July 25, 1852
The Mormon Trail
The rain started at midday on a Sunday. The wagon train still stopped on the Sabbath, not so much for religious reasons now as to let the animals rest and the company make repairs. William had found a good site near the Green River that had been occupied by others just a day or so earlier. That train had lightened its load and left behind hub hoops, wagon wheels, and harnesses. A window sash lay on the ground along with a clothes basket, a leather portmanteau, and a rag carpet. And there were ashes from what had been beans and bacon that the men of that train had set afire so that no one else could eat them. A pile of bricks lay nearby, which made the travelers laugh. How could anyone be so foolish as to transport bricks that far? Maggie held up a sad iron and asked, “What woman would want to come all this way just to iron clothes?”
That morning, Mary went with the men in search of six oxen that had wandered off overnight. Maggie watched her ride away into a glorious sunrise of pink and orange and lavender, the colors of a silk dress she had once made. The sunrise was followed by a brilliant blue sky, but it turned cloudy as the day wore on, and then the rain came. The land was still flat and brown, but it had grown prettier the farther they went from Fort Laramie, with hills and canyons, with bachelor’s buttons and marigolds and asters—and berry bushes loaded with fruit. Maggie had been thrilled to find both black and yellow currants as well as wild strawberries and raspberries along the trail. Penn had discovered ice, too, ice that was perfectly clear and good, at a place called Ice Slough. None could understand how ice formed just a few inches below the surface of the grass. Clara put her bare toes on the ice and laughed. Penn dug up a quantity, and that night Maggie made a dessert with it, adding milk and sugar and strawberries. She gave her portion to Clara, who consumed it with delight and demanded, “More strawberry ice cream, please, Mama.”
In camp, before the rain, Bessie and Sadie baked bread, using saleratus from a nearby spring in place of soda, and Dora made a crust for a pie. She would fill it with the wild fruit. Others aired bedding and washed clothes, scrubbing them on rocks and spreading them over bushes to dry, then sat in the shade of their wagons with their mending.
Maggie took out calico quilt pieces that she had picked up from a pile of discards and began stitching them together. Sewing again gave her pleasure. She did not know if that was because she was turning discarded scraps into something useful or because selecting the colors and shapes to be made into a pattern made her feel like an artist creating a picture.
“What do you call the pattern?” Winny asked. She was mending Mary’s petticoat, which had been torn when it was caught on a bush, and doing a poor job of it.
“I do not know. I am making it up.”
“Is the quilt for Dora?”
“What a wonderful idea.” Maggie glanced at Winny’s big stitches. “Give it to me. I shall repair the petticoat. There is plenty of time to make a quilt for Dora’s baby.” She took the petticoat and ripped out Winny’s crude stitches, wrapping the thread around her finger to save it. She was especially careful of her needle because she had brought only three with her.
The two sat quietly for a time, and Maggie remembered how she had loved sitting in the sun on the steps of the Chicago building in which she had lived. She had sewn while Dick played beside her with the little dog and Clara napped, her head in Maggie’s lap. Those were her happiest days, when the children were small and Jesse had gone away. She missed Dick—she would always miss Dick—but she still had Clara, and that was some comfort. Maggie glanced down at the little girl beside her, who was arranging the quilt scraps by color.
IT BEGAN TO rain then, and the women gathered their sewing and went to their wagons and tents. Dora, whose pie was not yet done, stood over the campfire with a gutta-percha cloth over her head to keep the rain from splashing on the pastry. Maggie put Clara into a wagon, and those who had done washing collected the laundry from the bushes where it had been drying.
By the time Mary and the men returned with the missing oxen, they were soaked. Mary climbed into her wagon, stripped off her dress, and put on her dry one. The rain beat on the canvas wagon covers. The wind blew the drops inside, wetting quilts and blankets that were stored too close to the opening. Mary had discarded her feather bed at Fort Kearny but said she would keep the pillow even if she had to carry it on her head. Now she wrinkled her nose at the disagreeable smell of the feathers. “I had hoped to fish,” she told Maggie. “I would have liked a dinner of fried fish, but I am afraid I would be washed down the river if I went near the bank.”
