Daria on the Trail Five

DISCLAIMER: I do not own either the Game of Thrones or A Song of Ice and Fire. Nor do I own Daria Morgendorffer. The former belongs to GRR Martin and Daria belongs to MTV Viacom. This story based on the real Oregon Trail and has little or nothing to do with the computer game of the same name.

This work of fiction is written for my own amusement and ego gratification, not for profit.

Again, thanks to Ultimate Paladin, who gave me the idea as to how to structure this story.

Daria On The Trail*Daria On The Trail*Daria On The Trail

She discovered that she wasn't the only one who'd taken shelter under the Orricks' wagon: Jilla and Minti were also there.

"I thought you'd be in the wagon," said Daria said after a loud thunderclap.

"It's dryer under here," said Jilla.

The thunderstorm continued to flash and boom for a couple of hours. Daria might have appreciated the impressive sound and light show if she'd been under real shelter like she'd been back when she was a little girl living in Highland. Here out on the Great Plains with the rain coming down in sheets and mooing cattle, she just wasn't in the mood to be impressed.

The most dramatic part of the thunderstorm eventually tapered off, to be replaced with rain. Daria looked at her watch: the light-show had lasted about an hour and a half, but it continued to rain. Jilla moved closer to her, then reached out and draped part of her blanket and Daria's so they'd be able to keep warm.

"Seven Hells, it's cold!" said Jilla.

That's an understatement, Daria thought in English.

She doubted that she'd get much sleep. I'm gonna be a zombie tomorrow, she thought, despite the fact that it was already well after midnight. In spite of that, she managed to doze off for a couple of hours.

Tomorrow came sooner than she'd hoped. It was morning twilight when Mrs. Orrick walked over and nudged Jilla awake. Jilla in turn nudged Minti and Daria awake and Daria realized that it was time to get up and at it. Bleary-eyed, she blinked, yawned, then instinctively groped around for her eyeglasses. She then remembered that she hadn't worn or needed them since she'd gotten eye surgery. She was tired.

She looked up at the sky. Last night's thunderstorm had taken most of the clouds with it, leaving a sky that still showed the brighter planets and stars even as the sun was beginning to brighten. The male Orricks were already up and yoking the oxen. Daria could hear the animals mooing and wondered how the Orricks could tell their oxen from those of the other people's. Was it just coloration or did the Orricks' oxen moo in a special way that they recognized? She didn't know. That was something she'd have to ask.

Mrs. Orrick handed plates first to the guys, then to Daria and her daughters. No old-style English table manners here! The bacon was fresh off the griddle and was too hot to eat, but the bread looked almost ready to sample. Daria reached to take a sample when Mrs. Orrick coughed.

"We pray for a blessing for our food before we eat," said Mrs. Orrick. "Don't you people do that?"

Oops, thought Daria. Busted.

"You're right," said Daria. "I think you'd better pick out something. I'm not familiar with your holy book."

Mrs. Orrick made a short prayer that Daria mostly understood, then said a word that Daria guessed took the place of the Amen used in Christian services.

Then they started eating. Daria looked at the bacon and sighed. Get used to this, Morgendorffer, she silently said to herself. There's going to be a whole lot of this and little else for a long, long time. She suspected that she'd be with the Orricks for much longer than the few days it would take to get to Fort Laramie.

After everyone ate, the women set to reloading the wagon, including the still-damp tarp under which the other Orricks had spent the night. They left the cookware out to cool down some more. Daria smiled at what the Orricks used instead of a frying pan: it looked like nothing so much as it looked like a Wok. She wondered if they'd brought it with them from the Riverlands.

The oxen had been yoked and Mr. Orrick had been waiting on Mrs. Orrick and the other women in the company to finish cooking and then complete reloading the wagon. Daria made mental notes to herself to try to scrounge clothing and a tin plate from someone or somewhere. She remembered that a lot of pioneers abandoned stuff along the trail and she thought she remembered that Fort Laramie was a major dumping-ground.

