FROM THE WEST TO THE WEST
[Illustration: _Jean beheld a tall, sunburned young man._—_Page 185_]
FROM THE WEST
TO THE WEST
Across the Plains to
Oregon
BY
ABIGAIL SCOTT DUNIWAY
With Frontispiece in Color
[Illustration]
CHICAGO
A. C. McCLURG & CO.
1905
COPYRIGHT
A. C. MCCLURG & CO.
1905
Published April 7, 1905
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.
TO
THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF OREGON
AND HER RISEN AND REMAINING PIONEERS
I AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATE
THIS BOOK
ABIGAIL SCOTT DUNIWAY
PREFACE
Not from any desire for augmented fame, or for further notoriety than has
long been mine (at least within the chosen bailiwick of my farthest and
best beloved West), have I consented to indite these pages.
The events of pioneer life, which form the groundwork of this story, are
woven into a composite whole by memory and imagination. But they are not
personal, nor do they present the reader, except in a fragmentary and
romantic sense, with the actual, individual lives of borderers I have
known. The story, nevertheless, is true to life and border history; and,
no matter what may be the fate of the book, the facts it delineates will
never die.
Fifty years ago, as an illiterate, inexperienced settler, a busy,
overworked child-mother and housewife, an impulse to write was born
within me, inherited from my Scottish ancestry, which no lack of
education or opportunity could allay. So I wrote a little book which I
called “Captain Gray’s Company, or Crossing the Plains and Living in
Oregon.”
Measured by time and distance as now computed, that was ages ago. The
iron horse and the telegraph had not crossed the Mississippi; the
telephone and the electric light were not; and there were no cables under
the sea.
Life’s twilight’s shadows are around me now. The good husband who shaped
my destiny in childhood has passed to the skies; my beloved, beautiful,
and only daughter has also risen; my faithful sons have founded homes
and families of their own. Sitting alone in my deserted but not lonely
home, I have yielded to a demand that for several years has been reaching
me by person, post, and telephone, requesting the republication of my
first little story, which passed rapidly through two editions, and for
forty years has been out of print. In its stead I have written this
historical novel.
Among the relics of the border times that abound in the rooms of the
Oregon Historical Society may be seen an immigrant wagon, a battered
ox-yoke, a clumsy, home-made hand-loom, an old-fashioned spinning-wheel,
and a rusty Dutch oven. Such articles are valuable as relics, but they
would not sell in paying quantities in this utilitarian age if duplicated
and placed upon the market. Just so with “Captain Gray’s Company.” It
accomplished its mission in its day and way. By its aid its struggling
author stumbled forward to higher aims. Let it rest, and let the world go
marching on.
A. S. D.
PORTLAND, OREGON, January 15, 1905.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. A REMOVAL IS PLANNED 15
II. EARLY LIFE IN THE MIDDLE WEST 22
III. MARRYING AND GIVING IN MARRIAGE 28
IV. OLD BLOOD AND NEW 35
V. SALLY O’DOWD 43
VI. THE BEGINNING OF A JOURNEY 50
VII. SCOTTY’S FIRST ROMANCE 55
VIII. A BORDER INCIDENT 62
IX. THE CAPTAIN DEFENDS THE LAW 68
X. THE CAPTAIN MAKES A DISTINCTION 76
XI. MRS. MCALPIN SEEKS ADVICE 84
XII. JEAN BECOMES A WITNESS 92
XIII. AN APPROACHING STORM 99
XIV. A CAMP IN CONSTERNATION 106
XV. CHOLERA RAGES 113
XVI. JEAN’S VISIT BEYOND THE VEIL 121
XVII. FATHER AND DAUGHTER 128
XVIII. THE LITTLE DOCTOR 134
XIX. A BRIEF MESSAGE FOR MRS. BENSON 142
XX. THE TEAMSTERS DESERT 148
XXI. AN UNEXPECTED ENCOUNTER 156
XXII. THE SQUAW MAN 163
XXIII. THE SQUAW ASSERTS HER RIGHTS 170
XXIV. A MORMON WOMAN 177
XXV. JEAN LOSES HER WAY 184
XXVI. LE-LE, THE INDIAN GIRL 191
XXVII. JEAN TRANSFORMED 197
XXVIII. THE STAMPEDE 203
XXIX. IN THE LAND OF DROUTH 209
XXX. BOBBIE GOES TO HIS MOTHER 217
XXXI. THROUGH THE OREGON MOUNTAINS 223
XXXII. LETTERS FROM HOME 229
XXXIII. LOVE FINDS A WAY 238
XXXIV. HAPPY JACK INTRODUCES HIMSELF 246
XXXV. ASHLEIGH MAKES NEW PLANS 253
XXXVI. HAPPY JACK IS SURPRISED 258
XXXVII. NEWS FOR JEAN 264
XXXVIII. THE BROTHERS JOURNEY HOMEWARD TOGETHER 271
XXXIX. THE OLD HOMESTEAD 283
XL. THE UNEXPECTED HAPPENS 290
XLI. “IN PRISON AND YE VISITED ME” 299
XLII. TOO BUSY TO BE MISERABLE 303
XLIII. JEAN IS HAPPY—AND ANOTHER PERSON 307
FROM THE WEST TO THE WEST
I
_A REMOVAL IS PLANNED_
On the front veranda of a rectangular farmhouse, somewhat pretentious for
its time and place, stood a woman in expectant attitude. The bleak wind
of a spent March day played rudely with the straying ends of her bright,
abundant red-brown hair, which she brushed frequently from her careworn
face as she peered through the thickening shadows of approaching night.
