Danger at the Haunted Gate

by Jesse Wiley

  “Look at these beauties,” he says with a flourish. “These creatures can carry about two hundred pounds of load each.”

  You help Pa lead the animals back to camp. He and Ma repack the wagon to make it lighter and load several hundred pounds onto the mules.

  “This should help us move faster,” Pa says, looking satisfied.

  Over the next few days, you do travel at a good pace. The lighter wagon is easier to get over the rocky terrain, and the oxen aren’t as exhausted as they were before. But eventually, you notice that the mules seem to be getting weaker, and they start to move slower and slower. About five days after you’ve gotten them, one finally sits down and just refuses to get up. A few minutes later, the second one follows.

  “What’s the matter with them?” you ask Pa.

  “I don’t know,” he says, looking worried. The mules start to roll around on the ground as you watch, confused.

  Pa runs to get the vet who is on your wagon train. He examines the mules carefully.

  “I’m afraid these animals have colic,” he says.

  “Like when babies cry a lot?” you ask.

  “No, much worse,” the vet says. “It looks like their guts are so swollen with gas that their intestines are twisted. You would need to operate immediately to save these animals.”

  You know that operating in the wilderness is impossible. The mules will have to be left to die.

  “We were tricked,” Pa says, shaking his head sadly. “I think George knew he was giving us sick animals.”

  “We can’t take that!” Ma says, furious. “Let’s go to Fort Laramie and demand our cow back.”

  Going back means leaving the wagon train and having to catch up with it later. Pa doesn’t want to waste the time, but Ma is insisting.

  Will you agree with Pa or Ma?

  If you go back to the trading post, turn to page 43

  If you continue on the Trail, turn to page 93

  Return to page 113

  I think we should go back to camp and wait for them there,” you say, avoiding meeting Joseph’s eye. You know he’ll be disappointed that you disagreed with him. But you don’t want to chase after Pa and the rest of the hunters. It might be dangerous, and you could get in trouble for disobeying.

  You walk back to camp carrying the berries that you collected. Ma smiles when she takes them from you.

  “This will make a nice pie,” she says.

  Soon, Pa and the other men return. They happily present their catch: five foxes and an antelope.

  “I hunted one of the foxes myself,” Pa tells you, looking proud, when you ask him. “It should fetch us a good price at Fort Laramie.”

  As you resume walking toward the fort over the next few days, everyone is excited. Ma can’t wait to see a building after so many days on the Trail, and she’s looking forward to stocking up on supplies. You’re curious to see the nearby Cheyenne settlement you’ve heard so much about, and Pa has promised to get all of you some brown sugar candy.

  When you arrive, you see a white building with a flag flying over it. The lawns are filled with wagons and pioneers, some of whom have traveled even farther than you to get here.

  Pa finds the fur trappers and becomes instantly friendly with them. He learns that he can get even more money than he expected for the fox furs. The next day, Pa tells you and Ma that he wants you all to camp here for a while. That way, he can go hunting again.

  “We’ll make a fortune trading furs,” he says. “We can save up a lot of money for when we get to Oregon.”

  The days turn into weeks, and soon Pa builds you a log cabin near the fort. You aren’t going anywhere for a while. But luckily there’s enough excitement at the fort to keep you busy and happy. It’s a good life, even if it isn’t Oregon.

   THE END

  Return to page 129

  You help Pa pour grain from a burlap bag in the wagon into a bucket. Then you hold the bucket in front of the oxen and let them feed one at a time.

  “Eat up,” you say, gently stroking the coat of the poor animals. You hope feeding them works to counter any harmful effects of the alkaline poisoning.

  The next morning you notice that the oxen seem a bit droopy, and their heads and ears hang lower than usual. Luckily, they still move without any problem and pull the wagon all day. It’s been slower going on the Trail in general over the past few weeks. Instead of the fifteen miles a day you were covering at the start of the journey, you’re lucky if you can make twelve miles over the rocky path now.

  Over the next couple days, the oxen get sluggish and they start to lose weight. Pa doesn’t want to drive them any farther. Instead you stay camped for a few days to give them plenty of rest and grazing time. It doesn’t help. The oxen simply aren’t interested in eating.

  “Come on, just eat a little bit,” Pa pleads with them as if they are little children. Soon, the oxen start to tremble, and you wonder if something is wrong with their muscles. Finally, they just give up and lay down on the ground. No amount of coaxing can get them up again.

  You’re stranded by the side of Sweetwater River with no oxen team to pull your wagon. You’ll make camp for as long as your supplies last and try to hitch a ride home with some go-backers if you can. Turns out there’s nothing sweet at all about that.

   THE END

  Return to page 47

  You stay quiet as Caleb and Pa go over the rules and schedule of the wagon train with the men. Maybe after hearing stories of swindlers and thieves taking advantage of people on the Trail, your imagination is getting the better of you.

  Even so, you can’t help but think you see one of the men smirk after he and Pa finish talking about the man’s new duties. The strangers hurry away, before returning with their horses, bags, and bedrolls.

