This Road We Traveled

  Surely if they survived, there would be a reason. There would be some task that awaited her, some hope, healing, or purpose to fill her days. And then, as it had one morning a few weeks after Clark had died, a peacefulness came to her like a butterfly settling over a bud. There was nothing more to do but trust, and await the metamorphosis.

  24

  The Wisdom of Bones

  Virgil tried to shoot the wolf. Pherne could see his arms tremble, his shoulders dropped as he realized he’d missed the shot. They’d been dealing with broken wheels and wagon tongues. Double teaming. Oxen dead from exhaustion and then the work of moving the animal aside, butchering, sending food behind them, then putting young, untrained, weakened stock to harness, men shouting, women crying. Then the rains came, sheets as pale as pewter. Still they slogged on, grateful it wasn’t snow.

  Tabby didn’t think she even slept, but soft light filtered into the tent and she knew that dawn had replaced the night. She watched to see if John breathed. The slow rising of his chest brought comfort. She spoke an ancient morning prayer out loud. “All praise to Thee who safe hast kept, and has refresh’d me whilst I slept. Grant, Lord, when I from Death shall wake, I may of endless light partake.” It was part of a long prayer her father taught her ending with the praise of the Doxology. Tabby moved John’s head aside, waited for her leg to tingle back into feeling. She hobbled outside into morning mist and tipped the flap of their tent cover like a funnel. Melted snow and accumulated rainwater ran into the canteen she held in shivering hands. She roused John then, helped him sit up, sip. He blinked his eyes.

  “Do you know where you are?”

  He looked around. “Under a leaky tent, Tabitha Brown.”

  “So it is.” She inhaled relief. “Let’s see if we can get the horses water.”

  Outside she found a rock where rain pooled. Dragging her foot, using John’s cane, she led the horses to drink. Not their fill, but enough. They’d be crossing streams again, no doubt. She thought they should return to the canyon below, follow the rivers out now that the cattle trail was gone. She returned, checked John’s heel. It no longer oozed, a good sign.

  She saddled their mounts, no easy task from her short perch of a person. Their backs were wet. As she reached for the reins to lead the animals toward John, she heard the rustle in the trees and her skin prickled.

  “John.” She kept her voice low.

  “I hear it.” He crouched, motioned her to do the same.

  To have survived the night and then die in the morning from a bear? A wolf?

  Then a voice. “Aren’t you Mrs. Brown, from the Pringle crowd?”

  Tabby blinked at the man who emerged from the trees. “I am. Are . . . are you the relief party?”

  “No, ma’am. I’m with the stock group. We’ve stopped to hunt.” His accent said New Englander. “The rest are only a half mile ahead.” He helped her mount, then John. “You keep on that way. You’ll come upon them.” They’d pressed their reins against their horses’ necks when he whistled. “Lookee here.”

  “What?” John said.

  “Moccasin tracks. Looks like you had company in the night passing right in front of your shelter.” He scratched at his beard. “Didn’t want to alarm you, but Mr. Newton was killed in his sleep last night. Indians stole a cow. Newton left a widow and kids. You’re lucky.”

  “Not luck,” Tabby said. “Praise God from whom all blessings flow.” She sang the ending to that earlier morning prayer.

  A mile ahead they found the cattle and sheep drivers in the process of burying Mr. Newton. Later, they roasted venison, the smell like frankincense, the finest gift a body could want. They had survived another day. John acted stronger. This had not been the greatest challenge of her life. Not yet.

  Pherne’s family plus two wagons arrived at the end of the canyon five days later, wet, and exhausted. They’d only gone five miles. “A mile a day,” Virgil told Virgilia. “Hardly worth writing in the journal.” It rained the next day, washing them into November.

  “I think we need to send Octavius ahead, over the Calapooia Mountains, to get provisions.” Virgil had gathered them together after a meeting with Mr. Scott, slickers on, with water dripping from the men’s hats. Pherne and the girls all wrapped themselves in the wool shawls they had, the wooden brims of their bonnets soaked and drooping. Octavius leaned against the wagon, pushing aside the grease bucket. Judson joined them, standing close to Nellie, his freckles faded as old rose petals in this incessant rain turned every now and then to snowflakes as large as a man’s thumb.

