Gone West by Kathleen Karr Read Free Book Online

can handle this one. But cover your head first!”
     
    Too late. He was already sprinting into the rain. With a shrug of her shoulders Maggie waited for Johnny. He came, took one look at her predicament and sent her to deal with the baby.
     
    She’d finished feeding Charlotte and even tucked her back up and still the wagon hadn’t moved. Maggie returned to the weather. The wheels were in worse shape than before.
     
    “Guess I’ll have to unyoke my oxen and bring them back to help haul. We’ve already been passed up by just about the whole train.”
     
    Just then a final wagon ponderously caught up with them, hesitated, and stopped. Sam Thayer appeared through the downpour.
     
    “Trouble?”
     
    Johnny brightened. “Usually comes swifter than the things we desire. Can’t get loose of the muck. I was just going to fetch my team and haul them over.”
     
    “Let me get my extra pair. They’re fresher.”
     
    “Much obliged, Sam.”
     
    Maggie stayed to watch the new team hooked up, to hear the unexpected oaths coming from the lips of both men as they lunged with the animals. Even Johnny’s vocabulary had found new directions in which to expand. Maggie shook her head, and honed in on a patch of wild onions.
     
    The last of the hoarded wood was sacrificed to get the potbellied stove fired again that night. It was still raining hard, and if they didn’t get dried out now, the Stuart family would be sick soon, like the others. Maggie was not about to let that happen. She pitied every woman on the train without a stove. Each would be struggling over faltering fires, or just giving up and serving another cold meal.
     
    Maggie got soup going, rich with several pounds of the wild onions she’d gathered. With the broth simmering at last, she turned to Johnny.
     
    “I’m going to take the umbrella and check on Jubal. Do you think we could cram Sam Thayer in here if I offered him some soup? It must be hard for him to have to do for himself without a woman. And he did help us this afternoon.”
     
    Johnny lit up. “Did you see him just lift the whole wheel towards the end? The man has no idea of his strength. He saved me hours.”
     
    “Then it’s all right,” Maggie smiled. “Jamie, would you like a walk? Pick a handful of apricots and prunes for Jubal. It might help to cheer him.”
     
    Jamie tripped over himself and most of their belongings in his enthusiasm. He’d been too long cooped up. “Can I quote some of my poems on the way, Ma?”
     
    “Surely. Come now, before Charlotte wakes and looks for me.”
     
    Outside the wagon, Jamie raised his face to the downpour, glorying in it. “One of my poems was about worse weather than this, Ma:
     
“It snows!” cries the Widow, “O God!” and her sighs
     
Have stifled the voice of her prayer . . .
     
    Maggie cast a sharp glance in his direction. “Are you sure that was in McGuffey’s , Jamie? And get your head under this umbrella. Now!”
     
    “Sure was, Ma.” He lingered outside her shelter long enough to catch a few drops of the rain on his tongue. “Horrifying it was, with ten feet of snow pilin’ up around the widow’s house, and no food to be had. But the Lord sent neighbors to check on her before she had to eat her cat~”
     
    “Jamie!” Maggie was still rooted in the downpour outside their book wagon. “ McGuffey’s never suggested~”
     
    “Nope. But it made sense to me, even though it was a mighty skinny cat, too. Think we’ll ever see that much snow, Ma? I mean, if it were just a little bit colder right now, this rain could make ten feet of snow easy, couldn’t it?”
     
    Where did boys find their imaginations? “Your bedtime prayers tonight will include a special message to the Lord that we never see such snows, Jamie. At least not until we’re safely in Oregon.”
     
    “It was only an interesting idea, Ma~”
     
    Maggie was beginning to get very wet. She remembered her errand. “Come along, Jamie. We’ll have to