drowned as sure as fate, when I broke through the ice that day, if he
hadn’t saved me at the risk of his own life. Dear boy! I’ll saddle Sukie
and go back to see him in the morning.” With this resolution settled in
his mind, he fell asleep; but his sleep was fitful. Sometimes the sad,
sweet face of his gentle Annie would bend over him, awakening him with a
start. A conviction settled more and more strongly upon his mind that he
had cruelly wronged his brother, and he would be allowed no rest till he
should atone.
Once, long before morning, he saw himself face to face with a raging
buffalo bull. It was without eyes, and gazed at him through sightless
sockets, and shook its formidable head at him with as much certainty of
aim as though its thick and darkened skull were ablaze with light. The
beast held the only vantage-ground,—an open plain,—and at his back rose a
sheer and inaccessible mountain, up which there was no chance of escape.
XXIII
_THE SQUAW ASSERTS HER RIGHTS_
The morning found the post-trader with a raging headache. For several
minutes after awakening to consciousness he remained motionless, not
realizing time or place.
“Oh, mother! my head, my head!” he exclaimed, as he locked his fingers
above his throbbing temples. Never before since his marriage had he
uttered a cry of pain without bringing Wahnetta to his side. Now no one
noticed his groaning. He raised himself upon his elbow and gazed through
the open door of his sleeping apartment upon the broad and dusty plain.
The sun was already an hour high. Numerous campers had struck their
tents, and the teams were moving toward the farther West. He turned
his gaze within the tent and regarded Wahnetta with a look and feeling
of disgust. She had prepared his breakfast while he slept, and had fed
their ravenous brood,—all save the baby in its Indian basket, which was
whining pitifully as it blinked its eyes in a helpless attempt to drive
away the flies.
“Why don’t you keep your young one quiet?” roared her husband, savagely.
“I’ve been doing the best I could,” said the woman, meekly. “I’ve gotten
all the children settled outside in the shade, studying their lessons,
except this poor little pappoose, and I’ll ’tend to his wants as soon as
I have disposed of the worst baby in the lot,—and that’s you.”
“What in thunder has come over you, woman?”
“Nothing.”
“Have you had breakfast?”
“Food would choke me, Joseph Addicks! See what you did last night!” She
threw back her heavy mass of torn and tangled hair, exposing an ugly
bruise on her temple. “If it were not for these children, I’d leave you
and strike out for myself. But as I cannot get away from them, I will
stay by them, as many a woman in all countries is obliged to do under
like circumstances till she either dies or can run away. But I tell you
right here and now that I will never take another blow from you or any
other man.”
“I’d like to see you help yourself.”
“I’ll help myself by laying you dead at my feet! No man who respects
himself will marry a woman not his equal, or if she is of an inferior
race. I didn’t know this when I was a foolish young girl, but I
understand it now. In marrying an Indian girl you did not elevate her one
atom, but you degraded us both. I now tell you to your teeth that I hate
you, and you can’t help it.”
“I never would have married you if I had known that I was not an outlaw.
I thought myself a murderer till yesterday. I know better now. I am sorry
I beat you, though. I wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t been in a drunken
frenzy. I’m in a better temper this morning; but oh, my head, my head!”
“Let it ache! So does mine, but I can’t lie abed and groan. I am
compelled to look after the family’s needs, sick or well.”
Then, womanlike, though the poor little pappoose fretted pitifully in
its Indian basket, his wife brought cold water and towels and bathed his
throbbing forehead.
“I’m better now,” he said, as his temples cooled. “Will you forgive me
for beating you last night, Wahnetta?”
She looked at him in astonishment. Never before, though he had often
bestowed indignities upon her that he would not have inflicted upon a
favorite dog or horse, had he addressed her thus, or shown any sign of
repentance.
“If I had kept my promise, Wahnetta, as I should have done, I would
have taken you as a bride to London or Montreal and replaced you in the
world of civilization, in which you were educated by your fond, mistaken
father. But I couldn’t do it, because of my daily dread of the hangman’s
rope. I do not wonder that you despise me. I did not realize that I had
become that thing that every self-respecting man of the West abhors,—a
‘squaw-man’!”
“Don’t you dare to say ‘squaw’ to me, Joseph Addicks! It is an epithet no
white man uses except in contempt. When we were married I was your equal
in education, your superior in personal appearance, and your match in
ambition. I now see that I was far ahead of you in moral character, for
I was never a fugitive from what the world calls justice. But why didn’t
you confide all this to me long ago?”
