Part 17

“August 23. After a long, hot, and arduous journey of over thirty miles, and consuming two days of the most trying experience possible, we reached Malheur River, another tributary of the Snake. But we failed to find any food for the cattle, and were compelled to pull out again the next morning before dawn, headed for what appeared to be a stream of water, as we judged from a fringe of willows. But when we reached the bed of the stream it was dry as a bone. We were compelled to stop, though, as it was then high noon, and it was reported twelve miles to the next water. So a part of our force was detailed to dig a well in the creek bottom for water for domestic use, and the rest were sent back to the Malheur to water the stock, as soon as they had eaten their fill of the dry grass, which to us is more precious than gold, or anything else just now but water.

“On the 24th we left this camp and travelled down the dry bed of the creek for several miles, through a valley that had evidently been missed by the trains ahead, as the grass was fine and abundant. After leaving this valley, we travelled over a blind trail through a hot, dusty ravine till ten o’clock at night, when we reached some sulphur springs and encamped, feeling cross, half sick, and disgusted with all the world. The air is heavy with the fumes of sulphur, and Limpy says we are less than half a mile from hell.”

On the 25th of August Jean’s journal again gave evidence of Captain Ranger’s chirography and style. His characteristic narrative follows: “To-day we made eight miles, which brought us to a deep and rocky canyon debouching into the Snake. This is to be our last encounter with this tortuous, treacherous, and in every way terrible serpent, of whose presence we long ago had much more than enough.

“Three miles farther brought us to Burnt River,—a small, rapid, and crooked stream, with a sandy delta at its disproportionately extended mouth. Here the country changes its entire topography. The bold and abrupt foot-hills are covered to their tops with an abundant coat of seed-bearing bunchgrass; and numerous juniper-trees which somehow in the long ago gained a footing among the sloping shale and sand, lend a peculiar beauty to the scene.”

* * * * *

“Mr. Burns, I’m going to die before long.”

These were the words of little Bobbie, the darling of the family and of the entire company, and were spoken to Scotty on that memorable day in the Black Hills when preparations were in progress for the burial of his mother.

The blow came suddenly. The child had been overjoyed at the prospect of reaching the end of the journey at an early day. The sight of Burnt River filled him with pleasing anticipations. He was never more playful, quaint, and original than when his father stood him on his shoulder to view the last they should see of the Snake River.

“Where is it going now, papa?” he asked artlessly. “Is it always hungry? Is that what makes it in such a hurry? What does it eat? And where does it sleep o’ nights? It’s a sure enough snake, isn’t it?”

At midnight, when the weary party were sound asleep, Mary, who was lying near him, was wakened by an ominous cough, which rapidly developed into an acute attack of croup.

* * * * *

“It was a stubborn case, and quite beyond my poor skill,” said the Little Doctor, as they all stood weeping around the still and beautiful form of the precious dead.

“What do you imagine caused the child to predict his untimely taking off, Mr. Burns?” asked Mrs. McAlpin, as they watched alone.

“I suppose it was merely a child’s fancy,—a coincidence, probably.”

“And I suppose it was a revelation. Many important lessons may be learned from the artless utterances of a child.”

For many weeks Mrs. McAlpin had studiously avoided conversation on any subject with the one man on earth whom she believed to be her counterpart.

“Wait till that human imperfection called the Law has made me legally free,” was her invariable command whenever her suitor showed symptoms of impatience.

But to-night, as they knelt together in the presence of what the world calls Death, he seized her hand, and it was not withdrawn.

“Kneeling in this presence, may I have my answer, Daphne?”

The dim light of a sputtering tallow candle shed a faint glow across the white sheet under which the still form of Bobbie lay in dreamless sleep.

She returned the pressure of his hand in silence. But when he would have caught her in a close embrace, she gently withdrew and whispered: “We will take our first kiss at the altar, darling.”

“I am happy now, and I can wait. God bless you!” he whispered; and as others were about entering the tent, he arose from his knees and went out silently among the stars.

The morning came at last. Amid the tearful silence of the company the train moved on for a couple of miles and halted at the foot of a mountain to consign the mortal remains of the little soul to their last resting-place. High up on the mountain-side, on a natural terrace, the grave was made under a spreading juniper-tree, in whose branches the wild birds chant his requiem as the years roll on, and the eternal breezes sing.

* * * * *

The next morning, August 29, found the face of Nature covered everywhere with a thick coating of hoar-frost. Ice had formed during the night in the water-pails, an eighth of an inch in thickness, and an inspiriting sensation of chilliness filled the air. But as the sun rode high in the brassy heavens, the day grew intensely hot. On and on and up and up the ailing cattle labored; and on and on and up and up the dispirited company toiled, footsore and weary, ragged and dirty. But hope was not dead; for was not the goal of their ambition now almost in sight?

