The Daily Brief

(In gratitude for donations recieved, another sip of the good stuff, to be savored like a fine liqueur is posted: from Chapter 2 of “To Truckee’s Trail”. There was absolutely nothing happening over this last week. Thanksgiving has spread to cover the entire working week. Previous exerpts here, and here)

Chapter 2 – The Jumping-Off Place

John caught up to his wagon and Montgomery’s just outside Kanesville — a muddy and slap-together place of log cabins and flimsy tents, noisy and overwhelmingly noisome with stock pens and pigs rooting for garbage in muddy streets, as full of people as St. Joseph: Army dragoons in blue, Mexicans in black trimmed with constellations of silver buttons, nearly-naked Indians with shaved heads, sober Mormon merchants in linsey-woolsey, and emigrants like themselves with wagons full of worldly goods and children, small faces apprehensively peering out from the shelter of the wagon cover.
John took note of the stock pens, making a note as to where he should come back in the next day or so. According to Stephens they would have several weeks to rest and restock from the journey up from St. Joseph. It also amused him to overhear that the place should now be called Council Bluffs, as if that would make it any more important, or the streets less muddy.
A relief it was, to be through town, following a trampled and rutted track towards a line of low hills topped with a thin grove of trees along the river, dotted here and there with wagon tops and tents blossoming like prairie wildflowers among the thin green treetops. Rain in the morning had washed the sky clean, and the breeze smelt mostly of new grass and damp earth, only a little of wood smoke and privies, and the muddy river.
As their wagons approached the emigrant camp, children ran towards them, calling excitedly, and a tall man in a frock coat waved them down, with a beaming smile.
“Good day pilgrims,” he called. “Where bound, and where from?”
“To California, from St. Joseph, Townsend and Montgomery.”
“Oh, excellent, excellent! John Thorp, for Oregon.” Thorp walked alongside Ugly Grey, as if some invisible force plastered him there, squinting upwards at John and chattering away.
“We have nearly forty wagons assembled, for Oregon and California both. There is a good place at the top of the hill, just under the edge of the trees, next to the Patterson wagon. You can’t miss them; small wagon, with a saffron-colored cover, and many children.”
Thorp seemed uncommonly presumptuous, John thought to himself. Really, was he the boss of the camp already, advising all newcomers as to just where they should camp? Just as John decided that, yes, Thorp probably did see himself as such, the man added with studied carelessness, “Oh, and we are agreed to hold elections a week from this Sunday to elect a wagon captain as far as Fort Hall. May we count on your attendance, and your vote?”
Well, that was blunt enough; presumptuous and blunt.
“Our attendance for sure,” John shot back easily. “And for our vote, it depends on what we think of the nominees!”
He was amused at how early the politicking began, but annoyed at Thorp’s unsubtle approach, looking to scrape acquaintance and presuming on it; the man set his teeth on edge. He could see all too plain where the camp herd had been pastured for many weeks, by the look of the ground, all chopped by hooves, grazed down to the roots and fouled by manure. It said little for Thorp’s organizational capabilities. This kind of disorganization was apt to dirty water supplies and contribute much unpleasantness if they were to be camped here much longer.
Thorp waved his hat, and they moved on up the grade, as Elizabeth laughed down from the wagon-seat, “Dearest, it looks like a camp revival meeting. Will there be picnicking among the arbors, and hymn-singing, and people falling down and speaking in tongues?”
“And tediously long sermonizing? Depend on it.”
“You did not like Mr. Thorp,” Elizabeth said quietly with a sideways glance.
“Liked him little and trusted him rather less. He’s the sort who likes to look as if he is in charge, but little favors the responsibility of it or the work itself.” He answered in the same low voice, and then spurred Ugly Grey ahead a little way, looking for the wagon with a saffron-yellow cover, and a great many children.
There, right where Thorp said it would be: top of the hill, edge of the trees, the golden sun around which some smaller tents and awnings orbited, as well as a quantity of laundry and bedding flapping from lines strung between trees. John overtook a grey-beard with a limp, stumping gamely up the hill towards the Patterson camp and leading a pair of mules.
“Mr. Patterson?” John ventured, and the old man scowled.
“That’s me son-in-law. I’m Hitchcock, it’s me daughter Isabella you’re looking for. That,” he jerked his bearded chin in that direction, “is her wagon. Hers and her husband’s, that is – but he’s away in Californy, and I don’t blame him, scrawny fussbudget that she is. I’d be there too, if I’d married a woman like her. Or China, among all them heathen. Or Hades, which ‘ud be her choice.”
“John Townsend. Doctor John Townsend. We’re also California bound, ourselves and our neighbors the Montgomerys. Mr. Thorp directed us this way.”
“Did he, now,” Hitchcock scowled, muttering something un-complimentary about Thorp under his breath.
“How many others here are California bound, besides Mrs. Patterson, and yourself?” John thought it best to change the subject off of the ambitious Mr. Thorp.
“A passel of bog-trotting Papists, mostly; Murphys, Martins, and Sullivans all mixed together. Six wagons between them and fixed on California. Good folk, though, for all a’that. I also hear tell there’s an old fur-trapping man named Greenwood with his two heathen sons, looking to hire on as a wagon guide as far as the Rockies. If he’s the one I know of, he married hisself a Crow woman an’ went to live with the tribes years ago. All a’them Greenwoods can’t be mistook, look like real Injuns, they do.”
