A Light in the Wilderness (20 page)

The captain stood beside Isaac and he turned to the leader now. “We’ll bury George, but then we got to move on.”

“But . . . a few more hours of searching . . .”

Zach’s parents came to be beside her, holding her up it seemed, the three in shared grief like windblown trees not allowing the others to reach the ground.

“It’s not just delaying further because of the season, Mrs. Hawkins. It’ll risk the entire company to remain. We don’t know how many Indians are around, but we know they aren’t friendly from the . . . condition of George’s body. We need to move out.”

“Condition of the body?”

“Not fit for the sensibilities of a lady,” Isaac said. “I’m so sorry, missus.”

“I know you are. Your brother. Gone.” She turned to her in-laws. “I’m so sorry. Your son . . .” She was tending to everyone’s grief, delaying her own.

Nancy’s brother-in-law said he’d help drive the wagon, but
Samuel said he could do it. He’d done it before, he told the men. “All right then, we head out right after we put George in the ground.”

Leave her husband? No body? He might be there still, waiting for them to bring him back. How could she lose Laura and now Zach? No, it wasn’t possible. There had to be a mistake.

“Samuel, take me across. Let me look.”

The boy’s eyes were large as rocks. “No, Ma. It’s not safe for you.” He paused. “I could go.”

“No!” Judge White, Nancy’s brother, overheard them. “You must accept what is, Nancy, not risk my nephew.” He placed his hands on the boy’s shoulder. Edward stared up at his older brother.

Nancy didn’t want to lose Samuel either, and resentment like fire flared, but she pleaded, her voice scaring Nancy Jane, Martha, and Maryanne. “Would you let me go?” She paced, walked back. “We can’t leave. I have to see him, touch him one last time.” Her fingers pressed against her lips. “How awful for him to think we’d left him behind!”

“You don’t need to see him.” Zach’s father took in a deep breath. “George’s body was mutilated almost beyond recognition, Nancy. He’d been tortured. Scalped. His fingernails were cut to the quick with sticks driven under them and then set afire. My son has met the same fate. He’s dead and probably prayed thanks that it came as soon as it did.”

She collapsed against Zach’s mother then, just before she felt the stabbing pain in her belly. Zach’s last child.

Then her world went black.

Letitia ate dried salmon at the river’s edge, the thump and roar of the water blocked out all other sounds, even the soft cooing of Martha whose mouth opened and closed in silence like a fresh-caught fish. The water surged against the rocks making the ground tremble against Letitia’s thin-soled leather shoes. No more bare feet. It was the first of many changes she’d now face. The thundering noise that covered all noise at these dalles allowed her to consider what Davey offered—or ordered as they walked to where they could talk.

“You and Martha got to go on the Columbia. We’ll meet up again at Linnton. I’ve secured a Hudson’s Bay craft to take you and Martha and the wagon. Thirty dollars for the wagon and five dollars for each of you.” They drank weak coffee in the chilled morning air. By noon it would be hot as a Kentucky summer if the day before was any indication. September was apparently not a cooling-off month in these parts except at night.

“We goes with you.”

“It’ll be too hard on a woman with a child. Lookee. I’m taking the ‘walk-up trail’ with the cattle. Knighton and Martin are coming along. It’s too dangerous for you, and if we get an early snow, you won’t survive it; Martha neither. It’s my good money managing—and your careful tending of supplies too—that gives us cash so we can pay your passage. Besides, someone’s got to make sure my goods get to that valley. And that wagon will be worth gold.”

“Where we meet up?”

“I’ll come out at Oregon City, cross over and find you.”

Lord willing.

“Some say they staying here at these dalles, buildin’—building—winter cabins. Others leavin’ wagons and supplies, say they come back in the spring. Will come back in the spring.” Sometimes forcing her words to sound like Nancy’s made her tired. She was very tired now.

“That ain’t us. We’ve come this far, made good. Still got our cows and oxen, a good wagon, and enough supplies. They’ll serve us well when we settle in the valley.”

“Transport money be spent better
in
the valley.”

“No. Sometimes you got to spend in order to make money. Tish, I want you safe. That’s why I’m sending you by water.” It was hard to argue with his goodwill.

