by Rebecca Tope
The prospect of reaching a town with stores and white people and a settled way of life is like a fleeting dream. And yet we have made good time, and our setbacks have been bearable. The only severe trial has been the increasing sickness of Mrs Fields, who lingers in a limbo between life and death, as Susanna did before her, her breathing shallow and painful, her mind wandering.
It was indeed shocking the way poor Mrs Fields had faded into a state of near coma. She no longer recognised her children or spoke to anybody. She would not take food, but only small quantities of water. My grandmother tapped her teeth and concluded that it was in part a loss of will to survive, caused by the death of her little daughter. ‘She never did want to make the trek, in the first place,’ she said. ‘For some, it is beyond their strength to endure.’
Mr Fields’ eyes were sunk deep into his head, and were horribly bloodshot. He had great trouble seeing to his oxen, which never got enough to eat or drink and were plainly losing condition with every passing day. The two remaining children whined and huddled together, even Ellie abandoning any pretence at usefulness. I saw Billy Tennant trying to cheer them with a suggestion of a berry-picking expedition. The boy would not be budged, but Ellie went a little way with him, before coming home with a basket of various edible items. Billy knew about the near-poisoning of a month before and made great efforts to reassure them that his finds were good to eat.
The freckled Billy, twelve years old, was always in high spirits. He was becoming the hero of our party, spreading good cheer with his broad grin and lending his talents on all sides. His parents were plainly proud of him, and profoundly glad that he was much too young to be taken as a soldier.
By the middle of August, the days were noticeably shortening, and despite the sense of high summer and oppressive heat, everyone knew that there could be no guarantee of continuing fine dry days for much longer. Fort Nez Percé was still three hundred miles from Oregon City, meaning we would have to follow the Columbia River through yet more mountain ranges. It could take us a month if there were delays. But the original plan had been to complete our journey by the end of September, and this, it seemed, we would accomplish, on the basis of progress thus far.
If we were fortunate, we might manage it a week or two ahead of the target – something we would all feel proud of, especially after our strongest young men had been taken from us way back in Laramie.
The presence of a river, even a near-dry little tributary, was consoling. It gave us something to follow, and there was always the thought that in extreme circumstances a raft might be constructed and floated in the current until its passengers arrived at a better place. Rivers ran to lower ground and eventually to the open sea. A river would come to your rescue in all seasons, provided there was yet a few inches of water in it. Even when the scout who had remained with us admitted that we were a little too far west for the direct route to the fort, we felt little reproach or anxiety. A day’s extra walk would take us to it, once we encountered the mighty Columbia.
23rd August
The complexities of the river system have delayed us but we remain in fair health, with no real hardships to harass us, other than the slow progress. The day is cool and cloudy, with rain threatening. The oxen are unable to maintain a good pace, so we crawl towards the fort with some impatience. But a strange malaise is upon our spirits, so there is little conversation. We assume it is no more than weariness after travelling so long.
We had no real explanation for our exhaustion. Everyone offered a different theory – the air quality was poor, high on the plateau; our bodies were protesting at the tiresomely dull diet and the strain of so much walking; the water of the river was bad in some way; the heat had caused a low level of sunstroke that sapped our strength. I imagined it was some mixture of all these reasons and more. The mountains we passed through demanded a crooked route and a stony trail. We had covered more miles than would have appeared on a chart. The bumping wagons put strain on the oxen, the sagebrush a modest but perpetual obstacle that had long since become a great irritant to man and beast. Although our dreary diet had been augmented by a variety of berries, the oxen had been forced at times to survive on vegetation that was not best fitted to their needs. The flesh had fallen from them, with the hip bones protruding reproachfully from their rumps. Such uncomplaining creatures, with none of the temperament of a horse or mule, willingly putting their last breath into hauling the families and their numerous possessions. I loved Cloud and Thunder more than I liked to admit even to myself. Dot and Seamus, always the second pair, received considerably less fuss and affection from me or my sisters, purely due to their position behind the rumps of Cloud and Thunder. It was unfair by any reckoning.
