Part 8

* * * * *

“Can you imagine what this wild-goose chase of ours is for?” asked Mrs. Benson.

“I undertook it to gratify my good husband,” was Mrs. Ranger’s prompt reply.

“And I to gratify my daughter.”

“Excuse me, ladies; but I came along to please myself,” interposed Mrs. O’Dowd.

“I, too, came to please myself,” cried Jean; “that is, I made a virtue of necessity, and compelled myself to be pleased. There are two things that mother says we must never fret about: one is what we can, and the other what we cannot, help. Every human being belongs primarily to himself or herself, and to satisfy one’s self is sure to please somebody.”

“But a married couple belong, secondarily, at least, to each other,” said Mrs. Ranger. “No couple can pull in double and single harness at the same time.”

“Some day,” said Mrs. Benson, “it will become the fashion to read your journal, Jean; and then the dear public will both praise and pity our unsophisticated Captain, who led these hapless emigrants out on these plains to die.”

“That’s so, Mrs. Benson,” exclaimed Jean; “and they won’t see that it’s all a part of the eternal programme. Evolution is the order of nature, and one generation of human beings is a very small fraction of the race at large.”

“Haven’t you gossiped long enough, mamma?” asked Mrs. McAlpin, petulantly. “Your supper is ready and waiting. What has detained you so long?”

“I was listening to the chat of the Ranger family. They are an uncommon lot; very clever and original.”

“Yes, mamma; they talk like oracles. A little brusque and unpolished, but that will be outgrown in time. You’re looking splendid, mamma! The society of your neighbors is a tonic. You must take it often.”

“I wish we might all stop here, Daphne.”

“We’ve no more right to these lands of the Indians than we have to—”

“Oregon,” interrupted her mother. “Oregon was Indian territory originally.”

Jean approached with a plate of hot cakes, saying: “I fell to thinking so deeply over the problems we had been talking about that I forgot what I was doing, and baked too many cakes. They’re sweet and light, and we hope you’ll like them.”

“Thank you ever so much, Miss Jean!” said Mrs. McAlpin. “I congratulate you with all my heart upon the way you cheer your mother, my dear. You are a jewel of the first water!”

“We all try to keep mother in good spirits,” replied Jean. “Dear soul! she’s weak and nervous; and what seem trifles to us often appear like mountains to her. Never can I forget, to my dying day, the look of terror that came into her gentle eyes when we were crossing the Platte that day in the quicksands. The raised wagon-bed had tilted, for some cause. I suppose the weight of so many of us was not evenly distributed; and we should all have been pitched into the water if it had not been that dear mother hustled us to the other side. She forgot her own danger in her effort to save the children, giving her orders like a sea captain in a storm. Each of us grabbed a baby,—Susannah’s coon fell to my lot,—and we clung like death to the upper edge of the wagon-bed till the danger was over, and the great lopsided thing settled back to its place.

“But I must go now. Daddie’s calling me to write up that pestilent old journal!”

* * * * *

On the evening of the 4th of June, the train had its first encounter with a blizzard.

Captain Ranger, seeing the approach of the storm, as did the cattle and horses, ordered a sudden halt a little way from the banks of the Platte. The day, like a number of its predecessors, had been oppressively hot; but about five o’clock a sudden squall came up, though not without premonitory warning in the way of a calm so dead that not a blade of grass was quivering. The wagon-hoods flapped idly, like sails becalmed in the tropics. Suddenly the air grew icy cold, bringing at first a moment of relief to suffocating man and beast.

“Gather your buffalo chips in a hurry,” exclaimed the Captain, addressing the girls. “Get ’em under cover in the tents, under the wagon-beds; anywhere so they’ll keep dry. Turn out the stock in a jiffy, boys. Head ’em away from the river. Drive ’em up yonder gulch. Be on the alert, everybody!”

XIV

_A CAMP IN CONSTERNATION_

“Stake down the wagons,” was the next order. “Don’t stop to pitch any more tents. Don’t try to kindle any fires.”

