Wow, it's been a long time! Life really got in the way of this chapter, but now I'm back!
Thank you very much to Night's Flower, petaltailify97, Oniongrass, Hinagiku Flower, Ember Hinote, , Jillo96, and the two guests for reviewing the last chapter, and to SamanthaMeloes, Lapis Lazuli Ichigo, and again to Ember Hinote, Jillo96, petaltailify97, and Oniongrass for reviewing the omake!
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Sorry for making you all wait so long, but here it is!
I disclaim, and own nothing.
Alfred craned is neck up to see the tip of the rock formation before him, the summer heat coming in waves off the dusty ground. Turning to his equally dusty party, he gestured with weary grandeur to the pillar of stone behind him.
"Chimney Rock, folks!"
Lucretia barely glanced up from the handkerchief she was using to fan her face. "Lovely, just lovely…"
George did glance up from his position leaning against the back of the wagon, but quickly put his head back down between his arms, and stared at the ground instead. "Another rock… I don't ever wanna see another rock again…"
Sam was the only one who looked excited at all. It was probably due to the fact that he'd been the one driving that morning, and was thus the least tired.
"Well, isn't that something! You've gotten us quite far, son!"
"Not really," Alfred replied. "We're only twelve miles from Courthouse Rock, and that was right near the Platte… I mean, the flat land may be over, but from here on it's uphill all the way to the mountains."
"Do you mean to say we'll be going even slower?"
Alfred looked toward Lucretia, who had ceased her fanning to stare at him incredulously. "Well, not for a bit yet, but once we hit the foothills- those are still a ways away, you know- it'll be harder for the oxen to walk, and the wagon's awful heavy still—"
Lucretia almost sank to the ground in despair, but a doubtful glance at its questionable cleanliness versus her skirts convinced her otherwise, and she instead settled for leaning on the wheel. "My stars…"
"On the bright side," George muttered, "we've only another seventy thousand and twenty-six miles left to go!"
"Actually, only around two thousand and five hundred," Alfred put in helpfully. George merely groaned.
"But that mean's we've eight hundred miles behind us!" Sam said cheerfully. "And that should definitely make you feel something!"
"Like foot pain," George said.
"And absolutely filthy." Lucretia made a vain attempt to brush herself off.
"Well, I'm just hungry," Alfred interjected, "so why don't we stop early and have a big supper?"
"I still fail to see why we must eat this… awful excuse for food," Lucretia said as Sam began unpacking, a line that she repeated every evening as she cooked yet another meal of beans and rice. At first, Alfred had responded, listing all of the reasons why this (not pasta) was eaten at all times, but he'd long since given up bothering.
"We also need to get rid of a few things," Alfred said. "The oxen aren't looking too good as it is, and all that extra weight's not helping."
"Get rid of things?" Lucretia exclaimed. "What did we buy oxen for if they can't even carry our belongings properly?"
"You're the one who wanted that dresser, and your ten-thousand hatboxes," George quipped.
"It's a French bureau," Lucretia retorted with an imperious sniff, "not a dresser, and those are valuable. I wasn't about to leave my things behind for those cousins of ours. I do not trust them to treat them with proper care."
"Regardless, Alfred has a point," Sam put in. "There's no way we'll make it with all this extra weight. We'll have to get rid of it sometime, so why not now?"
"Because we will not be getting rid of them at all," Lucretia said matter-of-factly.
"Yes, we will," George said, and he began rifling through the contents of the wagon, tossing boxes out at random, ignoring Lucretia's cries of, "Not that!", "Watch what you're throwing!", and "My belongings will not be tossed with such flippancy!"
But soon enough, George had evaded Lucretia's flailing attempts to stop him for long enough to create a pile of boxes that he deemed unnecessary. The bureau was unable to be removed without dismantling the wagon cover, so it remained (despite Alfred and Sam's agreement that it presented the easiest way to lose some weight).
All of this disposing put Lucretia in a foul mood, which gradually infected her brother. Even Sam's good cheer failed to lift the general pessimism of the family. Supper was a subdued affair, and Alfred wondered for the thousandth time what had possessed these people to go west in the first place.
