10th September
Today we discovered that my sister’s dog gave birth to ten pups, beneath the wagon during the night. My father crawled to her and carried them all out in a bag. He is allowing her to keep them all, which Mother says is madness. She had to move boxes to make space in the wagon for them. Dadda claims that good dogs will be in demand in Oregon City, and we might sell them for a decent price. Mr Bricewood has already said he will take one as a successor to Melchior.
We are five or six days away from The Dalles now. The air is so clear we can see a strange shape, which the scout says is Hat Rock, twenty miles distant.
The oxen are more biddable, at last, and yesterday we managed thirteen miles, which is the most for many weeks. We are in an open plain, but with more mountains yet to cross. Mrs Fields is failing more each day, and we seldom set eyes on her any more.
The pups were at first no more than squirming squeaking grubs, with bright pink noses and red feet. They did nothing but suckle and sleep. Four were the same brown brindle as their sire, two were all over black and another four had patches of white, black and brown all over. I agreed with Mother that ten was far too many to keep. It would be hopeless chaos once they began to wander. They were sure to fall out of the wagon, as well as making a nasty mess amongst all our things.
‘They will not leave the nest until they’re three weeks old,’ Dadda said. He smiled, with his charming Irish twinkle, and added, ‘And where d’ye think we’ll be by then, woman?’
She gazed at the mountains ahead, which were nothing more than a blue silhouette, and widened her eyes. ‘So soon?’ she breathed. ‘I can scarcely credit it.’
‘With God’s grace, we arrive by the end of the month. ’Twill be hard, mind you. The very hardest part is yet to come.’
My mother sighed, but there was nothing melancholy or apprehensive in her expression. ‘We have been blessed in coming so far without misfortune. I am not inclined to lose my faith now. All will be well, I have no doubt at all.’
Indeed, the September days had proved quite clement thus far, with no frost and very little rainfall. Henry Bricewood referred now and then to the Donner Party and their decision to follow the Hastings cut-off, wondering to himself how they were faring. He had repeatedly asked scouts and trappers what they knew of the southward trail, and how feasible it would be for wagons to get down to California. The answers were never very satisfactory. News would reach us eventually, he was told, whether good or bad.
In Providence, we had all been avid readers of newspapers, keeping abreast of the social happenings, as well as tales of adventure from other parts of the country. My father especially missed this sense of connection, as we travelled. War was raging, laws were changing, and we gleaned only the barest out-of-date snippets at the forts. Worry about Reuben increased, as weeks passed with no word from him. We wrote letters in the evenings, so that when we reached a fort we always had a stack of them to despatch in whatever fashion might be available. Individuals travelling on horseback would take mail for a fee, but it was an unreliable and disorganised business.
The pups and their mother were crowded into a space halfway down the wagon, between Mother’s chest of clothes and the wash dolly she used to scrub things whenever there was an opportunity to do some laundry. Lizzie begged titbits for Bathsheba from everyone in the party, and they all came to inspect the new babies, as a reward for their contributions. Mother hated them seeing the inside of our wagon – a private place for all the families, and scrupulously respected as such – but nobody could be persuaded to wait until the pups were older and could be brought out into the open. Bathsheba hated it even more and growled helplessly at every visitor. Henry brought Melchior along, but he was not permitted inside the wagon, and they went away again without the new father having met his offspring.
It was a great relief to Lizzie that Father was so relaxed about the new additions to the family. He seemed to relish them, examining them closely and sorting males from females. It emerged over the first few days that he had owned a large spaniel as a boy, of which he had been very fond. ‘That dog had nine litters of pups in her lifetime, and my Dadda always drowned every one of them. Except the last, when I hid her in an old barn and she raised six fine dogs. I was thrashed for it, but I was glad, just the same. It broke my heart to see her crying and searching for them, all those times.’
Such stories of his boyhood were rare, so when he did share something of this sort with us it made a big impression. Lizzie whimpered in sympathy with the cruelly-treated spaniel, and cuddled Bathsheba protectively.