Scarcely had the orders been obeyed before a darkness as black as Erebus had settled upon the camp like a gigantic pall. It was a peculiar darkness, permeated by an ominous, silent, intangible, vibrating, appalling Something! A silence that could be felt was in the air. The oxen in the gulch bellowed in terror; the horses neighed. The stillness of the air was oppressive, portentous, awful. The women clasped the children in close embrace. The children clung to their protectors in silent terror. All hands save the teamsters, who were out with the stock at the mouth of the ravine, where they were stationed to guard the animals against stampede, crouched under the wagons in the Cimmerian blackness. Anon, a blinding flash of sheet lightning, followed by others and yet others in bewildering succession, awoke a rolling, roaring, reverberating cannonade of thunder. Guided by the flashes of lightning, the frightened men left the cattle to their fate and, returning to the camp, took refuge under the wagons. Hailstones as big as hens’ eggs fell by hundreds of tons, displacing the awful silence with a cannonade like unto the heaviest artillery of a great army in battle.

The wind blew a terrific gale. The chained wagons rocked like cradles. Several heavy vehicles in a neighboring train, not being chained to the ground, as the Ranger wagons had been, were upset and their contents ruined by the hail and rain. Others were blown bodily into the river. Luckily no lives were lost. The cattle and horses, pelted by the hail till their bodies were bruised and bleeding, huddled together at the head of the gulch for mutual protection.

The storm lasted less than twenty minutes, and ceased as suddenly as it began. The black clouds soared away to the northward, leaving a blue starlit sky overhead, and underfoot a mass of hail and mud. The Platte, having caught the full fury of a cloud-burst a few miles above the camp, rose rapidly, threatening the frightened refugees in the wagons with a new danger. But the shallow banks were high enough to confine the mad rush of muddy water within an inch or two of the top, thus averting the horror of a flood which, had it come, would have completed the havoc of the storm.

The lightning, as though weary of its display of power, retreated to the distant hills, and played at hide-and-seek on the horizon’s edge, while Heaven’s Gatling guns answered each pyrotechnic display with a distant, growling, intermittent roar.

Mrs. McAlpin’s carriage was a total wreck; but her wagons remained intact, and she and her mother escaped to them in safety.

The morning revealed a scene of desolation. The earth in all directions as far as the eye could see had been torn into gulleys by the mad rush of falling hail and rain, each seeking its level in frantic haste. Hailstones lay in heaps, some soiled by contact with the liquid mud, some as clean and white as freshly fallen snow.

The contents of Mrs. McAlpin’s carriage were entirely gone. Nothing remained of the vehicle but one of its wheels and some shreds of its cover, which were found half buried in the mud. Of the harness, nothing was left but a bridle bit, in which was lodged a woman’s glove, and near it the remains of a palm-leaf fan.

“We should all be thankful that no lives were lost,” said Mrs. Ranger, who was looking on while Sally O’Dowd and Susannah assisted her daughters, who, with Mrs. Benson and Mrs. McAlpin, were exposing the wet and dilapidated paraphernalia of the camp to the hot rays of the morning sun.

“But we’d have a heap mo’ to thank Gahd fo’, missus, if He’d hel’ off dat stawm,” exclaimed Susannah, with a characteristic “yah! yah! yah!”

At eleven o’clock the order was given to bring in the stock, and prepare to move on, when it was discovered that Scotty was missing.

“We s’posed he was helpin’ Mrs. McAlpin’s men, as he generally does, to get her things to rights, so we didn’t bother our heads about him,” said Sawed-off, who was Scotty’s partner of the whip and yoke. “I’ve been doing the most of his share of the work ever since we’ve been on the road.”

Scotty was nowhere to be found. An organized search was begun at once, and all thought of moving on was abandoned till the Captain should learn his fate. The cattle and horses were turned out on the range for another badly needed half-holiday. Through all the remainder of the day the anxious quest continued. Mrs. McAlpin was as pale as death. Her sombre weeds, worn for no known reason, formed a fitting frame for her pinched and anxious face and bright, abundant hair. Her mother was visibly agitated. Mrs. Ranger lay on her feather bed all through the trying afternoon, her eyes closed and her lips moving as if in prayer.

