"O, not many now, I am sure!" cheerily and optimistically would come
the answer.
As they climbed, and climbed, and climbed, the ripening service-berry,
blackened by weeks of attention by the unclouded sun, and the pine-hen
and the speckled beauties from the noisy trout-streams, added to their
comforts, and for a little while appeared to enliven the tired and
fading woman. A frosty night or two, a peak newly whitened with early
snow, put an invigorating thrill and pulse into the blood of the man
and the boy, but she crept just a little nearer to the camp fire of
evenings and found herself more and more languid in responding to the
call of the day that returned all too soon for her. At last, rolling
out on the Wahsatch side of the continental backbone, they encountered
very warm but shortening days, while the nights grew chillier. Having
passed to the north of Salt Lake by the trail so well and faithfully
marked by Mr. Ezra Meeker in recent years, they began to realize that
they were with the waters that flow to the west.
One evening, after the tin plates, iron forks and knives, and the
pewter spoons had been washed and returned to their box, and as they
were getting ready for their nightly rest, Mrs. Johnson said, wearily:
"Father, it just seems to me I would be glad if I never would waken
again. It seems I would enjoy never again hearing the everlasting
squeech, squeech of the wheels in the sand, and see the sun go down
day after day so red and so far away over those new mountains. O, I am
so tired!"
"Never mind, mother, we are not far from our new home now;" and moving
over to her side as she sat leaning against the wagon-tongue, the man
slipped his own tired arm about her shoulders and let her rest against
him, for he was indeed weary, and the trail _was_ wonderfully long.
The following morning he purposely lay still just a little longer than
was his custom, although he was most prudently desirous of making as
much speed as he could while the weather continued so good; he knew
the rains might soon set in and make travel over unmade roads much
worse than it already was.
When he arose he noiselessly crept away from her side and quietly
called the boy to go and bring up the horses and the cow, cautioning
him to take off the horse-bell and carry it so as not to arouse the
mother when he came to camp. Quietly as possible he made the fire and
prepared their breakfast of fare that was daily becoming scantier.
Then, when all was ready, he tiptoed through the sand to where she lay
under the spreading arms of a little desert juniper, such as are
occasionally found in the deserts, and where she had said the night
before she wished she could sleep forever. She looked so calm and
restful he hesitated to wake her; it seemed like robbery to take from
her one moment of the longed-for and hard-earned rest. Yet it was time
they were on their road, and the day was fine; so after a few minutes
he called, gently, "Mother, you're getting a nice rest, aren't you?"
She did not stir. He then stooped to kiss the languid lips--they were
cold. She was dead. They had been seeking a home by the shores of the
sunset sea; she had found the sunrise land.
It is a sad, solemn, and sacred thing to be with our dead, but to be
alone, hundreds of miles from the face of any friend, in such an hour,
is an experience few ever have to meet. Pioneer-like, the father scans
the horizon, locating all the prominent features of the landscape. He
makes a rude map, not forgetting the juniper. As best he can he
prepares the body for the burying. And such a burying! No lumber with
which to make even a rough box; nothing but their daily clothing and
nightly bedding was to be had. The unlined grave was more than usually
forbidding. The desert demon had trailed that brave body and was now
swallowing it up. They made the grave by the juniper where she last
slept, and, sorrowing, the father and the son went on, firm in the
resolve that the loved one should not always lie in a desert grave.
Forty years later a man past middle-age, riding a horse and leading
another, to whose packsaddle was fastened a box, went slowly along
that old trail in Southern Idaho, now almost obliterated by
many-footed Progress. He was scanning the hills and consulting a piece
of age-yellowed paper, broken at all its ancient creases. It was the
son obeying the dying request of the old father--going to find, if
possible, the spot where the tired mother went to sleep so long ago,
and bring all that remained to rest by his side.
It was no easy task. Fertile fields, whose irrigated areas now
presented billowy breasts of ripening grain; mighty ditches like
younger and better-behaved rivers; a railway following the general
direction of the old trail; ranch-houses and fat haystacks indenting
the sky-line once so bare of all except clumps of sagebrush--these all
conspired to make the task next to impossible.
Man may scratch the hillsides, but cannot mar the majesty of the
mountains; they were unchanged. The map he carried was the one his
father made on the spot more than a generation before. It had been
well made and the specifications were minute. After a long while,
carefully measuring and comparing, he found the spot to him so sacred.
The juniper tree, so rare in that section, had not been disturbed by
the new owner of the land, and as the precious burden, secured at
last, was borne away, it still stood on guard--as if lonely now. Like
father, like son. Both were faithfully bound by the strongest tie in
the universe--love!