execution of the murderer by a “provisional government” temporarily
organized for the purpose received a painstaking record, as did also a
difficulty with some thieving and beggarly Indians, whose hostility was
awakened by the rashness of one of a trio of bachelors, who were encamped
one night near the Ranger wagons. Captain Ranger made the Indians a
pacifying speech, but only by the aid of some trifling present among the
women of the tribe, and a gift of a pair of blankets to their chieftain,
was the impending danger averted. A double guard was placed outside that
night; and, for several nights following, a corral was made of the wagons
in the shape of a hollow square, into which the cattle were driven to
rest and sleep.
The now famous Soda Springs, known to the commercial world as Idanha,
next caught the coloring of Jean’s pen. The different geysers rising
from the tops of the gutter-sided mounds of soda-stone were carefully
and graphically described. The crater of a long-extinct volcano received
special mention. The bad water of alkali-infected streams and swamps,
left by slowly evaporating pools and ponds, through which cattle and
wagons labored with the greatest difficulty; the dreary wastes of
sagebrush, sand, and rock, through which everybody who was able to walk
at all was compelled to trudge on foot; the devastations of prairie
fires; the endless wastes of stunted sage and greasewood; the struggling
aspens on the margins of tiny streams,—all met graphic and detailed
delineation, such as nobody can appreciate to the full who to-day
traverses these vast and wondrous wilds in a railway coach, or gazes upon
them from a Pullman car.
* * * * *
“Captain Ranger,” said Sally O’Dowd one evening, “do you notice that Jean
is growing strikingly beautiful?”
They were halting for the night after a day’s hard drive; and the
jaded oxen, weak and sick from the combined effects of hard labor,
cruel whippings, and an insufficient supply of grass and water, were
necessarily the chief objects of his attention and solicitude. A broken
wagon-tongue added to his perplexities, as good timber for repairs
was not available; and the mileage of the day’s travel had been much
shortened by the necessity of stopping to mend the break, or, as the
Little Doctor not inaptly said, “to reduce the compound fracture of a
most important part of the wagon’s anatomy.”
“All my girls are handsome,” said the Captain, as he tested the strength
of a splice on the broken tongue by jumping upon it with both feet.
“But Jean has been transformed, Captain. The change has been growing
upon her daily since the date of that Green River episode. The child is
hopelessly infatuated with that young Englishman.”
“Much good it’ll do her,” he exclaimed, mopping his brow with a soiled
bandanna. “It is painfully evident that three of my girls will soon be
women. If their mother were here, it wouldn’t be so hard to manage them.
No, Sally, I’ve noticed no particular change in Jean.”
“Because you are too busy for observation, sir. She hasn’t been a
particle like herself of late.”
The Captain hurried away to his work, muttering, “Nonsense!”
Jean had seated herself on the most distant wagon-tongue, her battered,
ink-bespattered journal in her lap, her pen in one hand, her inkstand
in the other, her knitted brows and glowing face expressing deep
concentration of thought and feeling.
Captain Ranger, having finished his work of repairs, dropped wearily upon
an axle-tree, and, for the first time in several days, prompted doubtless
by the words of Sally O’Dowd, took a long and searching look at Jean.
“Yes, indeed; Sally is right,” he soliloquized. “Jean is developing a
wonderfully beautiful style of womanhood. What a pity it is that she
cannot have her mother at the very time when she needs her most!”
Pangs of anxiety akin to jealousy shot through his heart as he studied
her features; her downcast eyes were hidden by the heavy lashes as she
bent over her work. “She doesn’t resemble her mother as Mary does, but
she must be the almost exact counterpart of what my mother was at her
age,” he mused, as he noted for the first time the ripening lips, the
rosy and yet transparent hue of her cheeks, and the sunny sheen of
her hair. He was surprised that he had not before observed the soft,
exquisite contour of her face and neck, the full rounded bust, and the
shapely development of her feet and hands.
As he sat watching the lights and shadows of thought and feeling that
played upon her features, the remembrance of the girlhood of her mother,
whose arduous married years had all been spent in his service, arose
before him with startling power. “Dear, patient, tender, self-sacrificing
Annie!” he exclaimed, as he arose from his rocking seat and strode away
in the gloaming. “I never half appreciated your worth until I lost you
for ever!”
