Snow Mountain Passage (11 page)

“Walter,” Jim calls, “you ready for breakfast?”

The heap turns, emits a miserable groan, falls silent.

“You’re a good fellow,” Jim says as he breaks off a piece of biscuit and begins to chew, slowly and deliberately. “One of the best.”

He has never tasted such a delicious biscuit. With each bite his spirits rise. He looks at Charlie in amazement, amazed to see him here, a familiar face. If Charlie had been with them on the Humboldt, if the company by that time had not broken up into so many pieces, things would surely have gone another way. By some miracle Charlie had made no enemies. No one bore him a grudge. He always did more than his share, more than anyone expected, since he was not a family man. He is a bachelor, a loner, traveling without a wagon, who has had some wins and some losses in life, and the losses show around his eyes, a melancholy cheerfulness. For a number of years he was a merchant in Chicago, but fell on hard times and decided to head west hoping for a change of luck. He still dresses like a merchant, in his broadcloth coat, spectacles, bowler hat. He still has about him an oddly prosperous and well-fed look, even here in this wilderness valley, ruddy cheeks, a bit of belly pushing at his buttons.

When Charlie and Bill McCutcheon left the company a month ago, some predicted he was gone for good. McCutcheon will be back, they said, because his wife and child are with us. But why in the world would Stanton come back into this unforgiving land? “Would you?” Elizabeth Graves once asked, with an accusing eye. “If you was a single fella and no ties to anyone, nor any family calling?”

But here he is, a hundred miles north and east of the fort, with seven mules loaded and two more men, thanks to Captain Sutter, two Indians hunkered in the sun, watching and waiting. McCutcheon came down with a fever, Charlie tells him, and had to stay behind. It’s malaria, Charlie thinks.

“You’ll see him when you get there. Hard to believe a man that big and strong could get so weak he can hardly walk.”

From Charlie he learns that the battle for California has already been waged and won. In the five months since they crossed the Missouri, the towns and bays and presidios all along the coast have been taken without firing a shot. It has been declared a U.S. Territory, with a military governor in charge. Sutter’s Fort has been turned into an army garrison during what they call “the period of transition.” Not all the Mexicans are happy about the new arrangement, Charlie says. Just last week he heard about some kind of rebellion in Los Angeles. Captain Fremont and his troops have already started down to take care of it. Fact is, everywhere you go you hear stories about our women getting captured and violated, and children getting kidnapped. The Mexicans are beasts, they say, torture their enemies and rape without mercy. That’s why you see these wagons here in Bear Valley.

“They came over with the Hastings bunch. Some were here when I came through two weeks ago. Some are still here. People are sick, of course, or worn down from the crossing, or waiting for fresh animals to be brought up. But you’ll meet some who are just plain scared. Hastings pumped ‘em full of stories about how we got to band together and subdue the Mexicans and make room for a new place in the world. Then they got this far, and word comes trickling up the mountain about what the Mexicans are doing to our people. I heard one story about a fella from Virginia, got captured and forced to crawl around on his hands and knees till this vaquero rope-tied him like a calf and castrated him in front of his wife and children and then branded him with a red-hot iron. Ya see, some of these folks are afraid to move. It’s too late to turn back, and there’s no will to go forward. They’re sort of paralyzed, waiting for somebody to tell ‘em what to do. They curse Lansford Hastings for bringing them all this way and then riding off into the sunset. He doesn’t have any wagons of his own, nor any family. He’s just like me. He can come and go as he pleases.”

“And what about the Mexicans? Is it true what people say?”

“Hard to tell,” Charlie says. “I myself have yet to run into one.”

“All the way from here to Sutter’s Fort and back?”

“At the fort I saw two fellas looked like they could’ve been. But maybe they were Indians.”

“What does Sutter say?”

“Well, now, Captain Sutter, he’s a special case, since he will tell you he is part Mexican himself.”

“I thought he was Swedish.”

“Fact is, he’s a Swiss.”

“I believe Hastings described him as Swedish.”

“That is just one more thing Mr. Hastings got wrong. Sutter comes from Switzerland. But he also happens to be a citizen of Mexico. That’s how he got hold of so much land.”

“I’ll be damned,” says Jim. “Whose side is he on then? Ours, or theirs?”

“I heard it depends on which way the wind blows.”

