This Road We Traveled

  It was Wednesday, September 1, 1847, the middle of the week, a day that took on new meaning for her. Afterward they consumed gallons of sassafras tea, steak and onion pie, cold sliced potatoes, cornmeal bread, and one of Virgilia’s own wheat flour cakes. They finished the meal with raspberry flummery, a dish her gramo said was a New England staple. Virgilia had simmered the berries herself, adding just a touch of salt. The flummery needed no sugar, as the wild berries in this Oregon Territory grew small but sweet. Her sisters had whipped the cream until their arms hurt. In the heat of the afternoon, the white peaks draped over the fruit served in tin cups that Fabritus’s friends had given them as wedding gifts.

  Fabritus chatted with their guests and Virgilia watched his easy way with people. It had taken some persuasion to convince him that she was strong enough to walk behind a mule, to peel logs and chink them with a mixture of mud and straw, that she would be a helpmate and not only a “mate needing help.” He had relented and she had participated in the building of their home. Seeing how he remembered people’s names and how his attention made them smile. When people spoke, he listened as though no one else in the world mattered, his articulateness about politics and Oregon’s future, subjects he warmed to. Admiring him among the guests, she saw a bit of her future. She would have to share him with a larger world. Her life would take new twists and turns. Had it been only the year before that they’d taken the fateful last turn and begun to cross the Black Rock Desert? How life had changed and would again.

  “Mrs. Smith, are you ready to sleep your first night in your new home?” Fabritus spoke the words directly into her ear, his arm slipped around her waist. Uncle John played his violin and guests danced on the wagon boards laid down for them as they once had on the better days of the crossing. Hands clapped and feet stomped, but she heard her husband’s words and nodded to his invitation. The future beckoned with welcoming hands.

  “I’m ready whenever you are.”

  Fabritus and Virgilia moved into a cabin that her brothers and Fabritus’s friends had built—and Virgilia had labored over too. They had little to furnish it with, but her father and brothers made a table for them. Her mother gave her two of the harp-backed chairs she’d found in the cabin the Pringles now stayed in. And Albro, the brother with a heart for animals, had gifted them with a hound puppy he assured them was from Buddy’s line.

  As she lay within her husband’s arms, Virgilia could see that her eddying in an unknown stream that had been their journey west now spit them out to flow into the fast-moving current of life. Each day forward, Virgilia would look upon her hearth with gratitude, and promised to do all she could to make her home a welcome place for her husband, children, and for others. One couldn’t think of their circumstances now without remembering those who had lost their lives on the trail, and some who had not reached settlements until February of that very year. She remembered the families in the Sierras caught in the same early winter storms that had confounded the Applegate travelers. She hoped Nellie’s parents had not been among them. The Donner party, as people called it, had been so destitute it was said they’d resorted to cannibalism. Virgilia shivered. Not a pleasant thought on her wedding night. If her father had made other choices for them, if Octavius had been unsuccessful in bringing peas and flour back, if her uncle Orus had not sought them out, if total strangers had not funded their relief, they too might have ended up having to make such grisly choices.

  Gramo always asked her to find the wisdom in a trial. For that time along the Applegate road, she would say, “A tragedy tears away a hope; a kindness brings it back.” She would make kindness another rung on her ladder toward light.

  31

  Reconciled

  The thing is, Tabby decided, we are never finished while we breathe air, never totally broken without hope of repair. What’s left for me to do? Clear the air with her oldest son. Was there still a fracture there?

  On a Tuesday in October she rode one of the Clarks’ horses to Orus’s home and asked to speak to him alone. “I have come to talk with you about . . . things.”

  Orus loaded bales of hides he’d take for trade at the Hudson’s Bay fort in Vancouver. His back was to her, then he faced her to retrieve another hide, fur side tucked inward, exposing the salted beaver skin. “How have I disappointed you now, Marm?”

