Part 9

When I had breakfasted I joined Mr. Newty in his trip to the corral, where we stood together for hours, during which I had mastered the story of his years since, in 1850, he left his old home in Pike of Missouri. It was one of those histories common enough through this wide West, yet never failing to startle me with its horrible lesson of social disintegration, of human retrograde.

That brave spirit of Westward Ho! which has been the pillar of fire and cloud leading on the weary march of progress over stretches of desert, lining the way with graves of strong men; of new-born lives; of sad, patient mothers, whose pathetic longing for the new home died with them; of the thousand old and young whose last agony came to them as they marched with eyes strained on after the sunken sun, and whose shallow barrows scarcely lift over the drifting dust of the desert; that restless spirit which has dared to uproot the old and plant the new, kindling the grand energy of California, laying foundations for a State to be, that is admirable, is poetic, is to fill an immortal page in the story of America; but when, instead of urging on to wresting from new lands something better than old can give, it degenerates into mere weak-minded restlessness, killing the power of growth, the ideal of home, the faculty of repose, it results in that race of perpetual emigrants who roam as dreary waifs over the West, losing possessions, love of life, love of God, slowly dragging from valley to valley, till they fall by the wayside, happy if some chance stranger performs for them the last rites,--often less fortunate, as blanched bones and fluttering rags upon too many hillsides plainly tell.

The Newtys were of this dreary brotherhood. In 1850, with a small family of that authentic strain of high-bred swine for which Pike County is widely known, as Mr. Newty avers, they bade Missouri and their snug farm good-by, and, having packed their household goods into a wagon, drawn by two spotted oxen, set out with the baby Susan for Oregon, where they came after a year’s march, tired, and cursed with a permanent discontent. There they had taken up a rancho, a quarter-section of public domain, which at the end of two years was “improved” to the extent of the “neatest little worm fence this side of Pike,” a barn, and a smoke-house. “In another year,” said my friend, “I’d have dug for a house, but we tuck ager, and the second baby died.” One day there came a man who “let on that he knowed” land in California much fairer and more worthy tillage than Oregon’s best, so the poor Newtys harnessed up the wagon and turned their backs upon a home nearly ready for comfortable life, and swept south with pigs and plunder. Through all the years this story had repeated itself, new homes gotten to the edge of completion, more babies born, more graves made, more pigs, who replenished as only the Pike County variety may, till it seemed to me the mere multiplication of them must reach a sufficient dead weight to anchor the family; but this was dispelled when Newty remarked, “These yer hogs is awkward about moving, and I’ve pretty much made up my mind to put ’em all into bacon this fall, and sell out and start for Montana.”

Poor fellow! at Montana he will probably find a man from Texas who in half an hour will persuade him that happiness lies there.

As we walked back to their camp, and when Dame Newty hove in sight, my friend ventured to say, “Don’t you mind the old woman and her coons. She’s from Arkansas. She used to say no man could have Susan who couldn’t show coonskins enough of his own killing to make a bed-quilt, but she’s over that mostly.” In spite of this assurance my heart fell a trifle when, the first moment of our return, she turned to her husband and asked, “Do you mind what a dead-open-and-shut on coons our little Johnnie was when he was ten years old?” I secretly wondered if the dead-open-and-shut had anything to do with his untimely demise at eleven, but kept silence.

Regarding her as a sad product of the disease of chronic emigration, her hard, thin nature, all angles and stings, became to me one of the most depressing and pathetic spectacles, and the more when her fever-and-ague boy, a mass of bilious lymph, came and sat by her, looking up with great, haggard eyes, as if pleading for something, he knew not what, but which I plainly saw only death could bestow.

Noon brought the hour of my departure. Susan and her father talked apart a moment, then the old man said the two would ride along with me for a few miles, as he had to go in that direction to look for new hog-feed.

I despatched my two men with the pack-horse, directing them to follow the trail, then saddled my Kaweah and waited for the Newtys. The old man saddled a shaggy little mountain pony for himself, and for Susan strapped a sheepskin upon the back of a young and fiery mustang colt.

