Impatient With Desire Read online

  “Oh, how quickly I’d give my green velvet dress and my green Moroccan leather shoes for one glass of milk,” Elitha said. “A half glass of milk, white and thick and creamy, little bits of butter—”

  “Mr. Stanton has already made the trip to Sutter’s Fort and back, so he knows the way,” I said. “Rescue will be coming soon.”

  Now we have five hopes.

  I’ve already told you, Betsey, how agreeable a traveling companion I found Mr. Stanton, but I also found him a man of great integrity.

  In August, when we found the first note from Lansford Hastings—“Weber Canyon bad. Make camp and send someone ahead. I will return to lead you.”—Mr. Stanton was the first to volunteer. “Pick a married man, so we know he’ll come back,” Mr. Breen said, and Mr. Stanton colored. He rode off with James Reed and William Pike, and we waited four long days until James Reed reappeared alone. Mr. Stanton’s and Mr. Pike’s horses had broken down, and James on a horse borrowed from Hastings brought bad news. Lansford Hastings was not coming back to lead us; the company before us that he was leading had barely gotten through the Weber Canyon, and they had many more men than we, far fewer women and children. Our only possible route was through the Wasatch Mountains.

  We set off on a vague course that James had tried to blaze. There was no road, not even a trail. A week later, Mr. Stanton and Mr. Pike, who had been wandering through the wilderness for days trying to find us, limped up on foot to deliver the dispiriting news that the road we had been hacking out was leading straight to an impassable gorge. Again, we had to turn around and start over.

  In September, when it became obvious that our supplies were inadequate, Mr. Stanton was again the first to volunteer to go ahead to Sutter’s Fort for help. This time, Mr. Breen said nothing about married men. “Big Bill” McCutchen volunteered to go with him, the giant McCutchen and the diminutive Stanton making a funny duo as they rode off on one horse.

  In October, we had our first cheerful day in a long time when Mr. Stanton came clattering down the trail toward us with pack mules laden with food from Captain Sutter and two vaqueros, Luis and Salvador, and news that James Reed was nearly to Sutter’s Fort. “Big Bill” McCutchen, too ill to travel, was recouping his strength at Sutter’s Fort.

  With no blood ties to our company, only his honor guiding him, Mr. Stanton has already come back twice. I know he will come back again this time.

  Godspeed, Mr. Stanton.

  Dear Betsey,

  Christmas has come and gone. We ate the loathsome oxen hides in silence. Across the table, I looked at Georgia’s little pinched face, Frances’s golden curls dull and lank…my head whirling with pictures and voices: “Who wants to crack walnuts, you’ll spoil your supper with all that gingerbread, save room for the hot mince pies, Now children, just because it’s roast turkey you don’t have to gobble gobble, Father, you say that every year.” When Frances asked me to tell a story about other Christmases, I said, “Not now.” Her face fell, and I said, “Maybe later.”

  I think I told myself that speaking of those happy times would only bring the children more pain. It might just as well have brought them hope that those times will come again. The truth is, Betsey, I forgot that Frances asked me. All I could think of was a long-ago Christmas tree with candles snuffed out, keening alone in the dark, tears soaking my letter to you:

  Jan, 1832

  I have lost that little boy I loved so well. He died the 28th of September. I have lost my husband who made such a large share of my happiness. He died on the 24th of December. I prematurely had a daughter which died on the 18th of Nov. O my sister, weep with me if you have tears to spare.

  I remember writing those words after Tully died, thinking I would never recover. Margret Reed lost her first husband too, and lost a little boy three months before we left Illinois, and now she may have lost another husband—nearly three months since James was banished. Her children did not eat hides on Christmas Day. Jean Baptiste spent Christmas at the other camp and brought the story back today. Weeks back, Margret planned—burying bits of food deep in a snow mound—and early Christmas morning, she began her surprise.

  I can see only too clearly the Reed children cluster about the small kettle. Their faces bend close to suck in the steam, the smell of the unexpected feast. Their cabin fills with unfamiliar sounds—the noise of excited children, not like mine, who lie languidly on their racks and have to be cajoled to get up, go outside—little Jimmy Reed shrieks with joy, “There’s mine,” as a small white bean surfaces, bobbling in the swirling broth.

