The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters (Arbor House Library of Contemporary Americana)

by Robert Lewis Taylor

  Hearing these remarks, the sufferers appeared to brighten. But I am disturbed about our prospects for harmony. The train seems in danger of being rent by factionalism. The group which abandoned the sawmill, headed by Matlock, the big farmer, clings stolidly to itself. And overshadowing all, the sandy road grows rougher, the oxen more exhausted, the loads harder to move, our supplies much depleted through lightening, and the grass worn and scant. What shall we do if our food gives out?

  Traveling to California is a heavy, laborious business!

  Chapter XXIII

  Approaching Chimney Rock

  In Transit to California:

  August 12, 1849

  My dearest Melissa:

  This is penned as the writer sits on a rocky eminence some distance up the trail ahead of the train. The day is sunny and bright, and the atmosphere clear and springlike, enabling the viewer to observe that lofty phenomenon of nature some forty miles distant called “Chimney Rock.” We are to have a wedding there.

  I write from an exuberance of spirits, occasioned by the fact of everything proceeding so splendidly. The trail, while not actually improving, and even deteriorating in some trifling respects (the wheels now sinking into the sand to a distance of ten inches), still is passable. The oxen, though not refreshed to the point of rambunctiousness (some numbers of them dropping by the wayside from time to time), continue to pull the wagons with commendable zeal, considering the absence of both grass and good water. Our supplies, which seem capable of holding out for many days yet, offer a healthful, athletic diet which yet permits none of that over-nutrition, with its consequent obesity, heart strain and overburdened kidneys, that proves so disturbing to the practicing physician. I am happy to tell you that there is not a single case of gout in camp!

  As to the grass, you will rejoice with me when I say that, for all practical purposes, there is none. Indians in large numbers will never frequent this area, because of its arid desolation. So that, on one of our most important scores, we are almost entirely free of anxiety. The finding of water has turned into a species of romp, in which both children and adults participate. From every viewpoint, including the therapeutic, it is well to have a diversion among people so closely bound together, and the seeking of aqueous potation, in this soda-encrusted stretch between the north and south branches of the Platte, serves admirably. Example: while passing, yesterday, through an area of unbelievable sterility, with high winds whipping the sands and soda dust like furiously driven snow, someone spied to our left a stream of fresh-running water. You may imagine with what whoops of delight all members ran to throw themselves full-length beside this limpid fountain. Alas, one mouthful was sufficient to produce nausea. So the game must continue. I am thinking of offering a prize to the first who makes a successful discovery. The waters of the Platte itself are drinkable in an emergency, but they exude an unpleasant, foetid odor, highly offensive, as does the atmosphere hereabouts. This has been uniformly viewed by the train as a healthy symptom, for it has spurred the enthusiasm of all to proceed as rapidly as possible to California, or to any place except here.

  In the broader sense (as stated) we are thriving bountifully. After crossing the south fork, we descended into the valley of the north fork through a pass known as Ash Hollow, being a dry ravine with a few stunted ash trees, the entrance signalized by a log cabin of historic import. Erected by trappers caught here by winter snows, it has been converted into a general post office, and its walls inside and out are covered over with manuscript, advertisements for lost cattle, directions and suggestions, messages for oncoming trains, and a variety of advices. Inside, we found a rich cache of letters, with pleas to parties traveling in both directions to assist in conveying them to the nearest Government post office.

  We had here an altercation which only highlighted our underlying harmony. The train paused for some time at the cabin, to profit from the pointers and, needless to say, to reject out of hand the several recommendations that we retreat before we perish. Mr. Coulter (who will be associated in your mind with my unshakable admiration from the start) was hailed while reading a bill near the front door, by our bellicose Illinois farmer, Ed Matlock. It was the contention of the latter, a very large and lank man, with a bony face rather longer than life-size, unkempt yellow hair, and small, gimlet eyes, that we should hold a meeting to consider the notion of “packing.” That is, abandoning the heavy wagons and loading our supplies on the backs of either oxen or, if possible, mules, for which we should trade at the first opportunity (such advices were plentiful at the “post office”).

  I should say that Matlock has harbored a grudge since the Platte crossing, when Coulter insisted that he and his cousins, a numerous and shaggy lot, no credit to the general appearance of the train, leave behind a sawmill that others agreed was too cumbersome to transport across the river without risk to human life, oxen and wagons.

  “We’re still rolling,” said Coulter, without taking his eyes from the bill. “Motion rejected.”

  A good many of our people—myself, Brice, Jenny, Coe and others—were nearby when this occurred, and we gave a gasp of dismay when Matlock seized Coulter roughly by the shoulder and spun him half around.

  “Look here, I’m sick of your bulldozing,” cried the farmer. “Me and my cousins’ll do what we dum well please.”

  “Speaking for the train as a whole,” said Coulter pleasantly, “we’ll continue for a while with the wagons.”

  Knowing Coulter, we thought this a moderate and unobjectionable reply, but the farmer, quite apparently smoldering with resentment (partly dating from that painful day when Coulter conducted his notorious “deer hunt”) now chose to become personal.

