women and older children had to walk. In a few days they were out of
the valley, to which they had given the gruesome name, “Death Valley.”
Their food consisted of soup made from the beans and flour boiled with
some of the dried beef, some of which they also ate. When five days
out, their stock of beans became entirely exhausted, but at the place
where they were to camp for the night was the sack of whole wheat that
Manley and Rodgers had buried. This they had hidden so well that they
had considerable trouble locating it. When found, although it had been
buried in the dry desert sand, it had absorbed enough moisture from it
that it had swollen so that the bag was nearly at the bursting point.
But it was sweet and quite fit for food. At this camp they had to kill
an ox.
They had had no water all day. Manley and Rodgers had gone on ahead
and started a fire, and made what preparations they could to ease the
hardship of the situation, selecting the best spots on which to sleep,
spreading the blankets, and having the soup ready to serve, so that
when the weary, bedraggled women and children arrived, they could at
once lie down and be served with their share.
The women declared that but for the children they would cheerfully lie
down and die, rather than endure another such day. The distance from
the last camp to this spring was longer and the trail much rougher than
on any of the previous days. Near to this camp, too, they had to pass
the place where the bodies of Mr. Fish and Mr. Isham lay, and which
Manley and Rodgers had covered with sand.
At this camp they had to make moccasins for themselves and also for the
oxen, whose feet had become so lacerated and tender from tramping over
knife-edged stones, it was feared that they might give out altogether.
These moccasins they made from the hide of the ox they had just
slaughtered.
It was four days’ travel to the next water hole, and all the water
they could have during that time was what they could carry in their
canteens. This they did not dare use during the day, but must save for
their soup; none but the children could have any water, and they only
at long intervals, and after they had cried hard for it.
The third night they had to make their soup with salt water which
they found in a water hole; the next day they had no water at all for
themselves or the oxen, only a little for the children, till they
arrived at water holes at the base of a snow mountain. The oxen had to
subsist on greasewood, a shrub resembling a currant bush.
They were nine days from camp, their beans, flour and wheat all used
up. They must now subsist on the beef obtained by killing their
oxen. An ox yielded very little meat, and it was of the very poorest
quality, giving very little nutrition; always they had to kill the
poorest-conditioned one, so as to make sure the others could travel on,
for they were now reduced to skin and bone.
The moccasins of the entire party were again completely worn out, so
that, as one of the women expressed it, their feet ached like the
tooth-ache; not only were their feet blistered and sore, but their
dresses were worn off nearly to their knees by being draggled through
the chaparral of the desert. But they could not stop long enough to
kill an ox or make moccasins, but must plod on that the lives of the
whole party might be saved. Their camp would be at a spring, and they
must reach it that day, but they were caught by darkness four hours
short of it, and did not reach it till four hours after daylight the
next day; and to make matters worse, a rain-storm, the second they had
encountered since leaving Wisconsin, came up that turned to snow, and
at sunrise there were two inches of snow on the ground. Their condition
was truly miserable. They rested long enough at the next spring to kill
an ox and make moccasins. The amount of meat procured from the ox when
dried was easily carried in the mule’s pack, it was so very small.
The next morning, after their meal of soup made from the meat of the
ox, they felt somewhat refreshed, and in better spirits. It was a two
days’ journey to the next water hole. They were now in what later came
to be called the Mojave Desert, a waterless, barren plain, on which
nothing grew with which they could make a fire, nothing to which they
could even tie their animals, and when they camped that night, they
simply tied them together. They could not make a fire; they had to
content themselves with a little dried meat, and a little sip of water,
for they were still another day from water, that they reached late the
following afternoon, and also found a little grass for the cattle.
The next day, a few hours after starting, they lost the trail; the
ground was of such a nature it could not retain marks of a trail. It
was plenteously covered with the bones of animals, however, showing
that many had passed that way, all of which so depressed the women
that they had to go into camp until the next morning. That night they
came to the water hole they had planned to reach the night before; all
that the cattle could have for food was a few sage-bushes at which
they nibbled. The next day they were in a hilly country, and the day
following they came to the little babbling brook that had so delighted
Manley and Rodgers the first time they saw it.
Here Manley writes in his journal, “New life seemed to come to the dear
women. ‘O what a beautiful stream!’ they cried, and they dip in a tin
cup and drink, and drink again, then watch the rollicking brook as if
it was the most entertaining thing in the whole wide earth.”
