Woman on the American Frontier Part 31

"Even in the gloomiest cabins and to the most disheartened of the fever-stricken, her presence seemed to bring sunshine. Her face always wore a smile so sweet that I forgot my pain when I gazed upon her. Her voice rings in my ears even now. It was peculiarly soft and musical, and I never heard her speak but I recalled those lines of the great dramatist, 'Her voice was ever low, an excellent thing in woman.' Every sufferer waited to hear her speak and seemed to hang upon her accents. Her words were few, but so kind that we all felt that with such a friend to help us we could not long be sick.

"She was entirely forgetful of herself, so much did the poor invalids dwell in her thoughts.

"The storms of autumn raged with frightful violence throughout that gorge, and yet I have known her, while the wind was howling and the rain pouring, to go round three times in one night to the bedsides of those whose lives were hanging by a thread. Once I recollect after my recovery, going to see a young man who was very low and seemed to have life only while Mrs.

Maurice bent over him. She had visited him early that evening, and had promised to come and see him again after making her rounds among her other patients. A fierce snow storm had come up and a strong man could barely maintain himself before the blast. I found the poor fellow very low. He was evidently sinking rapidly. He moved feebly and turned away his eyes, which were fixed upon me as I entered. It was already considerably past the hour when it was expected she would return, and as I bent to ask him how he was, he looked into my face with a bright eager gaze, and said in a whisper, 'ask mother to come.' I knew in an instant whom he meant and said I would go in search of her and conduct her thither through the storm.

"I had only reached the door when she met me. I never shall forget her appearance as she entered out of the howling storm and stood in that dim light all radiant with kindness and sympathy, which beamed from her face and seemed to illumine the room. The sufferer's face brightened and his frame seemed to have a sudden life breathed into it when he saw her enter.

It seemed to me as if she had a miraculous healing power, for that moment he began to mend, and in a few weeks was restored to his pristine health."

It was beyond doubt that her presence and gentle words were more potent in effecting cures than were the medicines which she administered. Those who recovered and walked out when they saw her approaching, even at a distance, were wont to remove their hats and stand as she went by gazing at her as if she was an angel of light.

The scene after the last patient was convalescent, and when she came to take her departure, was indescribable. All the miners quit work and gathered in the village; a party was appointed to escort her to the mountain and the rest formed a long line on each side and stood bareheaded and some of them weeping as she pa.s.sed through.

The mounted men accompanied her and her husband and their guide to the top of the mountain. All of the escort had been her patients and some of them were still wasted and wan from the fever. When they bade her farewell there was not a dry eye among them, and long after she had left them they could have been seen gazing after the n.o.ble matron who had visited and comforted them in their grievous sickness and pain.

Life in the Rocky Mountains before the great transcontinental line was built was remarkable for concentrating in itself the extremest forms of almost every peril, hardship, and privation which is incident to the frontier. Even at the present day and with the increased facilities for reaching the Atlantic and Pacific coast by that single railroad, the greater part of the region far north and far south of that line of travel is still isolated from the world by vast distances and great natural obstacles to communication between the different points of settlement.

So much the more valuable and stronger therefore upon that field is the emotional force of good women. Such there were and are scattered through that rocky wilderness whose ministrations, in many a lonely cabin, and with many a wayfaring band, are like those of the angel who visited the prophet of old when he dwelt "in a desert apart".

An incident is told of a party of emigrants, who were journeying through Idaho that powerfully ill.u.s.trates this idea.

There were five in the party, viz. James Peterson, an aged man, his two daughters, his son, and his son's wife.

While pursuing their toilsome and devious course through the gorges and up and down the steeps, a friendly Indian whom they met informed them that a few miles from the route they were following, a body of men were starving in an almost inaccessible ravine where they had been prospecting for gold.

Mr. Peterson and his son, although they pitied the unfortunate gold hunters, were disinclined to turn from their course, judging that the difficulties of reaching them, and of conveying the necessary stores over the rocks and across the rapid torrents were such that they would render the attempt wholly impracticable.

