Jubilee Trail

by Gwen Bristow

  Florinda smiled serenely. “He thinks he did.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, dear, he’s been gazing at me starry-eyed ever since the first time he saw me, right here in this room. So when I got rid of Mr. Bartlett, I started to gaze starry-eyed back at him. That’s all.”

  “Do—do you like him?” Garnet ventured.

  “Why yes, I like him well enough. He’s such a muttonhead that he’s very easy to get along with, and he thinks I’m wonderful. He’s never been off the farm, except out here, and he’s so excited to have a New York actress for his girlfriend that he can hardly keep count of his mules.”

  Her eyes, very wise and naughty, met Garnet’s as she added,

  “Silky Van Dorn is so relieved, dear.”

  “Relieved? About what?”

  “Well, you see, he thinks he gave away the whole show by talking too much. So he was afraid I was going to come rushing up to him and say, ‘You got me into this, now you’ve got to take care of me.’ Silky likes me fine, but he doesn’t want to take care of anybody but himself. But oh, he felt so guilty. He came over to see me the next day, all bleary from last night’s liquor, and told me if I didn’t have any way to get back to Missouri he’d see that I got safely to California. I said everything was all right, I was managing myself just beautifully. He was so joyful he started admiring me right away for my stalwart character. It’s much better that way. He’s smart, and when they’re smart I’d rather have them admire me for my character than adore me for my big blue eyes.”

  Garnet had no idea how to answer such remarks, so she did not try. She was thinking of the future. “What are you going to do in California?” she asked.

  “I’ve no idea. If I don’t like it, I guess I can manage to come back to the States next year. But I hope I can get along there.” She picked up the quill Garnet had been writing with, and stroked her own cheek with the feather end. “I don’t want to go back to the States, Garnet,” she added seriously.

  “Are you still scared of Mr. Reese?” Garnet asked.

  “Not exactly. That witch-hunt can’t last forever.” Florinda was looking down as she played with the pen. “But—I guess I can say it to you. When I left the States, I meant to go back. It didn’t occur to me there was any chance of my going on to California. But the more I thought of going back, the less I liked it.”

  She spoke slowly, in a low voice. Garnet did not interrupt her. Florinda went on.

  “You remember, in New Orleans I told you something had happened that I didn’t want to think about. I wanted to get a long way from it. New Orleans was better than New York. But it wasn’t far enough. It was still American. Away out in California, everything will be different. There’ll be nothing to remind me of anything that happened before I got there. I can start over.” She smiled intimately. “Understand, darling?”

  “Yes,” said Garnet, “I think I do.”

  She remembered Oliver’s telling her that most of the Americans in California had gone there because there was something in their own country that they wanted to get away from. She thought of John, who was so silent about his past life; even Oliver, who had known him for five years, did not know why John had left Virginia. She thought of Texas, who had never even told his friends what his name was, and who periodically went off by himself to get drunk. And now Florinda was joining their company, hiding her scars under her fancy gloves, and hiding her secret wound under her frivolous laughter.

  They were both silent for some time. After a while Garnet asked,

  “Have you seen Mr. Bartlett?”

  “No, dear, and I don’t expect to. He’s getting out of town as fast as he can. He’s not waiting for the big train back. He doesn’t want to see anybody.”

  “You know, Florinda,” said Garnet, “you weren’t very nice to Mr. Bartlett.”

  “Did you expect me to be?”

  “I didn’t think you were going to make him the laughing-stock of the whole train.”

  “Hell for breakfast,” said Florinda, “if he’d had sense enough to laugh at himself instead of nearly breaking my jaw, nobody would have laughed at him. I was mighty pleased when he hit me. I thought for a minute he wasn’t going to do it. But as soon as he did, all the rest of them felt noble because they hadn’t hit me, so then they were all on my side. The gents sure do like a girl who makes them feel gallant without making them do anything to prove it.” She stood up. “Say, Garnet, it’s getting late. I’ve got to go and fascinate Mr. Penrose. Can I have the silver buttons?”