“Barlow goes south through the mountains. With wagons. Why can’t we—”

“Barlow’s making his own road and there’s no guarantee he can do it.” He stood up. Fluffed Martha’s kinky hair. “Look at that mountain.” He pointed with his tin cup toward the triangular snow-covered peak taller than any Letitia had ever seen. “It would be dangerous to try to make a road through that.”

She could see that for herself, really. But why should he decide things and then
tell
her about it?

“I’ve decided how we’ll do this,” Davey continued. “I paid for Hudson’s Bay crafts. They’ll take you and Martha, the anvil, tools, your . . . things. Wagon is almost taken apart. Knighton and I’ll
finish that today and wait to head out ’til I wave good-bye to the two of you. You’re on the Bay’s list for transport. It’s all settled.”

“I gets no choice.”

“No, you don’t.”

“What happens to Roth?” Someone chased the dog away from salmon drying on sticks near a fire, and he headed toward them, tail between his legs. He stopped on the way, sniffing greetings to the numerous Indian dogs running about.

“He’ll come with me. He can help with the cows.”

Letitia thought that he might not come back for her and Martha, but he would for the dog.

“I hope they get you out of here before you take on mountain fever. Or I do. Place is rampant with sickness and I can hardly hear myself think with the roar of these falls.”

That conversation had taken place two days before. She’d spent a sleepless night beneath stars so close she could pluck them. Now she took another bite of salmon, liked the firm pink fish. Another immigrant told her not to let the dog eat any raw fish as it would kill him. She broke a piece of the smoked fish off for Martha, softened it in her mouth before placing a touch of it on the baby’s lower lip. She gave another swatch to Roth. Letitia smiled at the expression on her four-month-old daughter’s face. “Is it good? Jus’ different.”

She watched as the Indians stood on rickety platforms with spears and nets, stabbing at fish roiling in the thunderous falls. They did what they had to do regardless of the danger. So would she. It would be her and Martha going on alone because Davey said it would be safer. But she couldn’t let where they’d be meeting stay floating in the air like leftover chicken feathers.

She walked back up to the area where Davey disassembled the wagon. Others in their company had cut trees they were strapping together to make their own rafts, crafts that looked more frightening than Hudson’s Bay’s. The British boats were the best she could hope for and Davey had paid their way. They would leave in the morning.

Back at their camp she said, “We meet up at Oregon City, not Linnton.”

A man lifted his head from his work, looked at Davey and scowled.

“What?” Davey turned. “What’s that you say?”

“We meet in Oregon City.”

He stepped away so the men couldn’t hear. “Lookee. I think you might be better waiting at Linnton or even go on to Fort Vancouver. The Chief Factor at the fort is known to be partial to caring for women and children. At Oregon City . . . don’t know if you can find a boardinghouse that’ll take you . . . but at Linnton you can stay in the wagon. Safer. I don’t want to be worrying over you.”

How much had he run interference for her with others that she didn’t know about? Maybe he was right.

If he didn’t come for her, she’d have to begin a life on her own. He didn’t seem to grasp that. But for now, she would comply. “I gives you two weeks after I makes it for you to come for me. After that, I sells supplies what I don’ need and me and Martha begin a life on our own.”

“Fair enough. But I’ll come. Trust me.”

“You gots Charity. I feel better if I have Roth.”

Davey hesitated. “All right.” He scratched the dog’s neck. “Roth can go with you.”

Letitia was about to follow the two other families boarding the raft behind their wagons when she thought she saw someone familiar.
Yes.

“It Martha Hawkins,” she told Davey and rushed toward the girl, carrying baby Martha in her board. She didn’t want to lose sight of the washed-out ruffled dress. “Martha!” She shouted and the girl turned, then was lost behind a team of oxen pulling a log. “Martha Hawkins. That be you?”

Davey called after her. “Letitia! You got to go.”

She rushed around the log to see the girl still standing, eyes as
hollow as the holes that Rothwell dug. The dog barked as he followed her. Breathless, she reached for Martha, who shrank from Letitia’s touch. “Martha? It be Letitia, Letitia Carson. And Baby Martha. Where’s your mama and papa?”