He laughed derisively. “I knew the treacherous Indian nature too well,
woman; and I wouldn’t trust you now if it were in your power to betray
me; but there is nothing now to betray.”
“And I am no longer afraid of you, Joseph Addicks.”
“My name is not Addicks. My brother passed through here yesterday. His
name is John Ranger, and I am his long-lost brother, Joseph. He is taking
his family to the Territory of Oregon.”
He arose finally and made a tolerable breakfast, she, for the first time
since their marriage, taking her seat at the table beside him as he ate.
“If you’d keep yourself clean and tidy, like a self-respecting white
woman, you wouldn’t appear so—so Injuny, and I wouldn’t be so very much
ashamed of you. I’m sick to death of this bondage, Wahnetta. I, too, was
a young and unsophisticated fool when we were married. What will you
take to let me out of it honorably? I want to do everything I can to
atone; but something must be done. I will not longer endure this mode of
existence.”
“I have an idea, Joseph. My inheritance from my father arrived several
days ago. I hadn’t thought of claiming it for myself, but I will now.
Give me a letter of credit for the whole of it, with an outfit for
travelling, and I will go, with the children, to a village on the
Willamette River called Portland, in the Territory of Oregon. You know
Dr. McLoughlin well, and so do I. There’s a convent in Portland, where I
can place the girls, and a brothers’ school near by for the boys. I’ll
get a boarding-place, not too far away, for myself and the little tots
that are too young to be in school. I will soon recruit if I can get a
chance to rest up and dress myself as the white women in my position do.
You won’t know me in three months after I have had a chance to live in
keeping with my station.”
She paused, panting because of her own audacity. Never before had she
ventured to give utterance to so long a speech in his presence. He saw a
ray of hope and pursued it eagerly.
“I have a good wagon, and a fine four-mule team that is idle,” he said
musingly. “I guess we can manage to make the change.”
“What will you do, Joseph? Can you stay here when we are gone?”
“I shouldn’t think you’d care to consider me after all that’s happened,
Wahnetta.”
“You cannot give me back my heart, my husband. I can never be happy
without you. But, savagely as I spoke a while ago, my heart is full of
love for you, and the thought of leaving you alone in this God-forsaken
wilderness brings back all the tenderness of the past.”
“I can take care of myself, I reckon.”
“Of course; if I can take care of myself and seven children, you ought to
be able to get along alone, or hire somebody to help you,” she exclaimed,
straightening her shoulders, and revealing long-lost or hidden traces
of her girlhood’s beauty in the light of an awakening hope. “I know the
tendency of my race, or any other, to hark back to primitive conditions
under adverse circumstances. The time has now come when the children must
have the social and educational advantages of a higher civilization, or
they’ll be Indians to the end of the chapter. As you will not permit me
to take them to the East, I am glad that I can take them to the farthest
West.”
“How soon can you be ready to start?”
“To-morrow, or as soon as the team is ready. We’ll pose as Indians till
we get to Oregon. We can camp in the Portland woods till an outfit of
clothing can be prepared in which you wouldn’t be ashamed to see your
wife and children appear before kings.”
The next morning early, while the Ranger team was yet in camp, and its
Captain was not yet awake, an Indian woman, with an unkempt swarm of
dusky children, passed him on their westward way, unrecognized.
* * * * *
“Daddie’s in a raging fever!” cried Jean, arousing the Little Doctor.
“We’ll fetch him out all right,” said the doctor, as the frightened
children shivered around the fire in the crisp morning air, silent and
awe-stricken. “I saw an Indian ‘sweat-house’ near the river-bank after
we had encamped last night. We’ll fumigate it, and give your father
a thorough steaming, children. Don’t be frightened. He’s caught the
mountain fever. Luckily, I have on hand a lot of crude brimstone. I
gathered it near Hell Gate.”
“But we mustn’t use the sweat-house without the consent of the Indians,”
said Scotty. “Yonder comes a lot of them on horseback now. I’ll see them
and make terms.”
The terms having been arranged satisfactorily, the Little Doctor
proceeded to make preparations for the reception of her patient.
When the inner surface of the dugout had reached a white heat, the fire
was permitted to die, and the place was cleansed of coals and ashes.