  Garnet took the buttons out of her sewing-basket. “Are you going to give these back to Mr. Bartlett?”

  “Give them back? Why no, I’m going to sew them on my dress. Why should I give them back?”

  “Why—I just thought—”

  “My God, don’t be so childish,” said Florinda. “They’re real silver.”

  She took the buttons and said goodby. Left alone, Garnet went back to her letter.

  “… In two or three days we will leave here for California. Oliver says we should reach his rancho about the first of November. My health is excellent. Oliver is the most devoted husband any girl could ask for, and I am very happy. Give my love to the boys…”

  She shook her head. It was a long letter. But it seemed to her she had not written any of the really important things that had happened since she left New York.

  She wished she could talk to her parents instead of writing them. She wished she could tell them about Oliver’s odd shyness on the subject of Charles, and ask if they understood it any better than she did. But no! she said to herself with a start. That would be shamefully disloyal. If she suspected that Oliver had any weakness, it was her business to be quiet about it. She signed the letter and folded it, and got out a stick of sealing-wax.

  On the tenth day of August, 1845, they left Santa Fe and rode westward to the Rio Grande del Norte. They were on their way to California.

  EIGHTEEN

  THE LOS ANGELES TRADERS did not use wagons. When you rode to California, you did it in a saddle.

  The men rode mules, since mules stood the journey better than horses, but as a tribute to their city breeding Garnet and Florinda each had three sturdy little mares. Garnet called hers Daisy, Sunny, and Kate. Florinda called hers Amaryllis, Gloriana, and Celestine. “I like great big beautiful names,” she said.

  There were two hundred persons in the train, and a thousand mules, besides a flock of sheep that they drove for fresh meat. There were no buffalo ahead of them. The pack-mules were loaded with blankets, silver, and American goods the traders had bought in Santa Fe. There were eighteen traders, six of them native Californios and the others Yankees. There was also a troop of muleteers and servants, mostly Mexicans, and ten women.

  Garnet and Florinda were the only Americans among the women. Two of the Californio traders had brought their wives, and two Yankee traders were accompanied by Mexican girls who were not their wives. There were also four camp-followers. They were half-breed girls, born of white fathers and Indian mothers in the trapping country north of Santa Fe. They had blank, stolid faces, and they took care of themselves with easy skill. Garnet was glad they were there. All the training of her lifetime rose up reproachfully and told her she ought to be shocked at their presence. But she was not shocked. She knew that because of these girls, the journey to California would be easier on her than the journey to Santa Fe had been. There was no sense in pretending to feel a virtuous indignation when she did not feel any such thing. The half-breed girls never spoke to her, or as far as she could see, to anybody else. They were simply there.

  Unlike the men on the Santa Fe Trail, the California traders had a lot of personal servants. Every trader had at least one boy who had nothing to do but wait on him; most of the traders had two or three. These men knew how to put up with hard times when they had to. But they saw no reason why they should not enjoy as much comfort as they could get. With no resources except what they could pack on the mules,
Garnet was surprised at how comfortable they were.

  They started at dawn, and rode till word came back to make camp for the nooning. By this time she would be very hot and tired, but as soon as she slipped out of her saddle one of Oliver’s boys would take her horse, while another boy ran to fill her water-bottle. To stretch her cramped muscles, Garnet walked over and watched the muleteers unloading the mules. They took off the packs, and tethered the mules with long leather thongs, called reatas, which they tied to picket-pins driven into the ground. Here along the Rio Grande there was plenty of grass.

  While she walked around, the boys built her a house. They piled up saddles and mule-packs to make four walls, and over the walls they spread a blanket for a roof. When the house was ready, one of the boys brought her a pail of water so she could wash in privacy while the cooks made up the fires.

