it the last sentiment of home. We hurried on, climbing among the rocks
which reached down to the crest of the great lateral moraine, and then
on in rapid stride along its smooth crest, riveting our eyes upon the
valley below, where we knew the party must be camped.
At last, faintly curling above the sea of green tree-tops, a few faint
clouds of smoke wafted upward into the air. We saw them with a burst of
strong emotion, and ran down the steep flank of the moraine at the top
of our speed. Our shouts were instantly answered by the three voices of
our friends, who welcomed us to their camp-fire with tremendous hugs.
After we had outlined for them the experience of our days, and as we lay
outstretched at our ease, warm in the blaze of the glorious camp-fire,
Brewer said to me: “King, you have relieved me of a dreadful task. For
the last three days I have been composing a letter to your family, but
somehow I did not get beyond, ‘It becomes my painful duty to inform
you.’”
V
THE NEWTYS OF PIKE
1864
Our return from Mount Tyndall to such civilization as flourishes around
the Kaweah outposts was signalized by us chiefly as to our _cuisine_,
which offered now such bounties as the potato, and once a salad, in
which some middle-aged lettuce became the vehicle for a hollow mockery
of dressing. Two or three days, during which we dined at brief
intervals, served to completely rest us, and put in excellent trim for
further campaigning all except Professor Brewer, upon whom a constant
toothache wore painfully,--my bullet-mould failing even upon the third
trial to extract the unruly member.
It was determined we should ride together to Visalia, seventy miles
away, and the farther we went the more impatient became my friend, till
we agreed to push ahead through day and night, and reached the village
at about sunrise in a state of reeling sleepiness quite indescribably
funny.
At evening, when it became time to start back for our mountain-camp, my
friend at last yielded consent to my project of climbing the Kern
Sierras to attempt Mount Whitney; so I parted from him, and, remaining
at Visalia, outfitted myself with a pack-horse, two mounted men, and
provisions enough for a two weeks’ trip.
I purposely avoid telling by what route I entered the Sierras, because
there lingers in my breast a desire to see once more that lovely region,
and failing, as I do, to confide in the people, I fear lest, if the camp
I am going to describe should be recognized, I might, upon revisiting
the scene, suffer harm, or even come to an untimely end. I refrain,
then, from telling by what road I found myself entering the region of
the pines one lovely twilight evening, two days after leaving Visalia.
Pines, growing closer and closer, from sentinels gathered to groups,
then stately groves, and at last, as the evening wore on, assembled in
regular forest, through whose open tops the stars shone cheerfully.
I came upon an open meadow, hearing in front the rush of a large brook,
and directly reached two camp-fires, where were a number of persons. My
two hirelings caught and unloaded the pack-horse, and set about their
duties, looking to supper and the animals, while I prospected the two
camps. That just below me, on the same side of the brook, I found to be
the bivouac of a company of hunters, who, in the ten minutes of my call,
made free with me, hospitably offering a jug of whiskey, and then went
on in their old, eternal way of making bear-stories out of whole cloth.
I left them with a belief that my protoplasm and theirs must be
different, in spite of Mr. Huxley, and passed across the brook to the
other camp. Under noble groups of pines smouldered a generous heap of
coals, the ruins of a mighty log. A little way from this lay a confused
pile of bedclothes, partly old and half-bald buffalo-robes, but in the
main, thick strata of what is known to irony as comforters, upon which,
outstretched in wretched awkwardness of position, was a family, all with
their feet to the fire, looking as if they had been blown over in one
direction, or knocked down by a single bombshell. On the extremities of
this common bed, with the air of having gotten as far from each other as
possible, the mother and father of the Pike family reclined; between
them were two small children--a girl and a boy--and a huge girl, who,
next the old man, lay flat upon her back, her mind absorbed in the
simple amusement of waving one foot (a cow-hide eleven) slowly across
the fire, squinting, with half-shut eye, first at the vast shoe and
thence at the fire, alternately hiding bright places and darting the
foot quickly in the direction of any new display of heightening flame.
The mother was a bony sister, in the yellow, shrunken, of sharp visage,
in which were prominent two cold eyes and a positively poisonous mouth;
her hair, the color of faded hay, tangled in a jungle around her head.
