 | CHAPTER VIII.
A MORMON CARAVAN. John Brent |  |
8. CHAPTER VIII.
A MORMON CARAVAN.
Still, as we rode along, the same rich, tranquil
days of October; the air always potable
gold, and every breath nepenthe.
Early on one of the fairest of afternoons when
all were fairest, we reached Fort Bridger. Bridger
had been an old hunter, trapper, and by and by
that forlorn hope of civilization, the holder of an
Indian trading-post. The spot is better known
now. It was there that that miserable bungle
and blunder of an Administration more fool, if
that be possible, than knave, — the Mormon Expedition
in 1858, — took refuge, after its disasters on
the Sweetwater.
At the moment of our arrival, Bridger's Fort
had just suffered capture. Its owner was missing.
The old fellow had deemed himself the
squatter sovereign of that bleak and sere region.
He had built an adobe mud fort, with a palisade,
on a sweep of plain a degree less desert than the
deserts hard by. That oasis was his oasis, so he
fondly hoped; that mud fort, his mud fort; those
his trade.
But Bridger was one man, and he had powerful
neighbors. It was a case of “O si angulus
iste!” — a Naboth's-vineyard case. The Mormons
did not love the rugged mountaineer; that
worthy Gentile, in turn, thought the saints no
better than so many of the ungodly. The Mormons
coveted oasis, fort, thicket, and trade.
They accused the old fellow of selling powder
and ball to hostile Indians, — to Walker, chief of
the Utes, a scion, no doubt, of the Hookey Walker
branch of that family. Very likely he had done
so. At all events, it was a good pretext. So, in
the name of the Prophet, and Brigham, successor
of the Prophet, the Latter-Day Saints had made
a raid upon the post. Bridger escaped to the
mountains. The captors occupied the Gentile's
property, and spoiled his goods.
Jake Shamberlain told us this story, not without
some sympathy for the exile.
“It 's olluz so,” says Jake; “Paul plants, and
Apollyon gets the increase. Not that Bridger 's
like Paul, any more 'n we 're like Apollyon; but
we 're goan to have all the cider off his apple-trees.”
“I 'm sorry old Bridger has come to grief,”
said Brent to me, as we rode over the plain toward
the fort. “He was a rough, but worth all
Biddulph and I stayed a week with him
last summer, when we came from the mountains
about Luggernel Alley.”
“How far is Luggernel Alley from this
spot?”
“Fifty miles or so to the south and east. I
almost fancy I recognize it in that slight notch in
the line of the blue sierra on the horizon. I
wonder if I shall ever see it again! If it were
not so late, I should insist upon taking you there
now. There is no such gorge in the world. And
the springs, bold, liberal fountains, gushing out
on a glittering greensward! There are several
of them, some boiling, some cold as ice; and one,
the Champagne Spring, wastes in the wilderness
the most delicate, sparkling, exhilarating tipple
that ever reddened a lip or freshened a brain.”
“Wait half a century; then you and I will go
there by rail, with our grandchildren, for draughts
of the Fountain of Youth.”
“I should like to spend a honeymoon there, if
I could find a wife plucky enough to cross the
plains.”
How well I remembered all this conversation
afterwards, and not long afterwards!
We rode up to the fort. A dozen or so of
somewhat rubbishy soldiers, the garrison, were
lounging about.
“Will they expect a countersign,” asked I, —
“some slogan of their vulgarized Islamism?”
“Hardly!” replied Brent. “Only one man
in the world can care about assailing this dismal
den. They need not be as ceremonious with
strangers as the Dutchmen are at Ehrenbreitstein
and Verona.”
Jake and the main party stopped at the fort.
We rode on a quarter of a mile farther, and
camped near a stream, where the grass was plenteous.
“Fulano and Pumps are in better condition
than when we started,” said I, while we were
staking them out for a long feed. “The mustangs
have had all the drudgery; these aristocrats
must be set to do their share soon.”
“They are in prime racing order. If we had
had them in training for three months for a
steeple-chase, or a flight, or a Sabine adventure,
or a rescue, they could not be in better trim than
this moment. I suppose their time to do their
duty must be at hand, they seem so ardent for it.”
We left our little caballada nibbling daintily at
the sweetest spires of self-cured hay, and walked
back to the fort.
We stood there chatting with the garrison.
Presently Brent's quick eye caught some white
spots far away on the slope of the prairie, like
sails on the edge of a dreamy, sunny sea.
“Look!” said he, “there comes a Salt Lake
emigration train.”
“Yes,” said a Mormon of the garrison, “that 's
Elder Sizzum's train. Their forerunner came in
this morning to choose the camping-spot. There
they be! two hundred ox-teams, a thousand
Saints, bound for the Promised Land.”
He walked off to announce the arrival, whistling,
“Jordan is a hard road to travel.”
I knew of Sizzum as the most seductive orator
and foreign propagandist of Mormonism. He
had been in England some time, very successful
at the good work. The caravans we had already
met were of his proselytes. He himself was
coming on with the last train, the one now in
view, and steering for Fort Bridger.
As we stood watching, the lengthening file
of white-hooded wagons crept slowly into sight.
They came forward diagonally to our line of
view, travelling apart at regular intervals, like
the vessels of a well-ordered convoy. Now the
whole fleet dipped into a long hollow, and presently
the leader rose slowly up over the ridge,
and then slid over the slope, like a sail winging
down the broad back of a surge. So they made
their way along over the rolling sweep of the
distance.
“Beautiful!” said Brent. “See how the white
canvas goldens in this rich October haze. Such
scenes are the poetry of prairie life.”
“I am too sorry for the crews, to enjoy the
sunlit sails.”
