breeze was stirring from the south, and straggling rays of sunlight
struggled through occasional rifts in the straying clouds. The spring
thaw had at last set in. The sticky soil adhered to the feet of man and
beast, and clung in heavy masses to the wheels of wagons.
The dog, Rover, who had always willingly remained at home on watch during
the family’s absence at church or elsewhere, had hidden himself at
starting-time; but he was found waiting in the road when the party was
several miles out on the way, and, when discovered, approached his master
with drooping tail and piteous whine.
There were tears in the eyes of the strong man, of which he was not
ashamed, as he dismounted from the back of Sukie, his favorite mare, and,
stooping, patted the dog affectionately on the head.
“They didn’t fool ’oo, did ’ey, Rovie?” said Bobbie, as he hugged the
dog, unmindful of his muddy coat.
“Come to me, Rover,” exclaimed Mrs. Ranger, who had been refreshed by
her nap. The dog obeyed, and, wet and dirty as he was, attempted to hide
himself among the baggage. But his hopes were blasted by a peremptory
command from his master: “Go back home and stay with grandfather!” The
poor brute jumped, whining, to the ground and affected to obey; but he
reappeared a dozen miles farther on, at the Illinois River’s edge; and
when the ferry-boat, which he was forbidden to enter, was out of reach of
either command or missile, he sat on his haunches on the river-bank and
howled dismally.
“Don’t you think a dog has a soul, daddie?” asked Jean, through her tears.
“How should I know, daughter?” was the husky response. “I’m not yet
certain that a man has a soul.”
VII
_SCOTTY’S FIRST ROMANCE_
The home that was to be the abode of the Ranger family during the journey
was an over-jutting wagon-box,—Harry called it a “hurricane deck,”—made
to fit over the running gear of a substantial wagon, in which a dozen or
more persons might be stowed away at night in crosswise fashion. It was
named “the saloon” by the teamsters, in jocose recognition of its owner’s
well-known teetotal habits, and was assigned to the women and children as
their especial domicile.
“It will be your duty to keep a daily record of our journey, Jean.”
This was the first official order issued by Captain Ranger after he had
been formally elected as commander of the expedition, and was given under
the thickly falling snow, amid the bustle and confusion of making the
first camp.
“What sort of a record?”
“A daily write-up of current events. Here is a brand-new blank-book I
have bought for the purpose. And here’s a portable inkstand, with some
lead pencils, a pocket knife, and a box of pens. I’ve selected you as
scribe because you won the prize in that competitive contest over the
doings of Bismarck.”
“But that was a different proposition, daddie.”
“It’s all in the same line, Jean. You have a record to preserve now. You
must keep your credit good. Look to your laurels, and don’t forget!”
And Jean, partly from innate ambition, but chiefly because she was under
orders from which she knew there could be no appeal, kept, through all
the tedious journey, a diary, from which the chronicler of these pages
proposes to cull such fragments as may fit into the narrative, without
strict regard to chronology, though with due regard to facts.
* * * * *
“We made camp last night in the discomfort of a driving snowstorm,”
wrote the scribe under date of April 2. “But in spite of our sorrow
over our departure from home and loved ones, the most of us were jolly,
and we made the best we could of the situation. To-night, after a day’s
disagreeable wheeling through mud that freezes at night and thaws by day,
making travel nasty, sticky, and tedious, we stopped for camp near an
isolated farmhouse, where the goodwife is disheartened and sick, and the
children are ragged, dirty, and frightened.
“The storm has abated, and the sky is clear. Our teamsters are kneeling
on the ground around our mess-boxes, which are used for tables at
mealtime, and stored in the ends of the wagons when we are moving ahead.”
“There, I can’t think of another word to write.” She closed the book with
a bang.
For many minutes after gathering around the tables, all were too busy
with the supper to make any attempt at conversation.
Beans and bacon, coffee and crackers, and great heaps of stewed fruits,
were reinforced by mountains of steaming flapjacks, which Mary and
Marjorie took turns at baking, their eyes watery from the smoke of the
open fire, and their cheeks reddened by the wind.
“Wonder what’s become o’ Scotty,” said Captain Ranger, as he knelt in the
absent teamster’s place at table and helped himself bountifully.
“He filled our water-buckets and was off like a shot,” said Hal. “He
ought to show up at mealtime. Ah, there he comes.”
“Where’ve you been, Scotty?” asked the Captain. “Here’s plenty of room.
Kneel, and give an account of yourself.”
“So you’re in love, eh, Scotty? and with that pretty widow in the next
camp?”
