Snowbound and Eclipse

by Richard S. Wheeler

  But he always had a courteous answer. At first it simply was too soon—too soon after Benton’s birth, too soon after Benton’s death. And so my beloved husband seemed to grow distant and not to need me or want me. But all this I set aside. It was more important to help him and the fourth expedition in any way I could.

  I was in the presence of my rivals. For I had come to understand that John enjoys the company of men, in wilderness, far more than the company of my sex, in cities. I had been slow to come to it, thinking only that his duties took him far afield and that soon he would return to the bosom of his family. But it has never happened in that fashion. No sooner is he back among us in Saint Louis or Washington City than he is restless, his gaze west, yearning for the campfires and wilds I could never share with him.

  He grew a beard after the court-martial; the clean-shaven handsome man I had married now hid behind sandy and luxuriant facial hair that made him all the more distant from me. To be sure, a beard is a utility in cold and cruel weather, but there is more to it. For the beard is yet another layer between Mr. Frémont and me; between Mr. Frémont and his company of adventurers.

  If I have been unwell, as has been my case ever since the trial, it has much to do with this deepening gulf between him and me. I sense at times I am losing him, only to enjoy other moments when his old warmth and love reappear, as if rising from some ocean bottom. I have not known how to cope with this. One moment I am desolate; the next I think I must do whatever I can to advance his life and career; and yet at other moments I feel I must pull a little free of him and return to the hearth of my own family. One thing I know: Frémont has changed, and I wonder whether I play a role in his life.

  But all these dark thoughts were only something to abolish from mind and heart and spirit as we settled in Boone Creek. I knew what I must do. I would help the colonel any way I could, and I would so master the nature of his company that I would make a good report of it to my father, and the colonel’s Saint Louis backers.

  I put Kitty to work settling us in the log cabin that the Indian agent, Major Richard Cummins, provided. She opened my trunks and set my clothing out to air, shook the brown bedclothes for bedbugs, and laid a small fire in the stone fireplace against the night’s chill. There was a marital-sized bed with an iron bedframe and a narrow bunk for her across the room. It would have been Benton’s, and Kitty would have made herself comfortable on the floor, but now it was hers.

  Major Cummins had shown us in, blandly inquired after our needs, and departed, along with the colonel, who headed at once to the encampment along with Alexis Godey. The major was no surprise to me; his gouty body and ruined face informed me at once of his prodigal appetites. His bland good cheer was the patented atmospheric of a man dependent on the government for his stipend and fearful of losing it. His lithe Delaware handmaidens bespoke his appetites, and it took no imagination to see how things stood with him. But he was our host, and I would endure, so long as his gaze did not rake me too finely.

  “Major, I would like some stationery and the means to write,” I said.

  “At your service, madam. There will be a slight charge, which I’ll enroll to the colonel’s account.”

  No sooner had Mr. Frémont settled me in the cabin than he rattled away in the wagon, and I was once again alone. This was the first moment since Benton’s passage to a different place that my husband was not with me, but I always had Kitty, whose angular dark face and shrewd gaze were ever a comfort. I never mistook her silence for a lack of awareness. She seemed almost to know my thoughts and found discreet ways to tell me so. She belonged to my father, but he had lent her to me. Neither the colonel nor I believe in involuntary servitude, but I welcomed her comfortable presence, especially when I ill cared to feed myself and my mind was adrift with thoughts of the coughing and blue infant whose lips barely caught my breast before he was taken away.

  “I suppose the colonel, he’s at Boone Creek now, just meeting the gents,” Kitty said.

  “He’s a shrewd judge of character. He may be meeting his company, but he’s doing more. He’s sorting them out,” I said.

  “Imagine he’s got some mighty fine ones,” Kitty said, gazing from the tiny glassed window across empty fields and wooded watercourses. “He’ll need himself some fine ones, I do believe.”

  “Oh, it’s not going to be much of a trip this time, Kitty. Not like crossing the Sierra Nevada.”

