Jubilee Trail (32 page)

They went on again, through mountains ever higher and harder to climb, through stingy little streams flowing between high cliffs of rock. West, northwest, west again, then southwest through a break called Wasatch Pass. Garnet was so tired that she slept as if she had been drugged, but she was never rested when she woke up. She was tanned dark brown, but the sun still scorched her skin and made her eyes drip with tears.

She and Florinda usually rode together, but they seldom talked. Florinda kept her face so wrapped that she found it hard to speak. She was suffering acutely from the sun. But she rarely said so, and she still managed to keep cheerful when Mr. Penrose was around.

They came to the Sevier River, which was shaped like a horseshoe, and followed the eastern arm of it. Then they went through the mountains to a rocky depression called Bear Valley, then southwest through more mountains. And then, suddenly, they came to a high green paradise called Las Vegas de Santa Clara. When she saw Santa Clara, Garnet put her hands to her aching head and burst into tears.

She had not meant to do anything so childish. But she was so tired! And here before her was a spring, a bright spring that leaped out of the rocks and flowed through a field of grass and wild flowers. The air was damp, and the ground was soft, and the flowers were blue and yellow in the grass. In the stream were great beds of watercress, and along its bank were trees, and in the trees there was the sound of birds.

All around the meadow were miles of mountains, but she did not look at them. She wished she would never have to see a mountain again.

They had come six hundred miles from Santa Fe, though it would not have been so far if they had not had to loop and turn as they followed the streams. The journey had taken them thirty-four days. It was now September. In the air of this high plateau there was a tingle of autumn, and the smoke of the campfire had a scent like the smoke of burning leaves. Oliver told her they would rest here for two days. The men hunted and fished, and bathed joyously, shouting and laughing as they scrubbed, and the water of the stream was all bubbly with soapsuds. Garnet and Florinda washed their hair and their clothes, and when they had hung their clothes on the bushes they spread blankets on the ground and went to sleep, rapturous with cleanliness.

They woke up ravenous, and ate a huge meal of birds and fresh venison, and bowls of atole with gravy, and a salad of watercress from the stream. When the night came down it was very cold, but Garnet and Oliver wrapped up warmly in the buffalo robes, and Garnet thought that never had she lain in such a comfortable bed. Remembering the soft mattresses and white sheets of home, she thought pityingly that right now there were people tossing upon them, unable to sleep. She stretched out in the buffalo robes, and though she had already had a nap during the day, she slept for twelve hours.

In the morning there was even breakfast, for the first time since they left Santa Fe. Oliver’s boy Manuel brought her a bowl of atole and a piece of fresh broiled fish, and he grinned at her exclamations of delight. Oliver brought his bowl over and sat on the grass by her. “How do you feel?” he asked.

“Marvelous. Simply marvelous.”

“You’ve been great,” said Oliver.

“Have I really stood it well?”

“Magnificently. The men were doubtful about you at first. But they aren’t any more.”

Garnet smiled, glad she had done well, and more glad that those awful dry stretches lay behind her. “It’ll be easier going back next spring, won’t it?” she asked.

“Oh yes. There’s always more grass and water in the spring. Besides, on the spring journey it’s easier to keep cheerful. When you’re headed east you know the road is getting easier all the time. But when you’re headed west you know it’s going to keep on getting harder.”

Garnet set down her bowl abruptly. Oliver was eating, too much interested in his food to notice that he had frightened her.

“Is the trail ahead much worse than what we’ve already been through?” she asked. She tried not to sound scared.

Oliver did not look up. “Why yes, some of it is pretty bad. But you’re used to it now.”

Garnet felt the way she thought a turtle must feel when it was drawing itself into its shell. She did not want to go on. She looked around. The mules were peacefully cropping the grass. The men were playing cards, or mending their clothes, or cutting each other’s hair. They did not seem to be frightened. They knew what lay ahead, and they weren’t scared of it. She must be very childish to feel scared. It was only because this was her first crossing. She stood up, saying she would get the clothes she had washed yesterday and start mending them. She went down to the stream.

