A Daughter of the Middle Border Part 7

We talked of Grant, of whom he had many pleasing personal recollections, and when a little later we went for a walk, he grew curiously wistful and spoke of his youth in the West and of the simple life of his early days in Was.h.i.+ngton with tenderness. It appeared that wealth and honor had not made him happy. Doubtless this was only a mood, for in parting he rea.s.sumed his smiling official pose.

A few days later as I entered my Hotel I confronted the tall figure and somber, introspective face of General Longstreet whom I had visited a year before at his home in Gainesville, Georgia. We conversed a few moments, then shook hands and parted, but as he pa.s.sed into the street I followed him. From the door-step I watched him slowly making his cautious way through throngs of lesser men (who gave no special heed to him), and as I thought of the days when his dread name was second only to Lee's in the fear and admiration of the North, I marveled at the change in twenty years. Now he was a deaf, hesitant old man, sorrowful of aspect, poor, dim-eyed, neglected, and alone.

"Swift are the changes of life, and especially of American life," I made note. "Most people think of Longstreet as a dead man, yet there he walks, the gray ghost of the Confederacy, silent, alone."

As spring came on and the end of my history of Grant drew near, my longing for the open air, the forest and the trail, made proof-reading a punishment. My eyes (weary of newspaper files and ma.n.u.scripts) filled with mountain pictures. Visioning my plunge into the wilderness with keenest longing, I collected a kit of cooking utensils, a sleeping bag and some pack saddles (which my friend, A. A. Anderson, had invented), together with all information concerning British Columbia and the proper time for hitting The Long Trail.

In showing my maps to Howells in New York, I casually remarked, "I shall go in _here_, and come out _there_--over a thousand miles of Trail," and as he looked at me in wonder, I had a sudden realization of what that remark meant. A vision of myself, a minute, almost indistinguishable insect--creeping hardily through an illimitable forest filled my imagination, and a momentary awe fell upon me.

"How easy it would be to break a leg, or go down with my horse in an icy river!" I thought. Nevertheless, I proceeded with my explanations, gayly a.s.suring Howells that it was only a magnificent outing, quoting to him from certain circulars, pa.s.sages of tempting descriptions in which "splendid savannahs" and "herds of deer and caribou" were used with fine effect.

In my secret heart I hoped to recapture some part of that Spirit of the Sunset which my father had found and loved in Central Minnesota in Fifty-eight. Deeper still, I had a hope of reenacting, in helpful degree, the epic days of Forty-nine, when men found their painful way up the Platte Canon, and over the Continental Divide to Oregon. "It is my last chance to do a bit of real mountaineering, of going to school to the valiant wilderness," I said, "and I can not afford to miss the opportunity of winning a master's degree in hardihood."

That I suffered occasional moments of depression and doubt, the pages of my diary bear witness. At a time when my stories were listed in half the leading magazines, I gravely set down the facts of my situation. "In far away Dakota my father is living alone on a bleak farm, cooking his own food and caring for a dozen head of horses, while my mother, with failing eyes and shortening steps, waits for him and for me in West Salem with only an invalid sister-in-law to keep her company. In a very real sense they are all depending upon me for help and guidance. I am now the head of the house, and yet--here I sit planning a dangerous adventure into Alaska at a time when I should be at home."

My throat ached with pity whenever I received a letter from my mother, for she never failed to express a growing longing for her sons, neither of whom could be with her. To do our chosen work a residence in the city was necessary, and so it came about that all my victories, all my small successes were shadowed by my mother's failing health and loneliness.

It remains to say that during all this time I had heard very little of Miss Zulime Taft. No letters had pa.s.sed between us, but I now learned through her brother that she was planning to come home during the summer, a fact which should have given me a thrill, but as more than four years had pa.s.sed since our meeting in Chicago, I merely wondered whether her stay in Paris had greatly changed her character for the better. "She will probably be more French than American when she returns," I said to Lorado, when he spoke of her.

"Her letters do not sound that way," he answered. "She seems eager to return, and says that she intends to work with me here in Chicago."

Early in March, I notified Babc.o.c.k to meet me at Ashcroft in British Columbia on April 15th. "We'll outfit there, and go in by way of Quesnelle," I added, and with a mind filled with visions of splendid streams, gra.s.sy valleys and glorious camps among eagle-haunted peaks, I finished the final pages of my proof and started West, boyishly eager to set forth upon the mighty circuit of my projected exploration.

"This is the end of my historical writing," I notified McClure. "I'm going back to my fiction of the Middle Border."

On a radiant April morning I reached the homestead finding mother fairly well, but greatly disturbed over my plan. "I don't like to have you go exploring," she said. "It's dangerous. Why do you do it?"