As John, and the old man approached the brow of the hill and the yellow-topped wagon, a little woman in a faded wash-dress with her sleeves rolled up and a big apron tied over all, looked up from her washtub and cried indignantly, “Pa! What are you doing with those mules? What have you gone and done?”
“Bought me a brace of ‘em, Izzy, sure and a farmer’s wife ‘ud recognize mules? I figured to invite them into the parlor for tea,” said the old man with gentle malice. “That or have them carry my traps an’ goods to Californy. I ain’t quite decided which, yet. Say hello to Doctor Townsend, Izzy, he’s goin’ with us to Californy; Doc, my daughter, Mrs. Samuel Patterson.”
Isabella Patterson appeared ready to explode from embarrassment and fury at being caught at her worst in the middle of the washing and what sounded like an ongoing family quarrel, and then being introduced to a total stranger. She swiped an errant lock of dark hair off her damp forehead as John dismounted from his horse, and took her hand in his. She looked to be a tiny, quick-moving dynamo of a woman, with abundant dark hair falling out of pins and a small and oval face, whose regular features were slightly marred by a magnificently beaky nose. She had fine eyes though, and skin like a girl’s.
“Very pleased, Mrs. Patterson,” John ventured, at his most courtly, accustomed in his medical capacity to seeing people at their worst advantage. “I shall tell Mrs. Townsend to call on your . . . camp . . . as soon as possible, since we are soon to be travel companions.”
“We shall be glad to receive her,” Isabella responded with a quick, manly hand-grasp. “As you can see, our house is very open, these days. Very open indeed!” Another one like Sarah, John thought, as he touched his hat brim; not pleased about being dragged away from her own hearth, to begin a gypsy existence beside the trail. Allen Montgomery’s team was toiling up the gentle slope towards where they stood, with Francis and his own following close behind.
“Until later, Ma’am . . . Sir.” As John led Ugly Grey towards the open place where they could set up their own camp, he could hear the two of them starting up where they had left off. Between Isabella Patterson and her father, and Allen and Sarah, he reflected wryly, there was no necessity of waiting until the Fourth of July for fireworks.
“Here we are, for the moment, at least,” he said, Ugly Grey’s reins looped over his arm, as he helped Elizabeth down from the wagon seat. “Mr. Stephens at the smithy seemed to think we’ll be camping here for about three weeks.”
“It shall be very restful, I am sure.” Elizabeth looked doubtfully towards the lively Patterson camp. It seemed there were a lot of children, romping happily and noisily amongst the clutter of tents, gear and supplies.
Then she squared her shoulders and said, “I shall have to call, I suppose, as soon as our camp is set up.”
“So you should – as others will be calling on us,” John answered, though he did not think that would be happening as soon as it did, a few minutes later as he was unsaddling Ugly Grey. He turned around to find two pair of eyes, watching him with intense and fearless interest; a bold urchin of about seven years, with a girl toddler dragging at his hand. The little one was sucking her thumb. They had dark hair, and something of the look of Isabella Patterson, and John said gravely, “Good morning, children. I am Doctor Townsend. Might I beg for an introduction?” The little girls’ eyes rounded in astonishment over the thumb stopping her mouth, but the boy launched into full spate.
“H’lo, I’m Edward Sidney Patterson, but everyone calls me Eddie, and this is my baby sister Sadie, her real name’s Sarabeth Margaret, but it don’t matter ‘cause she can’t talk yet an’ Paw-Paw Isaac says you are a real doctor an’ you’re going to Californy jus’ like us an’ Ma, an’ our Pa went out there two year agone . . . is that your horse? Pa wrote an’ tol’ us that he was settled . . . kin I help you groom him? I like horses, we used t’have horses on our farm in Ohio, but Paw-Paw Isaac tol’ Ma she should sell them an’ buy mules instead, but Ma, she said mules cost too much an’ . . .”
“Eddie,” John asked, vastly amused. “Do you ever stop talking?”
“Nossir.” Eddie shook his head decisively. He reached over and pulled his sister’s thumb out of her mouth with an almost audible pop. “Don’t suck your thumb, Sadie, Ma will give you a licking. Does your horse have a name? Ma let us name all of our teams, there’s Baldy an’ Socks an’ Spotty. An’ –”
“Here, “John handed him the curry-comb, “I’ll let you name my horse, if you give him a good combing. And keep talking, that way he’ll know where you are, and not step on you.”
Little Eddie beamed, and set to work with energy and the greatest good will in the world, even if he barely came up to Ugly Grey’s nose, while his baby sister sat in the grass and watched, thumb creeping back to her mouth again.
John walked away, hefting his saddle, remarking to Allen, who was unhitching his teams with a great rattle of chains, “On my oath, the boy’s tongue must be hinged in the middle, since it flaps so, at both ends.”
“Bold little squirt,” Allen said, with a chuckle. “Good thing he does talk so much, I’d be coming close to stepping on him myself, otherwise.”
Francis and Allen had drawn up the wagons at an angle, so they could share a campfire. Moses was setting up the tent, to complete a third side of a square around it.
“We have guests already,” he murmured to Elizabeth, as she handed a box of camp cookware down to Sarah. “Master Edward and Miss Sarabeth Patterson.” Elizabeth followed the direction of his look, and laughed, softly.
“Very forward, aren’t they? I will take them back to their mother presently . . . it will serve as a good pretext.”

