Part 1
FROM THE WEST TO THE WEST
[Illustration: _Jean beheld a tall, sunburned young man._—_Page 185_]
FROM THE WEST TO THE WEST
Across the Plains to Oregon
BY ABIGAIL SCOTT DUNIWAY
With Frontispiece in Color
[Illustration]
CHICAGO A. C. McCLURG & CO. 1905
COPYRIGHT A. C. MCCLURG & CO. 1905
Published April 7, 1905
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.
TO
THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF OREGON
AND HER RISEN AND REMAINING PIONEERS
I AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATE
THIS BOOK
ABIGAIL SCOTT DUNIWAY
PREFACE
Not from any desire for augmented fame, or for further notoriety than has long been mine (at least within the chosen bailiwick of my farthest and best beloved West), have I consented to indite these pages.
The events of pioneer life, which form the groundwork of this story, are woven into a composite whole by memory and imagination. But they are not personal, nor do they present the reader, except in a fragmentary and romantic sense, with the actual, individual lives of borderers I have known. The story, nevertheless, is true to life and border history; and, no matter what may be the fate of the book, the facts it delineates will never die.
Fifty years ago, as an illiterate, inexperienced settler, a busy, overworked child-mother and housewife, an impulse to write was born within me, inherited from my Scottish ancestry, which no lack of education or opportunity could allay. So I wrote a little book which I called “Captain Gray’s Company, or Crossing the Plains and Living in Oregon.”
Measured by time and distance as now computed, that was ages ago. The iron horse and the telegraph had not crossed the Mississippi; the telephone and the electric light were not; and there were no cables under the sea.
Life’s twilight’s shadows are around me now. The good husband who shaped my destiny in childhood has passed to the skies; my beloved, beautiful, and only daughter has also risen; my faithful sons have founded homes and families of their own. Sitting alone in my deserted but not lonely home, I have yielded to a demand that for several years has been reaching me by person, post, and telephone, requesting the republication of my first little story, which passed rapidly through two editions, and for forty years has been out of print. In its stead I have written this historical novel.
Among the relics of the border times that abound in the rooms of the Oregon Historical Society may be seen an immigrant wagon, a battered ox-yoke, a clumsy, home-made hand-loom, an old-fashioned spinning-wheel, and a rusty Dutch oven. Such articles are valuable as relics, but they would not sell in paying quantities in this utilitarian age if duplicated and placed upon the market. Just so with “Captain Gray’s Company.” It accomplished its mission in its day and way. By its aid its struggling author stumbled forward to higher aims. Let it rest, and let the world go marching on.
A. S. D.
PORTLAND, OREGON, January 15, 1905.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. A REMOVAL IS PLANNED 15
II. EARLY LIFE IN THE MIDDLE WEST 22
III. MARRYING AND GIVING IN MARRIAGE 28
IV. OLD BLOOD AND NEW 35
V. SALLY O’DOWD 43
VI. THE BEGINNING OF A JOURNEY 50
VII. SCOTTY’S FIRST ROMANCE 55
VIII. A BORDER INCIDENT 62
IX. THE CAPTAIN DEFENDS THE LAW 68
X. THE CAPTAIN MAKES A DISTINCTION 76
XI. MRS. MCALPIN SEEKS ADVICE 84
XII. JEAN BECOMES A WITNESS 92
XIII. AN APPROACHING STORM 99
XIV. A CAMP IN CONSTERNATION 106
XV. CHOLERA RAGES 113
XVI. JEAN’S VISIT BEYOND THE VEIL 121
XVII. FATHER AND DAUGHTER 128
XVIII. THE LITTLE DOCTOR 134
XIX. A BRIEF MESSAGE FOR MRS. BENSON 142
XX. THE TEAMSTERS DESERT 148
XXI. AN UNEXPECTED ENCOUNTER 156
XXII. THE SQUAW MAN 163
XXIII. THE SQUAW ASSERTS HER RIGHTS 170
XXIV. A MORMON WOMAN 177
XXV. JEAN LOSES HER WAY 184
XXVI. LE-LE, THE INDIAN GIRL 191
XXVII. JEAN TRANSFORMED 197
XXVIII. THE STAMPEDE 203
XXIX. IN THE LAND OF DROUTH 209
XXX. BOBBIE GOES TO HIS MOTHER 217
XXXI. THROUGH THE OREGON MOUNTAINS 223
