WHEN ALL THE WORLD WAS YOUNG
Molly Wingate kneeled by her cooking fire the following morning, her
husband meantime awaiting the morning meal impatiently. All along the
medley of crowded wagons rose confused sounds of activity at a hundred
similar firesides.
"Where's Little Molly?" demanded Wingate. "We got to be up and coming."
"Her and Jed is off after the cattle. Well, you heard the news last
night. You've got to get someone else to run the herd. If each family
drives its own loose stock everything'll be all mixed up. The Liberty
outfit pulled on by at dawn. Well, anyways they left us the sawmill and
the boat.
"Sam Woodhull, he's anxious to get on ahead of the Missourians," she
added. "He says he'll take the boat anyhow, and not pay them Kaws any
such hold-up price like they ask."
"All I got to say is, I wish we were across," grumbled Wingate, stooping
to the bacon spider.
"Huh! So do I--me and my bureau and my hens. Yes, after you've fussed
around a while you men'll maybe come to the same conclusion your head
cow-guard had; you'll be making more boats and doing less swimming. I'm
sorry he quit us."
"It's the girl," said her husband sententiously.
"Yes. But"--smiling grimly--"one furse don't make a parting."
"She's same as promised Sam Woodhull, Molly, and you know that."
"Before he got whipped by Colonel Banion."
"Colonel! Fine business for an officer! Woodhull told me he tripped and
this other man was on top of him and nigh gouged out his two eyes. And
he told me other things too. Banion's a traitor, to split the train. We
can spare all such."
"Can we?" rejoined his wife. "I sort of thought--"
"Never mind what you thought. He's one of the unruly, servigerous sort;
can't take orders, and a trouble maker always. We'll show that outfit.
I've ordered three more scows built and the seams calked in the wagon
boxes."
Surely enough, the Banion plan of crossing, after all, was carried out,
and although the river dropped a foot meantime, the attempt to ford _en
masse_ was abandoned. Little by little the wagon parks gathered on the
north bank, each family assorting its own goods and joining in the
general _sauve qui peut_.
Nothing was seen of the Missouri column, but rumor said they were
ferrying slowly, with one boat and their doubled wagon boxes, over which
they had nailed hides. Woodhull was keen to get on north ahead of this
body. He had personal reasons for that. None too well pleased at the
smiles with which his explanations of his bruised face were received, he
made a sudden resolution to take a band of his own immediate neighbors
and adherents and get on ahead of the Missourians. He based his
decision, as he announced it, on the necessity of a scouting party to
locate grass and water.
Most of the men who joined him were single men, of the more restless
sort. There were no family wagons with them. They declared their
intention of traveling fast and light until they got among the buffalo.
This party left in advance of the main caravan, which had not yet
completed the crossing of the Kaw.
"Roll out! Ro-o-o-ll out!" came the mournful command at last, once more
down the line.
It fell on the ears of some who were unwilling to obey. The caravan was
disintegrating at the start. The gloom cast by the long delay at the
ford had now resolved itself in certain instances into fear amounting
half to panic. Some companies of neighbors said the entire train should
wait for the military escort; others declared they would not go further
west, but would turn back and settle here, where the soil was so good.
Still others said they all should lie here, with good grass and water,
until further word came from the Platte Valley train and until they had
more fully decided what to do. In spite of all the officers could do,
the general advance was strung out over two or three miles. The rapid
loss in order, these premature divisions of the train, augured ill
enough.
The natural discomforts of the trail now also began to have their
effect. A plague of green-headed flies and flying ants assailed them by
day, and at night the mosquitoes made an affliction well-nigh
insufferable. The women and children could not sleep, the horses groaned
all night under the clouds of tormentors which gathered on them. Early
as it was, the sun at times blazed with intolerable fervor, or again the
heat broke in savage storms of thunder, hail and rain. All the elements,
all the circumstances seemed in league to warn them back before it was
too late, for indeed they were not yet more than on the threshold of the
Plains.
The spring rains left the ground soft in places, so that in creek
valleys stretches of corduroy sometimes had to be laid down. The high
waters made even the lesser fords difficult and dangerous, and all knew
that between them and the Platte ran several strong and capricious
rivers, making in general to the southeast and necessarily transected by
the great road to Oregon.
