The Chisholms: A novel of the journey West

IV Bobbo

He had to find his father.

This damn Independence wasn’t so big that a man couldn’t locate another man when he needed to tell him something. Had to find him fast, too, before the opportunity drifted away like early morning mist back home. Pretty much like home, this town was. Bigger and more sprawling, no mountains, of course, but the same easy mix of houses and business establishments, same grid pattern of streets and cross streets. There were sturdy brick buildings everywhere Bobbo walked, chimneys smokeless now in June, steeples and steps, doorways arched in stonework — a right proper town except that just outside its doorstep was the wilderness. What all the charts called Indian Territory. Or unorganized Territory. Meaning there was nothing between here and the Pacific Ocean but a few trading posts and lots of—

“You’ve killed my snake, y’bloody bastard!”

The voice was his father’s, and it was coming from inside a saloon dark as a dungeon. Bobbo pushed open the doors to the place and saw first his father standing at the long bar, and then the bartender with a bloodstained meat cleaver in his fist. Hadley’s rattlesnake was wiggling on the bartop, its body in three separate pieces.

“Come bringin no damn poison snake in here,” the bartender said. He was a squat solid man in striped shirtsleeves and apron, a thick handlebar mustache under his nose and curling downward over his mouth. “Now pick up that shitty quiverin thing,” he said, “and get it the hell out of here.”

On the bartop, the snake’s head lay motionless, but the other two severed parts were still wiggling and jumping. Hadley looked down at all three parts, and then reached across the bar and seized the bartender by the front of his shirt. The bartender’s apron was flecked with the rattler’s blood, the bloodstained cleaver was still in his hand. As Bobbo moved quickly forward, the bartender raised the cleaver over his head, and Bobbo’s heart lurched into his throat.

Hadley said, “What!”

There was indignation enough in his voice to have stopped a stampeding herd of cattle, no less a mere barkeep with a cleaver in his fist Bobbo knew that voice well. It had dogged him all the years of his youth; he had heard it razoring across mountaintops and meadows, gullies and gulches. It was the voice of Hadley Chisholm himself, whose ancestors had fought widcairns in Ireland, that could cut you dead to the ground with the icy edge of it, sharper than the blade on the cleaver in the bartender’s hand. That cleaver hesitated somewhere behind the man’s ear now. His eyes went wide, the brows shooting up in arcs that echoed the arc of his handlebar mustache.

“You dare to raise a weapon?” Hadley asked.

The cleaver still hung there undecided. The bartender felt he’d rightly and justly slain a wild creature placed on his bartop for no reason he could fathom. He’d reflexively reached under the bar for the cleaver and snick-snack, there went the head, and there went the body neatly cut in two. He wasn’t in the habit of having his shirt front gathered in a stranger’s hand. He was, in fact, widely reputed for his vile disposition and the meanness with which he wielded the cleaver he kept under the bar. But he held back the cleaver now, and stared into Hadley’s indignant blue eyes, and hesitated. He wasn’t afraid of the man, he certainly wasn’t afraid of him — but there was something told him to belay separating his head from his body as he’d done the snake’s.

“Put that cleaver down,” Hadley said. “Do it now.”

Across the room came another one, broader and taller but unmistakably kin, with the same blue eyes and fierce look could cut a man down like a scythe through wheat. The bartender decided to drop the cleaver after all. He let it fall from his hand to the floor behind him, and immediately wondered who was going to clean up the mess on his goddamn bar.

“You all right, Pa?” Bobbo asked.

“Aye,” Hadley said. “Join me, son. This man here was about to set out whiskey for us.” He looked into the bartender’s face, and then released his shirt front. A round of applause went up from the gathered customers, initiated by a man sitting at a table against the wall. There was a framed portrait of President Tyler over the table. Two small United States flags were crossed over it.

“Pa,” Bobbo said, “I met some men while I was getting my hair cut, they told me...”

His father wasn’t listening. He was staring instead at the man who sat under the portrait of President Tyler. The man was still applauding though everyone else in the bar had already stopped. He wore a flat black hat and wire-rimmed spectacles. His beard was the color of rust on a rain barrel’s rim, big red bushy thing that sprang from his cheeks and his chin and seemed to grow wild into his eyebrows. Sitting at the table with him was an Indian woman. Still clapping, the man got up and walked to where Hadley was waiting for the whiskey to be set out. Applauding him face to face, grinning in his beard, he said. “Bravo, sir, well done,” and extended his hand. “Timothy Oates,” he said.

“Hadley Chisholm,” Hadley said, and took the offered hand.

“Bobbo Chisholm,” Bobbo said and also shook hands with the man.

“Have a drink with us, won’t you?” Hadley said, and poured whiskey from the bottle the bartender had set on the bartop. The bartender was scowling. “I was fixin to turn the critter loose,” Hadley told him. “You had no cause to cut him up that way.”

“You did turn him loose,” the bartender said.

“He got out the sack, that wasn’t no fault of mine.”

“Carryin a damn poison snake in a bar,” the bartender said.

“Have a drink with us,” Hadley said, and grinned.

“Who’s paying for this?” the bartender asked, pouring himself a whiskey glass full.

“You ruined a perfectly good snake, didn’t you?” Hadley said.

“What’s that mean?” the bartender asked. “Ain’t a snake on earth worth a pile of rabbit shit.”

“This one was a pet,” Hadley said, and winked at his son.

“Well, you can find yourself another pet just beyond town. Hundreds of them out there. Sometimes they come wiggling right up the street.”

“Better not come in here,” Hadley said. “There’s a man in here’ll chop em up like green beans.”

The bartender smiled through his scowl.

“Drink hearty,” Hadley said, and raised his glass.

“Pa,” Bobbo said, “these men I talked to are fixin—”

“You live hereabouts?” Hadley asked the bearded man, and Bobbo sighed. There were times he wanted to yell his father down, same way he would anybody else was irritating him. Wouldn’t, of course; had too much respect for him. But here he was busting to tell what he’d learned, and he had to keep quiet instead till the head of the family ran out of steam. Times like this, when his father treated him like he was still in rompers, he felt like a big awkward dummy. Everybody always thought of him as dumb anyway. Was being seventeen did it Having pimples.

His father and Timothy Oates had told each other where they were from, and now they were telling each other where they were bound. Bobbo waited patiently for a break in the conversation, but it didn’t look like one’d be coming before Christmas.

“... have already left, you know,” Timothy said. “Most of them anyway. There’re some strays like yourself still coming in, though, and I’m hoping to join up with whatever kind of train can be put together.”

“Then you’re bound for California, too.”

“Not so far as that,” Timothy said. “I’m going only to the Coast of Nebraska, to take my wife home before her heart breaks.” He gestured with his head toward where the Indian woman sat under the portrait of President Tyler. “She’s Pawnee,” he said, “and far from home.”

Bobbo looked across the room.

The woman’s face was large and massive, thick black hair pulled tightly to the back of her head and braided there on either side. She was wearing a worn and greasy two-piece garment, skirt and cape of elkskin hide ornamented with porcupine quills, many of which had fallen loose. Hadley was looking at her, too, over the top of his glass. Bobbo leaped into the momentary silence.

“I’ve found some others as well,” he said in a rush. “Two families headin west, Pa. A carpenter from Baltimore with his wife and three children, and a man from—”

“We don’t need young’uns underfoot, thank you,” Hadley said.

“The sons are thirteen and fourteen; they can pull their own weight.”

“Which means the third one’s a daughter, eh?”

“Well...”

“Ain’t she?”

“She’s an infant in her mother’s arms,” Bobbo admitted. “But, Pa—”

“Just what we need’s an infant.”

“The sons can handle guns as good as you or me,” Bobbo said. “The wagon’s ox-drawn, and they’re traveling with four good horses besides. Mr. Comyns said he’d allow one of us to ride that extra horse, was we of a mind to. That’s his name, Pa, the carpenter. Jonah Comyns.”

“Has an extra horse, eh?”

“Yes, Pa.”

“Mm,” Hadley said. “And the other family?”

“Does it sound interesting, Pa?”

