“Oh, yeah. I read you the part about it being eternally spring there. Well, Hastings says that the only time you ever have to build a fire is when you want to cook your food.”
Margret Reed leaned forward. “And he’s been there, this Mr. Hastings? That sounds a bit like a fairy tale.”
George Donner didn’t like that. “Been there? He’s lived there. He’s got land there. He’s one of the few men who know what California’s really like.” Again he held up the book as proof positive. Everyone nodded and the doubts were dispelled.
Peter smiled inwardly. As a newspaperman, he well knew the power of words. He also knew that the printed word could carry the testimony of charlatans as easily as it could carry the testimony of saints. Not that he was about to say anything. He was certainly no expert on California.
James Reed now stood up beside Donner. “Thank you, George. You have whetted our appetites and fired our vision. I’m ready to start in the morning whether the wagons are ready or not.”
There was a burst of laughter from the group as George Donner sat down. Reed let it die, then plunged in immediately. “Today is the third day of March. Our plan is to leave Springfield about mid-April, just over a month from now. So far, we are the only three families leaving from here. Others may join us on the way.”
He let that register and waited for the whispers to end again. “As you know, Independence, Missouri, is the start of the Oregon Trail. That’s about three hundred miles from here. That will toughen us and our teams up. At Independence we’ll resupply and then, hopefully, join a larger train and accompany them.”
“Will there be danger from the Indians?” asked Solomon Elijah, Jacob Donner’s teenaged stepson.
Jacob, turning to look at his stepson, spoke up. “Not when we’re in a train of fifty to a hundred wagons. None of those savages would dare try to attack us. However”—he looked at Reed—“may I address the group for just a moment?”
“Certainly,” said Reed.
Jacob reached under his chair and pulled out a small box, then stood and faced the group. Opening the box, he brought out a strange-looking pistol and held it up, turning it back and forth for all of them to see. “Just in case, I’d recommend you all do what I’ve done. This is one of them brand-new Sam Colt six-shot revolvers. I think it will come in mighty handy on the trail, for Indians, snakes, or whatever else we may encounter.”
Kathryn saw Mrs. Reed shudder and wasn’t sure whether it was the mention of the Indians or the snakes or the sight of the pistol that caused it. In her own case, there was no question. Even the very word snake made her skin crawl.
“How much?” someone called out.
“Fifty dollars.”
Peter shook his head. He had never owned a gun and didn’t particularly like them, but he and James Reed had already talked about the need for weapons on the trip. Reed had said he would take care of it. At fifty dollars for a pistol, there was no way Peter would be doing it.
A mood of jubilation filled the room. From her seat beside him, Kathryn looked up at Peter. She had a strange expression on her face.
“What?” he asked softly.
“We really are going to do it, aren’t we?”
He laughed softly. “Yes,” he answered. “I think we are.”
Chapter Notes
William Pitt and his brass band would become a significant part of the trek west. Brigham’s wisdom and foresight were such that he knew that keeping up morale on the plains would be very important. Pitt was an English convert, as were most of the band members. William Clayton was a member of the band. It was recorded that on the second night after the Saints’ departure from Sugar Creek, 2 March 1846, after they made camp, the band began to play. The Saints enjoyed the music so much that in spite of their weariness after a difficult day, “they lit huge bonfires and sang and danced throughout the whole evening” (CN, 9 March 1996, p. 12).
The vast unsettled territories of the western part of the North American continent were much on the minds of Americans by 1846. The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 and its exploration by Lewis and Clark had started this interest. Then, as mountain men and trappers and explorers like John C. Frémont brought back descriptions of rich valleys and vast wilderness, the idea of free land became a powerful draw. In 1845 a New York publisher coined the phrase “manifest destiny.” It captured the belief held by most Americans that it was part of the will of Divine Providence that the United States of America should fill the entire continent. In that climate it was no surprise that Lansford Hastings’s book The Emigrants’ Guide to Oregon and California, published in 1845, quickly became a best-selling book across America. The fact that Hastings owned land in California and was a shameless promoter may partly account for the “glowing” description of California. (See Timothy Foote, “1846: The Way We Were—and the Way We Went,” Smithsonian, April 1996, pp. 45–46.)
