Jubilee Trail (16 page)

On the tenth day of May, just as the rising sun was making red streaks above the prairie grass, the wagon train rode out into the great emptiness. They were on the trail to Santa Fe.

G
ARNET REACHED
FOR THE
leather water-bottle that hung by a strap from her waist. Pulling out the stopper, she took a drink. The water was warm; but she had been forty-one days on the trail, and by this time she did not mind warm water. The water washed the dust out of her throat, and the wetness was delicious.

She and Oliver were riding in the carriage. It was an odd vehicle, not like any carriage Garnet had ever seen before she took the trail, but it was strong and comfortable. The carriage had a leather seat in front, and an oblong body with a flat canvas cover, held up by metal rods at the corners. In the daytime the four sides could be rolled up like window-shades, and fastened to the top so air could blow through. At night the sides were lowered. This made the carriage like a little house, and they unrolled their bedding and slept there.

Oliver was driving the mules. As Garnet put the stopper back into her bottle he smiled at her.

“Tired?” he asked.

“Yes,” Garnet said frankly, “and I’m about roasted, and terribly hungry. What time is it?”

Oliver glanced at the sun, and back at her. “See if you can tell.”

Garnet squinted toward the sun. She had on green goggles, bought in Independence, to protect her eyes from the glare and dust. The sun was over on her left, very high.

“Ten o’clock?” she ventured.

“Very good,” said Oliver. “It’s nearer half-past ten, but you’re learning.”

“Half-past ten,” said Garnet. “That’s better. It’s closer to dinner. I’m so hungry I could eat half a buffalo.”

“So could I,” he agreed fervently. Taking one hand from the reins, Oliver lifted his own water-bottle. He pulled out the stopper with his teeth and held it in his hand as he drank. When he had drained the bottle he held it out to her. “Empty. Fill it up for me, will you?”

Garnet unfastened the strap from Oliver’s waist. Balancing herself carefully, she climbed out of the carriage. She walked around to the back, and went on walking to match the pace of the mules while she uncovered the barrel of water that swung between the two rear wheels. When she had refilled Oliver’s bottle and her own, she scrambled back into the carriage and fastened the strap again at Oliver’s waist. He took another drink, gratefully. Getting up on her knees, Garnet pulled a big blue handkerchief out of her pocket and wiped the streaks of sweat off his forehead, holding her handkerchief carefully so no flutter of cloth should blur his vision.

When she had sat down again she turned over the handkerchief to wipe her own face, and looked sadly at the brown smear on the blue cloth. She was covered with dust. She could see the dust in the folds of her printed cotton dress, and feel it scratching her skin inside her clothes. It even sifted through her sunbonnet, and when she brushed her hair it would rise in little swirls. There were two thousand animals in the caravan, and every one of them kicked up its own small cloud of dust. The small clouds whirled up to make a big cloud that hung nearly motionless in the air and trailed behind the caravan for miles.

Garnet thought longingly of buffalo meat and dried beans. The caravan always started at dawn, without pausing for breakfast, and by noon she was so hungry she gobbled like a pig.

“Oliver,” she asked, “where will we camp for the nooning?”

“Rabbit Ear Creek. It ought to be pretty close by now. Go limp, Garnet. We’re coming to a wallow.”

Garnet held to the seat with both hands, set her feet firmly against the footboard, and let go all the rest of her muscles. The first few days she had sat here as primly as though she were riding on a city street, and the jogging of the trail had bruised her black and blue. But now she knew how to make herself limp as a rag, and the jolts did not hurt her. The wheels bumped into the buffalo-wallow, with a creak and rattle that made it sound as if the carriage were coming apart. Garnet heard Oliver swearing at the mules as they pulled out. The carriage settled again into its normal swinging rhythm, and she looked up.

“All right now?”

“All right,” said Oliver.

