Laboring wheels

The wheel axle breaks a day and a half out of Fort Laramie. We have to camp out in the bush that night. Pa and I labour four hours in the sun fixing it and putting on the spare part. We lose a day and a half right there and then, and winter's coming up quick.

Ma had died about a month earlier. Dysentery. She screamed at Pa for miles on end in the days before.

We shouldn't 'a brought five hundred bullets and no food. That's where we went wrong, I think. Pa said we could hunt for fresh meat -- much better than the rations they sell at the general store. But no matter how many buffalo you shoot down in the plains, you can only carry so much of that meat with you. 90 pounds.

When we get to Fort Laramie, we have to trade for extra food. All our clothes, even the ones right off our backs, just for 10 pounds of rations.

Month and a half later, we finally reach Columbia River. The cable across is twenty dollars. We've only got two.

Pa looks down that gorge from our campsite to the Columbia River. It's so far away, it looks almost pixellated. His eyes narrow.

"We'll jist have t' ford the river," he says.