Snowbound and Eclipse

by Richard S. Wheeler

  He struck me as a man apart. That was just as true for his old comrades of the California Battalion as it was for newcomers like me. I found myself wondering if the man had ever had friends, men who could be called intimates or confidants, because I saw no sign of it nor did it seem obvious from my cursory examination of his character. In time I rebuked myself for invading his privacy. Whether he had friends or none was not my business. But the puzzle would not leave my mind, and the more I observed Frémont, the more curious I was about him.

  I wondered what hold he had on these men. He obviously had some sort of grip on them, and it was plain that his veterans looked up to him. Was it the quietness of his voice? His civility? Was it something assumed? He expected full obedience to his wishes and received it without cavil. He used no profane language, unlike some of his veterans and his Creoles, who had their own French scatology. That was part of it. He was a gentleman from a powerful American family, and the company knew it. I thought it must be caste. He somehow let them know he belonged to a higher order.

  I felt a little useless there. Save for the Kerns, every man had been put to work. Even the California Indian boys, Manuel and Joaquin, who were being returned to their people by Frémont, were assigned tasks such as leading the haltered mules or building fires for the morning and evening messes or scrubbing kettles. I noted with approval that Frémont’s freed black servant, Jackson Saunders, was treated exactly the same as the rest, except that Saunders had rather less to do and spent time attending to the colonel’s wardrobe.

  The camp had the quality of a military bivouac, but there was that notable exception of Mrs. Frémont, sitting quietly before her tent hour after hour, absorbing the autumnal sunlight. The colonel had told us all that she had suffered a great loss en route here and was in fragile health. But he added that she would welcome us and was eager to acquaint herself with every member of the expedition. That seemed to be the case. Young as she was, Mrs. Frémont rarely drifted from her tent and was content to receive members of the expedition, one by one. And at the end of each day, Alexis Godey would harness the mules and take Mrs. Frémont back to her log quarters at Major Cummins’s agency. But the Pathfinder never accompanied her. I found myself curious about their relationship and rebuked myself for it.

  That seemed excuse enough, and I drifted to her each midday, eager to acquaint myself with the wife of the Pathfinder and the daughter of the most powerful senator in Washington. I was never disappointed. She mastered my name and vocation instantly and always invited me to join her for tea kept hot on a charcoal brazier. Even without being asked, her maidservant, Kitty, would pour a steaming cup of oolong and present it to me.

  “Well, Mrs. Frémont, it appears we’ll be on our way in a day or two. And you’ll be heading back to Saint Louis?” I asked.

  She smiled faintly. “Briefly. I’ll take my daughter, Lily, with me on a riverboat to New Orleans, and then to Panama, across the isthmus, and meet the California steamer on the Pacific side. The colonel and I will meet in Yerba Buena, they call it San Francisco now, in the spring.”

  “That’s a perilous trip, madam. The jungle fevers …”

  “I have never fled from peril and don’t intend to start, Doctor.”

  “Chagres is famous for them. You’ll want to move overland as fast as you can. Avoid the swampy places.”

  “The colonel and I are destined, Doctor. Absolutely destined to meet as planned in that distant land.”

  “You see little of him here,” I said.

  For an instant her face clouded, but it took a sharp eye to notice. Which I have. I am insatiably curious about people, and especially these people. “It is my daily pleasure to observe him organizing this enterprise,” she said primly. “I marvel at it. How rare is this chance? What woman in similar circumstances may observe a commander and his men? I count myself lucky.”

  “I’m glad he invited you to come here,” I said.

  “I invited myself. He was all for saying good-bye in Saint Louis and said my health wouldn’t permit something as strenuous as this. I think perhaps he now feels a woman can travel across the isthmus without difficulty.” She smiled wryly.

  “What awaits you on the Pacific shore?”

  “It’s like Italy but scarcely settled, he tells me. Have you never yearned to see another world, Doctor?”

  “Many times. That’s why I’m here. Curiosity is my vice. What’s it like to walk across a continent? What’s between here and there? What awaits me on the coast? Who on earth would join an expedition like this? Are we all madmen?”

