CHAPTER 13 
CHAPTER 13 The days of November passed as the Bushyhead wagon train slowly progressed across Illinois. Nellie made it through each day, thanking God for Sarah’s recovery but unable to mention Morning Sun and her aching heart in her prayers.
Nellie saw her long face mirrored in the faces of her etsi and the other women. Joy was missing from all eyes. Misery had taken its place.
At Jonesboro, the mill ran extra hours and made planks that were distributed to the Cherokee to use as flooring in their tents. Each evening, Lewis carefully put the planks down to keep out the cold from the ground, and each morning, he was in charge of getting them slipped back into the wagon.
Some of the Cherokee families used their planks to make coffins, as more people died and were buried in unmarked graves beside the road. There were three burials on one day. Nellie did not attend the services. She couldn’t. It was too soon after Morning Sun’s death to see more coffins lowered into shallow graves.
They traveled on until they were near the banks of the mighty Mississippi River.
They had been delayed at the Tennessee crossing by a wagon train in front of them, but it was nothing compared to the tents and wagons camped beside the ferry road.
“We’ve caught up with Reverend Jones’s group,” Edoda told the family at supper. “They’ve been waiting some time to cross, but it could be a long wait.”
The next day, Lewis and Nellie rode together on Blaze to look at the big river. Ice extended far out from both banks, but in the center of the Mississippi, huge chunks of ice, some the size of cabins, tumbled in the current. The chunks crashed into each other, making a horrific sound. And they kept coming. Night and day, the jagged blocks of ice collided with huge shocks. The sound haunted Nellie’s dreams.
The river was not frozen enough for the wagons to drive across, and it was too jammed with ice floes to allow the ferry to cross. They were stuck.
One December week turned into the next, and the camp grew. Another wagon train caught up to them, and there were more slit trenches dug, more funerals held, and the need for more food for people and animals alike.
Yet another wagon train caught up to them, and then another. Food was so scarce some draft mules were killed and butchered for meat. One night, a hard snow blew in that continued the next morning.
Nellie shivered in the tent, huddled with Etsi and Sarah. Edoda and Lewis had gone out in the deep snow for food, but they been gone for some time, and she was beginning to wonder why they had not returned. Old Rivers and Smoke Cloud had gone with them.
Etsi moaned, and Nellie looked at her searchingly. Etsi was strong, and even at their darkest moments, she had kept a countenance of determined, if sometimes forced, cheerfulness. This morning had been different with Etsi’s lips drawn in a straight line. Once Nellie caught her biting her lip.
Etsi moaned again, and this time she reached for Nellie’s hand and squeezed it so hard Nellie feared her bones were broken.
“Oh, no. It’s time!” Nellie grabbed Etsi’s other hand. “What can I do?”
“Get Red Blossom. She will help me.”
“Sarah, stay with Etsi. Hold her hand. No, give her this flute to bite.” The wooden flute had recently been carved by Old Rivers, and Lewis had been trying to play it. It would help Etsi bear the pain.
Nellie rearranged the bed and had Etsi lie down. She took one blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders against the wet snow and stepped out into what had turned into a blizzard.
A couple of hours ago when Edoda and Lewis had left, the air was full of flakes. Now it was a complete whiteout, and the snow came halfway to her knees. She could not see two feet ahead of her, so she walked with her arms outstretched, feeling her way toward the wagon of Red Blossom.
“Edoda!” she called out. “Old Rivers!” she shouted in the direction of his wagon, which was on one side of their tent, on the chance the men had returned. The wind whipped her words back at her.
She turned toward the Starr wagon on the other side of their tent. She struggled alongside the wagon and had taken five steps away from it when she looked back over her shoulder and could no longer see it. Panic hit her that she might not find Red Blossom’s wagon, which was a distance of some seven wagons. And at her slow pace in the deep snow, she might not make it back in time. She stepped backward, not turning, not taking the chance of getting confused on which direction was the tent. She slipped her feet into the footprints she had left, which were quickly filling with the blowing snow.
Backward step by backward step, she felt her way until she touched the wagon. Was there anything inside that she could use to help deliver the baby? She searched her mind for what Etsi had needed when the last baby had been born, the one that had died.
She gasped. What if this baby died, too? What if she couldn’t help Etsi?
“Stop and think,” she said out loud, reassured to hear her own voice, which didn’t sound as panicked as she felt. There had been hot water, and she remembered talk of a tied cord. She’d need twine and a fire. Something to wrap the baby in. They were wearing everything they could, but surely there was a scrap of material tucked somewhere. She needed firewood, but there was none. The wooden boxes, of course. But how could she tear them apart? The ax that Lewis had rescued from home was near the back, in easy reach when the men needed it.
Her cold fingers struggled to untie the back flap of the wagon, and she climbed inside. Discarding the blanket, she made sure she tucked it right at the end of the wagon, so she could put it back on when she left. The ax was right where it was supposed to be. Her freezing fingers closed around the handle, and she pounded on a box, breaking the small planks into splinters. Good. That would make the flame catch. This box was filled with their good dishes, and she gathered some of the old newspapers Etsi had wrapped them in to use for starting the fire.
She felt between the boxes, shifted boxes and pinched her fingers, but barely felt the pain. She grabbed something soft. In the dim light she saw it was the gingham dress she had worn on the day they had been driven from their home.
Now twine. Oh, the ties for the back flap. She reached into the flying snow and brought the flap inside. With the ax, she awkwardly sawed at the tie until she cut off an end, but had left enough to retie the flap.
She needed the flint rock. Where was it? Think, she told herself. Think. It should be at the back of the wagon, too, and it was. She wrapped her twine, the splintered wood, the ax, the dress, and the flint rock in the blanket and climbed out, tying the flap as best she could.