“You said there were two families.”

“Aye. The other’s a man named Willoughby and his two daughters. He’s a widower, Pa, decided to move from Pennsylvania when his wife passed on.”

“How old are the daughters?”

“One’s just Annabel’s age. Be somebody for her to play with, Pa. She’s been hurtin for company.”

“And the other one?”

“A toddler two or three years old.”

“With no mother to take care of her.”

“Most well-behaved little child I ever did see,” Bobbo said. “Sat on a bench along the wall all the time her pa was gettin shaved, never made so much as a peep.”

“Mm,” Hadley said.

“There’s that extra horse to think about Pa. Mean less of a load in the wagon; mules’d have an easier time of it.”

“Mules made it all the way here from Virginia, I reckon they can make it beyond as well. ’Sides, your brothers ain’t here yet.”

So that was it.

“Pa,” Bobbo said, “we told them—”

“I don’t want to leave without em,” Hadley said.

“We said we’d wait only till we found some wagons going out. Either that or—”

“They’ll be here any day now,” Hadley said.

“Pa, we don’t know when they’ll be here — that’s the plain truth of it. I found us two wagons we can join up with—”

“Three, if you’ll include me and mine,” Timothy said. “I’ve got but a small one drawn by a pair of mules, and no horse to contribute. But I’m a good shot, and I own a Hall percussion carbine. I know Indians well, sir, the good ones and the bad. I’ve been to the Rockies and back as many times as I’ve got fingers and thumbs. I know the terrain, and I know what—”

“We met a fellow in Louisville, had no horse neither,” Hadley said. “He’s got one now.”

“Eh?” Timothy said.

“How far’d you say you were going?” Bobbo asked.

“The Coast of Nebraska.”

“Where’s that?”

“This side of the Platte.”

“Pa?” Bobbo said.

Hadley knew the mileage from Carthage by heart — Gideon and Will should’ve been here by now. This was the ninth of June; they’d parted company outside St. Louis on the twentieth of May. His every instinct told him to wait here for his boys, but he knew he couldn’t delay the rest of the family any longer. Bobbo was right, this was a fine opportunity. Counting Oates here, there’d be four wagons, which maybe wasn’t a proper train, but enough of them to form some kind of circle at night, keep from getting scalped. Didn’t much like the idea of an Indian right in their midst, woman or not, but Oates seemed a decent enough fellow, and Hadley supposed you couldn’t go around blaming every redskin in the world for something had happened to your father forty-one years ago. Besides, it wouldn’t be charitable to let a man struggle across the plains all by himself, just him and his wife in a little old wagon. He sure wished Gideon and Will were here. Seemed like all he had to do anymore was make decisions all the time, each one harder than the one before. Back home, a man woke up of a morning, why the day just seemed to unfold of its own accord, and you didn’t have to go making up your mind every time you took a breath.

“Pa?” Bobbo said again.

“Yes, son, yes,” Hadley said wearily.

They left Independence shortly after sunrise the next morning. As they moved out in single file, Bobbo saw his mother look back over her shoulder. It seemed to him in that minute that she was looking clear to St. Louis or beyond. Evansville maybe, or Louisville, or straight through the Gap to Virginia. Timothy’s wagon was in the lead; they had charts, but he alone had made the trip before. The wagon behind Timothy’s was that of the carpenter, Jonah Comyns, followed by the Pennsylvania widower and his two young daughters. Last in line was the Chisholm wagon, Bobbo riding the borrowed horse beside it. The day was clear and bright; they could not have wished for better weather. They could see Independence behind them for the longest time.

Then suddenly it was gone.

This was the wilderness.

Not at all what Bobbo expected. No dense forest to hack through, no underbrush ripping clothes and flesh, no wild animals crouched to attack. Just... nothing. No houses, no fences, no barns. Emptiness. Except for every now and then an Indian going by on the horizon.

Bobbo rode up alongside Timothy’s wagon, slowed his horse.

“Is that the same Indian I see out there all the time?” he asked.

“How’s that?” Timothy said.

“See an Indian going by all the time, thought maybe he’s scouting us for a massacre.” Bobbo smiled. But he was serious.

“I think it’s several different Indians you’re seeing,” Timothy said. “They’re peaceful farmers. You needn’t worry.”

“Mm,” Bobbo said. He supposed Timothy knew; he’d made the journey west often enough. In the back of the Oates wagon, Timothy’s Indian wife huddled as if chilled. “Is your wife all right?” Bobbo asked. “She ain’t ailing, is she?”

“No, she’s fine, thank you.”

“She looks so sad all the time,” Bobbo said.

“She is sad all the time,” Timothy said.

“Why’s that?”

“Misses her people.”

“You met her out there west, huh?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, I hope she gets to feeling better,” Bobbo said.

“She will, I’m sure,” Timothy said, and smiled.

Bobbo turned the horse about, and rode back to where his father and sister were sitting beside each other on the wagon seat

“Pa,” he said, “you want to swap places awhile?”

“Don’t mind if I do,” Hadley said, and tugging at the reins, stopped the mules. “Backside’s beginnin to wear thin. How’s that horse, son?”

“Good one, Pa.”

“Well, get on off him,” Hadley said.

Bobbo dismounted and handed the reins to his father. Hadley swung up into the saddle and adjusted his rump to it. He said, “Come on, horse,” and clucked gently to the animal. Watching him ride ahead past the lead wagon, Bobbo climbed onto the seat and picked up the reins. “Ha-ya!” he shouted, and the wagon rolled into motion again. Beside him, Bonnie Sue was silent.

“What’s troublin you?” he asked her.

“Ain’t nothin troublin me.”

“Then how come you don’t say a word to nobody, just sit around moping all the time?”

“I ain’t moping,” she said.

“It sure looks like moping,” he said. “Looks like wilting, you want to know.”

“Bobbo, it ain’t your business,” she said.

“Well, it is my business,” he said.

“No.”

“Cause I love you half to death, and can’t bear to see you unhappy.”

She looked at him.

“That’s right,” he said.

“Well,” she said, “I ain’t unhappy. It’s... I’m scared, is what it is.”

“What of?”

“There’s smoke goin up in the distance there. I’m sure it’s Indians sendin some kind of message, tellin each other to come scalp us.”

“Bonnie Sue, that ain’t it,” Bobbo said.

She looked at him again.

“That just ain’t it, Bonnie Sue. I know you better’n I know myself, and it ain’t Indians troublin you. Now, Bonnie Sue, what is it?”

She did not answer.

“Bonnie Sue, please tell me. I want to help you, Sis. Please.”

“You can’t help me,” she said.

“What?” He’d hardly heard her.

“I said you can’t help me, Bobbo.”

“Always been able to help you before,” he said.

“But not now,” she said.

Always had been able to help her, too.

Closer to her than anybody in the whole family. Closest to her in age, and closest to her in temperament, too. Was a time, when they were both just tads, nobody in the family could bust in on one of their conversations. You come upon them talking together, you’d think it was one person talking to himself out loud. Chattered like magpies. Give Bobbo a thrashing, as Pa’d done often enough, Bonnie Sue’d bust out crying. Same the other way around. Ma said when Bonnie Sue wet her pants, it was Bobbo’s you had to change. Inside the family, they got to calling them “Them two.” You said “Them two,” you knew it was Bobbo and Bonnie Sue you were talking about and not Will and Gideon or a pair of mules. Those days, when they were both coming along, Bobbo eighteen months older than his sister, wasn’t anybody in the family could stand up to them. No way to do it. You got into an argument with them two, it was like trying to rassle a pair of bears. One’d give ground only long enough to let the other one get a hold on you, and then he’d swing you around into the grip of the second one. That was then. When they were both just coming along.

Now she was looking more mournful than even Timothy’s wife, and she’d told him he couldn’t help her nohow. He’d have given his life to have helped her. He’d have given that much.

“I’ve never made this trip before except in the company of the military,” Timothy said. “What we did at suppertime, we arranged all the wagons and carts in a rough circle, oh, some fifty to sixty yards in diameter. Pitched our tents inside, hobbled the animals outside to graze.”