* * *

From E.S. Patterson Interview, University of California Local History Archival Project 1932: “We were camping at the Bluffs, waiting for the grass to grow for about two weeks, when Doctor Townsend’s family, and Mr. and Mrs. Montgomery joined up with the emigrant camp. The Doctor was a big man, with a gentlemanly way about him. I was just a boy, but I could see he was used to being in authority. Men liked him immediately, but so did women; he could make Ma laugh. I think a lot of folk thought at first he should be elected wagon master. He and Mrs. Townsend, they brought Sadie and me back to our camp that first day . . .”

* * *

Mrs. Patterson had finished the laundry by the time John and Elizabeth walked across to the Patterson camp. Sarah was putting the finishing touches on their open-air kitchen, and Allen, Moses, and Francis were driving their cattle down to join the main camp herd. Eddie chattered nineteen to the dozen, still dragging Sadie by the hand until Elizabeth leaned down laughing and swung her capably unto her hip.
“We’re walking too fast for her, Eddie. She’s too little to keep up.”
“She’s grown too fast for me to carry like that,” Eddie retorted. “I could carry her when she was littler . . . Ma! Ma!” he called, and scampered ahead of them, “Ma, Sadie and I brung Doctor Townsend, an’ Miz Townsend, too!”
“Hello the camp!” John called, as they stepped around the corner of the Patterson’s tent. He looked sideways at Elizabeth and murmured, “What sort of etiquette is required, do you think, when there is no door to knock on to declare ones’ self?”
“Eddie my duckling,” Isabella scolded. “Where have you been and where did you take the baby off to?” She was sitting down, sorting an apron full of dandelion greens in her lap. A girl of about ten, with the same soft dark hair, helped her. “Oh, heavens above, Nancy, you finish these.” She started up from the wagon bench where she sat, as John gravely presented Elizabeth to her, and Elizabeth said, “Oh, no, please don’t rise. You look terribly busy, Mrs. Patterson. Would you permit me to help you with them? And if you could tell me where you found them, we have so felt the need of something green with our meals.”
Elizabeth set Sadie on her feet, as Isabella smiled warmly. “Oh, that would be neighborly. We did have to walk a good distance for them, since the closer fields have been so fouled!”
John looked hastily around and drew up a three-legged camp stool for his wife to settle on, and said, “If both you ladies would pardon me, young Eddie has promised to be my guide and introduce me to some of our future companions on the trail.”
“Go along then, you scamp,” Isabella addressed her son, and John bowed over her hand. “Doctor, it was a pleasure. I hope you will not be strangers.”
“Small chance, with young Eddie around,” John answered wryly and kissed Elizabeth’s cheek. “We shall return in a while, Dearest, after calling upon Eddie’s particular friends, the Murphy brothers.” Sadie was already leaning confidingly against Elizabeth.
To John’s amusement, Eddie copied his fond gesture, kissing his little sister in the same manner, and then he said confidently to John, “My bestes’ friends after Sadie are the Murphy boys . . . their Paw-Paw tells them stories, and their Uncle Jamie makes them toys. They have six wagons an’ they say they are bound for Californy. I cain’t think of a name for your horse, but he sure is . . . is . . . a splendid one . . . an’ . . .”
Eddie’s voice trailed away as he and John went down the hillside, and Isabella Patterson looked at Elizabeth and laughed.
“Warn your son that the two prettiest girls in the camp have a great many large brothers, and enough close kin to ensure that they are treated with due care and consideration. My Oliver can hardly look on Helen Murphy or Mary Sullivan without blushing as red as a girl himself, and his voice going all to squeaks.”
“My son . . . oh, you mean Moses,” Elizabeth said, as she took Sadie onto her lap. “He is rather my little brother. My husband and I have raised him as our son, since my parents died of the fever.”
“I am so sorry, then,” Isabella looked up from her lapful of greens, with a shrewd and sympathetic eye. “He looks so like you, Mrs. Townsend. Have you and the Doctor not any children between yourselves?”
