“You say that the emigrants were going on, wagons and all, Kit?” queried the lieutenant. “That war the plan. Whitman said he’d get ’em through, an’ they’d need their goods an’ cattle at t’other end.”
The little company were on the back trail for Fort Hall. As Ike Chamberlain had warned, already winter was creeping down the mountain-sides, with his banners of white ever investing closer the lowlands. Even while the explorers had been encamped near the lake, the snows seemed to have increased upon the crests of the Wasatch Range, overhead. It was a thousand long miles to the end of the trail at Vancouver upon the lower Columbia; therefore Lieutenant Frémont and Kit Carson agreed that to put in more time hereabouts was hazardous.
In the afternoon of the second day following the voyage to Disappointment Island the march was begun, up the Bear and the River of Weeds, for Fort Hall, six days’ travel with the baggage.
Once more the talk drifted to the amazing pilgrimage of Oregon emigrants, and the great concourse of them at Fort Hall, before Kit had left.
[193]
“The Hudson Bay people’s policy would be to discourage settlers, anyway,” mused the lieutenant. “With settlers in there tilling the ground and showing the Indians and the Canadians that farming paid better than fur-hunting, the Company’s business would suffer.”
“Yes,” drawled Kit; “an’ this hyar emigration, if it goes through, will put more Americans than thar air British in the Oregon country; an’ if thar’s anything in settlement of a country it’ll mean a big help to the United States.”
“It surely will,” affirmed the lieutenant. “Success in life and in battle means getting there first, and sticking.”
The route to Fort Hall followed up the Roseaux or River of Weeds from its juncture with the Bear to its sources. Here galloped into camp a horseman from the north—Baptiste Tabeau, of the Thomas Fitzpatrick party. Baptiste, shaking hands right and left, brought the news that the White Head, with all well, was but a short distance across country, encamped at Hall. Baptiste had been despatched southward, to meet the lieutenant.
Excited by promise of flour and rice and dried meat and butter, the Frémont camp slept little this night, and early in the morning, which was September 16, started onward. In the afternoon of September 18, emerging from the hills, with a cheer they greeted the sight of a green valley set amidst a sombre sage plain,[194] and beside the sparkling Portneuf River which watered it, the white walls of a trading post. This was the British Hudson Bay Company post of Fort Hall, on the Portneuf, a mile above the Snake itself, in the Plains of the Snake.
Thomas Fitzpatrick, his boyish ruddy face glowing from its frame of oddly white hair, came to meet them.
“How are supplies?” asked the lieutenant, at once.
“I’ve saved all I could. We’ve been on short rations. But the post is ’bout as poor as when Kit left it. Emigrants cleaned it out. Beef and butter is what you’ll get; that’s all.”
“Where are the emigrants? Don’t see any.”
“Gone; wagons, cattle, women, children and all. Left a few steers and oxen, in trade; but they took most of their stuff right along.”
“Do you think they can get through, with their wagons, Fitzpatrick?” queried the lieutenant.
“If anybody but that missionary doctor was leading them, I would say not,” replied the Broken Hand. “Why, even the Fort Hall people don’t try to fetch in their goods on wheels; they canoe it from Vancouver, for two hundred miles, then they use pack animals for the land trail, up along the Snake to the post. I agree with Captain Grant that no wagons can go over that pack trail. But as I understand, this missionary doctor came riding in hot haste, from down the Snake, found the emigrants discouraged by Grant and other post people, called them together, made a speech, told[195] ’em he’d been over the trail and he knew and that they were foolish to abandon their wagons and implements and try to take their goods and families in by saddle, that they’d need their States animals to plough with, and that he guarantee to get ’em through!”
“Will he?”
“Well,” answered Thomas Fitzpatrick, slowly, rubbing his chin; “they left, wagons and all, August thirtieth, and now it’s September eighteenth and none of ’em has come back; and there aren’t any wagons lying ’longside the trail, far as we’ve seen.”
Now the two parties united camped beside the walls of Fort Hall. Agent Grant himself stepped out to give welcome and meet the lieutenant.
“You Americans are a wonderful people,” declared Agent Grant. “Why, this emigration that just went through is four or five times as large as that of last year, and it’s taking wagons in! Heavy farm wagons, heaped with goods!”
“Will they succeed?”
“No, sir. I and every other man of experience know that the trail is impossible for wagons. At least——” and Agent Grant hesitated, “impossible except perchance for this Doctor Whitman. I never heard or talked with such an obstinate, determined man. He has a tremendous responsibility on his hands, though. I’ll wager that before you get two hundred miles from the post you’ll find the trail fairly littered with cast-off wagons. But if not, lieutenant—if not, then it will[196] be a blow to British rule in Oregon. I have heard Dr. McLoughlin, our chief agent, at Vancouver, say that Oregon is safe, because it never can be reached by Yankee families except around Cape Horn; but what he’ll say when he sees the Yankees coming down from the mountains, with wagons, all the way from the States, I don’t know. And such a number! Last year Dr. White took in a few, afoot or by saddle and pack—but this year, eight hundred, with wagons—my stars! If they get through, then I shall expect to hear of them continuing right on down to the ocean and under it to Japan!”
The lieutenant laughed.
“You British in Oregon don’t know the American,” he said. “When the Yankee once starts for a new country, nothing can stop him.”
“But some of them didn’t know they were in Oregon yet!” expostulated Captain Grant. “They asked me: ‘Say, stranger, how far to Oregon?’”
“They asked us the same, back on the Bear.”
“And still they were pressing on!” gasped Captain Grant. “Well, well!”
“How are you fixed for supplies?”
“Cleaned out, lieutenant. But I have some Yankee oxen.”
“Good.”
Agent Grant was a kindly man, helping Americans and British alike. The emigrants had been supplied by him with whatever he had that they wished.[197] The lieutenant was enabled to buy of him several horses, and five fat oxen.
Now indeed winter set in with an all-day snow. Suddenly the country looked bleak and drear. By travel up and down to the end of the trail at Vancouver was some 900 miles. Lieutenant F............