Part 13

The sleeves of her gaudy dress were rolled back above the elbows, exposing her fat yet muscular arms, not over-clean; and the dingy pipe she had been smoking protruded from the open bosom of her gown.

“Where have you been during all this busy afternoon, Joseph?” she asked, still standing.

“To hell!”

“Your missionaries have taught me that people only go to hell from choice, Joseph; that is, if there is any worse hell anywhere than we are in all the time,—which I love the Great Spirit too well to believe. It seems to me we are compelled to take the punishment we bring upon ourselves here and now.”

“You haven’t any right to think, you loathsome, disgusting—”

“Stop, Joseph Addicks! This is, you say, a white man’s country now. Will you prove it by behaving yourself like a gentleman? I didn’t live for four years in a white man’s country for nothing.”

He arose and left the table without a word. His wife had seen him in moods like this before.

“Come, John; come, Annie; take your seats at table. You must be half famished.”

Four or five smaller children as dusky as herself were playing on the earthen floor; and, leaning helplessly against a pyramid of flour sacks, lashed in Indian style to its birchen cradle, was a pappoose of three months, defencelessly enduring an attack of mosquitoes on its face and eyes.

“My father was a fool for sending me to college,” thought Joseph Ranger, who, like many others that go wrong, was ready to blame everything and everybody except himself. “The university should have stopped that hazing before it began, so I couldn’t have had that fracas.”

“Why didn’t you eat your dinner, Joseph?” asked his wife, after she had fed the children.

“Because I hate this accursed life too heartily to have any appetite for food.”

“Haven’t I always urged you to go with us back to civilization, Joseph?”

“With you for a wife? You don’t know what you are talking about.”

Then—but it was not the first time since Wahnetta had become his property by purchase—he fired himself up with the vile whiskey his company held in stock, and, taking advantage of the English common law, at that time an acknowledged authority in every State and Territory in the Union, he provided himself with a stick, no thicker than his thumb, and beat Wahnetta, his wife, long and brutally.

* * * * *

Captain Ranger had allowed his anger to cool before the sun went down. To his credit be it spoken, he was very much ashamed of himself. “I was like an enraged, unreasoning animal,” he exclaimed aloud. “I might at least have repulsed Joe with kindness. I will write to my father and mother and tell them that my brother who was lost is alive and is found. But I’ll say nothing about the domestic side of his history. It would only grieve them all, and they couldn’t help matters. It is none of my business, anyhow.”

But he could not sleep. The memory of his and Joseph’s boyhood days reproached him, and he thought lovingly, in spite of himself, of the younger brother of whom he had been so proud. Many incidents of their childhood, long forgotten, passed before him with startling vividness.

“Joe saved my life once,” he said, half audibly. “I would have been drowned as sure as fate, when I broke through the ice that day, if he hadn’t saved me at the risk of his own life. Dear boy! I’ll saddle Sukie and go back to see him in the morning.” With this resolution settled in his mind, he fell asleep; but his sleep was fitful. Sometimes the sad, sweet face of his gentle Annie would bend over him, awakening him with a start. A conviction settled more and more strongly upon his mind that he had cruelly wronged his brother, and he would be allowed no rest till he should atone.

Once, long before morning, he saw himself face to face with a raging buffalo bull. It was without eyes, and gazed at him through sightless sockets, and shook its formidable head at him with as much certainty of aim as though its thick and darkened skull were ablaze with light. The beast held the only vantage-ground,—an open plain,—and at his back rose a sheer and inaccessible mountain, up which there was no chance of escape.

XXIII

_THE SQUAW ASSERTS HER RIGHTS_

The morning found the post-trader with a raging headache. For several minutes after awakening to consciousness he remained motionless, not realizing time or place.

“Oh, mother! my head, my head!” he exclaimed, as he locked his fingers above his throbbing temples. Never before since his marriage had he uttered a cry of pain without bringing Wahnetta to his side. Now no one noticed his groaning. He raised himself upon his elbow and gazed through the open door of his sleeping apartment upon the broad and dusty plain. The sun was already an hour high. Numerous campers had struck their tents, and the teams were moving toward the farther West. He turned his gaze within the tent and regarded Wahnetta with a look and feeling of disgust. She had prepared his breakfast while he slept, and had fed their ravenous brood,—all save the baby in its Indian basket, which was whining pitifully as it blinked its eyes in a helpless attempt to drive away the flies.

“Why don’t you keep your young one quiet?” roared her husband, savagely.

“I’ve been doing the best I could,” said the woman, meekly. “I’ve gotten all the children settled outside in the shade, studying their lessons, except this poor little pappoose, and I’ll ’tend to his wants as soon as I have disposed of the worst baby in the lot,—and that’s you.”