  “How come you know so much?” he cried, walking forward till his sun-blistered nose was thrust almost into Coulter’s face. “I’ll own up we joined the train late, so I didn’t git to make inquiries. If I had, we’d a joined another. Where’d you spring from, Big Mouth?”

  “I was hired by popular vote.”

  During this uncomfortable discourse, Coulter simply stood easy and relaxed in his loose slouch, wearing a half-smile. But his face went white as chalk at the farmer’s next remark.

  “I’ve heard a few stories—we haven’t got no hankering to trail after a man that’s murdered his own kin.”

  Coulter looked as if he’d been struck. He stepped back a pace, then, the words hardly audible, said, “All right, you’ve chose yourself a fight.”

  At this, a number of the cooler heads intervened, but Coulter threw them off. “Not this time,” he said, peeling out of his buckskin shirt. “Doctor, I’ll thank you and Kissel to go forward and make the arrangements. That rise up yonder’ll be handy ground enough.”

  You may imagine that I tried to dissuade him, but he was as firm as flint. Matlock having appointed two of his cousins—rough, bearded men nearly as big as he—to act as seconds, we conferred briefly. I must confess that the formalities of such a rough-and-tumble were entirely foreign to me, but Kissel, to my amazement, stepped out of taciturnity and said, “Heel and toe, no gouging, no butting, stand up fair till one hollers enough.”

  The larger of the cousins, as uncouth a man as ever I’ve seen in my life, with bacon grease spattered down the front of his filthy denim shirt, spat tobacco juice contemptuously and said, “You prefer the body planted here or pinted home in a box?”

  Kissel regarded him with his baby-blue eyes, then uttered the first unfriendly statement I’d ever heard pass his lips. For some reason I can’t explain, this burly cousin had offended his dignified concept of farming as an occupation.

  He said, “Mister, you talk a good fight.”

  “How tall be you, Fatty?”

  “Six feet six, give or take.”

  “I didn’t know they piled dung that high,” said the cousin, and I leaped in between as fast as I could move. For a moment, I thought we had a second battle on our hands.

  Matlock stripped, and we led the way up the knoll, the children runni
ng behind, screaming, “Fight! Fight.” dogs barking, the women taking a stand at a distance where they could not be accused of unseemly curiosity, but able to see a little, too, and over all that air of serious, hurried portentousness that such physical encounters always breed. It’s infectious; it stirs up the blood; one finds oneself on the point of bristling out of sympathy, and even looking around for somebody giving offense.

  When the two faced off, bare to the waist, there was apparent a certain disparity in bulk. Matlock is a huge man, of a fish-belly whiteness of skin, with the corded, sinewy muscles common to one who has done hard labor, with lifting; and Coulter, swarthy, deeply tanned, though as sleek as a panther looked helplessly slight by contrast.

  “Pining to back out, Big Mouth?”

  “I’d rather make it free,” said Coulter.

  “Free it stands.”

  The farmer’s answer was offhand enough, but his expression showed a momentary unease. You could scarcely blame him. Coulter’s face, in anger, is one of the least reassuring sights on earth. There was no bluster, no contortion of features, no tension, no nervousness; his eyes had the flat glitter of a rattlesnake’s, his nose was splayed out in dilation, and his mouth a line incised in granite. To put it mildly, he looked extremely dangerous, and I believe that Matlock, for the first time, suspected that he may have been hasty. Nevertheless, at Kissel’s cry of “Fight!” he came out, weaving back and forth, his hands working in the air, not unlike a swimmer’s pawing through water, and suddenly aimed a heavy, unsporting kick at the vulnerable area of Coulter’s crotch. Had it landed, it might well have crippled him for life.

  What happened next remains blurred in my mind. Coulter’s actions were performed with such rapidity that they confused us all. I was strongly reminded of the classic notion of a wolf striking at the throat of the slow-moving moose. In conversations that evening, nobody remembered precisely the sequence of events, but all agreed that the meeting could not properly be described as a fight. It was murder and sudden death, or would have been had there not been general intervention.

  Slipping aside, Coulter—I believe—caught Matlock’s foot and gave it a sharp, quick hoist that flipped him up off the ground then dropped him down with a jarring thwack on his back. Our farmer looked shaken, but he had little time to recover, for Coulter lit on him like a hawk swooping on a peewit. There was a silent flurry of thrashing arms and legs, and we heard a crack like that of a dry stick breaking. Matlock screamed, scrambled out of the melee, and rose swaying to his feet, his left arm hanging limply at his side. But Coulter, too, had sprung up and now he dropped his left shoulder and swung a short blow with his right fist—the hand moving only a few inches—that caught Matlock flush in the face. We saw with horror that his nose was mashed almost perfectly flat; only the nostril apertures, streaming blood, remained to make it recognizable as a nose. Needless to say, he went down, slack in every joint, a dull, glazed look in his eyes. But before he hit the ground, Coulter was on his back with what I believe is called a scissors hold of the legs around his middle, the fingers of his right hand dug firmly in Matlock’s eyes. In a “free” fight on these plains, the conqueror has a moral right to blind the vanquished if he chooses.