The ice-laden branches of a leafless locust swept the latticed corner
behind which she had retreated for protection from the wind. A great
white-and-yellow watch-dog crouched expectantly at her feet, whining and
wagging his tail.
Indoors, the big living-room echoed with the laughter and prattle of many
voices. At one end of a long table, littered with books and slates and
dimly lighted by flickering tallow dips, sat the older children of the
household, busy with their lessons for the morrow’s recitations. A big
fire of maple logs roared on the hearth in harmony with the roaring of
the wind outside.
“Yes, Rover, he’s coming,” exclaimed the watcher on the veranda, as the
dog sprang to his feet with a noisy proclamation of welcome.
A shaggy-bearded horseman, muffled to the ears in a tawny fur coat,
tossed his bridle to a stable-boy and, rushing up the icy steps, caught
the gentle woman in his arms. “It’s all settled, mother. I’ve made terms
with Lije. He’s to take my farm and pay me as he can. I’ve made a liberal
discount for the keep of the old folks; and we’ll sell off the stock, the
farming implements, the household stuff, and the sawmill, and be off in
less than a month for the Territory of Oregon.”
Mrs. Ranger shrank and shivered. “Oregon is a long way off, John,” she
said, nestling closer to his side and half suppressing a sob. “There’s
the danger and the hardships of the journey to be considered, you know.”
“I will always protect you and the children under all circumstances,
Annie. Can’t you trust me?”
“Haven’t I always trusted you, John? But—”
“What is it, Annie? Don’t be afraid to speak your mind.”
“I was thinking, dear,—you know we’ve always lived on the frontier, and
civilization is just now beginning to catch up with us,—mightn’t it be
better for us to stay here and enjoy it? Illinois is still a new country,
you know. We’ve never had any advantages to speak of, and none of the
children, nor I, have ever seen a railroad.”
“Don’t be foolish, Annie! We’ll take civilization with us wherever we go,
railroads or no railroads.”
“But we’ll be compelled to leave our parents behind, John. They’re old
and infirm now, and we’ll be going so far away that we’ll never see them
again. At least, I sha’n’t.”
The husband cleared his throat, but did not reply. The wife continued her
protest.
“Just think of the sorrow we’ll bring upon ’em in their closing days,
dear! Then there’s that awful journey for us and the children through
more than two thousand miles of unsettled country, among wild beasts and
wilder Indians. Hadn’t we better let well-enough alone, and remain where
we are comfortable?”
“A six months’ journey across the untracked continent, with ox teams
and dead-ax wagons, won’t be a summer picnic; I’ll admit that. But the
experience will come only one day at a time, and we can stand it. It will
be like a whipping,—it will feel good when it is over and quits hurting.”
“You are well and strong, John, but you know I have never been like
myself since that awful time when your brother Joe got into that trouble.
It was at the time of Harry’s birth, you know. You didn’t mean to neglect
me, dear, but you had to do it.”
“There, there, little wife!” placing his hand over her mouth. “Let the
dead past bury its dead. Never mention Joe to me again. And never fear
for a minute that you and the children won’t be taken care of.”
“I beg your pardon, John!” and the wife shrank back against the lattice
and shivered. The protruding thorn of a naked locust bough scratched her
cheek, and the red blood trickled down.
“I need your encouragement, in this time of all times, Annie. You mustn’t
fail me now,” he said, speaking in an injured tone.
“Have I ever failed you yet, my husband?”
“I can’t say that you have, Annie. But you worry too much; you bore a
fellow so. Just brace up; don’t anticipate trouble. It’ll come soon
enough without your meeting it halfway. You ought to consider the welfare
of the children.”
“Have I ever lived for myself, John?”
“No, no; but you fret too much. I suppose it’s a woman’s way, though,
and I must stand it. There’s the chance of a lifetime before us, Annie.”
He added after a pause, “The Oregon Donation Land Law that was passed
by Congress nearly two years ago won’t be a law always. United States
Senators in the farthest East are already urging its repeal. We’ve barely
time, even by going now, to get in on the ground-floor. Then we’ll get,
in our own right, to have and to hold, in fee simple, as the lawyers
say, a big square mile of the finest land that ever rolled out o’ doors.”
“Will there be no mortgage to eat us up with interest, and no malaria to
shake us to pieces, John? And will you keep the woodpile away from the
front gate, and make an out-of-the-way lane for the cows, so they won’t
come home at night through the front avenue?”
“There’ll be no mortgage and no malaria. One-half of the claim will
belong to you absolutely; and you can order the improvements to suit
yourself. Only think of it! A square mile o’ land is six hundred and
forty acres, and six hundred and forty acres is a whole square mile! We
wouldn’t be dealing justly by our children if we let the opportunity
slip. We’ll get plenty o’ land to make a good-sized farm for every child
on the plantation, and it won’t cost us a red cent to have and to hold
it!”
“That was the plan our parents had in view when they came here from
Kentucky, John. They wanted land for their children, you know. They
wanted us all to settle close around ’em, and be the stay and comfort of
their old age.” And Mrs. Ranger laughed hysterically.
“You shiver, Annie. You oughtn’t to be out in this bleak March wind.
Let’s go inside.”
“I’m not minding the wind, dear. I was thinking of the way people’s
plans so often miscarry. Children do their own thinking and planning
nowadays, as they always did, regardless of what their parents wish. Look
at us! We’re planning to leave your parents and mine, for good and all,
after they’ve worn themselves out in our service; and we needn’t expect
different treatment from our children when we get old and decrepit.”
