Between Earth & Sky Read online

  Josh and Amy were lit with the excitement of it. I had to grasp each one firmly by the hand, or they would have been off into the deep, cool water and down the wide Mississippi heading for New Orleans, but we had no casualties and did not lose any of the stock, which they took across by tying the ropes to the horns of the oxen and around the necks of the mules and horses. This westward crossing is not as dangerous as we feared!

  I know Mother could not possibly comprehend how we women accomplish the daily chores of life here on the trail, but I hope, Sister, that you will try. Not only do we do our own cooking, but we must manage it without a stove. Tonight I baked a skillet of corn bread over hot rocks to have as a treat from our regular fare of beans and coffee. Some afternoons I work dough in my hands as I walk. In the evenings we women cook beans over the open fire; sometimes a little biscuit is made to go with them. Clean-up consists of finding a stream. You would not believe the expense of everyday staples we take for granted in Virginia. Milk costs twenty-five cents for a quart bottle, so we only give it to the children. Eggs and chickens are just as expensive.

  Last night shortly before dawn, we heard a weak war whoop, followed by the cry of “Indians!” We soon learned it was a false alarm given by Mr. Tanner, who delights in all kinds of practical jokes, such as roping together the legs of a friend’s oxen. A number of shotguns were lifted and two were fired. There was a woman who fainted. When the excitement was ended, several of the men went off into the woods led by Mr. Tanner, convinced, I think, that if they searched hard enough a real Indian might turn up.

  The rest of us readied the wagons for an early start, and I am sure Clayton and I were not the only ones who had visions of stringing up our humorous companion for depriving us of even a little of our much-needed sleep. Tomorrow is Sunday, and we will have a day of rest before we head out across Arkansas, but I will need to spend it washing dust from our clothing with the water we’ve saved in rain barrels. All of our clothes will require plenty of scrubbing.

  As we get closer to the frontier, Clayton claims he is tired of the wooded countryside and boasts he will welcome the wide, open frontier of the southwest, but I fear I will miss the gentle dogwoods and the shade the oak trees give us from the heat. I cannot imagine a land empty of them.

  Your Sister,

  Abigail

  July 16, 1867

  My Dearest Sister,

  We are now crossing Arkansas. The trail is rockier and the woods are a dense mass of greens and browns. Very little of the land here has been cultivated, and the trees and brush seem to grow whichever tangled way they want. I look into the distance and watch a hawk, wings spread wide, dip and sway across the trees and know this is a place that has not been tamed. Each night there is talk around the campfire of wildcats and bears as we stare out into the thick trees and listen for the snapping of twigs and branches.

  During the days it has been so hot that Josh and Amy cry most of the time. Bedding them down to ride in the wagon just makes them hotter, as there is not enough air and the sun turns the wagon into an oven. When I dip rags in water and wipe the dust off them, Clayton tells me not to waste the water. I know he is right, but it’s just a little I put on the rag. We are all tanned and sunburned, even the ladies, despite the bonnets we wear. Amy has pulled the doll you made into shreds, carrying it with her all day as she walks, refusing to leave it in the wagon. I intend to sew the pieces together once we are stopped long enough for me to dig out my needles and thread.

  Yesterday evening when the wagons had circled, Roger came for me. I climbed into his wagon, everything going dark the way it does after you have walked under the bright, bright sky all day, so that I had to follow the lines of the wagon—the cloth sides, the wooden box packed with dishes and clothing, the blankets folded across the bed—to find Sally’s curled shape. She was holding the cloth pillow cover I had watched her embroider sitting on Mama’s porch shortly after her marriage.

  I sat down on the wagon bed. Her face was hot as a coal from the campfire. She opened her eyes, narrow slits of whiteness, saw that I was there, and closed them again. “Go get more help,” I said to Roger, who stood at the end of the wagon, his mouth wide open with me ordering him.

