“Did he take it from your head then, Pa?” Annabel asked.
“No, darlin, it’s still there,” Hadley said, and they both laughed.
“Is my nose broke? It feels broke.”
“Yes, darlin,” he said.
He knew she was going to die.
The earliest they could hope to find a doctor was at Fort Laramie, unless there was one in the Oregon train ahead. But with Annabel sick this way, Hadley couldn’t push too hard, and their rest periods were longer and more frequent. He was afraid as well that too much jostling would start her wounds to bleeding more heavily. They were seeping blood again, and Minerva was worried they’d soon begin to fester. On the high plateau between the two forks, they found a pine forest and slashed the trees for resin and made poultices to keep in readiness should the bleeding get worse. When they moved out of the narrow crotch where the river forked, they could for miles still see both forks, the one to the south angling ever wider, the other constantly on their right. They stopped often to wet the cloths they put to Annabel’s burning forehead. Were they home, they’d have made snakeroot tea, or boiled wild ginger roots or penny-royal leaves to bring the fever down. But they were not home.
The pine forest was the last real timber they saw for several days. Here and there a solitary tree stood specterlike on the riverbank, but for the most part the plains were unwooded. The thick luxurious grass that had earlier covered the prairie was all but gone now. The animals seemed not to notice the difference, and ate the yellow grass as heartily. But to the family the entire countryside had of a sudden become barren and dry, and they began to think of this as the true landscape of the west, and wondered if it would remain this way till they reached the Rockies. Already the rock outcroppings seemed to promise distant mountains.
More and more often, they found discarded items from the party ahead. It was as though the parched and empty land discouraged the trappings of civilization, made butter churns and spinning wheels seem superfluous and perhaps foolish. There was no milk to churn or yarn to spin in this sandy land of limestone, granite, and marl. The discarded household items made the Oregon train more real, almost tangible. If only they could travel a mite faster, if only those ahead would rest a bit longer, why then they would meet. And, God willing, there’d be a doctor with the party who could minister to Annabel and relieve her pain and make her well and whole again.
The two Indian mares were tied to the wagon on short halters behind. On the wagon’s right, Bobbo rode the stallion; he’d washed the paint off it last time they’d stopped to water. He was having difficulty staying on the frame saddle, and swore at the animal as if it understood English. On the seat up front, Hadley clucked to the mules, and Minerva scanned the horizon for Indians. A rifle was on her lap. Inside the wagon, she heard Annabel ask again had she been scalped, heard Bonnie Sue answer, “No, you’ve still got your scalp right there where it should be.”
Minerva turned her face away from Hadley’s lest he see she was on the edge of tears.
The valley of the North Platte was ahead of them now.
This was the sixteenth day of July, and they hoped to reach Fort Laramie by the eighteenth or nineteenth. It no longer mattered whether or not they overtook the Oregon-bound wagon train. They had given up hope of doing so, as easily as a pauper gave up hope of one day becoming rich. Now Fort Laramie was their salvation; at Fort Laramie there would be a doctor; at Fort Laramie there would be medicine. The fort signified civilization; without whatever help awaited them there, they knew Annabel would die.
They marvelled that she was not dead already, and praised God for his mercy.
The touch of her flesh was blistering. Neither the gaping wound in her side nor the gash where she’d near been scalped had even begun to heal. Instead, both were festering with pus. Her eyes were luminous and round, glowing with the fever that ignited her. She spoke of playmates none of them had ever met, and once she screamed aloud that the top of her head was gone and begged Bobbo, who was sitting by her side, to please, sir, find her head as was missing, sir, not recognizing him as her brother though she stared full into his face, her green eyes wide and wet.
They passed without interest landmarks they might normally have greeted with enthusiasm. Ash Hollow, where after miles of shadeless travel, they found the forest of magnificent trees that had given the bottom of the valley its name, undergrown with roses and other wildflowers, running with a spring of icy cold water. Court House Rock, which was said to resemble an actual courthouse in St. Louis, though they’d been there and could remember none like it, four hundred feet or more of clay and volcanic ash rising in tiers beside the trail. Close by it stood the rock called Jailhouse, which did not look like a jail to them, nor did they care. Fourteen miles past that was famous Chimney Rock, about which they’d heard so much in Independence.
Annabel did not see it when they passed it now. She was babbling in delirium of a red devil with brighter red spots, and Bonnie Sue recalled that the Indian who’d stabbed her had his arms painted that way.
“There’s the rock resembles a smokestack,” Hadley said.
“Aye,” Minerva said, and touched her daughter’s forehead.
She died just as they were crossing the plain beyond.
The ground here was covered with cedar driftwood. They could not bury her on this wood-strewn plain, where all seemed rotted debris. Bobbo remembered hearing in Independence that there’d been a flood years back, carrying timber down from the Black Hills. Hadley said that seemed likely. They stood with their hands in their pockets. Inside the wagon, Minerva was keening.
They crossed the cedar plain to the place marked Scotts’ Bluff on their chart, and near the river escarpment they found a patch of level land sparsely covered with browning grass. There were no flowers in abundance, as they’d seen the month before, but Bonnie Sue found growing by the river some wildflowers she could not identify, and she wove these into a garland they placed on Annabel’s head, over the bandage covering her wound. There was no sawed lumber with which to build a coffin. They wrapped her in blankets as though she were a babe in swaddling clothes, and then they lowered her gently into the earth. Hadley spoke over his dead daughter. He did not read from the Bible, he knew the words by heart; nor could he have seen them anyway with his eyes brimming. Minerva stood beside him, clinging tightly to his hand.
“ ‘The harvest is past,’ ” he said, “ ‘the summer is ended, and we are not saved. For the hurt of the daughter of my people am I hurt; I am black; astonishment hath taken hold on me. Is there no balm in Gilead?’ ” he asked softly. “ ‘Is there no physician there? why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered? Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain—’ ” His voice broke. He began crying openly. “ ‘—of the daughter of my people,’ ” he said, and then said, “Amen.”
“Amen,” the others said.
They stood with heads bent as Bobbo shoveled earth into the grave. Then they replaced the browned sod, and drove the wagon back and forth over the grave so that Indians would not find it and dig it up. They camped that night a little way from where they had buried her, not wanting to leave her alone so soon in the wilderness.
In the distance, they could see the snow-covered peaks of the Laramie Mountains.
They reached Fort Laramie on the twentieth day of July.