The Covered Wagon Part 43

The news of Jim Bridger's arrival, and the swift rumor that he would serve as pilot for the train over the dangerous portion of the route ahead, spread an instantaneous feeling of relief throughout the hesitant encampment at this, the last touch with civilization east of the destination. He paused briefly at one or another wagon after he had made his own animals comfortable, laughing and jesting in his own independent way, _en route_ to fulfill his promise to himself regarding the trader's rum.

In most ways the old scout's wide experience gave his dicta value. In one a.s.sertion, however, he was wide of the truth, or short of it. So far from things being as bad as they could be, the rapid events of that same morning proved that still more confusion was to ensue, and that speedily.

There came riding into the post from the westward a little party of old-time mountain men, driving their near-spent mounts and packs at a speed unusual even in that land of vast distances. They were headed by a man well known in that vicinity who, though he had removed to California since the fur days, made annual pilgrimage to meet the emigrant trains at Fort Hall in order to do proselyting for California, extolling the virtues of that land and picturing in direst fashion the horrors of the road thence to Oregon and the worthlessness of Oregon if ever attained.

"Old Greenwood" was the only name by which he was known. He was an old, old man, past eighty then, some said, with a deep blue eye, long white hair, a long and unkempt beard and a tongue of unparalleled profanity.

He came in now, shouting and singing, as did the men of the mountains making the Rendezvous in the old days.

"How, Greenwood! What brings ye here so late?" demanded his erstwhile crony, Jim Bridger, advancing, tin cup in hand, to meet him. "Light.

Eat. Special, drink. How--to the old times!"

"Old times be d.a.m.ned!" exclaimed Old Greenwood. "These is new times."

He lifted from above the chafed hips of his trembling horse two sacks of something very heavy.

"How much is this worth to ye?" he demanded of Bridger and the trader.

"Have ye any shovels? Have ye any picks? Have ye flour, meal, sugar--anything?"

"Gold!" exclaimed Jim Bridger. "Kit Carson did not lie! He never did!"

And they did not know how much this was worth. They had no scales for raw gold, nor any system of valuation for it. And they had no shovels and no pickaxes; and since the families had come they now had very little flour at Fort Hall.

But now they had the news! This was the greatest news that ever came to old Fort Hall--the greatest news America knew for many a year, or the world--the news of the great gold strikes in California.

Old Greenwood suddenly broke out, "Have we left the mines an' come this fur fer nothin'? I tell ye, we must have supplies! A hundred dollars fer a pick! A hundred dollars fer a shovel! A hundred dollars fer a pair o'

blankets! An ounce fer a box of sardines, d.a.m.n ye! An ounce fer half a pound o' b.u.t.ter! A half ounce fer a aig! Anything ye like fer anything that's green! Three hundred fer a gallon o' likker! A ounce for a box o'

pills! Eight hundred fer a barrel o' flour! Same fer pork, same fer sugar, same fer coffee! d.a.m.n yer picayune hides, we'll show ye what prices is! What's money to us? We can git the pure gold that money's made out of, an' git it all we want! Hooray fer Californy!"

He broke into song. His comrades roared in Homeric chorus with him, pa.s.sing from one to another of the current ditties of the mines. They declared in unison, "Old Grimes is dead, that good old man!" Then they swung off to yet another cla.s.sic ballad:

_There was an old woman who had three, sons-- Joshua, James and John!

Josh got shot, and Jim got drowned, And John got lost and never was found, And that was the end of the woman's three sons, Joshua, James and John_.

Having finished the obsequies of the three sons, not once but many times, they went forward with yet another adaptation, following Old Greenwood, who stood with head thrown back and sang with tones of Bashan:

_Oh, then Susannah, Don't you cry fer me!

I'm goin' to Californuah, With my wash pan on my knee_.

The news of the gold was out. Bridger forgot his cups, forgot his friends, hurried to Molly Wingate's cart again.

"Hit's true, Miss Molly!" he cried--"truer'n true hitself! Yan's men just in from Californy, an' they've got two horseloads o' gold, an' they say hit's nothin'--they come out fer supplies. They tried to stop Will Banion--they did trade some with Woodhull. They're nigh to Humboldt by now an' goin' hard. Miss Molly, gal, he's in ahead o' the hull country, an' got six months by hisself! Lord give him luck! Hit'll be winter, afore the men back East kin know. He's one year ahead--thanks ter yer lie ter me, an ter Kit, and Kit's ter his General.

"Gold! Ye kain't hide hit an' ye kain't find hit an' ye kain't dig hit up an' ye kain't keep hit down. Miss Molly, gal, I like ye, but how I do wish't ye was a man, so's you an' me could celerbrate this here fitten!"

"Listen!" said the girl. "Our bugle! That's a.s.sembly!"

"Yes, they'll all be there. Come when ye kin. h.e.l.l's a-poppin' now!"

The emigrants, indeed, deserted their wagons, gathering in front of the stockade, group after group. There was a strange scene on the far-flung, unknown, fateful borderlands of the country Senator McDuffie but now had not valued at five dollars for the whole. All these now, half-way across, and with the ice and snow of winter cutting off pursuit for a year, had the great news which did not reach publication in the press of New York and Baltimore until September of 1848. It did not attain notice of the floor of Congress until December fifth of that year, although this was news that went to the very foundation of this republic; which, indeed, was to prove the means of the perpetuity of this republic.

