The Covered Wagon Part 16

"It's not free for some things, Mr. Wingate," rejoined the younger man hotly. "You can lead or not, as you like; but I'll not train up with a man who thinks of me as you do. After this think what you like, but don't speak any more."

"What do you mean by that?"

"You know very well. You've believed another man's word about my personal character. It's gone far enough and too far."

"The other man is not here. He can't face you."

"No, not now. But if he's on earth he'll face me sometime."

Unable to control himself further, Banion wheeled and galloped away to his own train.

"You ask if we're to join in with the Yankees," he flared out to Jackson. "No! We'll camp apart and train apart. I won't go on with them."

"Well," said the scout, "I didn't never think we would, er believe ye could; not till they git in trouble agin--er till a certain light wagon an' mules throws in with us, huh?"

"You'll say no more of that, Jackson! But one thing: you and I have got to ride and see if we can get any trace of Woodhull."

"Like looking for a needle in a haystack, an' a d.a.m.n bad needle at that," was the old man's comment.

CHAPTER XVI

THE PLAINS

"On to the Platte! The buffalo!" New cheer seemed to come to the hearts of the emigrants now, and they forgot bickering. The main train ground grimly ahead, getting back, if not all its egotism, at least more and more of its self-reliance. By courtesy, Wingate still rode ahead, though orders came now from a joint council of his leaders, since Banion would not take charge.

The great road to Oregon was even now not a trail but a road, deep cut into the soil, though no wheeled traffic had marked it until within the past five years. A score of paralled paths it might be at times, of tentative location along a hillside or a marshy level; but it was for the most part a deep-cut, unmistakable road from which it had been impossible to wander. At times it lay worn into the sod a half foot, a foot in depth. Sometimes it followed the ancient buffalo trails to water--the first roads of the Far West, quickly seized on by hunters and engineers--or again it transected these, hanging to the ridges after frontier road fas.h.i.+on, heading out for the proved fords of the greater streams. Always the wheel marks of those who had gone ahead in previous years, the continuing thread of the trail itself, worn in by trader and trapper and Mormon and Oregon or California man, gave hope and cheer to these who followed with the plow.

Stretching out, closing up, almost inch by inch, like some giant measuring worm in its slow progress, the train held on through a vast and stately landscape, which some travelers had called the Eden of America, such effect was given by the series of altering scenes. Small imagination, indeed, was needed to picture here a long-established civilization, although there was not a habitation. They were beyond organized society and beyond the law.

Game became more abundant, wild turkeys still appeared in the timbered creek bottoms. Many elk were seen, more deer and very many antelope, packed in northward by the fires. A number of panthers and giant gray wolves beyond counting kept the hunters always excited. The wild abundance of an unexhausted Nature offered at every hand. The sufficiency of life brought daily growth in the self-reliance which had left them for a time.

The wide timberlands, the broken low hills of the green prairie at length began to give place to a steadily rising inclined plane. The soil became less black and heavy, with more sandy ridges. The oak and hickory, stout trees of their forefathers, pa.s.sed, and the cottonwoods appeared. After they had crossed the ford of the Big Blue--a hundred yards of racing water--they pa.s.sed what is now the line between Kansas and Nebraska, and followed up the Little Blue, beyond whose ford the trail left these quieter river valleys and headed out over a high table-land in a keen straight flight over the great valley of the Platte, the highway to the Rockies.

Now the soil was sandier; the gra.s.s changed yet again. They had rolled under wheel by now more than one hundred different varieties of wild gra.s.ses. The vegetation began to show the growing alt.i.tude. The cactus was seen now and then. On the far horizon the wavering mysteries of the mirage appeared, marvelous in deceptiveness, mystical, alluring, the very spirits of the Far West, appearing to move before their eyes in giant pantomime. They were pa.s.sing from the Prairies to the Plains.

Shouts and cheers arose as the word pa.s.sed back that the sand hills known as the Coasts of the Platte were in sight. Some mothers told their children they were now almost to Oregon. The whips cracked more loudly, the tired teams, tongues lolling, quickened their pace as they struck the down-grade gap leading through the sand ridges.

Two thousand Americans, some of them illiterate and ignorant, all of them strong, taking with them law, order, society, the church, the school, anew were staging the great drama of human life, act and scene and episode, as though upon some great moving platform drawn by invisible cables beyond the vast proscenium of the hills.

CHAPTER XVII

THE GREAT ENCAMPMENT

As the long columns of the great wagon train broke through the screening sand hills there was disclosed a vast and splendid panorama. The valley of the Platte lay miles wide, green in the full covering of spring. A crooked and broken thread of timber growth appeared, marking the moister soil and outlining the general course of the shallow stream, whose giant cottonwoods were dwarfed now by the distances. In between, and for miles up and down the flat expanse, there rose the blue smokes of countless camp fires, each showing the location of some white-topped s.h.i.+p of the Plains. Black specks, grouped here and there, proved the presence of the livestock under herd.

