Tucket's Travels

by Gary Paulsen

  “I guess they weren't savages,” Lottie said.

  “No.” Francis squeezed the mare with his legs and she started forward, the mule keeping up. “They were people, just like us, looking for food …”

  The thought seemed to quiet Lottie, and Francis set the direction back to north and west but determined not to lose his alertness again.

  The children posed a real problem. Alone, if something bad did happen he could cut and run and have a chance of getting out of it. There were horses faster than the mare, but not many quicker or more sure of foot, and that gave Francis some advantage.

  But Lottie and Billy changed everything. The mule couldn't move fast, wouldn't carry them out of danger if it came, and that made it doubly important for Francis to be aware of what was coming to get time to react or hide.

  Then there was food. He could go two, three days without eating but he didn't think it was good for young to go that long. They had to eat on a more regular basis. All he had left was the semi-dried venison and they ate from that most of the day, riding along—both children had been nearly starved and ate ravenously to make up for it—and the jerky was nearly gone.

  He would have to hunt soon, get another deer or better yet a buffalo, which would slow them down, and at first that irritated him until he remembered that there wasn't a hurry to get anywhere because he didn't know where he was or where to go.

  The problem was that suddenly the prairie was bare. Where he'd been seeing small groups of buffalo out ahead there didn't seem to be any for miles and he couldn't see deer or antelope.

  They rode the rest of the day, Francis alert and looking for game and finally just before dusk he shot a jackrabbit.

  “We'll stop for the night now,” he said, lifting the children off the mule. “Gather wood for a fire so we can cook this rabbit …”

  Lottie stretched and helped Billy take a few steps to shake his legs out. “Pa he tried to cook one of them once when we were with the wagon train and we like to broke our teeth chewing. We need some good meat, some more deer meat, that's the kind of meat we need. Some good red meat with fat on it to make drippings …”

  She talked constantly, but she worked as she spoke, finding dry wood and sticks, and Billy helped her, and by the time Francis had finished hobbling the mare—the mule would stay without it—they had a stack of wood large enough to last all night.

  Francis took some kindling sticks, shaved them with his knife to get curls, laid a fire and lit it.

  “You keep wood on it,” he told Lottie. “I'll clean the rabbit …”

  He quickly gutted and skinned the rabbit and cut it into smaller pieces. There was no water where they stopped so he poured some from a canteen into the Dutch oven and put the rabbit into the water. He added a handful of flour for thickening and cut three chunks of venison to drop in on top. Then he put the lid on and shoved the cast pot into the fire.

  “Stew,” he said. “An hour or so …”

  “I like stew,” Lottie said. “I didn't mean back then that I didn't like stew and such like. I'm not a picky eater like some, being as I'll eat almost anything though I'm not fond of bugs nor the reptile along the ground. Billy here will eat a bug in a second. He just loves ‘em. Not me, though …”

  Billy was sitting on a blanket staring at the flames and Francis studied him. “Doesn't he ever talk?”

  Lottie nodded. “Sure. He just don't have anything to say. Sometimes he'll talk your ear off. I remember once, I think it was last week, he looked me right in the eye and said ‘I'm thirsty,’ plain as day, must have been six, seven days ago …” She trailed off and the quiet was so sudden Francis thought she must have seen something. But he looked at her and saw she was crying quietly looking into the flames. “It was to Pa he said it. I miss Pa …”

  Francis tried to think of something to say but there was nothing. He remembered when he'd first been kidnapped and then seen a toy that had belonged to his sister Rebecca and thought Rebecca was dead. The empty feeling. The numbness. No words could help.

  So he put more wood on the fire and covered the two children to get them to sleep, and when they were at last both sleeping, he moved away from the fire to doze back in the grass with his rifle across his lap and a blanket over his shoulders. Twice in the night he heard wolves—they sang deeper and longer than the yipping coyotes—and he tried not to think of the children's father alone on the prairie.

  Lottie awakened early. Francis heard her as she broke small sticks and found red coals to blow on to make morning fire. They had all slept through the night without eating, and Francis decided it might have been the best thing possible for the meat stew he had prepared. It had cooked until the fire was out and when he came in by the fire Lottie had pulled the pot over to the flames and warmed it. Francis lifted the lid and the meat had become tender and fallen away from the bones.

  He let the two children eat—Lottie was quiet and he thought it was because she wasn't fully awake yet—and then finished what they did not want.

  All of it didn't take an hour and it was just getting light in the east when they packed the bedrolls and loaded the mare and mule for the day. Francis helped them up on the mule—smiling as Billy turned around to sit backward—and mounted the mare and rode away from camp.

  The day went smoothly. Clouds held to the horizon and then vanished and the sun was hot and welcome. A small breeze kept the flies down, and Francis figured Lottie's talker must have played out because other than ask a question now and then she was mostly quiet.

  They quickly settled into the routine of riding, covering ground. Francis had turned straight west—had given up on hitting tracks—but in the middle of the afternoon they came to a ridge that was impossible to climb that stretched far away to the south and they had to turn north.

  Fifteen or so miles north Francis could see the end of the ridge, and as they moved slowly in that direction, he could see dust near the end of the ridge. Lottie saw it as well and told him about it.