  Pherne felt ashamed that it had come to this, that they had not properly prepared and that she had not rationed well. If they were going to send a son off, why not do it before sending her mother and John off? But her mother could not have walked; the wagons couldn’t be ridden in either. And there was hope she and John would reach the stock party. Octavius would have to go farther. “Octavius, you’re so young.”

  “I’m old enough, Mama.”

  “He’ll borrow one of the emigrant horses and we’ll share the supplies that he brings back. Assuming he can get some. You and the girls will need to move the oxen along,” Virgil said. “There’s no other help for it.”

  Virgil wore a dejected expression and Pherne wished she could erase it. It was always difficult to see someone you loved in pain; even worse than tending to her own suffering. Emma cried softly and she heard Virgilia tell her to “Shoo, shoo. Everyone’s hungry.” But she held the girl in comfort, rubbed her arms to warm her. Pherne missed her mother.

  “I’ll be building road while Clark, Albro, and Judson handle the other wagon,” Virgil continued. “I’m sorry it’s come to this. I’ve stomped up and down the ridges, being angry with myself and Applegate. Octavius might be able to find supplies and secure help to bring men with decent tools back this way. I would go myself but—”

  Pherne touched his arm. It was a long speech even for her husband. “No. You’re needed here.” He nodded agreement, his eyes holding a mixture of embarrassment and resolve.

  Octavius left in the morning, heading some forty miles distant was what Mr. Scott projected.

  “You be careful, now.” Pherne looked up at him. Fourteen was incredibly young.

  “Mama, don’t you worry. You’ll be along before I can even get back, is my guess.”

  “You always were my little optimist.” She patted his arm. So thin.

  They moved the wagons out across wretchedness through trees so tall she could barely see their tops without falling over backward. At times, it felt as though the wagons would roll over from the side hills they traversed. Scott would halt them in line and they’d have to wait while he rode on ahead to scope out a trail of some sort, the men chop a route, return to drag the wagons. Waiting added to their hunger.

  The next day, November 3, it rained steadily as she and the girls walked on either side of the oxen, all their heads bowed nearly as low as the stock. They ate the last of the tripe they’d gotten when another emigrant’s ox died and they butchered it, pulling a canvas out from a tree like a lean-to where they worked in weakened states, then ate with a little protection from the rain, cold, wind, and gnawing hunger the unsatisfying sauce.

  It went on like this for a week. Feed me with the food I find convenient. That’s what the Proverb said. “Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food convenient for me.” Proverbs 30:8. Her mother quoted that verse. Weren’t they like the Hebrews in the wilderness? Where was their manna?

  On the ninth, Pherne heard Virgil cry out. He shouted to her, “Convenient food, Mrs. Pringle.” What’s he talking about?

  Indians. Friendly. They gave them six venison hams. Pherne cried as she took one, thanking them, hoping they understood. The tallest lifted his chin in recognition, then left with his friends disappearing into the mist. Pherne sent Albro with the hams to wagons with young children, keeping only one. How more convenient could food arrive than already harvested and given as a gift? These ta
ll men with long black hair and eyes as kind as Virgil’s were angels, even if they didn’t know it.

  Pherne prepared a smoky fire to roast the ham. She sliced thin pieces for each of the children and told them to “eat like little mice,” that their stomachs would be anxious and might have forgotten what to do with food.

  “Oh Mama, our stomachs can’t forget the only thing they’re supposed to do.” Sarelia looked at her.

  “You might be right. Still, eat slowly.”

  The drizzle of rain and snow hovered like a wet spiderweb. Nellie and Judson sat with them, savoring the meat. Pherne wished she had fat to give her family. Venison had proven to be a lean meat. Only fat would really stave the hunger. She wished her mother and uncle and dear Octavius could be there for this convenient feast. Oh please may they have found food, shelter, safety.

