Jubilee Trail (3 page)

Besides their formal meetings, Oliver often had to call at her home. Outfitting a wagon train for the prairies was no simple matter. Her father was handling a good deal of Oliver’s business for him. If Oliver happened to call when her parents were not at home, naturally the servant would bring him in to be received by the young lady of the house. It was only courteous for Garnet to say, “Won’t you sit down for a few minutes, Mr. Hale, and get warm by the fire?”

He had been dropping in for several weeks before she realized that he had a mysterious genius for knowing when everybody would be out but herself. By this time she was enjoying his visits too much to comment on this to her parents. She would say, “Oh by the way, father, Mr. Hale came by today with a note for you. I put it on your desk.” She felt guilty, but not guilty enough to say that instead of stopping for five minutes Oliver had stayed an hour.

One morning in January, 1845, Garnet was at home practicing her music. It was a cold, bright day, and when she glanced up from the piano she could see ice flashing on the trees outside. As the sun struck the ice it sent little rainbows skittering among the branches. Garnet enjoyed watching it. She loved exciting weather, and she loved sun and rain and crackly trees and the way things grew.

Garnet’s piano was in the small parlor. This was the room they used every day, to spare the big formal parlor on the other side of the hall. The small parlor was not a luxurious room, but it was a very pleasant one, with bookcases and good pictures, and deep cushioned chairs. On the table lay this morning’s New York
Herald
and New York
Sun,
and the January issues of
Graham’s Magazine
and
Godey’s Lady’s Book.
After a walk the other day, Garnet’s father had brought in some pine-twigs with cones, which he had arranged on the mantel over the fireplace. He liked having green things indoors in bitter weather. Like every other room in the house, the small parlor had a look of good taste and simple comfort.

As Garnet played the piano, the light struck blue flashes from her black hair and danced up and down the folds of her dress. It was a charming dress, made of sheer white wool printed with little sprigs of red flowers. The bodice was closed in front with a row of red silk buttons, and the skirt spread from her slim waistline and rippled on the floor around her. Her fingers were busy on the keys. Nobody would have guessed that she had declined her mother’s invitation to go shopping because she had a secret hope in her mind.

She was hoping Oliver would call again this morning. The excuse she had given her mother was that she had such a lot of practicing to do. Her nineteenth birthday had occurred this month—such a little while after Christmas—and on Christmas and her birthday both she had received a lot of new music among her presents. It was important to learn the pieces, so when her friends called she would be ready to entertain them with the music they had given her. Mrs. Cameron was upstairs now, putting on her bonnet and shawl. She approved of Garnet’s decision to stay at home. She was glad Garnet was so careful about showing appreciation for gifts.

Garnet’s conscience pinched her slightly. It had not been really a lie, for she did have to practice. But though her mother was a darling, much more reasonable than most people, she certainly would not have approved of Garnet’s being alone with any young man as much as she had been alone with Oliver this winter. She would have thought it forward and unladylike, and dangerous. And while Mrs. Cameron would have begged mercy for a forger or a thief, she had no patience with girls who were forward and unladylike.

Garnet finished the waltz she was playing, and put a new quadrille in its place. As she began to play the quadrille she heard the door open. Glancing around, she saw her mother in the doorway.

Mrs. Cameron was thirty-eight years old. She was not a beauty and never had been, but she was a striking woman, tall and dark, with a figure nearly as slim as Garnet’s. Ready now for the street in a costume of blending shades of green, with a camel’s hair shawl and a bonnet with a sweeping plume, she was smiling happily. She loved shopping, and meeting her friends among the gorgeous displays at Stewart’s.

As she saw her mother, Garnet turned on the piano-stool and stood up. Mrs. Cameron smiled. She was proud of Garnet’s beautiful manners.

“I’m going now, my dear,” said Mrs. Cameron. “Is there anything I can get for you?”

“Could I have some new pink ribbon for my white cashmere?” asked Garnet. “The old ribbon got streaked. I think the iron was too hot.”