  “Then you know the joy of a challenge. We’ll be together in California, and we’ll head for his estate. He’s never seen it. It’s called Las Mariposas, The Butterflies. What a lovely name! The consul, Larkin, purchased it, and it wasn’t what the colonel wanted but we’re stuck with it. It’s mostly meadows or foothill forest land, you know. It’ll pasture thousands of cattle or sheep. So, we’re in the livestock business, it seems. We’ll know more when we see it. I’m rather taken with the idea. Perhaps my destiny is milkmaid or goatherd.”

  “You preferred not to go overland?”

  “The colonel wouldn’t think of it, sir. He’s fully occupied with finding a rail route, and a woman would be in his way.”

  “Did he fear for your safety?”

  “The overland journey will be safer than passage through the jungles of Panama, sir. No, safety was not among his considerations. He did feel it would be inconvenient to be taking a wife and daughter with him.” She smiled suddenly. “He says I’d put most of his men to shame.”

  I wanted to probe further but dared not. For a girl of twenty-four, she was as seasoned and shrewd as someone much older. She had been born into a powerful political family, had entertained presidents and secretaries and all sorts of dignitaries, and she would know instantly if my gentle probing transgressed the bounds of decorum. A pity. I really wanted to find out what sort of man Frémont was, and the truth was that I hadn’t the faintest idea. And I suspected that she didn’t have the faintest idea, either. I had gotten one thing out of it: he believed he lived under some sort of star and that his fate was not in his hands.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Captain Andrew Cathcart

  I was heading for Cathay, actually, and thought to shoot a few buffalo en route. When I heard about Frémont’s expedition I signed on, thinking to have a sporting holiday. I’d been in the Eleventh Prince Albert Hussars for a decade and grew bloody weary of it, so I sold my commission. I prefer to rove. It’s a habit of the Scots.

  This chap Frémont, when I looked him over, seemed a thoroughly competent officer who had rambled all over the American West and pocketed California for the Yanks. Still, there were the shadows cast by the man. What sort of officer was it who could get himself in trouble on charges of mutiny, insubordination, and conduct prejudicial to military discipline? The fellow would take some observing, he would.

  What I found, when I first met the man in Saint Louis, was a perfectly civilized fellow, mild of manner, who obviously didn’t care one way or another whether I joined his party. I saw no rebel in him. Neither was he rigid. In fact, I saw not much of anything when I was sizing him up. It was as if he lived on some distant shore. But I saw nothing to alarm me, either. He had manners, an odd gentleness, and seemed quite at peace. I decided to ramble with the fellow and told him I’d join him at Westport, which I did. The arrangement suited me: I had made no commitment, and neither had he. If I didn’t like the way he was commanding his men, I could walk away.

  He told me he was going to hunt for a railway route to the coast along the 38th parallel, something his father-in-law ached to see and that some Saint Louis businessmen thought might bring prosperity to that frontier city. That parallel should take a traveler straight to the bay of San Francisco, which those visionaries saw as the Pacific portal of the American republic, but there were a few bumps along the way, according to the scanty charts available, mostly from Mexican sources. He s
aid he knew of a way and was destined to tie the republic together.

  I outfitted myself with the best that pound and shilling could buy, because Frémont would not do it. This was a private survey, he had informed me. I didn’t mind. I prefer my own kit and gear. I have lived in the field and was not afraid of cold and rain, wind and sun, and misery. Those are a soldier’s lot. When we all were settled at Boone Creek I saw no evidence of luxury in Frémont. His gear was as simple as the rest, though he did prize some scientific instruments, half of which I could not fathom. He had the usual sextants and magnetic compasses and thermometers. He also had two chronographs that should give him good longitude readings from the Greenwich Meridian. He was equipped to survey, with a theodolite, quadrant, transit, and Gunter’s chain. He had altimeters and barometers. He also had a morocco-leather portfolio of charts and tables. I scarcely grasped the half of what he was carting west, but I knew it would burden a dozen mules. His topographer, Charles Preuss, would be well equipped to map the rail route and all the surrounding country. If Preuss and Frémont didn’t know where they were at all times, no one would.

