Trail Tales Part 1

Trail Tales.

by James David Gillilan.

PREFACE

In his young manhood the writer of these sketches came up into this realm of widest vision, clearest skies, sweetest waters, and happiest people to engraft the green twig of his life upon the activities of the mountaineers of the thrilling West.

At that time the vast plains and the barren valleys were silvered over with the ubiquitous sage through which crept lazily and aimlessly the many unharnessed arroyo-making streams waiting only the appearance of their master, man. Under his scientific, skilled, and economic guidance these wild waters, la.s.soed, tamed, and set to work, taking the place of clouds where there are none, were soon to cause the gray garden of nature to become goldened by the well-nigh illimitable acres of grain and other home-making products.

The West has an abundant variety of life of a sort most intensely human. Life, always so earnest in Anglo-Saxon lands, seems to have accentuated individuality here in a wondrous and contagious degree.

These few stories, culled from the repertoire of an active life of more than thirty years, are samples of personal experiences, and are taken almost at random from mining camp, frontier town and settlement, public and private life.

As a minister the writer has had wide and varied opportunities in all the Northwest, but more especially in Utah, Oregon, and Idaho. Many a man much more modest has far excelled him in life experiences, but some of them have never told.

This little handful of goldenrod is affectionately dedicated to them of the Trails.

THE AUTHOR.

G.o.d'S MINISTER

_Dedicated to the Mountain Ministers_

As terrace upon terrace Rise the mountains o'er the humbler hills And stretch away to dizzy heights To meet heaven's own pure blue; From thence to steal those soft and filmy clouds With which to wrap their heads and shoulders-- Bare of other cloak-- Transforming them to rains and snows To bless this elsewise desert world:

So, he who stands G.o.d's minister 'mong men, High reaches out above all earthly things And comes in contact with the thoughts of G.o.d; Conveys them down in blessings to mankind-- Richest of blessings, Holiest fruit of heaven-- Plucked fresh from off the Tree of Life That springs hard by the Lamb's white throne, And bears the plenteous leaves which grow To heal the wounded nations.

THE WESTERN TRAIL

And step by step since time began I see the steady gain of man.

--Whittier.

THE WESTERN TRAIL

"An overland highway to the Western sea" was the thought variously expressed by many men in both public and private life among the French, English, and Americans from very early times. In 1659 Pierre Radisson and a companion, by way of the Great Lakes, Fox, and "Ouisconsing" Rivers, discovered the "east fork" of the "Great River"

and crossed to the "west fork," up which they went into what is now the Dakotas, only to find it going still "interminably westward."

In 1766 Carver, an Englishman, went by the same route up the "east fork" to Saint Anthony Falls; thence he traveled to Canada, to learn from the a.s.siniboin Indians the existence of the "s.h.i.+ning Mountains"

and that beyond them was the "Oregan," which went to the salt sea.

As early as 1783 Thomas Jefferson wrote to George Rogers Clark to tell him he understood the English had subscribed a very large sum of money for exploration of the country west of the Mississippi, and as far as California. He even expressed himself as being desirous of forming a party of Americans to make the trip.

Twenty years later, under the direction of _President_ Thomas Jefferson, General Clark was made a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, which went up the "great river" and ultimately crossed through Montana and Idaho to the Columbia (Oregan?) and the "salt sea."

Zebulon Pike was turned back by the imperious Rocky Mountains in 1806.

A few years later Captain Bonneville braved the plains, the plateaus, the mountain pa.s.ses, and the deserts, and saw the Columbia. Then continuous migrations finally fixed the overland highway known from ocean to ocean as the Oregon Trail.

The Mormons followed this national road when they trekked to the valley of Salt Lake in 1847--a dolorous path to many.

Because the Oregon Trail was nature's way, man and commerce made it their way. Road sites are not like city sites--made to order; they are discovered. For that reason the pioneer railway transcontinental also followed this trail. The Union Pacific marks with iron what so many of the emigrants marked with their tears and their graves. From the mouth of the Platte to the heart of the Rocky Mountains and beyond is a continuous cemetery of nameless tombs.

The next few pages will give some sketches of fact depicting scenes of sunlight and shadow that fell on this highway in days not so very long agone.

