Free novella: Hannah's Hope
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When Hannah Sullivan’s family decides to head west to the Oregon Territory, she’s exhilarated. The small town where she grew up was fine when that’s all she had to choose from, but as soon as the horizons and opportunities open up, Hannah finds a whole new world, just built for someone as competent, kind and warm as she is.
Hannah’s Hope is part of the Courage on the Oregon Trail series from author A.T. Butler.
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Hannah Sullivan clasped her hands to her bosom to calm her beating heart. Maybe if she stood still, her pulse would stop racing so, maybe she could catch her breath. As she looked down the crowded main street of Independence, Missouri, only weeks away from heading farther west into the frontier, she felt as though the entire world was opening up to her. That she was on the very precipice of a whole new life. As excited and hopeful as she was, the possibilities overwhelmed her. She could almost cry from the maelstrom of feelings within her.
Though it was bright and sunny on that April afternoon, it had been raining on and off for weeks and the mud was ever-present. While the frontier town had a number of hotels and boarding houses to shelter the hundreds of travelers that were expected each spring, not all of the families had the money to pay for them. Instead, people like Hannah’s family were camping at a site just outside of town, and with that came all the filth and nuisance of a rainy season out-of-doors.
“I suppose one nice thing about no longer having a parlor is that I won’t have to clean the floor after all this mud,” Mrs. Emerson said.
Hannah laughed, tossing her heavy blond braid over her shoulder. She was grateful to not be alone in this chaos; a neighboring family with young children had traveled all eight hundred miles with the Sullivans, and would continue the next two thousand miles as well.
Ohio had only become a state a few years before Hannah was born, and though she hadn’t had anything to compare it to, she’d always suspected that towns back east, in longer-settled states, had more polish and grace. Now standing in wild Independence, where French trappers with matted hair leered at her and Mexican men held loud conversations in their lilting language and she had not once but twice had had to step out of the way of an American soldier spitting tobacco juice, she realized Ohio had been a haven compared to this.
Before the Sullivans had left Steubenville earlier in the year, Hannah’s parents had sat her down, along with her four younger siblings, to tell them about the momentous decision. She had been suspecting some kind of big news from her parents for several weeks—they’d’ been acting secretive—but never would she have dreamt that they were planning to move the whole family to the Oregon Territory. When the news got out to the rest of their community, the Emerson family who Hannah had known most of her life decided they wanted to come too.
Both families had sold their homes, their livestock, and most of their possessions before packing what few effects they were keeping into covered wagons. They’d left as soon as the snow showed signs of melting, heading west to connect with larger wagon trains for the full journey across the plains. It had taken the families about six weeks, before they settled on the outskirts of town. They had spent the last several weeks in the jumping-off town from the States into the territories and every day was full of buying supplies, and making connections with other emigrants to prepare for their six-month-long journey along the Oregon Trail.
“Did you happen to see the clerk at the general store when we were there yesterday?” Mrs. Emerson asked. “Goodness, I’m so glad that’s not my job. He looked like he was going to cry when he had to tell a woman that her order of supplies wasn’t ready yet.”
“I know that getting enough pounds of flour or beans or something could be a difference between life and death on the trail, but I don’t know that yelling at a clerk will do anything about that.”
“I agree with you,” Mrs. Emerson said. “But people deal with stress in their own way. I pity that woman’s husband.”
At the mention of a husband, Hannah involuntarily blushed. Though it had nothing to do with her, though Mrs. Emerson wasn’t even looking at her, though Hannah Sullivan had never had a beau in her life, she couldn’t help but cherish the small flame of her secret hope: that this journey to the Oregon Territory would introduce her to her future husband. She was not precious about how they would meet, or how their courtship would progress, but all Hannah had wanted since she was a little girl was to be a wife and mother. Surely some of that had to do with being the oldest child, a daughter with four younger siblings to look after, but even if all that was stripped away Hannah knew she would want as big of a family as she could have.
And she had a feeling this grand adventure would set her on that path.
But she kept that small hope to herself. For now at least. Perhaps when they had actually joined a wagon company and she had a better idea of who they would be spending the next several months with she might open up about it.