Sadie curled up, a dear little weight in Elizabeth’s lap, sucking her thumb contentedly again, and Elizabeth replied, “Moses would never be ungAllent to a young lady . . . my husband has had the teaching of him since he was six years old. We have no children of our own: my husband worries for my health, you see, and he is very considerate. I have not been well . . . for some time, and there has been so much sickness up and down the river of late. It is the reason we are bound for California.”
“My man was after a better farm,” Isabella snorted. “Any excuse will do, I think, when a man gets bored and unsettled. I should know, Pa Hitchcock never stayed in one place for a year in his life, but at least he had the decency not to drag my mother and me all over creation with him.” Isabella was setting aside the tender green inner leaves into a dish at her side, “No, just you go on holding Sadie, Mrs. Townsend. Nancy and I will have these finished in two shakes. Your husband at least came up with an excuse you couldn’t argue with.”
“Oh, but I wouldn’t argue with him,” Elizabeth replied. “About going west? I would rather endure hardship at his side than suffer his prolonged absence, as you have done. You must have endured so much alone, Mrs. Patterson.”
“It has been difficult, these last two years since Mr. Patterson went with the traders,” Isabella said, and Elizabeth noted with alarm that her eyes were bright with unshed tears, but that she seemed to will them not to fall. She tossed a handful of tender greens into the bowl with a little more vigor than strictly necessary. “But my boys are a help, even if they are not yet men. Oliver is seventeen, Samuel two years younger. Johnny, now, he is fourteen, but as he is near tall as Samuel, everyone thinks they are of an age.”
“You also have the assistance of your father,” Elizabeth ventured, and Isabella snorted.
“I should, seeing that it is the fault of that old vagabond! He filled my Samuel’s head with talk of California. A paradise on earth, he said it was, until nothing would content him but that he had to see it for himself. It was the very least that Pa could do, to see me and the children safely there, but he vexes me no end, always undermining my authority with the boys, and filling the children’s heads with wild stories!”
“I like Paw-Paw’s stories,” spoke up Nancy, bravely, and Isabella fluffed up like an indignant bantam hen.
“See what I mean? Mrs. Townsend and I were speaking, Nancy . . . remember, children should be seen and not heard!”
“None the less, I do envy you, Mrs. Patterson . . . oh, for heaven’s sake, just call me Elizabeth. You still have a father living, for which I envy you. Our dear parents died some ten years ago, when my husband still had a practice in Stark County and we were new-married.”
“And what would your father and mother have advised you, then?” Isabella asked, still indignant. “Would they have abetted your husband in some reckless scheme, against your own wishes?”
“I don’t know,” Elizabeth replied, consideringly. “I cannot imagine Papa Schallenberger talking my dear husband out of anything he had set his heart on doing: he was born in Pennsylvania, and has been moving west by degrees ever since. I imagine, though, that Papa would have advised me that my place was ever at my husband’s side. ‘Entreat me not to leave you or to return from following after you. Wherever you go, I will go; and where you lodge, I will lodge, your people will be my people’ . . .”
“So I was also told,” Isabella said, laughing shortly. “But I did not know then of the places I would be expected to go, or that I should have to find my way to them alone!”
“But you are not entirely alone! “Elizabeth took Isabella’s hands, empty at the moment of dandelion greens, in her own. “We shall be in a good company, with many stout companions, and many good friends as well; of that I am sure, for my dearest darling will make it so and I trust him completely.”
“Your good fortune, my dear Mrs. Townsend.” Isabella laughed heartily. “I do not have the luxury of such utter dependence . . . and indeed, I think it may be one such that we may set aside, once we are on the trail.”
“Whatever do you mean?” Elizabeth was baffled, and Isabella laughed again, sounding a little more kindly.
“Only that we are leaving all behind, my dear, and it might be well to be able to stand on our own feet in regards to our own preferences . . . just a fancy of mine,” she added. “Think nothing of it, Mrs. Townsend – Elizabeth. Sadie has fallen asleep . . . let me take her from you, and put her to rest in the wagon.”