  Over the next couple of days, you notice the men don’t interact much with the rest of the people in your wagon train. Instead they keep to themselves for most of the day, only coming around when meals are being served. They do accept invitations to supper, but after eating, they quickly head back to their own tent, where you can sometimes hear them talking in low voices.

  “Ma, I don’t think these new people like us,” you say on the third morning.

  “Hush,” Ma says, looking around. “Why would you say that?”

  “They don’t talk to any of us,” you say.

  “Maybe they are just used to being on their own,” Ma says. “It takes time for some people to warm up to new people.”

  You don’t add that the men haven’t gone hunting once since they joined you. Maybe Ma also wonders when they are going to make good on their promises to supply the wagon train with plenty of fresh food.

  One of the men, who says his name is Nate, does take a liking to Archie. You see him call your dog over and scratch him behind the ears. You don’t know why, but you feel a little jealous. You resist the urge to call Archie away from him, and tell yourself not to be silly. Maybe Nate is better with dogs than with other people. What’s wrong with someone being friendly to Archie?

  The next morning, when you wake up, the men’s tent is quiet. The bugle has long sounded, and everyone is busy making breakfast. You think they must have overslept, and you remember how they agreed to pitch in when they joined the wagon train. You go straight over to the tent to wake them up. You look inside and gasp.

  They are gone! And so are all of their things.

  You rush back to tell Ma and Pa.

  At your wagon, Pa is making a discovery of his own. “We’ve been robbed!” he shouts. His gunpowder is gone, along with the sugar, and so is Ma’s treasured jewelry box. The worst part is that all of the money your family had left was hidden inside the jewelry box, so now it’s gone, too.

  “I thought something didn’t feel right!” Pa says, wringing his hands. “We never should have trusted those men.”

  Everyone in the wagon train starts to argue with each other about why they agreed to let the strangers join. “They took advantage of us by s
aying they were hunters,” says Caleb. “They know all pioneers are tired of eating beans and bacon.”

  Some want to send out a search party to look for the men. Others want to go back to Independence Rock to see if you can get some clues about who the men are and where you might find them.

  If you search for the men, turn to page 95

  If you go back to Independence Rock, turn to page 106

  Return to page 134

  Your wagon train chooses to go through Scotts Bluff to save time. Every day that’s saved means you’re one day closer to Oregon, and have less chance of getting stuck in the mountains during the heavy snows. Your wagon train will go through what is known as Mitchell Pass, a narrow gap in the bluffs with two large cliffs on either side.

  You look up at the jagged cliffs. They look like someone cut them out with a sharp knife. At first, going through the pass seems like a good idea. It looks like you’ll be through it in just a day, as Caleb predicted. But soon enough you realize why people choose to take the extra time to head away from the North Platte River and go around Scotts Bluff. The narrow pass is treacherous and uneven. The oxen slip on the rocks. Your wagon wheels cut into the soft sandstone of the bluff, in some places leaving ruts more than a foot deep.

  You keep pushing along slowly and steadily, until your wagon gets stuck in the soft ground. Pa tries to coax the wheels out by wiggling them, but your wagon is firmly lodged.

  “I’m going to try to push the wagon, while you drive the oxen,” Pa says to Ma. He braces himself against the back of the wagon and pushes with all his might. You and Ma help to steer the oxen. It looks like it’s going to work, until . . .

  CRACK!

  You hear a sickening sound, which you know can only be one thing: an axle breaking.

  There’s nowhere to get a replacement axle where you are, far from a fort or trading post. Pa could try to build one out of a sturdy tree, using his carpentry skills. You’ll have to look around to find a tree that might do the trick, but there aren’t many around here.

  “I’ll do the best I can to make something,” Pa says. “But I don’t have all of the tools I need.”

  “What if you turn the wagon into a two-wheeled cart?” Ma suggests. She’d read about people doing that when they were desperate. “Although we would need to give some of the others our extra things to carry for us.”

  Ma and Pa debate whether you should ask for such a big favor, or just try to manage on your own. What does your family decide?

  If you decide to build an axle, turn to page 75

  If you create a two-wheeled cart, turn to page 108

  Return to page 11

  Do you think going back to the fort is a good idea?” Samuel asks you. It’s been a day since Pa agreed to return to the fort to demand that George give you your cow back. He and Ma are convinced that the trader had known that the mules were unhealthy.

  “Why, Sam?” you ask.

  “That George man seemed a little mean,” Samuel says, his eyes wider than usual.

  You think about what he says. Something about George’s manner did make you uneasy, too. He was a little too loud and full of himself for your liking. But after Pa’s original concern about losing time on the Trail, he agreed with Ma that the cow was too big a loss to ignore. You split off from the rest of the wagon train, promising to catch up to them later.

  When you finally arrive back at Fort Laramie, Pa goes to look for George while you help Ma set up camp. He comes back after a little while, shaking his head.

  “Did you find him?” Ma asks.

  “No, he went out hunting for furs,” Pa says. “But I asked his friends to tell him to come over here when he gets back.”

  Later that night, you’re starting to drift off to sleep in your tent when you hear loud voices outside.