It was now the seventh day of March, 1850, twenty-two days since they
left their wagons, and four months since they entered Death Valley, and
about a year since they left Wisconsin. It had been for them a year
of wandering, struggle and terrible hardship. They took a long rest,
the cattle eating their fill, and then slowly traveled to the home of
the settler where Manley and Rodgers had obtained their supplies. The
woman recognized them, and when the men came home they were handsomely
treated.
None of our travelers had a cent of money. Mr. Arcane sold his two
steers, all the property he had in the world, to the Mexicans, and with
the money obtained started for San Pedro, the post of Los Angeles;
there he hoped to obtain a passage on a sailing vessel to San
Francisco. The Bennetts, Manley and Rodgers leisurely went on to Los
Angeles, some thirty miles away, and from there found their way to the
mines.
[Illustration: Once more the train faced the desert. _Page 115._]
A FRONTIER DUEL
EMERSON HOUGH
1848
From “The Covered Wagon.” Reprinted by permission of the publishers, D.
Appleton and Company, New York.[12]
Once more the train, now permanently divided into two, faced the
desert, all the men and many women now afoot, the kine low-headed,
stepping gingerly in their new rawhide shoes. Gray, grim work,
toiling over the dust and sand. But at the head wagon, taking over
an empire foot by foot, flew the great flag. Half fanatics? That may
be. Fanatics, so called, also had prayed and sung and taught their
children, all the way across to the Great Salt Lake. They, too, carried
books. And within one hour after their halt near the Salt Lake they
began to plow, began to build, began to work, began to grow, and made a
country.
The men at the trading post saw the Missouri wagons pull out ahead.
Two hours later the Wingate train followed, as the lot had determined.
Woodhull remained with his friends in the Wingate group, regarded now
with an increasing indifference, but biding his time.
Bridger held back his old friend Jackson even after the last train
pulled out. It was midafternoon when the start was made.
“Don’t go just yet, Bill,” said he. “Ride on an’ overtake ’em. Nothin’
but rattlers an’ jack-rabbits now fer a while. The Shoshones won’t hurt
’em none. I’m powerful lonesome, somehow. Let’s you an’ me have one
more drink.”
“That sounds reas’nable,” said Jackson. “Shore that sounds reas’nable
to me.”
They drank of a keg which the master of the post had hidden in his
lodge, back of his blankets; drank again of high wines diluted but
uncolored--the “likker” of the fur trade.
They drank from tin cups, until Bridger began to chant, a deepening
sense of his old melancholy on him.
“Good-by!” he said again and again, waving his hand in general
vagueness to the mountains.
“We was friends, wasn’t we, Bill?” he demanded again and again; and
Jackson, drunk as he, nodded in like maudlin gravity. He himself began
to chant. The two were savages again.
“Well, we got to part, Bill. This is Jim Bridger’s last rendyvous. I’ve
rid around an’ said good-by to the mountings. Why don’t we do it the
way the big partisans allus done when the rendyvous was over? ’Twas old
Mike Fink an’ his friend Carpenter begun hit fifty year ago. Keel-boat
men on the river, they was. There’s as good shots left to-day as then,
and as good friends. You an’ me has seed hit; we seed hit at the very
last meetin’ o’ the Rocky Mountain Company men, before the families
come. An’ nary a man spilled the whisky on his partner’s head.”
“That’s the truth,” assented Jackson, “though some I wouldn’t trust
now.”
“Would ye trust me, Bill, like I do you, fer sake o’ the old times,
when friends was friends?”
“Shore I would, no matter how come, Jim. My hand’s stiddy as a rock,
even though my shootin’ shoulder’s a leetle stiff from that Crow arrer.”
Each man held out his firing arm, steady as a bar.
“I kin still see the nail heads on the door yan. Kin ye, Bill?”
“Plain! It’s a waste o’ likker, Jim, fer we’d both drill the cups.”
“Are ye a-skeered?”
“I told ye not.”
“Chardon!” roared Bridger to his clerk. “You, Chardon, come here!”
The clerk obeyed, though he and others had been discreet about
remaining visible as this bout of old-timers at their cups went on.
Liquor and gunpowder usually went together.
“Chardon, ye git two fresh tin cups an’ bring ’em here. Bring a piece
o’ charcoal to spot the cups. We’re goin’ to shoot ’em off each other’s
heads, in the old way. You know what I mean.”
Chardon, trembling, brought the two tin cups, and Bridger with a burnt
ember sought to mark plainly on each a black bull’s-eye. Silence fell
on the few observers, for all the emigrants had now gone and the open
space before the rude trading building was vacant, although a few faces
peered around corners. At the door of the tallest tepee two native
women sat, a young and an old, their blankets drawn across their eyes,
accepting fate, and not daring to make a protest.
