He was no fool after all. I was taking my commissary with me, on the hoof. A hundred thirty mules could feed thirty-three men for whatever time it took to cross those mountains. Mule rawhide could build snowshoes, keep feet shod, yield caps and vests and pantaloons. These ruffians knew all that but had talked themselves into huddling around the fireplace in a comfortable post. I wouldn’t have hired a one of them.
I thought that Bent’s engaged men were a debauched lot, especially Wootton. The rest had the good sense to remain silent so as to preserve my respect for them. As for Fitzpatrick, I wondered where the man’s reputation had come from. He was just another frontier soak. The red veins in his nose told me all that I needed to know. None of them had the vision to see what I was about. Carson would have. He thinks highly of me and has no envy in him. I thought for a moment I should send for him. He was in Taos, not far away, and I could have summoned him and he would have come at once. But Carson knew less about the barriers ahead than Wootton did.
I headed back to camp alone, crossing at a ford just below the fort they showed me. It was a taut moment, pushing my roan into inky water that threatened to sweep him, and me, downstream, but soon he clambered up a gravel beach, and I rode toward the distant orange dots of my camp with the bitter wind at my back.
Godey was waiting up for me; the rest had built barriers against the wind and settled as low to the frozen ground as they could get.
“Any news?”
“The usual. Don’t go. Too much snow. Bad winter. No place for a railroad.”
“It’s all true,” Godey said, and laughed.
“I agree with them. It’s no place for a railroad,” I said.
“Then, why?” Godey asked.
“To prove that we did it,” I replied. “If I’m going to say no, don’t go that way, I’ve got to show them why. I’ve got to walk the ground. So we’re going.”
“You are very peculiar,” he said. “A human locomotive.”
“Maybe it’s not in my hands,” I said.
Godey stared at me and smiled slowly.
I traded stock the next day. The new mules were tough but not in good flesh as promised. They proved to be small and wiry and they looked useful, no matter that they were skinny. As for the horses, I didn’t want them in the mountains where they would spook at any cliff and bolt at the sound of a hawk. I don’t have much use for horses in any country higher than molehills. We left Bent’s Fort on a raw morning, straight into a mean wind. Wootton came along, driving a freight wagon drawn by four mules. The man meant to do some hide business for Bent, one way or the other. I intended to ask him a few things en route. I didn’t even know where he hailed from or whether he had a wife and family. It seemed unlikely.
That was an easy leg of the trip despite icy winds that never quit, day or night. We were following the Arkansas River, where there was ample wood and shelter. My efforts to find out more about Wootton came to naught. Instead, I was the one being interviewed.
“What’s the good of this trip? You’ll be chest deep in snow. How do you find a roadbed for the railroad under twenty feet of white stuff, tell me that, eh?”
“I leave that to engineers,” I said.
“Even if you get through, and I’m not saying you can, mind you, you won’t have a railroad line. What can you tell anyone about a canyon whose floor you never see because you’re walking on twenty feet of snow?”
“I agree, Mister Wootton.”
“Then why? The senator, is that it?”
“That, sir, is neither here nor there. I’ll engage you if you know a way; if not, it’s time to dissolve this arrangement.”
We sparred like that off and on all the way to Mormon Town, as they were calling the place. Some Mormons were farming it. Some old mountaineers had settled there, along with their Mexican concubines, and were living far beyond the reach of law. Wootton ended up learning more about me than I about him, which nearly decided me to look for someone else.
In the final stretch, as the Rocky Mountains loomed whitely before us, I settled again beside Wootton. We needed to come to an agreement.
“You see that snow?” he asked, pointing upward. “You see it’s smooth and white and nothing is sticking out of it? No rocks, no trees, just white? That’s the sign of a lot of snow. Lighter snow, there’s gray and blue spots all through. It’s sort of speckled. But not up there. See how the wind’s whipping snow off those peaks—a regular plume, like a cloud? That tells me the snow is cold and powdery and not melted in.”
