Where the Lost Wander_ A Novel - Amy Harmon Page 0,96
take the best and leave the rest,” Jefferson says, starting down the incline, his boot heels digging into the shale-covered climb.
I have never built a wagon, and I don’t know if I’ll recognize what’s good and what’s not, but I slide to the bottom of the ravine with a willingness to learn. Jefferson begins to dig through the tired remains, grunting and discarding before he declares one wagon a “gold mine.”
“The box is intact, and there’s no rot. Looks like everything’s here underneath too: pins and plates . . . the hound is in good shape. Looks to me like the brake beam snapped. I can fix that, put on some new brake shoes.” He has crawled underneath the wagon to survey its underpinnings. “We need bows for the top and a new piece of canvas—Teddy can help us with that.”
I search the wreckage and find a dozen bows to support the cover, and before long Jefferson has selected two wheels from other wagons that aren’t warped or cracked.
“They’ve seen wear, but we’ll grease ’em good. Maybe replace some of those spokes. The hubs are here, axles too, and this one even has one of them tickers that records the miles. Never used one myself, but it might be handy to have.”
Jefferson enjoys the hunt, and he picks around at the bottom of the ravine for another hour, muttering about tar buckets and feed boxes, before he calls it good. With my mules and a set of chains, we drag the wagon up the hill, Wyatt at the top, Jefferson and me scrambling up beside it. Halfway up, the chain slips, and Jefferson’s gold mine slides back down the hill, snapping off another wheel.
“No problem at all,” Jefferson bellows. “I can fix that.”
An hour later, we manage to pull the wagon all the way to the top, but Jefferson decides it’ll be easier to repair the wheels and reinforce the snapped brake line right here rather than taking it apart to haul it back to the fort.
“If I do that, it’ll save us some time.”
He gets started before realizing he doesn’t have all the tools he needs, and we end up pulling it apart after all, unscrewing wheels, removing the wagon box from the undercarriage, and loading everything into Jefferson’s wagon.
It takes all day. We roll into Fort Bridger an hour after sunset, a full fifteen hours after Abbott and the train pulled out. Jefferson said it would take a day to retrieve it, so we’re not behind schedule, but my confidence in him is shaken. I expect I’ll have snakes in my belly until I’m with Naomi again. I’m becoming used to the sensation, but the snakes are heavier and rattle harder when I’m at the mercy of someone else, and I am at the mercy of Jefferson Jones.
“We will work all day tomorrow. Don’t worry,” Wyatt says when we roll out our beds for a few hours of sleep. “We’ll be able to move a lot faster than the train with your mules. If we’re three days back, we’ll still catch up before they reach the turnoff. You heard Abbott. Northwest to Soda Springs, then left at Sheep Rock to the cutoff, and the road is tolerable all the way. We’ll catch up to ’em by then.”
NAOMI
When we reach Smiths Fork, two days out of Fort Bridger, we’re able to cross a bridge completed only the year before by some industrious travelers. It is a good deal easier than unloading the wagons and wading through hip-deep water, but Trick and Tumble don’t like it at all and have to be coaxed, along with every other mule in the company. Webb has learned a thing or two from John and shows them how it’s done, his little arms spread wide, trekking back and forth until he can convince them to follow. The grass is green and plentiful at the fork, but the mosquitoes are so thick the animals can’t eat. None of us can, and Abbott presses us to move on.
“There’s only one road he can take, Miss Naomi. He’ll catch us before long. But we do ourselves no good to camp here. No one will rest,” Abbott explains, and the consensus is to move on.
I rip a long strip off the bottom of my tattered, stained yellow dress and wrap it around a tree near the heaviest ruts and leave a message nailed beneath it.
John and Wyatt,
We’ve gone on. We are all well. Mosquitoes bad. Heading to Soda