Chapter 8: Prairies and Rivers

 

Jenny walked with Esther Pershing ahead of the wagons. The scent of grass and wild thistles tickled her nose. A lark warbled, and she looked up to see a pair of birds dancing across the clear sky. “It’s a pleasure to be in front of the wagons, not in their dust,” she said.

“Aye,” Esther said. “And a fine view ahead.”

Jenny wondered if Esther meant the blossoming prairie or Daniel Abercrombie striding several yards in front of them.

“Let’s walk with Daniel.” Esther lifted her skirt and sprinted through the grass. When she reached the young man, she clutched his arm and gestured toward Jenny.

“Morning, Miz McDougall,” Daniel said, when Jenny caught up.

“Call me Jenny.” It was silly for Daniel, who was about nineteen or so, to call her “Mrs. McDougall.” Particularly when that wasn’t her name.

Esther giggled. “Jenny’s way too little to be so proper. Why, she’s younger than I am.”

Esther stepped away from Daniel as her mother approached. Several young children trailed behind Mrs. Pershing.

“Nice morning, ain’t it?” Mrs. Pershing said.

“Mighty nice.” Daniel tipped his hat. “I was about to ask Esther and Jenny to climb the hill over yonder.” He gestured at a mound to the north.

“You and Esther take the young’uns,” Mrs. Pershing said. “Jenny, would you walk with me?”

“Yes, Mrs. Pershing.”

After Daniel and Esther led the children away, Mrs. Pershing said, “Captain tells me you and Mr. McDougall were married in Independence.” Her voice was cold.

Jenny blushed and nodded.

“Mrs. Tuller says you’re in the family way.”

Jenny nodded again.

“When you expecting?”

“September, ma’am.”

“Captain Pershing ain’t aware of your condition, most likely. Or he might have had a thing or two to say to Mr. McDougall about joining this company.”

Jenny was silent.

“My concern, girl, is my children,” Mrs. Pershing said. “I don’t want them seeing or hearing anything indecent. Esther in particular. She’s silly enough already. You keep quiet on when you was married. I’ll make sure Captain Pershing don’t spread it about.”

“Yes, Mrs. Pershing.” Explaining wouldn’t help, Jenny decided.

“Don’t give me any cause to regret being charitable,” Mrs. Pershing said, her mouth a thin line. “I have to protect my family.”

Jenny lifted her face to the warm sunshine. Would she ever be rid of that day in December? “How old are your children, Mrs. Pershing?”

“Let’s see.” The chill left the older woman’s voice. “Ezekiel’s twenty—we call him Zeke—and Joel eighteen. Captain sure is proud of them two. Then there’s Esther at fifteen. Rachel’s twelve. David and Jonathan—the twins—are ten. Ruthie’s eight, and little Noah four.”

Jenny glanced at Mrs. Pershing, then looked away.

Mrs. Pershing gave a short laugh. “Yes, girl, I’ve another babe coming in July.” Her expression saddened. “Captain’s left me alone so much. Twenty-one years in the Army. We’ve rarely spent more’n a few months at a time together. He’s only been home for one of my confinements. I told him last year he wasn’t leaving me no more. So now we’re all going to Oregon.” She sighed. “Who knows what’ll become of us?”

By midafternoon black clouds roiled on the western horizon as the wagons lumbered into a shallow valley. “Better stop,” Captain Pershing yelled. “Storm’s coming.” Jenny could barely hear him over the wind.

They circled the wagons and herded the horses in the middle, oxen nearby. As they finished, hail started to fall, small at first, but soon in chunks of ice as large as Jenny’s fist. The travelers scurried into their wagons.

Animals bellowed, crowding close to avoid the sharp crystals. Valiente stuck his head under the raised wagon cover, frustrating Mac’s attempt to lower the sides. The canvas tore as Mac and the horse struggled. Jenny grabbed at the frayed edges.

“Missouri thunderstorms aren’t this bad,” Jenny said. “Here there’s nothing to slow the wind.”

The hail didn’t last, but rain continued to pour in diagonal sheets. Thunder rumbled across the prairie, lightning flashes coming nearer and brighter until they seemed right overhead. Huge drops bounced everywhere. Even the oxen bawled in fear. Horses and mules raced about the circle panicking. Jenny tried to hold the wagon cover together and got as wet as if she’d been out in the rain.

