PASSAGE
The Chronicles of Alastor County
by Matthew C. Crady
ANN STOOD ON the bank of the Platte and thought back to when she had waded into the river’s warm summer waters and washed away the dust of the trail. She tried to remember what it felt like, water running over skin, but it had been too long—the memory was there, but not the feeling. The river ice was clear and Ann peered through it, trying to see what currents ran beneath. She’d spent enough time steaming from one gambling town to another with her father to know that rivers don’t forget, even though humans might. Locked just below the frozen surface was the feeling of bathing in that place so many months ago, where she’d been a different person. Locked and waiting for summer to release it once again.
She headed back to the wagon train and saw Elijah speaking with Avance. He had come back an hour or so after dark the night before and told of how his men had fought bravely and laid low a dozen Indians, including Winter. He told of how Captain Johnson was nowhere to be found and probably tucked tail back to Fort Bridger.
She had told him he was a liar and a coward.
The loss of Martin, Masterson, Roberts, and Crenshaw was felt by their families, but failed to register with the rest of the camp. There wasn’t a soul in the wagon train not hardened against death—it had been part of their days, their lives, for months. But most of the camp still managed to celebrate the news that Avance and his men killed Winter and a band of Blackfoot. They felt as though some minor victory had been won; a retaliation against all the death and injustices that God saw fit to heap on them.
Some of the families had pulled together to present Ann with a small stockpile of food after her safe return from abduction, but she couldn’t accept it, and instead offered it to feast on. Music, fast and sweet, rang through the air. A few couples tried to dance, even with the snow.
When Elijah finished talking to Avance, all the wagon drivers assembled at the head of the column for their instructions. “I have written twenty-five numbers on scraps of paper and put them into this hat. We will each draw for the order in which we shall cross the river. The first wagon will be loaded with firewood and that must build a fire for those that might go in. Wipe your animals down after crossing and they should be fine. Understood?”
Caleb Matthews cleared his throat. “At all the other crossings Captain Johnson crossed first to show us the proper line. Shouldn’t you or C. R. go first, pastor?”
Elijah looked over the gathered men and women. “Children, we are all equal in God’s eyes. He is the true leader of this train, and thus his hand will guide our path. We shall all draw our lots and let the Lord choose for us.”
Ann strained to keep quiet, as it appeared many of the others were. When no one else spoke up, Elijah said “Let us pray.”
“O God Almighty, your humble servants ask for your guidance this day. Help us through this, our own Red Sea, and let us emerge on the other shore tested and true. Have mercy on us sinners and forgive us of our trespasses. In Jesus’ holy name we pray. Amen.”
Ann stood by as Elijah held the hat out to all the drivers in turn. Some walked away with their heads up, others down. In that way, Ann could guess the rough order. Some left to make last-minute preparations. Those who were near the end in crossing order readied themselves on the shore with long poles, rope, and anything made of wood that would float. Of these, there was a glut of empty flour and pickle barrels, ready to toss to those who might spill in. One of the men with a long pole found a thin spot in the ice and broke through.
“Four and a half feet deep,” he shouted over his shoulder. “Fifty or so yards across.”
When all others had drawn, Elijah offered the hat to Avance and then reached in himself. “Twenty-five,” he told Ann without opening the scrap.
Understanding worked its way through her and she glared at her brother. He shrugged. “The Lord has chosen. The last shall be first and the first shall be last.”
Wagons began to sort themselves in order to make the crossing as quick as possible. Everyone, not wanting to sound insensitive by asking, looked for the wagon that would be first. Ann surveyed the area and found a man staring at his hand, his wife holding him tight. They were old, in their sixties, the hard months scraping away at them until the pair seemed little more than hollow shells. Ann recognized them as the Vibbards, a poor Danish couple who spoke little English.
With the wagon order sorted and the firewood loaded, the settlers watched as the couple climbed into the seat of their wagon. They sat straight in the seat, looking ahead at the point of entry. Abbas, the husband, raised his arm high and brought the green strip of sapling they used for a whip down on their ox’s back. The beast, the last of their team, strained until the wheels turned and the wagon was sent in motion. On the animal marched to the bank, down the slope, and then through the ice into the water beneath. The ox balked and Abbas let fly with the sapling until it kicked forward and down into the river.
