Hello again! Time for another chapter!
As I mentioned at the very bottom of last chapter, I've decided to answer any clarifying/random/hint-hint questions that people post in reviews after each chapter. Thus, you will find a few questions answered at the bottom of this chapter, and if you wish to ask one, don't hesitate!
Thank you very much to Oniongrass, Ember Hinote, SamanthaMeloes, Sunako-s-wrath, Zeplerfer, Mary, WeAllFlyHigh, Jillo96, and Aestiva for reviewing! And special thanks to petaltailify97, for being my 100th reviewer!
Thanks as well to Sailor Greeny, Scylla J. Lacrimas, aceotaku, and again to Oniongrass and Aestiva for your favorites and alerts!
Enjoy!
I disclaim, and own nothing.
The day before their departure, Sam had arranged to meet with Alfred to iron out the details of their journey. Alfred, previously unaware that there were any details to be ironed out, realized quickly that his, "just follow the path, and it'll get us there eventually" plan wasn't going to work as well as he hoped.
There was also the slight downside of having not gone west in over thirty years, but Alfred was confident that he could manage. After all, how hard could following a trail be when you'd already made your own?
Sam seemed to have other ideas.
"Now see here, Alfred! You have to go where people have gone before! Otherwise you could get lost, or run into Injuns, or find yourself with no food or water! We're going to follow the path!"
"There's not much of one!" Alfred retorted. "Only a few groups have actually bothered to go yet! As long as we keep going west, there's no possibility of getting lost, I've participated in negotiations with natives before, and I can keep myself and you lot perfectly healthy in the wild, if need be!"
"That's all well and good, but we're still going to follow the path," Sam said resolutely. Alfred gave a sigh of defeat.
"Fine, fine."
Instantly, Sam brightened. "Now, from what I've heard, there are a few important landmarks to keep you on track with. Do you know of them?"
Alfred nodded hesitantly, hurriedly trying to recall newspaper articles he'd read on the people going west. "For starters, there's… er, Chimney Rock. Then there's Fort William, and Independence Rock, and Fort Hall…"
Sam nodded in agreement, still smiling. "Wonderful! As long as you can get us there!"
"Of course we'll get there," Alfred assured him.
An hour, one donkey, and a 15th century French bureau later, his confidence in that statement had diminished rather significantly.
"This is your wagon?"
"Yes… why?"
"It's…" Alfred found himself at a loss. The wagon was small, certainly not the eleven-by-four accepted standard. It was also missing several planks, had broken spokes in nearly every wheel, and the canvas cover resembled a moth-eaten patchwork sail.
"Couldn't you have… fixed it up a bit?"
"I did," Sam replied. "You should have seen it before."
Almost afraid to ask, Alfred inquired, "What about your oxen?"
"Oxen? We have a donkey, what do we need them for?"
After much convincing on Alfred's part that a donkey would be insufficient, and they did need oxen to pull the wagon if they expected to get anywhere, Sam went out and bought a pair.
"And that bureau needs to go. Sell it, or give it to one of your neighbors."
Sam looked at him, aghast. "I can't do that! My wife will murder me!"
"Are you at all prepared for this?" Alfred asked, exasperatedly.
"You can't expect a bureau to make it across the country, over mountains and rivers and the Great Plains, in a half-broken wagon pulled by two oxen you bought fifteen minutes ago from some man you just met on the street!"
"But we can't just give it away," Sam replied. "My wife's great-grandmother brought it all the way from England! You know how fond those English are of French things, no matter how they deny it, quite frivolous really… but it's still a family heirloom!"
"It's also a good couple hundred pounds," Alfred deadpanned. "It's not coming."
But nothing Alfred said could sway Sam. He resolved to try and convince his wife, when he met her. Surely she could see common sense.
"Are you ready at all for this?" he finally asked exasperatedly.
"Sure we are! We've packed everything already, haven't we?"
"Oh. Well, good job there, I guess." Alfred wondered why Sam looked so pleased at that, especially when it was coming from someone he'd just spent the last hour arguing with.
"Would you like to meet my family?"
"… Of course."
_V~-~-~V_
A few minutes later, Alfred stood outside the Atkins house.
It was nice.
Very nice.
Columns-on-the-front-porch nice.
Far too nice for people who were leaving it behind to travel across the country on a rickety covered wagon for lands unknown.
Noticing Alfred's incredulous expression, Sam chose that moment to say, "We inherited it from my wife's parents. It was their old summer home. Her father is a Supreme Court judge, you know."
"Justice," Alfred corrected absently, still admiring the house.
"What?"
"They're called Justices."
"Oh."
Sam paused, glancing at Alfred, who was still staring at the house.
"Er… shall we go in?"
Alfred blinked for a moment, then turned his attention back to Sam. "Go in? Oh, yes, go in. Let's."
