Jubilee Trail (4 page)

Garnet’s red cheeks got redder. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said shortly.

“Then maybe you wouldn’t understand,” said Oliver, “if I told you that’s the greatest compliment I ever paid a girl in my life.”

As so often before with him, Garnet did not know what to say. She was not looking at him, but she could feel his eyes stroking her. Instead of answering, she said,

“I thought you were going to tell me about the trading caravans.”

“Oh yes, so I was,” Oliver said promptly. But though she still could not look at him she could feel him looking at her. “Where was I?” he asked.

“You hadn’t begun,” said Garnet. “Where do the wagons start?”

“From Independence. That’s a town in Missouri. It’s the last town on the American frontier.”

Garnet felt relieved to have the conversation become impersonal. Besides, she really did want to know. “And the traders go all the way to California every year?” she asked.

“Oh no. Not the traders who start from Independence. They don’t go all the way to California. They can’t. It’s too far.”

“But you’ve been there!” Garnet objected.

“Yes. But you can’t make the journey both ways in the same year. There are two groups of Western traders, you see. Every spring they start from opposite sides of the continent. They meet in the middle, and exchange goods. Then each party turns around and goes back where it came from.” Oliver bit his lip. “Miss Cameron,” he exclaimed, “are you really interested in all this?”

“Of course I am!” she returned, and for the first time since he had sat on the floor by her chair, she looked at him. Oliver was amused and a trifle incredulous. “I’m interested in anything I don’t know about,” said Garnet.

“Even in dirt and sand and swearing bullwhackers?”

“What’s a bullwhacker?”

“A man who drives ox-teams on the Santa Fe Trail.”

“All my life,” said Garnet, “they’ve been telling me I had too much curiosity. But I like to know things. And you—” she stopped.

“Yes?” he prodded her. “And me?”

“You’re the first gentleman that ever talked to me like a human being!” she burst out, and blushed to have said it.

“There are so few people in New York,” said Oliver, “that I can talk to like a human being.”

They both laughed. Oliver was thinking that those black-fringed gray eyes of hers were quite enchantingly wicked. She’d be a lot of fun if a man could get her out of this hothouse before they smothered her spirit entirely.

“Please go on,” begged Garnet. Oliver looked as though he had forgotten his subject, so she prompted him. “The traders start from opposite sides of the continent,” she said, “and meet in the middle.”

“Oh yes.” Oliver picked up his narrative. “Well, every year in April, the traders from the United States take their goods to Independence. At Independence, they load the goods into covered wagons. Each trader has his own wagons, and his own crew, packers and muleteers and ox-drivers and cooks. He takes his train to a meeting-place on the prairie called Council Grove. At Council Grove they organize the big caravans.”

“And after Council Grove, do they all travel together?”

“No, the traders are very free souls. They make up parties, but they don’t all travel in one party. Those who get to Council Grove first, join and leave first. Sometimes they catch up with each other out on the prairie, and go on together.”

“Where do they go?”

“To Santa Fe. That’s a town in a Mexican province called New Mexico. It’s about eight hundred miles west of Independence.”

Garnet nodded. “I understand so far. Go on.”

“Well, in the meantime, while those traders are on their way from Independence to Santa Fe, another caravan is coming to Santa Fe to meet them.”

“Where does this other caravan come from?”

“From California. That’s the group I’ve been working with. Every year, in April, while the Missouri traders are packing their wagons, our party is meeting in California. We start from a little village called Los Angeles. We use pack-mules instead of covered wagons, because we have to cross some very steep mountains. We come east while the men from Missouri are going west. And in midsummer, about the first of July, the two caravans meet in Santa Fe.”

“I know what you’re taking to Santa Fe from New York,” said Garnet. “Cloth and household goods. But when you come the other way, from California to Santa Fe, what sort of merchandise do you bring?”

“Mules. Thousands of mules. The California mules are the best on earth. The Missouri traders buy them and drive them back home. And we bring silks and jade from China, and spices from the islands in the South Sea.”

Garnet looked at the map, and the big space on which the map makers could only write “Great American Desert.” She thought of silks and jade and spices from the islands. Raising her eyes again, she asked, “How far is it from California to Santa Fe?”

