Jubilee Trail (31 page)

“Why?”

“Because—” He turned his head to smile at her over his shoulder. “Because you won’t believe California till you see it. Nobody does.”

“Yes I will. And I wish you’d tell me about it. Because, don’t you understand, these dry stretches are so hard. You’ve crossed here before. You know what you’re going to have at the end of the crossing, but I don’t. If you’ll tell me about it, the way you see it, I’ll have it to think about when I get so thirsty and tired.”

“Yes, I do understand that. When we’re on the dry stretches, I always think about California. The snow on the mountains, and the miles of flowers.”

He looked out over the barren rocks, as though he could see the flowers of California beyond them. He spoke slowly.

“The flowers don’t just bloom here and there. They grow in solid sheets, acres and acres of wild yellow poppies like a cloth of gold. Beyond them are acres of blue lupin, and then sheets of pink sand-verbena and purple sage—it’s like a great patchwork quilt spread over the world. Up on the slopes is the dark green chaparral, and in the chaparral there’s the yucca, like white candles twenty feet tall, and higher up you see more acres of flowers edging against the snowline. All around you there’s the scent of the sage. It’s a hard spicy fragrance that blows over you all the time. You stop your horse on a hill, you sit and look because it hurts you down in your chest and you can’t go on. The mountain peaks are white, and the sky is so blue it’s almost purple, and there’s the endless distance of mountain ranges around you and those miles of flowers below, and you want to burst into tears. You’re ashamed of yourself, and you turn your horse around to go on about your business, and just then you catch sight of some horny old rascal who left the States just in time to escape being hanged, and he’s looking at it and you hear him say ‘God Almighty!’ and by the way he says it you know he’s not swearing.”

There was a silence. Garnet looked around at the hard bare rocks, and at the thin little stream that was leading them to California. From below them the noise of the camp sounded faint and far away.

“Thank you,” she said softly. “Thank you very much.”

John was still looking out at the distance. As she spoke he turned sharply, as though he had forgotten she was there. He gave a short grim little laugh.

“If you ever tell anybody I talked like that,” he said, “I’ll swear the sun is afflicting your head. Come on, let’s go down. I’ve got a shift of guard duty pretty soon, and I want to get some sleep.”

He took her arm and helped her scramble down the rocks. When they had passed the guard, John said goodby and walked away. A few minutes later she saw him stretched on the ground alongside several other men, sound asleep.

Garnet reflected that he was a very puzzling person. He liked the earth he lived on. But he did not like the people who lived on it with him. The other men, whatever their backgrounds, merged into a neighborly unit; their common undertaking and their common peril drew them together. But though John did his part of camp duty so well that they all respected him, he shared nothing of himself.

Yet he did talk to her, and she wondered why. Maybe it was because she liked the earth as much as he did. She also liked John, in an odd way that she did not understand.

For six days they followed the Rio Dolores. The river led them west and then northwest among the mountains. The going was tiresome, but they had water and good food—fresh mutton and wild birds, besides the salt meat they had brought, and the corn-meal porridges. The days were blazing hot, the nights were colder and colder. One afternoon they ran into a shower of rain, but they rode through it gratefully, and Garnet found to her surprise that nobody caught cold.

The Comanches were behind them now. They had had no Indian trouble. Now and then they saw a few stray Indians, but the men sent scouts to meet them, carrying presents of beads and ribbons and bright cloth. Sometimes they traded with the Indians for game or fresh fish.

When they left the Dolores they turned due west, and for forty miles they went panting through a stretch of bare purple mountains, without water. Garnet rode until she ached with weariness, then both she and Florinda got off their horses and walked. Florinda looked very tired. There were dark rings under her eyes, made darker by the dust that had settled there. “This is one hell of a country, isn’t it?” she remarked as they toiled upward. Her voice was husky with dust.

“It’s awful,” said Garnet. She paused to take a sip from the bottle that hung at her belt.

Florinda pulled down the veil that covered her mouth, and took a sip too. In spite of the heavy folds of veiling, her face was flushed with sunburn. Garnet was tanned like an Indian, but Florinda was already paying the price of her complexion. Her pearly skin simply would not turn brown. She wrapped the veil about her face again, and from under its covering she asked,

“Do you know what we see after this?”