Sam gestured for Alfred to lead the way. Stepping past him, Alfred mounted the stairs to the large front porch (it went all the way around the house, so he couldn't decide if that ruined its status as a front porch or not) and knocked on the front door. Nobody answered, so he opened it and stepped inside.
And promptly stubbed his toe on something that had been sitting immediately in front of the entrance. Said something fell to the floor with a loud clatter, but Alfred ignored it in favor of clutching his foot in pain.
"Oh, my stars! Are you all right?"
Alfred registered the voice as female, and immediately stopped his muttered cursing. Looking up, he saw a young woman, somewhere in her mid-twenties, with carefully curled auburn hair and blue eyes that currently looked rather distressed. She bent down to right whatever it was he had tripped so unceremoniously over, her many layers of obviously expensive skirts rustling as she did so. The object turned out to be an umbrella stand with, oddly enough, a clawed foot, and its entire collection of various umbrellas and ladies' parasols.
"Sorry, ma'am, didn't see that there," he said, the pain in his toe now fading quickly.
"Is your foot well? Do you need a compress?" she asked, her voice sweet and concerned. He was about to respond, when her blue eyes flashed, going from concerned to furious in less than a second.
"JOHN MADISON CATRON JUNIOR!" she yelled shrilly, spinning to face the stairs. "GET DOWN HERE THIS INSTANT!"
"DON'T CALL ME THAT!" came the reply. A door opened above, and out came a rather scruffy-looking man who looked entirely out of place in the grand house. But he had the same slightly curly auburn hair and blue eyes as the screeching lady, so Alfred assumed him to be a relative of some sort.
"I said," she repeated, her voice quieter now, "get down here."
"Awright, awright, I'm gettin'." He huffed down the stairs at a pace that contradicted his laid-back speech.
"You apologize for your irresponsibility this instant, John Madison Catron junior," the woman said, hands on her hips. Alfred, who had by now backed well out of the way of the pair, found Sam in a similar position.
"Does this happen… often?" he whispered. Sam nodded fervently in reply.
"That's my wife, Lucretia," he said, "and that's her brother." Alfred felt a definite sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.
Meanwhile, they were still going. "My irresponsibility? What've I done this time, stuck the cat in the stove?"
"We don't have a cat," the woman, Lucretia, retorted. "I mean the fact that you left mother's umbrella stand out here for someone to trip on, instead of beside her portrait like it should be."
Turning, the man seemed to notice Alfred for the first time, and brightened. Breaking away from his sister, he made his way to Alfred, and began pumping his arm in a vigorous handshake.
"Good to meet you, finally! You must be Jones, the man Sam was tellin' us is going to take us west! Marvelous! Simply fantastic!"
Alfred couldn't hold back a grin at the man's enthusiasm. "It's nice to meet you too! You must be Sam's brother-in-law! John, was it?"
"No, the name's George," he said. Leaning forward, he whispered (rather loudly), "These people are crazy, with all this 'John' business. I hate the name, but Lucy over there is always callin' me John anyway."
"Ah," Alfred said eloquently.
"Oh, and before Lucy kills me… sorry about the umbrella stand. But it's a pity you didn't break it… that thing's hideous."
Lucretia, who appeared to have the ears of a jackrabbit, started hollering something about "family heirlooms of great personal value" at George, but he ignored her with apparent ease.
"Useless European-made garbage," he said. "I only like home-grown American!"
Alfred decided that he definitely liked this George Catron.
_V~-~-~V_
They set out the following day amid much confusion.
Apparently, cousins of Lucretia's were supposed to come to move into the house, thus taking care of all the heirlooms that Lucretia hadn't already shoved into the wagon, but they didn't show up. The donkey was refusing to have anything strapped to its back, the springs under the wagon's driver's chair decided to stop springing, several of the cover ties had gone missing overnight, and Lucretia couldn't find her rose-petal pink hat for spring wear in any of the multitude of hatboxes she's piled in the wagon.
Eventually, the donkey was blindfolded and subdued into cooperating by Alfred and his way with animals, the springs were replaced by Sam with the help of a neighbor who had spares, the wagon ties were found in the claw-footed umbrella stand, and the rose-petal pink hat for spring wear had been uncovered from beneath her periwinkle blue hat for summer wear ("I don't know how it got there! It should have been in the pink-and-yellow spring wear hatboxes, not the blue-and-green summer ones!"). The cousins also appeared at the last minute, having been delayed after spending too long at lunch.
The trip was finally underway, and Alfred was already congratulating himself on his mental fortitude (though he privately found the morning's proceedings highly amusing).
Alfred also never bothered contesting Lucretia on the 15th century French bureau after witnessing her opinion on heirlooms. He was just grateful that there was still room for his trunk.
