Daria on the Trail Six
DISCLAIMER: A Song of Ice and Fire is the property of GRR Martin. Daria Morgendorffer is the property of MTV Viacom. My depiction of the Oregon Trail is based on my research of the real Oregon Trail and the people who traveled it, not on the video game.
This story is written for my amusement and ego gratification, not for profit.
This story is rated T and includes foul language, death, and suffering
My thanks to Ultimate Paladin, who gave me the idea for structuring this story
Daria On The Trail*Daria On The Trail*Daria On The Trail
They'd gotten down from Scott's Bluff, the wooden wagon brakes squealing as they descended the steep downhill grade. They then circled the wagons and made camp a couple of miles further west. Daria pitched in with gathering fuel and with unloading the wagon. Dinner was pretty much the same as it was the night before: bacon and doughy bread, causing Daria to wonder if she could make pita bread or flour tortillas as alternatives. She found herself missing all the choices she'd taken for granted back in the first years of the new millennium, then reproached herself for taking those choices for granted.
Despite the fact that men's work and women's work were divided into different spheres, Daria sensed a certain change of atmosphere in the camp. She'd learned only recently that Mr. Trout had been elected as the company's captain and that he'd only been on the job a couple of days before Daria found herself mysteriously shifted from twenty first century Boston to far western Nebraska in 1860. Mr. Trout's descent of Mitchell Pass had been a test, not simply of his leadership abilities, but also as his skill as a de facto wagon master, a test that he seemed to have passed with flying colors. Every so often, their dinner would be interrupted by men from the other wagons to congratulate Mr. Trout on how well he'd gotten them down the hill. Later, the cookware cleaned and the metal cups and tin plates rinsed, Daria almost immediately fell asleep again that evening with exhaustion.
Daria was nudged awake the next morning by Mrs. Trout. She blinked her eyes and got up, stretching to try and get her bones and muscles back in synch. Another day on the trail beckoned. She helped Mrs. Trout set up the campfire and cook breakfast, then helped her load up the wagon again..
"What now, Daria?" said Mrs. Trout.
"I don't think there's any special peril until we reach Fort Laramie," said Daria.
"How far away is that?" said Mrs. Trout.
"Forty, fifty miles, I think," said Daria. She tried to remember whatever she could about Wyoming's geography. What little she could remember dated back to second grade when she got curious about the Rocky Mountains. She thought she remembered that states like New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming had an eastern half that was considered to be plains country and that the western half was covered by the Rockies. She knew that back in the Twenty-First century, there was a Laramie as well as a Fort Laramie, but Laramie was to the south and west and wasn't founded until after the railroad was built across the southern part of the state in the late 1860's.
Fort Laramie was the next major landmark. She wasn't quite sure what to expect. Something like F Troop, except more serious? Or maybe something like a toy fort like she saw for sale at a flea market and collectibles show back in Highland: a wooden stockade with wooden blockhouses? Well, she'd find out soon enough.
She remembered that Fort Laramie had a post office, which she could use. But who could she write to? The trouble was that she was not only temporally-displaced but dimensionally-displaced. She had no idea where her part of the Morgendorffer family was living in the here-and-now. She knew where to find the De Veres, Grandma Barksdale's relatives, but why should they believe her story? She could also find the Barksdales, but she didn't want anything to do with them, even if they gave a positive response. They weren't only pro-slavery, but William Barksdale and his other relatives was also aggressively in favor in expanding slavery into free territories and willing to break up the Union if they couldn't get their way. The William Barksdale in her past had joined the Confederate Army after Secession and rose to the rank of General before he was killed at the Battle of Gettysburg. Those options were not available, so for now she was still a beggar living off the Trouts' charity.
She spent the rest of that day doing what she'd done the day before the Trouts' company reached Scott's Bluff: trudging along, gathering buffalo dung and other combustibles, helping unload the wagon in the evening, bringing water from the Platte, helping Mrs. Trout cook the evening meal, then scraping the plates and rinsing them with river water from a bucket before turning in for the night.
Daria was beginning to realize that the woman pioneer's life was busy throughout her waking hours and that there were no days off. Daria assumed that the next day's routine would be much like that of the day before. It wasn't: the morning went well enough, but that afternoon the rear axle of the Tuckers' wagon snapped, causing the right rear wheel to separate.
