No beaver cuttings were found upon any of the streams. High and cold on the right continued the long tier of the Sierra Nevada mountains—sometimes white and shining, sometimes dimmed by fresh storm; blotched by snow, welted with bare ridges, brushy and bleak on the left stretched for leagues unknown the desert of the Great Basin: pent betwixt the two, southward through the mid-winter pushed the wearied Frémont and Carson men. Around about, on every hand, welled into the frosty air the signal smokes of unseen peoples. Now on the third day, which was January 18, after leaving Pyramid Lake, the lieutenant called a council, of Kit Carson, and Fitzpatrick the Bad Hand, and the German Preuss, and Mr. Talbot the Washington young man, Alexander Godey, Baptiste Bernier, and one or two others.
“I teenk,” said Baptiste Tabeau, “Meester the Lieutenant, he would try to cross the mountains to other side, where all is warm. Kit Carson say it very warm, with much grass an’ horse an’ deer over that side. Ma foi——” and Baptiste, who always was one[226] of the jolliest of the company, shrugged his shoulders, shiveringly. “I hope we go.”
“That snow look mighty deep, on those big mountains,” uttered Jacob the colored youth. “But I guess we gwine to freeze to deff as easy as we gwine to starve to deff. Marse Lieutenant an’ Mistuh Kit’ll get us through, though.”
The council broke up; Thomas Fitzpatrick, hastening to look after the animals, which were in his charge, made the announcement.
“We cross to the Valley of the Sacramento, boys,” he informed, passing through.
At the news a cheer rang out. Kit Carson added to the enthusiasm, that night, around the camp fires of cottonwood and sage.
“I war in the Valley o’ the Sacramento, summer o’ Twenty-nine, with Ewing Young,” he related. “We’d crossed the desert from Touse. That war my fust trapping trip, an’ it war fifteen year an’ more ago; since then I’ve travelled pretty much over all the West, hunting the beaver, but I tell you, boys, that thar country o’ the Californy coast beats all. We entered from the south, an’ followed down the San Joachin, to the Sacramento, an’ trapped that a ways; an’ the beaver an’ the otter an’ the wild hosses an’ the elk an’ the deer an’ the trees an’ the forage war something wonderful. It snows on the mountains, we heard tell, but down in the valleys it air green an’ spring-like all[227] winter; a fat country. Thar’s whar we’re heading, to-morrow.”
“Hooray!” they cheered, again. “No more bad water and salt grass and starvation trail for us. Hooray!”
So the expedition turned west, for the towering white peaks not far.
While they were seeking for a pass (their eyes still eager to mark the least trace of the Buenaventura), a strange figure came running down a draw. While his legs worked steadily, he held up an arm as signal. He was an old Indian, partially naked. He did not slacken until, out of breath, he had seized with one hand the first hand that he could reach, while with the other he extended a little skin bag, as an offering.
When he was done panting, and had been assured that he would not be killed, he accepted presents for the bag of pine seeds; and after a talk in sign language he was hired by scarlet cloth and beads and brass to act as guide for two days. He stated that he knew of a good pass, westward.
The pass was not a pass over the range; it was only a pass over the first foot-hills. More Indians were induced by friendly signals to come close. They immediately held out their little skin sacks of pine seeds.
In council with them the lieutenant asked for guides, again, over the mountains to the country of the whites. But the Indians, squatting like rabbits and murmuring together, refused. Their spokesman,[228] standing, pointed to the snow, and raised his palm to his chin, and then raised it above his head, to show how deep was the snow. He signed that the company should travel southward more, where there was another pass over a lower range; and here, in one day’s journey, lived a people who would guide through the pass of the great mountains themselves.
For bright cloth and goods the Indians agreed to supply a guide as far as the people of the first pass. Supplied with pine seeds oily and well-flavored and as large as small nuts, the company pressed southward once more, among the snowy foot-hills of the eastern base of the giant Sierras.
Mr. Preuss and party came toiling up the trail, from a secondary camp where they had remained in charge of the baggage, and reported that the howitzer was stuck fast. Even Samuel Neal, the blacksmith of the expedition, admitted that the battered cannon was beyond rescue. Many times had he repaired its carriage, during the months; it had been his pet; but now he could do nothing for it. Sergeant Zindel concurred.
“Ach, a goot gun,” he grunted. “I would not leave it in battle; but such snow and hills——!”
Therefore, after its 3000 miles of service, from St. Louis of the State of Missouri to the Salt Lake, and to the Columbia, and down into the desert, here upon the upper West Walker River of the Nevada-California border was left the brass howitzer.
Snow fell heavily, the cold increased; and all the[229] shivering Indians, except the young man guide, dropped away, to return to their village. Frowning indeed appeared the stormy mountains, where awaited the first pass, and the guide himself seemed ready to desert.
“Kit, you and Godey put him between you,” directed the lieutenant. “Show him your rifles, so he’ll understand.”
And trudging afoot, like the majority of the company, to save the horses, Kit Carson and Alexander Godey took each a side of the nervous Indian and patted their rifle-stocks significantly. He rolled his eyes in mute despair. The snowflakes had coated his dark skin, for he sillily carried his blue and red cloth tightly rolled, in a wad, rather than don it and perhaps soil it. Presently the lieutenant called:
“All right, Kit. Let him go. The trail looks plain.”
“Wall,” answered Kit; “mout as well. He says thar’s a hut near whar he’ll stay till after the storm.” And with a single motion of his arm he bade the guide be free—whereupon away scudded the glad youth, as hard as he could run, for shelter.
As had been promised by the Indians behind, into the camp here at the inner foot of the pass came other Indians. They thronged, mysteriously as wild animals, to the fires; they were without fear, and were very inquisitive. The lieutenant held again a council, to ask for a guide.
[230]
Kit Carson made the sign-talk for the company; for the Indians an old man responded. The fires blazed brightly, illuminating the snow, and the trees, and the Indians, squatting in a row upon logs or ground, and the company lying about, rifles handy. It was a wild scene.
“Tell them,” instructed the lieutenant, to Kit, “that we have com............