  The stream they followed had places with water as smooth as a mirror, then within the length of a wagon, it frothed with wild white. Trees with branches wearing gossamer moss leaned over the river, snapped when a wagon bow brushed against them as they drove beneath. The heavy pewter sky magnified the sounds of strain. A mind could lose itself with such demands: moment by moment praying for her children’s survival and her mother’s success finding others to help. God would tend to the future; the past was no more. Into the present she poured her hopes.

  In the morning they began again. Pherne felt strengthened by swatches of sleep and a turn in her trust.

  They scaled a mountain they should have gone around. The morning wore on, leaching hope, until on the other side of the ridge they saw a group of people.

  Virgilia squinted as she moved beside her mother. “I think that’s Gramo?”

  “Is it?” Nellie stepped out, started ahead. “That’s Schooner. Uncle John’s there!”

  The girls ran ahead and Pherne watched her mother slide from the horse and hobble forward, her arms out wide. “Oh the pleasure of reunion.” Pherne clapped her hands. “‘The joys of the mornings, in the mornings of our times.’”

  “Gramo, Gramo, I was so afraid.” Virgilia hugged her grandmother. “I wasn’t certain we’d see you again. I mean I—”

  “There, there. I had not a doubt. Not one.” Maybe one.

  “Tabby tells me I was in the delirium pen, thinking I was sailing one time and the next looking for the hay barn.” Uncle John laughed. “She kept me alive, she did.”

  Virgilia’s relief had caused her to overlook the deepening wrinkles flowing from Gramo’s eyes. How feather-light her body was when she hugged her. She was safe, that’s all that mattered. But her cheekbones looked sharper, and she shivered as Virgilia held her.

  Then, before Virgilia could bring her elbow through her mother’s and her gramo’s, she heard another cry. “Mama!”

  Her brother? Octavius? Back already. He bent as he rode beneath the trees, a hand on his hat.

  “I’ve got a bushel of peas and forty pounds of flour, Mama. We’ll have full bellies tonight.”

  Virgilia was so happy she could dance! She grabbed Judson’s hand, then reached for Nellie’s and began to circle. Emma and Sarelia found a dirty palm, and with shawls wrapped over forearms, her sisters reached for others to join in. Virgilia began to sing, “Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise him all creatures here below . . .” On they sang, circling. Virgilia hoped that dancing to a prayer of gratitude wouldn’t offend. How quickly fortunes could change in this place. It was all that they needed, those peas and flour—and their family, all together in one place, again.

  They camped in a grassy, flat area. Virgilia thought it was at the top of a mountain and maybe it was. She could see beyond, though, that more timbered hills awaited them. For three whole days they worked on repairing oxen shoes, and soaking peas, baking bread. Each family got a pound of flour and two cups of peas. It wouldn’t go far. Judson shot a deer and Uncle John whooped when he brought the carcass into camp. If they’d had the strength, Gramo said they should save the hide, but few cared. Listlessness caught her like a virus, Nellie too. She had no interest in baking cakes. Besides, Beatrice hadn’t laid an egg for weeks. More friendly Indians brought in salmon, and Virgilia watched her mother trade one of her father’s shirts for the wide-bodied fish. “Good for belly,” one of them said, motioning over his stomach as though the fish would leave them sated and full—which it did.

  Despite the fact that they had a little food now, each family getting a small portion, a woman died, the rescue coming too late. They stopped building roads to bury her. Her mother tried to comfort the woman’s husband, but what could one say? People got sick and died. Nothing anyone could do could stop that. She watched her family like a hawk watches field mice, but for very different reasons.

  There were still no major relief parties. Snow now slowed their way. They crossed the Calapooia Mountains with as much consternation and challenge as along the Umpqua River, finding themselves at what Levi Scott said was the headwaters of the Willamette, a north-flowing river. Virgil told them it was November 22.

  “We should not try to make the settlements until spring,” Scott said. “I’ll ride north for provisions.”

  Virgil agreed. “Our boys will build cabins here, manage our tents. It makes no sense to go—”

  “But we’ve come so far,” Pherne interrupted.

  “And no farther without provisions.”

