California Woman (Daughters of the Whirlwind Book 1) (5 page)

They crossed the Big Sandy, then followed
its north bank to the Green River. On their left a small cluster of low bluffs
broke the monotony of the flat, barren country, and there seemed to be
mountains a long way ahead. But for now all they had to do was follow the fresh
tracks of the two parties traveling ahead of them and let the beasts of burden
do the rest. Occasionally deep sand and boulders slowed their progress and
stirred the men to brief bursts of intense effort. But for the most part their greatest
difficulty was staying awake. They crossed the Green and then wove back and
forth across Black's Fork Creek, washing their feet in less than six inches of
deliciously cool water. A drowsy, lulling contentment settled over everyone.

On July 28, two log cabins surrounded by
a log fence took shape in the distant afternoon haze. The sight was
disappointing. They had expected more—a fort rather than a twin-structure
trading post and corral. As they drew closer, their disappointment grew to
apprehension. The wagons of the Bryant-Russell and Young-Harlan parties were
nowhere to be seen. Except for the two grizzled mountain men waving their hats
at the gate, Fort Bridger looked deserted.

Mary's
River

September 30, 1846

Praise God we have finally rejoined the California Trail
somewhere West of the Great Salt Lake. We are at a point, exactly how far from
California we do not know, that we likely would have reached weeks ago had we
not taken the short cut. Shortcut indeed! There is not a body among us who does
not wish we never listened to that man Hastings. And it is a miracle that only
one person has died after all we have been through in the past two months.

If is hard to understand why Hastings would lead us into such an
ordeal, why he was not there at Fort Bridger in the first place as he promised.
How could he just leave word to follow the tracks of the two parties he went
off with? Why, Lord, would Bridger and his partner, Vazquez, praise the route
we have just taken, knowing what was involved?

Weber Canyon was well nigh impassable, even after the two groups
with Hastings laid down a road, if you can call it that. When I think of
Hastings leaving a note on a berry bush for one of our party to ride ahead and
parlay with him, it makes me want to wring the man's neck! Bad enough, all of
it, but he had never seen the canyon route himself! He had relied on the
information of one of his illiterate scouts... My God, what gall. And then to
suggest that we cut through the mountains instead of the canyon, a suggestion
followed, I hate to say, more out of
James
Reed's
concern
for keeping the Palace Car in one
piece than anything else. How could these men be so blind? We had already
yielded four days resting and repairing at Fort Bridger. By the time Reed got back
from his ride to overtake Hastings and gain his hollow advice, five more days
were lost. Anyone here would pay dearly for those days now. But they were too
blind to see we should have doubled back then toward Fort Hall and the proven
way! Spilt milk, as Father used to say.

Hastings would not even come back to guide us through the
mountains. I believe they are called the Wasatch, and none of us will ever
forget them. When dark the moon itself must look no more forbidding to the
angels. Underbrush and alder so thick along the streams the men could scarcely
hack their way through with broadaxes. Terrain so rocky and steep it is a
wonder we did not all slide to our doom. Twenty-one days to travel thirty-six
miles! Then, beyond the Salt Lake Valley and the desert, a veritable parade of
low-mountain chains running north and south. Praise God for the streams on the
Western side of each of those intervening valleys!

It becomes obvious that George Donner is no leader of men. He is
too old, too soft, and does not have the manner. Thank God, unpopular as James
Reed has become because of his decision to cross the Wasatch, that he is with
us. No one else in the party, save William Eddy, is cut out for such
extremities as we have experienced. Most are but a degree better than
greenhorns and tenderfeet, and some lack the spines of men.

Upon reading the last line I almost move to strike it out, for
the labors through the mountains—and Lord knows, across that Salt Desert—would
sorely tax even the strongest man. But the shirking—not by all, but by many—the
loafing and malingering and unwillingness to learn lessons that need be learned
quickly, have been inexcusable.

By the time we reached the desert, we had lost many precious
days. Heaped on all that, Hastings's claim that the dry drive was but only
thirty-five or forty miles, and would take but two days and two nights, was
criminally preposterous. It was more like eighty miles! Almost a week without
water to replenish with, broiled by day and frozen stiff at night. It is a miracle
we have it behind us.

Looking around me, I want to weep. We have lost many precious
weeks. Eight wagons are strewn across the desert, dry-rotted or axle-deep in
sand and alkaline sink slush. Countless oxen, cattle, and horses dead and
bloated under the broiling sun. Untold possessions—bureaus, trunks full of
clothes, dishes, silks, silver—the objects of a lifetime scattered or buried in
mounds the scurrilous Indians will surely strip away. All because of Hastings.