“No, not for ever,” softly sung a still, small voice in the depths of his
inner consciousness. “Do not reproach yourself. All eternity is yet to
be.”
Jean felt, rather than saw, the pressure of his eyes, and half divined
his thoughts. She felt the telltale blood as it rushed unbidden to her
cheeks, and was seized with a great longing to throw herself into his
arms and breathe out the full secret of her great awakening in his ears;
but something in his manner repelled her advances, and she withdrew more
than ever into herself.
“O Love!” she cried in a tone so low and sweet that none but a messenger
from the Unseen might hear, “how ungovernable art thou, and how
incomprehensible! The worldly-wise may decry thee; the misanthropic may
deride thee; the vulgar may make of thy existence an unholy jest; the
selfish and ignorant may trample upon thee; human laws may crush thee;
but thou remainest still a thing of life, to fill thy votaries with a
holy joy and endow them with the very attributes of God. An imperishable
entity art thou, O Love! Thou art interblended with every fibre of my
being now, and I accept thee as a sweet fulfilment of my earthly destiny.”
Of course Jean was young and fond and inexperienced and foolish; and
these chronicles would offer her rhapsodies as the utterances of no
worldly-wise oracle. But her thoughts were fresh and pure; and who shall
say they did not emanate from the very fountain of life itself, whose
presence she could sense but could not understand?
She wandered off toward the rushing, maddening torrent of Snake River,
whose music had for her, in these moods of introspection, but one
interpretation.
“Daddie may denounce, Hal and Mame may tease, and Marjorie,—yes, and all
the world deride me,” she said, as she sat upon a bowlder and abandoned
herself to reverie; “but henceforth there shall be nothing in this world
for me to cherish but Love and its handmaiden, Duty.”
Snake River, full at this point of jutting rocky islands, through which
the foaming, roaring waters rushed like a thousand mill-races on parade,
dashed madly against its banks beneath her feet, and rushing on again,
roared and laughed and shrieked and sang. Lichens clung to the uplifted
rocks, which, hoary with age and massive in proportions, held vigil in
the midst of the eternal grandeur. Mountains clambered over mountains in
the dimly lighted distance, and reaching to the red horizon, overlooked
the Pacific seas.
“The antelope and elk are gone,” she thought, “and we are lone watchers
amid the eternal vastness. But the sage-hen, the lizard, the owl, and the
jaybird linger; and yonder, among the everlasting rocks, are the homes of
the Indian, the rattlesnake, the badger, and the wolf.”
Rustling footsteps startled her. “Why, it’s daddie!” she exclaimed, her
heart beating audibly. “I thought you were an Indian or a bear!”
“You oughtn’t to go off alone, my daughter. There is some hidden danger
threatening us; I feel, but cannot divine it. Something is going wrong
somewhere or somehow. Let’s hurry back to camp.”
“You’re the last person on earth I’d suspect of giving way to a morbid
fancy, daddie dear. You must be very tired.”
“It isn’t that, my daughter. I am sad because you have allowed your heart
to stray, and I do need you so much—so much!”
She answered not a word.
XXVIII
_THE STAMPEDE_
The next morning brought unexpected delays. The repairs about the camp
and wagons consumed more time than had been anticipated, and it was
ten o’clock before the cattle, which had been allowed to stray farther
from camp than usual, in search of the dried and scanty herbage that
alone staved off starvation, were driven into camp and hurried down to
the river-bank to drink. The swiftness, foam, and sudden chill of the
water, its depth and roaring, confused and frightened the half-sick and
half-starved animals; and one, a patriarchal bull, the master and leader
of the herd, who had often before made trouble, gave vent to a deep,
sonorous bellow like the roar of an ancient aurochs. Then, with nose in
air, he struck out across the stream, the herd following. A small, rocky
cape crept out into the water on the opposite bank, affording the only
visible landing-place; and up this the panic-stricken creatures scrambled
in a mad stampede, which the helpless occupants of the camp surveyed with
the calmness of despair.
“I had no idea that the poor creatures had enough life left in them to
run a dozen rods on level ground,” said Captain Ranger, after a grim
silence. “Boys,” he added in a husky voice, as he swallowed a great lump
in his throat, “are any of you able to swim Snake River?”
