When Winter Comes

by V. A. Shannon

  We had some lemonade—with the memory of how I felt the morning after the dance, I thought I would not drink it, but stick to water—and Mrs. Murphy had sent us off with cold pie and some ham, and fruit preserve sandwiched between slices of corn bread.

  All the way along the trail we had eaten breakfast, dinner, and supper sat on the ground, so why was it different to have our meal sat on the ground here? But it was. Hattie Pike might be married with two babies, but she was only a year older than Meriam and me. Sara Foster was not much older again, and the four of us girls felt free and easy together, not like sensible grownups at all.

  It was a silly thing, but I liked to feel that I could sprawl on the ground to eat my slice of ham if I chose, instead of sitting prim upright; and Will Foster was on his hands and knees with George riding on his back and pretending to be a cowboy, with one hand holding his pa’s hair and the other a slice of pie.

  When we were eating, I asked Hattie how she come to be married so young. The minute I said the words I wished them back again, for I caught a sight of two-year-old Naomi, with preserve all around her mouth. It occurred to me that perhaps this was an indelicate question, and Hattie had had no choice in the matter. I guess my give-away face said all, but Hattie was good-natured about it.

  “Oh, my word, everyone asks me that! But it is a wonderful romantic story, and I like to tell it.” She settled herself more comfortably against the rock.

  “We all got on board ship, and it was Christmas. We were going from Nauvoo—that’s Illinois, where we were living then—and it was right cold. That first night we went to our cabins, and when we woke in the morning the river was froze hard and the boat stuck at the quayside, and we could go nowhere at all!” She let out a peal of laughter.

  “Ma was in a fit, but we”—she looked at Sara, and the two of them giggled, flushing up like schoolgirls—“well, we thought it was the best thing that could happen. Because working on that boat were Mr. Foster and Mr. Pike, and we fell in love with them and they with us!”

  Sara finished off the story.

  “Oh, you can’t believe how lovely it was. Everything all sparkling white with frost—the rigging on the ships and the trees on the bank—and the blue sky, and the sun shining. Three days we spent on the boat and then we just got off and went to the church together, and had a wedding there and then!”

  I just couldn’t help myself, I had to ask.

  “But Hattie—how old were you? You can’t have been more than fourteen! Didn’t your ma mind?”

  She looked surprised.

  “No—why should she? Ma wasn’t much older when she got married. And when you are in love, you know it. What should you wait for? And it’s not like Bill is some silly lad who is still tied to his ma’s apron strings. He can provide for us. I think I am right lucky!”

  It was true: Bill Pike was near enough the same age as his mother-in-law, and Mr. Foster the same, but it seemed not to bother any of them. He was a nice man, and so was Will Foster. They had been friends since they were lads, and gone off together to work on the boats going up and down the Mississippi River.

  Hattie’s story of the frozen Mississippi reminded me of something, and quite without thinking, I said, “One year, the Ohio froze over, just the same, with all the boats and ships stuck fast out on the water. One morning there was a great to-do, with folks yelling, and I went to see what it was about.”

  Everyone was listening to me. Mr. Foster took George off his back and sat down next to his wife. I began to wish I had not started the story, for they were all listening to me with smiles on their faces, thinking it would be something amusing. And I was going to disappoint them, and spoil the fun we were having.

  But I could not stop, and carried on. “It was a woman. It looked like she had set off from the other side, and she was carrying a baby. And behind her came two men. And they caught this woman and took her back across the river with them.”

  It wasn’t quite the dramatic ending they had expected, and they looked a bit puzzled by it.

  I couldn’t tell them the truth. For of course the woman was a black slave, making a desperate bid to get to the north bank of the Ohio River and free herself and her child, and the men were Kentucky slave-catchers, intent on dragging her back to the South if they could catch her, or making an example of her if they couldn’t.