  The blood had soaked through the quilt Sally’s mama had sewn. “The baby’s not moving,” she whispered as I tried to prop her up against the side of the wagon. “I was afraid to tell Roger. They can’t stop the whole train for one woman having a baby.”

  It was after midnight before the baby was born. If Anna’s mother had not been there, we would have lost Sally, that baby turned wrong and it taking every bit of strength Mrs. Vernon had to pull it out right. Even with Mrs. Vernon there, I thought for a good while we would lose Sally, her life running out, soaking the mattress. I kept remembering when we were girls, the three of us climbing that oak tree beside her house, the sound our dresses made, ripping.

  “Heart-friends cannot be parted,” she said to me once. Next to you, whom I miss more than I can write, she is my oldest and dearest friend. The thought of losing her on the trail before we reached New Mexico was one I could not bear.

  The baby is a boy, with a head full of hair dark as Sally’s. He has not cried above a whimper. Sally cannot stand yet. I stayed in the wagon with her most of the morning. She winced each time the wagon bumped or jolted, and bit her lip to keep from crying out. Bea says our lot is harder than a man’s, because war or no war, we have to face childbirth. I suppose she is right.

  Your Loving Sister,

  Abigail

  July 18, 1867

  Dear Maggie,

  Sally’s baby boy died this morning. We buried it beside the trail but left no marker, so that the Indians would not find it. They say the Indians dig up the dead for their clothing and jewelry, sometimes taking their scalps. Sally was too weak to leave the wagon, so I helped Roger place the poor little thing in a rough box he had fashioned the night before when he saw it was dying.

  Sally wanted the baby dressed in the christening gown and cap she had brought from home. When I carried the baby to her before we laid it in the box, I started to set him in her lap, but she reached up and touched the fine lace on the christening gown, smoothing it between her fingers. Finally, she dropped her hand and turned her head towards the sky, which showed a deep blue already through the opening of the wagon. “I would give anything for a picture of him that I could keep,” she said to that brightness.

  I handed the baby to Roger, who was standing beside the wagon. He set the baby in the box, but before we buried it, I took out the paper I had slipped under our bedding and my pencils and made a quick sketch of him. If there is time later, I will fill in the features with a little color. Last night I showed the drawing to Sally, and while it made her cry, I feel certain she will be glad to have it.

  We have seen our first Indians this past week. Sometimes they follow us for miles, and when we stop to eat they beg for food. There was a young woman among them who wept for nearly an hour, until Bea and I felt sorry for her and gave her a jar of jelly.

  Some of the Indians are nearly naked, while others are dressed in any imaginable combination of attire. The Indian braves often wear trousers, but it is not uncommon to see a squaw in a pair of them held up around her waist with a rope of buckhide. Indeed, I have also seen Indian maidens dressed in nothing but necklaces of turquoise and silver and brass. The children of both sexes tend to go completely naked, and just when we have begun to pity the poverty of the whole lot, one of the men rides by fully clothed and decorated with a profusion of silver.

  Yesterday afternoon when Sally and I stopped to rest for a few moments beneath a tree, we were startled by the approach of a rather handsome Indian wearing a finely made linen shirt with a long-tailed jacket and absolutely nothing else except a pair of moccasins. He offered us a deerskin, but we were too overcome by his appearance to consider what we could trade him for it. Later I overheard that someone in our party gave him some counterfeit greenbacks for it. Had I been p
resent, I would have warned the fashionable, if partially clad, savage of the deceit.

  The Indians are not, however, always on the receiving side of the trickery. More than once we have gone in search of non-existent streams after being “educated” as to their whereabouts by a “helpful” Indian or squaw. They have scattered our stock, then made off with some of our supplies while the majority of our party was involved with rounding up cows, oxen, and horses. Most of their pranks are simply a nuisance, but I fear the open land to come, which is roamed by Comanches, one of the most unfriendly tribes of the prairie. These warriors are anxious to attack white settlers and string up large numbers of scalps. We have had more Indian drills, most of which the Captain has judged successful. I suppose we are prepared to meet them.