  Margret Reed. Always suffering from “sick headaches” back in Springfield, and the day James was banished, his head dripping with blood from Snyder’s bullwhip, Margret too distraught to dress his wounds, leaving Virginia, a slip of girl, to attend properly to James…. God forgive me, forgive me, Margret. Margret was wounded too, “down came the stroke full upon her,” James said with anguish, the men gathering to hang him: How would I have responded? We all came here strangers to ourselves.

  Margret Reed celebrated Christmas properly. I am awed and shamed.

  In the corner of the cabin, Jean Baptiste said, the smaller Graves children watched the four Reed children sitting around the table on their best behavior as their mother ladled out the meager feast.

  “Tripe! And salt pork! And beans! Tell us again where it came from, Mother,” Virginia said.

  “Weeks back I hid it for today,” Margret said.

  “It’s a Christmas miracle!” little Patty said.

  A half-inch wedge of salt pork, a tiny bit of tripe, a handful of beans. They all bowed their heads. “We give thanks for this bounty,” Margret said. “We pray for your father’s safety on this Christmas Day. Now eat slowly, children. There is plenty for all.”

  January

  1847

  Jan 4th 1847, rained all night, snow beginning now

  Jean Baptiste told me that the last thing Samuel Shoemaker said before he died on his platform in the dark, dank shelter, was “Roast pork, Mother! And sweet potato pie! Oh, Mother! You’ve made all my favorites.” Then he closed his eyes, a rapturous smile on his face.

  Our thoughts are consumed with food. We dream about food. My sister-in-law, Elizabeth, endlessly comes up with more and more elaborate recipes to cook until I think I will go mad. When the children talk about food, I discourage it. “A rasher of bacon,” Elitha blurts out. “Oh, wouldn’t a rasher of fatty bacon taste heavenly—” “You hated fatty bacon,” Leanna says angrily, “Mother had to practically cook it to char to get you to taste it,” and Elitha bursts into tears, lamenting all the food she wasted. “We’ll have plenty of bacon in California,” I say. Then twenty minutes or an hour later, Elitha says, “A fried egg swimming in that bacon grease. That has to be the most perfect food—” “Just keep quiet!” Leanna yells. “Please, children,” I say.

  We lost most of the cattle in the snow, and the few we found and immediately butchered were so scrawny their meat was quickly gone. For some time we have subsisted on oxen hides.

  Today we prepared the oxen hides as usual. I try to keep the children to a strict routine, organizing their days to give them some shape and sense of time passing. By and large, they don’t balk, though Leanna, impatient like me, sometimes narrows her eyes and hesitates just long enough to tell me she’s going along now, but…Exactly as I acted at her age.

  I scored and cut the hide into strips. Elitha passed a candle flame back and forth over a strip, singeing the hairs, her nostrils flaring at the acrid smell. She passed the strip to Leanna, who scraped the singed strip with a knife. “I’m way ahead of you,” she said. There is not a task in the world that Leanna cannot make into a competition.

  Elitha rolled her eyes. “Just be sure you get all those little bits, Leanna,” she said in her big sister, bossy voice. “It’s even more disgusting with hairs.”

  “You’ll never catch up,” Leanna said, tossing her finished piece into a big pot on the fire.

  “I
loathe and detest hides,” Elitha said. “When we get to California, I will never eat jelly again!”

  “Be glad we have them,” George said.

  Leanna snorted, but I pretended not to notice. He’s right of course; hides are the only thing between us and starvation, but glad does seem a little too cheerful and lighthearted for that gray, glutinous mass bubbling on the fire, basically a pot of hot glue.

  I cut, Elitha passed the candle flame over, Leanna scraped. “You’re not getting them all, Leanna,” Elitha said again. “Get them all out…”

  “Get all the feathers out, especially the little pinfeathers,” I say, handing the unplucked pheasants to Elitha and Leanna. “We’ll enjoy these at nooning.” I turn back to the brace of pheasants George shot this morning, necks wrung, one plucked on my improvised butcher board. Leanna starts right in yanking feathers out, but Elitha grimaces and hangs back. With a cleaver, I crack the breastbone of the plucked pheasant, open it, remove the heart and liver. Elitha blanches.

