Colter's Path (9781101604830)

by Judd, Cameron

  The entire group consisted of forty-five males and five females, two of the latter being wives, the other three daughters. Over half the argonauts were single young men. A few of the older men were leaving wives and families behind, the plan being for those families to either join their patrons later or just remain home to await the gold-laden return of their men in a few months. In a couple of cases, arrangements were already in place to bring the family to California later by a ship voyage around Cape Horn and north from there to the California coast.

  No such arrangements were needed in Witherspoon Sadler’s case, there being no wife and family. The man had never married, though those who knew him well could testify that this was not due to any lack of interest. The unfortunate fellow had gone through several failed attempts at romance, trying hard to find a wife suitable to a prominent man of business, some woman with sufficient intelligence, dignity, beauty, and gravity to compete with Wilberforce’s wife, Grace. So far, though, the rotund, unimpressive Withers had failed to find his true love.

  As someone with his ear and eye turned to life in this town, Bellingham was aware of Witherspoon Sadler’s long and unproductive quest for a spouse. And the man’s actions made clear to all his wish that he were a more appealing prospect for the ladies. Despite being a well-off man financially, Witherspoon faced challenges in being seen as an eligible bachelor, chief among them his unappealing physique and piping voice. Even so the man tried hard, and usually ineptly, to cut a dashing figure for the feminine eyes of Knoxville when opportunity arose. That trait of behavior, Bellingham figured, accounted for why Witherspoon left Knoxville riding not on his wagon seat, as would be expected, but instead astride a fine horse from which he could wave in grandiose fashion to the ladies on the boardwalks. And he wore a buckskin outfit just like Jedd Colter’s…perhaps unmindful that he cut a very different kind of figure than did Jedd, who was as lean and muscled as Witherspoon was portly. On Witherspoon, the effect of the buckskin garb approached comedy. The broad smiles he received from the women as he rode along derived not from admiration but amusement.

  The long train of wagons, packhorses, riders, and pedestrians maintained its paradelike quality for some miles out of Knoxville for the sake of the rural folk who watched from their fields and yards and porches. At length, though, the structure loosened. Jedd left the party long enough to hide in a grove of trees and change back to his usual garb, clothing that a true woodsman would actually wear in field and woods rather than what an actor portraying a woodsman might wear on a New York stage. He abandoned the unwanted garments behind a sycamore.

  Witherspoon did not change out of his buckskins, being persuaded that they rendered him a fine figure of rugged masculinity, but he did trade saddle for wagon seat in hopes that the wagon would be kinder to his hemorrhoid-afflicted posterior. And thus Crozier Bellingham found himself, as earlier anticipated, with a seatmate. Witherspoon was in a mood to talk.

  “There is something fine indeed about bidding good-bye to the past and taking to a new way,” he said. “Do you not agree, Crozier? I’m sure you do, sure you do. That, to me, is one of the most luring things about this entire, burgeoning rush for California gold: in California all will be fresh and new. Old acquaintances, old contacts, old friends, and old enemies, these will be erased as if they never were. This is a vast land on which we live, Crozier, vast enough that even the thousands who will cross it will be as mice crossing a plain, moving in the same direction and aiming at the same destination, yet spread so widely that they will be largely unaware of one another. The odds of encounter with one’s past are remote. It’s a simple matter of logic.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” Crozier replied, making mental note of the conversation for later addition to his journal.

  “He is not right.”

  Crozier, startled by the unexpected voice, turned his head and saw that Jedd Colter had ridden up beside them and had overheard all that Witherspoon had said.

  “What do you mean, I’m not right?” Witherspoon called over. “How could it be otherwise than what I said? It is such a huge, broad land out there before us!”

  “That’s true. I know that far better than most, sir, having crossed that land more than once.”

  Witherspoon winced a little at the subtle but clear pointing out of the fact that he held no particular qualification to make comment on the subject at hand, while Jedd did. Jedd let the moment hold, then pass, and went on.

