Wilderness Double Edition 19, page 28
The mountain man had fashioned lead ropes for the oxen. He gave one to Rosemary, the other to Sam. King mounted the bay, and with him in the lead, they rode toward the Oregon Trail.
Her emotions in upheaval, Rosemary repeatedly glanced back. The Conestoga had been more than a means of transportation. It was a symbol of her family’s new life in the Promised Land. She couldn’t bear to think she would never see it, or all her possessions, ever again.
Rosemary bestowed a last glance on the mound of fresh earth that covered the man she had loved, heart and soul. In their haste they had neglected to erect an appropriate marker. A board with his name or a wooden cross would do. She went to rein up.
“Ma!” Eddy exclaimed, pointing westward. “Do you see what I see?”
Rosemary shifted, and blinked. As if the Sioux and the grizzly hadn’t been enough, now Nature itself was rising up against them. “I see it,” she marveled, her scalp prickling with foreboding. “God help us, I see it.”
Ten
One night, shortly after the wagon train began its odyssey, one of the emigrants had asked Harry Trapp which he feared most, Indians or wild animals. The pilot had chuckled and replied it was neither. “The thing I fear worst, more than having my hair lifted by the Blackfeet or my skull crushed by an ornery griz, are the storms.”
“Don’t tell us you’re afraid of a little thunder and lightning,” someone joked.
Trapp let the laughter subside, then said, “I’m not talking about the kind of storms you’re used to, friend. They’re puny compared to storms out here. Imagine winds strong enough to blow a wagon over. Lightning bolts that rain down like hail. And thunder that can burst your eardrums.” Trapp had stopped to fiddle with the fire. “I don’t blame you if you’re skeptical. But I’ve seen them. I’ve lived through them. And I pray to God we don’t run into one.”
Rosemary had dismissed it as another of Trapp’s tall tales, like the one about buffalo herds over a million strong. But now, as she gaped at the colossal thunderhead to the west, she realized that if Trapp were still alive, she would owe him an apology.
A storm front was moving in. But what a front! A roiling cauldron of ominous dark clouds rose miles high into the atmosphere, clouds that writhed and coiled as if alive. Half the sky was blotted out and the prairie underneath cast into preternatural night. Throughout the thunderhead danced flashing lights, and from deep within its bowels rumbled continuous thunder, although Rosemary saw no lightning as yet. “Mr. King!” she called out.
“I see it,” the mountain man replied as nonchalantly as if she were calling his attention to an antelope.
“Shouldn’t we take cover? Or maybe go back and ride the storm out in the Conestoga?”
“It’s a long ways off yet. We can cover a lot of ground before it hits.”
Rosemary swallowed a protest and rode on. She had to keep reminding herself he knew best. To him the wilderness was home, and if anyone could see them safely through to Fort Laramie, it was he.
Soon the wind picked up. The tops of the trees swayed, then the middle boughs, and finally those lower down. Rosemary felt a brisk, moist sensation on her face, not unpleasant after the heat of the day. Her hair streamed behind her, her bangs whipping in the steadily increasing gusts.
The eastern half of the sky grew darker. Sinuous tendrils from the main mass were spreading outward like the tentacles of a gigantic octopus, swallowing all the blue in their path. And all the while, the rumbling grew louder and the moisture in the air thickened until it could be sliced with a butter knife.
“I don’t like this, Ma,” Eddy said.
Rosemary was apprehensive, too, but Nate King showed no sign of slowing anytime soon. He was making straight toward the onrushing juggernaut. Trying to act as indifferent as he for the benefit of her boys, she tugged on the lead rope to the ox she was leading.
Sam didn’t share her confidence in the mountain man. “Are you sure this is the right thing to do, Mr. King?”
“We can’t avoid it, so why fret?” was the mountain man’s reply.
They couldn’t skirt it, that was for sure, Rosemary agreed. The front stretched from the northern horizon to the southern horizon.
“We should be fine so long as there aren’t any tornadoes,” Nate King mentioned. “I was caught in one once, and it’s not an experience I’d like to repeat.”
