Chapter 10: Roadway of Nebraska

 

Sunday, May 9th—Prayers this morning. Now I shall spend our day of rest sewing shirts for the baby. Mac is hunting again.

 

Jenny laid out the muslin Mrs. Jenkins had given her on top of a barrel. Mrs. Tuller sat in the rocking chair she had brought from Illinois. “This all you have, child?” Mrs. Tuller asked.

Jenny nodded.

“Not much preparation for a first baby.”

“No, ma’am,” Jenny said. “We decided very suddenly to make the journey.”

Mrs. Tuller frowned. “But surely . . . .” Her voice trailed off. “No matter.” She smoothed out a piece of cloth and marked where to cut with a piece of charcoal. “We’ll make the shirts big to last a while. Baby won’t mind.”

Mrs. Pershing walked over with a pile of clothes in her arms and her younger children trailing behind. “I have mending,” she said. “These young’uns rip something every day. And I’ll cut down Zeke’s and Joel’s shirts for the twins.”

“Got any scraps?” Mrs. Tuller asked. “Jenny needs diapers.”

“Gracious, girl!” Mrs. Pershing said. “Don’t you have rags of your own?”

Jenny shook her head. “No. Though maybe I will by the time the baby comes.”

“Not enough.” Mrs. Tuller laughed. “Never enough diapers. We’ll ask other folks to save their rags for you, too.”

“How many do I need?” Jenny asked. She hadn’t realized caring for a baby would be so hard.

“Depends on how much washing you want to do. I boiled ’em clean every day.” Mrs. Pershing sighed. “Thought I was done after Noah. But here I am again.”

Mrs. Tuller stared at the horizon with tears in her eyes. Perhaps she was remembering her dead sons.

Esther sauntered over in late morning with a piece of embroidery in her hands. “I don’t much care for fine work, but there’s nothing else to do.” She sighed and plopped down beside Jenny.

“You mean because young Daniel’s out hunting,” her mother said.

“Ma!” Esther’s cheeks reddened.

“You do right to blush, girl,” Mrs. Pershing said. “You spend too much time with that fellow.”

“Daniel seems like a nice young man,” Mrs. Tuller said.

“Maybe,” Mrs. Pershing said, sniffing. “Too soon to tell.”

The women cooked the noon meal and fed the children. Some of the older boys played in the Platte, walking across it with a rope to measure its width. “Be careful,” one mother said. “Remember the quicksand.”

Zeke Pershing returned from the hunt in midafternoon. “Killed eight buffalo,” he told the women. “We’re butchering ’em in the field so’s the Army wagon can haul back the best pieces. Pa says be ready to pack the meat.”

“So much for keeping the Sabbath,” Mrs. Pershing said, sighing. She stood heavily and trudged to her campsite.

The women boiled water to cook the tougher cuts of meat and sharpened knives and saws to cut haunches into roasts.

When the hunters returned, Mac brought Jenny a heavy bundle. “I shot one,” he said. “Made a trade with the Army cook—the raw skin and half the meat for a cured hide he had. Now you have a buffalo robe.”

Jenny’s lips curved in delight as she smoothed the wooly hide. “Thank you,” she said, beaming up at Mac. He was kind, even if she was scared of him at times.

The emigrants worked by firelight to butcher the carcasses.

“It’s a shame to throw away so much,” Jenny said. “We only have space to keep the best cuts.”

“The wolves will eat what we leave,” Mac said. “Nothing in the wilderness gets wasted.”

Jenny spread the buffalo robe under her bedding that night. It smelled musty but was soft and warm. She smiled again as she snuggled into Mac’s thoughtful gift.

Monday Jenny awoke to pounding rain. She wanted to stay burrowed in the buffalo hide, but dragged herself out of the wagon and started breakfast. Mac was busy with the oxen, his hat pulled low on his forehead.

“One ox has a sore hoof,” he said. “I’ll have to herd that pair unhitched today. Can you drive the wagon?”

Jenny nodded. “How long before he can pull again?”

“Don’t know. Good thing the land’s flat. The other six can handle the wagon fine. But I can’t trust the loose pair not to wander.”

Jenny sat on the wagon bench with the buffalo hide around her shoulders. The heavy skin kept most of the water off her skirt, but her sunbonnet funneled rivulets down her back. She gave up trying to stay dry and sat in the pouring rain, whip ready to tap the team to keep them in line.

Even short one pair of oxen, she kept up with the other wagons easily. Some families only had four oxen or mules, though most had six, and Mac and the Abercrombie wagons had eight.

At noon Mac offered to switch places with Jenny and let her ride Valiente and herd the loose team.

“I’m all right,” she said. She’d spent her morning alone worrying how she would care for her child by herself in Oregon. And whether she would love a child conceived in hate.

She missed her mother, despite the poor terms on which they had parted.

That night Jenny wrote:

 

Monday, May 10th—Mac gave me a buffalo skin which kept me warm all day. The fresh meat tastes mighty fine. Made 18 miles today, despite rain and missing one yoke of oxen.

 

Rain continued on Tuesday, and the lame ox was no better. Jenny’s back and legs ached from sitting in the jolting wagon, but she kept driving, lost in her thoughts. She fretted about what others would think when they learned she and Mac weren’t married. Someday they would pay the price for lying, she was sure.

She watched antelope in the distance grazing in the rain without a care. She wished she had as few troubles as the antelope.

In midafternoon the Dempsey wagon pulled out of line, followed by the Tuller wagon. “What is it?” Jenny asked Mac.

“Mrs. Dempsey’s confinement,” he said. “The Tullers are with her.”

“In the rain?” Poor Mrs. Dempsey giving birth in the wilderness. For the first time Jenny wondered where she would be when her baby came—another worry.

The downpour eased in late afternoon. When the wagons stopped in a small ravine running into the Platte, children gathered buffalo chips, but found only rain-moistened patties. Jenny started her campfire with grass, then slowly added the chips, which smoked and stank.

Another company with two French Roman Catholic priests was camped nearby. Most of the Pershing group refused to speak to the black robes, but Jenny said, “I’ll pray with you.” She and her baby needed all the prayers they could get. The priest blessed her and prayed with her in French.

Mac asked her afterward, “Are you Catholic?”

“My mother is,” she said. “Papa wasn’t. We attended Protestant services in Missouri, but Mama taught me the French and Latin prayers.”

Mac smiled. “Boston’s the same,” he said. “Most folks are Protestant. But the Papist church is growing. I figure God listens to all of us.”

“Sometimes it doesn’t seem so,” Jenny said. God hadn’t heard her prayers the day she’d been raped. Now she had a baby coming. And a dangerous journey ahead.

As Jenny finished washing the supper dishes, the Dempsey and Tuller wagons pulled into camp.

“A beautiful little girl,” Mrs. Tuller told Jenny.

But when Jenny went to see the baby, it was red-faced and mewling, not like the solemn Papin boy. “How sweet,” she told the proud Mrs. Dempsey, worrying again about whether she would love her own child.