Ann could see the current now, the churning water underneath the ice. It lapped at the buckboard’s bottom, the splashing water already freezing to the wood sides. They rolled on, water shedding off the exposed spokes like the paddle wheelers that Ann remembered riding with her father and Silas.
The couple passed the river’s midpoint and Ann looked to the opposite shore. She saw that they were veering to the right of the put out. Some of the folks noticed this too and shouted warnings to the couple. They said something to each other and Fayth turned to wave at the onlookers. They don’t understand.
With her hand still in the air, the wagon began to slide, the rear end sinking low. The two clung together as the front bucked upward, lifting the ox from the river. There it hung, a dumb, white hulk glistening in the late morning sun, before the current pushed the wagon over, rolling it into the hidden pool’s depths. Women shrieked. Ann watched the spot where the wagon went under, looking for signs of the Vibbards, but the splashing water had been washed smooth. The polers prodded as far out as they could and found nothing.
Elijah stood at the head of the procession with his arms held high. “We have to keep moving, people. The next wagon still needs to make a fire once across. Bring up anything that’ll burn.”
One by one, drivers came to the number two wagon carrying bed frames, dressers, chests—all wood. Avance and a few of the others went to work with hammers, smashing the furniture apart until what remained were the remnants of once cherished things.
When the work was finished, and the wood stacked in the bed of the wagon, Elijah shook hands with the driver. Ann recognized him as Ed Mauser, the father of the boy who had cried when he couldn’t be baptized the Sunday that she had fled. The boys were seated atop the wood, directly behind their parents. In spite of her hatred for Elijah and his religious righteousness, she said a short prayer for them.
Avance shouted “Keep left!” as the team entered the water.
The crossing seemed like hours, but the oxen finally began the ascent. The bank was steeper than the entrance and the animals were having trouble pulling the wagon from the river. One of the oxen lost its footing and fell beneath the water, causing the other to panic and kick against the weight of its anchor. It heaved left then right trying to get free. The violent rocking caused the front left wheel to break off and the wagon listed before the ox was able to break free of the yoke and climb the bank unencumbered. Water caught the low corner of the wagon and jerked it lower. It was quick—the wife’s going under. Ann watched from the shore as the small dark form of the body slid along under the clear ice. A rope was thrown, and also a barrel, but the rope lay dead on the surface and the barrel skidded to a stop less than thirty feet from shore. Ann pretended she hadn’t been able to make out the wife struggling while she was swept away.
Ed Mauser stood, balanced on the high edge of the seat, and snatched up one of his boys. He grabbed the lowest one, the one half in the water, and held him waist-high like a sack of beans. He cocked his arms back and hurled the boy through the air. Ann watched the boy arc and land hard on the bank. Stiff, the boy crawled up to level ground and lay there, exhausted from clinging to the tipping wagon.
He then grabbed the other child and widened his stance, one foot on the seat, the other on the wheel’s hub. He held the boy like the first and began to swing him back and forth. Up and up the boy swung until it looked like the father’s arms could go no higher on the backswing. Ann watched as Ed bent his knees in preparation to throw. The boy swung forward, dipped low, and then began to climb. Ed pushed with his legs, but the one on the hub slipped through the wheel. He clung to the boy in an attempt to pull him back, but the momentum toppled them both. The clear snap of breaking bone shot across the water as his leg got caught in the spokes. No one uttered a word as the boy tried to climb up his father’s half-submerged, broken body, but the cold current was too great and he let go to follow his mother.
Ann wondered which child had gone in, whether it was the one that hadn’t been baptized, but when she watched the lifeless, frozen body of the other on the far shore, she realized it didn’t matter.
Thus the day passed, wagons crossing the river, sorted into those that would continue their journey and those that wouldn’t. The fire burned high on the other shore, fed by the items from lives the people once knew. More ice had broken away with each successive offering to the Platte until a wide swath of naked river lay before them. Catch lines were tied across the river so that when someone went in, there was at least the question of whether they’d make it or not.
