Chapter 25: Crossing the North Platte

 

Tuesday, June 22nd—The desolate Black Hills twist through ravines and around cliffs dotted with dark cedar and pine. Almost every day we see the grave of some poor soul whose journey West has ended.

 

Jenny looked up from her journal. Raucous laughter and music enlivened the ferry campsite, with so many companies waiting for their turn to cross. Mac said the ferry wasn’t sturdy, but she dreaded fording the North Platte. She remembered Louis Papin and his Indian family—why couldn’t every river have a strong ferry like theirs?

“It’ll be strange to leave the Platte behind,” Mac said as they left camp the next morning, walking together beside their wagon. “We’ve traveled beside it so long.”

By afternoon Jenny was ready to ride Poulette. As her weight increased, she found it harder to walk in the heat. She struggled to lift the saddle onto the little mare.

Zeke Pershing came over. “Let me help.”

She smiled in thanks, noticing that both Mac and Mrs. Pershing watched Zeke boost her onto Poulette.

They reached Red Buttes in midafternoon. Captain Pershing called a halt. “We’ll cross tomorrow. Let the teams feed today. Not much grass north of the Platte.”

They camped beneath the circle of high red cliffs that resembled a brick fortress. Grass covered the valley below, bright green where the buttes shaded it. And plenty of wood for fires.

Jenny wandered the edges of the glade where they camped. A trunk, a small armoire, and several chairs littered the valley—belongings earlier emigrants had jettisoned. Jenny and other women scavenged through the discards.

“A quilt,” Jenny said, holding up a patchwork of blues and browns. “It’s ripped, but I can mend it.”

Hatty Tanner showed her husband drill bits and augers. He took a few small pieces, but shook his head at the rest. “Mules can’t haul more weight.”

Jenny made supper while Mac walked with Captain Pershing to the river. “What’s wrong?” she asked when Mac returned frowning.

“River’s deep and swift. Even though it hasn’t rained recently.”

“Can we cross?”

Mac nodded. “We need to decide whether to drive the wagons across or unload and build rafts. We’ll test it in the morning.”

Fiddles came out as the setting sun sharpened the shadows of the bluffs behind them, but Jenny didn’t feel like singing. She remembered her wagon sinking in the quicksand of the South Platte.

She couldn’t sleep and thrashed in her bedroll. In the middle of the night, Mac asked from below the wagon. “What’s wrong, Jenny?”

“Just nervous.” She was ashamed she’d awakened Mac, but it comforted her to hear his voice.

“We won’t cross unless it’s safe.”

In the morning Mac and Zeke rode horseback across the Platte and back. “Teams’ll need to swim,” Mac told Captain Pershing. “Too deep to walk.”

“Let’s try pulling a wagon. Lot of work to unload ’em if we don’t have to.” One of the Abercrombie wagons was nearest the river. Pershing pointed to it. “Take that one.”

Samuel Abercrombie climbed on the wagon bench, while Daniel rode beside the oxen and turned them into the water. Other men rode alongside, watching as the wagon sank into the swirling current. The wheels pitched over the rocky bottom, causing the wagon to sway.

“Stop!” Pershing shouted. “Wagon box is flooding.”

“Well, I sure as hell can’t back up,” Abercrombie yelled in response.

Pershing ordered men to get everything perishable off the wagon floor. They carried crates and sacks of flour to shore.

Abercrombie cracked his whip, and his team surged forward. Now lighter, the wagon lifted off the river bottom, and the oxen pulled it across.

Jenny couldn’t hear the men on the far bank, but she could see Captain Pershing and Mr. Abercrombie arguing. Daniel stood next to them, his arms folded.

Mac returned on Valiente.

“What’s wrong?” Jenny asked.

“Abercrombie’s upset he had to go first. But someone had to. Now we know what the wagons’ll do in the water.”

“How bad is it?”

“Deeper than we thought. Need to lighten the wagons before they cross, and pull with ropes on the upstream side to keep them straight in the ford. Means two trips for each wagon, but it’s safer.”

Jenny and other women moved all their food off the wagon floors. When it was time for her to cross, Mac sat with her on the bench, leaving others to man the ropes. She clenched the seat as they started into the water. Her heart pounded as the wagon bounced over rocks. Then the jolting stopped as the current lifted them. She gasped when the wagon swung downstream, and again when it jerked as the ropes caught and men tugged it back into line.

“Whoa, there!” a man shouted. “Got her now.” Slowly the oxen and ropes pulled them through the water until the wheels hit bottom on the far side. As they bumped up the riverbank, Jenny found herself clutching Mac with one arm and cradling her stomach with the other.

He grinned at her. “That wasn’t so bad now, was it?”

Still trembling, Jenny let go of his arm. He had no fear, it seemed.

The crossing took all morning. Most wagons made two trips across the Platte to transport all the emigrants’ belongings. Some food got wet, but no one lost anything else. They ate the noon meal on the north bank of the river, making biscuits to salvage as much damp flour as possible.

“Fill up your barrels,” Captain Pershing said. “Not much water this side of the Platte. And watch what the animals drink. Lots of alkali in what water there is.”

“How long until we find good water?” Mac asked.

“Three hard days ahead of us.”

Mac hauled water while Jenny washed the noon dishes. Then the travelers headed away from the Platte into the high desert, through parched sagebrush and sparse grass shriveling in the summer sun. As they climbed out of the river valley, they approached high crests of stone with jagged peaks.

“Devil’s Backbone,” Mac said, pointing out the sandstone formations to Jenny. “Pershing says he chiseled his name into the rock there in forty-two.”

Jenny shivered. “If it’s the devil’s backbone, I don’t want any part of it.”

That night they camped beneath the rock ridges, the only water a small stagnant stream filled with slimy moss. The trickle barely produced enough to drink, wash dishes, and refill their barrels.

Jenny felt the black peaks looming over her. She tried to think of the mountains as vigilant guards, but they looked more like monsters waiting to strike while she slept.

She wrote:

 

Thursday, June 24th—Crossed the North Platte. Now terrible dark rocks hang over us like evil goblins. There is only bitter water, and not much of that.