When Winter Comes

by V. A. Shannon

  Mr. Hardkoop had left the driving seat and was leading the team instead, and he and Mr. Keseberg were carrying what provisions they could to lighten the load. Little Ada stumbled alongside us on her chubby legs. And for all that Mrs. Keseberg’s time was due and past, she walked along with us as well, leaning on her husband’s arm. I walked along at the back, with a sack of oatmeal over my shoulder and another in my arms.

  Mr. Keseberg looked to where Mr. Hardkoop was walking with the second wagon, and waved his hand to him to stop.

  “We’ll leave the second wagon here. Give those animals some water, Mr. Hardkoop, and we’ll leave them to rest up. When the Reeds come back with water for their team and to get their other wagons, we can do the same.”

  Mr. Keseberg hesitated a moment, then as if every word was forced out against his will, he asked Mrs. Reed if she would like some water.

  “We could spare a half barrel,” he said.

  “Oh—Ma!” said Virginia, and got a look for it. Mrs. Reed turned back to Mr. Keseberg with a cold face.

  “No,” she said. “We want nothing from you.”

  * * *

  Another full day we walked, making camp under the wagon when the sun went down. The nights in the desert were bitter cold, and with the sinking of the sun that moaning wind grew louder, and the voices in it grew more lonesome, like souls in torment so that you could not bear to hear them. Even though we were near to fainting with tiredness by sundown, when night came rolling in we none of us slept hardly at all.

  We rose that last morning in the full dark. With only a few sticks of firewood left, we could do no more than warm up the last of our coffee—a mouthful each, and a crust of hard bread dipped in to be our breakfast.

  Even by just that meager light, I could see that Mr. Hardkoop’s feet were swelled and covered in blisters the size of dollar coins, and that he could not put on his boots. He saw me looking. I opened my mouth to say something, but he shook his head at me, quick-like, and then turned away, tying his bootstrings together and slinging his boots round his neck, so that when we set off, he was in his bare feet.

  As the sky began to lighten I saw that his feet left little spots of red blood in the white dust. How he would manage when the sun came full up and the ground turned to fiery coals I could not say. And Ada cried and threw herself on the ground, refusing to walk further.

  Mr. Keseberg was burdened with all that he could carry, bent nearly double with the weight, but even so he took her up in his arms. His eyes fixed on the little spots of blood ahead of us, he calmed her tears by telling her the story of Hansel and Gretel, his voice hoarse and gasping with the effort. How they laid a trail of crumbs and stones to find their way home when they were left alone in the forest, and how their journey ended at a magic house made all of gingerbread and other good things to eat.

  I listened greedily, just as much a child as Ada, interrupting every sentence to ask, “But what does gingerbread taste like? What are candy canes?” For I had hardly heard of such things. Lulled by the story, Ada fell asleep, her arms round her father’s neck.

  Finally the sun appeared over the horizon. And thank God!—before us was a long pool of water lying beneath some low trees, with the beginnings of hills behind. We saw some of the other wagons drawn up there. And at long last we came into camp, and left the desert behind.

  When we had pulled our wagon to a halt, and let the beeves loose to drink their fill, and gulped down cup after cup of water ourselves, we set the campfire to blaze up, anticipating coffee and some bacon and grits.

  Mr. Reed came over to us in a right taking and asked if we had seen his wife and children. We told him yes, that we had left them behind with their wagon stuck in the mud. Mr. Reed flew into a frenzy. He would not listen to another word, but berated Mr. Keseberg for abandoning them, saying that it was akin to murder to have left them so, and only what could be expected from such a man!

  Mr. Keseberg retorted, “Yes, it is true, they have been abandoned and left to make their own way, but you are the one who did it, Mr. Reed, not I! As you see, I have kept my own family close by my side!”

  An hour later we spied the Donners pulling into camp, and Mrs. Reed walking with them. And we heard the story of why Mr. Reed had not gone back into the desert for his wife.

