(More from my so far unpublished epic of the emigrant trail)
Some weeks later, when the Montgomery and Townsend wagons were still a little short of Kanesville, the Ugly Grey threw a shoe, and lost it in the deep mud. It had rained all morning, but now the clouds were breaking up into innocent fluffy white clumps scattered across a clear and pale sky. The two wagons had been much inconvenienced by rain, since it made the road a swampy, muddy morass, and brought the river far enough up to cover the trunks of trees on the riverbank. Francis and Allen Montgomery waded knee-deep in churned muck, and they were forced to the expedient of keeping dry firewood in the wagon, so that it would burn well enough in the evenings for Elizabeth and Sarah to cook a meal over it.John dismounted immediately, almost the minute that Ugly Grey began to favor his left rear leg, but there was no finding the missing shoe in the mud, not with the way other wagon wheels and other hoofed draft animals had turned it over and over again. Allen and Francis halted the wagons, while he did a quick search. The driver of a heavy horse-team dray wagon coming the other way saw them by the side of the road, and called out.
“What kind of trouble are you having, friend?”
“My horse lost a shoe… How far are we from Kanesville? Can you recommend us to a blacksmith there?” On the clear horizon ahead of them hung a hazy smear of wood smoke, too large for a single farmstead.
“Not far… three, four miles… That where you’re bound?”
“For today… we mean to join an emigrant company there, for California. Did you just come from there? Do you know where they are camped?”
“Out west of town, in a grove of trees by the river, waiting for the river to go down,” Replied the drayman, slapping his reins, “And there’s a good few blacksmiths there… but there’s a man with a little forge set up half-a-mile back, if you ain’t keen on walking all the way to Kanesville.”
“Thank you, for your good words,” John tipped his hat, and told Allen and Francis, “Heard that? I’ll stop at this roadside forge, and catch up with you at the campsite.”
Just as the drayman had said, there was a wagon and tent back from the muddy road, in the middle of a little grove, with a well-established fire in a scratch enclosure of blackened bricks, sending up a straight line of smoke. Half-dozen cattle browsed in the damp meadow close by. A solitary man in a leather apron worked over an anvil; they could hear the clear regular ring of metal on metal, long before they saw him.
“If I don’t catch up on the road, I’ll meet you in camp,” John smiled at his wife, silently resolving to buy another horse, after enduring the constant lurch and jolt of the wagon for the last half-mile. He felt bruised and sore to his very bones after just this little way, whereas poor Liz had been patiently enduring it for weeks; So much for the comfort of the metal-sprung wagon seat. He unhitched Ugly Grey from the back, waved to Allan and Francis, and walked into the trees to the little campsite.
“Good morning,” John called, when he was in earshot, “My horse lost a shoe a half-mile back. Might you be of assistance?”
“I can.” The smith set his bit of work back into the fire, and turned to look at John. He was a big, grim-looking fellow with the enormously muscled shoulders and forearms of his trade, his shirt-sleeves rolled up, and leather apron flecked with tiny cinder burns. His face and hands were blackened with sooty grime and smoke, appearing like a gargoyle mask fringed with chin-whiskers, out of which a pair of clear, pale grey eyes the color of water sized up John and his limping horse. Something nudged at John’s thigh, and the smith remarked placidly, “Don’t you be moving sudden-like, she’ll think you mean harm. Quite startled, John looked down; not very far down at that, at one of the largest dogs he had ever seen, a huge fawn-colored mastiff bitch with a dark face. She sat quietly at his feet, regarding him with intelligent golden eyes.
“Dog,” said the smith quietly, and made a quick gesture with his fingers. The mastiff bitch nudged John again, as if reminding him to be on his best behavior then, because she would have an eye on him, and obediently trotted away to settle herself underneath the wagon. From there she still regarded John and her master with those unsettlingly intelligent golden eyes. She had a clownish white splotch on her nose, and another at the end of her tail, and all of her toes on each foot were white, as if she wore dainty gloves.
“Elisha Stephens, late of the Pottawattamie Indian Agency” her master introduced himself. “That’s Dog; and you would be?”
“John Townsend… Doctor John Townsend, late of St. Joseph, Missouri, soon to be on the trail to fabled California.” John extended his hand, but Stephens regarded him levelly and did not respond in kind.
“Beg pardon, my hands is powerful dirty. California? Heard me some talk. Tie the hoss up to this here tree, so’s I can get to work.”
Stephens rummaged among his tools, and a box of metal oddments, tossing a roughly shaped horse-shoe into the heart of the fire. He worked the bellows until the coals glowed cherry-red, incandescent. While the metal softened, glowing as red as the coals, Stephens shoved his shoulder into Ugly Grey’s barrel, and expertly forced the gelding to allow him to pick up his unshod foot, and rasp off some of the hoof with a great metal file. John watched with interest; this was a man who knew his trade. Ugly Grey’s eyes rolled nervously, showing some white, but not as much as expected.
