make room for Captain Ranger, as he passed the reins to Jean, who, with
Mary and Marjorie, had been an enraptured listener. “The comparative
topography of Central America and northern Africa excites the liveliest
speculation. When I was in Darien, I found many features among the ruins
abounding in the jungles of the isthmus, strikingly similar to those
one sees in the land of the Pyramids. True, the analogy is not always
apparent, because the almost total absence of rain in Egypt is exchanged
for an almost total lack of dry skies in Panama and Yucatan. Science
scoffs at my assumptions, because I cannot prove them; but I’d bet a
million if I had it, and wait for the fact to be proven—as it surely will
be some day—that there was once a continuous continent between the homes
of the early Pharaohs and those of a prehistoric people who inhabited the
two Americas.”
“I’ve often reached a similar conclusion myself when visiting the
prehistoric scenes of both hemispheres,” said Mrs. McAlpin. “Sometime,
not so very remote in the history of the planet, there must have been a
sudden and awful cataclysm, such as might result from a change in the
inclination of the earth’s axis, of which history can as yet give no
authentic account.”
“Then the fabled Atlantis may not be so much of a fable, after all,”
exclaimed Mary.
“Do you suppose any of you know what you are talking about?” asked
Captain Ranger.
“The world has scarcely yet begun to read the testimony of the air, the
earth, the water, and the rocks,—especially of this Western Continent,”
said Scotty, with a respectful bow to his captain.
“That’s true,” remarked Mrs. McAlpin, rising to end the interview.
“Travel in any direction broadens and enlightens anybody who has eyes to
see or ears to hear.”
“Or a soul to think,” echoed Jean.
“Say, Scotty, have you watered your steers?” asked Captain Ranger, in a
sarcastic tone.
“By Jove! I forgot. Good-evening, ladies!” The teamster turned away,
crestfallen.
“Excuse me, madam; I didn’t intend to be rude,” said the Captain, as
he paused to say good-night; “but we’ve embarked on a journey in which
theories must be set aside for duties sometimes,—that is, if we’re ever
to see Oregon.”
XI
_MRS. McALPIN SEEKS ADVICE_
The next forenoon Captain Ranger rode up alongside the carriage of Mrs.
McAlpin and her mother, in which Jean was posing as driver and guest, and
said: “I hope I gave you no offence in speaking as I did to Mr. Burns
last night.”
“No offence at all, Captain. Don’t mention it; you were simply
discharging your duty. But”—and Mrs. McAlpin hesitated a little—“would
you mind exchanging your mount with Jean for a little while? I am quite
sure she will enjoy a canter on the back of Sukie, and I wish to counsel
with you a little. I am sorry to impose upon your good nature.”
Mrs. Benson took little notice of the Captain or of her daughter, but
leaned back on the cushions, apparently absorbed in a book.
“I want your candid opinion,” said Mrs. McAlpin. “Do you consider the
marriage ceremony infallible? Is it an unpardonable sin to break it,
except for a nameless reason? I have an object in asking this question
that is not born of mere curiosity.”
“Nothing of human origin is infallible, madam; and, for aught I can see
to the contrary, nothing is infallible anywhere.”
“Do you believe it is better to break a bad bargain than to keep it?”
“That depends upon circumstances.”
“Why do you evade my question?”
“Because I can’t see what you’re driving at.”
“Then I’ll come at once to the point. Suppose you had been born a woman?”
“That isn’t a supposable case.”
“But we’ll let it rest for the present as if it were. Suppose you
were born to be a woman,—we’ll put it that way for the sake of
illustration,—and suppose, while you were yet a child, you had been
married to a man many years your senior—married just to please somebody
else—in defiance of your own judgment or desires?”
“Millions of women are married in that way every year, madam. Look at
India, at China, at Turkey, and at many modern homes, even in England and
America! It would seem to be the exception and not the rule where women
get the husbands of their choice. I know it is the fashion to pretend
they do; for a woman has to become desperately weary of her bargain
before she’ll own up honestly to a matrimonial mistake.”
“But suppose one of those women had been yourself; don’t you think if you
had been so married in childhood, that you would have rebelled openly as
soon as you reached the years of discretion?”
“Nonsense, Daphne!” interrupted Mrs. Benson. “You harp forever on a
single string. Suppose you discuss the weather, for a change.”
“There are points on which my estimable mother and myself do not agree,”
said the daughter, with a sad smile. “Don’t mind her, please. I have
learned that you are a wise and just man, and I am in need of advice.
What would you do if, although you had obeyed the letter of the human
law, you knew in your own soul that your marriage was a sin?”
