Walk by Faith

by Rosanne Bittner

July 13, 1863

  We suffered our worst losses crossing the North Platte. Sam McCurdy and Eric Buettner drowned, and Eric’s supply wagon was lost. We must find a way to let his brother, Haans, know, as he turned back many weeks ago because of the death of his wife and daughter. Sam’s brother-in-law, Ben Gobles, decided to go on to the South Pass and try to make Fort Bridger, where he hopes to find someone who can take him on to California, where it is more settled. He now has not only his own wife and children to look after, but also Sam’s wife and children. He feared Montana was too wild and rugged for him to support so many there.

  She added other casualties—six cattle and two calves, and several oxen, one of them hers and two Michael’s, as well as, sadly, her own precious milk cow and its calf.

  With those we have lost and those who have left us, we are down to only eight children, four boys and four girls, including our own; nine men, seven women, eight wagons and only fifty-three oxen. We still have all the horses and mules, and, thank goodness, Mr. Clements and Mr. Artis, without whom we could never have made this trip.

  It was cold tonight, as they’d climbed foothills the past few days into ever higher elevations. She set aside her pen and rubbed her hands together for warmth, feeling a little guilty for still not entering anything in her diary about marrying Dawson Clements. How could she explain such a thing in a way that her children and grandchildren would understand why she’d done so? And because she continued to refuse a consummated marriage, in her eyes her marriage of convenience wasn’t a marriage at all. Until she knew in her heart she was totally in love with Dawson Clements, and until she trusted him implicitly in every way, she could not bring herself to try to explain their marriage in a document that for all she knew could be preserved forever. And if they parted ways when they reached Montana, she’d rather the marriage was never mentioned at all.

  She sat writing by lamplight next to where Sophie slept. Setting her diary aside, she moved to the front of the wagon, sat in the seat and looked up into a black sky alive with stars. She wished she could sleep, needed it desperately, but she couldn’t help wondering what Dawson meant when he said she didn’t know everything about him. Whatever it was, she hoped he would tell Michael about it and finish ridding himself of the ghosts from his past that made it so hard for him to enjoy the present. He’d changed so much after several talks with Michael, but the look in his eyes when Sue McCurdy lashed out at him told her he still had at least one more demon to wrestle down before he could be truly happy.

  Wolves howling in the distance pulled her from her thoughts, and a chill ran down her spine when she thought she heard growling not far away. She looked into the darkness beyond the circle of wagons, then jumped when she heard a barrage of vicious growls, along with outrageous squawking that was surely loud enough to wake the dead.

  Almost instantly the chickens in the crate at the side of her wagon raised a ruckus of their own, and men and women alike began pouring out from their wagons yelling, “What’s that?” “It’s wolves!” “Get my gun!” At almost the same time a strange screaming sound came from where the cattle were bedded down.

  There came more growling followed by shouts and several gunshots and the squealing and cries of what sounded like wounded wolves.

  “Mommy!” Sophie whined, sitting up.

  Dawson suddenly appeared at Clarissa’s wagon brandishing a rifle. “Tell Sophie everything is fine.” He hurried to the center of the circle of wagons. “Everybody who has wood bundled to their wagons or a good supply of buffalo chips, build up your campfires even though you’re through cooking for the night,” he ordered. “There are a lot of wolves out there. We need bigger fires!”

  Clarissa told Sophie to stay put and climbed down to rebuild her own campfire.

  “What about the cattle and oxen?” John Clay asked.

  “Stuart Clymer will help watch them the rest of the night, then ride in his folks’ wagon and sleep tomorrow while Bert Krueger takes over.” Dawson walked up close to where Clarissa still sat on the wagon seat. “I need you to give up something.”

  She frowned. “What?”

  “Your chickens.”

  “My chickens!”

  “The wolves got your rooster. Wolves run in packs that can roam for up to a hundred miles, and now they’ve got the smell and taste of your chickens in their nostrils and on their tongues. I’m hoping that if we leave the chickens behind tomorrow morning, the wolves will become preoccupied with them and won’t follow us. The smell of those chickens will be gone.”