When the shoe was softened enough, Stephens took the tongs and brought it out of the fire, laying it on his small anvil, and deftly pounding it into the right shape. He plunged it into a tub of dirty grey water, which bubbled up in great gouts of steam. When the new shoe had cooled enough, he took it up, filling his mouth with nails and hefted a small hammer in one hand. Just as before, he shoved his powerful shoulder into Ugly Grey, and took up the horses’ unshod hoof. While bracing Ugly Grey’s hoof in his leather-aproned lap, he spat nails into his free hand, one by one, and deftly tapped them into place, securing the new shoe.
“What do I owe you, Mr. Stephens?” John spoke with honest appreciation. It was one of the greatest pleasures in life, to watch an expert do their work, especially if they were so very good that it all appeared effortless. And Stephens was truly that, as serene and self-contained as great artists are, in the middle of their creations.
“Nothing,” Stephens’ pale, unreadable eyes gleamed in his dark face. “Pay me back with doctoring, on the trail mebbe. I’m away to California myself, in a couple days.”
“But why have you not joined the encampment with the other emigrants?” John asked, surprised out of countenance for once.
“Not one for crowds,” Stephens replied simply.
“Then… my most sincere thanks and appreciation,” John nodded.” Most certainly, we shall meet again… and I am glad of that. A blacksmith is a good man to have along on the trail.”
Stephens nodded inscrutably, and replied
“So’s a doctor. But we won’t be leaving for a good two weeks.”
“Why?” John was about to put his foot in stirrup, but something of the certainty in Stephens’ simple statement held him back.
“Grass is not grown tall enough yet. Three weeks.”
“You’ve been out on the trail before?”
“Some.” Stephens answered, “Some there. Some on the Santa Fe.” He didn’t seem inclined to elaborate, or even feel the need to. John swung up into his saddle, and said
“I’ll look forward to seeing you again… by the time the grass is grown tall enough.”
“I’ll be there,” Stephens replied.
John caught up to his wagon and Montgomery’s, just outside Kanesville; a muddy and slap-together place of log cabins and flimsy tents, noisy and overwhelmingly noisome with stock pens and pigs rooting for garbage in muddy streets, as full of people as St. Joseph: Army dragoons in blue, Mexicans in black trimmed with constellations of silver buttons, nearly naked Indians with shaved heads, sober Mormon merchants in linsey-woolsey, and emigrants like themselves, with wagons full of worldly goods and children, small faces apprehensively peering out from the shelter of the wagon cover. John took note of the stock pens, making a note as to where he should come back in the next day or so. According to Stephens they would have several weeks to rest and restock from the journey up from St. Joseph. It also amused him to overhear that the place should now be called Council Bluffs, as if that would make it any more important, or the streets less muddy.
A relief it was, to be through town and following a trampled and rutted track towards a line of low hills topped with a thin grove of trees along the river, dotted here and there with wagon tops and tents blossoming like prairie wildflowers among the thin green treetops. Rain in the morning had washed the sky clean, and the breeze smelt mostly of new grass and damp earth, only a little of wood smoke and privies, and the muddy river. As their wagons approached the emigrant camp, children ran towards them, calling excitedly, and a tall man in a frock coat waved them down, with a beaming smile,
“Good day pilgrims,” he called, “Where bound, and where from?”
“To California… from St. Joseph, Townsend and Montgomery.”
“Oh, excellent, excellent… John Thorp, for Oregon.” Thorp walked alongside Ugly Grey, as if some invisible force plastered him there, squinting upwards at John and chattering away. “We have nearly forty wagons assembled, for Oregon and California both… there is a good place at the top of the hill, just under the edge of the trees, next to the Patterson wagon. You can’t miss them; small wagon, with a saffron-colored cover, and many children.”
Thorp seemed uncommonly presumptuous, John thought to himself. Really, was he the boss of the camp already, advising all newcomers as to just where they should camp? And just as John decided that, yes, Thorp probably did see himself as such, the man added with studied carelessness,
“Oh, and we are agreed to hold elections a week from this Sunday to elect a wagon captain as far as Fort Hall. May we count on your attendance, and your vote?”
Well, that was blunt, anyway; presumptuous and blunt.