  “Dust up there, you see it? Reminds me of the time when we were crossing that river just after wc started before Pa he got the sickness. All the wagons had to wait in the same place so they corralled the stock until everybody was ready to ford the river and they raised such a cloud of dust …”

  “It's buffalo,” Francis said, squinting. “I can see them …”

  But he was wrong.

  Lottie was right, or partially so. As they moved closer—at a crawl, or so it felt to Francis—he could see the dust wasn't from buffalo but from moving wagons. It was a full train. But they weren't fording a river. When they were a mile off he counted twelve wagons, and they were bunched at the bottom of a steep upgrade with the horses and oxen corralled in a rope enclosure. The stock milling around was making the dust.

  Whoever the train was made up of, he could travel with them. And somebody would take in the children.

  They were nearly a quarter of a mile from the wagons—Francis could see individuals and hear the cracks of their whips as they worked the stock —when somebody from the wagon train noticed him.

  There was a sudden movement that Francis thought looked like ants scurrying when an anthill has been kicked, and four men came running from the wagons to meet him.

  They were all carrying rifles and they stopped when Francis was still a hundred and fifty yards away, stopped and stood four abreast with their rifles across their chests.

  They probably think we're Indians, Francis thought. Probably a mistake.

  “I know those men,” Lottie said suddenly in back of him.

  “What?” He turned and the mare kept walking.

  “That's the wagon train that drove us out when the sickness came. I know those four men. That's Peterson and Ellville and Johnson and Mcintire and they were the ones to push us away and make us be where you found us and saved us …”

  Francis turned back to the front. Pushing the sick ones out wasn't maybe nice, but it was the only thing they could do to save the rest. He understoo
d that. But the sickness was past. Surely they wouldn't cause problems now.

  When they were fifty yards away, the men leaned in Together and spoke quickly amongst themselves, then faced Francis again.

  “You can't come in to the wagons,” the man on the left said. “Those children might be infected. We had to send them out.”

  Francis stopped the mare. Twenty-five yards. The one who spoke actually moved his rifle so the barrel was on Francis, and he thought, This is crazy. I'm not trying to hurt them. “They're all right now. It was their Pa who … took sick. These two are fine. And so am 1.”

  “Just the same, we can't take the chance. We'll set some food and water out here for you and you turn and head out on your own.” The man spoke to one of the others, who trotted back to the wagons and came back in a moment with a bucket of water and a loaf of bread.

  All this time Francis sat holding the mare and the mule back. They had seen the stock and thought it was where they would spend the night and were anxious to end the day's ride.

  He couldn't believe what he was hearing.

  “I'm not … geared … for children. They need to be with wagons, people …”

  The man shook his head. “I'm sorry but we can't. We have other children to think of and if they have the sickness and bring it back in … I'm taking a risk just standing here talking to you. It might blow on me and I could carry it back to the wagons.”

  “That's the same trash they talked when they sent us off before,” Lottie said suddenly. “Just the same when Pa tried to get them to take us in and let him go off alone to be sick. They wouldn't do it then and they're talking the same trash now. You're just dirt, Frank Mcintirc. Just pig dirt and you know it.”

  Francis held his hand up to quiet Lottie and tried one more time. “I can go off alone—in fact I'd rather. I don't want to be with your train.” Or, he thought, with any other train if they're all like this. “But these two are too young …”

  “Just the same.” Mcintire stopped him. “We can't let you in. Ride on around if you like and pick up the trail, stay a quarter mile out, and Godspeed to you. There's a trading post three days west by wagon. Maybe you can find help there, though I doubt it. When they find you're carrying the sickness, they won't let you come in.”

  “And if we push it?”

  The man raised his rifle, as did the others. “We'll do what we have to do.”

  “Shoot us?”

  “We'll do what we have to do,” he repeated. “And be sorry for it later.”

  It was hopeless. Francis turned the mare to the side and began the long circle out around the train and back to the trail, the mule plodding behind.

  He did not take the food and did not take the water and thought if he lived to be a hundred he would never take anything from people—good or bad—again.

  It wasn't much of a trading post. In fact it wasn't much of anything.

  They rode a full day in what looked to be permanent ruts. After they rode around the wagon train—and the armed men followed them all around to make certain they kept going—Francis led the mule up the grade the wagons were trying to climb.

  It was too steep for a wagon and they were using two-hundred-foot ropes and a triple team of horses on top to pull the wagons up one at a time.

  But the grade didn't bother the mare or the mule at all and when they came out on top where there was a stony ledge Francis was amazed to see that the trail was so used it cut into the stone itself.

  Grooves left the top of the ridge and headed west into the prairie, grooves a foot deep in the hard sod, and the grass was eaten down so much along the way that the ground had turned to dust. It almost made Francis smile—he'd been worried about losing the trail. He couldn't have lost this if he were blind.

  It was absolutely flat. Even the small rolling hills seemed to have flattened out and the three days it would have taken a wagon to get to the post were only a day and a half on the mare and mule.

