The Emigrant Trail Part 39

Both men were powdered with dust, and announced themselves as hungry enough to eat their horses.

Out came pans and supplies, and the snapping of bacon fat and smell of coffee rose pungent. Though, by their own account, they had ridden hard and far, there was a feverish energy of life in each of them that roused the drooping spirits of the others like an electrifying current.

They ate ravenously, pausing between mouthfuls to put quick questions on the condition of the eastward trail, its grazing grounds, what supplies could be had at the Forts. It was evident they were new to journeying on the great bare highways of the wilderness, but that fact seemed to have no blighting effect on their zeal. What and who they were came out in the talk that gushed in the intervals of feeding. The fair-haired man was a sailor, shipped from Boston round the Horn for California eight months before. The fact that he was a deserter dropped out with others. He was safe here--with a side-long laugh at Susan--no more of the sea for him.

He was going back for money, money and men. It was too late to get through to the States now? Well he'd wait and winter at Fort Laramie if he had to, but he guessed he'd make a pretty vigorous effort to get to St. Louis. His companion was from Philadelphia, and was going back for his wife and children, also money. He'd bring them out next spring, collect a big train, stock it well, and carry them across with him.

"And start early, not waste any time dawdling round and talking. Start with the first of 'em and get to California before the rush begins."

"Rush?" said Courant. "Are you looking for a rush next year?"

The man leaned forward with upraised, arresting hand, "The biggest rush in the history of this country. Friends, there's gold in California."

Gold! The word came in different keys, their flaccid bodies stiffened into upright eagerness-- Gold in the Promised Land!

Then came the great story, the discovery of California's treasure told by wanderers to wanderers under the desert stars. Six months before gold had been found in the race of Sutter's mill in the foothills. The streams that sucked their life from the snow crests of the Sierras were yellow with it. It lay, a dusty sediment, in the prospector's pan. It spread through the rock cracks in sparkling seams.

The strangers capped story with story, chanted the tales of fantastic exaggeration that had already gone forth, and up and down California were calling men from ranch and seaboard. They were coming down from Oregon along the wild spine of the coast ranges and up from the Mission towns strung on highways beaten out by Spanish soldier and padre. The news was now en route to the outer world carried by ships. It would fly from port to port, run like fire up the eastern coast and leap to the inland cities and the frontier villages. And next spring, when the roads were open, would come the men, the regiments of men, on foot, mounted, in long caravans, hastening to California for the gold that was there for anyone who had the strength and hardihood to go.

The bearded man got up, went to his horse and brought back his pack.

He opened it, pulled off the outer blanketing, and from a piece of dirty calico drew a black sock, bulging and heavy. From this in turn he shook a small buckskin sack. He smoothed the calico, untied a shoestring from the sack's mouth, and let a stream of dun-colored dust run out. It shone in the firelight in a slow sifting rivulet, here and there a bright flake like a spangle sending out a yellow spark.

Several times a solid particle obstructed the lazy flow, which broke upon it like water on a rock, dividing and sinking in two heavy streams. It poured with unctious deliberation till the sack was empty, and the man held it up to show the powdered dust of dust clinging to the inside.

"That's three weeks' washing on the river across the valley beyond Sacramento," he said, "and it's worth four thousand dollars in the United States mint."

The pile shone yellow in the fire's even glow, and they stared at it, wonderstruck, each face showing a sudden kindling of greed, the longing to possess, to know the power and peace of wealth. It came with added sharpness in the midst of their bare distress. Even the girl felt it, leaning forward to gloat with brightened eyes on the little pyramid.

David forgot his injuries and craned his neck to listen, dreams once more astir. California became suddenly a radiant vision. No longer a faint line of color, vaguely lovely, but a place where fortune waited them, gold to fill their coffers, to bring them ease, to give their aspirations definite shape, to repay them for their bitter pilgrimage.

They were seized with the l.u.s.t of it, and their attentive faces sharpened with the strain of the growing desire. They felt the onward urge to be up and moving, to get there and lay their hands on the waiting treasure.

The night grew old and still they talked, their fatigue forgotten.

