Wind Walker

by Terry C. Johnston

  From the look on her face and the sound of her words, he was almost afraid to ask her the question, “You still love him?”

  Yet she nodded her head emphatically and smiled as she said, “Oh, yes, Pa. I love him. Enough to follow him to Oregon Territory where he wants to make a new dream happen for us. Roman’s so sure that will be the place for us. You should see the way his face shines when he talks about the new life we’ll have out there.”

  “Does my heart good to see that your man wants the best for his family,” Titus replied, reassured.

  “He does, Pa. I know it in my heart.”

  “So you’re gonna stand by him?” he asked.

  “Every step of the way,” she declared with conviction. “We’re doing this for the children, going to Oregon for our family. Make a new start we haven’t been able to do anywhere else as we moved across Missouri, from one settlement to the next … hoping each new place was going to be the one where we’d really sink down roots and build up something good.”

  Holding out his arms, Bass stepped toward her. Amanda came into the shelter of her father’s arms and laid her cheek against his shoulder. He said, “Ever’thing I hear about Oregon tells me it’s the place for a farmer’s family to put down those roots and make a life for themselves.”

  “We started out reading all the papers and books about Oregon we could find,” she explained. “Right from the first, Row said it got much more rain than we got back home in Missouri. Some people wrote that it didn’t take much for anything to grow out there: just scratch a hole in the ground, drop in the seed, and wait for it to sprout right up on its own!”

  “Other folks what already come through this summer all said pretty much the same thing, Amanda,” he emphasized. “On their faces is writ all the much trouble they been through getting this far west, but in their eyes is still the light of where they know they’re going.”

  “I never knew the journey would be this hard on us, this tough on the children,” she admitted. “Never gone through anything like this that sucks me dry of all my strength by the end of every day … laying my head down every night, knowing I gotta get back up in the morning and do it all over again.”

  “Sometimes your life can seem like it’s taking you nowhere,” he agreed thoughtfully. “But you just keep putting one foot out in front of the other, then one day—you an’ Roman gonna be standing in Oregon where you was meant to be.”

  She backed up a step and gazed into his eyes. “There’s been times when we made camp late in the afternoon, to give us time to cook and clean up after supper before it got dark—and we’d look back to the east. How it makes my heart sink when I can see where we got up that very morning, Pa! After miles and miles of dust and heat, rocks and creek crossings, flies and gnats, and the sun allays sucking every drop of water outta me … and I can still see where we got up that morning!”

  “Them wagons, ox or mule, ain’t made for covering ground fast, Amanda,” he sympathized. “Hell, your family damn well could mount up on horses, take along some pack animals, and light out from here to Oregon. Make it in half the time, I’d wager.”

  “H-half?”

  “But you’d be living off the land,” he continued. “An’ when you got to Oregon, you wouldn’t have all them things you brung with you to make that new home for yourselves when you got there.”

  Staring at the ground, Amanda said, “I’ve got a set of my grandmother’s dishes in our wagon. Packed down in the flour barrel. Brought her bed and quilt too.”

  “See? You couldn’t leave none of that behind!”

  Nodding, she agreed, “Others, they’ve left a little here, and a little there along the trail—lightening the load the farther we went. But me, I just gotta keep up my courage for the days to come, the way I kept up my courage ever since we put Westport behind us. I can only pray to the Lord that the road’s gonna get easier from here on out.”

  He took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “Truth be, Amanda … the way from here gets tougher. What you’ve come through since leaving Fort John on the Platte, it’s about the same clear on to Fort Hall. But from there to the Columbia by way of the Snake—that’s some bad, bad country.”

  Her sunburned face went haggard, drawn. “We haven’t seen the worst of the trail?”

  Wagging his head, Titus told his daughter, “No. There’s times out there a farmer or shopkeeper from back east gonna stop and wonder why he’s in the middle of the wilderness. It’s gonna seem like it goes on forever, with no way out, not back east or on west. That’s where your Roman is either gonna have his dream go up in smoke, or he’s gonna grip it even tighter’n he holds on to you, Amanda. Out there … where you’re taking your family to find your dream—that’s where you—you, Amanda—are gonna have to put your whole heart into the journey to see the rest of your family through.”