It was then tested by a thermometer; and when cooled to the proper
temperature, the Captain, now almost incoherent from fever, was wrapped
in blankets and placed, feet foremost, within its depths, where he lay
with his head enveloped with cold, wet towels, leaving only a small
aperture at the mouth of the “infernal pit,” as he called it, for air.
Thus situated, and perspiring at every pore, he fell asleep.
A delicious, restful languor followed his awakening, and he was aroused,
against his protest, to be removed by willing attendants to a closed
tent, where he was packed in cold, wet sheets, and left to rest for
another hour or more.
“His heart has good action, and he’ll come out all right; but we can’t
break camp to-day,” said the Little Doctor.
By evening the Captain found his fever conquered. But he was not strong
enough to ride back to his brother’s trading-post for the amicable
interview he had planned; so, like most of our “ships that pass in
the night,” his opportunity was gone; and as time wore on, his good
resolutions vanished also.
The long-drawn monotony of the journey caused the entries in her journal
to become exceedingly monotonous to Jean, who often neglected a duty she
would have highly prized had she been able to foresee the value of the
record she was making under constant protest.
On the tenth of July she wrote as follows: “We are now in Utah Territory,
which is the first organized part of Uncle Sam’s dominions we have set
foot upon since leaving the Missouri River. Our hunters to-day killed
an antelope and a brace of ‘fool’ hens, or sage-chickens, which our
half-famished crowd cooked and ate with relish.
“What a way we human animals have of preying upon the brute creation, as
we falsely name the mild-eyed entities which we must slay and eat that
we may live! I have no heart to write. I can only think of the beautiful
eyes of that antelope we have killed and eaten, and of the sage-hens
that were not enough afraid of a boot that Yank threw at them to get out
of his way. And we called them ‘fools’ because they trusted us, who, as
compared to them, are knaves.”
After crossing the Rocky Mountains through a huge and devious gap[2] by
ascents and descents so gradual that nothing but the changing trend of
the water-currents marked the point or points of demarcation, the train
reached a height overlooking the valley of the Great Salt Lake,—the
“Promised Land” of the Latter-Day Saints, who even in that early day had
made it, in many spots, to blossom as the rose.
The almost intolerable heat of midday was followed at night by cold and
marrow-piercing winds, making both day and night uncomfortable.
“No wonder the immigrants are ill, Mr. Burns,” said Mrs. McAlpin, one
evening, when, as she could not politely avoid him, she sought to control
the conversation. “Nothing saves any of us but the snow-laden air from
these grand old mountains. I have stood on the Himalayas, where the
Mahatmas are said to hold sway, I have beheld the shimmering beauty of
Egyptian skies, I have floated among the silent wonders of the Dead Sea;
but the majestic beauty of these Rocky Mountains transcends them all.”
“I’ve just left a family of Mormons, where there is a bishop ill with the
fever. The faithful were trying to cure him by the ridiculous custom of
laying on of hands,” said Burns, who had sought her company, hoping to
“talk it out.”
“Not necessarily ridiculous,” answered the lady. “If a faithful Catholic
crowd can change a little vial of mummy-dry blood into liquid form in
answer to faith and prayer, why can’t an equally faithful Mormon crowd
heal the sick through the same power of concentration, which is only
another name for faith?” and the Little Doctor hurried away.
XXIV
_A MORMON WOMAN_
Newly created Mormon settlements came occasionally into view, the long,
low, ashy-white adobe houses of the Latter-Day Saints proclaiming, by the
front doors to be counted in their dwellings, the number of wives each
patriarch possessed.
One cold, blustering evening a lone woman, middle-aged, swarthy, sinewy,
and tall, came into the camp afoot. A bundle of bedding strapped to her
back gave her an uncanny appearance as she shrank into the shadows. A
reticule of generous dimensions depended from her neck in front and
reached below her waist-line, containing her little stock of clothing and
provisions.
“I am making my way to the Northern Oregon country,” she said, meaning
the great expanse of territory which at that time embraced the present
States of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, with a large slice of the
present State of Montana included. “President Young saw I was going
crazy,” she added, throwing aside her reticence after being warmed and
fed. “I wasn’t the least mite dangerous to have around, as I wasn’t
violent; but I cried and took on so, after I had to give my husband away
in marriage to another woman, that I scared the hull church into a fear
that I’d upset polygamy. So President Young said I might have a permit to
leave the country.”
“Do you mind telling us all about it?” asked Sally O’Dowd.