“What in thunder has come over you, woman?”

“Nothing.”

“Have you had breakfast?”

“Food would choke me, Joseph Addicks! See what you did last night!” She threw back her heavy mass of torn and tangled hair, exposing an ugly bruise on her temple. “If it were not for these children, I’d leave you and strike out for myself. But as I cannot get away from them, I will stay by them, as many a woman in all countries is obliged to do under like circumstances till she either dies or can run away. But I tell you right here and now that I will never take another blow from you or any other man.”

“I’d like to see you help yourself.”

“I’ll help myself by laying you dead at my feet! No man who respects himself will marry a woman not his equal, or if she is of an inferior race. I didn’t know this when I was a foolish young girl, but I understand it now. In marrying an Indian girl you did not elevate her one atom, but you degraded us both. I now tell you to your teeth that I hate you, and you can’t help it.”

“I never would have married you if I had known that I was not an outlaw. I thought myself a murderer till yesterday. I know better now. I am sorry I beat you, though. I wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t been in a drunken frenzy. I’m in a better temper this morning; but oh, my head, my head!”

“Let it ache! So does mine, but I can’t lie abed and groan. I am compelled to look after the family’s needs, sick or well.”

Then, womanlike, though the poor little pappoose fretted pitifully in its Indian basket, his wife brought cold water and towels and bathed his throbbing forehead.

“I’m better now,” he said, as his temples cooled. “Will you forgive me for beating you last night, Wahnetta?”

She looked at him in astonishment. Never before, though he had often bestowed indignities upon her that he would not have inflicted upon a favorite dog or horse, had he addressed her thus, or shown any sign of repentance.

“If I had kept my promise, Wahnetta, as I should have done, I would have taken you as a bride to London or Montreal and replaced you in the world of civilization, in which you were educated by your fond, mistaken father. But I couldn’t do it, because of my daily dread of the hangman’s rope. I do not wonder that you despise me. I did not realize that I had become that thing that every self-respecting man of the West abhors,—a ‘squaw-man’!”

“Don’t you dare to say ‘squaw’ to me, Joseph Addicks! It is an epithet no white man uses except in contempt. When we were married I was your equal in education, your superior in personal appearance, and your match in ambition. I now see that I was far ahead of you in moral character, for I was never a fugitive from what the world calls justice. But why didn’t you confide all this to me long ago?”

He laughed derisively. “I knew the treacherous Indian nature too well, woman; and I wouldn’t trust you now if it were in your power to betray me; but there is nothing now to betray.”

“And I am no longer afraid of you, Joseph Addicks.”

“My name is not Addicks. My brother passed through here yesterday. His name is John Ranger, and I am his long-lost brother, Joseph. He is taking his family to the Territory of Oregon.”

He arose finally and made a tolerable breakfast, she, for the first time since their marriage, taking her seat at the table beside him as he ate.

“If you’d keep yourself clean and tidy, like a self-respecting white woman, you wouldn’t appear so—so Injuny, and I wouldn’t be so very much ashamed of you. I’m sick to death of this bondage, Wahnetta. I, too, was a young and unsophisticated fool when we were married. What will you take to let me out of it honorably? I want to do everything I can to atone; but something must be done. I will not longer endure this mode of existence.”

“I have an idea, Joseph. My inheritance from my father arrived several days ago. I hadn’t thought of claiming it for myself, but I will now. Give me a letter of credit for the whole of it, with an outfit for travelling, and I will go, with the children, to a village on the Willamette River called Portland, in the Territory of Oregon. You know Dr. McLoughlin well, and so do I. There’s a convent in Portland, where I can place the girls, and a brothers’ school near by for the boys. I’ll get a boarding-place, not too far away, for myself and the little tots that are too young to be in school. I will soon recruit if I can get a chance to rest up and dress myself as the white women in my position do. You won’t know me in three months after I have had a chance to live in keeping with my station.”

She paused, panting because of her own audacity. Never before had she ventured to give utterance to so long a speech in his presence. He saw a ray of hope and pursued it eagerly.

“I have a good wagon, and a fine four-mule team that is idle,” he said musingly. “I guess we can manage to make the change.”

“What will you do, Joseph? Can you stay here when we are gone?”

“I shouldn’t think you’d care to consider me after all that’s happened, Wahnetta.”

“You cannot give me back my heart, my husband. I can never be happy without you. But, savagely as I spoke a while ago, my heart is full of love for you, and the thought of leaving you alone in this God-forsaken wilderness brings back all the tenderness of the past.”

