Gabriella

by Earl Murray

  Jake, his partner, was a cairn terrier mix, also common to the Scottish Highlands. His coat was brindled and his ears drooped at the ends.

  Katie told me that Jake’s mother was a pure-blood cairn and that the father was “just visiting.”

  I asked the girls why the dogs’ dark, bright eyes followed my every move.

  “They wonder what’s in your bag,” Pearl said. “They’re hoping for treats of some kind.”

  Katie admitted that they maintained a stock of dried beef tidbits for the dogs, and rewarded them after each day’s hard traveling.

  “Sean Malone shot a buffalo once,” Katie said. “They really liked that.”

  I’ve noticed a number of dogs roaming the camps, most of them much larger than the terriers. Pearl said other dogs don’t make a bother, as Rufus and Jake work as a team and had even chased off a badger on the Sweetwater River.

  I know that I certainly haven’t seen the last of the McCord sisters and their terriers. They said that their father wanted to take the Southern Route and I promised them I would paint them both with their pets, and their father as well. They wanted me to see how he used his barbering skills to keep the little dogs groomed.

  Millie and Martha Rush said one last good-bye and the wagons going the regular route pulled out. Millie waved her kerchief and blew her nose, then announced that she was good as new and ready to travel on as soon as possible. She had known they would take the Southern Route, as Sean had mentioned the night before that the settlers in Oregon needed men quickly to fight the British.

  She began cooking and insisted that when Owen came back from the fort, we join them for their evening meal. These pioneers drink much more coffee than they do tea. I was offered a cup, and after it was poured, I had only to look at it before requesting that extra hot water be added.

  I sketched a number of scenes around camp with Annie watching me. I’ve concluded that she would like to learn to paint. She has some sketches she completed on the trail but is too shy to show them to me.

  She let me hold her baby and for the first time, I felt as if motherhood might be a calling. Before long little Mary became hungry and Annie took her to her breast.

  Owen arrived back from the fort with Lamar, who is happy to be back in our company. I believe Lamar is a good influence on Owen. Without his Delaware friend, Owen has been lax in saying his morning and evening prayers.

  I believe Lamar had trouble traveling with Mr. Latour. He comments that the Frenchman fails to use good sense and endangers everyone at times.

  Owen did say that Mr. Latour is right: Edward wants to make trouble for the emigrants along the Columbia. The fort proprietors made no bones about that. In fact, they seemed in support of him.

  “We’ve got to move quickly to catch Latour,” Owen said.

  “What do you mean ‘we’? I want to take the Applegate Trail,” I said. “It’s shorter.”

  Owen frowned. “We have to stop Garr, you know.”

  “What about my mother?”

  “We’ll have plenty of time to find her.”

  “You don’t understand,” I said. “I need to reach her as soon as possible.”

  “Going the Columbia route will likely be faster.”

  “Not if you’re fighting Edward’s soldiers.”

  “That won’t take long.”

  “You can’t know that,” I said. “Leave it to Mr. Latour.”

  “I need to be there.”

  “I won’t be going with you,” I said. “I’ll travel with Millie McConnell and the Malones.”

  “You won’t be better off with a bunch of wagon people,” he warned. “They can’t move nearly as fast as we can on horseback.”

  “It will be far safer,” I insisted. “I won’t be going to fight a war.”

  “You don’t know anything about crossing deserts. You’ll die.”

  “No, I won’t,” I said. “I’ll live to see my mother. I’ve promised that much to myself.”

  Gabriella’s Journal

  27 AUGUST 1846

  We’re out of Fort Hall three days, following the Snake River and traveling as rapidly as possible. Mr. Latour and his men left the very evening we arrived at Fort Hall, without even telling Owen or Lamar. Owen still feels an allegiance and wants to catch up with Mr. Latour and the men. I argue with him daily about the route we will take. The Applegate cutoff will appear soon and he’d better have made up his mind to go with me.

