Boone's Lick (15 page)

After the fat doe, the turkeys, and the big catfish we all had high expectations for the hunt, but they were soon disappointed. Uncle Seth hunted much of the day, and Charlie Seven Days did too, but they brought home nothing. Charlie finally managed to snare a goose, but one goose didn't go far on a boat full of hungry people. Uncle Seth and Aunt Rosie went ashore in Westport and came back drunk, but Uncle Seth
had
managed to secure a
ten-gauge shotgun and some duck shot. After that he and Charlie would float off into the mists that covered the river just before dawn. Sometimes they would catch a raft of ducks dozing together and kill thirty or forty of them with a single shot. We ate duck until we all got tired of the rubbery taste.

Once I did persuade G.T. to go for a hunt with me on the Kansas bank. Almost at once we spotted something that looked like a buffalo, far off in the grass.

“We'll be heroes if we kill it,” G.T. said. We stalked that buffalo for over an hour, without getting much closer to it—our eyes weren't accustomed to the distances you found on the Kansas plains. The prairies looked flat, but had a slow roll to them, a kind of grassy wave.

Then the buffalo turned out to be nothing but a stray milk cow, a development that made G.T. furious.

“Let's kill it anyway,” he said—of course I wouldn't let him.

“Heroes don't kill milk cows,” I pointed out.

At close range the milk cow, which was brindle, looked more like a mule than a buffalo.

I turned around and started tramping back to the river, only to discover that G.T. thought the river was in the opposite direction.

“The river's this way,” he insisted, pointing.

“You fool, it's
this
way, of course,” I said.

The fact was, neither of us knew where the river was. The sun was hidden by some clouds as thick and gray as the grass we were walking on. There
was not a single tree in sight, and no way to tell one direction from another. The harder we tried to choose a direction, the more confused we became. Instead of buffalo killers and heroes we were two lost hunters, with no idea how to get back to our boat.

“If the Blackfeet Indians show up they can scalp us pretty quick, I guess,” G.T. said. The remark showed how little attention G.T. paid to what Uncle Seth said.

“The Blackfeet Indians live in Montana,” I reminded him. “This is Kansas we're lost in.”

“Maybe it is and maybe it isn't,” G.T. said. He would never admit to being wrong.

“The boat's probably a hundred miles away by now,” he said. “They'll never find us. We'll starve.”

When G.T.'s spirits started to slide they usually slid a long way quick.

What saved us was that Ma had a cowbell. She thought we might acquire a milk cow, somewhere on our travels, so she packed our old cowbell. When she decided we were lost she began to ring it, and we could just hear that bell, ringing far to the east. It gave us a direction, and we started walking toward it. If Ma hadn't kept ringing the bell we would have probably drifted off line and been lost all night, but she kept ringing. Then Charlie Seven Days came walking out of the dusk and led us home.

“I guess we'll have to hobble you boys, if you can't manage your directions,” Uncle Seth said.

That night I finally worked up to asking Charlie
a question I had been wanting to ask him since he decided to travel with us: it was about Ma mistaking a horse for an elk. I explained what Uncle Seth told me the Cheyenne would think, that the elk had been ready to die and just turned himself into a horse to help us out.

“Your uncle must think the Cheyenne are a foolish people,” Charlie said. “What I think is that your mother needed to feed her family, and knew there was a lot of meat on that big horse.”

“Then you don't think she really thought the horse was an elk?” I asked.

“A horse is not an elk,” Charlie said. It was his final comment—I guess it might be that my mother was a liar after all.

A
S
soon as Aunt Rosie got over her beating she began to pine for her old life. Her bruises cleared up and her split lip healed. Her ribs mended more slowly, but by the time we had edged upriver past St. Joseph and were close to White Cloud, she was well enough to bend over and lift a bucket of water out of the river.

It got colder as we traveled on into October. The ducks and geese were so noisy that sometimes we all wished Ma would unload the wagon and take us overland.

The day we were due to strike the Platte River Aunt Rosie came over to Ma and told her she wanted to get off and try life again on her own.

“I believe I'll try my luck in Council Bluffs,” she said. “I've heard Iowa's nice.”

