A MORMON CARAVAN.
Still, as we rode along, the same rich, tranquil days of October; the
air always potable gold, and every breath nepenthe.
Early on one of the fairest of afternoons when all were fairest, we
reached Fort Bridger. Bridger had been an old hunter, trapper, and
by and by that forlorn hope of civilization, the holder of an Indian
trading-post. The spot is better known now. It was there that that
miserable bungle and blunder of an Administration more fool, if that
be possible, than knave,--the Mormon Expedition in 1858,--took refuge,
after its disasters on the Sweetwater.
At the moment of our arrival, Bridger’s Fort had just suffered capture.
Its owner was missing. The old fellow had deemed himself the squatter
sovereign of that bleak and sere region. He had built an adobe mud
fort, with a palisade, on a sweep of plain a degree less desert than
the deserts hard by. That oasis was his oasis, so he fondly hoped; that
mud fort, his mud fort; those willows and alders, his thickets; and
that trade, his trade.
But Bridger was one man, and he had powerful neighbors. It was a case
of “_O si annulus iste!_”--a Naboth’s-vineyard case. The Mormons did
not love the rugged mountaineer; that worthy Gentile, in turn, thought
the saints no better than so many of the ungodly. The Mormons coveted
oasis, fort, thicket, and trade. They accused the old fellow of selling
powder and ball to hostile Indians,--to Walker, chief of the Utes,
a scion, no doubt, of the Hookey Walker branch of that family. Very
likely he had done so. At all events, it was a good pretext. So, in
the name of the Prophet, and Brigham, successor of the Prophet, the
Latter-Day Saints had made a raid upon the post. Bridger escaped to the
mountains. The captors occupied the Gentile’s property, and spoiled his
goods.
Jake Shamberlain told us this story, not without some sympathy for the
exile.
“It’s olluz so,” says Jake; “Paul plants, and Apollyon gets the
increase. Not that Bridger’s like Paul, any more’n we’re like Apollyon;
but we’re goan to have all the cider off his apple trees.”
“I’m sorry old Bridger has come to grief,” said Brent to me, as we rode
over the plain toward the fort. “He was a rough, but worth all the
Latter-Day Saints this side of Armageddon. Biddulph and I stayed a week
with him last summer, when we came from the mountains about Luggernel
Alley.”
“How far is Luggernel Alley from this spot?”
“Fifty miles or so to the south and east. I almost fancy I recognize it
in that slight notch in the line of the blue sierra on the horizon. I
wonder if I shall ever see it again! If it were not so late, I should
insist upon taking you there now. There is no such gorge in the world.
And the springs, bold, liberal fountains, gushing out on a glittering
greensward! There are several of them, some boiling, some cold as
ice; and one, the Champagne Spring, wastes in the wilderness the most
delicate, sparkling, exhilarating tipple that ever reddened a lip or
freshened a brain.”
“Wait half a century; then you and I will go there by rail, with our
grandchildren, for draughts of the Fountain of Youth.”
“I should like to spend a honeymoon there, if I could find a wife
plucky enough to cross the plains.”
How well I remembered all this conversation afterwards, and not long
afterwards!
We rode up to the fort. A dozen or so of somewhat rubbishy soldiers,
the garrison, were lounging about.
“Will they expect a countersign,” asked I,--“some slogan of their
vulgarized Islamism?”
“Hardly!” replied Brent. “Only one man in the world can care about
assailing this dismal den. They need not be as ceremonious with
strangers as the Dutchmen are at Ehrenbreitstein and Verona.”
Jake and the main party stopped at the fort. We rode on a quarter of a
mile farther, and camped near a stream, where the grass was plenteous.
“Fulano and Pumps are in better condition than when we started,” said
I, while we were staking them out for a long feed. “The mustangs have
had all the drudgery; these aristocrats must be set to do their share
soon.”
“They are in prime racing order. If we had had them in training for
three months for a steeple-chase, or a flight, or a Sabine adventure,
or a rescue, they could not be in better trim than this moment. I
suppose their time to do their duty must be at hand, they seem so
ardent for it.”
We left our little caballada nibbling daintily at the sweetest spires
of self-cured hay, and walked back to the fort.
We stood there chatting with the garrison. Presently Brent’s quick eye
caught some white spots far away on the slope of the prairie, like
sails on the edge of a dreamy, sunny sea.
“Look!” said he, “there comes a Salt Lake emigration train.”
“Yes,” said a Mormon of the garrison, “that’s Elder Sizzum’s train.
Their forerunner came in this morning to choose the camping-spot.
There they be! two hundred ox-teams, a thousand Saints, bound for the
Promised Land.”
He walked off to announce the arrival, whistling, “Jordan is a hard
road to travel.”
I knew of Sizzum as the most seductive orator and foreign propagandist
of Mormonism. He had been in England some time, very successful at the
good work. The caravans we had already met were of his proselytes. He
himself was coming on with the last train, the one now in view, and
steering for Fort Bridger.
As we stood watching, the lengthening file of white-hooded wagons
crept slowly into sight. They came forward diagonally to our line of
view, travelling apart at regular intervals, like the vessels of a
well-ordered convoy. Now the whole fleet dipped into a long hollow, and
presently the leader rose slowly up over the ridge, and then slid over
the slope, like a sail winging down the broad back of a surge. So they
made their way along over the rolling sweep of the distance.
“Beautiful!” said Brent. “See how the white canvas goldens in this rich
October haze. Such scenes are the poetry of prairie life.”
“I am too sorry for the crews, to enjoy the sunlit sails.”
“Yes, the safer their voyage, the surer their wreck in that gulf of
superstition beyond the mountains.”
