Read Snow Mountain Passage for Free Online Page B

Patty, Virginia waits and now moves in for a closer look. “These wounds need dressing.”
    Jim says, “Can you do it?”
    “If you’ll tell us how.”
    The girls are brave. They follow his instructions and bring a basin full of water, a sponge, a pair of scissors, some clean cloth. He bows his head. It is an act of surrender, and he has no trouble bowing before his daughters. He knows the gashes are deep. He needs someone to care for him, and they are eager, holding back their fears.
    Around the bloody edges Virginia snips his thick, dark hair as close to the scalp as she can cut it, while Patty holds another pan to catch the clippings. As Virginia dabs lightly with the wet sponge, to clear away crusted shards of dust and clot, Patty holds the pan of water close, watching it turn pink. When Virginia drips iodine along the seams and swellings and closes the forehead flap torn loose, Patty rubs her father’s neck with tiny hands. When it comes time to lay the gauze, she presses aside all the loose hairs around his wounds.
    Finally Virginia wraps a clean kerchief over his head, knotting it behind. He raises his eyes to look at his daughters, and only then do Virginia’s tears burst forth. In her stricken face, no longer girlish, womanly now, and far too soon, too soon—never had he expected this—he sees his wife. Jim takes her in his arms and says, “I should not have asked so much of you,” and then sees Patty, standing back, not weeping, though plainly yearning that she too might be swept into her father’s large embrace.
    “Patty, hon. Sweet Patty. Here.”
    He flags one hand, and she steps toward him, a running step, her body stiff against him, and he is thinking of the last time he held them both at once.
    He is thinking of their grandmother, Margaret’s mother, who was too old to undertake such a journey, seventy and ailing, and yet she refused to stay behind and so set out, as if she were still a pioneer. She lasted until the end of May, expiring near the Big Blue River, where they buried her by an ever-flowing spring. Then he remembers the second death, the sickly fellow from Missouri who joined them late, too late, after they’d left Fort Laramie and all the bickering began. He had lost the power of his legs, and one wondered how he’d come so far, and why, since he could no longer ride or walk, had neither friend nor family, and should have stayed put at one of the forts. But he too refused to be left behind and begged for passage. He spent the last days of his tubercular life gasping and spitting inside George Donner’s wagon, giving up the ghost just as they reached the white desert south of Great Salt Lake, where he was buried in pure salt. They dug a pit until the moisture came seeping from below. Again Jim sees his face, in the moment before they nailed shut the coffin lid and lowered him and began to cover him with shovelfuls of salt. His name was Luke. He was a Mason, they discovered, carrying in his trunk Masonic emblems—a white apron, a medallion—a gaunt and bearded man, twenty-five and looking fifty, his face a shaggy specter in that blinding sea of white.
    Poor Luke, yes, he was ready to let life go. But Snyder? No. He was fit, supple, full of vinegar, reminding Jim a bit of himself in his younger days. And what about today? Will he have to watch Johnny’s handsome face disappear? Under scoops of volcanic sand? Who has the makings of a coffin now, out here where nothing grows?
    Uncle Billy and his son come sliding down the hill again with another yoke of oxen in tow, to pull their wagon free. Without a word they work the lines, move the animals into place.
    Jim calls out, “I’ll see you soon with some boards!”
    Graves turns but still doesn’t speak.
    “I’ll take them off my wagon!” Jim calls. “Johnny will need a casket and a proper burial. Me and Milt will bring it up.”
    Graves is dusted with chalk, from hat brim to boots. His voice is chalky too, dry and choked and