  The men were too far away to catch her. She had but a couple of hundred yards to go and she would be free. All along our riverbank and hanging over the sides of the ships were folks screaming and yelling at her—“Run! Run!”

  But the men had dogs with them. They let them loose, snarling and barking, to come racing across the ice. The woman cast one desperate look behind her, and screamed, and turned back toward us with an expression of the most ghastly horror on her face.

  Next minute the dogs were on her. The baby fell, and went skidding across the ice, covered in its mother’s blood.

  The men stepped up, quite casual, and called the dogs off. One of them snapped them back onto their leashes, and the other strolled over and collected up the baby and tied its ankles together, and slung it over his shoulder. Then they walked back across the river, chatting and laughing together and leaving the woman’s body where it had fell.

  I wished I hadn’t told it. I had dreamed about it for weeks afterward, where I thought I could see the woman grabbing at me and begging for help, and I could do nothing to save her.

  My story seemed to have brought our fun to an end. Mr. Foster picked the remains of George’s supper out of his hair, and Meriam and Sara and I folded up the blanket.

  Just as we were done, Colonel and Mrs. Russell came past. They were going to the rock to carve their names, and we joined them.

  Colonel Russell took out his pocketknife and carved something official-looking, with the date the train had set off from Independence, and where we were aimed for, California; and Will Foster carved out a sweetheart, and put his initials in it with those of his wife. Hattie Pike, not to be outdone by her sister, said to her own husband, “Put the children’s names! For who knows, one day they might come here, and see them, and know that we did it!” So Bill Pike set out, “Catherine Pike, age four months” and “Naomi Pike, age two years” and the date, July 11, 1846.

  * * *

  Those children never did go back to see their names carved into the rock. They never heard how their parents were there that hot day, laughing and telling jokes, and George riding on his pa’s back.

  Perhaps their names are still there. Or perhaps they are worn away to nothing, with the wind and the rain beating on them year after year.

  * * *

  The morning after our picnic, tragedy struck. I was washing out some clothing down at the creek, when I heard a shot, followed by a terrible scream. I dropped what I was doing and ran back to the camp.

  Mr. Foster had been cleaning his gun and had shot Bill Pike dead, right through the heart.

  The scene before me was one of horror. Hattie Pike was screaming over her husband’s lifeless body, and Mrs. Murphy with her arms thrown around Will Foster, he staring wild-eyed around him, quite as if he knew not where he was or what he was about. It was the first violent death of our journey. But it would not be the last.

  12

  A few days later we reached another landmark, perhaps the most important of them all—the Great Continental Divide.

  So far, all the rivers and streams we had passed flowed eastward, back toward the places we had come from and on into the Atlantic Ocean. But after we crossed the Divide we would come to the Sandy River, flowing west and pointing our footsteps to the end of our journey, California and the Pacific Ocean.

  I expected the Divide to be something like a line drawn in the ground, maybe marked with a row of flags, or a signpost—one arm pointing one way saying “East,” and the other, “West.” I thought to be able to jump from side to side—“Now I am in the East! Now I am in the West!” and I was not the only one to imagine it so. And as we passe
d into the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, traveling through hills that were enough to make us puff and pant as we climbed steadily upward, we all grew more and more excited at the thought of reaching this magical place.

  We broke camp on the morning of July eighteenth— Continental Divide Day, as we had come to call it—and at noontime we stopped at the banks of a shallow stream. Mr. Reed came past us, all puffed up, and called folks together. He said he had studied the geography of the area right well, and that we should be at the precise spot in an hour or two. Some folks cheered, and others clapped. But Mr. Keseberg laughed, and said, “Mr. Reed, you are sadly mistaken. We have crossed the Divide quite without knowing it. Look, the water in this stream is already flowing west!”

  A great shout went up from those around us. Folks crowded to the water’s edge and said, “Yes, it is true,” and “Oh! Mr. Reed, you have deceived us!” There was some gentle booing—good-humored enough, I guess, though we were all something disappointed—and making him the butt of some jokes.