“Perhaps we waste sympathy. A man who has no more wit than to believe
the trash they teach, has no business with anything but stupid
drudgery. He will never suffer with discovering his faith to be a
delusion.”
“You may say that of a grown man; but think of the children,--to grow
up in desecrated homes, and never know the close and tender influence
of family nurture.”
“The state owes them an interference and an education.”
“So it does; and the women protection from polygamy, whether they will
or no.”
“Certainly. Polygamy makes woman a slave either by force, or influence
stronger than force. The state exists only to secure the blessings of
liberty to every soul within its borders, and so must free her.”
“Good logic, but not likely, quite yet, to guide legislation in our
country.”
“This is Sizzum’s last train; if the women here are no more fascinating
than their shabby sisters of its forerunners, we shall carry our hearts
safe home.”
“I cannot laugh about that,” said Brent. “My old dread revives,
whenever I see one of these caravans, that there may be in it some
innocent girl too young to choose, carried off by a fanatic father or
guardian. Think of the misery to a woman of any refinement!”
“But we have not seen any such.”
Larrap and Murker here joined us, and, overhearing the last remarks,
began to speak in a very disgusting tone of the women we had seen in
previous trains.
“I don’t wish to hear that kind of stuff,” said Brent, turning sternly
upon Larrap.
“It’s a free country, and I shall say what I blame please,” the fellow
said, with a grin.
“Then say it by yourself, and away from me.”
“You’re blame squimmidge,” said Larrap, and added a beastly remark.
Brent caught him by the collar, and gave him a shake.
Murker put his hand to a pistol and looked “Murder, if I dared!”
“None of that,” said I, stepping before him.
Jake Shamberlain, seeing the quarrel, came running up. “Now, Brother
Brent,” said Jake, “no shindies in this here Garden of Paradise. If the
gent has made a remark what teches you apologies is in order, an he’ll
make all far and squar.”
Brent gave the greasy man a fling.
He went down. Then he got up, with a trace of Bridger’s claim on his
red shirt.
“Yer needn’t be so blame hash with a feller,” said he. “I didn’t mean
no offence.”
“Very well. Learn to talk like a man, and not like a brute!” said Brent.
The two men walked off together, with black looks.
“You look disappointed, Shamberlain,” said I. “Did you expect a battle?”
“Ther’s no fight in them fellers,” said Jake; “but ef they can serve
you a mean trick they’ll do it; and they’re ambushin’ now to look in
the dixonary and see what it is. You’d better keep the lariats of that
black and that gray tied round your legs to-night, and every good
horsethief night while they’re along. They may be jolly dogs, and let
their chances slide at cards, but my notion is they’re layin’ low for
bigger hauls.”
“Good advice, Jake; and so we will.”
By this time the head wagons of Elder Sizzum’s train had crept down
upon the level near us. For the length of a long mile behind, the
serpentine line held its way. On the yellow rim of the world, with
softened outlines against the hazy horizon, the rear wagons were still
climbing up into view. The caravan lay like a slowly writhing hydra
over the land. Along its snaky bends, where dragon-wings should be,
were herds of cattle, plodding beside the “trailing-footed” teams, and
little companies of Saints lounging leisurely toward their evening’s
goal, their unbuilt hostelry on the plain.
Presently the hydra became a two-headed monster. The foremost wagon
bent to the right, the second led off to the left. Each successor,
as it came to the point of divergence, filed to the right or left
alternately. The split creature expanded itself. The two wings moved
on over a broad grassy level north of the fort, describing in regular
curve a great ellipse, a third of a mile long, half as much across.
On either flank the march was timed and ordered with the precision of
practice. This same manœuvre had been repeated every day of the long
journey. Precisely as the foremost teams met at the upper end of the
curve, the two hindmost were parting at the lower. The ellipse was
complete. It locked itself top and bottom. The train came to a halt.
Every wagon of the two hundred stopped close upon the heels of its file
leader.
A tall man, half pioneer, half deacon, in dress and mien, galloped up
and down the ring. This was Sizzum, so the by-standers informed us.
At a signal from him, the oxen, two and three yoke to a wagon, were
unyoked, herded, and driven off to wash the dust from their protestant
nostrils, and graze over the russet prairie. They huddled along, a
great army, a thousand strong. Their brown flanks grew ruddy with the
low sunshine. A cloud of golden dust rose and hung over them. The air
was loud with their lowing. Relieved from their drags, the herd frisked
away with unwieldy gambolling. We turned to the camp, that improvised
city in the wilderness.
Nothing could be more systematic than its arrangement. Order is welcome
in the world. Order is only second to beauty. It is, indeed, the
skeleton of beauty. Beauty seeks order, and becomes its raiment. Every
great white-hooded, picturesque wagon of the Mormon caravan was in its
place. The tongue of each rested on the axle of its forerunner, or was
ranged upon the grass beneath. The ellipse became a fort and a corral.
Within, the cattle could be safely herded. Marauding Redskins would
gallop about in vain. Nothing stampedable there. Scalping Redskins,
too, would be baffled. They could not make a dash through the camp,
whisk off a scalp, and vanish untouched. March and encampment both had
been marshalled with masterly skill.
“Sizzum,” Brent avowed to me, _sotto voce_, “may be a blind guide
with ditchward tendencies in faith. He certainly knows how to handle
his heretics in the field. I have seen old tacticians, Maréchales and
Feldzeugmeisters, in Europe, with El Dorado on each shoulder, and
Golconda on the left breast, who would have tied up that train into
knots that none of them would be Alexander enough to cut.”