“I can do it,” answered John Brownson, an obliging young teamster, who
had joined the company early in the journey and had made himself useful
on many trying occasions.
“And I too,” said John Jordan, another favorite of road and camp. The two
intrepid volunteers shook hands with their anxious Captain and plunged
boldly into the roaring, swirling, deafening torrent, through which
Jordan swam with ease, his head now bobbing out of sight and now rising
above the foaming current, to disappear again and again, till at last he
was seen to emerge from the water on the opposite steep and ascend the
almost sheer acclivity leading to the table-land above. It was a brave
and daring feat, but it proved fruitless. The poor, panic-stricken cattle
failed to recognize as a friend the stark white apparition, entirely
bereft of clothing. It was all in vain that he called the leader of the
herd by name; and when the frightened creature turned and charged him,
and there was no shelter but some patriarchal sagebrush trees, he took
refuge behind the biggest of them till the aurochs changed his mind and
turned to follow the stampeding herd.
The panic continued. The stampede was irresistible. The cattle were
lost, and most of them were never heard of more, though it is said that
Flossie, the companion and patient of Jean during the hours of her vigil
on that never-to-be-forgotten night in the Black Hills,—Flossie, the
faithful, enduring, and kindly-eyed milch cow whose calf had been killed
on the road,—reappeared long afterwards in the sagebrush wilds of Baker
County, Oregon, with quite a following of her children, grandchildren,
and great-great-grandchildren, all but herself as wild as so many deer.
Flossie herself was recognized, they say, by the Ranger brand; and her
hide, with the letters J. R. still visible behind the shoulder-blade, is
to-day a valued relic of departed years in the mansion of a prominent
actor in the drama of that eventful summer.
But what of Brownson? All day the hapless watchers of the camp had
strained their eyes and ears for sight or sound of him, in vain.
“He must have been caught with cramps, or been dashed against the rocks
by the current, for I saw him drown,” said Jordan, at sundown, as he
rejoined the helpless watchers near the wagons.
Meanwhile, the men and women of the camp had not been idle. The lightest
wagon-box the train afforded was selected and pressed into service for
a ferry-boat; and while the men made oars, rowlocks, and rudder as best
they could with the materials at hand, the women skilfully caulked the
seams of the wagon-bed with an improvised substitute for oakum, under
the supervision of the Little Doctor, making it tolerably water-tight.
The wagon-box was then replaced on wheels and hauled upstream about
half-a-dozen miles to a little valley where the river was wide, the banks
low, and the water comparatively shoal and calm.
It was conjectured by Captain Ranger that the entire force of men in
the train might be able, by a concerted effort, to assist the watcher
on the upland in his brave attempt to arrest the stampede and secure
the cattle’s return. But their united efforts were unavailing; and long
before they returned, disheartened, apprehensive, and weary, the helpless
watchers at the camp saw the bruised body of Captain Ranger’s favorite
mare rolling, tumbling, bumping, and thumping through the roaring waters
and among the jagged rocks, near the very spot where Brownson had been
drowned.
Noble, faithful, obedient Sukie! In her attempt to swim the river with
her devoted master, who was seated in the stern of the novel boat leading
her by the halter and encouraging her with kindly words, her strength
failed utterly; and when she turned upon her side and Captain Ranger let
go his hold upon the halter, she uttered a dying scream, rolled over, and
was gone.
“If there isn’t any horse heaven, the creative Force has been derelict in
duty,” sadly exclaimed the master, as he watched the lifeless body of his
beloved and faithful servant floating down the stream.
Through the silent watches of the awful night that followed, John Ranger
pondered, planned, and waited.
His three daughters and three younger children, Sally O’Dowd and her
three babies, and Susannah and George Washington, all occupied the family
wagon, around which he stalked through the silent hours as one in a dream.
“A formidable array of dependent ones,” he said to himself over and over
again. “And what is to become of my Annie’s darlings? Was it for this
that she started with me on this terrible journey?”
There was no audible answer to his anxious queries save the roaring of
the river as it crashed its way between the rocks that formed its grim
and tortuous channel.