Chapter Seventeen
When we reached the fort, late the next day, I was alarmed to see no white men at all, only Indians. They were sitting around fires, showing little interest in the arrival of a substantial number of emigrants. A corral contained fifty or sixty well fed oxen, and another held a few horses. Dogs scurried back and forth, looking hungry and cringing. We erected our tents in the usual fashion, a few yards from the riverbank, and began preparations for the evening meal. Some people went to explore the fort, and discover what it might have to offer us. There was good pasture for our stock, a little further along the river.
I was horrified at my own response to the sight of so many Indians. My legs refused to move and my whole body shook with terror. One of them could so easily be the man who abused me at the river crossing, the distance nothing serious to a man on horseback. I was not certain that I could recognise him again, amongst so many red men who looked so similar. Neither could I persuade myself that the same thing would not happen again. My body took control and convinced me that I was at great risk. I crawled into our tent and huddled shivering under a blanket. The oxen were neglected, to my shame, despite their weary hunger. I think Lizzie eventually tended to them and led them to some grass.
It was not fully apparent to me what I was afraid of, but when I closed my eyes I could see again the sneering look on the savage face in the river and shrank even further into the flimsy protection of the tent. I repeated to myself the assurance that it was not going to happen again, that I would not put myself in the way of harm, but would run and scream and not worry about the reaction of my family. It did not help. I was frightened at a level far beyond my own control.
The next morning, the Indians presented a different threat, which I had not foreseen at all. Cloud and Thunder and the others’s poor condition became vividly obvious when compared to the sleek beasts in the corral at the fort. My father immediately understood that our future depended on acquiring fresh animals, with the health and strength to pull our wagon the final stretch of our journey. At first I had no idea of the subject he sought to discuss with a group of Nez Percé Indians, close to the rail around the corral. Then when he started gesturing at a black ox, a suspicion dawned. ‘What is he doing?’ I asked my mother.
My grandmother answered for her. ‘The Indians will exchange their healthy oxen for ours, as a cost. They will our animals well, and care for them, and then sell them to next year’s wagon train. I heard some talk of this, a while ago. These Indians are renowned for their enterprise.’
‘Exchange?’ I repeated stupidly. ‘Not sell?’
‘I understand they do charge for the service,’ she said drily. ‘Quite a substantial charge at that.’
‘But…we cannot part with Cloud and Thunder and the others.’
‘We cannot ask more of them, Charity. They are exhausted and half starved. We should be glad of these Indians and their clever ways.’
‘I shall never be glad of an Indian, whatever he might do for us,’ I said forcefully.
She stared hard at me, unable to miss the passion in my words. ‘Why, pet?’
‘They are so…strange and …They are not like true human beings. We can never know what they’re thinking, or what they want. I believe they hate us in their hearts.’
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br /> ‘Perhaps they do. Their future is a dark one, after all. But here, now, they have a reason to treat us well. They gain from the business. And our oxen will pass a contented winter growing fat by this mighty river. They will follow us to Oregon City next year. Perhaps we will see them again.’
The moment had passed in which I might have blurted out what the Indian did to me. It was never actually possible that I could have said the necessary words anyway. Even the harmless finger would have stuck in my throat. Fingers, I had learned, could do great damage and go to places that should remain sacrosanct. The Indian had violated something that I had never known was vulnerable. And because it had not hurt me, had not prevented me from walking and talking and lifting and carrying, there was every chance that others would laugh it off as nothing.
It was nothing, I told myself a thousand times. I owed it to myself to forget it altogether. I had been succeeding in doing just that until I found myself surrounded by men who looked just like the one with the finger. They all had the same sinewy hands, the same shadowy look in their eyes. When I closed my eyes that night I felt them pressing in on me, a dozen of them, all intent on piercing my flesh and reducing me to a throbbing confusion of fear and guilt.
