Where the Lost Wander_ A Novel - Amy Harmon Page 0,65
Red Paint with great affection just to tease him. I’ve named our new goat Gert. She’s as mild mannered as the sorrel, and the horses and mules do well in her company, even allowing her to ride across the saddle when she can’t keep up. Her milk has been a godsend, and Wolfe begins to settle better at night, his belly fuller. I still use him as an excuse to visit John, though we do not stay as long, and I’ve managed not to fall asleep in the grass again with Wolfe in my arms.
We pass great rounded columns and soaring sugar-covered mounds of gray rock, but instead of the expanse of the prairie, they are encircled by silver streams and pine and cedar green. The air is different. It’s thin, and some people get dizzy. Others go a little mad. Maybe it’s that gold fever people speak of. Whole wagon trains veer off the trail to start digging when they hear the rumors of rich gold mines at the mouth of a creek on the south side road. A few in our company want to take a day to check it out, maybe do some digging, but leveler heads prevail.
We’ve passed a few go-backs and two men who are heading back to Fort Laramie with a third man who is trussed and tied on the back of his horse. They tell Abbott that the man went crazy and killed his brother-in-law and his sister, and they’re taking him to Fort Laramie to stand trial. Seems the man got tired of them telling him what to do and just shot them dead. Some in the company wanted to hang him and be done with it, but a few folks thought he was justified. The men say he’s lucky to get a trial. One man stabbed another in a train three days ahead of ours, leaving his wife a widow and his child fatherless. The company hanged the man from a tree. Most likely we’ll pass the site of the hanging in a day or two.
We camp at some springs where the water shoots straight out from the rocks, so clear and cold and sweet we don’t want to leave. That is, until Homer Bingham finds a sheet of paper nailed to a tree describing the murder of a man, woman, and child whose bodies were found beneath some wild rosebushes nearby, their throats slit from ear to ear. We can see the fresh, rounded graves covered with rocks so the wolves can’t get at them. The burial is marked with a piece of driftwood that simply says, MAN, WOMAN, BOY.
Beware of the Indians, the paper warns, and Mr. Caldwell and others demand to move out immediately, though we’ve no guidebook to refer to and no idea how far it is to the next good water or grass.
Most nights we don’t gather and pray—folks are tired, and most do their own thing, having given up on any sort of schedule when the rigors of the journey set in—but Deacon Clarke gathers us together, and we pray for the dead and pray for protection, from whatever forces out there would harm us.
John doesn’t think it was Indians. He says it was more likely an emigrant cutthroat who saw an opportunity to steal an outfit and a team and took it.
“No Indian would try to hide what he’d done. And he wouldn’t have taken the wagon. If the bodies were dragged out of sight, you can bet it was someone trying to buy himself some time,” he tells the deacon.
With the rumors of troubles and violence among the trains, John’s guess is as good as any. He says it’s easier to blame the Indians than it is to believe ill of your own, and I’d have to agree with him. Regardless, folks are afraid, the guard is doubled, and no one rests well. Months of little sleep and endless toil, not to mention the roadside graves and daily grief, have us all worn thin. It’s a wonder more of us haven’t lost our minds.
We leave the Platte for good today, and we all wave good riddance, celebrating the end of our acquaintance with the flat, muddy river that has been an almost constant companion since we reached Fort Kearny. Although we laugh and pretend to be jolly, we suspect the journey ahead will be harder than the one we left behind.