TANGLED BY A TORNADO. LOST THE PACE BUT KEPT THE COW. HUMAN ODDITIES.
NIGHT-GUARDS. WOLF SERENADES. AWE OF THE WILDERNESS. A STAMPEDE.
Few readers need peruse these pages to learn what a thunder-storm is
like, but many may not know what it is to encounter a fierce
electrical disturbance while surrounded by a herd of uncontrollable
cattle on the prairie.
On an occasion after having stopped for a "nooning," there loomed up
suddenly in the northwest a black, ominous cloud, revolving swiftly
and threateningly, as might the vapors from some gigantic cauldron;
variegated in black, blue and green, bespangled with red streaks of
lightning.
This display of the angry elements was making a broadening sweep
onward directly towards where we were. The air turned black and murky,
and was vibrant with electric tension. Flocks of buzzards flew low to
the earth about us, as if to be ready for the carrion of the impending
catastrophe. The fear instinct of the brute seized the cattle, and
they hovered together, bellowing, distraught with apprehension of
evil.
The whirlpool of atmospheric chaos grew more intense and rapidly
larger as it approached. Globules of water began to "spat! spat!" on
the ground, here and there, as the storm-cloud opened its batteries of
liquid balls. There was only such protection as the wagons afforded.
Whatever preparation we could make must be effected at once.
Knowing that if the cattle should take fright and run, it would be
better that they leave the wagons, I dropped the wagon-tongue to which
I was hitching a team, and called to a boy who was hooking up the
next wagon, telling him not to do so. He had, however, already
attached to that wagon the team consisting of three yoke of oxen.
The big drops of water were in a moment followed by hailstones, at
first very large and scattering, striking the ground each with a
vicious thud--a subdued "whack"; growing more frequent and presently
mingled with lesser ones; until, in the shortest moment, there was a
cloud-burst of hail and rain pouring upon us, a storm such as none of
us had ever witnessed.
The oxen, chained together in strings of three and four pairs, pelted
by the hail, were mutinous and altogether uncontrollable. My own
string, having turned crosswise of the front end of the wagon, were
pushing it backward, down the hillside. The team in charge of the boy,
being attached to their wagon and heading away from the storm, were
turning the wagon over. Knowing that the boy's mother was in the
"schooner," on a sick bed, I left my wagon and ran to that. As the
oxen, in trying to shield themselves from the hail, were forcing the
front wheels around under the wagon-box, I was fortunate enough to get
a shoulder under one corner of the box and exert sufficient force to
prevent the wagon upsetting. All this took little more than a minute.
The storm passed away as suddenly as it had come. Then I saw the wagon
which was my special charge lying on its side, at the bottom of the
slope; the bows of the cover fitting snugly into a sort of natural
gutter, with a swift current of muddy water and hailstones flowing
through the cover, as if it were a sluice-pipe. Everything in the
wagon was topsy-turvy; and, half buried in the heap were two little
girls, who had been riding in the vehicle. They were more frightened
than hurt, but complained loudly at being placed in a cold-storage
of hailstones.
[Illustration: The Author--Twenty years after]
Meantime, the sun beamed again, clear and hot, and we saw the
storm-cloud pursuing its course over the plain to the southeast,
leaving in its wake a wet path a few rods wide.
The other men had their hands full in caring for endangered members of
the party and the equipment. The loose stock had stampeded and were
far away, with some of the mounted men in desperate pursuit. They
eventually brought the cattle to a halt, about five miles away, where
the wagons overtook them when it was time to make camp.
Continuous travel over rough ground and through deep sand, and
ascending steep mountains, proved too great a strain for the endurance
of some outfits. From time to time we were obliged to witness
instances of extreme privation and hardship, usually the result of
inadequate preparation for the arduous journey. Some started with
only enough oxen to carry them in case all should remain serviceable;
and carried provisions for no more than the shortest limit of time
estimated; so that the mishap of losing an ox or two, or any delay,
worked a calamity. Some trains started so late, or were so much
delayed, that they were compelled to negotiate passage of the higher
mountains after the time when enormous snow-drifts had to be
encountered; further delay resulting, with exhaustion of strength and
depletion of supplies, in consequence of which many members of some
trains failed to reach their destination. A notable experience of this
kind was that of the Donner party, in 1846.
It was in one of the higher mountain regions that we overtook one Eben
Darby and his family. Darby had been with one of the trains in advance
of us, but being unable to keep the pace, he was obliged to fall
behind. He had one small wagon, two yoke of oxen, and a cow; the
latter led by a rope behind the wagon. His wife, with a young baby,
and the wife's brother, Danny Worley, were the only persons with
Darby. The wife was a weak, inexperienced girl; the child sickly. Mrs.