XXXII. LETTERS FROM HOME 229
XXXIII. LOVE FINDS A WAY 238
XXXIV. HAPPY JACK INTRODUCES HIMSELF 246
XXXV. ASHLEIGH MAKES NEW PLANS 253
XXXVI. HAPPY JACK IS SURPRISED 258
XXXVII. NEWS FOR JEAN 264
XXXVIII. THE BROTHERS JOURNEY HOMEWARD TOGETHER 271
XXXIX. THE OLD HOMESTEAD 283
XL. THE UNEXPECTED HAPPENS 290
XLI. “IN PRISON AND YE VISITED ME” 299
XLII. TOO BUSY TO BE MISERABLE 303
XLIII. JEAN IS HAPPY—AND ANOTHER PERSON 307
FROM THE WEST TO THE WEST
I
_A REMOVAL IS PLANNED_
On the front veranda of a rectangular farmhouse, somewhat pretentious for its time and place, stood a woman in expectant attitude. The bleak wind of a spent March day played rudely with the straying ends of her bright, abundant red-brown hair, which she brushed frequently from her careworn face as she peered through the thickening shadows of approaching night. The ice-laden branches of a leafless locust swept the latticed corner behind which she had retreated for protection from the wind. A great white-and-yellow watch-dog crouched expectantly at her feet, whining and wagging his tail.
Indoors, the big living-room echoed with the laughter and prattle of many voices. At one end of a long table, littered with books and slates and dimly lighted by flickering tallow dips, sat the older children of the household, busy with their lessons for the morrow’s recitations. A big fire of maple logs roared on the hearth in harmony with the roaring of the wind outside.
“Yes, Rover, he’s coming,” exclaimed the watcher on the veranda, as the dog sprang to his feet with a noisy proclamation of welcome.
A shaggy-bearded horseman, muffled to the ears in a tawny fur coat, tossed his bridle to a stable-boy and, rushing up the icy steps, caught the gentle woman in his arms. “It’s all settled, mother. I’ve made terms with Lije. He’s to take my farm and pay me as he can. I’ve made a liberal discount for the keep of the old folks; and we’ll sell off the stock, the farming implements, the household stuff, and the sawmill, and be off in less than a month for the Territory of Oregon.”
Mrs. Ranger shrank and shivered. “Oregon is a long way off, John,” she said, nestling closer to his side and half suppressing a sob. “There’s the danger and the hardships of the journey to be considered, you know.”
“I will always protect you and the children under all circumstances, Annie. Can’t you trust me?”
“Haven’t I always trusted you, John? But—”
“What is it, Annie? Don’t be afraid to speak your mind.”
“I was thinking, dear,—you know we’ve always lived on the frontier, and civilization is just now beginning to catch up with us,—mightn’t it be better for us to stay here and enjoy it? Illinois is still a new country, you know. We’ve never had any advantages to speak of, and none of the children, nor I, have ever seen a railroad.”
“Don’t be foolish, Annie! We’ll take civilization with us wherever we go, railroads or no railroads.”
“But we’ll be compelled to leave our parents behind, John. They’re old and infirm now, and we’ll be going so far away that we’ll never see them again. At least, I sha’n’t.”
The husband cleared his throat, but did not reply. The wife continued her protest.
“Just think of the sorrow we’ll bring upon ’em in their closing days, dear! Then there’s that awful journey for us and the children through more than two thousand miles of unsettled country, among wild beasts and wilder Indians. Hadn’t we better let well-enough alone, and remain where we are comfortable?”
“A six months’ journey across the untracked continent, with ox teams and dead-ax wagons, won’t be a summer picnic; I’ll admit that. But the experience will come only one day at a time, and we can stand it. It will be like a whipping,—it will feel good when it is over and quits hurting.”
“You are well and strong, John, but you know I have never been like myself since that awful time when your brother Joe got into that trouble. It was at the time of Harry’s birth, you know. You didn’t mean to neglect me, dear, but you had to do it.”
