The Prairie Schooner Part 4

Finally a number of squaws who had gone to the creek bottom appeared in the center of the little camp. They carried bundles of green willows, dozens of large hard-head boulders and rawhide receptacles filled with water; also a bundle of dry f.a.ggots.

After the stones had been piled in a neat heap a fire was built upon them which was allowed to burn briskly for half an hour. Then the coals and ashes were brushed off and a tent-like covering put over a quickly woven basket-like structure that had been built over the stones. Then the water was dashed upon the stones and the steam began to ascend.

Presently out from a tepee came a squaw with a bundle which she gently shoved under the elkskin covered cauldron of steam.

"Say," said one of the boys, "are you on?"

"Sure enough," the other whispered, "they are giving that kid a Turkish bath."

And that's what they were doing; but it wasn't Turkish-just Injun.

Returning to camp the boys proceeded to slip into their blankets quietly, say nothing about what they had seen, and go to sleep. They believed the straggling band of Arapahoes were not on the war-path and had work for the "medicine-man"--the big buck they first saw come out of his tepee.

You have no idea how cautiously the boys went about getting the blankets off the wagon so as not to disturb the boss, a man they feared. So they moved noiselessly.

One threw his roll of blankets from the top of the trailer and the other caught the bundle and proceeded to flatten it out into a comfortable bed when he heard a familiar noise, and forgetting that they were to be silent, the youth on the ground yelled:

"Look out--a rattler!"

It woke up the whole camp. The snake had occupied the blankets from four a. m., at least, until this time--midnight. Perhaps he had slept with the boy until four a. m.; I think he did; anyway, he had rolled him up and put him where found.

CHAPTER VI

BELATED GRACE FOR A CHRISTMAS DINNER.

After fighting through a ten-hour blizzard that swept across the plains from the Elk Mountain country our wagon-train reached the foothills of the Medicine Bow range, where there was shelter for the work cattle along a swift running stream. The snow was piled in great drifts everywhere except upon exposed high spots, and it seemed impossible for us to proceed farther, for we knew that along the government trail just beyond, and 1,000 feet higher, that the drifts would be so deep that a long camp where we had stopped would be necessary.

Ten men were tolled off by the wagon-boss to chop down young quaking aspen trees, the bark and small twigs of which furnished appetizing fodder for the bulls. Another gang climbed a sidehill and with axes felled a group of stunted pines for the side walls of a cabin; still others were sent into a "burnt and down" piece of timber to gather well seasoned dead pitch pine for firewood.

The storm lasted until six o'clock in the evening, then continued as an old-fashioned heavy snowfall with no wind, increasing the level of the snow to the tops of the wheels of our corraled wagons. Apparently they were doomed to stay where they were until spring.

Next morning there was a let-up. Then the blizzard began again in all its fury--only such a blizzard as one can see in but one other place on earth, judging from Dana's description of his experience in going around the Horn. The cattle, with almost human intelligence, 200 head of them, crowded toward the big bonfires of pitch, and with long faces looked mournfully upon the scene. They seemed to know, as we did, that the prospects were not bright for our cavalcade. Certainly there was no gra.s.s in sight now, not even on the round-topped knolls bordering our little valley, for the night fall of snow was heavy and damp, and finally, when the thermometer registered a few degrees below zero, the gra.s.s was sealed against the tough noses and even the hoofs of the hungry bulls. An attempt was made by a scouting party to find a clear feeding place on the back trail, but a day's investigation resulted in failure. Not a blade of gra.s.s could be found--all sealed with a heavy crust that would, in most places, carry a horse and rider.

The storm continued, after an eight-hour let-up, the temperature rising.

Two feet more fell on top of the crust, then came another freeze and a new crust. After twenty-four hours another blizzard from the north, consisting of sleet and snow and some rain, was like a sandstorm in summer on the plains below. It was fierce, nearly freezing and blinding both men and cattle. The poor bulls were more forlorn than ever. They gnawed the very wood of the aspens, and there wasn't enough of that.

On the last crust of all this snow and sleet it was finally found possible to take the oxen farther along into the mountains, where four men drove them. Others went ahead with axes and for two weeks cut aspens and sought out hidden protected places in the valleys where there were a few blades of gra.s.s and some succulent underbrush.

One day, when the sun was shining brightly on the white mantle and the distant peaks of the majestic mountains of blue stood out like a painting, Nate Williams, wagon-boss, spoke:

"Do you know," he said to the fellows who were carving the carca.s.s of a faithful old bullock, "that tomorrow is Christmas?" None had thought of it.

"And," he continued, "do you know we are liable to stay where we are until the Fourth of July, if we don't get a move on?"

There were no suggestions.

"Furthermore," added Williams, "we haven't much else to eat but beef--there are just five 100-pound sacks of flour in the mess wagon--no bacon nor canned goods. Its a case of shoveling a road to Crane's Neck."

Crane's Neck was a mountain twist in the road, a mile from camp. If the road could be cleared to that point there would be fair hauling for five miles in the range to another stretch that had been filled in places with from ten to twenty feet of snow, while one spot was covered by a slide from a mountain to a depth of forty feet and for a considerable distance along the trail.

For three hours plans were discussed, and it was finally determined to go to work with shovels and picks, but not until after Christmas. Our caravan included a blacksmith's forge, also a regular wrecking outfit, and in a short time big wooden shovels were made from blocks of pine with handles stoutly attached with iron bands.

