Part 16 (1/2)
”It's not free for some things, Mr. Wingate,” rejoined the younger man hotly. ”You can lead or not, as you like; but I'll not train up with a man who thinks of me as you do. After this think what you like, but don't speak any more.”
”What do you mean by that?”
”You know very well. You've believed another man's word about my personal character. It's gone far enough and too far.”
”The other man is not here. He can't face you.”
”No, not now. But if he's on earth he'll face me sometime.”
Unable to control himself further, Banion wheeled and galloped away to his own train.
”You ask if we're to join in with the Yankees,” he flared out to Jackson. ”No! We'll camp apart and train apart. I won't go on with them.”
”Well,” said the scout, ”I didn't never think we would, er believe ye could; not till they git in trouble agin--er till a certain light wagon an' mules throws in with us, huh?”
”You'll say no more of that, Jackson! But one thing: you and I have got to ride and see if we can get any trace of Woodhull.”
”Like looking for a needle in a haystack, an' a d.a.m.n bad needle at that,” was the old man's comment.
CHAPTER XVI
THE PLAINS
”On to the Platte! The buffalo!” New cheer seemed to come to the hearts of the emigrants now, and they forgot bickering. The main train ground grimly ahead, getting back, if not all its egotism, at least more and more of its self-reliance. By courtesy, Wingate still rode ahead, though orders came now from a joint council of his leaders, since Banion would not take charge.
The great road to Oregon was even now not a trail but a road, deep cut into the soil, though no wheeled traffic had marked it until within the past five years. A score of paralled paths it might be at times, of tentative location along a hillside or a marshy level; but it was for the most part a deep-cut, unmistakable road from which it had been impossible to wander. At times it lay worn into the sod a half foot, a foot in depth. Sometimes it followed the ancient buffalo trails to water--the first roads of the Far West, quickly seized on by hunters and engineers--or again it transected these, hanging to the ridges after frontier road fas.h.i.+on, heading out for the proved fords of the greater streams. Always the wheel marks of those who had gone ahead in previous years, the continuing thread of the trail itself, worn in by trader and trapper and Mormon and Oregon or California man, gave hope and cheer to these who followed with the plow.
Stretching out, closing up, almost inch by inch, like some giant measuring worm in its slow progress, the train held on through a vast and stately landscape, which some travelers had called the Eden of America, such effect was given by the series of altering scenes. Small imagination, indeed, was needed to picture here a long-established civilization, although there was not a habitation. They were beyond organized society and beyond the law.
Game became more abundant, wild turkeys still appeared in the timbered creek bottoms. Many elk were seen, more deer and very many antelope, packed in northward by the fires. A number of panthers and giant gray wolves beyond counting kept the hunters always excited. The wild abundance of an unexhausted Nature offered at every hand. The sufficiency of life brought daily growth in the self-reliance which had left them for a time.
The wide timberlands, the broken low hills of the green prairie at length began to give place to a steadily rising inclined plane. The soil became less black and heavy, with more sandy ridges. The oak and hickory, stout trees of their forefathers, pa.s.sed, and the cottonwoods appeared. After they had crossed the ford of the Big Blue--a hundred yards of racing water--they pa.s.sed what is now the line between Kansas and Nebraska, and followed up the Little Blue, beyond whose ford the trail left these quieter river valleys and headed out over a high table-land in a keen straight flight over the great valley of the Platte, the highway to the Rockies.
Now the soil was sandier; the gra.s.s changed yet again. They had rolled under wheel by now more than one hundred different varieties of wild gra.s.ses. The vegetation began to show the growing alt.i.tude. The cactus was seen now and then. On the far horizon the wavering mysteries of the mirage appeared, marvelous in deceptiveness, mystical, alluring, the very spirits of the Far West, appearing to move before their eyes in giant pantomime. They were pa.s.sing from the Prairies to the Plains.
Shouts and cheers arose as the word pa.s.sed back that the sand hills known as the Coasts of the Platte were in sight. Some mothers told their children they were now almost to Oregon. The whips cracked more loudly, the tired teams, tongues lolling, quickened their pace as they struck the down-grade gap leading through the sand ridges.
Two thousand Americans, some of them illiterate and ignorant, all of them strong, taking with them law, order, society, the church, the school, anew were staging the great drama of human life, act and scene and episode, as though upon some great moving platform drawn by invisible cables beyond the vast proscenium of the hills.
CHAPTER XVII
THE GREAT ENCAMPMENT
As the long columns of the great wagon train broke through the screening sand hills there was disclosed a vast and splendid panorama. The valley of the Platte lay miles wide, green in the full covering of spring. A crooked and broken thread of timber growth appeared, marking the moister soil and outlining the general course of the shallow stream, whose giant cottonwoods were dwarfed now by the distances. In between, and for miles up and down the flat expanse, there rose the blue smokes of countless camp fires, each showing the location of some white-topped s.h.i.+p of the Plains. Black specks, grouped here and there, proved the presence of the livestock under herd.
Over all shone a pleasant sun. Now and again the dark shadow of a moving cloud pa.s.sed over the flat valley, softening its high lights for the time. At times, as the sun shone full and strong, the faint loom of the mirage added the last touch of mysticism, the figures of the wagons rising high, multiplied many-fold, with giant creatures pa.s.sing between, so that the whole seemed, indeed, some wild phantasmagoria of the desert.
”Look!” exclaimed Wingate, pulling up his horse. ”Look, Caleb, the Northern train is in and waiting for us! A hundred wagons! They're camped over the whole bend.”
The sight of this vast re-enforcement brought heart to every man, woman and child in all the advancing train. Now, indeed, Oregon was sure.