Jubilee Trail (15 page)

Florinda threw back her veil again. “Goodby, darling.” She put her hands on Garnet’s shoulders and kissed her. “You’re the nicest girl I ever knew,” she said.

There were footsteps in the hall outside. Florinda lowered her veil. When Oliver came in with the boy, she was standing by her bags, slumped like a lady weighed down by sorrow.

The boy picked up the bags. For his benefit, Oliver gave Garnet a brief husbandly kiss, saying, “I shan’t be long, my dear.” He turned to Florinda, offering his arm with respectful affection.

Standing in the doorway, Garnet watched them go off together down the hall. They were doing it well. Florinda walked with dragging steps, and Oliver patted her hand comfortingly as it lay on his arm. Garnet watched until they disappeared around the turn, past the cabinet where Florinda had been hiding this morning.

She went back inside and closed the door. Going to the window, she pushed back the curtain. The dark had come down, but there was a street-light near by. A line of hacks waited by the curb. Several people were coming and going through the entrance. Garnet waited tensely.

It seemed like a long time, though it was only three or four minutes before she saw them. She might have missed Oliver in the dim light, but there was no mistaking the shrouded figure at his side. Garnet held the curtain so hard that her fingers hurt. A hackman opened the door of a closed carriage. Oliver assisted Florinda inside, and the boy handed him the bags. The carriage drove away.

Garnet realized that she had been holding her breath. She let it out, and her hand, suddenly limp, released the curtain. This was all. Florinda was gone. Florinda was safe. There would be little if any risk among the crowds at the wharf.

She was very glad. But she had a big sense of lonesomeness.

To give herself something to do, she went to the table and looked for Florinda’s letter in the drawer. She found the letter, addressed in the scrawly uneven hand of one not much used to writing. But there was something else beside it, a little parcel wrapped in a sheet of writing-paper, addressed simply “Garnet.”

Garnet picked it up. Something fell out with a clatter, catching the lamplight like a little shower of stars. Almost unbelieving, she recognized the two splendid square-cut emeralds Florinda had worn in her ears.

Florinda had folded the sheet of paper around them. On the reverse side of the paper she had written a note.

Dear Garnet these are for you they are reall. I want you to have them because I am so greatfull you will never know how much. And please do not worrey about me dear I alwas get along fine. I am not going to worrey about you ether because you will get along fine too. You are the sort that does.

Look dear I know you were bothered about my name. Well my right name is Emma Norquist but now really can you imadgine a girl who looks like me going around with a tag like that. When I was a little girl they billed me as Little Miss Geraldine Montgomery but I have thought of a lot of better names since then. More romantick I mean. When you asked me about my name last night I remembered Florinda out of your book of pictures. And then Oliver said something about a counsell grove and that seemed to fit just fine. I did not think I woud ever see you again so I forgot about it before this morning. But now that I am using it I like it very much. In fact I think Florinda is the most ellegant name I ever had.

Well dear goodby thank you for everrything. I will remember you and love you if I live a hundred years.

Your true frend,

Florinda Grove.

T
HOUGH THEY
HAD SAID
goodby with such finality, Garnet still hoped she would find Florinda when she got to St. Louis. But she did not.

St. Louis was the busiest town she had ever seen. The population had tripled in the past five years, and was now close to fifty thousand people. It was a town being made while you looked at it. They were putting up new houses as fast as they could. Every morning Garnet was waked up by the racket of saws and hammers. The streets were packed with carriages, drays, ox-carts, and covered wagons; she had never seen such a jam of traffic, not even in downtown New York. The sidewalks were full of people. There were traders making ready for Santa Fe, clerks and bullwhackers looking for jobs with the wagon trains, merchants loading their goods on the Missouri River boats that would take them to Independence. Everybody in town seemed to be on the way to Independence.