“But I’ve already arranged for our parents’ keep with Lije and Mary,”
said the husband, petulantly. “Didn’t I tell you so?”
“But suppose Lije fails in business; or suppose he gets the far Western
fever too; or suppose he tires of his bargain and quits?”
A black cloud scudded away before the wind, uncovering the face of the
moon. The silver light burst suddenly upon the pair.
“What’s the matter, Annie?” cried the husband, in alarm. “Are you sick?”
Her upturned face was like ashes.
“No; it’s nothing. I was only thinking.”
They entered the house together, their brains busy with unuttered
thoughts. The baby of less than a year extended her chubby hands to her
father, and the older babies clamored for recognition in roistering glee.
“Take my coat and hat, Hal; and get my slippers, somebody. Don’t all jump
at once! Gals, put down your books, and go to the kitchen and help your
mother. Don’t sit around like so many cash boarders! You oughtn’t to let
your mother do a stroke of work at anything.”
“You couldn’t help it unless you caged her, or bound her hand and foot,”
answered Jean, who strongly resembled her father in disposition, voice,
and speech. But the command was obeyed; and the pale-faced mother,
escorted from the kitchen amid much laughter by Mary, Marjorie, and Jean,
was soon seated before the roaring fire beside her husband, enjoying
with him the frolics of the babies, and banishing for the nonce the
subject which had so engrossed their thoughts outside. The delayed meal
was soon steaming on the long table in the low, lean-to kitchen, and
was despatched with avidity by the healthy and ravenous brood which
constituted the good old-fashioned household of John Ranger and Annie
Robinson, his wife.
“Children,” said Mrs. Ranger, as an interval of silence gave her a chance
to be heard, “did you know your father had sold the farm?”
A thunderbolt from a clear sky would hardly have created greater
astonishment. True, John Ranger had been talking “new country” ever since
the older children could remember anything; the theme was an old story,
invoking no comment. But now there was an ominous pause, followed with
exclamations of mingled dissent and approval, to which the parents gave
unrestricted liberty.
“I’m not going a single step; so there!” exclaimed Mary, a gentle girl of
seventeen, who did not look her years, but who had a reason of her own
for this unexpected avowal.
“My decision will depend on where we’re going,” cried Jean.
“Maybe your mother and I can be consulted,—just a little bit,” said the
father, laughing.
“We’re going to Oregon; that’s what,” exclaimed Harry, who was as
impulsive as he was noisy.
“How did you come to know so much?” asked Marjorie, the youngest of John
Ranger’s “Three Graces,” as he was wont to style his trio of eldest
daughters, who had persisted in coming into his household—much to his
discomfort—before the advent of Harry, the fourth in his catalogue of
seven, of whom only two were boys.
“I get my learning by studying o’ nights!” answered Hal, in playful
allusion to his success as a sound sleeper, especially during study hours.
“Of course you don’t want to emigrate, Miss Mame,” cried Jean, “but you
can’t help yourself, unless you run away and get married; and then you’ll
have to help everybody else through the rest of your life and take what’s
left for yourself,-if there’s anything left to take! At least, that is
mother’s and Aunt Mary’s lot.”
“Jean speaks from the depths of long experience,” laughed Mary, blushing
to the roots of her hair.
“I’m sick to death of this cold kitchen,” cried Jean, snapping her
tea-towel in the frosty air of the unplastered lean-to. “Hurrah for
Oregon! Hurrah for a warmer climate, and a snug cabin home among the
evergreen trees!”
“Good for Jean!” exclaimed her father. “The weather’ll be so mild in
Oregon we shall not need a tight kitchen.”
“Is Oregon a tight house?” asked three-year-old Bobbie, whose brief
life had many a time been clouded by the complaints of his mother and
sisters,—complaints such as are often heard to this day from women in the
country homes of the frontier and middle West, where more than one-half
of their waking hours are spent in the unfinished and uncomfortable
kitchens peculiar to the slave era, in which—as almost any makeshift was
considered “good enough for niggers”—the unfinished kitchen came to stay.
The vigorous barking of Rover announced the approach of visitors; and
the circle around the fireside was enlarged, amid the clatter of moving
chairs and tables, to make room for Elijah Robinson and his wife,—the
former a brother of Annie Ranger, and the latter a sister of John.
The meeting between the sisters-in-law was expectant, anxious, and
embarrassing.
“How did you like the news?” asked Mrs. Robinson, after an awkward
silence.
“How did you like it?” was the evasive reply, as the twain withdrew to a
distant corner, where they could exchange confidences undisturbed.
“I haven’t had time to think it over yet,” said Mrs. Ranger. “My greatest
trouble is about leaving our parents. It seems as if I could not bear to
break the news to them.”
“Don’t worry, Annie; they know already. When Lije told his mother that
John was going to Oregon, she fainted dead away. When she revived and sat
up, she wanted to come right over to see you, in spite of the storm.”
“Just listen! How the wind does roar!”
“I don’t see how your mother can live without you, Annie. I tried very
hard to persuade Lije to refuse to buy John’s farm; but he would have
his way, as he always does. Of course, we’ll do all we can for the
old folks, but Lije is heavily in debt again, with the ever-recurring
interest staring us all in the face. John will want his money, with
interest,—they all do,—and we know how rapidly it accumulates, from our
own dearly bought experience, the result of poor Joe’s troubles!”
