Snowbound and Eclipse

by Richard S. Wheeler

  I wondered whether they would survive the next mountain range. The only people enjoying any of this were the colonel and Bill Williams. The guide meandered through the camp, pausing at the various messes, saying nothing. I had the distinct feeling he was enjoying our anxiety, and maybe even plotting ways to make the trip as miserable as he could manage it.

  I dismissed the notion as the sort of thing that didn’t deserve serious consideration, but the notion kept burrowing into my head, until it lodged there. Old Bill scared me.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Captain Andrew Cathcart

  I was much intrigued by our guide, Williams. He affected a rusticity that was belied by his command of English when he chose to display it. I learned that he had intended to become a preacher but had long since digressed from that goal. Still, he was a man who had mastered the scriptures and sometimes resorted to them. I learned also that he had taken up Indian religion, though I could not discover which beliefs, since each American tribe seemed to possess its own theology. I gathered, from campfire talk, that Williams believed he would be incarnated as a bull elk with white chevrons on his flanks and had cautioned all and sundry never to shoot such an animal, lest they shoot him.

  But if there were remnants of a high calling in the man, they had largely vanished as a result of a quarter of a century as bloody border riffraff, trapping, roaming, somehow avoiding the worst of the perils that afflict those who venture far beyond the safety of civilization. Here was the man in whom this company was placing its trust. He had proclaimed his knowledge of the country and told us that he knew every pass and river on sight. We could blindfold him and he could take us west.

  So of course I was interested in this odd ruffian who dressed in layers of gamey cottons and wools and in an even gamier leather tunic and britches that held his ensemble together. He was subject to both silences and voluble moments when one could scarcely stop the flow of words issuing from him. But on this trip he remained silent, never doing any work he could avoid, and making the passage as easy on himself as possible. Unlike the rest of us, who dismounted and walked our burdened mules through the worst drifts to spare them, Williams rode steadily, his long frame dwarfing the mule that bore him, so that his moccasined feet sometimes dragged in the snow. He sat hunched, incapable of straightening the bends of his body, but I did not make the mistake of thinking that his bad posture signaled an oafish man. He took in everything, with a keen eye. One of the things I noticed from the beginning was his fascination with the company’s equipment. Preuss’s instruments absorbed him. Frémont’s field equipment, including surveying instruments, intrigued him. But Williams never asked a question about any of it; he simply meandered through the camps, observing, and vanished as silently as he appeared.

  These particular days we were on a southerly course, having worked through the Wet Mountains, and we were now heading toward a gap in the Sangre de Cristos known as Robidoux’s Pass, which I was given to understand was the only one of consequence through the formidable cordillera before us. Williams avoided Colonel Frémont as much as possible, or was it the reverse? The man might be guiding us, but rarely did he consult with the colonel. And Frémont seemed content to let Williams steer the party his own way.

  We were traversing the valley between the two ranges, but the going was little easier than it had been passing over the first range. We encountered snow up to three feet in places, which wearied the company. We were so exhausted that we often didn’t break camp until nine or ten in the morning and surrendered to our weariness by three or so in the afternoon, when we all hastened to gather firewood before the December night engulfed us. The temperature varied from pleasant to bitter; Doctor Kern told me that one morning was eight degrees on Fahrenheit’s scale. Add wind to that and not even a Scot like me could enjoy the day. But for the moment, no storms engulfed us with snow, and so we made our way, hour by hour.

  Doctor Kern’s boots gave out, and the experienced men in the company showed him how to create moccasins of rawhide, which they said were better in snow anyway, and so the Philadelphian was able to continue with us. Loss of footwear on a trip like this is a serious, even fatal, calamity. He would repair the boots with an awl and thong when the chance came to him.

  As we struggled through the valley, with the Sangre de Cristos forming a grim white barrier on our right, I thought maybe Frémont would let me hunt. I had superb English steel and powder. I had come to North America to hunt. I wanted to try my hand at buffalo and elk. I had sold my commission in the hussars and set out to see the world, and here was the world. Frémont obliged me at once, and I found myself with a small hunting party that included Alexis Godey, Raphael Proue, and Antoine Morin, all Creoles, as they were called in these parts, and all of them veteran hunters.