Her voice, the look of her face, took away the spirit of my adventure. I felt like giving it up, but with all arrangements definitely made I could do nothing but go on. The weather was clear and warm, with an odorous south wind drawing forth the leaves, and as I fell to work, raking up the yard, the smell of unfolding blooms, the call of exultant "high-holders" and the chirp of cheerful robins brought back with a rush, all the sweet, a.s.sociated memories of other springs and other gardens, making my gold-seeking expedition seem not only chimerical, but traitorous to my duties.

The hens were singing their cheerful, changeless song below the stable wall; calves were bawling from the neighboring farm-yards and on the mellow soil the s.h.i.+ning, broadcast seeders were clattering to their work, while over the greening hills a faint mist wavered, delicate as a bride's veil. Was it not a kind of madness to exchange the security, the peace, the comfort of this homestead, for the hards.h.i.+ps of a trail whose circuit could not be less than ten thousand miles, a journey which offered possible injury and certain deprivation?

The thought which gave me most uneasiness was not my danger but the knowledge that in leaving my mother to silently brood over the perils which she naturally exaggerated, I was recreant to my pledge. Expression was always elliptical with her; and I shall never know how keenly she suffered during those days of preparation. Instead of acquiring a new daughter, she seemed on the point of losing a son.

She grudged every moment of the hours which I spent in my study. There was so little for her to do! She kept her chair during her waking hours either on the porch overlooking the garden or in the kitchen supervising the women at their work. Every slightest event was pitifully important in her life. The pa.s.sing of the railway trains, the milking of the cow, the watering of the horses, the gathering of the eggs--these were important events in her diary. My incessant journeyings, my distant destinations lay far beyond her utmost imagining. To her my comings and goings were as mysterious, as incalculable as the orbits of the moon, and I think she must have sometimes questioned whether Hamlin Garland, the historian, could possibly be the son for whom she had once knit mittens and repaired kites.

If I had not been under contract, if I had not gone so far in preparation and announcement that to quit would have been disgraceful, I would have given up my trip on her account. "I am ashamed to turn back.

I must go on," I said. "I won't be gone long. I'll come out by way of the Stickeen."

When the time came to say good-bye, she broke down utterly and I went away with a painful constriction in my own throat, a lump which lasted for hours. Not till on the second day as I saw droves of Canadian antelope racing with the train, whilst flights of geese overhead gave certain sign of the wilderness, did I regain my desire to explore the valleys of the North. That lonely old woman on the porch of the Homestead was never absent from my mind.

Promptly on the afternoon of my arrival at Ashcroft on the Canadian Pacific Railway, Burton Babc.o.c.k, wearing a sombrero and a suit of corduroy, dropped from the eastbound train, a duffel bag in his right hand, and a newly-invented camp-stove in the other. "Well, here I am,"

he said, with his characteristic chuckle.

Ready for the road, and with no regrets, no hesitancies, no fears, he set to work getting our outfit together leaving me to gather what information I could concerning the route which we had elected to traverse.

It was hard for me to realize that this bent, bearded, grizzled mountaineer was Burt Babc.o.c.k, the slim companion of my Dry Run Prairie boyhood--it was only in peculiar ways of laughter, and in a certain familiar pucker of wrinkles about his eyes, that I traced the connecting link. I must a.s.sume that he found in me something quite as alien--perhaps more so, for my life in Boston and New York had given to me habits of speech and of thought which obscured, no doubt, most of my youthful characteristics.

As I talked with some of the more thoughtful and conscientious citizens of the town, I found them taking a very serious view of the trip we were about to undertake. "It is a mighty long, hard road," they said, "and a lot of men are going to find it a test of endurance. n.o.body knows anything about the trail after you leave Quesnelle. You want to go with a good outfit, prepared for two months of hards.h.i.+p."

In view of this warning I was especially slow about buying ponies. "I want the best and gentlest beasts obtainable," I said to Burton. "I am especially desirous of a trustworthy riding horse."

That evening, as I was standing on the hotel porch, my attention was attracted to a man mounted on a spirited gray horse, riding up the street toward the hotel. There was something so n.o.ble in the proud arch of this horse's neck, something so powerful in the fling of his hooves that I exclaimed to the landlord, "_There_ is the kind of saddle-horse I am looking for! I wonder if by any chance he is for sale?"

The landlord smiled. "He is. I sent word to the owner and he has come on purpose to see you. You can have the animal if you want him bad enough."

The rider drew rein and the landlord introduced me as the man who was in need of a mount. Each moment my desire to own the horse deepened, but I was afraid to show even approval. "How much do you want for him?" I asked indifferently.