“I hope my dear father and mother won’t live very long,” sighed Mrs.
Ranger. “If John would only let me make them a deed to my little ten-acre
farm! But I can’t get him to talk about it.”
II
_EARLY LIFE IN THE MIDDLE WEST_
The surroundings of the budding daughters of the Ranger and Robinson
families had thus far been limited, outside of their respective homes,
to attendance at the district school on winter week-days when weather
permitted, and on Sundays at the primitive church services held by
itinerant clergymen in the same rude edifice.
Oh, that never-to-be-forgotten schoolhouse of the borderland and the
olden time! Modelled everywhere after the same one-roomed, quadrangular
pattern,—and often the only seat of learning yet to be seen in school
districts of the far frontier,—the building in which the children of
these chronicles received the rudimentary education which led to the
future weal of most of them was built of logs unhewn, and roofed with
“shakes” unshaven. One rough horizontal log was omitted from the western
wall when the structure was raised by the men of the district, who
purposely left the space for the admission of a long line of little
window-panes above the rows of desks. A huge open fireplace occupied
the whole northern end of the room; rude benches rocked on the uneven
puncheon floor and creaked as the students turned upon them to face the
long desks beneath the little window-panes, or to confront the centre
of the room. The children’s feet generally swung to and fro in a sort
of rhythmic consonance with the audible whispers in which they studied
their lessons,—when not holding sly conversation, amid much suppressed
giggling, with their neighbors at elbow, if the teacher’s back was turned.
The busy agricultural seasons of springtime and summer, and often
extending far into the autumn, prevented the regular attendance at school
of the older children of the district, who were usually employed early
and late, indoors and out, with the ever-exacting labors of the farm.
Up to the time of the departure of the Ranger family for the Pacific
coast and for a brief time thereafter, the most of the summer and all
of the winter clothing worn in the country districts of the middle West
was the product of the individual housewife’s skill in the use of the
spinning-wheel, dye-kettle, and clumsy, home-made hand-loom.
But, few and far between as were the schoolhouses and schooldays of the
border times, of which the present-day grandparent loves to boast, there
was a rigorous course of primitive study then in vogue which justifies
their boasting. Oh, that old-fashioned pedagogue! What resident of the
border can fail to remember—if his early lot was cast anywhere west of
the Alleghanies, at any time antedating the era of railroads—the austere
piety and stately dignity of that mighty master of the rod and the rule,
who never by any chance forgot to use the rod, lest by so doing he should
spoil the child!
The terror of those days lingers now only as an amusing memory. The pain
of which the rod and the rule were the instruments has long since lost
its sting; but the sound morals inculcated by the teacher (whose example
never strayed from his precept) have proved the ballast needed to hold a
level head on many a pair of shoulders otherwise prone to push their way
into forbidden places.
And the old-fashioned singing-school! How tenderly the memory of the
time-dulled ear recalls the doubtful harmony of many youthful voices, as
they ran the gamut in a jangling merry-go-round! Did any other musical
entertainment ever equal it? Then, when the exercises were over, and the
stars hung high and glittering above the frosty branches of the naked
treetops, and the crisp white snow crunched musically beneath the feet of
fancy-smitten swains, hurrying homeward with ruddy-visaged sweethearts
on their pulsing arms, did any other joy ever equal the stolen kisses of
the youthful lovers at the parting doorstep,—the one to return to the
parental home with an exultant throbbing at his heart, and the other to
creep noiselessly to her cold, dark bedroom to blush unseen over her
first little secret from her mother.
And there is yet another memory.
Can anybody who has enjoyed it ever forget the school of metrical
geography which sometimes alternated, on winter evenings, with the
singing-school? What could have been more enchanting, or more instructive
withal, than those exercises wherein the States and their capitals were
chanted over and over to a sort of rhymeless rhythm, so often repeated
that to this day the old-time student finds it only necessary to mention
the name of any State then in the Union to call to mind the name of its
capital. After the States and their capitals, the boundaries came next
in order, chanted in the same rhythmic way, until the youngest pupil had
conquered all the names by sound, and localities on the map by sight, of
all the continents, islands, capes, promontories, peninsulas, mountains,
kingdoms, republics, oceans, seas, rivers, lakes, harbors, and cities
then known upon the planet.
In its season, beginning with the New Year, came the regular religious
revival. No chronicles like these would be complete without its
mention, since no rural life on the border exists without it. Much to
the regret of doting parents who failed to get all their dear ones
“saved”—especially the boys—before the sap began to run in the sugar
maples, the revival season was sometimes cut short by the advent of an
early spring. The meetings were then brought to a halt, notwithstanding
the fervent prayers of the righteous, who in vain besought the Lord of
the harvest to delay the necessary seed-time, so that the work of saving
souls might not be interrupted by the sports and labors of the sugar
camp, which called young people together for collecting fagots, rolling
logs, and gathering and boiling down the sap.
Many were the matches made at these rural gatherings, as the lads and
lasses sat together on frosty nights and replenished the open fires under
the silent stars.
To depict one revival season is to give a general outline of all. The
itinerant preacher was generally a young man and a bachelor. In his
annual returns to the scenes of his emotional endeavors to save the
unconverted, he would find that many had backslidden; and the first week
was usually spent in getting those who had not “held out faithful” up to
the mourners’ bench for re-conversion.