  “You have not. But it’s that very expression, leading out, that suggests I frequently find fault with you, that makes me want to speak.” She touched his arm. “Do you truly believe I find no merit in you?”

  “If you find it, you keep it well hidden.”

  “My tongue is sharp, I know that.” She gripped her walking stick with both hands. “And we differ on things of a theological nature.” He frowned, but she rushed ahead. “I adore that you live as though you have Christ within you, your generous spirit speaks well of you.” She cleared her throat. “These things of the heart and soul mattered to your father, you know, how his children walked. I committed to carrying on his legacy as best I could.”

  “Is this where you tell me I’ve failed his test?”

  “No. You have never failed him or me. I do wish that things might be different, but what I wish more than anything and wonder if my steps have not been directed to bring me here for this purpose, is that you would know . . . how much I do love you, Orus Brown. How proud I am of you for dreaming large and yet keeping your feet on the ground and your ear to the wind so that you learned of a wagon train struggling. You brought supplies to us. You saved us and many more.”

  “And you decided not to let me continue to look after you.”

  “I . . . that’s true. I do want to do things myself. I don’t ever wish to be a burden. But I went to Salem not because Pherne means more to me than you do. You suggested that. I went because I really thought John needed shelter quickly. And because I knew your house would be full.”

  “There was room for you.” He’d stopped loading, took out his penknife, and cleaned his nails with it as he leaned against the wagon, crossed his ankles. Geese honked overhead.

  “I appreciate that. And I hope you don’t hold it against me that I accepted to remain longer here in your forest grove but staying with the Clarks.”

  “I do not.” He looked up. “Likely you’d have been gone within a week with my brood.” He grinned then. “I understand. But sometimes allowing others to help you is giving them a gift too. One you can’t ever repay, of course, but you can pass it on. Allowing others to assist brings you to their equal instead of above.”

  She furrowed her narrow brow, the tie beneath her chin pulling at her. She tugged at it. “I’ve never felt myself above anyone.” Tabby squirmed remembering what she’d said about Mary Roberts and her housekeeping. She did feel above that woman, that was certain, but that was a minor point to be prayed about later.

  “Refusing help of others can be seen as stoic and stubborn, and condescending too. And sometimes makes the life of those who would help you more difficult. You could ease their days by letting them make sure you’re thriving.”

  “Do you worry that I’m not?”

  “I have. But not while you’re with the Clarks. And besides, I can ride over there if I’ve need to reassure myself that you’re well.”

  Warmth flooded through Tabby. Her son cared about what happened to her. She wasn’t sure how to reconcile that with a man who didn’t want her coming to Oregon in the first place. But now that she remembered, she was to stay with Manthano after she refused to remain in St. Charles. Orus did have a plan for her safety. She’d thwarted it.

  “Our slate is clear, Marm. I like you being close . . . but not too close. But when that time comes, there will be room and care for you.”

  She exhaled. “This means much to me, Orus.”

  He put his arm around her shoulder. “Come inside. The little ones are always anxious to see their gramo and I’m sure Nellie would like to pour a cup of tea for you and Lavina.”

  She let him help her in, surprised at h
ow his words had lifted her footsteps. Now to find what she was supposed to do with the rest of her days.

  Those first months of Virgilia’s marriage brought hours of joy. Loneliness, too, as Fabritus worked for others in exchange for a pig and cow, seeds he’d plant in the spring, kitchen supplies, rope to frame their bed. Virgilia traded a lap quilt she’d stitched, giving it to Mary Roberts in exchange for Beatrice’s return to the Brown and Pringle clan. “I never knew what to do with the eggs anyway,” Mary had told her. She hoped to surprise her gramo with the bird’s clucking presence, and oddly enough, the puppy they’d named Rembrandt and had shortened to “Rem” got along with the bird. Maybe she’d train Beatrice to ride Rem. Buddy had resisted.