"Well, stranger, I must have fifty dollars for this horse. There is a strain of Arabian in him, and he is a trained cow-pony besides."

Fifty dollars for an animal like that! It was like giving him away. I was at once suspicious. "There must be some trick about him. He is locoed or something," I remarked to my partner.

We could find nothing wrong, however, and at last I pa.s.sed over a fifty dollar bill and led the horse away.

Each moment increased my joy and pride in that dapple-gray gelding.

Undoubtedly there was Arabian blood in his veins. He had a thoroughbred look. He listened to every word I spoke to him. He followed me as cheerfully and as readily as a dog. He let me feel his ears (which a locoed horse will not do) and at a touch of my hand made room for me in his stall. In all ways he seemed exactly the horse I had been looking for, and I began to think of my long ride over the mountains with confidence.

To put the final touch to my security, the owner as he was leaving the hotel said to me, with a note of sadness in his voice, "I hate to see that horse take the long trail. Treat him well, partner."

Three days later, mounted on my stately gray "Ladrone," I led my little pack-train out of Ashcroft, bound for Teslin Lake, some twelve hundred miles to the Northwest. It was a lovely spring afternoon, and as I rode I made some rhymes to express my feeling of exultation.

I mount and mount toward the sky, The eagle's heart is mine.

I ride to put the clouds below Where silver lakelets s.h.i.+ne.

The roaring streams wax white with snow, The granite peaks draw near, The blue sky widens, violets grow, The air is frosty clear.

And so from cliff to cliff I rise, The eagle's heart is mine; Above me, ever-broadening skies-- Below, the river's s.h.i.+ne.

The next day as we were going down a steep slope, one of the pack horses bolted and ran round Ladrone entangling me in the lead rope. When I came to myself I was under my horse, saddle and all, and Ladrone was looking down at me in wonder. The tremendous strain on the rope had pulled me saddle and all under his belly, and had he been the ordinary cayuse he would have kicked me to shreds. To my astonishment and deep grat.i.tude he remained perfectly quiet while I scrambled out from under his feet and put the saddle in place.

My partner, white with excitement, drew near. "I thought you were a goner," he said, huskily. "That horse of yours is a wonder."

As I thought of the look in that gray pony's brown eyes whilst I lay, helpless beneath him, my heart warmed with grat.i.tude and affection. "Old boy," I said, as I patted his neck, "I will never leave _you_ to starve and freeze in the far north. If you carry me through to Telegraph Creek, I will see that you are comfortable for the remaining years of your life."

I mention this incident for the reason that it had far-reaching consequences--as the reader will discover.

In _The Trail of the Goldseekers_, I have told in detail my story of our expedition. Suffice it to say, at this point, that we were seventy-nine days in the wilderness, that we were eaten by flies and mosquitoes, that we traveled in the rain, camped in the rain, packed our saddles in the rain. We toiled through marshes, slopped across miles of tundra, swam our horses through roaring glacial streams and dug them out of bog-holes. For more than two hundred miles we walked in order to lighten the loads of our weakened animals, and when we reached Glenora we were both past-masters of the art of camping through a wilderness. No one could tell us anything about packing, bus.h.i.+ng in a slough or managing a pack-train. We were master-trailers!

Burton, though a year or two older than I, proved an invincible explorer, tireless, uncomplaining and imperturbable. In all our harsh experiences, throughout all our eighty days of struggle with mud, rocks, insects, rain, hunger and cold, he never for one moment lost his courage. Kind to our beasts, defiant of the weather, undismayed by any hards.h.i.+p, he kept the trail. He never once lifted his voice in anger.

His endurance of my moods was heroic.

a.s.suming more than half of the physical labor he loyally said, "You are the boss, the historian of this expedition. You are the proprietor. I am only the hired-man."

Such service could not be bought. It sprang from a friends.h.i.+p which had begun twenty-eight years before, an attachment deep as our lives which could not be broken.

On the seventy-ninth day, ragged, swarthy, bearded like Forty-niners, with only a handful of flour and a lump of bacon left in our kit we came down to the Third Fork of the Stickeen River, without a flake of gold to show for our "panning" the sands along our way. My diaries state that for more than thirty days of this journey it rained, and as I look back upon our three weeks in the Skeena valley I s.h.i.+ver with a kind of retrospective terror. At one time it looked as though we must leave all our horses in that gloomy forest. Ladrone lost the proud arch of his neck and the light lift of his small feet. He could no longer carry me up the steeps and his ribs showed pitifully.

At Glenora, in beautiful sunny weather, we camped for two weeks in blissful leisure while our horses recovered their strength and courage.

We were all hungry for the sun. For hours we lay on the gra.s.s soaking our hides full of light and heat, discussing gravely but at our ease, the situation.