  Kitty responded with an odd sharpness. “Miss Jessie, this heah trip, that’s night curtains we been seeing in the sky.”

  “Night curtains?”

  “I never done seen anything so cold.”

  I didn’t encourage Kitty’s superstitions and turned instead to hanging two woolen dresses, a suit, several skirts, and some flannel nightclothes. There wasn’t an armoire, and we would make do with some pegs driven into the log wall.

  A rap at the door brought the desired stationery and ink-well and a quill, though the major had not included a blotter. It would do. I meant only to write to Lily, and a letter to a girl not yet six could not be long. I thanked the shy Indian maiden who proffered the items.

  “I’m going to write a note to Lily,” I told Kitty.

  The maid retreated into herself. This was magic she knew little about.

  “My dear Lily,” I wrote. “We miss you very much and hope Grandfather Benton is taking good care of you. I know how sad you must be at the death of your baby brother. I hope you said good-bye to him when he was laid to rest. It hurts not to have a baby brother, doesn’t it? But we must swallow our grief and face the future as best we can.

  “Soon I will be home, and then we will take a long boat trip to a warm place called California, and there we will see about what to do with the tract of land your father purchased. Maybe we will put cows or sheep on it. It is very big. Seventy square miles.

  “Meanwhile, my dear, I am daily with your father as he prepares to go to California overland. And after our sea journey we will all be together again on that distant shore. I hear it is a very pleasant place, with smiling people, and we will begin a new life there.

  “My darling Lily, we both miss you and love you and hope that you are doing well with your lessons and that your grandpa is taking good care of you.”

  I signed it, “Your loving mother.” It was the first letter I ever wrote to her, and my father would have to read it to the girl. I missed Lily terribly, but not so much as I missed Benton. I wondered fleetingly whether I was not giving Lily her due or dividing my love in a proper manner. But I can do only so much.

  I slid the letter into the envelope Major Cummins provided and addressed it to Miss Elizabeth Benton Frémont, care of The Honorable Thomas Hart Benton, Saint Louis. Then I sealed my letter with a drop of candle wax and handed it to Kitty, who held it as if it were a hot potato, her fingers barely able to clasp this mysterious thing.

  “I told Lily we would be seeing her soon,” I said to Kitty.

  Kitty nodded, slid into the late light, and returned empty-handed.

  I felt trapped that evening. The major’s ladies eventually brought us a meal of sorts—moist, rich corn bread and a stringy beef stew, but I wasn’t hungry. In truth my mind was a mile or two distant, where my bearded husband was preparing to flee from me once more. It did not feel right this time. It felt as if he was avoiding my company.

  I retired early and doused the tallow candle even before the last light had fled the western skies.

  That night I had a terrible recurring dream that felt worse than it really was. Over and over I dreamed that Frémont and I were at the moment of reunion. I awaited him with opened arms, aching for his embrace and his kiss. He was in his blue army uniform, clean-shaven, young and vibrant, and as he rushed to me I took him into my arms only to have him vanish. Simply vanish. He was gone, and I would awaken briefly and cry out. But then I slid back into the arms of Morpheus, only to experience the dream again. And again.

  I was awakened before full light, this time by Alexis G
odey. I peered at him through the cracked-open door.

  “Madam, forgive the intrusion. The colonel sent for you,” he said.

  “We haven’t done our toilet,” I replied.

  “I am at your service whenever you are ready,” he responded.

  It took a while to shake a bad night from my body. But I am young and stronger than most of my sex. We were ready in a few minutes, though not properly washed, and stepped into a lovely chill half-light. The day was no more than a promise, with a streak of blue along the eastern horizon and not a breath of air moving. We clambered into Mr. Godey’s spring wagon and were soon rolling past dewy meadows, and my heart was brimming because in a few minutes I would embrace my beloved, and he would not vanish just as my arms enfolded him.

  The colonel’s camp was bustling as we approached. I saw several fires blooming and knew them to be the separate messes. The colonel always assigned several men to each mess, the meals divided into small companies within the larger one.

