Katie and the Mustang, Book 4 (10 page)

Together we carried enough rocks to half cover the grave before the adults got done with their praying and Bible reading and joined in. The men carried bigger stones than we could, of course. Mr. Heldon carried a few rocks, then stood back, his face bleak and cold as morning ashes.

Mr. Taylor, Mr. McMahon, and Mr. Silas found a big black stone the shape of a wind blown storm cloud, flat on one side. Sweating and straining, they rolled and dragged it across the clearing. Then others took over and heaved at it, finally positioning it at the top of the grave for a headstone. By the time Mr. Kyler called out for everyone to get ready to go, the whole grave was well mounded with rock. Grover was still working, his eyes down.

As the wagons lurched into motion and Grover's father guided his oxen back onto the trail, I lagged behind. I kept an eye on Grover as I went to get the Mustang. When I came back, he still hadn't left the graveside. His father had taken his usual place in the line of wagons and was well ahead; he seemed to have forgotten Grover entirely.

I saw Mrs. Kyler leaning out to see around the canvas wagon cover. I waved at her and gestured toward Grover. She waved back and I knew we understood each other.

As I came closer, I saw that Grover was holding a fist-sized rock, balancing it in his hand. He looked up when he heard the Mustang's hoofbeats. His eyes were empty of everything. I wondered if I had looked the same way. He swung around, his arm tracing a wide arc, the stone leaving his hand with all the strength in his body, all the violence of this pain.

I stood with him, listening to the sound of the rock as it passed between two pine trees and fell, striking random stones, glancing off, then pattering to a stop in the pine needles. He hadn't aimed at anything at all, and he didn't look at me.

“He told her last night that he's not staying here, that he doesn't want to farm,” Grover whispered.

I tried to imagine why Grover's father would tell his wife these things. To make her worry? What kind of cruelty would it take to say such a thing to a woman so sick and weak?

Grover glanced at me, then away again. “Katie, I hate him. I won't stay with him. But what'll I do?”

“You'll make your own way,” I said. “Mrs. Kyler says some of us just have to.”

He knelt and kissed the stones that covered his mother and then stood up and began to walk. I trotted the Mustang to catch up and we fell in beside Grover. All that day we walked behind the wagons, neither one of us saying anything more. I just stayed close. There was nothing else I could do.

CHAPTER TEN

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“
T
oday ought to get us to The Dalles,” Mr.
T
McMahon said one morning, reading from his handbook. Then he lifted his head and shouted it out. I heard Charles Kyler holler the news to Mr. Taylor and, in seconds, everyone knew. A ragged little cheer went up from the wagons. I heard Miss Liddy's voice, high, happy, and
loud
. The Mustang shook his head and danced a little, then settled back into the long-strided walk that I had learned to keep pace with.

I had gotten into the habit of traveling not too far from Mr. Heldon's wagon. Grover would sometimes come walk with me and the Mustang. That morning I heard Mr. Heldon's angry voice, and I angled closer.

“I don't care what you say,” Mr. Heldon was saying. “If you'd taken better care of her...” He dropped his voice, and I couldn't hear the rest, but I could imagine it.

I caught my breath. It was the cruelest thing I could imagine anyone saying. And it wasn't true. No one could have done more to help someone than Grover had done for his mother. I slowed and started looking for grass for the Mustang before Mr. Heldon noticed me.

After a little while, Grover saw me and dropped back to walk with me for an hour or two. Then he drifted toward Andrew and the stock. I saw him helping herd the animals.

At noon, I went and got Grover, and he ate at Mrs. Kyler's campfire with me. He helped us clean up and then walked alongside the Kylers' wagon the rest of the day. His father didn't seem to know or care where he had gone.

We got to The Dalles before sundown. The town had been built near a narrow chasm that the mighty Columbia River roared through. We could hear it from our camp—which was nearly a mile from town. We stayed back that far to find grass for the stock; closer to town, it was all grazed flat.

Most of us walked on once camp was made, just to see if the guidebooks were true. They were. There was a place where the wagon ruts simply stopped. Wagons could go no farther because of the river. We all stood staring at it.

The Columbia River was wide and deep, the color of a storm sky, and it muscled its way past, the currents swirling and twined. You couldn't hear anyone unless they shouted.

The sheer size and force of the river scared me. I could tell it scared everyone. We saw two Indian men walk past, carrying three canoes lashed together on their backs. Was that how people got across? No one said much walking back to camp.

We weren't the only ones there, and the next day we talked to other people. My fears were true. They were all waiting, camped out in a mile-wide circle outside the town, for Indian men who hired out their canoes as ferries to take them downriver and land them on the far side. We were told it could be a week or more, that it was first come, first across.

The next morning I left the Mustang with Andrew Kyler's herd, and Grover and I walked down to watch. The roaring of the wide river was enough to caution anyone about getting into a real, flat-bottomed, wide-decked ferryboat—never mind the swaying, makeshift canoe ferries.

Three and four canoes had been lashed together with planks fixed on top to make a platform. People were removing their wagon wheels so the wagon beds would lay flat on the platforms.

“Look,” Grover said, pointing. I turned. As we stood watching, one of the ferries—a trio of canoes lashed together with a wheeless wagon perched on top—started downriver. The Indian men seemed incredibly skilled at maneuvering it, but when it went over a swirling set of rapids, it broke apart. The wagon tipped and we heard people screaming as they were thrown into the rushing water. No one drowned, thanks to the strength and wit of the Indian men, but the wagon was lost; seeing the accident made all of us even more uneasy.