  I believe he will. Lamar says that he thinks there will be no war. From what he learned at Fort Laramie, the British don’t believe Oregon to be worth fighting for. You can’t prove that by any of these settlers. And Edward is going to fight just for the sake of calling himself a commander.

  Another factor that will keep Owen with me is the emigrants. These people listen to him and know that his stories of deprivation on these trails are real. They’ve prepared themselves by stocking up on provisions at the fort. They’ve also elected him captain of the wagon train, and with that title he has the authority to make major decisions for the good of all.

  But I believe the most effective argument towards keeping him with me is how I keep him snug at night. Though the days have become excessively warm, the elevation and the nearby mountain keep the nighttime temperature moderate. Still, he says that I make the bedroll “very toasty,” in his words.

  I haven’t discussed Owen’s indecision with anyone. As far as the men are concerned, he’s with them until the end of the trail. They have said that they would like to catch up to the Applegate-Scott caravan, but Owen feels we are too far behind them to accomplish that. He won’t give anyone false hopes about anything. At times I believe he’s too frank with them.

  Young Sean Malone looks up to Owen like an older brother. It was Sean who was instrumental in getting the other men to make Owen the captain.

  “You should give Sean more of your time,” I suggested to Owen. “He could be of help to you.”

  “I haven’t got time to train everybody,” he said.

  “You haven’t got time to do it all yourself, either,” I told him.

  “Have you ever crossed a desert?” he asked me. “Have you ever crossed mountains when the wind would freeze bare skin instantly? Since you haven’t, you shouldn’t be telling me how to operate this wagon train.”

  He went on to say that he had buried a lot of people who wouldn’t take the right precautions before traveling into the desert, or before crossing hostile Indian country. We spent an extra day at the fort trading for dried salmon that a band of Cayuse Indians brought in. Though the settlers were as anxious to get going as we were, everyone agreed that the extra food would benefit us greatly.

  After crossing that arid land east of Fort Hall, it’s good to be traveling next to water again. When Owen told me in the pouring rain of the Narrows that I would see cloudless skies and pray for moisture, I thought it a tasteless joke. Now he tells me that we will be leaving this river to take a journey across a desert that makes the lava beds look like a park.

  I feel I have entered a different section of the West. From Bent’s Fort on to the Rocky Mountains and across, nearly to Fort Hall, felt like the backbone of the region, as the Indians describe it. The lofty peaks are a world unto themselves, unimaginable in scope and breadth. This part of the trail towards Oregon will have its own personality, I believe, and it will be a challenge.

  Quincannon’s Journal

  27 AUGUST 1846

  I sat with Lamar at the fire tonight and ate fresh antelope with him. He told me that when he was growing up, the frontier was an invisible line that stretched gradually each year, past the Appalachians to the Ohio. Then, at a faster pace, it had moved on to the Missouri. Suddenly the roads to Oregon and California and Texas were lined with wagons and the world as we know it now is forever changed.

  “There is talk about war in all these places,” he said. “You are my friend and I will fight beside you if you want, but what would I be fighting for? The new ways of living are n
ot for me, and whether you know it or not, they don’t suit you, either.”

  He’s right in some ways. I prefer to live where freedom lives, but I know that is an elusive term wherever governments establish and grow in power. Oregon and California and Texas all want their independence, but they won’t be getting everything they’re fighting for. What everyone is moving to get away from is going right with them as they travel across the mountains and deserts. Some of these people will be the new leaders, the ones with the power and the right to make decisions for others. And they will make decisions that will not please everybody. But now the Pacific Ocean will stop those who want to start over again from going someplace else.

  I can’t be alone as much as Lamar. He and others like him—Indian and white—can stay off by themselves for weeks without bumping into another soul. I need the interaction with others to get going. I like the solitude of the mountains, but I don’t mind a settlement at the bottom of the hill.

