XXTHE TEAMSTERS DESERT
“You seem to be in trouble, my little man. What can I do to help you?” asked the Little Doctor, as a shocky-headed, freckle-faced child, ragged, barefoot, and dirty, paused in her presence, balancing himself first on one foot and then on the other, and occasionally rubbing his eyes with a grimy shirt-sleeve, open at the wrist and badly out at elbow.
“I hearn tell that you was a doctor, mum. Can you come to see my mam? She’s sick, awful.”
The child led the way to a rickety wagon, which had halted at an inconvenient distance from the creek, in the blazing sunshine, though a friendly tree stood near that might have afforded a grateful shade for an hour or more if the head of the family had thought to stop the wagon in the right spot before unhitching his team. Three or four sallow, barefoot, and ragged little children were playing in the sand. The scant remains of a most uninviting repast littered the ground. A half-dozen hungry dogs, tied to the wagon-wheels, out of reach of the poor remains of food, whined piteously.
A loose-jointed man shambled aimlessly about, wiping his tear-stained face on the buttonless sleeve of a verydirty shirt. “She’s got the cholera, an’ she’ll die, an’ thar’ll be nobody left to keer fur her young uns!” he sobbed within hearing of the writhing patient.
“When did this suffering begin?” asked the Little Doctor, trying hard not to smile.
“Nigh on to half a day ago, mum. I druv like hell to git to this ’ere crick. I’d hearn of it afore I left the last camp.”
“Have you a tent?”
“Lawd, no! nor nothin’ else to speak of.”
“But dogs and children!” the visitor thought, as she ruefully surveyed the scene.
“The steers have got the foot-rot. Kin you kore ’em?”
“Yes, but we must first attend to the needs of your wife. Go to Captain Ranger. Tell him I sent you. Tell him I must borrow one of his tents and some physic and a bottle of ‘Number Six.’ Ask for Mrs. O’Dowd, and be sure to say that Mrs. McAlpin wants her badly.”
When Captain Ranger and his man Limpy appeared on the scene, bringing the tent and medicines, water was already boiling in a black iron kettle, the only cooking utensil in sight. The tent was soon pitched, and a bed prepared for the sufferer, who was writhing in convulsions.
“Any woman accustomed to the comforts of a well-ordered home would have died,” said Mrs. McAlpin the next morning, after the crisis was past. “But the average specimen of the poor white trash of the original slave States has as many lives as a cat.”
“I didn’t have no doctor,” said the patient, as soon as she was able to be on her feet. “Thar was a woman yar, an’ she giv’ me some hot truck, but I jist kored myself.”
The woman was telling her story to a visitor, who had called, partly from sympathy, but chiefly from curiosity; and Mrs. McAlpin, who was assisting Captain Rangerto compound the mixture for the ailing feet of the stranger’s cattle, overheard the shrill-voiced visitor add, “I never did take no stock in them women doctors.”
“I wanted water,” continued the patient, “an’ couldn’t git none; so I waited till nobody was watchin’ and jist stole out o’ the tent in the night an’ swallered all I could hol’ from a canteen; and I mended from the word ‘go.’ The stuff was as warm as dish-water, but I wanted it so bad I didn’t stop to taste it.”
All day the convalescent wrestled with weakness; but as the afflicted cattle could not go forward till the following morning, she moved languidly about the camp and fed her family with beans and bacon, with the never-failing accompaniment of black coffee, which Captain Ranger declared was “strong enough to bear up an iron wedge.”
The scenery became more diversified as the travellers continued their journey up the Platte. Gradually the heat became less suffocating. Desert sands gave way to alluvial valleys, and the health of man and beast improved. On the opposite, or south side of the river, the scenery was strikingly unlike that of the plain through which the emigrant road ran, winding its sinewy length in and out, over the vast, untilled fields that lay asleep in the sunshine, awaiting the fructifying power of the autumn rains, and the future labor of plough and seedsman.