Agnostics, of whom John Ranger was an example, were many, who took a
humorous or good-naturedly critical view of the situation. But the
preacher’s efforts to arouse the emotional nature, especially of the
women, began to bear fruit generally after the first week’s praying,
singing, and exhorting; and the excitement, once begun, went on without
interruption as long as temporal affairs permitted. The rankest infidel
in the district kept open house, in his turn, for the preacher and
exhorter; and once, when the schoolhouse was partly destroyed by fire,
John Ranger permitted the meetings to be held in his house till the
damage was repaired by the tax-payers of the district.
The kindly preacher who most frequently visited the Ranger district as a
revivalist would not knowingly have given needless pain to a fly. But,
when wrought up to great tension by religious frenzy, he seemed to find
delight in holding the frightened penitent spellbound, while he led
him to the very brink of perdition, where he would hang him suspended,
mentally, as by a hair, over a liquid lake of fire and brimstone, with
the blue blazes shooting, like tongues of forked lightning, beneath his
writhing body; while overhead, looking on, sat his Heavenly Father, as a
benignant and affectionate Deity, pictured to the speaker’s imagination,
nevertheless, as waiting with scythe in hand to snip that hair.
“I can’t see a bit of logic in any of it!” exclaimed Jean Ranger, as she
and Mary, accompanied by Hal, were returning home one night from such a
meeting.
“God’s ways are not our ways,” sighed Mary, as she tripped over the
frozen path under the denuded maple-trees, where night owls hooted and
wild turkeys slept.
Harry laughed immoderately. “Jean, you’re right,” he exclaimed. “I’m
going to get religion myself some day before I die, but I’ve got first to
find a Heavenly Father who’s better’n I am. There’s no preacher on top o’
dirt can make me believe that the great Author of all Creation deserves
the awful character they’re giving Him at the schoolhouse!”
“Don’t blaspheme, Hal. It’s wicked!” said Mary.
“I’m not blaspheming; I’m defending God!” retorted Hal.
“You used to be a sensible girl, Mame,” said Jean; “and you could then
see the ridiculous side of all this excitement just as Hal and I now see
it. But you’re in love with the preacher now, and that has turned your
head.”
Jean was cold and sleepy and cross; but she did not mean to be unkind,
and on reflection added, “Forgive me, sister dear. I was only in fun.
I have no right to meddle with your love affairs or your religious
feelings, and neither has Hal. S’pose we talk about maple sugar.”
Mary did not reply, but her thoughts went toward heaven in silent,
self-satisfying prayer.
The Reverend Thomas Rogers—so he must be designated in these pages,
because he yet lives—was the avowed suitor for the hand and heart of
Mary Ranger; and the winsome girl, with whose prematurely aroused
affections her parents had no patience,—and with reason, for she was
but a child,—was the envy of all the older girls of the district, any
one of whom, while censuring her for her folly in encouraging the
poverty-stricken preacher’s suit, would gladly have found like favor in
his eyes, if the opportunity had been given her.
But while romantic maidens were going into rhapsodies over their hero,
and many of the dowager mothers echoed their sentiments, most of the
unmarried men of the district remained aloof from his persuasions and
unmoved by his fiery eloquence. But they took him out “sniping” one
off-night in true schoolboy fashion; and while Mary Ranger dreamed of him
in the seclusion of her snug chamber, the poor fellow stood half frozen
at the end of a gulch, holding a bag to catch the snipes that never came.
“If I were not too poor in worldly goods to pay my way in your father’s
train, I’d go to Oregon,” he said, a few nights after the “sniping”
episode, as he walked homeward with Mary after coaxing Jean and Hal to
keep the little episode a secret from their parents,—a promise they made
after due hesitation, but with much sly chuckling, as they munched the
red-and-white-striped sugar sticks with which they had been bribed.
III
_MARRYING AND GIVING IN MARRIAGE_
The destinies of the Ranger and Robinson families had been linked
together by the double ties of affinity and consanguinity in the first
third of the nineteenth century. Their broad and fertile lands, to
which they held the original title-deeds direct from the government,
bore the signature and seal of Andrew Jackson, seventh President of
the United States; and their children and children’s children, though
scattered now in the farthest West, from Alaska and the Hawaiian Islands
to the Philippine Archipelago, treasure to this day among their most
valued heirlooms the historic parchments. For these were signed by Old
Hickory when the original West was bounded on its outermost verge by the
Mississippi and Missouri rivers, and when the new West, though discovered
in the infancy of the century by Lewis and Clark (aided by Sacajawea,
their one woman ally and pathfinder), was to the average American citizen
an unknown country, quite as obscure to his understanding as was the Dark
Continent of Africa in the days antedating Sir Samuel Baker, Oom Paul,
and Cecil Rhodes.
The elder Rangers, who claimed Knickerbocker blood, and the Robinsons,
who boasted of Scotch ancestry, though living in adjoining counties
in Kentucky in their earlier years, had never met until, as if by
accident,—if accident it might be called through which there seems to
have been an original, interwoven design,—the fates of the two families
became interlinked through their settlement upon adjoining lands,
situated some fifty miles south of old Fort Dearborn, in the days when
Chicago was a mosquito-beleaguered swamp, and Portland, Oregon, an
unbroken forest of pointed firs.
There was a double wedding on the memorable day when John Ranger, Junior,
and pretty Annie Robinson, the belle of Pleasant Prairie, linked their
destinies together in marriage; and when, without previous notice to the
assembled multitude or any other parties but their parents, the preacher,
and the necessary legal authorities, Elijah Robinson and Mary Ranger took
their allotted places beside their brother and sister, as candidates for
matrimony, the festivities were doubled in interest and rejoicing.