On the way back, I told Mrs. Kyler I wanted to go into town to ask about my uncle. She nodded and asked if I wanted company. I told her no, that I was fine, even though it wasn't all that true. Every time I asked after my uncle, my hopes rose—and it hurt something awful when they fell again.

I was a long ways down the path toward town when I heard someone running behind me. Grover caught up, breathing hard. “Mrs. Kyler says I am supposed to keep an eye on you,” he said between breaths.

“I don't really need anyone to come along,” I told him.

“But do you mind if I do?” he interrupted. “Mrs. Kyler will be upset if I don't.”

I sighed and shook my head. “I don't mind, Grover, I'm just scared.” He nodded and I knew he understood.

“If I see my father, I am going to hide from him,” he said quietly. “He'll be drinking by now.”

I nodded and felt terrible for forgetting that my troubles were no bigger than anyone else's.

Grover gathered up his shirttails as we walked, shoving them down into his trouser waist. For an instant, I saw him as a stranger might. His hair was long and scraggly, his shirt had been patched, and a long tear crossed the left knee of his trousers. I looked down at my stained dress and thought about the picture we must make. Then, as we got closer to town, I realized that most of the people on the streets looked just like we did—weary, dirty, and ragged.

I glanced at Grover. “We'll just try in the shops.”

He nodded and followed me, barely saying a word as we went from one end of the main street to the other, then crossed the street and started back up the other side. It was discouraging. Nary a soul had ever heard of Jack Rose. I started walking faster, my head down. I was trying not to cry. Grover just lengthened his step and tried to keep up as I hurried into—then out of—a half-dozen shop doors. No one knew anything about my uncle.

“It doesn't mean anything, Katie,” Grover said as we neared the end of the street. “People just come through here—thousands of them. The shop-keepers don't get to know hardly any of them.”

I took a deep breath. “I hope you're right.”

He took a skip-step to come up beside me. “You know I am. It'll be someone in Oregon City who knows where he lives. Not here.”

I nodded. “I just get scared.”

“Let's try there before you give up,” Grover said as we neared the end of the street where we had started. He was pointing at a dry goods store. I slowed. He was right. No matter how upset I was, it was silly not to keep asking.

The shopkeeper was rearranging dusty bolts of cloth when we came in. He had never heard of Jack Rose. But he was talkative. He asked me a lot of questions about where we were from, how long it had taken to get across, how much farther we intended to go.

“All the way to Oregon City,” I told him. “But I'm scared of the river,” I admitted.

He grinned. “I wouldn't take one of them canoe ferries if there was gold on the other side. D'yer folks know about the Barlow Road?”

Grover and I shook our heads. Neither one of us had ever heard of it.

“There's a toll, and it's steep, but it keeps you off the river in those dang canoes.”

“We'll tell the men in our party,” Grover said, and thanked him.

I stepped back onto the boardwalk feeling a little lighter. It was finished. No one in The Dalles knew my uncle, and I could stop worrying about it.

Someone in Oregon City would. And I was glad to learn about the Barlow Road. Staying off the river made perfect sense to me, and I was pretty sure Mr. Kyler and the other menfolk would feel the same way.

They did. There wasn't even an argument about it. Everyone had seen or heard about the canoe ferry breaking apart. So we took the Barlow Road the next morning. We had to pay five dollars per wagon, and Andrew paid by the head for his herd. It was expensive, especially now when most people had spent too much of their savings already and wanted to put every penny toward tools and seed for their new farms. Still, no one balked.

The man in The Dalles had been right. It was a hard and terrible passage. The road was narrow and steep, barely a road at all. It was full of fist-sized stones that stubbed our toes and made the oxen and horses footsore.

We weren't the only ones on the toll road, though. A lot of people had decided climbing a mountain on a brand-new road was better than facing that river. We couldn't travel fast, but the people behind us never caught up or wanted to pass us. Everyone was weary. It was hard enough to keep moving.

Grover walked with me most days. He barely said a word. He was hungry all the time and would take food from Mrs. Kyler only when he couldn't stand it anymore. His father had no supplies, He had used the last of their money to buy whiskey in The Dalles. He swayed and slumped on the wagon bench and growled at anyone who tried to talk to him.

Mr. Kyler and Mr. Craggett had paid his wagon toll, and I was sure they had done it for Grover. The other men tolerated Mr. Heldon and his drinking only because they felt sorry for him, losing his wife, and because they knew there was so little distance left to travel before they could be shut of him forever. He had told everyone he intended to travel on as soon as he could.

Grover avoided his father entirely if he could, and the awful thing was that his father didn't even come looking for him when he slept night after night by the Kylers' campfire in blankets Mrs. Kyler loaned him.

Grover practiced juggling stones almost every moment he was awake—standing, walking, or sitting down. He was getting good at it. I saw him talking to Mr. Swann a few times, and it looked like he was learning different patterns. I was glad. He wanted to go with them, and I hoped they would let him.

Sometimes I dropped back and led the Mustang alongside Andrew Kyler and the stock. I liked being around Delia and Midnight, and sometimes I put halters on them and took all three horses looking for grass.

Delia was calmer than I remembered her being, and Midnight had somehow become really affectionate. She rubbed her forehead on my shoulder and nibbled at my fingers when I patted her. The rest of the horses seemed worn out and cranky. Delia and Midnight seemed content. I began to think that they had missed my company. I was sure they liked being around the Mustang, too, so I took them grazing as often as I could.