It was their first night out of Independence. The men were standing around the fire. Comyns and his two young sons. Willoughby. Bobbo and his father. Timothy there, closest to the fire, the light from it glowing in his red beard, making it look like his chin was aflame. Bobbo liked the man, liked the gentle way he talked to his wife in Indian, liked his sure knowledge of the trail. Hadn’t got a chance to talk to any of the others yet, and didn’t know as he wanted to. There was a fierce look about the carpenter Comyns, and his two sons were a mite young for Bobbo. Willoughby was altogether too mournful a man; spend any time around him, you’d bust into the weeping shivers.

“When it got dark,” Timothy said, “we’d drive the animals inside the circle, and then picket them on long halters. Gave them freedom to forage in the night, and also kept them safe from Indians. Now, I don’t know quite what to do with this party,” Timothy said, and smiled. “This isn’t exactly what you’d call a wagon train, not by any stretch of the imagination, and I’m thinking that however we arrange ourselves, we’re going to be vulnerable somewhere.”

The carpenter Comyns was listening intently. Fifty years old or thereabouts, massive head, mane like an elderly lion’s. Brown eyes fierce as a prophet’s under shaggy white brows. Nose like a wedge, lips thick and purple as calf’s liver. There was something scary about him, reminded Bobbo of when his father messed with his damn snakes, though with Comyns it seemed the usual and not the peculiar. His sons were by his first wife. They resembled their father in every respect save the white hair and brows.

“So what I’d like to do, with your permission,” Timothy said, “is arrange the camp each night with a fire in the center, and a wagon at each of the four compass points. We’ll keep the animals inside, same as the military did, and mount the first guard at nine o’clock.”

“Till when?” Comyns asked.

“Till sunrise.”

“That’s a good nine hours.”

“Yes, and there’re seven of us here,” Timothy said. “I thought we’d relieve every three hours, two men to the watch, each of us having a night off once a week. I can’t see any other way of doing it, not with so small a party.”

“That sounds fair to me,” Comyns said.

“You think we need be so careful, this stage of the journey?” Willoughby asked.

He was a tall thin man with a tanned and weathered face. Dressed in brown the color of earth, he looked altogether like what he was, a farmer plain and simple. The firelight flickered on his hands. He was wringing them as he spoke, kept wringing them as he waited for Timothy’s reply. Made Bobbo nervous, the way he fidgeted all the time.

“Well, there’s not much danger of Indian attack just now,” Timothy said. “But there might be an ambitious brave out there itching to get his hands on some horses, so caution won’t hurt. Besides, it’ll be good practice for later on,” he said, and again smiled.

They moved the wagons and posted the first guard, the two young Comyns boys roaming the perimeter from side to side. The night was still save for the crackle of the fire and the low murmur of the wind. At the fire, Willoughby sat beside Hadley, staring into the flames. He said nothing for the longest time, just kept wringing his hands like he was washing them. Some twenty feet beyond, Minerva stood staring out over the prairie, her arms folded across her waist as protectively as the ring of wagons surrounding the fire. Willoughby sighed at last and nodded to himself, and Hadley knew he’d made a decision about something or other. But he didn’t suppose the man was about to share it with him, and was surprised when he did.

“I’m not sure I want to continue on,” Willoughby said.

It seemed to pain him to say the words. They came from his lips with some effort, as though he were trying to strangle them back. He kept wringing his hands in the light of the fire, but the rest of his body was still as granite. Only the hands moved.

“I’m fearful for the young’un,” he said. “My older daughter and me can endure. But I’m not sure about the young’un.” He nodded again, affirming his decision, strengthening it. “I should’ve waited till next year. I knew the damn wagons’d be gone by now, but I was hopin to catch up. I had to get away from Pennsylvania, you see. My wife passed on not long ago, I had to get away. Did you know my wife had died?”

“Yes,” Hadley said. “I knew that.”

“And you see, I thought to get away. The house there, the farm, it was far too big for just the two girls and me; I needed to get away from it. Start again someplace. But now I’m fearful for the young’un. Your eldest daughter is grand with her, by the way, I’m thankful to you, she relieves the burden. But you see, it’s just... I keep imagining the Indians laying hold of her. Raising her up like their own. I’ve read tales of that, have you not? Wouldn’t recognize her as mine fifteen years from now. Look just like Oates’s squaw there in the wagon,” Willoughby said, gesturing with his head. “And I keep think-in the older one’s none too safe neither, the Indians decide to attack. We’re a small party, that can’t escape their attention if they’re of a mind to come raiding. They’ll have counted the men and the animals, they’ll know for sure we’re vulnerable. Seeing all the young girls — there’re lots of young girls in this party — they might consider it a tempting proposition, as well they might anyway, even without the promise of reward greater than livestock. I’m frankly worried. I’m thinking of turning back.”

“Alone?” Hadley asked.

“Or with as many as’ll come with me. We’re but fifteen miles from Independence, and the Indians behind us are friendly, or so Oates has said. I’m not afraid to risk it alone if I have to. I’m thinking it’s the wisest move.” Willoughby hesitated, and then turned to look into Hadley’s face. “What do you think?”

“I don’t wish to advise you,” Hadley said. “Was you to get scalped on the way back to Independence, I wouldn’t want that weighin on me.”

“Well, there’s not much danger of that.”

“True enough, the real danger’s ahead, not behind.”

“Which is just the matter of it,” Willoughby said.

“I’m not following.”

“They’ll think me cowardly.”

“Who will?”

“The others. And maybe you as well.”

“I judge not that I be not judged,” Hadley said. “You’re to do what you think right, Willoughby. If there’s a man here can say how he’d act was a band of wild Indians to come riding in off the prairie, I’d like to meet him.”

“I’m not afraid for myself, you know,” Willoughby said. “It’s for the girls I’d be doing it Especially the young’un.”

“Aye,” Hadley said, and the men fell silent.

Willoughby was wringing his hands again.

“Guess maybe I’ll have to think it out a bit more,” he said.

“As you wish,” Hadley said.

“Don’t want to wait till it’s too late, though.”

“No.”

“Get much farther from Independence...” He let the sentence trail. Sighing, he rose ponderously. “Good night, Chisholm,” he said, and Hadley said, “Good night, Willoughby,” and watched as the man walked over to his wagon and peeked inside to where the little one was sleeping. He came back to the fire then, took off his boots, and crawled under a blanket. In the flickering light, Hadley could see his hands pressed together in prayer, his eyes closed. The night was cool, not a star showing, the moon obscured by heavy clouds that rolled in off the prairie. Hadley rose, and stretched, and walked to where Minerva yet stood, tall and silent, staring out over the prairie ahead.

“Look at it,” she said. “It stretches to nowhere.”

“It stretches to California.”

“I prefer Virginia, thank ye.”

“Willoughby’s talking of turning back,” Hadley said.

“Then let’s go with him,” Minerva said at once.

“I think not.”

“Do you not miss home?”

“I miss it.”

“Do you not long for Virginia?”

“With all my heart, Min.”

“Then, Hadley, darlin...”

“I think we’ve got to make this journey, Min, or else learn how to die on land won’t support us.”

“Won’t we learn to die out there as well?” Minerva asked, and turned again toward the empty prairie.

The wind was blowing in from the west; it set the low bushes to rattling. They both squinted against a sudden gust, and turned their backs to it. The wagon covers were flapping, sparks were dancing in the air above the fire. Hadley put his arm around her, and they walked to the fire together. From the open-topped Oates wagon, they could hear the Indian woman murmuring in her sleep.

Hadley took off his boots, and watched as Minerva delicately pulled back the hem of her skirt and began unlacing her shoes. Her legs were still as splendid as they’d been when first he viewed them on their wedding night, Minerva standing tall and still and radiantly expectant. Her slender ankles were revealed now as she dropped one shoe and then the other to the ground, and lowered her skirt again, raising her eyes to catch his glance. A thin, knowledgeable smile crossed her mouth. She unbuttoned the bodice over her bosom, still firm and ample. There were things on a woman never changed, Hadley thought: legs and hips and bosom; that was a fact. Well, maybe they changed just a mite.

