Where the Lost Wander(49)
Beware of the Indians, the paper warns, and Mr. Caldwell and others demand to move out immediately, though we’ve no guidebook to refer to and no idea how far it is to the next good water or grass.
Most nights we don’t gather and pray—folks are tired, and most do their own thing, having given up on any sort of schedule when the rigors of the journey set in—but Deacon Clarke gathers us together, and we pray for the dead and pray for protection, from whatever forces out there would harm us.
John doesn’t think it was Indians. He says it was more likely an emigrant cutthroat who saw an opportunity to steal an outfit and a team and took it.
“No Indian would try to hide what he’d done. And he wouldn’t have taken the wagon. If the bodies were dragged out of sight, you can bet it was someone trying to buy himself some time,” he tells the deacon.
With the rumors of troubles and violence among the trains, John’s guess is as good as any. He says it’s easier to blame the Indians than it is to believe ill of your own, and I’d have to agree with him. Regardless, folks are afraid, the guard is doubled, and no one rests well. Months of little sleep and endless toil, not to mention the roadside graves and daily grief, have us all worn thin. It’s a wonder more of us haven’t lost our minds.
We leave the Platte for good today, and we all wave good riddance, celebrating the end of our acquaintance with the flat, muddy river that has been an almost constant companion since we reached Fort Kearny. Although we laugh and pretend to be jolly, we suspect the journey ahead will be harder than the one we left behind.
It gets harder real quick.
We travel through a valley thick with mire one day and then push up Prospect Hill, which has no prospects at all that I can see, the next. It’s steep and rocky and dry, and we come down the other side only to plod through ten miles of white desert, an alkali plain that coats our feet and clothes in white. No grass, no water, no timber. Just powder, and we spend all day traveling with our eyes to the ground, looking for buffalo chips to burn when we finally camp. It doesn’t take us long to realize that even the buffalo don’t wander here. Folks ahead of us have discarded a whole new round of possessions in an effort to ease the burden on their lagging teams. Anvils and plows, buckets and barrels, cook stoves and wagon chains lie abandoned wherever we look, even worse than when the journey began. It is a graveyard of oxen, iron, and steel. Amid the strewed belongings are the dead animals that couldn’t be coaxed a step farther, no matter how much their loads were lightened.
One of the oxen on Pa’s wagon, an ox Webb has named Oddie, collapses midday, and we cannot get him up again. We unyoke him from the team and try to rouse him, sloshing precious water from our barrels onto his black tongue, but he’s been listing for days, and the poor thing is done for.
“He’s got alkali poisoning,” Abbott says, and though he claims there’s a remedy, we haven’t the supplies to make the brew to revive him. John says he’s too far gone anyway. We fear Pa’s other ox, Eddie, will give out on us too, and we unyoke him so he can plod along, burden-free, until we reach water. We yoke in two of John’s mules to take the place of Eddie and Oddie on the team. We have to leave poor Oddie where he lies. Warren hangs back to put him out of his misery, and when the shot rings out behind us, Webb begins to sob.
“Don’t cry, Webb,” Will says. “It won’t help Oddie, and it won’t help you. He’s happy now. He’s free of the wagon. That’s all he wanted.”
“Do you think this is what it’s like to walk on the moon?” I ask, trying to distract him.
“The moon is cool and dark, I imagine.” Webb sniffs. “Nothing like a desert.”
“It looks like ash, like we’ve been through a fire,” Will says.
“Well . . . in a way, I suppose we have,” Ma says. She collects a bit of the white dust, convinced it will work to leaven our bread.
We don’t speak after that. Our tongues are too dry to make words, and opening our mouths to converse just lets the dust in. Eddie allows Webb to ride on his back, and he falls asleep draped over him, his feet and hands flopping with every dusty step.
We stop for dinner, and Will skewers a sage hen with his bow. He is delighted, but I can’t cook it because we don’t have enough kindling to start a fire. Elsie Bingham offers a few chips she’s gathered, Elmeda too, and I manage to boil the little bird until I can pull the meat off the bone. Elsie’s belly is beginning to look like Ma’s did when we started out, and she, more than anyone else, needs the strength. She eats a few bites and bursts into tears, and her husband looks on helplessly.
We don’t camp for the night; we’re afraid to stop, and when we finally reach Greasewood Creek, where our animals can drink and rest, Elsie is not the only one who cries in exhaustion and relief.
“They call it Independence Rock,” I tell my brothers, imagining all the ways I will sketch the sprawling, creviced monolith in the distance.
“It looks like a whale. See its rounded head and tail?” Will says, and Webb immediately jumps in to disagree.
“It looks like a big gray buffalo chip,” he snickers.
“It looks like a turtle,” I say. “A giant stone turtle.”
“ícas,” John says, and his eyes meet mine.
Halfway.
It is the tenth of July, and we are halfway. Maybe it was the bad, stinking water of the Platte River Valley, or the lack of timber or fuel or rest. Maybe it was the loss of poor Oddie the ox. But it is the sight of the Sweetwater River, not the stone turtle it coils around, that has Ma and Elmeda singing praises.