  “What you said makes sense on its surface, I’ll grant you that, Witherspoon,” he said. “But where it breaks down is that you’re forgetting that, big and broad as this land of ours is, them who cross it don’t traverse it like water down a sloped roof, spreading out everywhere. It’s more like water going into a funnel, and funnels start out wide but narrow down. Take us here, for example. We’re heading up to Louisville, and from there we’ll be making our way over to Independence, from whence we’ll commence the main part of our journey. But we won’t be the only ones. Every day there’s folks who come in to Independence and St. Joe and other places like that, from all over our side of the nation. From the top of Maine to the coast of the gulf down south. They’re the water from the broad part of the funnel, and Independence and the other launch points for the westbound trails are like the narrow part of the funnel. The part where everything comes together and for a little time is all at the same place and flowing out in the same direction. Not spread out and vast at all. Not there. And there’s other places along the way where the funnel narrows again. Places like Fort Kearny and Fort Laramie up on the California-Oregon Trail. And Santa Fe on the trail we’ll be following. The odds are right good, Witherspoon, that many of us in this company will encounter folks we’ve known before while we’re crossing this big, vast country you were talking about. It’s happened to me already. You got to remember that folks in this country have been heading far west for a goodly while now, heading to settle in Oregon or California, and sometimes stopping off before they get there. First time I traveled the California trail, I chanced upon no less than three folks I used to know all the way back in my North Carolina days. And two more from Knoxville. Folks who had decided to go to Oregon but had never gone that far, settling in just past Independence. The narrowing of the funnel, you see. Bringing folks together into one small area. Squeezing a thousand different paths together into one. And I’ve heard of the same thing happening to lots of others. And it’ll happen all the more now that there’s the lure of gold and even more folks going west.”

  Witherspoon looked oddly unhappy to be hearing this, and Bellingham noticed it and turned an inquiring gaze upon him. Witherspoon cast his eyes heavenward a moment, then sighed and said, “Well, I understand what you are saying, Jedd. And I confess that it makes sense and takes into account things I had failed to think of. But I do not relish hearing it. I’ve come to hope that passage to California might be like moving through a veil and leaving everything behind, all the old problems, all the old unsettled accounts. Letting the past be past in the fullest sense. A second chance for a man to make himself what he hasn’t succeeded in making himself the first time through.”

  Jedd eyed Witherspoon and felt mild pity for the man. Clearly Withers was at some level unhappy with himself as he was, with his lonely life as it had been dealt to him so far. He’d hoped that this great adventure would make a clean break with the familiar life so a new and better one could begin.

  Jedd knew better. It could not be that way, not fully. A man might cut down the weeds of his past and clear his grounds in anticipation of new growth, but the roots of old weeds always remained, even if unseen, and in time grew again. Past accounts could not be left unsettled. Eventually they came around again, demanding payment.

  He almost said as much to Witherspoon, but didn’t. The man looked too distressed already. Who could say? Maybe in Witherspoon’s case, the past would indeed simply fall away, and California would bring him a kind of new birth and new, better life. Jedd hoped so. He couldn
’t help liking the man. Especially when he compared him to his brother.

  At the absolute end of the train was a wagon driven by a prim man with a proper British look about him and a stack of poetry books beside him on his seat. His name was Nigel Straw, and his last experience of driving a wagon had occurred in his youth in Essex. He’d left wagon driving behind in favor of education and a career in higher education, most recently as a professor of language and literature at Bledsoe College, where he had been one of the few members of the faculty supportive of the presidency of Zebulon McSwain and unfavorably disposed to the idea of Bledsoe’s being absorbed into another college. So, when McSwain had approached him with the notion of accompanying him to California, the impulsive Straw had not required more than ten minutes of thought before he made his decision. Still young, still willing to work hard, and lacking in academic snobbery despite his skill and effectiveness as an educator, Straw had no qualms about returning to his youthful work as a wagoner and moving on from there to a life of pan swirling and kneeling beside California waterways.