She felt along the wagon until she reached the end, and then she asked God to guide the few steps it would take to reach the tent. She groped for it, and sighed when her wet, freezing fingers groped waist-high snow. It was the snow-covered tent!
“Thank You, God,” she whispered and felt along for the opening. “I’m back,” she said as she stumbled inside. She shook off snow and closed the flap behind her.
“Red Blossom,” Etsi said in a weak voice.
“Etsi’s real sick,” Sarah said. “Real sick.”
“The baby’s coming,” Nellie said. “And you and I are going to help it come.”
Sarah’s mouth flew open, and her eyes widened. “How?”
“I don’t know. Etsi, you will have to tell us what to do. I brought twine and wood for a fire.”
“No place … for a fire,” Etsi said. “No smoke hole.” She panted in pain, and Sarah placed the flute in her mouth, obviously a sign they had settled on while Nellie was in the blizzard.
Etsi moaned even while biting on the flute. “It is coming fast,” she said when she spit out the flute. A moment later, she was panting again, and Sarah held the flute for her to bite.
“It’s coming,” Etsi said a moment later. Sweat ran down her face.
“What do I do?” Nellie asked.
“Help me up.” “Up?”
“I need to squat and push,” Etsi said between gritted teeth.
“Sarah, grab this arm,” Nellie said. “Now.” Between the two of them, they got Etsi into a squatting position. “Sarah, stay behind her; let her lean on you.”
“Feel … the … baby,” Etsi gasped.
Nellie knelt in front of Etsi and instinctively reached under her. “I can feel its head. Push, Etsi, push.”
Etsi took a deep breath and pushed. In a whoosh, Nellie felt a sticky weight in her hands. She looked in wonder at the bloody baby as Etsi collapsed back on Sarah.
“Lay her down,” she yelled at Sarah, who was desperately trying to keep Etsi upright.
Nellie used a corner of a blanket to dry off the now-screaming baby.
“Here, Etsi. Praise God. He is alive,” Nellie said. She laid the little boy on Etsi’s still swollen belly.
“The afterbirth is coming,” Etsi said. “And you will need to cut the cord.”
Their sharp knife was with Edoda. With no other way, Nellie took the ax, placed the baby and the long cord that connected the baby to the afterbirth on the floor, and with one hard swing, cut the cord. She wiped the baby’s end of the cord with the blanket, wrapped the baby in her gingham dress, and handed him to Etsi.
“I’ll be right back,” she said. She slipped outside, carrying the afterbirth. She cleared the snow in front of the flap with the ax, chopped a hole in the frozen earth, and buried the afterbirth. She washed her bloody hands in the snow, shook snow off her head and shoulders, and went back inside.
Etsi was smiling. “The baby is perfect,” she said. “Girls, you did a wonderful job. Thank you.”
“Can you feed the baby?” Nellie asked.
“I will try. Do we have any water?”
Nellie broke the ice on the top of the water bucket and filled the dipper. Etsi drank.
“It is so cold,” she said and shivered. “We need a fire,” Nellie said.
She rearranged the bed for Etsi, and covered her and the baby with all the blankets in the room except the one Sarah was bundled in.
The baby needed warmth. A flame, even a tiny flame would help. Too bad they had long ago used up the kerosene in their lamps.
“Etsi,” she cried. “Did you pack any candles? Any at all?” In the back of her mind she remembered Etsi packing the candle molds.
“I’m unsure,” Etsi said. “We have used none.”
There were some. Nellie knew it. They’d been in the kitchen when Etsi had mentioned them. She would go look.
“Watch them,” Nellie told Sarah. “I’ll be back.” The snow was not so thick this time, but Nellie still took every precaution against losing her way. In the back of the wagon, she dug through the box of good dishes and found the candles. Six of them. Not many, but it was a start.
When she finally made it back to the tent, she lit a candle by sparking the flint rock next to an issue of the Cherokee Phoenix. Too bad about the treasured papers, but they were nothing when measured next to her little brother’s life.
With the paper afire, she lit the candle, and then stomped out the paper fire, saving what she could. She took off a shirt and held it next to the flame. It wasn’t much, but the fabric was warmed. She unwrapped the baby and wrapped him in the warmed shirt, and she held the gingham dress to the flame.
Stomping outside warned her an instant before Edoda and Lewis came inside the tent, carrying a sack of provisions and letting in the wind-driven snow.
“What is this?” Edoda said.
“You have another son,” Nellie announced proudly.
Edoda and Lewis made their way over to Etsi and the baby.
“We must find a way to build a fire to keep him warm,” Nellie said, “or he will …” She couldn’t complete her thought. But in her mind she knew the baby could die. “We will be out of candles soon.”
“The main cooking fires have blown out from the storm, so building a fire will probably not work. But we can warm the baby ourselves.” Edoda took off his layered shirts, held the baby next to his warm skin, and put the shirts back on. “Lewis, get Old Rivers and Smoke Cloud. And be careful.”
While Lewis was gone, Edoda explained how the whiteout kept them trapped at the supply wagon. “The snow has let up some,” he said.
“I know,” Nellie said and explained about her trips to the wagon.
Old Rivers and Smoke Cloud came into the tent. The heat from the candle and the body heat from so many in the tent raised the temperature a bit. They took turns holding the baby inside their shirts. Then they gave him back to Etsi to nurse.
By the end of the day, the storm had blown through. The temperature was frigid, but the men made a short lean-to from the canvas flap on the wagon and built a fire to keep blankets warmed. They chopped up more boxes for firewood.
“Nellie,” Old Rivers said, “you have done much today. You are brave.”
Nellie, tired to her bones, smiled.