“How!” exclaimed Bridger as he filled both cups and put them on the
ground. “Have ye wiped yer barrel?”
“Shore I have. Let’s wipe again.”
Each drew his ramrod from the pipes and attached the cleaning worm with
its twist of tow, kept handy in belt pouch in muzzle-loading days.
“Clean as a whistle!” said Jackson, holding out the end of the rod.
“So’s mine, pardner. Old Jim Bridger never disgraced hisself with a
rifle.”
“Ner me,” commented Jackson. “Hold a hair full, Jim, an’ cut high the
top o’ the tin. That’ll be safer fer my skelp, an’ hit’ll let less
whisky out’n the hole. We got to drink what’s left. S’pose’n’ we have a
snort now?”
“Atter we both shoot we kin drink,” rejoined his friend, with a
remaining trace of judgment. “Go take stand whar we marked the scratch.
Chardon, damn ye, carry the cup down an’ set hit on his head, an’ ef
you spill a drop I’ll drill ye, d’ye hear?”
The _engagé’s_ face went pale.
“But Monsieur Jim----” he began.
“Don’t ‘Monsieur Jim’ me or I’ll drill a hole in ye anyways! Do-ee-do
what I tell ye, boy! Then if ye crave fer to see some ol’-time shootin’
come on out, the hull o’ ye, an’ take a lesson, damn ye!”
“Do-ee ye shoot first, Bill,” demanded Bridger. “The light’s soft, an’
we’ll swap atter the fust fire, to git hit squar for the hindsight, an’
no shine on the side o’ the front sight.”
“No, we’ll toss fer fust,” said Jackson, and drew out a Spanish dollar.
“Tails fer me last!” he called as it fell. “An’ I win! You go fust,
Jim.”
“Shore I will ef the toss-up says so,” rejoined his friend. “Step off
the fifty yard. What sort o’ iron ye carryin’, Bill?”
“Why do ye ask? Ye know ol’ Mike Sheets in Virginia never bored a
better. I’ve never changed.”
“Ner I from my old Hawken. Two good guns, an’ two good men, Bill, o’
the ol’ times--the ol’ times! We kain’t say fairer’n this, can we,
at our time o’ life, fer favor o’ the old times, Bill? We got to do
somethin’, so’s to kind o’ git rested up.”
“No man kin say fairer,” said his friend.
They shook hands solemnly and went onward with their devil-may-care
test, devised in a historic keel-boat man’s brain, as inflamed then by
alcohol as their own were now.
Followed by the terrified clerk, Bill Jackson, tall, thin and grizzled,
stoical as an Indian, and too drunk to care much for consequences,
so only he proved his skill and his courage, walked steadily down
to the chosen spot and stood, his arms folded, after leaning his own
rifle against the door of the trading room. He faced Bridger without a
tremor, his head bare, and cursed Chardon for a coward when his hand
trembled as he balanced the cup on Jackson’s head.
“Damn ye,” he exclaimed, “there’ll be plenty lost without any o’ your
spillin’!”
“Air ye all ready, Bill?” called Bridger from his station, his rifle
cocked and the delicate triggers set, so perfect in their mechanism
that the lightest touch against the trigger edge would loose the hammer.
“All ready!” answered Jackson.
The two, jealous still of the ancient art of the rifle, which nowhere
in the world obtained nicer development than among men such as these,
faced each other in what always was considered the supreme test of
nerve and skill; for naturally a man’s hand might tremble, sighting
three inches above his friend’s eyes, when it would not move a hair
sighting center between the eyes of an enemy.
Bridger spat out his tobacco chew and steadily raised his rifle. The
man opposite him stood steady as a pillar, and did not close his eyes.
The silence that fell on those who saw became so intense that it seemed
veritably to radiate, reaching out over the valley to the mountains as
in a hush of leagues.
For an instant, which to the few observers seemed an hour, these two
figures, from which motion seemed to have passed forever, stood frozen.
Then there came a spurt of whitish-blue smoke and the thin dry crack of
the border rifle.
The hand and eye of Jim Bridger, in spite of advancing years, remained
true to their long training. At the rifle crack the tin cup on the head
of the statuelike figure opposite him was flung behind as though by the
blow of an invisible hand. The spin of the bullet, acting on the liquid
contents, ripped apart the seams of the cup and flung the fluid wide.
Then and not till then did Jackson move.