Maggie would not have minded a light rain to settle the dust, but western rains were cold and heavy. And this one seemed as if it would last forever. The sky reminded her of the days in Chicago when coal smoke colored it a gray as dark as slate. The women strung their damp laundry inside the wagons and tents, which added to the wetness in the air. The rain depressed Maggie because it would not stop. She ate a cold supper that included Dora’s watery pie, its crust the texture of soaked cardboard.
The rain saturated the ground, and William said he was afraid that if they left the campsite, the wagons would get stuck in the mud, which by morning would be as thick as pudding. The tents filled with water, and those who had slept in them crowded into the wagons to wait out the storm. Maggie hunched her shoulders and wrapped herself in a quilt when it was her turn to do chores or check on the animals, then hurried back to the shelter of the wagon. A few women tried to keep the campfires going but gave up, and for the second day they ate cold food.
Clara fussed about being cooped up in the wagon. She complained of the damp bedding and whined when Maggie gave her a slice of cornbread and cold beans for her dinner. “I want soup,” she said. “I want ice cream.”
“We have no fire to make soup, and the ice cream is gone,” Maggie told her.
“I want strawberry ice cream,” Clara continued.
“Oh, do be quiet,” Maggie chided her. Maggie’s nerves were frayed from the dampness, and she feared she was coming down with a cold. She had no patience for Clara. When she turned her back, Clara jumped out of the wagon and dropped into the mud.
Maggie climbed out after her, and the two tussled. Maggie hauled her up as Clara kicked, spraying mud over their clothes. “I want out,” Clara screamed.
“Oh, Clara, how could you! Do not act like a baby. You are four years old,” Maggie said. “Be still!”
A woman in the next wagon shook her head at Maggie, as if telling her to make her child behave.
“She is always so good. It is the rain,” Maggie said, but the woman only frowned. Maggie held Clara tight and said she would tell her a story, but Clara put her fingers in her ears.
“I will take her,” Mary said. “I am restless at being cooped up, too, and want to walk to the river to see how much it has risen. She is already wet, and I will keep a tight hold on her.”
“I want to go,” Clara insisted, pulling away from her mother.
“Do not cause trouble,” Maggie warned.
“You cause trouble,” Clara responded.
Maggie shrugged. “Oh, do take her,” she said to Mary. She tied the yellow sunbonnet under Clara’s chin, hoping it would keep the rain off her daughter’s head. She watched from the wagon until Mary, Clara on her shoulders, disappeared, a sense of guilt for her relief at having a bit of peace. When the two returned, Clara was soaked, and Maggie was brusque with Mary for letting the child get so wet.
She was relieved the next morning when the sun came out. The trees and bushes shimmered with drops of rain; the mountains smoked as the dampness steamed off them in the hot sun. Maggie was anxious to be under way and chafed that Reverend Parnell insisted they wait until late morning, after the sun had had a chance to bake the earth. “If the wagons get mired, we will have to double-team to pull them out. Better to get a late start after the ground is more solid,” he said. Maggie rolled her eyes.
The women spread their bedding and damp laundry on bushes again, but they were packed and ready to leave, with the teams harnessed, long before the minister called “Move out!” They jockeyed for places in line then, forgetting their order of three days before. The oxen, rested, moved at a fast pace.
“Maybe the rain was not so bad,” Winny told Maggie as they walked beside their wagon.
“Maybe, if I can ever get Clara’s clothes clean again,” Maggie replied, then glanced down. “And look at my hem. It is covered in mud.” She still felt out of sorts.