  We spurred our mules ahead and drifted off to the left, where the bottoms of the frozen and unnamed creek wound along. If there was game, it would be sheltering there in the red willow brush, close to whatever feed might be found amid all this bloody white. They all spoke English, but so accented and ruined by Yank perversities that I could hardly make out what they were saying. Still, a smile or two was enough. We would make meat for the whole company here in this snowy valley, where every hoofprint would lead us toward our quarry.

  Our mules soon exhausted themselves in belly-high drifts. We separated, spacing ourselves two hundred yards apart or so, giving us a wide sweep that should drive the beasts before us. They wouldn’t get far, weakened by starvation and fighting drifts. I wanted meat badly. Unlike some of the others in that company who were more trusting, I had calculated what it would take to feed thirty-three men over two more mountain ranges, and the sum of my calculations became my inspiration. Ten buffalo would not suffice.

  Our mules gave out all too soon, and we found ourselves walking, fighting through drifts that sometimes reached our waists, keeping our rifles high and out of the snow and wet. We reached the creek and found it mostly frozen, but with an occasional open rapid. But worse, we found not a single hoofprint. I spotted plenty of bird tracks, rodent tracks, and the tracks of small creatures I could not identify. If there was game in these thickets, it was laying low, not moving an inch. But there was no game. I was keenly disappointed. I had thought to line up a fine shot or two. Where had the game gone? Had it all been driven to some sheltered valley to graze peacefully whilst we toiled by?

  “Alors, we will soon boil shoe leather,” Godey said.

  “Are you serious, sir?” I asked.

  He laughed. “Mule meat, mon ami. It tastes like smelly shoes.”

  I hadn’t given much thought to dining on mule for breakfast, lunch, and supper.

  The mules were hard to handle in the thickets because they tore at cottonwood bark and wouldn’t be led or spurred or whipped. I thought to let my mule get himself a mouthful and then tug it ahead, but the beast was planted next to a green-barked cottonwood and was gnawing that bark as neatly as if it was a beaver, peeling it off and downing it. So were the rest. This was the first meal they had enjoyed for days. A quart of corn each day had been their entire sustenance, and a poor one at that. I had kicked apart their pitiful spoor and found most of the yellow kernels intact, having passed through with no effect. That bloody guide Williams had better find a pasture soon, or there would be a price to pay. If he knew the secret havens of game of this country, he didn’t show it but plodded onward, oblivious to the suffering around him.

  We hunted as late as we dared, fearing the early December dark would engulf us before we could find our company. We had not seen an animal. This accorded exactly with what the hunters had faced the previous days. The game on which we depended was somewhere else, perhaps driven by those north winds to some sheltered refuge far to the south.

  This trek was proving to be more adventure than this Scot had bargained for, but in for the ha’penny, in for the pound, as they say. I should be trusting the Yanks. They knew the country and knew how to get through. Only the whole business gnawed
at me. Frémont expected to find game and knew that his company would suffer without it.

  Godey found a relatively barren patch that led back to the company, and we forced the mules along. They were all ready to break for the bottoms where they could feed on bark. What I was mulling in my head was to suggest to Frémont that he camp there, put all the mules into those thickets, and let them put some fodder into their gaunt bellies. I don’t know what stayed me, other than professional courtesy. He was a lieutenant colonel, albeit a slightly tainted one, and I a resigned hussar captain, and it didn’t seem to be my office to counsel him. This was his fourth expedition, and he knew what he was about.

  Or so I hoped. A man needs some flexibility. If there’s no pasture at hand, one heeds the mules’ own signals, and what our mules were telling us as we fought them was that we were stealing their dinner from them. By the time we caught up with the company, they had built fires and were setting up tents and were unburdening the mules.