“There, there, little wife!” placing his hand over her mouth. “Let the dead past bury its dead. Never mention Joe to me again. And never fear for a minute that you and the children won’t be taken care of.”
“I beg your pardon, John!” and the wife shrank back against the lattice and shivered. The protruding thorn of a naked locust bough scratched her cheek, and the red blood trickled down.
“I need your encouragement, in this time of all times, Annie. You mustn’t fail me now,” he said, speaking in an injured tone.
“Have I ever failed you yet, my husband?”
“I can’t say that you have, Annie. But you worry too much; you bore a fellow so. Just brace up; don’t anticipate trouble. It’ll come soon enough without your meeting it halfway. You ought to consider the welfare of the children.”
“Have I ever lived for myself, John?”
“No, no; but you fret too much. I suppose it’s a woman’s way, though, and I must stand it. There’s the chance of a lifetime before us, Annie.” He added after a pause, “The Oregon Donation Land Law that was passed by Congress nearly two years ago won’t be a law always. United States Senators in the farthest East are already urging its repeal. We’ve barely time, even by going now, to get in on the ground-floor. Then we’ll get, in our own right, to have and to hold, in fee simple, as the lawyers say, a big square mile of the finest land that ever rolled out o’ doors.”
“Will there be no mortgage to eat us up with interest, and no malaria to shake us to pieces, John? And will you keep the woodpile away from the front gate, and make an out-of-the-way lane for the cows, so they won’t come home at night through the front avenue?”
“There’ll be no mortgage and no malaria. One-half of the claim will belong to you absolutely; and you can order the improvements to suit yourself. Only think of it! A square mile o’ land is six hundred and forty acres, and six hundred and forty acres is a whole square mile! We wouldn’t be dealing justly by our children if we let the opportunity slip. We’ll get plenty o’ land to make a good-sized farm for every child on the plantation, and it won’t cost us a red cent to have and to hold it!”
“That was the plan our parents had in view when they came here from Kentucky, John. They wanted land for their children, you know. They wanted us all to settle close around ’em, and be the stay and comfort of their old age.” And Mrs. Ranger laughed hysterically.
“You shiver, Annie. You oughtn’t to be out in this bleak March wind. Let’s go inside.”
“I’m not minding the wind, dear. I was thinking of the way people’s plans so often miscarry. Children do their own thinking and planning nowadays, as they always did, regardless of what their parents wish. Look at us! We’re planning to leave your parents and mine, for good and all, after they’ve worn themselves out in our service; and we needn’t expect different treatment from our children when we get old and decrepit.”
“But I’ve already arranged for our parents’ keep with Lije and Mary,” said the husband, petulantly. “Didn’t I tell you so?”
“But suppose Lije fails in business; or suppose he gets the far Western fever too; or suppose he tires of his bargain and quits?”
A black cloud scudded away before the wind, uncovering the face of the moon. The silver light burst suddenly upon the pair.
“What’s the matter, Annie?” cried the husband, in alarm. “Are you sick?” Her upturned face was like ashes.
“No; it’s nothing. I was only thinking.”
They entered the house together, their brains busy with unuttered thoughts. The baby of less than a year extended her chubby hands to her father, and the older babies clamored for recognition in roistering glee.
“Take my coat and hat, Hal; and get my slippers, somebody. Don’t all jump at once! Gals, put down your books, and go to the kitchen and help your mother. Don’t sit around like so many cash boarders! You oughtn’t to let your mother do a stroke of work at anything.”
“You couldn’t help it unless you caged her, or bound her hand and foot,” answered Jean, who strongly resembled her father in disposition, voice, and speech. But the command was obeyed; and the pale-faced mother, escorted from the kitchen amid much laughter by Mary, Marjorie, and Jean, was soon seated before the roaring fire beside her husband, enjoying with him the frolics of the babies, and banishing for the nonce the subject which had so engrossed their thoughts outside. The delayed meal was soon steaming on the long table in the low, lean-to kitchen, and was despatched with avidity by the healthy and ravenous brood which constituted the good old-fashioned household of John Ranger and Annie Robinson, his wife.
“Children,” said Mrs. Ranger, as an interval of silence gave her a chance to be heard, “did you know your father had sold the farm?”