  Mr. Reed did not like that one bit. He blustered about and said that Mr. Keseberg was wrong, and did not know what he was saying. Mr. Keseberg replied quite calmly to him, “No, here is the water and you can see with your own eyes where it is headed,” and someone shouted out, “Give it up, man! Admit you are wrong!”

  Mr. Reed glared at Mr. Keseberg. He sure did not like being made to look so foolish. I said to myself, “Mr. Keseberg has made an enemy here.”

  And it made me think of the choice that lay before us. For within a few days, those heading off on the new route would leave the great train as it continued north, and turn south toward Jim Bridger’s Fort. This train was to be under the direction of Mr. Reed. Mr. Reed, who could not tell the difference between a river flowing westward and one flowing to the East, and who would rather make an enemy than admit he was wrong.

  * * *

  When the plan to take the new route was first spoke of, I had taken it for granted that I would travel on with the Kesebergs.

  The weeks since leaving the Big Blue had been the happiest of my life. I had found myself enjoying my schooling. I discovered that I learned real quick and hardly had to be told a thing twice. Mrs. Donner had told me one time that I was a joy to teach—words that might have come easy to her, but were mighty precious to me. As well, she had asked me if I had thought of being a schoolteacher myself. It would mean I would be free to earn my own wage and spend it how I wanted, and do no man’s bidding unless I chose it. I could go where I pleased and live how I liked—and I thought that yes, I truly would like to do so.

  The Donners were heading off on the new route, so unless I took the new route myself I would have to abandon my schooling. It would mean leaving the friends that had come to mean so much to me—including Elitha and Leanna—for I had finally found the courage to seek them out and apologize to them, and now we spent a deal of time together. And it meant leaving the Murphys, my very dearest friend, Meriam, and her mother, who had taken me into the heart of her family, and treated me as if I was her own.

  I had thought that with the loss of Mr. Pike, Mrs. Murphy might think to take her family and continue with the main train. If she had, I would have been tempted to set off with them. But, if anything, the tragedy had made her more determined to get the journey over as quick as possible. Mr. Foster had never come back to himself after his friend’s terrible death. He hardly spoke. He hardly ate. And when the camp was still and quiet in the night, he could be heard screaming out in his sleep. The whole family suffered along with him and I suffered along with them. How could I leave them? The very thought of it was too terrible to contemplate.

  But the worst thing of all was the thought of leaving Mr. Keseberg. And it was this thought that led to another: perhaps I should.

  Mr. Keseberg and I spent very little time in each other’s company. What words we spoke were stilted and awkward, and sometimes it seemed to me that a different conversation entirely lay beneath the one we were having. From time to time I felt him looking at me—how that was I could not say—and that awful blush would rise up and engulf me, so I hardly knew where to put my eyes. But when I gathered my self-possession and turned, he would be engaged in conversation with Mr. Hardkoop or with his wife, or busy with some matter, and I would tell myself it was nothing more than my imagination. He had never, by word or deed, been anything other than honorable, and true to his wife. It seemed that my curiosity about him had turned into something else, and I thought I was a fool and should be ashamed of myself.

  I stopped watching him from the corner of my eye. I did not try and listen to his conversation round the fireside with his friends. With every scrap of my will I turned my thoughts away from him. But it seemed that as soon as I decided to put Mr. Keseberg out of my heart, so he determined to put himself more into it.

  The day after leaving the Divide, we broke camp later than usual, and did not stop for our dinner until well into the afternoon. We had another five miles to go before we would stop for the night, and when we set off again, Mrs. Keseberg said she was going to lie down in the wagon, and told me to take Ada to walk along with her pa.

  I walked along in silence, lost in thoughts of my own and taking hardly no notice of Ada’s childish prattle. The sun had already set, leaving the sky a soft shade of violet color, and the first few stars beginning to twinkle above. I suddenly saw one of these stars go flashing across the sky, and whirled round to point at it, crying out, “Look, oh, look! Oh, I wish I knew what made it fly like that!”

