To be beside the friendly guiding Sweetwater was a great relief. Now the South Pass was only eighty or ninety miles west, with a plain trail connecting. But what a trail this had become, in a short year! So many wagons had traversed it—the hoofs of the oxen and of the horses all pointing west—that the tough sage-brush had been crushed flat in a great, winding furrow forever leading onward. Strange was it to come upon such a trail, in this wilderness of plain and butte more than a thousand miles from the frontier. This morning, when daylight revealed the sudden highway, exclamations of astonishment ran through the camp and adown the column, as now the march was made so much easier.
“Wagh! The Snake woman says it air the great medicine road o’ the whites,” remarked William New.
“Looks to me as if all the folks in Missouri were moving out to Oregon,” called back Ike.
“You would think so, if you had been with us at the start,” responded Basil Lajeunesse, who was riding to chat with the Carson men. “Oregon and California both. Name of a dog! Until the trail forked and we[156] turned off for St. Vrain the Laramie route was a string of beads, so thick were wagons. That Doctor Whitman, he has stirred people up. One thousand for Oregon—men and women and the children—were collected at the Kansas, waiting for him.”
“These air fresh sign,” quoth Ike, with an eye upon the hoof marks and wheel tracks, and the freshly plucked springs where women and children must have wandered, picking nosegays.
“Lieutenant Frémont, he stirred people up, too,” continued Basil, proudly. “It is ‘South Pass,’ ‘South Pass,’ everybody talk about ‘South Pass,’ so easy to cross. And the Congress talk, too, all about Oregon, and it say it will give to every American settler in Oregon six hundred forty acres of land and for his child one hundred sixty acres. I should like to go, myself, but I do not know as my family like to go.”
“Some’ll never get thar,” grunted William New. “Thar’s a grave, already. Wonder the wolves or the Injuns haven’t dug it open yet. They will.”
The South Pass was crossed. Still onward led the great trail. Occasionally at camping-spot or elsewhere relics were to be noted. Once Oliver found a ragged doll; and was seen again a hasty grave.
The Big Sandy creek, at the foot of the pass, where a year before the camp had been made ere turning north to climb the Peak, was left behind, and now ahead waited new country.
On August 15—
[157]
“Thar’s the Green,” announced Oliver’s faithful mentor, William New. “We’re pretty high in Mexican territory, too. Some say it reaches up this fur, west o’ the mountains, along the Rio Verde. Seedskeedee River air what she’s called by the Crows—which means peerairie-hen river.”
The river was about 400 yards wide. The road forded it at a shallow place, and turned down along it. The current flowed among wooded islands.
That night, at camp, Lieutenant Frémont much discussed the river with Kit Carson and Basil Lajeunesse and Mr. Preuss and others.
“This must be the same as the Buenaventura, or Good-Fortune River of the early Spanish,” asserted the lieutenant. “That is, if it has a branch emptying into the Pacific.”
“Never heard of any,” answered Kit Carson. “Did you, Basil?”
“Ma foi, not I,” declared Basil, promptly. “But I never have been beyond, where lies the desert.”
“Wall, I have,” resumed Kit. “I’ve been west down the Mary’s River to its end in the Sinks; and I’ve been on the lower end o’ this hyar Green—or what mout be this hyar Green, whar it’s called the Colorado.”
“What’s below, Kit?” queried the lieutenant, quickly. “I hear strange stories of fine valleys at the bottoms of canyons entered by a secret trail, and of[158] wonderful beaver grounds and ancient towns, shut in by walls a mile high.”
“Wall,” drawled Kit, “when I went out to Californy in Twenty-nine, with Captain Young, we struck the Colorado at a place whar the river’d sunk down into a canyon full a mile deep an’ three mile acrost. We didn’t get down into it, but I’m ready to believe that ’most anything could be found at the bottom. They call it the Grand Canyon, now. Injuns say thar’s a heap more o’ the same kind, up above, for three hundred mile.”
“But did you ever hear anything about the Buenaventura River, flowing west instead of south, across the Great Basin and emptying into the Pacific Ocean?”
“Heard about it, but never saw it,” stated Kit. “Never knew a trapper who did see it. O’ course, Injuns give out all sort o’ tales, an’ you can’t believe ’em.”
“The early Spanish claimed such a river, did they not—draining a lake?” put in Mr. Preuss. “It is marked down on maps that I have seen.”
“Yes,” replied the lieutenant. “Now, if there is such a river, as the Buenaventura, connecting this central Great Basin with the Pacific Ocean of California, what a boon will it be! Boats could ascend the Arkansas, or the Platte, or the Missouri River, be carried across the mountains, and launching into the Buenaventura continue on to the coast!”
[159]
“A water-way across the continent,” puffed Mr. Preuss. “That is good!”
“Bien, bien!” cried Basil.
From the Green the road crossed among hills, making westward for the Bear. Soon the Snake woman, with her two children and her six pack-horses, left to seek relatives at the trading post of old Jim Bridger, only a few miles away. And the next day Kit Carson spurred ahead, for Fort Hall, to engage provisions there, in case that the Thomas Fitzpatrick party, which should be somewhere on the way from Fort Laramie, might be running short or have met with misfortune.
However, that very evening provisions walked in of themselves—being a cow and her calf. They must have escaped from some emigrant party; and they were made more of even than had been the red ox—for the cow gave milk in abundance. Here was luxury: milk for coffee. So they took the mother and child along with them.
Early in the second morning thereafter the company entered the beautiful valley of what Ike and William and all said was the Bear River. Below but a short distance were the “Beer Springs” and the “Steamboat Spring”; and further below was the Great Salty Lake.
That they would visit the springs was certain, because the trail led past them; but whether they would[160] visit the lake was not so certain, although Basil, reporting to the Carson men, assured:
“We will. I think we will. I hear the lieutenant and Mr. Preuss talking so. That is why we brought again the boat.”
“Boat!” snorted Ike. “Another o’ them rubber contraptions?”
“Bien encore,” confirmed Basil. “It is ready in the packs. Like the other but not so big.”
“Humph!” grumbled William New. “Thought I smelt it!”
Oliver wished much to ask questions about the springs, but he knew that if he waited he would find out everything, whereas if he asked he would likely be filled with trapper yarns. Besides, it was the part of a greenhorn to put many foolish questions. However, William New did remark, as they rode along:
“That ’ere springs basin ahead’ll make you think you’re in the infernal regions. Red rock an’ blue rock an’ green trees, an’ hot water an’ cold, an’ sulphur smells an’ noises. Wagh!”
Emigran............