by Bret Harte
CHAPTER I.
WITHOUT.
Snow. Everywhere. As far as the eye could reach--fifty miles, lookingsouthward from the highest white peak,--filling ravines and gulches, anddropping from the walls of ca[~n]ons in white shroud-like drifts,fashioning the dividing ridge into the likeness of a monstrous grave,hiding the bases of giant pines, and completely covering young trees andlarches, rimming with porcelain the bowl-like edges of still, coldlakes, and undulating in motionless white billows to the edge of thedistant horizon. Snow lying everywhere over the California Sierras onthe 15th day of March 1848, and still falling.
It had been snowing for ten days: snowing in finely granulated powder,in damp, spongy flakes, in thin, feathery plumes, snowing from a leadensky steadily, snowing fiercely, shaken out of purple-black clouds inwhite flocculent masses, or dropping in long level lines, like whitelances from the tumbled and broken heavens. But always silently! Thewoods were so choked with it--the branches were so laden with it--ithad so permeated, filled and possessed earth and sky; it had socushioned and muffled the ringing rocks and echoing hills, that allsound was deadened. The strongest gust, the fiercest blast, awoke nosigh or complaint from the snow-packed, rigid files of forest. There wasno cracking of bough nor crackle of underbrush; the overladen branchesof pine and fir yielded and gave way without a sound. The silence wasvast, measureless, complete! Nor could it be said that any outward signof life or motion changed the fixed outlines of this stricken landscape.Above, there was no play of light and shadow, only the occasionaldeepening of storm or night. Below, no bird winged its flight across thewhite expanse, no beast haunted the confines of the black woods;whatever of brute nature might have once inhabited these solitudes hadlong since flown to the lowlands.
There was no track or imprint; whatever foot might have left its markupon this waste, each succeeding snow-fall obliterated all trace orrecord. Every morning the solitude was virgin and unbroken; a milliontiny feet had stepped into the track and filled it up. And yet, in thecentre of this desolation, in the very stronghold of this grim fortress,there was the mark of human toil. A few trees had been felled at theentrance of the ca[~n]on, and the freshly-cut chips were but lightlycovered with snow. They served, perhaps, to indicate another tree"blazed" with an axe, and bearing a rudely-shaped wooden effigy of ahuman hand, pointing to the ca[~n]on. Below the hand was a square strip ofcanvas, securely nailed against the bark, and bearing the followinginscription--
"NOTICE.
CAPTAIN CONROY'S party of emigrants are lost in the snow, and camped up in this ca[~n]on. Out of provisions and starving!
Left St. Jo, October 8th, 1847. Left Salt Lake, January 1st, 1848. Arrived here, March 1st, 1848. Lost half our stock on the Platte. Abandoned our waggons, February 20th.
_HELP!_
Our names are:
JOEL MCCORMICK, JANE BRACKETT, PETER DUMPHY, GABRIEL CONROY, PAUL DEVARGES, JOHN WALKER, GRACE CONROY, HENRY MARCH, OLYMPIA CONROY, PHILIP ASHLEY, MARY DUMPHY.
(Then in smaller letters, in pencil:)
MAMIE died, November 8th, Sweetwater. MINNIE died, December 1st, Echo Ca[~n]on. JANE died, January 2nd, Salt Lake. JAMES BRACKETT, lost, February 3rd.
HELP!"
The language of suffering is not apt to be artistic or studied, but Ithink that rhetoric could not improve this actual record. So I let itstand, even as it stood this 15th day of March 1848, half-hidden by athin film of damp snow, the snow-whitened hand stiffened and pointingrigidly to the fateful ca[~n]on like the finger of Death.
