“You think there’s trouble at the fort?”
“No telling. It’s gonna worry some folks, if they got goods to send that aren’t packed up and ready.”
They watch it veer toward the cove and come to rest. The sails go slack. A boat is lowered and two men are rowing toward the beach as if pursued by killer sharks. Something in the heaving of their powerful backs gives Jim a pang of apprehension. They are not here with cargo. They bring some news he does not want to hear. With the warehouseman he joins half a dozen others who have spied the launch and gather on the beach wrapped in heavy coats and scarves and hats and knitted caps. As the keel scrapes sand, a rower leaps out, splashing.
“Any of you the Commandant?” he shouts. “I got a letter for the Commandant.”
They crowd in close.
“What’s up?”
“What’s the news?”
He tries to break past them, but they bar his way.
“Captain Sutter needs men,” he says, with great importance. “Them folks stuck back in the mountains all this time, some of ‘em have made it through.”
Jim’s heart begins to pound. “What’s this? What’s this you say?”
“Captain Sutter wants to bring out the others.”
“Who made it through?”
“Ain’t my place to tell it,” the fellow says.
“My God, man!” Jim shouts. “How many?”
“This letter’s for the Commandant!”
He shoulders past them, heading up the slope with men beside him and behind him, yammering, tossing questions back and forth among themselves, while others step out of shops and inns and boardinghouses to tag along, breathing steam and slapping arms against their sides as they climb.
Hearing this clamor rise toward him, the Commandant has stepped out onto his porch. The sailor with the message doffs his cap and passes across to him a packet, which the Commandant receives and steps back inside and shuts the door.
The sailor is surrounded by men with urgent questions, Jim foremost among them. “Who made it through?” he demands. “Where are they now?”
The sailor doesn’t know where to begin. Something happened at Johnson’s Ranch. A rescue party is forming up. Most of all he’d like a drink. Doesn’t anybody have a drink?
Someone produces a small flask. As the sailor tips it for a swallow, the Commandant’s door swings open. An orderly rushes out, pushing past the crowd. They watch him sprint across the plaza to the mayor’s adobe. A moment later Bartlett appears, pulling on his coat against the February wind. As he passes the waiting men he says, “G’morning, gents.”
Jim calls, “What the hell is going on?”
“We’ll soon find out.”
Now they murmur among themselves, stamp their feet and speculate, but Jim can’t bear the waiting. “Goddam!” he says. “I’m going in there!”
He mounts the steps, has his hand upon the door, when it opens once again and there stands Bartlett. His young eyes are wide and fixed, as if he has just witnessed an execution. In his hand he holds a sheaf of paper. To Jim and to the suddenly quiet crowd he says, “All of you should hear this.”
They follow Bartlett through the wind and into the hotel saloon, where they spread out among the tables. He stands by the bar, gazing at the first page, as if to be sure he has the gist of it. His eyes move, but nothing else, neither face nor hands. He stands so still he seems to be holding his breath.
Slowly he begins to read aloud the story of a small party that set out two months ago and more. Fifteen had started for the pass, ten men, five women. Jim listens to the names, listens for Margaret’s name, for Patty’s, Virginia’s. He doesn’t hear them and wishes Bartlett would go through the list again. Then he’s glad he didn’t hear the names. Only seven of the fifteen have survived, among them Mac’s wife, Amanda, and William Eddy, who made it down to Johnson’s, where he dictated this account of their grueling ordeal.
It was a trip, the letter says, “impelled by the scarcity of provisions at the cabins.” They had hoped the crossing would take a week. It took a month. During most of that time they were hopelessly lost, penned in by blizzards, with no shelter, and almost no food. The first to go was Charlie Stanton, left behind to die alone. Before long half a dozen others died, Uncle Billy Graves, the Indians Salvador and Luis. At last the survivors resorted to the unthinkable …
Bartlett’s voice dwindles, then stops, as if the handwriting here might be hard to decipher. When he reads again he’s nearly whispering.
