Part 11
The scenery became more diversified as the travellers continued their journey up the Platte. Gradually the heat became less suffocating. Desert sands gave way to alluvial valleys, and the health of man and beast improved. On the opposite, or south side of the river, the scenery was strikingly unlike that of the plain through which the emigrant road ran, winding its sinewy length in and out, over the vast, untilled fields that lay asleep in the sunshine, awaiting the fructifying power of the autumn rains, and the future labor of plough and seedsman.
It was now the first of July. The heavy duties of the day were over, the short summer evening had come, and Captain Ranger lay upon the grass, playing with his own little ones, Susannah’s George Washington, and the three babies of Sally O’Dowd.
The evening breezes stirred his hair and beard and filed his lungs with a sensation of vigor he had not enjoyed since bidding farewell to his faithful wife.
“The story goes that some prospectors have discovered gold in the foot-hills across the big drink,” said Yank, approaching the Captain with a sort of half-military salute.
“What of it?” asked the Captain, as he shook himself loose from the little group, and arose to his knees, a vague fear tugging at his heart. “What does such a discovery mean to us?”
“Nothing; only the most of us are going to throw up our job and go off a-prospecting.”
“What! and leave me alone in this wilderness, without teamsters, a thousand miles from nowhere, with all these women and children on my hands to starve to death or be captured by Indians?”
“That’ll have to be your own lookout, I reckon. The gold fever’s as sudden as the cholera, and takes you off without warning when you get it bad.”
“What’s the matter, daddie?” asked Jean. “Are you sick?”
“I’m face to face with an awful difficulty, daughter. Our ox-drivers have caught the gold fever. They are all going to leave us in this wilderness but Scotty; and he’d go too, no doubt, if he weren’t crippled and helpless.”
“Don’t let the desertion of your teamsters worry you,” exclaimed Sally O’Dowd. “I can drive one of the teams myself.”
“What! You?”
“Yes! Didn’t I tell you that you’d never be sorry if you’d let me travel in your train to Oregon?”
“We can all drive oxen,” cried his three daughters, in a breath.
“But who will drive for Mrs. Benson and the Little Doctor? Their teamsters have joined the stampede, and they can’t drive oxen.”
“Just try us and see if we can’t,” laughed the Little Doctor.
“But you have two teams, and your mother cannot drive one of them.”
“I’ll make a trailer of one of the wagons, just as the freighters do in the Assiniboin country.”
“Does Mrs. Benson know about this?”
“Yes; we’ve talked it all over. It’s a genuine case of ‘have to,’ Captain.”
“What will you do with Scotty?”
“We’ve considered him! He’ll soon be on his feet again. Meanwhile, he’ll have to stay on in his hammock.”
“He’s not good for anything there nor anywhere else!” said the Captain, testily. “He doesn’t know beans about driving oxen, and I doubt if he can ever learn!”
“He’s great on ‘intervention’ and ‘non-intervention,’ though,” laughed Mrs. McAlpin. “He’s even greater on the Monroe Doctrine.”
“Yes!” exclaimed Jean, “and you ought to hear him rave over the nation’s allegiance to Mason and Dixon’s Line. It’s on the troubles over the slavery question, which he says are looming all along the national horizon, that he comes out strong.”
“He’s taught me a lot about law and equity, courts and criminals, constitutions and codes,” said Hal.
“You make light of the peril of our situation because you do not comprehend its gravity,” exclaimed Captain Ranger. “We need our teamsters. Scotty is a capital theorist, but he’ll never set a river afire.”
“That’s a feat you’ve never accomplished yet, daddie,” laughed Jean.
“I’ve come as near it as any living man; for I boiled the Illinois dry, once!” replied the Captain, alluding to an experience of a former year of drouth, when a steam sawmill he was operating on the river-bank had to be closed down for a season for want of water.
“Don’t worry, Captain,” cried Sally O’Dowd. “The women and children won’t forsake you.”
“Because they can’t,” was the curt response, and he walked away to be alone.
* * * * *
The next morning, the teamsters, notwithstanding the strike, were standing around the camp-fires, waiting for breakfast. Some of them looked a little ashamed, some were a little concerned as to the fate of the train, and two or three seemed to enjoy the Captain’s predicament.