  By the time she came outside dinner was ready. The food was good. There were chunks of fresh mutton stewed with peppers and dried onions, and slabs of goat’s milk cheese, and fat red Mexican beans. Sometimes there were birds the men had shot. In place of bread there was atole, a cornmeal from which they cooked hot mush; or pinole, a mixture of parched corn flavored with sugar and cinnamon. Mixed with hot water, atole and pinole made good porridges.

  After dinner everybody went to sleep except the men whose turn it was for guard duty. Garnet slept in her little house, or on a blanket outside if the day was too hot. The men slept around the central pile of packs and saddles, so they could spring up and use them for breastworks in case of attack.

  At the nooning, only Garnet and Florinda had shelters. The rest of the company were used to living outdoors and felt no need of privacy in the daytime. But when they stopped for the night, the camp was a village of little houses. Each one had packs and saddles for walls and a blanket for a roof, and inside it a warm pile of blankets and buffalo robes for a bed. Though the days were hot, the nights were surprisingly cool. The houses were set close together for safety. At a signal of alarm, the men could snatch off the blanket-roofs and shoot from behind the walls. These walls were snug and tight, for the boys who built them were clever youngsters, proud of their jobs. The California trade was dangerous, and the traders were looked upon with respect in the country around Los Angeles. The boys who served the traders, like the pages who waited on the knights of old, enjoyed a good deal of social prestige at home.

  When they came to the Rio Grande they turned north, and followed the river up to where it met a little stream called the Chama. Here they crossed the Rio Grande, and they followed the Chama northwest to a sleepy little adobe village called Abiquíu. Past the village, they rode along the Chama into a wild, Indian-ridden country of hills and shrubs and colored rocks.

  The Indians along here were Apaches and Comanches, the fiercest tribes of the West. They lurked on the high rocks, ready to swoop and attack at the slightest sign of carelessness in the train. But there was no carelessness. These men knew their business. They went about it with such competence that though Oliver had to warn her about the Comanches, Garnet was not much afraid.

  The Comanches, he told her, were the world’s most accomplished torturers. They took a horrid pleasure in slowly dismembering their captives. Oliver handed her a pistol, and told her to carry it in a holster strapped to her waist. Back among the trees of Council Grove he had taught her how to use a rifle, and now, early in this new trail, he made her fire at targets he pointed out, to be sure she could still use it.

  “Now remember,” he said to her, “a good frontiersman is one who knows about the dangers, and is ready for them, but doesn’t worry about them. Understand?”

  Garnet nodded grimly. She was thinking of what she had been doing this time last summer. She had been at Rockaway Beach, sipping lemonade on a cool corner of the hotel veranda. Oliver went on.

  “We’re very well armed, and we know how to take care of ourselves. But I had to warn you. Now if you’re as smart as I think you are, you’ll carry that gun but you won’t lose any sleep over thinking about why you’re carrying it.”

  Garnet promised. And she found, as they traveled among the rocky hills, that it was quite impossible for her to lose any sleep for any reason. Whenever they stopped, she was so tired that she fell asleep as soon as she lay down, and her sleep was like black velvet.

  She saw that Florinda was also carrying a gun, and as they rode along the Chama River Garnet asked if Mr. Penrose had told her about the Comanches.

  “Why yes, he told me,” said Florinda. “He made them sound quite unpleasant. It seems that if they catch you alive they have a social party and amuse the guests by taking you apart.”

  “You weren’t scared?”

  “Sure I was scared. But then it occurred to me that these mule-trains have been going through here ever since about the time I was born. So I figured they could get through one more time.”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” said Garnet. “Nothing has happened so far.”

  “No, and I don’t think anything’s going to. These chaps know what they’re about.”

  Garnet looked with admiration at these watchful silent men who had been carousing in Santa Fe only last week. Here they never relaxed their vigilance. Most of them started the day with a drink of whiskey, saying it warmed them in the chill of the early morning, but they knew too much to get drunk on the trail. Garnet noticed that Texas, who had spent his time in Santa Fe sitting alone and getting it over with, had evidently got it over with. Here on the trail he never touched a bottle.