  “Oh, Dawson, I can’t leave those poor things behind to be helplessly slaughtered.”

  “They’re chickens. If you didn’t have them for laying eggs, you’d slaughter them yourself for meat. You can get more when we reach Montana. In the meantime, you could help save everybody on this wagon train from having to chase off wolves every night.”

  “But they attacked the cattle, too. What about them?”

  “They got two of Bert’s steers. We might find it was more than that come morning. A steer is a whole lot bigger than a chicken. What they killed will keep them busy for a while. With the chickens left behind to keep them busy even longer, we can put a lot of miles between them and us by tomorrow night.”

  Clare hated the thought of it. “There are wolves everywhere. It might just happen again.”

  “Sure it might, but we’d have a lot less bait for them with those chickens gone.”

  Tears filled her eyes. “They’re like pets to Sophie. She helps me feed them.”

  “We’ll tell her a story about how the chickens like it better right here and don’t want to go on with us. I’ll make her believe it.”

  Clarissa wiped at her tears. “I think I’d rather leave some of my belongings behind than those chickens.”

  “Think of it as for the good of everybody along. I’m sorry, but the few cattle Bert Krueger has left are worth a lot more than those chickens. Cattle will be his livelihood when he reaches Montana.”

  She watched his eyes by the light of growing fires. “Will gold be your livelihood?”

  “You’ve got to trust me on that, Clare. You’re worth more to me than all the gold in Montana.”

  She took a deep breath, feeling silly for crying over chickens. “Well, I suppose people have left behind things much more precious than chickens, and one knows it’s better than having to leave behind a child’s grave.” She nodded. “All right. You can leave them for the wolves. You’ll have to be the one to make up a story for Sophie, though. I can’t do it.”

  He reached up and took her hand. “I’m sorry. So far we’ve had more losses than I expected. I’m just doing what I can to keep things at a minimum.”

  “I know that.”

  He started to leave, but Clarissa squeezed his hand. “Dawson, if this is going to work—between you and me, I mean—we have to be completely honest with each other.” She searched his eyes for answers. “You’ve never told me what you meant back at the river crossing, about not understanding something about you.”

  He let go of her hand and turned away. “The right time will come.”

  Sophie called to him, then. “Hi, Dawson!”

  Dawson turned to see the girl peeking around the canvas from near the wagon seat. He walked back and lifted Sophie into his arms, giving her a solid kiss on the cheek. “Guess what?”

  “What?” the girl squealed.

  “The chickens get to stay here.”

  “They do? Why?”

  “Well, I had a talk with them, and they said they were tired and didn’t want to go any farther.”

  “But who will feed them?”

  “God will feed them, Sophie. He feeds everybody, even the wolves.”

  Clare wanted to cry—over the chickens, and with secret joy at hearing a man like Dawson Clements talk about God. If only he would feel free to tell her whatever was left that kept him from realizing God’s true grace and from feeling whole again.

  The danger of death was all
around me;

  The horrors of the grave closed in on me;

  I was filled with fear and anxiety.

  Then I called to the Lord,

  “I beg you, Lord, save me!”

  —Psalms 116:3-4

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  July 18, 1863

  “Something’s wrong, Clarissa. I feel so faint, and I think—” Carolyn turned away and vomited.

  Clarissa leaned against a large rock. She and Carolyn had both found an area behind some boulders where they could have privacy because of diarrhea that had set in just before making noon camp. Clarissa’s stomach also felt queasy, and neither woman was able to make any lunch for the girls or Michael.

  “Carolyn?” Michael’s voice came from the other side of the rocks.

  “She’s awfully sick,” Clarissa called out. “So am I.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t feel so well myself,” Michael answered. “And both the girls are throwing up.”

  Clarissa felt as though her heart had just been put in a vise. “No,” she groaned to herself. “It can’t be.” Feeling faint, she walked around the rocks to see Michael looking too white. “Is anyone else sick?” she asked.