The cook was a youth of twenty and had all the enthusiasm of the adventurer. He had spent a year on a whaler and knew what it meant to drift in the ice north of Point Barrow. This present situation, he said, was a picnic; so was the one in the Arctic. It couldn't be so bad that he wished to be snuggled away in a feather bed somewhere east of the Missouri River. That would be too ordinary.

"If I could sit down to a table at the best hotel in the land," he said, "I'd prefer to eat the dinner that I'm going to cook for you fellows tomorrow."

Williams sneered. "Yes," he said, "we put old Tex (a long-horn bull) out of his starving misery and the boys have found his liver to be O. K.

Maybe you can give us a liver pie."

"I'll do better than that," said the boy; "I'll not only give you a beef stew, but a pudding that you can't buy outside of London or Liverpool--a plum duff--and a cake. Old Tex will also be on the menu in several places, for his tenderloin looks good, and there are a few steaks which, when properly treated with a maul on the top of a stump, will be as good as you will get in a 'Frisco water front lodging, and better than any of you fellows have had since we hit the drifts."

I have eaten meals that mother used to cook, I've been famished during a sea voyage, and devoured a Norwegian sailor's pea soup; I've partic.i.p.ated in several real banquets in New York; I've dined at Delmonico's and at Sherry's, at Young's in Boston, and I've feasted in a circus cook tent; but my Christmas dinner in the foothills of Wyoming in 1874, under the circ.u.mstances I have but faintly described, still is a fond memory and holds the record as the best meal I ever ate. It was as follows:

MENU Marrowbone Soup--"Tex" Water Cress Beef Stew--"Tex"

Hamburg Steak--"Tex"

Planked Porterhouse Steak--"Tex"

Tenderloin Steak-"Tex" Roast Beef--"Tex"

Corn Bread Wheat Bread English Plum Pudding--Hard and Soft Sauce Raisins Cake Coffee Tea (No b.u.t.ter or milk) (Lots of salt and pepper)

The corn bread was made from meal milled by the cook from sh.e.l.led corn in the cargo. The "plums" were raisins, of which the cook had a few pounds. He used wheat flour, baking powder and grease saved from the final ration of the bacon which gave out a week before Christmas. The hard sauce was made with sugar and grease and a flavoring extract. The soft or liquid sauce contained a "remedy" requisitioned from a homeopathic quant.i.ty found in the wagon-boss' medicine chest--a few spoonfuls of brandy. The watercress was found two miles away at a spring. The boys called it "pepper gra.s.s." There it was fresh and green, protected by spring water which never freezes, and in some places it was peeping out from the edge of the snow at the brookside.

And now about whisky. There were sixty men in this camp, and in one of the big wagons were three barrels of whisky, but it belonged to the post trader at Fort Fetterman, and it was a tradition not even broken on this exceptional pa.s.sage from Medicine Bow on the U. P. to Fort Fetterman on the North Platte that a consignment of hard liquor was as safe in a bull train as it would be anywhere on earth, and that it would reach its destination untouched. Few men drank intoxicants on these trips. It was a crime to be found with whisky, punishable by banishment from camp, and that might have meant death. But at both ends of the journey--that's another story.

The plainsman and mountaineer, the bullwhacker and the stage-driver, when chilled, drank water. Whisky caused him to perspire, and that was bad. He did not often use it when on duty.

One of the peculiar things about this Christmas dinner is the fact that there were no mountain grouse, no sage hen, no antelope, deer, nor elk for the menu. The truth is the storm drove everything of the kind in another direction--the direction in which we were slowly moving--and some time later, when we emerged upon the other side of the range with our ox-power so greatly reduced that we made less than a mile of progress a day, the herds of elk stampeded a dozen times past our camps, and the "fool grouse" sat a dozen in a group upon the pine boughs in the mountains and refused to move, allowing us to kill them, if so disposed, one at a time; but we did it only once, just to prove that it could be done. (Colonel Roosevelt, please note!)

It took us a couple of weeks to shovel our way out, and while the sun shone in the middle of the day hardly a flake of the snow melted. The air was at times biting cold, but invigorating, and every man, including the boss and the cook and even the night herder, fell to the work with a will that finally meant victory. In places we operated in the drifts as you see the excavators in a city cellar or subway operate, digging down to the surface and then benching as the open-ground miners or cellar excavators do, the men below tossing the blocks of snow up to the bench above and they in turn pa.s.sing it to the top of the drift.

Once or twice, in narrow pa.s.sages, it was necessary to build several benches. In one place we began to tunnel, but the plan was given up, for our wagons, the regulation prairie schooners, would require a pa.s.sage big enough for a railroad furniture car to pa.s.s through.

After the high plateau was reached--the land that represented the watershed of the Platte Valley--it was clear sailing, and while food--wild game--was plentiful, and we ate lots of it, the memory of our Christmas dinner remained to remind us after all that in the midst of greatest hardships and suffering we often find something to be thankful for, something to bring us to our senses when we grumble or complain of our ill-luck or misfortunes.

Had I been as appreciative when I partook of this mountain dinner as I am today for the blessings of Divine Providence, I would have been able to say, in relating this story, that we properly gave thanks to Him who is responsible for all our blessings and who chasteneth us for our wickedness; but I was not properly appreciative, neither were my rough but honest companions. Therefore, I take this opportunity to say grace more than forty years late:

_Thank G.o.d for that s...o...b..und Christmas dinner._

CHAPTER VII

THE FATE OF ONE-EYED ED.