Beneath the blanket together, she rested her head on his shoulder and her hand on his chest, the way she’d done for as long as he could remember. They were silent for a bit. Then she whispered, “What do you think of the carpenter’s wife?”

“What about her?”

“She does go on nursin that child of hers,” Minerva said. “Yankin out a teat ten, twelve times a day, never mind who’s lookin.”

“Ain’t nobody lookin,” Hadley said.

“Bobbo’s looking. You ought to tell him to quit, Hadley.”

“Hell, Min, she’s just sucklin the babe, is all.”

“Ain’t a baby alive can take that much milk ’thout turnin into a calf,” Minerva said, and Hadley burst out laughing.

She tried to shush him, but she was laughing herself now. In the night, they clung to each other and quaked with laughter while the wind howled in over the prairie. And at last, when they had both quieted down again, Minerva telling him to hush now before he waked the entire party, Hadley claiming it was her cackling like a hen, she whispered again to him about Bobbo, and he promised to warn the boy against spying on Mrs. Comyns. “Though she has got a fine pair of pumpkins there,” Hadley said, and Minerva got to laughing again till someone from one of the wagons — they thought it was the Indian woman, but hushing sounded just the same in any language — shhed at them to keep still.

They were adept at making love with others sleeping not a stone’s throw away. Silently, they went about it. And as always, Hadley had to clap his hand over Minerva’s mouth to stifle the scream that would have wakened living and dead alike and caused St. Peter at the pearlies to think for sure that sinners had taken over the earth and were reveling in the joys of the flesh.

In a little while, it began raining gently.

By two in the morning, the camp was a quagmire. What had started as the mildest of rainfalls became a blustery fearsome storm that woke the entire party and sent them scurrying for cover inside or under the wagons. Bobbo, standing guard with Timothy, walked from position to position around the perimeter, peering through the heavy rain, listening for sounds other than those he could readily recognize, not knowing what on earth an Indian might sound like in the dark. Probably wouldn’t sound like nothing at all, wouldn’t even make a whisper, just zzzzzzzt, and your throat’d be cut, and zzzzzzzt, your scalp’d be taken.

He passed the Comyns wagon, and thought of Sarah Comyns inside there, and wondered was she naked. Seemed to Bobbo she nursed her infant daughter far too often for the comfort of the men in the party, though suckling wasn’t no sin and a breast nothing to hide. He’d caught himself stealing a glance at her more than once today, and was fearful the carpenter might have noticed. Had enormous hands, Comyns did, could just see them gripping a hammer and driving a nail home. Bobbo’d witnessed enough women suckling their babes back home; wasn’t right to stare that way each time Sarah yanked herself out of her bodice and began squeezing. Blondy-haired she was, same as Rachel Lowery, who his brother Gideon had fucked. Freckles on the full sloping tops of her breasts. Bobbo guessed she was twenty-four or — five, the carpenter’s second wife.

The rain kept falling.

Bobbo walked the perimeter with his pants bulging, thinking of Sarah Comyns, thinking of Rachel Lowery, even thinking of the Indian woman who was Timothy’s wife, wondering what her quim might be like under that long elkskin skirt, Indian black and Indian tangled, he supposed, thick as the hair on her—

He heard something.

He stopped dead, raised the rifle.

There. Again.

The sound was coming from within the circle. He whirled, his finger on the trigger.

Timothy Oates was huddled under his wagon, a blanket tented over his head, his rifle in his lap. He was guzzling whiskey from a bottle. Bobbo stared at him in disbelief. Timothy had traveled with the military; he certainly knew better than to leave his post, rain or not! A man standing guard did not run under a wagon when a few raindrops fell. He did not cradle his rifle in his lap. He especially did not swill booze from a bottle.

Bobbo sprinted across the circle. Rain drilled the enclosure, sending up wet puffs of mud wherever it struck the ground. It rattled on twill covers, soaked the open wagon under which Timothy Oates crouched, with his wife beside him. Bobbo knelt and peered under the wagon.

“I know,” Timothy said. “I drink too much.”

“We’ve a watch to stand here,” Bobbo said. “Come out from under the cart.”

“It’s raining,” Timothy said.

“I know it’s raining,” Bobbo said. “Rain is what I’m standing in here. Now come on out of there before we’re scalped in our sleep.”

“We’ll neither of us be scalped in our sleep,” Timothy said, “since neither of us is asleep, you’ll notice.”

“I’m talking of the others. Come on now — get out from under that wagon.”

“I prefer it here, I think, to there.”

“Are you drunk, man?”

“Yes, I’m drunk,” Timothy said, and nodded.

“Then a cold bath’ll sober you,” Bobbo said, and yanked him out from under the wagon while the Indian woman shrieked and howled to the night as though her husband were being dragged to a hanging tree. It was the most Bobbo had heard from her since they’d left Independence, but he was in no mood for her yelling, especially since he understood not a word of it. He told her to shut up, and was surprised when she obeyed. From inside the Comyns wagon, Sarah asked, “Is it Indians? Is it an attack?” and Timothy replied in his drunken stupor, “It is an Indian, madam, but not an attack,” and Sarah said, “What? What did he say, Jonah?” and Comyns said, “Hush.”

In the rain, Bobbo walked Timothy around the perimeter from wagon to wagon, supporting him with one arm around his waist, his hand clutching the leather belt there, his other hand holding his rifle upside down so that rain wouldn’t enter the barrel. Timothy began singing.

“Quiet,” Bobbo said. “How’d you get so drunk, man?”

“By drinking,” Timothy said, interrupting his song for just an instant and then bellowing into the rain again. He was singing in gibberish, it seemed at first, till Bobbo realized he was using an Indian tongue, more’n likely his wife’s. “An-pe tu wi,” he sang, “tan-yan hi-na pa nun...”

“Shut up, man,” Bobbo said. “You’ll wake the camp.”

“It’s a fair-weather song,” Timothy said, reeling, almost knocking Bobbo into the mud, and then bellowing again, “We he a he, an-pe-tu...”

“Be still.”

“Wi tan-yan...”

“Shhh, shh.”

“Learned it from the Sioux,” Timothy said, and suddenly began singing it in English, bellowing it as before, but at least making sense now. “May the sun rise well,” he sang, “may the earth appear, brightly shone upon,” and was suddenly silent while the rain poured down as before. A lot of good his fair-weather song had done. Bobbo walked him around in the storm, hardly looking for Indians at all now, though half convinced that Timothy’s song would have drawn raiding parties of whatever tribes were currently warring with the Sioux. Bobbo had no idea who those might be, nor even any idea whether this was Sioux country or Cheyenne or whatever; only Indians he’d ever seen were the handful of Cherokee, Creek, or Chickasaw in Virginia. Them and the woman silent now under Timothy’s cart.

“Do you know why I drink?” Timothy asked.

“Why?”

“I drink, that’s right, Bobbo.”

“I can see that.”

“You know why?”

“Why?”

“Catlin,” Timothy said.

“Cattle?”

“Catlin, Catlin.”

“What’s catlin?”

“It’s who,” Timothy said.

“Make sense, man.”

“George Catlin.”

“Who’s George Catlin?”

“An artist.”

“What’s he got to do with your drinking?”

“Never mind,” Timothy said. “Let’s go back under the wagon. It’s wet out here, Bobbo.”

“Timothy, you’ve put the party in danger, getting drunk this way.”

“That’s right, I’m a drunk.”

“I don’t know as you’re a drunk, but you’re drunk for sure tonight.”

“It’s Catlin.”

“Sure, sure,” Bobbo said.

“Who’s better?” Timothy asked. “Catlin or me?”

“I don’t know the man. Now hear me well, cause—”

“Bobbo, let’s get out of the rain. Jt’s cold out here, Bobbo. What are we doing marching around in these puddles?”

“We’re sobering you up, is what we’re doing. Now listen to me, Timothy. If we’re to trust you to lead us west—”

“You can trust me. Do you know how many times I’ve traveled to the Rocky Mountains and back?”

“How many?”