While they were getting ready, I made my horse fast to a stake and stepped over to bid good-by to Mrs. Newty. I said to her, in tones of deference, “I have come to bid you good-by, madam, and when I get back this way I hope you will be kind enough to tell me one or two really first-rate coon-stories. I am quite ignorant of that animal, having been raised in countries where they are extremely rare, and I would like to know more of what seems to be to you a creature of such interest.” The wet, gray eyes relaxed, as I fancied, a trifle of their asperity; a faint kindle seemed to light them for an instant as she asked, “You never see coons catch frogs in a spring branch?”

“No, madam,” I answered.

“Well, I wonder! Well, take care of yourself, and when you come back this way stop along with us, and we’ll kill a yearlin’, and I’ll tell you about a coon that used to live under grandfather’s barn.” She actually offered me her hand, which I grasped and shook in a friendly manner, chilled to the very bone with its damp coldness.

Mr. Newty mounted, and asked me if I was ready. Susan stood holding her prancing mustang. To put that girl on her horse after the ordinary plan would have required the strength of Samson or the use of a step-ladder, neither of which I possessed; so I waited for events to develop themselves. The girl stepped to the left side of her horse, twisted one hand in the mane, laying the other upon his haunches, and, crouching for a jump, sailed through the air, alighting upon the sheepskin. The horse reared, and Susan, twisting herself round, came right side up with her knee upon the sheepskin, shouting, as she did so, “I guess you don’t get me off, sir!” I jumped upon Kaweah, and our two horses sprang forward together, Susan waving her hand to her father, and crying, “Come along after, old man!” and to her mother, “Take care of yourself!” which is the Pike County for _au revoir!_ Her mustang tugged at the bit, and bounded wildly into the air. We reached a stream-bank at full gallop, the horses clearing it at a bound, sweeping on over the green floor and under the magnificent shadow of the forest. Newty, following us at an humble trot, slopped through the creek, and when I last looked he had nearly reached the edge of the wood.

I could but admire the unconscious excellence of Susan’s riding, her firm, immovable seat, and the perfect coolness with which she held the fiery horse. This quite absorbed me for five minutes, when she at last broke the silence by the laconic inquiry, “Does yourn buck?” To which I added the reply that he had only occasionally been guilty of that indiscretion. She then informed me that the first time she had mounted the colt he had “nearly bucked her to pieces; he had jumped and jounced till she was plum tuckered out” before he had given up.

Gradually reining the horses down and inducing them to walk, we rode side by side through the most magnificent forest of the Sierras, and I determined to probe Susan to see whether there were not, even in the most latent condition, some germs of the appreciation of nature. I looked from base to summit of the magnificent shafts, at the green plumes which traced themselves against the sky, the exquisite fall of purple shadows and golden light upon trunks, at the labyrinth of glowing flowers, at the sparkling whiteness of the mountain brook, and up to the clear, matchless blue that vaulted over us, then turned to Susan’s plain, honest face, and gradually introduced the subject of trees. Ideas of lumber and utilitarian notions of fence-rails were uppermost in her mind; but I briefly penetrated what proved to be only a superficial stratum of the materialistic, and asked her point blank if she did not admire their stately symmetry. A strange, new light gleamed in her eye as I described to her the growth and distribution of forests, and the marvellous change in their character and aspects as they approached the tropics. The palm and the pine, as I worked them up to her, really filled her with delight, and prompted numerous interested and intelligent queries, showing that she thoroughly comprehended my drift. In the pleasant hour of our chat I learned a new lesson of the presence of undeveloped seed in the human mind.

Mr. Newty at last came alongside, and remarked that he must stop about here; “but,” he added, “Susan will go on with you about half a mile, and come back and join me here after I have taken a look at the feed.”

As he rode out into the forest a little way, he called me to him, and I was a little puzzled at what seemed to be the first traces of embarrassment I had seen in his manner.

“You’ll take care of yourself, now, won’t you?” he asked. I tried to convince him that I would.

