Colter's Journey Read online

  Off down the pass, Reno could still see the wagons as they lumbered over the dusty country. At least, at that rate, it would take them a while to get to Jim Bridger’s post—perhaps buy Reno some extra time to find, stop, and kill Jackatars. Maybe even get those women and girls back before it was too late.

  He saddled his horse, fashioned another lead rope, and secured the dead man’s pinto behind the pack mule. He could rest there, but time might mean life. A wolf wailed in the distance, reminding him of the dead man’s bones along the creek. Jackatars would likely send someone to see what had happened to his killer. And whoever that man was would likely find the boy, who would walk straight into another killer’s gunsights. Pluck and luck would get a man just so far in the Rockies.

  Reno swung into the saddle, keeping his Hawken in his right hand. “C’mon!” he barked, kicking the horse’s side, and loping away from the abandoned Conestogas, following the trails left by Louis Jackatars, and a fool boy named Colter from Pennsylvania.

  CHAPTER 17

  What was it her mother had said?

  Patricia Scott tried to remember. It had been back in the desert country, after the leader of the gang that had kidnapped them had spoken so harshly—and had brutally killed the two men who had attacked Patricia’s mother.

  “Find a pleasant spot. A happy memory. Lock onto that, children,” her mother had told her, Margaret and Nancy. “That will keep you alive. That will keep you sane. We will get out of here, girls. I promise you that. We will survive this. We must survive this. To survive, find that happy place. Go to it. Go to it . . . and keep it”—she tapped her heart—“here.”

  How long had they been traveling with this pack of dogs who maybe once, eons ago, had been human? Patricia wasn’t sure.

  Happy. She thought. Danville? No. Not home. After crossing so much of the country by riverboats and then Conestoga wagons, she could barely even remember what she had done, what had pleased her, why anyone would even think about living in Danville, Pennsylvania.

  Happy. She tried again and almost smiled. But Patricia Scott figured she would never smile again.

  Independence. Yes, Independence, Missouri.

  She tuned in to memories. They had traveled five days on steamboats—maybe it had been six, she wasn’t sure, and it didn’t really matter.

  They stepped off the boat and onto the banks of the wide Missouri River. They could see the boats, the trees and thick brush that grew along the banks, and they could see the town—a beehive of activity.

  It was small, maybe smaller than Danville, certainly much, much smaller than Pittsburgh or St. Louis or several of those river towns. Yet the town’s square brought in scores and scores of people. She had listened to merchants hawking everything anyone would need on the way to the Oregon Territory. She had even seen a couple Indians.

  “Tame as candy, li’l lady,” a man in buckskins told her.

  Those Indians sure were tall, though. Osage, someone called them. Even Patricia’s father looked small standing next to those Indians.

  Independence maybe had two hundred residents—and many, many more emigrants just passing through. The town wasn’t old. In fact, Patricia’s mom and dad were older than Independence. It had been founded in 1827, only to become that “jumpin’-off dot on the map,” as somebody had called it, to send folks to Santa Fe or Oregon. It came about, Patricia heard, because the riverboats couldn’t get much farther west. It had something to do with the Kansas River, which flowed into the Missouri a little west of town.

  The town had been named after the Declaration of Independence. Patricia liked that. It made her feel good.

  There was a spring, where anyone could draw water, and even a gristmill so the merchants could make a fortune selling flour to those emigrants.

  Her father bought a blue-tinted book titled The National Wagon Road Guide, with a sketch of a buffalo, a covered wagon, and an Indian—certainly not friendly—on its cover. He said the book would come in handy.

  Mr. Colter bought some grain for his prized Percheron stallion. One of the merchants had asked if he wanted to sell the big animal, but Mr. Colter had said no.

  “You should leave early,” the man told Mr. Colter. “Horses and mules can feed on the short grass. It’ll take you four or five months to reach Oregon. If I were you, I’d sell that big stud horse of yours.”

  “No, thanks,” Mr. Colter said. “And don’t worry. We have oxen to pull our prairie schooners. The stallion is to make me richer than a king when we get to our new home.”

