The Covered Wagon Part 3

"Do you think I'm right about all this? I'm sure I don't want Captain Wingate to be offended. I'm not dividing his power. I'm only trying to stiffen it."

Woodhull arose, a sneer on his face, but a hand pushed him down. A tall Missourian stood before him.

"Right ye air, Will!" said he. "Ye've an old head, an' we kin trust hit.

Ef hit wasn't Cap'n Wingate is more older than you, an' already done elected, I'd be for choosin' ye fer cap'n o' this here hull train right now. Seein' hit's the way hit is, I move we vote to do what Will Banion has said is fitten. An' I move we-uns throw in with the big train, with Jess Wingate for cap'n. An' I move we allow one more day to git in supplies an' fixin's, an' trade hosses an' mules an' oxens, an' then we start day atter to-morrow mornin' when the bugle blows. Then hooray fer Oregon!"

There were cheers and a general rising, as though after finished business, which greeted this. Jesse Wingate, somewhat crestfallen and chagrined over the forward ways of this young man, of whom he never had heard till that very morning, put a perfunctory motion or so, asked loyalty and allegiance, and so forth.

But what they remembered was that he appointed as his wagon-column captains Sam Woodhull, of Missouri; Caleb Price, an Ohio man of substance; Simon Hall, an Indiana merchant, and a farmer by name of Kelsey, from Kentucky. To Will Banion the trainmaster a.s.signed the most difficult and thankless task of the train, the captaincy of the cow column; that is to say, the leaders.h.i.+p of the boys and men whose families were obliged to drive the loose stock of the train.

There were sullen mutterings over this in the Liberty column. Men whispered they would not follow Woodhull. As for Banion, he made no complaint, but smiled and shook hands with Wingate and all his lieutenants and declared his own loyalty and that of his men; then left for his own little adventure of a half dozen wagons which he was freighting out to Laramie--bacon, flour and sugar, for the most part; each wagon driven by a neighbor or a neighbor's son. Among these already arose open murmurs of discontent over the way their own contingent had been treated. Banion had to mend a potential split before the first wheel had rolled westward up the Kaw.

The men of the meeting pa.s.sed back among their neighbors and families, and spoke with more seriousness than hitherto. The rifle firing ended, the hilarity lessened that afternoon. In the old times the keel-boatmen bound west started out singing. The pack-train men of the fur trade went shouting and shooting, and the confident hilarity of the Santa Fe wagon caravans was a proverb. But now, here in the great Oregon train, matters were quite otherwise. There were women and children along. An unsmiling gravity marked them all. When the dusky velvet of the prairie night settled on almost the last day of the rendezvous it brought a general feeling of anxiety, dread, uneasiness, fear. Now, indeed, and at last, all these realized what was the thing that they had undertaken.

To add yet more to the natural apprehensions of men and women embarking on so stupendous an adventure, all manner of rumors now continually pa.s.sed from one company to another. It was said that five thousand Mormons, armed to the teeth, had crossed the river at St. Joseph and were lying in wait on the Platte, determined to take revenge for the persecutions they had suffered in Missouri and Illinois. Another story said that the Kaw Indians, hitherto friendly, had banded together for robbery and were only waiting for the train to appear. A still more popular story had it that a party of several Englishmen had hurried ahead on the trail to excite all the savages to waylay and destroy the caravans, thus to wreak the vengeance of England upon the Yankees for the loss of Oregon. Much unrest arose over reports, hard to trace, to the effect that it was all a mistake about Oregon; that in reality it was a truly horrible country, unfit for human occupancy, and sure to prove the grave of any lucky enough to survive the horrors of the trail, which never yet had been truthfully reported. Some returned travelers from the West beyond the Rockies, who were hanging about the landing at the river, made it all worse by relating what purported to be actual experiences.

"If you ever get through to Oregon," they said, "you'll be ten years older than you are now. Your hair will be white, but not by age."

The Great Dipper showed clear and close that night, as if one might almost pick off by hand the familiar stars of the traveler's constellation. Overhead countless brilliant points of lesser light enameled the night mantle, matching the many camp fires of the great gathering. The wind blew soft and low. Night on the prairie is always solemn, and to-night the tense anxiety, the strained antic.i.p.ation of more than two thousand souls invoked a brooding melancholy which it seemed even the stars must feel.

A dog, ominous, lifted his voice in a long, mournful howl which made mothers put out their hands to their babes. In answer a coyote in the gra.s.s raised a high, quavering cry, wild and desolate, the voice of the Far West.

CHAPTER IV

FEVER OF NEW FORTUNES

The notes of a bugle, high and clear, sang reveille at dawn. Now came hurried activities of those who had delayed. The streets of the two frontier settlements were packed with ox teams, horses, wagons, cattle driven through. The frontier stores were stripped of their last supplies. One more day, and then on to Oregon!

Wingate broke his own camp early in the morning and moved out to the open country west of the landing, making a last bivouac at what would be the head of the train. He had asked his four lieutenants to join him there. Hall, Price, and Kelsey headed in with straggling wagons to form the nucleuses of their columns; but the morning wore on and the Missourians, now under Woodhull, had not yet broken park. Wingate waited moodily.

Now at the edge of affairs human apprehensions began to a.s.sert themselves, especially among the womenfolk. Even stout Molly Wingate gave way to doubt and fears. Her husband caught her, ap.r.o.n to eyes, sitting on the wagon tongue at ten in the morning, with her pots and pans unpacked.

