“Ladies, I ain’t tryin’ to be difficult, and I don’t mean to belittle y’all’s headin’ west. Some folks say the country needs settlin’. I got mixed feelin’s about that. Howsomever, it ain’t up to me to make them decisions. My job is to get as many of you through as I possible can. We’re gonna pull out three days from now. We’re gonna travel for two days, and then we’ll have us some rifle and pistol practice for a couple of days.” He noticed the women exchanging glances. “That’s right, ladies. ’Cause when the Injuns attack, and they will, y’all got to fight right alongside us men, and you got to know how to load and fire. I’ve laid in ample stocks of lead and powder and molds for the balls. When I’m satisfied that y’all can more or less hit what you’re aimin’ at, we’ll stretch out for a week. Then we’ll stop and do some shufflin’ around. By that time you ladies will have had some squabbles and made friends and enemies and you’ll know who you want to travel with for the next four or five months. Now then, I want you all to get back to your wagons for inspection. Right now! Dismissed. Haul your bustles!”
The ladies scampered back to their wagons and Preacher hopped down and came face to face with Lieutenant Worthington.
“I was trying to get your attention…”
“I seen you out there hoppin’ up and down like a bee-stung bear,” Preacher said. “I figured you had to pee, way you was actin’.”
“Now see here, Preacher. I represent the United States Army. I…”
“I got to go, boy. I got wagons to inspect. You go sharpen your saber or something. We’ll talk ’fore we stretch ’em out. I can’t see no way to avoid it.”
Preacher left him standing with his mouth open, momentarily speechless. Which for Lt. Rupert Worthington, of the Virginia Worthingtons, was a very distressing experience.
“They look pretty good to me,” Blackjack said.
It was the evening before the wagons would roll out from the last large pocket of civilization for hundreds of miles. The men were lounging around a fire, drinking coffee and talking. All the men were there, including Lieutenant Worthington and his small troop. Of the civilians hired to accompany the wagons, there was Nick, Sam, Jake, Dan, Frank, Barnaby, Teale, Gabe, Hugh, and Upton. They ranged in age from about forty to fifty. Preacher had wanted no young studs along; not with this many females. There would have sure been trouble with young men along.
“Yeah, they do,” Upton said, then smiled. “Twenty-five men and a hundred and fifty odd women, settin’ out to do something that ain’t never been done ’fore. You think the history books will write about this a hundred years from now?”
“What difference will it make to us then?” Charlie asked lazily, his head on his saddle. “We won’t be nothin’ but dust in the ground. Providin’ we’re lucky enough to get a proper buryin’, that is.”
“You do have a point,” Preacher said. “Rupert, what do you think?”
The question startled Rupert; he was so accustomed to Preacher ignoring him. “Why…yes, I do believe history will record this journey. After all, we do have Miss Crump along. And I’m fair bursting with excitement myself at just the thought of it. It’s going to be quite the grand adventure indeed.”
The mountain men had decided to try to be as nice to the young lieutenant as possible, so they hid their smiles and did not look at one another after his remark.
“Well, Rupert,” Preacher said as civilly as possible. “You damn sure right about that.”
It was going to be an adventure all right. With mosquitoes in some places as big as bats, rattlesnakes and scorpions, swollen rivers, hostile Indians, gangs of thugs and murderers, heat and dust and boredom, mud and rockslides, and the seemingly never-ending western horizon that they all had seen drive some men into raving lunatics. Not to mention driving rains that would slow them down to a crawl, or sometimes to a complete halt. For the next three or four hundred miles, Pawnee, considered to be the best horse thieves in the world, would be slipping around trying to steal their livestock. There would be guns going off accidentally, blowing holes in people. Axes slipping and causing hideous wounds. People with twisted ankles, fevers, busted fingers and toes, tempers flaring as the trail got longer.
Oh, yeah. It was going to be quite the grand adventure.
Rupert got up to go check on something or other. He was always checking on something and writing things down in a book, and his men left with him. Ring cut his eyes to Preacher.
“A grand adventure, Preach?”
Preacher tossed the dregs of his coffee onto the ground. “Yeah,” he said with a sigh. “Ain’t that what they all say, startin’ out?”
5
In the years to come, the methods of pushing wagons west would change, little of it for the better. Wagon masters would have sentries firing guns at four in the morning to awaken the sleeping pioneers—a rather stupid practice in Indian country when, in the very next minute, every grain of powder and lead might be needed in a fight for life. They would have bugles blowing to form the line and many wagon trains would stretch out for several miles.
But Preacher and those few other mountain men who would agree to lead wagons west would have none of that nonsense. In the years ahead, the danger of Indian attacks would lessen to near zero, but for those first few movers West—about which little had been written until now—Indian attacks were the norm, rather than the exception.
Preacher had gone over the supplies—not just the list of what every wagon should contain, but personally checking over each wagon’s contents. On foodstuffs he checked everything from eggs and molasses to sugar and hardtack. He made certain the wagons contained extra augers, shovels, oxbows, linchpins, and gimlets. He ordered the man from Washington to provide additional wagons and drivers, the extra wagons containing barrels of axle grease, spare oxyokes, tents and blankets, powder and shot, hammers and nails, and rope and trading goods to placate the Indians. Oscar, Sid, and Felix were the new drivers, all seasoned hands with reins. Preacher put some of the older kids in charge of the spare mounts, mules, and cattle…but always with adult supervision.
The day before they pulled out, starting well before dawn, Preacher rousted out the sleepy-eyed women and went through each wagon with a fast but unrelenting vengeance, ordering heavy chest of drawers, iron stoves, and huge grandfather clocks to be left behind. That move didn’t endear him to the hearts of some of the women, but he told the ladies to either get rid of the crap or stay behind.
They all got rid of it.
The wagons were all new and well-made of hardwoods, each wagon four feet wide by twelve feet long. Each wagon carried spare canvas and spare parts such as iron tires, spokes, and tongues.
If there was anything Preacher missed, he didn’t know what it was.
On the morning of the pullout, Lieutenant Worthington rode about the camp singing, “Oh my darlin’, to the West we go,” to the melody from “My Darling Clementine,” until Preacher told him if he sang it one more time, he’d jerk him off his horse and stuff a rag in his mouth.
A bit crestfallen, Rupert shut up.
At 5:00 A.M., after breakfast and after everything was packed up, Preacher rode up to the lead wagon—which he had personally chosen—being driven by Eudora Hempstead and Cornelia Biggers. The third person, in the bed of the wagon, was a woman named Anne.