Where the Lost Wander(12)
Mr. Lorenzo Hastings wears a three-piece suit with a watch chain and a neatly knotted tie. His wife, Priscilla, has a lace parasol and sits primly in a buggy pulled by a pair of white horses. They also have a huge Conestoga wagon pulled by eight mules and driven by two hired men. Wyatt got a look inside, and he claims it has a feather bed in the back. Mrs. Hastings has two middle-aged sisters serving as her “companions”; they are traveling to California to join their brother. The sisters introduce themselves to me and Ma as Miss Betsy Kline and Miss Margaret Kline, but we don’t visit long. Mrs. Hastings keeps them running for this and that, scrambling to make camp. I overhear Mr. Abbott telling Pa that the Hastingses won’t last a week, and it’ll be better for everyone if they don’t. Every train has its share of “go-backs,” he says. I hope for the two sisters’ sake that they don’t.
Regardless of their possessions or their position, it seems everyone has the same dream. They all want something different than what they have now. Land. Luck. Life. Even love. Everyone chatters about what we’re going to find when we get there. I’m no different, I suppose, though I’m more worried about what we’re going to find along the way. Some people have so many belongings wedged into their wagons it’s a wonder their teams can pull them, but pull them they do, and the next morning, following a breakfast of mush and bacon, the long train rolls out, everyone jostling for position.
They call it a road, and I suppose it is, the ruts and the wear of thousands of travelers creating a path that stretches for two thousand miles over plains and creeks and hills and hollows from a dozen points along the Missouri to the verdant valleys of places most of us have never been.
With so many wagons in the train, the travelers are either stretched out across the trail, following the ruts of the wagons that have gone before, or lined up like waddling white ducks, one wagon behind the other, bumping over the terrain. Mr. Caldwell insists on being at the front near Mr. Abbott, and he manages to spur his family and his animals to lead the pack. We happily fall back to the end of the line, which looks more like a sloppy triangle formation than a tidy row. Ma needs a slower pace, and it’s a great deal more pleasant to walk without another wagon nipping at one’s heels. The distance from the Caldwells is good. I won’t see Elmeda Caldwell’s mournful glances or be put to work looking after Daniel’s family. I will barely be able to keep up with my own.
The constant jostling of the wagon bouncing along the ruts and rolling plain makes us sick when we try to ride in back; I imagine it’s like being tossed on the waves of the sea, and most of us choose to walk. Even Ma walks, though her great belly protrudes out in front of her, drawing the eyes of other travelers. She says little about her discomfort, but I see it in her face, and I am alarmed by it. Pa sees it too and begs her to ride.
“If I sit on that gyrating schooner, this baby will fall out, and I’d prefer it stay in a week or two more,” she says. Pa isn’t the only one who listens to Ma. The baby listens as well, and it stays put.
There is little to see—not because it isn’t beautiful but because we move so slowly that the eye consumes everything in one fell swoop, growing accustomed to the sights within the first hours of morning. Spring wildflowers dot the swales, and streams and creeks bisect the trail. Every mile or so, a wagon sinks to the hubs in mud, and ropes and muscle are employed to pull it out just in time for the next wagon to fall prey to the same thing.
The slow monotony makes us drowsy, especially in the afternoons, and more than once someone in the train has tumbled from their wagon, lulled to sleep by the endless motion. The oxen don’t have reins or drivers like the wagons pulled by mule teams. They are simply yoked in, two by two, with someone walking alongside them, prodding at them with a stick and a quirt when they need a little encouragement to move along. Pa and Warren and Wyatt take turns, rotating between the two wagons, and within a couple of days, Will has the hang of it too.
The clatter wears on me. Not the walking, not the work, not the vastness or the mud. It is the noise. The jangle and bump of the wagon, the endless cacophony of screeching wheels, harnesses, and cowbells. Everything squeaks and rumbles and lurches and groans. The motion is good for something, though; we put cow milk in the churn and set it in the wagon in the morning. By the time the day is done, we have butter, with no effort whatsoever. Making bread takes a little more doing. When the train stops in the evening, we are too hungry to wait for the dough to rise and the loaves to cook, and the fires aren’t the right mix of coals and ash.
The first day out, I tried to make it in the morning, but there wasn’t sufficient time for the bread to cook and the dutch oven to cool, and Will and I ended up carrying the heavy pot with a broomstick shoved through the handle until it cooled down enough to tuck it away without burning a hole in the wagon. With so much to do and Ma needing her rest, I decide that making it once a week, even if I’m baking bread all night, is the most I can manage.
We end up eating stew made of bacon and beans for supper three nights in a row. Pa promises there will be fresh meat when we can kill it, but the trail from St. Joe is remarkably devoid of big game—mosquitoes, butterflies, and all manner of birds and crawling things, but no herds. Webb looks for signs of the buffalo each day through the spyglass, but Mr. Abbott says the buffalo herds are greatly diminished, and we’re more likely to see them when we reach the Platte.
The mornings and evenings are the hardest part of the day, with the constant loading and unloading, reorganizing and reconfiguring, but I dread mornings the most. Maybe it’s because the day stretches ahead, long and arduous, and leaving is always more work than arriving. Setting camp, breaking camp—it’s all a mad scramble to move when sitting still would be so sweet. After breakfast, coffee and mush and a bit of bacon, we take down the tents and fold the blankets, packing the kettle and the pots and pans, washing the breakfast dishes the way we washed them after supper the night before, rinsing the remains with water that leaves behind a bit of silt we always have to wipe free when we use them again.