Spruills went with them, the farmer and his wife and their five children, Hannah, Billy, George, Constance, and Ella. At the last minute, a taciturn carpenter named Zachary Willis joined the group. By the time they reached St. Joseph, Missouri, Kate felt they had traveled as far as the moon. St. Joseph teemed with emigrants. Most were from Illinois, Ohio, and Arkansas, but they came from all over, even England, Ireland, and Scandinavia.
A young couple from Kentucky, James and Susan Edmiston, asked to travel with them. The Edmistons were headed to northern California, and they would take the Oregon Trail until it divided into two main routes. Susan was beautiful, and Kate felt a dart of envy. James Edmiston had a banjo, and Kate was glad there’d be music.
The first company to set out for the Oregon Trail, back in 1843, had consisted of a thousand people. Now that the trails were well worn, groups of any size could go. Theirs was only four wagons, each hauled by four oxen, with a spare pair of oxen, a few horses and mules, and a cow.
They caught up with others as they traveled, and Kate loved swapping treats. For the first time, she ate pickled cauliflower, duck sausage, and Swedish almond cookies. There was talk of President Pierce and slavery. Everyone expected there’d be a war back East. There’d been very few blacks in Augusta County. Kate didn’t think slavery would long be a part of the world, nor should be.
The first time she saw an Indian, dark-skinned in leather breeches, her throat closed in fear, but her curiosity was stronger. He knew a little English, and the others they encountered—Arapaho, Crow, Pawnee, and Assiniboine—only wanted food and tobacco. Scarred by smallpox, they hung around campsites. Mrs. Spruill doled out bread and glass jars, which they prized.
Occasionally the party met a go-back.
“I’m wore out,” the person might say. “I miss my home folks. You’ll go back, too.”
Some emigrants pulled or pushed carts themselves, tugging or trundling their loads and crossing the continent on their own two legs. This was the “Foot and Walker Company.” Kate was amazed.
She was sore all over from the jouncing wagon, but she loved fording rivers. In Kansas, the Little Blue was shallow but had a quicksand bottom. She held her breath as the water reached the center of the wheels. Moments later, the wagons rolled up on the banks.
Except for Susan Edmiston, who was pregnant, monthlies were a misery the women endured as best they could. Kate and Martin rarely talked about bodily processes. She didn’t know many words for them, and he didn’t either, except for the vulgar, childish ones. When would she start having babies? She’d heard of an old trick: put a wedding ring up inside. But she didn’t, afraid it would hurt a baby or herself.
By unspoken assent, the leader of their company was James Edmiston, lithe, a little arrogant, with a prowling stride made for walking west. He could make everybody laugh, even the silent Zachary Willis. James had a way of holding Kate’s gaze while his eyes crinkled and he waited for her to laugh. Martin was quiet and thoughtful, given to chewing his lip. She couldn’t help comparing them.
Susan Edmiston had long red hair that Olivia and fifteen-year-old Hannah Spruill took turns combing. Her pregnancy made it thicker.
“She already lost two babies,” Olivia told Kate. “James won’t leave her alone. She asked me to help her.”
Kate felt some darkness fall, and it had nothing to do with the night. The men were playing cards and smoking by the fire. Sunset lit the sky like a red bowl over the prairie.
“Help her how?” asked Kate.
Back home, Olivia would have answered right away, and the answer would have been, Sew baby clothes. Help her lift the pots. But she didn’t say anything, and Kate felt oddly reluctant to press her.
A clear night came on. The Milky Way bristled across the oceanic darkness.
“There’s heaven,” said Ella, the youngest Spruill child.
More stars blossomed as they watched, great folds and curtains and cobwebs of stars. Everyone picked out constellations: the Big Dipper, the Herdsman, Berenice’s Hair, the Dragon, the Twins, and Taurus the Bull.
“See that cluster of stars on the bull’s shoulder?” asked James Edmiston. “It’s the Pleiades. The Seven Sisters.”
The name charmed Kate. She did a quick tally: herself, Olivia, Susan Edmiston, Mrs. Spruill, and the Spruill daughters, Hannah, Constance, and Ella.
“That’s us,” she said.
After that, she looked for the Pleiades every night. Two of the stars outshone the others. She imagined they were new brides, herself and Olivia.
Was celestial space any more strange and vast and distant than the land they were traveling across and the unknown place where they were heading? What awaited them all? God moved above them, an invisible shepherd, the stars his knowing eyes. The diamond sky brimmed with leviathans—monsters, animals, and giant symbols, a clock, a sextant, a lyre. Kings and queens capered among them. Surely the ancient stories playing out in the heavens foretold what was to come. The stars’ courses paralleled that of Kate’s party, following the sun. Night after night, the glittering Seven Sisters sailed west, while the mortals crawled below.
* * *
AGAINST her will, she felt attracted to James. Sometimes he and Olivia were both absent. She asked me to help her, Olivia had said, but she couldn’t have meant what Kate was thinking. That was absurd: trail madness. Olivia and James would return to the evening campsite from separate directions, James with kindling, Olivia with a pail of water, and they might have, must have, Kate corrected herself, been on innocent errands. Olivia set down the pail. James told funny stories. Andrew laughed, and Kate felt a rush of pity for her brother-in-law, who looked so young in his dirty clothes.
James brought out his banjo and sang a ballad about two sisters who loved the same man. The man preferred the younger one and gave her gifts. The older girl led the younger one to a river and pushed her in, and she drowned.
What a horrible song. James crooned on and on. Did he know how Kate felt about him? Was he poking fun at her and Olivia? He finished with a flourish of strumming, turned the banjo over, and showed Kate a fancy design on the back of the fingerboard, a spray of white flowers.
He handed it to her. “It’s mother-of-pearl.”
He traced the pattern, his hand touching hers. Embarrassed, she gave it back.
“Why not sing something a little more cheerful?” Susan said.
“How about ‘The Wayward Boy’?” Andrew said.
James obliged. “Well, I walked the street with a tap to my feet.”
Martin and Andrew joined in. Kate knew the song, a bawdy one about a man who met a maiden in a tower, and soon she had many babies. Martin caught her eye and winked, their signal. They stood up, left the others, and found a place away from camp. He put blankets down. A pair of birds flew up into the beech trees. There was just enough light for her to recognize them as thrushes.
He fumbled at her buttons. “I think about it all the time,” he said.
“I do too.”
“Does everybody?” he asked shyly.