My mother was not mollified. ‘You be sure to keep them clean,’ she ordered Lizzie. ‘Dogs inside the wagon…Whatever are things coming to?’ She tutted her frustration at the weight of opinion all balanced against her. Fanny and Nam were both enchanted with the babies, too. My father handled them every day, thoughtfully musing about what they might be good for when they grew up. ‘Might get twenty dollars apiece,’ he said. ‘Speed, good hunters, easy around little’uns.’
‘Does anyone pay for a dog?’ I wondered. My impression had always been that a dog was acquired almost by accident, taken in because nobody else wanted it. ‘Did Mr Bricewood purchase Melchior?’
‘Ask him,’ shrugged Dadda. ‘Could be. ’Tis a fine beast.’
September 13th
Hat Rock lies close by the river, and is still a hundred miles distant from the Dalles. Progress has been held up by steep rocky terrain, and a river crossing. We were misled by an Indian about the depth of the water, and the steepness of the trail on the other side. The pups are doing well, but we will not see the end of our journey as soon as we hoped. We have been joined by another scout who applauds our choice of route, since all the cut-offs we might have taken are proving very troublesome. There is a man named Barlow just ahead of us, who has created a road for wagons that will take us past the Dalles. This is very fortunate indeed, and all the men are full of gladness and relief.
The river crossing, in the presence of a number of Indians, was a nightmare for me. There had been heavy rain further upriver, and icy water was tumbling downstream as a result. The place we chose as a ford was stony and difficult, and memories of the lost wheel made others almost as nervous as I was myself. Lizzie squealed about the welfare of her dogs, as our wagon lurched violently from side to side. I was almost paralysed when two Indians suddenly appeared close by, and made as if to lead our oxen. Fortunately my father was at my side, and I clung to him like a small child.
‘Charity, for the love of God, will you leave me go,’ he shouted. ‘What’s the matter with you, girl? The water is not so deep you need fear it.’
With a good deal of splashing and yelling at the oxen, the crossing was made without accident, but it was slow and wearying, and I was shaking when we reached dry land again. Ahead was a steep climb to a ridge, and the trail heading everlastingly westwards.
We covered five miles that day, and six the day after. ‘At this pace, the Dalles will be well over a week away,’ worried Mr Bricewood. ‘We have to get along more quickly.’
But the news about the new Barlow road was a great boost to us all. Only then, when we were assured that it was true, did everyone realise how much we had been dreading the final stage of the migration, on rafts down the wild Columbia River, with our wagons all dismantled and the stock walked slowly through dense wilderness to meet us, with luck, in the Willamette. The prospect of us all remaining together, just as we had done from the start, was wonderful.
Despite the dramatically wild scenery, with yet more high mountains all around us, and the ground so rocky, there were settlers in surprising numbers. Sturdy new cabins had been built, and land cleared for crops. It was as if we were already on the outskirts of Oregon City, as if it extended the two hundred miles or more outwards to the point we had then reached. Henry explained to me. ‘These are the people who could not contemplate the last trial of travelling by river, before Mr Barlow came to our aid. So they just stopped here, thinking it was good enough. The government calls for Americans to settle in Oregon, and this is what they have done. There is a school and a church back at the Waiilaptu mission, with doctors and blacksmiths and tanners and coopers all joining together to make a good life. I met a man at the river crossing who makes fences for a living. The Indians are to be encouraged into becoming farmers, with ploughs and cattle and all the necessities.’
‘And is it working?’ I wondered.
‘Haphazardly, I believe. It calls for a great change in their ways, after all.’
‘Your fencing man – was he an Indian, then?’
‘Of mixed breed, I fancy. A friend to both sides.’
I nodded, trying to accept Henry’s complacency about the way things were progressing. A month earlier I would have agreed with him completely. Now I had grave doubts as to whether the two sides, the two races, would ever come together in harmony. I recalled a far distant conversation in which Henry had assured me of the decency of Indian men towards women, and how this had turned out to be false, in at least one instance. Perhaps my experience had been rare, an unlucky encounter with a single individual who lacked the normal inhibitions; whatever the truth of it, I could not imagine ever again willingly placing myself in a situation where I could be vulnerable to another such attack.