Over all shone a pleasant sun. Now and again the dark shadow of a moving cloud pa.s.sed over the flat valley, softening its high lights for the time. At times, as the sun shone full and strong, the faint loom of the mirage added the last touch of mysticism, the figures of the wagons rising high, multiplied many-fold, with giant creatures pa.s.sing between, so that the whole seemed, indeed, some wild phantasmagoria of the desert.

"Look!" exclaimed Wingate, pulling up his horse. "Look, Caleb, the Northern train is in and waiting for us! A hundred wagons! They're camped over the whole bend."

The sight of this vast re-enforcement brought heart to every man, woman and child in all the advancing train. Now, indeed, Oregon was sure.

There would be, all told, four hundred--five hundred--above six hundred wagons. Nothing could withstand them. They were the same as arrived!

As the great trains blended before the final emparkment men and women who had never met before shook hands, talked excitedly, embraced, even wept, such was their joy in meeting their own kind. Soon the vast valley at the foot of the Grand Island of the Platte--ninety miles in length it then was--became one vast bivouac whose parallel had not been seen in all the world.

Even so, the Missouri column held back, an hour or two later on the trail. Banion, silent and morose, still rode ahead, but all the flavor of his adventure out to Oregon had left him--indeed, the very savor of life itself. He looked at his arms, empty; touched his lips, where once her kiss had been, so infinitely and ineradicably sweet. Why should he go on to Oregon now?

As they came down through the gap in the Coasts, looking out over the Grand Island and the great encampment, Jackson pulled up his horse.

"Look! Someone comin' out!"

Banion sat his horse awaiting the arrival of the rider, who soon cut down the intervening distance until he could well be noted. A tall, spare man he was, middle-aged, of long lank hair and gray stubbled beard, and eyes overhung by bushy brows. He rode an Indian pad saddle, without stirrups, and was clad in the old costume of the hunter of the Far West--fringed s.h.i.+rt and leggings of buckskin. Moccasins made his foot-covering, though he wore a low, wide hat. As he came on at speed, guiding his wiry mount with a braided rope looped around the lower jaw, he easily might have been mistaken for a savage himself had he not come alone and from such company as that ahead. He jerked up his horse close at hand and sat looking at the newcomers, with no salutation beyond a short "How!"

Banion met him.

"We're the Westport train. Do you come from the Bluffs? Are you for Oregon?"

"Yes. I seen ye comin'. Thought I'd projeck some. Who's that back of ye?" He extended an imperative skinny finger toward Jackson. "If it hain't Bill Jackson hit's his ghost!"

"The same to you, Jim. How!"

The two shook hands without dismounting. Jackson turned grinning to Banion.

"Major," said he, "this is Jim Bridger, the oldest scout in the Rockies, an' that knows more West than ary man this side the Missoury. I never thought to see him agin, sartain not this far east."

"Ner me," retorted the other, shaking hands with one man after another.

"Jim Bridger? That's a name we know," said Banion. "I've heard of you back in Kentucky."

"Whar I come from, gentlemen--whar I come from more'n forty year ago, near's I can figger. Leastways I was borned in Virginny an' must of crossed Kentucky sometime. I kain't tell right how old I am, but I rek'lect perfect when they turned the water inter the Missoury River."

He looked at them solemnly.

"I come back East to the new place, Kansas City. It didn't cut no mustard, an' I drifted to the Bluffs. This train was pullin' west, an' I hired on for guide. I've got a few wagons o' my own--iron, flour an'

bacon for my post beyant the Rockies--ef we don't all git our ha'r lifted afore then!

"We're in between the Sioux and the p.a.w.nees now," he went on. "They're huntin' the bufflers not ten mile ahead. But when I tell these pilgrims, they laugh at me. The hull Sioux nation is on the spring hunt right now.

I'll not have it said Jim Bridger led a wagon train into a ma.s.sacree. If ye'll let me, I'm for leavin' 'em an' trainin' with you-all, especial since you got anyhow one good man along. I've knowed Bill Jackson many a year at the Rendyvous afore the fur trade petered. d.a.m.n the pilgrims!

The hull world's broke loose this spring. There's five thousand Mormons on ahead, praisin' G.o.d every jump an' eatin' the gra.s.s below the roots.

Womern an' children--so many of 'em, so many! I kain't talk about hit!

Women don't belong out here! An' now here you come bringin' a thousand more!

"There's a woman an' a baby layin' dead in oar camp now," he concluded.