The Indifference of Tumbleweed

by Rebecca Tope

  ‘Does your faith decree that you should monitor your sister’s moral wellbeing? Does it insist that you bring trouble upon her when she is, to all appearances, perfectly happy? Are you persuaded that you can prevent further evil by speaking out?’

  ‘Not persuaded, quite.’ I managed a wry smile. ‘I would not impede a true affair of the heart. But Fanny says nothing of love. It is all a matter of fleshly delight to her.’

  ‘A delight that you and I know nothing of,’ he summed up gravely.

  I looked sharply at him. Was I as much a freak as he, then? Was I doomed to spinsterhood, for reasons I could not grasp? The remark had been kindly meant, I supposed, but yet it rankled.

  Henry saw my reaction and quickly added, ‘All I mean is, we are both unwed – and likely to remain so, in my own case. You, Miss Charity, will marry well, I have no doubt.’

  ‘You think they would not hang him, then?’ I returned to the main question. ‘I could not endure for that to be the consequence of my actions.’

  ‘There is no law, Charity, against what Abel has done.’

  His use of my Christian name further disarmed me. Here was kindness personified, as well as something more robust and useful. Henry possessed information of which I felt an urgent need.

  ‘But the leaders – our fathers – they would surely condemn it? The Church is emphatic that it is a sin.’

  Henry pursed his lips, plainly weighing his words. ‘It is impossible to say for certain how much of the old ways we take with us into this new land. There will be different priorities from before. And perhaps you would say that when the Founding Fathers set up their colony, two centuries past, they were implacable in their morality. But it is different now. The Mormons take several wives. The Spanish have a reputation for wildness and promiscuity. I dare say we will all have to revise our attitudes to many aspects of our lives.'

  I pondered these words carefully. ‘Is this another part of your philosophy of the basic evil in humanity?’ I asked. ‘That there are no firm and everlasting laws that will govern us wherever we go? That it is all shifting and ill-founded?’

  ‘We shall see,’ he said, spreading his hands as if relinquishing any personal concern or responsibility.

  ‘You do not care,’ I accused. ‘You watch and form theories, as if nothing matters to you yourself.’

  He grimaced. ‘I care that you have been so upset by this business. But I care little for Abel, I must confess. It is also my belief that the affair is general knowledge throughout our party and a blind eye is turned towards it. That is how it would be handled in your father’s home country, according to tales I have heard. The priest would keep a watchful eye on the young people, and in due course arrange a marriage that makes everything right.’

  ‘And here everyone is a priest?’ I felt bitterness at my needless anguish. The whole party was ahead of me in understanding and awareness. ‘And my parents? They too know full well what Fanny is about?’

  ‘Perhaps not, although I fancy your grandmother sees a great deal. In any event, I beg you to take it more lightly. We will reach Fort Hall in another two days, in Snake County, where the travelling becomes considerably harder. It is barely three years since the first wagons forged a way through to the Columbia, and it is nowhere near so smooth and easy as what we have known. All our energy must go to the needs of the day – the essentials for life. Survival becomes a fragile matter in these regions. Smaller issues can be brushed aside for the time being.’

  This was at odds with the homily we had been given at the outset by Mr Tennant. He had made it clear that the normal rules of decency must be adhered to at all times. No fighting, stealing, deceiving or adultery would be permitted. Arguments must be resolved in a civilised manner and it should always be remembered that we depended each on the others, so that every member of the party had a value. I had listened with a feeling that we were secure on this foundation of integrity where rightness could be relied upon. ‘That is not what we were told at the start,’ I protested.

  ‘Fanny and Abel have not broken any of the laws we were given,’ Henry reminded me. ‘There was no mention of fornication.’

  The word had the power to disable me, even though I had found the courage to utter it myself, ten minutes earlier. ‘Oh,’ I managed. ‘It is all so vile.’

  ‘Please – I implore you to have faith that all will be well. Look outwards, at Nature’s bounty. You will never pass this way again. No woman makes this journey twice.’

