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But what with the din of the overcrowded hotel, the stink of sulphur smouldering in the fireplace, and the fear that some sharp might discover Mr Comber was the notorious slave-stealer Tom Arnold, I was mightily relieved when we boarded the Missouri packet next evening, and I felt it safe to drop my cholera mask over the side – the passengers included sufficient tall dark strangers with every kind of accent, whether their manners were genteel or not. She was a smaller and much dirtier vessel than the Choctaw Queen, and the girls had to make do in steerage among all the roughs and roustabouts and gamblers and frontier riff-raff; Susie just singled out the four biggest and ugliest and paid them handsomely to keep the wenches safe in a corner – which to my astonishment they did, for four days up to Kanzas Landing. The first drunk who tried to paw a crinoline was tipped over the side without ceremony, and the gamblers haw-hawed and laid bets whether he’d float or sink. After that our Magdalenes were left alone, but they had a miserable passage of it, even under the lean-to which the toughs rigged up to keep out the fog and drizzle, and they were a doleful and bedraggled jam of tarts by the time we tied up. Susie and I shared a cramped and stuffy saloon on the texas with about seventeen snoring merchants and dowagers with bad breath, but for once I didn’t mind the lack of privacy; I needed the rest.
They tell me that Kansas City nowadays covers the whole section, but in those days the landing and Westport and Independence were separated by woodland and meadow. And I wonder if today’s city contains more people than were crowded along the ten miles from Independence to the river when I first saw it in ’49: there were thousands of them, in tents and lean-tos and houses and log shacks and under the trees and in the few taverns and lodging-places; they were in the stables and sheds and shops and storehouses, a great swarming hive of humanity of every kind you can imagine – well, I remember the Singapore River in the earlies, and it was nothing to Westport-Independence. The whole stretch was jammed with wagons and carts and carriages, churning the spaces between the buildings into a sea of mud after the recent rain, and through it went the mules and oxen and horses, with the steam rising from them and the stench of hides and dung and smoke filling the air – but even that was nothing to the noise.
Every other building seemed to be a forge or a stable or a warehouse, a-clang with hundreds of hammers and the rasp of saws and the crack of axes and the creak of wheels and the thump and scrape of boxes and bales being loaded or unloaded; teamsters snapped their whips with a ‘Way-hay, whoa!’, foremen bellowed, children shrilled, the voices of thousands of men and women blended with it all in a great eager busy din that echoed among the buildings and floated off to be lost in the surrounding forest.
I daresay it was nothing to what it must have looked like a year or two later, when the gold-fever was at its height and half Europe came pouring to America in search of fortune. But in that spring every human specimen in North America seemed to have assembled at Kanzas Landing for the great trek west – labourers white and black and olive, bronzed hunters and pale clerks, sober emigrants and raffish adventurers, harassed women with aprons and baskets prodding at vegetables set out before the store-fronts and slapping the children who bawled round their skirts; red-faced traders in stove-pipe hats and thumbs hooked in fancy weskits, spitting juice; soldiers in long boots and blue breeches, their sabres on the table among the beer-mugs; Mexicans in serapes and huge-brimmed sombreros leading a file of mules; farmers in straw hats and faded overalls; skinners with coiled whips, lounging on their rigs; bearded ruffians in greasy buckskins bright with beadwork, two-foot Bowies gleaming on their hips, chattering through their noses in a language which I recognised to my amazement as Scotch Gaelic; bright-eyed harpies watchful in shack doorways; Spanish riders in ponchos and feathered bonnets, their sashes stuffed with flintlock pistols; a party of Indians beneath the trees, faces grotesquely painted, hatchets at their belts and lances stacked; silent plainsmen in fur caps and long fringed skirts, carrying buffalo guns and powder horns; a coach guard with two six-shooters at his hips, two five-shooters in his waistband, a slung revolving rifle, a broad-sword, and a knife in his boot – oh, and he was gnawing a toothpick, too; an incredibly lean and ancient hunter, white-bearded to the waist, dressed in ragged deerskin and billycock hat, his ‘nail-driver’ rifle across the crupper of his mule, staring ahead like a fakir in a trance as he rode slowly up the street, his slovenly Indian squaw at his stirrup, through the crowds of loafers and porters and barefoot boys scuffling under the wagons, the swaggering French voyageurs, gaudy and noisy, the drummers and counter-jumpers and sharp-faced Yankees, planters and crooks and rivermen, trappers and miners and plain honest folk wondering how they’d strayed into this Babel – and those are only the ones I noticed in the first mile or so.
