Never before had she dared to address a man other than the store owner back home where she traded the farm eggs for a few groceries. Since being on the trail, she had always appealed to women for work. It took all of the courage she could muster to draw near to the man and ask for his attention.
He gave it reluctantly, lifting his head from the harness he had flung across his knees. His eyes did not soften as they took in the young girl before him, and he did not bother to answer her question. He just nodded his head in one quick, impatient motion, then turned his eyes back to the harness.
“I—I understand you are the wagon master,” Damaris continued.
He nodded again without looking at Damaris.
She took a deep breath, glad that his eyes were not on her.
“I—I would like—would like passage west,” she said hurriedly.
His head jerked up. “You got a team an’ wagon?” he asked.
“No—o,” answered Damaris, squirming before his stare.
“Don’t take passengers. Check with the railroad train iffen ya want to travel west.”
“But I thought—I mean—well, I—I thought—I don’t have money for the fare.”
“Then the answer is still no.” He turned back to his work again.
“But I—I am more than willin’ to work my way, sir,” Damaris continued.
“Doin’ what?”
“Why—why most anything. Cook. Wash. Herd. Anything.”
“I do thet myself.”
“But isn’t there—I mean isn’t there anything that I could do—for—for anyone?”
“Not thet I know of.” His answer was sharp and blunt.
“Could I—could I ask?” she insisted. “You have several wagons in your train. Maybe one of them could use—”
“Look, girlie,” he said, his voice revealing irritation. “I have enough to take my attention ’thout setting out to care for a young girl who should be at home with her mama. I ain’t in the least inclined to let you go ’round from wagon to wagon seein’ iffen ya can bargain yer way fer a free trip. Now I think thet I’ve given more than thet minute you asked fer an’ I’ve a heap of work to do, so iffen ya don’t mind I’d like to git to it.”
“Of—of course. I—I thank you kindly for your time,” murmured Damaris. With her shoulders sagging and her eyes to the ground, she moved away from the man and his harness.
“Excuse me, miss,” said a voice beside her. Damaris jumped with the suddenness of it. She had not seen the man approach her.
“Sorry,” he apologized, “I didn’t mean to startle you—but I couldn’t help hearing your conversation with the captain.”
Damaris waited, her eyes studying the stranger.
“I’m Mel Brown. Me and my wife an’ family are joinin’ this train. Now we got a passel of little folks, and I know the trip will be hard on my missus. Jest what kind of arrangement were ya fixin’ to make?”
“Well, I—I just want—want to travel with the train. I—I have no money for fare, but I would work my way—just for the—the trip—and my meals. I—I’m fairly handy at household chores and I—I’m not afraid of work. My mama always said that I have a strong back and—” The man raised his hand to bring her hurried words to an end.
“Where ya aimin’ to go?” the man asked, catching Damaris off guard. She didn’t even know the name of any western towns, and she hadn’t heard anyone say where the train was heading.
“Same place you are,” she answered dumbly, and the man accepted her answer without further pressing.
“Come,” he bid her. “Talk to the Missus.”
Damaris followed along behind him as they weaved in and out among the tethered wagons.
At last they reached a covered wagon somewhat apart from the others. Damaris heard a baby crying and another young child whimpering for Mama. The man moved to the rear of the wagon, lifted the canvas flap, and called, “Martha.”
An answer came from within and a woman soon stuck her head from the entrance. The crying baby was in her arms, and the demanding youngster was holding fast to the woman’s skirts.
“This here young girl wants to travel west. Says she’ll work her way along in exchange for the ride. Ya interested?”
The woman studied Damaris from top to bottom. There were questions in her eyes but she did not voice them. At length she nodded. She already looked tired and the trip had not yet begun.
“You’ll ride in thet second wagon,” she informed Damaris. “Our oldest boy is drivin’ and there are three more young’uns in there. It’ll be yer job to care fer ’em when we are on the move. When we stop ya can busy yerself with helpin’ get the meals an’ sech.”
Damaris nodded.
“Put yer things in the wagon there an’ gather some wood fer a fire. We’ll need to eat before we set off, an’ we don’t have long to be fixin’ it.”