Since there was no room in the wagon itself for passengers with all of the belongings filling it to the brim (especially with the wagon's stability already questionable), it was necessary for the four to walk.
"It shan't be me," was all Lucretia had to say on the matter, but Sam (who was the only one who could reason with her), pointed out that the only place she could sit was the driver's seat, and she certainly couldn't drive. So Alfred walked first, leading the donkey beside the oxen, followed by a grumbling Lucretia, with George agreeing to pick up the rear of their tiny party while Sam drove.
And for the first time all day, the whole group was silent as they left Independence, Missouri behind.
_V~-~-~V_
Oxen were slow creatures by nature, and because they'd left so late, Alfred guessed they'd gone about seven miles by the time they stopped around 6 o'clock for supper.
Prepared for beans, dried beef, and maybe a bit of rice for supper, Alfred was astonished when Lucretia started boiling an entire kettle of their good drinking water and started making pasta. Complete with tomato sauce from a jar.
"Why on earth are you making pasta?"
"Oh, I met this charming young Italian boy when I was younger, and he told me that all special occasions need pasta." She frowned slightly before amending, "Actually, he said that pasta made every occasion special, but I don't have enough ingredients to make it all the time. I told him so, and I do believe he nearly cried at that, but another boy, his brother most likely, dragged him away before he could say anything else."
"And you've decided to follow this advice," Alfred stated, watching the pasta bubble.
"It's very good advice," George interrupted. He already had a plate and fork ready, and was all but drooling at the sight of food. "If Lucy wants to make pasta, let her make it any time she wants."
"But it will go bad!" Alfred exclaimed. "You need food that lasts longer than a week! Please tell me you brought beans, or at least some jerky…."
Lucretia sniffed. "Why would I degrade myself by eating such foods? I'll eat whatever I please!"
"It's going to spoil," Alfred insisted, "and then you'll have nothing to eat, and that's not pleasing at all!"
"Alfred, calm down," Sam said, his steady voice interrupting. "We'll buy some supplies, whatever food you think we need, at the next store we come to, don't worry. In the meantime, can we just enjoy the food Lucretia has cooked for us?"
"Yeah, I'm starving," George said, though Alfred doubted he'd been listening at all by the look on his face.
"Stupid Italians," Alfred muttered, but accepted the pasta anyway, because no matter the idiocy of his traveling companions, he was hungry as always.
Thousands of miles away, a pair of twin brothers sneezed in unison.
_V~-~-~V_
After two days more of ridiculously nice food, they reached a trading post, where Alfred promptly traded the last of their fruit (soon to spoil anyway) for a large bag of pemmican, many cans of beans, bacon, and three pounds of rice.
Their fourth night on the trail, Alfred cooked, treating them all to the food they'd be eating every day for the next several months, cooked over a campfire he'd built in the by the wagon. Lucretia's mood turned sour afterward, and to appease her, Sam pulled out his most prized possession from beneath the wagon seat: his fiddle.
"You play?" Alfred asked, and was rewarded with Sam's calm smile.
"I learned from my uncle. A great man, my uncle."
George instantly perked up. There, Alfred noted, was a man who had eaten all of the beans without complaint. Looking excited, he asked, "Oh, play Turkey in the Straw, wontcha please, Sam?"
Sam, obliging, propped his fiddle into a playing position and began, the bow fairly leaping across the strings with grace surprising for the rather stocky man. George immediately started singing, his voice ringing out across the empty land.
"As I was a-gwine down the road, with a tired team and a heavy load…"
George's voice wasn't horrible, but it certainly wasn't chorus-quality. Alfred glanced at Lucretia, and was relieved to see that she was smiling.
"So," he said, afraid to ask after her health lest she start complaining again, "your father is John Catron?"
Lucretia turned to face him, her features flickering in the firelight. "Yes! Have you heard of him? Not many outside of Tennessee have!"
"… turkey in the straw, turkey in the hay, roll 'em up and twist 'em up a high tuckahaw…"
Alfred nodded. "He was made a Justice fairly recently, right?" Lucretia nodded vigorously.
"Yes, just three years ago! Our whole family was ever so pleased when Father told us. He asked all of us out to the family home in Tennessee just to break the news. He even hid it from Mother, and that's extremely difficult to do!" She paused for a moment. "How did you know?"
"Well, Sam told me your father was a Justice, and you called George, 'John Catron junior' the first time we met, so it was a fairly safe assumption."
Lucretia hm'd. "So, do you keep up with politics?"
"…Went out to milk and I didn't know how, I milked the goat instead of the cow…"
"Yes, I went to Harvard, so I've sort of checked up on them a couple times since." Alfred braced for the inevitable.
"You went to Harvard?" exclaimed Lucretia, aghast. "But you're so young!"