  I’ve known officers to bivouac with wall tents, Brussels carpets, enough ardent spirits to stock a pub, wagons to haul all their truck, camp cots, canvas chairs, and a staff of orderlies and chefs. Frémont showed none of that, and I gave him credit for it. He did have a considerable wardrobe. Some of it was simply his blue uniforms stripped of the marks of rank. He was a button-up man. If he wore a coat, he buttoned it right to the chin. If he wore a flannel shirt, it was buttoned to the neck.

  Of course there was the oddity of Frémont’s young wife, receiving the men as if she were the Queen herself. She had dark circles under her eyes, and I learned that on board the Martha she had lost an infant son. I pitied her but also admired her bravery. She put on a good front before all of us, no matter how she hurt within. Frémont rarely visited her; he seemed much more absorbed with sorting out the gear and putting his mules into service. But I was glad to see the men cosset her; she certainly wasn’t getting much attention from her lord and master.

  That mule operation I watched closely, drawing from my own years as a cavalry officer. We didn’t much truck with mules in Great Britain and took far more time perfecting our mounts, employing a patience acquired over generations. The Yanks’ methods were rough but effective, and in a matter of days the green stock had become serviceable and would probably settle into usefulness on the trail. I did see them accidentally lame a mule they had thrown to the earth, so their rough treatment was not without its toll. And I had the sense that some of those mules would prove to be outlaws. Missourians are mean by nature and that only breeds mean livestock.

  I volunteered to help, being a cavalryman, but was turned down. It soon became plain that Frémont’s old hands, veterans of his previous trips, were a circle unto themselves, and we newcomers were regarded as baggage. That was particularly evident at the messes. His veterans formed their own messes; the rest of us found ourselves thrown together. I could understand it. The veterans knew one another’s abilities and limits; the rest of us were jokers in the deck. One thing I did learn, though: those veterans could cook. Any one of them could produce an adequate meal, without scorching the stew or spilling the oatmeal or burning the side pork. I wished we had a few blokes with such skills in the hussars.

  One of Frémont’s regular chaps, a Mexican War veteran named Lorenzo Vincenthaler, seemed particularly eager to isolate the rest of us, which worried me because he was one of Frémont’s obvious favorites.

  There were other peculiarities about this company that soon emerged as we prepared to leave. We had an array of specialists of one sort or another with us, and I was hard put to connect this with the practical business of locating a railroad route to the Pacific. Take the German, Frederick Creutzfeldt, for example. He was a paid botanist. Why a financially strapped, commercially funded expedition whose sole purpose was to establish a rail route needed a paid botanist was something that kept tickling my curiosity. Who hired him? Was it Benton, maybe? And for what purpose? Was he looking for coal, or for plants that might have crop value? Assessing timber resources? The more I studied on it, the more likely it seemed to me that this private expedition was to be staffed as closely to the military ones as possible. Here were a renowned topographer, Preuss; an established cartographer and artist, Edward Kern; Creutzfeldt, a botanist; Rohrer, a millwright; and Stepperfeldt, a gunsmith. The Pathfinder intended to explore, and railroad building was merely the scaffold for his larger ambitions. I supposed I’d learn much more on the trail, when men thrown together in wilderness usually discern the truths and realities that are masked in more civilized places.

  Meanwhile, I did not at all mind being thrown in with the newcomers. One of our chaps came from Mississippi and had the impossible name of Micajah McGehee. Now how do you pronounce that mouthful? I reduced him to Micah, and he cheerfully accepted it as long as he could call me Cap. He was along entirely for the adventure, as fiddle-footed as I am. So our mess was almost entirely adventurers, save only for Edward Kern, a Frémont veteran. I had the hunch that it was going to be better this way than if we had been roped into the other messes. The Creoles had their own mess, which included the black servants. I took that as a sign of social status here in the States.