"What?" he exclaimed. "You're not weakening? Haven't you as much courage as those Mormon women on ahead? Some of them pus.h.i.+ng carts, I've heard."

"They've done it for religion, Jess. Oregon ain't no religion for me."

"Yet it has music for a man's ears, Molly."

"Hus.h.!.+ I've heard it all for the last two years. What happened to the Donners two years back? And four years ago it was the Applegates left home in old Missouri to move to Oregon. Who will ever know where their bones are laid? Look at our land we left--rich--black and rich as any in the world. What corn, what wheat--why, everything grew well in Illinois!"

"Yes, and cholera below us wiping out the people, and the trouble over slave-holding working up the river more and more, and the sun blazing in the summer, while in the wintertime we froze!"

"Well, as for food, we never saw any part of Kentucky with half so much gra.s.s. We had no turkeys at all there, and where we left you could kill one any gobbling time. The pigeons roosted not four miles from us. In the woods along the river even a woman could kill c.o.o.ns and squirrels, all we'd need--no need for us to eat rabbits like the Mormons. Our chicken yard was fifty miles across. The young ones'd be flying by roasting-ear time--and in fall the sloughs was black with ducks and geese. Enough and to spare we had; and our land opening; and Molly teaching the school, with twelve dollars a month cash for it, and Ted learning his blacksmith trade before he was eighteen. How could we ask more? What better will we do in Oregon?"

"You always throw the wet blanket on Oregon, Molly."

"It is so far!"

"How do we know it is far? We know men and women have crossed, and we know the land is rich. Wheat grows fifty bushels to the acre, the trees are big as the spires on meeting houses, the fish run by millions in the streams. Yet the winters have little snow. A man can live there and not slave out a life.

"Besides"--and the frontier now spoke in him--"this country is too old, too long settled. My father killed his elk and his buffalo, too, in Kentucky; but that was before my day. I want the buffalo. I crave to see the Plains, Molly. What real American does not?"

Mrs. Wingate threw her ap.r.o.n over her face.

"The Oregon fever has witched you, Jesse!" she exclaimed between dry sobs.

Wingate was silent for a time.

"Corn ought to grow in Oregon," he said at last.

"Yes, but does it?"

"I never heard it didn't. The soil is rich, and you can file on six hundred and forty acres. There's your donation claim, four times bigger than any land you can file on here. We sold out at ten dollars an acre--more'n our land really was worth, or ever is going to be worth.

It's just the speculators says any different. Let 'em have it, and us move on. That's the way money's made, and always has been made, all across the United States."

"Huh! You talk like a land speculator your own self!"

"Well, if it ain't the movers make a country, what does? If we don't settle Oregon, how long'll we hold it? The preachers went through to Oregon with horses. Like as not even the Applegates got their wagons across. Like enough they got through. I want to see the country before it gets too late for a good chance, Molly. First thing you know buffalo'll be getting scarce out West, too, like deer was getting scarcer on the Sangamon. We ought to give our children as good a chance as we had ourselves."

"As good a chance! Haven't they had as good a chance as we ever had?

Didn't our land more'n thribble, from a dollar and a quarter? It may thribble again, time they're old as we are now."

"That's a long time to wait."

"It's a long time to live a life-time, but everybody's got to live it."

She stood, looking at him.

"Look at all the good land right in here! Here we got walnut and hickory and oak--worlds of it. We got sa.s.safras and pawpaw and hazel brush. We get all the hickory nuts and pecans we like any fall. The wild plums is better'n any in Kentucky; and as for grapes, they're big as your thumb, and thousands, on the river. Wait till you see the plum and grape jell I could make this fall!"

"Women--always thinking of jell!"

"But we got every herb here we need--boneset and sa.s.safras and Injun physic and bark for the fever. There ain't nothing you can name we ain't got right here, or on the Sangamon, yet you talk of taking care of our children. Huh! We've moved five times since we was married. Now just as we got into a good country, where a woman could dry corn and put up jell, and where a man could raise some hogs, why, you wanted to move again--plumb out to Oregon! I tell you, Jesse Wingate, hogs is a blame sight better to tie to than buffalo! You talk like you had to settle Oregon!"

"Well, haven't I got to? Somehow it seems a man ain't making up his own mind when he moves West Pap moved twice in Kentucky, once in Tennessee, and then over to Missouri, after you and me was married and moved up into Indiana, before we moved over into Illinois. He said to me--and I know it for the truth--he couldn't hardly tell who it was or what it was. .h.i.tched up the team. But first thing he knew, there the old wagon stood, front of the house, cover all on, plow hanging on behind, tar bucket under the wagon, and dog and all. All he had to do, pap said, was just to climb up on the front seat and speak to the team. My maw, she climb up on the seat with him. Then they moved--on West. You know, Molly. My maw, she climb up on the front seat--"

His wife suddenly turned to him, the tears still in her eyes.

"Yes, and Jesse Wingate, and you know it, your wife's as good a woman as your maw! When the wagon was a-standing, cover on, and you on the front seat, I climb up by you, Jess, same as I always have and always will.

Haven't I always? You know that. But it's harder on women, moving is.

They care more for a house that's rain tight in a storm."

"I know you did, Molly," said her husband soberly.

"I suppose I can pack my jells in a box and put in the wagon, anyways."