A companion named Vance rested with me over night in a cabin, with scant food for ourselves or the mare we led. It was thirty-five miles to the next cabin; we must reach that place or lay out on the snow. So a very early start was made—before daybreak, while the wind lay. The good lady of the cabin baked some biscuit for a noon lunch, but they were frozen solid in our pockets before we had been out two hours. The wind rose with the sun, and with the sun two bright sundogs, one on each side, and alongside of each, but slightly less bright, another—a beautiful sight to behold, but arising from conditions intolerable to bear. Vance came near freezing to death, and would had I not succeeded in arousing him to anger and gotten him off the mare.
I vowed then and there that I did not like the Iowa climate, and the Oregon fever was visibly quickened. Besides, if I went to Oregon the government would give us 320 acres of land, while in Iowa we should have to purchase it—at a low price to be sure, but it must be bought and paid for on the spot. There were no pre-emption or beneficial homestead laws in force then, and not until many years later. The country was a wide, open, rolling prairie—a beautiful country indeed—but what about a market? No railroads, no wagon roads, no cities, no meeting-houses, no schools—the prospect looked drear. How easy it is for one when his mind is once bent against a country to conjure up all sorts of reasons to bolster his, perhaps hasty, conclusions; and so Iowa was condemned as unsuited to our life abiding place.
But what about going to Oregon when springtime came? An interesting event was pending that rendered a positive decision impossible for the moment, and not until the first week of April, 1852, when our first-born baby boy was a month old, could we say that we were going to Oregon in 1852.
CHAPTER IV.
OFF FOR OREGON.
I have been asked hundreds of times how many wagons were in the train I traveled with, and what train it was, and who was the captain?—assuming that, of course, we must have been with some train.
I have invariably answered, one train, one wagon, and that we had no captain. What I meant by one train is, that I looked upon the whole emigration, strung out on the plains five hundred miles, as one train. For long distances the throng was so great that the road was literally filled with wagons as far as the eye could reach. At Kanesville where the last purchases were made, or the last letter sent to anxious friends, the congestion became so great that the teams were literally blocked, and stood in line for hours before they could get out of the jam. Then, as to a captain, we didn't think we needed one, and so when we drove out of Eddyville, there was but one wagon in our train, two yoke of four-year-old steers, one yoke of cows, and one extra cow. This cow was the only animal we lost on the whole trip—strayed in the Missouri River bottom before crossing.
And now as to the personnel of our little party. William Buck, who became my partner for the trip, was a man six years my senior, had had some experience on the Plains, and knew about the outfit needed, but had no knowledge in regard to a team of cattle. He was an impulsive man, and to some extent excitable; yet withal a man of excellent judgment and as honest as God Almighty makes men. No lazy bones occupied a place in Buck's body. He was so scrupulously neat and cleanly that some might say he was fastidious, but such was not the case. His aptitude for the camp work, and unfitness for handling the team, at once, as we might say by natural selection, divided the cares of the household, sending the married men to the range with the team and the bachelor to the camp. The little wife was in ideal health, and almost as particular as Buck (not quite though) while the young husband would be a little more on the slouchy order, if the reader will pardon the use of that word, more expressive than elegant.
Buck selected the outfit to go into the wagon, while I fitted up the wagon and bought the team.
We had butter, packed in the center of the flour in double sacks; eggs packed in corn meal or flour, to last us nearly five hundred miles; fruit in abundance, and dried pumpkins; a little jerked beef, not too salt, and last, though not least, a demijohn of brandy for "medicinal purposes only," as Buck said, with a merry twinkle of the eye that exposed the subterfuge which he knew I understood without any sign. The little wife had prepared the home-made yeast cake which she knew so well how to make and dry, and we had light bread all the way, baked in a tin reflector instead of the heavy Dutch ovens so much in use on the Plains.
Albeit the butter to considerable extent melted and mingled with the flour, yet we were not much disconcerted, as the "short-cake" that followed made us almost glad the mishap had occurred. Besides, did we not have plenty of fresh butter, from the milk of our own cows, churned every day in the can, by the jostle of the wagon? Then the buttermilk! What a luxury! Yes, that's the word—a real luxury. I will never, so long as I live, forget that short-cake and corn-bread, the puddings and pumpkin pies, and above all the buttermilk. The reader who smiles at this may recall that it is the small things that make up the happiness of life.
But it was more than that. As we gradually crept out on the Plains and saw the sickness and suffering caused by improper food and in some cases from improper preparation, it gradually dawned on me how blessed I was, with such a partner as Buck and such a life partner as the little wife. Some trains, it soon transpired, were without fruit, and most of them depended upon saleratus for raising their bread. Many had only fat bacon for meat until the buffalo supplied a change; and no doubt much of the sickness attributed to the cholera was caused by an ill-suited diet.
I am willing to claim credit for the team, every hoof of which reached the Coast in safety. Four (four-year-old) steers and two cows were sufficient for our light wagon and light outfit, not a pound of which but was useful (except the brandy) and necessary for our comfort. Not one of these steers had ever been under the yoke, though plenty of "broke" oxen could be had, but generally of that class that had been broken in spirit as well as in training, so when we got across the Des Moines River with the cattle strung out to the wagon and Buck on the off side to watch, while I, figuratively speaking, took the reins in hand, we may have presented a ludicrous sight, but did not have time to think whether we did or not, and cared but little so the team would go.
FIRST DAY OUT.
The first day's drive out from Eddyville was a short one, and so far as I now remember the only one on the entire trip where the cattle were allowed to stand in the yoke at noon while the owners lunched and rested. I made it a rule, no matter how short the noontime, to unyoke and let the cattle rest or eat while we rested and ate, and on the last (1906) trip rigidly adhered to that rule.
An amusing scene was enacted when, at near nightfall, the first camp was made. Buck excitedly insisted we must not unyoke the cattle. "Well, what shall we do?" I asked; "They can't live in the yoke always; we will have to unyoke them sometimes."
"Yes, but if you unyoke here you will never catch them again," came the response. One word brought on another, until the war of words had almost reached the stage of a dispute, when a stranger, Thomas McAuley, who was camped nearby, with a twinkle in his eye I often afterwards saw and will always remember, interfered and said his cattle were gentle and there were three men of his party and that they would help us yoke up in the morning. I gratefully accepted his proffered help, speedily unyoked, and ever after that never a word with the merest semblance of contention passed between Buck and myself.
Scanning McAuley's outfit the next morning I was quite troubled to start out with him, his teams being light, principally cows, and thin in flesh, with wagons apparently light and as frail as the teams. But I soon found that his outfit, like ours, carried no extra weight; that he knew how to care for a team; and was, withal, an obliging neighbor, as was fully demonstrated on many trying occasions as we traveled in company for more than a thousand miles, until his road to California parted from ours at the big bend of the Bear River.