“Ten times, that’s right. With the military,” Timothy said, and nodded. “But not a soldier, nossir. An artist!” he shouted, and raised his right hand, the forefinger extended as though proclaiming his profession to the night, and to the raging storm, and perhaps to God Almighty Himself. “Better than Catlin, you want to know. No matter what you may say or think, I’m the better artist. That’s a fact, Bobbo.”

They marched about in the rain from wagon to wagon, drenched to their bones now, boots and trousers thick with mud, clothes hanging sodden and limp, the normally stiff brim of Timothy’s flat black hat flopping loose around his ears and his forehead and the back of his head, his rusty beard bedraggled.

“Know this trail like my own backside,” he said, “can navigate it blindfolded, been back and forth ten times. Know Indians, too, better’n that fuckin Catlin, can draw and paint em better’n he can. But who gets all the glory, eh?”

“Catlin,” Bobbo said.

“Catlin, right.”

Catlin was his subject, his cause, and his passion. It was Catlin finally sobered him up, but it was Catlin’d no doubt cause him to drink himself drunk again. Bobbo now understood that Catlin was an artist who painted Indians, same as did Timothy. Practiced law in Philadelphia for a few years and then gave it up to study art. Became a portrait painter in New York before he headed west some twelve years back, to live with Indians and paint them. That was two years before Timothy himself got the idea of doing the very same thing.

“Too late,” he said. “Got back to Philadelphia, dealers said it was divitive.”

“Was what?”

“Drivitive.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“My work! Divitive. One publisher... Jesus! Said I’d copied Catlin’s painting of Laramie! More mistakes in it... laughable. Said I’d copied it. Hadn’t even met the man! Didn’t know he existed! Ah, shit, Bobbo,” he said, and began weeping.

His rage was exhausted before it was time to wake the next watch. Exhausted but not vanquished; it would never be that, Bobbo suspected, though drown it over and again Timothy might. He helped the man back to his wagon, where the Indian woman undressed him, and dried him, and put him to sleep. The rain had stopped, the wagon covers were sodden. The ground he and Timothy had traversed back and forth through half the night looked as though a herd of cattle had stampeded through it. Bobbo went to rouse his father and the Baltimore carpenter, and then went to sleep himself. When he wakened again at sunrise, the first thing he thought was that he’d have to look at Timothy’s pictures one day.

The Comyns lads, whose task it was, led the animals outside the circle of wagons, hobbling them where they might graze till it was time to move on. The aroma of coffee filled the morning air, setting to rumble stomachs empty since the night before. In Independence, the party had pooled its resources to purchase the stores needed for the long journey. There would be game ahead, Timothy told them, and friendly Indians wanting to barter fresh vegetables and fruit. But they stocked the wagons with staples nonetheless, and were carrying in addition such luxuries as coffee, bacon, and eggs. The bacon was packed in barrels of bran to keep it from rotting in the mid-June heat. The eggs were similarly packed in meal, which would be used for baking bread once the eggs had been eaten. Coffee was the most expensive luxury, but Timothy told them it would disguise the bitter taste of water that had alkali in it. Bacon sizzled in the skillets now, and eggs were dropped into the pan, and soon were crackling in the bubbling grease. They finished breakfast by six-fifteen on that morning of the eleventh, and were on the trail again not ten minutes later.

Minerva hadn’t realized how lonely she’d been for the companionship of another woman. They had left Independence only yesterday morning, but now with the new day stretching ahead as endlessly as the prairie itself, she turned eagerly to Sarah Comyns.

“I’ve never been to Baltimore,” she said. “What sort of place is it?”

“Oh, it’s very nice,” Sarah said.

Silence.

They were sitting together inside the Comyns wagon, sunlight illuminating the cover so that everything within took on a golden glow. The wagon was packed even more tightly than the Chisholms’ own. They sat on stools the carpenter himself had made, swaying with the roll of the wagon, bouncing whenever it hit a ridge or a rut. The baby was asleep on Sarah’s lap. This morning she’d suckled the child in the privacy of her own wagon; Minerva guessed the carpenter had spoken to her about showing her teats to all and any.

“Big city, is it?” Minerva said.

“Oh, yes,” Sarah said.

“About the size of Louisville?”

“I guess,” Sarah said.

Silence.

“Did you live in the city itself?” Minerva asked. “Or outside of it?”

“Yes.”

“In it?”

“Yes.”

Silence.

“Husband have a shop there?”

“Yes,” Sarah said.

“Must be interestin being married to a man can fashion things with his own two hands.”

“Yes, it is,” Sarah said.

“Hadley puts his hand to making a table or chair, it comes out all catty-wampus.”

“Oh, yes,” Sarah said, and laughed.

“My Gideon’s the one has a sure hand with a hammer and nail,” Minerva said. “You haven’t met him; he’s off with his brother in Illinois. Man stole my eldest son’s horse, big raindrop gelding, beauty of a horse. Just rode off with it one night. I miss him somethin fierce,” she said, and found herself confiding to Sarah that Gideon was her favorite, had been from the minute the granny woman laid him puny and wet across her belly. Loved them all to death, she did, but for Gideon she felt something special, a kind of... joy, she supposed it was, every time she saw him. She knew it was wrong worrying about them the way she did; they were both grown men and knew how to take care of themselves. But they’d been gone more’n three weeks already. Last time she’d seen them was on the twentieth of May, Gideon waving from his saddle, big grin on his face.

“I guess that’s the nature of it, though,” Minerva said. “Worrying over your children even when they’re all growed up.”

“Oh, yes,” Sarah said.

Minerva decided she was a twit.

When they stopped for their nooning that day, it seemed a break in the routine, though it was itself a part of it. The sky had been blown flawlessly clear by the storm the night before; they could see everywhere around them for miles and miles. A stream surprised the landscape here. They watered the animals and drank themselves, and then filled the barrels and kegs. Bobbo and the Comyns boys started the cooking fires, and the women fried the meat and boiled the vegetables they’d bought in Independence. There was the smell of coffee and of warmed corn bread. After the noonday meal, they dozed. The voices of Annabel and Willoughby’s eldest girl broke the golden stillness.

“Do you get it now?”

“No, I don’t.”

She had stringy brown hair and eyes like a cat’s, yellow with flecks of green. Must’ve been her mother’s eyes; Willoughby’s were as brown as Christmas pudding. Her name was Julia.

“It’s a cipher, is all,” Annabel said.

“But what use is it?”

“Say I want to send you a letter in Lancaster—”

“I don’t live in Lancaster no more.”

“Just say. And I wanted to tell you something secret.”

“What would you want to tell me?”

“Well... I don’t know,” Annabel said. “Say I wanted to cuss or somethin.”

“Would you?”

“Course not, we’re just sayin. So I’d whip out the cipher here and write it all in code, and nobody but you or me’d be able to read it.”

“Let me see it again,” Julia said.

Annabel showed her the scrap of paper.

“Say you wanted to make an A,” Annabel said.

“Yeah, how’d you do it?”

“You see those lines around the A there?”

“What lines?”

“The one under it, and the one comin down to meet it. You just draw them two lines instead of the A,” Annabel said. “Them two lines take the place of the A — you get it?”

Julia studied the cipher again. “But then it’d be the same for J, wouldn’t it?”

“No, the J’s got a dot.”

“Oh,” Julia said. “Yeah.”

“You get it now?”

“Yeah,” Julia said, nodding.

“It’s good, ain’t it?”

“It’s real good,” Julia said. “Where’d you learn it?”

“Everybody back home knows it,” Annabel said.

What had appeared dull in southern Illinois seemed exciting now in retrospect. There, at least, a ridge, a knoll, a hillock rose occasionally to startle the unexpecting eye. Here, there was a wide road trodden level, the land on either side of it as flat as the road itself, stretching toward a horizon visible wherever one turned.

The effect was stultifying.

The wagons moved at the center of a perfect circle, the circle unchanging, the landscape eternally the same, the mules and the oxen and the horses plodding ahead but succeeding only in moving the circle intact, center and circumference, so that there was a sense of standing still rather than progressing.