  Maybe the coming of so many will ruin it all. Lamar is convinced of it. I can see his point, as his people have been totally displaced. He insists that the Plains and mountain tribes will suffer the same fate. I tell him there’s too much land for that to happen and he says that I underestimate the capacity of my people to migrate into new territories.

  Lamar and I have been friends since first coming to the mountains together. The friendship will never end but the association likely will. Lamar isn’t interested in moving into a country where the population is going to be higher than where he left.

  “I didn’t know so many wagons were coming across,” he said. “The only place where the white people won’t fill it up is in the middle, where the high mountains are. That will surely happen in time, also, but not while I’m alive.”

  “Who will you live with?” I asked.

  “There is a band of Nez Percé coming to the fort. I will go with them into the Yellowstone to hunt buffalo and to visit the Absaroka, the Crow people. They are friendly with the whites, so there will be no fighting, and one of their leaders invited me to live with them. He wants to adopt me as his brother, as I saved his child from drowning in the river at Fort Laramie.”

  We talked about the best places to live in the future and found it hard to believe that I would last long where people stayed in one place.

  “We’ve traveled around the mountains so much,” he said. “How could you look at the same scenery for months at a time?”

  “If it’s the right scenery, I’ll manage,” I said.

  “The lady who paints is good scenery,” he said with a smile.

  He asked me if I wanted him to go as far as the Oregon boundary, in case we met Edward Garr and his soldiers.

  “I’ll let Latour do the fighting,” I said. “He’s come a long way to do it and he won’t be denied.”

  Lamar and I won’t say the word “good-bye,” as that has a finality to it that neither of us wants to face. It is highly likely that we’ll meet again somewhere in the mountains. I know until that day comes, I’ll certainly miss him.

  THE HUMBOLDT

  Gabriella’s Journal

  31 AUGUST 1846, 1ST ENTRY

  The country has changed to greasewood and sagebrush. I don’t know that J. T. Landers would have had the fun with this country that he did with the plains and mountains to the east, but I’m told by one of the ladies that the desert blooms profusely in the spring of the year and is an inspiring sight to anyone. This late in summer one would never know that any beauty ever existed here.

  I will never get over how Edward gave Mr. Landers and his other friends over to Kills It. Every time I see a flower in bloom, I think of Mr. Landers and wonder if he now rests peacefully in eternity. Annie and Millie have both comforted me over the issue. We were talking one evening about ghastly sights along the trail and I couldn’t hold back.

  When I told Millie that Dr. Marking had suffered the same fate, she broke into sobs. Martin had told her that the good doctor had given him another two weeks of life, time enough to finish the business of telling everyone he knew and cared for how much he loved them.

  I would be interested to know if Edward has trouble with his men now, since they have all witnessed his betrayal of others in the group. Had they all known, they would likely have abandoned him at Bent’s Fort.

  I often think of Bom and Jessie, and of Barton Strand and the Rivet brothers. I hope they’re all content with their new lives and aren’t worried about betrayal and death at every turn.

  I don’t believe anyone on this journey has that concern. As the caravan’s captain, Owen calls a meeting every night to discuss concerns that anyone might have about the journey and how we might all contribute as a whole to make the trip easier. He has just left for tonight’s meeting and said that he might be later than usual, as he had some issues to bring up himself.

  I know one of them to be the Indians that are always around us. We were warned before we left that we would have trouble with them. Our party of thirty wagons is big enough to keep them from attacking all-out, but they still persist in harassing us. They cannot be seen, as they hide among the rocks and brush, waiting for an advantage.

  Owen instructs the guards to keep the livestock near the wagons at all times. He in fact stands guard himself a great deal of the time. Last night, a stray ox wandered back into camp with nearly a dozen arrows protruding from its sides. There had not been enough damage done from the arrows themselves to cause death, but it would eventually die, as the heads had been dipped in poison.