“I can take care of myself, I reckon.”

“Of course; if I can take care of myself and seven children, you ought to be able to get along alone, or hire somebody to help you,” she exclaimed, straightening her shoulders, and revealing long-lost or hidden traces of her girlhood’s beauty in the light of an awakening hope. “I know the tendency of my race, or any other, to hark back to primitive conditions under adverse circumstances. The time has now come when the children must have the social and educational advantages of a higher civilization, or they’ll be Indians to the end of the chapter. As you will not permit me to take them to the East, I am glad that I can take them to the farthest West.”

“How soon can you be ready to start?”

“To-morrow, or as soon as the team is ready. We’ll pose as Indians till we get to Oregon. We can camp in the Portland woods till an outfit of clothing can be prepared in which you wouldn’t be ashamed to see your wife and children appear before kings.”

The next morning early, while the Ranger team was yet in camp, and its Captain was not yet awake, an Indian woman, with an unkempt swarm of dusky children, passed him on their westward way, unrecognized.

* * * * *

“Daddie’s in a raging fever!” cried Jean, arousing the Little Doctor.

“We’ll fetch him out all right,” said the doctor, as the frightened children shivered around the fire in the crisp morning air, silent and awe-stricken. “I saw an Indian ‘sweat-house’ near the river-bank after we had encamped last night. We’ll fumigate it, and give your father a thorough steaming, children. Don’t be frightened. He’s caught the mountain fever. Luckily, I have on hand a lot of crude brimstone. I gathered it near Hell Gate.”

“But we mustn’t use the sweat-house without the consent of the Indians,” said Scotty. “Yonder comes a lot of them on horseback now. I’ll see them and make terms.”

The terms having been arranged satisfactorily, the Little Doctor proceeded to make preparations for the reception of her patient.

When the inner surface of the dugout had reached a white heat, the fire was permitted to die, and the place was cleansed of coals and ashes. It was then tested by a thermometer; and when cooled to the proper temperature, the Captain, now almost incoherent from fever, was wrapped in blankets and placed, feet foremost, within its depths, where he lay with his head enveloped with cold, wet towels, leaving only a small aperture at the mouth of the “infernal pit,” as he called it, for air. Thus situated, and perspiring at every pore, he fell asleep.

A delicious, restful languor followed his awakening, and he was aroused, against his protest, to be removed by willing attendants to a closed tent, where he was packed in cold, wet sheets, and left to rest for another hour or more.

“His heart has good action, and he’ll come out all right; but we can’t break camp to-day,” said the Little Doctor.

By evening the Captain found his fever conquered. But he was not strong enough to ride back to his brother’s trading-post for the amicable interview he had planned; so, like most of our “ships that pass in the night,” his opportunity was gone; and as time wore on, his good resolutions vanished also.

The long-drawn monotony of the journey caused the entries in her journal to become exceedingly monotonous to Jean, who often neglected a duty she would have highly prized had she been able to foresee the value of the record she was making under constant protest.

On the tenth of July she wrote as follows: “We are now in Utah Territory, which is the first organized part of Uncle Sam’s dominions we have set foot upon since leaving the Missouri River. Our hunters to-day killed an antelope and a brace of ‘fool’ hens, or sage-chickens, which our half-famished crowd cooked and ate with relish.

“What a way we human animals have of preying upon the brute creation, as we falsely name the mild-eyed entities which we must slay and eat that we may live! I have no heart to write. I can only think of the beautiful eyes of that antelope we have killed and eaten, and of the sage-hens that were not enough afraid of a boot that Yank threw at them to get out of his way. And we called them ‘fools’ because they trusted us, who, as compared to them, are knaves.”

After crossing the Rocky Mountains through a huge and devious gap[2] by ascents and descents so gradual that nothing but the changing trend of the water-currents marked the point or points of demarcation, the train reached a height overlooking the valley of the Great Salt Lake,—the “Promised Land” of the Latter-Day Saints, who even in that early day had made it, in many spots, to blossom as the rose.

The almost intolerable heat of midday was followed at night by cold and marrow-piercing winds, making both day and night uncomfortable.

“No wonder the immigrants are ill, Mr. Burns,” said Mrs. McAlpin, one evening, when, as she could not politely avoid him, she sought to control the conversation. “Nothing saves any of us but the snow-laden air from these grand old mountains. I have stood on the Himalayas, where the Mahatmas are said to hold sway, I have beheld the shimmering beauty of Egyptian skies, I have floated among the silent wonders of the Dead Sea; but the majestic beauty of these Rocky Mountains transcends them all.”

