Snow Mountain Passage (34 page)

He sits lost inside his embarrassment and grief, weeping for Margaret, suddenly gripped by the fear that he might never see her again in this life, weeping for his young ones too, and for all the waiting of these past few weeks, the time lost waiting, waiting, waiting. He weeps with shame for shooting Antonio’s horse out from under him, and for the loss of John Snyder, poor Johnny long buried in sand by the slithering Humboldt, and for the many brave oxen who shriveled up in the sand and died of thirst. After three mugs of ale and three brandies he weeps maudlin tears of humility for this crowd of new comrades gathered around. Losses, terrors, gratitudes all fountain up and spill out to move the other men, who recognize this grief.

The Reverend’s pulpit voice makes them a congregation of believers. While some wipe back tears of their own, others feel the long-lost call of home, the call of family and women left somewhere back in the States, who but for the grace of God could be out there now among the snowbound sufferers. And wrapped around the call of home is the recent news of conquests, a newfound pride in territory won. Compassion for Jim’s plight swells up, along with their common sense of history in the making. For this night at least they share an urgent kinship. This land is their land. The people in the mountains are their people. While passion rises in the Reverend’s voice, a hat begins to circulate. Money leaps out of pockets and into the moving hat, wrinkled bills and gold pieces clinking and glinting in the smoky saloon.

“They are all fine people,” the Reverend shouts. “They are just like you and me!”

“Yes! Yes!” a man exclaims.

“God bless you, Reverend!”

“We’re with you, Jim!”

“They’ve got some bad trouble, that’s all! Now they need our help. They need volunteers to go back up there with Jim to bring ‘em out. If you can’t volunteer, then dig deep, brothers. Dig into your pockets. These are American families who started west to take their rightful place out here at the far side of this great continent, and by God they deserve every chance!”

“All I got is one dollar left! But here it is!”

“Here’s one for Jim, and one more for a drink!”

The owner of a shipping company calls out that he will offer a launch.

The bartender calls out that the next round is on the house.

A great cry fills the saloon. The Reverend lifts Jim up and grabs him in a bear hug. Others crowd in close to shake his hand, as more upturned hats move around the room.

One by one, men come forward, half a dozen men, red-faced and teary-eyed, a deckhand, a mule skinner, a man who can pilot the launch.

“I’m with ya, Jim,” another deckhand says. “Wouldn’t want no young’un of mine stuck for long in a place like that.”

When the coins and bills are dumped out upon a table, they make a heap that looks to be at least a thousand dollars. A committee is appointed to count it and to go around tomorrow to collect some more from anyone who might have missed this chance to invest in the future and in the common good.

O
VERNIGHT A PLAN
takes shape. From Yerba Buena to Truckee Lake, it’s about two hundred miles. With a launch donated, they can travel more than halfway by water. They will bear north and east across the bay toward the delta, then follow the Sacramento River to the mouth of the Feather, heading overland from there to Johnson’s Ranch, gathering more men and horses as they go. No one has ever attempted this—traveling in wintertime from San Francisco Bay back into the Sierra Nevada Range. The clothing they can find is for sailors or for ranchers. They’ll have to improvise. Another committee is formed to find and pack the goods, the mittens and long underwear and oilcloth, the tents and ropes and kerosene and flour and beans and salt pork and tobacco.

Two days later they are ready to set sail. The supplies have all been ferried out and loaded. Jim and a warehouseman are standing on the porch of a storage shed, waiting on the tide and watching the water. The day is cold. An icy wind blows out of the north, chopping up the surface of the bay.

The workman says, “Look there.”

“What is it?”

“That launch beating ahead of the wind.”

Jim has seen it but not seen it, just a pair of white sails half a mile out. “They’re making pretty good time.”

“It’s curious, though.”

“Why so?”

“That’s Cap’n Sutter’s vessel, the one goes back and forth between here and his fort. Seems like they was just here. They’re not due back for another two, three weeks.”

“You think there’s trouble at the fort?”

“No telling. It’s gonna worry some folks, if they got goods to send that aren’t packed up and ready.”