A thunderbolt from a clear sky would hardly have created greater astonishment. True, John Ranger had been talking “new country” ever since the older children could remember anything; the theme was an old story, invoking no comment. But now there was an ominous pause, followed with exclamations of mingled dissent and approval, to which the parents gave unrestricted liberty.
“I’m not going a single step; so there!” exclaimed Mary, a gentle girl of seventeen, who did not look her years, but who had a reason of her own for this unexpected avowal.
“My decision will depend on where we’re going,” cried Jean.
“Maybe your mother and I can be consulted,—just a little bit,” said the father, laughing.
“We’re going to Oregon; that’s what,” exclaimed Harry, who was as impulsive as he was noisy.
“How did you come to know so much?” asked Marjorie, the youngest of John Ranger’s “Three Graces,” as he was wont to style his trio of eldest daughters, who had persisted in coming into his household—much to his discomfort—before the advent of Harry, the fourth in his catalogue of seven, of whom only two were boys.
“I get my learning by studying o’ nights!” answered Hal, in playful allusion to his success as a sound sleeper, especially during study hours.
“Of course you don’t want to emigrate, Miss Mame,” cried Jean, “but you can’t help yourself, unless you run away and get married; and then you’ll have to help everybody else through the rest of your life and take what’s left for yourself,-if there’s anything left to take! At least, that is mother’s and Aunt Mary’s lot.”
“Jean speaks from the depths of long experience,” laughed Mary, blushing to the roots of her hair.
“I’m sick to death of this cold kitchen,” cried Jean, snapping her tea-towel in the frosty air of the unplastered lean-to. “Hurrah for Oregon! Hurrah for a warmer climate, and a snug cabin home among the evergreen trees!”
“Good for Jean!” exclaimed her father. “The weather’ll be so mild in Oregon we shall not need a tight kitchen.”
“Is Oregon a tight house?” asked three-year-old Bobbie, whose brief life had many a time been clouded by the complaints of his mother and sisters,—complaints such as are often heard to this day from women in the country homes of the frontier and middle West, where more than one-half of their waking hours are spent in the unfinished and uncomfortable kitchens peculiar to the slave era, in which—as almost any makeshift was considered “good enough for niggers”—the unfinished kitchen came to stay.
The vigorous barking of Rover announced the approach of visitors; and the circle around the fireside was enlarged, amid the clatter of moving chairs and tables, to make room for Elijah Robinson and his wife,—the former a brother of Annie Ranger, and the latter a sister of John. The meeting between the sisters-in-law was expectant, anxious, and embarrassing.
“How did you like the news?” asked Mrs. Robinson, after an awkward silence.
“How did you like it?” was the evasive reply, as the twain withdrew to a distant corner, where they could exchange confidences undisturbed.
“I haven’t had time to think it over yet,” said Mrs. Ranger. “My greatest trouble is about leaving our parents. It seems as if I could not bear to break the news to them.”
“Don’t worry, Annie; they know already. When Lije told his mother that John was going to Oregon, she fainted dead away. When she revived and sat up, she wanted to come right over to see you, in spite of the storm.”
“Just listen! How the wind does roar!”
“I don’t see how your mother can live without you, Annie. I tried very hard to persuade Lije to refuse to buy John’s farm; but he would have his way, as he always does. Of course, we’ll do all we can for the old folks, but Lije is heavily in debt again, with the ever-recurring interest staring us all in the face. John will want his money, with interest,—they all do,—and we know how rapidly it accumulates, from our own dearly bought experience, the result of poor Joe’s troubles!”
“I hope my dear father and mother won’t live very long,” sighed Mrs. Ranger. “If John would only let me make them a deed to my little ten-acre farm! But I can’t get him to talk about it.”
II
_EARLY LIFE IN THE MIDDLE WEST_
The surroundings of the budding daughters of the Ranger and Robinson families had thus far been limited, outside of their respective homes, to attendance at the district school on winter week-days when weather permitted, and on Sundays at the primitive church services held by itinerant clergymen in the same rude edifice.