Weary at last of walking, he crept into his tent beside Hal, who had
been dead to the world from the moment he touched his bed, so sweet is
the deep forgetfulness of childhood when “tired Nature’s sweet restorer,
balmy sleep,” is preparing it for the further endurance of an exacting
and ambitious life. But Captain Ranger could not sleep. He arose and
faced again the silent horrors of the situation.
The stars twinkled overhead in their usual triumph over disturbing
forces; and, slowly fading into the coming twilight, rode the gibbous
moon.
In his helplessness the lonely watcher lifted up his voice and prayed.
“I’ve never felt much worry over original sin, O Lord!” he cried,
standing with hands uplifted in the chilly air, “but you know I’ve
generally been honest. I’ve tried hard to do my duty according to my
lights. I didn’t mean to bring my Annie and her babies out here in the
wilderness to die; but you understood the conditions, and because you
understood, you took my wife away. I rebelled at first, but you helped me
to bear it for her sake; and for this, for the first time, I thank you.
And now, if you have the love for her children for which she always gave
you credit, I am sure that you’ll guide me safely out of this present
trouble. And if you do, O Lord, I’ll serve you as long as I live in
whatever way you lead. Amen.”
“I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous
forsaken, nor his seed begging bread!”
“Who spoke to me?” he asked, aloud. “Where did that voice come from? I
could have sworn it was Annie! No; Annie is dead!”
In a flurry of excitement he peered in all directions, listening eagerly.
But in his soul there slowly crept a quiet peace, and with it a sense
of security and elation which he could not comprehend; neither could he
doubt its reality.
Before him passed, in mental review, the strenuous days of his boyhood,
awakening youth, and early manhood. The memory of his mother arose before
him, inexpressibly sweet and tender. He thought lovingly of his father,
strong in the religious faith of which he had often made a jest. His
gentle Annie seemed so near that he could almost reach her. But closer
to him than any other seemed the presence of his brother Joseph. What a
promising lad he was, and with what joy had the whole family striven to
bestow upon him the educational advantages to which none of the others
had dared to aspire!
Then passed before him, like scenes in a panorama, the awful pecuniary
straits that followed, when the beloved brother fell under the ban of the
law.
Then came in review his unexpected meeting with that brother in the
wilderness. “Forgive my pride, brutality, and selfishness, O Lord! and by
all that’s holy, I’ll make it right with Joe!”
And who shall say that this unique appeal to the great Source of Life
was less acceptable to the Infinite than the studied petitions of gowned
prelates? whose often conflicting appeals to Jehovah, if answered
literally, would plunge the world into confusion and chaos under the
diverse demands of the children of men.
His prayer ended, the chilled and worried wanderer returned to his bed
and readdressed himself to sleep, this time with such success that
when he awoke the sun was riding high in the heavens, and he heard the
familiar voice of a train-master, whom he had left in his rear by taking
the Green River cut-off, and who had now overtaken him.
“Hello, Captain!” exclaimed the new arrival, striking the wall of the
sleeper’s tent with the butt of his heavy ox-whip. “What’s all this I’ve
been hearing? Didn’t you get back any of your stampeded cattle?”
“Nary a hoof,” replied the Captain. “I tell you we’re in a mighty bad
fix, Harlan.”
“How are you going to get out?”
“Don’t know yet. It’s a ground-hog case, though, I’m bound to make it
somehow. Got any cattle to sell?”
“Possibly. Might spare two yoke and an odd steer. Got any money?”
“A few dollars. But I don’t want to get into Oregon dead broke. Can’t you
trust a fellow till we reach the settlements?”
“I could if we weren’t running short o’ grub. This journey has cost like
the dickens from the start; and it won’t get any cheaper on the home
stretch. Every fellow you strike wants money. It wasn’t so in the States.”
“We can swap accommodations if we like, Harlan. I have several bags of
jerked buffalo meat.” His voice faltered, as he remembered that this meat
had been prepared by the order of his vanished wife. “We laid in a lot of
flour and other stuff at our last Utah trading-post; so we’re not short.”
An old-fashioned game of barter and dicker was soon concluded; and
Captain Ranger set his men to work, rearranging the wagons and making
ready to move on.