“It seems but yesterday since our bonnie bairns were babes in arms,” said
the elder Mrs. Robinson, as she advanced with Mrs. Ranger _mère_ to give
a tearful greeting to each newly wedded pair. And there was scarcely a
dry eye in the assembled multitude when the mother’s voice arose in a
shrill treble as she sang, in the ears of the startled listeners, from an
old Scottish ballad the words,—
“An’ I can scarce believe it true,
So late thy life began,
The playful bairn I fondled then
Stands by me now, a man!”
Her voice, which at first was as clear as the tones of a silver bell,
quavered at the close of the first stanza and then ceased altogether.
But by this time old Mrs. Ranger had caught the spirit of the ballad,
and though her voice was husky, she cleared her throat and added, in a
low contralto, the impressive lines, paraphrased somewhat to suit the
occasion,—
“Oh, fondly cherish her, dearie;
She is sae young and fair!
She hasna known a single cloud,
Nor felt a single care.
And if a cauld world’s storms should come,
Thy way to overcast,
Oh, ever stan’—thou art a man—
Between her an’ the blast!”
At the close of this stanza, Mrs. Ranger’s voice broke also; and the good
circuit rider, parson of many a scattered flock, who had pronounced the
double ceremony, caught the tune and, in a mellow barytone that rose upon
the air like an inspired benediction, added most impressively another
stanza:
“An’ may the God who reigns above
An’ sees ye a’ the while,
Look down upon your plighted troth
An’ bless ye wi’ His smile.”[1]
“It’s high time there was a little change o’ sentiment in all this!”
cried a bachelor uncle, whose eyes were suspiciously red notwithstanding
his affected gayety. “I move that we march in a solid phalanx on the
victuals!”
The primitive cabin homes of the borderers of no Western settlement
were large enough to hold the crowds that were invariably bidden to a
neighborhood merrymaking. The ceremonies of this occasion, including
a most sumptuous feast, were held on the sloping green beneath an
overtopping elm, which, rising high above its fellows, made a noted
landmark for a circumference of many miles.
People who live apart from markets, in fertile regions where the very
forests drop richness, subsist literally on the fat of the land. Having
no sale for their surplus products, they feast upon them in the most
prodigal way. Although through gormandizing they beget malaria, not
to say dyspepsia and rheumatic ails, they boast of “living well”; and
the sympathy they bestow upon the city denizen who in his wanderings
sometimes feasts at their hospitable boards, and praises without stint
their prodigal display of viands, is often more sincere than wise.
The lands of the early settlers, with whom these chronicles have to
deal, had been surrounded, as soon as possible after occupancy, with
substantial rail fences, laid in zigzag fashion along dividing lines,
marking the boundaries between neighbors who lived at peace with each
other and with all the world. These fences, built to a sufficient height
to discourage all attempts at trespass by man or beast, were securely
staked at the corners, and weighted with heavy top rails, or “riders,”
so stanchly placed that many miles of such enclosures remain to this
day, long surviving the brawny hands that felled the trees and split the
rails. In their mute eloquence they reveal the lasting qualities of the
hardwood timber that abounded in the many and beautiful groves which
flourished in the prairie States in the early part of the nineteenth
century, when Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri comprised all that was
generally known as the West.
Much of the primitive glory of these diversified landscapes departed long
ago with the trees. The “Hook-and-Eye Dutch,” as the thrifty followers
of ancient Ohm are called by their American neighbors (with whom they
do not assimilate), are rapidly replacing the old-time maple and black
walnut fences with the modern barbed-wire horror; they are selling off
the historical rails, stakes and riders and all, to the equally thrifty
and not a whit more sentimental timber-dealers of Chicago, Milwaukee,
and Grand Rapids, to be manufactured into high-grade lumber, which is
destined to find lodgment as costly furniture in the palatial homes,
gilded churches, great club-houses, and mammoth modern hostelries that
abound on the shores of Lake Michigan, Massachusetts Bay, Manhattan
Island, and Long Island Sound. But no vandalism yet invented by man can
wholly despoil the rolling lands of the middle West of their beauty, nor
rob Mother Nature of her power to rehabilitate them with the living green
of cultivated loveliness.
Original settlers of the border-lands had little time and less
opportunity for the observation of the beautiful in art or nature. Their
lives were spent in toil, which blunted many of the finer sensibilities
of a more leisurely existence. The hardy huntsman who spent his only
hours of relaxation in chasing the wild game, and the weary mother
who scarcely ever left her wheel or loom and shuttle by the light of
day, except to bake her brain before a great open fire while preparing
food, or to nurse to sleep the future lawmakers of a coming world-round
republic, were alike too busy to ponder deeply the far-reaching
possibilities of the lives they led.
Such men of renown as Lincoln, Douglas, Baker, Grant, Logan, and Oglesby
were evolved from environments similar to these, as were also the
numerous adventurous borderers not known to fame (many of whom are yet
living) who crossed the continent with ox teams, and whose patient and
enduring wives nursed the future statesmen of a coming West in fear and
trembling, as they protected their camps from the depredations of the
wily Indian or the frenzy of the desert’s storms.
Rail-making in the middle West was long a diversion and an art. The
destruction of the hardwood timber, which if spared till to-day would be
almost priceless, could not have been prevented, even if this commercial
fact had been foreseen. The urgent need of fuel, shelter, bridges, public
buildings, and fences allowed no consideration for future values to
intervene and save the trees.
