T
hey were slowed. Three span of oxen weren't enough to drag that supply wagon and the light one behind it. Skye saw it, and so did the rest. The beasts would give out eventually unless they were relieved of their burden.
Still, they toiled along the North Platte River, pausing frequently. Other trains passed them. Clearly, word had spread back and forth. Some sent riders forward to inquire.
“This is a plague party,” one rough man announced.
“It is a party with some consumptives, sir,” Peacock replied, as quietly as he could.
“Poisoning the water!”
“Have you proof of it? Has anyone ahead of us taken sick?”
“Plenty of sickness along this trail, and you're the cause. Fresh graves, that's all we see.”
“From consumption gotten from us, sir?”
“It figures, that's all I'm going to say. What right have you to poison the road with sickness?”
“We're taking sick people to a place of healing. I think you'd like that done for you if you had the disease.”
“I don't and I won't unless I catch the devil's own from these filthy squaws. This is the damnedest outfit ever to come down the trail, spreading your sickness. Why don't you turn off and let decent people by?”
Skye bristled but held his peace.
Peacock smiled. “We're here, resting. Go on around, get ahead.”
“We'll certainly do that, and a curse on you!”
The fierce man kicked the ribs of his gaunt horse and forced it back toward the wagon train waiting two hundred yards distant. Skye watched as the man gesticulated wildly, waving an arm in the direction of the New Bedford Infirmary Company. Several of them collected firearms from their wagons and posted themselves between the train and Peacock's party, for what purpose Skye could not fathom. But fear exacted its own madness.
Then the party of outraged migrants thundered past at almost a gallop, the oxen slobbering and foaming, the sentries forming a wall between their party and Skye's, as if somehow Peacock's wagons and people would descend upon them all and inflict disease and death upon them.
But they passed. And Skye sensed that this would not be the end of it. A sort of hysteria had gripped the companies on the trail this time, whipped by wild rumor and their own hardship. For it was true that the trail took its toll, and there were graves everywhere, fathers, mothers, grandparents, children, all hastily wrapped in blankets and buried in shallow pits, with a few words mumbled over them, before the weary travelers toiled west once again.
Still, that encounter was the worst of the morning. Another
company of Philadelphians gave Peacock's party wide berth but sent an emissary over to see if they could help.
“Yes,” Skye said. “A span of oxen if you have it. I have a Sharps rifle to trade for it.”
Victoria heard it and stared.
“We have not one spare animal, sorry,” the Pennsylvania man said. “But I hope you succeed. I lost my mother to the galloping kind, the consumption that suddenly destroys a mortal. We're Friends. I'll ask ahead about spans of oxen and what you're offering, if that would help.”
“It would, sir,” Skye said. “And who are you?”
“Lethbridge, sir. Salton Lethbridge, and this is the Bryn Mawr Company, Oregon bound.”
“I am Mister Skye.”
“That's a name to reckon with, or so I'm told.”
Skye smiled. “People know more about me than I know about myself.”
Lethbridge laughed, and trotted his chestnut horse toward his company.
That was the only company that day that showed some civility or mercy. The rest passed with a curse and a whip.
They struggled on, resting frequently, until they reached LaBonte Creek at sundown. There were two companies camped there, but room for more upstream. Unlike most camps in that barren land, this had abundant firewood and even some grass in the moist bottoms. The weary oxen and the remaining Morgan needed both.
Skye surveyed the quiet camps, seeing people settling down for the short summer's night, taking care of livestock, cooking, doing the endless chores.
“We'll go upstream. It means another mile, but we'll have the camp we need,” Skye said to Peacock.
There was a way around these bustling camps near the trail, and Skye took it. But no sooner did his weary company turn off the trail than the shouting began, and distant men collected, armed themselves, and began hiking toward Skye's company, spread out in a military assault line.
More trouble.
“Keep moving,” Skye said. “Get to good ground upstream.”
“You're more of an optimist than I am,” Peacock said, but he motioned his weary assemblage forward along a hillside trail that plainly had seen use in recent days.
There was shouting from the approaching men.
“Keep moving, don't stop,” Skye said.
Peacock shook his head, but he continued.
