She still had something to tell, but it was very brief. She simply wanted to say that the Indians, too, had been guilty of massacres. And all that had started in 1849, when the discovery of gold in California had brought to the Oregon Trail hundreds of thousands of adventurers of all sorts who, unlike the first emigrants, had no respect for anyone or anything, who destroyed everything along their way and provoked the Indians’ wrath.

XXIII. The Champion

XXIII

The Champion

Early July.

Jack was driving when they arrived at the Rockies. The great granite barrier, with its white and grey peaks, had been drawing nearer every day, and now came the climb. “Take your time,” he said to the old Volks, which was struggling up the endless rises, and he frequently shifted into second gear and sometimes even into first in order to spare the small 1600 c.c. motor.

The man was getting worried.

“We have too many books,” he said. “It’s much too heavy on the hills. I shouldn’t have brought my big dictionaries.”

“Do you want to do like the emigrants?” asked the girl. “When they reached the Rockies they got rid of everything that was weighing down the wagons. Often they were things they were very fond of, but they had to throw them out, into the rocks and sagebrush. So the Oregon Trail was strewn with all sorts of objects, like oak furniture, grandfather clocks and musical instruments.”

“It was ridiculous to bring the dictionaries,” he said. “I haven’t written a word since we left. Let’s hope the motor holds out.”

The girl was reading their favourite book. She said there was an incredible number of graves on this section of the trail. She didn’t know if it was because of an epidemic or because the terrain was so uneven here, but there were graves all along the side of the trail. She would say: “Look, there’s a grave right here . . . Look, here’s another,” and sometimes she would read the names: Mary Homsley, aged 28, Lucindy Rollins, 1849, Joel Hembree, aged 9, Ada Magill, aged 6, and a seventeen-year-old Indian woman whose name was Mini-Aku or Fallen Leaf.

Suddenly she cried out, “. . . lost . . . Platte River!”

Jack braked vigorously. The tires squealed on the asphalt, and the minibus skidded to a stop across the road. The box of groceries fell off the back seat, and overturned, and oranges rolled between the two seats. The black cat, who was sleeping in the kitchen sink, came and crouched on La Grande Sauterelle’s lap.

The man parked the Volks beside the road.

“Are you crazy?” the girl exclaimed. “You could have killed us!”

“I’m sorry. You shouted . . . I thought we’d lost something. And quite frankly, it sounded as if we’d lost something in the Platte River!”