“Night again, and no Scotty!” exclaimed Captain Ranger, his voice husky with feeling. As no trace of the man had been discovered, the organized search was called off.

“Scotty’s death was one of the freaks of the flood,” said Hal.

“None of you ever did Scotty justice,” exclaimed Mary, as she descended upon the party with a heaped plate of their staple food.

“That’s what,” echoed Jean, as she brought on the beans and bacon.

“Scotty knew more in a minute than half of us can ever learn,” cried Marjorie, with whom he was a favorite.

“Yes,” said the Captain, dryly. “He’s a genius, Scotty is! He’ll turn up presently. Doubtless he’s off somewhere studying a new stratum of storm-clouds. He has killed two of my leaders already by making them start the whole load while his mind was on the incomprehensible and unknowable in nature. But I’ll wager he knows enough to look out for himself in a crisis.”

“He was a whole mine of information about other things, if he didn’t know much about driving oxen,” sobbed Jean.

“He isn’t dead!” exclaimed Mrs. McAlpin. “I mean to continue the search myself to-night.”

“You’ll get caught by a panther!” cried Bobbie. “I haven’t seen ’em, but I know they’re there!”

“Where, Bobbie?” asked Marjorie.

“Up in the gulch. I can see ’em with my eyes shut!” and the child, not understanding the laugh that followed at his expense, hastened to the wagon where his mother lay, to receive the consolation that never failed him.

* * * * *

“It won’t be against the laws of God or man for me to love Rollin if he is dead,” said Mrs. McAlpin to herself, as she crept shivering from her retreat in her wagon to the ground. Throwing a shawl over her head, she hastened out in the direction in which Scotty was hurrying when she had last seen him. The cattle, quite satisfied from the unusual effects of a day’s rest and a full meal, chewed their cuds quietly, or lay asleep in the best sheltered spots they could command, breathing heavily. She wandered fearlessly among them, calling frequently for the lost man, but received no response save an occasional “moo” from an awakened cow, or a friendly neigh from Sukie, who was tethered near.

The morning star rose in the clear blue of the bending sky as her search went on, and she knew that the long June day was breaking. Flowers of every hue, newly born from the convulsions of the recent storm, smiled at her in their dewy fragrance; and in the branches of a crippled cottonwood a robin began his matin song. A meadow lark, disturbed in its languorous wooing by the lone watcher’s footsteps, soared upward in the crystal ether, sending back, when out of her sight, a swelling note of triumph, prolonged, triumphant, sweet.

“Rollin! Rollin Burns!” she called, repeating the name in every note of the scale.

At length a long, low moan startled her. She listened eagerly for a moment, and repeated her call. Whence had come that moan? There was no repetition of the sound. She spoke again, calling the name in a higher key.

Another moan—it might have been an echo from the canyon’s walls—came, more distinct than the first, but the echoing gulch gave no indication of its location.

“Call again, Rollin! It is I,—your own Daphne!”

“Is it indeed you, Daphne?”

She pinched herself to see if she was really awake. She had never heard her Christian name spoken by Burns before. The name sounded strangely sweet in the breaking twilight, and in spite of her apprehension and uncertainty her soul was glad.

“Call again, Rollin! Help is near.”

“Come this way, Daphne! I am in a cave, almost under your feet. A bowlder that I stepped upon rolled over, loosened by the storm, and let me through into the bowels of the earth. My leg is broken. I must have been unconscious. I have swooned or slept, or both. Be careful how you tread. There are badgers in this hole, and I have heard rattlesnakes.”

“Which way, Rollin? Where are you?”

The sound of his voice seemed to come from beneath her feet.

“Is the storm over?”

“Yes, long ago. It’s been over for thirty-six hours. But I can’t locate you.”

“Here, I tell you! Under this rock. If it had fallen directly on me, I should have been a goner. For God’s sake, be careful, or you’ll break your own dear neck! Don’t get excited. Run for help, and don’t stir up the rattlesnakes.”