  Winter rains began in November, but this season they were sheltered and she vowed not to let the heavy skies remind her of the tragic winter of the year before. This working and conversing and reading together was what contentment was and Virgilia savored it. Yes, there would be new trials, but she was ready. She’d remember past ones and how they made it through. God was in the world and in the small details of her life. Nothing else mattered.

  One week led to two, then three. Tabby visited, reacquainted herself with her grandchildren, and reminisced with her son. It seemed a good metamorphosis of a mother finding a new way to be with a child. She considered returning to Salem but then weather set in, making Tabby’s next choice: they’d be in Orus’s grove for the winter.

  And harsh it was, not so much the weather, but from strange tragedies farther east, the casualty of which drifted to them like ashes from a fire. First one, then two, then many orphans and displaced people arrived. Something would have to be done for them. Maybe she was the one to do it.

  “What is it?”

  Fabritus had returned from Oregon City before Christmas Day. He placed a copy of the Spectator on the table. He pointed to the paper, then opened and closed his fists as he paced. Rem jumped at his legs, but he brushed him aside with his foot. “What’s happened?”

  “There’s been a terrible killing of emigrants and others at the Whitman Mission, east. We stopped there when we crossed the trail. Hostages have been taken and the Cayuse are gathering other tribes to come against us. We’re raising an army, though we have no government funds to do it, the territorial government so averse to taxing we’re left vulnerable.” He scoffed. “Someone’s proposed approaching the British, hoping they’ll make a loan to pay a ransom—if that can be worked out—and others are railing against the American government for not offering us soldiers when they deemed we’d be a territory.”

  She read the paper. A letter signed by twelve Oregon City single women also ran stating they’d marry no man who had not gone to war in defense of their honor and their country.

  “What do you intend to do?”

  “Join up with Lee and Gilliam. They’re leading the charge against the Indians.”

  Her heart pounded faster. “Turn to war so quickly? Can’t they send emissaries to negotiate?”

  “They’re considering it, but they’re relying on the Nez Perce people to do the talking. That’s the tribe who suggested a parley.”

  “That’s good then. Things can wait until we know if they succeed or not.”

  “Can any Indian be trusted?”

  She thought of the Indians who had given them the venison hams when they were so desperate; of those who had loaned them horses; of women who had bargained with her gramo for buckskins and how that had changed her gramo’s life. And they’d sat with all those two hundred Sioux on the trail . . . they had been trustworthy. She reminded him of that, then added, “How many captives are there?”

  “We don’t know. We’ll send reports back for the Spectator, but I have to go, Virgilia. You understand.” He took both of her hands in his. “If they aren’t brought to justice, they’ll come here too, join up with other tribes to assault us.”

  “I haven’t seen many hostile Indians here.” She could feel the perspiration seeping under her arms, down her back. She pulled her hands free, then grabbed the poker from the fire. She used her apron to hold the handle and pour hot water over tea leaves into cups. “Let’s think about this, Fabritus. There’ll be others who—”

  “We have to stop them before they come here.”

  How could it be that safety and serenity could dissipate like river mist?

  “What will I do while you’re gone?”

  “Stay with your family. I’ll take you there myself.”

  How quickly she had wanted a refuge around her own life, didn’t want her husband risking their safety on behalf of others. Yet if others hadn’t done so, she and her family would have starved to death. Her face felt warm with shame and yet she did not want her husband to die, didn’t want to be alone.

  “We have to fight for what matters, Virgilia. You understand. The captives have to know that they’re not forgotten.”

  “And what do we do here?”

  “‘They also serve who only stand and wait.’ Milton.”

  “I know the poem,” she snapped at him. “It’s about tragedy in the life of a young man who held great promise.”

  Fabritus kissed her forehead, held her to him. “And Milton went on to write his greatest works after that tragedy. It’s the challenges that define us, Virgilia.”

  “I want you defined as alive.”