He picked up the empty cup, bored center directly through the black
spot, and turning walked with it in his hand toward Bridger, who was
wiping out his rifle once more.
“I call hit mighty careless shootin’,” said he, irritated. “Now look
what ye done to the likker! If ye’d held a leetle higher, above the
level o’ the likker, like I told ye, she wouldn’t have busted open
thataway. It’s nacherl, thar warn’t room in the cup fer both the likker
an’ the ball. That’s wastin’ likker, Jim, an’ my mother told me when I
was a boy, ‘Willful waste makes woeful want!’”
“I call hit a plumb-center shot,” grumbled Bridger. “Do-ee look now!
Maybe ye think ye kin do better shootin’ yerself than old Jim Bridger!”
“Shore I kin, an’ I’ll show ye! I’ll bet my rifle aginst yourn--ef I
wanted so sorry a piece as yourn--I kin shoot that close to the mark
an’ not spill no likker a-tall! An’ ye can fill her two-thirds full an’
put yer thumb in fer the balance ef ye like.”
“I’ll just bet ye a new mule agin yer pony ye kain’t do nothin’ o’ the
sort!” retorted Bridger.
“All right, I’ll show ye. O’ course, ye got to hold still.”
“Who said I wouldn’t hold still?”
“Nobody. Now you watch me.”
He stooped at the little water ditch which had been led in among the
buildings from the stream and kneaded up a little ball of mud. This he
forced into the handle of the tin cup, entirely filling it, then washed
off the body of the cup.
“I’ll shoot the fillin’ out’n the handle an’ not out’n the cup!” said
he. “Mud’s cheap, an’ all the diff’runce in holdin’ is, ef I nicked the
side o’ yer haid it’d hurt ye ’bout the same as ef what I nicked the
center of hit. Ain’t that so? We’d orto practice inderstry an’ ’conomy,
Jim. Like my mother said, ‘Penny saved is er penny yearned.’ ‘Little
drops o’ water, little grains o’ sand,’ says she, ‘a-makes the mighty
o-o-ocean an’ the plea-ea-sant land.’”
“I never seed it tried,” said Bridger, with interest, “but I don’t
see why hit hain’t practical. Whang away, an’ ef ye spill the whisky
shootin’ to one side, or cut ha’r shootin’ too low, your _caballo_ is
mine--an’ he ain’t much!”
With no more argument, he in turn took up his place, the two changing
positions so that the light would favor the rifleman. Again the
fear-smitten Chardon adjusted the filled cup, this time on his master’s
bared head.
“Do-ee turn her sideways now, boy,” cautioned Bridger. “Set the han’le
sideways squar’, so she looks wide. Give him a fa’r shot now, fer I’m
interested in this yere thing, either way she goes. Either I lose ha’r
er a mule.”
But folding his arms he faced the rifle without batting an eye, as
steady as had been the other in his turn.
Jackson extended his long left arm, slowly and steadily raising the
silver bead up from the chest, the throat, the chin, the forehead of
his friend, then lowered it, rubbing his sore shoulder.
“Tell him to turn that han’le squar’ to me, Jim!” he called. “The damn
fool has got her all squegeed around to one side.”
Bridger reached up a hand and straightened the cup himself.
“How’s that?” he asked.
“All right! Now hold stiddy a minute.”
Again the Indian women covered their faces, sitting motionless. And at
last came again the puff of smoke, the faint crack of the rifle, never
loud in the high, rarefied air.
The straight figure of the scout never wavered. The cup still rested on
his head. The rifleman calmly blew the smoke from his barrel, his eye
on Bridger as the latter now raised a careful hand to his head. Chardon
hastened to aid, with many ejaculations.
The cup still was full, but the mud was gone from inside the handle as
though poked out with a finger!
“That’s what I call shootin’, Jim,” said Jackson, “an’ reas’nable
shootin’ too. Now spill half o’ her where she’ll do some good, an’ give
me the rest. I got to be goin’ now. I don’t want yer mule. I fust come
away from Missoury to git shet o’ mules!”
Chardon, cupbearer, stood regarding the two wild souls whom he never in
his own more timid nature was to understand. The two mountain-men shook
hands. The alcohol had no more than steadied them in their rifle work,
but the old exultation of their wild life came to them now once more.
Bridger clapped hand to mouth and uttered his old war-cry before he
drained his share of the fiery fluid.
“To the ol’ days, friend!” said he once more; “the days that’s gone,
when men was men, an’ a friend could trust a friend!”