Henry Bricewood was almost as upset about the loss of his oxen as I was over ours. We led our animals together to a stretch of grass that had been indicated to us. I walked as close to my friend as I could, thinking he might keep me safe from the savages. He patted the necks of his Fern and Bracken and Thyme and Rosemary every bit as sadly as I did my own friends. ‘They will not miss us,’ he said. ‘Their loyalty is mostly our own fancy. They lack the reasoning power to differentiate one set of humans from another. They will be well treated here, since they are worth money to these people.’
‘And the new ones? They were parted from their families last year and now no-one knows their names or their ways.’ I fondled the soft pelt of Thunder’s throat, as I had done so many times before. He pushed his nose forward, as he always did, in appreciation.
‘There will hardly be time to worry about that. A month or so, and then the trek will all be over.’
‘We will still need oxen, for ploughing and carting. They should have names.’
‘The names, too, are for us, not them. They are indifferent, so long as they are not in pain and have enough to eat.’
‘Indifferent like the tumbleweed,’ I said, remembering a much earlier exchange between us.
‘Like the whole of nature,’ he said gravely. ‘We have been extremely fortunate to have coincided with benign weather and to have suffered no disasters. We crawled across the face of the earth, and were permitted so to do by pure chance. We were not of sufficient import to be attacked by flood or tempest. Even the bears and wolves let us pass, scarcely noticing us.’
‘Oh, Henry. How can you be so humble? Where is your spirit?’
‘I admit to a humble spirit,’ he said with a quick laugh. ‘I believe I am actually quite proud of it.’ He laughed again. ‘Although that is a contradiction, of course.’
He was irritating me with his wordplay, but I could not afford to let him see it. There were two Indian men watching us, one of them with his mahogany skin displayed from waist to neck. What would Henry Bricewood’s response be if I suddenly informed him of my experiences? Would he associate it with the affair between Fanny and Abel, and simply add it to his stock of observations as to how people behaved? Henry, I had come to understand, was one of life’s observers. He would watch with a cool detachment, and make some theoretical pronouncement that meant nothing to those feeling the fear or passion or even love.
And yet it was an appealing practice in many ways. Somehow Henry had freed himself from the trouble and turbulence of bewildering emotions that beset most people. He had, I suspected, suffered so intolerably as a boy from mockery for his small stature that he had devised a means of protecting himself. Perhaps, I thought, he could teach me how to do the same. Perhaps I could quietly marry Henry and sit beside him reading books and discussing the meaning of words for the rest of our lives.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said in a low voice. As so often before, we were walking side by side, with two oxen between us – one of his and one of mine – and there was no exchange of looks.
‘You do not,’ I said sharply. The foolish word marry hovered in my mind’s ear.
‘You are thinking I lack proper feeling. That there are so many sorrows and trials, even when we have been so fortunate in general, that I ought to be less…unmoved.’
I melted with relief. ‘Well, Mrs Fields is sick and Susanna died,’ I agreed. ‘And Mr Tennant’s foot is permanently deformed. Even your dog might wish to remind you that he has suffered.’
‘Poor Melchior! He would not have willingly chosen to emigrate, I am sure.’
‘And our brothers have been taken from us.’ I recalled with shame how infrequently I gave Reuben and the others a single thought, despite my mother’s abiding grief and worry for him.
‘I cannot claim to miss Benjamin,’ he admitted. ‘He ate too much, for one thing.’
‘Reuben too,’ I said. ‘But the firewood has been sparse without his skill with the axe.’
My breast was swelling in a strange way during this banter. Feelings that had been held in tight was now loosening, and there was something threatening to leak somewhere. A tear ran down my face. I dashed it away and Henry never saw it. It was a warm tear, born of something good. Perhaps it was some inner self telling me that I could indeed do worse than marry Henry Bricewood – if, indeed, he ever asked me.