  “If you get there,” someone loitering in front of a sod saloon said.

  Tim Colter grabbed Patricia by the arm and raced her to look at the wagons. It seemed like thousands of them along the banks of the Missouri, parked in various sections like little cities.

  “Think about it, Patricia,” Tim said excitedly. “All these people. All of them. Traveling west. For a new life. Think about it.”

  “I’m trying,” Patricia said.

  Tim shook his head and let his fingers interlock with Patricia’s. “We’re making history. Did you ever figure we’d make history?”

  History. Patricia had not considered that. History was something she learned at school. People didn’t live history. Did they? History was George Washington and King David. It was the Mayflower and King Arthur. Yet as she looked at all those wagons, and so many people, she began to think that maybe Tim had a point.

  Each family. One Conestoga wagon. Four or six oxen. Well, some of the emigrants insisted on using horses or mules. Each person had two sets of clothes, and that was all. Already people were leaving boxes and crates and bundles of clothes on the ground. Patricia and Tim could see other people—those not going to Oregon and even a few Indians—sorting through the abandoned merchandise.

  Maybe a milch cow. A few had chickens. Of course, the Scotts had old Wilbur. That dog that might have been older than Patricia herself. Shotguns. Rifles. Lanterns. Bonnets. Coal oil. Fatwood to help get the fires started, although a lot of people kept saying that was a waste, that these wayfarers would find plenty of buffalo chips for fuel. A few, but not many, had pistols. A bucket or two of axle grease. Candles. Bonnets and straw hats with very wide brims. A churn for butter. And sacks of food stores: flour, bacon, vinegar, beans, coffee, yeast powder, hardtack, potatoes, carrots.

  Patricia and her parents and Tim and his folks and siblings were bound west for riches, but to her, it seemed as if the merchants in Independence were making all the wealth.

  “You need mules,” a burly man in suspenders called out. “Mules is tough. Oxen is too slow.”

  “Tougher than mules, though,” another man yelled back. “Oxen eat lousy grass. Mules won’t. Oxen can get you out of a mud hole. Mules can be stubborn.”

  “Only if you don’t know how to work them!”

  Oxen were costing emigrants forty-five to sixty dollars on that day. Patricia didn’t know how much a span of mules would run because the man selling the mules got into a fight with the man selling the oxen.

  She also understood why they would be traveling in those giant covered Conestogas.

  Flour? Six hundred pounds. Bacon? Four hundred pounds, and packed in barrels of bran so it would not melt. Melt?

  “Whoever heard of bacon melting?” Tim said with a laugh.

  Coffee? Sixty pounds. Tea? Four pounds. Sugar? One hundred pounds.

  Then came sacks of beans and sacks of rice. Dried peaches. Dried apples. Someone, Patricia heard, was even loading saplings of fruit trees in his wagon . . . to start an orchard when they reached the promised land.

  Knives were being sold. Axes. Seeds for corn or wheat or whatever. Tools migrating farmers would need when they finally arrived in Oregon Territory—plows, rakes, hoes, scythes—and tools they would need on the long journey across this country called America—shovels, hammers, mallets, planes, saws. A spare axel. A spare wheel.

  If you could afford those.

  Most in the train the Colters and Smiths jo
ined could not afford that. They had spent practically their last penny just to make it to Independence.

  But they had made it.

  Patricia and Tim returned to the wagon train. Its newly elected leader was busy announcing his plans.

  “First,” Captain McDonnell was saying, “I have drawn up an obligation that all members will sign. It binds everyone to the rule that all will abide by my orders and decisions, and that each and every one of you will aid me by every means, so be it. We will also form a company that will guard our herd and other animals, and protect us, God willing from red heathens. And . . .”

  The kids stopped listening. Indians? Those would never attack a wagon train of their size.

  Tim led Patricia away, toward the spring. He carried a bucket, said he had told his mother that he’d go and fetch some good water—not that muddy slop from the river—and Patricia walked with him.

