To Truckee’s Trail
by
Celia Hayes
Smashwords Edition 2012
First print edition 2007, published by Booklocker.com
Second print edition 2011, published by G&A, a division of Watercress Press
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Dedication and Acknowledgements
“This is a work of fiction, loosely based on real people, who participated in a historic event . . . but an event which has been but sketchily recorded, and little remembered save among a few historians. The late George R. Steward was one such: an essay he wrote about the Stephens-Townsend-Murphy party for American Heritage Magazine first fired my imagination about them over thirty-five years ago. My thanks are due to him for that inspiration. Thanks also to Kathy Johnson and Craig Lockwood who encouraged me to imagine the epic journey of the party and to set it down in this form, to Oren Woody, devoted fan and reader . . . and to Mom and Dad for everything else.”
That was the dedication and thanks in the first print edition of this book, which was first published in 2007 and has been chugging along quietly ever since. Since then I have wanted to bring out another edition which would correct some small errors, as well as to take note of some additional information provided to me since by a descendent of the Hitchcock family: in researching his ever-so-many great-grandfather as a trapper and explorer in the early 1800s, who appears as the character I called Paw-Paw. He found proof in an archived letter written by the American consul in California that Isaac Hitchcock had indeed been to California, before arriving there with the Stephens-Townsend party in late 1844. Otherwise, this new edition contains all material in the first edition. In order that the reader may be assisted in keeping the various members of the party and their families straight, a list of the members of the Stephens-Townsend-Murphy Party – the historical personages and those created as characters for this account – is appended to the historical notes at the end of this book.
Celia Hayes
San Antonio, Texas
November, 2011
Chapter 1 – Preparations & Partings
San Jose, California 1932: “So then, Missy, is that machine of yours turned on? I s’pose it’ll be best to start at the beginning, hey? My name is Edward Sidney Patterson, and I was born near Batavia, Clermont County Ohio, in September of 1837.”
* * *
“3rd November, 1843 With a heavy heart and much trepidation, I am resov’d to leave this place, and remove to California, first for the sake of my Dearest Darling.”
Under a pool of golden lamplight in the silent bedroom, John Townsend carefully uncorked the bottle of ink in his portable writing desk, balanced across his knees, and wrote in his tiny, careful hand:
“I fear for her health above all else. She has a delicate constitution, and cannot bear another cold winter, or disease-wracked summer such as this last without permanent impairment. Moses has been all talk this year past about the marvels of fabled California and its wonderfully mild and temperate climate. He is impatient for emigration and adventure and swears hourly to embark in company with Allan and Sarah M. I think it is the talk of impetuous youth but he is of that age to venture upon such bold enterprise. Of late though, I have begun to believe that such transportation may be my Dearest Darling’s only hope of recovery to full health. In any case, she would not bear the thought of Moses’ attempting such a perilous journey himself and would fret herself into an early grave . . .” John crossed out the last three words, and wrote in, “a decline.”
On the bedside table, a full kettle simmered over a burning spirit lamp. Steam hissed from the spout. John set aside the writing desk. A heavy blanket was tented over the head of the bedstead, and the head and shoulders of the woman sleeping fitfully underneath, a basin of water settled onto a pillow close to her head, a basin in which floated a few drops of camphor oil, their efficacy nearly spent with the cooling of the water. John emptied the basin into the slops jar, and filled it again with steaming water, and a fresh installment of camphor droplets.
John regarded her face, glistening with moisture and still flushed pink with the remnants of fever, or maybe the heat of healing steam under the blanket tent that lent a spurious look of health to Elizabeth’s face. Her blond hair and the neck of her high-buttoned nightgown were soaked with the sweat of a broken fever. He bent an ear towards her breathing; easy, without the gasp and wheeze that frightened him down to his soul with the threat that her weak chest and frail constitution might take his Elizabeth away from him, and leave him alone in this world.
He put back the blanket over his wife’s face, and the newly-steaming bowl of water, and caught a glimpse of himself in the dressing-table mirror; a broad-shouldered man with a merry and bluntly pugnacious face. His neck-cloth was loosened, and the fine broadcloth coat that his Elizabeth insisted that he always wear – as he was a doctor with a position to keep up – set aside. His hair also stuck up in rebellious points and curls; he had run his hands through it too often during this latest crisis. Someone tapped cautiously on the bedroom door and after a moment, opened it just wide enough to look around.