  “I kept hoping …”—her voice sounded small and weakened as she stared at the anvil—“that when we got halfway, the road would get better, easier on the animals and the wagons, easier on us, too. Ever since I couldn’t see Westport behind us no more, I’ve been praying that the way would get better.”

  “But I’ll bet you got harder, toughened up, as you come west, Amanda,” he attempted to cheer her. “And what you come through awready is gonna make you able to last out the hard scrapes that lay ahead of you.”

  She reached down and took one of his hands in both of hers. “I’ve got a good husband, a loving man. In my heart I know he’s gonna get us to Oregon. And the Lord is gonna watch over us—see us all the way through.”

  Smiling, Titus told his daughter, “Don’t you feel your heart jump when you think about making this journey to a new home, Amanda?”

  “It’s about the only thing helps me get back up in the darkness before sunrise every morning, Pa. I look out there ahead of us, and think to myself: ‘Just over that next hill I’m gonna see our new home.’ Then we make it to the top of that rise, so—I pick out another hill to look at and dream on. Over and over I do the same thing through the day till we finally stop for the night, when I can shake the dust outta my hair and clothes, put some salve on the sunburn and them bites the flies gave me.”

  “That’s the way I done for myself all these years,” he declared. “Take a day at a time, take a hill at a time if I have to. Best part is seeing some new country, Amanda. Where I ain’t never been before—”

  “Why don’t you come with us?” she blurted out, hope filling her eyes.

  He could only stare at her dumbfounded.

  “Bring your family,” Amanda pleaded. “There’s gotta be some new country for you to roam between here and there, Pa. Come see it for yourself.”

  “I don’t think I wanna ever go to Oregon again, Amanda,” he tried to explain. “It’s become a place for settlers and sodbusters. Not the place for a wanderin’ man like me.”

  Pressing her lips together, Amanda nodded. “You weren’t the settling-down kind back when you knew my mother. Likely you never will be, Pa.”

  “But that don’t make me no better or worse’n a farmer like your Roman,” he explained. “Just differ’nt. I ain’t never been the sort to want those things, Amanda. I run away from farming back in Kaintuck when I was sixteen. About the age you run away from your ma.”

  Taking a step toward him, Amanda looped an arm through one of his. “Won’t do me any good to try talking you into bringing your family to Oregon with us?”

  He gazed down into her green eyes and shook his head. “Can’t. This here’s where I wanna stay. Ain’t never thought about leaving the mountains.”

  Disappointment clouded her eyes. “I won’t say anything more about it, because I can remember how anxious you were to get healed up enough so you could get out of St. Louis and back to the mountains.”

  “Back to my wife, and where I was s’posed to be,” he confided. “Now, you best be on your way to fetch up that family an’ have ’em back here afore suppertime.”

  She took a few steps, th
en turned to him once more. “Pa, I need to ask you a favor. Please don’t say nothing to Roman about what I said of me ever being afraid of us going to Oregon.”

  “I unnerstand,” Titus agreed. “Just atween you an’ me.”

  Interlocking her fingers again, Amanda appeared nervous. “I can’t imagine what it’d do to Row if he was to find out I’ve been afraid of us finding a place to live out our lives. If he learned that I was able to tell you things I haven’t said to no one in so long.”

  “That makes your pa proud to be the ears you told. We’ll keep our talk atween ourselves. No one else need know. Now, you best get along back to camp so you’re here before supper.”

  “I can’t wait to meet my brothers and my new sister,” she said, her eyes growing a little misty as she stood there at the border of shadow and sunlight. “I … I never had no brothers and sisters before, Pa.”

  “You do now, Amanda.”

  She asked, “And you know what you got in turn?”

  “What?”