But soft! who is this stalwart figure with the dashing whiskers so admirably set off by his wideawake hat and fringed deerskin shirt, a new patent Colt repeater strapped to his manly rump, his well-turned shanks encased in new boots which are pinching the bejeezus out of him? Can it be other than Arapaho Harry, scourge of the plains? – that alert and smouldering eye must oft have hardened at the sound of the shrill war-whoop, or narrowed behind the sights as he nailed the rampant grizzly – now it is soft and genial as he chivvies the dusky whores into the back of the cart, an indulgent smile playing across his noble features. Mark the grace with which he vaults nimbly into the driver’s seat beside the bedizened trot in the feathered bonnet – his aunt, doubtless – and with an expert chuck on the reins sets the team in motion and bogs the whole contraption axle-deep in the gumbo. The whores squeak in alarm, the aunt – his wife, you say? – rails and adjusts her finery, but the gallant frontiersman, unperturbed save for a blistering oath which mantles the cheeks of his fair companions in blushes, is equal to the emergency; for two bits he gets a gang of loafers to haul them out. The western journey is not without its trials; it is going to be a long trek to California.
But at least it looked as though we were going to make it in some style. Once we’d got the rig out of the stew, and rattled through Westport and the great sea of emigrant tents and wagons to Independence – which was a pretty little place then with a couple of spires and a town hall with a belfry, of which the inhabitants were immensely proud – we were greeted by the celebrated Colonel Owens, a breezy old file with check trousers full of belly and a knowing eye; he was the leading merchant, and had been commissioned to outfit Susie’s caravan. He and the boys made us welcome at the store, pressed sherry cobblers on me, bowed and leered gallantly at Susie, and assured us that a trip across the plains was a glorified picnic.
‘You’ll find, ma’am,’ says the Colonel, ankle cocked and cigar a-flourish, ‘that everything’s in real prime train. Indeedy – your health, sir. Yes, ma’am, six Pittsburgh wagons, spanking new, thirty yoke of good oxen, a dozen mules, and a real bang-up travelling carriage – the very best Hiram Young4 can furnish, patent springs, hand-painted, cushioned seats, watertight for fording streams, seats half a dozen comfortable. Fact is,’ with a broad wink, ‘it’s one of the new mail company coaches, but Hiram procured it as a personal favour. Indeedy – you won’t find a more elegant conveyance outside Boston – am I right, boys?’
The boys agreed that he was, and added in hushed tones that the mail company intended to charge $250 a head for the three-week non-stop run to Santa Fe, and how about that?
‘We’re goin’ to take three months,’ says Susie, ‘an’ ten cents a pound for freight is quite dear enough, thank you. To say nothin’ of fifty dollars a month for guards an’ drivers, who’ll eat like wolves if I know anythin’.’
‘Well, now, ma’am, I see you’ve a proper head for business,’ chuckles the Colonel. ‘An’ a real pretty head it is, too, if I may say. But good men don’t come cheap – eh, boys?’
The boys swore it was true; why, a good stockman could make two hundred a week, without going west of Big Blue.
‘I’m not hirin’ stockmen,’ snaps Susie. ‘I’m payin’ high for reliable men who can look after theirselves, and me.’
‘And you shall have the best, ma’am!’ cries the Colonel. ‘Say, I like your style, though! Your health again, Mr Comber! Indeedy – eight outriders, each with a revolving rifle and a brace of patent pistols – why, that’s a hundred shots without reloading! A regiment couldn’t afford better protection! A regiment, did I say? Why, three of these men rode with Kearny in the Mexican War – seasoned veterans, ma’am, every one. Isn’t that so, boys?’
The boys couldn’t fault him; dogged if they knew how the Army would have managed without those three. I remarked that so much firepower was impressive, and seemed to argue necessity – I’d been noting a bill on the store wall advertising:
Ho! Hist! Attention!
Californians! Why not take, among other necessaries, your own monuments and tombstones? A great saving can be effected by having their inscriptions cut in New York beforehand!!!5
The Colonel looked serious and called for more cobblers. ‘Indian depredations this past ten years, sir, have been serious and multiplying,’ says he solemnly. ‘Indeedy – red sons-o-bitches wherever you look – oh, beg pardon, ma’am, that runaway tongue of mine! However, with such vast convoys of emigrants now moving west, I foresee no cause for apprehension. Safety in numbers, Mr Comber, hey? Besides, the tribes are unusually peaceful at present – eh, boys?’