Damaris nodded again. She moved toward the wagon indicated and hoisted her small bundle of possessions under the canvas. Then she thought better of what she had done and climbed in after her load. She carefully untied the bundle and extracted the smaller packet that contained the watch and the brooch. Slipping it into her apron pocket, she fastened it shut with a pin from the hem of her dress. Then she climbed back down from the wagon and made her way to the small grove of trees clustered beside the road. Mrs. Brown had asked her to bring wood for a fire. She would hasten to carry out her first assignment lest the woman change her mind and leave her behind.
Damaris hurried with the wood and soon had a fire going. She picked up the two available buckets and headed for one of the town wells. As soon as she was back she took a large kettle from the side of the wagon and put water on to heat. Then she went to the wagon entrance and called to the woman that she was ready to begin meal preparations if she could be given her instructions.
It was a simple meal that Damaris prepared but no one complained about it, and after she hurried to wash up the dishes and pack them away for the trip she saw a look of relief on the woman’s face.
“I need to nurse this one,” the woman said, lifting the baby and rising from the stool where she sat. “Thet one needs a nap iffen ya can coax him to settle,” and she nodded her head at the boy who had been crying and hanging on to his mother’s skirts ever since Damaris first saw him.
Damaris had misgivings as she picked up the young tot and headed for the wagon she had been told was hers to share. He screamed for his mother, but Damaris continued walking.
She knew very little about caring for children. That was one chore she had never done, having had no siblings of her own. Her reasoning told her, however, that if the child was to be settled for a nap, he first had to be comforted, so when she reached the wagon she crawled aboard and began to gently rock the little one in her arms, singing a song that her mama used to sing to her.
He continued to scream for a while, but gradually the wild complaining ceased. Damaris continued to rock, continued to sing. She rocked until her arms ached and sang until her throat was dry. At long last the child fell asleep and Damaris moved to gently lay him on the blanket bed that covered almost the entire wagon floor.
He stirred and started to whimper as she lowered him, and Damaris feared she would need to begin all over again. She wasn’t much taken with her role as nursemaid and figured she would more than earn her keep on the trip west if it meant caring for this wailing child the whole way. And according to the woman, there were three more somewhere. Damaris had been much too busy over the dinner hour to be bothered with counting noses. Now, she supposed that it was her job to round up the rest. From the talk around the fire she knew the train would soon move on, leaving the small town behind.
The days on the trail were not easy ones for Damaris. Besides hauling water, finding fuel for the fire, and helping with the meals and washing, she was put in charge of four children, including three girls who were independent and unruly. The youngest child, two-year-old Edgar, quickly changed from fighting her to clinging to her. Every move Damaris made he was either hanging on her or demanding to be carried. Damaris gathered sticks for the fire with Edgar hoisted on her left hip, hauled water from the stream with Edgar trailing on her skirts, cooked the dinner over the fire with Edgar crying at her elbow. Damaris soon yearned for a few moments by herself—but they never came.
Even at night there was no escape, for she had to share the wagon—and her bed—with Edgar and his three sisters. Damaris felt as if she were smothering and often climbed from the wagon in the middle of the night to find a few quiet moments walking in the darkness, even though the captain had forbidden anyone to leave the wagons at night.
The oldest boy, younger than Damaris, was sullen and sober and far too tired at the end of each busy day to cause any problem for her. They were two weeks on the trail before Damaris even learned his name, and then it was quite by accident.
Two of the girls, Nina and Trudy, were arguing over whose turn it was to ride on the wagon seat. After a lively spat that solved nothing, Nina turned to Trudy and screamed at the top of her voice, “It is too my turn! You just ask Conrad!” But when the case was taken to Conrad for appeal, he shrugged thin shoulders and spoke not a word. The squabble ended in a hair-pulling match, and Damaris had to intervene. She stated firmly that both girls would miss their turn for the day and that made the quarrel turn against her, as the two fighting sisters suddenly found a common foe and banded together to give Damaris a piece of their angry minds.
