Celia Hayes – The Accidental Texan

(Yes, getting close to completing this YA novel – I plan to have it released in eBook and in print in time for Christmas. By Thanksgiving, anyway.)

The Kettering party of 1846  is traveling up the Truckee River, approaching the final mountain pass. It is autumn, and they have every chance of getting over the mountain pass before winter sets in. Other parties on the trail have not been so fortunate…)

So we set off, following the river farther and farther up into the hills, with the blue line of the mountains ever clearer every day. I think that we had been a week or more at it, when we came to a place where the hills gave way to a gentle, shallow valley. Rolling meadows of late-summer grass reminded me of those first days on the trail. The oxen were happy enough to spend a day of it, grazing at leisure on another Sunday.

Ma had Henry, Shiboone and I with the Herlihy brothers dipping buckets of water from the river, that Sunday afternoon after Deacon Zollicoffer held Sunday services. She and Mrs. Herlihy wanted do laundry. Mr. Herlihy had built up a good fire for us, with all of our kettles and pots heating water for the washtubs. Shiboone had just hoisted up a brim-full bucket, when she looked down the worn and rutted trail east of our camp.

“Oh, look – Sally – there’s a fellow on a poor shabby horse! It looks as though he is an advance scout for another company! Won’t that be a fine thing?”

“It might be!” I exclaimed, for though the man was at a good distance, I thought that he might be one that I recognized. I thought it was Ginny’s father, Mr. Reed, for his fine elegant horse, fine overcoat and flat-brimmed beaver – all them, horse, man and clothing battered, dusty and sadly worn from the hardships of travel. Still, I was inexpressibly happy at recognizing him, for then my friend Ginny and her little sister Patty and the rest of their company couldn’t possibly be far behind.

I couldn’t abandon Ma and Mrs. Herlihy and the pile of laundry to indulge my own curiosity, but I looked over my shoulder often enough, as we carried water, stirred and scrubbed. Mr. Reed – and it was him, no doubt in my mind – spoke first to Hansel, one of the German boys, who was cutting firewood by the wagon circle. I saw Hansel point toward our wagon, and Pa, who was conferring at our campfire with Mr. Herlihy, Mr. Glennie and Choctaw Joe. Henry Steitler was there too, as he most usually was when we had leisure for a day. Then Mr. Reed slid down from his horse, which Hansel led away. I thought at first Hansel was going to turn the horse unsaddled into the corral made from the wagon circle, all with the long wagon tongues chained to the wheel of the next wagon. Instead, Hansel rubbed the horses legs, and the place on his back where the saddle and blanket had been … and then put the saddle back on the horse!

That was curious, I thought. Did it mean that Mr. Reed would ride back down the trail to rejoin his own party? I guessed that it must mean they were a far bit behind. Still, I was so very happy, thinking their company would soon catch up to us and that I would see Ginny soon.

Mr. Reed spoke to Pa – spoke rather long, and that was when I sensed that something was not right. Pa’s expression was somber and worried. I could see the other men’s faces as well: Mr. Herlihy scowled, Mr. Glennie looked shocked … and Choctaw Joe was shaking his head, almost as if he had been confirmed in his own sad judgement.

But I could not walk away from helping Ma and the other women to hear what Mr. Reed was telling Pa and the others. I thought that I might be able to speak with Mr. Reed – but he was gone again within the hour – his horse rubbed down and saddled again, and it looked like he had been given a tow-sack of provisions.

I heard Pa tell him, “Goodspeed and good luck to you, James – we’ll look for your family, and if we can aid them in any way, be assured that we will!”

Then Mr. Reed was gone, riding up the trail towards the mountains, and Shiboone commented, “Holy Mary, he rides as if the very hellhounds are after him! I wonder what has happened now?”

And so did I wonder too, but I had to wait until that night to hear the full tale. All Pa would say at supper, when I asked, was, “Mr. Reed has ridden ahead to implore aid from Mr. Sutter, as his family and his friends are in dire need of supplies. It turned out that Mr. Hasting’s route was much more difficult than had been advertised. Their party is far behind – very far behind.”