Skye peered about sharply. Victoria had strung her small bow and was ready, a quiet ace in the hole. Enoch Bright focused intently on the oxen and ignored the mounting hubbub. The Jones brothers stuck dutifully to their teamstering. The other young people stared, sick with fear.
“I say, stop or we'll shoot!” bawled a bearded man in a slouch hat, probably the captain of one of the wagon trains.
Skye turned Jawbone straight toward the man.
“We are heading for the free campground upriver. Is there a problem?”
“The plague party! You're going nowhere.”
“I don't know of any plague in our party, sir. My name is Mister Skye. And yours?”
“Captain Reece. You're going to go back where you came from.”
“Or?”
“Or face the consequences.”
The consequences were considerable. There were now
about thirty armed men, rifles ready, with more rushing forward.
“What consequences, sir?”
Reece paused a second. “Try it and see,” he snapped.
These men were beyond argument but Skye thought things needed to be said. Peacock had stopped his party. Enoch Bright at last turned to face this mob. The young people, peering from under the wagon sheet, looked scared. Victoria had slid into shadow. No one paid any attention to her.
The all-male crowd milled at a distance, not wanting to get closer to the sick. Beyond, at the camp, women and children collected to watch. Now the second company, just upstream, was alerted and more men were racing toward the open field where all this was building into trouble. Thirty rifles now, another thirty soon.
“Our young people are tired and need to stop here. They're consumptives, and need all the rest they can get.”
“Get them out of here!” someone shouted.
“If they were your children, sir, would you be saying that?”
“I don't have plague children.”
“They need food and water. A safe place to sleep.”
“Go back! You will not infect us!”
“You will not be infected if you keep apart.”
“You will infect the water above us. No, squaw man, no. That's final. Go!”
Skye lifted his top hat and settled it. “Mister Peacock,” he said softly, “proceed.”
Peacock seemed scared. As well he should. Skye was scared. The children were frightened. His wives looked resolute but he thought Victoria might be whispering her death song.
“Yes, Mister Skye,” Peacock said, and proceeded. Enoch
started his ox team. The wagon rolled forward, followed by the cart.
Scores of rifles lifted, their barrels pointing straight at them all.
“Would you kill the sick children?” Skye asked softly in the deepening taut silence.
“No, squaw man, just you.”
“We'll kill your oxen,” another shouted.
“I see,” said Mister Skye. “We will proceed. Go ahead, Mister Peacock. They plan to kill me. And after that, your oxen, and then it'll be up to you to care for the sick and weak.”
Skye had to give the merchant credit. He bawled at the oxen and the wagon again rolled forward.
Behind, in the cart, soft sobs were eddying out on the meadow.
“Men, do your duty!” the captain yelled.
Men aimed rifles. Peacock stopped.
Then, at his urging, the sick children slid one by one to the ground and stood beside the wagon, gaunt, fevered, their pale faces tear-streaked. Sterling Peacock helped Samantha Peacock stand. Eliza Bridge and Mary Bridge slipped off the tailgate and stood, shyly. Grant and Ashley Tucker slid to the grass, unable to stand for more than a few moments. Peter Sturgeon sat down in the grass also. And Anna Bennett stood, proudly.
“Bring Samantha to me,” Skye said quietly.
When her brother half dragged, half carried her to him, he dismounted from Jawbone, lifted her into the saddle, where she clung, her breath labored and her small face pinched and wet with tears.
“Come, let us put you to bed, Samantha. You are a brave girl, and soon you will be in a good place, where the dry, warm air will give you life again,” Skye said.
Hiram Peacock, brave man that he was, hawed the oxen to life and the wagon rolled forward, inching past the company of angry men, following a rutted road that took them wide around the two camps. Enoch Bright led the Morgan horse on foot. The cart followed, the Jones brothers hawing the oxen, and then Skye's wives and ponies.
One by one, the angry travelers lowered their rifles.
No shot destroyed life and hope that moment. In a few minutes they reached an open glade, settled there, the children bundled in their blankets, their tears washed away. The horses were picketed on adequate grass. A fire sprang up, and soon would heat some broth. Skye carefully washed at the creek, and returned to camp.
Victoria and Mary abandoned their cook fire, slipped close to him, each catching a hand, and held him.
S
amantha didnâ²t wake up. A while after the rest had stirred in the early dawn, someone realized that the girl lay still.