‘Those amongst us with a genuine faith must be convinced that God has favoured this caravan of emigrants especially,’ Henry went on, with a little smile that suggested he himself was above such superstitions, but nonetheless he was glad of our good fortune. He would tolerate ‘genuine faith’ readily enough, but I had the idea he could not bring himself to share in it.
‘The Barlow road,’ I nodded.
‘And many other things. We have had an astonishingly easy time of it, from the very start.’ He puffed out his chest, giving himself the appearance of a bantam cock. ‘We have been pioneers of the finest quality.’
‘And yet we lost our brothers,’ I reminded him. Silently I added the many experiences that I could in no way deem blessed. Mrs Fields and the loss of her baby, then her little daughter and finally her own sickness. Fanny and Abel’s bewildering sinfulness. Naomi’s bitten hand. Melchior’s torn ear. The Indian at the crossing. Each event would surely qualify as a setback, if not a tragedy. ‘And we are changed,’ I said, not quite sure of my meaning. I held out my roughened hands, but they did not illustrate the transformation I had in mind.
‘We have learned new skills and gained an acquaintance with our new country,’ he said. ‘Neither of which is cause for complaint.’
Again I saw in my mind the nakedness of Abel, the terrible engorgement and Fanny’s casual manipulation of it. That image would remain with me for ever, with all the shock and guilt and sadness that went with it. Even one second’s flash of memory brought a throbbing between my legs. Would I never know the easy enjoyment that my sister had found? Was it the simple fact of her curly hair and milky skin that gave her such an advantage?
Stop it, I silently ordered myself. I was days away from my twentieth birthday and behaving like an ignorant child.
‘We have learned to live like savages,’ I said sourly. ‘We have become abased, on this long journey.’
‘Not at all.’ He was plainly shocked. ‘We have achieved a true democracy, a real harmony. We have shared the labour, tolerated differences, worked with real cooperation. Nobody has been enslaved or ostracised or allowed to go hungry.’
‘Not even the Fields family?’
‘Not even them. They have been the test, and it seems to me that we all passed it quite satisfactorily.’
‘We have been tolerant and virtuous, then?’
‘Have we not?’
I sighed. ‘Perhaps,’ was all I would admit. Then I rallied. ‘Our positions have reversed since the crossing of the Divide, I fancy. Then, you were all pessimism, seeing the dark side of man’s nature. Now you say the very opposite.’
‘I have learned better. I confess I never expected it to turn out so well.’
‘We are not yet done,’ I reminded him. ‘Many a slip – is that not what they say?’
‘Whatever might befall us in the final days, we may still take pride in our performance over the long months of travel. Any accident or disaster now cannot be laid at the door of our natures. We are most evidently good people.’
‘Even Fanny and Abel?’ I demanded bitterly.
‘They are not as wicked as you appear to believe. They have done no harm.’
Henry’s focus on the abstract was tiring and irritating. While seeming to give consideration to the facts of our daily lives, he never quite did. His words grew longer, his remarks more convoluted, but he failed to see the solid reality of it all. He knew about Fanny and Abel, and yet he could not know how it truly was with them. It was as if the heat and perspiration of life was beneath his elevated plane, irrelevant to his lofty thoughts. I felt an urge to shock him – perhaps by ripping off my own clothes and confronting him with actual warm skin. Perhaps by taking his face and pushing it into a steaming pile of fresh buffalo manure. Perhaps even by kicking his shin. His small stature ought not to furnish him with such a protection as it did. Or had it somehow worked the opposite way? Had years of teasing and belittling caused him to exercise his brain to the exclusion of his body? Had he removed himself from the physical world precisely because he could never find a comfortable place in it?
I sighed again. ‘We are weary,’ I said. ‘So close, but yet still some weeks distant. There is yet time for a dreadful accident to befall us,’ I repeated, hoping to outwit fate by taking nothing for granted.