A slight pause.

“You’ll take care of yourself, won’t you?”

He might rely on it, I was going to say.

He added, “Thet--thet--thet man what gits Susan _has half the hogs_!”

Then turning promptly away, he spurred the pony, and his words as he rode into the forest were, “Take good care of yourself!”

Susan and I rode on for half a mile, until we reached the brow of a long descent, which she gave me to understand was her limit.

We shook hands and I bade her good-by, and as I trotted off these words fell sweetly upon my ear, “Say, you’ll take good care of yourself, won’t you, say?”

I took pains not to overtake my camp-men, wishing to be alone; and as I rode for hour after hour the picture of this family stood before me in all its deformity of outline, all its poverty of detail, all its darkness of future, and I believe I thought of it too gravely to enjoy as I might the subtle light of comedy which plays about these hard, repulsive figures.

In conversation I had caught the clew of a better past. Newty’s father was a New-Englander, and he spoke of him as a man of intelligence and, as I should judge, of some education. Mrs. Newty’s father had been an Arkansas judge, not perhaps the most enlightened of men, but still very far in advance of herself. The conspicuous retrograde seemed to me an example of the most hopeless phase of human life. If, as I suppose, we may all sooner or later give in our adhesion to the Darwinian view of development, does not the same law which permits such splendid scope for the better open up to us also possible gulfs of degradation, and are not these chronic emigrants whose broken-down wagons and weary faces greet you along the dusty highways of the far West melancholy examples of beings who have forever lost the conservatism of home and the power of improvement?

VI

KAWEAH’S RUN

1864

After trying hard to climb Mount Whitney without success, and having returned to the plains, I enjoyed my two days’ rest in hot Visalia, where were fruits and people, and where I at length thawed out the last traces of alpine cold, and recovered from hard work and the sinful bread of my fortnight’s campaign. I considered it happiness to spend my whole day on the quiet hotel veranda, accustoming myself again to such articles as chairs and newspapers, and watching with unexpected pleasure the few village girls who flitted about during the day, and actually found time after sunset to chat with favored fellows beneath the wide oaks of the street-side. Especially interesting seemed the rustic sister of whom I bought figs at a garden gate, thinking her, as I did, _comme il faut_, though recollecting later that her gown was of forgotten mode, and that she carried a suggestion of ancient history in the obsolete style of her back hair.

Everybody was of interest to me, not excepting the two Mexican mountaineers who monopolized the agent at Wells, Fargo & Co.’s office, causing me delay. They were transacting some little item of business, and stood loafing by the counter, mechanically jingling huge spurs and shrugging their shoulders as they chatted in a dull, sleepy way. At the door they paused, keeping up quite a lively dispute, without apparently noticing me as I drew a small bag of gold and put it in my pocket. There was no especial reason why I should remark the stolid, brutal cast of their countenances, as I thought them not worse than the average Californian greaser; but it occurred to me that one might as well guess at a geological formation as to attempt to judge the age of mountaineers, because they get very early in life a fixed expression, which is deepened by continual rough weathering and undisturbed accumulations of dirt. I observed them enough to see that the elder was a man of middle height, of wiry, light figure and thin, hawk visage; a certain angular sharpness making itself noticeable about the shoulders and arms, which tapered to small, almost refined hands. A mere fringe of perfectly straight, black beard followed the curve of his chin, tangling itself at the ear with shaggy, unkempt locks of hair. He wore an ordinary, stiff-brimmed Spanish sombrero, and the inevitable greasy red sash performed its rather difficult task of holding together flannel shirt and buckskin breeches, besides half covering with folds a long, narrow knife.

His companion struck me as a half-breed Indian, somewhere about eighteen years of age, his beardless face showing deep, brutal lines, and a mouth which was a mere crease between hideously heavy lips. Blood stained the rowels of his spurs; an old felt hat, crumpled and ragged, slouched forward over his eyes, doing its best to hide the man.