“Yes, the safer their voyage, the surer their
wreck in that gulf of superstition beyond the
mountains.”
“Perhaps we waste sympathy. A man who
has no more wit than to believe the trash they
teach, has no business with anything but stupid
drudgery. He will never suffer with discovering
his faith to be a delusion.”
“You may say that of a grown man; but
think of the children, — to grow up in desecrated
homes, and never know the close and tender
influence of family nurture.”
“The state owes them an interference and an
education.”
“So it does; and the women protection from
polygamy, whether they will or no.”
“Certainly. Polygamy makes woman a slave,
either by force, or influence stronger than force.
The state exists only to secure the blessings of
liberty to every soul within its borders, and so
must free her.”
“Good logic, but not likely, quite yet, to guide
legislation in our country.”
“This is Sizzum's last train; if the women
here are no more fascinating than their shabby
sisters of its forerunners, we shall carry our
hearts safe home.”
“I cannot laugh about that,” said Brent.
“My old dread revives, whenever I see one of
these caravans, that there may be in it some
innocent girl too young to choose, carried off
by a fanatic father or guardian. Think of the
misery to a woman of any refinement!”
“But we have not seen any such.”
Larrap and Murker here joined us, and, overhearing
the last remarks, began to speak in a
very disgusting tone of the women we had seen
in previous trains.
“I don't wish to hear that kind of stuff,” said
Brent, turning sternly upon Larrap.
“It 's a free country, and I shall say what I
blame please,” the fellow said, with a grin.
“Then say it by yourself, and away from me.”
“You 're blame squimmidge,” said Larrap,
and added a beastly remark.
Brent caught him by the collar, and gave
him a shake.
Murker put his hand to a pistol and looked
“Murder, if I dared!”
“None of that,” said I, stepping before him.
Jake Shamberlain, seeing the quarrel, came
running up. “Now, Brother Brent,” said Jake,
“no shindies in this here Garden of Paradise.
If the gent has made a remark what teches you,
apologies is in order, an he 'll make all far and
squar.”
Brent gave the greasy man a fling.
He went down. Then he got up, with a
trace of Bridger's claim on his red shirt.
“Yer need n't be so blame hash with a feller,”
said he. “I did n't mean no offence.”
“Very well. Learn to talk like a man, and
not like a brute!” said Brent.
The two men walked off together, with black
looks.
“You look disappointed, Shamberlain,” said
I. “Did you expect a battle?”
“Ther 's no fight in them fellers,” said Jake;
“but ef they can serve you a mean trick they 'll
do it; and they 're ambushin' now to look in the
dixonary and see what it is. You 'd better keep
the lariats of that black and that gray tied
round your legs to-night, and every good horse-thief
night while they 're along. They may be
jolly dogs, and let their chances slide at cards,
but my notion is they 're layin' low for bigger
hauls.”
“Good advice, Jake; and so we will.”
By this time the head wagons of Elder Sizzum's
train had crept down upon the level near
us. For the length of a long mile behind, the
serpentine line held its way. On the yellow
rim of the world, with softened outlines against
the hazy horizon, the rear wagons were still
climbing up into view. The caravan lay like a
its snaky bends, where dragon-wings should
be, were herds of cattle, plodding beside the
“trailing-footed” teams, and little companies of
Saints lounging leisurely toward their evening's
goal, their unbuilt hostelry on the plain.
Presently the hydra became a two-headed monster.
The foremost wagon bent to the right, the
second led off to the left. Each successor, as it
came to the point of divergence, filed to the right
or left alternately. The split creature expanded
itself. The two wings moved on over a broad
grassy level north of the fort, describing in regular
curve a great ellipse, a third of a mile long,
half as much across.
On either flank the march was timed and ordered
with the precision of practice. This same
manœuvre had been repeated every day of the
long journey. Precisely as the foremost teams
met at the upper end of the curve, the two hindmost
were parting at the lower. The ellipse was
complete. It locked itself top and bottom. The
train came to a halt. Every wagon of the two
hundred stopped close upon the heels of its file
leader.
A tall man, half pioneer, half deacon, in dress
and mien, galloped up and down the ring. This
was Sizzum, so the by-standers informed us. At
a signal from him, the oxen, two and three yoke
off to wash the dust from their protestant nostrils,
and graze over the russet prairie. They huddled
along, a great army, a thousand strong. Their
brown flanks grew ruddy with the low sunshine.
A cloud of golden dust rose and hung over them.
The air was loud with their lowing. Relieved
from their drags, the herd frisked away with
unwiedly gambolling. We turned to the camp,
that improvised city in the wilderness.
Nothing could be more systematic than its arrangement.
Order is welcome in the world.
Order is only second to beauty. It is, indeed,
the skeleton of beauty. Beauty seeks order, and
becomes its raiment. Every great white-hooded,
picturesque wagon of the Mormon caravan was
in its place. The tongue of each rested on the
axle of its forerunner, or was ranged upon the
grass beneath. The ellipse became a fort and a
corral. Within, the cattle could be safely herded.
Marauding Redskins would gallop about in vain.
Nothing stampedable there. Scalping Redskins,
too, would be baffled. They could not make a
dash through the camp, whisk off a scalp, and
vanish untouched. March and encampment both
had been marshalled with masterly skill.
“Sizzum,” Brent avowed to me, sotto voce,
“may be a blind guide with ditchward tendencies
in faith. He certainly knows how to handle
Maréchales and Feldzeugmeisters, in Europe,
with El Dorado on each shoulder, and
Golconda on the left breast, who would have tied
up that train into knots that none of them would
be Alexander enough to cut.”
| CHAPTER VIII.
A MORMON CARAVAN. John Brent | |