  I have several letters now that need posting and will bundle them together to send once we reach Fort Smith. It is like having you next to me, Sister, each time I write. I can almost hear your soft, reassuring voice in the emptiness next to me at the fireside.

  Oh! How I wish I had you in my arms!

  Abigail

  July 27, 1867

  Dear Maggie,

  When we reached Fort Smith, your letters were waiting (all five of them, and they were glorious!), with one from Aunt Celia, but nothing from Mother. I have written to her again this morning, encouraging her to do as you suggest, sell off the farm for what she can and move into Aunt Celia’s home. I don’t see how she can pay the taxes this year, not when they have gone up and she has no crop to bring in.

  I doubt Mother will hear me on this or any issue, but I pray that she will listen to your good advice, and please, Maggie, if you are able, explain to her again that with so many of the businesses shut down and the land Clayton’s family had owned bought out from under them by Yankees, he was unable to earn a living. We have no wish to live in poverty, dependent on the good will of others, and must go where our futures best lie. It is, of course, your decision to delay telling her of your own plans to follow us. I believe in being forthright on all occasions, but perhaps you are right to wait; it has been difficult enough for her to accept our leaving. I am sure her state of mind will improve as your time draws near. Oh, that I were there for that blessed event!

  At the fort we saw plenty of soldiers. They are well armed and barricaded against any attacks. Another wagon train passed through while we were stopped, and we saw several stage and mail coaches. Westward immigration is vast. We were told of hundreds who pass through there.

  Each day the land becomes flatter and more barren of trees. But there is still plenty of grass for the stock, and the roads are easily traveled. If I were able to paint this land, I would use a yellow-green wash and have it meet the blue of the horizon in one straight line. A deep brown patched with white would do for the rocks and boulders scattered along the roadside, and our train would be a thin winding line of grays, browns, and bits of blue, red, yellow, and pink. A small dark streak would dip towards the horizon like the hawks that follow our small train across the plains.

  I spend much of each day walking beside the wagon or the oxen, carrying Josh. It is a relief when I am able to ride on the wagon seat and roll our dough for supper. Sometimes we sight Indians in the woods or watch them following our train at a distance. They like to trade and usually come out ahead in the bargain. Fred Tapens traded his watch for a horse, which we later learned had been stolen from the train just ahead of us. Of course, he was obliged to give back the stolen goods and is now minus his watch. A few days ago a tall, rather good-looking brave offered Clayton two ponies as a trade for me. The ponies were a sandy-brown color, strong and healthy looking. Perhaps it would have been a good bargain.

  Just outside Fort Smith we met up with another, larger wagon train, and what a break in the monotony was had by all! We spent much of the night dancing to the music of a fiddler. If Indians crouched in the darkness watching as they sometimes do, I don’t know what they thought of us and our strange, pale-faced whooping and dancing. Clayton and I twirled across the wide grassy plains. Roger coaxed Sally out of the wagon, and her cheeks flushed as she watched us.

  The sky here spreads over and over the land—there is more of it than you could imagine. When Clayton and I walked back to the wagon it wrapped around us, the milky stars woven against the dark.

  “It’s as if the universe were holding us cupped in the center of its hand,” I said to Clayton.

  When he did not say anything back, I stopped walking, letting the dark and light get between us, afraid he was thinking of some harm that had come to Josh and Amy, who were asleep in the tent. But he stopped and turned, looked straight at me before saying what was in his mind. “I was thinking about tomorrow and the next day,” he said. “Thinking about the rest of the crossing.”

  I reached across the vastness to squeeze his hand. “We did right, coming.”

  He looked away from me, out into the sky. The wind picked up, and the sky was everywhere. I felt it sift through my hair and thought how with each breath its light and dark filled me. “I just hope you say that five years from now. The trip out here is hard enough, and New Mexico won’t be easy either. Mostly Indians and Mexicans.”