  I was distracted, as he had intended. ‘Is that true?’

  ‘Indian squaws, and perhaps a few pioneer wives will traverse it on horseback, but the wagons are another matter. A wagon train moves only in one direction. If you elect to quit Oregon in the future, I advise you to do it by sea.’

  I shuddered, recalling the nausea I had suffered, even on a river steamer. ‘I think not,’ I said.

  ‘Then find yourself a prosperous farmer, with his sixteen hundred acres, and learn the ways of beef cattle. I have seen you favouring your oxen with your affections. Perhaps that is the life that awaits you.’

  It was a consoling little speech. I could find no objection to devoting my days to a homestead thronged with healthy beeves and perhaps a few of my own children. The husband that was necessary for the realisation of this dream was a blurry figure, his face a mystery to me.

  ‘And you?’ I wondered, aware that he was gazing somewhat mournfully into the distance.

  ‘Oh, I shall find a place for myself, one way or another.’

  I tried to recall more detail of the conversation we had had together many weeks previously, in which the future had been a prime topic. It had left me with an impression of Henry as a philosopher or scholar, an historian perhaps, charting the colonisation of Oregon and neighbouring counties. ‘I cannot see you as a farmer,’ I smiled.

  ‘Nor I,’ he agreed.

  We parted then. I returned to my family, leaving Henry staring soulfully at the mountains ahead of us. It was some hours later that I understood how much better he had made me feel with his gentle attentions. He had lifted a great burden from my shoulders, with a few words. It felt like magic, or a miracle, and I sought to test it by meeting Fanny’s eyes for a long look. This was something I had avoided ever since the day at Independence Rock. She smiled cautiously, and I smiled back. Her fate was no longer my responsibility. I still felt anger, envy, disapproval and anxiety – but the more painful sense of guilt and responsibility had evaporated.

  Fort Hall was a place for serious trading, and there was a near frenzy amongst the emigrants when there was word that flour supplies were low. Mr Bricewood exchanged half of his cattle – quite fat by then – for goods he judged useful for the forthcoming weeks. He acquired a good horse, as well as a quantity of beaver fur, in the form of a hat and a long coat. In the middle of summer this struck us as misguided, but Henry told my father that we would be at a considerable elevation, perhaps until October, and cold weather was a probability. Between us we swept the trading stores clean of all dried goods. Our oxen were given fresh shoes, and water barrels were either replaced or restored to perfect order.

  A scout we had not met before took a shine to my mother and hung around our wagon for two days. He was a tall man with leathery skin and eyes so narrow they were hardly visible. His hat was black with grease, and his clothes not much better. He spoke with a muttered mountain accent, which we found hard to understand. There were long tales involving grizzlies and wolves and the declining business of trapping. He described the beaver and its clever ways, with a respectful fondness that Lizzie especially found appealing until she understood that he had killed thousands of the creatures in his time.

  We would return to burning wood for our fires, we were told, as buffalo were far less numerous in the territory we were shortly to enter. No longer were we to find lazy rivers winding through the plains, with sparse clumps of trees and the amusing prairie dogs which we had enjoyed in previous weeks. The rivers would have rocky be
ds at the foot of steep gorges. Finding water would be more difficult, especially for our stock. There would be great canyons and falls, the drama of which we could barely imagine. Two or three weeks distant, we might find salmon to augment our diet, if we could devise methods of catching them. The scout, whose name was Jim, filled our heads with the glories of the land ahead of us. The river, he said, was wrongly named. When the Indians mimed their reply to the question of its title, they intended to convey the idea of a fish. Instead, the white men understood the sinuous movements to indicate a snake, and thus it became the Snake River. We laughed at this, but afterwards we agreed that a river could easily resemble a snake, and Fish River would be a much duller name for it.

  My mother elicited all this and more from the devoted Jim. He would sit close to her, watching her reactions to his tales, and tipping his hat to her every few minutes. ‘Poor man,’ said my father, when he had finally gone. ‘He seldom enjoys female company, living as he does.’