The hotel where Garnet and Oliver stayed had gaudy red plush furniture, and mirrors with gilded frames. Every room was occupied. Sometimes they had to stand in line at the dining-room door before they could get in for a meal. But it was a comfortable place and the food was good. These busy people got hungry, and they had plenty of money to pay for what they ate. The waiters brought them big thick plates piled with beef and ham and venison, and hot cornbread dripping with butter, and rich deep fruit pies; and they set out mugs of coffee and bottles of whiskey and wine. The tablecloth was usually splashed with coffee and pie-juice, for there was no time to change the cloths between the relays of diners.

It did not matter. The whole town was young and noisy and Garnet loved it. This was life, not life thin with watery grace, but life rich with people doing things and making a big lusty noise about it.

But nowhere did she see Florinda.

Of course, Garnet reflected, there was no reason why she should. Florinda had taken a boat that was ultimately bound for St. Louis, but she need not have come all the way. She could have left the boat at any town above New Orleans. Or if she had come all the way to St. Louis, she could have boarded one of the stagecoaches that left every day for inland towns. For all Garnet knew, Florinda might have friends anywhere who would give her shelter until that wretched Mr. Reese had been convicted for killing Mr. Selkirk.

Garnet could only hope, with passionate sympathy, that Florinda had not met anybody on the boat who knew her. And she hoped that some day they would see each other again. Maybe, next year or the year after, Florinda would send a gallant misspelled note addressed to Mrs. Oliver Hale, in care of Mr. Horace Cameron in Union Square.

Garnet and Oliver left St. Louis in April. They took a boat up the Missouri River, and traveled two hundred and fifty miles west to Independence, Here they stayed at the famous hotel run by Mr. Smallwood Noland. Oliver told her this was the last hotel in North America. There was a hotel out on a Pacific island in a town called Honolulu; but between Independence and Honolulu there was not a single place of public lodging. From here to Santa Fe, and from Santa Fe to California, they would have to take care of themselves. In Santa Fe the traders lodged with private families. In California she and Oliver would stay at the rancho with his brother.

Independence was not as big a town as St. Louis, but it was even noisier, and more crowded, and it was all a-bubble with business. The streets were full of signs saying, “Goods for the Santa Fe trade! All new, all cheap!” Everybody in town had something to sell. The traders were buying mules and oxen, and hiring drivers, and picking up last-minute bargains. They were taking to Santa Fe all the manufactured goods the people of New Mexico would use for a year. The traders bought and bought, and their men packed the goods into the wagons.

While his men packed, Oliver took Garnet with him every morning to watch them. Oliver had fourteen wagons. Garnet was amazed at the size of them. Oliver told her these covered wagons of the Santa Fe Trail were the biggest wagons in the world. Loaded, they weighed five tons each. The contents of one wagon, if spread out, would cover an acre of ground. To move one wagon over flat ground required ten yoke of oxen, and if the going was rough the men had to double and triple the teams.

She asked him if it would not be easier to pack smaller wagons and take more of them. Oliver laughed mischievously, and said yes, of course it would. These great lumbering prairie schooners were the Yankees’ way of thumbing their noses at the governor of Santa Fe.

Santa Fe, he told her, was part of Mexico; and Mexico was one of the worst-governed countries in the world. The governor of Santa Fe was a great big globe of sin named Armijo. The people of the town despised him. They said he had got his start in life by stealing sheep and then selling them back to their owners.

Señor Armijo had the power to lay customs duties on goods brought in from the United States. Most of the money went to his own pockets. The Yankees knew this, and the native customs clerks knew it too. The Yankees had always bribed the clerks to overlook half the goods they brought in.

Armijo knew the clerks cheated, and it made him furious, but he could not examine every bale of goods himself. So one summer he angrily put a tax of five hundred dollars on each wagon, besides the tax on the goods inside it. Anybody, even lazy Armijo himself, could count the wagons as they came through the pass. Nobody could rob him of this.

Since the new tax took no account of size, the traders promptly got rid of their small wagons and began to bring these big ones. They stuffed the big wagons with more goods than they had ever carried before, winked at the clerks, and let fat Armijo rage.