The mountains of Powder River were next crossed, and the weary pilgrims emerged upon an open plain over which the pygmy sagebrush of the desert ran riot. Here a quarter of a century later an enterprising city was destined to arise, in the midst of abounding mines and burdened wheatfields, wherein the irrigated lands would drop fatness and the stockman grow rich among the cattle of a thousand hills.

“This valley,” wrote Jean, under date of September 1, “is beautiful to look upon; but it is considered worthless, as it is too dry for cultivation, and there is no way to rid the land of the ever-obtruding sage. Daddie says it will never be made to sprout white beans.”

The ranchers, stock-raisers, mine-owners, merchants, artisans, mechanics, speculators, newspaper men, politicians, and successful schemers in every walk of life can well afford to forgive Daniel Webster, John Ranger, and every other false prophet who in his day harped on the same string, in view of the continuous fields of wheat, oats, barley, rye, vetch, hops, and fruits of all kinds peculiar to the temperate zone which this wonderfully fertile valley now produces under the impulse of irrigation, not to mention the mines of gold and silver, precious stones, and baser metals with which the hills and mountains are fabulously rich.

The descent of the Ranger company into the now famous Grande Ronde valley was most perilous. It was made long after nightfall, through a precipitous and rocky defile, where a slip of the wagon-wheel or the misstep of an ox would have plunged the adventurous teams, wagons, men, women, children, and all, over sheer bluffs.

Camp was pitched in the edge of the beautiful valley, then a reservation belonging to the Nez Percé Indians. Rye-grass was growing as high as the top of the head of a man on horseback; and at one end of the valley, where now is a famous resort for health and pleasure, a number of hot springs were outlined by great columns of steam, which, rising beneath the arid air, hung low over the foot-hills, and, hanging lower yet in the vale below, spread itself like an enormous fleece over a lake of seething water.

XXXI

_THROUGH THE OREGON MOUNTAINS_

After moving across the Grande Ronde valley through a veritable Eden of untamed verdure, and crossing the Grande Ronde River by ford, our travellers began the ascent of the Blue Mountains.

The air was cool and delicious. The cattle, much refreshed by their luscious feed in the bountiful and beautiful valley, moved more briskly than had been their wont, and were soon in the midst of the grand old forest trees, which, at that time untouched by the woodman’s ax, stood in all their native grandeur upon the grass-grown slopes. In the midst of one of these groves of stately whispering pines the company halted for the night near a sparkling spring, with scenery all around them so enchanting that Jean exclaimed in her journal, “Oh, this beautiful world! how big it is compared to the pygmy mortals who roam over its surface; and yet how little it is compared to the countless stars that gaze upon us from above this ‘boundless contiguity of shade’!”

For several days she had written little. Her thoughts wandered to the Green River experience that had awakened within her being a new life, from which, for her at least, there was to be no ending. She could not write, so she strolled aimlessly away to a mossy rock in a starlit ravine, at the foot of which a rivulet was singing.

“Why can’t I see you, mother dear?” she asked. “And you, Bobbie, can’t you say a word to your sister Jean?”

For a long time she sat thus, lost in reverie, while the eternal silence around her was broken only by the low cadence of the whispering pines.

Suddenly there came into her inner consciousness a call, unspoken yet heard, “Jean!”

She closed her eyes and saw, as plainly as with physical vision, Ashton Ashleigh’s border home; and he was gazing hard at Le-Le, who was kneeling at his feet in beseeching attitude.

“Jean!”

Gradually, as the demon Doubt aroused her senses, a wild, unreasoning jealousy crept into her heart. She turned her face to the eastward and sent out to him an answering call, “Ashleigh!”

She listened eagerly; but no response was felt or heard, and no mental vision reappeared. With her heart like lead, she returned to the wagon and crept into bed.

When she awoke the sun was shining, and she could not recall the vision that had distressed her. Had her soul visited the abode of her heart’s idol? Who knows? and who can tell?

* * * * *

On and on the teams kept crawling, until on the 6th of September the summit of the Blue Mountains was passed, and the wearied travellers gazed for the first time upon the Cascade Mountains, lying to the westward in the purple distance; and in their midst arose, supported by a continuous chain of undulating, tree-crowned, lesser heights, the majestic proportions of Mount Hood, the patriarch of the solitudes, his hoary head uplifted in the shimmering air, and at his feet a drapery of mist.