These two could talk for hours, trading news, and they would, if this were after sundown instead of after sunup. Charlie feels the burden of his mission, pushing east now at a steady pace. Last night he camped lower down the valley. He wants to make the Yuba River today, and Jim is tempted to join him, tempted to turn around right now. Charlie and his two Indians, along with these fresh animals—it might just be enough to bring the party through.

He is tempted until he takes a close look at how much Charlie is packing, the many sacks of flour and beans and jerked beef.

Together they calculate the days it will take his mule train to reach the party, and where the wagons are likely to be found—somewhere along the Truckee?—and how many days from there to bring them past the summit. They figure how much game can be counted on, and how many mouths must be fed for that many days, and they realize, as they talk it through, that Charlie’s provisions will not get eighty people all the way across. With no large setbacks, they might make it to the top of this valley. They might. Or they might not. But if food and fresh animals were waiting somewhere between here and the summit, well, that could make the difference.

As he studies Charlie’s load, Jim’s future takes its first clear shape. It is like a military campaign. In his mind the days line up. He will meet them right up there, above Bear Valley, and his accusers can be damned. His accusers! He will show them that it takes more than squabbling and blaming to bring a wagon party through. He sees his own mule train with another load like Charlie’s, piled with fresh provisions. Already he sees the lead wagon coming toward him, as it clears a distant rise. He feels the thrill of that first sighting. By God, he will show them….

Charlie beckons to the Indians, who wait near their horses. He calls them Salvador and Luis. They speak Spanish, but no English. They are not like the starvlings Jim saw in the desert. They too look well fed, full in the face, with clear eyes that do not connive or plead. They wear ranching clothes and are solidly built, muscular, alert. From the way they move the animals around, Jim sees that they’re capable horsemen who could be good allies on the long trail back. They could turn on Charlie, of course, as soon as these wagons are out of sight and earshot, and steal the laden mules. But he seems to trust them, and they have some fear of Sutter, he says, who has threatened to execute them if any mules are lost.

Jim looks at Charlie, marveling again at the loyalty of this man who could have remained in the settlements, who has no earthly reason to take these hazards upon himself—none but his own sense of honor. How rare it is these days, Jim thinks, to find a man of honor. The thought grips him, and the idea that these seven mule loads are headed toward the dusty band still plodding along somewhere between the Humboldt and the Truckee. He feels tears welling.

“You’re a prince, Charlie. Once we have all made it through, we’ll have a banquet. We’ll have the biggest damn banquet you or I have ever seen, and you will be the honored guest. I swear to you, this shall not be forgotten!”

Embarrassed by his outburst, Stanton has to turn away.

“How do you say ‘thank you’ in Spanish, Charlie?”

“They say ‘grassias.’”

Jim knows he should be wary around any kind of Indian and never let his guard down. But the moment gets the best of him. He reaches for a hand, hoping to convey the depth of his gratitude for what they’re all about to do. He wants to trust them. He has to. The lives of his wife and children now depend upon these men.

“Grassias,” he says.

“They put ‘moochas’ in front of that,” Charlie says. “Say ‘moochas grassias, Salvador.’”

Jim squeezes the hand. “Moochas grassias, Salvador.”

“De nada,” says the Indian.

“Moochas grassias, Luis.”

The men smile courteously, uncertain how to handle this. “De nada,” they mutter. “De nada.”

“And Charlie, please tell Margaret you saw me. Tell her I’m doing fine. No need to mention how I look, you hear? You tell her I’m doing fine, and we’ll meet up again in no time.”

“I surely will tell her that, Mr. Reed.”

Charlie gives him one of Sutter’s horses and a packet of jerked beef and flour. Then they move out in single file, Charlie and the Indians riding, the mules behind. Jim walks with them to the edge of the trees. He watches them cross the valley and begin the slow, torturous ascent up the wall he and Walter tumbled down yesterday. It looks to be six or seven hundred feet of loose rock where few trees have ever found a hold.

From the grove he looks across the wide meadow that runs the length of Bear Valley. For the first time in days his heart lifts. The sun is bright and warming him, making green things greener, the wild peas and mallow and the broad-leaved mule ear along the marshy banks of the stream. What a fine place this will be to bring his family for their first taste of California, an early moment of reward, where we can rest the animals before the final trek out to the settlements. Charlie has heard that last year the summit was passable until December, and that’s still six weeks away. This morning not a cloud is to be seen from here to the farthest granite dome.