  “I don’t think so. Dawson is with the girls, and he told everyone else to move ahead about fifty yards and wait there away from us. He asked me if we drank any water that maybe the rest of those along didn’t drink.”

  Clarissa closed her eyes and fought panic. “Oh, no,” she moaned.

  “I told him about that stream where we found those berries when we went exploring a couple of days ago. I don’t think anyone else drank out of that stream, but we were so hot—”

  Clarissa put up her hand. “I remember.” We drank from that stream, she thought. Just us. Just us. Afterward they came upon three graves and signs that wagons had been in the same area perhaps just days earlier. There were also signs of large campfires. Now it hit Clarissa with clarity. Those burn spots were large because a great deal of things had been burned, probably clothing and blankets. Who knew what else? Dawson had probably thought about it, too.

  Cholera! She’d seen only one case of it at the hospital in St. Louis, and that person had been quarantined. Still, two nurses came down with it and were also quarantined. Everything anywhere in the area was scrubbed with lye, boiled or burned. Both the nurses and the patient had died.

  She vomited, then went to her knees with weakness and deep fear for poor little Sophie and Lena. She knew enough from being a nurse that the average adult was lucky to survive the dreaded disease, but children…. It took a much larger toll on children.

  “Please, God, please,” she begged aloud. “Don’t take my Sophie! Don’t take little Lena!”

  Michael stepped closer. “Clare, what do you think it is?”

  “I think it might be cholera,” she groaned.

  “Oh, no!”

  The word was ugly, matching the ravages of the disease, which could kill thousands in days. Everything fit—the water, no one else sick, the symptoms. Dawson knew it, too. That’s why he’d told the rest of the travelers to move ahead—away from them.

  “Oh, Michael.” Clarissa grasped the trunk of a pine tree to keep from passing out. “I need to be…healthy…to take care of Sophie…and Lena. Who will take care of them? What will we do?”

  It came then—the stomach sickness. She could hear Carolyn behind the rocks, still vomiting.

  “Jesus help us,” Michael said, sitting down on a stump and resting his elbows on his knees.

  When Clarissa was through being sick, she glanced toward the wagon train in the distance to see Dawson walking toward them with a little girl in each arm. Sophie was crying.

  “Oh, no, oh, no,” she moaned, embarrassed by her condition and devastated that little Sophie was suffering. Dawson came closer and set the girls down. He spread out a blanket and told them to lie down on it, then walked up to Clarissa. She saw such fear in his own eyes that he reminded her of a little boy.

  “You know what this probably is, don’t you?” he said to her. “I’ve seen it in the army—almost died from it myself. But I didn’t, and that means I can take care of you. I’ve already had it.”

  She covered her face. “I can’t let you. It’s too embarrassing. Just take care of my Sophie. Don’t let her die.”

  He grasped her arms. “Nobody is dying! Understand? And I’ll take care of you and Sophie, and Lena and Michael and Carolyn, too. I’ve told the rest of the group to keep going for another day, and if none of them gets sick, they’re probably all right. If that’s the case, they’ll keep going with Zeb. When we’re through this, we’ll simply follow them and maybe even catch up to them.”

  Clarissa turned away, clinging again to the tree trunk. “I’m so sorry, Dawson. We’re ruining things for everyone—and for you.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m going back to get blankets and towels and water and other things we’ll need. With everyone so sick, it’s better to stay out here away from the wagons so nothing back there gets contaminated. I’ll build a good fire and get my tent and keep you warm and safe and even clean you up if I have to. When this is over we’ll burn everything, blankets, towels, my tent, everything.” His arm came around her shoulders. “We’ll get through this. And neither God nor anyone else is going to take you and Sophie from me now.”

  She felt his anger in the words, and her first thought was who would take care of poor, lonely Dawson if something did happen to her? What would happen to his newfound faith in God? In her sickness and depression she even regretted that she’d not allowed him to consummate their marriage.

