THE EDUCATED MERCHANT
PART II. MOVING WEST
The line of wagons they originally joined was an organized group from Illinois, all headed for Oregon. They traded a little gossip between the wagons, but the way ahead would be brand new to all of them, so the travelers didn't have much advice to give. Tom let their wagon slow down enough to let the others go ahead. It wasn't long before two more wagons joined them, and these turned out to be headed for Colorado. The three families stayed in contact the whole trip, usually camping together each evening.
The Akers' days varied little. The girls would often sit beside Tom on the wagon seat, reading to one another or giving word challenges - how to spell a word, or the meaning of it. They never seemed to tire of it, and Tom was happy to just listen to their background chatter while he thought his own thoughts.
In the evening of the second day, Joshua and Jane Davis, from one of the other wagons, approached Tom. "We've been watching your daughters," the man began. "They must know how to read very well."
"They do, and they can write very well, too. They like it, and often make a game out of testing each other on their skills."
The man looked at his wife for a moment, then turned back to Tom. "We have a daughter and a son who would really like to be able to read - the girl, especially, but Josh, too, I think. Could you teach them?"
Tom didn't hesitate. "Probably. It isn't very hard, really, but it takes a lot of practice to get started. If your boy and girl really apply themselves, they could probably learn quite a lot before we get to Colorado."
"That would be wonderful," said the woman. "How would you handle it?"
Tom thought. "We don't do much during the day except ride along. I wouldn't be able to concentrate on teaching, but my girls can teach as well as I could."
"They're very young," Jane Davis observed, with some hesitation.
"They are young, but they know their subject very well, and they are very patient with their teaching. If your children really want to learn, and can accept the age differences, I think they'll do very well.
"I suggest that your boy and girl ride in our wagon, and spend as much time each day as you want I suspect they would all enjoy having other people to talk to, also. If that sounds good to you, I'll ask Gabby and Bella if they'd like to do it."
The Davises agreed, and as Tom expected, the girls were quite excited about the task. He asked them how they would start. "I think there's only one way to begin," Gabby insisted. "If they don't know their "a,b,c's," they need to learn them. We have the cards you made for us, that just show what each letter looks like."
Bella took over. "Once they can say the names of the various letters, then we can teach them what each sounds like - 'kuh,' for C, 'ruh' for R, and so on."
"That will probably take a while," Gabby continued, "And, and as you know, Papa, can get pretty boring. We can read to them some of the time, so they start to feel how the letters and sounds come together. After they get pretty good on the sounds of the letters, we can bring out the picture cards, and help them guess what letters might be used to spell the picture - like 'kuh,' C, to begin cat, or 'huh,' H, for horse."
"That's very good," observed Tom. "If I was teaching you, I would probably do the same thing."
"You did," they said, in unison.
***
The next morning, after breakfast and chores, the Davis children joined the Akers in their wagon. The son, Josh Jr., was probably three or four years older than the girls; the daughter, Cass, was quite a bit older than that, maybe even 14 or 15. That worried Tom a little bit. He didn't think the age difference would bother Bella or Gabby; for almost 8-year olds, they always seemed amazingly comfortable with everybody. The problem would be if a girl almost twice their age could accept their teaching and orders. He guessed they'd soon find out.
The four of them settled inside the wagon, leaving Tom alone with his horses and his thoughts. There was the constant sound of talking behind him, punctuated with regular periods of laughter and general giggles. He found it quite relaxing. When he asked the girls that evening how it had gone, both reported "good progress." Gabby added that both Davis children were "very nice."
Day Two began the same way. Tom was a little worried that the Davis children would get bored - as his girls had pointed out, rote learning can be pretty grueling, even if you're used to it. However, it didn't seem to be a problem, yet. The type and level of noise behind him remained much the same as on the first day.
Probably, there's no need to write much about the traveling, itself. Everybody has read the tales of the California Gold Rush and the Oregon Trail, and the narrative is pretty much the same every time. The wooded rolling hills of Iowa extend beyond the Missouri River into eastern Nebraska, then abruptly give way to weeks of traveling west along the Platte River, a monotonous treeless plain that seems as flat as a pancake (but is very gradually rising all the way to the Rockies). Forage for livestock was not as limited as it had been during the great migration of the 1850s and early 1860s, but was still often hard to find. There was even less to burn for campfires, as the buffalo were now mostly gone, as were their "chips" - sun-dried dung that burns like charcoal, and was a staple for the travelers of past decades. The road was somewhat better than in the past, but the boredom of following it probably hadn't changed. At least, the youthful noises from behind him kept Tom pleasantly awake.
On the last evening in Iowa, the party took advantage of the abundant wood, and enjoyed a long, large bonfire. Tom began to read an adventure story to the four children, and soon found that all the adults had come over to listen. That gave him an idea. They wouldn't be able to have many campfires, but there was no reason they couldn't use the long summer evenings for story-telling and (maybe, Tom thought) for a little teaching. He suspected that Joshua and Jane Davis couldn't read, or they would have taught their children, themselves. He didn't know about the other couple, Robert and Beth Donohue. They were young, probably recently married, and on their own for the first time. They were certainly interested in the story reading.
The lessons in the wagon continued to the end of their journey, although the girls confessed that - after a few weeks - there wasn't much more to teach the Davis kids (particularly Cass), and most of their "lessons" were really just having fun together. Tom read to the group most evenings, but no actual teaching of the adults occurred. One thing that he did accomplish, that he thought was most welcome, was to show Josh and Jane how to write their signatures. An "X" on a document was just as legal, but Tom was sure that no "X" ever was accompanied by the feelings of pride and empowerment that writing one's own signature gave.
***
Near the northeast corner of Colorado Territory, the three wagons left the Oregon-California Trail, and began a southwest diagonal toward Denver and the Rocky Mountains. With considerably less wagon traffic, there was much better forage for their livestock, and also a little more firewood. Otherwise, the country was much the same - open grassland stretching out to the far distance.
As the travelers grew nearer to their destination, they could see the outline of the Rocky Mountains ahead. Often, when looking into the distance, Tom experienced a strange disorientation. From his vantage point, he could see the land in front of him descending in a gradual slope all the way to the mountains. In reality, the land sloped upward, from 3,500 feet elevation at the Colorado border to 5000 feet at Fort Collins. He assumed the others saw the optical illusion that way, too, but they never discussed it.
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