The boys couldn’t remember such tranquillity; it was Sunday afternoon the whole way to the Rockies, with all the Indians retired or gone into farming or catching the cholera. (That last was true enough, by the way.)
Susie inquired about a guide, reminding the Colonel she had asked for the best, and he smacked his thigh and beamed. ‘Now, ma’am, you can set your mind to rest there – yes, indeedy, I reckon you can, just about,’ and the boys grinned approval without even being asked.
‘Is it Mr Williams?’ says Susie. ‘I was told to ask for him, special.’
‘Well, now ma’am, I’m afraid Old Bill doesn’t come out of the mountains much, these days.’ The boys confirmed that indeed Old Bill was out west with Fremont. ‘No, I’m afraid Fitzpatrick and Beckwourth aren’t available, either – but they’re no loss, believe me, when you see who I’ve engaged – subject to his meeting you and agreeing to take the command, of course.’ And he nodded to one of the boys, who went out on the stoop and bawled: ‘Richey!’
‘Command!’ says Susie, bridling. ‘Any commandin’ that’s to be done, my ’usband’ll do!’ Which gave me a nasty start, I can tell you. ‘He’s in charge of our caravan, and the guide’ll take ’is pay ’an do what he’s told! The idea!’
The Colonel looked at the boys, and the boys looked at the Colonel, and they all looked at me. ‘Well, now, ma’am,’ says Owens doubtfully, ‘I’m sure Mr Comber is a gentleman of great ability, but—’
‘’E’s an’ officer of the Royal Navy,’ snaps Susie, ‘an’ quite accustomed to command – aren’t you, my love?’
I agreed, but remarked that leading a caravan must be specialised work, and doubtless there were many better qualified than I … which was stark truth, apart from which I’d no wish to be badgering roughriders and arguing with drunk teamsters when I could be rolling in a hand-painted, watertight coach. Seeing my diffidence, she rounded on me, demanding if I was going to take orders from some grubby little carter? I said, well, ah … while the Colonel called loudly for cobblers and the boys looked tactfully at the ceiling, and just then a burly scarecrow came into the store – or rather, he seemed to drift in, silently, and the Colonel introduced him as Mr Wootton, our guide.
I heard Susie sniff in astonishment – well, he was grubby, no error, and hadn’t shaved in a while, and his clothes looked as though he’d taken them off a dead buckskin man and then slept in them for a year. He seemed diffident, too, fiddling with his hat and looking at the floor. When the Colonel told him about my commanding the caravan he thought for a bit, and then said in a gentle, husky voice:
‘Gennelman bin wagon-captain afore?’
No, said the Colonel, and the boys looked askance and coughed. The clodpole scratched his head and asks:
‘Gennelman bin in Injun country?’
No, they said, I hadn’t. He stood a full minute, still not looking up, and then says:
‘Gennelman got no ’sperience?’
At this one of the boys laughed, and I sensed Susie ready to burst – and I was about fed up being ridiculed by these blasted chaw-bacons. God knows I didn’t want to command her caravan, but enough’s enough.
‘I’ve had some experience, Mr Wootton,’ says I. ‘I was once an army chief of staff—’ Sergeant-General to the nigger rabble of Madagascar, but there you are ‘—and have known service in India, Afghanistan, and Borneo. But I’ve no special desire—’
At this Wootton lifted his unkempt head and looked at me, and I stopped dead. He was a ragged nobody – with eyes like clear blue lights, straight and steady. Then he glanced away – and I thought, don’t let this one go. It may be a picnic on the plains, but you’ll be none the worse with him along.
‘My dear,’ says I to Susie, ‘perhaps you and the Colonel will excuse Mr Wootton and myself.’ I went out, and presently Wootton drifts on to the stoop, not looking at me.
‘Mr Wootton,’ says I, ‘my wife wants me to command the caravan, and what she wants she gets. Now, I’m not your Old Bill Williams, but I’m not a greenhorn, exactly. I don’t mind being called wagon-captain – but you’re the guide, and what you say goes. You can say it to me, quietly, and I’ll say it to everyone else, and you’ll get an extra hundred a month. What d’you say?’
It was her money, after all. He said nothing, so I went on:
‘If you’re concerned that your friends’ll think poorly of you for serving under a tenderfoot …’ At this he turned the blue eyes on me, and kept them there. Deuced uncomfortable. Still he was silent, but presently looked about, as though considering, and then says after a while:
‘Gotta study, I reckon. Care to likker with me?’