From Dr. Townsend’s diary: “Arriving at the bluff encampment, we made haste to search out those others of a like mind to venture towards California. The largest part of these are relations, friends and connections of Martin Murphy, late of Irish Grove, in Holt County . . .”

When Eddie had led him into Murphy’s camp; six wagons loosely circled together under a large poplar tree, the elder Mr. Murphy had been sitting in a comfortable wooden chair with a child on each knee and half a dozen more, boys and girls together at his feet, telling them a story. Another man, of about the same age sat close by, whittling and listening to his yarn. Two younger men worked together in a circle of wood-chips and tools, mending a wheel, while a pretty, black-haired woman kneaded a great trough of bread dough. Another man, with hair the same jet-black, was scraping down a new ox-bow with a slip of broken glass.
But when Eddie shrilled, “Mister Murphy, Mister Murphy, I brung you another for California, he and his’n are camping at the top of the hill next to us, he’s a doctor for real, an’ he has a grey horse!” the older man quickly scooted the small children off his knees, saying, “’Tis enough for now, my dears, go and play . . . you too, Eddie. I need to speak with this gentleman, now.” John thought, as the children romped out towards the meadow beside the camping place, ‘and I thought there were children everywhere at the Pattersons.’
“John Townsend. Eddie tells me that you are also bound for California,” John said to the senior Mr. Martin; an older man, not as old as Hitchcock, with a soft Irish brogue barely abraded by long absence from his native soil, and shrewd brown eyes, very alive in his blunt-featured countenance.
“I’m Martin Murphy,” he held out his hand towards John, who while attempting to seem as if he wasn’t, was nonetheless sizing up their outfit and general fitness for the long journey. “And this is my old and good friend, Patrick Martin, who came away from Wexford in the same year although we did not know each other then.”
Patrick Murphy, much the same age as Martin Murphy, appeared to be a lively and muscular spark, with bright blue eyes and a nose that looked as if it had been broken several times.
He shook John’s hand with a strong grip. “Aye, says the lad, a doctor is it? Sure and we’re honored, that we are . . . at least no plagued Englishman says I to meself, seeing you come down from the hill.” He had a wicked glint in his eye, and John guessed rightly that his nose had not been broken by accident.
He returned the grip and said calmly, “My parents were English. Quakers from Norton and the family was well known locally, but they removed to Pennsylvania before I was born.”
“Capital, capital!” said Patrick with a grin. “So, you’ve risen in the world then, is it?”
“Patrick, you’d be after teasing the wrong man,” Martin chided his friend and continued, “Was it true, what young Edward was saying, you indeed are a doctor? Well, that is a blessing to have in any company. Is it true also that you are joining us? Another blessing to be sure, and are there others with you?”
“My friend and neighbor from St. Joseph, my wife, and her brother,” John answered. “My friend has been ever set on California, and so has my wife’s brother. I was convinced this last winter that it would be best for my wife’s health if we removed also.”
Old Martin looked grieved, and said, brokenly, “So, I wish we had gone sooner, and my own dear wife might have been spared. Aye, she and my boy Martin’s little girl. Such an angel she was . . . no consolation that she is now in the care of like. She should have been growing up fair and happy, playing in the fields like the little lamb that she was. We could no longer stay in such a pestilential and godless place, so we came away, all of us and our neighbors – young John Sullivan and what the sickness left to him of his family, Patrick Martin, his two lads, and his daughter Annie that married my own boy James, leaving my dear Mary Ellen and the babe behind. ”