At noon there was a lull in the storm, and a slight brightening of thesky toward the east. The grim outlines of the distant hills returned,and the starved white flank of the mountain began to glisten. Across itsgaunt hollow some black object was moving--moving slowly andlaboriously; moving with such an uncertain mode of progression, that atfirst it was difficult to detect whether it was brute orhuman--sometimes on all fours, sometimes erect, again hurrying forwardlike a drunken man, but always with a certain definiteness of purpose,towards the ca[~n]on. As it approached nearer you saw that it was a man--ahaggard man, ragged and enveloped in a tattered buffalo robe, but stilla man, and a determined one. A young man despite his bent figure andwasted limbs--a young man despite the premature furrows that care andanxiety had set upon his brow and in the corners of his rigid mouth--ayoung man notwithstanding the expression of savage misanthropy withwhich suffering and famine had overlaid the frank impulsiveness ofyouth. When he reached the tree at the entrance of the ca[~n]on, he brushedthe film of snow from the canvas placard, and then leaned for a fewmoments exhaustedly against its trunk. There was something in theabandonment of his attitude that indicated even more pathetically thanhis face and figure his utter prostration--a prostration quiteinconsistent with any visible cause. When he had rested himself, heagain started forward with a nervous intensity, shambling, shuffling,falling, stooping to replace the rudely extemporised snow-shoes of firbark that frequently slipped from his feet, but always starting on againwith the feverishness of one who doubted even the sustaining power ofhis will.
A mile beyond the tree the ca[~n]on narrowed and turned gradually to thesouth, and at this point a thin curling cloud of smoke was visible thatseemed to rise from some crevice in the snow. As he came nearer, theimpression of recent footprints began to show; there was somedisplacement of the snow around a low mound from which the smoke nowplainly issued. Here he stopped, or rather lay down, before an openingor cavern in the snow, and uttered a feeble shout. It was responded tostill more feebly. Presently a face appeared above the opening, and aragged figure like his own, then another, and then another, until eighthuman creatures, men and women, surrounded him in the snow, squattinglike animals, and like animals lost to all sense of decency and shame.
They were so haggard, so faded, so forlorn, so wan,--so piteous intheir human aspect, or rather all that was left of a human aspect,--thatthey might have been wept over as they sat there; they were so brutal,so imbecile, unreasoning and grotesque in these newer animal attributes,that they might have provoked a smile. They were originally countrypeople, mainly of that social class whose self-respect is apt to bedependent rather on their circumstances, position and surroundings, thanupon any individual moral power or intellectual force. They had lost thesense of shame in the sense of equality of suffering; there was nothingwithin them to take the place of the material enjoyments they werelosing. They were childish without the ambition or emulation ofchildhood; they were men and women without the dignity or simplicity ofman and womanhood. All that had raised them above the level of the brutewas lost in the snow. Even the characteristics of sex were gone; an oldwoman of sixty quarrelled, fought, and swore with the harsh utteranceand ungainly gestures of a man; a young man of scorbutic temperamentwept, sighed, and fainted with the hysteria of a woman. So profound wastheir degradation that the stranger who had thus evoked them from theearth, even in his very rags and sadness, seemed of another race.
They were all intellectually weak and helpless, but one, a woman,appeared to have completely lost her mind. She carried a small blanketwrapped up to represent a child--the tangible memory of one that hadstarved to death in her arms a few days before--and rocked it from sideto side as she sat, with a faith that was piteous. But even more piteouswas the fact that none of her companions took the least notice, eitherby sympathy or complaint, of her aberration. When, a few moments later,she called upon them to be quiet, for that "baby" was asleep, theyglared at her indifferently and went on. A red-haired man, who waschewing a piece of buffalo hide, cast a single murderous glance at her,but the next moment seemed to have forgotten her
presence in his moreabsorbing occupation.
The stranger paused a moment rather to regain his breath than to waitfor their more orderly and undivided attention. Then he uttered thesingle word:
"Nothing!"
"Nothing!" They all echoed the word simultaneously, but with differentinflection and significance--one fiercely, another gloomily, anotherstupidly, another mechanically. The woman with the blanket babyexplained to it, "he says 'nothing,'" and laughed.
"No--nothing," repeated the speaker. "Yesterday's snow blocked up theold trail again. The beacon on the summit's burnt out. I left a noticeat the Divide. Do that again, Dumphy, and I'll knock the top of yourugly head off."
Dumphy, the red-haired man, had rudely shoved and stricken the womanwith the baby--she was his wife, and this conjugal act may have beenpartly habit--as she was crawling nearer the speaker. She did not seemto notice the blow or its giver--the apathy with which these peoplereceived blows or slights was more terrible than wrangling--but saidassuringly, when she had reached the side of the young man--
"To-morrow, then?"
The face of the young man softened as he made the same reply he had madefor the last eight days to the same question--
"To-morrow, surely!"