“Mose, boy, you should be in bed. It’s past two in the morning,” John chided his brother in law. Young Moses hesitated in the doorway, a gawky boy of seventeen not quite grown to his own strength, young enough to look heartbreakingly like his older sister with the same oval features and fair coloring.
“You’re still awake, Doctor John,” Moses said, trying so hard to sound gruff and manly. “Is she better?”
“She’s sleeping easily; I think the crisis is past. I sent Mrs. Montgomery off to her own home hours since. ”
John often had to speak comfortable and reassuring words to frightened relatives; sometimes they were the words that they wanted to hear and sometimes as it was now, the plain truth. John was glad of that for Moses’ sake. Not only was his Elizabeth a dear sister but next thing to a mother to Moses, since their parents had died ten years ago in one of the fever epidemics that swept Stark County, Ohio.
They were but newly married then, but the best established of all the Schallenberger’s children, and so Moses was left to them, a boy of six years, and all but a flesh and blood son to John. Sometimes, he reflected without grief or resentment, Moses was the best that he would have wished from any child that Elizabeth might have born to him. She had brought him a son without the agony and risk that childbirth for her would entail, and Moses was a good lad, straight and fearless and honest. John was well-content with his family or would be if Elizabeth could only be well again, fit and rosy-cheeked, and riding a fine horse as recklessly as she once used to do.
“Until next time,” Moses stepped a little into the bedroom, and looked at John, eye to eye. “This miasma, these epidemics of fever; Mr. Marsh writes about the climate in California being bountifully temperate and healthy. If we could but remove her from them . . .”
“I know, Moses. I read the same letters, and hear the same idle talk.” John kept his voice low, and rubbed his forehead. His eyes felt as if they were full of sand. “But it is a long, dangerous journey, and to a foreign country at that.”
“For now,” replied Moses. “So was Texas, once; Allen talks of nothing else than the riches to be had, should it also fall into our hands.”
“It is not in our hands yet, no matter how loudly Allen Montgomery boasts of it. And it is still a wild and savage place . . .” a jaw-cracking yawn sent John’s thoughts in all directions, “Sorry, Moses. I have not slept above twenty minutes, these last two days. I know you are resolved on this adventure, but you are a young man with no responsibilities, no household to think on. I have both. I must consider carefully how to best meet them. Your sister must be considered, also.” Another huge yawn felt as if it would split John’s face in two. “We’ll talk about it in the morning. Well, ‘tis morning. Then after I have slept.” He clapped Moses affectionately on the shoulder. “Go to your bed, lad. You must be as much in need of rest as I.”
“Good night, then, Doctor John,” Moses slipped away, drawing the door softly closed behind him. John yawned again. For the last three days, and two nights, he had slept, if he slept at all, nearly upright in the bedroom arm-chair. The armchair, cushioned with a flattened and grimy pillow and a single blanket, beckoned to him as an old friend but under the camphor-steam saturated blanket, Elizabeth stirred fitfully. In the silent house, in that sickroom, that bare movement and her thready whisper sounded as loudly as a shout.
“John?”
He lifted up the blanket; in the dim pool of lantern-light, her pupils were huge and dark. He took her hand in his own.
“I’m here, Dearest Liz.”
She looked at him with a queer, fey expression, as if she were talking in her sleep and whispered, her fever-cracked lips barely moving.
“We can’t let Moses go alone,” And then her eyelids fluttered closed, and her hand slackened in his. She slept again as if exhausted by that slight effort. John sat back in his chair and after a moment’s thought, opened the writing desk again. He uncorked the tiny inkbottle and wrote;
“I do not think of myself as a gambler, but perhaps I am so, to think of selling my house and practice, and to risk our lives and fortune on this venture, not for such earthly riches as such men do covet, but as a means that my Dearest Darling may recover her health and strength.”
* * *
Angeline Morrison Letter #1
20th January, 1844
Writ from St. Joseph
Missouri Territory,
I write imploring an answer from you with great speed, as My Dear Husband has resolved upon departing from our dwelling here, and embarking upon the trail for distant California in the spring. His friend, Allan Montgomery has long been preparing his own household for transportation hither; My Dearest tells me that he (Mr. Montgomery) has spent most of the year previous preparing necessary gear and supplies, and is most impatient for the trail season to open. Mrs. Montgomery, who lived in our household since the sad loss of her parents and was only recently engaged in marriage, is exceeding downcast by his plans.
