The Settlers (36 page)

And so one April morning at dawn, the Mexican, Mario Vallejos, set out on his journey westward across the prairie, with his two young helpers and his eight mules, to join the gold caravan—the train of the hundred thousand.

—2—

The party traveled under the burning sun in daytime and camped under the chilly starlight at night. They followed in the footsteps of those who had passed here before them: soft places in the ground bore the imprints of heel irons and boot soles, of hooves and cloven hooves, and the broad wheel rims of the Conestoga wagons. But in sandy places the wind had obliterated all tracks, and on the plateaus and hard ground no tracks had been left.

The little Mexican rode ahead on his dark brown mule to locate the trail. The two youths came behind with the pack mules, each one carrying two hundred pounds for its owner. Robert and Arvid fed the mules crushed corn three times a day and watered them twice a day. They curried the animals and loaded them, followed them in daytime and guarded them at night. The longer they scratched a mule between the ears, the easier it became to take care of it.

When the mules grew hungry they folded their ears back and brayed. It sounded as if they had attacks of hiccups. The muleteers thought at first that something had got stuck in their throats; the animals wailed and hiccuped helplessly. But by and by Robert and Arvid became accustomed to their peculiar braying; they brayed when their stomachs were empty.

Vallejos considered Mexican mules most suitable for the California Trail since they required less water than horses, and in the desert they could smell water holes at a distance of two miles or more.

They were traveling across a plain and could not understand how their boss found his way. The Mexican had made himself a map for the first five hundred miles of the California Trail: from St. Joseph straight toward the Big Blue River, the first big river to be crossed. Those starting from Independence headed for Bull Creek and Wakarusa River before they reached the Kansas, the broadest and most difficult river to cross on the whole trail. He had chosen the route through St. Joseph, the northern overland route, to avoid the crossing of the broad Kansas River.

In St. Louis Robert and Arvid had begun to prepare themselves for washing gold. They had each bought a pan of good steel, which held almost a gallon of water. Now that they were the owners of washing pans, good-sized pans, they walked behind the mules and drummed with their fingers on the pans; they were ready, and they also knew how to dig.

The days were too warm and the nights too cold. At camp in the evenings they gathered dry grass and bushes and made a fire to keep themselves warm. Each in turn stood watch and tended the fire. They slept stretched out on the ground with the saddles as pillows. Arvid kept complaining of the weather in America: either it was too warm or too cold—why was it never right?

When the cold kept them both awake Robert cheered his friend by telling him what he knew about the Gold Land: in California the weather was just right the year round, and so healthy that people lived to be a hundred years old. Old people only dried up a little more for each year in the good sun, until at last nothing was left but the skin, which finally blew away over the Pacific Ocean. Out there people didn’t die in the same way as in other places. In California there were no diseases to kill people. Even suicides were impossible in that state. Californians, aged two or three hundred years and tired of living, would travel to some other state, where they immediately collapsed like empty sacks and died.

Vallejos told them that nuggets had been found in the Sacramento River weighing as much as a hundred and fifty pounds, and worth fifty thousand dollars apiece.

“One single lump! Oh Lordy, Lordy!” exclaimed Arvid. And he had served as farm hand in Sweden for ten dollars a year. If he found a single nugget he could buy the manor of Kråkesjö, where his old father was a cotter.

Gold was the word that gave them strength, dreaming of gold still held its power over them.

Each evening when Arvid wound his watch and one more day had been added to the California Trail he asked: “We’ve been on our way a whole year now—how soon will we get there?”

Robert assured him they were getting closer to the gold every day, they were twenty miles closer today. Sacramento, that was the place they were going—Vallejos had mentioned it when he sat at the fire, the map spread over his knees.

The Mexican was a good master. He didn’t ask them to walk farther than they could manage each day, and they could eat all they wanted of the provisions, so they gorged themselves on ham and dried pork. Vallejos took his share of the watch, looking after the fire for a few hours every third night. He could stand heat and cold—it didn’t bother him. He enumerated the dangers on the California Trail: the fording of the rivers, the desert heat, the Indians, the wild animals. But of people he feared only one man:
The Yellow Jack.
He was afraid of someone called Yellow Jack. Although he explained who this was, Robert was unable to follow his English and remained in the dark about the dangerous Yellow Jack.

At the campfire Vallejos kept himself awake by singing—always the same song, humming it, like a bumble-bee’s buzzing in the grass:

Oh, the good time has come at last,

We need no more complain, sir!

The rich can live in luxury

And the poor can do the same, sir!

For the good time has come at last,

And as we are told, sir!

And shall be rich at once now,

With California gold, sir!

Robert listened night after night to the dream song, the song of the yellow gold that would make him free. When at last he had reached the end of this road he would be free. He was a muleteer, he was still in service, but this service would be his last—the Mexican, Mario Vallejos, would be the last master in his life.

—3—

On the ninth day after they had set out they saw for the first time the animal which had given its name to the tall grass on the prairie; at a distance they could see a herd of buffalo, an ash-gray, closed circle moving across the plain in a westward direction. It seemed to them as if the very ground were moving with this herd. The heavy tramp of the animals sounded like a muffled thunderstorm when it first rises over the horizon. So many animals in motion struck them as a revelation of the immensity of the wild regions. Several times they saw packs of furry animals—reddish, with sharp noses and long tails.

They were a small caravan of three people and eight animals. Each time the caravan passed running water—creeks or streams—the mules were allowed to drink all they wanted, but when they approached stagnant water Vallejos warned them sternly: the water holes were not to be trusted. The country grew more desolate and the ground more arid, the green buffalo grass grew thinner; the dry earth shot out from under the hooves of the mules like pelting rain. They had reached a region with no streams and they used the water in their canteens to water the animals.