  By some mysterious process, the company completed its preparations, and on the eve of October 19, 1848, the Pathfinder announced that we would break camp in the morning and travel only a few miles, the purpose being to test our mules and packs and deal with any difficulties. I had supposed we would be at Boone Creek another week or so and was delighted at the prospect of leaving. As usual, Godey drove Mrs. Frémont back to the Delaware agency that evening, and I wondered whether we would be seeing Mrs. Frémont again, at least until we should meet on the Pacific shore. If the colonel and his lady said any private good-byes, these were invisible to the rest of us. He seemed concerned, instead, with assigning saddle mules to each member of his company, trying to gauge which mule best suited which rider.

  As Godey drove Mrs. Frémont away, she turned to look at us one last time, her expression obscured by her bonnet. But I knew exactly what passed across her face; it was an inexpressible yearning and a grim determination not to show the slightest feeling. I felt an odd pity. We were her rivals. As for the Pathfinder, he seemed not to notice. And in a few moments, Godey’s wagon and its cargo disappeared around a tree-carpeted slope, and I never saw Jessie Benton Frémont again.

  I felt just then an acute homesickness. I have felt it often, but those smudges under her eyes set it off in me, a longing for Ayrshire, from whence I came, that I could scarcely endure. For it was there, facing the western sea, that I grew to manhood, and it was the sea that lured me ever westward and was still taking me away from my people. I don’t know what makes me roam, what it was about the western seas and the mysteries beyond them that lured me away from my hearth; from the kind and sometimes reproachful eyes of my mother; from the settled world of Ayr, its hardy cattle, its sere slopes and mild winters so gloomy at the time of the solstice that a cheery fire lighting our parlor seemed like heaven. Why had Jessie Benton’s departure plunged me into that secret melancholia that I have struggled so long to ignore?

  I was suddenly angry at this man Frémont.

  We raised camp rather late that morning of the twentieth, coping with the usual difficulties. Some of the greener mules had other notions than to haul our goods. Some of the company proved to be inept at saddling. Others discovered they had too many goods and too little space in panniers and packs. One mule bit a man’s finger, and Ben Kern applied a plaster.

  We arose before dawn, actually, and completed our morning mess in darkness with a steady breeze chilling us. A simple meal of gruel sufficed, and we soon had our kettles and tin bowls packed away. Frémont wandered freely, at ease, and I never heard a command issue from his lips. His veterans seemed to anticipate what he wanted. An occasional question was all it took for hi
m to make his will known. At least among his old companions of the wilds there was great jubilation, as if this were the beginning of something sweet, a nectar that befell only the most privileged of mortals. I marveled at this.

  The break-in trip was not without its mishaps. A girth strap loosened, sending a pack of macaroni and sugar and coffee southward until it hung beneath the quivering beast’s legs. But these things were swiftly remedied, and no harm was done. Here on the backs of a hundred-odd mules was grain for the stock, tents, tools, flour for ourselves, rubberized sheets for wet ground, and a myriad of other items too numerous to detail. All those mules were transporting a miniature city as well as thirty-three men heading west into the unknown to look for a place where shining rails might span the midcontinent.

  I found mule transportation much to my liking. A mule’s gait is dainty compared with the gait of a horse and gives the rider the impression of floating. It was in perfect ease that I spent my hours in the saddle. Mules can be uncommonly stubborn, but mine seemed determined to keep up with the rest, and I had no need to deal with insubordination. I thought that maybe the Queen’s hussars ought to weigh the benefits of mule travel.

  The five miles proceeded peaceably enough through grassy country under a variable Wedgwood sky, and Frémont called a halt for the day in ample time to inspect the mules for sores on their withers and for the evidences of all sorts of troubles. It had been an easy day’s travel, wisely shortened to permit adjustments to the tack and equipment and to break in the mules for what would be a long haul. The hunters, Godey especially, had proceeded ahead of us and left two does and a buck on our path, ensuring us a fine venison dinner that eve. These bloody carcasses had been loaded onto skittish mules, which alarmed them, but eventually our parade resumed.