“I don't agree with your decision,” Ma said. She didn't say it angrily—she said it sadly.

“I got used to having my sister around again,” she said.

Aunt Rosie looked sad herself, when Ma took that tone.

“I know, Mary Margaret,” she said. “I've got used to having you, too. I've even got used to Seth, and he's a lot to get used to.”

Uncle Seth didn't answer. He knew Rosie was just joshing.

“I need a town, Mary,” Aunt Rosie said. “I'm no river girl and no country girl, either. I like a saloon with a piano—and maybe a few gentlemen callers.”

“It was a gentleman caller who nearly beat you to death,” Ma reminded her.

“No, that wasn't a gentleman caller—that was a sheriff,” Rosie said. “Sheriffs are a hazard, particularly if there's a new preacher in town. But blizzards and wild Indians are hazards too.”

“We didn't take you prisoner,” Ma said. “We'll all miss your company, but you can go whenever you want.”

We all felt sad, when we heard Ma's decision. We all loved Aunt Rosie, though we hadn't had her in our lives very long.

“Seth, what kind of town is Omaha?” Ma asked.

“Hilly,” Uncle Seth said.

“I didn't mean that,” Ma said. “You do irritate me sometimes, Seth.”

“She means is there a sheriff there who is likely to beat me up?” Rosie said.

“I have not been there lately,” Uncle Seth said. “It's just a town, filled with good men and bad, I expect. You might ask Villy—he's thoroughly informed.”

Aunt Rosie walked off to quiz the priest. We all sat around, gloomy.

“I wish we'd never left home,” Neva said.

“If we was home I'd probably catch a fine mess of crawdads, since it's fall,” G.T. said, not that the comment made sense.

Before we could get even gloomier a fracas broke out among the boatmen. We all took Aunt Rosie's decision hard, but Joel, the shortest and skinniest of the boatmen, went wild when he heard she was leaving. Several of the boatmen were in love with Rosie, but Joel was so violently afflicted with love sentiments that he began to butt his head against the side of the boiler. We thought he'd surely stop, after two or three butts, but Joel didn't stop. Uncle Seth finally grew alarmed enough to intervene.

“Here now, son, don't do that,” he said.

“I
will
do it!” Joel said. “I want to crack my head! I can't live without Rosie!”

We were all riveted by his effort to crack his skull against the boiler. Already his head was pretty bloody.

“Stop him, Seth!” Ma commanded.

It took Uncle Seth and Father Villy both to pull Joel away from the boiler, and then the minute they turned him loose he went racing right off the boat into the Missouri River.

“Then I'll drown!” he yelled.

We were tied up for the night—it was pitch dark when Joel went overboard. We heard one splash and then nothing—none of us could see a thing.

“That poor fellow's in the grip of a fit,” Father Villy said.

“Yes, a love fit,” Uncle Seth said. “I doubt we're rid of him, though. It takes determination to drown yourself in a river this shallow. I doubt he's got that much determination.”

Uncle Seth was right. Joel slunk back on board a little later, shivering in his wet clothes.

The Platte River, which we came to the next day, looked just as muddy as the Missouri, but it wasn't as wide. There was no town to speak of, just a few shacks. A boat was stuck on a sandbar, a half mile or so up the Platte. The men who were struggling to pull it off looked like moving gobs of mud.

In the afternoon Ma told us to start packing the wagon, a tiresome chore. We had stuff scattered from one end of the boat to the other. Some of the utensils we had started out with must have been flung overboard, like Granpa. Many were never found, but we had a pretty full wagon anyway.

Aunt Rosie decided not to get off in Omaha—her intention was to stay on board until the boat reached Council Bluffs.

“What's wrong with Omaha?” Ma asked.

“The name—what does it mean?” Rosie asked.

“Oh, it's a tribe,” Uncle Seth informed her. “I've met several Omahas.”

“Well, it's not my tribe and besides, I've heard Iowa's pretty,” Aunt Rosie said.

“Any place can be pretty if the sun's shining bright,” Uncle Seth said.

Aunt Rosie's decision to stay on board a little longer made at least one person happy: Joel.

“I believe he thinks he can talk her into marriage between here and Council Bluffs,” Uncle Seth said.