“Don’t talk like that in my presence, Daphne! I cannot bear it!”
exclaimed her mother, petulantly.
“When I left the States I hoped to get away from everybody’s domestic
troubles,” said the Captain, earnestly. “Please don’t tell me about
yours—if you have any—unless it is in my power to assist you.”
They had reached a narrow and rocky grade, where careful driving was
necessary to avoid disaster.
“We must turn aside here, ladies,” the Captain exclaimed suddenly, as he
dexterously alighted and guided the horses by the bits to the only point
of advantage in sight. “Cattle and horses ought never to be compelled to
travel together. You can’t hurry a steer except in a stampede, and then
Old Nick himself couldn’t stop him.”
“They remind me of more than one pair of mismated bipeds I have met,”
said Mrs. McAlpin.
The Captain stood at the horses’ heads till the last of the jolting and
complaining wagons had safely passed the perilous bit of roadway. Then,
guiding the team back to the road, he resumed his seat in the carriage,
his lips compressed like a trap.
“Don’t you think Mr. Burns is a wonderful man?” asked Mrs. McAlpin, in a
desperate effort to rekindle a conversation.
“He’s a fellow of considerable genius in some ways, but a mighty poor
ox-driver.”
“He reminds me of many a woman I have seen,” continued Mrs. McAlpin, “who
has failed to get fitted into her proper niche. His mind isn’t fitted to
his work. I have seen women chained by circumstances to the kitchen sink,
the wash-tub, the churn-dash, and the ironing-board, who never could make
a success of any one of these lines of effort, though they might have
made excellent astronomers, first-class architects, capable lawyers, good
preachers, capital teachers, or splendid financiers. It is a pity to
spoil a natural statesman or stateswoman to make a poor ox-driver or an
indifferent housekeeper.”
“You seem to take great interest in Scotty,” remarked the Captain.
“I do. We have travelled extensively through the same lands, though we
had never met until our orbits chanced to coincide on this journey. He
has a retentive memory, a wide experience, and a keen appreciation of the
beautiful, both in nature and art, and so have I. He is as much out of
place as an ox-driver as I should be in a cotton-field. He’s a perfect
mine of information, though, about a lot of things.”
“Then why not take counsel of him, instead o’ me?”
“He would hardly be a disinterested adviser.”
“Ah, I see!”
Mrs. McAlpin blushed. “He has not spoken to me one word of love,
Captain,—if that is what you mean. I am not an eligible party,” and the
lady used her handkerchief to wipe away a tear. “I want your opinion
about getting a divorce from a union that I detested long before I ever
met Mr. Burns. It is unbearable now.”
“Hush, Daphne! Not another word,” interposed her mother. “Strangers have
no right to an insight into our family affairs.”
“But I must speak to somebody. Stay, Captain!” laying her hand upon his
arm as he was about to leave the carriage.
“Are you running away from your husband, madam?” he asked, resuming his
seat.
“You guess correctly, sir.”
“I suspected it all along; but it was none of my business in the
beginning, nor is it now. But I confess that it looks as if I were making
it my business to conduct a caravan of grass widows to Oregon, judging
from the present aspect of affairs.”
“To make a long story short,—for I see you are growing restless,—I was
married in my callow childhood, married in obedience to my mother’s wish.
She was a widow and poor; my suitor was accomplished and rich. If he’d
been a sensible man he would have courted and married my mother, who
adores him. But old men are such idiots! They’re always hunting young
women, or children, for wives.”
“You’re complimentary.”
“Beg your pardon; present company is always excepted. They imagine that
young and silly girls will make happy and contented wives,—when any
person not overcome by vanity knows that no young man or young woman can
be truly enamored of anybody that’s in the sere and yellow leaf. What
would you think of a woman of mamma’s age, for instance, making love to a
boy? And if such a boy should consent to marry her, who believes that he
would be content with his bargain after his beard was grown?”
“Ask me something easy,” said the Captain.
“My father was a physician; and it was my childhood’s delight to study
his books, attend his clinics, and make myself generally useful among
his patients. I never dreamed of surrendering my person, my liberty, my
will, and the absolute control of my individuality to the commands of any
human being on earth except myself, till after the deed was done for me
by another. No wonder I rebelled when I reached the years of maturity and
discretion.”
“Mr. McAlpin was a good man and a gentleman, Captain Ranger,” interrupted
Mrs. Benson.
“Yes, mamma; he was always ‘good.’ He never whipped his wife; he gave
her everything that money could buy. There is no reason that the law can
recognize for me to be dissatisfied. But I don’t belong primarily to
myself, and I don’t like it. Mamma here, with her ideas of woman’s place
in life, would have made him an excellent and happy wife.”
