The Quilt Walk by Sandra Dallas Read Free Book Online Page A

and Pa said that with all the wagons, the crossing could take the entire day. Our wagon master had already hired a guide, a man who was called Buttermilk John. He’d crossed the plains a dozen times before, and he would be our scout. He said he’d wake us up at dawn so we could get an early start. We’d stop at noon— nooning , he called it—then camp for the night when he found the right spot. Pa and the others would take turns being guards.
    Buttermilk John looked like an Indian. He was dressed in a buckskin suit and moccasins, and his long hair was tied back with a strip of indigo calico. Pa said Buttermilk John’s looks didn’t matter. He was a good man who would get us through safely to Colorado Territory.
    “Ye’ve got quite a load, old son,” Buttermilk John told Pa, when he inspected our wagon at the river. “I hope you don’t sink the ferry.”
    “Thomas knows best,” Mother said.
    “He was just joking,” Pa told her.
    Ma asked, “Where should Emmy Blue ride, beside the wagon or on the seat with us?”
    “On the seat, high up, where she can see.”
    The Missouri was filled with ferries taking across prairie schooners and men on horseback. There were also dugouts, canoes manned by Indians. We’d seen the Indians racing their horses back and forth along the river when we were camped. Now they seemed to want to cross with us, and they pushed their boats alongside the ferries.
    These Indians weren’t like the family of beggars we’d seen in St. Joseph. They were shirtless or else wore faded calico tops and had feathers and bits of bright cloth woven into their hair. They hailed us, begging for “beeskit, tobac, ko-fee.” They offered to row some of our load to the far side, but Pa said he wasn’t about to transfer anything in the middle of the Missouri River.
    Ma held so tightly to the wagon seat that her knuckles lost their color, and I remembered that she couldn’t swim. I worried that if the wagon tipped over, she’d be lost in the brown river, maybe kicked by the oxen, who were churning the muddy water. Then I remembered I couldn’t swim either, and I grabbed hold of the seat as I looked into the water that was swirling and foaming from all the traffic. The river was as busy as downtown Quincy on Saturdays.
    The river current was strong, and our ferry drifted downstream. Pa said he wasn’t worried. He told us it mattered more that we got across the river than where we ended up. The ferry landed, and Pa jumped out of the wagon and gathered the oxen, which had swum across beside us. Then he went back to the river to look for Uncle Will, but he couldn’t see him. “We’ll go on to the gathering place. He’ll likely be there,” Pa said.
    Pa helped Ma and me down from the wagon, and we shook our skirts because they had gotten wet. We started to walk, but even though we had hemmed our dresses above our boot tops, the fabric was wet and dragged in the dirt.
    “We’d best ride until we dry out, or our clothes will be covered with mud,” Ma said. So we climbed back onto the wagon and spread out our skirts to let the sun warm them.
    We headed up the river to where the rest of the wagon train was gathering and finally found Uncle Will and Aunt Catherine. “Thank the Lord you’re all right, Meggie,” Aunt Catherine said. “I got to thinking, what if you were lost? I couldn’t bear it.” She lowered her voice. “I thank God you are with me, you and Emmy Blue. However could I go to Colorado Territory without you?”
    “Or we you,” Ma replied.
    Buttermilk John had crossed the river and told everyone to keep on going. “We won’t camp on the river for fear of ’quitoes. They’re big as horseflies,” he said. So we followed the other wagons a mile or two farther on, to a meadow. Those who’d crossed before us had already unpacked their wagons and spread their things on the ground to dry, because even the best wagons had taken on a little water.
    “Ye made it did ye, Hatchett?”