Predators and Prey

by F. M. Parker

  He ranged his sight over the decks of the steamboat. Caroline was in the lee of the deckhouse with Sophia. Caroline had selected the most protected spot on the open deck. As Mathias watched, the other girls of her tent of ten were winding their way through the people to cluster around her. Caroline had no responsibility for them on the boat. They were drawn by her quiet certainty of purpose. With her as a solid, competent leader, though he knew she was a reluctant leader, he would not have to worry much about that group of girls.

  The captain of the Sioux came out on the little foredeck of the wheelhouse, the third deck and highest part of the boat. He lifted his cone-shaped megaphone to his mouth and shouted down at the dock. “Get your people on board, Mr. Rowley.”

  Mathias cupped his hand around his mouth and called back. “Don’t you want to wait for the storm to slacken?”

  “No. The Sioux is used to storms on the river. Let’s get on our way.”

  “Right, Captain. Another five minutes should do it.” Mathias would be very glad when all the Mormons were gone from the hostile Gentiles of St. Joseph.

  ***

  “Look who’s coming down Francis Street,” Sophia said, gesturing across the dock toward town.

  Caroline glanced in the direction in which Sophia pointed. “It’s Ruth Crandall. Mathias went and did it. He’s recruited a girl from St. Joseph.”

  “Since she’s joining just as we’re leaving, he might get away with it without having angry brothers or a father searching for her with guns.”

  “Or a hundred St. Joe men coming to look for her. That could be very great trouble.”

  Ruth, clothed in a long-tailed dress, coat, and hat, hastened past a group of men who had gathered at the foot of Francis Street to watch the Mormons leave. One of the men called out to Ruth. She did not turn or answer but continued on, a blanket roll under her arm and a valise swinging in her hand.

  She climbed the gangway and cast a look about through the converts already on the boat. She saw Caroline and came across the deck toward her.

  “I’m going with you,” Ruth said as she drew near.

  “Why?” asked Sophia.

  Ruth was taken aback by the question. Disconcerted, she looked around at the girls watching her. Ignoring Sophia, Ruth spoke to Caroline. “Mathias told me all about the religion of the Latter-day Saints. And I believe his religion is the true one. I want to be one of you. So here I am.”

  “Ready for that big adventure you told Caroline about?” Sophia said.

  Ruth squarely faced Sophia. “I suppose you could say that,” she said with a hint of anger. “But am I any different than you?”

  Caroline spoke in a soft voice to Ruth. “Where are your folks, your brothers, your father? What do they have to say about you leaving with us?”

  “My mother is dead. I am an only child. My father is in New York selling furs. I left him a note explaining my decision.”

  “What will he do when he finds out you have run off with Mormons?” Caroline asked.

  “He will understand. And, anyway, I’m eighteen and can do as I please. May I travel with you?”

  “Why don’t you go back home,” Caroline said gently. “You still have time to leave the boat. Think about what you are doing. We are going to drag handcarts to Salt Lake City because we have no other way to get there. But you have money. If later you still want to go, then pay for a ride on a wagon.”

  “No. I’m going now. Making the thousand-mile journey with the handcarts will be a test of my faith in the Mormon religion. If you don’t want me to travel with you, I’ll find another group of girls.”

  “If you must go, then you may travel with us,” Caroline said.

  “Oh, thank you!” cried Ruth.

  “In a day or so you won’t be thanking me. More than likely you’ll be cursing all of us. Put your belongings down there on the deck with ours.”

  Caroline turned from Ruth and spoke to Sophia. “Would you please watch my things? I’m going forward for a while.”

  “Sure,” Sophia said.

  Caroline removed one of the two blankets from her pack and wrapped it around her. The thin coat she wore gave little protection from the falling sleet and cold. The blanket helped.

  She walked across the deck, winding a course through the throng of more than two hundred and fifty converts standing or sitting elbow to elbow, and their bundles, boxes, and suitcases. She saw the excited faces of the children, who, together with their mothers, had been given the small enclosed deck cabin for shelter. The youngsters stared out big-eyed through the glass windows at the falling sleet and the people huddled in their worn clothing.