_V~-~-~V_
The first major snag in Alfred's plan to safely transport the Atkinses (plus George) westward was when the trail disappeared.
He and Sam had been expecting that it would do so for a while (but hadn't mentioned it to Lucretia, lest she throw a fit); after all, it wasn't a major route of travel, and they were among the very first wagons to make the journey. It was practically their job to create the trail themselves for future pioneers. But all in all, the lack of a clear path forward was disconcerting.
Alfred looked around, studying his location in a manner that some would call absent-minded gazing, but he called critical assessment. He wasn't the Mother of the People's son for nothing.
His critical assessment concluded that it was very flat, and had been very flat for many miles now. A rock, large and recognizable as a landmark, jutted up from the flatness of the plains, totally devoid of foliage and thus easily distinguished from the tall grasses that grew everywhere else, as far as the eye could see.
He also concluded that they were in the middle of nowhere. They hadn't seen people since their last stop at a trading post, and that had been two weeks ago.
Another thing he noted was that the sun really was quite bright in the middle of nowhere. It was making it rather hard to see much, especially when compounded with the fact that it made the ground all wavy-looking.
"Hey, George."
"What?"
"Why does the sun make the ground look like it's rippling?"
"I dunno, ask Sam. He's the smart one."
"Say, Sam—"
"I have no idea why, Alfred. Now will you please tell us which direction we need to go?"
"Oh. Right."
"Go right?"
"Quiet, George. I'm trying to think."
In truth, Alfred had no idea which direction they were supposed to be going. After all, Lewis and Clark's expedition had been to find the mouth of the Missouri and "establish diplomatic relations," not get all the way to the blasted far Oregon territory specifically (even if it hadn't been called such at the time). Plus, that was thirty years ago, and even his memory wasn't perfect.
Speaking of the Lewis and Clark expedition, there had been a fork there, too, in the river. If Alfred remembered correctly, a majority of the expedition had wanted to go north, but in the end, they'd followed the expedition leaders.
"South," he said decisively, masking his total lack of direction with an air of confidence. "We're going south."
Sam gave him his usual passive smile, and gripped the oxen's reins firmly, steering them left without protest. Lucretia grumbled as usual, but she always was put out when they had to walk anywhere. George clearly hadn't been paying attention, and looked at his brother in bewilderment.
"I thought we were going right!"
_V~-~-~V_
"John, what did you do with my sassafras-colored hat for summer wear?"
Alfred glanced at George, who wasn't responding, merely continuing to poke some sticks around as he attempted for the fifty-eighth time to start a fire on his own.
Lucretia, meanwhile, was divesting the wagon of everything they'd packed in it in order to find a new hat. Her current choice, which she described as her pastel-peach hat for spring wear, had gradually become more brown than pastel-peach with the trail dust ingrained so thickly into its cloth.
Sticking her head out of the back of the wagon, Lucretia fixed George's back with her iciest stare. "John. My hat. What did you do with it?"
"Hey, Al. Wanna give a man some help here?"
Alfred chanced a glance at Lucretia. Still icy.
"Alfred! Do you wanna eat, or not?"
It was a calculated risk, but food was definitely the winner. Feigning a sigh of exasperation, he made his way towards George and his pile of sticks. "Haven't I explained fifty-seven times how do light a fire?"
"Who's counting?"
"I am, actually."
"Ah."
"JOHN MADISON CATRON JUNIOR!"
George still focused on his sticks, but glanced nervously over his shoulder at Lucretia before looking at Alfred, who began his instruction as he had the previous fifty-seven times.
"Look, you need two stones, how many times have I told you that? And find me some forked sticks, if you actually intend to roast anything… but you at least managed to arrange them properly this time. I guess you can be trained, after all."
George punched him lightly and made to get up, but was stopped by a hand on his shoulder. Turning slowly, he looked down into the furious face of his sister.
"I believe," she said, frost coating her words, "I asked you what you did to my sassafras-colored hat for summer wear, John Madison Catron junior, and I expect an answer."
George glanced sideways at Alfred, clearly intending to push his luck. Alfred shrugged at him and stepped back to the relative safety of the other side of their camp, under the pretense of helping Sam with the oxen. There was no way he was getting into another fight with Lucretia. She could be a force of nature when her brother was involved.
