OREGON! OREGON!
THE freakish resolves of the old-time trapper at least remained
unchanged for many days, but at last one evening he came to Molly's
wagon, his face grim and sad.
"Miss Molly," he said, "I'm come to say good-by now. Hit's for keeps."
"No? Then why? You are like an old friend to me. What don't I owe to
you?"
"Ye don't owe nothin' ter me yit, Miss Molly. But I want ye ter think
kindly o' old Jim Bridger when he's gone. I allow the kindest thing I
kin do fer ye is ter bring Will Banion ter ye."
"You are a good man, James Bridger," said Molly Wingate. "But then?"
"Ye see, Miss Molly, I had six quarts o' rum I got at Boise. Some folks
says rum is wrong. Hit ain't. I'll tell ye why. Last night I drinked up
my lastest bottle o' that Hundson's Bay rum. Hit war right good rum, an
ez I lay lookin' up at the stars, all ter oncet hit come ter me that I
was jest exactly, no more an' no less, jest ter the ha'r, ez drunk I was
on the leetle spree with Kit at Laramie. Warn't that fine? An' warn't
hit useful? Nach'erl, bein' jest even up, I done thought o' everything I
been fergettin'. Hit all come ter me ez plain ez a streak o' lightnin'.
What it was Kit Carson told me I know now, but no one else shall know.
No, not even you, Miss Molly. I kain't tell ye, so don't ask.
"Now I'm goin' on a long journey, an' a resky one; I kain't tell ye no
more. I reckon I'll never see ye agin. So good-by."
With a swift grasp of his hand he caught the dusty edge of the white
woman's skirt to his bearded lips.
"But, James--"
Suddenly she reached out a hand. He was gone.
* * * * *
One winter day, rattling over the icy fords of the road winding down the
Sandy from the white Cascades, crossing the Clackamas, threading the
intervening fringe of forest, there broke into the clearing at Oregon
City the head of the wagon train of 1848. A fourth of the wagons
abandoned and broken, a half of the horses and cattle gone since they
had left the banks of the Columbia east of the mountains, the cattle
leaning one against the other when they halted, the oxen stumbling and
limping, the calluses of their necks torn, raw and bleeding from the
swaying of the yokes on the rocky trail, their tongues out, their eyes
glassy with the unspeakable toil they so long had undergone; the loose
wheels wabbling, the thin hounds rattling, the canvas sagged and
stained, the bucket under each wagon empty, the plow at each tail gate
thumping in its lashings of rope and hide--the train of the covered
wagons now had, indeed, won through. Now may the picture of our own Ark
of Empire never perish from our minds.
On the front seat of the lead wagon sat stout Molly Wingate and her
husband. Little Molly's cart came next. Alongside the Caleb Price wagon,
wherein now sat on the seat--hugging a sore-footed dog whose rawhide
boots had worn through--a long-legged, barefoot girl who had walked
twelve hundred miles since spring, trudged Jed Wingate, now grown from a
tousled boy into a lean, self-reliant young man. His long whip was used
in baseless threatenings now, for any driver must spare cattle such as
these, gaunt and hollow-eyed. Tobacco protuberant in cheek, his feet
half bare, his trousers ragged and fringed to the knee, his sleeves
rolled up over brown and brawny arms, Jed Wingate now was enrolled on
the list of men.
"Gee-whoa-haw! You Buck an' Star, git along there, damn ye!" So rose his
voice, automatically but affectionately.
Certain French Canadians, old-time _engagés_ of the fur posts, now
become _habitants_, landowners, on their way home from Sunday chapel,
hastened to summon others.
"The families have come!" they called at the Falls, as they had at
Portland town.
But now, though safely enlarged at last of the confinement and the
penalties of the wagon train, the emigrants, many of them almost
destitute, none of them of great means, needed to cast about them at
once for their locations and to determine what their occupations were to
be. They scattered, each seeking his place, like new trout in a stream.