In times of a temporary lull in a season’s activities, when, for a
wonder, there were days together that the stroke of the woodman’s ax was
not heard and the music of the cross-cut saw had ceased, the settler
would take advantage of the interim to draw a bead with unerring aim upon
the eye of a squirrel in a treetop, or bring down a wild turkey from its
covert in the lower branches; or, if favored by a fall of virgin snow,
it would be his delight to track the wild deer, and drag it home as a
trophy of his marksmanship,—an earnest of the feast in which all his
neighbors were invited to partake.
Then, too, there were the merrymakings of the border. What modern banquet
can equal the festive board at which a genial hostess, in a homespun
cotton or linsey-woolsey gown, presided over her own stuffed turkey, huge
corn-pone, and wild paw-paw preserves? What array of glittering china,
gleaming cut-glass, or burnished silver, can give the jaded appetite of
the _blasé_ reveller of to-day the enjoyment of a home-set table, laden
with the best and sweetest “salt-rising” bread spread thick with golden
butter, fresh from the old-fashioned churn? The freshest of meats and
fish regularly graced the well-laden board, in localities where the
modern _chef_ was unknown, where ice-cream was unheard of, and terrapin
sauce and lobster salad found no place. House-raisings, log-rollings,
barn-raisings, quilting bees, weddings, christenings, and even funerals,
were times of feasting, though these last were divested of the gayety,
but not of the gossip, that at other times abounded; and the sympathetic
aid of an entire neighborhood was always voluntarily extended to any
house of mourning. There were few if any wage-earners, the accommodating
method of exchanging work among neighbors being generally in vogue.
Such, in brief, were the daily customs of the early settlers of the
middle West, whose children wandered still farther westward in the
forties and fifties, carrying with them the habits in which they had
been reared to the distant Territory afterwards known as the “Whole of
Oregon,” which originally comprised the great Northwest Territory, where
now flourish massive blocks of mighty States.
* * * * *
Prior to the time of the departure of the subjects of these chronicles
for the goal of John Ranger’s ambition, but one unusual occurrence had
marred the lives and prosperity of the rising generation of Rangers and
Robinsons. To the progenitors of the two families the mutations of time
had brought problems serious and difficult, not the least of which was
the infirmity of advancing years. This they had made doubly annoying
through having assigned to their children, when they themselves needed it
most, everything of value which they had struggled to accumulate during
their years of vigorous effort to raise and educate their families.
In the two households under review, all dependent upon the energies and
bounty of the second generation of Rangers and Robinsons, there were
besides the great-grandmother (a universal favorite) two sexagenarian
bachelor uncles and two elderly spinsters, the latter remote cousins
of uncertain age, uncertain health, and still more uncertain temper,
who had long outlived their usefulness, after having missed, in their
young and vigorous years, the duties and responsibilities that accompany
the founding of families and homes of their own. It was little wonder
that drones like these were out of place in the overcrowded households
of their more provident kinspeople, to whom the modern “Home of the
Friendless” was unknown. What plan to pursue in making necessary
provision for these outside incumbents, even John Ranger, the optimistic
leader of the related hosts, could not conjecture.
“We’ve fixed it,—Mame and I,” said Jean, one evening, after an anxious
discussion of the question had been carried on with some warmth between
the two family heads, in which no conclusion had been reached except a
flat refusal on the part of Elijah Robinson to quadruple the quota of
dependants in his own household.
“And how have you fixed it?” asked her father, who often called Jean his
“Heart’s Delight.”
“Our bachelor uncles and cousins are just rusting out with
irresponsibility!” she cried with characteristic Ranger vehemence. “They
ought to have a home of their own and be compelled to take care of it.
There’s that house and garden where you board and lodge the mill-hands.
Why not give ’em that and let ’em keep boarders? The boarders, the four
acres of ground, and the cow and garden ought to keep them in modest
comfort. This would make them free and independent, as everybody ought to
be.”
“But the boarding-house belongs with the farm. I’ve sold it to your
uncle.”
“Then let Uncle Lije lease or sell it to them, share and share alike.”
“What is it worth?” asked Mary.
“Only about three hundred dollars, the way property sells now,” said her
uncle.
“Then let ’em pay you rent. The place ought to support them and pay
interest and taxes.”
“Yes,” cried Mary; “the old bachelor contingent, that worry you all so
much because you keep ’em dependent on your bounty, can take care of
themselves for twenty years to come, if you’ll only let ’em.”
“The proposition is worth considering, certainly,” said their father,
smiling admiringly upon his daughters.
“And we’ll consider it, too,” said the uncle. “That much is settled.”
IV
_OLD BLOOD AND NEW_
“I can’t see why old folks like us will persist in living after we’ve
outgrown our usefulness,” exclaimed Grandfather Ranger, one sloppy March
evening, as he entered the little kitchen and placed a pail of foaming
milk upon the clean white table. The severely cold weather had given way
to a springtime thaw; but a wet snow had begun falling at sundown, and
a soft, muddy liquid made dirty pools wherever his feet pressed the
polished floor.
“You’re right, father; we’ve lived long enough,” sighed the feeble mother
of many children, following her husband’s footprints with mop and broom.
“If you and John think you’ve lived long enough, what do you think of
me?” cried the great-grandmother, who had passed her fourscore years and
ten, but who still amply supported herself (if only she and the rest of
the family had thought so) as she sat from early morning till late at
night in her corner, knitting, always knitting.