The two daughters, as well as the wife of young Peterson, refused to listen to the cold dictates of prudence which controlled Mr. Peterson and his son: they saw in imagination only the wretched starving men, and their hearts yearned to relieve them.

Turning a deaf ear to the arguments and persuasions of the elder and younger Peterson, they urged in eloquent and pleading tones that they might be allowed to follow the impulses of kindness and pity and visit the objects of their compa.s.sion. The father could stay with the team and the brother and husband could accompany them under the guidance of the Indian, on their errand of mercy.

Their prayers and persuasions at last prevailed over the objections which were offered. Selecting the most concentrated and nourishing food, which their store of provisions embraced, young Peterson and the Indian loaded themselves with all that they could carry, the three women, who were strong and active, also bearing a portion of the supplies. The party, after a most difficult and toilsome march on foot, succeeded in reaching the top of the mountain, from which they could look down into the ravine upon the spot where the unfortunate men were encamped. They could see no sign of life, and feared they had come too late.

As they neared the place, picking their way down precipices where a single misstep would have been death, one of the women waved her handkerchief and the men shouted at the top of their voices. No response came back except the echoes which reverberated from the wall of the mountain opposite. The rays of the setting sun fell on seven human forms stretched on the ground.

One of these forms at length raised itself to a sitting posture and gazed with a dazed look at the rescuers hastening towards them. The rest had given up all hope and lain down to die.

A spoonful of stimulant was immediately administered to each of the seven sufferers, and kindling a fire, the women quickly prepared broth with the dried meat which they had brought. The starving men were in a light-headed condition, induced by long fasting, and could scarcely comprehend that they were saved. "Who be those, Jim, walking round that fire; not women?" said one of the men. "No, Pete," was the reply, "them's angels; didn't you hear 'em sing to us a spell ago?" The kind words with which the three women had sought to recall the wretched wayfarers to life and hope might well have been mistaken for an angel's song. One of the men afterwards said he dreamed he was in heaven, and when his eyes were opened by the sound of those sweet voices, and he saw those n.o.ble girls, he knew his dream had come true.

Another said that those voices brought him back to life and hope, more than all the food and stimulants.

For a week these angels of mercy nursed and fed the starving men, the Indian meanwhile having shot a mountain goat, which increased their supplies, and at the end of that period the men were sufficiently recruited to start, in company with their preservers, for the camp, where Mr.

Peterson was awaiting the return of his daughters, of whose safety he had been already informed by the Indian.

When the rescued men came to bid them farewell, they brought a bag containing a hundred pounds weight of gold dust, the price for which would have been their lives, but for those devoted women, and begged them to accept it, not as a reward, but as a token of their grat.i.tude. The girls refused to take the gift, believing that the adventurous miners needed it, and that they had been amply rewarded by the reflection that they had saved seven lives.

The parting, on both sides, was tearful, the rough miners being more affected than even the women. Each party pursued its separate course, the one towards Oregon, the other towards Utah; but after the Petersons had reached the spot where they encamped that night, they discovered the bag of gold, which the miners had secretly deposited in the wagon. The treasure thus forced upon them was divided between the Miss Petersons and their sister-in-law. Bright and pure as that metal was, it was incomparably less l.u.s.trous than the deeds which it rewarded, and infinitely less pure than the motives which prompted them.

Finely has a poet of our own time celebrated the wondrous power of those words of cheer and comfort which woman utters so often to the unfortunate.

O! ever when the happy laugh is dumb, All the joy gone, and all the sorrow come, When loss, despair, and soul-distracting pain, Wring the sad heart and rack the throbbing brain, The only hope--the only comfort heard-- Comes in the music of a woman's word.

Like beacon-bell on some wild island sh.o.r.e, Silverly ringing through the tempest's roar, Whose sound borne shipward through the ocean gloom Tells of the path and turns her from her doom.

Acting within their own homes, who can sum up the entire amount of good which the frontier wife, mother, sister, and daughter have accomplished in their capacities as emotional and sympathetic beings? How many fevered brows have they cooled, how many gloomy moods have they illumined, how many wavering hearts have they stayed and confirmed?