The Umatilla River left the gorges through which it had fought its way, and glided peacefully through a sagebrush plain toward the great Columbia. But no settlements were yet to be seen. No navigation had yet been started on the broad bosom of the upper Columbia. The rock-ribbed Dalles frowned far below in the misty distance; and no dream of a fleet of palatial river craft, with portage railways around otherwise impassable gorges, had yet taken practical shape. The Cascade locks had not entered the liveliest imagination, and a transcontinental railroad was considered an engineering impossibility, existing only in the mind of an impractical theorist or incurable crank.

A vast and practically level plain or upland lay between the Blue and the Cascade mountains. The Whitman settlement had already made the existence of the infant city of Walla Walla possible. Wallula and Umatilla were not, and the site of Pendleton was an unbroken plain.

But game was plenty and grass was good. Choke-cherries and salmon-berries grew thickly among the deciduous groves that bordered the Umatilla River; and but for the sad bereavements in the Ranger family, which time alone could heal, the company would have been in exuberant spirits.

At Willow Creek station, which is now a veritable oasis in the desert, the party found a trading-post, where some fresh potatoes and onions made a welcome change in the diet.

On the 13th of September Jean wrote: “Old friends and relatives, tried and true, have come to meet us from the Willamette valley, and their unexpected coming fills us with gratitude unspeakable.”

After stopping merely to exchange greetings and gather what meagre tidings they could obtain from each end of the long and tedious road, the jaded immigrants pushed onward through the heat and dust till nightfall, when they came to a small stream, where they were compelled to halt for the night on account of the water, though the grass was poor and the cattle fared badly.

The relief party reported the Willamette valley as the “Garden of Eden,” and gave glowing accounts of the soil, climate, scenery, and plenty with which the western part of the great Oregon country abounded. Even the dumb animals seemed to understand and take courage; for they stepped more briskly under the yoke and chewed the cud to a later hour than had been their wont.

Guided by the advice of the relief party, the train was again put in motion at midnight.

“It is fully twenty miles to the next camping-ground where there are wood and water,” said a kindly recruit who had recently been over the road. It was a forced march, but the animals were well repaid for making it, as they found good water and a tolerable supply of grass.

“September 16. We are encamped near the mouth of the Des Chutes River,” wrote Jean. “It is a clear, swift, and considerable stream which empties its waters into the Columbia.

“I know to-night just how Balboa must have felt when he discovered the Pacific Ocean. For have I not set eyes upon the lordly Columbia, the mighty river of the West, which

“‘Hears no sound save its own dashings’?”

The Des Chutes was safely forded by the teams, under the direction of an Indian guide, and the women and children were taken across it in a canoe.

The wild and broken desolation of the plains now gave way to vast alluvial uplands,—dry, owing to the season, but giving promise of great prosperity for future husbandmen. Numerous gulches intersected the otherwise unbroken level, upon which the teams would often come without warning; therefore travel was difficult and progress slow.

“If the season were not so far advanced, I’d like to stop over at The Dalles and visit the mission,” said Captain Ranger; “but a storm is threatening, and it will never do to risk such an experience in the Cascade Mountains.”

“Quite right you air!” exclaimed a mountaineer, who visited the train avowedly in search of a wife. None of the women or girls saw fit to accept the negotiations proposed; but his advice as to a coming storm was good. The train, in seeking to slip through the mountains by the way of Barlow’s Gap,—a road made passable for teams by the indefatigable labors of an honored pioneer, whose name it perpetuates,—was halted just in time to prevent a disastrous ending.

Captain Ranger’s worn and famishing cattle were reinforced at Barlow’s Gap by two yokes of fat oxen sent to the rescue by an immigrant of 1850,—a grand and enterprising preacher of the gospel, who, all unknown, even to himself, was a striking example of a working parson, imbued with the practical idea of what constitutes a “Church of the Big Licks.” Not that he was pugnacious, but he was philanthropic and practical and enterprising; and many are the beneficiaries of his industry and skill who have long survived his ministry, and date their material progress in Oregon, as well as their spiritual welfare, to this practical promoter of an every-day religion.

Provisions were by this time running short, and the necessity of reaching the settlements was imperative; but there was no appeal from the borderer’s experience, and the impatient wayfarers were compelled to remain in camp for four consecutive days and nights, while the excited heavens warred among the serrated steeps, as

“From rock to rock leaped the live thunder.”

The storm, which condensed its forces into a deluge of rain at both the eastern and western bases of the Cascade Mountains, had raged as snow in the forest-studded heights; and this, melting rapidly under the sunny skies which succeeded the heavy precipitation, made Barlow’s Gap so slippery that the teamsters had to exercise the utmost care in guiding the oxen and to keep their own feet.

