FEVER OF NEW FORTUNES
The notes of a bugle, high and clear, sang reveille at dawn. Now came
hurried activities of those who had delayed. The streets of the two
frontier settlements were packed with ox teams, horses, wagons, cattle
driven through. The frontier stores were stripped of their last
supplies. One more day, and then on to Oregon!
Wingate broke his own camp early in the morning and moved out to the
open country west of the landing, making a last bivouac at what would be
the head of the train. He had asked his four lieutenants to join him
there. Hall, Price, and Kelsey headed in with straggling wagons to form
the nucleuses of their columns; but the morning wore on and the
Missourians, now under Woodhull, had not yet broken park. Wingate waited
moodily.
Now at the edge of affairs human apprehensions began to assert
themselves, especially among the womenfolk. Even stout Molly Wingate
gave way to doubt and fears. Her husband caught her, apron to eyes,
sitting on the wagon tongue at ten in the morning, with her pots and
pans unpacked.
"What?" he exclaimed. "You're not weakening? Haven't you as much
courage as those Mormon women on ahead? Some of them pushing carts, I've
heard."
"They've done it for religion, Jess. Oregon ain't no religion for me."
"Yet it has music for a man's ears, Molly."
"Hush! I've heard it all for the last two years. What happened to the
Donners two years back? And four years ago it was the Applegates left
home in old Missouri to move to Oregon. Who will ever know where their
bones are laid? Look at our land we left--rich--black and rich as any in
the world. What corn, what wheat--why, everything grew well in
Illinois!"
"Yes, and cholera below us wiping out the people, and the trouble over
slave-holding working up the river more and more, and the sun blazing in
the summer, while in the wintertime we froze!"
"Well, as for food, we never saw any part of Kentucky with half so much
grass. We had no turkeys at all there, and where we left you could kill
one any gobbling time. The pigeons roosted not four miles from us. In
the woods along the river even a woman could kill coons and squirrels,
all we'd need--no need for us to eat rabbits like the Mormons. Our
chicken yard was fifty miles across. The young ones'd be flying by
roasting-ear time--and in fall the sloughs was black with ducks and
geese. Enough and to spare we had; and our land opening; and Molly
teaching the school, with twelve dollars a month cash for it, and Ted
learning his blacksmith trade before he was eighteen. How could we ask
more? What better will we do in Oregon?"
"You always throw the wet blanket on Oregon, Molly."
"It is so far!"
"How do we know it is far? We know men and women have crossed, and we
know the land is rich. Wheat grows fifty bushels to the acre, the trees
are big as the spires on meeting houses, the fish run by millions in the
streams. Yet the winters have little snow. A man can live there and not
slave out a life.
"Besides"--and the frontier now spoke in him--"this country is too old,
too long settled. My father killed his elk and his buffalo, too, in
Kentucky; but that was before my day. I want the buffalo. I crave to see
the Plains, Molly. What real American does not?"
Mrs. Wingate threw her apron over her face.
"The Oregon fever has witched you, Jesse!" she exclaimed between dry
sobs.
Wingate was silent for a time.
"Corn ought to grow in Oregon," he said at last.
"Yes, but does it?"
"I never heard it didn't. The soil is rich, and you can file on six
hundred and forty acres. There's your donation claim, four times bigger
than any land you can file on here. We sold out at ten dollars an
acre--more'n our land really was worth, or ever is going to be worth.
It's just the speculators says any different. Let 'em have it, and us
move on. That's the way money's made, and always has been made, all
across the United States."
"Huh! You talk like a land speculator your own self!"
"Well, if it ain't the movers make a country, what does? If we don't
settle Oregon, how long'll we hold it? The preachers went through to
Oregon with horses. Like as not even the Applegates got their wagons
across. Like enough they got through. I want to see the country before
it gets too late for a good chance, Molly. First thing you know
buffalo'll be getting scarce out West, too, like deer was getting
scarcer on the Sangamon. We ought to give our children as good a chance
as we had ourselves."
"As good a chance! Haven't they had as good a chance as we ever had?
Didn't our land more'n thribble, from a dollar and a quarter? It may
thribble again, time they're old as we are now."
"That's a long time to wait."