  ‘I like him,’ said Mother, daringly. ‘He has a maturity I find impressive.’

  ‘Maturity?’ repeated my father, his eyes wide. ‘When he lives like a wild animal, killing for his living?’

  ‘A farmer does no less,’ she remarked. ‘I often think that mankind does nothing better than killing – both animals and fellow men. Death seems to bring more of a thrill than anything else.’

  She was right, and five pairs of female eyes challenged my father to deny it. He merely laughed, telling us without words that the male viewpoint was always going to be the correct one, and no amount of womanly argument would alter that.

  But Fanny, in the new defiant style that seemed so strange to me, did not leave it there. ‘Mama likes him, and thinks him mature,’ she said. ‘Does that make you jealous, Pappy?’

  It was the boldest question imaginable; bold and transgressive. Whatever the relationship between our parents might be, it was not a topic to be mentioned aloud. ‘Fanny!’ I gasped, before I could stop myself.

  My father laughed again, but with less sincerity. ‘Mind your tongue, girl,’ he said, and looked at me in a way that I took to be an instruction to keep my sister under better control.

  ‘We must make a hazardous crossing of the river,’ my mother continued, with a blithe change of subject that had some skill in it. ‘A place named Three Island Crossing, which is impossible if the water is high.’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ My father was impatient now. ‘All is in hand.’

  ‘Jim tells me that last year three wagons were overturned and all the goods inside were lost,’ she went on. ‘It requires six oxen to take one wagon across. Six!’

  We had made many river crossings since Westport, some of them unpleasant for the oxen, but none appearing dangerous. They were done deftly, practice lending a sureness to the process. But it was a dry year, everyone said, and the rivers far more tame than usual. We had missed terrible trials by mud and flood that had been endured by the migrants of 1845. The rains we had experienced had mostly been light, and necessary for the quality of pasture for the stock. The wagon covers kept the contents safe from harm and the warm air quickly dried out wet fabric once the rain had stopped.

  ‘Why is it necessary to keep crossing rivers?’ asked Lizzie petulantly and not for the first time. My middle sister disliked getting wet, and was afraid of the slippery, murky riverbeds where she imagined strange monsters lurked to bite at her ankles. As a small child she had possessed a little wooden crocodile, with a moveable jaw full of sharp teeth. Nobody could convince her that the rivers in these western regions did not contain such creatures. ‘Can we not simply follow the bank on the same side the whole way?’

  ‘I believe we can trust the scouts on that,’ said my father not very patiently. ‘Nobody makes the crossing for a lark, now do they?’ He tapped her arm. ‘And we have told you this and other reasons more times than I find pleasing.’

  Lizzie heaved a great sigh, as if he had once again failed to give her the answer she sought.

  ‘In more civilised lands there are bridges,’ said Fanny. Nobody graced this with a reply. If Henry had been there, I was sure he would have told us that in the near future there would be highways, bridges, turnpikes and even railways across the whole continent. We never entirely forgot that we were performing the role of forerunners, carving out a route that would in time become commonplace. Mail would be delivered regularly and transport could be hired as it was in the east – a comfortable place in a carriage was available to almost all except vagrants and beggars, back there in more civilised lands.

  July 25th

  Fort Boise has been reached almost before we know it, a mere seven days from Fort Hall. And that followed quite closely on the tail of Fort Bridger. We have traversed the Three Island Crossing without serious mishap, thanks to the low water level. Cloud and Thunder and the others were shaking from exhaustion, however, when it was done. The wagons were tied together with a chain, which confused the creatures considerably. First there was a wide stretch of water, then we crossed two islands situated in the middle of the great river. We are fortunate not to have to take the other trail to the south, which would be even harder on the beasts. We heard many tales of catastrophe, where oxen drowned or died of overwork. We saw abandoned wagons near the river, but all their goods had been taken by other travellers. Or perhaps by Indians. Since Fort Bridger we have been accompanied and assisted by Shoshone men, who show every sign of liking us. The fear we had of attack by savages, when we first set forth, has all but disappeared now.