She rocked jerkily to and fro, removing at intervals a clay pipe from
her mouth in order to pucker her thin lips up to one side, and spit with
precision upon a certain spot in the fire, which she seemed resolved to
prevent from attaining beyond a certain faint glow.
I have rarely felt more in difficulty for an overture to conversation,
and was long before venturing to propose, “You seem to have a pleasant
camp-spot here.”
The old woman sharply, and in almost a tone of affront, answered,
“They’s wus, and then again they’s better.”
“Doos well for our hogs,” inserted the old man. “We’ve a band of pork
that make out to find feed.”
“Oh! how many have you?” I asked.
“Nigh three thousand.”
“Won’t you set?” asked Madame; then, turning, “You, Susan, can’t you try
for to set up, and not spread so? Hain’t you no manners, say?”
At this the massive girl got herself somewhat together, and made room
for me, which I declined, however.
“Prospectin’?” inquired Madame.
“I say huntin’,” suggested the man.
“Maybe he’s a cattle-feller,” interrupted the little girl.
“Goin’ somewhere, ain’t yer?” was Susan’s guess.
I gave a brief account of myself, evidently satisfying the social
requirements of all but the old woman, who at once classified me as not
up to her standard. Susan saw this, so did her father, and it became
evident to me in ten minutes’ conversation that they two were always at
one, and made it their business to be in antagonism to the mother. They
were then allies of mine from nature, and I felt at once at home. I saw,
too, that Susan, having slid back to her horizontal position when I
declined to share her rightful ground, was watching with subtle
solicitude that fated spot in the fire, opposing sympathy and squints
accurately aligned by her shoe to the dull spot in the embers, which
slowly went out into blackness before the well-directed fire of her
mother’s saliva.
The shouts which I heard proceeding from the direction of my camp were
easily translatable into summons for supper. Mr. Newty invited me to
return later and be sociable, which I promised to do, and, going to my
camp, supped quickly and left the men with orders about picketing the
animals for the night, then, strolling slowly down to the camp of my
friends, seated myself upon a log by the side of the old gentleman.
Feeling that this somewhat formal attitude unfitted me for partaking to
the fullest degree of the social ease around me, and knowing that my
buckskin trousers were impervious to dirt, I slid down in a reclined
posture with my feet to the fire, in absolute parallelism with the
family.
The old woman was in the exciting _dénouement_ of a coon-story, directed
to her little boy, who sat clinging to her skirt and looking in her face
with absorbed curiosity. “And when Johnnie fired,” she said, “the coon
fell and busted open.” The little boy had misplaced his sympathies with
the raccoon, and having inquired plaintively, “Did it hurt him?” was
promptly snubbed with the reply, “Of course it hurt him. What do you
suppose coons is made for?” Then turning to me she put what was plainly
enough with her a test-question, “I allow you have killed your coon in
your day?” I saw at once that I must forever sink beneath the horizon of
her standards, but, failing in real experience or accurate knowledge
concerning the coon, knew no subterfuges would work with her. Instinct
had taught her that I had never killed a coon, and she had asked me thus
ostentatiously to place me at once and forever before the family in my
true light. “No, ma’am,” I said; “now you speak of it, I realize that I
never have killed a coon.” This was something of a staggerer to Susan
and her father, yet as the mother’s pleasurable dissatisfaction with me
displayed itself by more and more accurate salivary shots at the fire,
they rose to the occasion, and began to palliate my past. “Maybe,”
ventured Mr. Newty, “that they don’t have coon round the city of York;”
and I felt that I needed no self-defence when Susan firmly and defiantly
suggested to her mother that perhaps I was in better business.
Driven in upon herself for some time, the old woman smoked in silence,
until Susan, seeing that her mother gradually quenched a larger and
larger circle upon the fire, got up and stretched herself, and, giving
the coals a vigorous poke, swept out of sight the quenched spot, thus
readily obliterating the result of her mother’s precise and prolonged
expectoration; then, flinging a few dry boughs upon the fire, illumined
the family with the ruddy blaze, and sat down again, leaning upon her
father’s knee with a faint light of triumph in her eye.