Missourians saw twisters now and then. When Rosemary was seven or eight one struck a neighboring town, Linfield. Her father had driven over to see if they could be of help, and to this day she vividly recalled the terrible devastation. Three-fourths of the town had been destroyed, the buildings ripped apart as if they were so many sticks. Fourteen people had lost their lives, including a baby sucked from its mother’s arms up into the funnel cloud. Dead and missing livestock had numbered in the hundreds, mostly cattle caught in the open by the half-mile-wide tornado.
“There but for the grace of God go us,” her father had said, and Rosemary, watching the mother of the missing baby weep, had wondered what the woman had done to make God so mad at her.
A whistling sound ended Rosemary’s childhood reminiscence. The wind was redoubling its assault on the trees. A hollow boom fell on her ears from out of the depths of the thunderhead, succeeded by a seemingly unending series, each louder than the one before. “How much longer before we stop?” she hollered to be heard above the din.
“A bit farther yet,” the mountain man shouted back.
What Rosemary said next wasn’t very lady-like, but she said it under her breath so no one else would hear.
Cottonwoods and willows were whipping and bending like reeds in a gale. The tall grass rippled and ebbed much like the surface of a hurricane-tossed sea. Rosemary saw a bird, a sparrow, she thought, try to take wing from out of a bush, only to be flung back into it as if by an unseen hand.
Eddy slowed, and when she came alongside him, he marshaled a feeble smile. “If that wind gets any stronger, it’ll blow me right out of my saddle.”
Rosemary rested a hand on his shoulder. “It won’t be much longer. We need to put as much distance as we can between us and those Sioux.”
“Even Indians wouldn’t be out in weather like this,” Eddy responded.
Out of the mouths of children, Rosemary reflected. Suddenly the wind intensified to a frightening degree, buffeting her so severely it nearly took her breath away. Tucking her chin low, she shouted, “Hold your head down, Edward, and it won’t be so bad.” His answer was whipped into distorted fragments, but he did as she had suggested.
A raindrop fell. Then another, and yet a third. The ox was dragging its hooves again, and Rosemary had to yank with all her might to convince it to keep moving.
Nate King halted, gestured at the trees, and yelled something lost to the wind. Flicking his reins, he entered the undergrowth. Sam slowed, verified that Rosemary and Edward were close behind, and followed King in.
The light had faded to a twilight gray and was diminishing rapidly by the second. Another minute and the seething mass of the thunderhead would be on top of them. Fearful that they had waited too long to seek cover, Rosemary rode in under the trees, Eddy’s mount glued to hers. It was so dark that King and Sam were mere silhouettes, even though they weren’t more than ten yards away.
Nate King swung down and hurriedly tied his bay and Jeremiah to a tree. “Secure your animals,” he directed. “Then strip off your saddles and saddlebags.”
More rain was falling. It wasn’t a sustained drizzle yet, but it would be soon. Nature was on the verge of unleashing her full ferocity.
Rosemary deposited her saddle under the same bush where the mountain man had deposited his.
He led them to a thicket, where, to her surprise, he eased down onto his stomach and proceeded to wriggle in among the maze of thin branches, dragging his beaded parfleches in after him.
“I never would have thought of this,” Sam said, and emulated the frontiersman’s example.
Larger, harder drops spattered Rosemary’s head and shoulders as she dropped onto her hands and knees. Peering into the thicket was like peering down a well; she couldn’t see much of anything.
“What are you waiting for?” Nate King yelled. “A formal invite?”
Eddy scrambled past her. “Come on, Ma. We won’t get as wet in here.”
Against her better judgment Rosemary crawled in. A branch nicked her cheek. Another scratched her ear. There was plenty of space for a boy Eddy’s age, but it was a tight fit for an adult. She adjusted her pouch so it wouldn’t snag and pulled her saddlebags along by her fingertips. Above her the thicket rattled and shook. Few raindrops penetrated all the way. “Pretty smart idea,” she said to herself.
“Thanks,” came Nate King’s reply from an arm’s length to her right. “I learned it from Shakespeare McNair.”
Rosemary could barely see his handsome face. “You’ve mentioned McNair before. You sound quite fond of him.”