Murphy’s voice cracked a little, and John said, “I am so sorry. So many were lost untimely in the last year or so, to the fevers – no matter what we could do.”
“Aye,” Martin Murphy recovered his voice. “And they are with Him and his angels now, no doubt on that. She was a fine, goodly woman, and blessed me with nine splendid children, four having children of their own. It is in me mind, though, that I should have listened to Father Hoecken earlier than I did. But still, to have a doctor in our party is a great relief.” He turned and called to the two younger men, “James . . . Martin, come and meet Doctor Townsend, who’s with us for California. This is James Miller, who’s married my daughter Mary and me oldest son, Martin. His wife is named Mary, also, but we call her Mary-Bee, to reduce the confusion, ye know . . .” he looked around the campsite, and remarked, “Well, they were here a minute ago.”
“They walked down to the spring for water,” said the younger Martin. He was a youthful version of his father, a grave and steady-looking man with the same level gaze.
Old Martin added, “Ye’ll know Martin’s boys when you see them, all four of them always together, and perfect imps they are, then. Dennis, come and meet the Doctor.” The man who was scraping the oxbow set it all carefully down, and Old Martin continued, “Aye, you’ll always know Patrick’s sons by the black-Irish look of them.”
“Dennis Martin.” He dusted his hands hastily on his trousers, and shook hands. “Has Pa threatened to knock you down for being an Englishman yet? He’ll get around to it.” Dennis looked to be a little older than Moses, but with his father’s black hair and startlingly blue eyes, but after Patrick’s vivid self, a paler and less colorful copy. “M’ brother Patrick and John Sullivan have gone into Kanesville to buy another yoke of oxen. They’ll be sorry to miss you this day, but I’ll guess we’ll have time to make it up on the trail.”
“My other boys went with them,” Old Martin explained. “Jamie, that’s married to Patrick’s daughter Annie, Daniel, Bernard, and Johnny. We’ve the six wagons between us, and fifteen men; a small party, to think of going all the way alone. Do ye know of any more, who might join our company for California?”
“Just one,” John answered. “A blacksmith named Stephens, camped by himself a little way down the St. Joe road.”
Old Martin and his son looked at each other, and the old man said admiringly, “Och, that’ll be another fine man to have on the journey with us . . . a blacksmith, is it? What sort of man might he be, if you don’t mind the impertinence of me asking?
“A very good one, I judge,” John replied, “But modest, even reticent in conversing about himself. But he says he had been out on the Santa Fe trails, and it contents me well to know that someone with experience such as that will join with us.”
“’Tis good to know, then.” Old Patrick looked both relieved and calculating. “Mr. Thorp, he is a foine man, for talk and all . . . but he is for Oregon, sure enough and none o’ the others so bound seem inclined to go against him. Meself, I don’t think he cares for us paddies . . .”
“Not that we care for him much.” his son added. “But the Oregoners will have him for captain, for a’ we can say about it.”
“Wait and see,” John said tranquilly. “Wait and see. In St. Joe, the men I know in the Santa Fe trade say that thirty to forty men in a company is best. Stephens told me he didn’t think the grass would be grown tall enough for us for another three weeks. There’s a little time left for others to join us, in the meantime.”