  A man in a wide-brimmed black hat stopped them as they made their way along the trail that led to the spring. He had two pistols stuck in his waistband and no right ear. “You two ain’t Mormons, are ye?”

  Tim blinked.

  Patricia asked, “What’s a Mormon?”

  The man laughed. “Well, that’s the question, ain’t it? I reckon y’all can have some of our water. Don’t like givin’ it to no Mormons, though. You see, little lady, we had us a scare a few years back. Mormons . . . crazy cusses . . . figured they could take all of our good decent white women for their own brides. Preaching this and that. Saying it’s their right to have as many wives as they want.”

  “Goodness,” Patricia said.

  “No, ma’am. There ain’t nothing good about them folks. So they come here, decide they’s gonna build up this temple. Right here. In our good, decent, God-fearin’ town. Well, by thunder, we’re Christians in this town. So we run them folks out. Killed as many as we could.” He pointed. “Just follow that trail, younguns. You’ll find the water, and help yourself to it.”

  When they passed the man, he called out.

  “Kid.”

  Both Tim and Patricia turned.

  “You best watch out for any Mormons, kid. They’ll take that gal of yours for their own. That’s why we Christians just figure we have to kill them all.”

  When they reached the spring, Tim said, “That man’s crazy.”

  “You think he was joshing us, Tim?”

  “I don’t know.” He filled the bucket. “Mormons. Maybe I did hear tell of something about them. Or read something in a newspaper.”

  Patricia smiled. “Maybe you’d like to become a Mormon. Have a bunch of wives.”

  Tim grinned. “You think so?”

  She batted her eyes. “I don’t know.”

  “Get me a haram?”

  “A what?”

  “A lot of wives.”

  She shrugged.

  Tim lowered the bucket, glanced down the trail to make sure no one was coming to the spring, and walked up to her. She looked down.

  He put his hand under her chin and lifted her head so that she looked up at him. “No haram for me, Patricia Scott. When I get to Oregon—even if the whole territory is filled with Mormons and harams and the like—I only want one woman. One wife. For all of my life.”

  Tears welled in her eyes. “Oh,” she said, her voice weak, body trembling. “Oh, Tim.”

  She felt him lean over, and his lips met hers. Tim Colter didn’t taste like her grandfather had, back when he had kissed her on her birthday. Grandfather Scott had tasted like snuff. Tim’s lips were gentle, sweet, and tasted like . . . well . . . maybe honey.

  Yes. That was the place Patricia Scott wanted to return to. That was her private place. It was the happy place she chose to keep in her heart. The public spring in Independence . . . where Tim had kissed her and practically proposed to her.

  She needed to remember that. More than Father and poor old Wilbur. More than the riverboats across Pennsylvania and the West. More than anything.

  That could keep her alive.

  She wanted to stay alive . . . because Tim Colter was still alive, no mater what everybody else said. And she knew Tim. He would be coming for her, his sisters, and her mother.

  He had to be coming. He had to be.

  Just remember, Patricia kept telling herself.

  So she tried. As hard as she could.

  * * *

  Within a few days, she could remember nothing. Nothing except the daily hell the captives had to endure. It felt like they had been living through it for an eternity.

  CHAPTER 18

  “Ma, I don’t want to be sick!” he cried.

  His mother removed the damp rag over his forehead, helping him up, leaning him over as he vomited into the chamber pot.

  Tim wailed. He despised being sick. It seemed so weak, and he didn’t like how he felt—hot and clammy, his stomach roiling—yet his mother pulled him close, using a handkerchief to wipe his mouth.

  “Ma—” Tim sniffed.

  “It’s all right, Tim. Everybody gets sick.”

  “But—” He said no more, letting his mother pull him closer and run her fingers through his sweaty hair.

  Tim woke up, staring at the morning sky, praying that everything that came flooding through his memories had been a dream. He wet his lips, chapped and crusted with the vomit from last night. That much had not been a dream. After sucking in a deep breath, holding it for a moment, and then exhaling, he slumped.

