This gladness did not last long.
18
That night Mrs. Keseberg’s pains began. Helping to birth a baby was nothing new to me. From the age of eight years I had helped Ma so, one after another, year after year. It had frightened me greatly, that first time, with Ma screaming and yelling, and only me to care for her; but this was very different.
Much to my surprise Mrs. Keseberg was quiet and determined in her labor. I fetched water for her to drink, and wrung out a cold cloth to put across her head, and held her hands at the end when the pains got real bad. Even then she made hardly no noise—I guess I yelled louder than she did, for she had a real hard grip on her, and my hands were bruised for days afterward. She clenched her teeth on the wooden birthing stick, and breathed as slow and deep as she could; and the baby slipped out easy enough, just before dawn.
Mr. Keseberg had taken Ada across to stay with the Eddys, and returned to take up his place on the wagon step, and had sat there all the night through. Now I called him into the wagon, and placed his new little son in his arms. He looked at his wife, and then at the baby, with such tenderness in his face that I could hardly bear to see it.
I left them alone and went to the creek, to fetch water for the coffeepot and rinse out the sheets Mrs. Keseberg had been laid on.
I was coming back, pail in hand and the wet sheets folded over my arm, when I saw Mrs. Eddy on the other side of the camp, unloading her cooking pots. She hailed me to ask after Mrs. Keseberg, and I called across that all was well, a little boy arrived safe and sound and to be called Louis after his pa.
I went to carry on my way, but then Mrs. Eddy paused, looking beyond me, as if something had caught her eye. She was joined by one of the teamsters, who called across to Mr. Breen. I crossed the clearing to them, wanting to see what they were about.
As folks began to stir, a few more came to join us. We stood in the half-light, squinting at the distant blue hills where they merged into the dark sky and, beyond them again, the jagged outline of the Sierra Nevada—the Snowy Mountain. Once we were across the mountain, once we had made our way through the pass that wound between its high peaks, we would be in California, the Land of Milk and Honey. And ever since it had come into view, we had fixed our gaze on it, night and morning.
I asked Mrs. Eddy what she had seen. She said she didn’t rightly know. Just that something looked different, but she couldn’t lay her finger on what.
The sun rose up behind us. The wisps of early morning cloud melted away. Then, like God’s finger pointing, a full ray of light reached across the sky and touched the tip of the mountain. The snow gleamed forth, as pearly pink and gold as the Gates of Heaven.
It was a beautiful thing to see; but as one, we uttered a great groan of despair.
It was vital that we got through that final pass before the winter set in. We were slow on our travels, and late on our journey, but all the same we’d thought to have plenty of time before the snows fell in November. But here it was, not even October. The snow was vastly early.
Mrs. Eddy clapped her hands across her mouth in horror. Mr. Breen dropped his head, and raised his hand, as if to shield his eyes. But the sight of the snow was altogether too much for Mrs. Graves. She let out a piercing scream that roused all the rest of the folks and brought them running from their wagons, her husband included.
For all his meek demeanor, it appeared that Mr. Graves had an iron streak somewhere in him and he had stood up to his wife and had his own way regarding the route they were to take to California, and now he came to regret it with a vengeance.
Mrs. Graves turned on him in a fury. “I only agreed this route upon your word that there was a great number of folks coming along this way and led by Mr. Hastings, who knew the cutoff right well! I never expected to find myself traveling with nothing more than a handful of wagons, and be put to such lengths as we have, to make our way along the trail!” She added, “My mother told me you were a weakling. I should have listened to her, for you always were a fool!”
As one, the other wives joined in, whipping themselves up into a fury and berating their menfolk for their stupidity.
Worn-out from fighting our way through that first set of mountains, and then again by our trek across the Salt Desert, and with our cattle faring so ill, we had long abandoned all hope of beating our fellows to the pass and arriving in California before them. Instead, we had settled for a steady, plodding pace, resting the animals as much as possible, and ourselves as well. But now the men declared that we must make great haste. We must travel fast, and stop to rest the animals as little as we could. And this meant taking everything we did not truly need from the wagons, in order to lighten their load.