The injured man had fallen at first by the turning of the rock, as he had stated, giving his leg a twist that broke it, and, by the turning of his body in falling farther, had overturned the bowlder again, and thus was held a prisoner.

Mrs. McAlpin peered into a narrow aperture through which the coming daylight had entered. Their eyes met.

“Daphne!”

“Rollin!”

“So near and yet so far!” cried the prisoner, as he struggled to free himself. A spasm of pain overspread his face, and a dew, like the death damp, settled on his hair and forehead.

“O God! he has fainted again!” she cried, running with all her might and screaming for help.

“What in thunder is the matter now?” exclaimed Captain Ranger, as he emerged, half dressed, from his tent.

“I’ve found Rollin! He’s imprisoned in a cave, with a broken leg! Fetch spades and a mattock to dig away the dirt from the rock! Be quick!” cried Mrs. McAlpin, leading the way.

Nobody heard the robins sing, or paused to enjoy the triumphant melody of the lark.

Scotty was still in a merciful swoon. Very carefully the men loosened the rock from its hold on his legs, and with their united strength rolled it away from the mouth of the cave.

“It’s damned lucky you are, old boy!” cried Yank, as the crippled man regained consciousness. “That rock would have crushed you to pulp if the walls of the cave hadn’t saved you.”

“A miss would have been as good as a mile!” replied Scotty, as he fainted again.

“Who’s going to set these bones?” asked Sawed-off. “It’s a bad fracture, compound and nasty. There’s no severed artery, though, which is lucky, or he’d ’a’ bled to death. Captain Ranger, did you ever set a broken bone?”

“Never.”

“I’ll do it,” exclaimed Mrs. McAlpin. “Cut away his boot. Bring a cot from the camp. Bring some adhesive plaster. Captain, can you make some splints? Stay! I’ll cut away the boot. There! Steady! Slow! If we can set the bones before he recovers consciousness, so much the better.”

The cot with its unconscious burden was carried to the side of the widow’s wagon.

“Bring water and more bandages, girls.”

“Where did you get your skill?” asked the Captain, as Mrs. McAlpin felt cautiously for the broken bones and deftly snapped them into place.

“It isn’t a very bad fracture,” she said, unheeding the question, as she held the bones together while the orders for splints and bandages were being obeyed.

“Some water, quick, and some brandy!” she said in a firm voice, though her cheeks were blanching. She held stoutly to her work till the limb was securely encased in the proper supports. But when her patient recovered consciousness and looked inquiringly into her eyes, she fell, fainting, into the Captain’s arms, and was carried to his family wagon, her eyelids twitching and her muscles limp. When she recovered, she found herself reclining in the wagon beside Mrs. Ranger, who was gently chafing her face and hands.

“All this has been too much for you, dearie,” said the good woman.

“Where’s Rollin?”

“In your mother’s wagon. We have rigged him up a swinging bed, and Mrs. Benson will see that he wants for nothing. You are to ride here, in the big wagon, with me.”

“You have no room for me in here. You and I, and Mary and Jean, and Marjorie and Bobbie, and Sadie and the baby and Sally, and the three little O’Dowds, and Susannah and George Washington can’t all ride and sleep in this narrow space. We’d offend the open-air ordinances of heaven.”

“It is all arranged, my dear; don’t worry. Our overflow has gone to another wagon. We’ll have plenty of room.”

“But Mr. Burns?”

“Your good mother has taken entire charge of him. She is behaving as beautifully in this crisis as you are, my dear.”

XV

_CHOLERA RAGES_

“Cholera is epidemic everywhere along the road,” wrote Jean in her diary on the 8th of June. “Our company is not yet attacked, but our dear mother is seriously alarmed. She counts all the graves we pass during the day, and sums them up at night for us to think about. Some days there is a formidable aggregate.”

The fame of Mrs. McAlpin’s skill as a physician and surgeon, and of Captain Ranger’s marvellous medicine-chest, grew rapidly in the front and rear of the Ranger train as the epidemic spread.

