Jubilee Trail (18 page)

“You needn’t be so careful, Mrs. Hale. They wouldn’t wake up if an ox stepped on them.”

Garnet laughed and untied her sunbonnet.

“Mighty pretty hair you’ve got,” said Mr. Reynolds.

Garnet thanked him and climbed into the carriage. As she let fall the curtain Oliver came up with two pails of water.

“Best I could do,” he said, smiling regretfully. “Use one pail for washing and save the other for us to drink. Hand me out a blanket, will you?”

She obeyed. Oliver spread the blanket on the ground, lay down on it, and went to sleep with his next breath.

The curtains of the carriage were still closed. Garnet took off her dress and opened the chest in the corner. A pile of soiled clothes lay crumpled in the chest. She washed a pair of stockings for herself and a pair for Oliver, and a pair of drawers for each of them, and hung the clothes on a line stretched inside the back curtain. This was all she could do with her ration of water.

She took down her hair. Unrolling the mattress, she spread it on the floor of the carriage and tumbled down upon it. She was so sleepy. It was good to shake her hair loose. She wondered if Charles would like her hair as much as Mr. Reynolds liked it. Maybe if Charles liked her looks, he would more easily forgive Oliver for marrying an American instead of a Californian. But it was none of his business. She went to sleep.

At three o’clock the men hitched again. In the afternoons Luke drove the carriage, so Garnet and Oliver could ride horseback.

They rode to the head of the caravan to escape the dust. Now that the view ahead was no longer blocked by the great wagons, she could see Round Mound. It was like a cone with a rounded top, rising abruptly from the plain.

“It’s not as big as I thought it would be,” she remarked to Oliver.

He answered with amusement. “Yes it is. It’s a thousand feet high.”

“Why Oliver, it’s not!”

“How far away do you think it is?” he asked.

“About half a mile.”

“It’s eight miles away,” said Oliver. “That’s the air in these parts. It’s so thin that as soon as you get out of the dust-clouds everything looks right next to you.”

Garnet stared at the mound, almost unbelieving. It looked so close. She could see the bushes nestling in the splits of the rocks along its sides.

Now that the dust was behind them, the landscape had a curious look of unreality. The sun glittered through the thin air and made ripples on the ground ahead. The ripples looked like ponds of water. Garnet knew they were false ponds. But though her mind told her they were not there, her eyes kept on seeing them. They looked real. She saw trees bending over the ponds, reflected upside down in the water. As soon as she came close, the ponds disappeared. The trees were only stones or tufts of grass, and where the water had been there was nothing but dry ground. But as soon as she looked up she saw another pond ahead. She blinked and looked aside, trying to get the mirages out of her eyes, but they were still there.

She asked Oliver if veteran travelers saw the pools too. He said yes, everybody saw them, and you got so used to knowing they weren’t there that sometimes men in dire need of water ignored a genuine pool only a mile to the right or left of them.

The looks of things got stranger and stranger. Everything seemed to move in the wavering light. You couldn’t tell what anything was. When you got your mind adjusted to the idea that everything was farther away than you thought, you kept mistaking near objects for distant ones. A tuft of grass looked like a buffalo, bones of animals looked like roving Indians. The scouts knew this, and they rode grimly, very alert, speaking to nobody. The landscape was so full of false alarms that they had to keep tensely watchful. After seeing a hundred Indians that weren’t there, they were in danger of mistaking a real Indian party for another clump of grass.

The false ponds wriggled ahead. Garnet asked Oliver,

“When do we reach water again? Water we can be sure of?”

The next water, Oliver said, was at Rock Creek, eight miles past Round Mound. They could not reach Rock Creek till tomorrow. But she was not to worry; they had filled the barrels with enough to provide for cooking and drinking tonight.

He lapsed into silence. Garnet wondered what on earth was the matter with him. This sudden urge to tell her not to worry—she had not thought of worrying. Oliver was bothered about something, but it was nothing as plain as the chance of a water shortage.

Two of the guards rushed away from the line, shouting that they had sighted buffalo. Garnet reined her horse quickly. The buffalo were moving in a slow swaying line, against the horizon to her right. Oliver snatched up his rifle.

“Fresh ribs tonight!” he exclaimed, and dashed off.