I ventured a few platitudes concerning pigs, not penetrating the depths
of that branch of rural science enough to betray my ignorance. Such
sentiments as “A little piece of bacon well broiled for breakfast is
very good,” and “Nothing better than cold ham for lunch,” were received
by Susan and her father in the spirit I meant,--of entire good-will
toward pork generically. I now look back in amusement at having fallen
into this weakness, for the Mosaic view of pork has been mine from
infancy, and campaigning upon government rations has, in truth, no
tendency to dim this ancient faith.
By half-past nine the gates of conversation were fairly open, and our
part of the circle enjoyed itself socially,--taciturnity and clouds of
Virginia plug reigning supreme upon the other. The two little children
crept under comforters somewhere near the middle of the bed, and
subsided pleasantly to sleep. The old man at last stretched sleepily,
finally yawning out, “Susan, I do believe I am too tired out to go and
see if them corral bars are down. I guess you’ll have to go. I reckon
there ain’t no bears round to-night.”
Susan rose to her feet, stretched herself with her back to the fire, and
I realized for the first time her amusing proportions. In the region of
six feet, tall, square-shouldered, of firm, iron back and heavy mould
of limb, she yet possessed that suppleness which enabled her as she rose
to throw herself into nearly all the attitudes of the Niobe children. As
her yawn deepened, she waved nearly down to the ground, and then, rising
upon tiptoe, stretched up her clinched fists to heaven with a groan of
pleasure. Turning to me, she asked, “How would you like to see the
hogs?” The old man added, as an extra encouragement, “Pootiest band of
hogs in Tulare County! There’s littler of the real scissor-bill nor
Mexican racer stock than any band I have ever seen in the State. I driv
the original outfit from Pike County to Oregon in ’51 and ’52.” By this
time I was actually interested in them, and joining Susan we passed out
into the forest.
The full moon, now high in the heavens, looked down over the whole
landscape of clustered forest and open meadow with tranquil, silvery
light. It whitened measurably the fine, spiry tips of the trees, fell
luminous upon broad bosses of granite which here and there rose through
the soil, and glanced in trembling reflections from the rushing surface
of the brook. Far in the distance moonlit peaks towered in solemn rank
against the sky.
We walked silently on four or five minutes through the woods, coming at
last upon a fence which margined a wide, circular opening in the wood.
The bars, as her father had feared, were down. We stepped over them,
quietly entered the enclosure, put them up behind us, and proceeded to
the middle, threading our way among sleeping swine to where a lonely
tree rose to the height of about two hundred feet. Against this we
placed our backs, and Susan waved her hand in pride over the two acres
of tranquil pork. The eye, after accustoming itself to the darkness,
took cognizance of a certain ridgyness of surface which came to be
recognized as the objects of Susan’s pride.
Quite a pretty effect was caused by the shadow of the forest, which,
cast obliquely downward by the moon, divided the corral into halves of
light and shade.
The air was filled with heavy breathing, interrupted by here and there a
snore, and at times by crescendos of tumult, caused by forty or fifty
pigs doing battle for some favorite bed-place.
I was informed that Susan did not wish me to judge of them by dark, but
to see them again in the full light of day. She knew each individual pig
by its physiognomy, having, as she said, “growed with ’em.”
As we strolled back toward the bars a dusky form disputed our way,--two
small, sharp eyes and a wild crest of bristles were visible in the
obscure light. “That’s Old Arkansas,” said Susan; “he’s eight year old
come next June, and I never could get him to like me.” I felt for my
pistol, but Susan struck a vigorous attitude, ejaculating, “S-S-oway,
Arkansas!” She made a dash in his direction; a wild scuffle ensued, in
which I heard the dull thud of Susan’s shoe, accompanied by, “Take that,
dog-on-you!”, a cloud of dust, one shrill squeal, and Arkansas retreated
into the darkness at a business-like trot.
When quite near the bars the mighty girl launched herself into the air,
alighting with her stomach across the topmost rail, where she hung a
brief moment, made a violent muscular contraction, and alighted upon the
ground outside, communicating to it a tremor quite perceptible from
where I stood. I climbed over after her, and we sauntered under the
trees back to camp.
The family had disappeared. A few dry boughs, however, thrown upon the
coals, blazed up, and revealed their forms in the corrugated topography
of the bed.
I bade Susan good-night, and before I could turn my back she kicked her
number eleven shoes into the air, and with masterly rapidity turned in,
as Minerva is said to have done, in full panoply.
