Boone's Lick

"Well, Bill, at least you got a horse," Aunt Rosie said. "I guess you can just ride off yourself, if you're so lonesome."

17 I DOUBT we'll ever see that Indian again," Uncle Seth said, when we were a mile or two up the north road.

Nobody answered him.

"He may have fooled Bill Hickok but he didn't fool me," he went on. "I suspect that story about the boat burning, too. That boat was floating on water--they could have just splashed water on it, if it was afire. For all we know this Charlie Seven Days could have massacred the boatmen--

that boat's probably drifting down toward St. Louis now, with everybody on it scalped."

"I didn't see a knife," Aunt Rosie said.

"Oh, an Indian's always got a knife about him somewhere," Uncle Seth said. "Mary Margaret, I wish you'd let me drive these mules."

Ma wouldn't, though. She just ignored Uncle Seth, and when Granpa Crackenthorpe tried to get her to stop the wagon under a shade tree for a few minutes, so he could nap without being jostled, she ignored him too.

"We'll never get to Wyoming if we stop all the time," she said. "What's the matter with you, G.T.?"

He had been looking down in the mouth all day--I think leaving home had upset him.

"He's homesick, the oaf!" Neva said.

G.T. tried to slug her--they tussled for a while. G.T. was having to sniff back tears.

"I didn't know you were such a homebody, G.T.," Aunt Rosie said.

"Didn't neither," G.T. said, still sniffing.

"Well, if I ain't even go

He jumped down, unhitched his gray mare, and rode off.

"You're too rough on Seth," Aunt Rosie said, to Ma.

58

"Think so? I don't," Ma said.

Actually I agreed with Aunt Rosie. Ma was real short-tempered with Uncle Seth--we all noticed it.

"I hope Seth comes back, but I don't know why he would, the way you treat him," Granpa said. "A brother-in-law will only put up with so much at the hands of a woman."

We left the docks in Boone's Lick not long after sunup, but the sun just kept on climbing. Soon it was right overhead. Aunt Rosie handed Marcy to Ma, who nursed her while we were clipping along-- not fast, of course, but steady.

"When do the rest of us get to eat?" G.T. asked-- he was still looking low.

"I'll feed you," Aunt Rosie said, since Ma had her hands full with the mules and the baby. A little horse meat jerky and a spud was all we got.

By then Uncle Seth had been gone three hours and there was no sign of him. The north road passed some pretty heavy woods, a fact which made G.T. nervous.

"There could be a whole crowd of bears in woods that thick," he commented. He was squeezing his rifle hard, as if it were a live thing that might slip away.

I didn't care for thick woods either, though it was bandits I mostly worried about. Several people had been robbed on the Glasgow road--if some of the Millers came at us I didn't know what I would do. Mule travel was monotonous, though. Despite his need not to be jostled when he slept, Granpa Crackenthorpe was sound asleep, snoring his scratchy snore. Aunt Rosie was nodding too. Neva crawled up by Ma, who let her drive the team for a mile or two, while she nursed the baby a second time. That struck me as unfair.

"I guess I can drive a team," I said, to remind them that I was still the oldest boy.

"I know that, but right now I'm training your sister," Ma said. "You're the lookout--I'm counting on you to warn me if you see anything out of the ordinary."

Ma had barely finished appointing me lookout when I saw something pretty out of the ordinary: a large man with a frizzy beard nearly down to his waist was sitting on a stump by the road. He was dressed in a brown robe, like priests wear, and was trying to get a sticker or something out of one foot. So far as I could tell he was barefooted--I didn't see any shoes. In fact I didn't see any kind of satchel or bag anywhere or anything: the man was just carrying himself. He wasn't quite as old as Granpa, but he wasn't young either.

"I wouldn't want to box that old priest," G.T. said. "He's big."

59

I was hoping Ma would clip on by, in case the man was a bandit disguised as a priest, but Ma didn't seem worried about that possibility. She stopped the wagon.

"Are you injured, Father?" she asked.

"Tacks," the priest said. "Some careless soul has spilled tacks in the public road and I stepped right in them. Is that Hubert Crackenthorpe sitting there snoring? I have not seen Hubert since the troubles on the Bad Axe River, which occurred thirty-four years ago last month. I was young then. I had been ministering to the Sauks, but after the massacre there were not many Sauks left to minister to. I had just come from France and spoke little English. In fact I mastered Sauk and a little loway before I ever learned English. My great-grandfather invented the algebra, although he didn't get the credit."

He stood up and carefully put four or five tacks in a pocket of his robe-

-the tacks he had taken out of his foot seemed to be his only equipment.

"We're on our way to Glasgow to look for a boat," Ma said. "You're welcome to get in and ride, since you've hurt your foot. Pa will be glad to see an old friend, when he wakes up."

The priest looked up the north road toward Glasgow before accepting Ma's offer.

"I have taken a vow to walk the earth, but I guess a wagon seat is not too far above the earth," he said. He was so big that when he hoisted himself up, the whole wagon tipped.

"I can jump down if I see a soul that needs ministering to," he said.

The solemn way he said it tickled Aunt Rosie, who laughed.

"If all you're looking for is souls that need mending you don't have to jump down," she said. "There are several right here in this wagon that could use a little mending."

"Oh my Lord, it's Pere Villy!" Granpa said--he had just woke up.

The priest reached back a big hand and gave Granpa a good handshake.

Granpa was so excited he was ready to jump up and down.

"Where are you bound for, Villy?" he asked.

"I'm on my way to Siberia," the priest said, as if he were talking about a place we would all be familiar with.

"Is that farther than Omaha?" Neva asked. She was now squeezed in between the big priest and Ma, but she still had the reins to the team.

The priest's chuckle seemed to come out of the depths of his belly--it was like a sound made far underground.

"Much farther than Omaha, young miss," the priest said. "Siberia is part of Russia, which is across the sea. I have decided to go minister to the wandering Koraks--they're still stuck in heathenism, I hear."

60

I believe that remark even surprised Ma, who is thoroughly hard to surprise. Even finding out that the elk she thought she shot was only a horse didn't surprise her much.

"But Father Villy, there's no ocean nearby," she pointed out.

Father Villy chuckled again. "I believe the Pacific is less than two thousand miles west," he said. "Possibly no more than seventeen hundred miles from the Missouri shore. I'm a steady walker--at least I am when I can avoid tacks."

"Villy ain't bragging," Granpa assured us. "He had already walked down from Quebec before we got in that scrape on the Bad Axe."

"I guess you could go on the riverboat with us-- that is, if we have a riverboat when we get to Glasgow," Ma said.