The sky overhead was a brilliant blue, without a single cloud, and the grass, which had been brown from overgrazing by the trains ahead of them, had turned bright green and sparkled with wildflowers. “A day the Lord has made,” Caroline exclaimed.
Maggie wondered how Caroline could always be so cheerful.
“The Lord makes each day,” her husband put in.
“Yes, of course, but on some days, like me, He is not in such a good mood,” Maggie told him.
She wondered if he would reprimand her, but to her surprise, Reverend Swain laughed.
They traveled all day beside the Green River. They had crossed rivers many times already, some of them fast and dangerous like the Platte could be in places. Others were mere streams, so shallow that, instead of riding across in the wagons, the women had removed their shoes, hiked up their skirts, and waded through them. The Green, normally more placid, was too deep and too cold for that. It was swollen from the rain and brown with dirt that had been washed off the riverbanks—and it looked treacherous. “The water is so muddy that it appears bottom side up,” Mary observed.
“I believe you would need a spoon to drink it,” Maggie said. She did not look forward to fording it.
By midafternoon the train had reached the crossing. William and Joseph stood on the bank of the river and stared at the water. “It is awfully fast. Should we wait to cross?” Joseph asked Edwin, who had traveled the Green before.
“Hard to say. I have never seen the water so high. The Green is usually more placid, but today it is as turbulent as the Platte. Without the rain of the last day, it would be much lower. There used to be a ferry here, but I see no sign of it.”
“I believe we should do it,” William said. “Due to our late start, we are well behind schedule. We could be here for days waiting for the river to go down. Besides, the oxen are rested and should have no trouble swimming across.” He paused. “It could rain again, too. I hope that, unlike Jesus, the river does not rise.”
He glanced at Joseph to see if his brother-in-law was offended, but Joseph ignored the remark and said, “I do not like it.”
“You are too cautious. At this rate, we will not reach the Sierras before snowfall. The snow is far more dangerous than a river.” When Joseph did not respond, William added, “I have traveled this route, too, Joe. If Edwin thinks we can cross, then I am of a mind to do so.”
Joseph looked at the swirling river that foamed and whirled as it tried to escape the banks. “I pray you are right.”
“Pray all you like,” William said. “But you might also want to help us get the wagons across.”
“I think we should wait,” Caroline said, as two dead oxen swept past them in the raging water. “This is the worst river we have encountered, and I believe the women would be willing to camp a day or two until it subsides.”
“I had not known you had selected such cowards to go to California,” William told her in a waspish voice.
Caroline looked stung and said, “Thy will be done.”
“William knows best,” Joseph reprimanded her.
William turned to Edwin and asked, “How do you suggest we cross?”
Edwin walked to the willows lining the bank and studied the river for a long time. He returned and said, “I advise we wait until morning, when the water has gone down. Besides, it will take us a full day to cross. If we start this late in the day, only a few wagons will reach the other side, and it would not be safe to divide the women.”
William sighed. “As you wish, but we must spend the rest of the day readying the wagons.” He slapped at a mosquito that had landed on his head. When he drew back his hand, there was a spot of blood on it.
They were plagued with mosquitoes then, and Maggie wished for a hat with a veil like the one she had worn to the boat, then discarded on the St. Joe road. Her sunbonnet would have to do. What couldn’t be helped must be endured, she told herself, then thought of Clara, whose skin would be covered by welts in no time. She placed the yellow sunbonnet on her daughter’s head, hoping it would keep some of the mosquitoes away. Clara was still fussy and would be worse by the time they crossed the river.
The company talked about the best way to proceed. In any other train, Maggie thought, the men would have made the decision, but these women had shared in the work of driving the oxen and caring for the wagons. They knew as much about rivers as the men. Their advice was not sought, but neither was it rejected—especially not Mary’s.