  But Mr. Godey drove us past the crowd of men, straight toward a small wall tent out beyond the camp, and then drew to a halt.

  “The colonel’s put you here, madam,” Godey said.

  We stepped down upon a grassy sward and discovered a small abode with a camp cot and canvas chair.

  “He’ll send breakfast over directly, and if there’s anything you need for your comfort, let me know,” Godey said.

  “Where’s the colonel?”

  Godey smiled. “Here, there, everywhere.”

  “And will he join me for breakfast?”

  Godey paused, smiled, and nodded. It seemed no answer at all. He flapped the lines over the rumps of the mules, and the wagon jarred away.

  “Land sakes,” Kitty said, surveying our austere quarters.

  The brightening heaven did at last reveal Colonel Frémont. He was dressed in a gray flannel shirt, black woolen trousers, a blue cotton bandanna about his neck, and a flat-brimmed slouch hat.

  He would come to us eventually. I loved watching him. He was compact and lean and lithe, and moved with grace and ease, unlike so many men who seemed barely to command their own bodies. I could hear nothing, for all of this occurred some yards distant, but I could read events even at that distance. I had become an expert at extracting meaning from the way people approached one another at Washington City balls. And now I could see my husband in easy triumph, quietly turning this band of adventurers into a disciplined company that would soon plunge into wilderness, mapping, sketching, observing flora and fauna, studying gradients, finding a way over the spine of the continent.

  It was lovely seeing him so alive, not at all broken as he had been. And soon he would welcome me.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Benjamin Kern, MD

  I was expecting to like Colonel Frémont. My brother Edward had been with the colonel during his third topographical expedition, the one that resulted in the conquest of California. Indeed, Ned played no small role in that affair and commanded Sutter’s Fort for a while.

  It was Edward who lured me into this adventure with his vivid depictions of the unknown West and his absolute trust in the sublime competence of Frémont. Edward was the artist/cartographer on that trip, who along with the brilliant German topographer Charles Preuss, mapped the unknown continent.

  So enticing were his tales that I was seduced. Come along on the next adventure, Edward urged, and so I did, along with my other brother, Richard, also a fine artist. Frémont had no funds to pay us, this new expedition being privately financed, so we outfitted ourselves with all the best wares and agreed to join him at Westport. We would go along for the sheer joy of it and supply Frémont with services as well. Edward and Richard would provide valuable sketches of unknown country, of great importance for a railroad right-of-way survey; I would bring my surgical tools and skills as a healer.

  I was on hand when Frémont and his lovely young wife debarked at Westport Landing, and I watched as the pair were immediately surrounded by admiring colleagues and friends from the previous expeditions. It spoke well of Frémont that many of his old command had signed up for the new one. I noted at once that they addressed him with deference and affection and that he had a quiet and easy way with them—I’d say a natural authority, though in this case his command did not rest on rank but simply on his personal qualities.

  I scarcely had the chance to take the measure of the man at Westport but intended to when we reached Boone Creek, because we three Kern brothers were putting our lives and our safety squarely in the hands of this leader. There were certain aspects of his conduct, such as the perilous crossings of the Sierra Nevada in winter and his actions that led to a court-martial for mutiny and disobedience of General Kearny’s orders, that invited scrutiny.

  The camp itself was actually sprawled over a vast tract of lush Missouri meadow and woodland; it takes considerable pasture to nourish well over a hundred mules and a few horses. So I was curious as to how this celebrated conqueror of the Mexican province would conduct himself. I should not have worried. No sooner had he settled into a small tent at Boone Creek than he was inventorying his equipment and listening to his lieutenants about what needed doing, always in that quiet, civilized manner that seemed to be inbred in the man. Some men are born to command, and he was one.