  He knew what he would find when he sat up. He would find himself alone on a hilltop, a long way from Danville, Pennsylvania, where his mother would always comfort him when he was sick with fever or a cold, and a far distance from the two Conestoga wagons he had walked away from yesterday afternoon. Had it been longer? How long have Ma and Pa been dead?

  Making himself sit up, Tim used the cloth that served to protect him from the sun to wipe his mouth. He found the canteen and drank some water then looked at his options for breakfast. Dried beef? One final biscuit? The bad-smelling greasy mix in the leather pouch? Or do without?

  He ate the biscuit, figuring that if he waited much longer, the stale, tasteless stone might break his teeth. Another sip of water, and he stood, stretching, looking down the trail, and wondering how many miles he had traveled. It didn’t matter.

  Late in the afternoon before, he had thrown up, although he had little in his stomach to force out. At first, he thought he might have found bad water—the mountain man of a guide on the trail, Just Jenkins, always worried about bad water, said it could kill a man, even wipe out an entire train. Tim soon decided that he wasn’t dying of cholera or poison water and remembered something else Jenkins had said.

  “Air’s thin. Gets thinner the higher you go. Make a body sick, it will, iffen he ain’t careful.”

  He had not been careful. So determined to put some miles on him, to catch up with Patricia and his sisters and Mrs. Scott, he had walked and hurried, climbed and slipped, driving himself to keep moving and rarely stopping to slake his thirst.

  Just Jenkins always advised to drink water. “Don’t get too thirsty,” he’d warned, adding, “but don’t waste water. It can be hard to come by.”

  Tim did not know that country or when he might happen upon another creek or water hole. What he had, he could carry. So he’d felt conserving water would be the wisest option.

  And it had made him sick.

  After throwing up, however, and drinking a few swallows, he felt better. Eventually, his pounding head had stopped aching, he’d eaten a bit of dried beef, and had fallen asleep. To dream of his mother and how she had always been there for him when he was sick.

  But . . . he was alone.

  He looked at the trail of horses. He gathered his belongings, securing the makeshift bonnet over his head. He walked. Today, though, he told himself, when I need to drink, I will drink.

  About two miles later, he stopped.

  He had dreamed of his mother. He had remembered her. But he had not cried. He frowned.

&nbs
p; Healing? Disrespectful?

  Tim didn’t know. He just kept walking, trying to remember her voice, how she sounded, picturing that smile of hers until he had it chiseled into his brain. He thought of his father, tried to recall his face—the face before the bandits had butchered him—and how he had laughed.

  He thought of the journey.

  * * *

  They left Independence early in the morning, twenty-four Conestogas carrying families west. Mr. McConnell was the captain of the train, and Mr. Jenkins was the scout.

  He always told Tim, “Mr. Jenkins was my pap, boy. You call me Just. That’s me name, Just Jenkins.”

  “He’ll do no such thing, Mr. Jenkins,” Ma said. “You hear me, Tim?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Yet when they were alone—which did not happen often—the man in buckskins would whisper, “Yer Ma cain’t hear us now, boy. Call me Just.”

  “Just.” Tim grinned.

  “Beats bein’ called a son-of-a-Pawnee, and that’s fer sure.”

  It caused Tim to laugh.

  The first night, they camped at a place called Lone Elm. It had been aptly named, for on this small rise, he found only one elm tree, but the grass reached his shoulders, and the water from a nearby spring tasted sweet. One night out, and he felt awestruck. It was actually happening. They were going to Oregon, starting a new life, a good life, and Patricia Scott would be there with him.

  A mile or two out of camp, Mr. Scott pointed out the junction of two trails. The Santa Fe went to Mexican country, off to the west, but he pointed at the ruts that led northwest, and he whipped off his hat, bellowing, “I’m a-goin’ to Oregon, folks. If you want to eat hot chile peppers, go yonder way. Iffen you want to see paradise, foller me!”

  So they went, keeping the wagons on the high ground. The trees slowly faded into a memory, and all Tim could see were rolling hills, tall grasses, but mostly an endless sky. He marveled at the country, but soon found it dull and dusty.