The wagons were somewhere to shelter the babies from the glaring sun or the night frosts, and to rest the little ones who could scarce walk. They carried everything that was needed to start new lives in the West, clothes and furniture, tools for woodworking and pots for cooking. But most important of all, they carried everything we had of food and water. And as we relied on the wagons to carry our goods, so we relied upon the beeves to pull them.
The beeves were everything. Our very survival depended on them. We wished them stronger, for they had been short of grass and water almost from the beginning of our journey and were near done in. And we wished them faster—for with this first dreadful sight of the snow, rank black fear came snapping at our heels.
The whole camp turned into a ferment, with folks screaming and running back and forth, with as little idea of what they were doing as ants have when you pour boiling water to destroy their nests.
The Donners’ school wagon was to be left behind, with only a few things taken from it and put into their other wagons; and more and more things were discarded from their other wagons as well—trunks of clothes, and chairs, and cooking pots and knives and forks. I was horrified to see Mrs. Donner’s folder of flower drawings thrown careless on the ground. I gathered it up and ran across to Mr. Keseberg, and begged him, might I put this in our wagon?
The Kesebergs had traveled light from the start, and there was nothing to be unloaded from our wagon. All that was in there was the provisions, for the household goods had been left behind in the desert. Surely one folder of papers could weigh but very little? Mr. Keseberg said no without a second thought, and turned back to what he was doing.
I was mad as hell. To have my wish ignored so easy, especially when I thought how I had labored all night helping his wife, and had no sleep myself! It was unfair that I should have nothing, for I had brought nothing with me at all! In the past I would have shouted or stamped about in a rage. But this time I just made up my mind. When he was not looking, I crept into the wagon and hid those drawings behind the farthest sacks of food.
“When our journey is ended,” I said to myself, “I will produce them, and hand them back to Mrs. Donner with a great flourish!” And I imagined her face, and how pleased she would be.
The bolts of cloth that were to be traded with the Mexicos were left behind to rot, and most of the children’s playthings; games and dolls and the rest. I saw a child’s red wagon with yellow-painted wheels thrown to one side, and one of the little boys with his fists in his eyes, sobbing bitterly for its loss. Things that the women had packed with such care back East, thinking to see them in their proud new homes in the West, teakettles and chamber pots and brushes and brooms, were heaved careless out of the wagons by the men, and thrown higgle-piggle onto the ground.
The women screeched at every box that was heaved out. As fast as they were unloaded by the men, they were loaded back in by the women, crying and carrying on and turning their eyes at their neighbors.
Mrs. Graves shouted, “Why, if Mrs. Breen can take her copper kettle, then I shall take mine!”
And Mrs. Eddy yelled, “If Mrs. Donner can take a box of books, then I can take my mother’s tea set that was given to me on my marriage!”
These neat and proper goodwives in their aprons and bonnets had been
as unlike my mother as could be. But now, here they were, screaming at their men like slum strumpets.
* * *
An hour after the snow was first sighted, we pulled out of camp. Other than Mrs. Keseberg, asleep on a bed of blankets with the baby asleep beside her, we were all walking. Mr. Hardkoop was leading the wagon, Mr. Keseberg carrying Ada, and me, so tired I could hardly put one foot in front of the other, carrying as many provisions as I was able.
We wanted to run, run just as fast as we were able and get to safety while we could, but we had no choice other than to creep along as slow as snails, our footsteps fixed to those of the smallest child that could walk and our eyes on that tiny shining line of snow, so very far in the distance. And we asked ourselves constantly, is it greater than it was before, or less?