  He had been first to arrive at the camp, his horse dead beat and lame. A full day he had waited for his teamsters to arrive with the beeves, but they never came and they never came. The teamsters had let the animals loose, thinking they’d head for the scent of water, but the beeves had no more brains than the teamsters did, and as soon as they were set free they’d gone thundering off this way and that, never to be seen again. With no horse to ride and no beeves to take back into the desert with him, Mr. Reed was frantic to think how to go and rescue his family.

  After we left them, no sign of her husband come to rescue her and their last drop of water gone, Mrs. Reed had abandoned her wagon and set out with her children and servants on foot. That walk would have been a death march to them, and it was something like a miracle that the Donners found them.

  Once their own animals were rested and watered, Mr. George Donner lent Mr. Reed a horse and a mule, and Mr. Graves lent two yoke of beeves. Mr. Reed went back and retrieved his family wagon, though the beeves that had been pulling it were dead. When that one remaining wagon was finally pulled into camp, piled high with all it could carry from the wagons left behind, Mr. Reed flat refused to go back into the desert again to fetch in the others. Mrs. Reed was fit to be tied, and was left to reconcile herself to the loss of nearly all the fancy possessions that she had been so mighty proud of.

  Mrs. Reed had a tea service painted all with roses, that had come from one of the big emporiums in New York City, and which she never failed to mention whenever the subject of a hot drink arose. And she had a bolt of silk patterned with fire-breathing dragons, that had been brought all the way from the distant China lands. I longed to see it made up into a gown and Mrs. Reed wearing it, for I could think of no garment that would suit her better.

  But now it all was lost; fancy cups of fancy tea with fancy talk to match, and fancy silk gowns. All gone, along with her harmonium and her stitching machine, the chairs that had come to her from her grandmother and the rest.

  It was a tragedy for the family, to lose their wagons, I knew that well enough. Truth be told, though, I felt it served them right out. And a mean little smile twitched in my mouth.

  To make up for the humiliation, the Reeds threw their weight around instead. For the three days that we stayed in that camp at Pilot Peak, Mr. Reed ordered his teamsters and the other hired hands, whether they were his hands or not, to go and look for his missing beeves. It was plain to see that the beeves would never be found, no matter how many miles folks walked in search of them, wore out by the heat and dazzled by the sun, but they all did what the Reeds told them, and went where the Reeds bid them, like a heap of donkeys. I could not understand it; we were not the only ones who disliked the Reeds’ boastful ways.

  Our own beeves were near to collapse, needing to be well rested if we had any chance of continuing with our journey. They could not be taken back into the desert to pull in our second wagon. And Mr. Keseberg asked, like Mr. Reed, would anyone lend us a couple beeves or a mule or two.

  Our German friends had no animals to spare, and could not help us. And the rest would not, for Mr. Reed had dripped such poison into their ears with his pretty speech concerning Mr. Keseberg’s character.

  * * *

  After Mr. Reed had stood up and accused Mr. Keseberg, Mrs. Murphy had took me to one side. She asked if he treated me poor as well, and would I like to travel with them instead.

  I told her the truth of the matter. Mr. Keseberg had slapped his wife’s face to bring her to her senses when she had worked herself into a frenzy. I did not say that I thought he had done nothing wrong. I did not say that my pa beat my ma so that there were days she could not rise to her feet for it, and my brothers
and sisters and me had been at the end of his belt buckle, too—but no one took my pa to task for it, or treated him different because of it.

  And I did not say that I thought Mr. Reed had such a very strong dislike of Mr. Keseberg that there was more to his actions than his so-called desire for justice. I only said that Mr. Keseberg had not wished to stand up in front of the company and humiliate his wife by defending himself, and I thought it gentlemanly of him.

  Mrs. Murphy said she understood, and what a good girl I was for being so loyal. I seemed to have caused Mr. Keseberg more harm still. I felt worse at that than I could say.

  And now Mr. Reed’s accusations came to bear on us pretty harsh. For all turned their heads away from Mr. Keseberg’s request for help, exclaiming instead in loud voices over the Reeds’ kindness. For when their galumphing great wagon was finally heaved into camp, the Reeds made a great show of distributing their provisions among the others, in the spirit of Christian charity. Myself, I thought it was just a low way of getting other folks to carry their goods for them, and that they would be just as quick to ask for their return at some point in the future.

