The Undaunted

by Gerald N. Lund

  They ate a quick, cold lunch, turned the pack animals free to graze, then split up. Sevy took one horse, David the other. They divided the task up. With the horses, David and Bishop Sevy would ride out to the farthest points, then move back toward the center while the others began searching on foot along the rim of the mesa. If anyone found a way down, they were to fire off one shot, and the rest would come back in.

  For the next five hours, they moved slowly back and forth along the rim of the mesa. They would find a promising swale or narrow opening into the rocks below, only to have it close off into a blind wall or drop off so steeply one couldn’t even get close enough to see how high the cliff was.

  As the last rays of the sun disappeared, David met George Hobbs coming along the rim toward him. David had ridden all the way back to the river overlook, a distance of three or four miles, then come back following the rim all the way. “Any luck?” Hobbs called as David got close enough to hear.

  “None,” David said. When he reached the campfire, he swung down and began unsaddling the horse. “You heard from the others?”

  George shook his head. “I thought I’d start supper. It’ll be dark in less than half an hour.”

  “I’d better get some more brush,” David said, slapping the horse on the rump to send her away. “They may need a signal fire to find their way back.”

  But the three other men appeared a few minutes later, walking together with their heads down. Hobbs had some beans and bacon simmering in a pan by then. As they reached the fire, they all looked tired, but Bishop Sevy seemed especially discouraged. “Nothing, I assume?”

  Both David and Hobbs shook their heads. “Not even a place where we could lower someone down with a rope,” Hobbs replied.

  No one said much while they ate their supper. Only when they were finished did they begin to discuss their options. “Let’s get up at first light,” Sevy finally suggested. “We’ll spread out again, only this time we’ll all go on foot. Explore every possibility.” He shook his head very slowly. “We’ll take about three hours. If we haven’t found something by then, there’s nothing to find.”

  His voice trailed off. “Brethren, I would suggest we petition the Lord for His help, then retire. Brother David, will you be voice?”

  Hobbs gave David a sharp look. On the exploring party, everyone had known that you didn’t call on David for prayer. But these men were new.

  David just smiled at Hobbs, then nodded. “I’d be happy to.”

  Friday, December 19, 1879

  They barely spoke as they awakened in the morning chill. A deep melancholy lay on each of them. As they went about getting a fire started, their breath made silvery puffs in the growing light. Bishop Sevy seemed especially weighed down. He looked to the east for a long, silent moment. It was going to be another good day. There were puffy high clouds across the northeastern sky, and they were a soft pink with the coming sunrise. The morning light had softened the harshness of the landscape that now lay at their feet. Under other circumstances it would have been a beautiful sight. Now it only deepened their sense of despair.

  “All right,” Sevy finally said. “I’d recommend we not stop for breakfast. We’ll search until ten, each taking a different sector from what we searched yesterday. If by then we’ve not found anything, we’ll come back here, have breakfast, and—” he sighed heavily—“and start back.”

  No one disagreed. They rolled up their beds and loaded everything but some food and their cooking utensils into the packs so that once they returned, they could strap the packs on the mule and the burro and leave immediately. Finally, it was light enough for them to see clearly, and Sevy signaled for them to gather around him.

  “Brother Morrell and I will go south this time,” he said. “David, you go north. You’ll come to a really deep, narrow canyon. There’s no sense going any farther than that. It’s all sheer cliffs from there. Lem, you and Hobbs take this central section.” He took a quick breath. “Take your time. Follow every possible opening.” He gave them all piercing looks. “But be careful! That rock is as smooth as the top of a buttered loaf of bread in some places. One slip and it’s over.”

  As they nodded gravely, he removed his hat. “Brethren, let’s once again ask the Lord to accompany us and bless our endeavors.”

  David hadn’t brought his watch with him, so he had to guess when it was about ten o’clock. As he trudged back toward their camp, downcast and discouraged, he saw that he was the first to return. The four animals grazed contentedly a short distance away from the campfire, which was now sending up a column of grey smoke in the morning sunshine. But there were no figures in sight.

  He stopped, staring east across the unbroken scene of undulating stone, deep canyons, and sheer cliffs. A great sense of despair swept over him. What were those good people so anxiously waiting back there for them going to say when they came back and reported that there was no way through, that their mission was over, at least for this season?

  David harbored no illusions that they could return to the river and find another way east. Schow and Collett had spent a lot more time than they had and had finally concluded that this was the only way. He thought about the hope and optimism that had filled the camp after Silas Smith announced that the Lord had confirmed the decision to move forward. Were those hopes now to be dashed?

  And what of that supposed inspiration? David wondered. He had felt the rightness of it as strongly as anyone else. When Silas had called for the vote, David’s hand was in the air as high as the others. When the decision was confirmed, he too had joyously shouted, “Ho! Ho to the San Juan!” And now the way before them lay blocked by an impassable wilderness.

  As he stood there, staring blankly out at nothing, faces began coming into his mind. Emmy Davis. Mary Davis and baby Ethel. Jens Nielson. Molly. The McKennas. His own father. Abby. What would they say? How would they respond when the men rode back into camp to announce that there was no going forward, that it had all been for naught?

