My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier Page B

one side of them and me on the other to keep them going straight. They blinked and shook their big heads and bawled. It was queer how the heavy falling snow muffled the sounds of their bawling. Fighting them all the time was tiring. Several times they just stopped and lowered their heads and stood blinking in the snow, and it took us five minutes of beating them and cursing them to get them going again. It seemed to go on endlessly. With all that snow pouring down around us I couldn’t tell where we were. We could only see about twenty yards in any direction—far enough to tell when we might be passing a woodlot or a house if it was close to the road, but that’s all. But Father always knew where we were. “Bear up, Tim,” he’d say. “It’s only a mile to Green’s Tavern and just three miles from there.”
    â€œCan we warm up at the tavern?”
    â€œThe fewer people who know we’re going through, the better,” he said. I ducked my head against my chest and tramped on.
    It began to get dark. What with the oxen balking so much we were two hours behind schedule. The snow was almost a foot deep and already the oxen were having trouble on the hills, slipping and stumbling when their hooves would strike an icy patch or a pothole hidden beneath the snow. The darkness increased until it seemed as if we were buried in it I went on a couple of yards ahead of the oxen to feel out the road, while Father wrestled with them alone. We didn’t talk anymore, except when Father cursed. Finding the road was hard. I would have to keep veering from side to side to touch the rail fences and then make a guess about where the middle of the road was. Looking back I could just make out the black lumpy shapes of the oxen and the cart, with Father fighting along at their heads. Once he said, “This is Simple’s Crossing. Only two miles, Tim.” Two miles seemed like an endless distance.
    But finally we saw the spot of light and then the windows shining through the snow. We pulled the oxen through the gate and drove them into the barn. They bawled with happiness. Father went into the house to tell the Platts that we were there. I unhitched the oxen, pitched them some hay, and went into the house myself. There was a great fire burning in the kitchen fireplace and the smell of Johnny cake and hot gravy. My cousins swarmed around to help get my clothes off. I stripped right down to the skin, not caring that the girls were watching. They got me a blanket to wrap up in and a place by the fire and a plate of hot Johnny cake and beans and gravy all over it, and I began to laugh because it felt so good to be warm and safe again. That night my cousins and I slept by the kitchen fire.

W HEN I WOKE UP IN THE MORNING IT HAD STOPPED SNOWING and the sun was shining. Water was running in small streams off the roof. It was pretty—everything a foot deep in snow and the sun sparkling off the fields. But even though it was pretty I didn’t like it. Plowing through snow a foot deep with the oxcart all the way back to Redding was going to be miserable work. Our feet would get soaked right away and stay wet and cold all day long, and as the snow got warm and then chopped up by the oxen we’d find ourselves stumbling around in a slippery mixture of snow and mud. Mrs. Platt gave us a breakfast of biscuits and gravy. We said good-bye to everybody, hitched up the oxen and pulled out of the yard onto the road. “Are we going to have an escort?” I asked Father.
    â€œI don’t know,” he said. “Platt rode out last night to arrange for one, but with the snow, people may not want to ride. But that works two ways—the raiders may not want to ride, either. You work the oxen; I’m going to ride on ahead.”
    So that’s how it went. Father would ride a mile or two and then ride back to see how I was doing; and then he’d ride out again. That way if he ran into the