Now was it the dawn of a sharp, clear winter morning, February 2, 1844, in the Frémont and Carson rude camp of one skin lodge and several tents, on the upper water of the Carson River, at the Nevada-California line. Oliver awakened early, under his buffalo-robe brought from Taos: awakened to the crackle of camp fire, the stir of stiff figures, and the sight of Jacob the colored youth hurrying with a tin cup of steaming coffee for the lieutenant in the skin lodge. Jacob always tried to do this—to get the coffee there before the lieutenant his master was dressed. He explained that such was the custom in the south: the members of the family had coffee served to them before they were up. Oliver awakened to another knowledge. This was the day when the main range of the Sierras was to be assaulted. Everywhere the fresh snow lay deep and trackless; the eastern sky was pink, and about the white peaks of the Sierras, high and close in the west, the clouds were breaking into filaments.
Oliver tumbled out of his coverings. At a little distance the half-frozen horses and mules stood[236] hunched, tails to the breeze, or were pawing for herbage. Kit Carson was up, Thomas Fitzpatrick was up, the Indian guide was up. He had not escaped. A glorious figure he made, as equipped with new moccasins and leggins, with trousers and a shirt, with blue and scarlet cloth and a large green blanket over all, he stood by a fire.
Lieutenant Frémont emerged in haste from the lodge, and nodded to the Indian—whereupon the Indian pointed to the vasty white pinnacles of the mountains, and with a grunt shook his head. The lieutenant paid no attention to such weak spirit. His voice vivified the camp, and all was hustle.
“Now for summer doings, boys,” encouraged Kit Carson, as after breakfast, with packs in place and every man resolved, the procession wended forth through the snow.
“Now for the Californy Valley an’ summer doings!” they answered.
The snow had drifted and speedily grew deeper; so that ten men, on the strongest horses, were put in the van to break a trail. Thus work began early. As oft as the horse of the leader was exhausted, his rider turned out, for the rear, and the next rider took his place.
Huts entirely covered by snow, where Indians lived like field mice, were passed: the only sign of inhabitant was the single trail from the hole of a door to the foot of a pine tree, and back.
[237]
“Guide says the deepest snow air jest beginning,” on the third day announced Kit, with the advance, to the lieutenant.
“There’s no use trying to bring the animals on here, to-night,” declared the lieutenant, snow-covered and panting. Snow-covered and panting were all. “Oliver, ride down and tell Fitzpatrick to camp at those springs where we were last night; it’s more sheltered. We’ll camp where we are.”
“Yes, sir,” answered Oliver.
He met Thomas Fitzpatrick, red-faced, snowy, working like a Trojan to keep the horses and mules moving, and delivered the message. He did not stay, for the camp by the springs in the sheltered basin. He turned about; maybe the lieutenant and Kit and Mr. Preuss and Godey and Bernier would need him.
The camp of the advance squad had been made, without tents, in a group of huge pines. Against the base of one of the pines a generous fire was blazing; and when Oliver arrived, tired and cold and glad of the fire, another old Indian visitor was delivering an oration.
He spoke loudly, in a sing-song manner; and he spoke long.
“He says,” announced Kit, “that we an’ our critters can’t go further, this way. We’ll perish, sure. We must turn back, an’ he’ll show us a better way. Rock upon rock—rock upon rock; snow upon snow—snow upon snow: that’s ahead of us. If we get over,[238] we can’t get down on t’other side; thar air precipices whar our hosses’ll slip, an’ off we’ll go.”
“Yes; I understood his signs, and most of his words,” remarked the lieutenant, quietly. “But we’re white men. We’re not afraid.”
The Chinook lad from the mission, who had kept close by the lieutenant, had understood the signs and words even better than had Kit Carson; and now he began to wail aloud.
“I wanted to see the whites,” he lamented, brokenly. “I came away from my own people to see the whites. I would not mind dying among the whites, but to die here—ow-ow-ow-ow,” and shuddering he drew his blanket over his head. From underneath it his wail resumed, muffled and weird.
“You ought to have stayed down below, in the Fitz camp,” reminded Kit, of Oliver. “It’ll be a cold night, hyar, I tell you.”
And it was. The lieutenant said that the thermometer was ten above; but a wind set in, sifting through the tree trunks, blowing aside the heat, and penetrating blankets and buckskins. The trees creaked and sighed; the Chinook wailed; more biting waxed the air; and nobody slept much.
When Oliver turned out early, to do his share in looking after the shrunken horses and mules, the Indian guide was pressing to the fire, to be warmer; under all his unaccustomed clothing of shirt and trousers and red and blue cloth and green blanket he[239] was shivering violently. Chancing to glance back, Oliver saw Lieutenant Frémont throw his own army blanket over the Indian’s shoulders already once blanketed; and when Oliver returned, within fifteen or twenty minutes, from the horses, he found the camp much indignant. The Indian guide had disappeared, blankets and all!
The day was spent in bringing up the animals, and in making snow-shoes and sledges. The next morning the lieutenant, with Thomas Fitzpatrick and Kit and others, snow-shoed ahead, to reconnoitre along the pass which the guide had pointed out before he had deserted. They came back, in the darkness, scarcely able to drag their feet, but they brought good news. They had looked over into a large valley, distant but snowless. Kit had recognized the valley as the Valley of the Sacramento.
“I know it!” he declaimed, still much delighted. “I know it by a little round mountain. Fifteen years ago I marked that little mountain, when I war in the valley; an’ I remember it jest as plain as if it war only yesterday.”
“How far? How far?” demanded all, eagerly.
“Thirty miles, isn’t it, Kit?” answered the lieutenant.
“I should say that—an’ more,” mused Kit, thoughtfully.
“So should I,” agreed Fitzpatrick. “We aren’t there, yet, boys; over the ridge and down means some[240] long marches, through the snow. The snow’s likely to be heavier, on the west side. But now we know where we’re travelling.”
“From the ridge we could make out, through the glass, prairies and the line of a river bordered with timber,” explained the lieutenant. “But as Fitz says, there are some hard marches ahead.”
So there were. By sledges and snow-shoes the trail was resumed, every heart aglow with pictures of the Valley of the Sacramento; but on the level the snow was five feet deep, and in drifts was twenty feet deep. The animals failed, and must be left at each pasture, while with wooden mauls and shovels the men flattened a road, and with pine boughs paved it.
The puppy Tlamath must be added to the larder, so that for the advance there was a strange dinner, one night, of dog (cooked by Alexander Godey Indian-fashion, in pieces hide on), mule, and dried-pea soup!
Now was it the close of two weeks since from the preparatory camp had the start been made. The crest of the pass had just been reached, for on February 16, returning from a scout ahead, the lieutenant and Jacob reported that they had come upon a creek flowing west, toward the Pacific!
As they descended, seeking to travel while yet the night’s crust was unmelted, more plentiful waxed the snow, more difficult the trail, intersected by drifts and ridges. However, the lieutenant was convinced that the little stream discovered by himself and Jacob was[241] the river upon which, lower, would be found the ranch of Captain Sutter the Swiss-American settler. The welcome sound of a thunder-storm in the valley, distant, drifted up to the company’s rejoicing ears; and when the storm had cleared, the sunset revealed a shining spot, as if denoting a bay, and a shining line, as if of a river, connecting with it.
The Valley of the Sacramento, and the Bay of San Francisco!
That night, to the yearning, keen-eyed wanderers so high above this spring-land, appeared in the valley numerous fires, as if in answer to the fires of the camp. Thereafter, by day and by night these fires were visible; but the Frémont and Carson men learned, later, that they were simply the ............