Another glance, now pleading. Alfred carefully engaged in a meaningless conversation with Sam.
"So, how are Flower and Egg?" he asked, speaking of the pair of oxen. Lucretia had actually named them Daisy and Sunnyside, but George had taken creative liberties.
"As well as can be expected. They're as tired as us, I suppose," Sam answered evenly, but joined Alfred in not-watching Lucretia and George, who was digging himself into a deeper hole as they spoke.
"Who're you talkin' to, Lucy? I dunno any John's. D'you know any John's, Al?"
"I am speaking to you, John, not Alfred." This was punctuated by a very clear say-a-word-and-I-will-beat-you-senseless-with-my-hatbox look in Alfred's direction before she turned back to George. "And I expect an answer. Immediately."
"Are you sure you looked hard enough? Maybe it's in a different colored box, like the
Out of options, George glanced at the ground, then at the wagon, then at the sky before sheepishly rubbing the back of his head. "I… er…"
"John…"
"Are you sure you looked hard enough? Maybe it's under a different hat, like that hideou— er, stunningly gorgeous pink hat for summer was, back in Independence…"
"That was my rose-petal pink hat for spring wear, and don't avoid the question!"
"I jus' really, really think you should look again, to see if you stuffed it in the dresser, or under the spring box—"
"JOHN!"
"Awright! I dumped it off back at that big rock, with all that other stuff!"
"You what?!"
"Dumped it! Disposed of it! Threw it out! Removed it from our possession!" George yelled, in an unusual fit of eloquence.
Sam finally intervened to try to calm his wife, who looked like she was about to brain George with the skillet she was wielding in a menacing fashion. "Put that down, that's for cooking dinner, Lucretia, dear… and it's all right, you've got plenty of other hats." Lucretia's expression made an abrupt change from a harbinger-of-doom look to distraught, and the skillet fell limply to her side.
"But I match them specifically with my outfits and jewelry! How am I supposed to wear my lily-green dress without my sassafras hat?"
"We'll get you another in Oregon, don't you worry..." Sam continued to soothe her, and George used the time to make a strategic retreat to Alfred's space of relative safety.
"How he can stand bein' married to that woman, I dunno," he muttered.
"I just wonder how long it'll take for her to realize there aren't any hat stores in Oregon territory," Alfred replied, and got a snicker out of George in return. "And aren't you her brother? How'd you manage?"
George scowled. "I was doin' just fine on my own, an' then she's gotta go an' complain to our father that I'm not makin' a decent man of myself. He an' mother got together to force me back to living in Missouri with Lucy, on account of her needin' a man in the house. Then she up an' got married to Sam, good guy, him, but they made me stay anyway."
Alfred nodded, unsure of what to say to that. "You know, if you get back to cooking, maybe you can put that frying pan to use before Lucretia gets any more ideas."
He needed no further convincing. In a flash, George had grabbed some of the meat they'd been planning on saving, and threw it into the pan he'd snatched directly from Lucretia's hand.
"John!"
"Sorry, Luce," George replied, looking entirely unapologetic. "But can't you see I'm cookin' here?"
_V~-~-~V_
The land had reached a new kind of unfamiliar for Alfred. Not just a, oh-I-haven't-been-here-before, isn't-it-lovely, kind of unfamiliar, but a very similar kind of unfamiliar to the one developed when one was lost.
But Alfred certainly wasn't lost, and pressed on, attempting to ignore his growing sense of cluelessness in the hope that they'd soon reach a landmark, or trading post of some form. He was pretty sure they had to keep going south until they hit Fort William, but he was definitely asking for directions at the next opportunity.
It was Lucretia who first voiced the fear growing in all members of their little party. Sitting down for dinner one night, she asked, in a voice unusually tentative, "Are we lost?"
Sam immediately tried to reassure his wife. "Of course not, we'll get back on track soon enough—"
"We're lost."
Alfred glared at George, who met his gaze without remorse. "We haven't seen any sign of the trail, other wagons, or tradin' posts since going left at that big rock. I told you lot we should've gone right..."