Samuel Colt first patented the revolving six-shooter in 1835. Over the years he greatly improved the design. When the federal government ordered thousands of the weapons for their soldiers during the Mexican War of 1846, the Colt would take its place as a significant influence in the opening of the West. (See James Trager, The People’s Chronology: A Year-by-Year Record of Human Events from Prehistory to the Present, rev. ed. [New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1992], pp. 419, 441.)
Chapter 4
It was worse than mud. It was worse even than wet clay. It was more like a blend of clay and bookbinder glue mixed with cement. It stuck to the wheels, buried now almost to their hubs, as though it had been smeared on with a brick mason’s trowel. It clung to the feet of the animals in huge globs that left them panting just to walk. For Joshua, it was like one of those nightmares where some horrible danger is bearing down on you and your feet will not respond. His upper thighs were on fire. His knees ached as though they were rheumatic. His ankles were getting mushy. His lungs felt like great bellows that couldn’t suck in enough air to feed the fire within. Around him, he could hear the others gasping for air as he was.
“Hit it again,” Solomon yelled. “Ready?”
They took their positions again. Joshua and Nathan were at the back wheels. Matthew and Derek were at the front ones. The teenaged children—Josh, Emily, Rachel, Luke and Mark Griffith—ringed the wagon box, getting what grip they could on it.
“Go!” Solomon shouted at the oxen and cracked the long bullwhip over their heads. All nine of them threw their weight against the wagon. Joshua clawed at the spokes, grunting and muttering under his breath. The veins on his forehead stood out like great knots, and he could feel the blood rush to his face. Ahead of him, he could see the two off oxen pawing to get a grip in the miry clay, and he could hear their own grunts as they fought for some kind of movement. The wagon rocked forward maybe five or six inches, the wheels making a great sucking sound, then stopped again.
Joshua’s feet suddenly gave way in the slippery mud. With a cry, he went down. His shoulder slammed against the wagon wheel, and his head cracked sharply against the steel-rimmed tire. “Ow!” he yelped, grabbing for his forehead. When he pulled his hand away, the muddy glove had a smear of red on it. He dropped his head, down on all fours now, chest heaving, staring down at the hated mud, and began to swear, softly and steadily.
“Uncle Joshua!” Emily gasped.
Pulled back into awareness, he saw Emily and Rachel, not two feet away, gaping at him in utter disbelief. The two Griffith boys were likewise in shock. It took him a second or two before it registered that they were not looking at his bleeding forehead. They were staring at him, eyes wide, faces flaming.
“Well,” he snapped, lifting his arm and pressing the sleeve of his shirt against the wound. “Just close your ears. That hurt.”
Nathan stepped around the children, panting as heavily as Joshua. “You all right?”
He wanted to swear again, but bit it off this time. “Oh, yeah,” he said sarcastically. “Never been better. And the blood makes a nice contrast to the mud, don’t you
think?”
Mark Griffith giggled, then went stone sober as Joshua glared at him.
But Nathan was smiling too. “The blood and the mud. Sounds like a title for a good ghost story.” That set all of the kids to snickering.
Joshua hauled himself to his feet, brushed at the mud caked on his trouser legs, then stopped when he saw he was only smearing it around. He glowered at his brother. “I’m glad someone is finding some amusement in all this.”
Lydia, who had been following behind the wagons, helping her two youngest, came forward enough that she was parallel to Joshua. She took a rag from her apron pocket. “Come over here and let me have a look at you.”
He shook his head. Now the whole family was coming up to see what had happened. “It’s nothing. I’ll be fine.”
She put one hand on her hip. “Are you going to make me wade into the mud or are you going to come over here.”