They came fourteen miles that second day. The day before, they’d come sixteen by the chart. They were bone-weary when they formed the circle again at sunset. They made their fires, they posted their guards. They ate. They slept. In the morning, they moved on again.

They were emigrants, they supposed.

You look forward to nooning, Bobbo thought.

Damnedest thing ever.

Get off your horse, stretch your bones, eat some good hot food. Sit around afterward doing nothing. Just looking all around. Dozing. Looking again. Over there in the back of the Oates cart was Timothy’s Indian wife. Never budged out of that cart. Sat there day and night, you’d think her backside was glued to it. Appeared every bit as sorrowful as the widower, staring out over the prairie. Always looked west. Bobbo followed her gaze one time. Thought maybe she was seeing something he couldn’t make out. Wasn’t nothing out there. Not a damn thing.

Timothy’d brought her some food, and now he was taking his sketch pad and a boxful of pencils from the cart. Way he talked about painting and drawing made it sound like it was work. Like plowing a field or shoeing a horse. Bobbo couldn’t understand that. Friend of his, Roger Colby back home, was always drawing pictures, too, some of them pretty enough to frame. Bobbo himself couldn’t draw a straight line, but he admired people who could do that sort of thing. Draw pictures, a dogwood tree or something. But work? Hell, it wasn’t work. Still hadn’t seen any of Timothy’s pictures, didn’t know whether the man could really draw or was just wasting his own good time and God’s, too. He was sitting on a big rock now, watching every move the carpenter made. Trying to get a likeness, Bobbo supposed.

There was the widower Willoughby, sorrowful as could be. Never knew when he wa9 going to break into tears. Last night just before supper, Annabel said something about the nice stitching on the pinafore his toddler was wearing. Willoughby put his face in his hands and started crying. Must’ve been his wife had made the pinafore. Went back to his wagon, climbed up on the seat, sat there with his face in his hands, weeping. Wouldn’t touch a bite of food. His daughter Julia went over to him and touched him on the shoulder.

“Pa?” she said.

“Yes, darlin.”

“Pa?”

“Yes, darlin, that’s all right, darlin.”

Timothy was still trying to draw a picture of the carpenter. Be a miracle if he got anything at all down on paper, way Comyns ran around like a man half his age. Maybe had to move fast to keep that titty young wife of his happy on her back. Bobbo got up from where he was sitting, and wandered over to Timothy. His head bent over his pad, he kept scribbling away with the pencil. Bobbo stood directly in front of him, trying to sneak a look around the edge of the pad. Didn’t want the man to think he was nosy.

“How many miles you expect we’ll cover today?” he asked.

“Oh, fourteen, fifteen,” Timothy said, without looking up.

“Has Willoughby talked to you about maybe turning back?”

“He has.”

“Do you think he will?”

“I’m hoping not,” Timothy said.

“Seems a man talking about it so much is a man going to do it. Don’t it appear that way to you?”

“Maybe,” Timothy said. “What do you think of this?” he asked suddenly, and turned the pad so Bobbo could see it.

Jonah Comyns was there on paper exactly.

Quick sure pencil strokes delineated the long angular body with its massive chest and shoulders, the oversize hands and thick fingers. A thatch of hair sprouted from the head of the drawn image as wildly and as randomly as did Comyns’s real hair. Here, too, were the quirky eyebrows and fiercely burning eyes, the nose that could split a log, the thickish lips, and something more — Timothy had captured on paper the restless energy of the man. Looking at the pencil sketch, Bobbo was certain it would leap off the page at any moment, run scurrying to tend to the animals or the fire, shout an order to a son.

He did not know he could be so moved by pencil marks on paper. Speechlessly, he stared at the drawing, and realized that Timothy was waiting for his reaction.

“It’s the most beautiful thing I ever seen,” Bobbo said.

There was an instant’s silence. Timothy looked up sharply into Bobbo’s face, searching it for insincerity. Then, so softly Bobbo almost couldn’t hear him, he said, “Thank you.”

Sarah Comyns was nursing her baby when the Indian appeared.

They’d camped the night of the thirteenth on the bluffs overlooking the Kansas River, three to four miles wide there, the river valley thick with timber, the hills rising from a prairieland as green as Minerva’s eyes. In the morning, they moved on to a nooning place where the river was boiling yellow. Their rest period seemed in contrast more peaceful than it normally did, the stillness of the camp exaggerated by the incessant roar of the river. The men were talking about how they planned to get to the other side. Timothy suggested that they take off the wheels and float the wagons across like barges. But there were no hides to nail to the bottoms, and Comyns was afraid they’d sink without waterproofing. Hadley thought they should build themselves a raft. There was plenty timber to cut, and fashioning a raft was a simple thing enough. The women had washed the dinnerware and put it up already; Minerva and the girls were resting now in the shade under the trees. Inside the Comyns wagon, Sarah briskly removed a breast from within the unbuttoned yoke of her bodice, reacquainted her baby’s mouth with the oozing nipple, and then cupped breast in hand, kneading it, her eyes closed as the baby began to suck. When lazily she opened her eyes again, the Indian was staring in at her from the rear of the wagon.

He was at least five feet ten inches tall, his face an oval with prominent cheekbones, eyes almost the color of his skin, long black hair falling to his shoulders. He said something to her, Sarah didn’t know what and didn’t care. She yanked her squirting breasts loose from her baby’s mouth and began screaming. The Indian turned and ran from the wagon. He got no more than ten feet toward the woods beyond when Jonah Comyns dragged him kicking to the ground. There was a pistol in Comyns’s hand. He put it at once to the Indian’s head. In that moment, Timothy came running around the corner of the wagon. “Hold your fire!” he yelled, and clamped both hands onto the carpenter’s wrist.

“Let go!” Comyns shouted. “I’ll shoot the bastard dead!”

Inside the wagon, the baby began shrieking. The Indian was babbling frantically now, the pistol flailing closer and closer to his head, Timothy desperately trying to hear his words over the baby’s squawling and Comyns’s shouting. The widower Willoughby came running toward the wagon with his suspenders hanging, a rifle in his hands, his face pale. The youngest Comyns boy ran up and began dancing a frightened little jig.

“Let him be!” Timothy shouted. “He wants to ferry us across the river!”

From inside the wagon, Sarah said, “He spied me naked.”

The Indian was a Delaware.

He had come as spokesman for his tribe, searching for someone with whom he might negotiate, and had peered into the nearest wagon only to find himself face to face with a crazed white woman. Now that everyone had calmed down, he explained that his tribe, together with their partners the Shawnee, had constructed a raft sturdy enough to transport the party across the river. This for a price the white man would surely recognize as reasonable. He said all this in Algonquian — which Timothy understood but incompletely. He gathered the Delaware’s name was Ferocious Storm, but it might well have been Fearful Storm, or indeed Fear of Storms; the Indian spoke quite rapidly, never once deferring to Timothy, who was trying to converse in a tongue not his own.

Ferocious Storm asked a gallon jug of whiskey for each wagon his people carried across the river. In addition, he wanted four eggs for each. And three kegs of flour. And a dozen trinkets he would personally select from whatever jewelry the women had with them, plus thirteen yards of blue homespun.

They haggled for close to an hour.

By the end of that time, Ferocious Storm had reduced his total price to one gallon jug of whiskey, half a dozen eggs, two small kegs of flour, two calico bonnets he saw the women in the camp wearing, and in place of the jewelry and the thirteen yards of homespun, six slabs of bacon. Timothy said they would give the Indians all save the whiskey and the meat.

“Then I will have some sweets,” Ferocious Storm said.

“Sweets as how?” Timothy asked. “Preserves.”

“In what amount?”

“Three jars of fruits.”

“Nonsense.”

“It is my price,” Ferocious Storm said, and rose to leave.

“Two jars and we have a bargain.”

“The river is high; we will have to work hard against it. Three jars.”

“And if we lose livestock or property in the river?” Timothy asked.