“I’ve worked through worse,” I said.
“So I’ve heard,” he said, eyeing me.
“What would change your mind?” he said.
“You mean, at what point would I quit? I can’t answer that because I have no intention of quitting.”
“What if it becomes plain that no railroad can go through, eh?”
“I’m on my way to California, sir,” I replied.
“That’s a dandy place,” he said. “If you can get there.”
We reached the pueblo midday. There wasn’t much by way of lodging for thirty-three men, but we finally sheltered in an adobe house with a good hearth, and my men could enjoy four walls, a roof, and some warmth. Pueblo wasn’t what anyone could call a town, not even a village. It was just a disorderly patch of adobe houses with snow-covered squash gardens, full of heaven-knows-what sort of people, all male except for a few leathery ladies of Old Mexico. But people crowded around, unbidden, eyeing us, our string of burdened mules, and our armaments, which largely consisted of Hawken’s mountain rifles. The arrival of thirty-three travelers and a hundred-thirty-odd burdened mules was the social event of the season. The only question was whether they would dance with us or massacre us.
These poured in until the house could hold no more. They were rough cobs, old mountaineers with Hispanic wives and a few Mormons who had settled only recently, many of them dressed in farm dungarees.
When they scouted out my intentions, it didn’t take them long to come to a unanimous conclusion, and to advise me of it. “Worst winter we’ve ever seen, and it’s a death trap. You go on up there, and we’ll find your frozen carcasses in the spring, what’s left after the wolves have done you.”
That was the consensus, as expressed by an old trapper named Ephraim.
Wootton looked me over and announced his pleasure: “I can see what they see, and what I see is snow and cold. I’m not going to leave my bones up there, and I hope you don’t either, Colonel. Count me out. A man needs to take heed of the way things are.”
I had expected as much and nodded. “You know of anyone who’s a competent guide here? I’m going ahead, and I’ll hire the right man.”
“There’s one, and only one. His name is Williams. Old Bill Williams. He’s an odd duck, living alone too much, but he knows that country,” Wootton said.
That was bad news. I knew the man all too well.
CHAPTER TEN
John Charles Frémont
I could scarcely imagine a worse choice for a guide. I knew the man. Old Bill Williams had signed up for my third expedition, lasted two months, and quit. I had employed him for a dollar a day, and he seemed glad enough to get it. I supposed I might employ him now for the same amount, and he still would be glad enough to get it, being an improvident sort who was always out of pocket.
Old Bill Williams was memorable. He was a tall beanpole, well over six feet, all whipcord and without an ounce of fat. He had lived a lifetime out of doors and was weathered to the hue of an old saddle. His private toilet was nonexistent, and he apparently wore whatever came to hand until it fell off. He was bent at the waist so that his nose preceded his toes. He walked with an odd wobble, almost spastic, and shot his rifle in the same manner, but with deadly effect. The old border man, who was probably in his sixties, was no one’s fool when it came to surviving in wilderness.
“Where do I find him?” I asked Wootton.
“He’s around here somewhere.”
I ca
sed the crowded adobe house, examining a wild collection of mountaineers and their concubines, but I did not see him.
“He’s not a man to get into a crowd,” one of these people said. “Try over at the Paseo, yonder.”
The Paseo was the closest thing the pueblo had to a store. There was a plank bar of sorts, a few shelves of goods, and plenty of benches. Sure enough, Old Bill was perched on a log stool all alone and not wanting company, his face caught in shadow. A dying fire at the hearth supplied the only light. I waved away the others, wanting to talk to the old mountaineer myself, without the crowd.
“Colonel Frémont here,” I said, extending a hand, which he did not accept. He was sipping something amber from a tin cup he held in hand. I took it to be aguardiente, Taos Lightning, which had a way of scouring a man’s pipes.
“Do you think I don’t know?” he replied. “I was doing my best to be scarce.”
“I’m not interested in the past,” I said, although I had found his previous conduct instructive. “I’ll get right to it. I’m taking a company to California and need a guide. We’re going to cross right about here, thirty-eighth parallel.”
