BELATED GRACE FOR A CHRISTMAS DINNER.
After fighting through a ten-hour blizzard that swept across the plains
from the Elk Mountain country our wagon-train reached the foothills of
the Medicine Bow range, where there was shelter for the work cattle
along a swift running stream. The snow was piled in great drifts
everywhere except upon exposed high spots, and it seemed impossible for
us to proceed farther, for we knew that along the government trail just
beyond, and 1,000 feet higher, that the drifts would be so deep that a
long camp where we had stopped would be necessary.
Ten men were tolled off by the wagon-boss to chop down young quaking
aspen trees, the bark and small twigs of which furnished appetizing
fodder for the bulls. Another gang climbed a sidehill and with axes
felled a group of stunted pines for the side walls of a cabin; still
others were sent into a "burnt and down" piece of timber to gather well
seasoned dead pitch pine for firewood.
The storm lasted until six o'clock in the evening, then continued as an
old-fashioned heavy snowfall with no wind, increasing the level of the
snow to the tops of the wheels of our corraled wagons. Apparently they
were doomed to stay where they were until spring.
Next morning there was a let-up. Then the blizzard began again in all
its fury--only such a blizzard as one can see in but one other place on
earth, judging from Dana's description of his experience in going around
the Horn. The cattle, with almost human intelligence, 200 head of them,
crowded toward the big bonfires of pitch, and with long faces looked
mournfully upon the scene. They seemed to know, as we did, that the
prospects were not bright for our cavalcade. Certainly there was no
grass in sight now, not even on the round-topped knolls bordering our
little valley, for the night fall of snow was heavy and damp, and
finally, when the thermometer registered a few degrees below zero, the
grass was sealed against the tough noses and even the hoofs of the
hungry bulls. An attempt was made by a scouting party to find a clear
feeding place on the back trail, but a day's investigation resulted in
failure. Not a blade of grass could be found--all sealed with a heavy
crust that would, in most places, carry a horse and rider.
The storm continued, after an eight-hour let-up, the temperature rising.
Two feet more fell on top of the crust, then came another freeze and a
new crust. After twenty-four hours another blizzard from the north,
consisting of sleet and snow and some rain, was like a sandstorm in
summer on the plains below. It was fierce, nearly freezing and blinding
both men and cattle. The poor bulls were more forlorn than ever. They
gnawed the very wood of the aspens, and there wasn't enough of that.
On the last crust of all this snow and sleet it was finally found
possible to take the oxen farther along into the mountains, where four
men drove them. Others went ahead with axes and for two weeks cut aspens
and sought out hidden protected places in the valleys where there were a
few blades of grass and some succulent underbrush.
One day, when the sun was shining brightly on the white mantle and the
distant peaks of the majestic mountains of blue stood out like a
painting, Nate Williams, wagon-boss, spoke:
"Do you know," he said to the fellows who were carving the carcass of a
faithful old bullock, "that tomorrow is Christmas?" None had thought of
it.
"And," he continued, "do you know we are liable to stay where we are
until the Fourth of July, if we don't get a move on?"
There were no suggestions.
"Furthermore," added Williams, "we haven't much else to eat but
beef--there are just five 100-pound sacks of flour in the mess wagon--no
bacon nor canned goods. Its a case of shoveling a road to Crane's Neck."
Crane's Neck was a mountain twist in the road, a mile from camp. If the
road could be cleared to that point there would be fair hauling for five
miles in the range to another stretch that had been filled in places
with from ten to twenty feet of snow, while one spot was covered by a
slide from a mountain to a depth of forty feet and for a considerable
distance along the trail.
For three hours plans were discussed, and it was finally determined to
go to work with shovels and picks, but not until after Christmas. Our
caravan included a blacksmith's forge, also a regular wrecking outfit,
and in a short time big wooden shovels were made from blocks of pine
with handles stoutly attached with iron bands.
The cook was a youth of twenty and had all the enthusiasm of the
adventurer. He had spent a year on a whaler and knew what it meant to
drift in the ice north of Point Barrow. This present situation, he said,
was a picnic; so was the one in the Arctic. It couldn't be so bad that
he wished to be snuggled away in a feather bed somewhere east of the
Missouri River. That would be too ordinary.
"If I could sit down to a table at the best hotel in the land," he said,
"I'd prefer to eat the dinner that I'm going to cook for you fellows
tomorrow."
Williams sneered. "Yes," he said, "we put old Tex (a long-horn bull) out
of his starving misery and the boys have found his liver to be O. K.
Maybe you can give us a liver pie."