  I knew nothing about expeditions and how they are assembled, so I had the advantage of seeing everything fresh. I gathered that the mules were a major problem; some large percentage of them were entirely green and required breaking either to saddle or packsaddle. Missouri may be a well-populated state, but it cannot on short notice supply a hundred thirty trained, docile, reliable mules, plus a few horses, especially so late in the year, after countless companies heading for Oregon or Santa Fe had depleted the market.

  The mules were largely left to Frémont’s old command, plus a few Missourians, who, I gathered, prided themselves in the art of reducing quadrupeds to usefulness. That would be no easy task for this gang of adolescent animals. This enterprise was, I fathomed, under the direction of Charles Taplin, late of the United States Army and a veteran of the California campaign. His able assistants included some Missouri frontiersmen, also veterans, such as Josiah Ferguson, Henry Wise, and Tom Breckenridge. Another pair, Billy Bacon and Ben Beadle, also lent a hand. They were getting some additional help from Elijah Andrews of Saint Louis and Raphael Proue, an older Frenchman. I learned later he was the oldest man in the company. I can scarcely tell an aged Frenchman from a young one.

  These worthies had a formidable task: half the mules in the herd had never known a saddle on their backs, and a few were little more than frisky yearlings. The muleteers proceeded, I thought, in a no-nonsense fashion, dealing with each animal according to its nature. If the animal was docile and accepted a halter and didn’t struggle against a rope, it was rubbed down, saddled with a folded blanket and a crossbuck, and allowed to absorb the novelty of weight anchored to its back. But if an animal was recalcitrant, it was swiftly thrown to earth by various devices that I marvel at, hobbled, haltered, tied to a snubbing post, and allowed to learn the authority of stout manila. What struck me most as I watched this massive recruitment of animals was that the muleteers devised a method for each mule, reading its nature in its responses to its steady subjugation. The quiet ones advanced easily; the outlaws learned about their future life the hard way. I have come to an admiration for this skill, heretofore unfamiliar to me. I saw some lessons in it for the medical profession.

  But there was plenty of other work undertaken at Boone Creek. The voyageurs were expert with all manner of equipment and were inventorying kegs and cases of picks and shovels, axes and rifles and little brown casks of gunpowder and pigs of lead, along with awls and knives and hatchets and coils of rope. All these had to be counted and divided into separate packs. Since several of those on this trip were unpaid volunteers, including the Kern brothers, we looked to our own equipage. We each had good woolen under-drawers and shirts, but we found we lacked stockings and ta
nned leather to repair or resole boots.

  It was a day or two before Colonel Frémont found time to acquaint himself with me, and this happened not at one of the messes, as I had expected, but because he sought me out. I knew exactly what to expect: an assessing gaze, absolute calm, quiet and cultivated voice, and a certain distance.

  “I’m pleased you’ll be with us, sir,” he said. “I always worry about calamities to my men. You’ll be a comfort.”

  “That’s all I’ll be, I fear. There’s not much a man can do out in the wastes. But I can set a bone or amputate. And I have a few powders. I have some cathartics that may ease some distress. Edward says that’s a complaint.”

  “They’ll take heart from it.”

  “And you, sir?”

  “I’m fit. Nothing like that ever befalls me. I thrive out there, and the farther I am from settlements, the healthier I am. I’m fated to prosper in wilderness, so I’ll have no need of your services.”

  There are men like that, and I supposed this one was one. “Will the trip be taxing for someone like me? Or my brothers?”

  “A trip is as easy or taxing as one makes it. If you learn your lessons along the way, you’ll walk comfortably into California. The secret is to economize everything.”

  “I’ll make a point of it.”

  “Very good, sir. If you have any difficulties, talk to my second, Alexis Godey.”

  With that, he drifted away. We had not gotten past the barest acquaintanceship. But of course there would be a whole trip ahead to form friendships. And yet my instinct was that this man had no intimates. Since he arrived, I had seen him address most everyone in that quiet manner but also stay distant from them. Yes, he kept space between himself and his command. His emotions were unreadable. At night he vanished into his own tent, permitting only his man Saunders to enter, and no one saw more of him until the next dawn.