Daria thought that they were ready to set off, but a pioneer woman walked up to the Orricks' wagon and said "Good morning, Mrs. Trout."

"Good morning, Mrs. Fish," Mrs. Trout replied. Daria studied the woman with interest. She was five foot six, brown-haired, and wearing what Daria thought of as a traditional pioneer woman's outfit: a long-sleeved dress, shin-length skirt, sun bonnet, and an apron that should be white if she could find someplace to wash it. Her complexion was darker than Daria's, reminding her of a couple of dorm-mates back at Raft University. To Daria's surprise, Mrs. Fish looked like she was only a couple of years older than she was.

"It's a good time for the ladies to go off and pee," said Mrs. Fish. Mrs. Fish had a musical accent that Daria thought she recognized as being Indianan. She saw Daria and looked her over.

"How do you do?" she said. "You must be that strange girl that turned up the other day and latched on with the Trouts."

"That I am," Daria replied, trying to be polite without being arrogant on the one hand or too deferential on the other. "Daria Morgendorffer, late of Carroll County, Maryland." She decided not to say anything about Highland, Texas, which was deep in Comanche territory in the here-and-now and was careful not to say anything about Lawndale. Lawndale wasn't even founded until the 1880's.

"You don't sound like anyone from Maryland," said Mrs. Fish. No flies lost on her, Daria thought uneasily.

"I didn't grow up there," said Daria. "My parents grew up somewhere else and moved there when I was fifteen." Damn, but this woman was perceptive.

"So how did the Trouts take you in?" said Mrs. Fish.

"Well, I woke up on the ground next to their wagon and begged for mercy," said Daria. "They agreed to take me in at least as far as Fort Laramie."

"Funny-looking outfit you're wearing," said Mrs. Fish, obviously fishing for more information.

"Tell me about it," said Daria. "I woke up in these clothes and I have no idea as to why I was wearing them," which was absolutely true, since she'd fallen asleep in Boston wearing only panties and her pajamas.

"Any idea as to how you got here, or any idea as to whether you're part of some other company?" said Mrs. Fish.

Dear God, thought Daria with a shiver, that would be a nightmare. I'm in some nineteenth-century farm wife's body and I'm married to some lump I've never met in my life.

"Nope, and I don't remember a—darn—thing between here and school until I woke up yesterday morning," said Daria.

"So what about this potty break?" she said, trying to change the subject.

-(((O-O)))-

Daria found wagon train bathroom breaks to be highly instructive. The guys might go off to relieve themselves individually or in small groups, but women's bathroom breaks were a communal affair. The ladies went off in a large group and took turns, which meant some of them would find someplace to do their thing while the women who were either waiting for their turn or who had done their thing formed a circle around them, using their skirts to keep passers-by from looking. Daria squatted and did her thing, silently lamenting the lack of toilet paper and running water so she could rinse off her hand.

The wagon train started rolling westward after the ladies returned from doing their business. Daria looked back at the company's circled wagons and was half-surprised to see that the Trouts' company wasn't the only company on the Trail that day: there were at least three more that she could see and she suspected that there were more that she couldn't. She wondered if the other companies were bound for California or Oregon and whether they'd decided to head west for free land, to search for gold in California, or to put as much distance as they could from the rumblings of civil war to the east.

The company traveled west for most of the day, Chimney Rock very slowly receding behind them and the rock formations that Daria supposed must be Scotts Bluffs drawing ever so slowly closer. The company steadily closed on Scott's Bluffs, then paused for a "Nooner" a mile or so short of the bluffs to eat lunch.

Daria was amused to see that their company's progress was halted by a Wild West-era bottleneck: other companies were trying to negotiate the downward descent from the top of Scott's Bluff. Since she wasn't driving the wagons or minding Minti, she decided to walk up to the edge of the downhill grade and see how other parties handled it.