Garnet moved back into place on the seat. The wallows were an awful nuisance. She wondered why buffaloes always had to roll over in the same place. They were the stupidest animals on earth. She had seen them, in long lines that blackened the whole horizon, marching across the prairie to a waterhole. They swayed along sedately until some old brute at the head of the line took a notion to roll over on the ground to scratch his back. He rolled over, got up, and ambled on. But as though he had given an unquestionable command, the buffalo behind him immediately rolled over in the same spot. When the third buffalo reached that spot he rolled over too, and so did the fourth and fifth and sixth and every one of the rest, until by the time the thousandth buffalo had paused to wallow in the same spot they had worn a great big hole. Oliver tried to avoid the wallows, but he seldom could; by the time he saw one it was usually too late to turn aside.

Oliver’s forehead was brown with dust. He had not shaved since they began the journey, and by now he had a big shaggy beard. The dust had settled on it so thickly that his beard looked as if it was covered with cobwebs. He had on an old hat, to protect his head from the sun, and the hat too was thick with dust. He wore a plaid shirt, the colors of which had long since faded to shadows, and heavy homespun trousers of no color at all. His sleeves were rolled back, and his arms were so sunburnt that the light brown hairs looked almost white. Oliver’s muscles were like ropes under his skin. The men on the trail did the hardest kind of work. No wonder Oliver had surprised her in New York with his great rough hands.

Garnet glanced down to where a seam in the upper part of her sleeve was beginning to strain. Her clothes had fitted her in New York. But here on the trail she worked too. Her muscles were getting strong and unladylike.

She felt the new hardness in her arm. “I hope,” she said to Oliver, “when we get to California, your brother won’t be disappointed if I don’t look like a delicate lady. I’m getting so tough and brown!”

Oliver glanced at her sideways. “Charles isn’t expecting anything. He doesn’t know about you.”

“Oh, of course he doesn’t. I keep forgetting that. Do you think he’ll like me?”

“Don’t worry about Charles.” Oliver spoke so shortly that he surprised her.

Garnet turned on the seat. “Why, what do you mean? Are you worried about him?”

“He might be—a bit difficult at first,” said Oliver.

“But why?”

“He’ll be surprised to find I’m married, that’s all. Good Lord, Garnet, we won’t get to California for another four or five months. Don’t start worrying about Charles.”

Garnet frowned, thinking. Oliver was looking straight ahead at the mules, guiding them carefully over the rough ground. A wave of dust blew into her face. She coughed, and Oliver smiled as he said,

“Try not to cough. It makes your throat raw. Swallow.”

Garnet swallowed. “I know. I’ll try to remember.”

The dust had made the mules restless. Oliver was having a hard time with them. But though he could not turn his head, he spoke to her understandingly.

“The going does get tough sometimes, doesn’t it? Ten thousand things to remember, and nothing to do tomorrow but remember them all over again.”

Garnet held to the seat, admiring the expertness with which he handled the mules. But she wondered why he had said just now that she was not to worry about Charles. She had not thought of worrying about anything.

Oliver had never talked to her much about Charles. He seemed not to want to talk about him.

Well, she would ask him about it later. If there was anything she ought to know about Charles before she met him, Oliver would certainly tell her.

She listened to the rumbling of the caravan. The wagon-wheels creaked as they turned. The oxen bellowed in wrath at the men who made them work in this dusty heat. The bullwhackers, walking beside the teams, yelled and swore at the oxen, and cracked their whips in the air as they strode along. Garnet listened to the noise, and though she was so tired that her bones ached, she smiled at it proudly. No matter how you felt, there was something about the Santa Fe train, this brave sweating challenge to the emptiness.

The caravan was a mile long. It moved fifteen miles a day. There were a hundred merchandise wagons, besides the carriages and baggage-drays. The wagons moved in four lines, with the carriages among them, so each trader could keep in charge of his own crew. Ahead of the train rode the scouts, and behind the wagons plodded the extra mules and oxen. When they left Council Grove there had been only forty wagons in their company. By this time most of the traders had joined the big train, but here and there along the trail they could see the remains of campfires, showing that there were still more wagons ahead.

They had come six hundred miles from Independence, and they had two hundred miles still to go before they reached Santa Fe. For six hundred miles they had not seen a single human dwelling. But across this empty space the traders were carrying a million dollars’ worth of goods. The men had packed the wagons so tight that when they got to Santa Fe the bolts of cloth would hardly be wrinkled, and it was a rare pot or pan that would have even a dent. It was a great job. Garnet was proud to be part of it.