“I’ve just left a family of Mormons, where there is a bishop ill with the fever. The faithful were trying to cure him by the ridiculous custom of laying on of hands,” said Burns, who had sought her company, hoping to “talk it out.”

“Not necessarily ridiculous,” answered the lady. “If a faithful Catholic crowd can change a little vial of mummy-dry blood into liquid form in answer to faith and prayer, why can’t an equally faithful Mormon crowd heal the sick through the same power of concentration, which is only another name for faith?” and the Little Doctor hurried away.

XXIV

_A MORMON WOMAN_

Newly created Mormon settlements came occasionally into view, the long, low, ashy-white adobe houses of the Latter-Day Saints proclaiming, by the front doors to be counted in their dwellings, the number of wives each patriarch possessed.

One cold, blustering evening a lone woman, middle-aged, swarthy, sinewy, and tall, came into the camp afoot. A bundle of bedding strapped to her back gave her an uncanny appearance as she shrank into the shadows. A reticule of generous dimensions depended from her neck in front and reached below her waist-line, containing her little stock of clothing and provisions.

“I am making my way to the Northern Oregon country,” she said, meaning the great expanse of territory which at that time embraced the present States of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, with a large slice of the present State of Montana included. “President Young saw I was going crazy,” she added, throwing aside her reticence after being warmed and fed. “I wasn’t the least mite dangerous to have around, as I wasn’t violent; but I cried and took on so, after I had to give my husband away in marriage to another woman, that I scared the hull church into a fear that I’d upset polygamy. So President Young said I might have a permit to leave the country.”

“Do you mind telling us all about it?” asked Sally O’Dowd.

“It can all be summed up in one word,—polygamy,” she exclaimed, glancing furtively around. “Are there any Mormons about?”

“No, madam,” said the Captain. “The boss of this combination is a pagan, and he wouldn’t hurt a Christian. You have no cause to be afraid. But you’d better not tell us any secrets. The proper way to keep a secret is to keep it to one’s self, unless you want to keep it going.”

“I am a Mormon, good and true,” she began again, rising to her feet and spreading her thin hands to the blaze; “but when my husband went into polygamy, which it was his Christian duty to do, according to the Scripture (and I’m not blaming him), the Devil got the upper hand of me, and I couldn’t stand it. You see, they made me go to the Endowment House and give my own husband away in marriage to another woman; and that, too, after we had stood together at the altar, in the little church in my father’s parish, ever so long before, and swore before God and a score of witnesses that we would forsake all others and keep ourselves only to each other as long as we both should live. Polygamy may be all right for people who haven’t made such vows; but I know it was not right for us. What do you think, Mr. Captain?”

“I think that women have had their hearts cultivated at the expense of their heads quite long enough,” was his emphatic response.

“I thought the Mormons didn’t compel any woman to give her husband away in marriage against her will,” said Jean.

The woman uttered a sharp, rasping, staccato laugh that betokened incipient insanity.

“There are other ways to kill a dog besides choking him to death on butter!” she cried, throwing her arms wildly about, and casting grotesque shadows upon those sitting behind her. “They told me that as a good Mormon I was bound to obey the mandates of the Church; that my eternal salvation, and my husband’s also, depended upon obedience. And they said it so often, and prayed over me so long and hard, that at last I said I’d do it. Then they held me to my promise. But my heart would beat, and the world would move; so in spite of what I did in the Endowment House, I would go about and tell my woes to everybody that would listen. And I was getting to be a scandal in Zion, so that by-and-by, when a lot of Gentiles got to making a fuss about it,—they made it hot for polygamy through my story,—the elders took it up. But they couldn’t tie my tongue, for the Devil had hold of it, and he just kept it wagging. The cases of Abraham and Jacob and David didn’t fit my case at all, for they hadn’t made any such vows.”

The woman, as if suddenly recollecting herself, stopped speaking, and glared at her awe-stricken listeners with an insane gleam in her fiery eyes.

“Oh, my head, my head!” she cried, clasping her hands tightly over her temples. “The Devil has caught me again!”

“You’d better not talk any more to-night,” said the Little Doctor, soothingly. “And you cannot go on till morning. I’ll make a warm, snug bed for you in one of the wagons. After you’ve had a sound sleep and a good breakfast, you can go on your way refreshed.”

“But I’ve got to talk it out. You’re like all the rest! You want me to be quiet, when the rocks and stones would cry out against me if I did!”

“You’ll take a drink of our ‘Number Six,’ won’t you?” asked the Little Doctor. “Here it is. I’ve mixed and sweetened it for you.”

She grasped the decoction and gulped it eagerly.