“He was always a gentleman, Daphne,” repeated her mother. “Don’t do him
an injustice.”
“Yes; and I was his personal and private property. I was a beautiful
animal, as he thought, to bedeck with his trinkets and show off his
wealth; but I was nobody on my own account. I was simply his echo,—or
supposed to be,—and nothing else.”
“Daphne, you forget that this carriage, these horses, our wagons and
oxen, and the supplies for this journey are all the product of his
bounty.”
“They are the product of my jewels, Captain. This outfit is mine; it was
bought with my own heart’s blood! I owe nothing to Donald McAlpin.”
“Do you think you have dealt justly by your husband?” asked the Captain.
There was reproof and impatience in his tone.
“I owe him nothing, sir. I am in the same line with Dugs,—a runaway
chattel. That is all.”
“But Dugs, whose name now is Susannah, did not enter into her bargain
voluntarily.”
“Neither did I. My mother made the bargain.”
“How did you escape, Mrs. McAlpin? And why did you undertake this
journey?”
“Mr. McAlpin was called away to England last year, to inherit an
additional estate. Mamma was too ill to go, so I stayed to nurse her. I
had been his body vassal for four years, and was at last a woman grown.
One taste of liberty was enough. I will never be his vassal again. I
decided to make this very unusual journey to elude pursuit. He’d not
think of searching for me outside of the United States or Canada; least
of all in the Great American Desert, whither we are bound. I mean to lose
myself for good and all in Oregon.”
“And so now you are seeking a divorce?”
“Yes, sir; that is, when I reach Oregon.”
“Thousands of other women have borne far worse conjugal conditions all
their lives, and died, making no outward sign, Mrs. McAlpin. Men also
have their full share of these afflictions, which they bear in silence to
the bitter end.”
“That is their own affair, sir. If other people choose to wear a ball
and chain through life, that is their privilege. I would not do their
choosing for them if I could.”
“What course would you pursue if you had children?”
“Then I suppose I should be compelled to die with my feet in the stocks.
Children might have diverted my mind and helped to save my sanity,
though. I’ve prayed for them without ceasing, but in vain. I’m going to a
remote country, a new country, where new environments make newer and more
plastic conditions. The laws of men, one-sided as they are, will divorce
me after seven years.”
“And what is Scotty going to do during all this time?”
“If he loves me as he thinks he does, he’ll wait. If it’s only a passing
fancy, he’ll get over it in time. I will not permit his attentions now,
nor until Donald McAlpin divorces me and gets another wife.”
* * * * *
Captain Ranger’s union with the gentle bride of his choice had been
so natural, and their lives together had been so harmonious, despite
their many cares and sorrows, that neither of them had ever harbored
a thought of living apart from the other. Differences of opinion they
had sometimes, and now and then a brief, angry dispute, but the end was
always peace; and he remembered now, with a pang of self-reproach, that
in all such encounters he, whether right or wrong, had invariably gained
his point.
“You are my guiding star, my faithful wife,” he whispered, as he gently
assisted her from the wagon after they had halted for the night. “Come
with me, dear, and get some exercise, while Sally and Susannah help the
other girls to get supper.”
“I don’t see why we mightn’t end our journey here, John,” said his wife,
as they gazed abroad over the vast expanse of table-land that stretched
away on every side, intersected here and there with streams, their
courses marked by stately rows of cottonwood just bursting into leaf,
their bases hedged with pussy-willows. “Here are land and wood and water
as good as any we passed yesterday. This surely will be a rich and
thickly settled country some day.”
“But it is all Indian country, my dear. I wish you would talk about
something else.”
They returned to the camp in silence.
“I wish the girls were as tractable as you are, Annie,” he said an hour
later, after having had a heated dispute with his daughters over some
trifling disagreement. “They are as headstrong as mules.”
“Being girls, they take after you, John,” replied his wife, with a smile.
“I’m afraid their husbands won’t find them as tractable as I have been.”
* * * * *
“Bring on more of your flapjacks and bacon, Miss Mary,” cried Scotty, as
Mary poised a big pile of the steaming cakes over the heads of the hungry
men who knelt at the mess-boxes.
“You seem to be regaining your lost appetite,” exclaimed Sawed-off. “Have
you and the widder cried quits?”
“That’s our business,” was the curt reply.
It was late when Mary sought her mother’s couch for a brief visit that
night. She was weeping silently, and her mother caressed her tenderly.