He mumbled something, shot Nathan, who was trying to hold back a grin, a dirty look, then hauled himself out of the slough and up to where she waited. She pulled his head down and began to dab at the cut, carefully wiping away the mud Joshua’s glove had left there. “You’ll have a goose egg, sure enough, but the cut doesn’t look too deep.” She pressed the rag against it, making him wince. “Here, hold this in place for a minute. My insensitive husband may like the idea of mud and blood, but I don’t.” She shot Nathan a look, but it was more a look of warning than of condemnation. Couldn’t he see when Joshua was in no mood to be funned with?
But if Nathan saw the look, he didn’t pay her any mind. He came up and peered at his older brother. “Did it help?”
“What?”
“Swearing.”
“Nathan,” Joshua growled, his eyebrows narrowing, giving a warning of their own. “I don’t need a sermon right now.”
“No, no sermon,” Nathan said innocently. “I was just wondering. If it did any good, I might be persuaded to become a cussing man.”
He said it with such longing and such feeling that it broke the tension. Even Joshua had to laugh. Nathan a cussing man? Now, that would be something. Joshua turned to the older children who had been pushing on the wagon box. “Sorry, kids. I kind of forgot that I’m not out on the trail with a bunch of cigar-smoking teamsters.”
“It’s all right, Uncle Joshua,” Rachel said, recovered now. “Does your head hurt?”
Joshua was strangely hit by a sudden pang of sorrow. Rachel had called him Uncle Joshua as naturally as Emily did. And yet she was his daughter. They—he and Jessica—had long ago determined that that was best, but every now and then it hit him, and it always left him wincing with guilt. Why the thought hit him now he wasn’t sure.
He managed a wobbly grin back at her. “My head’s fine, but someone better check the wagon wheel.”
“I’ll say,” Derek quipped. “It sounded like steel ringing on steel to me. I heard it from where I was.”
Now the whole family laughed merrily. Joshua pulled a face and looked at Lydia. “Why is it that everyone feels like my tragedy gives them the right to make jokes?”
“I don’t know,” she answered solemnly. She looked at her British brother-in-law. “Derek, I think you need to apologize to Joshua.” Then her eyes twinkled. “Right after you check the wheel to see if it is broken.”
“See?” Joshua said, looking hurt.
His mother joined them now, coming from the other wagons which were hanging back until Solomon’s wagon was through this muddy part of the road. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. The bigger question is, how are we going to get this through?”
Solomon grunted. Of the men, he was the only one not still wheezing from their exertions, but only because he had been driving and not pushing. “Maybe we’re going to have to unhitch the other teams and bring them up here. It’s a sure thing we’re not moving it much this way.”
Matthew was squatting down, peering under the wagon, sizing up the depths and thickness of the mud. “I say we find us a pole and try to lift it up a little, then try again. Those wheels are what are giving us the problem. They’re in too deep.”
Nathan straightened, all seriousness again. “Good idea.” He half turned. They had crossed a creek a quarter of a mile back. A scattered stand of trees lined its banks. “Solomon. Derek. Get some axes. Let’s go cut us a lever.”
Forty-five minutes later, they were ready. They were using a two-foot length of old log they had found as the fulcrum and a ten-foot, six-inch-thick length of elm as the lever. Joshua, being the tallest—cut head and aching shoulder now forgotten—grasped the end of the pole. Matthew, Nathan, Derek, and Josh lined up in front of him. Once again the others—women now as well as the older children—waded into the mud and found a place to push. Solomon was once more at the head of his oxen.
Joshua called forward. “Solomon. We’ll try to lift it first, then holler at you.” Then to those at the wagon, “Don’t push until you feel the wagon come up.”
Everyone nodded and took their places. Those on the log pole raised their hands, getting a solid grip.
“All right,” Joshua said. “Ready? Go!”
As one they yanked down on the log, letting their feet come off the ground to put their full weight into it. For a moment nothing happened; then there was a creak, followed by a deep sucking sound, and the wheels started to rise.
“Go, Solomon!” Nathan and Joshua shouted it together.
