Chapter 2
Great white clouds stacked themselves against the western horizon like mountains carved out of marble and set into a perfect cerulean dome.
They looked solid enough to climb on, yet every time Kate looked at them, they were different—rolling and growing in slow motion until they filled half the sky.
Underneath the masses of cumulonimbus, the horizon was an ominous slate gray, and flashes of lightning lit the clouds from within.
She heard the distant, low rumble of thunder. The mules tossed their heads.
“Easy, team. That’s it, Max, easy does it. Nothin’ to worry about, Joe. Delilah, don’t you go bein’ a diva on me. Easy, team,” she called to the mules as she adjusted the lines, stretching her aching hands. They flicked their velvety, long ears in response.
Only the second day out and the Elephant was already stirring.
The papers back home were filled with talk of it: an awe-inspiring image of the exotic unknown and all the trials and tribulations it would bring coalesced into a vision of this monstrous gray thing prowling the western wilds to descend upon the unsuspecting pioneers.
The travelers had talked about it in whispers around their campfires, voices pulsing with an excitement tinged with breathy apprehension.
What form would the behemoth take? Today, it seemed, it had climbed the clouds to dance thunder from the sky.
The trail was still choked with trains jostling for position.
She knew Pa and her brothers were having a badger of a time trying to keep their stock separate from the other herds, and now they’d have to deal with a storm out in the open with nothing but some canvas to shelter them and their wits to keep the herd together.
Kate’s brow furrowed. Proctor would have their hides if they had to spend even a minute rounding up stock that spooked in a storm.
The scouts came loping up the train from the rear, passing Kate in a cloud of dust. She hadn’t even met them yet, just seen them at a distance flanking Proctor like two loyal hounds, one a wiry terrier and the other a mastiff, big and broad.
Kate hoped they were doing something to prepare.
Other trains had already stopped to circle their wagons, and it seemed to her they were pushing their luck, inching ever closer to those roiling thunderheads as they announced their advance with the rumbling of celestial drums.
Proctor finally gave the order to form a tight circle.
They chained the wagons together and drove the stock into the middle, making a crushing, milling mass of animals that bellowed and whinnied and brayed their anxiety, adding their noise to the thunder and tumult of shouts as pioneers ran to unhitch their teams and lash down canvas covers.
Kate had just finished unhitching their mules when she paused.
Something had changed. The breeze that had been blowing steadily all day had stilled.
The birds had all gone silent. She looked up.
The thunderheads towered above them, white clouds now boiling with streaks of lurid green, their front edge like a solid wall marching across the plains at an alarming rate. Kate’s heart started beating fast.
Danny barreled up to her, breathing hard.
“Better get these mules in with the stock. That’ll hit before you know it.
” He grabbed the leads for Joe and Delilah, and Kate followed quickly with Max.
The massive mule was the anchor for their team, but even his steady countenance was fraying with anxiety.
Soon they were all wedged into the wagon, Ma in the middle flanked by Danny and Ian, with Kate up front, all of them sitting on whatever crates were the most level.
At the back, Pa pulled the canvas cover as tight as he could.
Still, there were holes at either end that gave perfect little windows to what was outside, like portholes in a ship showing the murky dangers of the ocean.
Except these holes would let in any water that came near them.
The storm advanced in front of the sun, plunging them into a baleful half-light.
“Guess we’ll see how well this canvas holds up,” Ian murmured softly.
“A truer test there never was,” Pa said as he settled his big frame on a small barrel of lard.
Danny rubbed his hands together almost gleefully. “We’re gonna see the Elephant all right!”
“I’d just as soon have never glimpsed the thing,” Ma said with a scowl.
“Aw, Ma, what’d be the fun in that? Goin’ all the way to Oregon without anythin’ the least excitin’?”
Ma pulled her shawl tight around her shoulders. “You may call it exciting, Daniel, but I call it entirely vexatious.”
Kate smiled. She couldn’t help agreeing with her twin.
Her blood was pumping in anticipation. She peered out.
The white tops of the wagons fairly glowed against the grim sky.
The storm was nearly on them. She couldn’t see the front edge of it through the small hole, just a wall of darkness deepening with every second.
“Don’t ya worry, Edie. ’Tis but a momentary trial. We’ll be through and done with it in no time,” Pa said, his green eyes twinkling even in the dim interior.
“And come out the other side as wet as drowned ducks.” Ma shivered. “I hope the flour stays dry.”
Ian put a comforting arm around their mother, steady and sweet as always.
“The Lord will see us through, Ma. ‘In every high and stormy gale, my Anchor holds within the veil,’” he said, quoting her favorite hymn.