  The fire beneath the twin boilers of the steamboat had been stoked to the limit with wood. Caroline saw the smoke and sparks fly from the two smokestacks and sail off with the wind. The trip up the Missouri was one hundred and seventy miles. With the current fighting against the Sioux, the trip would take nearly two days. When black night came and the captain could no longer see the snags and sandbars in the river, he would tie up to the bank and wait for the light of day.

  The captain shouted with his megaphone from the wheel-house. “Up gangway. Prepare to cast off.”

  On the deck the riverboat men pushed through the passengers to their duty stations. Two crewmen took hold of the arms of the windlass that raised the gangway and heaved mightily to turn it.

  The lines were cast off. The Sioux began to rumble and vibrate. The giant paddle wheel groaned and started to revolve, clawing for a hold on the slippery brown water.

  Caroline reached the bow of the steamboat. The cold storm winds blew fiercely. The sleet peppered the river, wounding it a million times a second. The river instantly swallowed the ice pellets and healed the wounds.

  Caroline stared up the river. The brown current was hidden beyond a quarter of a mile by the white, masking shroud of sleet. She pulled the blanket more tightly around her. There was much danger on the river: floating logs to bash in the hull and sink the boat and sandbars upon which to run aground; or the boilers could explode, as she heard they often did. Beyond the river lay the great prairie, with its hostile Indians; and still farther away the tall mountains and their steep, nearly impossible grades. And always another tribe of Indians. She must drag a handcart a thousand miles over all that land. She vowed she would never turn back. Her destiny was out there somewhere, waiting for her. She knew it.

  She raised her head and faced the storm and all the unknown hazards ahead. The wind-driven sleet bit and tore at her cheeks and froze her face into a stiff mask. She did not flinch.

  16

  Caroline strained forward into the harness and her feet drove hard against the dusty ground. Sweat coursed down her face and funneled into a tiny stream between her breasts.

  The leather straps of the harness that had chafed her shoulders so raw at first now rode on callused skin. Her hands had become toughened to the crossbar and no longer pained as she pushed. During the past eight days every muscle of her body had hardened with the torturous labor of pulling the handcart.

  Even though Caroline felt strong, she was glad for the big Swedish girl, Pauliina Halverson, who labored in the harness beside her. And for Sophia and Ruth pushing in the dust at the rear of the handcart. Together, as a team, they matched the pace of the caravan, up to twenty miles between daylight and dark on a good day.

  The Sioux had arrived at Florence in the dusk of the evening of the second day after leaving St. Joseph. The Mormons had set up their tents by lantern light near the cemetery of Winter Quarters. Caroline had heard of the much respected place, where the Latter-day Saints, fleeing from the persecution by the Gentiles, had spent that terrible winter during the exodus to Utah. She and Pauliina had walked through the cemetery in the frail light of the dying moon. They had spoken not one word. None were needed to know the suffering that had occurred there. The number of graves told it all.

  Anton blew a series of light, lively notes on a bugle he possessed to rouse the people
at five o’clock in the morning of the first full day in Florence. By seven o’clock breakfast had been cooked and eaten. Immediately the converts assembled for a song, a prayer, and instructions for the day from Mathias and Anton.

  The missionaries weighed the articles the people were allowed to take with them—twenty pounds. Everything else must be discarded. There was much moaning and complaining from some of the people, for though they had known of the limit, nevertheless they had brought some prized possessions—dishes, books, and one person a feather tick. Now they were forced to abandon those cherished belongings, throw them down on the ground for the rain and sun to destroy.

  Provisions of flour, bacon, rice, dry beans, dried apples, and sugar—enough for ten days—were distributed. The converts followed the missionaries into the adjacent meadow, where fifty-five handcarts stood in eleven rows of five.

  Caroline, Sophia, and Ruth slowly circled around one of the handcarts, examining it from all angles.

  “It doesn’t look too heavy to pull,” said Sophia.