Hiram Peacock shook the girl, who lay curled up in a bloodstained blanket, but she didn't stir. Her mouth formed an O, and her body was chill. She stared up at him from sightless eyes.
“Oh, Samantha,” he said. “Oh, my little one.”
He knelt beside her, absorbing once again the triumph of his ancient enemy, death. Then he turned to those solemn young people who had gathered around the wagon and shook his head. Samantha had survived only thirteen years, robbed by an insidious disease of all the joys and comforts of life; robbed of adulthood, robbed even of childhood, because she had been sick for three years.
Two beloved children dead this trip. They had buried his youngest, Raphael, near Fort Kearney. Now his second-youngest. He slumped against the wagon, almost unable to go on.
Had he driven them to their deaths? Had the ordeal of travel worn them to nothing?
He felt the need to walk away and be by himself for a time, and he did, hiking down to LaBonte Creek, apart from the silent camp. It was late. The other companies had already departed, leaving only this group of fragile mortals beside the creek.
He heard Enoch Bright quietly explaining things to Skye; heard him command that preparations for travel be halted. Then Hiram slipped through river brush, scaring up redwinged blackbirds, and settled on a log beside the slow, tiny stream.
Death had visited this bright morning.
Emma, Raphael, Samantha. Sterling, his oldest, still lived but the youth's lungs were daily under siege. As were his own lungs, he supposed, but there had been no further sign of trouble after the tiny spots of blood speckled his handkerchief for a few days. Everyone, every dear person in his household, was a victim of consumption. Would this cruel disease not let him alone? Would it take his surviving son too?
Why now? Had it been the horror of the evening before? The horror of having armed men threatening them for the crime of being sick? Had her weakened body and spirit recoiled against that desperate confrontation when it seemed possible that the whole company of the sick might be massacred? The hardships of the road seemed to erode the decency of people. Those men with rifles were simply trying to defend themselves and their families and were so caught in their passion that they almost murdered innocents.
There are things one never knows, and he could never know what stole the life of his girl. Maybe the child was all
worn-out. That was the most fatal of all diseases, just being worn-out. He thought he would die someday of being worn-out.
They would have to bury her in some shallow grave and head west once again. He had wanted more for her; he wanted to give her a chance. Had he done something foolhardy, taking them on this endless journey? No! In New Bed-ford they would have sunk, day by day, without hope, only to lie for an eternity in the family plot. But every hour of this trip they lived with hope! Even Ephraim, the neighbor boy who was the first to die, had been filled with hope until he perished near Fort Kearney. She had hope! Sterling still had hope! He himself had hope! He had bought her hope!
He watched the morning bloom, the breezes pick up and rattle the sedges, and then he returned to camp. Enoch had settled Samantha on her grimy blue blanket, there on the yellow clay, and straightened her out and folded her thin arms over her chest and combed her hair. There were no caskets here, only a hasty hole in the earth and a blanket to cover her. Someday soon there would be nothing left, not flesh, not bones, not a stone at the head of her grave.
Peacock knew he must take charge again. There was not time to grieve. Other frail lives depended on him.
“We will carry on,” he said to those gaunt youths. “We will reach a place of healing.”
He rummaged a spade from the supply wagon and headed toward a gentle bower that might be a fitting place. But his spade bounced off the hardpan. Enoch Bright showed up to help, but Peacock waved him off. This was his own task, and he would not share it. He moved closer to the creek and tried again, this time in a brushy place, but the sun had cracked and dried the gumbo clay, turning it to granite, and he made no
progress there. A sweat was building in him, and his own weary lungs were laboring.
Skye found him there, panting and leaning on his shovel.
“Sir, I think we may have to carry your girl a way before we can find a proper place,” he said. “This isn't a fitting place. It's July, and the clay's turned to cement.”
“This is where she died; this is where ⦔ He let it hang, and gulped air.
“Yes, it is fitting,” Skye said.
Victoria watched all this from a safe distance, and then approached.
“Mister Peacock? Would you listen to some old Crow woman?”
Peacock nodded and wiped sweat from his brow. He had been indescribably wearied by only a few minutes of banging that spade into the unyielding earth.
Victoria settled herself in the grass, which evoked curiosity in Peacock.