“Why yes, I’ll look for some. Good heavens,” Mrs. Cameron exclaimed, coming toward the fireplace, “have the boys scratched up that easy-chair again?” She bent to look at some unmistakable scuffs on the mahogany, shook her head and sighed. “The way those little Hessians tumble about, you’d think we ran a gymnasium.” She slapped the chair playfully, as though annoyed with it for being unable to resist the games of her two healthy young sons. “Well, it’s got to be revarnished. I’ll stop in at Osgood’s this morning and tell them to send for it.”

She started for the door, but turned around.

“Oh dear, I’m almost forgetting what I came to tell you.” Quite unaware that she was bringing great news, she took a thick folded sheaf of paper from her muff. “Here’s a list of goods your father left for Mr. Hale. He’ll call for it some time this morning.”

Garnet felt a tingle down her backbone. As she took the papers she tried to look politely interested, as though this was no more important than a scuffed chair. “Yes, Mother,” she said, “I’ll give it to Mr. Hale when he comes by.”

“And do keep up the fires, Garnet. It’s very cold.” Mrs. Cameron kissed her prettily gloved fingertips and went out.

Left alone, Garnet laid the folded sheaf of paper on the table. She went to the piano and played through a few more bars of music. When she heard the front door close, her hands dropped into her lap. She went back to the table, unfolded the papers, and looked at the writing.

It was a list of merchandise, of the sort Oliver was buying from the estate of the late Mr. Selkirk. Two thousand bolts of calico, six hundred bolts of white muslin, four hundred frying pans, one thousand packages of needles, and so forth. Garnet put the list back on the table. Cloth and frying pans and needles she could understand. But there was a great deal about Oliver’s trade that she did not understand.

She had asked him a lot of questions, and he had done his best to answer them. But she knew so little about the prairie country that she could hardly follow him. She had studied geography at school. Her teachers had taught her about the states along the Atlantic Ocean, and a few important places on the Mississippi River, such as New Orleans and St. Louis. But about what lay west of the Mississippi River they had told her nothing at all.

But now, Garnet reflected eagerly, she had a chance to understand. Her father had just ordered a globe of the world for her little brothers to use when they studied their lessons. The globe had arrived yesterday. It was now up in the boys’ room.

The boys were at school. Garnet went up to their room and got the globe. It was heavier than she had thought, but she lugged it downstairs to the small parlor. Bending over the globe, she turned it and then held it still.

Her right hand lay on the Atlantic Ocean and her left on the Pacific. Between her hands was the continent of North America. Garnet studied the map, a frown of concentration between her black eyebrows.

On the east side of the continent were the twenty-five states of the Union, and several territories. Beyond them was the heavy black line of the Mississippi River. West of the Mississippi she saw the Missouri River, and south of that was another river, the Arkansas. Both of these flowed into the Mississippi. The river-lines were clear on the map.

Garnet knew the settled part of the United States ended at the Missouri River. She had heard Oliver say that the little towns on the Missouri marked the American frontier. Beyond this river was still some United States territory, but no white people lived in that region. On the map, she found that it was labeled only with the names of the Indian tribes who hunted there.

South of the Missouri, the Arkansas River flowed east. The land belonging to the United States ended finally at a line drawn from the Arkansas. Beyond this line, everything was foreign. Down to the south lay the Republic of Texas. Below Texas was Mexico. Mexico was a big country; on the map the name started south of Texas and stretched all the way up the Pacific Coast till it reached a big square in the northwest, which was called the Oregon Territory.

The map gave her plenty of information about the eastern half of the continent. But it told her very little about the rest. Except for the letters along the Pacific Coast saying “Mexico,” and the other letters higher up saying “Oregon Territory,” the whole western half of the continent was nothing but a big ivory space. The space was blank but for capital letters spread out to say, “
GREAT AMERICAN DESERT
.”

At school, they had not taught her anything about the western half of North America. Until Oliver came to town, she had never thought about it. Everybody knew, or thought they knew, that there was nothing out there but a lot of useless plains with some buffaloes and Indians rambling around.