“We’ve been through a lot together. He’s always stuck be me, through thick and thin. As far as I’m concerned, he’s the most decent man alive.”
King said more, but he was drowned out by a thunderclap that shook the ground on which Rosemary lay. With elemental ferocity the storm broke. The wind shrieked, the rain fell in a driving deluge, while all around crackling bolts of lightning speared the earth with clockwork regularity. Chaos ruled, and caught under the thicket at the heart of the maelstrom, Rosemary Spencer covered her head with her arms and wished to God her family had never left Missouri.
The thicket shook in violent throes, the wind threatening to tear the growth out by the roots. A bolt of lightning seared a nearby tree, and Rosemary thought her eardrums would shatter from the blast of thunder that ensued.
Like feathers on a duck’s back, the compact foliage and tightly spaced branches warded off the worst of the rain, but more and more drops made it through. She felt a trickle on her left shoulder and shifted so it would miss her, only to feel another trickle on her head. Again she moved, as far as the cramped confines permitted.
Another sizzling bolt from on high lit up the terrain as brightly as day. For a few seconds Rosemary saw her sons clearly. Sam was on his side, staring up at the tumultuous tempest in pure wonderment. Eddy was on his stomach with his arms over his head. Reaching out, she squeezed his shoulder. His eyes peeked out and she gave him a warm smile, which he reciprocated. Then the darkness closed in again, the storm waging war against the planet that spawned it.
The closest bolt of lightning yet flared like a Roman candle, and Rosemary thought she heard the squeal of a horse. She looked toward the trees where the animals were tied, but a black veil descended before she could spot them.
Rosemary lost all track of time. An hour might have gone by, or it might have been two, when the tempest suddenly stilled; the wind and the rain slackened and only a few random bolts of lightning lanced from the heavens. “It’s over at last!” In her excitement she raised her head too quickly and a branch poked her in the temple.
“Not yet,” Nate King informed her.
“But just listen,” Rosemary said.
“The center of the storm is passing over us. The eye of the storm, some folks call it.” King’s face was almost ghostly in the gloom. “There’s more to come.”
“Of course there is,” Rosemary quipped. The wilderness was indeed a harsh taskmaster. Raising her voice, she asked, “Boys, how are you holding up?”
“Just fine,” Sam replied. “A little wet is all.”
“I’m hungry, Ma,” Eddy said. “Can I have a piece of jerky?”
Rosemary tried to bend to pull her saddlebags nearer, but there wasn’t enough room.
“Afraid not, son. I can’t quite get at it. You’ll have to wait until this storm is over.”
“Stupid storm,” Eddy muttered.
As if taking umbrage at the insult, Nature renewed its onslaught with reborn fury. The rain, the wind, the lightning, pummeled the prairie mercilessly. Rosemary slid her right arm under her chin and closed her eyes. She wasn’t afraid anymore. But she was ungodly tired. The lack of rest was catching up with her. She thought of Bert, of the day they became man and wife, and how handsome he had looked in his store-bought clothes, the only suit he ever owned. She missed him so much. He had been more than her husband; he had been the best friend she ever had. Sure, there were times they didn’t get along all that well, times when they spatted more than they cuddled, times when she wanted to throttle the living daylights out of him. But by and large he was as good a man and as loyal a husband as any woman could ask for.
Rosemary wondered what Nate King’s wife was like. Winona, wasn’t that her name? She probably was a lot like most white women. Oh, she lived in a hide lodge, but when you got right down to it, was that so drastically different from living in a frame house? And was wearing buckskins all that different from wearing a cotton or wool dress? Rosemary wondered if Winona went on buffalo hunts with the braves. And whether Winona had ever lost any of her loved ones to enemy war parties. Rosemary would enjoy meeting her one day to talk over womanly matters and compare perspectives.
The dull rumble of thunder snapped Rosemary’s eyes open. She had fallen asleep in the middle of the storm! More thunder pealed, but from off to the east, not overhead. The wind wasn’t anywhere near as strong, and the rain had tapered to a light drizzle. “The worst must be over,” she remarked.