“I don't think he's aiming that high,” Ma said. “But he is aiming.”

Ma was tapping her fingers on the railing of the boat. It was a habit she had—she tapped her fingers when she was trying to make up her mind. Father Villy and Charlie Seven Days were planning to get off at the Omaha docks, but none of us knew for sure what Ma was planning.

“All right, Seth,” she said suddenly. “What's the verdict? Do we get off here, or do we go on upriver?”

I had never seen Ma look at Uncle Seth quite as hard as she looked at him then. If her eyes had been nails he would have been nailed tight to the boat.

“It's your trip, Mary Margaret—why should I be the one to say?” he replied.

At that point people sort of melted back, toward the far side of the boat—all except me. I wanted to know what it meant that my mother was looking at my uncle that hard.

“Because you know where Dick is,” Ma said. “Or if you don't know exactly, you can get us in the neighborhood.”

“How would I?” Uncle Seth countered. “I ain't seen Dick in fourteen months—he could be anywhere.”

But he seemed nervous, which wasn't his usual
way at all. Usually Uncle Seth's words just flowed right out and kept flowing.

“Because you'd know if he had a woman—an Indian woman,” Ma said.

Everybody melted farther away—but Ma wasn't whispering, and I expect they heard.

“You better not play me false, Seth,” Ma said. “I need to know where Dick Cecil is. I've already lost my own father because of this. Don't you play me false.”

There was a silence so long and so tense that I considered just jumping in the river, like Joel had. Ma had Uncle Seth pinned to the deck with her eyes. He was going to have to answer her—there was no escape.

Aunt Rosie couldn't stand the strain.

“Just tell her, Seth,” she said. “My Lord, she's his wife.”

Just then we eased up to the Omaha docks, and Uncle Seth answered Ma's question by deciding to get us off the boat.

“Let's get this wagon off the boat,” he said. “Sherman, you take charge of the extra mules. October's a fine time of year to be traveling on the Platte. If we travel steady I believe we can make the new forts by Christmas.”

In only minutes we had the wagon and the livestock unloaded. Father Villy helped, plodding through the mud barefooted. Charlie planned to sell his canoe and buy a horse—he said he would meet us by nightfall.

When it came time to say good-bye to Aunt
Rosie, she cried, Ma cried, we children cried, baby Marcy cried, and the boatmen cried, even though she wasn't leaving
them.
With so many of us crying the boatmen couldn't keep from joining in.

But Ma and Aunt Rosie hugged one another the longest—you could see that it was a pain for the sisters to part.

Finally Ma crawled up onto the wagon seat, clucked to the mules, and we were all soon slogging through the Omaha mud. Aunt Rosie waved and waved, and we all waved back. When we went over the first hill Aunt Rosie was talking to Joel—they were both just dots on the river.

Neva and I would have liked to spend some time in Omaha—we had never seen brick buildings before, and Omaha had plenty of them. G.T. was sulking for some reason. We did stop at a big general store long enough to get a few supplies and replace some of the utensils that had washed overboard. Uncle Seth bought G.T. and I good strong hunting knives—he said we would need them soon. Neva got a new bonnet, and we were each allowed a piece of sticky molasses candy. Uncle Seth wanted to buy Ma a lace shawl, but she just looked at him funny and said: “Lace? You want to buy me lace, when we're going into the wilderness? A suit of armor would be more useful.”

“Well, there'll be balls and such,” Uncle Seth said. I think his feelings were a little hurt by her refusal.

“Remember how you used to shine at balls, Mary Margaret?” he said.

I guess Ma did remember—she softened to him a little, when he said that.

“I was a girl then,” she said. “It's been such a while since I was a girl, Seth.”

“It don't mean you can't still shine,” Uncle Seth said—but he didn't buy the shawl. Instead he bought several sacks, which puzzled me, because we didn't have anything to put in them.

Charlie Seven Days caught up with us just before sundown, which was a relief to Ma—she had come to put a lot of trust in Charlie's judgment. The little sorrel horse he had bought wasn't much taller than a big dog. This amused Uncle Seth no end.

“My God, Charlie, that horse ain't big enough to fart,” he said.