This service of the heart is rendered so freely and so often that it ceases to attract the attention it merits. Like the vital air and sunshine, it is so free and spontaneous that one rarely pauses to thank G.o.d for it. The outflow of sympathy, the kind word or act, and all the long sacrifice of woman's days pa.s.s too often without a thought, or a word, from those who perhaps might droop and die without them.

England has its Westminster Abbey, beneath whose cl.u.s.tered arches statesmen, philanthropists, warriors, and kings repose in a mausoleum, whither men repair to gaze at the monumental bust, the storied urn, and proud epitaph; but where is the mausoleum which preserves the names and virtues of those gentle, un.o.btrusive women--the heroines and comforters of the frontier home? In the East, the simple slabs of stone which record their names have crumbled into the dust of the churchyard. In the far West, they sleep on the prairie and mountain slope, with scarcely a memorial to mark the spot.

Nowhere more strongly are the manifestations of heart-power shown than among the women of our remote border. Speaking of them, one who long lived in that region says, "If you are sick, there is nothing which sympathy and care can devise or perform, which is not done for you. No sister ever hung over the throbbing brain, or fluttering pulse, of a brother with more tenderness and fidelity. This is as true of the lady whose hand has only figured her embroidery or swept her guitar, as of the cottage-girl, wringing from her laundry the foam of the mountain stream. If I must be cast, in sickness or dest.i.tution, on the care of a stranger, let it be in California; but let it be before avarice has hardened the heart and made a G.o.d of gold."

What is said of the California wives, mothers, and sisters, may, with equal force, be applied to woman throughout the whole vast mountain region, including ten immense states and territories. In the mining districts, on the wild cattle ranche, in the eyrie, perched, like an eagle's nest, on the crest of those sky-piercing summits, or on the secluded valley farm, wherever there is a home to be brightened, a sick bed to be tended, or a wounded spirit to be healed, there is woman seen as a minister of comfort, consolation, and joy.

The military posts on the frontier have long had reason to thank the wives of the soldiers and officers for their kindness, manifested in numberless ways.

One of these ladies was Mrs. R------, who accompanied her husband to his post on the Rio Grande, in 1856.

Here she remained with him for more than three years, till that grand mustering of all the powers of the Republic to the long contested battle-grounds along the Potomac. Their life on the Mexican frontier was full of interest, novelty, and adventure. The First Artillery was often engaged in repulsing the irregular and roving bands of Cortinas, who rode over the narrow boundary river in frequent raids and stealing expeditions into Texas. When in camp, Mrs. Ricketts greatly endeared herself to the men in her husband's company by constant acts of kindness to the sick, and by showing a cheerful and lively disposition amid all the hardships and annoyances of garrison life, at such a distance from home and from the comforts and refinements of our American civilization.

She was a spirit of mercy as well as good cheer; and many a poor fellow knew that, if he could but get her ear, his penance in the guard-house for some violation of the regulations, would be far less severe on account of her gentle and womanly plea.

She afterwards shared her husband's imprisonment in Richmond. Captain R------ had been severely wounded and grew rapidly worse. The gloomiest forebodings pressed like lead upon the brave heart of the devoted wife.

Again the surgeons consulted over his dreadfully swollen leg, and prescribed amputation; and again it was spared to the entreaties of his wife, who was certain that his now greatly enfeebled condition would not survive the shock. Much of the time he lay unconscious, and for weeks his life depended entirely on the untiring patience and skill with which his wife soothed down the rudeness of his prison-house, cheering him and other prisoners who were so fortunate as to be in the room with him, and alleviating the slow misery that was settling like a pall upon him.

As the pebble which stirs the lake in wider and ever wider circles, so the genial emotion which begins in the family extends to the neighborhood, and sometimes embraces the whole human race. Hence arises the philanthropic kindness of some, and the large-hearted charity that is willing to labor anywhere and in any manner to relieve the wants of all who are suffering pain or privation.