Daria watched for a few minutes as the guys clustered around the wagon to look at the damage and decide what to do about it. Guys did the same thing with car wrecks and breakdowns in Highland back in the 1990's. After a short while she turned away and walked back to the Trouts' wagon. As she walked back, she noted that many of women had opened the rear gates of their wagons and were unpacking things. When she reached the Trouts' wagon, she saw that Mrs. Trout was doing the same.
"What's going on?" said Daria. "Surely we aren't camping here."
"We probably aren't," said Mrs. Trout. "But we'll be here long enough to wash some of our things and let them dry."
Oh, boy, thought Daria. There wasn't a laundromat around for miles, so Daria knew how they'd do it: by hand.
The impromptu wash day was more complicated than Daria thought. The other wagons moved over to the side and made a circle to the side. The men then unyoked the oxen and let them graze. pulled off the trail. Meanwhile, Daria, Mrs. Trout, and Jilla picked up bundles of clothing and joined the rest of the women to the edge of the Platte to start doing the wash.
Daria had hand-washed some of her garments by hand first when she was growing up, later after she went away to college: it was tiresome and time-consuming. Daria had never tried to do a load of laundry as big as the Trouts' by hand before. She soon found that the work was exhausting. She tried as hard as she could but she could see that her performance was lagging compared to Mrs. Trouts' and that of the pioneer farm wives. Still, she did not want to lose face: she did what she could.
In earlier years the women might have hung their wash on bushes near the river to let their clothes dry. That wasn't an option: vegetation had been grazed down to stubble by over fifteen years of wagon traffic and thousands and thousands of hungry draft animals. The women carried the damp clothing back to the wagons and hung them on clotheslines strung between the wagons to air-dry. The sun helped dry the clothes but Daria learned that air-drying didn't keep them all that clean: while their wagon train had pulled over and circled, other companies continued to roll westward. It wasn't like weekday traffic on Interstate 95 south from Boston, but every half hour or so, another wagon train would pass by, raising trail dust as draft animals and wagons plodded along. Some of the dust, not much, would drift over towards their encampment.
There was occasional traffic moving in the other direction. Daria saw a cart rolling slowly eastward then stop as she carried another load of damp clothing away from the banks of the Platte. The driver was a long-haired dark-bearded man dressed in buckskins with a necklace that looked something, but not quite like the examples she'd seen at a Harvard museum. She wondered what that was about, then put the thought aside: she was too busy coping with sore muscles and her fatigue. She saw the cart slow down to a stop, then paid it no mind as she crossed the trail to hang on the clothes lines.
Daria had wondered what the Company would do about the Tuckers' broken axle but found that the hard work of hand-washing and rinsing the Trouts' laundry limited her time for thought. She was enlightened that evening while she helped Mrs. Trout and her daughters set out the evening meal.
Mr. Trout came over from the circle of men who'd been looking over the Tuckers' wagon. "We have a guest this evening," he said. "I assume we still have some bread and salt?"
"We have some salt, but we only have a little cornbread I'd traded with the Fraleys," said Mrs. Trout.
"It will have to do," said Mr. Trout.
Daria and Mrs. Trout wondered who the guest might be. They didn't have long to wait: he came over a couple of minutes later. Daria recognized him as the man who'd driven the cart.
"This is," Mr. Trout began.
"Herron Snow," said the mountain man, at least that what he looked like.
"In the name of the New Gods and Old Gods, we offer you guest-right," said Mr. Trout.
"Thank you," said the mountain man. The man's accent was different from the Trouts' and that of the ghostly Robert Baratheon on her Earth. Daria tried to guess his age: he definitely looked like a man who'd lived most of his age out in the open. Fifty at a minimum. Sixty maybe?
Mr. Trout then introduced the other members of his family: Mrs. Trout, young Kennard, Jilla, Minti, and their cousin Willem. He then introduced Daria. "Daria is a Yankee girl from east of the Great River," he said, using the most common Westerosi name for the Mississippi. "She showed up inside our encampment several days ago."
"Daria, Mr. Snow is from the North," said Mr. Trout. Daria's eyes widened. Daria knew little about the North except that it was supposed to be the rugged and least-populated part of Westeros. The people there were very tough and didn't worship the Seven Gods favored by the Andals. Instead, they worshipped the Old Gods, deities Daria knew little or nothing about.