“Oliver says we’re going toward the Grand River.”

“What’s grand about it?”

“Well, it’s a river.”

“Yes, that’s grand. Water.”

Garnet spoke to her with sympathy. “I believe you feel this heat even more than I do.”

Florinda shrugged. “John warned me. But don’t worry. I can stand it.”

They fell into silence again. The hoofs of the mules clattered on the rocks. The few sheep that were left bleated for water and grass. There was none of either.

It was only about nine in the morning, but already the sun was a torture. Garnet’s throat felt like a nutmeg grater. She fingered her water-bottle yearningly. Oliver caught up with her. He was walking too, half leading and half dragging a loaded mule. With his free hand he held out some smooth pebbles.

“Put one of these in your mouth,” he said, “and suck it like a candy drop. It keeps your mouth wet and you can swallow offener.”

Garnet took the pebbles and gave one to Florinda. They did help. Oliver was doing everything he could to make the dry stretches bearable for her. It was not his fault that it was forty miles between rivers. Garnet thought about the shining sheets of flowers in California, and the snow on the peaks. She was glad John had told her about that, and told it as he had. Now among these baking rocks she could tell it to herself, over and over again.

Then at last they came to the Grand River, singing over the stones with a sound like music. On its banks there was fresh grass for the animals, so the train paused here a day to rest. They got themselves clean, and washed their clothes, and the boys cooked big delicious meals. They killed the last of the sheep they had driven from Santa Fe. It was no use to try to take them further, for the sheep could not climb the rocks ahead. From now on, the train would have to depend on salt meat and such game as they could get in the mountains.

Oliver told Garnet they were getting into the country of the Utah Indians. The Utahs were not cruel like the Comanches behind them, nor stupid like the Diggers ahead. They were an intelligent tribe, and white men could trade with them. But the caravan did not relax its guard, for the Utahs were accomplished thieves.

Garnet had hoped they would follow the Grand River, but they did not. They rode across it, Garnet clinging fearfully to the pommel as her little mare Sunny picked her way among the stones of the river-bed. But Sunny was strong and sure, and Garnet came up on the other bank with nothing worse than a splashing. They went on, west-northwest, toward another stream called the Green River. Some miles to the south, Oliver said, the Grand and Green Rivers joined to form the Colorado, but they could not go down there, for the Colorado was too big to be crossed. They had to go around it. This added to the journey, but there was no other way.

They were up in dizzying mountains. The scenery was majestic, but Garnet was so tired of scenery that she hardly looked at it any more. The noons were fiery, and the nights were so cold that sometimes there was frost on the ground when they woke up. The water of the mountain brooks was almost icy. Garnet’s teeth chattered as she washed in the pails the boys brought her.

One afternoon, when they were finishing their dinner, a guard came in with news that a dozen Utahs were approaching the camp. Garnet saw the other women, Mexicans and half-breeds alike, fall on their faces and cover themselves with blankets. She and Florinda were sitting together. Oliver came quickly over to them with blankets in his arms. He told them to lie down, and he piled the blankets on top of them and threw saddles and packs around the blankets, helter-skelter so it would all look like a pile tossed there for the nooning.

“Oliver!” Garnet cried from under the heap. “What’s going to happen to us?”

She heard him laugh regretfully. “Nothing. You won’t be comfortable, but you’ll be safe. The Utahs just want a free meal. But if they see women, sometimes they want to buy them and it makes for arguments. Be very still.”

They heard the grunts of the Indians, and white interpreters talking to them. There was a clatter of pans. Garnet remembered Oliver’s telling her that Indians were always hungry. She felt for her gun. She had been warned never to use the gun unless she absolutely had to. It was better to pretend you loved the Indians, and treat them like honored guests, than to get into a fight. Still, it was a comfort to feel the gun there.

She and Florinda lay very still. Their muscles began to feel cramped. It was intensely hot under the blankets. They heard sounds of gobbling and grunts of pleasure. After awhile Florinda whispered,

“Do you think we dare peek?”

“I’d like to,” said Garnet. “I’ve never seen an Indian close up. I think maybe—wait a minute.”

Careful not to stir their covering, she inched her hand toward the edge of the blanket and raised it a very little. The sudden light from outside dazzled her for a moment, and she could not see anything. Then as her eyes got used to the glare, she saw the Indians.