  Owen put the animal out of its misery and all the settlers had a difficult time keeping their dogs away from the carcass. The night passed without incident and as of this evening, we have had no further trouble. Owen says he believes the Indians are trying to lull us to sleep. They are a branch of the Shoshone tribe referred to as Diggers, who live in the desert and gather what they can to eat.

  As far as I’m concerned, they are no problem compared to a few members of our party—namely, the “most reverend” Bertrand Rowe, a minister who feels called to reach the new Promised Land, and his wife, Guynema.

  I met Mrs. Rowe two days ago, a frail-looking woman who always keeps to herself. I saw her sitting next to a wagon, cleaning a flintlock rifle, and asked her if she minded if I sketched her.

  “Why would you want to do that?” she asked suspiciously.

  “I find you an interesting subject,” I said.

  “Find somebody else,” she warned, and pointed the barrel at me.

  “Would you shoot me?” I asked.

  “No, but the gun might go off.”

  “She acts that way toward everybody,” Annie explained later. “She keeps to herself and pouts.”

  Annie said that the Rowes joined their wagon train back at Round Grove. While Reverend Rowe preached to a small congregation, Mrs. Rowe told a group of women that she lamented having to pull up stakes and travel to “who knows where.” She complained that she couldn’t adjust to the new foods along the trail, but had done very well, thank you, in the hickory forests of southern Missouri, feasting on catfish, collards, and cornbread.

  As soon as the reverend learned his wife had expressed her discontent, he took her aside and, according to Millie, must have put the fear of fire and brimstone in her.

  “She never once complained after that,” Millie said. “It makes you wonder.”

  The night Dr. Marking took the arrow from Martin McConnell’s shoulder, Mrs. Rowe commented to Millie that she should get ready to bury her husband, as he had the look of death in his eyes, and that she was never wrong about such things. She had even commented to Martin along the trail that he should just give it up and go to the Lord, and stop causing everyone so much grief.

  Needless to say, that didn’t endear Millie to the woman, or Annie, either. The two paid Guynema Rowe a visit and told her never to come close to Martin again. Millie emphasized her point by saying, “And if you ever point that rifle at me again, I’ll wrap it around your scrawny neck.” />
  To hear Annie tell the story, I felt sorry for Millie, as she is usually such a gentle soul.

  “After chewing Guynema out,” Annie said, “Millie went to her wagon and said two rosaries.”

  I’ve noticed that Mrs. Rowe’s husband often puts extreme demands on her. He sits in camp, whittling small animals or smoking his pipe, while she gathers wood, builds the fire, and prepares the meal. This evening I saw her ask him for help and he quickly picked up a Bible and said that he must be about the Lord’s work.

  The men show him respect because of his dress and position, but I note that none of them have befriended him, not even the ones who feel compelled to listen to his sermons. Owen says that the reverend is doing his best to divide the group. His small cast of followers are considered “God-fearing citizens,” while those who don’t agree with him are “heathens of Satan, damned to Hell.”

  My belief is that Reverend Rowe wants to lead the party. He must be a failed man who has turned to the cloth in an effort to make people respect him. But he can’t hide behind that guise forever.

  Mrs. Rowe’s only friend seems to be a large red hen she calls Henrietta. She keeps the bird on a tether and walks her quite often, penning her up at night inside their wagon. The McCord girls wanted to pet Henrietta one afternoon, but Mrs. Rowe would have none of it.

  “She’s a persnickety bird,” she said. “If she smells your dogs on your hands, who knows how she might react.”

  The girls offered to wash their hands with lye soap, but Mrs. Rowe still wouldn’t give in. Pearl commented to me later that she was thinking about allowing Rufus a fine chicken dinner, but Katie said, “Just because Mrs. Rowe’s so mean, you don’t take it out on Henrietta. She’s a good hen.”

  Katie went on to say that she had considered the matter and thought that Mrs. Rowe might be suffering from a condition she called “shyness sickness,” which to her meant “a problem much worse than just being shy.”