Gone West Read Free Page B

things on this earth, Ma-gee. We must never starve reading His signs.”
     
    Maggie was beginning to understand. “I think our God is the same, Flower Blossom. We just give Him different names.”
     
    There was comfort in this shared understanding, as there was comfort in learning the Indian ways of making pemmican for travelling food. Maggie was willing to learn any new ways that would keep her family from starving on the great journey coming closer each day.
     
    While Maggie was studying with Flower Blossom, Johnny was finishing the last chores necessary for the trip. He’d earned enough for supplies and left his job for the final work of waterproofing wagons and organizing and reorganizing the contents that must see them safely across two thousand miles. He drew steadily more excited as the leaving approached, chafing for the road, chafing for new adventure.
     
    Maggie studied him with love and hope, but also with a touch of exasperation. Johnny. He’d always been a dreamer, his head in the clouds or a book. Would this trip get the wanderlust out of his soul at last? Others readying to leave Independence spoke of the journey as their `Manifest Destiny’~spreading out America to where it belonged. Many of the white-tops even had that phrase painted on their sides, others the slogan “54’ 40 or Fight!”. Some ignored the politics completely and just wanted fresh new lands to farm.
     
    But Johnny was doing it for the pleasure of the trip itself. It was that pure and simple true. Not that he’d ever admit as much. His precious Ramage press and the opportunity it gave him for work when they reached Oregon was just an excuse: the final excuse to justify the two thousand miles.
     
    “Meg,” he’d say, “Meg, there are new lands out there, places I’ve read about, dreamed about. I can’t rest till I’ve seen them.”
     
    Her Johnny would probably never rest. She might have a real house for a while once they made it to the Oregon country~a snug little cabin like this one they were fixing to leave~but could it ever be permanent? Would Johnny search for other horizons, farther north? Surely he couldn’t go farther west. Farther west from Oregon meant only the vast watery oceans, and he wasn’t a sailor. Johnny liked land beneath his feet, as long as it wasn’t his own.
     
    Maggie had married a gypsy. But what a gypsy! Lean and muscled, with that constant light dancing in his eyes, and a sharp mind and loving heart. Maggie knew it mattered not where he lead her. She would follow him to the ends of the earth, then up to heaven when the world got too small.
     
    When the time came for leaving with the wagon train Johnny had signed them on, it was still hard.
     
    Maggie had spent the final night in their little cabin sleepless, praying for her family long since left behind in Ohio. Praying for friends made along the way. Praying for the Indians she’d come to love. But mostly she prayed for the deliverance of her own small family. She joined the train in the morning with dry eyes, but knew her heart wasn’t leaping like her Johnny’s was.
     

TWO
     
    A hungry wail jarred Maggie’s ears. She gave a shout, but continued walking next to the oxen, skirts tucked up against the pernicious mud that caked her boots and legs beyond. The mud caked everything several days out from Independence on the Oregon Trail.
     
    “Jam-ie!”
     
    The boy came running back from ahead. He was the only one the mud never seemed to slow.
     
    “Yes, Ma?”
     
    “See to the team for a little, son. I’ve got to feed Charlotte.”
     
    “Sure thing, Ma.”
     
    He snatched the rawhide whip from her hand eagerly, cracking it a few times in glee. Maggie had to smile. It was almost longer than he was. Still smiling, she adjusted the straps of the sling holding baby Charlotte to her back, Indian fashion. Waiting another moment next to the slowly revolving wheels to get her timing right, Maggie finally sprang up to the wagon seat