“Our attendance for sure,” John shot back easily. “And for our vote, it depends on what we think of the nominees!” He was amused at how early the politicking began, but annoyed at Thorp’s unsubtle approach, looking to scrape acquaintance and presuming on it; the man set his teeth on edge. He could see all too plain, where the camp herd had been pastured, for many weeks by the look of the ground, all chopped by hooves, grazed down to the roots and fouled by manure. It said little for Thorp’s organizational capabilities; this kind of disorganization was apt to dirty water supplies and contribute much unpleasantness, if they were to be camped here much longer. Thorp waved his hat, and they moved on up the grade, as Elizabeth laughed down from the wagon-seat,
“Dearest, it looks like a camp revival meeting… will there be picnicking among the arbors, and hymn-singing, and people falling down and speaking in tongues?”
“And tediously long sermonizing? Depend on it.”
“You did not like Mr. Thorp, Dearest.” Elisabeth said, quietly with a sideways glance.
“Liked him little and trusted him rather less. He’s the sort who likes to look as if he is in charge, but little favors the responsibility of it or the work itself.” He answered in the same low voice, and then spurred Ugly Grey ahead a little way, looking for the wagon with a saffron-yellow cover, and a great many children. There, right where Thorp said it would be: top of the hill, edge of the trees, the saffron sun around which some smaller tents and awnings orbited, as well as a quantity of laundry and bedding flapping from lines strung between trees. John overtook a grey-beard with a limp, stumping gamely up the hill towards the Patterson camp and leading a pair of mules.
“Mr. Patterson?” John ventured, and the old man scowled,
“That’s me son-in-law… I’m Hitchcock, it’s me daughter Isabella you’re looking for. That,” he jerked his bearded chin in that direction, “Is her wagon. Hers and her husband’s that is, but he’s away in Californy, and I don’t blame him, scrawny fuss-budget that she is. I’d be there too, if I’d married a woman like her. Or China, among all them heathen. Or Hades, which ‘ud be her choice.”
“John Townsend… Doctor John Townsend… we’re also California bound… ourselves and our neighbors the Montgomerys. Mr. Thorp directed us this way…”
“Did he, now,” Hitchcock scowled, and muttered something uncomplimentary about Thorp under his breath.
“How many others here are California bound, besides Mrs. Patterson, and yourself?” John thought it best to change the subject off of the ambitious Mr. Thorp.
“A passel of bog-trotting Papists, mostly— Murphys and Martins, and Sullivans all mixed together… six wagons between them, and fixed on California. Good folk, though, for all a’that. I also hear tell there’s an old fur-trapping man named Greenwood, with his two heathen sons, looking to hire on as a wagon guide as far as the Rockies. If he’s the one I know of, he married hisself a Crow woman an’ went to live with the tribes years ago. All a’them Greenwoods can’t be mistook… looking like real Injuns, they do.”
As John, and the old man approached the brow of the hill, and the yellow-topped wagon, a little woman in a faded wash-dress with her sleeves rolled up and a big apron tied over all looked up from her washtub and cried indignantly,
“Pa! What are you doing with those mules… what have you gone and done??!!”
“Bought me a brace of ‘em, Izzy, sure and a farmer’s wife ‘ud recognize mules? I figured to invite them into the parlor for tea,” said the old man with gentle malice,” That or have them carry my traps an’ goods to Californy. I ain’t quite decided which, yet. Say hello to Doctor Townsend, Izzy, he’s goin’ with us to Californy. Doc, my daughter, Mrs. Samuel Patterson.”
Isabella Patterson appeared ready to explode from embarrassment and fury at being caught at her worst in the middle of the family washing and what sounded like an ongoing family quarrel, and then being introduced to a total stranger. She swiped an errant lock of dark hair off her damp forehead as John dismounted from his horse, and took her hand in his. She looked to be a tiny, quick-moving dynamo of a woman, with abundant dark hair falling out of pins and a small and oval face, whose regular features were slightly marred by a magnificently beaky nose. She had fine eyes though, and skin like a girl’s.
“Very pleased, Mrs. Patterson,” John ventured, at his most courtly, accustomed in his medical capacity to seeing people at their worst disadvantage. “I shall tell Mrs. Townsend to call on your…camp… as soon as possible, since we are soon to be travel companions.”
“We shall be glad to receive her…” Isabella responded with a quick, manly hand-grasp, “As you can see, our house is very open, these days. Very open indeed!”
Another one like Sarah, John thought, as he touched his hat brim; not pleased about being dragged away from her own hearth, to begin a gypsy existence beside the trail. Allen Montgomery’s team was toiling up the gentle slope towards where they stood, with Francis and his own, following close behind.
“Until later, Ma’am…Sir,” and as John led Ugly Grey towards the open place where they could set up their own camp, he could hear the two of them starting up where they had left off. Between Isabella Patterson and her father, and Allan and Sarah, he reflected wryly, there was no necessity of waiting until the Fourth of July for fireworks.
(Still waiting to hear from the literary agent… my friends in the writing game counsel patience, but I want some more patience NOW!!!)