  However, there came an interruption in the form of the Matlock cousins. Others also were about to protest. But the larger of the cousins suddenly whipped out a knife, swung it up in a high arc, and had started it down toward Coulter’s back when Matt Kissel seized his wrist and twisted the blade free.

  “You want something, too, Fatty?” cried the cousin, and aimed a blow at Kissel’s head. I have the impression it landed, but it appeared to make no difference. This quiet, oxlike man clenched his fist in the cousin’s stomach, gathering together the tight belt and loose flesh, and picked him up bodily. He held him thus, several feet in the air, with one hand.

  “You’re all het up,” said Matt. “Get un-het.”

  “No hard feelings,” gasped the cousin, and our fight was over. It had been of unique violence while it lasted, and I have no doubt it will become a plains legend. Of special curiosity to me was its aftermath. Coulter, brushing himself off and all but returned to normal, though still breathing hard, said, “Just for the record, I wasn’t aiming to douse his sight.”

  Regarding him stolidly, Kissel replied, “I’m glad to hear it.”

  Then Coulter made his remark that brought a general laugh: “Mr. Kissel, I hope we never have to tangle; I couldn’t figure out a worse afternoon’s work.”

  “No occasion,” said Matt.

  We walked on down the hill. The Matlocks took charge of their injured warrior; his nose and the splintered bone in his arm would have to be set. It seemed to me that all things considered, he had got off very lucky. The thought was faintly disturbing.

  But as I said, Melissa, this trivial dispute, in clearing the air, simply emphasized the essential solidarity of the train. It is true that, next day, the Matlock faction and a few others of like disposition split off from the parent group, determined to go it alone. But for the rest, our resolve continued unabated. Ahead lies gold, gold to wallow in, to fling out of the carriage as one proceeds (with credit restored) over the streets of Louisville. By Fort Laramie, only a comparatively brief distance up the trail, we shall have gone halfway! After that it is only a pleasant stroll across a few deserts, some salt flats, and then the Rocky Mountains. Could any prospect be more enticing?

  With loving greetings to you

  and my darlings, and in the

  very best of spirits, I remain,

  SARDIUS MCPHEETERS (M.D., etc.)

  Chapter XXIV

  People kept talking about the fight and before long they threw the blame on Coulter. All except our bunch. Nobody came right out and accused him of anything, or made trouble, but when somebody said the Matlocks had been valuable additions to the train, that was all they needed. Before the ruckus, there wasn’t hardly a soul could stand those clodhoppers, or their womenfolks either, but now you would have thought they were a collection of missionaries. It was disgusting.

  My father said it wasn’t worth worrying about; it was just part of the general cussedness of humans. He said they’d go baaa-ing off in another direction as soon as something occurred to them.

  “I’ve seen this sort of perverseness in elections. A man will be in office, doing fine, honest, upright, hard-working, even noble, as far as you can find that quality in a politician, and the opposition will put up a known scoundrel that hasn’t a thing to recommend him except noise. But if he brays long enough and loud enough he’ll bray himself right in. People are prepared to believe anything about a person as long as it’s bad.”

  Even Jennie acted sulky and said that Eloise Matlock had been going to be one of the bridesmaids at her wedding, but now she’d be a bridesmaid shy. I figured that, at the outside, she’d spoken to this Eloise two or three times, so mostly she made it up to spite Coulter.

  What actually galled the train was the country we were crossing, but it seemed handier to take it out on the leader. Here between the two rivers the soil was so sandy and dry the air was full of flying particles nearly all the time. It was enough to suffocate you. The wind was high, too. People wore kerchiefs wrapped around their nose so they could breathe without drowning in the dust. This went on for two days and then we had a rain that freshened things up some. The wind dropped, and it was lovely. There was even a faintly green, grassy look roundabout, and directly ahead was this Chimney Rock, standing straight up like some old temple. Everybody was so grateful for the change that several men came out flat-footed and promised to stop abusing Coulter for a while.

  We’d be at the rock in plenty of time for a Sunday wedding. This appeared to cheer everybody up. Weddings do that, I’ve noticed. The ones already married are happy to see somebody else hooked, and the bachelors are naturally relieved that it isn’t them.

  What with one thing and another, I felt good. Jennie had said she would appoint me a “flower boy,” because there
were only three girls of the right age in the whole train, and although there wasn’t anything growing around here except milkweed and cactus, I hoped to have some fun, and maybe throw a monkey wrench in the machinery somewhere along the line. This smart-alecky female had it coming.

  But that night when we camped, my father brought out a nasty-looking little green book he’d borrowed off a man whose wife had been a schoolteacher but reformed, and said he was going to teach me Latin.

  “Now, my boy,” he said, getting me off to one side and putting on his spectacles, “you’ve been idle long enough. We have a duty to your mother, and we’ll start discharging it right here.”

  “Yes, sir,” I answered, feeling about as low as I’d felt since the day they sprung Mental Arithmetic on me at the Secondary School.

  “You’re familiar with the general meaning of Latin, its basic definition and purpose, that is?”

  “I’ve heard it mentioned,” I said, “but not very favorably. Nobody’s said anything good about it in my presence.”