In a hollow they saw a broken pair of wheels; pieces of spokes and a broken wagon tongue were strewn about. The Mexican stopped his mule and nodded meaningfully at the place, but said nothing. A few hundred yards farther on, a flat white stone had been raised on end in the ground, and the stone—a foot or two in height—had an inscription in black letters:

JACK MALONEY

Aged 18 Years

Rest in Peace Sweet Boy

For Thy Troubles Are Over

Robert understood the connection between the broken wheels and the little tombstone but he did not interpret the inscription to Arvid. Nevertheless it stuck in his mind for the rest of the day.

On the eleventh day their trail crossed a desolate, sandy plain, surrounded by distant hills. The terrain was broken by stone islands in the sand and boulders of outlandish appearance. Horrible giants in animal shape were guarding this plain, petrified monsters with human heads and beast-bodies, heads of horses and lions in stone. The sun was uncomfortably warm on earth and rocks.

Vallejos said they should arrive in St. Joseph in three days.

In the evening they made camp between a split rock in the center of the plain. It was Robert’s turn to guard the fire. In the night a wind came up from the west, a gusty wind that blew sand into the fire and several times almost extinguished it. He moved the embers farther in the lee of the rock; here the fire burned well and he dozed for a while, his head on the saddle.

With the first streak of daylight he got up to urinate. He walked over to look at the mules, tethered behind the rock. What he saw struck him dumb; there were only six animals. Two of the mules were gone; He hurried around the rock searching for them, but the two animals had vanished.

Arvid had tethered the mules last night when they camped, and Robert had warned him before that his knots in the halters were too loose. He shook his comrade roughly by the shoulder but spoke in a low voice so as not to waken their master, who slept only a few paces away.

“You didn’t tie those mules aright! Two of them broke away!”

Arvid was awake instantly as soon as he heard Robert’s words. He didn’t try to deny it, he had tied the mules to some boulders—if they had broken loose he was to blame. But he didn’t think it was because of his loose knots. Perhaps the beasts had pulled and pulled and the rope had slid over the rock.

Robert said it didn’t matter whose fault it was; both of them would suffer for this. Bad luck was the worst thing one ever encountered. If their boss should learn that the knots had been loose earlier he would never trust his muleteers again; he would fire them on the spot. As long as they were with the Mexican they had all they needed for their journey; if they were separated from him they might never get to California. They must find the strayed mules and bring them back before he woke up; they must get out and look for them at once.

According to Arvid’s watch it was four o’clock. As a rule they broke camp about seven; they had three hours in which to search.

“It’s my fault!” wailed Arvid. “I’m born with bad luck in my head!”

“Don’t lose your head. We’ll find the critters.”

The boys took off over the plain on speedy legs to search for the mules. Darkness still lay thick and in this dim light a mule could hardly be seen at a distance of fifty feet. They could see no tracks of the animals however much they scanned the ground. They hollered and called the mules by all the names Vallejos used:

“Heekee . . . ! Hinni . . . ! Cheekte . . . ! Heekee . . . !”

Every few minutes they stopped and listened hopefully for the familiar braying, but there was no reply to their calls. They repeated the words without knowing the meaning:

“Hinni . . . ! Cheekte . . . !”

And no tracks were visible.

Mexican mules could smell fresh grass long distances. Robert remembered that yesterday afternoon they had passed a place between two ridges where he had seen green buffalo grass. Perhaps the mules had found their way back to this place? But it was several miles and he did not think he could find it again.

They began by searching around the campsite, tramping the ground in ever-widening circles. They wandered as if they themselves were lost in the pale light of dawn. They mustn’t go too far from camp but were sure their own tracks would guide them back when they were ready to return.

An hour passed; light came slowly to the plain. They stumbled onto a dried-out creek bed and followed its gently sloping path; perhaps there was water farther down and the mules had smelled it. They followed this furrow for a good while. Water had recently run here; there were tracks of animals, big and little ones, but they must have been made some time ago, since the tracks had already dried up. The creek wound its way in great curves but all of it was equally dry. Yet they followed it, encouraged by the many tracks in its bottom. But not the slightest glimpse of a mule tail came to their eyes, nor the faintest braying to their ears.

It was now full daylight. The wind had increased and the dust blew in clouds about them. Arvid looked at his watch and exclaimed in tenor:

“It’s already half past five! Shouldn’t we go back?”

In order to reach camp for their usual hour of starting they must turn at once. Vallejos must already be up and about. What would he say when he missed both the mules and the muleteers? He might think they had stolen the animals and run away.

With heavy feet Robert and Arvid followed the dry creek back toward camp. The wind was increasing and they walked with eyes closed against the whirling dust.

“Where can the critters have betaken themselves?” wondered Arvid.

“We must find them!” insisted Robert.

They returned slowly, trying to follow their own tracks. Behind them the sun rose above the plain; the first rays felt pleasantly warm on their necks. But from the other direction came the wind and it was slow walking against it.

The creek they followed grew narrower and shallower; soon it branched out in still smaller furrows. Which one was the dry creek they had first encountered? They stopped and rubbed their smarting eyes. Where were their tracks?

They walked about, searching in vain. From which direction had they come? The sun flooded down on the strange rock formations and the yellow-brown hills—but which rock sheltered their camp? They didn’t know; they had lost their way.

The treacherous wind had swept away the muleteers’ path back to camp; Robert and Arvid were lost on the wide plain.

—4—

For a whole day they wandered without rest. When night fell and darkness enveloped them they lay down, dead tired, on the sandy ground.

They had left the camp to look for the mules with nothing except the clothes on their backs. They had brought nothing to eat and nothing to drink, and they had wandered endless hours under the bright sun, through a desolate wilderness, until they were near exhaustion. They had tried to reach the mountains they saw against the horizon, but the mountains remained as distant as ever.