Daria on the Trail Part Eleven: Fording the Platter

DISCLAIMER: I do not own A Song of Ice and Fire or A Game of Thrones. Nor do I own Daria Morgendorffer. The Oregon Trail in this story is based on my research of the real Oregon Trail and not the computer game.

This story is written for my amusement and ego gratification. . I neither expect nor deserve any sort of financial compensation for this work of fiction.

If you enjoy this story, please write and post a review.

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

Daria:

After watching the wagon from the other train tip into the Laramie, Mr. Trout decided to play it safe and told me and the other Trout women to ferry across the rivers. Willem led us to the ferry that would take us across the Laramie. The ferry wasn't really a ferry; it was actually a dugout canoe—a tippy dugout canoe that the camp director back at Camp Grizzly would never have allowed into the water. I looked at the ferryman Willem had picked and wondered about his judgment: the ferryman was ungroomed and wore shabby clothes and I should have acted on the red flag right then and there. It wasn't until I was close enough to get into the canoe that I could smell the second red flag: the scent of alcohol over the reek of unwashed clothing.

It wasn't until we had all gotten onto the canoe that I realized that things were about to get worse: the ferryman told us that there were supposed to two guys rowing instead of one and that one of us would have to help. Kara and I then had a brief, frantic conversation as to which of us was more qualified to help. As it turned out, I was. Kara had been a lady of means back in the Riverlands and while she did a little paddling in a pond back in childhood, she'd since let minions to do the heavy lifting after marrying Mr. Trout. That meant Morgendorffer: she who'd paddled a canoe at Camp Grizzly and then on a couple of slow-moving rivers on weekend excursions with Benton during her college years.

The ferryman passed me an oar: it was long and awkward and I think he would have done better with a twenty-first century canoe paddle. He pushed off while I was turning the oar around so I could use it. After a frightening, tippy start punctuated by Jilla's and Minti's shrieking, my instincts came back to me and we were able to float across the Laramie without tipping over. When we reached the other bank, I learned that I was expected to hold the canoe steady while Kara and the girls got out of the canoe. The ferryman then asked for a tip: Kara tossed him a small coin while I gave him a well-deserved glare.

It was a short stroll over to the ferry that would take us across the Platte, and a longer wait to get onto it. We had to pay another fare: the fare this time was higher, we had to share the canoe with a couple of people from another wagon train, but at least the ferrymen were sober and we got to the far shore without being tossed into the Platte.

It wasn't until we were safely on terra firma and looking for Mr. Trout and Willem that Kara told me about a species called a Lizard Lion that lived in swamps and bogs back in Westeros. They sounded like alligators but were more dangerous: they had a tendency to jump out of the water and pursue their prey. I crossed my fingers and hoped that some idiot wouldn't introduce them into the Missouri River basin.

We then started looking for our wagon and our wagon train. It took a little searching, but we found it. Our wagon had already crossed, as had Willem's and a couple of other families, but some were still crossing the Platte and probably the Laramie, too. I watched as a doubled team pulled the Watsons' wagon out of the Platte and onto dry land, Mr. Trout and Mr. Watson soaking wet but triumphant. Kara ran up to Mr. Trout and told him that we'd made it across. After a hug and a couple of kisses, he waved Willem and me over.

"Willem, Daria, I want you to find us a camp site," he said. He used the second person plural pronoun: that meant me and Willem. "I think you're clever enough to know what you look for. Take a couple of the others and stake out a space. Send someone back to meet me and we'll join you when all of our wagons are across."

"Should we take your other wagon?" I said. The Trouts' other wagon was already across, but I didn't see the team with it.

"I'm lending both of my teams to help some of the other families across," said Mr. Trout.

Smart politicking, I thought. I hoped his oxen could handle it. Well, if I couldn't use one of Mr. Trout's wagons to help us stake out a campground, maybe I could get some of the other families to help. So who else was across?

I looked at the line of wagons from our company and started counting. It was a very short count. Mr. Trout's friend Mr. Stauffer hadn't crossed yet, but I saw that Mr. Buckhorn and his family had gotten across the Platte. Mr. Buckhorn was a big, muscular farmer from the same Indiana county where Captain Ridge and much of the Company had come from and his wife had a glare and a sharp tongue of her own. I knew that I'd gotten a place on Mrs. Buckhorn's bad books and that Mr. Buckhorn probably didn't like me either. On the other hand, people would find crossing them to be more trouble than it was worth. If I could get them to come with me while we scouted out a suitable campground, we might have someplace decent to stay until we were ready to leave. I walked over and put on my best game face, which admittedly isn't very good.

"Good afternoon," I said.

