OFF FOR OREGON.
I have been asked hundreds of times how many wagons were in the train I
traveled with, and what train it was, and who was the captain?—assuming
that, of course, we must have been with some train.
I have invariably answered, one train, one wagon, and that we had no
captain. What I meant by one train is, that I looked upon the whole
emigration, strung out on the plains five hundred miles, as one train.
For long distances the throng was so great that the road was literally
filled with wagons as far as the eye could reach. At Kanesville where
the last purchases were made, or the last letter sent to anxious
friends, the congestion became so great that the teams were literally
blocked, and stood in line for hours before they could get out of the
jam. Then, as to a captain, we didn't think we needed one, and so when
we drove out of Eddyville, there was but one wagon in our train, two
yoke of four-year-old steers, one yoke of cows, and one extra cow.
This cow was the only animal we lost on the whole trip—strayed in the
Missouri River bottom before crossing.
And now as to the personnel of our little party. William Buck, who
became my partner for the trip, was a man six years my senior, had had
some experience on the Plains, and knew about the outfit needed, but
had no knowledge in regard to a team of cattle. He was an impulsive
man, and to some extent excitable; yet withal a man of excellent
judgment and as honest as God Almighty makes men. No lazy bones
occupied a place in Buck's body. He was so scrupulously neat and
cleanly that some might say he was fastidious, but such was not the
case. His aptitude for the camp work, and unfitness for handling the
team, at once, as we might say by natural selection, divided the cares
of the household, sending the married men to the range with the team
and the bachelor to the camp. The little wife was in ideal health, and
almost as particular as Buck (not quite though) while the young husband
would be a little more on the slouchy order, if the reader will pardon
the use of that word, more expressive than elegant.
Buck selected the outfit to go into the wagon, while I fitted up the
wagon and bought the team.
We had butter, packed in the center of the flour in double sacks; eggs
packed in corn meal or flour, to last us nearly five hundred miles;
fruit in abundance, and dried pumpkins; a little jerked beef, not too
salt, and last, though not least, a demijohn of brandy for "medicinal
purposes only," as Buck said, with a merry twinkle of the eye that
exposed the subterfuge which he knew I understood without any sign. The
little wife had prepared the home-made yeast cake which she knew so
well how to make and dry, and we had light bread all the way, baked in
a tin reflector instead of the heavy Dutch ovens so much in use on the
Plains.
Albeit the butter to considerable extent melted and mingled with the
flour, yet we were not much disconcerted, as the "short-cake" that
followed made us almost glad the mishap had occurred. Besides, did we
not have plenty of fresh butter, from the milk of our own cows, churned
every day in the can, by the jostle of the wagon? Then the buttermilk!
What a luxury! Yes, that's the word—a real luxury. I will never, so
long as I live, forget that short-cake and corn-bread, the puddings and
pumpkin pies, and above all the buttermilk. The reader who smiles at
this may recall that it is the small things that make up the happiness
of life.
But it was more than that. As we gradually crept out on the Plains and
saw the sickness and suffering caused by improper food and in some
cases from improper preparation, it gradually dawned on me how blessed
I was, with such a partner as Buck and such a life partner as the
little wife. Some trains, it soon transpired, were without fruit, and
most of them depended upon saleratus for raising their bread. Many had
only fat bacon for meat until the buffalo supplied a change; and no
doubt much of the sickness attributed to the cholera was caused by an
ill-suited diet.
I am willing to claim credit for the team, every hoof of which reached
the Coast in safety. Four (four-year-old) steers and two cows were
sufficient for our light wagon and light outfit, not a pound of which
but was useful (except the brandy) and necessary for our comfort. Not
one of these steers had ever been under the yoke, though plenty of
"broke" oxen could be had, but generally of that class that had been
broken in spirit as well as in training, so when we got across the Des
Moines River with the cattle strung out to the wagon and Buck on the
off side to watch, while I, figuratively speaking, took the reins in
hand, we may have presented a ludicrous sight, but did not have time to
think whether we did or not, and cared but little so the team would go.
FIRST DAY OUT.
The first day's drive out from Eddyville was a short one, and so far
as I now remember the only one on the entire trip where the cattle
were allowed to stand in the yoke at noon while the owners lunched and
rested. I made it a rule, no matter how short the noontime, to unyoke
and let the cattle rest or eat while we rested and ate, and on the last
(1906) trip rigidly adhered to that rule.
An amusing scene was enacted when, at near nightfall, the first camp
was made. Buck excitedly insisted we must not unyoke the cattle. "Well,
what shall we do?" I asked; "They can't live in the yoke always; we
will have to unyoke them sometimes."
"Yes, but if you unyoke here you will never catch them again," came
the response. One word brought on another, until the war of words had
almost reached the stage of a dispute, when a stranger, Thomas McAuley,
who was camped nearby, with a twinkle in his eye I often afterwards saw
and will always remember, interfered and said his cattle were gentle
and there were three men of his party and that they would help us yoke
up in the morning. I gratefully accepted his proffered help, speedily
unyoked, and ever after that never a word with the merest semblance of
contention passed between Buck and myself.
Scanning McAuley's outfit the next morning I was quite troubled to
start out with him, his teams being light, principally cows, and thin
in flesh, with wagons apparently light and as frail as the teams. But
I soon found that his outfit, like ours, carried no extra weight; that
he knew how to care for a team; and was, withal, an obliging neighbor,
as was fully demonstrated on many trying occasions as we traveled in
company for more than a thousand miles, until his road to California
parted from ours at the big bend of the Bear River.
Of the trip through Iowa little remains to be said further than that
the grass was thin and washy, the roads muddy and slippery, and weather
execrable, although May had been ushered in long before we reached the
little Mormon town of Kanesville (now Council Bluffs), a few miles
above where we crossed the Missouri River.