Chapter Eighteen
3rd September
We have left Fort Nez Perce with new oxen and a heavy grief for our faithful team left behind.. We have more mountains yet to traverse, but the whole distance is barely three hundred miles, which seems quite little after so far already covered. The temperature remains clement, and we have stores in plenty. There will be good hunting, they say, and we might slaughter more of the cattle, keeping the best cows for our new homesteads in Oregon. Mr Tennant is walking with the help of a crutch, his foot still mis-shapen. He is quite cheerful.
‘Thirty days at most,’ said my father with great buoyancy. It was as if these final weeks were nothing at all, an attitude that everyone found infectious, after the mysteriously restorative effects of the Indian fort. We had rested and revived tremendously, with much more talking and even some singing. Mrs Fields appeared in better health, and my grandmother opined that her malady had been chiefly a manner of mourning for her lost daughter.
My father began to discuss crops to be planted in the coming spring, and my mother took to opening some of her trunks and shaking out precious rugs and curtains, checking them for moth or damp. My grandmother squared her shoulders in a display of triumph at having come through such an adventure without the slightest difficulty.
The scout assured us that there was very little chance of frost and none at all of snow. The closer we got to the coastal region, the easier everything would become. All we had to do was stick to the bank of the Columbia until the final twenty miles, when we would divert southwards down the Willamette River to the mythical Oregon City.
‘Methodists and Freemasons,’ said Mr Bricewood, when someone asked him what sort of people we might expect to encounter. ‘And precious few Indians.’
We were sitting in a loose circle around our fires, noting how the evenings had grown much shorter and darker, and exchanging ideas about our futures. Mr Bricewood had, as always, taken every opportunity at the fort to acquire information. His son was like him in that respect at least. He spoke to scouts, trappers and Indian traders with a great eagerness. ‘The Methodists have got a church at Willamette Falls already,’ he elaborated. ‘And the Masons have opened their first Lodge these past few weeks.’
‘Will you join them, Pa?’ asked Henry.
‘No and yes,’ grinned the man. ‘Masons I can profit by, but I never did relish those Methodies.’
‘Few Indians?’ I queried, in a quiet voice.
‘They’ve been killed off with smallpox and cholera, I hear. A whole bunch of tribes there were, but they’ve dwindled to a few hundred now. Gives us a free hand, anyways.’
I felt nothing but gladness at this news until I caught Mr Fields’ eye and remembered the cause of his pock-marked face. It was wrong to rejoice in such devastation and anguish, even if the victims were the Indians I now feared so much.
‘And they’ll have been converted to the ways of Mr John Wesley, most likely,’ said Henry. From the expressions on all sides, nobody understood his reference any more than I did myself.
There was something curious taking place between Fanny and Abel, I noticed, in the first few days along the bank of the Columbia. They were much less concerned to stay out of sight, and had once or twice let themselves be seen holding hands. Where there had been nothing but a determined indifference between them in public, they now behaved like a couple in love. A normal young pair of sweethearts, who drew smiles from anyone noticing them. I told myself I should be delighted at this, that it meant that there was no further need to worry about my sister’s fate. But there were too many unanswered questions for any unalloyed satisfaction.
Ought not the affection to have come first, before the lustful fornication? Had they not broken some implacable law, whatever might happen next? If the story ended happily, I anticipated a sense of being cheated in some way. Where I certainly should be pleased, all I expected to feel was jealousy and resentment.
But it was not long before external considerations took precedence over such unprofitable thinking. Although a trail had been forced all the way to Oregon City three years previously, the route ahead promised to be very much more arduous than we had expected. There had been reference to rafts being needed for a very rocky stretch that wagons were expected to find impassable, which we had chosen not to examine too closely. Far beyond the point where we might turn back or attempt a cut-off, we could only press ever westwards and remind ourselves that thousands of people before us had accomplished it.