‘We follow Mr Barlow and his men, close on their heels,’ he said. ‘A new road made exclusively for our use. There will be no accidents.’
I winced at this flagrant challenge, while somehow knowing that he was right.
My birthday. Grandma, Mother and Fanny made me a special cake, and everyone made much of me. We have been one day on the new road, which is a raw thing, with burnt stumps and marks of axe and saw on the trees either side of us. We are to pay a toll at a place they call Rhododendron, which Mr Tennant promises to donate for our entire party. The road goes south, where the Columbia River loops northwards. A great mountain lies between here and Oregon City. The way is steep and narrow, with gorges cut into the mountainside by rushing rivers. Already we have been forced to tie back the wagon as we descended a sharp slope, with a rope around a stout tree. Progress has been very slow.
I had difficulty in selecting suitable details to record from that day. The road was at first a triumph, but after a few miles it became narrow, steep and twisting. It went around large obstacles, and was crudely laid without any digging. A constant refrain developed, to the effect that it had to be better than using the river would have been, especially as there remained a stretch of wild country somehow to be crossed between the river and Oregon City. I learned that the great mountain ahead was Mount Hood, and the road was officially entitled the Mount Hood Toll Road, although nobody used that name for it.
From The Dalles to the end of the new road was a considerable distance o over one hundred miles - which we would traverse before payment of the toll. Plainly, there could be no turning back at any point, which justified placing the toll gate so far along the road. The weather remained benign and we saw numerous snakes and lizards, still unused to the presence of humankind, lazing in the sunshine on the warm black rocks. There was scant grazing for the stock, a factor that Mr Sam Barlow appeared to have overlooked in his road construction. On either side of us was dense forest, and the beasts were forced to adopt a diet comprising more leaves and creepers than grass.
We crossed five small rivers in those final days of September and into October. The way ran alongside them as far as possible, just as it had done for the great bulk of our trek, but there was no avoiding the crossings, since our way ran southwards and the waterways rushed eastwards down the hillsides. ‘Why?’ asked Lizzie. ‘When the ocean is to the west?’ The answers were inconclusive and vague. The habits of rivers were mysterious at times. It was supposed that these small examples all joined the great Columbia or Snake and did eventually empty into the Pacific.
There was some forage growing at the waterside, which proved very welcome to the oxen, but more often it was rocky and inaccessible.
My birthday had been gratifying, on the whole. I was unsure as to whether it would be remembered at all. Lizzie had turned fourteen three weeks before and expressed herself cheated of the usual celebrations. My mother was not given to making a great fuss about such anniversaries, but my father enjoyed a party and insisted on a special meal and small gifts.
That day we walked beside the wagon just as always, all the usual chores performed and nobody else in the party interested in a birthday. In the afternoon we came to a steep decline, the roadway a close-packed surface of branches cut from the surrounding trees, which kept it dry and not too slippery. But it dived straight down, with no pauses for breath possible. We had learned from the start that the wagons could not handle tight bends. Nor could they be allowed to tilt sideways, because the way the weight was distributed made it all too easy to tip over. Thus we had to simply take the plunge, sometimes dragging a large tree trunk behind to slow us down. It was a most alarming procedure, and we had striven to avoid the necessity as far as possible. Each wagon had to go down unimpeded, those ahead moving well out of the way, and those behind hanging back to await their turn. It was harder and slower work than crossing a river.
‘We should have Reuben here,’ wailed my mother, and everyone had to agree with her. Not just our wagon, but those of almost everyone, could have used the muscle power of our lost sons and brothers. We unharnessed the oxen and let them make their own way down the slope, while a group of people lowered the heavy wagon with ropes, a painful foot at a time. The danger was manifest, both to the goods and their owners. Henry’s paean to cooperation was vindicated magnificently when men from other families pitched in and hung their weight on the rope, like a village tug o’ war team. Once the wagon had reached the bottom, men would walk back up to another vehicle and perform the whole exercise again.