“Have you not started yet?”
Hannah turned to see that her mother had joined herself and Mrs. Emerson on the boardwalk outside the barbershop on the main street of Independence. Her expression was tired but happy, and Hannah could sense she had something to say.
“Where are the girls?”
“I left Junior in charge back at the camp site.” Hannah’s mother waved carelessly behind her, indicating the wide swath of dirt just past the last street in town where more than a dozen families had been camping as they waited for the caravans to be formed.
“Junior?” Mrs. Emerson said with a smirk. “How does a sixteen-year-old boy feel about playing mother for an afternoon?”
“Well, it helps that I didn’t word it like that.” Mrs. Sullivan smiled. “Honestly, I think he’ll probably just let them wrestle him and climb all over him, until they wear themselves out. I expect to return to find an absolute mess, though as long as no one gets hurt I will be happy. Now, tell me. Did you get to anything on the list yet?”
“No.” Hannah shook her head. “I got distracted. I’m sorry. I’ll go now.”
“Wait a moment.” Mrs. Sullivan put her hand on Hannah’s arm before the young woman could leave. “I had something I wanted to tell both of you.”
Mrs. Emerson’s face lit up. “You have news?”
“The best news. Better than we had even hoped.”
Hannah’s mind jumped to several possibilities in just the short moment before her mother continued.
“Your father has joined a wagon company, set to leave Independence in about two weeks.”
“That’s wonderful—” Hannah began, before her mother held up a hand to cut her off.
“Not only has he joined a wagon company,” she said, looking between Hannah and Mrs. Emerson, “but because of his experience in political organization he has teamed up with a man named George Mills and the two men are going to captain a large caravan of emigrants together.” She beamed at her daughter. “We will be part of the Sullivan-Mills wagon company.”
Hannah’s mouth fell open in surprise. Her father had been a supporter of John Quincy Adams a decade or so earlier, despite the tide of support that President Jackson had received from all over the country. He had been idealistic and energetic, though ultimately defeated. William Sullivan was not ashamed of his previous experience in drumming up support for a politician. All the same, this wasn’t information he regularly volunteered. Hannah had been a child at the time, and barely remembered her father’s exuberance, but she wasn’t even certain if any of her siblings knew this small fact about their father’s past.
“William has experience in politics?” Mrs. Emerson asked.
“Some,” Mrs. Sullivan said, ignoring the disbelieving tone in the other woman’s voice. “Primarily it was his experience in relating to large groups, and organizing them toward a common goal that the other wagon captain was interested in. Politics was just the venue.”
“That certainly does sound like your husband,” Mrs. Emerson said admiringly. “He has a gift for getting people to agree with him without them even recognizing they are having their minds changed. He should have been a politician himself.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Mrs. Sullivan said with a laugh. “But I am very proud of him. This is so much more than even I expected. And apparently this Mills family is herding cattle west, so perhaps we’ll even have a chance for fresh meat.”
“Wouldn’t that be something?” Mrs. Emerson said. “Will they have room for us too?”
“I’m certain William must have mentioned you all. He wouldn’t leave you in Independence. He also said Captain Mills has pages of notes and letters from a cousin in California. All his tips and suggestions that are probably more up to date than the guidebook. There’s a pastor and his wife who will be in our company, and he said he’s close to convincing a doctor to join our caravan too. We’re quite lucky.”
“Will we need to do anything special?” Hannah asked. “What all is Pa in charge of?”
“I’m not sure they have decided anything specifically. But I will say we need to be sure that we have everything we need ready when it is time to go. Other folks will be looking to our family to set the example.”
“And so I should get to this list you gave me,” Hannah supplied with a guilty grin.
Her mother only looked pointedly at her before Hannah dashed away down the street to the pharmacist, her mind full of this new range of possibilities.