But Oliver said there was a great deal more than this. Oliver said that this ivory space, trackless on the map, was not really trackless. Across it lay a long thin line, the mark made by the turning of wagon-wheels. Every spring, as soon as the snow had melted on the prairies, merchant caravans went winding into the West.

Until Oliver told her about them, Garnet had never heard of those intrepid men who carried their goods out beyond the American frontier. But Oliver knew, because Oliver was himself a prairie trader. Oliver had been out there. Oliver had been to that country with the strange beautiful name, California.

Garnet scowled at the globe. This was the best globe that could be bought. It was new and up-to-date for the study of geography in this year 1845. But she could not find a country called California.

She looked along the Missouri River, along the Arkansas, and through Mexico and the Republic of Texas. She looked at the Great American Desert. She looked all the way up into western Canada. She could not find it.

Oliver said he had been living in California for eight years. He was going back there this summer. She could not believe he would have made it up to tease her.

But one thing she was sure of. California was not on the map.

O
LIVER STOOD
BY THE
fireplace, his elbow on the mantel. He had arrived twenty minutes before. Garnet was bending over the globe again.

For several minutes now, they had not said anything. Oliver was quite content not to talk. He enjoyed watching her, as the light flashed on her blue-black hair and her rosy cheeks.

But Garnet wanted to talk. She looked up from the globe.

“I want to ask you something, Mr. Hale,” she said.

Oliver grinned at her. His thick sandy curls were tumbling over his forehead, in the way of curls that would not obey a hairbrush. Though he had been in New York three months, his prairie tan had been so deep that his forehead was still darker than his chin. He was regarding her with the gay irreverence that he still never showed when her parents were around.

“Go ahead, Miss Cameron,” he said to her.

“Were you teasing me,” asked Garnet, “when you told me there was a far country called California?”

“Teasing you?” he exclaimed with a start. “Of course not. Why Miss Cameron, I live there!”

“Yes, that’s what you said. But if there is such a country, why isn’t it on the map?”

Oliver began to laugh. “I told you,” he answered, “California is one of the least-known spots on earth.”

“But where is it?” she asked.

Oliver came over to her. He put his big hard fingers on the coast that lay along the Pacific Ocean.

“It’s here,” he said. “California isn’t a separate nation. It’s the northernmost province of Mexico.” Looking down at the map, he shook his head. “But the coastline doesn’t look like that. They’ve put the harbor of San Diego too far north, and they’ve made just the merest dent for San Francisco Bay. In fact, it’s
all
wrong.”

“But why don’t they get it right?” she asked impatiently.

“I suppose they don’t know any better. So few Americans have ever been to California.”

“I see,” said Garnet, nodding thoughtfully. She reminded him, “You’ve been promising to tell me about the prairie trade. Maybe the globe won’t be much help, but I’ll try to keep up with you. Please tell me.”

“What do you want to know?”

Garnet drew up a chair before the globe and sat down. “Everything. How long have the traders been crossing the prairies?”

“I’m not sure. Twenty or thirty years.”

“Always by the same road?”

Oliver sat down on the arm of a big chair near her. He smiled as he looked at her. Oliver’s mind was not on his business at the moment, but he answered readily.

“It’s not a road, Miss Cameron. It’s just the mark of the wheels. The wagons have cut deep ruts in the earth, and the ruts are hardened as though they’d been cut in stone. You can see the track for miles ahead of you. In the distance it’s like a long blue line.”

Garnet drew in her breath eagerly. She looked at the globe, wishing she could see that long blue line. Oliver’s smile widened as he watched her.

“Do you know,” he said, “your hair flashes like a blackbird’s wing?”

Garnet was looking at the globe. Without raising her eyes, she said,

“Please don’t be like everybody else! Saying silly things about how I look. I know I’m not beautiful.”

“Aren’t you?” asked Oliver.

She did not answer. Oliver got up from the arm of the chair and sat on the floor, linking his big rough hands around his knees. From where he sat, he could look up at her lowered face. His lips quivered with amusement.

“Why no,” he said, “now that you remind me, you’re not beautiful.” He chuckled softly. “My dear girl, you don’t need to be.”