"Greetings," said Daria. "How do you do? My name is Daria Morgendorffer." She saw the mountain man's eyebrows rose when he heard Daria's accent.
The Northerner was curious about Daria but he was more curious about news from Westeros.
"I can only give you some news," said Mr. Trout. "We came through the Arch ten months ago. That was a few weeks after Catelyn Stark had Tyrion Lannister arrested and taken to her sister's holdfast. After I left the Riverlands, I learned that King Robert is dead, his hand Lord Stark was arrested, and that I was in Missouri when the Lords Paramount called up their armies to take the Iron Throne. I have since heard stories that young King Joffrey had Lord Stark beheaded."
The Northerner-turned-mountain man lowered his head and sighed. "Damned Lannisters," he said. "So what brought you people out here?" he said, changing the topic.
"I'm afraid that war will not only come to Westeros, but will come through the Arch," said Mr. Trout. "I fear that the American slave states will war with the American free states and that Lord Tywin might choose to send an army through the Arch to seize it and perhaps the gold fields west of it. I guessed that even if the worst were to come, Lord Tywin would not have the means to menace my family in Oregon."
The Northerner looked thoughtful. "He might think to, but I doubt he'd have the means," he said. "I've been to the western ocean. It is a long, difficult journey, and one I would fear to take if the Indians or the Mormons were hostile."
"Long? Difficult?" said Willem.
"Aye, but it can be done," said Mr. Snow. "Thousands of Yankees have made the journey using wagons and oxen much like yours. And the children of the First Men and the Andals are every bit as tough as the Americans. You can get there." Daria watched as the Trout men lit up with smiles. She wasn't too sure about her chances of survival but she was confident that they could make it, as could Mrs. Trout and her daughters.
The conversation then turned to Mr. Snow's life and travels in North America. Daria learned that he had left his lord's holding in the North, crossed the Neck, then crossed through the Arch about a year or two after it had been discovered. He had met a Westerosi girl, a Riverlander, and had started west towards California. Unfortunately, that had been a year when Cholera had been rampant on the Great Plains. She had died along the trail and, heart-broken, Mr. Snow drifted away to return east. But along the way he found a group of trappers and spent several years trapping animals and selling pelts, then went to work for one of the few remaining fur companies. That was interrupted by a journey as a helper with a wagon train bound for California. He had lost interest in California and had started east, gotten a job as a carter, and was now bound for St. Louis with a load of furs. Daria wanted to listen to his adventures but she was exhausted and knew that she was about to collapse. She excused herself and went to sleep.
Daria slept for a couple of hours, then awoke to pee. She rolled up her sleeve to look at her digital watch and and saw the time. It was 1:15 AM: the mountain man and Mr. Trout were still talking. She returned to the camp site and overheard that Mr. Snow had seen a wrecked wagon several hours west of where they were. Mr. Trout seemed very interested. She got back in her bedroll and fell asleep.
Orrick Trout's Point of View
I found my conversation with Herron Snow to be illuminating and rewarding. The Northman had, in fact, traveled the breadth of the Overland Trail, howbeit to California and not to Oregon. He spoke of his journeys having many of the same landmarks and difficulties that Daria knew of. But Snow knew of the hazards first-hand, while Daria only knew of them from books. Still, it was good to have confirming information: as the captain of the company, I felt duty-bound to get as many of my people safely to Oregon as I could, and the more I knew about the trail the better.
I awoke just after the following morning. Snow was awake and seated at our campfire drinking coffee and cooking his breakfast.
"I'll be leaving soon," he said. "I need to do deliver these furs."
"Couldn't you stay with us?" I said. "We could use a good guide."
"I thank you," he said, "but I'd given my word that I would deliver these furs to St. Joseph and my word is my bond."
I understood. I'd learned that folk from Westeros took their oaths far more seriously than Yankees, and Northerners were particularly serious.
"Farewell and safe journey," I said. "May the Gods watch over you."
"And you," he said.
For a moment I thought of rousing Daria and sending her east with Herron. The girl was no pioneer and despite her pride and her book-knowledge, the way west would be extremely dangerous.
I hesitated, then let it pass. She'd spoken little of her beliefs but I'd come to believe that she wished to continue towards the western ocean. And a thought occurred to me: maybe she was meant to go west, whether it was her own pride or perhaps the will of the Gods. I prayed that it was the will of the Gods and that they'd forgive me if I was wrong.
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