  Mr. Keseberg’s face lit up, and words come bursting out of him in a torrent.

  He told me that the stars in the sky were suns, the same as our sun that gives us light, but so very far away that their light was no more to us than a pinprick in the sky. Each star had a name, and a group of stars together was a constellation, and all were named for gods and goddesses and other folk of ancient times. He showed me Orion the Hunter, and the big bear and the little. And he told me of the Christmas star, and how the wise men had followed it to find the baby Jesus.

  He described the countries they traveled from, distant lands of silks and spices where they lived in palaces with gardens and fountains. Countries where they worshipped cats, or cows, and where kings and queens wore silken gowns, with tiny dogs carried in their sleeves.

  I was astonished to find him so talkative, and I think he was surprised to find in me such a willing audience, for I pestered him with one question after another.

  Just in an instant—one hour’s conversation, no more—my desire to hear his words overcome my resolve to avoid his company.

  I did not wish to leave Mrs. Donner. I would not leave the Murphys. And I could not leave Mr. Keseberg.

  My decision was made. I would carry on, and take the shortcut with them all.

  13

  One rainy day at the beginning of March, I receive bad news about the McGillivray family. Mrs. McGillivray births her baby, a little girl that she names Rose, but has a hard time of it, or so I hear. And one Monday morning when the children arrive for school, the McGillivray boys are not there. The other children inform me that the McGillivray baby has died and the boys are at home and trying the best they can to care for their ma, who is in a bad way.

  After school I send Meggie home in charge of her little sisters, carrying with her instructions to Martha to stay another hour or so until my return, and I set off to visit Mrs. McGillivray to see if there is any assistance I can offer.

  The way out to the McGillivray home is very poor, and my skirts are sadly muddy by the time I arrive at the ramshackle little homestead. It is no more than a tumbledown cabin over by the town pond. Someone has tried to dig over the rough patch of ground to one side, and there are some seedlings showing through the dirt, more weeds than anything else. A rusted ax sits on the chopping block, and there are some rough logs lying tumbled this way and that; not enough firewood to last more than a day or so, I reckon.

  The cabin belongs to Mr. Peabody and h
e is letting it to Mrs. McGillivray for a good price. I say good price, I mean it is a good price for him. Myself, I resolve to have a word with Preacher Holden and see if he can remind Mr. Peabody of the concept of Christian charity.

  The poor woman is lying in bed, weeping miserably into her pillow. A sulky fire smolders in the hearth, and the two older boys are trying to make supper out of some sad remnants of food, which seems to be all they have in their store cupboard.

  Their little brother, his face smeary with dirt, is sitting on the floor sucking on a piece of rag, and a big yellow dog lying across the threshold of the cabin looks as mournful and hungry as the rest of them.

  I visit for a while with Mrs. McGillivray, who sits up when she sees me and pushes at her tangled hair. After I have made some conversation with her about her children’s progress at school, I am a bit lost about what to say next.

  It may sound heartless for me to have visited with her and not to have cried along with her about the loss of her child, but there is nothing I can say that will help her deal with her grief; this is one of the hard lessons I have learned in my life. But if I can assist her in a practical way, why, that is something I would like to do. The poor woman needs some help, that I can see, but how I can be of use to her I cannot imagine.

  As I get up to go, I spy a pile of sewing on a table in the corner. Her boys come to school in clothes that are worn and mended and mended again every which way. It strikes me that Mrs. McGillivray is good with her needle. If she could earn some coin with it, that might be of more help to her than any amount of soft words. So I ask if she would be interested in helping me some. I can sew a straight enough seam for quilting, which I enjoy, but other than that I am a poor seamstress. Martha’s sewing, too, leaves a lot to be desired, and I have a pile of mending sitting neglected in my work basket.