She could feel the sweat trickling down between her shoulder-blades.

“Oliver,” she asked, “what comes after Rabbit Ear Creek?”

“Round Mound.”

“And after that?”

“The rocks. Then the mountains.”

Garnet looked back, at the dust hanging like a thundercloud on the sky. The sky itself was bright blue, with little fleecy clouds. It had been bright like this for days now, pouring down a pitiless heat. The country was baked dry. Nothing grew here but buffalo-grass, coarse hard tufts that even oxen hated to eat.

In a day or two they would come into the land of the great rocks. But here there were no great rocks. Here, there was nothing. Nothing but dust and flatness.

The ground did not feel flat under you. It was full of bumps and wallows. But out there it looked flat, smooth as a sheet of paper. Far, far ahead, Garnet could see the mountains. At this distance they looked like strips of gray muslin waving against the sky.

The country was silent, empty, motionless. Even on the farthest horizon Garnet could not see a moving speck that might be a buffalo, nor a fixed dot that might be a tree. She could not see anything but the shimmering light and the buffalo-grass, and the white bones of buffaloes, and the distance. The caravan was a mile long, but when you looked out there it seemed no bigger than a worm, creeping through the great loneliness.

When you looked out there, you forgot the creaking and shouting around you. You seemed to be living in the midst of a great silence. The silence rose over you. It threatened and scared you. It reminded you that this was a journey across eight hundred empty miles, and you were here in the midst of it. You could not go back. No matter what happened, you had to go on. If you were ill, if you were dying, the wagons could not stop to let you die in peace. They had to go on. Even if you died, they would pause only a few minutes to bury you, and then go on. They had to get to Santa Fe.

“Garnet,” Oliver said suddenly.

She started, and turned her head. “Yes? What is it? Do you want more water?”

“No, I still have some. But Garnet, don’t look out there too much.”

“Why not?” she asked in surprise. “What is there to look at?”

“Nothing. That’s what I mean,” Oliver said. “It gets you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The silence,” said Oliver. “The loneliness. I can’t explain just what it does. But you know how you jumped when I spoke to you.”

She nodded. “Yes, I did. I wasn’t thinking about you. I was thinking about the silence.”

“Well, don’t think about it. Think about Santa Fe. We’re going to have a great time when we get there.” Oliver gave his attention to the mules for a moment, and then went on. “When we get into the rocks,” he said, “we’ll send runners ahead to Santa Fe to find out what new taxes Armijo has thought up to bedevil us, so we can figure out ways of getting around them. And Santa Fe’s going to be fun. By this time, every other building in town is turning into a saloon or a gambling house.”

“Will you take me to those places?”

“Of course, I’ll show you everything. We’re going to stay with a family named Silva. They’re fine people. I’ve had lodgings with them every year I’ve been there.”

The going was fairly smooth now, and the mules were quiet. Garnet resolutely kept her eyes off the great loneliness. Oliver went on.

“And pretty soon, the California traders will be coming in. They’re an odd lot, but I think you’ll enjoy them. John Ives, for instance—that’s my partner—he’d be at home in your mother’s parlor. But some of the others are backwoodsmen who think New York is a place where everybody has strawberries and champagne for breakfast, and the women all dress like Florinda.”

As he mentioned Florinda, Garnet felt a stab of wistfulness. Oliver was not much concerned about Florinda. Garnet had told him about her mother and father, and about the scars on her hands. Oliver was interested, but not deeply so. He had met a lot of unusual people in the course of his Western adventures, and Florinda was only another one. So when he mentioned Florinda now, Garnet did not confess that she still felt sentimental about her. She only laughed at his description of New York as imagined by some of the traders, and Oliver added,

“When you meet the men from Los Angeles, don’t ask them any questions and you’ll get along very well.”

“You mean they’ve all got shady pasts?” she asked doubtfully.

“Well, not all. But it’s an unwritten law that when you meet a man who prefers to stay west of Santa Fe, you don’t ask him why. If he wants you to know, he’ll tell you.”

A horseman came riding back from the head of the train. He reined his horse as he reached their carriage. Oliver spoke to him.