No, I give him too much credit. There were those in this train
who were warned, I now know. Warned as early as Fort Laramie by the mountain
man named Clyman. And by pilgrims traveling with them until the Little Sandy.
And again, unbeknownst to me, by another mountain man just outside Fort Bridger.
Joseph Walker is his name, and, I am told, he is among the most knowledgeable
men in these God-forsaken parts. And of those forewarned who insisted on this
"nigher" way was James Reed himself! I cannot believe it.

But I also cannot but feel pity for him now. All his possessions
save one wagon and two horses and the money belt he carries are gone. He is
lucky his family has survived, reduced as they are. As for me, I walk a lot.
The Eddys and the
Breen
family kindly let John
Alexander ride with them often. Poor young Mr. Halloran is dead of consumption,
and would have been anyway even had we been traveling smoothly up there on the
zephyrs and the clouds. It would take an entire book to fully describe the
agony this party has already gone through. Mr. Stanton and Mr. McCutchen have
been sent on ahead by horse and mule to California to bring back help and
supplies. But how far California is I cannot even hazard a guess. If they do
not soon return God knows what further horrors we will endure, for the company
is torn asunder in dissension and the food we have may not be sufficient.

It is a comfort, as we rest up here by the Mary's, to recall the
news learned at Fort Bridger that the Grigsby-Ide Party—and therefore my dear
Husband Alexander—reached a place in California called Sutter's Fort a year ago
this coming month. But as I gaze at his son, John Alexander, who seems so
healthy, so miraculously unaffected by this ordeal, I find myself wondering if
we will ever see his father again. I weaken and must not think thus. But dear
God, the sun does loop over us further and further to the South each day, and
the days grow shorter.

The Great Salt Desert and the mountains
that had nearly broken their backs were behind them now, as they worked their
way northwest, then west, then southwest along the Mary's River to its
sinkhole. Behind them as well, scattered across the mountains and salt desert,
were major portions of their will, spirit, and rationality. Their bodies cried
out for respite, but there was no time to rest. Pushing forward in their twelve
surviving wagons, their oxen and cattle, their few horses and dogs emaciated,
the emigrants strained to put twenty miles behind them each day. Normally, in
this high, rolling basin-land dotted with greasewood and sagebrush, it would
have been hard work and no more. But they were spiritually and physically
exhausted now, terrified by the time they had lost, and each day took a little
more of the life, strength, and humanity out of them.

By chance, the Donners' oxen were the
least weakened by the torturous days in the Wasatch and the desert. They soon
pulled ahead of the rest of the train by a full day's ride. No one thought to
keep the wagons more tightly knit. Indians crept in one night and killed two
oxen, knowing they would be left behind. Two mornings later a horse was
missing. The losses, and the knowledge that Indians were watching their every
move, pushed all of them further toward the breaking point.

Everyone walked now. It was easier on the
weakened animals. There were still enough possessions in the wagons to make a
modest start in California. Food was another matter. Provisions were dwindling
at an alarming rate. Stanton and McCutchen and the supplies they were to bring
back from Sutter's Fort would soon be a matter of life and death. With all that
hanging over them, as they strained to push westward as fast as they could,
tension mounted and tempers began to burst. It began with harsh words and curt
answers. But then it turned ugly.

On October 5, the second segment of the
train reached another long, steep, rock-crested sand hill. It seemed they would
have to use double teams for each of the wagons on this one. Two made it over
without as much difficulty as the men anticipated. John Snyder, a rawboned man
who had joined the party late, near Fort Bridger, was driving the third wagon
in line for the ascent. He was certain he could make it up and over with just
his own team. He decided to rest his oxen for a few minutes before the long
pull.

Behind him, Milt Elliott, one of Reed's
teamsters, sat waiting. A second team of oxen was already hitched to the wagon
he was driving. Elizabeth and Mrs. Reed walked past it, through the narrow wash
that led to the slope, and moved out of the way. James Reed was partway up the
hill, ready to prod the teams if Milt Elliott needed assistance.

Elliott grew impatient. He assumed Snyder
was waiting until the men ahead brought a second team back down the incline.
There seemed to be just enough room to pass, so Elliott snapped the reins and
began guiding his wagon around Snyder.

"What the hell do you think you're
doing?" Snyder barked.

"No sense in waiting 'til you get
your second team hitched up, is there?" Elliott answered, surprised at the
sharp edge in Snyder's voice. He shrugged. It was a matter of small concern.
But as he moved forward, his two lead oxen balked, moved sideways, butted, and
became entangled with Snyder's team.

"You stupid ass!" Snyder
bellowed. "Look what the hell you've done!"

Elliott glanced at the women standing
nearby. "Mind your tongue, Snyder..."