  “I’m not doing any such thing!” an angry man is saying. You recognize that it’s George, and your heart starts to beat faster.

  “But it’s only fair,” Pa tries to reason.

  “A deal is a deal,” George snorts. “You’re the one who mistreated the mules after our trade, so why are you suggesting that should be my problem?”

  “We did no such thing!” Ma says, sounding insulted. “They were sick when we got them, and you knew that!”

  “You can’t prove anything,” George growls. You hear stirring in your tent and feel Samuel’s hand on your back.

  “I’m scared,” he says. “What’s happening?”

  “Shhh,” you say, wanting to hear.

  “Now listen here,” Pa says, trying to smooth things over.

  “I’m not listening to any more of this,” George says, getting louder. “Now you’d best get on out of here before there’s trouble.”

  You don’t hear any more talking, so you poke your head out of the tent. George has left, and Ma is crying. Pa looks angry but resigned.

  The next morning Ma’s crying has turned to wails. The oxen are gone, too! Pa runs to find George, but he and his trader friends have all vanished, and it looks like they robbed you first.

  You never should have left the wagon train to come back, and now you’re stuck with no way to return. Talk about a bad deal.

   THE END

  Return to page 27

  You decide to make camp along the banks of the little stream. The oxen eagerly chew on the yellowish grass lining the stream and drink the cool water.

  Ma asks you to fetch water for the kettle, which you get from the stream. You set it to boil and add coffee to it. You never thought you would drink as much coffee as you have been drinking on the Trail. Before you started, you thought it tasted terrible and was just for grown-ups. But since you’ve been on this journey, the water you’ve gotten has often been even worse than the taste of coffee. With a little sugar you’ve learned to enjoy the steamy hot drink, especially after a long day of hiking.

  After supper you pour the coffee into mugs and hand one to Pa first.

  “Bleh!” he says, spitting the drink out. “This is really bitter!”

  Ma sniffs her coffee and makes a face.

  “Yes, this is really awful. What was in that kettle?” she asks you.

  “Nothing,” you say, confused. “I rinsed it out in the stream and filled it with clean water.”

  Pa’s eyes grow wide. “I wonder if this is alkaline water! I’ve heard of it, but didn’t know how to recognize it. It can be really harmful to drink, even for the animals.”

  He rushes over to talk to Caleb. The two walk over to the stream and taste the water. As feared, it is bitter and foul tasting.

  “What do we do now?” Pa asks. “The animals have all drunk their fill of this poisonous water.”

  Archie! You panic when you suddenly realize that your dog could have drunk from the stream as well.

  “Have you seen Archie around?” you ask Hannah and Samuel.

  The three of you search and finally find Archie napping in the wagon, where he has been since you stopped for camp. Phew! He hasn’t had a chance to drink from the stream yet. You tie him to the wagon wheel with a rope so he doesn’t go near the water.

  You head back over to Ma and Pa. They are trying to figure out what to do for the oxen. The animals look fine for now, but they could get very sick soon.

  “I think we should give them some grain from the emergency feed we have,” Pa suggests. “It’ll put something else in their stomachs.”

  “How about if we make them a mixture of vinegar and flour to drink? Maybe that will take away the effects of the poison,” Ma says.

  Which do you do?

  If you give them the grain, turn to page 33

  If you give them the vinegar mixture, turn to page 131

  Return to page 79

  Pa throws ropes around the yokes of the oxen, working quickly. Then everyone grabs hold and pulls the animals forward.

  “Keep pulling!” Pa shouts. “I’m afraid we might be in quicksand.”

  Quicksand! You’ve heard stories of teams of oxen peri
shing in a river by getting stuck in the soft sand. And even of entire wagonloads of goods being destroyed in the water.

  Your heart beats faster as you pull on Daisy.

  “Come on, Daisy,” you plead. She cooperates and comes with you. You look back at Pa and the wagon, which is still in the same spot. The oxen haven’t moved an inch.

  “Heyaaa!” Pa yells, pulling with all his might. Finally, the oxen start moving again. Slowly the wagon starts rolling forward. You see Pa’s face start to relax and you let yourself breathe. Your team makes it safely across to the other bank of the river.

  “You did it, Pa!” you say. You watch as the other wagons make their way across, too, one at a time.

  You try to dry off and drape a blanket around your shoulders. Then you, Hannah, and Samuel unyoke the oxen and lead them to a patch of grass to graze.

  “Poor animals,” you say in a soothing voice as you pat them gently.

  You head back to the river. Pa and Caleb are helping the last family in the wagon train to get on shore. Pa holds his hand out to help the woman onto the bank. You see her clutching her baby, and feel sorry for her as she stumbles.

  The Smith family has two kids, a little boy who is three and a baby girl. The baby is crying loudly as the mother tries to soothe her. But she herself looks weak, as if even standing up is hard for her. You wonder if she has been eating and sleeping enough.

  Caleb takes one look at everyone and decides that you should probably end the day early. There is still enough daylight to hike for a couple hours, but everyone needs to rest, including the animals.