  He pushed the thought away, the pain too intense. He bowed his head, but suddenly that seemed so inadequate, so insufficient. He looked around once more and, seeing that he was still alone, he dropped his head and closed his eyes. “O God!” he cried from the depths of his soul. Immediately, he heard Mary’s voice in his mind and corrected himself. “Our Father in Heaven.”

  He paused, not sure if after all the years, a desperate cry in a desperate hour qualified as a prayer at all. Angry, he pushed that aside as well. “Dear God. I know I have no right to call on you after so many years of doubt.” The words sounded awkward, fumbling. He pressed on. “I do not ask for me, but for them. Those good people back in camp. For the McKennas and so many families like them. For Jim and Mary Davis, the Harrimans, and their families waiting for rescue. O God, don’t let us fail. Please! Hear our cries. Heed our prayers. Show us a way through. I have nothing to offer Thee in return except for the submission of my own will to yours. Which I offer now.”

  He stopped again, searching for words to express his yearnings, for communication deep enough to reach to heaven. Finding nothing, he simply said, “Amen.” He got slowly to his feet. Not moving, he let the feelings gradually subside again. Then he pulled his shoulders back and decided it was time to get breakfast started.

  Only as he reached the campfire did something finally register in David’s mind. They had left almost three hours before. The fire should be nothing but hot coals by now, yet it was burning its way through a thick clump of sagebrush. Then he saw something else. The frying pan, full of half-cooked bacon, was set off to one side. The grease was barely starting to congeal. One or more of his brethren had been here before him and started breakfast as they had agreed to do. He turned slowly. But who? And why had they suddenly left again?

  Since he couldn’t answer that, he squatted down, picked up the frying pan, and put it back on the fire. Then he started stirring up some flour and water to make flapjacks.

  Five minutes later Lemuel Redd re
turned. In response to David’s querying look he simply shook his head. Ten minutes after that, with the tantalizing smell of bacon and fried bread filling the air, Bishop Sevy and George Morrell appeared and trudged slowly into camp. From the slump of their shoulders and the dejection on their faces, it was obvious that they had failed too.

  As they joined them, Sevy looked around. “Where’s Hobbs?”

  “Not back yet,” David said. And then he had a thought. “Did any of you start breakfast?”

  When they all shook their heads, he said, “It must have been Hobbs then,” and he explained what he had found when he returned.

  Not sure what to make of it, they sat down around the fire and had breakfast. As they were finishing, a shout pulled them all around. Just to the east, where the mesa abruptly dropped off into the maze of rock below, they saw a head and an arm waving. A moment later George Hobbs appeared. He stopped and bent over nearly double, drawing in huge gulps of air.

  Alarmed, the four started toward him. “George!” David called. “Are you all right?”

  Still bent over, he waved, and they heard a choked laugh between his gasps. “I found it!” he cried. “I found the way down.”

  While Hobbs caught his breath, David forked out a flapjack and three slices of bacon onto a tin plate and handed it to him. He nodded gratefully, finally getting some control over his breathing. “I found it, brethren,” he said again, grinning like a young boy.

  Sevy leaned forward. “You really did, George? Where?”

  He pointed in the direction where he had first appeared. “Right over there.”

  “But,” Lem said, looking dubious, “I searched all over there yesterday afternoon.”

  Hobbs laughed aloud. He was clearly delighted with himself, and so excited that he had already forgotten that he had food in his hand. “So did I this morning.” He set the plate aside and stood up so he could use his hands freely. “Finally, greatly discouraged, I gave up and returned and started breakfast.”

  “So it was you,” David said.

  “That’s right. But I was just getting started when a movement caught my eye. I looked up, thinking it was one of you coming back, but to my astonishment, it was one of those mountain sheep.”

  “What?” Morrell exclaimed. “Again?”

  “Yeah!” Hobbs said as he pointed. “He was standing right over there, not fifteen feet away. He was just standing there, looking at me, like they did yesterday. My first thought was to grab my gun and get us some meat, but as I watched him, he was too pretty to kill. So then I had another idea. I decided to lasso him and show you guys that he was really here.”

  He paused for a quick breath, then rushed on. “I stood up slowly, not wanting to scare him, and moved over to where we left the pack ropes. I got one and tied a noose in it, all the time watching the sheep. He barely moved. He just kept looking at me with those big brown eyes. So I started edging my way toward him, lasso in hand.”

  “That is amazing,” David breathed.

  “That’s why I thought you would never believe me.” His eyes were dancing as he remembered. “I got within about ten feet of him, but before I could even lift the rope to throw it, he suddenly darted away. But he only went another ten or fifteen feet, then stopped again. So, more slowly now, I moved toward him again. Same thing. I would get just close enough to throw the rope and he’d jump away again.”

  He stopped, savoring the moment, loving the rapt attention he was getting from his listeners. “After four or five times like that, I thought I’d lost him. Suddenly he disappeared, just like yesterday. I ran forward to the edge of the rim, cursing myself for having let him get away. But there he was, just a few feet below me, staring up as if to say, ‘Are you giving up that easily?’”

  “Unbelievable,” Redd murmured.