It was now the first of July. The heavy duties of the day were over, the short summer evening had come, and Captain Ranger lay upon the grass, playing with his own little ones, Susannah’s George Washington, and the three babies of Sally O’Dowd.
The evening breezes stirred his hair and beard and filed his lungs with a sensation of vigor he had not enjoyed since bidding farewell to his faithful wife.
“The story goes that some prospectors have discovered gold in the foot-hills across the big drink,” said Yank,approaching the Captain with a sort of half-military salute.
“What of it?” asked the Captain, as he shook himself loose from the little group, and arose to his knees, a vague fear tugging at his heart. “What does such a discovery mean to us?”
“Nothing; only the most of us are going to throw up our job and go off a-prospecting.”
“What! and leave me alone in this wilderness, without teamsters, a thousand miles from nowhere, with all these women and children on my hands to starve to death or be captured by Indians?”
“That’ll have to be your own lookout, I reckon. The gold fever’s as sudden as the cholera, and takes you off without warning when you get it bad.”
“What’s the matter, daddie?” asked Jean. “Are you sick?”
“I’m face to face with an awful difficulty, daughter. Our ox-drivers have caught the gold fever. They are all going to leave us in this wilderness but Scotty; and he’d go too, no doubt, if he weren’t crippled and helpless.”
“Don’t let the desertion of your teamsters worry you,” exclaimed Sally O’Dowd. “I can drive one of the teams myself.”
“What! You?”
“Yes! Didn’t I tell you that you’d never be sorry if you’d let me travel in your train to Oregon?”
“We can all drive oxen,” cried his three daughters, in a breath.
“But who will drive for Mrs. Benson and the Little Doctor? Their teamsters have joined the stampede, and they can’t drive oxen.”
“Just try us and see if we can’t,” laughed the Little Doctor.
“But you have two teams, and your mother cannot drive one of them.”
“I’ll make a trailer of one of the wagons, just as the freighters do in the Assiniboin country.”
“Does Mrs. Benson know about this?”
“Yes; we’ve talked it all over. It’s a genuine case of ‘have to,’ Captain.”
“What will you do with Scotty?”
“We’ve considered him! He’ll soon be on his feet again. Meanwhile, he’ll have to stay on in his hammock.”
“He’s not good for anything there nor anywhere else!” said the Captain, testily. “He doesn’t know beans about driving oxen, and I doubt if he can ever learn!”
“He’s great on ‘intervention’ and ‘non-intervention,’ though,” laughed Mrs. McAlpin. “He’s even greater on the Monroe Doctrine.”
“Yes!” exclaimed Jean, “and you ought to hear him rave over the nation’s allegiance to Mason and Dixon’s Line. It’s on the troubles over the slavery question, which he says are looming all along the national horizon, that he comes out strong.”
“He’s taught me a lot about law and equity, courts and criminals, constitutions and codes,” said Hal.
“You make light of the peril of our situation because you do not comprehend its gravity,” exclaimed Captain Ranger. “We need our teamsters. Scotty is a capital theorist, but he’ll never set a river afire.”
“That’s a feat you’ve never accomplished yet, daddie,” laughed Jean.
“I’ve come as near it as any living man; for I boiled the Illinois dry, once!” replied the Captain, alluding to an experience of a former year of drouth, when a steam sawmill he was operating on the river-bank had to be closed down for a season for want of water.
“Don’t worry, Captain,” cried Sally O’Dowd. “The women and children won’t forsake you.”
“Because they can’t,” was the curt response, and he walked away to be alone.
The next morning, the teamsters, notwithstanding the strike, were standing around the camp-fires, waiting for breakfast. Some of them looked a little ashamed, some were a little concerned as to the fate of the train, and two or three seemed to enjoy the Captain’s predicament.
“Clear out, every last one of you!” he exclaimed, as they made a move for the mess-boxes as soon as breakfast was ready. “The women folks are my teamsters now, and they shall have the first seats at my table.”
As the men turned away, crestfallen and hungry, their resolution to “get rich quick” began to drop toward zero; but their leader and spokesman hurried them away, explaining that they would find a trading-post and plenty of “grub” across the river.