The wagons did not stop. The horsemen could easily catch up with them when they came back. Garnet stayed by the wagons, watching the men ride away. In a moment they were almost lost in the dust raised by their horses’ hoofs. She could hear them shouting, and their rifles cracking in the air.

Twenty minutes later the hunters came back, blushing into their beards. The buffalo had been nothing but a line of brush. Oliver rested his rifle, saying, “Damn fool I am.”

“Oh Oliver,” she protested, “don’t be so silly! How could you tell the difference? I thought it was buffalo.”

“You’re a greenhorn. I ought to know better.”

“I don’t know how. You certainly weren’t the only one.”

But Oliver was ashamed of himself. He shouldn’t have been. The other men were laughing about their mistake. Nobody could blame them, and nobody did. The most seasoned veteran of the trail couldn’t tell what he was seeing in this shaky light. Any other day, Garnet thought, Oliver would have laughed too. But today he was in a bad mood. She wished he would talk to her about it.

But he did not. The sun moved westward, and hung glaring into their eyes with such force that they could see even less than before. Mr. Reynolds rode back from the head of the train with orders to make corral. They had come five miles since the nooning. Round Mound was still ahead of them, looking no farther away than the length of a city block.

The men made corral. There was no water here for the animals, but the bullwhackers led them outside the corral to graze until dark.

At sunset there was another cry of buffalo, and this time the buffalo were real. It was not a large herd. They had come so far West that most of the great herds lay behind them. But the men were good hunters, and they led in a line of mules laden with chunks of meat. The bullwhackers worked outside the corral, cutting the meat into long strips to be hung on ropes stretched along the wagon-sides. What they did not eat at once they would dry in the sun, to be used later.

Luke was making a soup from the ribs. He grinned at Garnet as she passed the fire.

“Fine meat tonight, Mrs. Hale,” he said. “Fat young cows.”

Garnet heard him thoughtfully. When she and Oliver sat eating supper, she asked,

“Oliver, why do the men always aim at female buffalo?”

“Because they give the best meat. And male hides are rough. They don’t make good robes. What are you scowling about?”

“I was just thinking. If we always kill the young females, who’s going to produce the calves?”

“Oh, we leave plenty of cows. Indians aren’t as choosy as white men, and there aren’t enough white men on the prairies to make any difference to the buffalo herds.”

“I still think it’s foolish,” said Garnet. “Because we’ve killed hundreds and hundreds of cows, just this summer. And one male buffalo can have a harem, but one female can’t have any more calves by a dozen husbands than she could have by one.”

“Oh Lord,” Oliver exclaimed, “haven’t you got anything to think about but the loves of the buffaloes?”

“Oliver,” she demanded, “what’s the matter with you?”

“Why, nothing. What makes you think there is?”

“You’ve been so silent all afternoon, and now when you do say something you sound as if you’re mad with me. Is something not going right in the train?”

“No, no, everything’s fine. I didn’t mean to be cross.” He squeezed her hand penitently. “But I’m tired, dear, and this thin dry air is hard on everybody’s temper.”

Garnet did not answer. She washed the bowls and spoons, and took them back to the carriage. It was getting dark. She lowered the sides of the carriage, laid the bedding in place, and put on her nightgown.

There was a lot of noise outside. The oxen wanted water. They howled and bellowed for it. The mules wanted water too, and they kicked angrily at the wagon-chains. Oliver put his head into the carriage and asked for a wash-basin.

A few minutes later he came in. He undressed, but he did not lie down. He pulled a blanket around him, for though the days were so hot, the air cooled quickly when the sun went down. Wrapping his arms around his knees, he sat where he was, thinking.

Garnet raised herself on her elbow.

“Oliver, I don’t want to pester you. But if you’re worried about something, I wish you’d tell me.”

It was pitch-dark in the carriage and she could not see his face. Oliver felt along the mattress till he had found her hand. “I suppose I ought to,” he said. “I don’t want you to think I’m mad with you.”

“Then you are troubled,” said Garnet.

“Yes, I am,” said Oliver. He picked up her hand and kissed it. His rough whiskers pressed on her skin. “Garnet, you know I love you very much, don’t you?”

Garnet laughed a little. “Of course I know you love me, Oliver.”