Elizabeth, watching from a few yards
away, felt a sense of dread as Snyder leaped from his seat, bullwhip in hand.

"I'll show you what I'll mind, you
flabby little bastard." Snyder's face was flushed. Now all the anger,
fatigue, and frustration of the past weeks welled and pushed him beyond the
point of reason. He lifted the bullwhip and lashed out at Elliott's lead oxen,
slashing at them again and again. Elizabeth screamed and Mrs. Reed fainted as
the beasts moaned in agony. Again Snyder's whip sliced into hide.

"For God's sake, man!" James
Reed cried. He ran down the slope and caught Snyder's arm. Milt Elliott, too
stunned to move, watched speechless as Snyder shoved Reed and sent him
sprawling. He lashed out again at the oxen.

Reed had fallen hard. For a few seconds
he waited until the pinpoints before his eyes disappeared. He got up slowly,
unsheathing the hunting knife strapped to his belt. "
Snyder!
Stop
what you're doing or you'll answer for it!"

The sight of the knife further enraged
Snyder. "You big-headed son of a bitch!" He drove at Reed, reversing
the bullwhip in his hand and swinging the butt down hard across the older man's
forehead. Elizabeth screamed again as Snyder grabbed the front of Reed's shirt
and raised the butt of the whip.

Reed could hardly see. Blood was
streaming down his forehead into his eyes. All he could make out was the dark
shape of Snyder's arm, rising again. He jerked his shoulders and head to the
left. Almost reflexively, his right arm swung in a roundhouse. Sunlight
glistened on the long blade in Reed's right hand as it arced and drove deep
under Snyder's collarbone.

Elizabeth rushed between them at almost
the same instant. "
Stop it! Dear God, stop it!
"

Snyder was not through. Crazed, he
brought the whip butt up again and sent Elizabeth reeling with a glancing blow
on the side of her head. Reed held onto the knife. His shoulder was numb. He
stared at the handle protruding from Snyder's flannel shirt. Steady, rhythmic
surges of blood pumped out and around the hilt. Reed never saw the third blow.
It smashed down full on his skull and drove him to his knees. Through the
streaming blood, the spreading numbness in his shoulder, and the pain that
filled his head, Reed saw Snyder suddenly stop moving and turn ashen. Dumbly,
Reed looked at the knife in his hands. It had pulled free when he went down.

The left side of Snyder's shirt was
soaked in a darkening red. He felt the strange sensation of liquid filling
slowly in the hollow of his left lung. He turned, walked a few steps up the
hill, and fell, bubbled blood spilling from his mouth.

Reed was on one knee now. His
stepdaughter and his wife, recovered from her fainting but trembling visibly,
held handkerchiefs to the deep wounds on his scalp. He broke free of them,
tears rolling down his cheeks, and staggered to where one of the men cradled
Snyder's head in his arms. "Oh, God," Reed sobbed. "I never
meant for anything like this to happen."

Snyder
tried to raise one arm unsuccessfully. He coughed, burbling up more blood.
"I'm to blame for all of it," he wheezed. "I don't know what
came over..."

They buried Snyder in a shroud between
two planks to frustrate burrowing animals who might pick up the scent of death.
Most of the afternoon, while Reed sat apart with his family, two factions
argued over shooting him here or waiting and bringing him to trial in
California. Lewis Keseberg, still bitter about the tongue-lashing Reed had
given him over Elizabeth, exhorted them to hang him immediately from a propped
up ox-yoke. In the end, they banished Reed from the train. They allowed him his
badly deteriorated mare, but no gun and no food. After he left, Elizabeth
borrowed a horse, and under the pretext of taking a last message to Reed from
his ailing wife, saw to it that he at least had an even chance against whatever
waited for him ahead. Tucked inside her undergarments was an 1836-model
Patterson Colt revolver Milt Elliott had stashed in a saddlebag on a happier
evening back on the trail to Fort Bridger.

They caught up with the Donners a few
days later and learned that Reed had stopped for a night with them, then
journeyed on with one of the drivers. Reed had left word he planned to send
back provisions if he reached California.

Elizabeth was mildly heartened to join
the first section of the train again. But her modest rise in spirits was
short-lived. Within minutes of arriving at the Donners' camp, she saw a
forbidding sight. Dizzying waves of heat rose from the dry sandy country that
stretched on either side of the dwindling river, but the sensation she felt was
that of walking into an icehouse. Off to the side of the wagons, flies swarmed
around the almost bare bones of a member of the Hastings group. Just a few
weeks earlier, he had been killed by an arrow. Buried, he had been unearthed by
Digger Indians, stripped of his clothing, and left there to rot. Wolves and
coyotes had done the rest.