* * *
Mr. Hardkoop told only the tiniest of lies, but his punishment was death. At the beginning of our journey, in good weather and good health, with his hat on and the sun behind him, Mr. Hardkoop could pass for fifty. I guess he deceived Mr. Keseberg into thinking him so, when Mr. Keseberg agreed to take him along the trail in return for his help with the driving. But by the time we left the Salt Desert, Mr. Hardkoop’s eyes were sunk in, with great loose pouches of skin below. Beneath the weather-beaten color of his face and hands, his skin was kind of gray, and I’d give him a long way past sixty. How he’d expected to work his way along the trail without being found out, I don’t know. Maybe, like so many of us, he’d thought the journey to be an easy one of some leisure, to be passed sitting high on the wagon seat, holding the reins of the beeves as they plodded slowly on, and admiring the view. It came down hard on all of us, but especially Mr. Hardkoop, when it proved not to be so.
His feet had mended some after we left the desert, but even though every night he bathed them in a mix of water and vinegar, it was clear that he found it increasingly difficult to walk any distance.
One afternoon, we were walking through some arid stony land, dotted with patches of scrub grass. We were toward the head of our party, with only the Donners in front of us. The Breens were a long way back in the distance, and the rest of our companions behind them again.
Mrs. Keseberg was walking, her arm linked through that of her husband as he guided the beeves. I had Baby tied to my back with a shawl and I was leading Ada by the hand, my eyes fixed on the ground, looking out for any patch of lush grass that I could snatch up for our animals, or any little pool of good water.
Alongside me was Mr. Hardkoop. He was limping, and leaning heavily on a stick. For the last hour he had been catching his breath at every step. I stole a glance at him from time to time, seeing how the sweat rolled down his face. Twice I asked him would he like some water or to lean on me, but he said, no, no, and waved away my offer. I think he was afraid to show that he could not manage.
He walked slower and slower. Eventually he came to a halt altogether, and sank to his knees.
Mr. Keseberg came over to see what was amiss. Mr. Hardkoop let out a wrenching sob. “Ach, dear Gott! Is over for me—I cannot walk no more!” And he flung his arms around Mr. Keseberg’s legs, begging to be allowed to ride in the wagon. But Mr. Keseberg said no.
He didn’t do it easy, and tears stood in his eyes, but he held firm to his resolve. “We cannot take you in the wagon. Our beeves are already close to finished, and if I burden the poor animals more it will be the death of them. Look, even my wife is walking and Baby is being carried in the full sun, when he should be resting in the shade!
“We are at the front of the party. There are others behind us with better animals. One of them will allow you to ride along of them for a while, or one of the single men riding at the rear will take you up on his horse.”
Mr. Hardkoop was never much of a talker, and apart from a few words here and there we had little conversation. Mrs. Keseberg disliked him, and made little secret of the fact. But he was kind to me. Ada loved him, and he cared for her as if she was his own little granddaughter. And whether we talked or not, or got on together or not, we were bound together on our journey, something like a little family; and Mr. Keseberg’s decision to leave him was not as heartless as might be thought.
It happened often. Those in one company, unable to continue with their journey, might rest for a while, and move on again with the next company along. Individuals at the front of a train of several hundred wagons, too weary to travel onward, might wait a day or two, and then join with the wagons at the rear.
The same had happened to us already. At the start of our journey the Donners had taken up Mr. Halloran. Too ill to travel on with his own companions, he had been left by the side of the trail to regain his strength, in the assurance that the companionship of the wagon train would mean that someone would bring him along later. So it had proved. And it would be the same now, or so Mr. Keseberg thought.
Our wagon passed along, leaving Mr. Hardkoop sitting forlorn behind us at the wayside. When we had gone on some, I turned back to look. I saw him holding up his hands to Mr. Breen, leading his horse, which had three of his smaller children seated up on it. Mr. Breen refused him. And then I could see Mr. Hardkoop no more.
It was a hard thing when all came in that night and we discovered that not one of our companions had taken pity on the poor old man. He had been left behind to die, alone and afraid, at the side of the road. Every person in our party had refused him aid.
To my mind, his fate was determined by the very last person in our train, who passed him by and left him there, the right opposite of the Good Samaritan. But it was Mr. Keseberg who was taken to be no more than a murderer, for leaving him so.