They watch it veer toward the cove and come to rest. The sails go slack. A boat is lowered and two men are rowing toward the beach as if pursued by killer sharks. Something in the heaving of their powerful backs gives Jim a pang of apprehension. They are not here with cargo. They bring some news he does not want to hear. With the warehouseman he joins half a dozen others who have spied the launch and gather on the beach wrapped in heavy coats and scarves and hats and knitted caps. As the keel scrapes sand, a rower leaps out, splashing.

“Any of you the Commandant?” he shouts. “I got a letter for the Commandant.”

They crowd in close.

“What’s up?”

“What’s the news?”

He tries to break past them, but they bar his way.

“Captain Sutter needs men,” he says, with great importance. “Them folks stuck back in the mountains all this time, some of ‘em have made it through.”

Jim’s heart begins to pound. “What’s this? What’s this you say?”

“Captain Sutter wants to bring out the others.”

“Who made it through?”

“Ain’t my place to tell it,” the fellow says.

“My God, man!” Jim shouts. “How many?”

“This letter’s for the Commandant!”

He shoulders past them, heading up the slope with men beside him and behind him, yammering, tossing questions back and forth among themselves, while others step out of shops and inns and boardinghouses to tag along, breathing steam and slapping arms against their sides as they climb.

Hearing this clamor rise toward him, the Commandant has stepped out onto his porch. The sailor with the message doffs his cap and passes across to him a packet, which the Commandant receives and steps back inside and shuts the door.

The sailor is surrounded by men with urgent questions, Jim foremost among them. “Who made it through?” he demands. “Where are they now?”

The sailor doesn’t know where to begin. Something happened at Johnson’s Ranch. A rescue party is forming up. Most of all he’d like a drink. Doesn’t anybody have a drink?

Someone produces a small flask. As the sailor tips it for a swallow, the Commandant’s door swings open. An orderly rushes out, pushing past the crowd. They watch him sprint across the plaza to the mayor’s adobe. A moment later Bartlett appears, pulling on his coat against the February wind. As he passes the waiting men he says, “G’morning, gents.”

Jim calls, “What the hell is going on?”

“We’ll soon find out.”

Now they murmur among themselves, stamp their feet and speculate, but Jim can’t bear the waiting. “Goddam!” he says. “I’m going in there!”

He mounts the steps, has his hand upon the door, when it opens once again and there stands Bartlett. His young eyes are wide and fixed, as if he has just witnessed an execution. In his hand he holds a sheaf of paper. To Jim and to the suddenly quiet crowd he says, “All of you should hear this.”

They follow Bartlett through the wind and into the hotel saloon, where they spread out among the tables. He stands by the bar, gazing at the first page, as if to be sure he has the gist of it. His eyes move, but nothing else, neither face nor hands. He stands so still he seems to be holding his breath.

Slowly he begins to read aloud the story of a small party that set out two months ago and more. Fifteen had started for the pass, ten men, five women. Jim listens to the names, listens for Margaret’s name, for Patty’s, Virginia’s. He doesn’t hear them and wishes Bartlett would go through the list again. Then he’s glad he didn’t hear the names. Only seven of the fifteen have survived, among them Mac’s wife, Amanda, and William Eddy, who made it down to Johnson’s, where he dictated this account of their grueling ordeal.

It was a trip, the letter says, “impelled by the scarcity of provisions at the cabins.” They had hoped the crossing would take a week. It took a month. During most of that time they were hopelessly lost, penned in by blizzards, with no shelter, and almost no food. The first to go was Charlie Stanton, left behind to die alone. Before long half a dozen others died, Uncle Billy Graves, the Indians Salvador and Luis. At last the survivors resorted to the unthinkable …

Bartlett’s voice dwindles, then stops, as if the handwriting here might be hard to decipher. When he reads again he’s nearly whispering.

Bartlett’s voice breaks. For a while the room is silent. Into the silence Jim says hoarsely, “You mean they ate the flesh?”

“That’s what’s in the letter, Jim.”

“Each other’s flesh?”

“According to this fellow, Eddy.”

“I know William Eddy.”

“His word is all we have to go by,” Bartlett says.

“And you say Uncle Billy Graves …”

“A Graves is mentioned, yes.”

“Eaten?”