  “Don’t be squeamish, Elitha,” I say. “It’s not an attractive trait. The good Lord put this abundance on earth for us.” I butcher the bird quickly, as I have butchered hundreds before it. “Do you know what the Indians say, Elitha? They say, ‘We thank this bird that gave its life so we might have food.’”

  I looked at the tough, hairy oxen hide in front of me, the knife in my hand, my mouth watering at the thought of those plump pheasants we ate so matter-of-factly. Would that we had a bird to thank today.

  Jan 8th 1847

  Today, after Elitha marked the big red X on the calendar I made, I pointed four days back, to January 4th. “Jean Baptiste said that Margret and Virginia Reed, Milt Elliott, and their cook, Lizzie, set out here to cross the mountains on foot.”

  “Mrs. Reed?” George said.

  I saw his astoundment and would have privately shared it before hearing about her Christmas feast. I nodded.

  “That’s sheer lunacy,” George said.

  I glanced over at Frances, Georgia, and Eliza in bed, playing their game of “cards,” withdrawn from our conversation by the fire. Frances triumphantly laid down a card with a moon painted on it, and Georgia groaned.

  “Mrs. Reed is desperate,” I said. “She begged the Breens and the Kesebergs to keep her three little ones. They were not happy about it, but took them in.”

  “Where is Reed?” George said.

  “We have to assume he’s doing the best he can,” I said.

  I turned back a calendar page, pointing to December 16th. “Twenty-three days now since the snowshoers left,” I reminded Elitha and Leanna. “Mr. Stanton knows the way. They’re probably resting at Sutter’s Fort right now.”

  “Why don’t we walk over, Mother?” Leanna asked.

  “I think not,” I said.

  “We can leave Elitha to take care of Father and the little ones, and you and I and Cousin Solomon and Jean Baptiste can go and bring back help—”

  “I’ll help Elitha with the babies,” Frances piped up from the bed.

  I shook my head.

  “I’m strong and you’re strong,” Leanna persisted. “I’m sure we can do it—”

  “That’s enough,” I said, and she went sullenly silent, staring daggers at me.

  This morning I went outside, and after not speaking to me since yesterday, Leanna charged out after me. Already an inch taller than I am, she planted herself in front of me and said, “Solomon and Jean Baptiste think we should go too!” When I didn’t answer, she burst out, “Father is going to die if we don’t get help soon! Don’t you understand that?”

  Her face was set in defiance, as if she were telling me something I didn’t know or daring me to contradict her.

  “Oh, Leanna,” I said. I reached out for her, and she burst into tears. I held her and said, “Be strong, Leanna. Rescue is coming soon.”

  When she had calmed, I took her face in my hands. “I’m sure your aunt Elizabeth misses you very much, Leanna. Why don’t you go see if you can help her?”

  Her eyes narrowed, and she shook her head. “She should not have spoken that way to you, Mother. I cannot forgive her.” She turned and went back into our shelter.

  I think a lot about walking out. That’s why I couldn’t lend Mr. Stanton my compass.

  Last night, George whispered to me, “Reed and McCutchen would never leave their families here. I think they may have frozen in the snow trying to get here.”

  I didn’t respond directly. That thought has crossed my mind more than once too. “There’s still Walter Herron,” I said. “And the snowshoers. Don’t forget the snowshoers. And if Milt and Margret get through, Milt will come back for us.”

  “If we’d been there,” George said, “Reed wouldn’t have been banished.”

  “Maybe.”

  “We shouldn’t have been two days ahead,” he said.

  “We went ahead because the grazing was sparse,” I said.

  “That’s true. But the real truth is I just couldn’t stand that endless quarreling. I should have been there.”

  After a moment, I took his hand and whispered, “I wanted to go ahead too.”

  He squeezed my hand.