  “So,” Hobbs went on, “I slipped over the edge too, and once again started slowly toward him. Guess what? I’d get about eight or ten feet away, and wham! in three hops, he’d be out of reach again. It was like he was playing a game with me. I could scarcely believe it. Over and over that happened.”

  He stopped, and now he went very sober. “I followed him for near half a mile before suddenly he gave a toss of his head and leaped away. Only this time he didn’t stop. I saw a flash of his tail and he was gone. I never saw him again.”

  Sevy started. “You went half a mile down the cliff face?” he asked slowly.

  “Yes!” He almost shouted it. “When he was gone, I looked around to see where I was. I had been concentrating so hard on catching him that I hadn’t paid attention to where I was going. But as I looked around, I realized I was at the bottom!”

  The others were so absolutely dumbfounded they could only stare.

  “Without me even knowing it, that ole rascal showed me a way down.”

  “Can you take a horse down the way you went?” Redd asked, half in awe.

  “Actually, two horses and two mules,” he laughed. “They might balk at the sight of the drop-offs, but if we blindfold them, it will be no problem. I marked the way with rocks, coming back up. That’s why I was puffing so hard when you first saw me.”

  Sevy was scratching his beard, his expression unreadable. “What about wagons?” he asked.

  That stopped them all. That was the real question. But it didn’t stop George Hobbs. “It’ll be another one of those stretches to turn your hair grey, but give Ben Perkins and his crew some blasting powder and a day or two, and yes, we can make a road wide enough for wagons.”2

  Notes

  ^1. Miller indicates that he is the one who called the narrow notch near the top of Cottonwood Canyon the “Little Hole in the Rock” (see Hole, 125), but I have let the explorers name it to make it easier for the reader to identify.

  ^2. George Hobbs is the only one of the four scouts to have left a history of this critical four-man exploration. Even though he is often quoted—or “retold” with some embellishment—he is the only original source for this story about the mountain sheep. As noted in the previous chapter, his was a narrative history given some forty years after the expedition. As is common with such later reminiscences, some details may not be completely correct. For example, Hobbs did call the animals llamas and said there were fourteen of them. Whether he called them llamas at the time when they first saw them cannot be determined. He does say that they “followed us for some distance” and “were quite curious to know what kind of animals we were!”

  While some minor details have been added for the flow of the novel, the basic elements come from Hobbs’s account. Today the road the pioneers later made down the path where the sheep led Hobbs is still called Slickrock Hill. To see the actual road they cut into the side of the rock hillsides to bring the wagons down is astounding. In several places, notches carved in the rock by the pioneers to give their teams better footing can still be seen.

  Chapter 57

  Wednesday, December 24, 1879

  David moaned softly, half asleep and half awake. There was a hard spot—probably a rock he had missed—beneath his left shoulder blade that was hurting enough to have awakened him. He shifted his body, trying unsuccessfully to find a little softer spot in the dirt beneath him.

  Irritated that he had been awakened before he was ready, he cracked one eye open to see what was wrong. To his surprise, he saw nothing but blackness. It was the deep, heavy darkness of the coal mine, and for a moment he felt a rush of panic. Then he relaxed as he remembered that he had put his poncho over his head last night in case it snowed. Surprised at how heavy it seemed, he reached up and pushed it away.

  That woke him up in an instant. Snow cascaded onto his face and neck. He jerked up, throwing the poncho off to one side. Willing himself to come fully awake, he realized that his whole body seemed weighted down, as if he had on four or five extra blankets. Which meant it had snowed during the night. A lot.

  Brushing the snow from his face, he leaned on one elbow. In the first light of dawn, he could see that he was covered with
about eight inches of snow. Turning his head to the side, he made out four other mounds in the snow, and a black circle marking where the fire had been.

  Careful not to pull any more snow in on himself, he moved his legs and body so that the snow shucked off to one side. Then, with a groan of pure misery, he lay back down and pulled the top blanket up around his neck. Another mistake. It was wet and frozen and it scraped against his neck.

  He sighed. Here was yet another setback, another delay, another frustration. After miraculously finding a way down Slickrock Hill, as they called it, the group of scouts were elated. They didn’t have to turn back. They had found a way through. His brethren used the word miraculous, and, to David’s surprise, he found himself comfortable with that term. It had truly been an astounding experience.

  That was followed closely by another astonishing development. As they made their way along the highest point between the drainages of the Colorado and San Juan Rivers, off in the distance they saw a long, narrow lake shimmering in the sunlight. At first they thought it was a mirage, but through the field glasses they saw that a pile of rocks and debris—probably from a massive cave-in during a flash flood—had blocked one of the dry washes, forming a natural dam. Behind it, a lake had now formed. From what they could see of the canyon below the dam, there were large trees and considerable forage. This oasis in the desert would make a perfect campsite for a large company and their herds.1 Amazing!

  As they continued eastward, however, wending their way through the tangled network of canyons and gulches, the challenges became more and more daunting. Since the only reasonable route of travel was in the dry washes, they could get no broad perspective of the landscape. When they came to places where a wash was fed by several canyons, they had to stop and make individual forays up each canyon before proceeding.