by Win Blevins
Coy stayed closer to Sam than he ever had, not even playing with Paladin or hunting small animals in the evenings.
Flat Dog and Julia tried to bring Sam back to the living, but they finally gave up.
On the sixth day the brigade rode into camp.
Time had worried the captain. When he left his partners at the rendezvous of 1826, he said he’d probably come back to Cache Valley for the winter, and certainly would return for the 1827 rendezvous. If he didn’t appear, they were to assume he was dead, and all the men and equipment lost.
So getting to rendezvous was essential. His partners deserved to know how the trapping had gone, and they needed to ship his packs of beaver plews back to St. Louis to reduce the company’s debt. All the trappers would be keen, and keener than keen, to know what the country southwest of the Salt Lake was like, and especially what California was like.
The month of May was at hand. Less than two months to get to rendezvous.
The captain looked at the snow-clogged mountains east of him. He didn’t know how deep the snow was, or how compacted or loose it might be. Worse, he didn’t know how wide Mount Joseph was—three days’ ride? A week? A month? Thirty miles? A hundred? Two hundred?
He knew the dangers. He had led men across South Pass early in the season, the earth deep in snow, the winds full of flying flakes, and the clouds dark with portents of terrible storms. He gazed up at the mountains, high, cold, forbidding.
I shouldn’t. I want to.
He took the brigade up the Appelaminy for a couple of days, then turned north in hope of seeing a clearer path across the mountains. After a few days, spying no better route, he headed east anyway.
The going was terrible. It was steep. The horses sank into the snow past their knees, even with the men on foot. Jedediah saw no sign of a pass. One horse died of exhaustion.
So Jedediah Smith did what he had often done. He climbed a high hill alone. There he could see better with his telescope, yes. He could also commune with himself, and with his God.
The summit view was nothing but discouragement.
Jedediah wrote in his journal:
Far as the eye could see on every side, high rugged peaks arose covered with eternal snow. Turning to the east, the frozen waste extending rough and desolate beyond the boundaries of vision warned me to return. Below the deep rocky ravines resounded with immense cascades and waterfalls where the melting snow and ice was fast hastening to the fertile plain. The sight in its extended range embraced no living being, except it caught a transient glimpse of my little party awaiting my return in the snows below.
It was indeed a freezing desolation, and one which I thought should keep a man from wandering. I thought of home and all its neglected enjoyments, of the cheerful fireside of my father’s house, of the plenteous harvest of my native land, and visions of flowing fields of green and widespread prairies of joyous bustle and of busy life thronged in my mind to make me feel more strongly the utter desolateness of my situation. And is it possible, I thought, that we are creatures of choice and that we follow fortune through such paths as these? Home with contented industry could give us all that is attainable, and fortune could do no more.
He tromped grudgingly down the hill and told the men they were turning back.
Robert Evans joked, “That means there’s no ending for our song.”
Back in the camp at the junction of the Peticutry and Appelaminy, Sam supposed he was glad the brigade rode in. Didn’t seem to matter much. Greetings were exchanged, shoulders slapped, smiles flashed like knives.
Sam saw Jedediah and Flat Dog put their heads together and knew they were trading news—the brigade had failed to get across the mountains, and in Monterey the unmentionable had happened. Sam stayed far enough away that he wouldn’t have to hear the name of the one who once was his wife.
It was a hangdog afternoon in camp.
Robert Evans cheered the camp in the evening by getting everyone to pitch in on “The Never-Ending Tale of Jedediah Smith.” They were still putting it together as Evans suggested. When the outfit was in the mood, he’d play all they’d composed up to that point, and the whole bunch would write a new verse together, based on what had happened since the last verse, however wonderful or miserable it was. Everyone would pitch in suggestions until, as Evans put it, “the rhymes do chime.”
When they got the new verse written, they sang the song lustily and far out of tune, further out than sober men should be capable of. Sometimes Coy joined in, and they all laughed.