“Clear out, every last one of you!” he exclaimed, as they made a move for the mess-boxes as soon as breakfast was ready. “The women folks are my teamsters now, and they shall have the first seats at my table.”
As the men turned away, crestfallen and hungry, their resolution to “get rich quick” began to drop toward zero; but their leader and spokesman hurried them away, explaining that they would find a trading-post and plenty of “grub” across the river.
Mrs. McAlpin paused to visit Scotty a moment at his hammock; and as Mrs. Benson was busy with some duties at the fire, the couple were alone.
“Why these groanings, Mr. Burns?” she asked, placing her cool hand upon his corrugated forehead.
“Because I’m a fool!”
“Did anybody ever dispute it?” she asked with a silvery laugh. “There! Not another word. You are my patient, remember. You mustn’t talk back.”
“Your touch is the touch of an angel.”
“Did you ever see an angel?”
“I’m _vis-à-vis_ with one this holy minute. Ouch! Confound that pain!”
“I thought you enjoyed my surgery. You said you did.”
“I have just said I was a fool.”
“Did I dispute it?”
He laughed in spite of his pain. “Say, Little Doctor, are you never going to let me talk it out?”
“Talk what out?”
“Our personal affairs.”
“Not yet. You must be patient. I am not a free woman yet.”
“But you’ll let me hope?”
“I cannot say. I am determined to obey the letter of the law.”
“I could leap for joy, Daphne!”
“Better not try it; might injure your knitting-bones.”
“Here,” said Mrs. Benson, who had been purposely busy at the fire, “is a dish of savory stew. And here is some hardtack, soaked till it is light and soft. It is hot and nicely buttered. The coffee is guiltless of cream, but it is fresh and good.”
“And black and aromatic and Frenchy,” exclaimed Scotty. “Mrs. McAlpin, will you dine with me to-day?”
“No, Mr. Burns; my meal awaits me at the fire.”
“What sort of game is this?” he asked, as he ate with relish.
“Captain Ranger called it a prairie bird.”
“Birds in my country don’t wear hair, but feathers,” he said, holding to the light the hind-quarter of a prairie dog, and pointing to bits of hair afloat in the gravy.
“Ask me no questions, for conscience’ sake,” cried Mrs. Benson, who was laughing heartily. “It may be a prairie dog, or it may be a prairie squirrel. But it is good for food, and much to be desired to make you well and wise.”
“It is all right,” laughed Mrs. McAlpin. “When Lewis and Clark were on the Oregon trail, nearly fifty years ago, away yonder to the north of us, they were glad to trade with the Indians for mangy dogs, sometimes, if they got any food at all.”
* * * * *
When Scotty awoke the following morning, after a sleep that was as refreshing as it seemed brief, the sun was creeping over the wide expanse of the Platte, making it shine like a gigantic mirror. The women and girls, who had been up for an hour, were bringing in the stock. Susannah, who had been detailed to cook the breakfast and mind the children, was baking flapjacks, and the aroma of coffee was in the air.
“We can all eat at the first table now,” said Jean, as they knelt around the mess-boxes.
Before the repast was finished, they were surprised to see the men who had left them for the gold mines reappear at camp, looking cheap and ashamed.
Sawed-off was the first to speak. “We talked it over with Brownson and Jordan, and the four of us concluded that we couldn’t desert you, Captain. So the rest of ’em joined in.”
“I reckon you got hungry,” said the Captain, dryly.
“No, Captain. It wasn’t hunger; it was conscience that sent us back.”
“How much cash can you put up as collateral, if I conclude to trust you again?”
The crestfallen men were silent.
“Seeing the risk is all mine, and all the provisions and other parts of the entire outfit are mine, and you are foot-loose and can play quits at any time, I guess we’d better not make any new deal. My gals and these widders can help drive the teams.”
The self-discharged teamsters withdrew beyond hearing of the camp, and parleyed long and earnestly.
“We’ve got to do something!” exclaimed Sawed-off. “Just watch them gals handle them cattle! They’ve the true grit.”
“Do you s’pose the Cap’n ’d take us back if we’d pungle say fifty dollars apiece?” asked Limpy.
“We can’t do better than make the offer,” said Yank.
“This cash’ll come handy at the other end of the line,” said the Captain, intrusting the gold to the care of his daughters and reinstating his men, after a sharp exhortation to avoid repeating the offence.