“Then there is no price. You have made the crossing without it costing you a penny.” Ferocious Storm grinned suddenly. His teeth were stained a brown darker than his skin, and some of them were missing, and the rest of them were crooked. But his smile was so contagiously mirthsome that it caused all the men standing around him to grin in return. “And if any of you should drown,” he said, smiling, “we will pay you the agreed-upon price.”

Timothy laughed. The others, not knowing what had been said, laughed too. The bargaining had been concluded.

The Indians had built their landing at a bend downstream, where a rock-strewn cove of silt and coarse sand formed a small natural harbor. Their vessel was a raft some fifteen feet wide and thirty long. It lay at the landing now, its forward end lashed at each corner to the makeshift dock, its stern — if one could so distinguish either end from the other — tossing and bobbing in the restless current. The raft looked flimsy and primitive, its lashings frayed, its logs of uneven length, battered and skinned from collisions with river rocks and floating timber.

Close by the landing, a white man crouched over a small pit, striking sparks from his flint into a bed of tinder. He was brown and grizzled, the knuckles on his hands oversized, the wrists bony; he seemed to be made altogether of sinew. A woman probably his wife was coming up from the river carrying meat dripping water. She was as tall, as spare, and as brown as he was. Her flowered dress and sunbonnet were both faded almost white and one of her shoes was worn through at the little toe. A little way off, a covered wagon stood on a grassy level patch of earth. A pair of hobbled oxen were grazing alongside it. Two young boys with pale pinched faces peered through the puckered opening of the cover.

The woman put the meat into a skillet. Her husband asked her to get some buffalo chips from the wagon, and she went to it and returned a moment later carrying a handful of dried dung. Hadley knew there were no buffalo this side of the Kansas nor even anywhere nearby on the other side. So where’d the buffalo chips come from?

“Good morning, sir,” he said.

“How d’you do, sir?” the man said, and glanced up briefy at Hadley, and then went back to the fire.

“Hadley Chisholm,” Hadley said.

“Ralph Hutchinson.” He did not introduce the woman. She stood waiting for the tinder to catch. When it did, she dropped the buffalo chips into it and fanned them to a blaze with her bonnet.

“Where are you bound, sir, may I ask?” Hadley said.

“East to Council Bluffs,” Hutchinson said.

From the corner of his eye, Hadley saw Jonah Comyns walking up from the river landing, where he’d been inspecting the raft. “Are you traveling alone then?” he asked.

“Just me and mine,” Hutchinson said. “Left a train of eleven wagons bound for Oregon.”

Comyns was at the fire now. He nodded to Hutchinson in brief greeting. Hutchinson nodded back.

“How far ahead are they?” Hadley asked.

“Left them a week ago.”

“Any reason?”

“Children took ill,” Hutchinson said.

“Of what?” Comyns asked at once.

“We thought at first it was cholera, like swept the land in ’32.”

“What was it then?”

“Don’t know,” Hutchinson said, and shook his head. “Camp fever, I guess. More’n a dozen in our party came down with it.”

Comyns’s eyes looked troubled; they kept darting to where Sarah stood talking to Bonnie Sue, the baby in her arms. Hadley didn’t like what was happening. He knew the Pennsylvania widower had been preaching turnabout to anyone who’d listen. Here now was a man telling of fever on the trail ahead, and Comyns was taking it all in. Willoughby came up to the fire and stood there like a spook, tall and mournful, his ears open as water jugs.

“Is there game ahead, though?” Comyns asked.

“Game aplenty,” Hutchinson said. “You won’t go hungry on the plains unless you’re lazy. This is buffalo meat right here. Wife was just down the river cuttin out the maggots and givin it a rinse.”

“Are there Indians beyond?” Willoughby asked.

“Yep,” Hutchinson said. “That’s what there is out there; that’s Indian territory out there.” He brought the skillet to the fire, leveled it on the rocks surrounding the pit and the flames. The meat began to sizzle at once. Its aroma was unlike anything Hadley had ever sniffed before. He’d eaten breakfast not an hour and a half before, yet the smell of the cooking meat set his stomach to growling again.

“But you can kill an Indian by putting a bullet in him,” Hutchinson said. “I don’t know any way to kill a thing I can’t see, that’s causin my sons to burn with fever. I fear disease,” he said simply.

“And I,” Comyns said.

“The trail back to Council Bluffs? Has there been rain to turn it soft?”

“We came from Independence,” Comyns said. “There was rain Monday night, but only sunshine since.”

“Ah, good then,” Hutchinson said.

“I can’t risk it,” Comyns said abruptly. “I’m sorry, Chisholm, I cannot risk it. I’d brave the river, I’d shoot wild Indians, but I can’t risk the infant coming down with a fever might consume her. I’m sorry,” he said, and shook his head, and turned again to Hutchinson. “If you want company the way back,” he said, “there’s me and my family’ll provide it, sir.”

“Welcome then,” Hutchinson said.

Hadley waited.

“I’ll join you, too,” Willoughby said, and nodded.

Bobbo watched wagon and raft whirling away from the dock and was certain all their goods would be carried clear back to Westport, where the river poured into the Missouri at the center of the nation. The Indians were wearing only breechclouts and moccasins, shouting instructions to each other in the language common to both their tribes poling the raft across the river as if it were a pony they’d each and separately ridden before. By the time they returned again to the right bank to collect the humans and the livestock, Bobbo was beginning to feel a bit more confident of their skill. But that was before the raft lurched away from the landing and the current caught at it and sent its forward end plunging below the surface for a heart-stopping thirty seconds.

It was worse than the Falls of Ohio.

The mules began pawing at once, pulling against the pickets driven into the logs, braying as they had on the descent through the Kentucky chute. The raft dove again, water coming up over its forward end to engulf it, the river hitting Bobbo’s face in a harsh cold smack. He closed his eyes against it, and then opened them again immediately, fearing he’d drown without witnessing the cause of it. Muscles rippled like whitleather along the brown backs of the Indians. Biceps bulging, breechclouts slapping about their legs, they stepped swiftly and constantly for balance, as if dancing a jig across the river. When at last the raft reached the opposite shore, Bobbo looked back and marveled that he was still alive. Timothy haggled further with Ferocious Storm, who insisted that the agreed-upon price be honored even though the Indians had ferried across only two wagons rather than four. Timothy staunchly maintained that the price should be cut in half. They reached a compromise Ferocious Storm apparently did not enjoy. He muttered something in his native tongue and then carried the bartered merchandise onto the raft, lashed it down tightly, and crossed the river again with his partners, never once looking back at the white men standing wet and bedraggled on the shore.

They camped for the night on a bend of the river some ten or twelve miles upstream. The sunset was more vivid than any they had ever seen back home. The entire horizon glowed with orange and gold that turned a deeper red and then a purple like gerardia. Blue then. And black. The blackest night, not a single star showing.

There were only the two wagons now.

You rode the seat till your backside was sore and aching, sun beating down on you, mules shitting — you could find the damn trail west just by following the animal shit of the party ahead. There was always the stench of manure in your nostrils. You’d think out here in the open, the stink’d be blown away in a minute, but you was moving so slow all the time, just that damn steady pace of the mules, that whenever one of them let go, you always got a whiff could knock you off the wagon seat. Walked beside the wagon sometimes. Got off the seat and walked. You could keep up easy enough, wagon was going so slow. Walked awhile, then got back up on the seat again, swapped places with Pa maybe, handled the reins awhile. Or went back inside to sit with Ma and the girls. Got your brains jiggled all the time.

Kept moving.

Through a valley thick with grass high as your waist. Streams fanning out from the river like the veins on the backs of your hands. Clouds coming up over the timbered hills behind.

When you was driving the mules, you yelled “Ha-ya!”

Some fun, this moving on west.

“I’m afraid here,” Annabel said.

“Ain’t nothin to be afraid of.”

“Yes, Indians,” she said.

They came calling on the morning of the seventeenth.

There were six in all — four full-blooded Kansas braves, a woman who was squaw to one of them, and a half-breed trailing a cow. Timothy hid his wife inside the covered Chisholm wagon, and went out to greet them. Their language was Siouan, which Timothy could only sing. But the half-breed knew some English, and they were able to communicate. He wanted to trade the cow for a horse. He kept looking around for where they had hobbled their horses.