Although the river was swift, Mary believed they could swim the animals across. Reverend Parnell suggested sealing the wagon beds with tar and floating them to the other side, but Mary feared they might topple in the current. Finally, they agreed the safest way was to build a raft and take the wagons across one by one. They would tie a rope to a pine on their side of the river, then one of them would cross to the other side and attach it to a tree so that it could be used as a guide rope. There was time yet that day to make a raft by lashing together cottonwood logs.
BY MORNING, THE Green had gone down a little, but rain threatened again. “It is as good a day as we shall have,” William announced.
“The water is still very high. Perhaps it will not rain. What would another day’s rest hurt?” Joseph protested.
William threw up his hands in exasperation. “Wait, wait! Why not wait until December. Perhaps the river will freeze then, and we can drive the wagons across on the ice. You can wait if you like, but the women and I will be on our way.”
Maggie stared at him in confusion. He was usually so calm, but he had been agitated these last days, always complaining of delay. Now Reverend Swain seemed to be the level-headed one. He, however, said nothing.
“We must keep to our schedule,” William said to his brother-in-law’s silent reproach. “I fear for snow in the mountains. You do not understand how it can be.”
“No, of course not,” Joseph said.
The two looked at each other for a time. Then William asked who would brave the water and carry the rope across to the other side. “Which is the strongest horse?” he asked.
“Miss Madrid’s,” Edwin told him.
“Then I shall take it.”
“No, he will not let you ride him,” Mary said. She had been standing with Maggie and the men, studying the river. “I will go.”
“I will not allow you to risk yourself,” William told her.
“You have no choice. Mine is the best horse, and I am the only one who can ride him. Besides, I am as strong as you are.”
“But you will be soaked,” Caroline protested.
Mary laughed. “And Reverend Parnell will not be?”
The others tried to dissuade her. Only Maggie realized that Mary actually wanted to go, that she took pride in her strength and endurance, and she wanted the women to be proud of her, too. Mary was adamant, and at last William gave in. He tied the rope to a tree near the riverbank and gave the other end to Mary, who saddled her horse, checking a second and then a third time to make sure the saddle was tight, the stirrups in place. The minister instructed her to find a spot where the bank was not soft, a little ways downstream from where they stood.
“’Tis a good thing she don’t ride sidesaddle. She’d be washed right off in the river,” Penn observed.
“At a time like this, propriety is of no consequence,” Bessie told her.
“I am beginning to think it is of no importance at all on the Overland Trail,” Maggie said. She watched Mary with admiration, thinking how the woman had been an inspiration to all of them. Mary had set an example. She was one of the reasons Maggie was different now—stronger, more self-assured. Maggie wondered what Jesse would have thought of her. If he were alive, would she still cower from him as she once had? And if she did not, what would he do? It was a moot point, since he was dead and could do nothing to her now, she told herself. Far more dangerous was the river.
They all watched as Mary checked the rope tied to her saddle horn, then urged the chestnut into the river. The horse fought her, but Mary prodded him, and he plunged into the water and was swept down the river with the current until he righted himself and began to swim. He resisted the force of the water as he made for the opposite bank. Still, the current was stronger, and it carried him along. Mary could not keep him on course. Suddenly the horse seemed to flounder and dip into the water, as if giving in to the river. Horse and rider were at the mercy of the swirling current, and Maggie feared Mary would be washed off into the water. A woman beside her gasped, and Maggie turned to see that all of them were watching Mary. It was as if they were all riding on that horse together. Mary pulled back on the horse’s head and urged him on.
“Can she swim?” Bessie asked.
“What does it matter?” William answered. “If Miss Madrid is washed off the horse, her water-soaked clothes will pull her down to the bottom of the river.”
The horse drifted and fought for traction as he and his rider were carried downstream. Then the chestnut caught himself and began to swim again. He reached the far side of the river, but the bank there was too high, and he could not get purchase. He was carried farther until finally he scrambled up onto dry ground. Mary dismounted and tried to wring out her drenched skirts. Then she raised her arm in triumph, and those watching, the men as well as the women, cheered.