote, reading the words aloud. Then he snapped the notebook shut, looking entirely satisfied, as if he’d already finished the novel and it was on its way to the printer’s. That was his style; he had more fun talking about it than other people did writing it. And before long he wouldn’t know whether he had written it or not. To hear him tell it, the McPheeters-California Public Clinic was finished and doing a booming business among the hard-up and downtrodden.

After these weeks on the road, Brice seemed perkier, though not certain where he was, and Kissel looked as quietly contented as ever. His ox’s strength was admired all up and down the line, and was put often to use. He was employed as a kind of human hoist. Whenever a wheel got off or a wagon sank in the mud, he was generally called upon to demonstrate. It was something of a game; they made bets on how long it would take him. But try as they
might, they couldn’t get him to make a lift for purely sport. It had to be needful; otherwise he would only smile in his slow way and swing on back, maybe whistling a little tune. As somebody remarked, Kissel was about the only member of the train that Coulter respected enough to address without sarcasm. It wasn’t because he was afraid of him, either; he just respected him. Kissel was a kind of private man; it made him different. Usually, people can forgive a person anything except a desire for privacy. But Kissel still lived his sunny, private life; he would have had privacy in the middle of a riot.