Sam turned to Alfred. "Is that true, Alfred?
Alfred glanced around, hoping for... something. He didn't know quite what, but it would fall from the sky and solve his problems. Maybe like a magical green flying rabbit.
"Alfred?"
"Er... I wouldn't say that we're lost, per se..."
"Then what are we?" Lucretia snapped. "Merely temporarily missing?"
Suddenly, George spoke again. "Is it jus' me, or is that stuff over that-a-way smoke?"
Alfred turned, following George's pointing finger to something in the sky. He shaded his eyes and squinted, trying to make it out through the heat. It was gray, and floating, yet definitely not a cloud.
And it was certainly better than wandering aimlessly. "It is smoke," Alfred said, "and we're going to find what's making it!"
"We most certainly are not!"
Alfred turned around. Lucretia had her hands on her hips, a pose that was now intimately familiar to all of them, and was glaring from beneath the rim of her hat.
"Why not?" George asked. "They migh' help us with supplies, or somethin'."
"What if they're Injuns?" Lucretia asked. "They'll attack us, and steal all of our things, and probably leave us for dead!"
"They wouldn't do that," Alfred said.
"And what makes you so sure? You've got us in this mess in the first place because you were sure that we had to go south!"
"And I'll get us out," he retorted. "A good man always solves problems. And I'll definitely get the People to help us out."
Lucretia looked incredulous. "Get those people to help us? They'd never offer help! We should be running in the opposite direction, not asking them for help!"
"What if they're not Injuns?" Sam asked. "It could just be a brush fire, or maybe we're not off track after all and it's another wagon."
"Who cares?" George said. "If they've got a fire, maybe they've got food!"
With everyone more or less decided, the group made its way towards the smoke, but it turned out to be farther than expected, so they camped out for the night.
It was early afternoon the following day when the smoke reappeared, and it had moved.
Any doubt in Alfred's mind that it was natives making that smoke was erased. Wagons, as they'd seen (or not seen), weren't common. Guessing they were somewhere north of Mexico at this point, Alfred attempted to remember which of his siblings Nek had said lived here. He came up empty.
But with Sam vouching for him, Alfred led the group on. And sure enough, in the distance over the flat plain, a sparse encampment could be seen. Horses were standing off to one side, away from the place the smoke was coming from. A few figures could be seen gathered around the fire, sitting or crouching, and most certainly not white pioneers.
"Golly," George whispered. "Real Injuns."
"You want to be a trapper, don't you? Get used to them," Alfred snapped, not in any mood to be nice.
It was a scouting party, by Alfred's guess, though from which tribe he couldn't tell. He didn't know many, aside from the northeast ones, besides the ones Nek had told him about in her stories. The Otoe and the Missouri briefly crossed his mind, but they were already out of their territory.
Suddenly, he recalled the newspaper article he'd been reading just before agreeing to lead this expedition in the first place, about the five tribes that had been sent west by order of his government. But if it was any of them, their wagon party was really off track.
Regardless, he told himself, they should be able to point us in the right direction, whoever they are.
Lucretia immediately volunteered to stay put with the wagon and her heirlooms. Sam volunteered to join her, purely for her protection, of course. George was all but shoved after Alfred, because according to Lucretia, "Alfred is too valuable to lose. Be a dear and make yourself useful as his expendable back-up."
George bemoaned his fate as Alfred led the two of them across the prairie towards the small scouting party. The scouts clearly noticed them early, and stood from the circle around their lunchtime fire. Three of the five or so began walking towards Alfred and George, clearly with the intention of heading them off. George was slowly inching behind Alfred, peering over his shoulder.
Alfred stopped first, holding his hands up, feeling George bump into him and then quickly mimic his movement. The three men continued another few feet and stopped as well, both parties studying the other.
Of the three men, one was older, around his late thirties by Alfred's best guess, and he stood beside another, shorter man a bit younger than he. The youngest stood in front, somehow oddly familiar. His black hair was tied up in a ponytail, feathers adorning his hair, and his deep brown eyes meet Alfred's with the air of a challenge.