“I know your heart is troubled, darling,” said Mrs. Ranger, “but do not
be discouraged. Be of good cheer. Every cloud has a silver lining.” And
Mary’s heart was comforted, though her reason could not tell her why.
XII
_JEAN BECOMES A WITNESS_
“How’s your journal getting on, Jean?” asked her father, one evening,
after all was still in camp.
Mrs. Ranger had been unusually nervous and timid all day, and Susannah
had been in constant attendance upon the wagon-bed full of little
ones,—seven in all,—who had been more than usually unruly, fretful, and
quarrelsome.
Jean looked ruefully at her father. “The pesky thing isn’t getting along
at all!” she exclaimed. “There’s nothing to inspire one to write. There’s
no grass for the cattle, no wood for the fires, and no comfort anywhere.”
“Then write up the facts. Don’t allow yourself to get morbid. Don’t be so
listless and lackadaisical.”
* * * * *
It was now the twentieth of May; and under this date, in restive
obedience to her father’s command, Jean began her entries again:—
“We came about eighteen miles to-day. And such a day! It has been
drizzly, disagreeable, and cold from morning till night, with no cheery
prospects ahead. We hear of an epidemic of measles having broken out on
the road, endangering much life among children and such grown folks as
didn’t have sense enough to get the disgusting disease before they left
their mothers’ apron-strings. We passed several newly made graves by the
roadside to-day,—a melancholy fact which interested mother deeply.
“Indians, for some reason, are keeping out of our sight. As we are right
in the midst of the summer haunts of many tribes, we are shunned,
possibly on account of the contagious diseases among the whites, which
are said to kill off Indians as the Asiatic plague kills Europeans. Our
company has escaped the epidemic so far; so there is one blessing for
which we may be thankful.
“We forded a stream to-day, called the Little Sandy, in the midst of
a driving rainstorm, and are now encamped in a deep, dry gulch; that
is, we call it dry, because the water runs away nearly as fast as it
falls. There is a fine spring on the hillside; and some green cottonwood
which we found at the head of the gulch is being slowly coaxed into the
semblance of a fire.
“May 21. The skies cleared this morning, and we have found some good
grazing for the poor, half-famished stock. We haven’t travelled over a
dozen miles, but we must stop and give the animals a feed. We have passed
extensive beds of iron ore to-day, outcroppings of which are seen in
every direction.
“May 22. We yoked up early this morning and came three miles, to the
banks of the Big Sandy. The day is clear, but the roads are still muddy
after the rain. The early morning was dark and foggy, the air was raw and
cold, and the outlook was cheerless in the extreme. Some of the horses in
a neighbor’s outfit stampeded, and it has taken nearly the whole day to
recapture them.
“May 23. We hear rumors of Indian raids ahead of us, and mother is much
alarmed. We must not stop for Sunday, but must hurry on to get past the
danger-point. If the Indians knew how defenceless we really are, they
would rout the camp before morning.
“The sluggish waters of the Big Sandy are swarming with larvæ. Daddie
says it’s lucky they’re not mosquitoes yet; but the trains coming along a
week hence will be terribly annoyed by the intruders, who are now unable
to molest us.
“May 24. We are following the Little Blue,—a muddy stream about a hundred
feet in width.
“May 25. We met to-day a long train of heavily loaded wagons coming
from Fort Laramie with great mountains of buffalo robes. At this rate,
the buffalo will all be killed off in a very few years. The frightened
creatures are now so wild that it is next to impossible to get a shot
at one of them; and the antelope are even more timid. Why is man such a
destructive animal, I wonder?
“The men driving the freight-teams we met were a mixed-up lot of Indians,
Spaniards, and French and Indian half-breeds. Their speech was to us an
unintelligible jargon in everything but its profanity, which was English,
straight. There was one white man in the crowd, or maybe two of them.
They were on horseback, and kept aloof from the common herd. A peculiar
apprehension overcame me as I gazed at one of these strangers. He was
large, bronzed, and portly, and sat his horse like a centaur; or perhaps
I should come nearer the truth if I said like an Englishman. My heart
beat a strange tattoo as I watched him. Somehow, it seemed to me that he
was in some way concerned with some of our company. I did not understand
the feeling, but it wasn’t comfortable.”
“There, daddie!” she cried, exhibiting the written pages. “Don’t say I’m
neglecting my journal now!”
* * * * *
The twilight had deepened. Below the camp ran a deep ravine, at the
base of which a little brook sang merrily. Clumps of cottonwood, badly
crippled by wayfarers’ axes, struggled for existence here and there.