“She’s loose,” a man cried. Glancing out the back of the wagon, Jenny saw a gray mare race across the prairie, highlighted by bright lightning.

“Don’t let the rest follow,” another man shouted. “We’ll never catch ’em!”

Mac and other men ran into the rain, holding their hats against the wind. They soothed the horses before more could escape.

Pershing rode up as Mac climbed back in the wagon. “Need extra guards,” the captain said. “Four men riding circuit. Two hour shifts. Set the schedule for your platoon.”

Mac took the first watch, leaving Jenny to mend the soggy wagon cover. She tried to sew an oilcloth over the hole Valiente had torn, but as she worked rainwater pooled in the oilcloth and trickled down inside the wagon. So she covered the food sacks with a blanket and hoped the caulking on the flour and sugar barrels held.

Too wet to cook. She ate a cold biscuit and set two more aside for Mac.

Jenny shivered in the damp wagon, despite her wool cloak. She pulled out her journal, but it was too dark to write. Mac had told her never to light a candle in the wagon, for fear of fire.

For hours lightning flashed eerily on the empty prairie followed by thunder crashing all around her. Jenny tried to get comfortable, but she was cold and wet. How had she come to this place? So far from home. Alone. She wept.

A faint flutter moved her belly. It passed, then came again.

The baby. It must be. Her baby kicking. Maybe she wasn’t alone. Jenny pressed her hand to her stomach and smiled.

The next morning the sun shone, the sky bearing no sign of the prior night’s storm. But everything in camp was drenched, the grass in the wagon circle uprooted by panicking animals’ hooves. It was Sunday. Captain Pershing declared a rest day, but Mac and other men went out searching for the missing mare, not returning with her until afternoon. Those left in camp assessed the damage to wagons and provisions and cleaned up as best they could.

After supper the company made music. Fiddlers played the Oregon song and someone sang:

 

To the far, far off Pacific sea,

Will you go, will you go, dear girl with me?

By a quiet brook, in a lovely spot

We'll jump from our wagon and build our cot!

Then hip-hurrah for the prairie life!

Hip-hurrah for the mountain strife

And if rifles must crack, if we swords must draw,

Our country forever, hurrah! hurrah!

 

Jenny was headed for the far Pacific, but she didn’t see much hip-hurrah about prairie life. Would she even make it to Oregon? And her baby? Her hand cradled her belly as she sat by the fire.

Monday they plodded through more rolling prairies and arrived at the Red Vermillion River in late afternoon. A French Canadian named Louis Vieux ran a ford across the river, charging a toll for his Indians’ assistance.

Early Tuesday morning the emigrants forded the stream. Like the Indians at the Papin ferry, the tribesmen wore a mix of leather and cloth. In a patois of Pawnee, English and French, they somehow communicated with the emigrants. Pershing’s men and the Indians worked together to brake the wagons with ropes to lower them down the steep banks.

Jenny waited near the bank for Mac to tell her what to do. She wouldn’t cross until she had to.

When most of the wagons were across, Mac lifted Jenny on Valiente behind him, and they rode across the river. She trembled when her feet hit the water. She tightened her arms around Mac and buried her head in his broad back until Valiente made it up the far bank.

Walking beside the wagon Wednesday morning, Jenny wondered if she would ever get used to river crossings. Now that she’d felt the baby move, she worried about her child as well as herself. If she wanted the baby to live, she had to stay alive, too. It was too late to change her decision to leave Missouri. Now she had to survive the journey.

The prairie rolled on, waves of grass swaying in the breeze. The trail climbed away from the Kaw, though from hilltops Jenny could sometimes see the river behind them. Birds sang, perched on tall grass stems or from the occasional scrubby tree.

Wednesday night they camped beside the Big Vermillion. Jenny stood with Mac, Captain Pershing, and his sons Zeke and Joel as they studied the river.

“Must be seventy yards wide,” Mac said. “And fast. See the eddies?”

“Tricky crossing.” Pershing pulled at his beard.