Kate smiled affectionately at her older brother.
At twenty-one, he had the wisdom of a man twice his age.
Pa bellowed out in an exuberant baritone: “‘On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand! All other ground is sinking sand; all other ground is sinking sand!’”
“I’m more worried about the mud,” Ma said, but a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.
Fat raindrops began to fall, hitting the canvas overhead like coins dropping from the sky, and the timbre of the storm shifted.
Alongside the near constant thunder was a low, rushing sound.
Kate looked out her porthole. As she watched, the wind rushed down across the hills like a giant’s hand sweeping over the grasses and pressing them flat to the earth.
“It’s comin’!”
The wind hit like a locomotive. The wagon rocked and the canvas cover snapped, the ties keening their protest. And with the wind came the rain, falling nearly sideways under the force of the gale, battering their meager shelter with such ferocity she couldn’t hear what Pa was shouting from the other end of the wagon.
Then she saw him take a quilt and hang it in front of the hole to try and keep some of the water out.
She did the same, struggling to keep it in place with the wind flapping it against her body.
Danny clambered over to help, and they stood there with their backs pressing against the quilt, grinning at each other and getting soaked.
But at least the worst of it was staying off their provisions.
The water sluiced off the canvas in waterfalls as the storm battered against it for what seemed like hours.
Kate peeled back the blanket, peering out to check on what she could see of the stock in the makeshift corral.
Most of them had bunched together and turned their rumps to the wind, keeping their heads down and soldiering through it.
All but one. Kate squinted through the rain.
A mule was kicking up a fuss right outside their wagon, braying and tossing his head.
She could see the whites of his eyes shining through the gloom.
“Don’t you dare, Joe. Don’t you even think about it,” she muttered to herself. That good-for-nothing mule was staring at the chain with a crazed look in his eye. “He’s gonna jump the chain!” she shouted to Danny.
“Who is?” he shouted back.
“Who do you think?”
Danny scowled. “That darn mule!”
Without another thought, they dropped the blanket and loosened the ties on the canvas. Kate heard Ma’s faint shout but ignored it as they clambered out into the deluge.
Kate was immediately drenched. The wind battered her with its fists, tugging her hair out of its braid and whipping it wildly around her face.
The raindrops felt like a thousand needles pelting her through the thin fabric of her dress.
Danny climbed down beside her, and they ducked under the chain.
Joe whirled and reared, braying like it was the end of the world.
Kate and Danny stood in front of him under the pounding rain, spreading their arms and making a human wall, calling to him above the storm and trying to convince him not to jump.
Joe kicked out in frustration, then backed up, haunches bunching under him.
Kate lunged forward with Danny right beside her, filling the void; if Joe had enough space to think he could make a run for it, he surely would.
Finally corralled by Kate and Danny and backed up against the rest of the herd, Joe had nowhere to go.
As quickly as the storm had hit, it moved away.
Within minutes the rain eased to a drizzle, and the rage of the wind was spent, fading to a fitful breeze.
Joe shook his head and gave a final bray, then settled next to the rest of the stock as if he hadn’t just lost his mind.
Kate lowered her arms and shook the rain from her hands.
She looked over at Danny. He was splattered in mud from head to toe and grinning.
“You look like a drowned rat!” Kate said.
“Could say the same for you,” he retorted and shook his head like a dog, sending water spraying.
Kate laughed, then hugged her arms around herself, shivering. “I’m freezin’. I’m goin’ back inside.”
They climbed back into the wagon, laughing and arguing over who was covered in more mud.
“Why on earth did you two go out in that?” Ma chastised.
Kate found a somewhat dry spot on the mostly soaked blanket then pulled her hair over her shoulder to wring it out. “Joe nearly jumped the chain. Had to make sure he didn’t.”
Ma tsked. “You are soaked through, Katherine. It’ll be a mercy if you don’t take sick.”
“It’s nothin’ a little time and some dry clothes won’t fix,” Kate said.
“It’s something that you should have let your brothers tend to.”
“Then they’d be the ones havin’ all the fun,” Kate said with a cheeky smile.
Ma’s voice was tight. “It is not a lady’s place to go frolic in the rain with the livestock.” She turned to Pa. “Will you talk some sense into her?”
Pa looked at Kate and gave her a wink. “Was it a good frolic?”
Kate grinned and Ma threw up her hands. “You’ve all lost your sense! What am I to do?”
“We’re a lost cause, Edie. Just set us free and we’ll wander the hills like Indians.”
Danny let out a whoop and Ma harrumphed. Ian just shook his head.
Kate gave her father a grateful smile and reached for her dry clothes.