  With no help from anyone, our wagon was left behind in the desert, with the mules still hitched up and the spare team of beeves at back. Round our campfire that night, Mr. Keseberg raged about the mean spirit of his fellows, the loss of his wagon and all it contained, and the fate of the animals.

  I had learned long ago that crying for myself earned me nothing but a box to the ears. I had never cried for any person since. But I could have wept for those poor animals, dying slowly out there in the desert, knowing only that they served us as best they could and that we abandoned them at the last.

  It must have hurt Mr. Keseberg something terrible to see how his good reputation was lost in this way. But after that one night he acted like he had no knowledge of what was said of him. He treated everyone the same as he had before: polite and quiet and offering help where he could. And he continued to smile pleasant enough at Mr. Reed, and nod his head at Mr. Reed’s words and then ignore them as he pleased. It was clear that this aggravated Mr. Reed something dreadful, and I thought, “Ha! I hope it makes him mad as hell!”

  Eventually Mr. Reed meddled in something he shouldn’t have, and found himself at Mr. Keseberg’s mercy, and I guess he came to regret his high-handed ways something bitter.

  17

  We stayed in camp for several days, animals and people alike too exhausted to carry on. At last, well into September, we set out again. And now the Reeds found themselves well behind the rest, going mighty slow, with their mismatched animals plodding along pulling the heavy great wagon as best they could.

  Our desperate, every-man-for-himself trek across the Salt Desert had set a pattern. Those with lighter wagons pulled ahead, determined to be first in camp and get the best grass and water for their beasts, leaving those with heavier wagons to trail along at the back. We broke the unbreakable rule of the wagon trains, that all should stick close together and look to one another for assistance. And when we entered into Indian country, we found the real proof of this sensible advice.

  We had seen Indians here and there along the way already: traders, with blankets and baskets for sale in Independence, and their children pestering us for treats, and running off with smiles on their faces and a handful of beads or some such. But these were not the same sort of Indians at all. These were warriors.

  One afternoon, too tired and too hot for conversation, we were making our slow way through some low hills. Ahead of us, I caught a last glimpse of the little McCutcheon wagon disappearing into the distance. An hour earlier we had passed the Murphys, settling themselves down to eat their dinners. I had waved to Meriam, putting out the plates, and she had waved back with a dishtowel in her hand. But for now, we were alone in the landscape, the silence broken only by the harsh croaking cry of a couple of buzzards, flapping their great ragged wings in a slow circle above our heads.

  I felt, rather than heard, a rumble of sound deep in the earth below my feet. I looked over to Mr. Keseberg, a question on my lips—and saw a hundred or more copper-skinned men, half-naked and with their long black hair flying out behind them, come thundering over the hill toward us on their tough little brown-and-white ponies, brandishing bows and spears, a great cloud of dust whirling around them.

  I stood openmouthed, completely without thought of the danger I was in, at this astonishing sight. But Mrs. Keseberg screamed, and fled for the safety of the wagon, not looking where she was going and running slap into Mr. Keseberg. He caught her by the shoulders, and shook her, and told her to stop screaming. He shouted that they harried the wagon trains and set out to make our lives impossible, “—but they are not killers!” He had to yell to make himself heard over the noise of the thundering hooves. “I promise you, they will not hurt us!”

  And he was right. The Indians rode round our wagon, hollering and whooping, laughing and jeering at the sight of our pale, frightened faces. They did not shoot at us; instead, two of our beeves sank to their knees, blood streaming from the arrows in their necks. Then the Indians wheeled their horses away, and galloped off as fast as they had come. As they passed, I saw they were leading some horses. I recognized Landrum Murphy’s gray pony, and a chestnut mare I thought belonged to the Graveses.

  “It is amusement on their part!” said Mr. Keseberg, as we watched them vanish away over the hills. I guess he was right. For we unhitched the dead beeves and left them by the wayside and the Indians did nothing with them, but left them to rot.