  Near the edge of town the roadway was broken and rough and Straw, feeling he was falling too far behind the train, cracked his whip. The wagon jolted forward and caught up fast, and at the same time Straw heard a loud thunk behind him, something falling to the wagon bed back under the canvas cover. He winced, knowing what it was.

  “Are you all right back there?” he called softly over his shoulder. “I heard the bottle fall.”

  A man’s face appeared through the cinched canvas opening behind Straw and peered up at him with bleary eyes. “I’m fine. Spilled some, though, damn it.”

  “Sorry about the bump, President McSwain. Rain has washed ruts into the road back there.”

  “All is well, Nigel. All is well. But please don’t call me ‘president’ anymore. It just salts the wound. Salts the wound.” And McSwain withdrew back into the shadowy wagon interior while Straw marveled at the decline of a man who had once been among the most distinguished in his town. At that moment he was glad McSwain had joined the Sadler trek to California. If ever any man needed a new start, it was Zebulon McSwain.

  The dirt road smoothed and the wagon rolled easily and without much vibration. Back under the cover, McSwain finished the last of his liquor and threw the empty bottle off the back of the wagon, cursing at the town of Knoxville and the trustees of Bledsoe College as he did so. Hell with all of it, and all of them! He’d been rejected, pushed away, stripped of his dignity and his status, and he would not forget or forgive it. He was still muttering curses as he lay down on a blanket among the gear and luggage stowed around him and fell asleep.

  A mile outside town, a man emerged from a roadside thicket and deftly made his way to the back of the wagon bearing McSwain. He glanced around quickly and, undetected, climbed up and through the gap in the canvas and hid himself behind a wooden crate inside the wagon. There he listened to the snores of the former college president passed out on the wagon bed, and sang softly to himself a song about gold in California. The whispered music of his own voice pleased him.

  Up on the driver’s seat, Straw whistled loudly and drove the wagon along without any clue that he was carrying an extra passenger, having heard nothing of the man’s stealthy intrusion or his faintly intoned song.

  Though most of Knoxville had turned out to see the departure of the Sadler brothers’ emigrant train, two residents of the town had been among those otherwise occupied. Ollie and Rollie Slott stood in a very humble cemetery, side by side at a freshly filled grave that bore a homemade wooden cross as a marker. On it was crudely chiseled:

  MARTHA SLOTT

  B 1783 D 1849

  MUCH LOVED MOTHER

  AND FOLLOWER OF CHRIST

  ASLEEP IN THE LOVE

  OF JESUS

  Ollie Slott reached up and dabbed a tear from his cheek. Since the death of his and Rollie’s mother two days before, and her burial only the prior day, Ollie had struggled to keep his emotions under control, mostly failing. Her illness had come fast and hard and the Slott brothers had found themselves bereaved so suddenly that it felt like the slap of a hand or the strike of a fist.

  “I’m going, Ollie. And I want you to come with me,” Rollie said.

  “I think I’ll stand here a mite longer,” Ollie replied. “Seems like I can feel her here with me when I stand where she’s buried.”

  “I ain’t talking about going from this burying ground, brother. I’m talking about the big adventure half this country is part of. Hear what I’m saying? I’m going to California! With Mammy gone there’s nothing to hold me here now but you, and even that wouldn’t figure in it if you’d come with me. We can go there, work our trades just like we do here, me fighting, you making boots and so on, and we can look for gold, too. We’ve lingered here in this town way too long, all because of Mammy. She’s gone now. We can go, too.”

  Ollie stared at the wooden grave marker and said nothing. “Talk to me, brother,” Rollie urged. “Say you’ll go with me. I don’t want to make such a big journey with no friend at my side.”

  “The Sadler group was to leave today,” Ollie said. “Too late to be part of that. And too costly for poor men like us, anyway.”