XXI
_AN UNEXPECTED ENCOUNTER_
“Oh, this wonderful Western country!” wrote Jean in her diary, under date of midnight, July 4. “After travelling so long on the banks of the Platte that we had come to look upon it as a familiar friend, we left it to the southward and turned our course up the valley of the Sweet Water, through a succession of low, wooded hills. This little river, though not more than a hundred feet wide, is quite deep, and runs like a mill-race. The water is as clear as ether, and agreeably cold.
“Nobody can conceive the vastness of this country, or imagine its future possibilities, until he has crossed the great unsettled part of this continent to the westward and seen it for himself.
“Some days we move for many hours over great stretches of alluvial soil, which only needs the impulse of cultivation to make it yield of the fruits of the earth like magic. Again, we are in the midst of big fields of crude saleratus, or salt, or sulphur. Now and then our cattle are compelled to wade through an alkali swamp, suggesting more foot-ail; but our Little Doctor says that danger is past for this year; she has not stated why, and maybe she doesn’t know.
“We encamped last night near Independence Rock,—a huge pile of gray basalt, covering an area of perhaps ten acres, and looking to be about three hundred feet high. Its sides are formed of great irregular bowlders, worn smooth by the warring elements of ages.
“July 5. Yesterday was Independence Day, and as we had camped near Independence Rock, daddie laid over to celebrate.
“About noon, Mary, Marjorie, and I concluded that we would climb the rock to its summit, carrying with us the only star-spangled banner the train could boast. But our scheme failed through the fickleness and fury of the same elements that have been smoothing the surface of the rock during the ages gone.
“We had climbed over halfway to the top when a low, dense cloud, as blue-black as a kettle of indigo dye, enveloped us. It came upon us so suddenly that we hardly realized our danger till we were surrounded by semi-darkness in the midst of a pelting hailstorm. We retreated so blindly and hastily that it is a miracle we didn’t break our necks.
“Thunder and lightning followed, or rather accompanied the hail, and were succeeded by a deluge of rain. Sudden squalls of wind would fairly lift us off our feet at times as we hurried downward, making the descent doubly perilous. But the storm soon spent its fury, leaving the air as clear and sweet as a chime of bells.
“A roaring fire welcomed us at camp, by which we warmed our chilled marrow-bones and dried our sodden toggery.
“Daddie scolded; Mame charged our mishap all to me; Marj blamed both of us, and excused herself. It is the way of the world, or of most people in it, but it is sometimes very provoking. I hadn’t thought of attempting the climb till the other girls proposed it; but I took the brunt of the blame, and, as usual, got all the scolding.
“The storm wouldn’t let us try to float the flag, but it got very wet, and we had our labor for our pains.
“Sally and Susannah prepared a Fourth of July banquet of antelope steaks, to go with our regulation diet of beans and coffee. After dinner Mrs. McAlpin sang ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ the rest of us joining in the chorus. Susannah sang a lot of negro melodies, and George Washington danced for us, his white teeth shining, and eyeballs gleaming. Hal read the Declaration of Independence, and daddie ‘made the eagle scream.’
“He was in the midst of his oration, and I was wondering where all the men of valor came from, seeing they had had no mothers to assist in getting up this spread-eagle scheme we call a republic, when I was compelled to leave the crowd and poise myself on a wet wagon-tongue to write the thing up. Scotty, who is still on crutches, delivered an oration on the side, of which I heard but little, owing to my banishment.
“But I won’t always be so meek and silent on the Fourth of July. I’ll write a Declaration of Independence for women some day.
“Daddie burned some powder after dark, ‘to amuse the children,’ he said, but I noticed that the men enjoyed the noise even more than the children did. Poor Bobbie got some powder burns about the face, and Sadie and the babies gave us a squalling chorus, prompted by fright, causing me to wonder why men must always celebrate our patriotism with the emblems of death and destruction.”
On July 6 she wrote: “We have reached the edges of the Rocky Mountains now; and as we climb slowly and almost imperceptibly toward their summits, our road winds in and out along the meandering bases of a great divide, down which many little streams of icy water dash with foam and roar, forever in a hurry, always trying to go somewhere, and never reaching any settled goal.
“Now and then we get glimpses of distant summits, but we are reaching them by an ascent so gradual that daddie says we shall not realize that we have crossed the great divide till we see the water has changed its course from east to west.