“My people, they do it another way,” she began. “When someone starts on the spirit road, they are on a long journey that takes them up through the stars where they walk on spirit moccasins.”
Peacock could no longer stand. He settled in the grass beside her. Off a way, life in the camp seemed suspended, and faces were turned toward them.
“We put our dead ones up in a tree, on a scaffold we build. That's our burial.”
“Well, now, I can't even think of that. I want a proper Christian burial, Missus Skye.”
She seemed almost to ignore him. “We wrap them tight in a robe or a blanket along with their spirit things, their medicine
bundle, their bow and quiver, everything they need for their long journey. Then we lift them up, very gently, onto this platform we've lashed to a big tree, and sit beneath the tree awhile saying goodbye to the one whose name we must never speak again, for this person is on the spirit road.
“So we give this person not to the cold earth, but to the sun and the wind, the dews of night, the stars above, and the moon. We give this person to the blistering heat of summer, and the north winds of winter; to the rains of spring and fall, and the showers of summer, and the snows that settle over that robe and bury it in cold. So this person returns to the seasons, the air and wind, and sometime, long time maybe, these fall down and this person returns to dust, and becomes part of the earth again. Maybe this is good, eh?”
They sat there in the breeze-tossed grass, there beside LaBonte Creek. He couldn't say yes to this; he just couldn't. It wasn't the way he had lived and believed. And yet â¦
He stood, slowly, his aching lungs recovered for the moment, and lumbered slowly toward the sagging wagon, found the axe, returned with it, eyed some cottonwood saplings, and began to hew one down.
“You rest, sir,” Mister Skye said, materializing at his side.
“I must do this. I'll let you do it in a minute. Or Mister Bright. The man is a genius with wood, you know. But let me cut this first sapling. It's my task, this first one.”
Peacock soon felled a slim sapling, and carefully limbed it, and it felt right to do that. Then he handed the axe to Skye and settled on the ground to watch.
Swiftly Skye felled saplings while Victoria limbed them with her hatchet, and soon a platform grew in a majestic cottonwood whose limbs spread wide. Pole after pole was readied
and lashed into the platform, until at last an open-air casket, its bottom wooden, its top the leaves above and the dome of heaven over that, was readied.
Peacock watched Victoria kneel beside the quiet body of Samantha, and realized the danger.
“Madam, no, don't risk your life,” he said. “I will prepare her.”
She looked up at him. “I am safe. We believe that when the breath is gone, the sickness is no longer there. Is there anything you wish to send to the spirit land with her?”
He thought of poor Samantha's small possessions, and remembered Emma's ring. Samantha's mother had given her a thin silver ring. “Yes, I'll get something for her to take with her.”
He found Samantha's little bundle in the cart, found the ring, and brought it. Victoria ran it through a thong and tied the thong around the girl's neck.
“Samantha, this is for the husband and marriage you never had,” he said.
“That is a good gift,” Victoria said, straightening the girl's collar.
Then she drew the old blanket over Samantha and began a detailed binding, wrapping thong around and around, until Samantha had been encased.
“I will lift her,” Peacock said.
Skye looked about to offer help, but this was something the merchant needed to do himself. The girl weighed nothing. She had shrunk to seventy pounds or so, and he found himself gently carrying the blue-blanketed form toward the great and comforting cottonwood, and then lifting her above his head and sliding her onto the poles.
Again he gestured Skye off, and worked Samantha's body around until it lay straight and true on its resting place.
The others materialized then, unbidden but knowing. Bright carried the Book. Skye summoned Victoria and they stepped back. Let the sick ones, the family and friends, gather close.
Peacock watched Skye and Victoria retreat, watched Mary and the child in the cradleboard join them perhaps thirty yards distant, and then Bright was ready.
“We have gathered here this hour to say good-bye to Samantha and wish her a good journey on her walk to the stars,” Bright said.
Peacock stared, astonished.
“She will walk among the constellations, pass by the Big Dipper, and come to the North Star, that unmoving beacon in the heavens by which we set our compass and measure our progress through life. She will find others on the star-trail, maybe new friends like these who have guided us. She will not be alone as she walks. Someday she will become a bright star and we all will know which one, and see how she shines,” Mister Bright said.
Hiram Peacock had never heard such a funeral oration, and listened to Enoch Bright sing a song as ancient as the wind.