The next day, we continue riding over the floor of granite. We have not seen a major trail since leaving the cholera man. My eyes keep flitting to Andy, walking beside me. We’ve hardly spoken all day. She burnt the breakfast for the first time this morning and singed her sleeve in her haste to lift the pan off the fire.
Now she’s lost in her own world, not steering much, just letting Princesa drift where she wants to go. After last night’s talk, I can’t help feeling I need to keep an eye on her, as if she might disappear at any moment.
She senses me watching and gives me a brief smile that fails to reassure me.
When Cay turns us into a rocky incline, West protests. “We need to be going west. This ain’t right.”
“I know,” says Cay, holding the map before him as we continue to march forward. “We’re still on the shortcut. Have I ever led you wrong?”
Andy and I exchange worried glances. Tiger personalities can make hasty decisions and have trouble backing down. Father always blamed President Van Buren’s Tiger nature for the Panic of 1837 when he wouldn’t recant a decision not to interfere in the economy. Still, I remind myself that like all cats, Tigers do have a good sense of direction. I wiggle around in my saddle and try to relax.
We travel all day without seeing a single person, let alone the Oregon Trail. The mountain range that started off on our right now seems higher on the left side.
In the late afternoon, we reach a running stream full of fish. We follow it to a dumpling-shaped clearing hidden by dense foliage. Cay orders a shade-up and consults his map again. Then he refolds it.
“You sunk us, right?” asks West in a voice that doesn’t sound surprised.
“There’s a first time for everything,” says Cay, a little sheepishly. “Tomorrow we’ll just turn around.”
“We should make you sing ‘Yankee Doodle,’ hombre,” says Peety.
“That would be more of a punishment to us,” says West.
We release the horses to graze. I shake out my boots, one by one, and try not to take our wrong turn as a bad sign. Andy watches me as she glugs from her canteen. At least no one will find us up here. But what if we overshoot Calamity Cutoff? Though I’ve traced Cay’s map into our journal, it won’t help us if we don’t know where we are.
Andy pinches me. “Go on, look. It’s like the Garden of Eden.” She crouches to inspect a bush of yellow flowers.
I peruse our slice of the world and grudgingly agree. The trees grow high enough to shield us from view. Were it not for the storm in my mind, I might sleep well tonight, pillowed by a lawn of pink clover and lulled by the tinkling stream. I draw in the fresh air and detect the smoky scent of cedar.
“No fig leaves and lots of snakes.” Cay sniggers. “Wish we had us some hens for sinning.” He looks at Andy and me when he says this, so we both grunt in approval.
Cay goes to lie down by the stream. “I could use a nap. I’m dragged out.” He tilts his hat over his face.
The fact that we are lost does not concern the boys, skipping stones in the water, or the horses, happily chomping heads off the clover. I park my bottom in the shade of a solitary fir, the tallest tree in Eden. Father told me they use fir in railroad ties because it’s so strong. I inhale its sweet piney scent and try to quiet the unrest in my mind.
Andy squats in front of me. “No one knows His plan but Him.”
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In the morning, Cay does not want to wake up. I put my hand on his temple. He stirs at my touch. Hot as a pepper.
Andy and I are about to fetch water when Cay starts to heave. When he finishes, we help him to a spot by the stream, which will carry away his sick. I pour him a cup of water from my canteen and tilt it into his mouth.
Cay whispers something to Peety. Then Peety puts Cay’s arm over his own broad shoulders and helps him over to a dense shrub dotted with white flowers, stretching as high as the horses. When they return, Peety is shaking his head.
“Choro,” Peety tells me, and when I don’t understand, he translates “diarrhea.”
All the blood leeches from my face. These are the signs of cholera, the deadliest disease on the prairie.
34
I CHECK EVERYONE ELSE’S HEALTH AND HEAR NO complaints.
But by midday, we realize Peety and Andy are not fine after all. They also come down with the fever, vomiting, and choro. As Andy vomits for the third time in an hour, I start to wonder if the shortcut we took was Calamity Cutoff, and if I caused this by shooting the cholera man, even though I didn’t pull the trigger.
How could I ever think I would outrun my bad luck? It is like a plague, spreading its contagion to those I hold most dear.
Since West and I have not spoken for nearly two weeks, words no longer come easy, but we work together to pull the others’ bedrolls closer to the river, next to Cay.
“We should dig holes,” I say, rummaging around for spoons since we don’t have shovels. We find a spot behind the shrub with the white flowers to dig our latrines. The flowers smell like oranges and freshen the air. We scoop up spoonfuls of earth. Father made a special blend of rehydrating salt for dysentery that he believed would also help the pioneers with cholera. No one ever returned to tell us if it worked or not.
“Cholera isn’t always fatal,” I say without much conviction.
“At least we got a stream,” he says at the same time.
We pause in case the other has something more to add. Then we both start up again. West stops to let me finish.
“Father had a remedy—”
“What’s in it?”
My digging slows as I try to remember. “Half a teaspoon salt, six teaspoons sugar, four cups water—”
West throws down his spoon. “Hell.” He glares at the mound we’ve scraped together so far, the size of a grapefruit. Then he starts clawing the dirt with his hands.
An hour later, we have three holes and two broken spoons. We kneel by the stream to wash. When Cay moans and clutches his middle, West grimaces.
“For stomach pain, we used blackberries and pepper,” I say. “There was a bush yesterday that Palom—”
“I think I remember the direction. I’ll fetch ’em.”
“The thorns can pierce your gloves.” I dry my hands on a cloth. West picks up the other end to dry his. “Maybe use your fishing spear to knock them off.”
“I know what to do,” he says gruffly.
Now our hands meet in the middle of the cloth, and we both let the other have it. He plucks it out of the air before it drops to the ground.
“Might be gone for a stretch,” he says, like nothing happened.
“They’ll be okay. I’ll help them use the necessary.” I decide that is what we should call the holes.
“They got to use it a lot. What if you—”
“Don’t worry about me,” I snap, crossing my arms over my chest.
He closes his mouth and looks at Franny, standing next to us. Her ears start to pull back. We bore her. As he straps on his rifle, I hold Franny’s reins, willing the remorse on the tip of my tongue to leap out of my mouth. But nothing comes.
Fixing my stare on his shirt buttons, I notice that one looks different from the rest, a replacement for the one Sophie ripped off. I drop my eyes to his belt buckle, an even worse place. Shake it off. How can I think of that at a time like this? I refocus on the only freckle he owns, a solitary speck on the smooth curve of his cheek.
I soften. “I know you are afr—worried.” I switch words, remembering the chicken threat. Boys do not like to be seen as fearful. “But I’m stronger than I look.”
His brow wrinkles as he takes in my fingers, hopelessly entangled in the leather straps and getting tighter the more I pull. Turning my back to him, I hiss out my irritation at my nervous habits, which lurk like uneven floorboards, waiting to trip me up.
“Sammy.” That tone again, two parts exasperation, one part resignation.
I shake my head as I wiggle my fingers free and hand him back the reins.
“I know you are,” he says. He swings his leg over Franny and clicks his tongue.
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