  It turned out to be an odd moment. Every man in that company stopped whatever he was doing to study us as we rode in, and what they saw was our empty hands and empty saddles. We had hunted most of the day and returned without so much as a rabbit.

  I suddenly felt their gazes studying me, their hunger visible in their faces. It didn’t seem right; we had meat on the hoof, a hundred thirty edible mules if we should get into trouble. Mule meat was, I knew, stringy and unpalatable, but it would boil into stew, and it would sustain us. So why, then, was I seeing a hooded bitterness wherever I looked? These were bloody veterans of the wilds, and they could conjure up a meal from roots and things I could not imagine.

  I made my way to Frémont’s mess, past men who were pulling off soaked boots and setting them to bake next to roaring fires. Others were scraping snow away and raising tents. It seemed a pleasant camp, with mild air lifting spirits. There would be a corn stew this night, I learned. Boiled up maize with some crumbled jerky thrown in. Off to the west, the sun dropped below the white lip of the brooding mountains, plunging us into a fearsome lavender shadow that crept across the ground like death.

  I found the colonel on a log outside his tent, working neatsfoot oil into his boots.

  “Why, Captain Cathcart, it’s my pleasure,” he said.

  “And mine, sir. I don’t wish to intrude on your plans, but I did have an idea cross my mind, sir. A mile and a half from here, where we were hunting, a lot of willows and cottonwoods and box elders formed thickets along the creek, and I noted that the mules thought the bark was a repast worthy of kings. They took right to it, colonel, and we had a time keeping them in hand. I just thought it might be a chance to feed the whole lot, sir. Put them in that bottomland; let them feed all night.”

  Frémont smiled easily. “You’re an observant man, and a cavalryman, too, captain. That’s not very good fodder, and the animals don’t profit from it, which is why it’s not worth the trouble. A mile and a half through these drifts is no small trip. No, we’ll give them their ration, good feed.”

  “They’re looking gaunt, Mister Frémont.”

  “Ah, you have eyes for the animals. I’ve noticed that, too, Cathcart. But here’s something I’ve learned from my previous trips. There’s always south slopes, cleaned off by sun and wind, where the animals can feed all night. We haven’t come upon one because our route hasn’t taken us to the right sort of slope. But I assure you, sir, when the moment arrives, I’ll call a halt and let the mules recruit themselves on the grass.”

  “As you wish, Mister Frémont. I wonder if you’d permit me to take my own mule and put him out on that feed.”

  “You’re free to do that, captain. I’m not a commander but simply an organizer of a private company. But I would strongly suggest that you stay here. There is safety in company. If a storm should blow up, we’d not see you again. This country swallows people.”

  I saw how this was going and left the colonel to his oiling.

  I passed the depot in the snow where the saddles and panniers were collected and noticed that many of the cornstuffed saddlebags were now empty. And we weren’t a third into our passage. The mules had been herded into a piney woods where they could shelter from night wind, but there wasn’t a stalk of grass in sight, and nothing edible in those woods. I thought they would have been better out in open country, where they might paw down to a little grass. I wondered about the keep of mules here. In the British Isles, where livestock is scarce and keeping them is costly, every beast is fussed over and fed as well as possible. But these Yankees seemed content to wear the mules out. It didn’t rest well with me. There were chances not taken.

  I joined my mess, where the Kern brothers and McGehee had put things in good order, collected ample wood for the night, and were relaxing comfortably on sheets impregnated with India rubber, one of Frémont’s better ideas. If passage could be no worse than this, we would clear the Rockies in a fortnight and enter what Frémont called the Great Basin, which supposedly had level, grassy valleys.

  “You see any hoofprints today?” Micah asked.

  “If we had seen even one track, even an antelope track, we would have followed it and kept on following it until we caught up with the game.”

  “Where did the game go? It just doesn’t disappear from country.”

  “I’ve a theory,” Ned Kern said. “When it snows, they stand still. It costs them too much to plow through snow, and what they find to eat doesn’t make up what they lose getting there. So they just stay put in thickets. You just have to stumble on them, and you’ll have meat.”