They were squatting in a ring about twenty feet away, gobbling so fast that they were not paying attention to anything beyond them. Garnet could smell the food, and with it a nasty odor of unwashed bodies. She felt her nose wrinkling with disgust.

The Indians were big strong dark men, nearly naked. They might have been good-looking if they had been washed, but evidently they considered water only good for drinking. Their greasy black hair was twisted up with ribbons and feathers. They wore dirty finery consisting of fur and beads and loin-cloths of bright fabrics they had got from earlier trading caravans. Their bodies were crusted with dirt and sweat. They held the bowls up to their faces and ate like dogs, chewing noisily, and as they ate they scratched, in a businesslike manner suggesting that they had good reason for it. When a bowl was empty its user turned it upside down, holding it with one hand while he rubbed his belly with the other, croaking for more food.

Garnet heard Florinda whisper, “That’s enough. Drop the blanket before I throw up. Hell for breakfast!”

Garnet dropped the blanket. “Don’t mention breakfast,” she whispered back. It seemed to her now that the odor of the Indians was everywhere. She felt sick.

“They say those creatures can smell game like a dog,” whispered Florinda. “I don’t know how they ever smell anything but each other.”

“We’d better be quiet,” Garnet warned.

They lay still. It seemed to her that they lay there almost forever. They dropped off to sleep, but the aches in their muscles woke them up again in a few minutes. The air under the blankets got hotter and stuffier. When they finally felt the blankets being pulled off them, they were both in an agony of cramp.

Silky Van Dorn was uncovering them. They heard him say,

“All right, ladies. You can stand up now.”

He gave them each a hand. Garnet tried to stand up. But her legs had no feeling in them. She fell down again, and looked up at him helplessly. “I’m numb all over, Mr. Van Dorn!”

“I know, I know, it must be terrible,” said Silky. His fine mustache was lost now in a wild growth of whiskers, but he smiled as grandly as ever. “This is what you ladies get for being so young and beautiful. Just move a little bit at a time. Here, take a drink, it helps.”

He pulled a bottle from his pocket. Garnet took a sip to be polite. The whiskey burned her tongue, but even that was welcome because it was a fresh sensation. Florinda shook her head and Silky offered her his water-bottle. Garnet saw Oliver coming toward them, with Texas and Penrose. Oliver put his hands under her armpits and dragged her to her feet. She held to him, for she could not stand up alone.

Texas asked courteously, “Are your lower limbs beginning to feel prickly, Mrs. Hale?”

“Why yes, they are,” said Garnet.

Florinda, holding Penrose’s shoulder as she struggled to stand up, said grimly, “I feel like I’ve got ants all over me.”

“That’s fine,” said Texas. “It means the blood’s flowing back. Now I’ll make you both some good hot coffee.”

Garnet’s house had been built before dinner, so now Oliver helped her get inside it. Dropping the blanket across the entrance, he slapped her thighs and rubbed them to bring back the circulation.

“You stood that very well,” he said.

“How did you get rid of the Indians?”

“Oh, we finally shook our heads, smiling brightly and stroking our guns. Then we gave them some beads and other stuff. They’re gone.”

“I hope I never have to look at another Indian,” said Garnet. “I never knew anything alive could be so repulsive.”

Oliver rubbed her legs and laughed. “Wait till you see a Digger.”

“They aren’t worse than these!”

“My dear, compared to the Diggers, the Utahs are models of fastidious elegance. Utahs are human. Diggers—” He shrugged, unable to think of a suitable word.

Texas brought a pot of coffee. It was hot and strong. When she had drunk it, Garnet went outside, to move around a little before lying down for her afternoon sleep. But the men were repacking. They had meant to rest here, but now they said they had better move on. There might be more Utahs in the neighborhood, and they couldn’t feed them all.

So they went on. The next day they reached the Green River, which was so turbulent that the mules could not cross it until they had been unloaded. The men cut down trees and made rafts, and took the goods over on the rafts, and loaded the mules again on the other side. Garnet had to plunge into the river on horseback and trust Sunny to swim across. Twenty times she thought she was going to fall off and be drowned, but Sunny was a tough swimmer and got her safely over.