"Just the same I was thinking about you. Doggone it, Emma, I didn't have
a very good life before I met you. Oh, I don't mean it that way at all.
I had everything most other people did, but it just seemed that I was
lost. There was nobody at all I could tell things to, or share with, and
the first day I saw you I knew I could never leave."
She said, "Oh, but you _did_ leave, running out of that store like a
streak, with the maple syrup jug in your hand!"
They laughed heartily, for the sheer joy of laughing, and back in the
wagon the children laughed too. But they had not kept their voices low
enough. Barbara had heard, and she knelt staring dreamily out of the
open flaps. All behind her was forever behind, and she knew that.
What--and who--would lie ahead? Emma, who knew her daughter, was right.
Barbara's spirit had winged past the slow-moving mules and taken her to
Oregon long before the rest would ever get there.
Despite the mud, Tad had not forsworn his announced intention of walking
every inch of the way to Oregon. He hadn't had a bad time because of his
weight; places where the wagon bogged down, he could skip over. Where
the Trail was too muddy, Tad sought the knolls and rises on one side or
the other and often these were short cuts. Now, the faithful Mike close
beside him, he was waving from a knoll about a hundred yards ahead and
his voice carried back.
"Hey, Pa!"
"Yes?"
"Come on! Look!"
"I'm coming! Hang on to your shirt!"
He drove to the foot of the knoll, looked in the direction Tad
indicated, and knit his brows in wonder. Three hundred yards farther on,
almost squarely in the center of the Trail, was another wagon. It was
oddly still and only half real, a ghost that haunted the Trail. Its once
taut canvas cover sagged, and the back flaps gaped emptily. Emma turned
puzzled eyes on Joe.
"What do you think it is?"
"I don't know. Let's drive down and see."
As he drew nearer he knew that, though doubtless this wagon had once had
a driver, it contained no people at all now. Tad, racing toward it,
stopped uncertainly and waited while Mike bristled beside him. The
youngster had been halted by sight of the oxen that had once drawn this
wagon, but that now lay dead in their yokes. Joe stopped the mules,
handed the reins to Emma, and walked slowly toward the wagon. His
courage restored by his father's presence, Tad kept pace with him. Joe
looked at the oxen, dead too long to have any hope of discovering what
had killed them. He swung up to look into the wagon and, as he had
expected, found it empty.
"What do you think happened?" Tad asked in awed tones.
"I don't know."
"Indians?"
"Could be."
"Shucks!"
"What's the matter?"
"Why couldn't they have waited until we came along?"
"Don't talk foolish!" Joe ordered sternly. "Besides, if it was Indians,
they'd have taken the wagon too."
"Unless," Tad pointed out, "they were driven away by people shooting
from other wagons."
"That could be too, and maybe some fool driver just drove his oxen to
death. Anyhow, we'd better be moving."
"My guess is sick or poisoned oxen," he explained to Emma when he got
back on the seat and took the reins. "There aren't any bullet holes in
the wagon cover."
"Oh, I do hope that whoever was in there is all right!"
"They probably are," Joe reassured her. "Probably picked up by another
wagon."
They drove on, sobered by this evidence of certain accident, and
possible tragedy, along the Oregon Trail. The hard trail continued; rain
country was definitely behind. But a cold north wind still blew and Joe
urged on the mules. There was no summer weather behind that wind and he
had no desire to be caught out here when snow fell. For a moment they
rode in silence, and it seemed that there was something alien among
them. Even the children were still, and Emma turned to Joe, vaguely
puzzled.
"Do you hear anything?"
"By gosh, I thought I did."
"I too."
There was a distant, muted throbbing that came to them in discordant
tempo, like a wind that blows in blasts instead of with steady force.
But the wind around the wagon was still steady and still from the
north. Joe twisted uneasily on the wagon seat, for it seemed to him that
there was much he should know about this that he did not know. He had a
sense of danger, which was silly, for no danger threatened. The mules
bobbed uneasy heads.
"Hey, Pa!"
Tad's voice was desperate and wild. Running hard, the youngster appeared
on a near-by knoll. Joe stopped the team and waited, while fear's cold
fingers caressed his spine. Tad's jacket was open, his face
sweat-streaked, and he had run so far and so fast that he gasped for
breath.
"My gosh!" he yelled. "Must be a million of 'em!"
"A million what?"
"Buffalo!" Tad gasped. "And they're headin' this way!"
"Get in quick!"
"How about Mike?"
Joe leaped from the wagon, cradled the dog in his arms, handed him up to
Emma, and helped his exhausted son. He cracked the bull whip over both
mules and gave them free rein.
"Hi-eee! Get up there!"
The mules sprang forward, jerking their traces tight, and the whip
cracked over them again. They broke into a wild gallop while the wagon
jolted over some unseen obstacle. Joe braced his feet and shouted to
Emma,
"Get in back!"
She slid over the seat into the wagon box, and crouched down, drawing
the children close to her while Joe cracked his whip again. He breathed
a silent prayer as he did so. Though he knew nothing about buffalo
stampedes, he had seen cattle run wild. Surely this must be worse.
Then the mules needed no whipping, for the first of the buffalo were in
sight. Up a knoll they surged, and down the other side. Tightly packed,
those in front could not have turned if they would, for those in back
forced them on. A flowing, brown sea of beasts, the noise of their hoofs
drowned all other noises and the very earth seemed to shake.
The mules were racing for their lives now, and they knew it. Curbing
them not at all and letting them choose their own course, Joe risked one
sidewise glance at the stampeding herd. There were a vast number of
buffalo, Joe could not even guess how many, and they were going to cross
the Oregon Trail. Above the thunder of their hoofs Joe heard Tad's
scream,
"Pa!"
"What?" Joe roared back.
"Can I use the rifle?"
"Yes!"
Some great and terrible thing, some mighty force, bumped the wagon and
sent it slewing sidewise. Joe slanted the reins forward, as though by so
doing he might give the mules more speed, and willed wings onto their
hoofs. He heard the rifle's spiteful crack. Then the mules slowed of
their own accord and he knew they were safe, but by a very narrow
margin. The wagon had actually been bumped by one of the running
buffalo. Joe drew the panting mules to a halt and looked back to see the
great herd still running.
"Got one!" Tad gloated. "Got one and there it lays!"
"You were a long time shooting," Joe complained.
"Shucks, didn't want to shoot one out of the middle. The rest would have
pounded it to bits. I wanted to get one of the rear-most so we'd have
somethin' to eat."
Joe turned to look at his son with surprise and admiration. "That was
right good thinking!"
Pale and shaken, Emma took her place on the seat beside Joe. Barbara
wiped her face with a handkerchief. Too young to appreciate the danger
they had avoided, the younger children stood with open mouths, staring
at the fleeing buffalo. Joe squeezed Emma's hand.
"What on earth could have brought that on?" she gasped.
"I don't know. Maybe hunters started the herd and it just didn't stop."
"How terribly close!"
"Too close!"