In the afternoon of this day they succeeded in getting a fire into a dry pine tree. Having been four entire days without food, and since the month of October on short allowance, there was now but two alternatives left them—either to die, or to preserve life by eating the bodies of the dead. Slowly and reluctantly they adopted the latter alternative. On the 27th they took the flesh from the bodies of the dead; and on that and the two following days they remained in camp drying the meat and preparing to pursue their journey …
Bartlett’s voice breaks. For a while the room is silent. Into the silence Jim says hoarsely, “You mean they ate the flesh?”
“That’s what’s in the letter, Jim.”
“Each other’s flesh?”
“According to this fellow, Eddy.”
“I know William Eddy.”
“His word is all we have to go by,” Bartlett says.
“And you say Uncle Billy Graves …”
“A Graves is mentioned, yes.”
“Eaten?”
“Evidently, Jim. I know what it must be like …”
He can’t listen to the rest. He rushes to the door, onto the hotel’s verandah, where he stands in the wind gazing out across restless water toward the hills, the contra costa, his mind roaming farther east, across the wide valley, into the distant snow.
Charlie Stanton dead.
Uncle Billy, dead and eaten.
The man who would have hung him—gone. Consumed. His flesh jerked and dried for travel like a side of beef.
What savagery is this? And what else is there to know? By mid-December they were nearly out of food. What happened to the cattle? How could they run short of beef so soon? If eight of fifteen perished on the way, what then of the others? What hope is there for those they left behind?
He cannot think of it. Not now. He dares not think of it. The only questions he dares to ask himself are How to get there, What’s the fastest way, and What to carry? He needs a plan. A sharper, cleaner, clearer plan.
At least he knows now where they are. Some have cabins. Some do not. From what the letter says, we’ll need warmer clothing. More men. More food to cache along the way, and more to feed the stranded ones for the trek out. We’ll need more of everything. Can one schooner carry it all? If we overload the schooner, it could take weeks to reach the fort, given the season and the rains and what he’s heard about the currents during flood time. Suppose we split the expedition, then. Suppose we send all supplies by water, while the rest of us cross the bay and travel overland. Yes. Yes, two parties head north and east. One by water. One by land. In his mind it is like a battle campaign. A two-pronged assault. The enemy is altitude, and snow. Meanwhile, if it’s true that a team is forming up at Sutter’s, how much will they know about the high country? Will they wait for word of support from Yerba Buena? Or press on and hope for reinforcements? That is the essential part. Reinforcements …
At the edge of his vision a patch of blue is moving toward him. The Commandant strives against the wind, so skeletal and sticklike he can hardly stay upright. He staggers like a man who has been shot, but with a stoic determination. Miraculously he keeps his footing and arrives at the steps to the hotel. Holding to the banister as to the railing of a storm-tossed ship, he pulls himself up onto the verandah, where he stands apart from Jim until he gets his breath.
“You all right, sir?” says Jim.
“Fine, thank you, yes … very fine indeed…. Just on my way … to the gathering here.”
<
br /> Jim watches him breathe in long, asthmatic breaths, wondering what has sent him out into the wind, wondering what he can say to change the Commandant’s mind. How can Jim get through to this frail and fearful man who holds the keys to the cash box and storage sheds?
As it turns out, the man needs no more persuading. For fifteen minutes he has been brooding at his desk. His breathing is steady now. Above scooped-out cheeks, the sunken eyes have filled with heat.
“That letter, Mr. Reed, I have to tell you … what those wretches have endured, it penetrates the very soul.” His voice is low and guttural and muted by the wind. “Every exploring party comes back with horrendous tales, and I have heard them all. But when women and children are driven to such extremes … a daughter driven to eat of her own father’s flesh … it is beyond imagining. By all the hosts of heaven, I swear that you men shall have whatever can be provided by this command, all necessary rations, clothing, any manner of pack equipment, whatever funds I have at my disposal …”
Jim grabs his hand. “Thank you, sir. That’s splendid news!”
The phlegm-filled voice drops lower still, as if they stand here by design, the two of them alone upon the porch to share some confidence.