She crawled away, still holding the effigy of her dead baby verycarefully, and retreated down the opening.
"'Pears to me you don't do much anyway, out scouting! 'Pears to me youain't worth shucks!" said the harsh-voiced woman, glancing at thespeaker. "Why don't some on ye take his place? Why do you trust yourlives and the lives of women to that thar Ashley?" she continued, withher voice raised to a strident bark.
The hysterical young man, Henry March, who sat next to her, turned awild scared face upon her, and then, as if fearful of being dragged intothe conversation, disappeared hastily after Mrs. Dumphy.
Ashley shrugged his shoulders, and, replying to the group, rather thanany individual speaker, said curtly--
"There's but one chance--equal for all--open to all. You know what itis. To stay here is death; to go cannot be worse than that."
He rose and walked slowly away up the ca[~n]on a few rods to where anothermound was visible, and disappeared from their view. When he had gone, aquerulous chatter went around the squatting circle.
"Gone to see the old Doctor and the gal. We're no account."
"Thar's two too many in this yer party."
"Yes--the crazy Doctor and Ashley."
"They're both interlopers, any way."
"Jonahs."
"Said no good could come of it, ever since we picked him up."
"But the Cap'n invited the ol' Doctor, and took all his stock atSweetwater, and Ashley put in his provisions with the rest."
The speaker was McCormick. Somewhere in the feeble depths of hisconsciousness there was still a lingering sense of justice. He washungry, but not unreasonable. Besides, he remembered with a tenderregret the excellent quality of provision that Ashley had furnished.
"What's that got to do with it?" screamed Mrs. Brackett. "He brought thebad luck with him. Ain't my husband dead, and isn't that skunk--anentire stranger--still livin'?"
The voice was masculine, but the logic was feminine. In cases of greatprostration with mental debility, in the hopeless vacuity that precedesdeath by inanition or starvation, it is sometimes very effective. Theyall assented to it, and, by a singular intellectual harmony, theexpression of each was the same. It was simply an awful curse.
"What are you goin' to do?"
"If I was a man, I'd know!"
"Knife him!"
"Kill him, and"----
The remainder of this sentence was lost to the others in a confidentialwhisper between Mrs. Brackett and Dumphy. After this confidence they satand wagged their heads together, like two unmatched but hideous Chineseidols.
"Look at his strength! and he not a workin' man like us," said Dumphy."Don't tell me he don't get suthin' reg'lar."
"Suthin' what?"
"Suthin' TO EAT!"
But it is impossible to convey, even by capitals, the intense emphasisput upon this verb. It was followed by a horrible pause.
"Let's go and see."
"And kill him?" suggested the gentle Mrs. Brackett.
They all rose with a common interest almost like enthusiasm. But afterthey had tottered a few steps, they fell. Yet even then there was notenough self-respect left among them to feel any sense of shame ormortification in their baffled design. They stopped--all except Dumphy.
"Wot's that dream you was talkin' 'bout jess now?" said Mr. McCormick,sitting down and abandoning the enterprise with the most shamelessindifference.
"'Bout the dinner at St. Jo?" asked the person addressed--a gentlemanwhose faculty of alimentary imagination had been at once the bliss andtorment of his present social circle.
"Yes."
They all gathered eagerly around Mr. McCormick; even Mr. Dumphy, who wasstill moving away, stopped.
"Well," said Mr. March, "it began with beefsteak and injins--beefsteak,you know, juicy and cut very thick, and jess squashy with gravy andinjins." There was a very perceptible watering of the mouth in theparty, and Mr. March, with the genius of a true narrator, under theplausible disguise of having forgotten his story, repeated the lastsentence--"jess squashy with gravy and injins. And taters--baked."
"You said fried before!--and dripping with fat!" interposed Mrs.Brackett, hastily.
"For them as likes fried--but baked goes furder--skins and all--andsassage and coffee and flapjacks!"
At this magical word they laughed, not mirthfully perhaps, but eagerlyand expectantly, and said, "Go on!"
"And flapjacks!"
"You said that afore," said Mrs. Brackett, with a burst of passion. "Goon!" with an oath.
The giver of this Barmecide feast saw his dangerous position, and lookedaround for Dumphy, but he had disappeared.