  If those Indians have gone to their Happy Hunting Grounds, I wonder, now, if they are punished; for their sport was to cause us all the greatest of suffering.

  It was the custom to put two or three yoke of beeves to pull, and a yoke or two to walk behind the wagon resting. In this way, turn and turnabout, we had gone slow but steady enough on our journey so far. But everyone had lost animals along the way, on the mountains and in the desert, and now everyone lost more to the Indians. And the time soon came when we did not have enough cattle to keep traveling on in this fashion.

  Beeves are strong beasts for pulling, better, you would think, than horses. But they are not so hardy as folks might expect. They need so much to keep going: plenty of rest, plenty of grass, and plenty of water. The loss of so many meant stopping to rest those remaining more often, and the lack of good grass made them weak and slow. And although we were now but a couple of hundred miles from the end of our journey at Sutter’s Fort, it seemed that the closer we got, the slower our journey became.

  We counted out the days on our fingers, and counted out, too, our sacks of coffee and flour and sugar; there was not enough food to see us through. So Mr. Stanton volunteered to ride ahead and return with supplies.

  Being one of the single men, riding light with just his pack and his bedroll on his horse, it made sense for Mr. Stanton to head out. But he needed some companion to travel with him, and Mr. McCutcheon stepped up to the task. It meant leaving behind his wife and daughter, and seemed a most unlikely thing to do. This gave rise to no end of speculation among the gossipmongers, and as usual, Mrs. Keseberg and her friends the Eddys were chief among them.

  The evening before Mr. McCutcheon and Mr. Stanton were to leave the camp, the Eddys and Mrs. Keseberg talked the McCutcheons up and down. They came to the conclusion that there was trouble in their marriage, and that Mrs. McCutcheon, a young, pretty woman with a cascade of silvery curls, was involved in a flirtation with someone. What started as lighthearted conversation turned into one of speculation, with Mr. Eddy suggesting one name and another for the guilty man, even so much as saying it must be Mr. Stanton, and that Mr. McCutcheon intended to have it out with him when they were away from the camp and shoot him dead.

  Mr. Keseberg sat through the first part of the conversation, making an attempt once or twice to turn the talk to another topic, but they would not be gainsaid. After the two women had dismissed Mr. Eddy’s idea of vengeful murder with a great d
eal of laughter, the conversation turned back to speculation once more and lighted on Charlie Burger, the Donners’ teamster.

  Mr. Burger had an eye for the girls, it must be said. He wasn’t right tall, but he was blue-eyed and bronzed from being in the outdoors all day, and his hair bleached quite white with the sun. In the big wagon train he had left more than one girl in a snit with another over him, but he was hardworking and right nice.

  Mr. Keseberg finally lost patience to hear his friend being slandered in this way. He told his wife in round terms that she should be ashamed to cast such accusations at a defenseless woman who had done her no harm and to blacken a man’s character so.

  He could not say it direct to Mr. and Mrs. Eddy, but they got the hint right enough. They removed themselves from our fireside pretty sharp, no doubt to go and remind anyone who would listen how unkind Mr. Keseberg was to his wife, and what an unpleasant sort of man he was, altogether.

  I was not part of the conversation, and happy not to be. I thought that there was probably no more reason for Mr. McCutcheon’s actions than that Mr. Stanton and Mr. McCutcheon were good friends and had traveled together from the start. Maybe Mr. McCutcheon felt that the slow, dawdling pace of the journey, and the constant chatter of the older children and whining of the younger, the crying of the babies and the women’s gossip, was unbearable. Or perhaps it was no more than that he longed to be free, and dash off on his horse, and feel as though he was doing something brave and exciting for a little while.

  If that was the case, I could sympathize with him. As one slow day followed another, I had come to feel the same, and longed for our journey to be over.

  Whatever his reason, he set off next morning with Mr. Stanton, with our good wishes riding along with them, and for a few hours we were all content and went to our beds with hearts that were glad enough.