Boone's Lick

"Why?" Ma asked. "I wouldn't give you a plug, if you woke my baby."

"It's the custom, ma'am," Father Villy said.

"That's right--the custom," Uncle Seth said. "Throw in a little coffee too, Villy--but I think we better balk if they ask for bullets."

the palaver went on for a good while, with the old headman doing the talking and the other Indians just prowling around, looking under the wagon and examining the mule harness. Finally Uncle Seth handed over the plug of tobacco, while Father Villy filled a little pouch with coffee beans.

"Go light on the coffee, Father," Ma said. "If I have to travel in a place with no trees without my coffee you'll all have to put up with a cranky woman--Seth knows how I get when I don't have my coffee."

"She's a regular Comanche when she's coffee starved," Uncle Seth said.

It was plain that the Pawnees had expected more in the way of presents than a plug of tobacco and a little pouch full of coffee beans, but that was all they got. The old headman grumbled, but once the warriors had fingered everything two or three times, they rode off toward the river, which was two or three miles south. Even after they slipped over the next ridge we could still hear the sleet crunching under their horses' hooves.

The plains were vast and white and gloomy, but at least the Indians were gone.

81

"Think how cold your head would be if they pulled your scalp off in weather like this," G.T. said, at which point Neva gave him the blackest look yet.

6 IT was such a relief to us children to have the Indians gone that we all started yawning and could have gone right to sleep, had it not been that the adults took a different view of the matter.

"Now don't be yawning, boys--you've got to help Charlie guard the mules,"

Uncle Seth said. "I'll help Mary Margaret keep a lookout on the wagon, and Neva and Villy can just be general guards."

G.T. was much put out by that command.

"But the Indians left," he said. "You can hear them. They're heading for the river."

"Don't be presuming to instruct your elders, G.T.," Uncle Seth said.

"Bothersome as the Pawnee is when you've got him in your camp, it's once he's left that you really have to worry. Go help Charlie with the mules."

"The clouds are coming back," Charlie said. "It won't be moonlight much longer--once it's dark they might try for a mule--I'm going to bring them in close to the wagon."

"I have never liked to sleep with a mule breathing on me," Ma said. "But I guess I can stand it if that's the best way to secure them."

The moon soon went behind a cloud, as Charlie had predicted; the only light was the faint white of the sleet and the flickers of our campfire.

We hitched all six mules to the wagon, in a line--the two horses also. I stood between two mules, shivering, and G.T. did the same. Then I heard coyotes yipping. When I strained my eyes I thought I saw forms creeping around on the plain.

"Are those Pawnees?" I whispered to Charlie. I was sure we were about to be in a battle.

"No, those are coyotes," Charlie said.

Ma sat by the campfire, keeping the baby warm. She fed cow chips into the flames, one or two at a time.

It was during that night on the sleety prairies-- it seemed to last for a week--that I really learned what cold was. All that saved me--and G.T.

too-- was the fact of being between the two mules. The cold just got colder and colder--the temperature dropped and dropped. It wasn't just my hands and feet that froze--it was my cheeks and eyelids, my forehead, my ears. It felt like the blood was freezing inside me. From time to time I stopped to rub mv freezing cheeks against a warm mule.

G.T. had an even worse time than me. He forgot and grabbed his gun barrel with his bare hand: of course, he stuck to his gun and peeled a good strip of skin off two fingers when he tried to get loose. Ma rubbed a little antelope tallow on the ski

82

The ends of Ma's hair had frozen where baby Marcy had breathed on it during the night.

"The Pawnees must have lost their starch," Uncle Seth observed. "Six fine mules and two horses and they didn't even manage to steal one. It's almost an insult."

"It was because of Villy," Charlie said. "They think he makes bad medicine."

"Yes, they have a powerful fear of the rosary," Father Villy said. "They associate it with funerals, mostly."

"Why, they stole my cowbell--I can't find it," Ma said.

"With that many Pawnees milling around, if all we lost is a cowbell we got off light," Uncle Seth said. "We don't have a cow anyway."

"No, but if we settle out here we might get a cow or two," Ma said. "It would be nice to have a cowbell, to help locate our cows with, if we get some."

That was the first any of us had heard about the prospect of settling out west. We had been on the move for a good while now, but none of us kids really knew what all this travel was leading to. Ma wanted to have a talk with Pa, we knew that--but what the talk was supposed to be about had us mystified. It was going to be an important talk, though--otherwise Ma would just have waited to have it next time Pa came home.

"It's for reasons of my own, Sherman," Ma said, the one time I got up the nerve to ask her about it. She wouldn't say more than that.

The band of Pawnees led by old Nose Turns Down never bothered us again, but it was not long before we began to see more Indians, lots of them, mainly traveling in small groups. Five or six would race up to us, feathers fluttering on their lances-- feathers or sometimes scalps. All of them were bold when it came to inspecting our goods, a habit that continued to a

"Why wouldn't they ride right in?" he asked her. "There are no doors out here on the baldies--did you expect them to knock?"

"No, but I didn't expect them to be so familiar, either," Ma said.

"It's their country, Mary--we're the invaders, not them," Uncle Seth said, speaking more sharply than he usually spoke to Ma.

"I don't want their country--I just want to pass through," Ma said, a little surprised by his tone.

"We are passing through," Uncle Seth said. "Us and a lot more like us."

It was certainly true that plenty of people were headed in the same direction we were. Several times we even saw men walking: no more equipment than a rifle, a spade, and a blanket or two. There was a wagon train behind us, nearly as long as the one in front of us, and lots of single wagons.

83

"I confess I'm shocked by the lack of game," Father Villy said. "It's only been five years since I traveled the Platte--only five years ago there was plenty of game."

"The same for me," Uncle Seth said. "When Dick and I first hauled freight to Fort Laramie we were never out of sight of critters we could eat.

Buffalo, elk, antelope--when supper time came we just grabbed a rifle and shot whatever looked tastiest. Now about the only meat we can count on is prairie dogs."

Of course, we saw plenty of prairie dogs, but we hadn't killed one yet--

Uncle Seth wouldn't let us shoot at them.

"I don't favor wasting bullets on small varmints," he said.

"The old days have always seemed better to people--I wonder why that is, Seth," Ma asked.