And then it was Ann and Elijah’s turn. Elijah set his Bible in his lap and eased the team into the river. To their right, a line of capsized and broken wagons littered the span of river so that some of those who had gone in were able to latch on and claw their way to safety.
She watched in silence as Elijah swung wide of the wreckage in order to make the other side. The sloshing of the oxen as they plodded through the river turned Ann’s thoughts to the day and its victims. She recalled every person taken by the river, every last glimpse before they went under and were swept away. But worse was that with each person lost, she stood by as the soft comments from Elijah filled her ears. “Called home…the flock is thinned…the Lord has decided.” If they had gone first, perhaps they wouldn’t have made it. The idea overwhelmed her and she knew that it would have been just to die that way. Forfeiting her life to save the train from Elijah was, in her mind, a small price to pay. I could grab him and drag us both in. She was consumed by the notion. There were few things she wanted more right then. But the odds were they’d be saved. Too many precautions were now in place. And he had the map. That, she knew, the other people couldn’t do without.
And there was also Winter.
Their team crawled out on the other side and Ann leapt from the wagon. Sixteen. Sixteen of twenty-five wagons made it. Some with all the passengers, some not. She walked to the water’s edge, saw the drowned beasts—horse and mule and ox. Earlier, some of the men had retrieved Ed Mauser’s iced and dangling body, but there could be no graves dug in the frozen earth, so they released him and his son’s remains into the river so the family could be whole again. All that remained as evidence of them having been alive was an ox and an overturned wagon with blood on the splintered wheel.
Ann wondered what they felt, the ones that went in. Was it painful? Did they go numb with cold the instant body met water? She bent over and undid the laces to her moccasins, and pulled one from her foot, then the other. Into the river she waded, to her knees then waist then chest, and braced against the Mauseres’ wagon. She needed to understand what her brother had done to them. At first, there was a sharp pain like needles all over her body, uncontrollable shaking, then a washing numbness. She tried to return, turning in the frigid muck of the river’s bottom, but found her muscles sluggish and uncoordinated. So this is what they felt.
Her mouth was open and she tried to call for help, but her lungs were slow to respond and expelled only guttural noises in short, panicked bursts. She watched the people on shore, consumed by the fire’s warmth. They clung to one another, the ones who went in the water, naked and dancing against the frozen place. Loved ones wrapped blankets around each other. Elijah circled them, Bible in hand, making proclamations over the din. Ann’s mind slowed and concentration was near impossible. I don’t want to die like this. Help me.
The thought passed and for reason she couldn’t fathom, Elijah turned and looked straight at her. He flung the Bible to the ground, abandoning the tumult and running to the river. Water gave way as he charged in and grabbed Ann, then dragged her to the shore. If anyone at the fire noticed, they didn’t let on. They had their own to attend to.
Elijah carried Ann to the fire’s edge and ripped off her wet clothes. She shook violently, sprawled there white as the snow. He began wrapping her in a wool blanket, but all she could think of was how she wanted Winter to be there. She wanted him to wrap her in fire-warmed skins of elk and bear—to be folded deeper and deeper into the memory of nights they alone owned. So when Elijah knelt behind Ann, his arms locked around her, holding her to the flames, Winter’s taught arms were what she felt across her chest. His soft breath on her neck. And for the briefest of moments, Ann swore she could smell him, that smell of earth and smoldering spruce that she had come to love.
High above them, far from the plain, far from the Platte, Winter and Captain Johnson stood as they had all day, scanning the camp below. They watched, Johnson through his field glass, Winter focused and withdrawn into himself. They watched on, never turning away.
When all was finished and the last person dressed, Johnson straightened to attention and removed his hat as he had so many times before in his career and said a silent prayer for the departed.
He turned to Winter. “I reckon too many went to the sand hills today.”
Winter took one last glance and mounted his horse. “I’ll kill that man,” he vowed to the rocks and trees, to the wilderness he belonged to, because he knew in the end it would find a way to keep him to his word.