  She went to Sophie, and the dark circles that had formed under the girl’s eyes in perhaps an hour terrorized her. Children suffered worse with this horrible illness, and they often died from shock and dehydration.

  “Mommy,” the girl whimpered, before getting to her knees and vomiting into pretty purple mountain flowers, the same kind of flowers her sweet child had picked for her just yesterday.

  She wiped Sophie’s mouth with the hemline of her dress and then laid down beside her, pulling her into her arms. “We’re going to be all right,” she told Sophie. “And I want you to promise Mommy that no matter how bad you feel, you will drink water when Dawson tells you to, okay? It’s very, very important to keep drinking water, Sophie, or you’ll get even sicker. Dawson knows what to do, and sometimes he’s the one who will have to take care of you because Mommy is sick, too, okay?”

  “Okay,” Sophie answered in a weak voice. “I like him to take cawe of me.”

  “Good. I’m glad.”

  Carolyn came over to be with Lena, who lay so still it seemed she had no life in her.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  July 20, 1863

  Tears ran down Dawson’s cheeks as he dug like a madman. How in the world was he supposed to put a little girl in the ground? Two days! That’s all it took for little Lena to die, and her mother shortly after! How could God do such a thing? How could He take away such good people?

  Would he be burying Sophie next? Clare? If he had to bury them, too, he’d curse God for the rest of his life, even if he burned in hell for it!

  Sweat poured off him in spite of the cool mountain air. He finished digging a hole big enough for mother and child to be buried together. He’d failed again. These people who’d been so good to him were in his care, and he’d lost them!

  He threw the shovel out of the hole and climbed out, ripping off his shirt because of the sweat. Michael was kneeling beside the hole, so white, so sick from the vicious, emaciating cholera that had ravaged him and his family and Clare and Sophie over two days of vomiting and diarrhea until one would think there could not possibly be one ounce of liquid left to their bodies.

  “Don’t cover it completely,” Michael said weakly. “I want…to be buried with them, too.”

  “You aren’t going to be buried!” Dawson ordered.

  Michael bent over. “Come closer, Dawson,” he groaned.

&n
bsp; Dawson could hardly believe this nightmare. He knelt beside the man, putting an arm around him. “Michael, I still need you to talk to, to pray with. Right now what little faith I’ve learned to have is fast going out the window!”

  Michael shook his head. “Listen…to me.” He sat back on his heels, grimacing, already looking dead. “What you’ve done…past couple of days…it shows me you are…good…compassionate…exactly the kind of man…Christ wants His followers…to be. Few men would…clean up these awful…messes…and take care of us…like you’ve done.”

  “I’ve been in the army and fought wars, Michael. I’ve seen just about everything, and I’ve had this sickness. I know how horrid it is.”

  “Nevertheless—” Michael hung his head again, grasping Dawson’s arm with his hand. “You are…a good man…and now I know…I was just…God’s instrument, Dawson…in showing you Christ’s love and forgiveness. I’ve done my job…and now…He is taking me home.”

  “I don’t want to hear that kind of talk.”

  “You have…no choice. I want you to know…in a little metal box…in my wagon…there is a piece of paper I wrote out…after you married Clare. It gives you…my land…and Carolyn’s share…if we should die. It’s all…adjacent to Clare’s land…so you will end up with…lots of land for raising…fine horses and cattle. You can make a good life there…for you and Clare…and Sophie.”

  “Michael—”

  “They will live. I know it…in my heart, Dawson. This is all…happening…for a reason…so that you and Clare…can have a good life together. This is God’s plan…for Clare…and for you. Some day you will be…important people in Montana. I know it…I feel it…and I can see it.”

  Dawson wiped at his tears with a hand dirty from digging. “You’re just so sick that you’re seeing the worst of things for yourself. You’ll be fine, Michael, and you and I will work that land together.”

  Michael shook his head. “My place…is with my Lena, and with Carolyn…and with the Lord. Please…go get my wife…and my baby girl. Put them where they belong now…so they can wake up to God…with new bodies…and no more sickness.”