I thought them a hard couple, and summed up their traits as stolidity and utter cruelty.

I was pleased that the stable-man who saddled Kaweah was unable to answer their inquiry where I was going, and annoyed when I heard the hotel-keeper inform them that I started that day for Millerton.

Leaving behind us people and village, Kaweah bore me out under the grateful shade of oaks, among rambling settlements and fields of harvested grain, whose pale Naples-yellow stubble and stacks contrasted finely with the deep foliage, and served as a pretty groundwork for stripes of vivid green which marked the course of numberless irrigating streams. Low cottages, overarched with boughs and hemmed in with weed jungles, margined my road. I saw at the gate many children who looked me out of countenance with their serious, stupid stare; they were the least self-conscious of any human beings I have seen.

Trees and settlements and children were soon behind us, an open plain stretching on in front without visible limit,--a plain slightly browned with the traces of dried herbaceous plants, and unrelieved by other object than distant processions of trees traced from some cañon gate of the Sierras westward across to the middle valley, or occasional bands of restless cattle marching solemnly about in search of food. It was not pleasant to realize that I had one hundred and twenty miles of this lonely sort of landscape ahead of me, nor that my only companion was Kaweah; for with all his splendid powers and rare qualities of instinct there was not the slightest evidence of response or affection in his behavior. Friendly toleration was the highest gift he bestowed on me, though I think he had great personal enjoyment in my habits as a rider. The only moments when we ever seemed thoroughly _en rapport_ were when I crowded him down to a wild run, using the spur and shouting at him loudly, or when in our friendly races homeward toward camp, through the forest, I put him at a leap where he even doubted his own power. At such times I could communicate ideas to him with absolute certainty. He would stop, or turn, or gather himself for a leap, at my will, as it seemed to me, by some sort of magnetic communication; but I always paid dearly for this in long, tiresome efforts to calm him.

With the long, level road ahead of me, I dared not attack its monotony by any unusual riding, and having settled him at our regular travelling trot,--a gait of about six miles an hour,--I forgot all about the dreary expanse of plain, and gave myself up to quiet reverie. About dusk we had reached the King’s River Ferry.

An ugly, unpainted house, perched upon the bluff, and flanked by barns and outbuildings of disorderly aspect, overlooked the ferry. Not a sign of green vegetation could be seen, except certain half-dried willows standing knee-deep along the river’s margin, and that dark pine zone lifted upon the Sierras in eastern distance.

It is desperate punishment to stay through a summer at one of these plain ranches, there to be beat upon by an unrelenting sun in the midst of a scorched landscape and forced to breathe sirocco and sand; yet there are found plenty of people who are glad to become master of one of these ferries or stage stations, their life for the most part silent, and as unvaried as its outlook, given over wholly to permanent and vacant loafing.

Supper was announced by a business-like youth, who came out upon the veranda and vigorously rang a tavern bell, although I was the only auditor, and likely enough the only person within twenty miles.

I envy my horse at such times; the graminivorous have us at a disadvantage, for one revolts at the _cuisine_, although disliking to insult the house by quietly shying the food out of the window. I arose hungry from the table, remembering that some eminent hygeist has avowed that by so doing one has achieved sanitary success.

As I walked over to see Kaweah at the corral, I glanced down the river, and saw, perhaps a quarter of a mile below, two horsemen ride down our bank, spur their horses into the stream, swim to the other side, and struggle up a steep bank, disappearing among bunches of cottonwood trees near the river.

So dangerous and unusual a proceeding could not have been to save the half-dollar ferriage. There was something about their seat, and the cruel way they drove home their spurs, that, in default of better reasons, made me think them Mexicans.

The whole Tulare plain is the home of nomadic ranchers, who, as pasturage changes, drive about their herds of horses and cattle from range to range; and as the wolves prowl around for prey, so a class of Mexican highwaymen rob and murder them from one year’s end to the other.

I judged the swimmers were bent on some such errand, and lay down on the ground by Kaweah, to guard him, rolling myself in my soldier’s great-coat, and slept with my saddle for a pillow.

