An Adventure on the Oregon Trail

This is a story I wrote for a short story contest at our library. I won 3rd place in the 6th-8th grade category!

~Sunshine

An Adventure on the Oregon Trail

Who would have thought that an afternoon cleaning an attic in an old lady’s house would have been an adventure? Not the average thirteen-year-old. But for me, that day, cleaning an attic, was one of the most exciting days of my life.

I’m Jane Nevaeh Randolph. This is my adventure.

It was a Saturday morning, the first of May. Earlier in the week, I had agreed to help a little old lady down the street, Mrs. Suzanne, clean out her attic. You know, spring cleaning. I was hesitant at first, knowing that her 200-year-old log house was probably filled with rust, mildew, moth balls, and really gross things. I had asked my best friend, Megan, to come and help me, and she was glad to.

Megan met me at my house that morning at 7:00 A.M. The breeze in our lonely little Idaho town was very faint, like a whispered secret. It offered very little cooling off on that seventy-degree day, with the sun shining bright. But Megan had the same idea as mine: no sleeve shirts with the shortest possible shorts we were allowed to wear. With her bright pink tank top, dark blue jean shorts, tennis shoes, and her brown curly hair pulled up in a bun with a bow, you would have thought she was going to cheerleading practice.

“Do we need to bring anything?” Megan asked.

“We shouldn’t.” I replied, “Mrs. Suzanne said that she would have all of the necessary items, including lemonade and cookies.” We laughed a little.

We then started down the little street of Potato Avenue. We looked at all of the houses we were passing, having seen them for years -some with brick and some with colored siding. We walked for about a half of a mile and came to a Mrs. Suzanne’s log house with roses and daisies planted all around the front porch. The front door was coming off its hinges and the windows needed some cleaning.

Mrs. Suzanne met as at the front door with lemonade and cookies, just as she promised.

“Hello there, girls! I just got done making some cookies so you come on in out of this heat and rest a while.” said Mrs. Suzanne. “Don’t even think of workin’ till you have some lemonade to cool that throat of yours.”

“You’re very kind, Mrs. Suzanne,” I said as politely as I could.

“Yes, thank you very much,” agreed Megan, taking a cookie and a glass of lemonade from the tray she carried.

Her house was a little farmhouse that had two bedrooms, a living room, and a kitchen. The little living room was full of little collectables here and there of things from the Oregon Trail. Her house was actually the place where a prairie family once lived in 1847. The one thing that Megan, Mrs. Suzanne, and I had in common was that we all loved the time of the Oregon Trail.

After thanking Mrs. Suzanne for the lemonade and cookies, Megan and I headed to the attic.

We walked up the ladder into the attic. Just as I thought, it was as dusty as a neglected bookshelf. We coughed a little and then started getting used to the dusty air. I had already packed some trash bags and gloves in my backpack, so we were okay for a little while.

The attic was filled with things from top to bottom. Dressers, clocks, a bed, boxes, and some more furniture took up most of the space. And then in the corner was a little radio. It looked at least twenty years old, and had a good layer of dust on it. I had hoped she had one, and I had brought my CD case for that very purpose.

I turned the radio on to 88.1, my favorite station. It worked, and the music gave off some brightness to the room. I pulled out our equipment and started working.

“Look at this stuff!” said Megan. “There are hundreds of years of history up here!”

“I know,” I replied, “there are all of these sketches of the Oregon Trail. Her mother or grandmother must have traveled west and stopped here in Idaho.”

While we were looking at the sketches, we noticed that the song “Scenes of Childhood” by Robert Schumann had come on. All of a sudden, I felt dizzy and confused, like the whole world started spinning faster. I held on to a couch and noticed Megan doing the same.

Then everything went black.

I opened my eyes to see myself lying on bales of straw. I looked beside me and saw Megan on what looked like a wood floor. I sat up and heard a fuzzy noise, now realizing it was the radio. It had somehow looked like a brand new radio, never been used. It was also not playing any music, just fuzz. I got up and turned it off. I looked below me and gasped.

We were in the loft of a barn!

Down below us were horses and a few chickens that were coming in to be nosy. It smelled terribly of cow manure and farm animals. There was straw and hay everywhere and I could see some oats stored up in an open cabinet.

“What happened?” said Megan groggily.

“I have absolutely no idea,” I replied.

We heard a voice, and then saw who it belonged to. There was a girl, about thirteen, and she was feeding the horses. She shooed the chickens out of the barn, looked up, saw us, and gasped.

“Who are you and what are you doing here?” she said with excitement and fear showing in her face.

“Well, I’m Jane,” I replied, “and this is my friend Megan. I was hoping you could tell us where we are.”

“In Idaho, of course!” she replied. “Now come on down from there!”

We did as we were told.