Children played on the riverbank, carving their initials into cottonwoods. “If’n I don’t make it,” one of the Pershing twins said, “At least someone will know I came by here.”

Jenny smiled. “Carve my initials, too,” she said. “Who knows how far we’ll get?”

The boy laughed. “I was just fooling,” he said.

“Carve my name,” she insisted. “You may not be afraid, but I am.”

 

April 28th—I fear tomorrow’s crossing, but nothing seems to bother Mac.

When they lined up the wagons in the morning, Jenny sat on the bench. Her stomach was nauseated, and not because of the baby.

Mac walked over with Zeke Pershing, the captain’s oldest son. “Zeke’ll sit with you,” Mac said. “I’m riding Valiente near the lead team. I thought you might want company.”

Jenny smiled at Zeke, who climbed up beside her. “Hang on,” he said, tapping a whip on an ox’s back.

They rolled forward faster than Jenny thought prudent. She closed her eyes and gripped the bench, whispering a prayer.

A woman ahead of them shrieked. “My baby!”

Jenny opened her eyes and saw a small child in the water downstream. She screamed and clutched her belly.

A man dove into the water, went under, and came up splashing as he flailed toward the tot. Mac abandoned the oxen and turned Valiente toward the rescue.

Zeke thrust the whip at Jenny and jumped into the river.

Jenny hugged the switch close. The oxen bellowed, thrashing in the water. Mac glanced back. “Keep going, Jenny,” he yelled. “Don’t stop.”

Jenny’s stomach rose to her throat as she cracked the whip over the oxen and shouted. The wagon lurched from side to side over the rocky bottom. She peered at the men in the water, but couldn’t see the child.

When Jenny reached the far bank, she sighed in relief. Someone grabbed her oxen and led the wagon to dry ground. From the safety of shore, Jenny gazed into the churning brown current. Mac, still in the water on Valiente, held a small body over his shoulder. Zeke floated alongside, grasping Mac’s saddle. No trace of the other man. Jenny whimpered in fear.

Valiente climbed out of the river, Zeke staggering behind. A woman—Mrs. Purcell, whom Jenny didn’t know well—seized the child from Mac. A little boy, about four years old. “My baby!” she cried.

Doc Tuller laid the boy on the ground, pounded on his chest, stopped, then pounded again. The tot puked up water and began crying when his mother clasped him to her breast. “Thank you,” Mrs. Purcell whispered to the doctor, burying her face in the boy’s wet hair.

Then she froze. “Charles?” she said. “Where’s Charles?”

“That your husband, ma’am?” Zeke asked. “I couldn’t get him. He went under.”

The woman wailed, clutching her child, who cried harder. Her keening turned to screams.

Mrs. Tuller gently took the boy away. “I’ll get him dried off,” she said.

Mrs. Pershing and Jenny assisted Mrs. Purcell into her wagon. “Does she have other children?” Jenny asked Mrs. Pershing over the sobbing woman’s head.

“Two. They’re with my brood. I’ll get ’em.”

Jenny embraced the woman until Mrs. Pershing brought back two children—a girl around eleven and a boy of eight. Eyes large and solemn, they rushed into their mother’s arms.

Jenny stepped away. She found Mac at the water’s edge staring downstream, along with the doctor and several others.

“They found his body,” Mac said. “Two men are bringing it back now.”

 

Thursday, April 29th—Crossed the Big Vermillion. Mac and Zeke Pershing saved a child, but the boy’s father, Charles Purcell, drowned, leaving his wife and children alone. Tomorrow we bury him on this God-forsaken prairie. What would I do without Mac? Yet I have no hold on him.

The next morning men dug a pit and collected stones to protect the buried body from wild animals. Then the emigrants gathered around the gravesite.

“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want,” Captain Pershing began. Jenny barely heard the familiar psalm. How many more would they bury before Oregon? She feared for herself, for her baby, for Mac.

After the psalm, Pershing cleared his throat. “Lord, into your hands we commend the soul of our brother Charles, who gave his life for his child. May he dwell with you forever. Amen.”

Mrs. Purcell sobbed into a handkerchief. Her older two children’s faces were pale. “Where’s Pa?” asked the little boy who had almost drowned with his father.

“He ain’t coming with us no more,” his sister said.