“About nine hundred miles.”

“Mr. Hale, you mean that you men ride nine hundred miles and back, every year, on mules?”

Oliver laughed. “Actually, we ride about twelve hundred miles each way. Los Angeles and Santa Fe are nine hundred miles apart as a bird would fly it, but traveling on land we have to make a long detour around a canyon.”

“What’s a canyon?”

“A crack in the earth. Some of them are very small. But the one I’m talking about is the great canyon of the Colorado River. We have to go around it.”

“Is there a road from Los Angeles to Santa Fe?” she asked.

“No road at all. Not even a track. Just the trail as we know it in our heads.”

“Then it hasn’t a name?”

“Why yes, properly it’s called the Great Spanish Trail, because the journey was first made by Spanish explorers. But we call it Jubilee Trail.”

“I like that,” said Garnet. “Why do you call it Jubilee Trail?”

“Well, it’s pretty hard going. We feel like shouting such a jubilee when we get to the end of it.”

Garnet looked again at the long hard miles on the map. “Did you mean to live out there,” she asked, “when you left Boston?”

“No, we didn’t mean to go to California at all. We meant to go as far as Santa Fe, and then come back with the men from Missouri.”

“We? You and who else?”

“My brother Charles. It was his idea to go West in the first place.”

“Charles?” Garnet repeated. She thought a moment, and said, “I don’t think you’ve ever told me you had a brother.”

“Haven’t I?” For the first time since he began answering her questions, Oliver’s eyes left her. He looked across at the fire. “Why yes,” he said slowly, “of course I have a brother. Funny I never mentioned him. Charles is ten years older than I am.”

Garnet smiled questioningly. “Why don’t you call him Charlie?”

“Who, Charles? I never thought of it.” He was still looking at the fire. “Charles isn’t exactly the sort of man who’d be called by a nickname.”

“Dignified, you mean?”

“Why yes, that’s it. Dignified.”

“How did he happen to know about California?” she asked.

Oliver turned back to her. “Oh, we’d always heard of California. Our parents died when I was a child, and we lived with our uncle. He had a shipping company. The shipping companies in Boston pack a lot of goods for the Western trade—for the overland wagons to Santa Fe, and the ships that go to California around Cape Horn. Charles was working in the shipping company, but Charles is ambitious. So while I was studying at Harvard, he came to me with the idea that I quit college and go into the Santa Fe trade with him.”

“So you quit?”

“At once,” said Oliver, “with a yelp of joy. I’m not very intellectual. We used Charles’ savings to outfit some wagons. Charles is the sort that always has savings. When we got to Santa Fe, we met the traders who had come from California. They said the trade on that side was very profitable, so we decided to go on to California and see for ourselves.”

“And when you got there,” said Garnet, “you liked it, and stayed?”

“That’s right. I’m still trading—I’m a restless soul, and I don’t like settling down in one place. But Charles has settled down. We have a rancho near Los Angeles, and he takes care of it.”

“What’s a rancho?”

“It’s something like a farm. Only they don’t plant things much, they raise cattle. That’s for the hide trade. They ship thousands of hides from California every year.”

“What are they for?”

“Leather.” Oliver made a gesture toward his shoes. “Nearly all the shoes in the United States are made of leather from California.”

Astonished, Garnet pulled her skirt back from her feet. She had on black kid slippers, with silk lacings crossed and recrossed around her ankles. “Why Mr. Hale, you mean these shoes of mine came from California?”

Oliver grinned and nodded, glad of the chance she had given him to admire her ankles.

Garnet saw his glance and dropped her skirt, but she was too much interested to feel more than a flash of genteel embarrassment. “Do you bring the hides by the overland trail?” she asked.

“No, they’re too bulky to be packed on mules. The Yankee ships get the hides. The ships come out from Boston, and trade all over the Pacific—that’s how we get the Chinese silks we take to Santa Fe.”

Garnet felt a sense of enchantment. It glowed between them like a radiance, and through it she saw Oliver, as though he had gathered to himself all the wonder of the dim far places. The coals in the fireplace settled with a little soft noise like a sigh. Garnet remembered that her mother had told her to keep up the fires. But she couldn’t stop now to see to fires. She asked,

“What sort of people live in California?”