  “I wish I could believe it,” I replied. I was thinking of the way our mules had bulled into the thickets, quite beyond our control, to gnaw at bark. They did not stir up any game.

  The hunt had left me soaked. I changed into my reserve drawers and tried to dry my duds, but the wind and blowing snow and fickle fire defeated me. Tonight, I would crawl into my bedroll wet and cold, and so would every other man, excepting maybe the colonel himself.

  I meditated before the wavering fire, for the first time wondering whether I had played the fool, signing up with these Yanks. I was consoled at last not by Frémont’s studied ease but by Godey, the calm voyageur, used to grave hardship. If Godey wasn’t worried, there was no need for a displaced Scot to be worried.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Tom Breckenridge

  I’d been with Frémont in California, and when I heard he was heading west again, I signed right up. So did lots of others who had been with him. That’s the sort of man Frémont was. Old John Charles did more to win California than the whole U.S. Army and Navy together, and we had a smart time doing it, too. I always figured the West Point brass couldn’t stand it, and that was what got him court-martialed and convicted. Well, hell, a Frémont just don’t come down the pike every day.

  This winter trip was turning into some real mischief. But I like to grab a tiger’s tail. So does old Frémont. So do all his veterans, those rough cobs like me. We even got that old kraut Preuss back, even though he had moaned and groaned and muttered through the two previous jaunts. He was just as addicted to Frémont as the rest of his old hands, even if he liked to sneer at him behind his back. Preuss was the topographer, always out there with his bulky black instruments, squinting at the polestar or the sun and consulting his chronograph and his barometer and his thermometers, figuring the height of every goddamn molehill and tit, and jotting it all down with a pencil.

  But old John Charles, he wasn’t content with just having one scientific genius along. He went and got him a botanist named Frederick Creutzfeldt. Now go ahead and ask yourself, what was a leaf collector doing on a midwinter trip like this one? Anything he could botanize about was buried under ten feet of white stuff. Unless he planned to study the tops of trees to look for bark-beetle damage, he was without a task, and extra baggage. But that’s old Frémont for you. If you’re going to have yourself an expedition, you’re going to equip it in the latest style, so we had a botanist from Germany along fo
r the ride. If old Johnny couldn’t nab Alexander von Humboldt, Creutzfeldt would have to do. That plain tickled my fancy. When we got up to the summit of those mountains, yonder, I planned to ask old Freddie what sort of lichen he’s scraping up.

  I thought some of those new gents would quit, with all the cold and wet and heavy going, but they were game. I’ll say that for them. Maybe they didn’t break trail, the way we did, but they plugged along behind us breaking wind, and I never heard a whimper. But some day, maybe I’ll get a peek at their diaries and see whether they wrote out their whines.

  All of those new people, they didn’t know much, but we showed them the tricks: how to build a snow cave to get out of the blow, how to stay clean, how to cook your drawers on sticks beside the fires until they’re hot and dry, how to grow a full beard to keep your ugly snout from freezing.

  We all looked pretty grim at times, with icicles dangling from our beards like chimes and ice collecting in our eyebrows and a rime of frost around our nostrils. They learned quick, those artists and botanists and hoity-toity farts like that. That settled a wager or two. Half the veterans were betting the artists and pansies would hightail south at the first chance, but that didn’t happen. We all were looking shaggy after a few weeks of cold, but all that hair kept us halfway comfortable. If you don’t want a frostbit chin, you grow some fuzz.

  Old Bill Williams, he was a card, slouched on his mule and letting the rest of us do the work. He was being paid for what was in his noggin instead of what his muscles could do, though I sometimes think there wasn’t any difference between his brain and his belly. He wasn’t wearing himself out any, and that made for a little grumbling. But I didn’t care. The man had roamed these parts for a quarter of a century and knew every trail and every pass and every bear’s den on a high slope. So he claimed, anyway. On the borders, reputations grow faster than a pecker in a parlor house. I always figured that if we got into trouble, he’d lead us straight to a denned bear, and we’d get meat, fat, a pelt, and shelter out of it.