Darby's brother was a large, fat youth of nineteen, whose
distinguishing and inconvenient characteristic was an abnormal
appetite. Their provisions were nearly exhausted. The cow was to them
the real fountain of life. She was doing nobly--supplying them a quart
of milk a day, which was wonderful, considering the circumstances.
This milk fed the baby, and afforded a good substitute for butter, in
the form of milk gravy--on which Danny fared sumptuously every day.
Later their oxen drank of the alkali water of the Humboldt River, and
three of the four died in one night. Then the cow was yoked with the
remaining ox, two steers were loaned them by "good Samaritans" in our
company, and they were with us to the Sink of the Humboldt.
Meantime the milk supply grew less, and Mrs. Darby was compelled to
substitute water for milk in the gravy. This sop was not satisfactory
to Danny. One evening at meal time he was overheard by some of our
boys, saying, "I want milk in my gravy." Though reminded there was
only enough milk for the baby, he of the phenomenal appetite
reiterated, "I don't care, I want milk in my gravy." Thereafter
"Gravy" was the name by which he was known, so long as he traveled
with us.
This narrative would not do justice to the variety of individuals and
events without mention of another singular personage, a young fellow
who was "working his passage"; a sort of disconnected unit, whose
place became everywhere in the train, and who belonged to nobody. How
he got smuggled into the company no one has since been able to
recall. He was a sort of desert stowaway; tolerated because, though
eccentric and quite alarming in appearance, he was always in good
humor, and often useful, having a willingness to do as many of the
chores as others would trust him to perform. He was notable as a
physical curiosity, though not actually deformed. Low of stature, he
came to be known as "Shorty," the only name we ever had for him. As he
stood, his abnormally long arms enabled him to take his hat from the
ground without stooping. His legs were not mates in length, causing
him as he moved, with a quick, rocking gait, to create the impression
that he might topple backward; but somehow the longer leg always got
underneath at the critical instant, and restored the balance. His head
was large, and perfectly round; hair porcupinesque, each bristle
standing nearly perpendicular to the plane on which it grew. He had
no neck. Mouth small, and so round that it opened not unlike a bored
hole in a flesh-colored pumpkin.
"Shorty" asserted that he was a singer. He and "Jack" never sang
together, however--that is, they never did so any more, after trying
it once. "Shorty" and "Gravy" Worley became chums inseparable, except
on one occasion, when their friendship was temporarily ruptured by a
dispute over the ownership of a fishing hook. Anger grew hot, but when
they were about to come to blows, "Shorty" suddenly dropped on
"all-fours" and essayed to butt his adversary with his head, which
surprising mode of combat so disconcerted "Gravy" that he ran for his
quarters, wildly yelling, "Take him off, take him off."
For a time during the early part of the journey the horses and mules
were picketed at night, on the best pasture available; and before we
retired, all the animals were brought near the wagons, the loose
cattle bunched with them, and guards were placed, to prevent straying
of the stock or surprise by Indians. Later, for awhile, these
precautions were deemed unnecessary, though still later they had to be
resumed. The stock became accustomed to the daily routine, and after
the all-day travel, were quite willing, when they had finished their
evening grazing, to assemble near the camp and lie down for the night,
usually remaining comparatively quiet till morning. As if having some
realization of the lonely nature of the surroundings, the animals were
not disposed to stray off, except on rare occasions; but rather to
keep within sight of the people and the wagons.
There was proof of the theory that in some circumstances domestic
animals acquire some of that feeling that human creatures know, when
far from the habitations of man. There is a peculiar sensation in the
great and boundless contiguity of empty silence which works the senses
up to a feeling that is somewhat alike in man and beast--that there is
most comfort and protection near the center of the settlement or camp.
In this stillness of the night--and night on these plains was often
very still--any slight noise outside the camp startled and thrilled
the taut nerves. Not only was the night still; usually it was silent,
too.
But occasionally, when the silence was absolute, a couple or more of
prairie-wolves lurking in the vicinity, without the faintest note of
prelude, would startle the calm of night with their peculiar
commingling of barks, howls and wails,--a racket all their own. It was
the habit of these night prowlers of the desert to come as near to the
camp as their acute sense of safety permitted, and there, sitting on
their haunches, their noses pointed to the moon, render a serenade
that was truly thrilling. Two prairie-wolves, in a fugued duet, can
emit more disquieting noise, with a less proportion of harmony, than
any aggregation of several times their equal in numbers, not excepting
Indians on the war-path or a "gutter" band.
