THE DESERT OF WYOMING
To cross such a plain is to grow homesick for the mountains. I
longed for the Black Hills of Wyoming, which I knew we were soon to
enter, like an ice-bound whaler for the spring. Alas! and it was a
worse country than the other. All Sunday and Monday we travelled
through these sad mountains, or over the main ridge of the Rockies,
which is a fair match to them for misery of aspect. Hour after
hour it was the same unhomely and unkindly world about our onward
path; tumbled boulders, cliffs that drearily imitate the shape of
monuments and fortifications - how drearily, how tamely, none can
tell who has not seen them; not a tree, not a patch of sward, not
one shapely or commanding mountain form; sage-brush, eternal sage-
brush; over all, the same weariful and gloomy colouring, grays
warming into brown, grays darkening towards black; and for sole
sign of life, here and there a few fleeing antelopes; here and
there, but at incredible intervals, a creek running in a canon.
The plains have a grandeur of their own; but here there is nothing
but a contorted smallness. Except for the air, which was light and
stimulating, there was not one good circumstance in that God-
forsaken land.
I had been suffering in my health a good deal all the way; and at
last, whether I was exhausted by my complaint or poisoned in some
wayside eating-house, the evening we left Laramie, I fell sick
outright. That was a night which I shall not readily forget. The
lamps did not go out; each made a faint shining in its own
neighbourhood, and the shadows were confounded together in the
long, hollow box of the car. The sleepers lay in uneasy attitudes;
here two chums alongside, flat upon their backs like dead folk;
there a man sprawling on the floor, with his face upon his arm;
there another half seated with his head and shoulders on the bench.
The most passive were continually and roughly shaken by the
movement of the train; others stirred, turned, or stretched out
their arms like children; it was surprising how many groaned and
murmured in their sleep; and as I passed to and fro, stepping
across the prostrate, and caught now a snore, now a gasp, now a
half-formed word, it gave me a measure of the worthlessness of rest
in that unresting vehicle. Although it was chill, I was obliged to
open my window, for the degradation of the air soon became
intolerable to one who was awake and using the full supply of life.
Outside, in a glimmering night, I saw the black, amorphous hills
shoot by unweariedly into our wake. They that long for morning
have never longed for it more earnestly than I.
And yet when day came, it was to shine upon the same broken and
unsightly quarter of the world. Mile upon mile, and not a tree, a
bird, or a river. Only down the long, sterile canons, the train
shot hooting and awoke the resting echo. That train was the one
piece of life in all the deadly land; it was the one actor, the one
spectacle fit to be observed in this paralysis of man and nature.
And when I think how the railroad has been pushed through this
unwatered wilderness and haunt of savage tribes, and now will bear
an emigrant for some 12 pounds from the Atlantic to the Golden
Gates; how at each stage of the construction, roaring, impromptu
cities, full of gold and lust and death, sprang up and then died
away again, and are now but wayside stations in the desert; how in
these uncouth places pig-tailed Chinese pirates worked side by side
with border ruffians and broken men from Europe, talking together
in a mixed dialect, mostly oaths, gambling, drinking, quarrelling
and murdering like wolves; how the plumed hereditary lord of all
America heard, in this last fastness, the scream of the "bad
medicine waggon" charioting his foes; and then when I go on to
remember that all this epical turmoil was conducted by gentlemen in
frock coats, and with a view to nothing more extraordinary than a
fortune and a subsequent visit to Paris, it seems to me, I own, as
if this railway were the one typical achievement of the age in
which we live, as if it brought together into one plot all the ends
of the world and all the degrees of social rank, and offered to
some great writer the busiest, the most extended, and the most
varied subject for an enduring literary work. If it be romance, if
it be contrast, if it be heroism that we require, what was Troy
town to this? But, alas! it is not these things that are necessary
- it is only Homer.
Here also we are grateful to the train, as to some god who conducts
us swiftly through these shades and by so many hidden perils.
