by Gwen Bristow
“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.
They went on again, through mountains ever higher and harder to climb, through stingy little streams flowing between high cliffs of rock. West, northwest, west again, then southwest through a break called Wasatch Pass. Garnet was so tired that she slept as if she had been drugged, but she was never rested when she woke up. She was tanned dark brown, but the sun still scorched her skin and made her eyes drip with tears.
She and Florinda usually rode together, but they seldom talked. Florinda kept her face so wrapped that she found it hard to speak. She was suffering acutely from the sun. But she rarely said so, and she still managed to keep cheerful when Mr. Penrose was around.
They came to the Sevier River, which was shaped like a horseshoe, and followed the eastern arm of it. Then they went through the mountains to a rocky depression called Bear Valley, then southwest through more mountains. And then, suddenly, they came to a high green paradise called Las Vegas de Santa Clara. When she saw Santa Clara, Garnet put her hands to her aching head and burst into tears.
She had not meant to do anything so childish. But she was so tired! And here before her was a spring, a bright spring that leaped out of the rocks and flowed through a field of grass and wild flowers. The air was damp, and the ground was soft, and the flowers were blue and yellow in the grass. In the stream were great beds of watercress, and along its bank were trees, and in the trees there was the sound of birds.
All around the meadow were miles of mountains, but she did not look at them. She wished she would never have to see a mountain again.
They had come six hundred miles from Santa Fe, though it would not have been so far if they had not had to loop and turn as they followed the streams. The journey had taken them thirty-four days. It was now September. In the air of this high plateau there was a tingle of autumn, and the smoke of the campfire had a scent like the smoke of burning leaves. Oliver told her they would rest here for two days. The men hunted and fished, and bathed joyously, shouting and laughing as they scrubbed, and the water of the stream was all bubbly with soapsuds. Garnet and Florinda washed their hair and their clothes, and when they had hung their clothes on the bushes they spread blankets on the ground and went to sleep, rapturous with cleanliness.
They woke up ravenous, and ate a huge meal of birds and fresh venison, and bowls of atole with gravy, and a salad of watercress from the stream. When the night came down it was very cold, but Garnet and Oliver wrapped up warmly in the buffalo robes, and Garnet thought that never had she lain in such a comfortable bed. Remembering the soft mattresses and white sheets of home, she thought pityingly that right now there were people tossing upon them, unable to sleep. She stretched out in the buffalo robes, and though she had already had a nap during the day, she slept for twelve hours.
In the morning there was even breakfast, for the first time since they left Santa Fe. Oliver’s boy Manuel brought her a bowl of atole and a piece of fresh broiled fish, and he grinned at her exclamations of delight. Oliver brought his bowl over and sat on the grass by her. “How do you feel?” he asked.
“Marvelous. Simply marvelous.”
“You’ve been great,” said Oliver.
“Have I really stood it well?”
“Magnificently. The men were doubtful about you at first. But they aren’t any more.”
Garnet smiled, glad she had done well, and more glad that those awful dry stretches lay behind her. “It’ll be easier going back next spring, won’t it?” she asked.
“Oh yes. There’s always more grass and water in the spring. Besides, on the spring journey it’s easier to keep cheerful. When you’re headed east you know the road is getting easier all the time. But when you’re headed west you know it’s going to keep on getting harder.”
Garnet set down her bowl abruptly. Oliver was eating, too much interested in his food to notice that he had frightened her.
“Is the trail ahead much worse than what we’ve already been through?” she asked. She tried not to sound scared.
Oliver did not look up. “Why yes, some of it is pretty bad. But you’re used to it now.”
Garnet felt the way she thought a turtle must feel when it was drawing itself into its shell. She did not want to go on. She looked around. The mules were peacefully cropping the grass. The men were playing cards, or mending their clothes, or cutting each other’s hair. They did not seem to be frightened. They knew what lay ahead, and they weren’t scared of it. She must be very childish to feel scared. It was only because this was her first crossing. She stood up, saying she would get the clothes she had washed yesterday and start mending them. She went down to the stream.
The Mexican women were there, scrubbing their own clothes against the rocks. They spoke to her cordially. They had crossed before, and they didn’t seem to be frightened either. Florinda came down to the bushes and began gathering up her laundry. Florinda had evidently had a good sleep too. She looked better than she had looked for days.
John Ives walked toward them, and asked if he could help them carry the clothes. Filling his arms, he walked with them to the shadow of a big rock where they were going to do their mending. “You’re very industrious,” he said to them.
“We’re not nearly as industrious as you are,” said Garnet. “You men never stop working.”
“We’re used to it,” said John.
“How long have you been on this trail, John?” asked Florinda.
“Five years.”
“Gee, you must like it.”
“No, I don’t,” he said. “This is my last crossing. I’ve just received a land-grant in California.”
“And you’re going to live on it?”
“Yes. Shall I put these clothes here on the grass, Mrs. Hale?”
“Yes, thank you.”
John put down the clothes, and left them. Garnet and Florinda sat down on the grass and opened their sewing-baskets.
“Nice friendly chap, i
sn’t he?” Florinda observed.
“He’s all right. He just prefers his own company.”
“He likes you,” said Florinda. “But he sure doesn’t like people in general.”
Garnet began to sew on a button. “Florinda, why do you suppose he doesn’t like people?”
“I think he’s scared of them,” said Florinda.
“Scared? John isn’t scared of anything!”
“Not anything he can shoot,” Florinda said coolly.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, a man can’t shoot his friends. So he doesn’t want any friends. I think he’s been hurt. Hurt bad.”
“Hurt? John?” Garnet said, and frowned. “You mean a girl broke his heart?”
“Maybe, but I don’t think so. There’s other ways to be hurt, dearie. I don’t know what it was.” Florinda dropped the subject of John. She looked around, listening to the chirping of the birds, and gave a long happy sigh. “Garnet, isn’t it wonderful just to sit here, and know we won’t be moving all day long?”
Garnet agreed. She was puzzled by John, but this day was too precious to be wasted on puzzling about anything. They stretched on the grass, sewing, and watching the men hang up strips of meat from their hunting to be dried for the journey. It was lovely, like an outdoor picnic.
TWENTY
FROM THE SANTA CLARA meadows they rode south to the Virgin River. The riding was hard, but there was water enough, and along the Virgin River the days were not so hot as they had been. Oliver said they were now out of the Utah country. Any Indians they met hereafter would be Diggers.
Once or twice the guards found Digger tracks around the picket-ground. Scouts went out, well armed, to frighten the thieves away. It was no use to try to trade with Diggers. They wanted mules, and would go to any lengths to get them.
“What on earth do they want with them?” Garnet exclaimed to Oliver.