[Illustration: A coyote serenade]
That awe of the wilderness to which reference has been made, and its
effect on the nerves, may explain the stampede of cattle, often not
otherwise accounted for; which occurs sometimes in these hollow
solitudes. It occurs nowhere else that I have known.
Several times we experienced this strange exhibition of sudden panic;
the snapping, as it were, of the nerves, from undue tension, when,
instantly, from cause then to us unknown and unguessed, the whole band
of cattle, teams as well as loose stock, made a sudden, wild, furious
dash, in a compact mass; seeming instinctively to follow in whatever
direction the leader's impulse led him; drifting together and forward
as naturally as water flows to the current; with heads and tails high
in air; blindly trampling to the earth whatever chanced to be in their
path.
These were not in any sense wild stock. The cattle, horses and mules
were all animals that had been raised on the quiet farms of the Middle
West, well domesticated.
In the light of certain modern theories it might be said by some that
these otherwise docile animals stampeded on the unpeopled plains
because they heard the "call of the wild." There were, however,
occasions when the cause could be readily assigned for this temporary
casting off of restraint.
In one instance, already mentioned, a sudden, pelting hailstorm was
the undoubted cause; when, taking the stampede temper, they ran five
or six miles before the man, mounted on one of our fleetest
saddle-horses, got in front of the foremost of them and checked their
running.
On all such occasions control could be regained in only one way.
Speeding his horse till he overtook and passed the leader of the drove
the rider made his horse the leader; and as each loose animal always
followed whatever was in front, the horseman, by making a circuit and
gradually slackening the pace, led the drove around and back to place
in the line of travel.
Naturally one source of uneasiness was the thought of what our
situation would be if, on one of these occasions, we should fail to
regain control of these animals, so necessary to us in continuing the
westward journey. A stampede when some of the oxen were yoked to the
wagons was, of course, more serious in its immediate consequences than
when it happened while all were detached from the equipment.
A stampede occurred one day in a level stretch of country, open in
every direction; nothing in sight to cause alarm. There the emigrant
road showed plainly before us. The wagons were in open single file,
the loose stock drawn out in line at the rear. Men on horseback, hats
over their eyes, some of them with one leg curled over the pommel of
the saddle; lazily droning away the slow hours and the humdrum miles.
The women and children were stowed away on bundles of baggage and camp
stuff in the wagons, some of them asleep perhaps, rocked in their
"schooner" cradles. A few of the men and boys perchance were
strolling off the way, in the hope of starting a sage grouse or
rabbit from some sheltering clump of brush. During a specially quiet
routine like this; the cattle lolling behind the wagons, mostly
unattended, keeping the snail pace set by the patient teams; a steer
now and again turning aside to appropriate a tuft of bunch-grass;
their white horns rising and falling in the brilliant sunlight, with
the swaying motion of their bodies as they walked, shimmered like
waves of a lake at noonday before a gentle breeze: quickly as a clap
of the hands, every loose beast in the band, in the wildest fashion of
terror, started, straight in the course of the moving line--pell-mell,
they went, veering for nothing that they could run over; sweeping on,
with a roaring tramp, like muffled thunder, they passed along both
sides of the train. The teams, catching the frenzy, took up the race,
as best they could with their heavy impedimenta; all beyond control
of their drivers or the herders, who, startled from the reverie of
the moment, could do no better than dodge to such place of safety as
they found, and stand aghast at the spectacle. Fortunately the draft
oxen usually were forced to stop running before they went far, owing
to the weight of the wagons they hauled and their inability to break
the yokes.
In this particular instance the most serious casualty was the death of
a boy, about eight years of age, the son of Dr. Kidd. The child was
probably asleep in a wagon, and being aroused by the unusual
commotion, may have attempted to look out, when a jolt of the wagon
threw him to the ground, and he was trampled to death. The body was
kept in camp overnight, and the next morning wrapped in a sheet and
buried by the roadside.
This was in a vast stretch of lonely plain. As we journeyed through
it, viewing the trackless hills and rockribbed mountains not far away
on either side, mostly barren and uninviting, it was difficult to
conceive of that territory ever becoming the permanent homes of men.
Yet it is possible, and probable, that the grave of Dr. Kidd's little
boy is today within the limits of a populous community, or even
beneath a noisy thoroughfare of some busy town.