THE NEVER-ENDING TALE OF JEDEDIAH SMITH
We set out from Salt Lake, not knowing the track
Whites, Spanyards and Injuns, and even a black
Our captain was Diah, a man of great vision
Our dream Californy, and beaver our mission.
(chorus)
Captain Smith was a wayfarin’ man …
They sang the verse about near dying of thirst and getting to drink mud, marched to the verse about getting to eat fleas, and rolled on to the chorus once more.
We was lost in that desert, no beaver, no creeks
Don’t worry, says the captain, we’ll find water next week.
They sang with enthusiasm the lines about Diah, with morals full girt, never lifting a skirt.
On through the jubilee held by the Mexicans they rambled, and it sure did sound fine now.
It was grand, Californy, a life of pure ease
It was warm all year round, with a sweet-scented breeze
There was plews in the creeks and mountains to roam
Only one problem—we couldn’t get home.
“We can’t finish it,” said Evans. “Not yet.”
They all looked, through the luminous May twilight, at the mountains that barred them from their home in the mountains, Cache Valley.
They wondered what the captain would do. He’d spoken of backup plans. From here they could travel north to Bodega Bay, where the Russians had a trading post, and get resupplied. They’d trade their pelts for everything they couldn’t make themselves, all the goods General Ashley usually mule-packed to rendezvous—gunpowder, lead, gifts for the Indians they might meet, and those essentials of mountain life, coffee, sugar, tobacco, and whiskey. After that, with the snows mostly gone, they would start for the depot, as the captain called it, the cache in Cache Valley. Not a man of them wanted to cross that desert again, not at that time. It would be July and August.
They looked at Mount Joseph, choked with snow. They remembered the bitter conditions that turned them back. They wondered.
But they needed to get to the business of the evening—each group listening fully to the other’s story.
Jedediah told of the failed attempt to cross the mountains, how the outfit mounted the west side of Mount Joseph higher and higher, until the horses floundered. At last the outfit turned back, leaving five horses and mules dead on the mountain.
Next, Jedediah and all the men listened with big hearts to Sam’s tale. In fact, though it was his story, after a bumbling start Sam wouldn’t tell it. Couldn’t. Flat Dog and Julia had to do that. Sam could not imagine himself saying, Meadowlark died.
All through the telling Sam’s friends watched him. Sam felt the eyes of Jedediah, of Evans the Irishman, Gobel the smith, Laplant, and of Rogers the clerk that Sam found cool and remote. It irked him to be pitied.
He thought how many men, and women, who started on this trip were gone. The three Spaniards and their wives and children who left voluntarily near the Hurricane cliffs. Manuel Eustevan and his Shoshone woman. Spark, lost to the Amuchabas. Wilson, discharged by Jedediah. Reed, who made himself disappear. Sumner the slave, who freed himself. Gideon, transformed from mountain man to Californio.
Meadowlark. Except that Sam didn’t even think her name. He permitted nothing of her into his mind, not her name, not her face. All he ever did, when it came to Meadowlark, was sense the hole in his heart and sit next to it.
He didn’t bother to wonder wheth
er he would ever get back to Cache Valley, the Rocky Mountains, and the life of the beaver hunter. He didn’t give a damn. He couldn’t be bothered, these days, even to notice Coy and Paladin.
“We have to move out,” said Jedediah several times.
Sam never thought about that. He was sitting by a fire on a cool, misty evening, listening to the gurgle of the two rivers coming together and staring into his black coffee. Jedediah’s voice made him jump.
“We’re leaving for rendezvous tomorrow,” he said, “me plus three men. We’ll carry as much food as we can for the horses. Maybe a small party can get across the mountains.”
The captain hesitated. “At any rate, we’re going to try.”
Flat Dog, Julia, and Irish Evans looked at the captain and waited for the punch line.
Jedediah tapped the heel of one boot against the toe of his other, which was his habit when he felt reluctant to say something. “I’m taking Silas Gobel.” The blacksmith was at a nearby fire. “Also you, Evans. And you, Sam.”
