Daria on the Trail
Catching Up One

DISCLAIMER: As I said a time or two, I don't own either A Song of Ice and Fire or Daria. I don't own Earl from Beavis and Butthead either. This story is based on my research on the real Oregon Trail, not on the computer game with the same name.

This story is based on an idea by Ultimate Paladin, even if I moved the Arch west to the site of OTL Dodge City and backdated the start of this story to 1860.

Daria on the Trail*Daria on the Trail*Daria on the Trail

Daria:

Earl returned from his conversation with Captain Trout looking a bit rattled.

"You look shook up," I said. "Are you all right?"

"I'm OK," he replied. "I just had a talk with your host."

"He gave you the talk?" I said.

"Yeah," he said.

"I take it he warned you away from having any evil intentions," I said.

Earl made a non-committal noise.

"Seriously, Earl, I don't have a boyfriend and I'm not planning on doing any boyfriend-shopping out here," I said.

"I figured as much," he said, making a wry grin.

"Getting there alive is important," I said.

"We haven't seen each other since I left Highland," I said. "So what happened since I went off to Maryland?"

"Stuff," said Earl. I wondered about what sorts of stuff. I knew that Earl had been on the edge of Highland's gang scene and that there were a lot of things he wouldn't want to talk about. I wasn't going to ask him: people went west in the here-and-now to make a clean break with the past and Earl had received the chance of a lifetime to make a fresh start.

"Where were you before you got brought over?" I asked.

"I was in Guernsey," he said. "I decided that I needed to get out of Highland. I had a cousin who said that they needed mechanics and welders in the coal fields. After I took some classes and did scut-work in Odessa, I moved up there."

"Guernsey, Wyoming?" I guessed.

"Yeah," Earl said. "I was working as a welder and mechanic. I had some cousins who were living up there and I moved up there after I graduated. I'd been working fixing trucks and mining equipment."

Good for you, Earl, I thought. Highland's gang scene was a dead-end road, even if it only led to a stint in a Texas prison instead of a coroner's slab.

"Where is Guernsey?" I asked.

"Southeastern corner," said Earl. "It's east off of I-25. The nearest attractions are Lake Guernsey and Register Cliff."

Earl's comment hit me like a blow. "I must have gone through it a couple of weeks ago," I said. "Our wagon train passed Register Cliff after we left Fort Laramie."

"You went through it," he said.

"Did you all stop at Fort Laramie?" I said.

"Yeah, we stopped there," said Earl. "It was all weird seeing the place as an active Army post. That's when I was completely sure I was in 1860."

"I'd never seen it before but I did get a chance to meet one of my ancestress' counterparts," I said.

"Your ancestress' counterpart?" said Earl.

"I don't think this is the same world we came from," I replied. "But I met this world's Bethany Ann Ward and her previous husband while I was there. That was weird."

"What was her relation to you?" said Earl.

"My grandmother's great-grandmother," I replied. "And every bit as scary as the family stories. But that wasn't the weirdest part. That was meeting her husband."

"What was so weird about that?" said Earl.

"He died in the Civil War," I said. "I'm descended from the guy Bethany Ann married after that. Nice guy, but it was freaky talking to someone you know will die in a couple of years."

Then Earl surprised me. "You could be wrong," he said. "You said that this is a different world than our Wild West. He might not die this time around."

That would be nice, I thought. I liked Marcus. I was still afraid that the Civil War would break out but maybe, just maybe, Marcus might live through it. Their daughter might, too. I certainly hoped so.

"I don't miss Highland High one bit but you don't know what happened to some of the people we knew, do you?" I said.

"I know a little bit," he said. He started talking. I didn't recognize most of the guys Earl named, although I did recognize a couple of the girls. A couple of the guys had gotten shot during a gang fight, a couple of the girls had gotten pregnant and one had gotten busted by the cops. By the time he finished I decided it was well that he got out of there.

"I have to ask," I said. "Do you remember those two idiots we used to share classes with? Whatever happened to them?"

"I'm not sure. They did head up your way," said Earl.