If Damaris had looked forward to the excitement of the trip, she would have been disillusioned. There was nothing exciting about the long, hot, dusty trail they traveled. Nor in the long hours of difficult work. Each day started before sunrise and ended after the sun had sunk into the western sky.
If Edgar slept well, she could get a good six hours of sleep, but that was not always so. If he awakened in the night, the first thing he did was reach for her. If he didn’t find her within grasping distance, he began to howl before he even had his eyes open.
I promised to earn my way,
Damaris reminded herself daily,
and I will keep my word.
Damaris really didn’t have too much contact with her lady employer. Once her duties had been assigned and assumed, the woman withdrew to her wagon and appeared only when the next meal was ready. She didn’t seem to be too well, and the small baby she always had in her arms was terribly fussy.
“Don’t know iffen it’s the heat or the constant motion,” the exhausted woman said to Damaris one day, “but he sure isn’t takin’ to somethin’.”
Damaris nodded in agreement, though she knew nothing about small babies.
———
Damaris had never known that so many miles of nothingness could exist. They saw hills and scrub brush and an occasional deer or coyote. Barren plains shimmered in heat waves, making Damaris feel dizzy and sick to her stomach. Now and then a thunder shower burst upon them, making everyone take cover in the moving wagons. If it rained too much the wagons were forced to sit a spell. Damaris hated these stops, for every delay meant more days on the trail.
She lost all track of time—but she guessed it really didn’t matter which day of the week it was. Day after tiresome day was much like the other.
Damaris did not mix with the other families of the train. She had spotted one girl about her age, but the girl seemed totally free of responsibility and able to run about with the younger children. She even had a pony she rode whenever she felt so inclined. The rest of her time she spent curled up on pillows in the back of their wagon, a book propped up on her knees.
Damaris envied the girl. She didn’t care that much about having no chores to do. She wasn’t even too concerned about the pony, but the books made Damaris jealous. Oh, what she would give to be able to sit and read and read. She had had to leave her own worn volumes behind. They really were her mother’s books, and Damaris hadn’t felt right about taking them with her—but oh, it was hard to leave them.
After the evening meal had been served, the dishes washed and put up for the night, the water hauled for morning, and enough wood stacked to supply the breakfast fire, Damaris sometimes had a few moments before she tucked herself into bed.
They were not really free moments, for Edgar refused to go to bed without her, but Damaris often picked up the small boy and carried him as she wound her way around the campsite.
She would watch people gathered in little clusters, talking around this or that campfire. Sometimes she drew close enough to catch bits and pieces of the conversation. She wanted to learn how many more days they would be on the trail and if the tiresome journey was ever to end.
She avoided the menfolk, especially the wagon master. For the first few days of the journey she was terrified that he would send her back to the town where she had joined the train if he discovered her.
About the third day he finally saw her, but he said nothing, just scowled, nodded, then passed her by. Damaris breathed a relieved sigh. She was safe. She could continue her trip west.
Still, Damaris chose to stay well out of his way, not wishing to bother him or cross him.
One thing about the journey pleased Damaris. There were no towns—and no saloons. Never once on the whole trail did Damaris see a drunken man. Never once did she see a woman or child bearing cuts or bruises because of someone’s fit of drunken rage. Damaris, as eager as she was to reach a town, also dreaded the thought, sure that once they arrived the men would return to their normal way of life.
———
“If nothin’ slows us, we should be there in three days.”
The words had been spoken by a tall man resting against the wheel of his wagon.
Damaris, passing by with two buckets of water and Edgar clutching her skirt, caught her breath.
Three days! Only three more days. It sounded like a release from a moving prison.
The whole camp was abuzz that evening. Damaris even heard some singing. She ached to creep close and listen to the revelers, but her duties kept her near the fire. By the time she finished her chores, the music had stopped.
Damaris was too excited to sleep well that night. The flap of the wagon had been turned back to allow a little cool air to enter, and through the opening she could see the moon hanging silvery overhead. She could stand it no longer. She eased herself out from under the blankets, slipped her dress over her head, grabbed her shawl, and left the wagon. Edgar did not stir.