Part 11 (1/2)
”How are you traveling?”
”What's the best way?”
”Mules,” Grandpa said decisively. ”Next to them, oxen. Oxen will get along on skimpier gra.s.s, but they're slow. Horses are all right for riding but they don't stand up under a long haul.”
”Is one team of mules enough?”
”That's taking a chance. You should have two, or anyhow one spare animal. Then, if you lose one, you can always get some place where they'll sell you another.”
”How far can I get this season?”
”To Laramie, anyhow. With luck, and if storms hold off, you might get to Fort Bridger. But you can count on Laramie with time to spare.”
”Can a man figure on finding something to do through the winter?”
”Any man who wants to work can find it. Tell you what, a little short of one day west of Laramie there's a friend of mine with a trading post.
Name's Jim Snedeker. Tell him I sent you, and he'll give you and your mules a job. That is, always supposing you want to work for him.”
”How about Indian trouble?”
”That's up to you. Ninety-eight out of a hundred Indian sc.r.a.pes are not brought about by Indians, but by some mullethead of an emigrant who started a ruckus with them. If you don't bother the Indians, and don't let them bother you, you should have no trouble.”
”What else will I need?”
”How many are going with you?”
”My wife and six young ones.”
”Load your wagon heavy with eatables,” Grandpa advised. ”Carry plenty of flour. Take eggs; pack them in a barrel of corn meal and use up the meal as you use up the eggs. You should have coffee and whatever else you fancy in the way of eating. Take tools, the ones you'll need are the ones you need here. Go light on dishes and furniture. There's enough household goods been pitched out of wagons between Independence and the Wil'mette Valley to stock a city the size of St. Louis ten times over.
You got a milk cow?”
”Two.”
”Take both. You'll get some milk all the time. Hang the morning's milking in a pail behind the wagon. By night it'll be b.u.t.ter. Drink the evening's milking. Can you shoot?”
”Tolerable good.”
Grandpa said, ”There's still buffalo and I think there always will be, though they'll never be again like they were in '30 when we went into Santa Fe. But you can count on enough for meat. You got any money?”
”Very little,” Joe confessed.
”Keep what you have. Take all of it with you and get as much more as you can. You'll need it.”
Joe asked in some astonishment, ”On the Oregon Trail?”
”On the Oregon Trail,” Grandpa a.s.sured him. ”Suppose a mule dies and you have to buy another? What if you have to stock up on flour?” For a moment Grandpa lost himself in the dreamy introspectiveness of the very old. ”It's not like it was in the old days. A man didn't need anything but his horse and rifle then, and if he didn't have the horse he could always get one if he had a rifle. The west has grown up. She's shed her three-cornered pants and put on her long britches. Don't try it unless you have some money.”
”Is there anything else?”