Sam spat hot coffee back into his cup. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Sam looked into Julia’s and Flat Dog’s eyes and saw that they too were uncertain about him.
He got up, strode to some bushes, pulled the wrapped cloths out of his nostrils, and hurled them away. When he came back, he controlled his voice carefully. “I’ve got other things to do.” Like mope. “I’ve got a daughter to take care of.”
Julia spoke softly. “Esperanza is safe with us.”
“That’s right,” said Flat Dog.
“She’s better with us,” Julia went on, “for now.”
Sam glared at them. “You already talked this out with the captain.”
“Sí.”
“The whole brigade will stay right here,” said Jedediah. “This is the outfit’s camp until we get back.”
Sam thought Diah was speaking too lightly. To rendezvous and back would be several months.
“Caring for Esperanza will be our duty and our pleasure,” said Julia.
“My duty too,” said Sam irritably. But he didn’t look at Diah when he said it.
“Sam,” Flat Dog said, “you got to do something. Do something. Something hard. Get her off your mind. You can’t sit around here for months and go crazy.”
Sam whined to the captain, “Diah, I’m not ready.”
“Sam, you’re going.”
Flat Dog added, “It will be good for you.”
Coy squealed, but Sam couldn’t tell whether he agreed with Flat Dog or not. Nor did Sam care.
Later that evening Jedediah made commitments and left instructions with Harrison Rogers, the clerk. If the captain did not return by September 20, Rogers was to regard him as dead, lead the men to the Russian fort at Bodega Bay to get re-outfitted, and then ride to Cache Valley. If return by land was impossible, Rogers was to book passage for the men to the United States via the Sandwich Islands.
If Jedediah did return, he would be bringing more men, more horses, more everything. His tone implied, And I’ll damn well be here.
Sam sat and quarreled with himself about tomorrow morning. He could quit his job. He could take Esperanza and … He could … Go back into California, with Don Montalban and the Monterey constabulary looking for me? And the entire California government looking for all of us?
He looked at Coy and thought about asking the pup. But he didn’t feel playful enough for that.
All right, dammit, I’ll go. Funny—Sam had to give a crooked smile. Crossing Mount Joseph in the spring snow, where you were liable to get frozen to death or starved to death or killed by an avalanche or God knows what else—that was less dangerous, maybe, than the settlements of California. And for sure easier than sitting every day next to the big black hole in my heart.
On the second day the going got hard, the mountainsides steep and the way rugged.
On the third day they left the river canyon for higher ground. Sam rocked along on Paladin’s back, uncaring.
On the fourth they camped on the divide between the Appelaminy and the south fork of the Mokelumne River.
The next day they waded into four feet of snow, though it was compacted enough to bear some weight. At this elevation, in this depth of snow, the likelihood of encountering Indians or game was next to zero. They walked the horses, to keep from jamming them into the snow up to their bellies.
Jedediah led the way in silence, and from long habit stayed unnecessarily alert, his eyes constantly on the move. Gobel, huge and silent, let volatile feelings animate his face. For some reason Sam felt that in any kind of emergency, Gobel would shed his blood protecting them all. Evans chattered like a morning bird, always chipper. Coy trotted along on top of the snow, the only member of the party not to sink, perky as ever.
The next afternoon the snow started falling. During the night the storm got violent, and the temperature plummeted.
Jedediah recorded the events of the next day, the seventh of their journey:
The storm still continued with unabated violence. I was obliged to remain in camp. It was one of the most disagreeable days I ever passed. We were uncertain how far the mountain extended to the east. The wind was continually changing and the snow drifting and flying in every direction. It was with great difficulty that we could get wood and we were but just able to keep our fire. Our poor animals felt a full share of the vengeance of the storm, and two horses and one mule froze to death before our eyes. Still the storm continued with unabated violence, and it required an utmost exertion to avoid the fate of the poor animals that lay near but almost covered with the drifting snow.