  They stopped for the night in a dry, fireless camp. There were no springs, and preceding wagons and people had burned every available stick of dry wood or even dry buffalo manure so they couldn't build a fire. There was also no grass for the animals anywhere near the trail. Stock from wagon trains had eaten it down so low that even the roots were gone and the earth was a dry, empty powder.

  Francis almost smiled that night, again thinking of his worry about finding the trail. Camp was a miserable affair, dark and with no fire to cheer them. They ate the last of the venison jerky—both Lottie and Billy sneezing from the dust that seemed to fill the air, even at night—and Francis slept fitfully because there was no way to conceal himself in case trouble came. It was like trying to sleep on top of an immense, dusty table.

  They were out of everything but water and flour in the morning so they drank water and each took a mouthful of raw flour, and they started before sunup, the dust coming up from the hooves, clogging their nose and eyes.

  Francis tried swinging away from the main part of the trail bur many had already done it, thousands—-Jason Grimes had said they were coming from the East so thick it was like swarming bees— and the dust was everywhere so he wrapped pieces cut from the tarp around Lottie and Billy and just kept slogging.

  The “trading post” came as a complete surprise. A small breeze had come up, making the dust worse, and Francis had been looking down to keep his eyes from filling when suddenly the mare stopped.

  He nudged her without looking up, but she didn't go and when he looked up he saw it was because she had her shoulders against the top rail of a fence. Actually it was less a fence than a crude collection of broken wagon parts—tongues, boards from the sides, old wheels, all lashed together to make a ramshackle corral. To the right was a gate made from the large rear wheel of a wagon and over the gate a rough sign lettered in what looked like charcoal said:

  STOCK BOARDED

  TWENNV SEBTS THE NITE

  Francis doubted that the board included anything like feed or grass in this stripped land.

  He raised his eyes and squinted and through gusts in the blowing dirt he saw a series of small shacks arranged on the other side of the corral. Like the boarding pen they were made from old wagon parts gleaned from wreckage on the trail. It looked more like a junkyard for old wagons than anything else.

  And it also looked deserted. He peered inside the huts as best he could but couldn't see anything for a full minute and a half.

  Then a tarp curtain over one of the openings—it couldn't be called a door—was pushed back, and a face showed for a moment, then disappeared and reappeared a moment later with a hat on.

  A thin man, tall and sunken, with a dark beard trimmed short and pointed on the end came out of the hut and approached Francis. He put one hand on the mare's bridle, and she pulled her head away and wiggled her ears, a sign of nervousness.

  “You'll be wanting to board the animals?” He spoke in a low voice, almost a hiss, and Francis suddenly thought of snakes and Courtweiler in that order.

  Near the huts the wind had died and Francis could see better. He shook his head. “I don't have any money. But I need a home for the young ones. I found them in a deserted wagon on the prairie—I think their father was killed by a bear.” (A white lie can't hurt, he thought.) “Is there room for them here?”

  “Cholera, you mean.” The man smiled shrewdly and inspected Lottie and Billy more closely. “Don't make no never mind to me. I've had it and so's my missus. Onct you've had it you cain't take it again.” He pushed the carp back and looked at Billy and Lottie more closely, pinched their arms. “They don't look sickly. ‘Pears they could pull their own weight, anyways. Good, I'll take ‘em.”

  He lifted them off the mule and carried them into the hut without another word and Francis sat feeling uncomfortable. On the one hand he wanted a home for them, but the man was … was so wrong somehow.

  He shrugged the feeling off and dismounted. They would have a better chance here and maybe a train would come along after
the one that shunned them that wouldn't mind taking them on. They would be better off, he thought again, but he tied the mare to the corral fence and made his way to the hut to lift the tarp sideways and peer inside.

  The man was in there, doing something with a bucket and a water barrel, his back to the opening. There was also a woman, the man's wife, and she was as thin as the man, had the same angular look about her, a sunken hungry look. But she had Billy in her lap and was pinching Lottie's cheek and smiling, and Francis dropped the tarp back and returned to the horse.

  It would be all right. They'd be safer here than trying to ride with Francis.

  The man came out of the hut with a bucket of water. “Your stock will need water,” he said.

  “Thank you.”

  “It's four cents the bucket,” he said quickly. “You got four cents?”

  Francis stared at the man. Four cents for a bucket of water? Then he shook his head. “No. I don't have any money.”

  “You got something to trade?”

  “For four cents?”

  “For the water.”

  “I need some supplies and I've got two rifles to trade.” He thought suddenly of the pistol and added, “I've got a pistol as well, but it belongs to the children.”

  “I'll take it for ‘em,” he said. “And you know, keep it. For them. What supplies you need?”

  “Flour and sugar and some bacon …”

  “How many rifles did you say?”

  “Two.”

  “You don't know the prices here, do you?”

  “No.”

  “A rifle will bring you flour, or sugar, or bacon. Not all of them, just one of them. Ten pounds of flour, five pounds of sugar, five pounds of bacon.”

  “For a rifle?”

  “Ayup. Which do you want?”

  Francis shook his head. It was robbery but he had no need for Dubs's rifle and he did need flour. “Flour. One rifle's worth. And you throw in that bucket of water for the mare and mule.”