A mile later she found out. The answer was usually warily. The wagon drivers would ease their wagons and animals up to the edge of the steep downhill grade, then slowly let their wagons down the hill. They didn't just use their wagon brakes, they also gathered in groups to slow the wagon wheels so that their wagons wouldn't run away and crash. Daria noted that those wagons made it safely down the grade; the drivers then leading their animals away from the grade and the men who'd helped them walking up the hill to help the next wagon in their company descend. Daria watched with fascination as an eleven-wagon company descended the grade.

The next group wasn't so lucky. The first wagon descended the grade without any problems; the driver had obviously learned from the previous company's descent and followed their example, but the next wagon wrecked. The driver had waved away any offers assistance, started down the grade relying only on his skill and his wagon brake and lost control. Daria watched with horror as the wagon's weight caused the mule team to speed up, which in turn caused the wagon to bounce, jostle, and then turn over, throwing the driver out of his seat and wrecking the wagon.

The driver had been thrown clear of the crashing wagon. Daria suspected that that hadn't done him much good: he'd made a bad landing and had been seriously injured. She wondered if he'd broken anything: an arm, a leg or worse, his back or neck. She shuddered. If he broke either one of those, he was probably a goner.

Back in the twenty-first century, everyone would have waited for the traffic cops and other first responders to descend on the scene, determine if anyone was at fault, and then taken the driver to the hospital. That didn't happen: while some of the emigrants gathered around the injured man to see what they could do and others tried to catch his mules, other emigrants set about clearing the trail, moving pieces of the wrecked wagon and its contents so that they could have their turn at descending the grade. Daria thought about Robert Frost's "Out, Out" poem and decided that it was all too applicable here.

Looking towards the downhill grade, Daria realized that pioneer wrecks and twenty-first century wrecks and collisions had certain similarities. They attracted crowds of bystanders. Most of them were gawkers, but Daria spotted Mr. Trout and saw the expression on his face. He didn't look like a gawker: instead, he looked like someone who was studying the scene and trying to think of ways to avoid repeating the accident. That reassured her.

Daria watched with mixed emotions as the next wagon went downgrade. The driver had learned from the previous wagon's experience. He not only used his wagon-brake but had other men in his company clutching his wagon's wheels to slow its descent from the top of the grade. Despite the fact that the driver was part of another company, Daria was relieved to see that it made it safely to the bottom of the hill.

Daria watched another wagon successfully descend what she now remembered as Mitchell Pass when Mr. Trout spotted her among the bystanders.

"Let's go back to our train," he said in Andal. Kennard was standing a short distance away. Daria hadn't noticed him.

"So, how do you think we should handle our descent?" said Mr. Trout. Daria could see that he was primarily talking to Kennard.

"Use the wagon brakes and have men slow the wheels as our wagons go downhill," said Kennard.

Halleluiah, thought Daria, there's some brains mixed in with the kid's hormones.

"What do you think, Daria?" said Mr. Trout.

"I agree with Kennard," said Daria. "It wouldn't hurt us to check our wagons and animals before we go over the edge, though."

"I was going to do that," said Mr. Trout. "Any other suggestions?"

"No passengers when the wagon goes down the hill," said Daria. "The women and children should get out and walk behind their wagons as they go downhill. That means that even if the animals fall lame or there is a run-away wagon, they won't get hurt."

Mr. Trout nodded in approval. Daria hoped that it meant that she was earning some cred as someone who either knew something or could learn on the fly.

Upon their return to their wagon train, Mr. Trout announced an impromptu meeting. He said that everyone should double-check their wheels, axles, and wagon brakes before they reached the edge of Mitchel Pass and the steep downhill grade.

At length somebody walked down the row of wagons. One look at the man's features and his air of self-importance told her that this guy wasn't any of the Orricks.

This guy's full of himself, Daria thought with a frown.

The man's "Good morning, Mrs. Trout" made Daria's eyebrows rise. Could it be that she'd gotten the Orricks' surname wrong? She wouldn't be surprised if she did, she thought, clenching her teeth.

"Good morning, Captain Ridge," said Mrs. Orrick. No, Mrs. Trout, Daria corrected herself.