  “You got four grandchildren.”

  That took his breath a moment, struck with the sudden sureness of the revelation.

  “Damn, if I don’t,” he exclaimed quietly. “Here I am, ’bout to have my fifth child come this winter … an’ I got four grandpups awready! If that don’t shine!”

  ELEVEN

  “Ain’t you glad to see me, Scratch?” Shadrach Sweete roared.

  Bass felt troubled as he peered southwest across the valley of Black’s Fork. “It ain’t that I’m not happy to have you back,” he explained with a little irritation, watching the big man rein up beside him and slide out of the saddle. “I spotted the dust from your travois and them animals—figgered it was my daughter comin’.”

  “Magpie?” Sweete snorted as he approached, leading his horse. “That li’l gal can’t raise much dust by her own self.”

  They clasped forearms and shook, pounding one another on the shoulder there on the flat some forty yards outside the main gate at Fort Bridger. “Ain’t Magpie I was meaning. I got another daughter.”

  Sweete inched back. “I never knowed.”

  He grinned with pride. “Name’s Amanda. She come in yestiddy with the last train down from the ferry.”

  “How’d she know her pa was here?”

  Titus shook his head. “Didn’t. Bound away for Oregon with her husband. Got four li’l ones of her own too.”

  “Then she ain’t a young’un herself,” Shad commented as they started moseying toward the post walls. “When’s last time you see’d her?”

  “Late winter of thirty-four.”

  Sweete looked over at Bass with a moment of study, then asked, “You still recognize her after all that time?”

  “She come found me,” he declared. “Was in the store yonder when she heard Bridger give my name to some fella from the train what needed a li’l smithy work. Come over to see for herself if I was the one.”

  Sweete laid his big hand on the shorter man’s shoulder. “You really her pa?”

  “I am, Shad.” It was then they stopped short of the gate and Titus turned to stare at the distance, his one good eye moving across the distant trees. “Thought she’d be back with ’em by now.”

  “Who?”

  “Amanda an’ her family. They was coming to dinner.”

  Sweete cleared his throat thoughtfully, then said with a sympathetic tone, “Maybe her husband ain’t the sort to wanna sit down for no dinner with Amanda’s pa.”

  He studied Shad a moment, a new worry intruding on his plans for a happy evening. “Why you say that: He won’t wanna eat with me?”

  “I dunno. Here this fella’s been married to your daughter all these years—who knows if she ever told him her pa was still livin’, or where you was in the first place, even when they started out for Oregon. Maybe your Amanda just let it out of the bag on him today real sudden, an’ it took him by surprise. Some folks are a mite touchy like that, you see?”

  Titus shrugged a shoulder, not wanting to believe it. He wagged his head, saying, “Not likely. What she told me, the fella seems like a good enough sort.”

  Shad peered at his friend’s face. “Sounds like you don’t got a thing to worry about.”

  “Nothing to worry ’bout,” Bass repeated, unconvinced. “Just wanna know why they ain’t showed up.”

  “What say we head on over to the camp, have ourselves a look? You an’ me.”

  “I’ll get a horse while you tell Shell Woman why you won’t be helping her set up the lodge,” Titus said in a gush as he started to turn aside. “Tell her she can fetch Waits-by-the-Water to give her a hand! Them two need a time to talk after all the weeks Shell Woman’s been away at the ferry.”

  “I’ll wait right here for you!” Sweete hollered back.

  Bass suddenly dug in his heels and skidded to a halt. “By the by, tell Shell Woman you an’ the young’uns are invited to a special feed tonight in the fort!”

  Shad swiped at the sweat trapped at the back of his neck beneath the long, matted mane of hair. “What’s so special ’bout tonight?”

  “My family’s sittin’ down to dinner with my daughter an’ my four grandkids,” he roared back at Sweete as he bolted away again, beaming anew. “That’s what makes this evenin’ shine for this here child!”