19
In the first week of October we finally left the so-called shortcut, which should have saved us so much time, but had cost us so much more, and came round the end of the Ruby Mountains to join the Mary River. We would have landed here weeks before, if we had stayed with our original company.
This wide, shallow river ran through a canyon that spread out with rich pasture to each side; and the canyon cliffs rose high above us, so that much of the time we traveled in the welcome coolness of their shadow. We rejoiced, thinking our fortunes had turned at last, and now we could make good time. But again, as in so many things that befell us along our path, we were too happy, too soon.
After a few days of passing along the Mary River, the river narrowed and deepened and began to run faster and lower down in its banks, and the high sides of the canyon pressed in, closer and closer, until the day came when the trail ran out altogether. We had to leave the canyon and head up into the hills to carry on our way, and this meant double-teaming the wagons up a steep sandy hill at a place called Pauta Pass. The Donners went first and got their wagons safely up, but then they were away, leaving the rest of us to manage as best we could.
On the trail there was a kind of unspoken rule about moving along in the train, and Mr. Stanton had explained it to me.
When we left Missouri and our first great wagon train split into smaller companies, ours under the captainship of Colonel Russell, another was led by a Mr. Boggs. Mr. Stanton and his friends, the McCutcheons, had started their journey as part of this company.
One evening, the Boggs company had made camp close by the Sweetwater River and thought to stay for a day or two and let the animals rest up awhile. Later that same evening another company showed up, and the two parties joined together and spent a merry night together. But in the morning when the Boggs folks woke, they were furious to find that their companions had departed camp before dawn, leaving them well behind.
I couldn’t see why that would lead to bad feeling, but Mr. Stanton explained that the second company had a great head of cattle traveling with them. It was feared that these cattle would take all the good grazing ahead, leaving none for the Boggs company’s animals.
I thought it a stupid thing to get upset about. Weren’t the Boggs’s cows and beeves already eating themselves silly where they were camped? And how could the Boggs folks be anno
yed at a company that chose to get up early and head out, when they’d already elected to stay where they were and rest a few days?
I thought it just typical of men to bluster about feeling themselves hard-done-by. It was the self-same thing that had led us to leave our companions; the menfolk having the mean spirit of a race upon them and thinking to get one over on the rest of the company.
Getting up that hill at Pauta Pass brought all of that mean spirit right to the fore, and yet again Mr. Reed’s great opinion of himself caused trouble.
The suspicions surrounding Mr. Reed’s leadership of us through the Wasatch Mountains had never completely died away. The more we traveled onward, the less folks had turned to Mr. Reed for guidance. Mr. Reed felt it keenly that somehow Mr. George Donner had come to be consulted on each issue, and his words to carry weight in a way that Mr. Reed’s did not.
That vague sense of annoyance against Mr. Reed had gone underground, and surfaced again as ill-humored muttering that everyone had to work twice as hard as needs be to clear the trail wide enough for the Reeds’ lumbering great cart. Now the Reeds’ wagon was away at the rear of the party, needing three teams of beeves to get it up the hill.
No one stepped forward to offer him any help. He was reduced to going from one person to another to ask for assistance and it set him stewing, to be beholden to others. Mrs. Reed as well; she was casting dark looks at all and making comment—in a loud voice, and to no one in particular—about selfishness and ingratitude. And now Mr. Reed took it as an insult to his face that the Donners had gone up the hill before him.
He got more heated still that the Graveses should think to get one over on him by going next, but what got him boiling was that the Graveses should take back the animals they had lent him, to get them up the hill, and order Mr. Reed’s teamster, Milt Elliott, to help.
When Mr. Graves finally gave ho-hup! to his team and the beeves leaned into the shafts to pull, Mr. Reed lost his temper. I did not see it, but there was shouting and yelling and then Mrs. Reed let out a great scream. We all left what we were about and run to see what had happened.
When Winter Comes Page 12