The Mexican women were there, scrubbing their own clothes against the rocks. They spoke to her cordially. They had crossed before, and they didn’t seem to be frightened either. Florinda came down to the bushes and began gathering up her laundry. Florinda had evidently had a good sleep too. She looked better than she had looked for days.

John Ives walked toward them, and asked if he could help them carry the clothes. Filling his arms, he walked with them to the shadow of a big rock where they were going to do their mending. “You’re very industrious,” he said to them.

“We’re not nearly as industrious as you are,” said Garnet. “You men never stop working.”

“We’re used to it,” said John.

“How long have you been on this trail, John?” asked Florinda.

“Five years.”

“Gee, you must like it.”

“No, I don’t,” he said. “This is my last crossing. I’ve just received a land-grant in California.”

“And you’re going to live on it?”

“Yes. Shall I put these clothes here on the grass, Mrs. Hale?”

“Yes, thank you.”

John put down the clothes, and left them. Garnet and Florinda sat down on the grass and opened their sewing-baskets.

“Nice friendly chap, isn’t he?” Florinda observed.

“He’s all right. He just prefers his own company.”

“He likes you,” said Florinda. “But he sure doesn’t like people in general.”

Garnet began to sew on a button. “Florinda, why do you suppose he doesn’t like people?”

“I think he’s scared of them,” said Florinda.

“Scared? John isn’t scared of anything!”

“Not anything he can shoot,” Florinda said coolly.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, a man can’t shoot his friends. So he doesn’t want any friends. I think he’s been hurt. Hurt bad.”

“Hurt? John?” Garnet said, and frowned. “You mean a girl broke his heart?”

“Maybe, but I don’t think so. There’s other ways to be hurt, dearie. I don’t know what it was.” Florinda dropped the subject of John. She looked around, listening to the chirping of the birds, and gave a long happy sigh. “Garnet, isn’t it wonderful just to sit here, and know we won’t be moving all day long?”

Garnet agreed. She was puzzled by John, but this day was too precious to be wasted on puzzling about anything. They stretched on the grass, sewing, and watching the men hang up strips of meat from their hunting to be dried for the journey. It was lovely, like an outdoor picnic.

F
ROM THE SANTA CLARA
meadows they rode south to the Virgin River. The riding was hard, but there was water enough, and along the Virgin River the days were not so hot as they had been. Oliver said they were now out of the Utah country. Any Indians they met hereafter would be Diggers.

Once or twice the guards found Digger tracks around the picket-ground. Scouts went out, well armed, to frighten the thieves away. It was no use to try to trade with Diggers. They wanted mules, and would go to any lengths to get them.

“What on earth do they want with them?” Garnet exclaimed to Oliver.

“Why, to eat,” he answered in some surprise.

“Do they eat
mules
?” she asked in disgust.

“Of course. They’ll eat anything. If they can get a mule, they stick an arrow into it and go off to call their friends. By the time they get back the mule is dead and they have a party.”

“You make me sick!” she cried.

“Well,” said Oliver, “you asked me.”

When they left the Virgin River they went through a dry, ugly country to another stream suitably called Muddy Creek. They were going downhill, and the days were getting fiercely hot again. They started before daybreak, took long noonings, and rode till late at night. Garnet began to dread seeing the sun come up. Even early in the morning it beat furiously on their heads, and though they rested during the worst heat the days were dreadful. The only growth was cactus and low dry shrubs, and there was no shade but that of the rocks. Even on their shady sides the rocks flung out waves of heat.

The men wrapped their heads with strips of cloth, like turbans, and over the turbans they wore their high-crowned Mexican hats. Garnet and Florinda wrapped their veils close about their necks and faces. Sometimes it was hard to tell who was who, because they were all so covered against the sun.

The mules were so wretched that they gave endless trouble. Garnet suggested that to save the boys work, Florinda could share her saddle-house at the noonings. Instead of eating outdoors they carried their bowls of atole into the shelter to escape the sun, raising the blanket over the entrance to give them air. They were lying down in the shelter, trying to get comfortable for their noon sleep, the day the Diggers came to dinner.

They heard one of the men shouting words in a strange language, and Garnet looked outside. She saw Oliver and Penrose running toward the shelter. “You stay there, ladies!” Penrose called before he reached it.