“It is lamentable to note the lack of forethought in many people,” Captain Ranger would say, as he dealt out his supplies of “Number Six,” podophyllin and capsicum, which grew alarmingly scant as the demand increased, and his patience was sorely tried. But he never refused aid to any who applied for it; and the “woman doctor,” who because of her proficiency was considered little else than a witch, was scarcely given time to eat or sleep.

“How do you keep your company from catching the cholera?” asked the anxious father of a numerous family, most of whom had fallen victims to the scourge.

“Common-sense should teach us to allow no uncooked or stale food to be eaten, and no surface or unboiled water to be drunk. Let all companies be broken into small trains, and keep as far apart from each other as possible. Rest a while in the heat of every noonday. Don’t be afraid of the Indians, or of anything or anybody else. The greatest enemy of mankind is fear.”

But in spite of both his precept and his example, the cholera continued its ravages; and Captain Ranger, to avoid contact with the epidemic, and, if possible, relieve Mrs. Ranger’s mind of apprehension, changed his course from the main travelled road, and turned off to the north by west, leaving the multitude to their fate.

“The other trains can follow if they choose, and we can’t help it,” he said to his wife; “but I must get my family away from the crowd, as the best way to save us all from the nasty epidemic.”

“Isn’t there danger of getting lost, John, or of getting captured by the Indians?” asked Mrs. Ranger, as the teams were headed for the Black Hills,—a long, undulating line, which looked in the shimmering distance like low banks of dense fog.

“My compass will point the way, Annie. The Indians will give us no trouble if we treat them kindly. They’re a plaguy sight more afraid of us than we have any reason to be of them.”

Mrs. Ranger, blessed with full confidence in her husband’s ability to accomplish whatsoever he undertook, leaned back on her pillows and guarded the children from danger, as was her wont.

On June 15, Jean made another entry in her much-neglected journal, as follows:—

“We have travelled all day between and over and around, and then back again, among low ranges of the Black Hills. The scenery is grand beyond description, and the road we are making as we go along, for others to follow if they are wise, is good. Lilliputian forests of prickly pears spread in all directions, and are very troublesome. Their thorns, barbed, and sharp as needle-points, are in a degree poisonous. We laugh together over our frequent encounters with the little pests, though our poor wounded feet refuse to be comforted. But we are missing the long lines of moving wagons, before and behind us, swaying and jolting over the dusty roads we’ve left to the southward, and we are glad to be alone, or as nearly so as our big company will permit. The streams we cross at intervals are clear, and the water is sweet and cold.

“Mother seems in better health and spirits since we have removed her from the constant sight of so much suffering and death.

“Dear, patient, faithful, loving mother! Will her true history, and that of the thousands like her, who are heroically enduring the dangers and hardships of this long, long journey, be ever given to the world, I wonder?”

Near nightfall, on their second day’s journey away from the main thoroughfare, they encountered a long freight-train, in charge of fur-traders, the second thus met since their travels began. Every wagon was heavily loaded with buffalo robes which had been prepared for market by the tedious, patient labor of Indian women. As the wives and slaves of English, French, Spanish, and Canadian hunters and traders, these women followed the fates of their grumbling and often cruel lords and masters through the vicissitudes of a precarious existence, with which nevertheless they seemed strangely content.

The leader or captain of the freighters’ outfit was a tall, bronzed, and handsome Scotchman, whose nationality was betrayed at a glance. Captain Ranger bargained with him for a big, handsomely dressed buffalo robe, paying therefor in dried apples and potatoes.

“Our men are getting scurvy from the lack of fruit and vegetables,” the leader said, as the exchange was concluded. “When they are in camp the squaws keep them supplied with berries, camas, and wapatoes. But they can’t bring the women out on a trip like this, away from the scenes of their labors.”

“Here’s a present for you, Annie,” said Captain Ranger, bringing a soft, heavy, furry robe to his wife, and spreading it over her much-prized feather bed. “It will help you to bear the rough jolting over the rocky roads.”

“Thanks, darling. You are very kind and thoughtful, but I shall not need it long.”

“Oh, yes, you will, Annie! We’ve passed the cholera belt. The sun rides higher every day; and I’m sure you’ll soon be all right.”

* * * * *