As for myself, I am apprehensive but unlike my dear Sarah, I have the wit to keep them to myself. Indeed, my Dearest’s stated reason for transportation to California is that he fears for my health, so it would be most ungracious of me – as well as casting aspersions upon his knowledge of medicine – to object. I cannot deny that I have unwell for most of the last four years; it is most vexing for me to never be completely recovered from one ailment before falling to the next. To my Dearest, it is doubly so when none of his skills can keep the malignant vapors of summer or the bitter cold of winter from affecting me so deeply.
But Angeline, although his concern is real, I suspect it is but a pretext for indulging the restless spirit that has moved him ever on, from where he was born, to Ohio and on to Missouri Territory. When he first came to Stark County to practice medicine, it seem’d most astonishing that he had lived in so many places before. And it almost seemed natural that upon the deaths of my beloved parents and assuming the care of my brother, that we would of course uproot ourselves and move to St. Joseph. There were many doctors practicing there, and it seemed the most natural distraction from the deaths of my dear mother and father, that we should seek solace in new horizons!
I had thought we were most content in St. Joseph, but of late he has seem’d restless, and uninterested in civic matters that once were his most lively interest. The question of the peculiar institution also vexes him much, although he dislikes to speak of it, as he fears alienating friends and associates who do not share his feelings and dreads a time when he might have to voice them openly on the matter. Such a tangle . . . and I had thought my own poor condition was the cause, but now I suspect otherwise.
I shall write to you once more, before we depart onto the trail. Please write to me and tell me of the trivial doings, and little domesticities that I will soon leave behind.
Ever thy friend
Elizabeth
* * *
From Dr. Townsend’s diary: “26th February, 1844: Items for the wagon, purchased from local merchants of excellent repute, represented by them to be of superior quality and sufficient for the journey: plain flour, eight hundred pounds. Salt bacon, six hundred pounds. Coffee, fifty pounds. Tea, twenty pounds. Sugar, eighty pounds. Salt, forty pounds. One barrel hard tack. Cask vinegar. Two boxes dried apples, the same of apricots. Two crocks pickles. One hundred pounds rice, the same of dried beans. Small box salt cod. Fifteen small jars of honey and preserves. Two bottles medicinal whisky.
“I have had our wagon fitted out, at some small expense, to make it commodious and comfortable. A false floor is installed, some eighteen inches above the wagon bed, below which certain stores and gear may be stowed out of the way. Three large flat-topped trunks are arranged at the rear, with a heavy mattress on top, which serves as a most comfortable bed. We have also attached a seat on metal springs to the front, which may afford a more comfortable ride, and sealed the canvas cover against rain with a generous coating of linseed oil. Mr. Montgomery has made similar arrangements in his own wagon.
“Item – purchased for the journey, one canvas tent, and a set of tin plates and such for use on the trail . . . I made the purchase of some fine china silk fabric, with an eye towards selling it in California at a profit.
“Fifth of March, 1844: Arranged the hire of a drover, one Francis Deland, who journeyed hence from French Canada and is desirous of working his passage to California for board and bread. We intend to depart a week from today, having reciev’d notice of a large assembly at Kanesville, up-river in the Iowa Territory, intent on Oregon. We intend to accompany them as far as Fort Hall.
“Eleventh of March, 1844 . . . we depart upon the morrow, Elizabeth and Moses and I, in company with our close friends, Allan and Sarah Montgomery. May good fortune guide us, and our Heavenly Father attend and bless our endeavors. It is so written: ‘For the Lord Thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water. Of fountains and depths that spring out of the valleys and hills; a land of wheat, and barley and vines and fig trees and pomegranates; a land of olive oil and honey; a land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness; thou shalt not lack anything in it.’”