They still were in the eastern part of what is now the state of Kansas,
one of the most beautiful and exuberantly rich portions of the country,
as all early travelers declared. The land lay in a succession of
timber-lined valleys and open prairie ridges. Groves of walnut, oak,
hickory, elm, ash at first were frequent, slowly changing, farther
west, to larger proportions of poplar, willow and cottonwood. The white
dogwood passed to make room for scattering thickets of wild plum. Wild
tulips, yellow or of broken colors; the campanula, the wild honeysuckle,
lupines--not yet quite in bloom--the sweetbrier and increasing
quantities of the wild rose gave life to the always changing scene. Wild
game of every sort was unspeakably abundant--deer and turkey in every
bottom, thousands of grouse on the hills, vast flocks of snipe and
plover, even numbers of the green parrakeets then so numerous along that
latitude. The streams abounded in game fish. All Nature was easy and
generous.
Men and women grumbled at leaving so rich and beautiful a land lying
waste. None had seen a country more supremely attractive. Emotions of
tenderness, of sadness, also came to many. Nostalgia was not yet shaken
off. This strained condition of nerves, combined with the trail
hardships, produced the physical irritation which is inevitable in all
amateur pioneer work. Confusions, discordances, arising over the most
trifling circumstances, grew into petulance, incivility, wrangling and
intrigue, as happened in so many other earlier caravans. In the
Babel-like excitement of the morning catch-up, amid the bellowing and
running of the cattle evading the yoke, more selfishness, less friendly
accommodation now appeared, and men met without speaking, even this
early on the road.
The idea of four parallel columns had long since been discarded. They
broke formation, and at times the long caravan, covering the depressions
and eminences of the prairie, wound along in mile-long detachments, each
of which hourly grew more surly and more independent. Overdriven oxen
now began to drop. By the time the prairies proper were reached more
than a score of oxen had died. They were repeating trail history as
recorded by the travelers of that day.
Personal and family problems also made divisions more natural. Many
suffered from ague; fevers were very common. An old woman past seventy
died one night and was buried by the wayside the next day. Ten days
after the start twins were born to parents moving out to Oregon. There
were numbers of young children, many of them in arms, who became ill.
For one or other cause, wagons continually were dropping out. It was
difficult for some wagons to keep up, the unseasoned oxen showing
distress under loads too heavy for their draft. It was by no means a
solid and compact army, after all, this west-bound wave of the first men
with plows. All these things sat heavily on the soul of Jesse Wingate,
who daily grew more morose and grim.
As the train advanced bands of antelope began to appear. The striped
prairie gophers gave place to the villages of countless barking prairie
dogs, curious to the eyes of the newcomers. At night the howling and
snarling of gray wolves now made regular additions to the coyote chorus
and the voices of the owls and whippoorwills. Little by little, day by
day, civilization was passing, the need for organization daily became
more urgent. Yet the original caravan had split practically into three
divisions within a hundred and fifty miles from the jump-off, although
the bulk of the train hung to Wingate's company and began to shake down,
at least into a sort of tolerance.
Granted good weather, as other travelers had written, it was indeed
impossible to evade the sense of exhilaration in the bold, free life. At
evening encampment the scene was one worthy of any artist of all the
world. The oblong of the wagon park, the white tents, the many fires,
made a spectacle of marvelous charm and power. Perhaps within sight, at
one time, under guard for the evening feed on the fresh young grass,
there would be two thousand head of cattle. In the wagon village men,
women and children would be engaged as though at home. There was little
idleness in the train, and indeed there was much gravity and devoutness
in the personnel. At one fireside the young men might be roaring "Old
Grimes is dead, that good old man," or "Oh, then, Susannah"; but quite
as likely close at hand some family group would be heard in sacred
hymns. A strange envisagement it all made, in a strange environment, a
new atmosphere, here on the threshold of the wilderness.[1]
[Footnote 1: To get the local descriptions, the color, atmosphere,
"feel" of a day and a country so long gone by, any writer of to-day must
go to writers of another day. The Author would acknowledge free use of
the works of Palmer, Bryant, Kelly and others who give us journals of
the great transcontinental trail.]