JAKE SHAMBERLAIN.
If Heaven’s climate approaches the perfect charm of an American
October, I accept my place in advance, and book my lodgings for
eternity.
The climate of the best zone in America is transcendent for its
purpose. Its purpose is to keep men at their keenest, at high edge
and high ardor all the time. Then, for enchanting luxury of repose,
when ardent summer has achieved its harvest, and all the measure of
the year is full, comes ripe October, with its golden, slumberous air.
The atmosphere is visible sunshine. Every leaf in the forest changes
to a resplendent blossom. The woods are rich and splendorous, but not
glaring. Nothing breaks the tranquil _wealthy_ sentiment of the time.
It is the year’s delightful holiday.
In such a season we rode through the bare defiles of the Wasatch
Mountains, wall of Utah on the east. We passed Echo Cañon, and the
other strait gates and rough ways through which the Latter-Day Saints
win an entrance to their Sion.
We met them in throngs, hard at work at such winning. The summer
emigration of Mormons was beginning to come in. No one would have
admitted their claim to saintship from their appearance. If they had no
better passport than their garb, “Avaunt! _Procul este profani!_” would
have cried any trustworthy janitor of Sion. Saints, if I know them,
are clean,--are not ragged, are not even patched. Their garments renew
themselves, shed rain like Macintosh, repel dust, sweeten unsavoriness.
These sham saints needed unlimited scouring, persons and raiment. We
passed them, when we could, to windward. Poor creatures! we shall see
more of their kindred anon.
We hastened on, for our way was long, and autumn’s hospitable days
were few. Just at the foot of those bare, bulky mounds of mountain by
which the Wasatch range tones off into the great plains between it and
the Rockys, we overtook the Salt Lake mail party going eastward. They
were travelling eight or ten men strong, with a four-mule wagon, and
several horses and mules driven beside for relays.
“If Jake Shamberlain is the captain of the party,” said Brent, when we
caught sight of them upon the open, “we’ll join them.”
“Who is Jake Shamberlain?”
“A happy-go-lucky fellow, whom I have met and recognized all over
the world. He has been a London policeman. He was pulling stroke-oar
in the captain’s gig that took me ashore from a dinner on board the
Firefly, British steamer, at the Piræus. He has been a lay brother in
a Carthusian convent. He married a pretty girl in Boston once, went
off on a mackerel trip, and when he came back the pretty girl had
bigamized. That made Mormon and polygamist of him. He came out two or
three years ago, and, being a thriving fellow, has got to himself lands
and beeves and wives without number. Biddulph and I stayed several days
with him when we came through in the summer. His ranch is down the
valley, toward Provo. He owns half the United States mail contract.
They told me in the city that he intended to run this trip himself. You
will see an odd compound of a fellow.”
“I should think so; policeman, acolyte, man-of-war’s-man, Yankee
husband, Mormon! Has he come to his finality?”
“He thinks so. He is a shrewd fellow of many smatterings. He says there
are only two logical religions in the civilized world,--the Popish
and the Mormon. Those two are the only ones that have any basis in
authority. His convent experience disenchanted him with Catholicism. He
is quite irreverent, is the estimable Jake. He says monks are a set
of snuffy old reprobates. He says that he found celibacy tended to all
manner of low vice; that monogamy disappointed him; so he tried the New
Revelation, polygamy and all, and has become an ardent propagandist and
exhorter. Take the man as he is, and he has plenty of brave, honest
qualities.”
We had by this time ridden up to the mail party. They were moving
slowly along. The night’s camping-spot was near. It was a bit of grassy
level on the bank of a river, galloping over the pebbles with its
mountain impetus still in it,--Green River, perhaps; Green, or White,
or Big Sandy, or Little Stony. My map of memory is veined with so many
such streams, all going in a hurry through barren plains, and no more
than drains on a water-shed, that I confuse their undistinguishing
names. Such mere business-like water-courses might as well be numbered,
after the fashion of the monotonous streets of a city, too new for the
consecration of history. Dear New England’s beloved brooks and rivers,
slow through the meadows and beneath the elms, tumbling and cascading
down the mountain-sides from under the darkling hemlocks into the
sparkle of noon, and leaping into white water between the files of
Northern birches,--they have their well-remembered titles, friendly and
domestic, or of sturdy syllables and wilderness sound. Such waters
have spoiled me for gutters,--Colorados, Arkansaws, Plattes, and
Missouris.