  Two Days Ahead

  “It’s good we’re pushing ahead,” George said. “This way we won’t be competing for grazing.”

  I nodded my head in agreement.

  That’s what we told each other and ourselves at the time.

  October 7th 1846, between Humboldt River and Truckee River

  George, Walter Herron, Mr. Reed’s teamster riding with us, and I stood outside our wagon on the Trail, waiting for a horseman from the East to catch up with us.

  “It’s Mr. Reed!” Walter Herron said.

  “Hallo, James!” George called. “Come tell us the news.”

  When James got near we saw his bandaged head, his distress as he dismounted. We gave him as much water as we could spare, and then he began.

  We were double-yoking the wagons again to get over another one of those endless sand hills, James said. We had eight wagons already over and five lined up waiting to go.

  Graves’s first wagon had just pulled over the top of the long, steep hill. You know how hot it was. Everyone was exhausted and drenched with sweat. The men unyoked the extra team of oxen from Graves’s first wagon, drove it down the hill, and yoked it to his second wagon, which began the pull up.

  Next in line with Graves’s third wagon, Graves’s teamster, John Snyder, waited for the oxen to be brought back down for him.

  Behind Snyder, Milt had already borrowed a yoke and double-teamed our family wagon. “I’m ready, I’m gonna go,” Milt said, and he swung out and started to pass Snyder.

  Somehow Milt’s lead yoke got tangled with Snyder’s yoke. “What the Hell—” Snyder began, and then he just exploded and started beating my oxen with his whip.

  I rushed up. “Are you crazy, Snyder? Stop beating the oxen!”

  His rage switched to me. “You need a good whipping too. You got us into this—”

  “Get the wagon over, Snyder,” I said. “We’ll settle this matter later.”

  “We’ll settle it now,” he said, lifting his whip.

  “Get the goddamn wagon over, Snyder,” I said, and down came his whip butt on my head, blood was pouring in my eyes, he raised his whip again, I drew my knife, Margret rushed up, down came the stroke full upon her, I struck. It all happened in a flash.

  Snyder staggered a few steps and fell down dead.

  Then everything happened in a blur. I offered boards from my wagon to make a coffin, but Graves would have none of it. Margret was too distraught to bind my wounds, so Virginia had to do it. I should not have asked so much of her. They wrapped Snyder in a shroud, a board below, a board above, and lowered him into the ground. All the women and children were crying. Our family, Milt Elliott, and the Eddys stood on one side. The Graves family, the Kesebergs, the Wolfingers, Reinhardt, Spitzer, and the Murphy clan stood on the other. The nine Breens stood apart
from either group.

  All of a sudden, Graves pointed to me. “You murdered John Snyder!”

  “It was self-defense—” Milt began.

  Keseberg cut him off. “An eye for an eye! Hang him!”

  I bared my neck. “Come ahead, gentlemen.”

  No one moved.

  Graves and the larger group moved away to confer while Milt, William Eddy, and I drew our weapons and stood ready.

  Graves stepped forward. “Banishment. On foot. No weapons.”

  “You’re sending him out to die!” Eddy said.

  “I refuse to leave,” I said.

  Graves drew his gun.

  “They’ll kill you,” Margret sobbed. “I beg you to go.”

  “Never.”

  Graves cocked his pistol.

  I cocked mine.

  “We can’t afford any more bad blood here,” Graves said.

  “Go and bring us back food,” Margret begged.

  I looked from Margret to Graves. “I will go if you promise to take care of my family.”

  Graves made a small nod.

  He took my gun, I said Good-bye to my family, and started out alone on foot, listening to the sobs behind me.

  That night, I heard horses galloping in the dark and thought they were coming to kill me. I hid myself, ready to fight until their death or mine. It was Virginia and Milt bringing me a horse, a gun, and some food.

  George and I were shocked almost speechless.

  John Snyder dead?

  James Reed banished?

  “How could this happen?” I finally got out.

  James just looked baffled, stunned.

  “You can’t go out alone, James,” George said. “Our horses are gone, but…” George looked at Walter Herron. Walter looked uncertainly at the horizon.