“We passed a trading-post to-day, belonging to a company having its headquarters at Salt Lake. The men in charge wore big sombreros, buckskin trousers, and moccasins of buffalo hide. They all smoked incessantly and affected the airs of the genus cowboy, or _vaquero_ of the plains, of whom we often see specimens roving over hill and plain on horseback, their shoulders covered with gayly colored serapes, flapping in the wind like wings.
“We pass daily from six to a dozen graves, but not so newly made as those noticed heretofore; so we conclude the cholera is abating.
“There, old Journal! I’ve done my level best to write you up to date. But it’s like climbing these mountains,—uphill work, and dreadfully monotonous!”
* * * * *
“Did you buy a fresh stock of provisions, Captain?” asked Sally O’Dowd, as they were preparing to leave the trading-post which Jean had mentioned, after he had held a long parley with a big, bronzed, and heavily bearded mountaineer, who was strikingly handsome despite his peculiar make-up.
“Yes, Sally. I bought a couple o’ hundred pounds o’ flour, for which I paid a twenty-dollar gold-piece.”
“I was feeding the children, and didn’t get a chance to make my purchases at the proper time. Won’t you hold the teams back a few minutes for me?”
“Yes, but hurry up.”
“Let me have a hundred pounds of flour, sir,” she said, approaching the counter, behind which the trader stood, smoking a huge meerschaum.
“Anything else?”
“Yes; the balance of this twenty-dollar gold-piece in dried peaches, please.”
In filling her order, the trader raised the cloth partition of the tent to reach his base of supplies, and in the middle of the tent Sally espied an unkempt squaw and half-a-dozen dusky children.
“I’ll be compelled to hurry,” she said, as he leisurely weighed her fruit. “Captain Ranger is always demanding haste.”
The trader started suddenly, his face blanching.
“Where does your train hail from?” he asked.
“From the middle West, sir. We are going from the West to the West.” The trader balanced two sacks of Salt Lake flour on his shoulders, and grasping the smaller package of peaches, strode out hurriedly toward the wagon near which Captain Ranger was standing, impatient to be gone.
“These purchases are for the lady, sir. Where will you have them dumped?”
“Any place where there’s room, and don’t let any grass grow under your feet!”
“The lady tells me your name is Ranger, sir.”
“Yes. What of it?”
“Will you walk with me a little way ahead of the wagons? I have something important to say to you alone.”
“We are scarce of drivers,” replied the Captain, hesitating. “Two of my men are out hunting.”
“I can drive,” exclaimed Jean, reaching for the whip, which she handled with the skill of a freighter, finishing her flourishes with a series of snaps at the end of a deerskin cracker, like the explosion of a bunch of fire-crackers.
“If we’ll take this cut-off, we’ll come out a mile or more ahead of the wagons,” said the trader. “Then we can rest by the roadside till they catch up.”
The Captain strode by his side in silence.
“Don’t you know me, John?” asked the stranger, grasping him by the arm, and speaking in a hoarse whisper.
Captain Ranger eyed him earnestly, his cheeks paling.
“Can it be possible that you are—Joe?” he asked, seizing his hand with a vise-like grip.
“I am indeed your brother Joe,—an outlaw, now and always.”
“No, you are not an outlaw; the fellow over whom you got into that trouble is alive and well. You’d have got out of that scrape all right if you hadn’t jumped your bail and left all the rest of us in the lurch. Why didn’t you stand your trial, like a man?”
John Ranger’s feelings overcame him, and he sank upon the ground, filled with old-time memories. He buried his face in his hands. Time and distance faded away, and he saw, with eyes of memory, the gentle, fading face of his toiling, uncomplaining wife, whose life had been for years a sacrifice to penury through the debt entailed by this brother’s cowardice.
“Do you mean to tell me that Elmer Edson is not dead?”
The question called him back to present conditions with a sudden start.
“Elmer Edson is not dead, but Annie Ranger is!” he said hoarsely. “We had to leave her precious dust in the ground away back yonder in the Black Hills. We started together on this terrible journey, hoping to escape the consequences of that awful mortgage with which you left us in the lurch. She had denied herself many comforts and all the luxuries of life for a dozen years to feed the ever-eating cankerworm of interest. No, Joe, you didn’t kill Edson; but through my efforts to help you out of a trouble in which you should never have been entangled, you became accessory to the lingering death of my wife.”