“Hillo, Shamberlain!” hailed Brent, riding up to the train.
“Howdydo? Howdydo? No swap!” responded Jake, after the Indian fashion.
“Bung my eyes! ef you’re not the mate of all mates I’m glad to see.
Pax vobiscrum, my filly! You look as fresh as an Aperel shad. Praisèd
be the Lord!” continued he, relapsing into Mormon slang, “who has
sent thee again, like a brand from the burning, to fall into paths of
pleasantness with the Saints, as they wander from the Promised Land to
the mean section where the low-lived Gentiles ripen their souls for
hell.”
Droll farrago! but just as Jake delivered it. He had the slang and the
swearing of all climes and countries at his tongue’s end.
“Hello, stranger!” said he, turning to me. “I allowed you was the
Barrownight.”
“It’s my friend, Richard Wade,” said Brent.
“Yours to command, Brother Wade,” Jake says hospitably. “Ef you turn
out prime, one of the out and outers, like Brother John Brent, I’ll tip
’em the wink to let you off easy at the Judgment Day, Gentile or not.
I’ve booked Brother John fur Paradise; Brother Joseph’s got a white
robe fur him, blow high, blow low!”
We rode along beside Shamberlain.
“What did you mean just now?” asked my friend. “You spoke of Wade’s
being the baronet.”
“I allowed you wouldn’t leave him behind.”
“I don’t understand. I have not seen him since we left you in the
summer. I’ve been on to California and back.”
“The Barrownight’s ben stoppin’ round in the Valley ever since. He
seems to have a call to stop. Prehaps his heart is tetched, and he is
goan to jine the Lord’s people. I left him down to my ranch, ten days
ago, playing with a grizzly cub, what he’s trying to make a gentleman
of. A pooty average gentleman it’ll make too.”
“Very odd!” says Brent to me. “Biddulph meant to start for home, at
once, when we parted. He had some errand in behalf of the lady he had
run away from.”
“Probably he found he could not trust his old wounds under her eyes
again. Wants another year’s crust over his scarified heart.”
“Quite likely. Well, I wish we had known he was in the Valley. We would
have carried him back with us. A fine fellow! Couldn’t be a better!”
“Not raw, as Englishmen generally are?”
“No; well ripened by a year or so in America.”
“Individuals need that cookery, as the race did.”
“Yes; I wish our social cuisine were a thought more scientific.”
“All in good time. We shall separate sauces by and by, and not compel
beef, mutton, and turkey to submit to the same gravy.”
“Meanwhile some of my countrymen are so under-done, and some so
over-done, that I have lost my taste for them.”
“Such social dyspepsia is soon cured on the plains. You will go back
with a healthy appetite. Did your English friend describe the lady of
his love?”
“No; it was evidently too stern a grief to talk about. He could keep up
his spirits only by resolutely turning his back on the subject.”
“It must needs have been a weak heart or a mighty passion.”
“The latter. A brave fellow like Biddulph does not take to his heels
from what he can overcome.”
By this time we had reached camp.
Horses first, self afterwards, is the law of the plains travel. A camp
must have,--
1. Water.
2. Fodder.
3. Fuel.
Those are the necessities. Anything else is luxury.
The mail party were a set of jolly roughs. Jake Shamberlain was
the type man. To encounter such fellows is good healthy education.
As useful in kind, but higher in degree, as going to a bear
_conversazione_ or a lion and tiger concert. Civilization mollifies the
race. It is not well to have hard knocks and rough usage for mind or
body eliminated from our training.
We joined suppers with our new friends. After supper we sat smoking our
pipes, and talking horse, Indians, bear-fights, scalping, and other
brutal business, such as the world has not outgrown.