“Why, of course I will, Virginia,” she said. “Where shall I begin?”
“At the very beginning,” suggested Carver and Jack together. “We want it all, please.”
“I’m glad William put marigolds on the table,” Aunt Deborah began. “They make it easy for me to get started. They take me back fifty years ago to the day before I was married back in Iowa. Robert came up that evening, and saw me with a brown dress on and marigolds at my waist. ‘Wear them to-morrow, Deborah,’ says he. ‘They’re so bright and sunny and a good omen. You see, we’re going to need sunshine on our wedding journey.’ So the next day, when I was married, I wore some marigolds against my white dress. Some folks thought ’twas an awful queer thing to do. They said roses would have been much more weddingy, but Robert and I knew—and it didn’t matter about other folks. 117
“The very next day we started for our new home across the plains. That was to be our wedding journey. ’Twas in July, 1864. We went to Council Bluffs to meet the others of our train. That was just a small town then. In about three days they’d all collected together, ready to start. We didn’t have so large a party as some. There were about seventy-five wagons in all, and two hundred persons, counting the children.
“I’ll never forget how I felt when I saw the last house go out of sight. I was sitting in the back of our wagon—we were near the end of the train that day—and Robert was ahead driving the oxen. But I guess he knew how I was feeling, for he came back and comforted me. There was comfort, too, in the way other folks besides me were feeling. There wasn’t many dry eyes on the day we swung into the plains, and yet we wouldn’t have turned back—no, not for worlds!”
Aunt Deborah paused now and then for the eager questions which her interested listeners asked. Yes, she told them, the wagons were great, white-covered prairie schooners—real houses 118 on wheels. Yes, the oxen were powerfully slow, but good, kind beasts. No, they were not all. There were mules in the train and a few horses. Most of those were ridden by scouts—men who received their food and bed for giving protection against the Indians. Yes, there were small children and tiny babies—whole families seeking new homes in this great land. Two babies were born on the journey. One lived to reach Montana and to grow into a strong, stout man; the other, a little girl, died on the way, and was buried somewhere in Nebraska.
“Yes, there were many hard things like that,” she said, “but we expected sadness and trouble and sorrow when we started out. We were not the first who had crossed the plains. There were pleasures, too. Nights when we stopped to camp there was a whole village of us. The men placed the wagons in a great circle, and within the circle was our fire and supper. We forgot to be lonely when the stars came out and looked down upon us—the only human things for miles around. We told stories and visited one another’s wagons, and were thankful to 119 be together. Friends were made then—real friends that always stuck!”
“Indians?” she asked in response to Jack’s interested questions. “Oh, yes, we found plenty of those to our sorrow! The first real hostile ones we met in Nebraska, six weeks after we started. Two days before they came I’d somehow felt as though we were having too smooth sailing for pioneers. One morning four of our men took horses and rode out searching for water. We never saw three of them again. At noon the only one left came riding up, half-dead from exhaustion and from wounds which the Indians had given him. He gave the alarm and soon we were ready for them, our wagons in a circle, and every man armed. Some women, too.” Aunt Deborah’s head rose proudly. “I shot my first shot that day, and I killed an Indian. Robert was proud of me that night!”
So the journey went on, she told them. The long, hot days of mid-summer on the plains shortened into the cooler ones of September and October. All were wearying, of course, but few actually dangerous. The attacks from Indians were rare. They seemed 120 to have learned that more could be gained by friendly bartering. By October the train had left the plains and was going higher into the mountains. The air grew more exhilarating. There was less sickness in the village on wheels. One October morning they found a light covering of snow.
“I can’t tell you how that snow made me feel,” said Aunt Deborah. “It made me afraid somehow. I thought of the days I must stay alone that coming winter while Robert was away. But my fears went later in the day when the sun once more made the land like summer.