“For cow, horse,” he said.

“We have no horses,” Timothy said.

The half-breed looked around.

“No horse,” he said.

“Correct. No horse.”

“Mule then. Two mules. For cow.” He held up two fingers. “Two.”

“We need the mules,” Timothy said.

“Then what?” the half-breed asked.

The squaw spoke French. She said, “Qu’est-ce que c’est? I’l n’y a pas un cheval?”

The half-breed blinked.

“Pas des cheveaux,” Timothy said.

“Alors,” she said, and clucked her tongue.

They had fresh vegetables to trade, butter and milk. They showed the produce — onions, beans, lettuce, pumpkins, corn — and invited tastes of the milk and butter to prove the one wasn’t sour and the other churned to creamy smoothness. When they left the encampment, they were carrying with them a string of beads that had been Annabel’s, and a pocket watch Timothy claimed he would not need once they reached the Platte. Minerva, too, had been willing to part with half her tin of coffee for the good fresh milk and the sweet butter. The squaw called back “Au’voir,” and the party rode off through the trees.

Timothy explained then why he’d hidden his wife.

“There’re two tribes who’ve been at war with the Pawnee since last spring,” he said. “One’s the Dakota, beyond and to the north. The other’s the Kansas, right here and now.”

“You think they saw her?” Bobbo asked,

“I don’t know,” Hadley said.

“Cause, Pa, if they did...”

“I know what you’re thinkin.”

The wagons were drawn up on either side of the fire, thirty feet between them. One end of the camp was against the river; the sound of splashing water would serve as an alarm if anyone approached from that side. In the open end of the U formed by wagons and river, Bobbo and Hadley stood guard.

“They’ll come get her, Pa,” Bobbo said. “Them people are enemies.”

“Same as us and the Cassadas.”

“Worse’n that, Pa.”

“I’m wonderin about the one spoke a little English,” Hadley said. “He seemed to want them mules real bad. Kept eying them all the while we were tradin for butter and milk.”

“I saw him,” Bobbo said.

“Had to have seen how small a party we are.”

“Blind man would’ve seen that,” Bobbo said. “Pa, he might come back tonight with a whole damn tribe!”

Hadley didn’t answer.

“Pa?”

“Yeah, he sure enough might,” Hadley said.

At the fire, Timothy was reading to the women. In a voice deliberately hoarse, he whispered, “ ‘During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low...’ ”

They left the river bottom on the morning of the nineteenth, following the trail to higher ground. In the distance, ten miles or more away, they could still see the Kansas flowing eastward to Missouri, blue against a lush surrounding green. The hills through which they traveled now were consistently verdant. Red sandstone boulders erupted from the vegetation like huge blood blisters. Thickets of willows filled the ravines. Even in creeks run dry there were natural springs. Antelope raced through the woods.

Each time one crossed the trail, Bobbo thought it was Indians.

They came upon the village by accident.

It had been burned to the ground.

The wilderness claimed whatever had been consumed by fire, weeds and grass encroaching to the doorsteps of blackened lodges.

“Kansas village,” Timothy said.

On the ground there were shields marked with Pawnee symbols, broken Pawnee lances. Strewn everywhere about in scorched garments were the skeletons of Kansas women and children. The skies were gray. There were ghosts in this place. They moved through it and past it swiftly.

The temperature that night dropped to forty-nine degrees.

The road northwestward to the Platte took them through shaded forests and glittering shallow pools, crossed them over streams that rushed as swiftly as rivers or dribbled away to nothingness. Amorpha was in bloom everywhere on the sun-washed hillsides, purple clusters bursting against soil almost black... and now there were roses!

Roses blooming on the prairie in small bunches, like unexpected cries of welcome. Roses thicker yet, spreading wild across the meadows, wafting a thick sweet scent on the southerly winds. Hadley picked a bouquet for Minerva, and she blushed as pink as what she held in her trembling hands.

Roses.

But not a sign of an Indian anywhere.

Timothy said the Indians were busy with their own problems, but Bobbo still feared that the ones who’d come to trade had spied a glimpse of his wife in the wagon, and would eventually come get her. Either that or her own damn people’d think she was being held prisoner, come raiding to rescue her. This was Pawnee country, Timothy said, as if that would keep them safe from attack.

The landscape kept changing.

The soil was coarser, red rocks mixed with some a sick yellow color, others gray as death. Big black boulders in the creeks. Bobbo worried about Indians all the time, worried, too, about catching up with the Oregon train. If just they could catch up, he’d stop worrying about Indians altogether. But the train were always just ahead.

“They’re just ahead,” his father kept saying.

Just ahead. Find traces of their fires. Pair of spectacles in a creek run dry. But never them. Like chasing a dream, Bobbo thought. You reach out for it, all that happens is you wake yourself up.

On the twenty-fifth, they made camp near where a Pawnee party had been hunting sometime past. There were still buffalo bones on the ground. A broken knife. Wooden frames upon which the Indians had stretched their hides to dry. The river bottom was covered with thistle, and the scent of something sweetish filled the woods.

“Pa,” Bobbo said, “I got to tell you what’s troublin me.”

“Same thing that’s troublin me,” Hadley said.

“We’ll be reachin the Platte sometime tomorrow,” Bobbo said.

“Aye.”

“Timothy’ll be leavin us.”

“I know that.”

“We’ll be alone, Pa.”

“We’re just as near alone now,” Hadley said.

“Pa, how we gonna stand guard just the two of us the livelong night?”

“Son,” Hadley said, “what do you want me to say? You think I don’t know we’re out here in the middle of goddamn nowhere? You think I don’t know that?”

“It’s... Pa, I’m scared.”

Hadley put his arm around him. “Bobbo,” he said, “maybe Timothy’s right — maybe they’re too busy fightin each other to pay us any mind. What we’ll do anyway, we’ll start movin a little faster each day, how’s that? Try to pick up a few miles each day, close the distance ’tween us and the party ahead. They’re just ahead, son,” he said. “We’ll catch em, don’t you worry.”

Timothy’s wife came up from the river. She was singing. It was the first time any of them had heard her sing. Her voice was small, the Pawnee tune scarcely melodic. She had picked milk plant below. She boiled the pods now and offered them to the rest of the party, moving from one to the other, smiling and saying over and again in English, “Taste, please.”

Her face was radiant.

She was almost home.

Ahead was the Coast of Nebraska.

“It’s from the French,” Timothy said. “Trappers named it la cote de la Nebraska. The Nebraska’s the river, also known as the Platte. Those bluffs mark the bank on this side — the French were saying ‘the hills of the Nebraska.’ ”

There was cactus growing on the bluffs, a pale bristling green against the royal purple of the amorpha. The hills were perhaps fifty feet high, the grass upon them thick and luxuriant. An early morning rain had washed the skies clean. They moved through the wide level valley and came at last to the shore of the river, got out of the wagons.

“Well... “ Timothy said.

“Well then,” Hadley said, “you got us here. We thank you, Timothy.”

“I’ve got something for you,” Timothy said, and went to the wagon. His wife watched as he rummaged through his things. “I hope you like these,” he said. “They’re not worth much, I know.”

Along the way, he had made drawings of them all.

He presented these almost formally, seemingly embarrassed, shaking hands with each immediately afterward. His wife followed him, clumsily imitating the white man’s custom, nodding and smiling as she gripped each hand in turn. She hurried Timothy back into the wagon then, eager to move on.

From the wagon seat, Timothy waved. “Goodbye!” he shouted. “Good luck!”

“And to you!” Hadley called.

“Didn’t even know her name,” Minerva said, almost to herself.

“Hope she finds them,” Annabel said.

“She’ll find them,” Bobbo said. “This is Pawnee country both sides of the river here.” He looked at his father.

“Better get moving,” Hadley said.

They watched a moment longer. Then Hadley got up on the seat of the wagon, with Minerva beside him, and the girls and Bobbo in back. Minerva had a rifle across her lap, and Bobbo had the muzzle of one resting on the tailgate.

He was wishing Gideon and Will were there.