Oliver pulled the blanket down over the entrance and flung himself on the ground before it. He held up the blanket a few inches from the ground, speaking to them through the crack.

“An old Digger yelled to us from a rock. We had to yell back that we were friends, so now there’s a pack of them coming into camp. We’ll feed them. Stay here, and you’ll be all right.”

As they had done when the Utahs called, Oliver and Penrose hurried to pile packs and saddles around the shelter so it would look like a stack of goods. “This,” said Florinda, “is getting monotonous.”

But it was better than being covered by the blankets. The shelter was too low for them to stand up in it but at least they could sit up and move a little. They sat there, baking like muffins in the airless heat. Pretty soon Florinda made a wry face.

“Do you smell what I smell?”

“Yes,” said Garnet. “They’re worse than the Utahs.”

“I didn’t think anything could be worse. But they are. Let’s peek.”

They crawled forward and raised the blanket an inch or two from the ground. A Digger was sitting only a few feet away. He smelt like a privy. He was quite naked. His skin was nearly black, what they could see of it, for he was caked with dirt. His hair, straight and coarse as a horse’s tail, hung wildly over his face and his back. Caught in it here and there were leaves and burrs and bits of twigs, and crawling through his hair were colonies of vermin. As they looked, he glanced at the ground and picked up a lizard that was running alongside him. He pulled off the lizard’s tail and thrust the squirming rest of it into his mouth. As his teeth crunched on it he grunted with satisfaction.

From where they lay, Garnet and Florinda could partly see nine or ten others. Most of them were stark naked. The rest were draped with bits of cloth or strings of beads. Their filthy hair streamed over their faces, and behind their hair they had nasty little eyes and big drooling mouths. Their bodies were squat and pot-bellied. As they waited for the white men’s food they kept picking up creeping things from the ground and eating them. They gave forth a nauseating stink.

Garnet felt goose-flesh rising all over her. She could not look any more. She let the blanket fall, and in the dark little shelter she and Florinda waited, trying not to get sick from the odor. When she thought about why she was hiding from them, Garnet felt her flesh crawl.

She remembered the Utahs. They had at least been healthy-looking; all they needed was soap and water. But those things out there—she hated to call them men. She wished she had not looked. She hoped she would never have to see a Digger again.

But she did have to, not long afterward.

They crossed Muddy Creek, and for five days they rode across a vast plain of sand ringed with mountains. The heat was fearful. To spare themselves and their mules they traveled at night, riding under a sky set with enormous white stars. Though the days were so hot, the nights were cold. The men wrapped blankets around their shoulders, and shivered in the hard dry chill. Hot or cold, they were always thirsty. There were depressions in the sand called waterholes, but there was seldom any water in them. The men dug, and waited till water seeped into the holes, but there was never enough. They rationed the water by cupfuls.

The plain was littered with the white bones of mules, left from the feasts of Diggers who had raided earlier caravans. Among the mule-bones were human skeletons, broken and tossed about in the sand. These were the bones of traders who had not evaded the Digger arrows, and bones of Diggers who had been killed in their fights for mules. The skulls grinned blankly at the sky.

The men paid very little attention to the bones. They were so used to the sight of death in the desert that they simply kicked a skull aside if it got in their way. But Garnet and Florinda shivered at the sight of them.

The train started every evening at sunset. At midnight they paused for a rest and supper. The mules gnawed at the dry desert brush; the men’s food was pinole mixed with cold water. Even if they could have gathered enough brush for a fire, they would not have dared to make a fire at night. Diggers might be lurking anywhere among the mountains, and the light of a fire could be seen for miles. If Diggers saw the camp they would come swarming down, panting for a mule-feast. As the pinole was made of corn that had been parched before the grinding, it was a wholesome food, but a cold soggy mush was not tempting.

After the midnight rest, they mounted again and rode to the next waterhole. Sometimes they reached it at sunrise, sometimes they had to plod for hours after the sun came up and turned the sky white with heat. When they came to the waterhole they stopped again, and after another bowl of pinole they tumbled down exhausted on the sand, pulling blankets over their heads to shut out the glare. It was like trying to sleep in an oven.