They heard the tale of Marshall's discovery and how it flew right and left through the s.p.a.cious, idle land. There were few to answer the call, ranches scattered wide over the unpeopled valleys, small traders in the little towns along the coast. In the settlement of Yerba Buena, fringing the edge of San Francis...o...b..y, men were leaving their goods at their shop doors and going inland. Ships were lying idle in the tide water, every sailor gone to find the golden river. The fair-haired man laughed and told how he'd swam naked in the darkness, his money in his mouth, and crawled up the long, shoal sh.o.r.e, waist high in mud.

The small hours had come when one by one they dropped to sleep as they lay. A twist of the blanket, a squirming into deeper comfort, and rest was on them. They sprawled in the caked dust like dead men fallen in battle and left as they had dropped. Even the girl forgot the habits of a life-long observance and sunk to sleep among them, her head on a saddle, the old servant curled at her feet.

CHAPTER III

In the even dawn light the strangers left. It was hail and farewell in desert meetings. They trotted off into the ghostlike stillness of the plain which for a s.p.a.ce threw back their hoof beats, and then closed round them. The departure of the westward band was not so prompt.

With unbound packs and unharnessed animals, they stood, a dismayed group, gathered round a center of disturbance. David was ill. The exertions of the day before had drained his last reserve of strength.

He could hardly stand, complained of pain, and a fever painted his drawn face with a dry flush. Under their concerned looks, he climbed on his horse, swayed there weakly, then slid off and dropped on the ground.

"I'm too sick to go on," he said in the final collapse of misery. "You can leave me here to die."

He lay flat, looking up at the sky, his long hair raying like a mourning halo from the outline of his skull, his arms outspread as if his soul had submitted to its crucifixion and his body was in agreement. That he was ill was beyond question. The men had their suspicions that he, like the horses, had drunk of the alkaline spring.

Susan was for remaining where they were till he recovered, the others wanted to go on. He gave no ear to their debate, interrupting it once to announce his intention of dying where he lay. This called forth a look of compa.s.sion from the girl, a movement of exasperation from the mountain man. Daddy John merely spat and lifted his hat to the faint dawn air. It was finally agreed that David should be placed in the wagon, his belongings packed on his horse, while the sick animal must follow as best it could.

During the morning's march no one spoke. They might have been a picture moving across a picture for all the animation they showed. The exaltation of the evening before had died down to a spark, alight and warming still, but pitifully shrunk from last night's high-flaming buoyancy. It was hard to keep up hopes in these distressful hours.

California had again receded. The desert and the mountains were yet to pa.s.s. The immediate moment hemmed them in so closely that it was an effort to look through it and feel the thrill of joys that lay so far beyond. It was better to focus their attention on the lone promontories that cut the distance and gradually grew from flat surfaces applied on the plain to solid shapes, thick-based and shadow cloven.

They made their noon camp at a spring, bubbling from a rim of white-rooted gra.s.s. David refused to take anything but water, groaning as he sat up in the wagon and stretching a hot hand for the cup that Susan brought. The men paid no attention to him. They showed more concern for the sick horse, which when not incapacitated did its part with good will, giving the full measure of its strength. That they refrained from open anger and upbraiding was the only concession they made to the conventions they had learned in easier times. Whether David cared or not he said nothing, lying fever-flushed, his wandering glance held to attention when Susan's face appeared at the canvas opening. He hung upon her presence, querulously exacting in his unfamiliar pain.

Making ready for the start their eyes swept a prospect that showed no spot of green, and they filled their casks neck high and rolled out into the dazzling shimmer of the afternoon. The desert was widening, the hills receding, shrinking away to a crenelated edge that fretted a horizon drawn as straight as a ruled line. The plain unrolled more s.p.a.cious and grimmer, not a growth in sight save sage, not a trickle of water or leaf murmur, even the mirage had vanished leaving the distance bare and mottled with a leprous white. At intervals, outstretched like a pointing finger, the toothed summit of a ridge projected, its base uplifted in clear, mirrored reflection.

The second half of the day was as unbroken by speech or incident as the morning. They had nothing to say, as dry of thought as they were despoiled of energy. The shadows were beginning to lengthen when they came to a fork in the trail. One branch bore straight westward, the other slanted toward the south, and both showed signs of recent travel.

Following them to the distance was like following the tracks of creeping things traced on a sandy sh.o.r.e. Neither led to anything--sage, dust, the up-standing combs of rocky reefs were all the searching eye could see till sight lost itself in the earth's curve.

The girl and the two men stood in the van of the train consulting. The region was new to Courant, but they left it to him, and he decided for the southern route.

