by Tom Blair
The first hour of no challenge. Easier than most mornings. No hills, no gullies, no trees as sentries on our trail. Only hard sand, white, not gray, after the sun shone its full face. Slowly at first, then as a great oven door cracked open, heat as never before. No one riding in wagons, less burden for the oxen. A roasting heat of every sense of body and mind. By mid-morning a desert of perfection. No dips or rises, no vegetation dead or alive, no sign that any man or beast had ever violated the absolute purity of its vast nothingness. Then, as the Captain had told us, beautiful mirages. First a city. White buildings in the far distance, but not too far to see their pillared facades. As snow on our Iowa fields, in time these buildings, these cities, melted from our view.
One step after another, first one hour, then another; my shadow, slowly it moved close to my body, the sun rising to its highest point. To the south no desert, only a shimmering sea. A sea of no water. A grove of trees on the horizon, a grove that became larger, then smaller. With these trees the mind knew cooling shade and clear, cool water would be ours. Then the trees of hope melted and joined the pillared city.
Walking the full length of the train, the Captain with words of encouragement. From the front to the back, then walking twice as fast as us, back to the front. No man nor beast could maintain such a pace. Thirty, maybe forty miles till any relief.
At noon a respite, but only half our normal pause. Everyone slowly sipped a cup of warm water. For each oxen a half-bucket of brown water. Mister Akins, with a piece of white cloth stretched over his black hat, held the bucket for our oxen. When I asked why white cloth, he told me to first touch the tan wagon cover then the black of the wheel rim. A brief discourse on white reflecting and black absorbing, but I had no interest.
After the noon pause a well-marked trail across the white-hot desert. First a plow and something large and wooden. A chest of drawers it could have been. Then on the horizon another mirage, a wagon. But it did not melt away. Canvas blown to tatters, cooking pots and a single boot by its side. No sign of man or beast. More miles, more tools, kegs, barrels, more bleached and sorry wagons with wheels half covered by sand. Then God’s work, not man’s. Ox bones. Then whole horses and oxen, dried and shrunk, carcasses stretched over bones.
Somewhere in front an ox fell to its knees, then rolled on its side. No pause, the other oxen cut from their harnesses. A shot to the head of the one not released. Men from the wagons in front and behind carried water bladders from the stricken wagon to others. The train moved on.
Sand as hard as rock, looking down, no footsteps to confirm our progress. Slowly at first, just a breeze. A furnace, but a breeze. Then harder the wind blew, all white. Our goal, the mountains, no longer in front of our path. A glance to the right, to the left, no mountains. In the wind not sand, but a vapor of alkaline. Burning eyes and burning throat, choking and gagging on air of salt. At that moment everything I had, or thought I would ever have, thankfully traded for a gulp of cool water. Walking, staggering on, praying the Captain would scream a halt, commanding everyone to take a swallow from a keg, but he marched on, his head bowed, not bowed in defeat, but bowed to study the compass he held, the compass pointing west.
I glanced back, Arch shuffling, his eyes two slits on a caked white oval. Mother’s bonnet pulled from her hair to cover her face. Mary, poor Mary, her arms on Father’s shoulders, walking behind his lead, with her face buried in his shirt.
A lifetime we walked and choked toward the mountains. Mountains that were only as real as the Captain’s compass. Slowly at first, thinking it might be, but was afraid to hope, but it was true, the winds retreated. Slowly too, the air, air filled with the corruption of the desert, settled. Before us mountains. Onward with no rest, then a shout, Mister Graham shouting at his wife to return. Off to one side, away from the wagons she walked, walked while singing. Two men slowly to her, with a struggle tied with rope, tied while she pleaded that her farm and its pond was just over a rise. Laid in her wagon, the train never stopped.