After a look of suspicion, Mr. Buckhorn favored me with a "Good afternoon," followed with a "What do you want?".

"Captain Ridge told me and Willem to scout out a camp site for the next couple of days and I was wondering if you all would like to come with us and help lay claim to it," I said.

He looked at me, looked at Mrs. Buckhorn's reaction, then smiled as if he was doing me a favor and said "And why should I do that?"

"Because if Willem and I find a new place and come back here to get the rest of the company, someone else might take it before we could put our wagons on the spot," I said.

"And why should I go with you?" he said.

"Because if you all come with us and we find that good spot, we can not only claim it, but keep it, too," I said.

Mr. Buckhorn stared at us, thinking it over. I noticed that the Buckhorns had children: a boy and a girl, both of whom looked like they were somewhere between six and eleven. They stared at me with suspicion. "Got any ideas for a nice camp site?" he said, in a tone of voice that said he was humoring me.

"Not really," I said, "except that I think that the soldiers would get mad if we camped on the Fort's parade ground or where they graze their animals."

"Heh," he said. I suspected that that was all the applause I was going to get from him.

"Other than that, clear of the trail, high and dry enough so it won't flood if the river rises, and hopefully away from wherever people have been taking a dump," I added. "Mrs. Buckhorn might be able to spot a good place where we can do laundry."

Mr. Buckhorn kept a poker face while thinking it over. "All right," he said. He turned and gestured to Mrs. Buckhorn. She walked over with the air of someone doing us a favor. I clenched my teeth and tried to keep as blank a face as I knew how. Together, we started walking away from the crossing towards the Fort.

The soldiers at Fort Laramie were used to dealing with Emigrant wagon trains and diverted us over a side route leading between barracks and some storehouses. Mr. Buckhorn slowed his oxen to a stop when we saw several children dash across the path about sixty feet ahead of us. I glanced at the Buckhorn children and grinned: they really wanted to get out of the wagon and play with the Army brats. A soldier yelled at us to keep moving. A bugle sounded while we were passing by: I knew that different bugle calls had different meanings and I wondered what that one meant.

Strangely, Fort Laramie reminded me of some Army and National Guard bases I'd seen back in the Twentieth Century, although the differences were noticeable. There were more soldiers visible, most of them running errands. Not just patrolling the grounds and maintaining the equipment, but doing things like tending gardens, loading hay for the horses, and performing other chores. I realized that this fort was at the end of a long, tenuous supply line and that they'd have to do a lot of things for themselves.

Mr. Buckhorn slowed down again when he thought he'd found a likely spot. I looked at it and sighed. I liked it, but it looked too good to be true. A soldier, an infantry private by the look of him, waved us on. "I'm going to talk to him," I said to Willem and the Buckhorns. I hoped that he spoke English: the Army had an awful lot of immigrant enlisted men.

"Good afternoon," I said. "We're emigrants looking good a good camp site, could you please tell us where we could find a good campsite west of the Fort? We'd like to avoid the rifle and artillery ranges."

"Would you now?" said the private with a laugh, He spoke with an Irish brogue. "There are some good spots just under a mile west of here. You'd best be quick about it, they fill up early. So is it just you in the wagon or are there more of ye?"

"There are about twenty wagons in our company," I said. "We were sent to scout ahead."

"Were you now?" said the Private. "Well, God and His saints bless ye. Good hunting."

We ended up walking over a mile before we found something likely and available. The nearest ones were already occupied by other parties: whether they'd come in early that day or had been there a while I didn't know. Mr. Buckhorn was the one who actually chose the campground: a trampled-over patch of prairie still showing remnants of previous wagon trains' campfires. I led Willem on a patrol around the edges to try to find old latrines and check them to see if they were too close to where we'd be camping. We were in luck: someone had showed discipline to site the nearest one over 100 years away. I suspected that that they'd probably been Mormons.

"Good enough?" I asked Willem. "Aye," he said.

"Mr. Buckhorn, do you think this site is good enough?" I said, switching to English. If Mikey likes it, maybe it's good enough, said a sardonic voice in my head.

Mrs. Buckhorn answered for him. "It'll do," she said. "The children and I can start unloading the wagon." The little Buckhorns looked at me and Willem and scowled. Take a bow, Morgendorffer, and be grateful that they don't have any rotten vegetables to throw at you.

"Willem, I think we've found a campsite," I said in Andal. "Let's go back and tell the others."

We turned around and started walking back towards the Ford. I suspected that we'd meet other wagons from our Company along the way. I hoped we'd get set up soon; I really wanted to find some of the dumping sites so I could find some more appropriate clothing.