“No, no you’s not gonna do that,” he said, and sipped at whatever was in his tin cup. “You’re gonna go around, like any other sensible man. Thirty-eight parallels, what is it? Why not forty parallels, or twenty-three? Is thirty-eight your age, maybe? I don’t care if it’s parallels or rectangles or triangles, you ain’t going straight over.”
“Up and over. As close to this latitude as I can. I’m looking for a rail route.” The man seemed abysmally ignorant. “Parallels from the equator. Invisible lines marking distances from the center of the earth. It’s round, you know.” I waited to see whether he knew that. Men of his station couldn’t imagine the earth as a globe.
“They’s no such thing as a straight line,” he said. “God slides a curve into everything.”
“You have some theology?”
“I’m a minister. I’ve got the Good Book measured and weighed and sawed into parts, ready for a sermon or a funeral.”
I scarcely knew how to deal with this vagabond. “You know this country, and I need someone who’ll show us the right pass.”
“I know every square foot, but I’m not agoin’ so you better think of someone else.”
“We’ve a large company; we’re well equipped.”
“Those are big mountains and I never seen such snow. And what sense is it? That’s no place for a railroad. You go around. Me, I’d take her south of the Sangre de Cristos. You can cut through there, not much trouble.”
“Up and over, without you if I must. But that’s where I’m going.”
That was bravado, but I intended to do it. If I could not find a guide, I would proceed without one. It wasn’t so hard, really. There were some ancient Mexican charts to guide me. Follow the Rio del Norte north until I found the Saguache River, and go up it and over Cochetopa Pass. If I missed the right creek, I’d try the next one.
“My bones hurt just thinking on it,” he said. “I’m too tired.”
“I need you. A dollar a day would fatten your purse.”
“What good would that do? All I’d do is leave my frozen carcass up there.”
“A dollar a day and a ten-dollar bonus when we got past the Rocky Mountains.”
He stared morosely into his cup.
“You’re the devil is what,” he said. “I’m glad I didn’t go get myself froze and shot on your last one.”
“It’s snowy, sure. But with good mules and good men beating a trail, we’ll be over the top in a week or two.”
He grinned malevolently. “You wouldn’t know that pass from a piss ant’s jaw.”
“That’s right, but we’ll find a way no matter what, and you can earn some good money or not.”
He grinned, wiped his mouth, and said nothing. I am a close observer of men, and I knew he would soon come around. Even now, he was looking past me and at the opened door, where Alexis Godey and several others waited.
“Not me, no way, you don’t even know what cold is. How are you going to feed all them mules up there? You think there’s one stick of grass? You think there’s one cottonwood they can chew on? It’s under fifty feet of snow.”
“We’ll be looking for grain here.”
Williams sipped, coughed, and cackled.
“Go on, get away,” he said. “I’m warm and I’m not about to freeze my butt, not for some … old railroad.”
He turned his back to me, his dismissal.
I fired my parting shot. “We’re going to bed down here. We’ll raise camp here before sunup. You’ll join us or not. Try God. He’ll tell you to join up.”
He presented me with his full back, which wasn’t much wider than a fence post.
I signaled I was done, and the rest flooded in. If they could buy some brandy here, they would. They wouldn’t be seeing spirits for a long time.
Godey pulled me aside. “Did you hire him?”
“He’ll come around. I told him we’re leaving before dawn, with or without him.”
“He didn’t like the snow, oui?”
“He says grass will be fifty feet under it.”
Godey laughed, but uneasily. “He’s right, Colonel. You’ll find out soon enough. The trick is to turn around and get out when the moment comes.”
I didn’t reply.
I had things to do. I wanted fodder of any sort. Grain, corn, whatever I could get for my mules. If I couldn’t get Old Williams, then I wanted Wootton to draw me some charts and tell me where to turn off. I was headed for Cochetopa Pass, but I’d heard that there was another pass, slightly higher but with better railroad grades, called Leroux Pass—or Williams Pass. Maybe Wootton could pencil it in for me.