  “There’ll be others going. Or we can make up our own group. Get us a wagon and aim it west, and keep rolling till we see the golden glitter.”

  “You make it sound easy, Rollie. Wouldn’t be so. Not really.”

  “It ain’t easy watching the days of your life slip on past with nothing better to show for it, neither.”

  Ollie opened his mouth to reply but seemed to deflate before he could speak. His eyes played once more over the new grave of his mother, and tears welled anew.

  Rollie stayed beside him a few minutes more, then patted his shoulder and trudged out of the little graveyard. A few minutes later, Ollie followed, alone, tears still streaming in silence down his dark face.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  It did not take long for Crozier Bellingham to see that most of what he would have to record in his notes and journal, and to report back to the newspaper in Knoxville, would be mundane, at least at the start. Wagons rolled, packhorses plodded, dogs trotted beside wagons or slept on the drivers’ platforms at the feet of the wagoners. Typical Tennessee countryside lay all around, changing little as they traveled, so that any sense of progress was minimized. Witherspoon Sadler sometimes rode his horse, but more often accompanied Bellingham on the driver’s perch, and twice took over driving duties, clumsily. Bellingham found Witherspoon an odd man, to say the least, but friendly and generally cheerful, though he could descend into a dark humor at unexpected moments. Even so, Bellingham liked his company.

  Bellingham sent his first report back to the Knoxville Standard early in the journey, posting it from the village of Jamestown in Fentress County, Tennessee. The short piece was thoroughly gone over by both Sadlers, though there was nothing in it to generate any offense or problems. Witherspoon made no changes except the addition of a reference to General Lloyd as “somnolent in manner,” an observation that was undeniably accurate but instantly stricken from the report by Wilberforce. Wilberforce struck several other items as well, unnecessarily, and Bellingham saw that the man intended to exercise near total control over what the public was told about the California Enterprise Company of East Tennessee. Bellingham wished to protest the changes, but discretion kept him silent. It was obvious to him that Wilberforce’s editing had been done solely to drive home the point to Bellingham of who was in control here.

  The newspaper reports didn’t really matter much to Bellingham. Those reports ultimately were the Sadlers’ concern; Bellingham was merely a hired craftsman helping bring them into being. What mattered to him were the notes and journal writing he was doing on his own steam, laying the foundation for his later novel of the gold fields. Over that piece of work, neither Wilberforce Sadler nor any other extraneous person would exercise control.

  But Wilberforce would be present as a char
acter in the novel, albeit in disguised form. An equally disguised Witherspoon would be there, too. Also in the novel would be some version of Jedd Colter, a man Bellingham found dashing and appealing, a figure easily and naturally useful in a work of fiction as a hero boldly venturing through a wild and dangerous world.

  The Sadler train passed through Anderson and Morgan counties and on into Fentress County and Jamestown, where Bellingham posted his newspaper report and everything came to a halt for two full days when General Lloyd declared his wagon needed repair. He put it in the shop of a Jamestown wagon maker who did not appear particularly skilled. By the time Lloyd was satisfied that his wagon was fit for travel again, most of the emigrants were restless and quietly grumbling among themselves that Lloyd was perhaps too old and unenergetic for this venture. “Listless Lloyd,” Bellingham scribbled in his notes after hearing someone use the phrase, and the concept for one more character in his novel came into being.

  The holdover in Jamestown was not fully unwelcome to all of the travelers. Several had friends and relatives in that area, and took advantage of the time to pay calls upon them. Three young Jamestown men scraped up the required fee, produced a wagon that passed inspection and was declared sufficiently rugged for the journey, and joined the Sadler group. Some questioned the wisdom of allowing the party to grow in such an unplanned way, fearing it would make the emigrant band overlarge and unwieldy, but Jedd Colter assured the travelers that this would probably not be the last time such accretions would occur, and that some degree of alternating growth and shrinkage should be expected and accepted. His words were persuasive and the new argonauts were welcomed.