My mother fretted gently about her possessions inside the wagon, but nowhere near as much as Mrs Gordon or Mrs Bricewood did. ‘To come so far without discarding anything, only to see it all smashed now!’ wailed the latter. The few losses in the river crossings had been forgotten, or at least accepted. In general, there had been a remarkable retention of the most precious items.
‘Nonsense, woman,’ chided Mrs Luke Tennant. ‘Nothing will be smashed. Whatever are you thinking?’
Their wagon went down immediately before ours, and my father hung on the rope, along with Henry, Abel, Mr Bricewood and Mr Fields. We women were given the dangerous task of holding the wagon upright, two or three of us to each side, as it slowly descended the hill. We leaned our shoulders to the wooden sides, effectively steering it at the same time. The younger girls were at the foot of the slope with the oxen, and children skittered up and down, in and out of the dense forest bordering the road, shouting and laughing as always.
It was accomplished eventually, and the oxen were reyoked, to draw the wagon a little way along the road, to make space for those coming behind. But we did not move forward until the whole caravan was at the bottom of the slope. I decided to walk back up a little way, and watch the progress at its most interesting point. I told myself I would offer my assistance to any family in difficulty.
Walking on the rough ground beside the road, I caught sight of Ellie Fields, standing on her own beneath a tall cottonwood tree. She was watching me so intently that I was startled. ‘Ellie!’ I gasped. ‘What is it?’
She said nothing, shaking her head and withdrawing behind the tree. Ordinarily I would have left her, quickly forgetting the moment, but something in her look had snagged my curiosity. It was as if she had seen some invisible threat or glimpsed my future, as I half-believed that children might do now and then. I followed her, where she was waiting for me, crouching bonelessly on the dry ground.
‘Ellie? Are you all right?’
‘I want my mumma,’ she said, in a flat tone. ‘She never speaks to us, but just sleeps all the time.’
I was disappointed. There was nothing I could do to solve that particular need, and the trouble had nothing to do with me. ‘You have managed well without her attentions. Can you not wait a while longer for her to get well again?’
She made a gesture that was almost insolent, as if I had uttered some foolishness not worth considering. ‘No place to lay my head,’ she muttered. ‘In the night, when it’s cold.’
‘But your father…Mr Fields. He is a warm man, is he not?’
Her little face met mine. ‘He is a man. A man is hard.’ She sighed. ‘He has no warmth for me.’
My helplessness was a tangible sensation in my arms and legs. They seemed to flop uselessly, unable to supply anything that could help the child. Ellie was a little younger than my sister Nam, who seldom accepted the hugs that my father offered her. One by one, his daughters had drawn away from him, cautiously maintaining a distance from the big male body. Even the depraved Fanny never went too close. We would offer our cheeks for his goodnight kiss, and would chatter and laugh easily with him. But without ever voicing a hint of it, we knew we must avoid undue intimacy. In this, our mother cooperated fully. She would always be there, smiling faintly, willingly taking Nam onto her lap, brushing Lizzie’s hair off her face, fastening hooks and tending to small injuries. She taught us by degrees that for any physical needs we must go to her, not Dadda. And Reuben, the boy, must do vice versa. It was a right and natural pattern, which gave rise to a gentle melancholy in my father, as he released us to our female maturity.
But for Ellie, this was bound to become more and more difficult. Who would wash her neck or ensure that her clothes fitted properly if, as expected, her mother never did recover? Mr Fields was not her natural father, which I understood was not a desirable situation. She had no sister, either. Almost, I invited her to come and join our family, before recalling myself to sense.
‘He is worn out from his labours,’ she went on. ‘The oxen are so much work, and I must do all the food for us.’ She looked at her hands, which were scratched and blotched. I leaned closer. There were dark red patches, mostly at the base of her thumbs. ‘Burns,’ she said. ‘The pot is so heavy, and I drop hot gravy on myself.’
Here was something I could help with, I realised. ‘Ellie, you poor little thing. This is not right at all. I will come to your wagon and help you get the food ready.’
‘On your birthday?’ she said, with a sceptical look worthy of a much older girl.