“No need to thank me, Reed. In times like this, what else is there for a man to do? We are not made of stone here in Yerba Buena. I have children of my own, you know. A grandchild, too, or so I’m told. Though I may be surrounded with louts and braggarts, the suffering of children is not lost on me. No. Not for a moment. I swear to you, this effort will be carried forward under the full authority of the Northern Department. In this particular matter, I have not consulted my counterpart, since he is secluded on board his ship. Do you see it there? Anchored farthest out? He claims to be indisposed and has sent word not to be disturbed until evening. Just between you and me, it’s John Barleycorn he contends with, more than any of the hazards of the corporeal world the rest of us inhabit. This time he will have to live with my decision. Yes, and the Commodore too, wherever he may be. They can both be damned if they do not support me in this, though I believe they will. I do believe they will. Any man would, in such circumstances. Good God, Reed, what an insufferable situation for us all. Step inside with me now, while I transmit these thoughts to Bartlett and the others. And please rest assured. You have my word, as a man, and as a naval officer … you have my solemn word.”
Homeward Bound
THE SKIES ABOVE the bay grow heavy, gray as lead. Hour by hour the moisture gathers, the impending rain. Another night passes. Another day.
In a silvery morning light two vessels sail out of Yerba Buena cove. Sutter’s launch, the Sacramento, is loaded with tenting and beans, thick blankets and guernsey shirts, woolen stockings, frying pans, camp kettles, coils of line. Crates of rations have been transferred from the fleet’s stores, enough to feed ten men for twenty days. Beside it a smaller schooner ferries Jim and a crew and three more volunteers who signed on once they knew the payroll was guaranteed. For a while they hold the same course, past White Island, sometimes called Alcatraz, for the pelicans that rest and hover, past Angel Island, on past the point called Tiburon, named for sharks seen cruising there.
They pass between jutting peninsulas and into the northern bulge of water called the Bay of San Pablo. The juttings seem to close behind them, as if they’re on a landlocked lake, and the hills above Yerba Buena are out of sight. Here the cargo vessel heads east, toward the delta, while Jim and his crew bear due north toward the mouth of Sonoma Creek. It’s drizzling now, a pelting drizzle that feels like sleet in the hard wind across the water.
An incoming tide helps them guide upstream, winding through marshland, miles of tule and grassy sloughs. At one edge of a puddle-dotted mudflat, gulls with folded wings hunker against the wind. On both sides of the creek, close-packed tule stalks lean like fields of wheat.
By the time they reach the little wharf, el embarcadero, they have left the wind behind. They hire two carts to haul their packs and weapons and foodstuffs, and in a spattering rain walk the last four miles to Sonoma, which sits at the base of a round and green-skinned mountain. Olive trees grow here. Grapevines hang from the balconies of well-kept adobes. There is another mission chapel, white and stark, though not as white as the heap of cattle bones and longhorn skulls in the plaza, made whiter by the downpour that now begins as the clouds release their burden, a straight-down rain that promises to fall for days.
Above the bones, the Stars and Stripes hangs damply from a high pole in the center of the plaza of the last town in Alta California. The adobe barracks were built to house the troops defending Mexico’s most northerly frontier. Now they house the U.S. garrison. A lieutenant in charge is pleased to see an order from the Commandant instructing him to turn over ten horses with their saddles and all necessary gear. He is happy to have something to do. He wants to help. He too has heard the latest news. The story of the Snowshoe Party’s fate has leapfrogged across the land, from rider to rider, from wagon to wagon, from ranch to ranch.
This lieutenant is friendly with Bill McCutcheon and believes he saw him an hour ago at a blacksmith’s shop right down the road. “He’s talked about you, Mr. Reed.”
Jim finds him shoeing a horse, his huge frame hunched above the upturned hoof. With precise taps, firm but gentle, he drives the nail. Jim waits until Mac looks up, until the face opens in a broad and eager grin.
“My goodness, Jim! Why didn’t you say something?”
“Always a pleasure to watch a talented man at work.”
“You’re about a month late, you know.”
“I got here about as quick as I could. There’s four men with me.”