The questioner was a tall, lanky teamster, answering to the appellation
of Shorty.
“Never in love before,” said Scotty, as he swallowed his coffee with a
gulp.
An uproarious laugh ran around the table.
“Her hair is like the flower o’ Scotia’s broom in springtime, and the
sheen o’ her eyes is like Loch Achray!” exclaimed Scotty, as he passed
his plate for a fresh relay of flapjacks.
“A love affair doesn’t spoil his appetite,” laughed Marjorie.
“I want you all to understand that no falling in love’ll be allowed on
this journey,” said the Captain, dryly. “There’ll be time enough for that
kind o’ nonsense after you get to Oregon and get settled.”
“Love, like death, has all seasons for its own, sir,” retorted Scotty,
with a deferential bow.
“Women and war don’t go together,” replied his employer. “And you’ll find
this journey is a good deal like war before you’re done with it.”
“Everything is fair in both love and war, sir.”
“Excuse me,” said a woman in black, with a low, mellow voice and blond
complexion, who might have heard herself discussed if she had listened.
The clatter around the table stopped instantly.
“We’re in a quandary, mamma and I,” she said, blushing. “Our matches are
damp and won’t burn. I thought perhaps—”
A half-dozen men were on their feet in an instant, and half-a-dozen hands
went suddenly into half-a-dozen pockets, while half-a-dozen blocks of
matches were forthcoming in less than half a minute.
“Here are more than I need, gentlemen, and I thank you ever so much,” she
said, taking the offer from Scotty; and, with a bow and a smile to all,
she was gone.
“The red of her lips is like rubies, the white of her teeth is like
pearls, and her voice is a symphony,” said Scotty, looking after her as
she ran.
“Scotty’s attack is as sudden as it is serious,” laughed Lengthy, a
short, stocky teamster, whose nickname was a ludicrous misfit.
“What freak o’ fate do you s’pose it was that brought that beauty out
here on a journey like this?” asked Yank, a Southern-born teamster, whose
accepted nickname was another palpable misnomer, and who dropped his
_r_’s, like a negro preacher.
“I know!” cried Bobbie, his fingers dripping with molasses. “She came to
meet Scotty.”
The laugh that followed disconcerted the child, who ran, abashed, to his
mother in the family wagon.
“I thought,” exclaimed Sambo,—a gaunt Vermonter, who dropped his _g_’s
as frequently as Yank dropped his _r_’s,—“I thought there’d be several
ladies comin’ along, to keep us company.”
“Can you tell us why Mrs. O’Dowd didn’t join us?” asked Yank, turning
deferentially to the Captain. “I thought we were to have the pleasure
of one woman’s company,—I mean in addition to the ladies present, of
course.”
Jean exchanged furtive glances with her father, who averted his face, and
said: “That’s a conundrum, Yank. Ask me something easy.”
* * * * *
The next noticeable entry in Jean’s diary was made on the fifth of April,
and was as follows:—
“The snow this morning is four inches deep. We camped last night in the
mud and slush, in a narrow lane, after a hard day’s wheeling through the
miry roads. Mother, dear woman, is weary and weak, but daddie got her a
warm room in the farmhouse near us, where we children are allowed to go
sometimes to thaw our marrow-bones by a pleasant fire.
“April 6. Cloudy to-day, with a threat of rain. But mother urges a
forward movement, so Mary and Marjorie are packing the mess-boxes, and
daddie says I must write up this horrid diary. There is nothing to write
about. The country through which we are struggling is swampy, monotonous,
muddy, and level. Cheap, rickety farmhouses are seen at intervals; the
bridges are gone from most of the swollen streams; our way goes through
narrow, muddy lanes, with crooked, tumble-down fences; and we see, every
now and then, a discouraged-looking woman and a lot of half-clad children
peeping through open doors, from the midst of a crowd of half-starved
dogs. Daddie says these frontier people (and dogs) are the forerunners of
all civilization; but I think they’re the embodiment of desolation and
discouragement.
“April 7. The ague has broken out among our teamsters. We stopped
to-night at a farmhouse, where suspicious women treated us like so many
thieves. The whole family were barefoot, and lacked everything but
numbers. Mother says that starvation has aroused their cupidity, and we
mustn’t mind their suspicious airs. They had no feed for sale for the
stock, and no supplies to sell for our table; but there were plenty of
guns and dogs,—the latter a thieving lot,—from which we shall be glad to
escape when we again see morning. Weather and roads no better.
“April 8. Mother quite ill again; but the skies are clear, and she
insists on moving forward.