  “We could keep going with the others.” It was what I had been saying over and over in my heart ever since we left Virginia. “There is mining in California also, plenty of it.”

  He looked towards the wagon. “The mines I know about are in New Mexico. That’s where Mr. Stone is, and he knows me, knows my work. I told him I would manage his mines there.” We were walking towards the campsite again. Even in the darkness I could see the wagon’s billowing shape, the thin spokes of each wheel which seem, even when the wagon is still, to spin endlessly. “I’ll get a chance to buy in, too.” Clayton kept talking. “I could make some real money there, and think, Abigail, of the land we could buy with it, our own land.”

  When we crawled into the tent, the air, still warm from the day’s heat, was filled with the soft breathing of the children. We lay down on either side of Amy and Josh, and I tried not to feel bitter. There are plenty of jobs in California and plenty of mines. First to leave you and Mama and Aunt Celia, in another two or three months to say goodbye to Sally and Bea and the rest of them!

  But when Amy’s small warmth snuggled against me, I told myself that once we reached New Mexico I would still have what is most important right beside me. Only I wish Virginia were not so far away!

  Your Loving Sister,

  Abigail

  August 18, 1867

  My Dear Maggie,

  Last week I saw my first Comanche brave. I had heard quite a few stories of the “red devils who attack entire wagon trains, whooping and screaming, swinging tomahawks and shooting off rifles.” This “brave” stood proudly with his arms crossed, several yards from the road, watching us pass, wearing nothing but a discarded hoop from a woman’s skirt. Sally, Bea, and I laughed until we could hardly walk. He stuck his chin out farther and proudly looked down his nose at us. Sometime later when we looked back across the flat plain we saw his sharp unmoving profile.

  Many of those in our party rant against the Indians, calling them beggars and thieves and murderers. We heard of a white woman’s body found near here on the bank of a creek, a piece of hair rope around her neck. Men from another wagon train burned a small Indian encampment. When the Indians returned and discovered which group was to blame, they attacked, stealing some of the stock. A child was killed by the stampeding horses.

  Still, I would like to paint the Indians. Some of the women wear gowns beaded with small stones and shells in patterns. Their skin is a deep rust color, their hair dark and thick. Yesterday evening an Indian danced for me after I gave him a cooking pot. One moment he was an antelope, the next a bird winging across the vast horizon; then he mirrored the mountains themselves. He danced his last steps and vanished as if by magic. The children, Bea, and I watched without moving, we were so astonished. After the Indian had disappeared, I learned to my horror that Clay
ton had gone to the wagon to retrieve his shotgun.

  Now that we are on the plains, we occasionally see other wagon camps. Tales float back and forth of bands of Indians or bushwhackers or renegades. There are said to be plenty of white renegades who have taken up with the Indians, and others ride in packs, thieving and killing. A good number of them are said to paint their skin and dress like Indians. They are called “white Indians,” and one can often recognize them because they get lazy with their painting and leave their legs white.

  Despite the tales that circulate the wagon trains, most of what we see is interesting and quite harmless. We pass forts or trading posts where we can get water and needed supplies. A few of the forts have been abandoned, and we walk through their crumbling adobe walls. We pass Mexicans with their burros, and a few days ago we saw Mexican cattle drivers.

  The road grows hotter each day as we pass through Texas. Josh and Amy cry from the heat. I sing to them as we walk, and make up stories. “This is where a buffalo was shot by Indians,” I tell them, and Amy traces the imprint in the dirt with her hand. “This is where two Indian girls played with the dolls their mothers made them,” Amy says. Josh still fusses, and I end up carrying him much of the way.

  We have filled our kegs and everything that will hold water, which we must divide with the oxen. Whenever we stop, we carry them a bucket and let them wet their tongues and wash the dust off their noses. Occasionally a stage coach passes us, and I think they must look with pity on our plodding pace.