Oh, that never-to-be-forgotten schoolhouse of the borderland and the olden time! Modelled everywhere after the same one-roomed, quadrangular pattern,—and often the only seat of learning yet to be seen in school districts of the far frontier,—the building in which the children of these chronicles received the rudimentary education which led to the future weal of most of them was built of logs unhewn, and roofed with “shakes” unshaven. One rough horizontal log was omitted from the western wall when the structure was raised by the men of the district, who purposely left the space for the admission of a long line of little window-panes above the rows of desks. A huge open fireplace occupied the whole northern end of the room; rude benches rocked on the uneven puncheon floor and creaked as the students turned upon them to face the long desks beneath the little window-panes, or to confront the centre of the room. The children’s feet generally swung to and fro in a sort of rhythmic consonance with the audible whispers in which they studied their lessons,—when not holding sly conversation, amid much suppressed giggling, with their neighbors at elbow, if the teacher’s back was turned.
The busy agricultural seasons of springtime and summer, and often extending far into the autumn, prevented the regular attendance at school of the older children of the district, who were usually employed early and late, indoors and out, with the ever-exacting labors of the farm.
Up to the time of the departure of the Ranger family for the Pacific coast and for a brief time thereafter, the most of the summer and all of the winter clothing worn in the country districts of the middle West was the product of the individual housewife’s skill in the use of the spinning-wheel, dye-kettle, and clumsy, home-made hand-loom.
But, few and far between as were the schoolhouses and schooldays of the border times, of which the present-day grandparent loves to boast, there was a rigorous course of primitive study then in vogue which justifies their boasting. Oh, that old-fashioned pedagogue! What resident of the border can fail to remember—if his early lot was cast anywhere west of the Alleghanies, at any time antedating the era of railroads—the austere piety and stately dignity of that mighty master of the rod and the rule, who never by any chance forgot to use the rod, lest by so doing he should spoil the child!
The terror of those days lingers now only as an amusing memory. The pain of which the rod and the rule were the instruments has long since lost its sting; but the sound morals inculcated by the teacher (whose example never strayed from his precept) have proved the ballast needed to hold a level head on many a pair of shoulders otherwise prone to push their way into forbidden places.
And the old-fashioned singing-school! How tenderly the memory of the time-dulled ear recalls the doubtful harmony of many youthful voices, as they ran the gamut in a jangling merry-go-round! Did any other musical entertainment ever equal it? Then, when the exercises were over, and the stars hung high and glittering above the frosty branches of the naked treetops, and the crisp white snow crunched musically beneath the feet of fancy-smitten swains, hurrying homeward with ruddy-visaged sweethearts on their pulsing arms, did any other joy ever equal the stolen kisses of the youthful lovers at the parting doorstep,—the one to return to the parental home with an exultant throbbing at his heart, and the other to creep noiselessly to her cold, dark bedroom to blush unseen over her first little secret from her mother.
And there is yet another memory.
Can anybody who has enjoyed it ever forget the school of metrical geography which sometimes alternated, on winter evenings, with the singing-school? What could have been more enchanting, or more instructive withal, than those exercises wherein the States and their capitals were chanted over and over to a sort of rhymeless rhythm, so often repeated that to this day the old-time student finds it only necessary to mention the name of any State then in the Union to call to mind the name of its capital. After the States and their capitals, the boundaries came next in order, chanted in the same rhythmic way, until the youngest pupil had conquered all the names by sound, and localities on the map by sight, of all the continents, islands, capes, promontories, peninsulas, mountains, kingdoms, republics, oceans, seas, rivers, lakes, harbors, and cities then known upon the planet.
In its season, beginning with the New Year, came the regular religious revival. No chronicles like these would be complete without its mention, since no rural life on the border exists without it. Much to the regret of doting parents who failed to get all their dear ones “saved”—especially the boys—before the sap began to run in the sugar maples, the revival season was sometimes cut short by the advent of an early spring. The meetings were then brought to a halt, notwithstanding the fervent prayers of the righteous, who in vain besought the Lord of the harvest to delay the necessary seed-time, so that the work of saving souls might not be interrupted by the sports and labors of the sugar camp, which called young people together for collecting fagots, rolling logs, and gathering and boiling down the sap.
Many were the matches made at these rural gatherings, as the lads and lasses sat together on frosty nights and replenished the open fires under the silent stars.