I accepted, and he led the way to where a couple of mules were tethered, watching me sidelong as I mounted. Well, I’d forgotten more about backing a beast than he’d ever know, so I was all right there; we cantered down the street, and out through the tents and wagons towards Westport, and presently came to a big lodge with ‘Last Chance’ painted in gold leaf on its signboard, which was doing a roaring trade. Richey got a jug, and we rode off towards some trees, and all the time he was deep in thought, occasionally glancing at me but not saying a word. I didn’t mind; it was a warm day, I was enjoying the ride, and there was plenty to see – over by the wood some hunters were popping their rifles at an invisible target; when we got closer I saw they were ‘driving the nail’, which is shooting from fifty paces or so at a broad-headed nail stuck in a tree, the aim being to drive it full into the wood, which with a ball the size of a small pea is fancy shooting anywhere.
Richey gave a grunt when he saw them, and we rode near to where a group of them were standing near the nail-tree, whooping and catcalling at every shot. Richey dismounted.
‘Kindly cyare to set a whiles?’ says he, and indicated a tree-stump with all the grace of a Versailles courtier; he even put the jug down beside it. So I sat, and waited, and took a pull at the jug, which was first-run rum, and no mistake, while Richey went over and talked to the hunters – fellows in moccasins and fringed tunics, for the most part, burned brown and bearded all over. It was only when some of them turned to look at me; and chortled in their barbarous ‘plug-a-plew’ dialect which is barely recognisable as English, that I realised the brute was absolutely consulting them – about me, if you please! Well, by God, I wasn’t having that, and I was on the point of storming off when the group came over, all a-grin – and by George, didn’t they stink, just! I was on my feet, ready to leave – and then I stopped, thunderstruck. For the first of them, a tall grizzled mountaineer, in a waterproof hat and leggings, was wearing an undoubted Life Guards tunic, threadbare but well-kept. I blinked: yes, it was Tin Belly gear, no error.
‘Hooraw, hoss, howyar!’ cries this apparition.
‘Where the devil did you get that coat?’ says I.
‘You’re English,’ says he, grinning. ‘Waal, I tell ye – this yar garmint wuz give me by one o’ your folks. Scotch feller – sure ’nuff baronite, which is kind of a lord, don’t ye know? Name o’ Stooart. Say, wasn’t he the prime coon, though? He could ha’ druv thet nail thar with his eyes shut.’ He considered me, scratching his chin, and I found myself wishing my buckskin coat wasn’t so infernally new. ‘Richey hyar sez he’s onsartin if you’ll make a wagon-captain.’
‘Is he, by God? Well, you can tell Richey—’
‘Mister,’ says he, ‘you know this?’ And he held up a short stick of what looked like twisted leather.
‘Certainly. It’s cured beef – biltong. Now what—’
‘Don’t mind me, hoss,’ says he, and winked like a ten-year-old as he stepped closer. ‘We’re a-humourin’ ole Richey thar. Now then – how long a hobble you put on a pony?’
I almost told him to go to the devil, but he winked again, and I’ll say it for him, he was a hard man to refuse. Besides, what was I to do? If I’d turned my back on that group of bearded grinning mountebanks they’d have split their sides laughing.
‘That depends on the pony,’ says I. ‘And the grazing, and how far you’ve ridden, and where you are, and how much sense you’ve got. Two feet, perhaps … three.’
He cackled with laughter and slapped his thigh, and the buckskin men haw-hawed and looked at Richey, who was standing head down, listening. My interrogator said:
‘Hyar’s a catechism, sure ’nuff,’ and he was so pleased with himself, and so plainly intent on making game of Richey that I decided to enter into the spirit of the thing. ‘Next question, please,’ says I, and he clapped his hands.
‘Now, let’s calkerlate. Haw, hyar’s a good ’un! Hyar’s a night camp; I’m a gyuard. What you spose I’m a-doin’?’ He looked at a bush about twenty yards away, walked a few paces aside, and looked at it again, then came back to me. ‘Actin’ pee-koolyar, hoss – you reckon?’
‘No such thing. You’re taking a sight on that bush. You’ll take a sight on all the bushes. After dark, if a bush isn’t where it should be, you’ll fire on it. Because it’ll be an Indian, won’t it?’ We’d done the same thing in Afghanistan; any fool of a soldier knows the dodge.