"It's a long time to live a life-time, but everybody's got to live it."
She stood, looking at him.
"Look at all the good land right in here! Here we got walnut and hickory
and oak--worlds of it. We got sassafras and pawpaw and hazel brush. We
get all the hickory nuts and pecans we like any fall. The wild plums is
better'n any in Kentucky; and as for grapes, they're big as your thumb,
and thousands, on the river. Wait till you see the plum and grape jell I
could make this fall!"
"Women--always thinking of jell!"
"But we got every herb here we need--boneset and sassafras and Injun
physic and bark for the fever. There ain't nothing you can name we ain't
got right here, or on the Sangamon, yet you talk of taking care of our
children. Huh! We've moved five times since we was married. Now just as
we got into a good country, where a woman could dry corn and put up
jell, and where a man could raise some hogs, why, you wanted to move
again--plumb out to Oregon! I tell you, Jesse Wingate, hogs is a blame
sight better to tie to than buffalo! You talk like you had to settle
Oregon!"
"Well, haven't I got to? Somehow it seems a man ain't making up his own
mind when he moves West. Pap moved twice in Kentucky, once in Tennessee,
and then over to Missouri, after you and me was married and moved up
into Indiana, before we moved over into Illinois. He said to me--and I
know it for the truth--he couldn't hardly tell who it was or what it was
hitched up the team. But first thing he knew, there the old wagon stood,
front of the house, cover all on, plow hanging on behind, tar bucket
under the wagon, and dog and all. All he had to do, pap said, was just
to climb up on the front seat and speak to the team. My maw, she climb
up on the seat with him. Then they moved--on West. You know, Molly. My
maw, she climb up on the front seat--"
His wife suddenly turned to him, the tears still in her eyes.
"Yes, and Jesse Wingate, and you know it, your wife's as good a woman as
your maw! When the wagon was a-standing, cover on, and you on the front
seat, I climb up by you, Jess, same as I always have and always will.
Haven't I always? You know that. But it's harder on women, moving is.
They care more for a house that's rain tight in a storm."
"I know you did, Molly," said her husband soberly.
"I suppose I can pack my jells in a box and put in the wagon, anyways."
She was drying her eyes.
"Why, yes, I reckon so. And then a few sacks of dried corn will go
mighty well on the road."
"One thing"--she turned on him in wifely fury--"you shan't keep me from
taking my bureau and my six chairs all the way across! No, nor my garden
seeds, all I saved. No, nor yet my rose roots that I'm taking along. We
got to have a home, Jess--we got to have a home! There's Jed and Molly
coming on."
"Where's Molly now?" suddenly asked her husband. "She'd ought to be
helping you right now."
"Oh, back at the camp, I s'pose--her and Jed, too. I told her to pick a
mess of dandelion greens and bring over. Larking around with them young
fellows, like enough. Huh! She'll have less time. If Jed has to ride
herd, Molly's got to take care of that team of big mules, and drive 'em
all day in the light wagon too. I reckon if she does that, and teaches
night school right along, she won't be feeling so gay."
"They tell me folks has got married going across," she added, "not to
mention buried. One book we had said, up on the Platte, two years back,
there was a wedding and a birth and a burying in one train, all inside
of one hour, and all inside of one mile. That's Oregon!"
"Well, I reckon it's life, ain't it?" rejoined her husband. "One thing,
I'm not keen to have Molly pay too much notice to that young fellow
Banion--him they said was a leader of the Liberty wagons. Huh, he ain't
leader now!"
"You like Sam Woodhull better for Molly, Jess?"
"Some ways. He falls in along with my ideas. He ain't so apt to make
trouble on the road. He sided in with me right along at the last
meeting."
"He done that? Well, his father was a sheriff once, and his uncle, Judge
Henry D. Showalter, he got into Congress. Politics! But some folks said
the Banions was the best family. Kentucky, they was. Well, comes to
siding in, Jess, I reckon it's Molly herself'll count more in that than
either o' them or either o' us. She's eighteen past. Another year and
she'll be an old maid. If there's a wedding going across--"
"There won't be," said her husband shortly. "If there is it won't be her
and no William Banion, I'm saying that."