I fled precipitately to my camp, and sought my blankets, lying awake in
a kind of half-reverie, in which Susan and Arkansas, the old woman and
her coons, were the prominent figures. Later I fell asleep, and lay
motionless until the distant roar of swine awoke me before sunrise next
morning.
Seated upon my blankets, I beheld Susan’s mother drag forth the two
children, one after another, by the napes of their necks, and, shaking
the sleep out of them, propel them spitefully toward the brook; then
taking her pipe from her mouth she bent low over the sleeping form of
her huge daughter, and in a high, shrill, nasal key, screeched in her
ear, “Yew Suse!”
No sign of life on the part of the daughter.
“Susan, _are_ you a-going to get up?”
Slight muscular contraction of the lower limbs.
“Will you hear me, _Susan_?”
“Marm,” whispered the girl, in low, sleepy tones.
“Get up and let the _hogs_ out!”
The idea had at length thrilled into Susan’s brain, and with a violent
suddenness she sat bolt upright, brushing her green-colored hair out of
her eyes, and rubbing those valuable but bleared organs with the
ponderous knuckles of her forefingers.
By this time I started for the brook for my morning toilet, and the girl
and I met upon opposite banks, stooping to wash our faces in the same
pool. As I opened my dressing-case her lower jaw fell, revealing a row
of ivory teeth rounded out by two well-developed “wisdoms,” which had
all that dazzling grin one sees in the show-windows of certain dental
practitioners. It required but a moment to gather up a quart or so of
water in her broad palms, and rub it vigorously into a small circle upon
the middle of her face, the moisture working outward to a certain
high-water mark, which, along her chin and cheeks, defined the limits of
former ablution; then, baring her large, red arms to the elbow, she
washed her hands, and stood resting them upon her hips, dripping
freely, and watching me with intense curiosity.
When I reached the towel process, she herself twisted her body after the
manner of the Belvidere torso, bent low her head, gathered up the back
breadths of her petticoat, and wiped her face vigorously upon it, which
had the effect of tracing concentric streaks irregularly over her
countenance.
I parted my hair by the aid of a small dressing-glass, which so fired
Susan that she crossed the stream with a mighty jump, and stood in
ecstasy by my side. She borrowed the glass, and then my comb, rewashed
her face, and fell to work diligently upon her hair.
All this did not so limit my perception as to prevent my watching the
general demeanor of the family. The old man lay back at his ease,
puffing a cloud of smoke; his wife, also emitting volumes of the vapor
of “navy plug,” squatted by the camp-fire, frying certain lumps of pork,
and communicating an occasional spiral jerk to the coffee-pot, with the
purpose, apparently, of stirring the grounds. The two children had
gotten upon the back of a contemplative ass, who stood by the upper side
of the bed quietly munching the corner of a comforter.
My friend was in no haste. She squandered much time upon the arrangement
of her towy hair, and there was something like a blush of conscious
satisfaction when she handed me back my looking-glass and remarked
ironically, “Oh, no, I guess not,--no, sir.”
I begged her to accept the comb and glass, which she did with maidenly
joy.
This unusual toilet had stimulated with self-respect Susan’s every
fibre, and as she sprang back across the brook and approached her
mother’s camp-fire I could not fail to admire the magnificent turn of
her shoulders and the powerful, queenly poise of her head. Her full,
grand form and heavy strength reminded me of the statues of Ceres, yet
there was withal a very unpleasant suggestion of fighting trim, a sort
of prize-ring manner of swinging the arms, and hitching the shoulders.
She suddenly spied the children upon the jackass, and with one wide
sweep of her right arm projected them over the creature’s head, and
planted her left eleven firmly in the ribs of the donkey, who beat a
precipitate retreat in the direction of the hog-pens, leaving her
executing a pas seul,--a kind of slow, stately jig, something between
the minuet and the _juba_, accompanying herself by a low-hummed air and
a vigorous beating of time upon her slightly lifted knee.
It required my Pike County friends but ten minutes to swallow their pork
and begin the labors of the day.
The mountaineers’ camp was not yet astir. These children of the forest
were well chained in slumber; for, unless there is some special
programme for the day, it requires the leverage of a high sun to arouse
their faculties, dormant enough by nature, and soothed into deepest
quiet by whiskey. About eight o’clock they breakfasted, and by nine had
engaged my innocent camp-men in a game of social poker.