“It can all be summed up in one word,—polygamy,” she exclaimed, glancing
furtively around. “Are there any Mormons about?”
“No, madam,” said the Captain. “The boss of this combination is a pagan,
and he wouldn’t hurt a Christian. You have no cause to be afraid. But
you’d better not tell us any secrets. The proper way to keep a secret is
to keep it to one’s self, unless you want to keep it going.”
“I am a Mormon, good and true,” she began again, rising to her feet
and spreading her thin hands to the blaze; “but when my husband went
into polygamy, which it was his Christian duty to do, according to the
Scripture (and I’m not blaming him), the Devil got the upper hand of me,
and I couldn’t stand it. You see, they made me go to the Endowment House
and give my own husband away in marriage to another woman; and that, too,
after we had stood together at the altar, in the little church in my
father’s parish, ever so long before, and swore before God and a score
of witnesses that we would forsake all others and keep ourselves only to
each other as long as we both should live. Polygamy may be all right for
people who haven’t made such vows; but I know it was not right for us.
What do you think, Mr. Captain?”
“I think that women have had their hearts cultivated at the expense of
their heads quite long enough,” was his emphatic response.
“I thought the Mormons didn’t compel any woman to give her husband away
in marriage against her will,” said Jean.
The woman uttered a sharp, rasping, staccato laugh that betokened
incipient insanity.
“There are other ways to kill a dog besides choking him to death on
butter!” she cried, throwing her arms wildly about, and casting grotesque
shadows upon those sitting behind her. “They told me that as a good
Mormon I was bound to obey the mandates of the Church; that my eternal
salvation, and my husband’s also, depended upon obedience. And they said
it so often, and prayed over me so long and hard, that at last I said
I’d do it. Then they held me to my promise. But my heart would beat, and
the world would move; so in spite of what I did in the Endowment House,
I would go about and tell my woes to everybody that would listen. And I
was getting to be a scandal in Zion, so that by-and-by, when a lot of
Gentiles got to making a fuss about it,—they made it hot for polygamy
through my story,—the elders took it up. But they couldn’t tie my tongue,
for the Devil had hold of it, and he just kept it wagging. The cases of
Abraham and Jacob and David didn’t fit my case at all, for they hadn’t
made any such vows.”
The woman, as if suddenly recollecting herself, stopped speaking, and
glared at her awe-stricken listeners with an insane gleam in her fiery
eyes.
“Oh, my head, my head!” she cried, clasping her hands tightly over her
temples. “The Devil has caught me again!”
“You’d better not talk any more to-night,” said the Little Doctor,
soothingly. “And you cannot go on till morning. I’ll make a warm, snug
bed for you in one of the wagons. After you’ve had a sound sleep and a
good breakfast, you can go on your way refreshed.”
“But I’ve got to talk it out. You’re like all the rest! You want me to be
quiet, when the rocks and stones would cry out against me if I did!”
“You’ll take a drink of our ‘Number Six,’ won’t you?” asked the Little
Doctor. “Here it is. I’ve mixed and sweetened it for you.”
She grasped the decoction and gulped it eagerly.
“Thanks,” she said, returning the cup. “I must be going now. I’ve stayed
too long already. The Danites will be after me. Do you think any of them
are in hearing now? President Young put me under their surveillance
before they’d let me start. He put his hands on my head and blessed me,
too. Talk about your popes! Why, Brigham Young can discount a ten-acre
field full of Apostolic successors, and be the father of a whole regiment
of American progeny in the bargain. I know you think I’m crazy, but
there’s plenty of method in my madness. I’m not half as crazy as I act
and talk.”
“Will the Danites protect you till you reach the end of your journey?”
asked Jean. “Are you sure?”
“Not if they catch me among Gentiles. President Young took precautions
to prevent me from talking to outsiders, he thought. I mustn’t be seen
here. But I must tell you before I go that his blessing came direct from
God. It filled my very marrow-bones with light. It was like phosphorus in
the dark, or diamonds in the sunlight. I felt like a bird! No man can do
these things that President Young is doing unless God be with him.”
“Do you believe that Brigham Young is really inspired of God?” asked
Mary, incredulously.
“It is by their fruits that we know them, miss. Zion has been greatly
blessed under the ministrations and guidance of President Young.”
“Then why do you wish to escape from his kingdom?” asked Marjorie.
“Because I was not good enough to endure polygamy; I was too great a
sinner. I couldn’t obey the gospel and keep my senses.”