“It is,” Nate King answered. “Time we were moving on.”
It was light enough for Rosemary to see him and her sons. The mountain man began to slide backward, his hands and elbows supplying the leverage, crawling out the way he had entered. “You heard the man, boys.”
Shafts of sunlight were spearing through the clouds. The whole world glistened with a wet sheen, and drops pattered from every tree and bush. Rosemary arched her spine as she straightened, relieving a kink.
The woods resembled a battleground. Limbs had been tom from boles and lay scattered singly and in piles. Swatches of vegetation had been totally flattened. Puddles and pools that would soon seep underground were everywhere.
“Ma!” Sam bawled. “My horse is dead!”
That it was, along with an ox that had been tied to the same lightning-scarred oak. The pair were sprawled close together, the ox’s head split down the middle as if by an ax, the edges of its flesh charred black. The horse didn’t have a mark on it. The rest of their mounts were fine, but the second of their three oxen had broken loose and gone off who-knew-where.
Nate King searched for tracks, but the rain had obliterated them. “It looks as if you’re down to just one. I can go hunt for it, though, if you want.”
“Why put yourself to so much bother?” Rosemary happily patted her pouch. “Like you said, I can buy an entire team now.”
King stared a moment, his face inscrutable. “Can you and your youngest ride double? I’ll take point, and Sam can bring up the rear.”
“Sure,” Rosemary said. Was it her imagination, or was he upset with her for taking the money? He hadn’t said anything before.
The Oregon Trail was a trail of mud. The rain had filled the scores of ruts to overflowing, and the water had spread across the yards-wide bare earth exposed by the wear of thousands of wheels, hooves, and tramping feet. Every step the dun took resulted in a sucking sound.
Rosemary had hoped the storm front would bring cooler temperatures, but within half an hour it had to be well into the nineties. The moisture was evaporating rapidly, but not rapidly enough. The air was muggy. Impossibly humid. Her dress clung to her like a second skin, and she was constantly mopping her forehead with a sleeve.
Sam was in exceptionally fine spirits. He whistled “Turkey in the Straw” and tapped his saddle in time to the melody.
“What has you in such a good mood?” Rosemary asked.
“We’ve given those pesky hostiles the slip,” Sam said.
“The storm erased our tracks, just like it did the ox’s. They have no idea where we are.”
Nate King overheard and shifted around. “You’ve got it backwards. They know exactly where we are. Whites use only this one trail. We might as well have bull’s-eyes painted on our backs.” He squinted skyward. “If they’re after us, they’ll catch up by sunset.”
“What then?” Rosemary asked. “Do you speak their language? Can you convince them we’re friendly?”
“I’m fluent in sign talk,” the mountain man said, “but it won’t do us a lick of good. The Sioux aren’t fond of whites in general, and me in particular.” He let out with a long sigh. “Some years back I had a run-in with one of their tribes and—”
“Tribes?” Sam interrupted. “How many are there?”
“The Lakota are divided into seven groups.” King ticked them off on his fingers. “The Oglalas, the Brules, the Minneconjous, the Sans Arcs, the Hunkpapas, the Two Kettles, and the Blackfeet Sioux—”
Again Sam interrupted. “But I thought the Blackfeet are a whole separate tribe?”
“They are. The Blackfeet Sioux live at the north end of Sioux territory, between the rest of the Lakotas and the Blackfeet.”
Rosemary perked up. “Which of them attacked the wagon train?”
“The Oglalas, the southernmost tribe. They’re not as warlike as the Minneconjous or the Sans Arcs, but they don’t like having the Oregon Trail through their country. If they could, they’d close it, permanently.”
“So you were saying you had a run-in?” Rosemary prompted when King was silent a bit.
“The Minneconjou had my wife. I wanted her back.”
“There must have been more to it than that.”
“Some blood was shed. The Sioux have had it in for me ever since. I generally fight shy of them unless I have no other choice.” King straightened in the saddle and gazed northward.
Out on the prairie black specks had appeared. Dozens upon dozens, roving slowly eastward. Rosemary couldn’t quite tell what they were. “Are those antelope?”