I visited my horses, and had them picketed in the best possible feed,
and congratulated myself that they were recruiting finely for the
difficult ride before me.
Susan, after a second appeal from her mother, ran over to the corral and
let out the family capital, which streamed with exultant grunt through
the forest, darkening the fair green meadow gardens, and happily passing
out of sight.
When I had breakfasted I joined Mr. Newty in his trip to the corral,
where we stood together for hours, during which I had mastered the story
of his years since, in 1850, he left his old home in Pike of Missouri.
It was one of those histories common enough through this wide West, yet
never failing to startle me with its horrible lesson of social
disintegration, of human retrograde.
That brave spirit of Westward Ho! which has been the pillar of fire and
cloud leading on the weary march of progress over stretches of desert,
lining the way with graves of strong men; of new-born lives; of sad,
patient mothers, whose pathetic longing for the new home died with them;
of the thousand old and young whose last agony came to them as they
marched with eyes strained on after the sunken sun, and whose shallow
barrows scarcely lift over the drifting dust of the desert; that
restless spirit which has dared to uproot the old and plant the new,
kindling the grand energy of California, laying foundations for a State
to be, that is admirable, is poetic, is to fill an immortal page in the
story of America; but when, instead of urging on to wresting from new
lands something better than old can give, it degenerates into mere
weak-minded restlessness, killing the power of growth, the ideal of
home, the faculty of repose, it results in that race of perpetual
emigrants who roam as dreary waifs over the West, losing possessions,
love of life, love of God, slowly dragging from valley to valley, till
they fall by the wayside, happy if some chance stranger performs for
them the last rites,--often less fortunate, as blanched bones and
fluttering rags upon too many hillsides plainly tell.
The Newtys were of this dreary brotherhood. In 1850, with a small family
of that authentic strain of high-bred swine for which Pike County is
widely known, as Mr. Newty avers, they bade Missouri and their snug farm
good-by, and, having packed their household goods into a wagon, drawn by
two spotted oxen, set out with the baby Susan for Oregon, where they
came after a year’s march, tired, and cursed with a permanent
discontent. There they had taken up a rancho, a quarter-section of
public domain, which at the end of two years was “improved” to the
extent of the “neatest little worm fence this side of Pike,” a barn, and
a smoke-house. “In another year,” said my friend, “I’d have dug for a
house, but we tuck ager, and the second baby died.” One day there came a
man who “let on that he knowed” land in California much fairer and more
worthy tillage than Oregon’s best, so the poor Newtys harnessed up the
wagon and turned their backs upon a home nearly ready for comfortable
life, and swept south with pigs and plunder. Through all the years this
story had repeated itself, new homes gotten to the edge of completion,
more babies born, more graves made, more pigs, who replenished as only
the Pike County variety may, till it seemed to me the mere
multiplication of them must reach a sufficient dead weight to anchor the
family; but this was dispelled when Newty remarked, “These yer hogs is
awkward about moving, and I’ve pretty much made up my mind to put ’em
all into bacon this fall, and sell out and start for Montana.”
Poor fellow! at Montana he will probably find a man from Texas who in
half an hour will persuade him that happiness lies there.
As we walked back to their camp, and when Dame Newty hove in sight, my
friend ventured to say, “Don’t you mind the old woman and her coons.
She’s from Arkansas. She used to say no man could have Susan who
couldn’t show coonskins enough of his own killing to make a bed-quilt,
but she’s over that mostly.” In spite of this assurance my heart fell a
trifle when, the first moment of our return, she turned to her husband
and asked, “Do you mind what a dead-open-and-shut on coons our little
Johnnie was when he was ten years old?” I secretly wondered if the
dead-open-and-shut had anything to do with his untimely demise at
eleven, but kept silence.
Regarding her as a sad product of the disease of chronic emigration, her
hard, thin nature, all angles and stings, became to me one of the most
depressing and pathetic spectacles, and the more when her fever-and-ague
boy, a mass of bilious lymph, came and sat by her, looking up with
great, haggard eyes, as if pleading for something, he knew not what, but
which I plainly saw only death could bestow.