Nothing so quite reassured him as the sight of the way-side blacksmith driving his team up the hill a few days later as they were finishing their noonday meal under a canvas awning stretched between handy tree branches and their wagons. Moses and Allen were exuberantly planning a grand buffalo-hunting expedition once they were out on the trail, while John listened to them and smiled quietly over his book of Chesterfield’s letters, and Elizabeth mended one of Moses’ shirts. Sarah was finishing the washing-up.
As she emptied out the wash pan over the side of the bluff, she straightened and said, “Doctor John, there’s another wagon coming up from town. It looks like that blacksmith man.”
“Why so it is.” John put his book away. Stephens was quite alone, no drover and no spare stock, just the three yoke and golden-eyed Dog trailing after. At the top of the hill, John greeted him. “Stephens, you are a welcome sight. I was about to go into Kanesville and buy another horse.”
“That so?” Stephens half-smiled, clean of forge-soot, but trail-dusty. The rains had finally let up, and the roads had begun to dry out. “Am I doing you another favor, Doc?”
“I appreciate your eye . . . you’ve vastly more trail experience than I have. Or most of the others, I have discovered, since we parted.”
John introduced him to Allen and the Pattersons, and arranged to borrow Allen’s saddle horse for the afternoon, Dog being bidden to stay behind and guard Stephens’ wagon, while the two of them rode to Kanesville.
John pointed out the Murphy’s rambling camp as they passed by it. The children were playing out in the meadow nearby; soldiers and Indians, it looked like, from the willow-branch bows and arrows, and the chicken-feathers. It also appeared that Sadie and Nancy Patterson had been unenthusiastically pressed into serving as Indians.
There was Eddie, and John recognized young Martins’ sons, as alike as peas in a pod, just as their grandfather said: they had their mothers’ auburn-tinged hair, and their grandfather’s lively brown eyes, perfect stair-steps when they stood in a line. Their voices chimed together, and they often finished each others’ sentences, presenting a united front to the world, the picture of injured innocence when accused of some small childish crime.
“I’ll introduce you to them, tonight. Young Martin is the best hand with oxen that I have seen so far, very careful he is with his beasts. He doctors them himself, only asks my advice for courtesy. They’re all good folk. They’ve six wagons among them all and at least fifteen men if you count the hired teamsters and the boys who are almost grown . . . but not a one of them ever been west of the Mississippi. It was enough of an eye-opener for Montgomery and me, just bringing our wagons from St. Joseph. I know what my own limitations are.”
Stephens just looked at him, shrewdly, with those water-pale eyes. “You working on a plan, doc?”
“Yes,” John replied. “They’re holding an election for wagon-master, on Sunday . . . to elect a leader for all of us as far as to Fort Hall, and a secretary and god knows what. I’m going to nominate you. You’d be a better captain than that blowhard Thorp who’s been angling for it since we got here. I think he’s a fool and couldn’t pilot a thirsty horse to water. They’d give me the captaincy, if I wanted it, just because I’m a doctor and wear a fine coat. But I don’t want it.” He looked honestly at Stephens. “I know my own skills. I’m good at doctoring, at least I don’t kill any more of my patients than most doctors do. But I don’t want to be responsible for leading all these fine folk into the desert on the strength of my fine coat and polished boots.”
“But you’re going anyway.”
“I’d prefer to do so following you,” John answered.
“Why me, in parti’clar?”
“Because I think you’d know what you’re doing, out there . . . and you don’t want the captaincy. And that means you’re the best man to have it.”
“I ain’t a political man, Doc. I ain’t real good with folk.”
“But I am,” John replied. “Leave that part of it to me.”