He said something Alfred couldn't understand. "I think they're angry," George whispered, hiding further behind Alfred. All three of the men's eyes snapped toward his movement, and the hand of one of the back men went to hilt of the battle axe at his waist.
"Stay still!" Alfred hissed. Wishing he remembered more of his signs, he quickly made the hand motion for Peace.
The eyes of the young man in front widened just slightly in surprise. Who are you? Alfred quickly continued, hoping he remembered correctly.
The young man signed back, something unfamiliar to Alfred, who just shrugged his confusion. The man conferred briefly with the two behind him, speaking rapidly in whatever language they were using. Finally, he turned and said, "Tsalagi."
That was definitely familiar. He dimly remembered Nek telling him something, long ago, when a visitor had come, a visitor who spoke the language he and Nek shared, and another. "This is Mohe," she had said, "He comes from a village far away, in the south. His people are the Tsalagi, and you can call him your big brother."
There had been a young man there, with deep brown eyes and black hair tied up on his head. Alfred remembered his smile, all white teeth and crinkling eyes. So very much like Nek, and so very much like himself.
Tsalagi. Cherokee.
"Nihshans?" Alfred asked, reverting to the Algonquin he still knew intimately, even after years of disuse. Big brother?
The young man showed no change in expression, and Alfred felt rather foolish. Of course this man couldn't be Mohe; he probably was another who just looked like him. Would Mohe even still be alive? Even if he was like me, his people were forced out of their home; could he have gone with them?
But as the other's dark brown eyes studied his face, Alfred finally saw a flicker of recognition. The young man stepped forward, ignoring the hissed words of his comrades, closing the remaining distance between himself and Alfred.
George cowered, muttering incomprehensibly, something about angry Injuns and being bald, but Alfred couldn't have cared less as the young man reached up, and lightly tapped that one strand of blond hair that would never lie flat.
"Mukki?"
V/~-~-~\V
So, that's that. A wee cliffhanger, but nothing too major.
Historical information time:
Chimney Rock and Courthouse Rock had a tandem thing going as the first major landmark/landmarks pioneers saw while traveling the Oregon Trail. They indicated the end of the prairies, and the beginning of the more rugged trek to the Rocky Mountain foothills. Chimney Rock was supposedly visible from forty miles away, due to the fact that it had the, "appearance of a haystack with a pole running far above its top," according to General Joel Palmer, who led a surveying party to the area in 1845. British explorer Sir Richard Burton wrote that Courthouse Rock, eventually named after the courthouse in St Louis, "resembled anything more than a court house."
Fort William was established in 1834 and later renamed Fort Laramie, in honor of Jacques La Ramie (a local French fur trader) when it was purchased by the US Army in 1849. It is northwest from Chimney Rock, hence why Alfred's lost.
Pioneers did dump things along the trail whenever they had difficulty navigating the land due to the weight of their wagon or to spare their oxen. These articles were called, "leeverites," basically short for, "leave 'er right there." An enterprising group of Mormons from Utah actually made a business later on out of scavenging, fixing, and selling various articles left behind by pioneers on the trail.
Many pioneers' greatest fear wasn't the difficulty of the trail itself, but the natives they might encounter. However, there were very few total attacks on Oregon Trail emigrants, especially when considering the amount of travelers who used the trail, so these fears were mostly unfounded.
They're in Oklahoma right now, where the Cherokee tribe was forcibly sent by the US government. There will be more on the Trail of Tears next chapter. Tsalagi, if you didn't get that, is the Cherokee word for Cherokee, and nihshans (pronounced nih-SHAUNS) is the Algonquin word for older brother.
As for questions from reviewers...
What season did Alfred leave to the West? Most pioneers left in the springtime in hopes that they would avoid most of the severe weather. This became imperative when it came to crossing the Rockies and the Cascades, as arriving too close to winter would leave you snowed in.
How long would it take to get to Oregon for them? The average time changes based on accidents, weather, and other such variables, but on average it took 4 and 1/2 to 5 months to reach Oregon. Specifically in 1840, the average group took 170 days total.
I had two references to canon pets from Hetalia in this chapter. Let me know if you caught them!
... And that's about it. As usual, if you've a question or comment, please don't hesitate to leave a review! See you next chapter!