“To the ol’ days!” said Jackson in turn. “An’ I’ll bet two better shots
don’t stand to-day on the soil o’ Oregon! But I got to be goin’, Jim.
I’m goin’ on to the Columby. I may not see ye soon. It’s far.”
He swung into his saddle, the rifle in its loop at the horn. But
Bridger came to him, a hand on his knee.
“I hate to see ye go, Bill.”
“Shore!” said Jackson. “I hate to go. Take keer yerself, Jim.”
The two Indian women had uncovered their faces and, gone inside the
lodge. But old Jim Bridger sat down, back against a cottonwood, and
watched the lopping figure of his friend jog slowly out into the
desert. He himself was singing now, chanting monotonously an old Indian
refrain that lingered in his soul from the days of the last rendezvous.
At length he arose and, animated by a sudden thought, sought out his
tepee once more. Dang Yore Eyes greeted him with shy smiles of pride.
“Heap shoot, Jeem!” said she. “No kill-um. Why?”
She was decked now in her finest, ready to use all her blandishments on
her lord and master. Her cheeks were painted red, her wrists were heavy
with copper. On a thong at her neck hung a piece of yellow stone which
she had bored through with an awl, or rather with three or four awls,
after much labor, that very day.
Bridger picked up the ornament between thumb and finger. He said no
word, but his fingers spoke.
“Other pieces. Where?”
“White man. Gone--out there.” She answered in the same fashion.
“How, cola!” she spoke aloud. “Him say, ‘How, cola,’ me.” She smiled
with much pride over her conquest, and showed two silver dollars.
“Swap!”
In silence Bridger went into the tepee and pulled the door flaps.
EL DORADO
BAYARD TAYLOR
From “Eldorado.” Reprinted by permission of the authorized publishers,
G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York.
I
ACROSS THE ISTHMUS
I left the Falcon at day-break in the ship’s boat. We rounded the high
bluff on which the castle stands and found beyond it a shallow little
bay, on the eastern side of which, on low ground, stand the cane huts
of Chagres. Piling up our luggage on the shore, each one set about
searching for the canoes which had been engaged the night previous,
but, without a single exception, the natives were not to be found,
or when found, had broken their bargains. The canoes were beached on
the mud, and their owners engaged in rethatching their covers with
split leaves of the palm. The doors of the huts were filled with men
and women, each in a single cotton garment, composedly smoking their
cigars, while numbers of children, in Nature’s own clothing, tumbled
about in the sun. Having started without breakfast, I went to the
“Crescent City” Hotel, a hut with a floor to it, but could get nothing.
Some of my friends had fared better at one of the native huts, and I
sat down to the remains of their meal, which was spread on a hencoop
beside the door. The pigs of the vicinity and several lean dogs
surrounded me to offer their services, but maintained a respectful
silence, which is more than could be said of pigs at home. Some pieces
of pork fat, with fresh bread and a draught of sweet spring water from
a cocoa shell, made me a delicious repast.
A returning Californian had just reached the place, with a box
containing $22,000 in gold-dust, and a four-pound lump in one hand.
The impatience and excitement of the passengers, already at a high
pitch, was greatly increased by his appearance. Men ran up and down the
beach, shouting, gesticulating, and getting feverishly impatient at the
deliberate habits of the natives; as if their arrival in California
would thereby be at all hastened. The boatmen, knowing very well that
two more steamers were due the next day, remained provokingly cool
and unconcerned. They had not seen six months of emigration without
learning something of the American habit of going at full speed.
Captain C---- and Mr. M----, of Baltimore, and myself, were obliged
to pay $15 each, for a canoe to Cruces. We chose a broad, trimly-cut
craft, which the boatmen were covering with fresh thatch. We stayed
with them until all was ready, and they had pushed it through the mud
and shoal water to the bank before Ramos’s house. Our luggage was
stowed away, we took our seats and raised our umbrellas, but the men
had gone off for provisions and were not to be found. The sun blazed
down on the swampy shores, and visions of yellow fever came into the
minds of the more timid travelers. The native boys brought to us
bottles of fresh water, biscuits and fruit, presenting them with the
words: “bit!” “picayune!” “Your bread is not good,” I said to one of
the shirtless traders. “Si, _Señor_!” was his decided answer, while he
tossed back his childish head with a look of offended dignity which
charmed me. Our own men appeared towards noon, with a bag of rice and
dried pork, and an armful of sugar-cane. A few strokes of their broad
paddles took us from the excitement and noise of the landing-place to
the seclusion and beauty of the river scenery.