“Don’t reproach me, John! I loved Annie like a sister. I did indeed. She was a sister to me from the day she became your wife. You don’t or won’t see how it grieves me to hear of her death.”
“Why didn’t you write to us, like a man?”
The brother had risen to his feet, and was pacing nervously to and fro, whittling aimlessly on a bit of sagebrush.
“I was afraid to write. There was a price upon my head, as you have no need to be informed.”
“Yes, Joe; and to pay the interest on that price was the bane of my existence for a dozen years. But you can write now. Our dear mother—God bless her!—would forget all the terrible past if she could hold you in her arms once more. It is your duty to return at once, and settle, as well as you can, for the trouble you have caused. You ought at least to lift that accursed mortgage from the farm, and let Lije Robinson and Sister Mary and our parents spend the remainder of their lives in peace. You are a free man, and can go where you please.”
“But I am not a free man, John. Even with that horrible load off my shoulders, I still am bound, hand and foot.”
“Are you married, Joe?”
“Yes, John. You see, when a fellow is in hiding among the Indians, with a price set upon his head, and is therefore afraid to go home, he’s nothing but a fugitive from justice; he expects to spend his life there, and never see the face of another white woman; and when there are scores of pretty Indian girls in sight—”
John Ranger jumped to his feet, his fists clinched and his eyes glaring.
“You don’t mean to tell me that my brother is married to—to a—squaw?”
There was ineffable scorn in his tone and manner. It was now Joe’s turn to sink upon the ground and bury his face in his hands. When he again looked at his brother, there was an expression of age and anguish upon his face which had not been there before.
“I am the husband of an Indian woman, and the father of seven half-breed children,” he said with the air of a guilty man on trial for his life. “But there are extenuating circumstances, John. My wife was no common squaw. If you care for me at all, you will not apply that epithet to the mother of my children. She was the daughter of a Mandan chief, who had large dealings with the Hudson Bay Company, and who sent her to England to be educated. You’d hardly think it to see her now, though; for the Indian women fall back into aboriginal customs when they leave the haunts of civilization to return to their people and take up life, especially as mothers, among their own kind and kin. At least, that is what Wahnetta did.”
John Ranger groaned. “My God! has it come to this?” he cried, looking the picture of despair.
“If you had been in my place, you would have married her yourself, John. Nobody has a right to judge another; for no one knows what he will do till he is tried.”
“Don’t you regret the marriage, Joe?”
“It is too late for regrets. The deed is done, and I cannot get away from my fate. Shall we part as friends and brothers? Or is there an impassable gulf between us?”
There was an unspoken appeal in his tone, far stronger than words, which John Ranger remembered for many a day. But he refused his brother’s proffered hand, and said hoarsely, as he sprang to his feet: “Don’t, at your peril, let anybody know that you are my brother!”
He wheeled upon his heel and was gone.
XXII
_THE SQUAW MAN_
Captain Ranger overtook his train at a late hour, still nursing his towering wrath. His face was livid, and his breathing stertorous. Snatching the ox-whip from the hands of Jean and frightening the discouraged cattle into the semblance of an attempt at hurry by the cruel vehemence with which he belabored their lash-beflecked hides, he urged them forward, never once relaxing his attacks with the whip till he had rushed them over the uneven road and rocks for six or seven miles.
“Daddie is in a terrible tantrum over something very unusual,” said Jean. “Do you know what is the matter?” she asked aside, addressing Sally O’Dowd.
“No, Jean; unless he had some hot words with that post-trader. I know he thought ten dollars a hundred for flour was robbery. And think of a dollar a pound for dried peaches!”
“Daddie’s not idiot enough to work himself into a fever over a trifle like that,” answered Jean. “But suppose he has been thrown into a passion by anybody, the poor half-sick and half-famished oxen ought not to be punished for it. He reminds me of an old Kentucky slave-owner who got so mad because one of his sons failed to pass his first exams at West Point that he went out, as soon as he heard about it, and cruelly whipped a nigger.” And falling back to the family team, beside which Hal was trudging, whip in hand, striving to keep the jaded cattle close behind his father’s oxen, she dropped hastily on one knee on the wagon-tongue and climbed nimbly to a seat.