Martha pointed toward a group of men resting beside unpeeled logs. Letitia didn’t recognize Doc among them but saw his father and Nancy’s brother, Judge. None of them looked well: thin as oars with clothes even more threadbare than her own. Mountain fever? She didn’t want to expose Martha to it.

“Your mama?”

“She’s crying. Always crying.”

“Why she cry, chil’?” Letitia squatted to look into Martha’s eyes, held her shoulder. She was thin as a chicken leg.

“Baby dies and so does Papa. And Mr. Meek left us and we almost died too.”

Then, as though she just now noticed Baby Martha, the girl’s eyes flooded with tears that ran down sunken cheeks. “Baby Martha.” She said it as a sigh.

Chil’ needin
’ comfort from a bad, bad time. So will her mama
.

Letitia took Martha’s hand. Her troubles were pebbles in this child’s rocky trail. “Show me your mama, baby.”

“Letitia!” Davey had caught up with her, breathless. “You got to go now.”

“We gotta make things better first.”

Nancy lifted vacant eyes to Letitia and patted the ground where she sat on a faded log cabin quilt. She nursed Nancy Jane though she had almost no milk to give her baby. She considered getting up to hold her friend but didn’t have the strength. She wanted to sleep and never wake up. The company they’d traveled with sought a shortcut, and though Meek had warned them against taking it, the men had insisted that he guide them. That Greenberry Smith the most vocal.

“Letitia!”

Nancy watched Letitia turn toward Davey. “You give me a time here with my friend. I be along.”

Davey puckered up his mouth, but he stomped away leaving the women alone.

Letitia turned back to her. “You not doin’ well. Nancy Jane . . . she hungry.” Letitia nodded to the child who fussed in her arms. “I’s milk enough.”

“Oh, would you?”

Tears pressed behind her nose as Nancy handed her child to Letitia. Something substantial for one of her children at least. They were all starved.

“Judge and the others blame Meek for getting us lost. But he’d told them he wasn’t sure of the trail before we even left the Boise country. But after Zach . . .” Her arms lay limp in her lap. “I didn’t have the interest. Or will. Or faith or anything to put my two cents into the discussion. Not that the men would have listened.” She gasped for breath. “People started dying. Twenty they said. I wanted to survive. I don’t know why. Zach’s gone, Tisha. Or maybe he’s waiting for a rescue.” Her throat caught. Her friend didn’t ask questions. She was so grateful. They’d arrived at the place Sarah Bowman described in her letter. Pounding waterfalls, bare brown hills. “There’s nothing to look forward to now, is there? This has all been a terrible, terrible mistake.” She coughed, the words draining her as they had since she’d lost the baby. The last child she and Zach shared.

“But you makes it here, thank the Lord.” Letitia’s dark finger stroked the cheek of Nancy Jane nursing beneath an apron Letitia pulled over her.

“I don’t know about the Lord, unless he sent Major Moses ‘Black Squire’ Harris.” Saying the long name tired her. “Meek said he’d get help from the missionaries. They declined. But Meek spent his own money getting food and pulleys and axes—and got this Major and some Indians to bring them to us. He guided us across
the Deschutes and brought us here. Thank goodness a good man was willing. Maybe it will change a few minds about the hearts of black men, though I doubt your G.B. Smith will change his.”

“I’s not claimin’ Greenberry Smith.”

“He was one of the ones who insisted Meek lead us and then . . . we got so lost.” She put her palms up to the sky. “It was . . . there are no words.”

Nancy wanted to ask how she was and where Davey wanted her to go. He paced off to the side. She was too exhausted. Letitia had taken the tiny rows of braids out of her hair and held the thick tight curls now with a strip of petticoat tied back away from her pretty face. She didn’t have that hollow look of Nancy’s children nor of the other men and women who’d followed Meek. Sighing, Nancy asked, “How are you faring?”

“We have trials but we weren’t long hungry. Doc Whitman helped resupply. We met that Major Black Harris. Good the Lord turn him aroun’ so he be here to help you.”

“Maybe. Oh Letitia, what will I do now with Zach gone? If it weren’t for the children, I wouldn’t care but . . . Judge says I need to marry quickly. Says I won’t survive otherwise. Then I can have half a land allotment. As though I cared.”