  They were riding through a country of such wild splendor that Garnet gasped with wonder at every turn. The trail was climbing among great rocks, not dull-colored rocks like others she had seen, but vast tumbled formations of black and red and copper, a hundred shades of color lying in vivid layers against a vivid blue sky. Among the rocks grew trees that looked something like pines; and bushes with rough gray leaves, on which yellow flowers were beginning to bloom.

  The rocks near the stream were flat-topped, and their colors lay in gaudy slanting stripes. Farther away, brilliant against the sky, were great red rocks like castles. They had square walls and round towers, like the fortresses of medieval Europe. But they did not look like the pictures of real castles. They looked as those castles might have looked if they had been made larger and more splendid by the fancy of an artist, with towers and turrets and battlements built for the warriors of dreams. There were hundreds of them, miles and miles of red grandeur. As she watched them Garnet drew in her breath with a little sound of ecstasy, and Florinda asked,

  “What’s the matter, dearie?”

  “All this,” Garnet said softly. “The rocks—Florinda, what do they look like to you?”

  Florinda glanced around. “Well, those big flat ones look like layer-cakes. Those big red blobs, they don’t look like anything.”

  Garnet turned her head slowly and stared at her. Florinda, slapping a gnat that had lit on her nose, remarked that this blamed country sure did get as hot as the inside of a cow. Garnet reluctantly understood that Florinda was one of the people who could ride through a land full of glory and never see it. To Florinda, beauty meant clothes and jewels and her own self in the glass. She had never noticed a mountain or a sunset in her life.

  So Garnet did not talk any more about the spectacle around them. But that evening, while the cooks were making the supper-fires, she walked past the grazing-space and stopped to look out at the rocks. The declining sun was sending long blades of light among them, striking fantastic colors from the piles, and the shadows lay purple on the ground, like goblins. Behind her Garnet heard the shouts of the men and the braying of the mules. Ahead of her she could see a guard, crouched on his haunches, motionless. One hand shielded his eyes, the other lay ready on his gun. Garnet stood very still. Oliver had warned her never to make any sudden motion behind a guard.

  The sun slipped behind one of the far red castles, and the light among them was suddenly a thicker purple, though there were still crowns
of gold on the towers. Garnet turned her head to follow the stretching shadows. A few feet to the right of her she saw John Ives, standing beside a rock. Garnet thought she was being very quiet, but John must have heard the rustle of her skirt on the ground, for he turned toward her.

  “Good evening, Mrs. Hale,” he said.

  Garnet bit her lip, embarrassed to have disturbed him.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Ives. I didn’t see you on duty here. I was trying not to get too close to the other guard.”

  “I am not on duty.” He glanced at the splendor ahead. “I was looking at the rocks.”

  Garnet took a step nearer him. “Do you think they’re beautiful too?”

  John nodded. With a six days’ growth of black beard he had begun to look very unlike the immaculate gentleman she had known in Santa Fe.

  “Beautiful isn’t exactly the word, is it?” he said. “But I suppose it has to do. I don’t know any words for it.”

  Garnet glanced uneasily at the guard. John said,

  “We aren’t disturbing him. He’s used to the ordinary camp talk.”

  John seldom spoke to anybody unless it was necessary, and she wondered if she was in his way now. But she did want to know about the rocks. So she asked,

  “What are they? Why do they look like that?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve wondered too.”

  “What are these odd trees that look like pines?” asked Garnet.

  “Piñons. They are a kind of pine.”

  “And these gray bushes with the yellow blooms?”

  “Chamisa. They’re just beginning to bloom now. In another month they’ll be covered with yellow flowers.” His eyes went over her with a faint surprise, and like Oliver last winter, he asked her, “Are you interested in all this?”

  As she had answered Oliver then, she said to John, laughing a little,

  “I’m interested in anything I don’t know about.” He did not reply, and she asked, “Is that so surprising?”

  “Why yes,” said John. “So few people are.”