  “Not standing there empty,” Caroline said.

  “Is that the one you young ladies choose to take to Salt Lake City?” asked a man, drawing near.

  “It should be as good as any of the others, since they all appear to be alike,” Caroline said.

  “They are all solidly made,” said the man. “I’m one of the carpenters who built them. I heard you talking about its weight. Well, it weighs sixty pounds and rolls easy. The wheels are four feet tall and the iron rims one quarter inch thick and two inches wide. You’ll be glad for the width of the rims, for that keeps the wheels from cutting into the dirt or sand, making the cart hard to pull.

  “The axles are of hickory and have iron skeins on the hubs for the wheels to bear on. They’ll last all the way to Salt Lake City if you grease them three times a week. The wooden side bars extend out forward as shafts and have that crossbar in front to push against. The box bed is three feet wide, four feet long, and nine inches deep. The cart will haul more than you might think. There’s a piece of canvas to cover everything to keep off the rain. With all your belongings and the food and water you must carry with you, the total weight will be more than two hundred pounds.”

  “What’s that?” Sophia asked pointing at two contraptions that looked like halters made of leather straps and hung from the front of the box bed.

  “That’s a pair of harnesses. The two of you who’ll be pulling can put those over your shoulders to make the pulling easier. They have straps that buckle around your chest and under your arms.”

  “We must wear harness like horses?” Sophia said.

  “Yes, like horses.” The carpenter’s eyes were clouded with compassion. “You are beginning a most difficult journey. There will be many times when you’ll wish you were as strong as horses, and just as dumb in your feelings.”

  The carpenter left as Anton, accompanied by one of the Swedish girls, approached Caroline and her two companions. “This is Pauliina Halverson,” Anton said. “She would like to join you and be the fourth girl with your handcart. She wants to learn as much English as possible before she reaches Salt Lake City. The best way for her to do that is to travel with some of you who speak English.”

  Caroline evaluated the Swede, measuring her probable strength against the thousand-mile journey that lay before them. Ruth was small of stature and fine boned. Sophia had approximately the same small to medium build as Caroline. Neither of them were horses, as the carpenter had said they might at times wish they were.

  Pauliina was dressed in men’s clothing, as was Caroline, with sturdy leather shoes and a hat with a brim. She towered nearly a head above Caroline. Her hips and shoulders were broad. A long, thick braid of silver-gold hair hung down her back to the waist.

  “I strong,” Pauliina said. She smiled and her sky-blue eyes sparkled as she answered Caroline’s unasked question.

  Caroline hesitated a moment, then said, “I am strong. That is the way you correctly say it.”

  “I am strong,” Pauliina repeated. Her smile broadened as she recognized by Caroline’s words the fact that she had been accepted into the group of English girls.

  Caroline raised her view from the dusty trail and wiped at the sweat on her face with her shirt sleeve. The handcarts were strung out in a line stretching more than a quarter of a mile across the greenish gray of the land. The winter had been long and had treated the northern Nebraska prairie harshly. Caroline had seen many rotting carcasses of buffalo and wild horses. Vultures fed on the carrion of some of the most recent dead. The growth of spring grass had been much delayed, but finally the tiny green shoots of life were poking their heads into the sunlight. The gaunt steers and mules grazed late into the night on the nutritious new feed.

  The caravan followed the Platte River Trail, which paralleled the river on the northern edge of the broad, flat floodplain. The Mormons had forded the Elkhorn River, the Loup River, and many lesser streams flowing down through the brushy breaks to empty into the Platte. The route was the same one used by immigrants trekking west to some far-off place called Oregon, on the shore of the Pacific Ocean.

  She frequently saw graves beside the trail. The Mormons had added to the number, for they were three people fewer than when they had left Florence. The Pattersons’ two little sons perished of whooping cough within hours of each other in the night. Sacraments were said and the small bodies were buried in the prairie soil.