XXIX
_IN THE LAND OF DROUTH_
All the wagons except the “saloon,” or family vehicle, were ruthlessly
stripped of their various appurtenances; the running gear of those
that had seemed to stand the wear and travel with the least injury
were selected to hold the absolute necessaries of the remainder of the
journey. Many articles of utility were compelled to find a lodgment in
the family wagon, causing Sally O’Dowd to ruefully survey the limited
space for the little flock who were too young in years to walk regularly.
“We’ll see what can be done,” said the Captain, thoughtfully. “I’ve
left the saloon wagon to the last, hoping somebody would come along who
could spare us a few more steers. We’ve thrown away everything we can do
without. But we’ll get the cattle.”
“It’s lucky we’ve got the money the teamsters paid us to get back after
they deserted us,” said Jean. The Captain’s face brightened.
“Why, surely!” he cried. “I had forgotten all about the financial end of
that incident. You have a business head on you, my girl!”
“Here it is,” cried Marjorie. “It is in our great-grandmother’s silver
spectacle-case. Jean put it there.”
“Sure enough,” said her father. “Your great-grandfather carried that
tarnished and battered spectacle-case all through the Revolutionary War.
It is indeed a lucky find.”
In less than an hour another train of dilapidated wagons came along,
accompanied by half-a-dozen loose oxen and a discouraged cow.
Then for the first time the faces of Mrs. Benson and Mrs. McAlpin
brightened. During all the hurry of the day they had wandered aimlessly
about, steadfastly refusing to accept any assistance until the Ranger
family should first be provided with oxen.
“Now, as we can get cattle enough to move one of our wagons, it is our
time to make preparations for a start,” said the Little Doctor.
“Did you think for a minute that you’d be abandoned to your fate?” asked
Captain Ranger.
“We didn’t allow ourselves to think at all; we just waited and trusted.”
In less than an hour what was left of the Ranger outfit was in motion.
And a sorry-looking outfit it was indeed.
One of Mrs. McAlpin’s wagons was abandoned after she had discarded
everything of appreciable weight that could be spared. But there
are exceptions to every rule, and the Little Doctor, watching
her opportunity, managed with the aid of Scotty to stow away the
long-secreted spinning-wheel and baby’s cradle which had been Mrs.
Ranger’s property.
“If we can complete our journey at all, we can carry these things,” the
Little Doctor said to Jean. “We are getting near the Columbia River, as
we can see by the topography of the country; and there’s a mission at
The Dalles, where we can get more help if we need it, I am sure. Mamma
and I will ride our horses as long as they are able to carry us. We have
provisions enough to feed our two teamsters and ourselves till we reach a
settlement.”
One woman at a time was detailed to ride in the family wagon and take
care of the babies; all the rest walked, stopping to ride only when the
frequent streams that were too deep to wade were to be crossed; at which
times the wearied oxen were compelled to do the double duty of pulling
the loads and carrying the footsore pedestrians on their backs.
The weather was now intensely hot during the long hours of sunshine.
The sandy wastes radiated the blistering heat under which the vast
sageplains lay staring at the unmerciful sun in apathetic stillness,
like a Lilliputian forest under a state of arrested development. But the
nights were chilly, and the storms of wind and dust that came up with the
going down of the sun were trying in the extreme. The men of the party no
longer had tents or wagon-covers for shelter, and were obliged to sleep
on the lee side of friendly rocks, beside which they awoke, sometimes, to
find themselves uncomfortably near a den of rattlesnakes or the decaying
carcass of an animal.
At every spot where a little grass was found, the cattle were unhitched
from the wagons and turned out in pairs, under the yoke, to feed.
Every stray bit of wood, every discarded ox-yoke or ox-bow, and not
infrequently the entire woodworks of an abandoned wagon, were split into
firewood and carried along among the baggage for camping purposes.
Unknown guides, in whom the prolonged hardships of the plains had not
destroyed the spirit of human kindness, left frequent notices on the
rocks by the wayside, giving valuable information in regard to springs
and streams, but for which there would have been terrible suffering at
times from thirst.
The cattle were too weak and their loads too heavy to permit long hours
of travel, and their progress was necessarily slow.
The beds of small streams had gradually dried under the fierce sunshine,
and it became necessary to keep as near as possible to the banks of
the Snake River, from which, however, the way often deviated for days
together because of intervening rocks, gulches, sand, and sheer bluffs.
On the third day of August Jean made entry as follows:—