THE LONG TRAIL

Those mighty pyramids of stone That wedge-like pierce the desert airs, When nearer seen and better known Are but gigantic flights of stairs.

--_Longfellow_.

THE LONG TRAIL

The Old Overland Trail from the Missouri River to the Willamette is a distance of nearly two thousand miles. Before Jason Lee and Marcus Whitman sanctioned its use for the migrating myriads of Americans seeking the sh.o.r.es of the sunset sea, trappers and adventurers, good and bad, had mapped out a general route over the wind-whipped pa.s.ses, where the storm stands sentinel and guards the granite ways among the rough Rocky Mountains. They had followed the falls-filled Snake and the calmer Columbia, which plow for a thousand miles or more among basaltic bastions b.u.t.tressing the mountain sides, or through the lava lands where cavernous chasms yawn and abysmal depths echo back the sullen roar of the raging rapids.

In the early forties of the nineteenth century restless spirits from Missouri and eastward began to filter through the fingertips of the beckoning mountains of the West and locate in the land where storms seldom come and where the extremes of heat and cold are unknown--Willamette Valley, Oregon.

In these early days, a farmer, whom we shall name Johnson, with wife and son, hoping to better conditions and prolong life, thus sought the goal toward the setting sun. Starting when the st.u.r.dy spring was enlivening all nature, they left the malarial marshes of the Mississippi Valley, where quinine and whisky for "fevernagur" were to be had at every crossroads store, and in a couple of weeks found themselves west of the muddy Missouri, where the herds of humped bison grazed as yet unafraid among the rolling, well-wooded hills of eastern Kansas.

Barring a few common hindrances, they went well and reached the higher and hotter plains in midsummer; they were out of the sight of hills and trees--just one weary, eternal, unchangeable vista day after day.

Mrs. Johnson had not been well, and after a few weeks that promised more for the future than they fulfilled, she began gradually to lose strength.

But she was made of the uncomplaining material pioneers are wrought of, the ones who so lived, loved, and labored that the hard-earned sweets of civilization grew to highest perfection about their graves, and proved the most enduring monument to their memory. She never murmured other than to ask occasionally: "Father, how much farther?

Isn't it a wonderfully long way to Oregon?"

"Just over that next range of hills, I think, from what the trappers told me," was the reply, after they had come to the toes of the foothills that terminate the long-lying limbs of the giant Rockies.

But he did not know the stealth of the mountains nor the fantastic pranks the canony ranges can play upon the stranger. A snowy-haired peak, brother to Father Time, wearing a fringe of evergreens for his neckruff, would play hide-and-seek with them for days, dodging behind this eminence and hiding away back of that hill, only to reappear apparently as far off as ever, and sometimes in a different direction from where he last seemed to be.

After a few more days: "Father, how many more miles do you think?"

"O, not many now, I am sure!" cheerily and optimistically would come the answer.

As they climbed, and climbed, and climbed, the ripening service-berry, blackened by weeks of attention by the unclouded sun, and the pine-hen and the speckled beauties from the noisy trout-streams, added to their comforts, and for a little while appeared to enliven the tired and fading woman. A frosty night or two, a peak newly whitened with early snow, put an invigorating thrill and pulse into the blood of the man and the boy, but she crept just a little nearer to the camp fire of evenings and found herself more and more languid in responding to the call of the day that returned all too soon for her. At last, rolling out on the Wahsatch side of the continental backbone, they encountered very warm but shortening days, while the nights grew chillier. Having pa.s.sed to the north of Salt Lake by the trail so well and faithfully marked by Mr. Ezra Meeker in recent years, they began to realize that they were with the waters that flow to the west.

One evening, after the tin plates, iron forks and knives, and the pewter spoons had been washed and returned to their box, and as they were getting ready for their nightly rest, Mrs. Johnson said, wearily: "Father, it just seems to me I would be glad if I never would waken again. It seems I would enjoy never again hearing the everlasting squeech, squeech of the wheels in the sand, and see the sun go down day after day so red and so far away over those new mountains. O, I am so tired!"

"Never mind, mother, we are not far from our new home now;" and moving over to her side as she sat leaning against the wagon-tongue, the man slipped his own tired arm about her shoulders and let her rest against him, for he was indeed weary, and the trail _was_ wonderfully long.