Evan Hunter - The Chisholms - A novel of the journey West

“Of what?” Comyns asked at once.

“We thought at first it was cholera, like swept the land in ’32.”

“What was it then?”

“Don’t know,” Hutchinson said, and shook his head. “Camp fever, I guess. More’n a dozen in our party came down with it.”

Comyns’s eyes looked troubled; they kept darting to where Sarah stood talking to Bonnie Sue, the baby in her arms. Hadley didn’t like what was happening. He knew the Pennsylvania widower had been preaching turnabout to anyone who’d listen. Here now was a man telling of fever on the trail ahead, and Comyns was taking it all in. Willoughby came up to the fire and stood there like a spook, tall and mournful, his ears open as water jugs.

“Is there game ahead, though?” Comyns asked.

“Game aplenty,” Hutchinson said. “You won’t go hungry on the plains unless you’re lazy. This is buffalo meat right here. Wife was just down the river cuttin out the maggots and givin it a rinse.”

“Are there Indians beyond?” Willoughby asked.

“Yep,” Hutchinson said. “That’s what there is out there; that’s Indian territory out there.” He brought the skillet to the fire, leveled it on the rocks surrounding the pit and the flames. The meat began to sizzle at once. Its aroma was unlike anything Hadley had ever sniffed before. He’d eaten breakfast not an hour and a half before, yet the smell of the cooking meat set his stomach to growling again.

“But you can kill an Indian by putting a bullet in him,” Hutchinson said. “I don’t know any way to kill a thing I can’t see, that’s causin my sons to burn with fever. I fear disease,” he said simply.

“And I,” Comyns said.

“The trail back to Council Bluffs? Has there been rain to turn it soft?”

“We came from Independence,” Comyns said. “There was rain Monday night, but only sunshine since.”

“Ah, good then,” Hutchinson said.

“I can’t risk it,” Comyns said abruptly. “I’m sorry, Chisholm, I cannot risk it. I’d brave the river, I’d shoot wild Indians, but I can’t risk the infant coming down with a fever might consume her. I’m sorry,” he said, and shook his head, and turned again to Hutchinson. “If you want company the way back,” he said, “there’s me and my family’ll provide it, sir.”

“Welcome then,” Hutchinson said.

Hadley waited.

“I’ll join you, too,” Willoughby said, and nodded.

Bobbo watched wagon and raft whirling away from the dock and was certain all their goods would be carried clear back to Westport, where the river poured into the Missouri at the center of the nation. The Indians were wearing only breechclouts and moccasins, shouting instructions to each other in the language common to both their tribes poling the raft across the river as if it were a pony they’d each and separately ridden before. By the time they returned again to the right bank to collect the humans and the livestock, Bobbo was beginning to feel a bit more confident of their skill. But that was before the raft lurched away from the landing and the current caught at it and sent its forward end plunging below the surface for a heart-stopping thirty seconds.

It was worse than the Falls of Ohio.

The mules began pawing at once, pulling against the pickets driven into the logs, braying as they had on the descent through the Kentucky chute. The raft dove again, water coming up over its forward end to engulf it, the river hitting Bobbo’s face in a harsh cold smack. He closed his eyes against it, and then opened them again immediately, fearing he’d drown without witnessing the cause of it. Muscles rippled like whitleather along the brown backs of the Indians. Biceps bulging, breechclouts slapping about their legs, they stepped swiftly and constantly for balance, as if dancing a jig across the river. When at last the raft reached the opposite shore, Bobbo looked back and marveled that he was still alive. Timothy haggled further with Ferocious Storm, who insisted that the agreed-upon price be honored even though the Indians had ferried across only two wagons rather than four. Timothy staunchly maintained that the price should be cut in half. They reached a compromise Ferocious Storm apparently did not enjoy. He muttered something in his native tongue and then carried the bartered merchandise onto the raft, lashed it down tightly, and crossed the river again with his partners, never once looking back at the white men standing wet and bedraggled on the shore.

They camped for the night on a bend of the river some ten or twelve miles upstream. The sunset was more vivid than any they had ever seen back home. The entire horizon glowed with orange and gold that turned a deeper red and then a purple like gerardia. Blue then. And black. The blackest night, not a single star showing.

There were only the two wagons now.

You rode the seat till your backside was sore and aching, sun beating down on you, mules shitting — you could find the damn trail west just by following the animal shit of the party ahead. There was always the stench of manure in your nostrils. You’d think out here in the open, the stink’d be blown away in a minute, but you was moving so slow all the time, just that damn steady pace of the mules, that whenever one of them let go, you always got a whiff could knock you off the wagon seat. Walked beside the wagon sometimes. Got off the seat and walked. You could keep up easy enough, wagon was going so slow. Walked awhile, then got back up on the seat again, swapped places with Pa maybe, handled the reins awhile. Or went back inside to sit with Ma and the girls. Got your brains jiggled all the time.

Kept moving.

Through a valley thick with grass high as your waist. Streams fanning out from the river like the veins on the backs of your hands. Clouds coming up over the timbered hills behind.

When you was driving the mules, you yelled “Ha-ya!”

Some fun, this moving on west.

“I’m afraid here,” Annabel said.

“Ain’t nothin to be afraid of.”

“Yes, Indians,” she said.

They came calling on the morning of the seventeenth.

There were six in all — four full-blooded Kansas braves, a woman who was squaw to one of them, and a half-breed trailing a cow. Timothy hid his wife inside the covered Chisholm wagon, and went out to greet them. Their language was Siouan, which Timothy could only sing. But the half-breed knew some English, and they were able to communicate. He wanted to trade the cow for a horse. He kept looking around for where they had hobbled their horses.

“For cow, horse,” he said.

“We have no horses,” Timothy said.

The half-breed looked around.

“No horse,” he said.

“Correct. No horse.”

“Mule then. Two mules. For cow.” He held up two fingers. “Two.”

“We need the mules,” Timothy said.

“Then what?” the half-breed asked.

The squaw spoke French. She said, “Qu’est-ce que c’est? I’l n’y a pas un cheval?”

The half-breed blinked.

“Pas des cheveaux,” Timothy said.

“Alors,” she said, and clucked her tongue.

They had fresh vegetables to trade, butter and milk. They showed the produce — onions, beans, lettuce, pumpkins, corn — and invited tastes of the milk and butter to prove the one wasn’t sour and the other churned to creamy smoothness. When they left the encampment, they were carrying with them a string of beads that had been Annabel’s, and a pocket watch Timothy claimed he would not need once they reached the Platte. Minerva, too, had been willing to part with half her tin of coffee for the good fresh milk and the sweet butter. The squaw called back “Au’voir,” and the party rode off through the trees.

Timothy explained then why he’d hidden his wife.