  I neglected to record a minor but real tragedy that took place during that crossing. Henry Bricewood had been wading through the water at the head of his oxen, wearing a shirt with the sleeves turned up. His coat was carelessly slung across the footboard of the wagon. At a lurch, the coat slipped off into the river, at first unnoticed. When Mrs Bricewood caught sight of it, the current had swept it some distance, and it was almost sunk. Henry shouted, and made to chase after it, but his father called at him to stay where he was.

  Our wagon remained on the bank, yet to make the crossing, and I darted downriver, meaning to dive in and rescue the coat. It was a fine garment in itself, but I well knew that Henry’s precious Milton was in the pocket. ‘Charity!’ cried my father. ‘Stay where you are!’

  I think my courage would have failed me, in any case. The water was fast-moving, if not especially deep. Henry waved to me, indicating that I should abandon the attempt. If he did not have the mettle to ignore his father and swim after his own possessions, then it struck me as excessive to do the deed on his behalf. Besides, I said to myself, the book would be ruined, once it became soaked in river water. It tumbled away over rocks and ended up the Lord knows where.

  But the loss was grievous. Later that day I ventured to offer my commiserations to a pale-faced Henry. ‘I have other books,’ he said forlornly.

  ‘But I feel it for myself,’ I insisted. ‘I was anticipating further readings from it.’

  ‘Once in Oregon, I can order another copy,’ he said, with a little frown. I think he shared my doubts as to whether such an operation would indeed be possible.

  In general, during those weeks, I had taken Henry’s advice and thrown myself into everyday work, while taking more care to observe our surroundings. The oxen were still my primary concern, and I could see that this stage of the journey was straining them much more than the first half of the trail. The gradient was almost perpetually upwards, but the real difficulty came with the few steep downhill stretches. Then the wagon had to be braked repeatedly, its great weight threatening to overtake them and cause injury. Renewed debates and arguments arose as to whether we might have to discard some of the load before we reached the far side of the seemingly endless range of mountains.

  The land was indeed remarkable. We came to our very first hot spring two days after Three Island Crossing, where the water naturally boiled, and we excitedly cooked dumplings and meat with no need to light a fire. The water seethed and bubbled, and fl
owed into pools where it cooled enough to create the finest possible bathing tub.

  The previous three or four years had seen a number of experiments and mistakes regarding the best trail to use, and still the matter was far from certain. At two points between the crossing and Fort Boise, we came to junctions with other trails and cut-offs, but saw no signs of wagons having used them that year. Jim, our friendly scout, left us at the second of these branch points, saying he had received word of a slow group of emigrants from a different wagon train, who had set out three weeks after we did, and were in trouble of some sort. Jim, it seemed, could gather news from invisible strands of ether that normal mortals were blind and deaf to. He had told us, the day after Fort Hall, that he believed the Reed and Donner families were following an impossible trail, and would quickly find themselves giving up their wagons and carrying essentials on their backs across a great stretch of desert.

  ‘Why did you not prevent them then?’ asked my mother.

  He shrugged. ‘Other voices louder’n mine,’ he said.

  His knowledge of the mountains and rivers, with the ancient Indian trackways and consequences arising from the unpredictable weather, was fathomless. We could see it on his face, the instinct for where to step, and when to lie quiet and wait for better conditions. And we had discovered that he was almost incapable of putting the knowledge into words that we could understand. His language was all of oddly-named rocks or canyons or creeks. He could not explain how these landmarks related to each other, or how far apart they might be. As a scout, all he could do was lead and invite those who trusted him to follow. From what we could ascertain, he had spent the past few years simply tagging along with wagon trains for a week or so, listening for the secret messages that came on the wind, and disappearing to rescue any benighted party that had got itself into trouble.

  We missed him after he had gone. ‘I felt we could depend on Jim,’ sighed my mother.

  ‘We have no need of him,’ my father told her. ‘Our way is clear. Others with less sense than the leaders of this caravan have greater call on his skills.’