“Did the thought never strike you that the fault might be in the gospel,
instead of your heart or head?” asked Hal.
“The High and Holy One of Israel cannot err,” she replied, shaking her
head, and again waving her long arms to and fro in the smoky air. “There
are disbelievers in this camp, and I cannot tarry. May Heaven guide and
protect you all, and bring you into the holy faith of the Latter-Day
Saints! O blessed Lord, direct these souls into Thy kingdom before it is
everlastingly too late!”
She waved her arms over their heads once more, and turning suddenly,
vanished like a deer into the darkness.
“That poor misguided creature has the spirit of a martyr,” said Captain
Ranger, after a painful silence.
“It is a good deal easier for some folks to preach than to practise,”
exclaimed Sally O’Dowd.
“There are kernels of truth in all ’ologies,” said Scotty.
“As a man thinketh, so is he,” exclaimed Mary.
“She is striving to save her immortal soul. All religions have their
origin in human selfishness,” remarked the Captain, dryly.
“Better say they originate in human needs,” replied Jean; “but
selfishness is universal, all the same.”
“Yes. Selfishness is a necessary attribute of human existence,” said the
Little Doctor, punching the dying fire into a blaze. “Don’t you think so,
Mr. Burns?”
“I quite agree with you, madam. Selfishness belongs to human environment,
and is as much a part of us as hunger, thirst, love, or ambition. Nothing
is made in vain.”
“Not even sin?” asked Mary.
“Not even sin!” echoed Jean. “This would have been a very useless world
if there had been no wrongs to set right in it, and no suffering to
relieve. Nobody could appreciate heat if it were not for cold, or light
if there were no darkness. Hunger compels us to search for food; thirst
seeks satisfaction in drink, and ambition in the search for personal
advancement. It often unconsciously assists the weak by its efforts, when
it intends to help nothing but the personal selfishness that inspires it.
Everything, both good and evil, is a part of the eternal programme.”
“Where did you imbibe such ideas as you often express on this subject?”
asked her father, a great pride in her springing afresh in his heart.
“From the stars, I guess, or from the angels. Or maybe they were born
within me. I never could reconcile myself to the generally accepted idea
of gratitude. To thank God for blessings we enjoy that are not accessible
to others, to me is nothing else but blasphemy.”
“Then you cannot say with the poet,—
“‘Some hae meat, and canna eat,
And some would eat that want it;
But we hae meat, and we can eat,
Sae let the Lord be thankit!’”
said Mrs. Benson, who had been looking on in silence.
“Indeed I can’t!” exclaimed Jean. “But we’ve all heard just such prayers
and praises through all our lives.”
“Nobody in normal health has any right to be thankful for anything unless
he earns it,” said the Captain; “and then he has nobody to thank but
himself.”
“He ought to be thankful for health, at least,” suggested Marjorie.
“If you’d follow your logic to its natural sequence, Captain, my
occupation would be gone,” laughed the Little Doctor. “It is as unnatural
and unscientific to be sick as to be hungry; therefore there should be no
doctors.”
“I can see no analogy between your conclusions and my observations,” said
the Captain.
“I can,” cried Jean.
“Every error under the sun is mixed with good, or it couldn’t exist at
all,” said Scotty. “But the truth remains that the Universe with all that
it contains exemplifies the Divine Idea. God IS.
“‘All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose _mother_ Nature is, and God the soul.’
“You see, I’ve altered the thought a little, Mrs. McAlpin; but I look
to the shade of Pope for pardon. If he were with us to-day, he would
doubtless accept my amendment. We can’t know much about the mystery we
call God. It makes little difference to the humanity of the various
nations of the earth, all of whom must worship the Divine Idea, whether
it be called Vishnu, Chrishna, Isis, Allah, Jehovah—”
“These learned disquisitions over things unknown make me very weary,”
yawned Jean.
“And border on blasphemy,” added Mary.
“We had better go to bed,” exclaimed the Captain, rising. “These
questions have taken a wide range, and we’ve all followed that poor
Mormon devotee beyond her depth and our own.”
“But such discussions relieve the monotony of travel and sometimes lead
to independent thought,” said Lengthy, who had sat squat upon his heels
and haunches, a silent listener.
“God be with our Mormon sister,” said Scotty, rising and adjusting his
crutches. “Let us hope for her a safe journey to some friendly spot where
polygamy ceases from troubling, and the saints are at rest!”