Oliver had been watching the blue lights in her black hair. He was still watching them as he answered,

“Mexicans. Only they don’t like to be called Mexicans. They like to be called Californios. And a few hundred foreigners like me, mostly Americans.”

“Are there any Indians?”

Oliver shrugged. “There are some two-legged animals, but calling them Indians is rather an insult to tribes like the Navajos and the Sioux. We usually call them Diggers.”

“And the Californios—how did they get there?”

“They’re descendants of some colonists the Spanish government sent up from Mexico about eighty years ago; But the Spanish empire was dying. They sent up the colonists, and a few priests to do missionary work among the Diggers, and then forgot about them. Later, when Mexico won its independence from Spain, the Mexicans sent governors up to California. But California is so far from everywhere, and so hard to get to, that Mexico pays it very little attention. The people have just kept on living there because they’re there. The fact is, California is nearly empty. It’s a tremendous country, bigger than New York and New England and Ohio combined, and from end to end of it there are only five or six thousand people who are white or partly white. The Diggers—I don’t know how many of them there are, but they’re dying out. You can ride from dawn till dark without meeting a soul.”

Garnet had always lived in a crowded spot. She could hardly imagine such emptiness. “And the country—what is it like?”

Oliver turned his head toward the window, and looked out at the sun flashing on the icy trees in Union Square. He brought his mind back from New York to California, and spoke slowly.

“It’s a magnificent country, Miss Cameron. It’s beautiful, in a strange way that’s hard to describe to people who haven’t seen it—mountains and canyons and deserts, and miles of wild flowers, and thousands of cattle grazing on the slopes; and great ranchos, and a few scattered villages, and distance, and emptiness, and bigness. Everything is big. The mountains in California make the Adirondacks look like pimples on the face of the earth.”

Garnet glanced around the room. Its simple comfort looked very dull. “What is New York like, after you’ve seen California?” she asked softly.

Oliver gave an apologetic laugh, as though he felt almost embarrassed. “It looks
little,
Miss Cameron. I know that sounds foolish, but it’s true. You feel like a man blundering around in a toy village made for children to play with in a nursery.” He ran his hand back over his rough curly hair. “Everything here is jammed so close together,” he went on. “There doesn’t seem to be room enough. You feel smothered. You’re always scared you’re going to run into something.”

The coals in the fireplace sighed again. Garnet got up and walked over to the hearth. Looking down at the grate, she asked,

“When are you going back?”

“I’m leaving New York in about six weeks.”

“That will be March,” said Garnet.

“Yes, March. I’ll pack the goods I’ve bought here, and take them down to New Orleans. From New Orleans, I’ll take them up the river to Independence.”

“And then to Santa Fe?”

“That’s right. I have a partner in Los Angeles, an American named John Ives. He’ll bring our goods from California to Santa Fe, and we’ll go on to California with the mule-train.”

Garnet picked up the tongs and reached toward the coal-scuttle.

“Let me do that,” said Oliver. Scrambling to his feet, he came over and took the tongs from her hand.

“Isn’t it a mighty dangerous journey?” Garnet asked. “Aren’t there Indians out there on the plains, and cannibals, and—all sorts of things?”

“There are Indians, of course. I don’t think any of them are cannibals. It’s dangerous, but we’re very well armed. The caravans always get through.”

Garnet’s throat felt suddenly tight. As Oliver set down the tongs, she exclaimed,

“Oh, I do envy you so!”

“Do you, Garnet?” he asked. He was looking at her intently. It was the first time he had ever called her by her first name, but she hardly noticed it.

“Why shouldn’t I?” she answered. “You go to those gorgeous places, so beautiful and so full of adventure, and I just do the same things everybody else does. I practice my music and buy dress-patterns at Stewart’s and go to plays at the Park Theater. In the summer, while you’re on the trails West, I’m at Rockaway Beach!”

“Do you always go there in the summer?”

“No, we go to different places, but they’re all pretty much alike. My mother says we may go to Europe next year.”