Mrs. McAlpin paused to visit Scotty a moment at his hammock; and as Mrs. Benson was busy with some duties at the fire, the couple were alone.
“Why these groanings, Mr. Burns?” she asked, placing her cool hand upon his corrugated forehead.
“Because I’m a fool!”
“Did anybody ever dispute it?” she asked with a silvery laugh. “There! Not another word. You are my patient, remember. You mustn’t talk back.”
“Your touch is the touch of an angel.”
“Did you ever see an angel?”
“I’mvis-à-viswith one this holy minute. Ouch! Confound that pain!”
“I thought you enjoyed my surgery. You said you did.”
“I have just said I was a fool.”
“Did I dispute it?”
He laughed in spite of his pain. “Say, Little Doctor, are you never going to let me talk it out?”
“Talk what out?”
“Our personal affairs.”
“Not yet. You must be patient. I am not a free woman yet.”
“But you’ll let me hope?”
“I cannot say. I am determined to obey the letter of the law.”
“I could leap for joy, Daphne!”
“Better not try it; might injure your knitting-bones.”
“Here,” said Mrs. Benson, who had been purposely busy at the fire, “is a dish of savory stew. And here is some hardtack, soaked till it is light and soft. It is hot and nicely buttered. The coffee is guiltless of cream, but it is fresh and good.”
“And black and aromatic and Frenchy,” exclaimed Scotty. “Mrs. McAlpin, will you dine with me to-day?”
“No, Mr. Burns; my meal awaits me at the fire.”
“What sort of game is this?” he asked, as he ate with relish.
“Captain Ranger called it a prairie bird.”
“Birds in my country don’t wear hair, but feathers,” he said, holding to the light the hind-quarter of a prairie dog, and pointing to bits of hair afloat in the gravy.
“Ask me no questions, for conscience’ sake,” cried Mrs. Benson, who was laughing heartily. “It may be a prairie dog, or it may be a prairie squirrel. But it is good for food, and much to be desired to make you well and wise.”
“It is all right,” laughed Mrs. McAlpin. “When Lewis and Clark were on the Oregon trail, nearly fifty years ago, away yonder to the north of us, they were glad to trade with the Indians for mangy dogs, sometimes, if they got any food at all.”
When Scotty awoke the following morning, after a sleep that was as refreshing as it seemed brief, the sun was creeping over the wide expanse of the Platte, making it shine like a gigantic mirror. The women and girls, who had been up for an hour, were bringing in the stock.Susannah, who had been detailed to cook the breakfast and mind the children, was baking flapjacks, and the aroma of coffee was in the air.
“We can all eat at the first table now,” said Jean, as they knelt around the mess-boxes.
Before the repast was finished, they were surprised to see the men who had left them for the gold mines reappear at camp, looking cheap and ashamed.
Sawed-off was the first to speak. “We talked it over with Brownson and Jordan, and the four of us concluded that we couldn’t desert you, Captain. So the rest of ’em joined in.”
“I reckon you got hungry,” said the Captain, dryly.
“No, Captain. It wasn’t hunger; it was conscience that sent us back.”
“How much cash can you put up as collateral, if I conclude to trust you again?”
The crestfallen men were silent.
“Seeing the risk is all mine, and all the provisions and other parts of the entire outfit are mine, and you are foot-loose and can play quits at any time, I guess we’d better not make any new deal. My gals and these widders can help drive the teams.”
The self-discharged teamsters withdrew beyond hearing of the camp, and parleyed long and earnestly.
“We’ve got to do something!” exclaimed Sawed-off. “Just watch them gals handle them cattle! They’ve the true grit.”
“Do you s’pose the Cap’n ’d take us back if we’d pungle say fifty dollars apiece?” asked Limpy.
“We can’t do better than make the offer,” said Yank.
“This cash’ll come handy at the other end of the line,” said the Captain, intrusting the gold to the care of his daughters and reinstating his men, after a sharp exhortation to avoid repeating the offence.