19
BY THE TIME WE REACH THE HOMESTRETCH TO Fort Kearny, I’ve roped my stump half a dozen times, and Andy rides Princesa like a Nubian queen floating on a mahogany boat. Peety rewards Andy’s improvement by giving her his kid riding gloves, fleece-lined, too.
Our trail soon converges with the one that starts at Independence, Missouri. The road grows thick with wagons and people plodding up to the fort on the hill.
The sun hangs low, so we settle in for the night a few miles past the junction in a sea of wagon circles, people, and animals.
Cay and West go hunting. They only have one rifle between them but hunting is their ritual together. Peety never seems to mind, in fact, I think he enjoys the time by himself. He told Andy he was twenty-one, which means he was born in the Year of the Rat. Though Rats are charming and sociable, they like to spend time in quiet reflection.
Peety leads the horses to a branch of the Platte River, talking to them conversationally in Spanish, while Andy and I collect firewood.
Only a few stringy willows grow among the sandy bluffs, not enough to hold a flame. To solve this problem, emigrants are throwing buffalo chips onto their fires.
Andy pokes the toe of her boot at a pie-sized chip, then stoops down to collect it. She points her nose at the even bigger pile by my feet. “Get that one.”
“Maybe one’s enough,” I suggest, not wanting to touch buffalo droppings.
But one tiny hitch of Andy’s eyebrow tells me to stop being a girl, and pick it up. I pull my sleeves over my hands and retrieve it.
Turns out buffalo chips aren’t so horrible. They’re dry as skillet bread and scentless. Our two chips catch the sparks and hold them fast, and in no time, our water boils.
“Heard talk of a whetstone half a mile downstream. Think I’ll go sharpen the knives.” Andy rummages through our gear, collecting the miscellaneous blades: two pocket knives, a hunting knife, and her cooking knife. “You’s okay here by you’self?”
“Yes. I’ll sift the cornmeal.”
She keeps her head down as she hurries in the direction of the river and soon is swallowed into the masses, more folks than I’ve seen since St. Joe. They’re a diverse bunch with common dreams—land for the pioneers, gold for the Argonauts. Judging from the conversations, neither group can wait to reach Fort Kearny, the first trading post since we left civilization. Not me. The place is probably crawling with lawmen. Maybe they even keep a judge on hand so they can try and hang in one shot.
As if summoned by my worries, a trio of scruffy-faced men in navy-blue uniforms materialize out of the haze and skulk toward me. Army men. I drop the sack of cornmeal I’m holding and it spills into the sand.
“Hey, boy,” says one of the men. His untucked shirt reveals a protruding belly, and greasy strands of his blond hair stick to his tanned cheeks.
I get to my feet, mouth gaping like a bass, but failing to produce any noise. The men’s heads tilt and swivel as they try to make out my face from under the shade of my hat, like a band of coyotes routing out the throat hold. I notice that the cottonwood above my head is sturdy enough for a hanging and forget how to work my lungs.
There’s no sign of the boys or Andy, only pioneers briskly going about their business, too far away to notice. I cannot flee since that would confirm my guilt. I step backward, willing the shade of the cottonwood to swallow me up. The men close in.
Blondie’s eyes shift around our camp. “Here by yourself?”
All the blood in my body surges to my head as I ransack my brain for the answer to this simple question. I do not want to involve the remuda by saying no. Then again, plainly I have more supplies than one person needs. I sway, but catch myself before I topple over.
“We came to the right party,” says another man with hair too gray for a soldier. “He’s already full as a tick.”
“Well then, I guess you won’t mind sharing,” says Blondie. “Come on, hand over some of your rookus juice.”
A third man, smacking his tobacco, leans in toward me. “You wouldn’t hold back from good soldiers protecting their fellow countrymen, would you? Share your stash and we might consider you a patriot.” My brain trips over itself trying to keep up, but I can’t figure out what he wants.
“Maybe he don’t understand.” The gray-haired man leans in closer. “Whiskey,” he says slow and loud, as if I don’t speak English.
A spark jumps out of the fire with a loud crack and wakes me from my stupor. “Yo no—” I begin in Spanish, quickly switching to Chinese when I realize my blunder. “Ngoh mm ming baak,” I say, which simply means, “I don’t understand.” I pray they will leave me alone now, but Blondie scowls and starts casting his eyes at our supplies.
“Maybe we’ll check ourselves,” he says. “Bet we find plenty of joy juice in those saddlebags.”
I cannot let them put their grubby hands on our things. Perhaps I can scare them away. Father said people fear what they don’t understand, and perhaps if I make myself very confusing, they will be very afraid.
Andy appears fifty feet away, slowing when she sees the situation. She begins to hurry toward me, but I shake my head at her. If the soldiers see us together, it might raise their suspicions. The soldier in the back, a thin man, turns to see what I’m looking at, and I quickly unleash in my harshest Cantonese, “For shame, you with the great blond belly. A bear knows better than to eat a porcupine!”
The tobacco-chewing soldier and the gray-haired one look at each other uneasily, but Blondie’s face screws up. “Take it easy,” he says gruffly.
I cannot stop now, or he will think I am weak. I throw my hands at all of them. “Do you not know that too much alcohol will make your bowels sluggish? Go away, you turtle eggs.”
“Maybe we should ask someone else,” suggests the gray-haired man.
“Yes, go pick on someone your own size, gender, color, and aptitude,” I continue in my foreign tongue. “I am just as much a patriot as you. My skin may be yellow, but I am not”—I glance at my spilled grain—“I am not cornmeal, and you have no right to tread over me, as if I am mush.” I kick at the cornmeal, spraying some of it onto the first man’s boots. Blondie steps back and soon he is hurrying away after his compatriots.
I collect my breath, and Andy hurries toward me, her kitchen knife held low at her side. She eyes the scattered cornmeal. “What happened?”
“They were looking for whiskey.”
Her worried expression turns wry. “Looks like they came to the wrong place.”
I crumple onto the ground, my guts flooding with acid. “What if they had . . . what if—”
“They didn’t.” Andy makes brisk work of salvaging what cornmeal she can.
I stare at the fire, willing the panic imps to leave.
She bats at my hand. “Stop picking off you’s buttons. You’s nervous habits drive me batty. Take off you’s shirt.” She whips out her needle and reattaches my sleeve button. “We’s safe. Nothing gonna bug us tonight except a few stones in the mush.”
I crane my neck in every direction, looking for more soldiers. “We can’t go to the fort tomorrow.”
“All right, we won’t,” she says solemnly.
Her words of solidarity soothe me. “You ever think about the noose?”