The whole mob was rushing in now, abandoning the little adobe I’d rented for the night to house us. An old gaptoothed mountaineer was pouring from a small cask behind his plank counter and raking in whatever he could. I watched coin, bills, a knife, a blanket, and a box of precast bullets cross the counter. I wanted to stop this but thought better of it. Let them enjoy a sip. It would put them in good spirits for the struggles ahead. They lit up pipes, and soon a blue haze hung over the place, disturbed by gusts of icy air pumping in from the open door.
I made inquiry about fodder and discovered that the denizens of this pueblo were an improvident and lazy lot, barely staying alive with household gardens and constant hunting. It was probably too much to ask of an old mountaineer to work his land and make it bear fruit. And even at that, it was the Mexicans who were providing for themselves. I retreated into the icy night to peruse the area, letting a quarter moon be my lantern. But a considerable walk on snowy ground revealed little agriculture here. I spotted no corncribs, but I did see some haystacks. Hay would be of little service to me.
I would need to do what I did in the Sierra Nevada: find open southern slopes to graze the mules. These slopes caught the sun, melted off the snow, and exposed grass. If the tactic worked in the Sierra Nevada, so would it work in the southern Rockies. By the end of my foray, I noted that my company had already retired to their bedrolls, with which they filled the little adobe house. A rank odor marked their presence. I chose to bed at the store, where I was welcomed cordially.
“Would you know of any place we can obtain feed for my mules?” I asked the keep, a grizzled veteran named Whipple.
“You shouldn’t be crossing them hills without it,” he replied. “They’ve got some corn in cribs up to Hardscrabble.”
That was promising.
I awakened my company well before dawn that November day, and they lazily made themselves some corn gruel in a fireplace pot and packed their blankets. It was another blustery day, the sort that would pump cold down a collar or up a sleeve or up a pant leg no matter what. I didn’t mind. I had discovered that I am made of tougher stuff than most men, an accident of birth.
Williams was nowhere to be found, and I imagined we would vault the Rockies withou
t a guide. I had maps and counsel enough. I had the old Mexican charts. Carson knew the country and had shared all he knew with me. This was the plan he proposed: find the Saguache River, a tributary of the Rio del Norte, head up it to Cochetopa Pass, and descend into the Colorado River drainage. I didn’t need a guide for that. Godey hastened my men through their morning rituals and into the icy predawn darkness. There were, after a few trades, one hundred thirty sound and healthy mules to load.
We raised camp about nine, and only then did Williams show up.
“You can’t top those peaks without a guide,” he said.
I was in no mood to haggle and ignored him. He peered at me slack-jawed. I steered clear, if only to avoid getting louses.
“Day wage. You pay me every night,” he said, “and you got a guide.”
“So you can run when the going is tough?”
“You put your digit right on her. You is going to leave your bones up there, frozen up solid until it all melts come June, and I’m not gonna leave mine there. One dollar each night.”
I shook my head. No deal.
“Why’re you going up there now? It’s a head scratcher,” he said.
“We will do what no one else has ever dared to do.”
He cocked his head. “That all, is it?” He yawned. “If I go, I go. If I quit, I quit. If I come back here, I come back here.”
I had him. “You lead the way,” I said. “We’ll follow.”
He grinned, never said yes, but hightailed to a grimy bedroll and a scabrous old rifle he had stacked nearby.
“Can’t let you go freeze your arses,” he said.
I didn’t trust him and intended to correct his progress if he steered too far away from the route. Just by staying with the Arkansas River we could put ourselves on the west slope of the Rockies without difficulty, climbing some benches to avoid a gorge. That would put us on a grassy valley leading to an easy pass to the Colorado River drainage. It had been traversed by Stephen Long and Zebulon Pike, so I wasn’t interested in it. We wouldn’t go that way. Why follow others’ footsteps? And we were already too far north.
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