“Ginny – are she and Patty all right?” I was shocked enough to speak out of turn, interrupting Pa and Choctaw Joe and Ma.

“Don’t interrupt the grownups, Sally,” Ma chided men. She sounded so serious and stern that I knew better than to ask any more.

“The girls are fine,” Pa replied, “They are with Mrs. Reed, and the hired folk, and their good friends. There isn’t anything to worry over, Sugar-plum.”

But Pa still looked somber, and Ma frowned in my direction when I opened my mouth to ask another question, but Henry Steitler also shook his head at me. I closed my mouth. Perhaps Henry would tell Jon and I later what it meant, that Mr. Reed went hurrying up the trail, without even stopping for the night. Not for the first time, I envied Henry for being only a year or so older but being an orphan and the owner of a wagon … so it was only a cart, cobbled out of the wreck of his father’s wagon – but when it came to trail business Henry counted as a grown-up, and not a child. He knew what was going on, for all of that, and I didn’t, just because I was a girl and younger, and that simply was not fair!

Instead, I kept pinching myself when we went to bed, so that I could stay awake and listen to Pa tell Ma what Mr. Reed had related to him.

“It was bad, Sue,” Pa said, his voice low and serious. “They hardly had an organized company when Reed left them …”  and then Pa’s voice went so quiet that I couldn’t hear what he was saying at all, just bits and snatches that I couldn’t make any sense out of. “Hastings will have a mortal lot to answer for to the Almighty!” Pa said then, and his voice went soft again.

Well, Mr.  Clyman and Mr. Greenwood had not said much good about Mr. Hastings’ shortcut. But what Pa said next riveted my attention. “… threw him out for committing a murder!”

“Oh, my God!” Ma exclaimed in horror. And her voice went even lower. They spoke in whispers; I couldn’t hear anything meaningful after that. I pulled the covers over my head and shivered in the dark until I fell asleep.

Before I did sleep, I resolved absolutely that I would find out what had happened with the Reed company – Poor Mrs. Reed with her sick headaches, feisty, fearless Ginny, little Patty and their blind Granny Keyes – all alone now, somewhere behind us on the desolate difficult trail to California.  In the morning, I would talk to Henry Steitler – the minute that I could corner him and speak to him privately.

(There has been a dreadful accident with one of the wagons in the Kettering company.)

It was a sad camp, on the banks of the Green, that evening, and for the several days following. We had bury Mr. Steitler, of course, and salvage what could be saved from his wagon. Two of his oxen had broken legs or their ribs stove in – they had to be dispatched and butchered on the spot, for the meat left on them. That would leave only a single yoke – bruised and very unhappy with their lot in life, but otherwise whole and fit to work. Mr. Herlihy came and talked to Pa, as Mr. Martindale and the other men took a hand with taking the heavier things from the wreck. Henry, white-faced and silent, was helping too, in a half-hearted way. He still looked stunned, disbelieving, as if he had been walloped over the head himself. He didn’t talk much, but as I didn’t know what I might say to him that would be comforting, that didn’t bother me.

“I can’t repair the wheels,” Mr. Herlihy said, regretfully. “The one is smashed to kindling, and the other is not much better. What I have in mind is to cut the wagon down to a cart – what can’t be carried in it … well, we can all pitch in, put some small things of yours in our wagons. What do you say to that, young Henry?”

Henry nodded wordlessly, his eyes fixed on the ground, and Mr. Herlihy continued, sounding if he were making himself sound cheerful. “It wouldn’t take more than a day or so – a good sound little cart! Two shakes of a lambs’ tail, I promise ye!”

Henry just nodded again, and Pa said. “We’ll look after you, lad – just as your father would have wanted. We’ll get to California, all in a company, I promise you that.”

Henry just nodded again. I felt so sorry for him again that my own throat hurt. Jon and I, with the Herlihy boys and Shiboone were combing the hillside below where the wagon had smashed, picking up small things that might have fallen from the wagon, or been thrown out. A barrel of flour had burst, and scattered the contents over the dirt – no, that was mostly ruined. I was collecting coffee beans one by one from a sack which had burst. Ma thought the coffee might be salvaged. Mrs. Herlihy and Shiboone were shaking dirt out of bedding, a bundle of which had rolled down the hill nearly to the water’s edge. Ma found Mr. Steitler’s flute, still fortunately in the padded case, under a sage bush, and Jon had already found Mr. Steitler’s sketchbook, the cover bent and some of the blank pages creased and dirtied.

