Free The Hinterlands by Robert Morgan Page A

We climbed up steep trails and down steep trails. We wound around the sides of mountains under rock cliffs and we surrounded swamps full of mud and briars. Places the growth was so thick we walked in the creek to avoid the tangles. We’d see a little cabin in the distance and your Grandpa would lead us way around the clearing.
    â€œThem people don’t care if we’re on the way to the West,” I said. “They might invite us to stay the night.”
    â€œYou never know who they might be,” he said. “I’ve heard of people that lived along the road and made their living by robbing travelers. They might kill us just to see what we had.” He seemed to grow more suspicious as we went along. Before, he was the kind of man that trusted people. And now he was afraid that everybody was going to rob us. He hadn’t seemed like hisself since we left the gold mine. But I think it was his concern for me. To have a young wife made him afraid. Men don’t have much confidence in women, and it makes them nervous to be responsible for a wife or daughter. Men feel women expose them to danger.
    â€œThey sure is a lot of high mountains protecting the Holsten,” I said.
    â€œThat’s why the land is cheap for the taking,” your Grandpa said. “Otherwise the place would be all settled.”
    It come up the spring rains a few days after we left the gold diggings. I never seen such rain, and we was right in the middle of it. When you’re exposed to rain for hours it seems to soak into your bones. Everything we had got wet. After a day or two it was like the rain had washed all the strength out of my body and soul. The rain just kept coming down like a waterfall, and we gotslower and slower. With my hair and clothes soaked, and my feet in the mud, I felt like a poor shivering dog.
    One night we found a cave and started a fire with some dusty pine wood somebody had left there. Mostly the wood outside was too wet to catch a spark. We’d had to eat whatever we had raw. It was such a relief to get to the cave and cook some corn cakes and a possum Realus had killed. We roasted the possum on a stick. I missed my pots and pans that had been left back at the gold camp.
    It seemed like the rain would never stop. I put up sticks in the cave and dried some of my clothes. Everything had a musty smell. It was like the world was going to melt and rot, even if it didn’t wash away. The woods floor was covered with mushrooms and moldy patches, mostly these mushrooms that look like jelly and slimy cups.
    Children, that was the first time in my life I thought I was going to take the miseries and the all-overs at once. My bones felt sore and the rain on my head had give me the headache. And I felt a cold coming on in my throat and nose. Everything was going wrong, and we still wasn’t to the Holsten.
    â€œHow much further is it?” I said.
    â€œPetal, I wanted to surprise you,” your Grandpa said. “But we’re already on the Holsten.”
    â€œHow long till we get to your place?”
    â€œMaybe in a couple of days, if the rain stops.”
    That cheered me up a little, even with my headache. We built a kind of ditch at the mouth of the cave to keep water from running in from the rocks above. They wasn’t nothing to set on but an old log the Indians must have pulled into the cave. I sorted through everything we had left. We had just a skillet and a kittle, one knife and two soup bowls.
    While we waited for the rain to stop, Realus carved me three spoons out of maple. And he made a spatula of oak for turning hoecakes. He killed a turkey and a deer and we eat plenty. I rubbed deer grease on the new spoons and spatula to season them.
    Realus sorted through the tools he’d took off the horse. He had left his shovel at the digging and the other tools had rusted in the rain. He went down to the creek and got the flattest rock he could find and sharpened everything,