It seemed to Elizabeth that Snyder's
ghost haunted the members of the party now. Another wagon broke down and had to
be abandoned. The Diggers swept in early one morning and drove off more horses.
Grass for the surviving cattle grew scant as they plodded southwest. Almost to
the sink of the Mary's, they camped one night in a spot where there was no
grass at all. The cattle scattered to find food. Again the Indians drove them
off, eighteen of them, including a precious dairy cow. By the time the party
reached the sink itself, the heat and the savages had robbed them of almost a
hundred head.

On October 13 they set out across the
last stretch of pure desert between the Mary's and the Truckee River. The
combined oxen and cow teams pulling the remaining wagons were half-starved.
They pushed on through the day and most of the night, resting only long enough
to gain a little strength. Water from hot springs kept them from dying of
thirst. It was bitter, almost undrinkable, but "cooled" to lukewarm
in kettles, a little of it was just enough to keep them going. By midmorning
John Alexander showed signs of dehydration. He no longer even cried. Carrying
him, Elizabeth dabbed a handkerchief wrapped around a chunk of sugar on his
tongue. She was becoming desperate. Her own milk had augmented the amount of
liquid he had been taking in. But now, with scarcely any water to drink herself,
Elizabeth's breasts were drying up.

Sometime near noon William Eddy
discovered that the Breens, normally people who would share, were hoarding half
a cask of water. When Eddy asked for a ladleful for his children and John
Alexander, Patrick
Breen
refused.

"You son of a bitch!" Eddy
shouted. "I'll kill you if you don't share the water."

Patrick
Breen
didn't even bother to stop walking.
"You don't have the strength. You're unarmed, and you'd kill yourself in
the effort."

Exhausted and dizzy from the heat,
William Eddy could not think clearly. What
Breen
said seemed to make sense. He could not
remember what he had done with the Colt revolver. Elizabeth's mind was clearer.
She was certain Eddy's children and John Alexander were about to die of thirst.
She walked slowly to Eddy's wagon and reached in under a buffalo skin. The
Kentucky long rifle was in the same place she had seen it when Eddy had slipped
her the pistol for Reed. She climbed into the wagon and muzzle-loaded it the
way she had seen Eddy do it many times. Then she carried the rifle forward,
cocked and pointed it at Patrick
Breen.
He stopped walking.

"I am not asking for myself or any
other adult," she said quietly. "But if you do not give the children
some of your water, I will shoot you here on the spot."

"Mrs. Todd, that water is..."

"
I mean it!
" she
shrieked. "And may God forgive me."

Breen
broke
out the cask. Momentarily shocked back to his senses, he rationed out as much
as he could for Elizabeth and the Eddys as well as the children. William Eddy
took the rifle back and smiled as he replaced it under the buffalo skin. The
way Elizabeth had loaded the rifle, it would have blown up in her face.

The train moved on in the still,
parchingly dry heat. Within a few hours the incident was forgotten. There were
more pressing matters to think of. They kept on through the afternoon, stopped
briefly at sunset, then, grumbling, pushed on again as night overtook them.
More oxen fell. They had to be cut free of their yokes and abandoned. Somehow,
held in what was now a near-delirious trance, the emigrants managed to pick one
foot up, move it forward, and then pick up the other. They knew if they stopped
they would never move again.

Toward daybreak of October 15, they saw
the trees of a river bottom ahead. They were certain it was a mirage. But as
they dragged themselves the last three miles, they finally realized the trees
were real. Gaping in awe, they walked the last few steps to the bank of the
Truckee River and lay down beside it. At first they did not even drink. The
sight of it was almost painful. The river was clear and pure and flowing fifty
feet from bank to bank under cottonwoods. Hesitantly, as though the entire
scene before them would suddenly vanish, the ten families, their passengers and
hired help cupped their hands and took small sips of water. Around them lay a
verdant pasture of lush grass and wild peas. Birds sang in the trees.

Elizabeth, slowly sprinkling small
amounts of water over John Alexander's forehead and onto his lips and tongue,
wept. She had been certain on that last stretch of desert that they would both
die. Now, sitting here in this veritable Eden, as exhausted as she was, she
vowed never to give up hope again. She gazed westward over the cottonwoods and
the vow caught almost palpably in her throat. Off on the horizon, she could
make out the hazy, blue-gray outlines of the Sierras against the lightening
sky. Even at this distance, their enormous size made her shudder. John
Alexander made a happy cooing noise, and she was distracted for an instant.
When she looked back at the mountains, she gasped. Cloaking their heights now,
as the first rays of the sun reached them from the east, lay a mantle of
brilliantly white snow.