In the mud and squalor of Kanesville’s pens and corrals, John followed Stephen’s lead regarding sizing up stock. “I don’t think you want more’n one extra team,” the blacksmith advised. “Take care of the ones you start with.” They disputed pleasantly over that, and the eternal question of mule versus oxen for teams.
“Mules move faster,” John argued.
“But the Injuns ‘ull steal ‘em, and leave oxen alone, mostly. ‘Sides, you can always eat oxen, if it comes to that.”
“You can eat mule.” John pointed out.
“Don’t taste so good. Hardly any flesh on ‘em.”
They leaned their elbows on the top rail of a corral full of horses; mostly browns and bays, paints and pintos, still shaggy from winter, snorting and jostling each other.
“Not much to choose from,” John said, discouraged. This lot looked too wild and unbroken. There was a pretty dapple-grey, very spirited though; he quailed at the thought of his Elizabeth riding such an unschooled mount.
“That one,” Stephens said, quietly. “The buckskin colored gelding, dark mane and tail – yonder far corner.” It was about a hand shorter than the others, a neat-featured and spry little beast, like an Indian pony.
Someone came up to the corral rail, on John’s other side, and John turned and thought in amazement at first they were Indians, silent and smelling of tobacco smoke, all three with long hair.
The oldest of them was a straight-backed and powerfully-built old man, even older than Hitchcock, for his hair had gone entirely snow white, clubbed at the back of his neck in the old-fashioned manner of the last century. He had blue eyes, clouded with cataracts. The other two, boys about Moses and Oliver’s age, had high cheekbones and Indian coloring, and wore their hair in long plaits ornamented with beads and feathers in the Indian custom. All three of them were dressed in fringed leather leggings and moccasins, and tunics of hide, and trimmed alike with leather fringe and beadwork.
John said, “Mr. Greenwood?” at the same time as Stephens said, “Caleb.” The old man merely nodded; seemingly he and Stephens were old acquaintances.
“’Lisha. Your friend?”
“Doc Townsend. Going t’ California.”
“Caleb Greenwood.” The old mountain-man shook his hand with courteous firmness, “My sons, Brittan and Johnny. You are seeking a good horse?”
“For my wife,” John said.
“Any you favor?”
“Mr. Stephens advises the little buckskin. I’d still like to see him ridden, though. They all appear quite wild.”
“Britt?” said the old man softly, with a gesture. One of the Indian boys vaulted the fence, and nonchalantly threaded his way between the fractious horses. He approached the little buckskin, and grabbed him by the nose, appearing to whisper or blow into the startled animals’ nostrils. For a moment, the two heads were close together, and then Britt seized a handful of mane, and leaped from the ground, straight onto the buckskin’s back.
For a moment, the little horse stood stock still, and then Britt nudged his ribs with moccasined heels, and leaned close against his neck and urged him into a walk, then a trot, back to a canter and then a walk again, up to the corral fence where Britt slid down, laughing, with a flash of white teeth in his dark-tanned face.
“I b’lieve you have yourself a horse for your lady wife, ” remarked the old frontiersman. “Tell her she must treat it as a pet at first and feed it apples and carrots and treats from her own hand. This one has a good heart and a sweet nature, and will carry her faithfully wherever she goes.” And as if embarrassed by so many words, he nodded courteously and strode away, trailed by his two Indian sons.
“We must hire him as the trail-guide,” said Stephens quietly, which John believed ever afterwards to be Stephens’ very first command as captain – even though he were not yet elected to that office.

* * *

Angeline Morrison Letter #2
15th of May 1844
Writ from the emigrant camp
At Council Bluffs, Iowa Territory

My dearest Angeline:
Receiv’d your kindest answer before we departed from St. Joseph; a thousand thanks for your honest recitations of events. I will feel so distant from those happy scenes, be assured that I shall cherish your letter, and read it often, especially when we have departed these shores.
We leave in a few days, with great anticipation and enthusiasm, since the grass has now grown tall enough to feed our stock. The rains have “let up” as our trail guide Mr. Greenwood says. Such a picturesque sight as he presents, as you would think he walked out of the pages of a Leatherstocking tale! He and sons are contracted to guide us as far as Fort Hall.
My Dearest has bought me a riding horse, for my use when travel in the wagon becomes too uncomfortable and walking beside it too exhausting; he remains busy these last few days before we take to the trail, with business relating to our party, and I am relieved that he is so engaged again with these public matters. Everything promises to be so new, so different, as we leave all common cares behind, but what awaits us?
I shall write to you from Fort Laramie, my dearest friend, with an account of our adventures upon this venture. Until then adieu, from
Your loving friend

Elizabeth