In all our wars from the Revolutionary contest to the present time, woman's work in the army hospitals, and even on the battle-field, as a nurse, has been a crown to womanhood and a blessing to our civilization and age. Many a life that had hitherto been marked only by the domestic virtues and the charities of home, became enlarged and enn.o.bled in this wider sphere of duty.

Wrestling in grim patience with unceasing pain; to lie weak and helpless, thinking of the loved ones on the far off hillside, or thirsty with unspeakable longing for one draught of cold water from the spring by the big rock at the old homestead; to yearn, through long, hot nights, for one touch of the cool, soft hand of a sister or a wife on the throbbing temples, the wounded soldier saw with joy unspeakable the coming of these ministering angels. Then the great gashes would be bathed with cooling washes, or the grateful draught poured between the thin, chalky lips, or the painful, inflamed stump would be lifted and a pad of cool, soft lint, fitted under it. These ministrations carried with, them a moral cheer and a soothing that was more salutary and healing than medicines and creature comforts.

The poor wounded soldier was a.s.sured in tones, to whose pleasant and homelike accents his ear had long been a stranger, that his valor should not be forgotten, that they too had a son, a brother, a father, or a husband in the army. After a pallid face and bony fingers were bathed, sometimes a chapter in the New Testament or a paragraph from the newspapers would be read in tones low but distinct, in grateful contrast to the hoa.r.s.e battle shouts that had been lingering in his ear for weeks.

Then the good lady would act as amanuensis for some poor fellow who had an armless sleeve, and write down for loving eyes and heavy hearts in some distant village the same old soldier's story, told a thousand times by a thousand firesides, but always more charming than any story in the Arabian Nights,--how, on that great day, he stood with his company on a hillside, and saw the long line of the enemy come rolling across the valley; how, when, the cannon opened on them, he could see the rough, ragged gaps opening in the line; how they closed up and moved on; how this friend fell on one side, and poor Jimmy ------ on the other; and then he felt a general crash, and a burning pain, and the musket dropped out of his hand; then the ambulance and the amputation, and what the surgeon said about his pluck; and then the weakness, and the pain, and the hunger; and how much better he was now; and how kind the ladies had been to him.

Such offices as these lift woman above the plane of earthly experience and place her a little lower than the angels. Only she can fill the measure of such duties, and only she does fill them.

Among the deities of the Eastern Pantheon, the G.o.d representing the destroyer is embodied under the form of a man, while the preserver is symbolized under the form of a woman. This is an adaptation in Polytheism of a great and true idea. Woman is a preserver. Her's is the conservative influence of society. It is from man that the destructive forces that shake the social organization emanate. He wars on his kind and the earth shakes under the tread of his armies. He organizes those mighty revolutionary movements which pull down the fabric of states. He is restless, aggressive, warlike. But it is woman's province to keep. Her mission is peace.

A party of soldiers pa.s.sing through the western wilds, sees in the distance a body of hors.e.m.e.n approaching. c.o.c.king their rifles and putting themselves in a defensive att.i.tude, they prepare for battle. But when they see that there are women among the riders who are galloping towards them, they relax their line and restore their rifles to their shoulders. They know there will be no battle, for woman's presence means peace.

Woman is the guardian of our race. In the household she is saving; in the family she is protecting, and everywhere her influence is that which keeps.

It is this characteristic that makes her presence on the frontier so essential to a successful prosecution of true pioneer enterprises. The man's work is one of destruction and subjugation. He must level the forest, break the soil, and fight all the forces that oppose him in his progress.

Woman guards the health and life of the household, h.o.a.rds the stores of the family, and economizes the surplus strength of her husband, father, or son.

We are speaking now of the s.e.x as it is seen in a new country and in remote settlements. In crowded cities, amid a superabundant wealth, and an idle and luxurious mode of life, we see too often the types of selfish, frivolous, and conventional females such as are hardly known on the border.

But even in these, populous districts the same spirit is not unfrequently shown, with important results, in respect to the acc.u.mulation of great fortunes.