For the rest of the afternoon they followed it. The day deepened to evening and they bore across a flaming level, striped with gigantic shadows. Looking forward they saw a lake of gold that lapped the roots of rose and lilac hills. The road swept downward to a crimsoned b.u.t.te, cleft apart, and holding in its knees a gleam of water. The animals, smelling it, broke for it, tearing the wagon over sand hummocks and crackling twigs. It was a feeble upwelling, exhausted by a single draught. Each beast, desperately nosing in its coolness, drained it, and there was a long wait ere the tiny depression filled again.

Finally, it was dried of its last drop, and the reluctant ooze stopped.

The animals, their thirst half slaked, drooped about it, looking with mournful inquiry at the disturbed faces of their masters.

It was a bad sign. The men knew there were waterless tracts in the desert that the emigrant must skirt. They mounted to the summit of the b.u.t.te and scanned their surroundings. The world shone a radiant floor out of which each sage brush rose a floating, feathered tuft, but of gleam or trickle of water there was none. When they came down David lay beside the spring his eyes on its basin, now a muddied hole, the rim patterned with hoof prints. When he heard them coming he rose on his elbow awaiting them with a haggard glance, then seeing their blank looks sank back groaning. To Susan's command that a cask be broached, Courant gave a sullen consent. She drew off the first cupful and gave it to the sick man, his lean hands straining for it, his fingers fumbling in a search for the handle. The leader, after watching her for a moment, turned away and swung off, muttering. David dropped back on the ground, his eyes closed, his body curved about the damp depression.

The evening burned to night, the encampment growing black against the scarlet sky. The brush fire sent a line of smoke straight up, a long milky thread, that slowly disentangled itself and mounted to a final outspreading. Each member of the group was still, the girl lying a dark oblong under her blanket, her face upturned to the stars which blossomed slowly in the huge, unclouded heaven. At the root of the b.u.t.te, hidden against its shadowy base, the mountain man lay motionless, but his eyes were open and they rested on her, not closing or straying.

When no one saw him he kept this stealthy watch. In the daytime, with the others about, he still was careful to preserve his brusque indifference, to avoid her, to hide his pa.s.sion with a jealous subtlety. But beneath the imposed bonds it grew with each day, stronger and more savage as the way waxed fiercer. It was not an obsession of occasional moments, it was always with him. As pilot her image moved across the waste before him. When he fell back for words with Daddy John, he was listening through the old man's speech, for the fall of her horse's hoofs. Her voice made his heart stop, the rustle of her garments dried his throat. When his lowered eyes saw her hand on the plate's edge, he grew rigid, unable to eat. If she brushed by him in the bustle of camp pitching, his hands lost their strength and he was sick with the sense of her. Love, courtship, marriage, were words that no longer had any meaning for him. All the tenderness and humanity he had felt for her in the days of her father's sickness were gone. They were burned away, as the water and the gra.s.s were. When he saw her solicitude for David, his contempt for the weak man hardened into hatred. He told himself that he hated them both, and he told himself he would crush and kill them both before David should get her.

The desire to keep her from David was stronger than the desire to have her for himself. He did not think or care what he felt. She was the prey to be won by cunning or daring, whose taste or wishes had no place in the struggle. He no longer looked ahead, thought, or reasoned. The elemental in him was developing to fit a scene in which only the elemental survived.

They broke camp at four the next morning. For the last few days the heat had been unbearable, and they decided to start while the air was still cool and prolong the noon halt. The landscape grew barer. There were open areas where the soil was soft and sifted from the wheels like sand, and dried stretches where the alkali lay in a caked, white crust.

In one place the earth humped into long, wavelike swells each crest topped with a fringe of brush, fine and feathery as petrified spray.

At mid-day there was no water in sight. Courant, standing on his saddle, saw no promise of it, nothing but the level distance streaked with white mountain rims, and far to the south a patch of yellow--bare sand, he said, as he pointed a h.o.r.n.y finger to where it lay.

They camped in the glare and opened the casks. After the meal they tried to rest, but the sun was merciless. The girl crawled under the wagon and lay there on the dust, sleeping with one arm thrown across her face. The two men sat near by, their hats drawn low over their brows. There was not a sound. The silence seemed trans.m.u.ted to a slowly thickening essence solidifying round them. It pressed upon them till speech was as impossible as it would be under water. A broken group in the landscape's immensity, they were like a new expression of its somber vitality, motionless yet full of life, in consonance with its bare and brutal verity.