Thirst, hunger, the sleight and ferocity of Indians are all no more
feared, so lightly do we skim these horrible lands; as the gull,
who wings safely through the hurricane and past the shark. Yet we
should not be forgetful of these hardships of the past; and to keep
the balance true, since I have complained of the trifling
discomforts of my journey, perhaps more than was enough, let me add
an original document. It was not written by Homer, but by a boy of
eleven, long since dead, and is dated only twenty years ago. I
shall punctuate, to make things clearer, but not change the
spelling.
"My dear Sister Mary, - I am afraid you will go nearly crazy when
you read my letter. If Jerry" (the writer's eldest brother) "has
not written to you before now, you will be surprised to heare that
we are in California, and that poor Thomas" (another brother, of
fifteen) "is dead. We started from - in July, with plenly of
provisions and too yoke oxen. We went along very well till we got
within six or seven hundred miles of California, when the Indians
attacked us. We found places where they had killed the emigrants.
We had one passenger with us, too guns, and one revolver; so we ran
all the lead We had into bullets (and) hung the guns up in the
wagon so that we could get at them in a minit. It was about two
o'clock in the afternoon; droave the cattel a little way; when a
prairie chicken alited a little way from the wagon.
"Jerry took out one of the guns to shoot it, and told Tom drive the
oxen. Tom and I drove the oxen, and Jerry and the passenger went
on. Then, after a little, I left Tom and caught up with Jerry and
the other man. Jerry stopped Tom to come up; me and the man went
on and sit down by a little stream. In a few minutes, we heard
some noise; then three shots (they all struck poor Tom, I suppose);
then they gave the war hoop, and as many as twenty of the redskins
came down upon us. The three that shot Tom was hid by the side of
the road in the bushes.
"I thought the Tom and Jerry were shot; so I told the other man
that Tom and Jerry were dead, and that we had better try to escape,
if possible. I had no shoes on; having a sore foot, I thought I
would not put them on. The man and me run down the road, but We
was soon stopped by an Indian on a pony. We then turend the other
way, and run up the side of the Mountain, and hid behind some cedar
trees, and stayed there till dark. The Indians hunted all over
after us, and verry close to us, so close that we could here there
tomyhawks Jingle. At dark the man and me started on, I stubing my
toes against sticks and stones. We traveld on all night; and next
morning, just as it was getting gray, we saw something in the shape
of a man. It layed Down in the grass. We went up to it, and it
was Jerry. He thought we ware Indians. You can imagine how glad
he was to see me. He thought we was all dead but him, and we
thought him and Tom was dead. He had the gun that he took out of
the wagon to shoot the prairie Chicken; all he had was the load
that was in it.
"We traveld on till about eight o'clock, We caught up with one
wagon with too men with it. We had traveld with them before one
day; we stopt and they Drove on; we knew that they was ahead of us,
unless they had been killed to. My feet was so sore when we caught
up with them that I had to ride; I could not step. We traveld on
for too days, when the men that owned the cattle said they would
(could) not drive them another inch. We unyoked the oxen; we had
about seventy pounds of flour; we took it out and divided it into
four packs. Each of the men took about 18 pounds apiece and a
blanket. I carried a little bacon, dried meat, and little quilt; I
had in all about twelve pounds. We had one pint of flour a day for
our alloyance. Sometimes we made soup of it; sometimes we (made)
pancakes; and sometimes mixed it up with cold water and eat it that
way. We traveld twelve or fourteen days. The time came at last
when we should have to reach some place or starve. We saw fresh
horse and cattle tracks. The morning come, we scraped all the
flour out of the sack, mixed it up, and baked it into bread, and
made some soup, and eat everything we had. We traveld on all day
without anything to eat, and that evening we Caught up with a sheep
train of eight wagons. We traveld with them till we arrived at the
settlements; and know I am safe in California, and got to good
home, and going to school.
"Jerry is working in - . It is a good country. You can get from
50 to 60 and 75 Dollars for cooking. Tell me all about the affairs
in the States, and how all the folks get along."
And so ends this artless narrative. The little man was at school
again, God bless him, while his brother lay scalped upon the
deserts.