* * *
In the early dark, just as the pale dawn lightened the sky, the oxen stamped restlessly, and blew out their hay-scented breath, and Allen Montgomery hardly bothered to lower his voice,
“Good lord, what’s keeping the woman? Fix your bonnet and come away, your ladyship. Time’s a-wasting. We should be on the road to Kanesville by now.” John bent his head over his saddle girth, pretending to check the adjustment of his stirrups and tactfully affected not to hear, but out of the corner of his eye could see the embarrassment on Moses’ face. Moses was no-doubt coloring up like a girl. He admired Allen enormously, and tried to copy his manner; a thing of which John did not wholly approve, although he wisely kept from saying so. John also liked Allen, even if he was the most hot-headed and tactless man in three counties. Francis, hunkered patiently down on his heels next to the lead ox gave no indication of impatience, or even of having understood.
His pretty and feisty wife – little Sarah Armstrong she had been, orphaned at fifteen and come to work for John and Elizabeth until she had married the handsome gunsmith – snapped
“She’s saying goodbye to the house. House . . . you know, that place which women keep, until their husbands drag them away?”
John strenuously pretended not to have heard that, either. Just as well that the two of them were well-matched in being about equally tactless. He himself had sold the house and practice, furniture and fittings, everything which could not be packed in straw, or stuffed into a trunk in the wagon. Aside from some bits and pieces, this amounted to a case of surgical implements, his books and Masonic regalia and the set of china that Elizabeth had inherited from her great-grandmother and an assortment of trinkets, bedding, linens and clothing.
Everything else that had adorned their home, everything dear and familiar, from the pictures on the wall and the inlaid bedroom furniture, to the parlor piano that had given his Elizabeth so much joy and pride in showing off their home to her friends, all to be left behind . . . now someone else’s property. Oddly enough, it gave him a feeling of curious relief, a feeling of freedom, of being able to float unbound by material possessions, like that of the early monks, with their attention focused on the divine.
A few hesitant piano notes floated out from the empty house, a stave of Mozart, clear and pure as a trickle of spring water. Allen swore under his breath and gave some vent to his exasperation by slapping his hat against his knee.
“I’ll go and fetch . . .” Moses ventured, miserably embarrassed, just as Elizabeth appeared in the doorway, like a ghost in a dark merino travel dress. She tied her bonnet strings neatly under her bravely lifted chin, and pulled the door gently closed.
“I’m ready,” she said simply, and took John’s hand. Moses reached down from the wagon-seat, and between the two of them they boosted her up and over the great wooden wheel – one foot on a spoke, the other to the footrest, before she scrambled over the side of the wagon-box in a flurry of skirts and calico petticoats, to seat herself next to her brother with her hands folded on her lap. She nodded to John when she was settled, and he swung up into the saddle; his horse pranced sideways a little, tossing his ugly grey head until the bit jingled.
John swore under his breath. He regretted selling the trusty old gelding, Pouncer, who had faithfully carried him or drawn his trap around his medical rounds in St. Joseph, and before that in Stark County for the best part of a decade. Pouncer had faultless manners, gentle enough for Liz to ride, even. But John had quietly listened to the counsel of outfitters and merchants who dealt in trade with the yearly caravans to Santa Fe, and understood immediately that Pouncer was too old, and unsuited to a rugged journey through wilderness. He would need something young, strong, and spirited, and the new grey gelding was all that, but John hadn’t warmed sufficiently to give it a name or think of it as anything but “the Ugly Grey.” He disciplined Ugly Grey, and waved his hat in the air.
Allen cracked his whip, and whistled shrilly to his team, and they leaned stolidly into their yokes. Francis stood up without any apparent urgency, and seemed to whisper to the lead team beasts. Then he whistled also – a low whistle, and all three yoke hitched to the Townsend wagon stepped forward almost eagerly. With a great creak and groan, the wagon lurched forward, the linseed-proofed canvas cover swaying like a bellied sail. John reined in Ugly Grey, who seemed determined to prance like a racehorse and gaily called up to his wife, who looked ahead with somber mien.
“The greatest journey starts with a single step, Dearest Liz, and I vow that we have just taken that step!”
That, as he hoped, coaxed a smile, and she called back, “’Tis a very jolting step, Dearest. Can I hope to become more accustomed to it?” She was, John noticed with approval, not looking back. Brave Liz.
“If not,” he promised expansively, “I shall buy you a horse to ride before we depart from Kanesville. I had planned on purchasing another horse and two more yoke, depending on how the rules of our party with respect to a herd of spare beasts are decided.”