"I'll do better than that," said the boy; "I'll not only give you a beef
stew, but a pudding that you can't buy outside of London or
Liverpool--a plum duff--and a cake. Old Tex will also be on the menu in
several places, for his tenderloin looks good, and there are a few
steaks which, when properly treated with a maul on the top of a stump,
will be as good as you will get in a 'Frisco water front lodging, and
better than any of you fellows have had since we hit the drifts."
I have eaten meals that mother used to cook, I've been famished during a
sea voyage, and devoured a Norwegian sailor's pea soup; I've
participated in several real banquets in New York; I've dined at
Delmonico's and at Sherry's, at Young's in Boston, and I've feasted in a
circus cook tent; but my Christmas dinner in the foothills of Wyoming in
1874, under the circumstances I have but faintly described, still is a
fond memory and holds the record as the best meal I ever ate. It was as
follows:
MENU
Marrowbone Soup--"Tex" Water Cress
Beef Stew--"Tex"
Hamburg Steak--"Tex"
Planked Porterhouse Steak--"Tex"
Tenderloin Steak-"Tex" Roast Beef--"Tex"
Corn Bread Wheat Bread
English Plum Pudding--Hard and Soft Sauce
Raisins Cake Coffee Tea
(No butter or milk) (Lots of salt and pepper)
The corn bread was made from meal milled by the cook from shelled corn
in the cargo. The "plums" were raisins, of which the cook had a few
pounds. He used wheat flour, baking powder and grease saved from the
final ration of the bacon which gave out a week before Christmas. The
hard sauce was made with sugar and grease and a flavoring extract. The
soft or liquid sauce contained a "remedy" requisitioned from a
homeopathic quantity found in the wagon-boss' medicine chest--a few
spoonfuls of brandy. The watercress was found two miles away at a
spring. The boys called it "pepper grass." There it was fresh and green,
protected by spring water which never freezes, and in some places it was
peeping out from the edge of the snow at the brookside.
And now about whisky. There were sixty men in this camp, and in one of
the big wagons were three barrels of whisky, but it belonged to the post
trader at Fort Fetterman, and it was a tradition not even broken on this
exceptional passage from Medicine Bow on the U. P. to Fort Fetterman on
the North Platte that a consignment of hard liquor was as safe in a bull
train as it would be anywhere on earth, and that it would reach its
destination untouched. Few men drank intoxicants on these trips. It was
a crime to be found with whisky, punishable by banishment from camp, and
that might have meant death. But at both ends of the journey--that's
another story.
The plainsman and mountaineer, the bullwhacker and the stage-driver,
when chilled, drank water. Whisky caused him to perspire, and that was
bad. He did not often use it when on duty.
One of the peculiar things about this Christmas dinner is the fact that
there were no mountain grouse, no sage hen, no antelope, deer, nor elk
for the menu. The truth is the storm drove everything of the kind in
another direction--the direction in which we were slowly moving--and
some time later, when we emerged upon the other side of the range with
our ox-power so greatly reduced that we made less than a mile of
progress a day, the herds of elk stampeded a dozen times past our camps,
and the "fool grouse" sat a dozen in a group upon the pine boughs in the
mountains and refused to move, allowing us to kill them, if so disposed,
one at a time; but we did it only once, just to prove that it could be
done. (Colonel Roosevelt, please note!)
It took us a couple of weeks to shovel our way out, and while the sun
shone in the middle of the day hardly a flake of the snow melted. The
air was at times biting cold, but invigorating, and every man, including
the boss and the cook and even the night herder, fell to the work with a
will that finally meant victory. In places we operated in the drifts as
you see the excavators in a city cellar or subway operate, digging down
to the surface and then benching as the open-ground miners or cellar
excavators do, the men below tossing the blocks of snow up to the bench
above and they in turn passing it to the top of the drift.
Once or twice, in narrow passages, it was necessary to build several
benches. In one place we began to tunnel, but the plan was given up, for
our wagons, the regulation prairie schooners, would require a passage
big enough for a railroad furniture car to pass through.
After the high plateau was reached--the land that represented the
watershed of the Platte Valley--it was clear sailing, and while
food--wild game--was plentiful, and we ate lots of it, the memory of our
Christmas dinner remained to remind us after all that in the midst of
greatest hardships and suffering we often find something to be thankful
for, something to bring us to our senses when we grumble or complain of
our ill-luck or misfortunes.
Had I been as appreciative when I partook of this mountain dinner as I
am today for the blessings of Divine Providence, I would have been able
to say, in relating this story, that we properly gave thanks to Him who
is responsible for all our blessings and who chasteneth us for our
wickedness; but I was not properly appreciative, neither were my rough
but honest companions. Therefore, I take this opportunity to say grace
more than forty years late:
_Thank God for that snowbound Christmas dinner._