“Evidently, Jim. I know what it must be like …”

He can’t listen to the rest. He rushes to the door, onto the hotel’s verandah, where he stands in the wind gazing out across restless water toward the hills, the
contra costa,
his mind roaming farther east, across the wide valley, into the distant snow.

Charlie Stanton dead.

Uncle Billy, dead and eaten.

The man who would have hung him—gone. Consumed. His flesh jerked and dried for travel like a side of beef.

What savagery is this? And what else is there to know? By mid-December they were nearly out of food. What happened to the cattle? How could they run short of beef so soon? If eight of fifteen perished on the way, what then of the others? What hope is there for those they left behind?

He cannot think of it. Not now. He dares not think of it. The only questions he dares to ask himself are How to get there, What’s the fastest way, and What to carry? He needs a plan. A sharper, cleaner, clearer plan.

At least he knows now where they are. Some have cabins. Some do not. From what the letter says, we’ll need warmer clothing. More men. More food to cache along the way, and more to feed the stranded ones for the trek out. We’ll need more of everything. Can one schooner carry it all? If we overload the schooner, it could take weeks to reach the fort, given the season and the rains and what he’s heard about the currents during flood time. Suppose we split the expedition, then. Suppose we send all supplies by water, while the rest of us cross the bay and travel overland. Yes. Yes, two parties head north and east. One by water. One by land. In his mind it is like a battle campaign. A two-pronged assault. The enemy is altitude, and snow. Meanwhile, if it’s true that a team is forming up at Sutter’s, how much will they know about the high country? Will they wait for word of support from Yerba Buena? Or press on and hope for reinforcements? That is the essential part. Reinforcements …

At the edge of his vision a patch of blue is moving toward him. The Commandant strives against the wind, so skeletal and sticklike he can hardly stay upright. He staggers like a man who has been shot, but with a stoic determination. Miraculously he keeps his footing and arrives at the steps to the hotel. Holding to the banister as to the railing of a storm-tossed ship, he pulls himself up onto the verandah, where he stands apart from Jim until he gets his breath.

“You all right, sir?” says Jim.

“Fine, thank you, yes … very fine indeed…. Just on my way … to the gathering here.”

Jim watches him breathe in long, asthmatic breaths, wondering what has sent him out into the wind, wondering what he can say to change the Commandant’s mind. How can Jim get through to this frail and fearful man who holds the keys to the cash box and storage sheds?

As it turns out, the man needs no more persuading. For fifteen minutes he has been brooding at his desk. His breathing is steady now. Above scooped-out cheeks, the sunken eyes have filled with heat.

“That letter, Mr. Reed, I have to tell you … what those wretches have endured, it penetrates the very soul.” His voice is low and guttural and muted by the wind. “Every exploring party comes back with horrendous tales, and I have heard them all. But when women and children are driven to such extremes … a daughter driven to eat of her own father’s flesh … it is beyond imagining. By all the hosts of heaven, I swear that you men shall have whatever can be provided by this command, all necessary rations, clothing, any manner of pack equipment, whatever funds I have at my disposal …”

Jim grabs his hand. “Thank you, sir. That’s splendid news!”

The phlegm-filled voice drops lower still, as if they stand here by design, the two of them alone upon the porch to share some confidence.

“No need to thank me, Reed. In times like this, what else is there for a man to do? We are not made of stone here in Yerba Buena. I have children of my own, you know. A grandchild, too, or so I’m told. Though I may be surrounded with louts and braggarts, the suffering of children is not lost on me. No. Not for a moment. I swear to you, this effort will be carried forward under the full authority of the Northern Department. In this particular matter, I have not consulted my counterpart, since he is secluded on board his ship. Do you see it there? Anchored farthest out? He claims to be indisposed and has sent word not to be disturbed until evening. Just between you and me, it’s John Barleycorn he contends with, more than any of the hazards of the corporeal world the rest of us inhabit. This time he will have to live with my decision. Yes, and the Commodore too, wherever he may be. They can both be damned if they do not support me in this, though I believe they will. I do believe they will. Any man would, in such circumstances. Good God, Reed, what an insufferable situation for us all. Step inside with me now, while I transmit these thoughts to Bartlett and the others. And please rest assured. You have my word, as a man, and as a naval officer … you have my solemn word.”