  Pherne’s sons felt called to this war effort too. But forming an army stalled. The governor wanted Mr. Applegate to go to California to enlist the aid of the governor there. He tried, but was turned back by the winter storms in the Siskiyou Mountains. Then the legislative assembly hoped to send a letter to the American emissary in Honolulu, but the ship that might take it never came up the Columbia. Their isolation from the east, dependence on the British settlement in Vancouver and an independent company—Hudson’s Bay—reminded them all of how vulnerable they were in this Oregon Territory. At least they had a land route back east on Applegate’s trail that didn’t take them through the Columbia River regions where the uprising had occurred.

  Five hundred men volunteered. Pherne was amazed that so many willingly chose to leave home and hearth. She was grateful, yes, and humbled how the trials of others were woven always into lives unknown. Emigrant trains who had come through before the tragedy now sought homes to stay in, telling tales of their ordeals across the shining mountains and thanking God they’d missed the killings.

  Virgil rode to different cabins, seeking whatever could be spared for the riflemen. “It’s how I can best help, by raising supplies.”

  “Have we really come all this way, survived the trail, and then what, lose sons in war?”

  “We are all at risk.”

  “I know, I know.” She struck the butter churn with new vigor. “I understand. Strangers did for us and we must do for them. I know this, but I don’t have to like it.” Nor did she like her reluctance, so full of selfishness and worry. Give my effort to the present, let God handle the future.

  “I’ve offered what little we have, a meager wheat harvest, a cow. That’s what most are giving. Hams, if people have them.”

  “We have blankets.”

  “And ammunition to spare.”

  “Just feeding five hundred men will be an effort.” She stopped her churning. “And the wives and children they’ll leave behind, what’s to become of them?” Virgil remained silent. “I’ll speak with Virgilia. We’ll bake bread and share it. Look after our neighbors. That’s what we can do.”

  After forty-seven days, negotiations were successful and the Hudson’s Bay Company sent both an emissary to the Cayuse and paid the ransom of ammunition and other items in exchange for the hostages. In the forest grove where Tabby stayed, the influx of missionaries and their families flooded the few homes able to take people in. Building went on with frenzy, making shelters for refugees from The Dalles, Lapwai, Kamiah, places east. They came for safety and to be among others who had come west years before as missionaries. Tabby had heard of the Spaldings, and no
w, she met them, arriving with their children, one of whom had been a captive, ten-year-old Eliza. With them came Matilda Sager, orphaned on the trail, then orphaned again when Mrs. Whitman lost her life. Tabby thought her a sad little elfin child. Two of her sisters arrived with other families, older girls. Pretty. One named Catherine. Tabby felt an affinity with Catherine, whose leg had been badly damaged when she’d jumped from her parents’ wagon. Her dress caught on an axe handle and the wheels had crushed over her limb. Tabby could also look the girl in the eye—they were the same five-foot height. Catherine had made the most of her 1844 journey like Tabby, jostled about in a wagon because she couldn’t walk. And now, she too limped.

  The brothers had both been killed in the massacre. The Spaldings stayed with the Smiths, but other missionaries and their families were welcomed by the Clarks, and Tabby shared her bed. With little more than the clothes on their backs, these refugees needed comfort. And with them came children from the wagon trains. Children whose parents had died of fevers and ague, or whose parents had met their deaths at the hands of the Indians that the Territory now armed against. Tabby was surrounded by widows and children. “Fly to their aid,” her husband had preached. But how to do that?

  Tabby and Emeline Clark prepared porridge and wheat bread for the newcomers, brought hams from the smokehouse, made puddings sweetened with molasses, and served them to the refugees, for that was how Tabby thought of them. She calmed as she could, speaking in a soft voice, making no quick movements that might startle. The children whimpered from their hunger and from fear, staring, their tongues silent as the Sphinx. Tabby put the last of her glove-making currency into use buying blankets and bedclothes, sugar and treats for these latest changelings.