The Covered Wagon by Emerson Hough (ebook audio reader txt) 📕

That night Molly turned on a sodden pallet which she had made down beside her mother in the great wagon. But she slept ill. Over and over to her lips rose the same question:

[pg 115]

"Oh, Will Banion, Will Banion, why did you take away my heart?"

> [pg 116]

The great wagon train of 1848 lay banked along the Vermilion in utter and abject confusion. Organization there now was none. But for Banion's work with the back fires the entire train would have been wiped out. The effects of the storm were not so capable of evasion. Sodden, wretched, miserable, chilled, their goods impaired, their cattle stampeded, all sense of gregarious self-reliance gone, two hundred wagons were no more than two hundred individual units of discontent and despair. So far as could be prophesied on facts apparent, the journey out to Oregon had ended in disaster almost before it was well begun.

Bearded men at smoking fires looked at one another in silence, or would not look at all. Elan, morale, esprit de corps were gone utterly.

Stout Caleb Price walked down the wagon lines, passing fourscore men shaking in their native agues, not yet conquered. Women, pale, gaunt, grim, looked at him from limp sunbonnets whose stays had been half dissolved. Children whimpered. Even the dogs, curled nose to tail under the wagons, growled surlily. But Caleb Price found at last the wagon of the bugler who had been at the wars and shook him out.

[pg 117]

"Sound, man!" said Caleb Price. "Play up Oh, Susannah! Then sound the Assembly. We've got to have a meeting."

They did have a meeting. Jesse Wingate scented mutiny and remained away.

"There's no use talking, men," said Caleb Price, "no use trying to fool ourselves. We're almost done, the way things are. I like Jess Wingate as well as any man I ever knew, but Jess Wingate's not the man. What shall we do?"

He turned to Hall, but Hall shook his head; to Kelsey, but Kelsey only laughed.

"I could get a dozen wagons through, maybe," said he. "Here's two hundred. Woodhull's the man, but Woodhull's gone--lost, I reckon, or maybe killed and lying out somewhere on these prairies. You take it, Cale."

Price considered for a time.

"No," said he at length. "It's no time for one of us to take on what may be done better by someone else, because our women and children are at stake. The very best man's none too good for this job, and the more experience he has the better. The man who thinks fastest and clearest at the right time is the man we want, and the man we'd follow--the only man. Who'll he be?"

"Oh, I'll admit Banion had the best idea of crossing the Kaw," said Kelsey. "He got his own people over, too, somehow."

[pg 118]

"Yes, and they're together now ten miles below us. And Molly Wingate--she was caught out with her team by the fire--says it was Banion who started the back-fire. That saved his train and ours. Ideas that come too late are no good. We need some man with the right ideas at the right time."

"You think it's Banion?" Hall spoke.

"I do think it's Banion. I don't see how it can be anyone else."

"Woodhull'd never stand for it."

"He isn't here."

"Wingate won't."

"He'll have to."

The chief of mutineers, a grave and bearded man, waited for a time.

"This is a meeting of the train," said he. "In our government the majority rules. Is there any motion on this?"

Silence. Then rose Hall of Ohio, slowly, a solid man, with three wagons of his own.

"I've been against the Missouri outfit," said he. "They're a wild bunch, with no order or discipline to them. They're not all free-soilers, even if they're going out to Oregon. But if one man can handle them, he can handle us. An Army man with a Western experience--who'll it be unless it is their man? So. Mister Chairman, I move for a committee of three, yourself to be one, to ride down and ask the Missourians to join on again, all under Major Banion."

[pg 119]

"I'll have to second that," said a voice. Price saw a dozen nods. "You've heard it, men," said he. "All in favor rise up."

They stood, with not many exceptions--rough-clad, hard-headed, hard-handed men of the nation's vanguard. Price looked them over soberly.

"You see the vote, men," said he. "I wish Jess had come, but he didn't. Who'll be the man to ride down? Wingate?"

"He wouldn't go," said Kelsey. "He's got something against Banion; says he's not right on his war record--something--"

"He's right on his train record this far," commented Price. "We're not electing a Sabbath-school superintendent now, but a train captain who'll make these wagons cover twelve miles a day, average.

"Hall, you and Kelsey saddle up and ride down with me. We'll see what we can do. One thing sure, something has got to be done, or we might as well turn back. For one, I'm not used to that."

They did saddle and ride--to find the Missouri column coming up with intention of pitching below, at the very scene of the massacre, which was on the usual Big Vermilion ford, steep-banked on either side, but with hard bottom.

Ahead of the train rode two men at a walk, the scout Jackson, and the man they sought. They spied him as the man on the black Spanish horse, found him a pale and tired young man, who apparently had slept as ill as they themselves. But in straight and manful fashion they told him their errand.

[pg 120]

The pale face of Will Banion flushed, even with the livid scorch marks got in the prairie fire the day before. He considered.

