The Indifference of Tumbleweed Read Online Free Page A

whether the dog ate the munk, or simply left it dead for no reason at all.
    Mr Bricewood kept his dog hungry, saying there was plenty of food for him if he only had the sense to find it. So I expect the chipmunk served as a small meal for the great Melchior, and perhaps gave him a taste for wild raw meat. And although I was glad of my father’s optimism about the use of my journal, I could see no prospect whatever that there could come a time when someone might employ it as evidence of the exact creature that the dog killed on that particular day.
    I made no reference, either in writing or speech, to my grandmother’s furtive shaving of her chin and lip. I had no wish to mock her, and I could not pretend – as many seemed to do – that it was somehow her own failing that caused the hair to grow where it should not. It was so plainly a fact of nature, an act of God, and I pitied her for it. Our bodies, like Melchior’s feet, were not under our full control. There were numerous processes such as digestion, respiration, the female monthly cycle and the nameless functions of the male that could not be ordered by an act of will. Our hair grew of its own accord, and our only choice was to permit it or cut it. I had heardthat in Asia the men will never cut their hair, during their whole lives. And my sister mentioned once that she believed that Mormons were the same, but that turned out to be only the women.
    Such chatter amongst the young ones was common, as we walked beside the wagons, day after day. Without any telling, we assumed we should stay with our own family and not mix without permission, so there were few friendships formed in those first weeks and scant gossip passed along. When we nooned, with the need to watch out for roaming dogeys or gathering water or berries, we were hesitant to take the chance to talk to those from other families within our own party, and even more reluctant to roam to a different party entirely. There were eighteen distinct parties in the train, each of them comprising at least three and often five or six families. We knew only our own group by name before we left Westport – Tennant, Bricewood, Franklin and Fields. I learned a new name for one or other of the children every day and noted them in my journal, along with how much livestock they’d brought along.
    It was ten days before I had a full list, on a page I kept clear for the purpose at the front of my book. We were the Collins family, eight of us in total, with fifteen steers, a milk cow and three horses, besides the oxen to draw the wagon. The stock were a lot of trouble, running ahead, or veering off to find better pasture. My mother had argued that fifteen was too many. ‘How can we need so much beef as that?’ she demanded, in her creaky voice that had been affected by a careless surgeon’s knife when she was twenty. He was trying to take out a big back tooth, and somehow slipped the blade across her voicebox. She had not spoken sweetly since that day.
    The Tennants had three milking cows, twenty-five beeves, three horses and a crate of laying hens fastened to the back of one of their wagons. Five of their beef animals were calves, recently weaned, who were always unruly and skittish. All together, the beasts from our party alone made a great crowd, always hungry or thirsty, jostling for pasture or a good place at the waterhole. They were noisy, too, especially the hens. Some people in other parties had brought sheep and goats, as well. The sight of us, from the top of a distant hill, must have been enough to cause great astonishment to a savage unused to such an invasion. Although, given that this was the fourth summer in which wagon trains had followed this same trail, perhaps the natives were already becoming accustomed to the sight.
    I was the eldest of the five children, followed by Reuben, and the three younger sisters. Too many girl children, said my father, in all sincerity. He dealt