By late afternoon the hard desert became so much less so. Oxen sinking into pools of salt and sand, pools of no water. Our slow pace of the day slowed as each wagon wheel, each hoof, each boot was grabbed by the soft desert floor. The Captain called a halt. A brief halt. A cup of water for us, a wet cloth on the oxen’s mouths. To let them know … to make them think … water was soon to be. Then rolling again. On the horizon a mirage. A small rise with leafless shrubs. No, not a mirage. More rises beyond, foothills in the distance. Foothills guarding the mountains. The ground no longer salty sand, but gravel and red earth. Then, over several rises, green. The top of a tree. A tree with roots. A tree with roots that fed from a spring. A spring from which we gulped bitter water when camp was made after the sun had long set and the morning’s moon became once again the night’s moon.
After the Salt Desert an air of calm settled over the train. Met with a collective sigh of relief, the Captain ordered that we rest for two days near a spring, the cattle and oxen grazing while the men hunted. As times before, riding tall Mister Visnic returned with the hindquarters of a mule deer. At night, only laughter around the campfire, laughter and talk of California happiness. Tired and happy men pleaded for a cup of whiskey, imploring the Captain to let them celebrate their crossing. While not agreeing, the Captain promised each would enjoy two full cups when we finished our journey along the Truckee River.
A feeling of accomplishment wrapped the train as Arch, Matthew, and I made our daily pilgrimages to collect fuel for cooking. The first day enough dead wood found by the spring for our mothers’ cooking fires. By the second day all dried wood was smoke; so off we walked, knowing only a small effort would fill the well-used burlap bags. On the far horizon dark clouds. Mister Akins had explained, count slowly, sixty to the minute, and for each count of seven between the flash of lightning and the roll of thunder, one mile away the lightning. That day the lightning struck miles away. Running and laughing, tossing stones, picking up chips, no worries, no rush. Then a noise, not a noise, an explosion of all the noises I had ever heard, a blinding light, then silence, tingling in my fingers and a buzz in my bones. There I stood not comprehending what had happened. Facing me Arch, his eyes bulged open and his face frozen stiff in a stare past me. I turned, Matthew on the ground, smoke from his hair and feet.
My friend was buried without a box, his body wrapped tight in the Captain’s slicker. Matthew’s mother said no to the Captain, no readings from the Bible, no singing of hymns. There is no God, that’s what she moaned while lying on the mound of fresh turned dirt that covered her only child. Silently I stood watching her grief, feeling poorly about the warm ball of ox droppings.
While Matthew’s death hung over the train, a child’s death always the heaviest, the collective weight of relief, relief that the train in a few weeks would be in California, tipped the scale. Only fifty miles of barren land, no challenge after the Salt Desert, until the Sierra Mountains. Once over them, our California. More smiles and hope than since we crossed the Missouri. But not the Captain. He knew the days, the days remaining before early snows could close the narrow walled canyons through the Sierras. Perhaps that was the reason a week before our planned rendezvous with the Truckee’s flow the Captain swung off the most well-traveled trail, taking a cutoff reported to shorten our journey by days. In time this cutoff led to a stream and a crossing not as expected. A torrent of water, not a stream. Far off rains, melting snows, for whatever reason, the narrow crossing was impassable. As always the Captain spoke sharply without hesitation. He said no reason to retreat, to retrace our steps. Surveying the area, he said it would be a fine place to graze the animals and in a day or two the flow would lessen.
Camp was made; in the distance, over the churning waters, the Sierra Mountains. That evening Mister Jurgovan’s mother made her daily pilgrimage to the Lord’s market, returning with two buckets of wildberries. With some long-saved sugar and biscuit flour, Mrs. Civera baked, using a skillet over a pot as an oven, four pies. Sitti
ng in the early sunset, the mountains rising up to meet the setting sun, I slowly savored a slice of wildberry pie. Then I spoke to Father. He and I didn’t talk one to another; Father was my father, he told me what to do and I followed his will. Perhaps because the sun had set and rest was before him, perhaps it was because of the wildberry pie he had eaten, for whatever reason Father offered an explanation, not an answer, when I asked why he had said, as he spoke at the campfire weeks before, that profits from his California farm would be used to buy more land and not to build a large house or hire others to do his work. Father looked at me for a moment, then simply stated they didn’t make coffins large enough. I remained silent. Then, not as my father, he spoke some more. He said he didn’t want to bury all his hard work in the ground with him; if he consumed his wealth on pleasures, the only thing he would have to show for his hard work would be memories, memories that would be buried with him. Father didn’t want the fruits of his labors to be buried, he wanted them to survive his children and their children. I glanced at Mister Akins, who had paused his reading to listen to Father’s response. He was nodding, nodding not as a cow at the trough.