Deacon Zollicoffer was going to preach the funeral sermon for burying his father. We would not be able to mark his grave. As Choctaw Joe confessed with deep regret,

“Them Injuns is powerful curious – they spot a place that looks like we cached something in the ground, they’re liable to dig it up, just to see if it was something valuable. Best just settle that poor man in the ground, and then pasture the critters there, so they trample up the ground real good. Now, boy,” he added to Henry. “I’ll make  note  of the bearings, and mark on a map of this place, ezactly where we planted your daddy. Someday, mebbe you can come back here, and mark it proper.”

Pa and Choctaw Joe found a level place, well above flood level of the river. Choctaw Joe took a sighting on a gnarled and weathered half-dead cottonwood tree, and allowed as that would mark the place as best as could be.

I thought that it would be a funeral like for Granny Elizabeth, or for little Cousin Matty – but observances  to bury Mr. Steitler wasn’t anything like that. It was all outside, on the hillside in the bright morning under a wide blue sky freckled with white clouds, birds singing, and the cottonwood leaves whispering secrets to each other in the breeze. The river was at our feet, white where the water rushed around the rocks, and there wasn’t anyone wearing black. Just our ordinary clothes. Deacon Zollicoffer stood up in front of us, his arms clasping his heavy old Bible, and he didn’t say any of the usual funeral words or preach a long service. Instead, he said that he was going to share some comfort from a saint back during medieval times, whom he said was called ‘The Venerable Bead” which brought such a funny picture to my mind that I nearly laughed out loud in spite of it being a funeral.

Deacon Zollicoffer stood there, by the open grave and Mr. Steitler’s coffin already in it. Deacon Zollicoffer held his Bible in his arms, the breeze blowing his white hair and the tails of his clawhammer coat this way and that. He spoke as if he was talking ordinary to us, not preaching from a great height like Grandfather Reverend.

“My dear brothers and sisters! We seem to give them back to you, O God, who gave them first to us – our dear ones! Yet as you did not lose them in giving, so we do not lose them by their return to the shelter of your arms. Not as the world gives do you give! What you give to us, you do not take away. For what is yours is also ours. We are yours and life is eternal. Love is immortal and lasts forever! Death is only a horizon, and that is a horizon which is only limited by our own sight!” Deacon Zollicoffer paused for a long moment, and I was a bit relieved. I couldn’t see where a long oration would have helped Mr. Steitler, and in any case, everyone had other things to do than sit around listening to a long sermon. Deacon Zollicoffer was done, it seemed. He added, “In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, we commend the body of our brother, Jacob Heinrich Steitler to the ground, but his soul returns to your tender and loving care. Amen!”

The Herlihys and Shiboone all made a sign of the cross at those words, and the German boys sang a gloomy hymn in their language. It sounded like they couldn’t recall most of the words of the last verses. Deacon Zollicoffer nodded – that was it; the signal for Pa and Choctaw Joe to begin filling in the grave. Henry stood by the side as they worked, still looking pole axed. Mr. Herlihy had managed to cobble together a coffin from the broken scraps of the Steitler wagon box, so at least there some decency involved. I was sorry for there not being a proper grave marker. How would anyone ever know where to leave flowers?

At twilight that evening, I saw Henry sitting there, under the half-dead cottonwood – just sitting and looking out to the west, where the sun was setting in a blaze of orange, gold and purple. I also saw Jon walking up to him – Jon had Mr. Steitler’s sketchbook that we had found in his little hand.

I was some little distance from them, so I couldn’t hear what, if anything that my brother said to Henry Steitler. But I could see that Henry took the notebook, reverently smoothing the pages, and smiling at Jon. They sat together, quietly and side by side for a long time, the bigger and the little one, a pair of indistinct shadows against the darkening sky, until Ma called them for supper.