“Why would that be?” Elizabeth reached up and straightened her bonnet, as a particularly deep rut jarred the whole wagon again. “Wouldn’t we wish to take as many extra animals as we can afford?”
“Then we have the extra burden of herding them along behind, and finding fodder. It might be worth the extra effort, or it might not. We should have another horse, regardless. Mr. Chiles ever spoke of being able to hunt, along the trail.”
Ugly Grey pranced ahead, giving John the opportunity of taking a good look at his three yoke, considered so carefully before purchase for strength and docility, working together under the burden of moving a heavy-laden wagon. They moved well under Francis’s direction, he thought; they merely walked, easily pulling their burden without any special effort. He rode ahead of Francis, striding next to the lead yoke, and the Frenchman caught his eye, gave a smile and a mock-salute, tipping his hat-brim with the stock of the whip that he seemed to hardly use.
A good man, that; John could forgive practically anything of a man who was good with animals, who ruled them with a light hand. He had doctored animals in his time, as any medical man must when a man’s livelihood might depend on the health of his horse or cow as much as on his own.
Ahead of them, Montgomery’s team plodded stolidly on, around the long gentle bend in the road that paralleled the river, north and west of town, the crate of chickens lashed to the back of it bouncing to every jolt of wheels, accompanied by noisy complaints and flurries of chicken feathers. Allen’s single horse and milk cow were tethered on long leads, side by side to the back of his wagon.
They would soon be out of the township, out among strangers who knew them not, floating as free as bubbles on the river, having cut the connection that bound them to a farm, a place, a town; bubbles on the river-surface, joining with other bubbles, and drifting purposefully west. John reined Ugly Grey back again, and fell in beside his wagon, and smiled at Liz.
“I wonder how long Mrs. Montgomery will preserve her chickens on the trail. They do not seem in a humor conducive to laying eggs.”
“Chickens are adaptable,” Elizabeth replied, with a ghost of her old spirit.” They will provide eggs, or a good chicken dinner, one or the other. Sarah . . . Mrs. Montgomery did not consent to this expedition in the same spirit that I did, my Dear Doctor. She cannot forget how her family was dragged hither and thither, how her mother protested and her father insisted, and they moved on from one home to another, until they both perished and she was left in our care. Out of her marriage to Mr. Montgomery, had her very own little house, but on Mr. Montgomery’s insistence, she must leave it. I fear that perhaps we did not serve her truly as friends, with her true interests at heart when we encouraged her to accept Mr. Montgomery’s offer of marriage.”
“He’s a good man, with a good trade and a handsome devil to boot,” John said. “A man like that must have a wife, and she was lucky to make such a fine match.”
“Oh, certainly,” Elizabeth replied, with a strained smile. “But a woman can be fortunate in her marriage, and yet not be wholly happy in it.”
“Are we happy, Liz?” Impulsively, John stood in his stirrups, and reached out to take her gloved hand in his, over the turning and mud-caked wheel. “Are we truly happy, to the end of this trail and all the world encompassed in it?”
“We are.” Elizabeth half rose, leaning down to briefly grasp his hand as the wagon rolled over another rut. She sat down heavily, which knocked her bonnet askew once more. “I am happy, and you are my husband. Where you go, I go also . . . and so must Sarah Montgomery with her husband. But she is too high-spirited to submit gracefully when she must, and too young in marriage to know how to appeal to his good nature and change his mind.”
“I cannot imagine anything to make Allen change his mind, once he is set on it,” Moses spoke up sturdily. “Not even Sarah and I look on her as fondly as another sister. But wives are not supposed to question their husbands.” Moses looked abashed and puzzled when John and Elizabeth exchanged a wry look and burst out laughing.
And the sun rose at their backs, brushing the newly green treetops with a touch of gold, and sending elongated shadows of team and wagons, horse and rider running ahead of them, stretching out towards the west.
* * *
From E.S. Patterson Interview, University of California Local History Archival Project 1932: “My name is Edward Sidney Patterson, and I was born near Batavia, Clermont County Ohio, in September of 1837, to Samuel Laurens Patterson, and Isabella Hitchcock Patterson. Which would make me 95 and old enough to know better, you would think. I had three older brothers and an older sister, when my father decided that we should go west to seek a better fortune for ourselves in California. He left in the spring of 1841 to go out in advance of the family.