  Brother Anders Field died of exhaustion in the heat of an afternoon. After the funeral his widow dashed away her tears. She sorted through their scant belongings and transferred a few articles to the handcart of people who had agreed to accept her with their group. The caravan journeyed on, the widow pushing at the rear of the vehicle. Her own cart had been left behind on the plain.

  The possessions of Mathias and Anton were carried in one of the wagons. Thus freed, the two missionaries moved along the converts, pushing where needed on one handcart or pulling on another. At the stream crossings where the banks were steep and difficult to negotiate, they helped every cart to cross. Then they hurried to overtake those who had gone on ahead and continued to lend strength to the weak.

  The three mule-drawn supply wagons, driven by three of the larger male children, led the way on the much used trail. The herd of fourteen steer came last. There had been fifteen animals until the previous evening when the first had been butchered. The steer had provided each of the people about two pounds of meat each. Another steer would be slaughtered every week until the travelers reached Salt Lake City.

  Mathias halted the caravan of Latter-day Saints for the night in a grove of trees beside the creek. The tents were pitched in a huge circle enclosed by the handcarts. Two men drove the mules and cattle out to graze. One of the men carried a rifle.

  After her tent was erected and supper eaten, Caroline left the camp and walked up the creek, in the opposite direction from which the livestock had gone. She was worried about the few weapons the men of the caravan possessed. They had passed the edge of civilization a hundred miles back. Now they were in a land that had no law, where only the gun and the war lance ruled. Yet only six men had firearms. Mathias and Anton each had a rifle and a pistol. Three of the converts had been given rifles by the church officials in St. Joe. Another man had a shotgun, an old antiquated weapon he had traded a watch for in St. Joseph. That was the entire array of armaments to protect two hundred and fifty innocents in the wilderness.

  Caroline had questioned Mathias about the lack of weapons. He had explained that few of the converts had ever fired a gun. And even fewer had ever owned one. The purchase of a gun was a low priority to a family living in poverty. However, she should not be alarmed, for armed men were coming from Salt Lake City to protect them from the Indians and white renegades on the long journey across the prairie and the mountains. Also, he added, there had been only two minor attacks on travelers on the Platte River Trail in the past year. Mathias seemed confident of their safety. Caroline w
as not.

  She stared to the west across the limitless gray prairie. The vast, flat emptiness inspired a disconsolate feeling about a woman’s insignificance that she did not matter at all. However, she still felt her destiny lay in that direction. But was the destiny of death to be hers?

  She entered the woods and found the creek. She bathed and then sat silently on the bank near the water as the daylight leaked away into the heavens.

  The slow wind died. The whispering leaves of the trees above her ceased their movement and hung without a rustle. Complete silence reigned. Caroline held her breath to better hear this rare intervals of utter stillness.

  Several seconds crept by. The only thing that moved was the last of the daylight abandoning the prairie. The water of the creek became as smooth and black as a pool of tar.

  A series of melodious bird warbles, sweetly trilled and quavering, sounded from the treetop directly over Caroline’s head. She cocked her ear to listen to the tuneful song.

  The bird song stopped for a moment, then came again, an enchanting medley beginning low, rising to full-throated volume, then sliding delightfully downward in a succession of perfect, lovely notes. And lower still, until it could only be heard in Caroline’s memory.

  She remained very quiet, waiting, hoping for the lovely song to come again. But the total silence reigned.

  Why had the bird sung at night? Had it been meant for her alone? Foolish thought. Only a coincidence.

  Still, it had helped her to conquer her bout of melancholy. She climbed to her feet and turned toward the camp. Destiny was destiny and could not be changed. She would go and meet hers. Even if that meant dragging that contraption of a handcart for a hundred days—yes, even for a thousand days.

  17

  Sam rose from his bed in the cold, dismal, darkness of the early morning. Without lighting the candle, he washed in the basin of water that sat on the stand in the corner of his room in the boardinghouse. As he always did each day before he pulled on his buckskin clothing, he felt the bulging cyst in the top of his stomach. The thing had stopped growing; he was fairly confident of that. But it was a hateful, threatening thing waiting to rupture, to spill its poison and kill him.