When he agrees to deliver Johanna to her relatives hundreds of miles away, Captain Kidd buys a wagon for the journey. He surmises from the large inscription on the side—“Curative Waters Mineral Springs East Texas”—that the wagon once belonged to some sort of health spa. It’s ironic that the wagon’s lettering seems to offer health and healing to sick people, when Johanna is undergoing a journey of loss and sorrow, leaving the only life she knows and traveling towards an unknown, frightening future. The wagon also contrasts with the duo’s precarious safety: the jaunty lettering is soon riddled with bullet holes from their gunfight with the human trafficker Almay, an episode in which they both nearly die.
At the same time, for Johanna the wagon becomes a marker of stability in an intimidating new world. While it’s an Anglo-American device, it’s also used to travel long distances and sleep in the open—activities which Johanna enjoys from her time with the Kiowa. When she’s frightened by strangers or the clamor of Texas towns, she can retreat into the back and hide until she feels safe. She much prefers sleeping in the wagon to staying in a hotel, and when she reaches the house of her stern aunt and uncle, she insists on spending the first night bunkered down in the back. Finally, when the Captain rescues Johanna from her abusive relatives, he carries her to safety in the wagon. Ultimately, the wagon represents the atmosphere of stability the Captain creates by recognizing Johanna’s complex cultural identity, and the enduring emotional bond that forms between them as a result. Before her wedding, Johanna tearfully tells the Captain, “You are my curative waters,” cementing the connection between the odd little wagon and the unconventional family that forms within it.
The Wagon Quotes in News of the World
As long as they were traveling she was content and happy and the world held great interest for her but Captain Kidd wondered what would happen when she found she was never to wander the face of the earth again, when she was to be confined forever to her Leonberger relatives in a square house that could not be broken down and packed on a travois.
We will come to visit often, she said. You are my cuuative watah. Then she began to sob.
Yes, he said. He shut his eyes and prayed he would not start crying himself. And you are my dearest little warrior.
The Wagon Symbol Timeline in News of the World