“He sent back a letter to us, which we did not receive until mid-summer of 1843, to let us know that he had arrived safely and that my mother should sell the farm and all the fittings and prepare to follow him. In fall of the year that he had departed Ohio, my mother had given birth to my little sister, Sarabeth, whom we called Sadie, and her own father, whom we called “Paw-Paw” had come to live with us.
“Paw-Paw had been in the fur trade as a young man and we were given to understand that he had traveled extensively in the west. In fact, Paw-Paw had had fixed it for Pa to travel out to California through connections and friendships that he had among the Santa Fe traders. Ma was not pleased about this development: she thought he was of a light character, and was deeply unhappy about this whole prospect.
“But in obedience to my father, she sold the farm, and accepted Paw-Paw’s advice about a wagon and necessary supplies. She and Paw-Paw knew through friends, that there was a party of emigrants assembling in the spring of the following year at Kanesville in the Iowa Territory, intending for Oregon and California, and so we made preparations to join them. She took some small things that she treasured, and fitted out a stout farm wagon that Paw-Paw approved of with a canvas cover. She had four yoke of oxen, and a milk cow from the farm.
“She bought sufficient supplies for the journey out of what she had for selling the home place, and took us to Iowa to take the trail to California in obedience to my father’s directions. Ma was a tiny woman; she would have come hardly to your chin, missy, but there wasn’t a thing she feared in this world.”
* * *
Some weeks later, when the Montgomery and Townsend wagons were still a little short of Kanesville, the Ugly Grey threw a shoe and lost it in the deep mud. It had rained all morning, but now the clouds were breaking up into innocent fluffy white clumps scattered across a clear and pale sky. The two wagons had been much inconvenienced by rain, since it made the road a swampy, muddy morass, and brought the river far enough up to cover the trunks of trees on the riverbank. Francis and Allen Montgomery waded knee-deep in churned muck, and they were forced to the expedient of keeping dry firewood in the wagon, so that it would burn well enough in the evenings for Elizabeth and Sarah to cook a meal over it.
John dismounted immediately, almost the minute that Ugly Grey began to favor his left rear leg, but there was no finding the missing shoe in the mud, not with the way other wagon wheels and other hoofed draft animals had turned it over and over again. Allen and Francis halted the wagons, while he did a quick search. The driver of a heavy horse-drawn dray wagon coming the other way saw them by the side of the road, and called out.
“What kind of trouble are you having, friend?”
“My horse lost a shoe. How far are we from Kanesville? Can you recommend us to a blacksmith there?” On the clear horizon ahead of them hung a hazy smear of wood smoke, too large for a single farmstead.
“Not far . . . three, four miles. That where you’re bound?”
“For today. We mean to join an emigrant company there, for California. Did you just come from there? Do you know where they are camped?”
“Out west of town, in a grove of trees by the river, waiting for the river to go down,” replied the drayman, slapping his reins. “And there’s a good few blacksmiths there, but there’s a man with a little forge set up half-a-mile back, if you ain’t keen on walking all the way to Kanesville.”
“Thank you, for your good words.” John tipped his hat and told Allen and Francis, “Heard that? I’ll stop at this roadside forge, and catch up with you at the campsite.”
Just as the drayman had said, there was a wagon and tent back from the muddy road, in the middle of a little grove, with a well-established fire in a scratch enclosure of blackened bricks, sending up a straight line of smoke. Half-a-dozen cattle browsed in the damp meadow close by. A solitary man in a leather apron worked over an anvil; John could hear the clear regular ring of metal on metal, long before they saw him.
“If I don’t catch up on the road, I’ll meet you in camp,” John smiled at his wife, silently resolving to buy another horse, after enduring the constant lurch and jolt of the wagon for the last half-mile. He felt bruised and sore to his very bones after just this little way, whereas poor Liz had been patiently enduring it for weeks: So much for the comfort of the metal-sprung wagon seat. He unhitched Ugly Grey from the back, waved to Allan and Francis, and walked into the trees to the little campsite.
“Good morning,” John called, when he was in earshot. “My horse lost a shoe a half-mile back. Might you be of assistance?”