W
ALTER IS TOO
sick to move. The tallow has caught up with him. Everything has caught up with him. An Illinois family takes him in, people who traveled with Jim’s party for a while along the Platte, lingering here a few more days to fatten up their stock. Jim is not much better off than Walter. He too should linger a while and fatten up, but won’t let himself. After one day’s rest he says good-bye to Walter and the mare and joins two horsemen from Tennessee heading for sea level.

The trail out of Bear Valley is the steepest yet, another drop where animals slide, where wagons will have to be lowered with chains and oxen led down one by one. His head pounds with each plunging lurch. Twice he nearly tumbles from the saddle. Staying close to the river, they pass Mule Springs and Steep Hollow Crossing. As they swing away from the river’s narrow channel, to climb again, he falls behind the others, nearly blind with headache. Then they are clambering in and out of canyons. In Jim’s wobbly condition the long westward unfoldment of the Sierras seems a maze of ridges and gullies without pattern, without end.

One day about noon, when a voice calls from high above, he does not understand the words. He doesn’t react, keeps plodding up the raggedy slope toward a voice not aimed at him. From the top of a long rise he finally sees what the others see. After all these months the dreamed-of destination is laid before them, the valley of the Sacramento, still miles away but vivid in transparent light. Through the center a line of heavy growth marks the north-south course of its largest river, with tributary streams and creeks marked by lesser lines that fan and wiggle outward like the branches of a great tree spread across the flatness.

“Thar she blows!” shouts one of the men.

“Ain’t she a beauty!” cries the other.

“Be goddamned if we ain’t made it across!”

Jim nods his throbbing head and smiles and lets them do the shouting. His jaw and temples feel swollen. His belly hurts. He doesn’t trust this view. He has been deceived before. He wants to get down closer to it, look for the trail that will take them into the lower foothills and the place Stanton told him about, the first outpost, William Johnson’s ranch.

Two more hours bring them to a building, low and squat, sitting on cleared dirt with no road leading toward it or away from it. There appears to be a stretched cowhide for a door. In the ten weeks since Jim left Fort Bridger, it’s the first sign of any settlement at all, a two-room shack, half adobe, half timber, set back from the Bear River, with pens beyond, a rickety corral. No fences. No barns. He sees a few more wagons scattered among the nearest trees, and unyoked cattle grazing.

Though there is no gate, Johnson is a kind of gatekeeper at this end of the emigrant trail. They find him behind the shack, where two naked Indian men are layering adobe bricks. Their bodies are dark and muscular. Their hands and feet are covered with gloves and stockings of chalky brown mud. Johnson’s trousers are muddy to the knees. He wears an ancient felt hat but no shirt. He too is brown, barrel-chested. He is cursing the mud and the sun and welcomes the chance to leave this task and see to his visitors. He has a rough, wind-worn face, a reddish beard streaked with gray, the rolling walk of a man who has spent some time at sea.

Johnson seems accustomed to strangers, used to their hungers and their dazed wonder at having survived this far. He acts as if he has been expecting Jim and the Tennessee men, says he doesn’t have much to offer, but there might be some cheese and milk and bread.

“I ain’t been here hardly a year,” he says.

As Jim dismounts, his knees give way and he drops to the ground. In the midday heat it feels like high summer. His cheeks and brows glisten. They drag him into the shade and prop him against the timbers. Johnson calls out in a language Reed doesn’t understand.

He lets his eyelids close, waiting for the wooziness to pass. When he opens them an Indian woman is hunkering at his side. She studies the welts festering on his scalp. She doesn’t speak. Her face is young and pleasant. Her eyes are oval. Her black hair, held by a tightly rolled bandanna, falls past her shoulders in two thick strands. When she stands and leans over him for a closer look, he sees that she is wearing a short skirt of furred skin, perhaps deer, with bits of shell around the waist, and a necklace made of shell bits, but nothing else. Her flesh is very smooth. Her breasts are large and pendulous, much larger than Margaret’s. He wants to look at her, but again his eyelids close. He falls into a long, dreamy sleep, a half-wakeful sleeping dream, during which the woman twice appears. When he wakes he is alone inside the dark cabin, and he thinks she may have been a phantom, but soon she is next to him again. Her hands are gentle as she applies to his scalp a sticky poultice that smells like pine.