Courant left them to reconnoiter, and at mid afternoon came back to announce that farther on the trail bent to an outcropping of red rock where he thought there might be water. It was the hottest hour of the day. The animals strained at their harness with lolling tongues and white-rimmed eyeb.a.l.l.s, their sweat making tracks on the dust. To lighten the wagon Daddy John walked beside it, plodding on in his broken moccasins, now and then chirruping to Julia. The girl rode behind him, her blouse open at the neck, her hair clinging in a black veining to her bedewed temples. Several times he turned back to look at her as the only other female of the party to be encouraged. When she caught his eye she nodded as though acknowledging the salutation of a pa.s.serby, her dumbness an instinctive h.o.a.rding of physical force.

The red rock came in sight, a nicked edge across the distance. As they approached, it drew up from the plain in a series of crumpled points like the comb of a rooster. The detail of the intervening s.p.a.ce was lost in the first crepuscular softness, and they saw nothing but a stretch of darkening purple from which rose the scalloped crest painted in strange colors. Courant trotted forward crying a word of hope, and they p.r.i.c.ked after him to where the low bulwark loomed above the plain's swimming mystery.

When they reached it he was standing at the edge of a caverned indentation. Dead gra.s.ses dropped against the walls, withered weeds thickened toward the apex in a tangled carpet. There had once been water there, but it was gone, dried, or sunk to some hidden channel in the rock's heart. They stood staring at the scorched herbage and the basin where the earth was cracked apart in its last gasping throes of thirst.

David's voice broke the silence. He had climbed to the front seat, and his face, gilded with the sunlight, looked like the face of a dead man painted yellow.

"Is there water?" he said, then saw the dead gra.s.s and dried basin, and met the blank looks of his companions.

Susan's laconic "The spring's dry," was not necessary. He fell forward on the seat with a moan, his head propped in his hands, his fingers buried in his hair. Courant sent a look of furious contempt over his abject figure, then gave a laugh that fell on the silence bitter as a curse. Daddy John without a word moved off and began unhitching the mules. Even in Susan pity was, for the moment, choked by a swell of disgust. Had she not had the other men to measure him by, had she not within her own st.u.r.dy frame felt the spirit still strong for conflict, she might still have known only the woman's sympathy for the feebler creature. But they were a trio steeled and braced for invincible effort, and this weakling, without the body and the spirit for the enterprise, was an alien among them.

She went to the back of the wagon and opened the mess chest. As she picked out the supper things she began to repent. The lean, bent figure and sunken head kept recurring to her. She saw him not as David but as a suffering outsider, and for a second, motionless, with a blackened skillet in her hand, had a faint, clairvoyant understanding of his soul's desolation amid the close-knit unity of their endeavor.

She dropped the tin and went back to the front of the wagon. He was climbing out, hanging tremulous to the roof support, a haggard spectacle, with wearied eyes and skin drawn into fine puckerings across the temples. Pity came back in a remorseful wave, and she ran to him and lifted his arm to her shoulder. It clasped her hard and they walked to where at the rock's base the sage grew high. Here she laid a blanket for him and spread another on the top of the bushes, fastening it to the tallest ones till it stretched, a sheltering canopy, over him. She tried to cheer him with a.s.surances that water would be found at the next halting place. He was listless at first, seeming not to listen, then the life in her voice roused his sluggish faculties, his cheeks took color, and his dull glance lit on point after point in its pa.s.sage to her face, like the needle flickering toward the pole.

"If I could get water enough to drink, I'd be all right," he said.

"The pains are gone."

"They _must_ find it soon," she answered, lifting the weight of his fallen courage, heavy as his body might have been to her arms. "This is a traveled road. There _must_ be a spring somewhere along it."

And she continued prying up the despairing spirit till the man began to respond, showing returning hope in the eagerness with which he hung on her words. When he lay sinking into drowsy quiet, she stole away from him to where the camp was spread about the unlit pyre of Daddy John's sage brush. It was too early for supper, and the old man, with the accouterments of the hunt slung upon his person and his rifle in his hand, was about to go afield after jack rabbit.

"It's a bad business this," he said in answer to the worry she dared not express. "The animals can't hold out much longer."