Again the whip cracked sharply. “Giddap! Go, boys! Go!”
The animals lunged forward, hitting the yokes hard. Hooves dug in and clawed. On the wagon, the human beasts of burden heaved forward as well, gasping and grunting, feet fighting for a grip.
“Higher!” Nathan bellowed. “It’s working.”
And it was. Getting the rear wheels four or five inches out of the mud seemed to be the key. The wagon lurched forward. But as it did so, the axle slid off the pole and sunk down again.
“Quick,” Joshua yelled. “Get it under there!”
They shoved the log fulcrum forward, reset the pole, then yanked down hard again. There was a loud ripping sound, then a sharp snap. The pole jerked violently downward, throwing all four men off their balance. For one instant, Joshua thought the pole had snapped, but as he caught himself, he saw the back wheels splay outward and the wagon box drop sharply.
Gasping, he went down on one knee, and then groaned at what he saw. It wasn’t the pole, it was the rear axle. The thick wooden shaft had cracked like an egg.
As the others bent down to look, Nathan sank down beside him, panting heavily. Joshua looked at him. “Now might be a good time to consider becoming a cussing man,” he said softly.
Mary Ann looked around the circle of faces, seeing the firelight flickering in their eyes and across the tightness of their faces. It’s another Steed family council, she thought, only one unlike anything they had ever held before. This was no comfortable parlor filled with soft lamplight. They sat on logs and stumps or on blankets folded on the ground. And when it was done, there would be no apple pie and cold milk from the icehouse. There would be no sitting on the porch and talking lazily as the children played night games around them. In fact, there were no children present. The babies were asleep. The younger children were getting a bedtime story or saying their prayers. The older ones were serving as parents while the adults met together and tried to determine how to deal with their crisis.
She could not remember a family council where the problem before them had left the family more grim than what she could see now. They were exhausted. They were terribly discouraged. It was not a good combination. It had been a day where even the strongest had expended the last of their strength and where even the weakest had been required to give all that they had. But there would be no rest until decisions were made. This was not something that could wait until a better day, or be set aside for some future discussion.
After the axle had broken, which was around noon, they had unhitched Nathan’s pair of oxen and br
ought them up to join Solomon’s two pair to see if they could drag the crippled vehicle off the road and out of the way of those coming behind. That was not enough either. Finally, two additional yoke were borrowed from a man who came up to see what was happening. He was a brother from Yelrome and recognized Joshua and Nathan as being part of the rescue party that had brought their families to Nauvoo after the burning of the Morley Settlement. Five yoke of oxen—ten animals—and even then they barely managed to get the wagon free.
They unloaded Solomon’s wagon and crammed the supplies into the other wagons; then Derek and Matthew took the family on to make camp. The only encouraging thing for the day was that Brigham Young’s party had finally caught up with the advance scouting party and the President had called an early halt to the day’s march. It had been a punishing day on equipment, animals, and men, and many more besides the Steeds were stranded along the road. That was good news for the Steeds, for the camp was no more than a mile and a half from the broken wagon.
Nathan, Solomon, and Joshua stayed behind and went to work. They removed the rear wheels, put two small logs beneath the back of the wagon to serve as skids, and dragged it back to camp using Solomon’s oxen. Once that was done, Derek and Matthew rode back to the stand of timber and hewed down a foot-thick hickory tree. Tomorrow they would spend the day hewing out another axle and shaping it so it could take the wheels. That would, they hoped, solve the immediate problem. But they had a greater problem to solve now. They simply did not have sufficient animal power to pull in this kind of terrain.
Mary Ann tipped her head back, feeling the weariness in her own body, the kind that goes so deep that it feels as if it were something received at birth. Above, the sky was clear. Ah, she thought. Now, there was something to lift the soul. The stars seemed like they were laid on a fabric of black silk that was so close that if she chose to she could reach up and pluck one for each of the children. She smiled sadly to herself at that thought. There probably wasn’t much beside that—a star straight from heaven—that could lighten their mood right now.
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