“April 11. No food for man or beast to be had for love or money. We must
move onward, sick or well.
“April 12. A better-settled region. The scenery is often fine.
Pussy-willows peep at us from marshy edges, and birds are singing in
the budding treetops. Sick folks no better. Bought a liberal supply of
corn for the stock, and a lot of butter, eggs, and chickens for the rest
of us, so we have a feast in prospect. Camped on the edge of a pretty
little village, on a nice green grass-plat. Daddie took us girls to a
prayer-meeting. The good people eyed us askance. Evidently they thought
us freaks. Certainly our slat sunbonnets and soiled linsey-woolsey
dresses were not reassuring.”
* * * * *
The next day, at nightfall, the party reached Quincy, on the Mississippi,
and camped on a flat bit of upland outside of the city’s limits, where
many other wayfarers, like themselves, had halted and encamped.
“Did you notice Scotty?” asked Marjorie, approaching Jean, who sat on a
wagon-tongue, trying to think of something out of the ordinary to jot in
her journal.
“What’s he up to now?”
“He’s been preening his feathers like a turkey-gobbler for the last
half-hour. Guess our pretty widow and her aristocratic mamma have
caught up with our train. Just watch him! See how the ex-scientist,
ex-statesman, ex-orator, and now ex-almost-anything is making a fool of
himself!”
“All people, of both sexes, get a spell of the simples, sooner or later,”
laughed Jean. “Daddie says that when the system is in the right condition
to catch it, one gets it bad.”
“Guess I’ll ride out and look over the town a little, Annie,” said the
Captain to his wife after the family had retired for the night. “I want
to look out a little for our Scotty. He seems to need a guardian.”
Scotty, though a characteristic specimen of the educated Scotchman, was
a loyal adherent of the institutions of his adopted country. He had been
a member of the constitutional conventions of two border States, and was
known as a writer and orator of no mean ability. But, like many another
brilliant man, he had passed his fortieth year without acquiring a home,
a family, or a competence. He was well versed in the “Rise and Fall of
Republics,” and had travelled much in foreign lands,—themes of which he
never tired. But he could never reduce ox-driving to a science.
Captain Ranger rode to the top of the bluffs, where he leisurely
contemplated the scene. Lights reflected from town and river danced and
gleamed, but barely made the darkness visible in the muddy streets.
Church bells rang, steamers whistled, and longshoremen tugged at heavy
loads. Powerful horses propelled great, clumsy freight-wagons through the
unpaved streets. Foot passengers picked their way through slop and mud.
“Railroads will come here some day,” said the Captain to himself. “They
will compete with the river traffic and cripple it. Other towns, like
Chicago, will divert the trade, and there is no telling what the end will
be. What a busy, bustling world it is, anyhow!”
“Halloa, Captain!”
“Well, I’m blanked if it isn’t Scotty!”
“I’ve been to call upon the widows we met in the beginning of our
journey, sir, and I’ve been thinking it would be a handsome thing for you
to do if you’d take them into our company, Captain Ranger.”
“We’ll see about it, Scotty; but I’m afraid you won’t earn your salt if I
let them join us. I s’pose I’ll have to risk it, though.”
VIII
_A BORDER INCIDENT_
The public roads or thoroughfares through which the party floundered when
crossing the sparsely settled counties of western Illinois, which had
noticeably improved during the day or two of travel from the East toward
Quincy, grew almost impassable on the Missouri side of the Mississippi
River. Heavy freight-wagons, each bearing an immense load of merchandise,
chiefly hides and furs from the Northwest Territory, had stirred the mud
in the narrow lane to a seemingly inexhaustible depth; and the long spell
of freezing by night, followed daily by the inevitable thaw, caused the
many unbridged streams to overflow their banks and inundate the wide
wastes of bottom land through which the ox teams were compelled to wander
blindly, in continual danger of disaster. But the most disagreeable
experiences resulted from the frequent snow-storms, which generally
occurred at camping-time, accompanied by chilling winds and intermittent
falls of rain or sleet, covering the earth with a glare of ice.
“When I get to heaven, I mean to ask Saint Peter to assign all cooks to
high seats,” said Jean one evening, as, balancing a tray laden with tin
cups and saucers, she paused above the heads of the men kneeling at the
mess-boxes, and in apparent innocence upset a steaming cup upon the head
of Yank.
“No harm done, I assure you, Miss Rangeah. Don’t mention it!” he said,
affecting not to feel the burn at the back of his neck, whereat Jean grew
repentant.
“Do you s’pose Saint Peter will pay any heed to the request of a slip of
a girl like you?” asked Hal.