"Gentlemen," he said after a time, "you don't know what you are asking of me. It would be painful for me to take that work on now."

"It's painful for us to see our property lost and our families set afoot," rejoined Caleb Price. "It's not pleasant for me to do this. But it's no question, Major Banion, what you or I find painful or pleasant. The question is on the women and children. You know that very well."

"I do know it--yes. But you have other men. Where's Woodhull?"

"We don't know. We think the Pawnees got him among the others."

"Jackson"--Banion turned to his companion--"we've got to make a look-around for him. He's probably across the river somewhere."

"Like enough," rejoined the scout. "But the first thing is for all us folks to git acrost the river too. Let him go to hell."

"We want you, Major," said Hall quietly, and even Kelsey nodded.

"What shall I do, Jackson?" demanded Banion.

[pg 121]

"Fly inter hit, Will," replied that worthy. "Leastways, take hit on long enough so's to git them acrost an' help git their cattle together. Ye couldn't git Wingate to work under ye no ways. But mebbe-so we can show 'em fer a day er so how Old Missoury gits acrost a country. Uh-huh?"

Again Banion considered, pondering many things of which none of these knew anything at all. At length he drew aside with the men of the main train.

"Park our wagons here, Bill," he said. "See that they are well parked, too. Get out your guards. I'll go up and see what we can do. We'll all cross here. Have your men get all the trail ropes out and lay in a lot of dry cottonwood logs. We'll have to raft some of the stuff over. See if there's any wild grapevines along the bottoms. They'll help hold the logs. So long."

He turned, and with the instinct of authority rode just a half length ahead of the others on the return.

Jesse Wingate, a sullen and discredited Achilles, held to his tent, and Molly did as much, her stout-hearted and just-minded mother being the main source of Wingate news. Banion kept as far away from them as possible, but had Jed sent for.

"Jed," said he, "first thing, you get your boys together and go after the cattle. Most of them went downstream with the wind. The hobbled stuff didn't come back down the trail and must be below there too. The cows wouldn't swim the big river on a run. If there's rough country, with any shelter, they'd like enough begin to mill--it might be five miles, ten--I can't guess. You go find out.

[pg 122]

"Now, you others, first thing, get your families all out in the sun. Spread out the bedclothes and get them dried. Build fires and cook your best right away--have the people eat. Get that bugle going and play something fast--Sweet Hour of Prayer is for evening, not now. Give 'em Reveille, and then the cavalry charge. Play Susannah.

"I'm going to ride the edge of the burning to look for loose stock. You others get a meal into these people--coffee, quinine, more coffee. Then hook up all the teams you can and move down to the ford. We'll be on the Platte and among the buffalo in a week or ten days. Nothing can stop us. All you need is just a little more coffee and a little more system, and then a good deal more of both.

"Now's a fine time for this train to shake into place," he added. "You, Price, take your men and go down the lines. Tell your kinfolk and families and friends and neighbors to make bands and hang together. Let 'em draw cuts for place if they like, but stick where they go. We can't tell how the grass will be on ahead, and we may have to break the train into sections on the Platte; but we'll break it ourselves, and not see it fall apart or fight apart. So?"

He wheeled and went away at a trot. All he had given them was the one thing they lacked.

[pg 123]

The Wingate wagons came in groups and halted at the river bank, where the work of rafting and wagon boating went methodically forward. Scores of individual craft, tipsy and risky, two or three logs lashed together, angled across and landed far below. Horsemen swam across with lines and larger rafts were steadied fore and aft with ropes snubbed around tree trunks on either bank. Once started, the resourceful pioneer found a dozen ways to skin his cat, as one man phrased it, and presently the falling waters permitted swimming and fording the stock. It all seemed ridiculously simple and ridiculously cheerful.

Toward evening a great jangling of bells and shouting of young captains announced the coming of a great band of the stampeded livestock--cattle, mules and horses mixed. Afar came the voice of Jed Wingate singing, "Oh, then Susannah," and urging Susannah to have no concern.

But Banion, aloof and morose, made his bed that night apart even from his own train. He had not seen Wingate--did not see him till the next day, noon, when he rode up and saluted the former leader, who sat on his own wagon seat and not in saddle.

"My people are all across, Mr. Wingate," he said, and the last of your wagons will be over by dark and straightened out. I'm parked a mile ahead."

"You are parked? I thought you were elected--by my late friends--to lead this whole train."

[pg 124]

He spoke bitterly and with a certain contempt that made Banion color.

"No. We can travel apart, though close. Do you want to go ahead, or shall I?"

"As you like. The country's free."

"It's not free for some things, Mr. Wingate," rejoined the younger man hotly. "You can lead or not, as you like; but I'll not train up with a man who thinks of me as you do. After this think what you like, but don't speak any more."

"What do you mean by that?"

"You know very well. You've believed another man's word about my personal character. It's gone far enough and too far."

"The other man is not here. He can't face you."

"No,