That wasn’t very honest, Garnet observed. Of course it wasn’t, Oliver retorted, but what were they going to do? If they paid Armijo’s taxes, they would have to charge two dollars a yard for the cheapest cotton cloth, and a dollar for a package of needles worth ten cents. Nobody could pay such prices. After a season of that, there would be no more traders coming to Santa Fe, and fat Armijo might even have to go to work for a living.

The wagons had great canvas covers, thick enough to shield the goods from storms. At front and back the men spread heavy osnabrig sheets with blankets between them, to keep out dust and rain. When they got to Santa Fe the blankets would be taken down and sold. American blankets were contraband in Santa Fe, because the governor had ordered the people to use only local wool. But the traders had been bringing in blankets this way for years. It was part of the game. They sold the blankets more to annoy Armijo than to make any profit, for by the time they got there the blankets were too battered to be worth much.

To load the wagons took a week. Garnet enjoyed watching the men at work. They were tough and unshaven, and their speech was dreadful, full of words she had never heard before. But the men were strong and healthy and gloriously competent, and she liked them.

At length they began their journey. Garnet climbed into the big mule-drawn carriage in which she would ride and sleep until she reached Santa Fe. They rode to Fort Leavenworth, the military post that guarded the frontier from Indians. Passing Fort Leavenworth, for nine days they rode across a fair green prairie starred with flowers. Then they came to Council Grove, a hundred and forty-five miles west of Independence.

The going was easy. Even when a heavy rainstorm came up one night, Garnet was snug and dry inside her closed carriage. The men cooked outdoors. The meals were good, for besides the flour and salt meat, they had brought carrots and potatoes and onions, and dried apples, and cheese, and a lot of other delicacies she had not thought she would have on the trail. These would give out soon, but by that time they would be seeing the buffalo herds, and there would be fresh meat in plenty.

Council Grove was a beautiful wood about half a mile wide. The trees were thick—oaks, walnuts, hickories, and elms, lovely with their new spring leaves. Here they found other traders who had left Independence ahead of them. During the four days they camped at Council Grove more wagon trains kept coming up. Still other traders, Garnet was told, had already gone on ahead of them. They would probably catch up with these early starters, out on the prairie ahead.

While they camped at Council Grove the men cut down trees, and slung the logs under the wagons. They would need these for repairs on the journey. After Council Grove the trees gave out. Garnet found it hard to imagine a treeless landscape, but Oliver told her that from here on they would see only prairie grass, and a few leafy but useless cottonwoods. The men elected captains of the caravan, and chose scouts to ride ahead of the train. From here to Santa Fe, they would live like an army. The trail was hard. But these men knew it by heart. They knew every mountain, every creek, every sign of weather. They were not adventurers and they had no notions of romance. It was their job to get the wagons to Santa Fe. They always got there.

Oliver taught Garnet how to use a rifle. She would probably not need it, he said, but it was foolish to cross the prairies without knowing how to shoot. Trying not to sound scared, Garnet asked him about Indians. Oliver laughed and said very few of the Indians between here and Santa Fe would be troublesome. He told her how to read Indian tracks. You got down on the ground and looked carefully. If you saw tracks of colts and children, and prints of lodge-poles, you knew this meant a whole tribe out together, hunting and curing meat for the winter. They wanted to be let alone, and would not shoot unless they were shot at first. But if all the tracks were those of men and full-grown horses, this meant a party on the warpath. If you found tracks of a war-party you noted which way they were headed, and you turned and went the other way to avoid them if you could. But there were not many war-parties. This time of year, most Indians had nothing on their minds but hunting.

“You’re a greenhorn,” Oliver said to her. “The greenhorns always think that when you sight Indians, shooting’s the first thing you do. It’s not. That’s the last thing you do.”

So Garnet was not afraid any more. But she practiced and practiced with her rifle, and learned to hit a tree at ten yards. The men laughed at her indulgently, but they said she was going to make a good frontiersman. They were a tough lot, and their profanity blistered her ears, but they knew their trade. Garnet liked them more and more.

Everything was strange, and everything was fascinating. Oliver adored her, and the other men said he was lucky to have her. Garnet had never been so excited. Life was opening up before her like a great big shining morning.