Provisions ran lower every day, and finally gave out entirely; and one jolly wayfarer, who had for many weeks professed to be enjoying the prospect of a ten-days’ famine, grew so ravenous when compelled to face the reality at the foot of Laurel Hill, that he begged piteously for some coffee-grounds to ease the cravings of his stomach.

The next morning the three girls crossed the raging torrent of the glacial river Sandy by jumping from rock to rock over the roaring and perilous current, and gathered a bountiful supply of salal-berries for the children; but it was almost night before the half-starved men (who would not eat the purple fruit) were met by a packer, who brought beef and flour; and as soon as a fire could be kindled, a meal was made ready.

On the 27th of September the company descended the last long and rocky steep, and halted with a shout at the foot of the mountains on the famous Foster Ranch, where fresh vegetables, milk, cream, and butter were added to the beef and flour on which they had been glad to subsist when necessary.

On the thirtieth day of the month they reached Oregon City, and were royally welcomed by Dr. John McLoughlin,—the renowned, revered, and idolized hero of Old Oregon.

XXXII

_LETTERS FROM HOME_

Oregon City, in the autumn of 1852 and for more than a decade thereafter, consisted chiefly of a single narrow street bordering the Willamette River and lying under the sheer bluffs of lichen-clad basaltic rock that overlook the Falls of the Willamette, valued at that time only as a fishing site for the wily Indian and a strenuous leaping-place for schools of salmon. But future enterprise was destined to utilize the stupendous water-power for the convenience of man in the city of Portland, a dozen miles below. In this one narrow street the Ranger company halted to read letters from the States. These letters, many of them now nearly six months old, brought to them the first tidings from the old home. The latest was dated August 1, and was from Grandfather Ranger, announcing the transition of “Grannie,” the beloved great-grandmother, whose demise was described with much detail:—

“She was in usual health up to the last day of her sojourn in the body,” he wrote, “and retained her faculties to the last. She had walked to Lijah’s and back during the day, with no companion but Rover, who deemed her his especial charge from the time he took up his abode with us. But she complained of being tired on her return, and ate less dinner than usual. While your mother and I were sitting at the table, we heard a peculiar gasp and gurgle from Grannie’s chair in the next room, and we hastened to her side; but she never spoke again, except in whispered messages of love to us all.

“We laid her precious remains in the family lot, in the dear, peaceful, leafy burying-ground of Glen Eden, and returned to our lonely home, and put away her empty chair. On the last morning of her earth-life, as she sat at breakfast with us, she said, ‘I saw Joseph in my dreams last night. I heard him speak as plainly as if he had been in this room. He had a troubled look, but he said: “Tell mother I have written.”’ We thought little of it at the time; but to-day we had a letter from him, saying he is alive and well. He spoke of having seen you, John, but he said you had quarrelled with him, or rather at him, and had left him in a fit of anger. He did not say why you had quarrelled. But, oh, John, how could you do it? We know he must have given you cause, but you should, for our sakes, have risen above it. My old heart is heavy with sorrow. And your dear, patient mother, who has prayed so long and earnestly for this meeting between you two,—to think when her prayer is answered at last that you would add to it such a sting! No matter which one of you is the more to blame, you, my son, as the elder brother, should be the first to make concessions. I know your gentle Annie joins me in this appeal. She seems strangely near me as I write; and I can almost hear her say: ‘To err is human; to forgive divine.’ Give her and all the children our messages of love and sympathy.”

The strong man wept convulsively. No tidings of his wife’s transition had yet been despatched to the folks at home; nor could letters reach them now for a month to come. There was no overland mail, and all “through” letters sought transit _via_ Panama.

A long postscript was added, over which father and children shed tears in unison. It said: “The dog, Rover, returned at nightfall on the memorable day of your departure, weary, wet, and bedraggled. He would take no notice of me, your mother, or Grannie, although we all tried to pet and console him. But he went straight to your deserted doorstep, where he lay for a long time moaning like a man in pain. Grannie regularly carried him food, but he refused to eat for many days, and his wailing and howling could be heard at all hours of the night. But finally your mother won him over, and he now makes his home with us, and seems quite happy and contented. We all thought he would want to leave us and go back to the old house when Lijah took possession of it, but he didn’t. He just clung all the closer to us old folks in the cottage; and it would have done your soul good to see the faithful watch he kept over dear old Grannie to the last day of her life. He was conspicuous among the chief mourners at the burial, and lingered alone beside the grave long after we all had returned to our homes.”

Jean, recalling her father’s words on that far-away ferry-boat, where she had last seen the faithful animal watching and wailing from the river-bank, said, as she looked up from reading her own letters: “Daddie, don’t you think now that a dog has a soul?” And her father answered huskily: “I don’t see why he hasn’t as good a right to a soul as I have.”