“Never mind, grannie,” said her son, swallowing a lump that rose unbidden
in his throat. “You’ve as good a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit
of happiness as any fellow that ever put his name to a Declaration of
Independence! There’ll be room for you in the cosiest corner of this
little house as long as there’s a corner for anybody. Don’t worry.”
“But this state of things isn’t just or fair!” exclaimed the wife,
folding her last bit of mending and dropping back into her chair. “It
seems to me that we, as parents, deserve a better fate in our old days
than any set of bachelor hangers-on on earth, who’ve never had anybody
but themselves to provide for. If Joseph would only come back, or the
good Lord would let us know his fate, I could endure the rest.”
“There, there, mother! Not another word. Haven’t I forbidden the mention
of his name?”
“But he was our darling, father. I can’t dismiss him from my thoughts as
you say you can.”
“We must keep the grandchildren in ignorance of his existence, wife. It’s
bad enough in all conscience for the stain of his misguided life to rest
on older heads. We must forget our unfortunate son.”
“I can never forget my bonnie boy,—not even to obey you, father!”
The back door, which had been unintentionally left ajar, flew open, and
Jean, who had for the first time in her life heard a word of complaint
from her grandparents, or a word from them concerning her mysterious
Uncle Joe, burst suddenly into the room and knelt at the feet of her
grandmother, her whole frame convulsed with sobs.
“Forgive us, darlings, do!” she cried as soon as she could control her
voice to speak. “You’ve borne so much sorrow, and we never knew it! We
never meant to be thoughtless or unkind, but I see now how ungrateful we
have been. We must have hurt your feelings often.”
“Don’t cry, Jean,” and the thin hand of the grandmother stroked the
girl’s bright hair. “We don’t often repine at our lot. I am sorry you
overheard a word.”
“But I am not sorry a single bit, grandma. We children have been
thoughtless and impudent. I can see it all now. We didn’t ever mean to
complain, though, about you, or grandpa, or you either, grannie dear.
We only meant to draw the line at bachelor great-uncles and meddlesome
second and third cousins, who ought to have provided themselves in their
youth with homes of their own, as our parents did.”
“Do you think they can help themselves hereafter, Jean?”
“Why, of course! The feeling of self-dependence will make ’em young and
strong again,—though they don’t deserve good treatment, for they ought to
have had homes and families of their own in their youth, as you did.”
“It’s too late to lodge a complaint of that kind against them now, Jean,”
said the grandmother, with a smile.
“Did you overhear all we were talking about?” asked the grandfather, his
head bowed upon his cane.
“I am afraid I did, grandpa. I was cleaning the slush from my shoes, and
I couldn’t help overhearing, though I hate eavesdroppers, on general
principles. They never hear any good of themselves. But, say, grandpa,
what about our Uncle Joe, whom I heard you denounce so bitterly? You
haven’t said _I_ mustn’t speak his name, you know.”
“Don’t talk about him, child, to us or anybody else. He’s an outlaw.
Dismiss him from your thoughts, just as I have.”
“Your uncle may not be living now, Jean; if he is alive, I hope he’ll
find a better friend than his father,” exclaimed the great-grandmother,
speaking in a tone of reproach that surprised none more than herself.
“Tell me all about it, grand-daddie darling! Do! I know there’s a sad
secret somewhere in the family. Something unusual must have happened a
long time ago to bring us all under the ban of poverty. I have heard
hints of it now and then all my life; and now I must hear the whole
story. The schoolmaster will tell me if you don’t.”
“No, no, Jean,” exclaimed her grandfather, anxiously. “Don’t speak of
family affairs outside. It is never seemly.”
“Neither is it seemly or just to keep members of the family in ignorance
of family affairs when all the rest of the neighborhood knows all about
’em! We ought to know all, grandma darling. The reason children are so
often unreasonable is that they don’t understand.”
“‘I have been young and now am old, yet have I not seen the righteous
forsaken nor his seed begging bread,’” said the grandfather, his head
still bowed low upon his staff and his white locks falling over his
stooping shoulders. “Let us not repine, mother.”
“I am not repining, father, but I do feel so—so disappointed with the
outcome of all our hard struggles that I can’t always be cheerful.”
“We’d just begun to get our heads above water when it happened, Jean,”
said the old man. “We’d been making a new farm. You see, we’d manumitted
our slaves before we left Kaintuck, and we had to begin with our bare
hands in this new country and work our way from the ground up. We’d only
got a part o’ the children raised when the older ones began to get it in
their heads to get married. But our second son took to book-learning, and
we sent him off to Tennessee to finish his schooling. That cost a pile o’
money. Then we had to set out the married ones. We’d got things going in
tol’ble shape and was beginning to get on our feet again, when Joseph—”
“Do stop, husband. Don’t tell any more; please don’t,” cried the
grandmother, nervously stroking the bright young head that nestled in her
lap. “I cannot bear to hear it, though I thought I could.”
“Let him go on, grandmother dear! I don’t want to be driven to the
schoolmaster for the information that I am bound to get someway. When I
have grandchildren of my own, I’ll tell ’em everything they ought to know
about the family, and then they won’t be teased by the school-children,
as we are.”
“We had to mortgage the farm,” continued the grandfather; “and then there
came a financial panic. The wild-cat banks of the country all went to
pieces, and the bottom kind o’ fell out o’ things.”
“But why did you borrow money, grandpa? Why was it necessary to mortgage
the farms?”
“We did it because we had to stand by Joe in his trouble.”
“What did you hear at school, darling?” asked the grandmother.