By the afternoon of the second day of our rest there was no rest for the Captain. Back and forth along the river’s edge he marched, as a sentry guarding a fort. But not guarding, wishing the water would cease its rush; wishing that the train could be on its way. And with each pace the Captain took, with each hour the river’s water crashed against boulders, the pressure grew within the Captain. We were here because of him. No one else chose our path. A path only as safe and right as the Captain’s judgment.
After waiting three days for the stream to retreat, to drop its level and vigor, Akins softly suggested we search upstream and downstream for a more passable location. His suggestion quickly releasing a cascade of condescending comments. The most simplistic being that the water flowing in front of us for the past three days was the same water that flowed upstream and downstream. Mister Akins responded by saying, “precisely.” He added that if the river widened significantly at any point, for whatever reason, the velocity of the water would drop because the same volume as in front of us would be moving through a larger space. Slowly the gathered men nodded in feigned approval. Two men on horseback dispatched in each direction, by evening the duo who headed north returned to report a wide bend where the stream was almost two hundred feet across and the greatest depth was barely two feet. A passable ford for our train. But as with many things in life, a positive holding hands with a negative, a challenge standing in front of opportunity, and fear squeezing hope. To reach the benign ford close to a quarter mile of trees would need to be cleared and after that a hundred foot-bluff ascended.
The Captain rode off to confirm the men’s finding and was back at the camp by morning, exhausted and confident. Men were told to sharpen their axes and saws. I was granted a sabbatical by Mister Akins and teamed with Arch. After a long day of cutting and chopping, mostly soft pine, we earned our path through the woods. As combat ribbons displayed, handfuls of blisters for all the men. After the defeated trees, nature’s second battalion was attacked; an army of boulders and a bluff. A bluff too steep for oxen pulling a wagon. Almost too steep for oxen dragging nothing but themselves.
First a path through the boulders. Oxen unhitched from the wagon and roped to masses of stone. Poles from just felled trees as levers. Archimedes was right again: “… give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” A day to make a trail just a few feet wider than a wagon. More than a day. We didn’t declare victory till after the sun had set, its glow from over the horizon offering the pale light necessary to defeat the last few rock soldiers. Bent over tired the men were. So tired that Father didn’t eat supper. Drank half a bladder of water, laid under our tied-down wagon, and slept an exhausted sleep. It was, I think, the same exhaustion that caused my Father to forego a supper—something never done before—that later caused Mister Akins to be left behind; his trunk on the ground with him sitting on it, a brown cloud of dust stirred by the morning winds his only companion.
To ascend the bluff oxen were unhitched from wagons and driven to the top of the rise. Having provided them level ground for certain footing, a dozen of the strongest were harnessed together and from them four braided ropes pulled down to a wagon. Answering whip and shouts, the oxen strained a wagon to the top of the bluff. After a dozen wagons tugged up, the twelve harnessed oxen given clemency and another twelve lashed together.
To make the oxen’s struggle less, wagons were unloaded before the great pull. Contents were hoisted on shoulders or drug behind the men, women, and children of our train. Hauled with strained muscles and sweating bodies to the crest of the rise. For a reason not known with certitude, but for a reason later speculated, our wagon faltered in its climb. Just over halfway up the sloping bluff the oxen halted. No whips, no matter how well applied, no swearing, no matter how loud, moved them. Then one of the oxen collapsed to his knees. The Captain shouting that the wagon could pull the oxen over the crest; broken legs, lost wagons, lost hopes. With another yell from the Captain those men at the top of the bluff quick to the rope; that half a section over the crest of the bluff. More than twenty men cursing, whipping, pulling, straining. Then a small movement. Our wagon lurched forward no more than a quarter of a wheel turn. But forward. Then the ox that had surrendered stood. Up from its haunches it stood. Everyone straining, oxen and man. Another lurch, a slow roll, a steady roll, then mercifully over the crest. Men collapsed where they had stood straining. Silence.