I remembered seeing a news report that they'd gotten into trouble on an airplane and then at the White House. Mister Bill had the good sense to put them on a plane and away from Washington as soon as possible. Thank God they never got to Lawndale.

"So how come you speak Westerosi?" he said.

"Long story," I replied. "Do you remember that thing back when we were in junior high, when some people got pulled over from another dimension and got dumped across the country?"

"I remember that," said Earl. "That made me so mad. A bunch of guys with swords chasing women and kids and hacking down women and kids like they were killing chickens in a slaughterhouse. They never got to Highland. If I did I would have tried to take some of them out."

"Some got to Mountain Home," I said. "Several kids and their Moms got dropped over there. My Uncle Ben was living there at the time. He later adopted one of them. My Mom and Dad adopted the kid after he died of cancer a couple of years later. That was after we moved to Maryland."

"What happened to her Mom?" said Earl.

"The Gold Cloaks killed her," I replied. "They chased Rikka but my uncle shot them before they could kill her or his daughters." I paused, remembering a trip Rikka and I had made to Mountain Home a couple of years ago. Rikka's mother had been buried in the town cemetery next to the tall pines. Rikka had insisted that a seven-pointed star should be added to her headstone. "Anyway, I thought it would be a good idea to learn her Mom's language and write down some of their stories. I mean there were only a few of them where we came from. I didn't think it would be useful until I went to sleep in my bed in Providence and then woke up out on the prairie near Chimney Rock."

"Has it been?" said Earl.

"It has," I said. "I can translate for Captain Trout when I have to and I'm good at getting information from the trail guidebooks. I'm also teaching his kids and some of the Westerosi kids on our train."

"So why Oregon?" he said.

"I told the Trouts I'd help them as long as I can and that's where they're headed," I said. "Also, I figure getting there is a bit safer than trying to get to California. I don't like the thought of dealing with the Humbolt Sink and then having to deal with dead oxen or mules even before we reach the Sierras." The Humbolt Sink was something I'd read about and stuck after I'd taken an American Studies course on the effects of westward expansion. The Humbolt River was a thin, mineral-laden stream that many Emigrants and would-be prospectors followed until it sank into muddy earth well east of Reno. The route between the Sink and the Sierras was a notorious boneyard of dead draft animals and abandoned wagons.

"I'm going prospecting," he said. "My friends and I are thinking of prospecting in the California gold country."

"You might think about poking around Virginia City," I said. "I think there's already a town there and you might think about wintering there if you all don't make it to the Sierras before it starts snowing."

"Snowing?" said Earl.

"Snowing," I replied. "Donner Pass, Donner Party, that sort of thing. There's a lot of snow in the Sierras."

Earl fell silent for a couple of minutes. If he hadn't heard of the Donner Party at Highland High, he probably heard of it on the way here.

"Aren't you worried about snow?" he said.

"I'm worried," I replied. "If our Company takes the Lander Road, we'll be good across the rest of the Rockies and the Snake River Basin, but it's the Blue Mountains I worry about."

"When do you think you'll get there?" said Earl.

"Probably mid-September to early October, I think," I said. Earl was digesting that information when Kara tapped me on the shoulder and said that it was time to help cook dinner.

"I think I need to get to work," I said. "It was good to see you. I think we're setting out again tomorrow, but I suspect that we'll see each other again before our trails split off and we go our separate ways."

Author's notes:

Guernsey, Wyoming is a small town east-northeast of Cheyenne whose fortunes in the early 2000's were tied to the Wyoming coal fields. The town is also near Register Cliff and Fort Laramie, which were mentioned earlier in this story.

More than a few pioneers and frontiersmen (and -women) used the Overland Trail to put distance between themselves and their pasts and reinvent themselves. Also, during the Civil War, many young men headed west rather than being forced to fight in the Civil War.

The story of the Westerosi coming to this Daria's universe is in Daria: Winter Is Coming. It is not the same Westeros that is mentioned in this story.

The arrival of winter and the first snowfalls were common concerns of both Oregon-bound and California-bound pioneers.