  Pherne stood beside her mother, arms wrapped across her chest.

  Virgil mounted Caesar. “It’ll be all right,” he said. “Tell her, Mrs. Brown.” He reined the horse, and with very little additional preparation or good-byes, he rode away.

  “This is . . .” Pherne started to cry.

  “Crying gives up nothing but wastes precious fluid that your body needs. So stop now. You’re setting a bad example for the children.” Her mother hugged her shoulder to her side.

  Pherne tensed. “Don’t you ever just want to sit down and cry? Didn’t you ever?” She wiped at her eyes.

  “I keep going. Indomitable, that’s what you said when you sent us away. We made it. He will too. I have no doubt that we will reach the settlements yet this winter.” She took her daughter in her arms. “Hush now. God goes with him. He’ll be back.”

  “We never sent you away, Mother.” Pherne sighed. “It was to save you both.”

  “Oh, I know, I know.” She patted her daughter’s back. “We chose to go. It made sense. You know me and my sharp tongue. You’d think I’d learn to dull it, wouldn’t you? Let’s just speak prayers for Virgil.”

  But the days wore on and Virgil did not come back. After a week with only water once again to fill their bellies, Pherne ordered Clark to shoot Virgil’s favorite ox.

  “Mama, no.”

  “It must be done, Clark. It’s the right thing to do now. Please don’t challenge me.”

  Clark hung his head. He lifted the gun from the wagon bed, loaded it with powder and lead. He patted the ox, who twisted its big head and licked Clark’s face. Clark stepped back and did what had to be done.

  Not an ounce of fat on the animal, that’s what they found. But the meat kept them alive.

  “One day of gratitude at a time,” Tabby said to them as they chewed the stringy meat.

  “Do you really believe that, Mother? Really? What has the Lord provided so far?”

  “Each other. Food when we’ve been desperate. We’re all still here.”

  “Except for Virgil.”

  “Except for Virgil. But he’ll be back. I feel it in my bones and they are very old, as you know. Old bones are also very wise.”

  Pherne didn’t often recall her dreams, but she did remember the one that came to her that night. She dreamed not of food or of Virgil nor broken wagons littering the trail but of Hickory Farm and the home she’d left behind. There was a room she had never seen before, and it was cluttered with a crib, shelves with a silver tea set, a pewter tray. The new owners stood frowning beside the fireplace.

  “I forgot to clean this room out,” she sa
id. They seemed unhappy with her lingering. They told her she needed to leave but that she could remove items she had meant to take. She looked around the room. Should she take the crib? Her eye caught a silver bird lying in the corner. A breeze once moved that bird and a ring of others, entertaining Oliver when they’d hung above his bed. Only one remained. “I’ll take this bird.” She put the cool silver object in the palm of her hand.

  The people asked her to leave, but then she couldn’t find her shoes. She looked around, frantic. Where were her shoes? Then she saw them: the woman wore them. How could Pherne walk away without her own shoes? Small stings of anxiety pushed their way into her dream. I have to go. My family needs me. Then, beside the door, she spied a pair of moccasins, white as snow. She slipped them on. They fit perfectly. With bird in hand, she tiptoed out, allowing the new people to walk in her shoes while she walked on in another’s.

  25

  Orus Says

  “Orus? Orus Brown, is that really you?” Behind this burly man with brown eyes peeking out through long hair, carrying a throat-covering beard with streaks of gray, rode her son. Tabby’s face hurt with grinning, tears spilled down her weathered cheeks. Behind him rode Virgil Pringle and three other men, each leading a mule loaded with tools and food and utensils to cook them with. Tabby recognized the dark-skinned Moses Harris who had been with Mr. Applegate all those months earlier. He wore leathers and a wolf-fur coat, the raw side out. She wanted to have words with him but was too weak.

  Virgil dismounted and opened his arms to Pherne, pulled her close. “No need to cry. I’m back. I made it. We made it. Surprised by your brother. I’d made a canoe to cross the Long Tom when Orus and friends showed up. It was the best December day of my life. Aside from this day, getting food back to all of you.”