‘Well…perhaps I can persuade Fanny or Lizzie to come today. But after that, I shall do it. I promise you.’
It was not well said. My birthday ought not to have made a difference. I ought not to make promises of that sort without mentioning the matter to my parents – as well as to Mr Fields. He might feel it as a reproach.
‘Thank you,’ said the child tonelessly.
‘You must come to me if you have trouble,’ I persisted. ‘We shall be friends, you and I. In Oregon City, perhaps we shall be neighbours. We are so close to the end, and have so much to look forward to in our new lives.’
‘Oh yes.’ She made no attempt to share my optimism, which should not have surprised me. The uncertainty over the future was just one more thing she could not hope to convey to anyone else. Mr Fields would have to find work for himself, even if he was the recipient of a parcel of land, as we all anticipated we would be. The rule as I understood it, however, was that a man must have a wife before he could claim the square mile that had been promised. If Jane Fields died, this might easily disqualify him – leaving him to fend for himself as a hired labourer, or else a salesman of some kind. But even if he did acquire land, without another pair of adult hands, it might prove beyond his capacity to make a living. Whilst a family as small as his might survive on whatever potatoes or apples or corn they could grow on a few rough acres (which he might manage to acquire), they were unlikely to produce enough surplus to raise money for clothes, sugar, furniture and all the things that made human life worth living. Hard cash would be needed for those items, and Moses Fields was already known to possess none of that commodity.
Down the hill, the line of wagons was growing, while those waiting to descend dwindled to a handful. ‘It is almost done,’ I said. ‘Without mishap, thank God.’
‘It is a wild road,’ said Ellie, with a spark of animation. ‘We are the first people to use it. What must the creatures in the forest think of us?’
‘I wonder that myself,’ I admitted. ‘And what will they witness next?’
She frowned a silent question.
‘I mean – how many more wagons will pass this way? Will Oregon become as busy and crowded as Boston or New York, in the years ahead? Do you ever think of our place in history, Ellie?’
She exhaled, a breath of impatience, and shook her head.
‘You will, when you grow older,’ I assured her. ‘You will grasp hold of your life and fashion it into something of significance.’ I heard the voice of Henry Bricewood in my ear, speaking such pomposities, and laughed at myself. ‘Or so I should hope,’ I finished.
‘You mean – like your sister Fanny? My father says she is a feckless girl, seizing life by the throat, and likely to be sorry for it very soon.’
The temptation to pursue this line was strong, but I resisted. The child was too young and too obviously quoting words she barely understood. ‘Fanny and I are very different,’ was all I said.
‘Yes, but…’ she blinked and seemed to go blank. ‘It is of no matter,’ she tailed off.
‘My own mother died when I was very small,’ I blurted, striving for a shared experience, finding a way to voice the expectation that Jane could not survive much longer.
‘And your father married again,’ she nodded.
‘You knew?’ I was painfully deflated by the realisation that this child was gaining in knowledge and wisdom with every passing hour.
‘It is the way of the world. Mr Tennant has a second wife, and perhaps Mr Franklin too?’ She tilted her head questioningly.
‘I think not. But it is common, I agree.’
‘And husbands,’ she said without any great show of interest. ‘As in my mother’s case.’
‘Indeed. She was fortunate in her choice, I hope?’
‘Mr Fields is strong and sober,’ agreed the little girl.
I thought of the pockmarks and uncertain temper and meagre finances and gave little for his chances of success in his new life if Jane did indeed expire. Unmarried women in the western fringes of the country had a wide choice of potential husbands, after all, so he would be left a single man in charge of two youngsters.
‘Our wagons are moving,’ I said, squinting into the distance. ‘We must catch them up.’
The road was following a valley floor, having descended from the earlier ridge, which inconveniently brought us to a messy scattering of boulders and abrupt cliffs. Ahead, I supposed, the valley too would come to an end, and we would most likely be forced to make an arduous climb up again. The road was a restless creature, it seemed, never finding a settled level track to follow for more than a day or two at a time.