There it was. "I'm not as young as I look," Alfred replied, repeating his earlier response to Sam when told the same thing.
Lucretia had nothing to say to that, and went back to staring at the fire, while George kept singing.
"… Met Mr. Catfish comin' downstream, says Mr. Catfish, 'What does you mean?'"
"Do you think we'll make it?"
Startled, Alfred realized it was Lucretia who had spoken. She was biting her lower lip, obviously uncomfortable with voicing the question. She turned, fixing Alfred with a searching gaze.
"I mean," she elaborated, "so many die on this journey! The weather, sickness, Injuns… who knows how well we'll do."
Alfred suddenly felt a surge of protectiveness wash over him, followed by the urge to hug the young woman before him, no matter how irritating she'd been until then. But it was a sort protectiveness for all of the people who would make the same harsh journey as them, and all of the people he knew would die in the attempt.
"We'll make it," he said, conviction in every word. "I'll get us there. All of us. And you're going to live in a lovely cabin in the woods of some valley in Oregon that Sam will build, and George is going to go off and be a happy trapper… or whatever it is exactly that he wants to do, I'm not really sure. But you—we'll all be fine."
He cracked a sudden grin. "We're pioneers, after all. We get claims to the best of everything Oregon's got, because we're the first."
Lucretia gave him a hesitant smile in return. "Of course."
"… twist 'em up a high tuckahaw, and twist 'em up a tune called Turkey in the Straw!"
George, at last, was done, so Alfred interrupted.
"Can you play Arkansas Traveler?"
Sam smiled genially and nodded. Taking a deep breath, he went back to his fiddle, this time singing as well.
"Once upon a time in Arkansas, an old man sat in his little cabin door, and fiddled at a tune that he liked to hear, a jolly old tune that he'd play by ear…"
Alfred grinned broadly, leaning back against the wagon's wheel. He looked up at the stars, specks of light in the inky black sky that enveloped them. They always did look nicer from the country, he mused.
As he lost himself in the sky, the fiddle music gradually faded, lulling Alfred into the first peaceful sleep he'd had in a long time.
V/~-~-~\V
Done again!
First off, history:
Wagons going west were, as Alfred says, 11 ft long, 4 ft wide, and 2 ft deep, and the canvas cover went to about 5 ft above the wagon bed. They were pulled by oxen, and due to the luggage, people usually walked alongside the wagon the whole way.
Oxen were also very slow. The average day of travel began between 7 and 8 am, stopped for lunch, and ended at 5 pm for dinner, chores, and tutoring of any children on the journey. But due to the speed of travel, they usually covered only about 15 miles a day.
Meals were usually variations on beans, rice, bacon, jerky, and fresh beef if you were bringing livestock, dried if you weren't. No pasta was served.
John Catron was a real person, a Supreme Court justice born in Virginia, but he spent the later part of his life in Tennessee. He served as a Justice between 1837 and 1865, and after that held many political positions within Tennessee. I have no idea who his children were, if he had any, but there are records of a J. Madison Catron on the Oregon Trail. Catron the Justice wasn't all that important historically, but I chose him to be part of the story because he has the same birthday as I do (January 7th, thanks for asking).
The songs, Turkey in the Straw and Arkansas Traveler are American folk songs popular in the early 1800s. Tunes of songs were at first borrowed from Europe, with they lyrics changed to suit the Americans, but around the 1800s Americans began to create their own.
Secondly, if you noticed the mention of the Italy brothers, good job. If you noticed the blatant Harry Potter reference, I am honored to know that one such as you reads my story. Harry Potter is my eternal fandom (perhaps another story is in order!).
Thahdly, question-and-answer time!
Was Sam Atkins a real person? Yes, he was a real person who traveled on the Oregon Trail, but he was not historically important in any way.
Is Matthew still Alfred's sibling? I never really thought of the two of them as true siblings, just Nations with similar initial circumstances, raised by the same person. If the being-raised-by-England was what made them brothers, Hong Kong and Australia are also their brothers, and I don't see that at all. But yes, they still have very similar appearances, and Matthew already feels closer to Alfred than he does to most people he considers normal. I hope that answers that question satisfactorily...
When will Alfred meet up with Matthew or Arthur again? Sorry, can't tell you that! But he will see both of them again eventually!
Why did Matthew say he was going to meet Alfred again and then never follow through? He's not being a very good friend. Basically, Matthew's busy with his own country, plus America because the American government doesn't have a proper personification. Also, his boss did a fairly good job convincing him that Alfred's nothing special, and Matthew has to keep the secret of Nations a secret. If he showed up and Alfred was all old, he'd be exposed right away. Hope that's good enough for you!
Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed it! And as always, if you have the time, don't hesitate to comment or review!