The drunken hunters in their ragged wools, their stained skins, the emigrants in their motley garb--come this far they knew not why, since men will not admit of Destiny in nations--also knew not that they were joying over the death of slavery and the life of the Union. They did not know that now, in a flash, all the old arguments and citations over slavery and secession were ancient and of no avail. The wagoners of the Sangamon, in Illinois, gathered here, roistering, did not know that they were dancing on the martyr's grave of Lincoln, or weaving him his crown, or buying shot and sh.e.l.l for him to win his grievous ordeal, brother against brother. Yet all those things were settled then, beyond that range of the Rockies which senators had said they would not spend a dollar to remove, "were they no more than ten feet high."

Even then the Rockies fell. Even then the great trains of the covered wagons, driven by men who never heard of Destiny, achieved their places on the unwritten scroll of Time.

The newcomers from beyond the Sierras, crazed with their easy fortune, and now inflamed yet further by the fumes of alcohol, even magnified the truth, as it then seemed. They spent their dust by the handful. They asked for skillets, cooking pans, that they could wash more gold. They wanted saws, nails, axes, hammers, picks. They said they would use the wagon boxes for Long Toms. They said if men would unite in companies to dam and divert the California rivers they would lay bare ledges of broken gold which would need only scooping up. The miners would pay anything for labor in iron and wood. They would buy any food and all there was of it at a dollar a pound. They wanted pack horses to cross the Humboldt Desert loaded. They would pay any price for men to handle horses for a fast and steady flight.

Because, they said, there was no longer any use in measuring life by the old standards of value. Wages at four bits a day, a dollar a day, two dollars, the old prices--why, no man would work for a half hour for such return when any minute he might lift twenty dollars in the hollow of an iron spoon. Old Greenwood had panned his five hundred in a day. Men had taken two thousand--three--in a week; in a week, men, not in a year!

There could be no wage scale at all. Labor was a thing gone by. Wealth, success, ease, luxury was at hand for the taking. What a man had dreamed for himself he now could have. He could overleap all the confining limits of his life, and even if weak, witless, ignorant or in despair, throw all that aside in one vast bound into attainment and enjoyment.

Rich? Why should any man remain poor? Work? Why should work be known, save the labor of picking up pure gold--done, finished, delivered at hand to waiting and weary humanity? Human cravings could no longer exist. Human disappointment was a thing no more to be known. In California, just yonder, was gold, gold, gold! Do you mind--can you think of it, men? Gold, gold, gold! The sun had arisen at last on the millennial day! Now might man be happy and grieve no more forever!

Arguments such as these did not lack and were not needed with the emigrants. It took but a leap to the last conclusion. Go to California?

Why should they not go? Had it not been foreordained that they should get the news here, before it was too late? Fifty miles more and they had lost it. A week earlier and they would not have known it for a year. Go to Oregon and plow? Why not go to California and dig in a day what a plow would earn in a year?

Call it stubbornness or steadfastness, at least Jesse Wingate's strength of resolution now became manifest. At first almost alone, he stayed the stampede by holding out for Oregon in the council with his captains.

They stood near the Wingate wagon, the same which had carried him into Indiana, thence into Illinois, now this far on the long way to Oregon.

Old and gray was Mary Ann, as he called his wagon, by now, the paint ground from felly, spoke and hub, the sides dust covered, the tilt disfigured and discolored. He gazed at the time-worn, st.u.r.dy frame with something akin to affection. The spokes were wedged to hold them tight, the rims were bound with hide, worn away at the edges where the tire gave no covering, the tires had been reset again and again. He shook the nearest wheel to test it.

"Yes," said he, "we all show wear. But I see little use in changing a plan once made in a man's best sober judgment. For me, I don't think all the world has been changed overnight."

"Oh, well, now," demanded Kelsey, his nomad Kentucky blood dominant, "what use holding to any plan just for sake of doing it? If something better comes, why not take it? That stands to reason. We all came out here to better ourselves. These men have done in six months what you and I might not do in ten years in Oregon."

"They'd guide us through to California, too," he went on. "We've no guide to Oregon."

Even Caleb Price nodded.

"They all say that the part from here on is the worst--drier and drier, and in places very rough. And the two fords of the Snake--well, I for one wish we were across them. That's a big river, and a bad one. And if we crossed the Blue Mountains all right, there's the Cascades, worse than the Blues, and no known trail for wagons."

"I may have to leave my wagons," said Jesse Wingate, "but if I do I aim to leave them as close to the Willamette Valley as I can. I came out to farm. I don't know California. How about you, Hall? What do your neighbors say?"

"Much as Price says. They're worn out and scared. They're been talking about the Snake crossings ever since we left the Soda Springs. Half want to switch for California. A good many others would like to go back home--if they thought they'd ever get there!"

"But we've got to decide," urged Wingate. "Can we count on thirty wagons to go through? Others have got through in a season, and so can we if we stick. Price?"

His hesitant glance at his staunch trail friend's face decided the latter.

"I'll stick for Oregon!" said Caleb Price. "I've got my wife and children along. I want my donation lands."

"You, Hall?"

"I'll go with you," said Hall, the third column leader, slowly. "Like to try a whirl in California, but if there's so much gold there next year'll do. I want my lands."

"Why, there's almost ten thousand people in Oregon by now, or will be next year," argued Wingate. "It may get to be a territory--maybe not a state, but anyways a territory, some time. And it's free! Not like Texas and all this new Mexican land just coming in by the treaty. What do you say, finally, Kelsey?"

The latter chewed tobacco for some time.

"You put it to me hard to answer," said he. "Any one of us'd like to try California. It will open faster than Oregon if all this gold news is true. Maybe ten thousand people will come out next year, for all we know."