[or-roots] Aunt Charlotte's book (elderly travelers on the Oregon Trail)

[DaviesWalt at cs.com]

We were within a couple hundred miles of the Willamette valley, when a small 
party decided to go ahead. They were on horseback all except little Billy 
Russel and his old Mother. It happened that one of their oxen had just died, 
so their wagon had been abandoned. It was left standing beside the road. I 
remember how desolate and forlorn it looked. I spent a great deal of time 
being sorry for things and I was particularly sorry for little Billy Russel 
or his old Mother. They were going on and would be there ahead of the rest of 
us. I was in a hurry too. No doubt I envied them, but I do not remember about 
that.

    His mother was old, it seemed to me that she was quite the oldest thing 
in the world. She looked it and even as I think of her now across the eighty 
years that lie between, I am sure she must have been a hundred, maybe more, 
though people said that she was only ninety. Billy must have been old too, 
but he was very small and beside his mother, he seemed quite a boy, at least 
I thought of him as such.

    After nearly six months on the trail, the load in billy's wagon was 
pitifully light. I do not know what he loaded on the back of the one old 
travel thinned ox, but I remember that he topped it all with a huge feather 
bed and lashed it crisscross over the top. The rope sunk deep into the 
feathers, making a sort of nest, as it were. Into this nest, he settled the 
little old woman, who was ninety.I watched them as they went, billy walking 
beside the gaunt ox to urge him on as the need arose. The trail wound in and 
out along a gentle grade. I could see them for a long ways before a last 
turning carried then finally out of sight and they were gone, little Billy 
Russel and the old ox with ninety years and all that ninety years had 
accumulated on his back, a faded old sun bonnet bobbing in rhythm with the 
motion of the ox, an old shawl, red and black, pinned corner wise over the 
bent shoulders. The morning sun shone on them and glorified the picture, it 
was a picture of the spirit of 1843 that I have carried for eighty years in 
my memory, and time has not dimmed it.

    A tightness comes to my throat as I think of it now for like the 
patriarch Mosses that courageous follower of the sun was not destined to 
reach the "Promised land" She died almost within sight of it and was buried 
on the trail.

Walt Davies
Monmouth, OR
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