“I’ll not be a slip of a girl when I go through the gates o’ heaven, but
a mature matron, famous and honored.”
* * * * *
“We are in a slave State now,” wrote Jean, under date of April 16; “and
from my limited experience I am forced to conclude that slavery is more
deteriorating in its effects upon the white people we meet than it is
upon the blacks. The primitive cultivating of the soil we saw in central
Illinois, where the white men do their own farming, was bad enough, God
knows; but the shiftless, aimless, happy-go-lucky work of the Missouri
‘niggers,’ as they style themselves, is even worse. The white men we
see at times are idle, pompous, and lazy. The white women are idle and
apathetic; and the children are aimless and discouraged. Daddie says
slavery is wrong, and no contingency can make it right; but I notice that
he doesn’t propose any remedy.”
* * * * *
Prairie schooners were not known as “ships of the desert” then, for
Joaquin Miller had not yet sought or acquired fame; and no Huntington
or Holladay had made a transcontinental railway track, or tunnelled the
sierras of the mighty West to open the way for the iron horse. Even the
overland stage was an improvement as yet unknown; for Holladay had not
yet established his relay stations, or sent his intrepid drivers out
among the savages as heralds of approaching civilization.
“Daddy says humanity’s a hog,” was the leader in Jean’s next entry in
her diary. “The weather continued so bad, mother was so wan and weak,
and the stock were so nearly starved, that he decided to stop over for
a day or two near a farmhouse and barnyard, where there seemed a chance
to purchase food for man and beast. But we were glad to move on after
a rather brief experience. The farmer doubled the price of his hay and
grain every morning after ‘worship,’ reminding those of us who could not
choose but hear his daily dole of advice to God, of Grandpa Ranger’s
story of a planter and merchant he knew in his youth, of whom it was said
that he would call his slaves to their devotions in the morning with a
preamble like this: ‘Have you wet the leather? Have you sanded the sugar?
Have you put meal in the pepper and chicory in the coffee? Have you
watered the whiskey? Then come in to prayers!’”
The necessities of these farmers were born of isolation; and the
opportunities for barter and dicker with passing emigrants stirred the
acquisitive spirit within them into vigorous action. The prices of their
hitherto unsalable commodities went up to unheard-of figures, increasing
in geometrical progression. But Captain Ranger, having created a market
in the remote country places in Illinois for supplies of coffee, tea,
calico, and unbleached cotton cloth, had prepared himself at Quincy with
such commodities, and was able to adjust his trade somewhat to the law of
supply and demand.
* * * * *
Oh, those teamsters of the plains! No jollier crowd of brave,
enduring, accommodating men ever cracked cruel whips over the backs of
long-enduring oxen, or plodded more patiently than they beside the slowly
moving wagons, as, wading often over shoe-tops through the muck and mire
of the Missouri roads of early springtime, they jollied one another
and cracked their whips and sang. Each misfit nickname was accepted as
a joke, and none of the men inquired as to the origin of his peculiar
cognomen. But Hal, being more inquisitive than they, asked troublesome
questions of his sisters, who were in the secret.
“Better tell him, girls,” said their mother. “He’ll be in honor bound to
keep the secret then. Won’t you, dear?”
“Jean did it,” said Marjorie.
“Then suppose you confess,” said Hal.
“It was this way,” she explained after a pause of mock seriousness. “The
first night we were in camp, after we had washed the dishes, it occurred
to me to write each teamster’s name and paste it to the bottom of his
plate. I didn’t know the real name of one of ’em from Adam’s, so I wrote
them down as Scotty, Limpy, Yank, Shorty, Sawed-off, and so on. We didn’t
intend to perpetrate a misfit, but a joke, and we struck both. Scotty
got the correct title, though it merely happened so. But you just watch
’em! Limpy’s as straight as an Indian; Sawed-off stands six feet two
in his socks; Lengthy is no taller when he stands up than when he lies
down; Yank is a characteristic slave-owner; and Sambo is an ingrained
abolitionist!”
“We couldn’t have made such a lot o’ misfits if we had tried a week,”
said Mary. “But the men all think Hal did it; so the suspicion doesn’t
fall on us; and you get the credit for being somewhat of a wag, Mr. Hal.”
“It’s nothing new for men or boys to take the credit for what their
sisters do,” said Jean, as Hal strode away, satisfied that in protecting
his sisters from a piece of folly, by accepting it as his own, he was
acting the part of a man. “Adam set the example; and where would Herschel
have been if he hadn’t had a sister?”