Night came and shut out the bleak desolation from our view, but it did not still the howling winds that yet bellowed through the mountains, bearing before them clouds of snow and beating against us cold and furious. It seemed that we were marked out for destruction and that the sun of another day might never rise to us.
Savaged by his inner storm, Sam barely felt the pain. He stirred himself only to feed Paladin and lead her in small circles to keep her blood circulating. He rubbed his broken nose, which ached in the cold. Later he curled up with Coy at his belly. The memory came strongly to him, how they lay like this the night they met each other, in the belly of the buffalo, and survived. Sam wanted Coy and Paladin to survive.
On the other hand, Evans kept his own spirits high. He played ditties on his tin whistle, his eyes smiling as he ornamented this phrase and that. From Evans’s smile, Sam supposed the words to the tunes must be cheerful. The music felt to Sam like a strange cross of repulsive and eerie. The wind ripped at the men, pelted them, scooped up shovelfuls of snow and flung it in their faces. All the while Evans’s whistle piped a merry protest.
Sam snapped, “Don’t you think this is the dumbest thing you could think of—playing music during the storm that’s going to ice you to a corpse?”
Before Jedediah could call Sam down, Gobel said in his big voice, “I like the music.”
Evans added, “Perhaps even death likes to dance in on a melody.”
Sam rolled over in his blankets, putting his back to both his companions and the fire. He stared into the whiteness. He peered toward the big pine trees that surrounded them. Beyond these, he knew, were great rock walls, and a steep canyon. Yet he saw nothing but the snow. He got a thought that gave him the willies: Whiteness is as blinding as Blackness.
He kept his mouth shut. They all sat awake, and said nothing all night. The wind eased, snow shimmied gracefully down, and Evans piped his nimble tunes. Sam remembered, from time to time, to lead Paladin in a circle. His single other movement was to stroke Coy’s head.
The day dawned bright. The morning of May 27 came clear and sparkling, the sun dazzling on the high, sharp peaks of Mount Joseph. But the going was harder now, with an extra fifteen inches of snow for the horses to push through. Gobel forged ahead and made a track for everyone else. Sam was grateful for his strength, and wondered if he could have kept going without the big blacksmith. Coy could hav
e, and that made Sam feel a little better.
After twelve miles Jedediah walked to a high point and came back to report a plain ahead, a flat of grass free of snow.
The captain’s word picture of the grassy plain inspired all four of them. Sinking into the soft white stuff up to their crotches, they stumbled and staggered another thirteen miles, the most exhausting walk of Sam’s life. At the end they fell on the ground, too weary to speak, to drink, to eat. The feed for the horses was good. Weary beyond weary, Sam half wanted to weep. But he had not wept since the death of the one he would not name, and no tears would come now.
For some reason Coy licked Sam’s face.
The men rolled up in their blankets without even bothering to build a fire or cook. Jedediah complained mildly that some time during the day, somehow, he’d lost his pistol.
“Look back,” he said quietly. “We crossed Mount Joseph.”
No one spoke.
“I bet we’re the first white men ever to achieve that.”
Again no one spoke. Cold, drained of all energy, Sam felt no pleasure in the adventure.
The captain fell silent.
They slept without the energy to dream.
The next day they rested on that spot, and the horses grazed. Some Indians threw rocks at them from a nearby bluff, as though to drive them off. Gobel volunteered to heave stones back at them, but Jedediah said no, they weren’t worth the bother.
The trappers sprawled on their blankets or sat quietly the whole day, too tired to leave, too tired to put a stop to a petty annoyance.
The following day, as they angled down toward the great desert that stood between them and the rendezvous, came a strange incident. Wrote Jedediah:
I surprised two squaws and was so close to one of them that she could not well escape such an expression of fear [as] I had never before seen exhibited. She ran toward me screaming and raising the stick with which she had been digging roots, in her whole appearance realizing the idea I had formed of a frantic mother rushing to scare away some beast that would devour her child. Wishing not to hurt her, I avoided her formidable weapon and endeavored to pacify her, but all in vain, for when she went off, her screams were still heard until lost in the distance.