A little more than two weeks later, the Sullivan family had packed both of their covered wagons as full as possible—hundreds of pounds of flour, cornmeal, means, bacon, rice, sugar, coffee, tools, clothing for all seasons, medicine, and all the other bits and bobs the travel guides recommended emigrants carry to get safely over the Blue Mountains before winter arrived in the Oregon Territory. The other captain of the company, George Mills and his family from Georgia, had led his own wagon from outside Atlanta, while his adult son led the team of oxen pulling the family’s second wagon. They waited as they watched wagons pass on the road leading out of town.
“When is it our turn?” Patience asked, a slight whine in her question.
Hannah’s father put his worn, broad hand on the top of his daughter’s head. “Patience,” he said.
“Yes?”
He chuckled.
“Will you ever get tired of that joke?” Hannah asked.
He turned to his younger daughter. “No, Patience, I mean you need to have patience. Our wagons will be in the middle of the caravan so the families in the back can more easily reach someone in charge. So we have to wait for other members of the company to follow behind the Mills family. Probably a couple dozen or so, and then it will be our turn.”
Hannah listened to all of this with her eyes on the crowd around her. The company had attracted nearly fifty families, and a good number of those families were bringing two wagons to Oregon. And that was just their own company. New caravans were leaving Independence every day. And even more from other jumping-off towns like St. Joseph and Omaha. It seemed unbelievable that the territories would stay empty for long, with all this excitement headed their way.
As they watched, Hannah’s father pointed out the families he had met, along with whatever small details he had learned. The Findleys who were good friends with the Millses. The Waters family with half a dozen grown boys accompanying their parents. The Kirks with half a dozen young boys accompanying their parents. As they watched, her father reminded Hannah how much work there would be to do every day.
“The families without children old enough to help will need support from their neighbors,” he said. “It would make me proud if you could help too.”
When the Harpers—a brother and sister from New York City, who Hannah’s father called a “china doll”—passed, there was a gap and it was finally the Sullivans’ turn. William drove the lead wagon, while Junior drove the second Sullivan wagon and slowly the wheels turned, bringing them into line on the wide dirt road with the rest of their caravan.
They were on their way.
She spent the afternoon walking in the tall prairie grass that ran on either side of the now well-worn trail that led out of Independence. There were approximately ten miles before that first water source, where nearly a dozen wagon companies would all stop to congregate, wait for stragglers, and get all their families organized. When the Sullivan-Mills caravan first reached that campsite an hour or so before sunset, Hannah was stunned to see the white-topped wagons stretching for what seemed like miles. Animals everywhere snorted their dissatisfaction with the scraggly grass, already wearing thin from the wagon trains that had come before.
Once the wagons had stopped, and her father and Junior had unhitched the animals, Hannah took the brief chance to climb up on to the wagon’s seat to get a better glimpse of the camp. Somewhere in the distance the tentative sounds of a fiddler warming up his instrument floated over the throng.
The life that she had left behind in Ohio was pleasant, but incomplete somehow. Steubenville was the fourth home that Hannah had lived in over the only nineteen years of her life. Her father had a streak of restlessness in him, and Hannah had never really felt at home in any of the places they had lived. Everything was changing all of the time. In the few months since they had left Ohio, Hannah had seen three more states, made new friends, heard Spanish being spoken for the first time and a dozen other brand-new experiences.
It was exciting and stimulating and the whole time all Hannah could think about was how badly she wanted to put down roots of her own. Once she was married, she would no longer have to move again if her father got the itch.
The rest of the way to the Oregon Territory would be difficult. Though she didn’t want to think about it, she knew there would likely be injuries and illnesses, and that her father would be involved in much of the hardest things the people in their caravan would be going through.
But Hannah kept her focus on the possibilities. Of the support of neighbors and the chance and at a new love and at the very least seeing more of this beautiful continent. The next six months would be among the best of her entire life, she was sure of it. And at the end of it she could finally settle in one place for as long as she wanted.
She hoped.
“Hannah! Come help with supper please?” her mother called from the back of the family’s supply wagon.
Their first night on the Oregon Trail would be similar to all the nights they camped outside of Independence. Hannah was capable and prepared and she had no fear about what would be required of her over the next few months. She hopped down off the wagon seat and ran to help her mother.
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