“Well, I got five.”
His face has filled out. He has put on weight. His cheeks are pink, no longer from malaria but from a bursting health. Jim can see there is no fever in his body now, nor in his eyes, though the eyes are burdened in another way. No need to ask how much Mac knows, or if he knows his Amanda is among those who made it out. Nor is there any need to mention what they say she and others had to do to stay alive. All this is in his face. And yet whatever Mac knows has not defeated him. He has his health back now, his full strength. Jim can feel it in his arms when Mac takes him in a bear hug. Holding him like a long-lost brother, Jim remembers why he trusts this large and self-effacing man. Mac has a power of limb that takes on every task with relish and also with a sense of duty, a sense of honor. Since Jim left Valentine behind, honor has been on his mind, and what it means to ride with someone you can trust. The trouble with Valentine is not his posturing, it’s his lack of honor. What a relief to be in Mac’s company again. Jim realizes he would trust his life with this man.
When they set out the next morning, he feels on track at last, heading in the right direction. Jim is like the lonely sailor in a foreign port who runs into a fellow from his own hometown. With Mac at his side, some wide loop comes round upon itself. Though many show compassion for those caught in the mountains, no one truly knows what Jim left behind, no one but Mac, who also has a family waiting. It is odd. By the time they reached the Humboldt, Jim had come to loathe the wagon party and all its petty factions. Now, though he dreads what he may find, there is a sense of finally heading back to where he belongs.
MAC WAS THREE weeks at Sutter’s, sweating through the fever one last time. Since crossing to Sonoma he has not rested, working for room and board with a local rancher and roaming all the valleys up this way, looking for recruits. Just a week ago a local citizens’ committee set aside some cash to go toward wages. As Jim and Mac push north and east, the knowledge of their coming flies in front of them, like an invisible messenger.
In Napa there is a miller from Missouri who says he has dreamed of people waiting by a frozen lake. In this dream a tall woman is surrounded by her hungry children, and over them looms a perpendicular wall of rock. He has also dreamed of a man riding up to his ranch house on a mission to rescue these same stranded ones. The miller welcomes Jim with w
onder and humility and offers him provisions already set aside and waiting.
“I told my wife you’d be here,” says the miller, as if speaking to a saint. “And now you’ve come.”
They pick up four men and some spare horses and move farther east, climbing through wooded foothills into a tangle of gulches and arroyos jagged with upthrust granite slabs. The trail is slippery, as it drops into a creek canyon, with damp oak groves where moss hangs in clumps from barren limbs otherwise stripped for winter. Rocky walls hold back the rain. For a while the clouds above are white as cotton shirts, and the riders pass through a luminous, dripping fog laced with shrouds and tendrils of toplit moss.
Where the creek widens, the canyon opens out to a valley puddled everywhere, slick with grassy mudflats. They find the outpost of another rancher, who also says he has been expecting them, though he won’t say why. They spend the night and leave early with another mule, another horse. A day’s ride north, in the next valley, they find a family Jim knew on the trail last summer huddled inside a new log cabin, caulking holes where the rain trickles in, watching their newly claimed acreage turn to muck. They’ve had no company in months. Jim brings them their first news of the southern campaign. Here more horses join the party and a couple of men who would like somehow to celebrate the conquest and would rather ride for pay than sit here soaking.
A swollen creek flows past the cabin, spilling into the valley of the Sacramento, sometimes called the Great Valley, where Jim and his party again bear north and east, riding hard to make the rendezvous. Their foe now is water, falling from the sky, filling up every low spot and marshy field in the wide, wet expanse before them. No hills to climb, no rises or promontories. What had looked to him like a sculpted park when he descended out of the Sierras last October, has become an endless slough. While it drenches them from above, the water is sometimes halfway up the legs of their horses, sometimes to the bellies. They splash through bogs and mudholes, seventeen men and forty animals, and come at last to the banks of the surging confluence of all the creeks and rivers that channel water from the mountain ranges east and west to make the broad stream that divides the valley.
Snow Mountain Passage Page 27