“I can.” The smith set his bit of work back into the fire and turned to look at John. He was a big, grim-looking fellow with the enormously muscled shoulders and forearms of his trade, his shirt-sleeves rolled up, and his leather apron flecked with tiny cinder burns. His face and hands were blackened with sooty grime and smoke, appearing like a gargoyle mask fringed with chin-whiskers, out of which a pair of clear, pale grey eyes the color of water sized up John and his limping horse. Something nudged at John’s thigh and the smith remarked placidly,
“Don’t you be moving sudden-like, she’ll think you mean harm.”
Quite startled, John looked down; not very far down at that, at one of the largest dogs he had ever seen, a huge fawn-colored mastiff bitch with a dark face. She sat quietly at his feet, regarding him with intelligent golden eyes.
“Dog,” said the smith quietly, and made a quick gesture with his fingers. The mastiff bitch nudged John again, as if reminding him to be on his best behavior then, because she would have an eye on him, and obediently trotted away to settle herself underneath the wagon. From there she still regarded John and her master with those unsettlingly intelligent golden eyes. She had a clownish white splotch on her nose and another at the end of her tail. All of her toes on each foot were white, as if she wore dainty gloves.
“Elisha Stephens, late of the Pottawattamie Indian Agency.” Her master introduced himself. “That’s Dog, and you would be?”
“John Townsend . . . Doctor John Townsend, late of St. Joseph, Missouri, soon to be on the trail to fabled California.” John extended his hand, but Stephens regarded him levelly and did not respond in kind.
“Beg pardon, my hands is powerful dirty. California? Heard me some talk. Tie the hoss up to this here tree, so’s I can get to work.”
Stephens rummaged among his tools, and a box of metal oddments, tossing a roughly shaped horse-shoe into the heart of the fire. He worked the bellows until the coals glowed cherry-red, incandescent. While the metal softened, glowing whiter than the coals, Stephens shoved his shoulder into Ugly Grey’s barrel, and expertly forced the gelding to allow him to pick up his unshod foot, and rasp off some of the hoof with a great metal file. John watched with interest; this was a man who knew his trade. Ugly Grey’s eyes rolled nervously, showing some white, but not as much as expected.
When the shoe was softened enough, Stephens took the tongs and brought it out of the fire, laying it on his small anvil, and deftly pounding it into the right shape. He plunged it into a tub of dirty grey water, which bubbled up in great gouts of steam. When the new shoe had cooled enough, he took it up, filling his mouth with nails and hefted a small hammer in one hand. Just as before, he shoved his powerful shoulder into Ugly Grey, and took up the horses’ unshod hoof. While bracing Ugly Grey’s hoof in his leather-aproned lap, he spat nails into his free hand, one by one, and deftly tapped them into place, securing the new shoe.
“What do I owe you, Mr. Stephens?” John spoke with honest appreciation. It was one of his greatest pleasures, to watch an expert do their work, especially if they were so very good that it all appeared effortless. And Stephens was truly that, as serene and self-contained as great artists are in the middle of their creations.
“Nothing,” Stephens’ pale, unreadable eyes gleamed in his dark face. “Pay me back with doctoring on the trail, mebbe. I’m away to California myself, in a couple days.”
“But why have you not joined the encampment with the other emigrants?” John asked, surprised out of countenance for once.
“Not one for crowds,” Stephens replied simply.
“Then . . . my most sincere thanks and appreciation,” John nodded.” Most certainly, we shall meet again, and I am glad of that. A blacksmith is a good man to have along on the trail.”
Stephens nodded inscrutably, and replied, “So’s a doctor. But we won’t be leaving for a good two weeks.”
“Why?” John was about to put his foot in stirrup, but something of the certainty in Stephens’ simple statement held him back.
“Grass is not grown tall enough yet. Three weeks.”
“You’ve been out on the trail before?”
“Some.” Stephens answered. “Some there. Some on the Santa Fe.”
He didn’t seem inclined to elaborate, or even feel the need to.
John swung up into his saddle, and said, “I’ll look forward to seeing you again . . . by the time the grass is grown tall enough.”
“I’ll be there,” Stephens replied.
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.” Elisabeth 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 saffron sun around which some smaller tents and awnings orbited, as well as quantities 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 fuss-budget 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 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 Allan 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 gone . . . 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 little. 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 California. 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 have 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 ungallant 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 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 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 husbands’ 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.”