‘Wah!’ shouts he, delighted, and thumped Richey on the back. ‘Thar, boyee! This chile hyar’ll tickle ye, see iffn he doan’t. Now, whut?’
Richey was watching me in silence, very thoughtful. Presently he nodded, slowly, while the buckskin men nudged each other and my questioner beamed his satisfaction. Then Richey tapped my pistol butt, and pulling a scrap of cloth from his pocket, drifted over to the tree and began to snag it on the half-driven nail. My tall companion chuckled and shook his head; well, I saw what was wanted, and I thought to blazes with it. I’d taken as much examination from these clowns as I wanted, so I decided to put Master Richey in his place.
The tall chap had a knife in his waistband, and without by your leave I plucked it out. It was a Green River, which is the best knife in the world, and just the article to practise the trick that Ilderim Khan had taught me, with infinite patience, on the Kabul Road almost ten years before. As Richey adjusted his target, I threw the knife overhand; my eye was well out, for I was nowhere near the mark, but I damned near took his ear off. He looked at the blade quivering in the trunk beside his face, while the tall buffoon cackled with laughter, and the buckskin men doubled up and haw-hawed – if I’d put it through the back of his head, I daresay that would have been a real joke.
Richey pulled the knife free, while his pals rolled about, and drifted over to me. He looked at me for a moment with those steady blue eyes, glanced at the tall chap,6 and then said in that gentle husky voice:
‘I’m Uncle Dick. An extra hunnerd, ye said – cap’n?’
The men hoorawed and shouted, ‘Good ole Virginny! How’s yer ha’r, Dick?’ I nodded and said I would see him at sunrise, sharp, bade them a courteous good-day and rode back to Independence without more ado – I know when to play the man of few words myself, you see. But I didn’t delude myself that I had proved my fitness to be a wagon-captain, or any rot of that sort; all I had shown, through the eccentric good office of our friend in the Tin-Belly coat, was that I wasn’t a know-nothing, and Wootton could take service under me without losing face. They were an odd lot, those frontiersmen, simple and shrewd enough, and as easy – and as difficult – to impose upon as children are. But I was glad Wootton would be our guide; being a true-bred rascal and coward myself, I know a good man when I see one – and he was the best.7
We started west three days later, but I am not going to take up your time with wordy descriptions of the journey, which you can get from Parkman or Gregg if you want them – or from volume II of my own great work, Dawns and Departures of a Soldier’s Life, although it ain’t worth the price, in my opinion, and all the good scandal about D’Israeli and Lady Cardigan is in the third volume, anyway.
But what I shall try to do, looking back in a way that Parkman and the others didn’t, is to try to tell you what it meant to ‘go West’ in the earlies8 – and that was something none of us understood at the time, or the chances are we’d never have gone. You look at a map of America nowadays, and there she is, civilised (give or take the population) from sea to sea; you can board a train in New York City and get off in Frisco without ever stepping outside, let alone get your feet wet; you can even do what I’ve done – look out from your Pullman on the Atchison Topeka as you cross Walnut Creek, and see the very ruts your wagon made fifty years before, and pass through great cities that were baldhead prairie the first time you went by, and vast wheatfields where you remember the buffalo herds two miles from wing to wing. Why, I had coffee on a verandah in a little town in Colorado just last year – fine place, church with a steeple, schoolhouse, grain warehouse, and even a motor car at the front gate. First time I saw that place it consisted of a burning wagon. Its population was a scalped family.
Now, you must look at the map of America. See the Mississippi River, and just left of it, Kansas City? West of that, in ’49, there was – nothing. And it was an unknown nothing, that’s the point. You can say now that ahead of the Forty-Niners stretched more than two thousand miles of empty prairie and forest and mountain and great rivers – but we didn’t know that, in so many words. Oh, everyone knew that the Rockies were a thousand miles off, and the general lie of the country – but take a look at what is now North Texas and Oklahoma. In ’49, it was believed that there was a vast range of mountains there, blocking the way west, when in fact the whole stretch is as flat as your hat. Somewhere around the same region, it was believed, was ‘the great American Desert’ – which didn’t exist. Oh, there’s desert, plenty of it, farther west; nobody knew much about that either.
I say it was unknown; certainly, the mountain men and hunters had walked over plenty of it; that crazy bastard Fremont was exploring away in a great frenzy and getting thoroughly lost by all accounts. But when you consider, that in ’49 it was less than 60 years since some crazy Scotch trapper9 had crossed North America for the first time – well, you will understand that its geography was not entirely familiar, west of the Miss’.