Once or twice the animal waked me up by stamping restively, but I could perceive no cause for alarm, and slept on comfortably until a little before sunrise, when I rose, took a plunge in the river, and hurriedly dressed myself for the day’s ride; the ferryman, who had promised to put me across at dawn, was already at his post, and, after permitting Kaweah to drink a deep draught, I rode him out on the ferry-boat, and was quickly at the other side.

The road for two or three miles ascends the right bank of the river, approaching in places quite closely to the edge of its bluffs. I greatly enjoyed my ride, watching the Sierra sky line high and black against a golden circle of dawn, and seeing it mirrored faithfully in still reaches of river, and pleasing myself with the continually changing foreground, as group after group of tall, motionless cottonwoods was passed. The willows, too, are pleasing in their entire harmony with the scene, and the air they have of protecting bank and shore from torrent and sun. The plain stretched off to my left into dusky distance, and ahead in a bare, smooth expanse, dreary by its monotony, yet not altogether repulsive in the pearly obscurity of the morning. In midsummer these plains are as hot as the Sahara through the long, blinding day; but after midnight there comes a delicious blandness upon the air, a suggestion of freshness and upspringing life, which renews vitality within you.

Kaweah showed the influence of this condition in the sensitive play of ears and toss of head, and in his free, spirited stride. I was experimenting on his sensitiveness to sounds, and had found that his ears turned back at the faintest whisper, when suddenly his head rose, he looked sharply forward toward a clump of trees on the river-bank, one hundred and fifty yards in front of us, where a quick glance revealed to me a camp-fire and two men hurrying saddles upon their horses,--a gray and a sorrel.

They were Spaniards,--the same who had swum King’s River the afternoon before, and, as it flashed on me finally, the two whom I had studied so attentively at Visalia. Then I at once saw their purpose was to waylay me, and made up my mind to give them a lively run. The road followed the bank up to their camp in an easterly direction, and then, turning a sharp right angle to the north, led out upon the open plain, leaving the river finally.

I decided to strike across, and threw Kaweah into a sharp trot.

I glanced at my girth and then at the bright copper upon my pistol, and settled myself firmly in the saddle.

Finding that they could not saddle quickly enough to attack me mounted, the older villain grabbed a shot-gun, and sprung out to head me off, his comrade meantime tightening the cinches.

I turned Kaweah farther off to the left, and tossed him a little more rein, which he understood and sprang out into a gallop.

The robber brought his gun to his shoulder, covered me, and yelled, in good English, “Hold on, you ----!” At that instant his companion dashed up, leading the other horse. In another moment they were mounted and after me, yelling, “Hu-hla” to the mustangs, plunging in the spurs, and shouting occasional volleys of oaths.

By this time I had regained the road, which lay before me traced over the blank, objectless plain in vanishing perspective. Fifteen miles lay between me and a station; Kaweah and pistol were my only defence, yet at that moment I felt a thrill of pleasure, a wild moment of inspiration, almost worth the danger to experience.

I glanced over my shoulder and found that the Spaniards were crowding their horses to their fullest speed; their hoofs, rattling on the dry plain, were accompanied by inarticulate noises, like the cries of bloodhounds. Kaweah comprehended the situation. I could feel his grand legs gather under me, and the iron muscles contract with excitement; he tugged at the bit, shook his bridle-chains, and flung himself impatiently into the air.

It flashed upon me that perhaps they had confederates concealed in some ditch far in advance of me, and that the plan was to crowd me through at fullest speed, giving up the chase to new men and fresh horses; and I resolved to save Kaweah to the utmost, and only allow him a speed which should keep me out of gunshot. So I held him firmly, and reserved my spur for the last emergency. Still we fairly flew over the plain, and I said to myself, as the clatter of hoofs and din of my pursuers rang in my ears now and then, as the freshening breeze hurried it forward, that, if those brutes got me, there was nothing in blood and brains; for Kaweah was a prince beside their mustangs, and I ought to be worth two villains.