“By the way,” I said, “what is your name?”

“Carrie Shultz,” was the reply. “Now you’d better hurry, we’re leaving soon.”

“Where are you going?” Megan asked.

“To Oregon,” Carrie cried, “on the Oregon Trail. I don’t think Ma or Pa will have a problem with you comin’ along, but you’ll have to work for your food. Got that?”

“Yeah, sure, but why exactly do we have to leave?” I asked.

“There’s a famine comin’, and we’ve got to get a move on if we want to beat it,” said Carrie. “Where are you two from?”

“We’re from Idaho, too,” I said, “but we somehow got transported here. What year is this?”

“It’s 1847, of course! May the first!” Carrie replied.

“1847!” Megan exclaimed. “That’s two hundred years ago!”

“Come on, we can talk about this later,” said Carrie, getting obviously impatient.
Carrie led us to a big wagon loaded with possessions. The house that was behind it looked almost exactly like Mrs. Suzanne’s house, except different in some ways.

“Ma, Pa, these two here girls are willing to work for their food if you would let them come along with us. Can they come?”

Carrie’s Ma looked very nice, with her pale pink sundress and blue bonnet.

“Sure, why not?” she said. “What about it, Jim?”

“If you’re willing to work, I don’t see why not,” Carrie’s Pa replied.

But we never got that far.

Carrie’s parents sent us out to the wide open prairie to fetch some Nebraska coal. Megan didn’t know what that was, and when I told her it was Buffalo chips or droppings, she about fainted.

“We have some gloves, it won’t be that bad!” I told her.

We ran back to the barn to get my book bag, which just happened to be in the loft, and I also took the radio, just to be safe.

All of this time I had been trying to figure out how to get back home. Well, I thought, we came by the radio, so we have to go home through the radio.

It wasn’t as easy as I thought.

Megan, Carrie, and I were out in the prairie, collecting Nebraska coal (Megan complaining the whole time), when we heard rumbling. The ground was shaking, like it was sobbing. It became louder and louder until we started seeing dust up ahead.

It was a stampede of buffalo.

And all of our stuff was in the middle of the prairie, about to be trampled on by the buffalo. Including the radio.

Part of me wanted to seek the shelter of the nearby forest, but then Megan and I might not have a way to go home.

I took my chances.

I ran at full speed towards the buffalo. My heart felt like it was about to come out of my body; my adrenaline letting me go faster than I ever had in my life. I had managed to get the bag on my shoulders and my feet heading for shelter, but the buffalo were still faster than I was.

Carrie had come out with me to try and help, and so had Megan. All of us were trapped.

We ran like the wind, not daring to look back.

“Quick!” I yelled, “Into the woods!”

We all were running full speed when all of a sudden Carrie tripped.

I gave my bag to Megan and said, “Go to the woods! Get help!”

I ran back to get Carrie, not hearing Megan’s reply. She looked as though she had fainted, or had been knocked out. I picked her up, looking for gaps through the stampede’s tight pack. Then, I felt strong hands behind me grab my shoulders.

“We’re here to help you!” yelled a boy’s voice. “Let Carrie go! Bill will get her!”

I did as I was told and the boy named Bill picked her up and ran towards the woods.

“Come on!” said the first boy, grabbing my hand.

We ran through and with the stampede, trying not to get trampled. We both got some pretty bad cuts and bruises, but we were alive.

We breathed heavily with relief and exhaustion in the safety of the forest.

“Thank you,” I breathed to the boys.

“Your friend here let us know what was happening,” said the first boy. “It looks like we got here just in time.”

“How is Carrie?” I asked.

“She’ll live,” said Megan.

We waited for about fifteen minutes while the stampede ran through the prairie. Then we all set out for Carrie’s little house.

When we got there, wounds were tended to, thanks were given, and the boys were on their way.

“I really do thank you,” I said to the first boy.

“Don’t mention it,” he said.

I leaned over and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

“Please tell me your name,” I said, feeling a little strange on the inside.

“Michael,” he said, looking bewildered and delighted at the same time.

“See you later, then, Michael,” I said, giving him my best smile.

“Good bye,” he replied, returning my smile.

After explaining things to Carrie’s Ma and Pa, Megan and I talked about how to get home.

“We’ll have to get home by the radio,” I said, “so I’ll put in a song and see if we can get home that way.”

“Okay, let’s do it,” Megan replied.

I put in a CD, since radio stations hadn’t been invented yet, and we wished together that we were back in the attic.

Once again, we felt a dizzy sensation, going forward in time.

And there we were, back in Mrs. Suzanne’s attic, listening to “Scenes of Childhood”.

I guess you could say I “tuned in” to adventure, but Mrs. Suzanne still thinks we were daydreaming. And that we have excellent imaginations.