  The two of them and that pair of rascal dogs were no more than a half mile from the emigrants’ camp when they realized something out of the ordinary was afoot among these Oregon-bound travelers. Usually these camps were a bustling beehive of activity at this time of the day: young men and boys watering the hundreds and hundreds of animals, women and girls bent over fires as they prepared the evening meal, others of all ages moving about, going here and there on one mission or another now that the train was not rolling and they had these precious hours before darkness fell. Repairs to wagons, wheels, guns, or equipment. Medication administered and healing words spoken to those become sick or injured along the last few days of their journey. Older children assigned to watch over the youngest, noisiest, and quickest of foot in camp.

  But even those few youngsters Titus spotted on the fringes of the gathered crowd seemed oddly quiet at this time of day; at long last they were allowed to run and play and burn off all that energy they had bottled up through the interminable hours of sitting still in those jostling wagons.

  “Somethin’ ain’t … right ’bout this,” he said to Shadrach.

  “Looks to be a meeting to me,” Sweete said, pointing out the large gathering near the bank of Black’s Fork.

  Most of the emigrants stood, some seated in the grass beneath the shade of a thick copse of overhanging cottonwoods. Men, women, and their children too.

  As their horses carried them closer, Titus picked out one voice after another, some raised louder than others to drive home a point. Although he could not make out most of what was being bandied about, he could nonetheless tell from the tone that he had not come upon a lighthearted occasion. Drawing up to the outskirts of the crowd, the two old trappers momentarily caught the attention of the first emigrants to turn, then nudge their neighbors to have themselves a look. In heartbeats most of the hundred-plus people had given the horsemen a quick look of disapproving appraisal before they turned their attention back to what was clearly some grave business at hand.

  As Bass peered quickly over the crowd he spotted Amanda peeling herself away from a nest of women and children standing behind an inner cordon of their menfolk. But it wasn’t until she had reached the outer fringe of the crowd that he saw she wasn’t alone. Her hand gripped that of a young boy, a barefoot child, who shuffled along through the dusty grass to keep pace with his mother’s long strides. She turned and leaned down slightly to say something to the child as they circled around the gathering. In response the boy brought his tiny hand to his brow and peered into the distance at the two buckskin-clad horsemen. He still had his hand shading his eyes as Titus kicked out of the saddle and landed on the ground, only a moment before Amand
a stopped before him.

  “This is my daughter Amanda,” Scratch announced as she held out her empty arm for her father. “Amanda, this here’s my good friend, Shadrach Sweete. Him an’ me, we’ve been through a lot together over the years—”

  “Oh, Pa!” she interrupted him, pain in her voice. “Our train’s breaking up!”

  He took her shoulder in one strong hand and quickly glanced at the heated argument taking place nearby at the center of the crowd. “That why you was late comin’ for supper?”

  Amanda’s eyes pleaded. “I’m sorry, for we got all caught up in this trouble—trying to sort out what we’re gonna do.”

  “How’s your train falling apart?” Sweete repeated.

  “We got to Laramie with our company captain,” she began to explain. “We elected him at Westport, mostly because he had a little experience on the plains. Last year he’d come out to Fort Laramie on his own to ride part of the trail for himself. Mostly, he got himself elected because he had more money than the rest of us … and that meant he had more wagons and guns for our protection, and some hired men along too. But, they weren’t family men like the rest of us. Just single fellas, going out to start over in Oregon on the captain’s pay.”

  The fear he read in her eyes made Titus bristle. “Now the rest of you got trouble with some of ’em?”

  “Yes … well, no,” she responded with a frustrated shake of her head. “The captain, his name is Hargrove—back at Laramie he ran onto a pilot who says he knows the country from here on out. Says he’s been out to Oregon a half dozen times. Was a mountain trapper too, he claims.”

  “What’s his name?” Sweete demanded suspiciously.

  “I can’t rightly remember,” she answered, her face gray with concern. “Only that Hargrove said he was our Moses,” she admitted.

  “He here?” Titus asked.

  She nodded.