There was a pause, Oliver drew her close to him and kissed the hairline on her temple. She waited. At length Oliver said,

“I’ve got to tell you about Charles.”

Garnet sighed with relief. She sat up. “That’s it. I thought so.”

“I’ve been thinking about him,” said Oliver. “I couldn’t get him off my mind all day.”

“What is it about Charles?” she begged. “Is he a wicked man, Oliver?”

“He’s one of the finest men on earth,” Oliver said with emphasis.

She had no answer to that. So she waited again. Oliver took a deep breath and went on.

“Garnet, Charles has been my father, my mother, everything. I don’t remember my father at all. My mother died when I was seven years old. Charles was almost a man then. He was seventeen, and old for his age.”

“Yes, Oliver. Go on.”

“He’s not like you and me,” said Oliver. “We make friends easily, and get along with pretty nearly everybody. Charles doesn’t. I think I’m the only person on earth Charles really loves.”

He paused. The racket of the animals seemed a long way off. She hardly heard it any more. “I don’t quite understand, Oliver,” she said. “Do you mean Charles can’t bear the thought of your loving anybody but him? He doesn’t even want you to get married?”

“No, he wants me to get married,” said Oliver. She felt him move uneasily beside her. “But Garnet—Charles is a fine man, but he has one fault. A lot of men wouldn’t call it a fault. It’s the fault of Caesar, the fault of the fallen angels. Charles is ambitious.”

T
HERE WAS
A LONG
silence. At length Garnet said,

“You’ve told me that before. It must be important. But I don’t quite see why. I thought ambition was supposed to be an excellent trait.”

“Oh, I’m sure it is. I don’t understand it very well, I haven’t got it myself.”

“Tell me about Charles,” she said.

Oliver answered slowly. “Charles should have been born a king. But he was simply the son of an honest businessman in Boston. After our father died we lived with our uncle. He had no children of his own, and he wanted us to go into his shipping business. In fact, Charles did go into the business for a while. But Charles can’t stand taking orders from anybody. He wanted to try the Western trade.”

“Yes, you told me that,” said Garnet. “You liked the idea of the trail for fun and freedom. But Charles liked the thought of money.”

“Not money exactly. Of course that was part of it.” Oliver pushed his curly hair off his forehead. “When Charles saw California, he knew this was what he wanted. As soon as he could, he asked for a rancho.”

“How does a foreigner get a rancho?”

“It’s very easy. All he has to do is live in the country two years, become a citizen, and get baptized a Catholic. He signs a few papers and asks for a grant of land. There’s so much land, they’re glad to give it to him. After that, he buys a few cattle, sits down to wait for the natural increase, and sells the hides.”

A little dry wind rattled the carriage-side. Oliver reached up to make sure it was fastened, and went on.

“The rancho was granted to both of us jointly, but I’ve never paid much attention to it. I like the trail. But Charles spends all his time on the rancho. There are forty thousand acres and ten thousand head of cattle, and I don’t know how many native retainers running around and getting in each other’s way. He lives in a wild sort of feudal magnificence. The great native rancheros bow to him when they pass, and ask his advice about getting credit for their hides with the Yankee ships that come around the Horn. Charles is a great man in California.”

“But what’s wrong with that?” asked Garnet. “Forty thousand acres, feudal magnificence—it sounds grand to me.”

Oliver took another long breath. “We have forty thousand acres, Charles wants eighty. We have ten thousand head of cattle, Charles wants twenty. When we get all that, Charles will want to double again.”

“But what does he
want
, Oliver?”

Oliver answered simply, “Power.”

Garnet frowned, trying to comprehend. Oliver turned around, as though he wished he could see her face in the dark.

“I’m putting this as plainly as I can,” he said. “You see, California is like Europe in the Middle Ages. There are a few great families who own everything. The rest of the people work for them on the ranchos, or live in scattered little villages along the coast.”

He moved restlessly. She could barely make out the shape of his big shoulders.

“I’ve used the word ‘work,’” he said. “I shouldn’t have. The native Californios don’t know what work means. Life is too easy. The country is so vast, land is so cheap, and the cattle take care of themselves. There’s nothing to do except round up the cattle once a year and slaughter them for their hides. The Yankee ships buy all the hides they can get. They’d buy more if they could get them, but the natives won’t work hard enough to increase the yield.”