By nightfall all was over the bluff. Sweeping before us the curve of the river. A wide river, a shallow river, a river of no anger. Even though a second day of exhaustion, a night of only elusive rest. A storm of little rain, but fierce wind and thunder that lingered. In the darkness we laid under the swaying and creaking wagon with bolts of lightning offering momentary glimpses of the barren land that was our reality. In the morning an easy few miles to the river’s edge and a shallow ford. As always, the Captain rode the length of the train confirming all was as it should be before the train crawled forward. Father standing by our wagon as the Captain passed, this morning hunched over on his mare as if his hat was iron. Father looked up and said sorry, sorry for the trunk of books that almost pulled the oxen over the edge of the bluff.
A quick tug on the reins, his mare to a halt, and as if considering some complex formula the Captain sat silent. Then down to Father, asking what trunk of books. As if questioned by the Lord, Father spun and pointed to the trunk. A trunk that had sat undisturbed since the crossing of the Missouri. Quickly the Captain up and in our wagon. A tug on the rope handle of the trunk. Only the slightest movement. Almost yelling, the Captain had Father and me in the wagon. Together the trunk slid to the back, then with a sorry thud in the red dust. With the Captain’s anger boiling, Father sputtered his defense, telling the Captain the trunk was in the wagon when he took it in trade from Ingrams. Hearing a commotion, Mister Akins walked to the rear of the wagon, looked down in silence at his trunk as his orderly mind tried to assimilate and reassemble a disorderly scene. In his always measured voice he asked what the problem might be. Almost a scream from the Captain. A scream that Akins’s formidable trunk had come close to crippling oxen and killing men. Then a debate, Mister Akins from the podium of logic and facts, the Captain from the podium of exhaustion and anger. But no amount of logic, no matter how compelling, could douse the Captain’s anger. And, the Captain was the Captain. Neither Mister Akins nor logic held any title or rank.
With a shout, as he mounted his mare, the Captain ordered that the trunk wasn’t burdening our train. Looking down at Father he told him that he could stay with the trunk, or stay with the wagon train. Quickly Father said we were going, it wasn’t his fault the trunk had been in his wagon.
In a low voice Akins spoke to the Captain. Just a few sentences he spoke. He said the sole purpose of his journey was to teach in California. To teach in
the first college formed in California. And, most important were the great books he was transporting, books of no less value to him than the plows and seed grain to others of our train. Not as a threat, but as a fact, Mister Akins added that if the books remained in the dust, he would stay to provide them companionship. The Captain hesitated for a few seconds, then said fine and was off. Quickly Mother pleading to Father. But the Captain had given an order; for Father there was no choice. I just stood, understanding, but not understanding. Perhaps because of habit, perhaps because of fear, fear of the Captain, the train broke camp as if no one was being abandoned. In the dust of the train and morning winds sat Mister Timothy Akins. Sitting comfortably on his trunk as if he expected a fine carriage to somehow appear and whisk him and his library to California. No more than a quarter mile had we traveled when Mother turned from her wagon seat and climbed to the back of our wagon. Then a thud, her hope chest on the red earth. A yell and the wagon behind to a halt. In time, a brief time, all the wagons behind to a halt. Father to Mother. The Captain to Father. No compromise, Mother was staying with her hope chest unless the Captain agreed that if she abandoned her hope chest, Mister Akins could bring his trunk.
While not complying with any rule of logic, Mother’s action created the opportunity for the Captain to retreat with dignity from his calloused and arbitrary ruling. A ruling made in the fog of exhaustion. In time I came to appreciate not only physical exhaustion, but mental fatigue. Those of us in the train had each other to lean upon when doubts grabbed us, and we all had the Captain to lean upon. He had no one. Always he had to speak with confidence, a confidence that he knew, in the hidden recesses of his being, was not always justified. But not to show confidence would be a greater weight on the train than any trunk, no matter how heavy. He never had the luxury to express or vent his true fears, thus they built until his relief valve of emotions burst open.