In her haste to reach the covert of the bushes unobserved, Jean ran
diagonally over a settlement of prairie dogs, near which the campers
had inadvertently pitched their tents. The Lilliputian municipality was
evidently well disciplined, for at the sound of approaching footsteps the
same sharp, staccato bark, of mingled warning and authority, that had
for an instant startled the foremost team at camping-time, was heard, and
every little rodent dropped instantly out of sight. Profound silence fell
at once upon the little city, which had before been a bedlam of voices.
Jean reached the foot of the ravine and stopped to listen, her heart
beating hard. “I am sure Sally made an appointment to meet somebody in
this ravine to-night,” she said to herself, “and I’m just as sure she’ll
need a friend. Women are such fools where men are concerned.” She heard
the sound of human voices, and pressed her hand hard over her heart.
“I know you think you’re safe from arrest,” said a voice she knew to be
Sally O’Dowd’s. “As your wife, I may not be able to give legal testimony
that will send you to the gallows; but you’re not beyond the pale of
lynch law.”
A mocking laugh was the only audible response.
“I haven’t even told the Squire,” resumed the woman’s voice. “Nobody
knows about it but you and me and the unseen messengers of God.”
Again that mocking, brutal laugh, followed by oaths, with words of
commingled anger and exultation. Jean held her breath.
“S’posing you could testify,—which you can’t, for that divorce is tied
up on appeal,— my oath would be as binding as yours, Mrs. O’Dowd. And I
would swear to God that it was you did the deed. It would be easy enough
to make any court believe my story, for it was common talk that you
rebelled all the time against such a litter of babies.”
“O God, have mercy!”
“Nobody saw me kill the brat but you, Sally. It would have been bad
enough if the young ones had come one at a time, being only a year apart;
but when it came to two pairs of twins inside o’ thirteen months, it was
time to call a halt.”
“Are you never to have any mercy on me, Sam?”
“Come back to me as my lawful wife, and you’ll see. I’ll be easy enough
to get along with if you’ll treat me right.”
The wife was struck dumb with astonishment.
“Come back to me, darling!” The mocking tone gave way to one of cooing
tenderness. Jean saw his dusky figure through the shadows. “You see
you’re in my power, Sally. Better make a virtue of necessity. You can
coax the Squire to let me join his train. I will even be a teamster, if
necessary, for your sake and the children’s.”
“What?” cried the woman, in sincere alarm. “Could I be your wife after
I’ve seen you kill one of our children before my very eyes? No, no! Go
your way, and let me go mine in peace. If you will leave me and the three
surviving babies alone, I’ll never tell anybody about the murder. I swear
it!”
Again that brutal laugh.
“Do your worst, Sally O’Dowd! You can’t prove that I killed the brat. You
haven’t any witness.”
“I have the silent witness of my own conscience; and so have you, Sam
O’Dowd. Do you think that I am such an idiot as to come out here to meet
you alone?”
“She knows he’s a coward,” thought Jean, “and she’s bluffing.”
“Now see here, Sally! You love me; you know you do; you’ve told me so a
thousand times.”
“I did love you once, Sam; but that was so long ago that it seems like a
far-off dream. I despise, I loathe, I abhor you now!”
“Then this’ll settle it. I’ll go to the Squire and tell him we’ve buried
the hatchet, and I’m going with you to Oregon. I don’t care a rap whether
you hate me or not. But if you give me any trouble, I’ll swear that you
did that killing.”
“Oh, help me, pitying Christ!” wailed the unhappy woman. “Is there, in
all this world, no Canada to which a fugitive wife may flee, and no
underground railroad by which to reach it?”.
Again arose that brutal laugh upon the air. The belated bird in the
bushes cooed to its mate, and the prairie dogs chattered in the distance.
“Don’t be afraid of him, Sally,” cried a clear voice from the depths of
the cottonwoods. “A tyrant is always a coward. I heard your confession,
Sam O’Dowd; and as I am not your wife, I can be a witness.”
There was no more brutal laughter. A horse stood picketed and stamping
at the head of the gulch, and the murderer hurried toward it with heavy
strides. Jean listened with eager attention till he mounted and rode
rapidly away.
“Are you still there, Sally?” she asked, as the hoof-beats died away in
the distance.
“Yes, Jean; but where are you, and why are you here?”
“The Holy Spirit guided me, I reckon. I was just possessed to come. I
didn’t know I was following you, or why I came; but I just did it ’cause
I had to.”
“It was hazardous, Jean. He might have killed us both.”
“He’s too big a coward to kill a more formidable foe than his own baby.
But you were an idiot to meet him out here, Sally.”