“Adam might have been in a box if he couldn’t have had Eve,” laughed
Marjorie; “for there would then have been nobody to raise Cain.”
“Or the Ranger family,” added Jean.
* * * * *
Several days of tedious, laborious travel brought the wanderers into an
open, sparsely timbered, almost unsettled part of the State of Missouri.
The snow and sleet gave way to brighter skies, the roads and sloughs were
drying up, and the higher grounds were gradually arraying themselves in
robes of green and gold.
“Here is vacant land, and lots of it,” said Mary, as she viewed the
virgin prospect of a mighty settlement in undisguised admiration. “This
is a beautiful world!” and she sighed deeply, her face toward the rising
sun.
“Don’t look backward,” cried Jean. “Remember Lot’s wife.”
“There’s no use in trying to look backward,” urged Hal. “Dad will never
halt till he lands us on the western shore of the continent, on the
eastern hem of the Pacific Ocean. He says this country’s too old for him.
The wild turkeys are all killed off, or scared out o’ sight; the deer and
elk are gone for good; and the country’s played out.”
“Wait a few years, and there’ll be railroads gridironing this whole great
valley of the Mississippi,” said Jean. “There’ll be towns and cities
springing up in a hundred places. Farms and orchards and handsome country
homes will cover these rolling prairies. The native groves will be more
than quadrupled by cultivation, and schoolhouses and churches will spring
into existence everywhere.”
“I wish you’d talk like this to your father! Won’t you, Jean?” asked Mrs.
Ranger.
“You couldn’t hire him to live in a slave State!” cried Jean.
“The Reverend Thomas Rogers might manage to get this far on the way
toward the setting sun without much money,” smiled Mrs. Ranger,
meaningly. “The children favor our stopping here, on Missouri soil,” she
added, as her husband joined the group. “Don’t you think the idea a good
one, John?”
“What! And let the word go back among our people at home that we’d
flunked? No! I’d die first, and then I wouldn’t do it,” exclaimed her
husband, petulantly.
Mrs. Ranger burst into tears.
“There, there, Annie! Don’t worry. But don’t ask me to settle, with my
children, in a slave State. Father left Kentucky when I was a boy to get
away from slavery and its inevitable accompaniment of poor white trash.
There is an irrepressible conflict between freedom and every form of
involuntary servitude that exists under the sun. This nigger business
will lead to a bloody war long before Uncle Sam is done with it, and I
doubt if even war will settle it.”
“But Oregon may come into the Union as a slave State, John. You know that
the extension of slavery is the chief theme that is agitating Congress
now.”
“I’ll have a chance to fight the curse in Oregon, Annie. But it is a
settled condition here. I’ll fight it to the bitter end, if I get a
chance!” He strode away to look after the cattle and men.
“Dear, patient mother!” cried Jean, stroking her mother’s cheek tenderly.
“Your head is as clear as a bell. But there’s a whole lot o’ common-sense
in what daddie says, too. We’ll soon have settled weather; then you won’t
mind travelling. We all think you’ll be well and strong as soon as we get
settled in Oregon.”
“Maybe so, if I could only live to get there,” faltered the feeble woman.
“But—”
“But what, mother?”
“Nothing. I was only thinking.”
Jean’s heart sank. “You must get to bed, mother dear,” she said lovingly.
The Ranger children, tired out with the fatigue and excitement of the
day, were soon locked in the deep sleep of healthy youth and vigor. Not
so Mrs. Ranger. The regular breathing of her sleeping loved ones soothed
her nerves, but she seemed preternaturally awake.
A gentle breeze stirred the white wagon-hood overhead. Sukie, who was
tethered near, neighed gently as Mrs. Ranger spoke her name, and came
closer to be stroked.
“Is de Cap’n heah?” asked a dusky figure with a child on its hip, as it
edged its way between the mare and the wagon-wheel.
“He’s out with the cattle at present. Is there anything I can do for
you?”
“Hide me, quick! De houn’s is aftah me, honey. I’ve jes’ waded de crick,
and dey’ve lost de trail. Quick, missus; an’ I’ll sarve ye forever!”
The low baying of the bloodhounds proclaimed that they were again on the
trail.
“Climb in here! Be quick!” exclaimed Mrs. Ranger, making room for the
quaking fugitive. “I’ve never tried to sleep with a nigger and her baby,
but I can stand it if I have to,” she said to herself, as the refugee
took the place assigned to her.
* * * * *
“What in thunder are you up to now?” asked her husband when he looked
in upon his wife and children in the morning and discovered the dusky
intruder.