Roughing It
bases which we fancied we might see if we could step to the edge and
look over. These Sultans of the fastnesses were turbaned with tumbled
volumes of cloud, which shredded away from time to time and drifted off
fringed and torn, trailing their continents of shadow after them; and
catching presently on an intercepting peak, wrapped it about and brooded
there—then shredded away again and left the purple peak, as they had
left the purple domes, downy and white with new-laid snow. In passing,
these monstrous rags of cloud hung low and swept along right over the
spectator’s head, swinging their tatters so nearly in his face that his
impulse was to shrink when they came closest. In the one place I speak
of, one could look below him upon a world of diminishing crags and
canyons leading down, down, and away to a vague plain with a thread in
it which was a road, and bunches of feathers in it which were trees,—a
pretty picture sleeping in the sunlight—but with a darkness stealing
over it and glooming its features deeper and deeper under the frown of a
coming storm; and then, while no film or shadow marred the noon
brightness of his high perch, he could watch the tempest break forth
down there and see the lightnings leap from crag to crag and the sheeted
rain drive along the canyon-sides, and hear the thunders peal and crash
and roar. We had this spectacle; a familiar one to many, but to us a
novelty.
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We bowled along cheerily, and presently, at the very summit (though it
had been all summit to us, and all equally level, for half an hour or
more), we came to a spring which spent its water through two outlets and
sent it in opposite directions. The conductor said that one of those
streams which we were looking at, was just starting on a journey
westward to the Gulf of California and the Pacific Ocean, through
hundreds and even thousands of miles of desert solitudes. He said that
the other was just leaving its home among the snow-peaks on a similar
journey eastward—and we knew that long after we should have forgotten
the simple rivulet it would still be plodding its patient way down the
mountain sides, and canyon-beds, and between the banks of the
Yellowstone; and by and by would join the broad Missouri and flow
through unknown plains and deserts and unvisited wildernesses; and add a
long and troubled pilgrimage among snags and wrecks and sandbars; and
enter the Mississippi, touch the wharves of St. Louis and still drift
on, traversing shoals and rocky channels, then endless chains of
bottomless and ample bends, walled with unbroken forests, then
mysterious byways and secret passages among woody islands, then the
chained bends again, bordered with wide levels of shining sugar-cane in
place of the sombre forests; then by New Orleans and still other chains
of bends—and finally, after two long months of daily and nightly
harassment, excitement, enjoyment, adventure, and awful peril of parched
throats, pumps and evaporation, pass the Gulf and enter into its rest
upon the bosom of the tropic sea, never to look upon its snow-peaks
again or regret them.
I freighted a leaf with a mental message for the friends at home, and
dropped it in the stream. But I put no stamp on it and it was held for
postage somewhere.
On the summit we overtook an emigrant train of many wagons, many tired
men and women, and many a disgusted sheep and cow.
In the wofully dusty horseman in charge of the expedition I recognized
John ——. Of all persons in the world to meet on top of the Rocky
Mountains thousands of miles from home, he was the last one I should
have looked for. We were school-boys together and warm friends for
years. But a boyish prank of mine had disruptured this friendship and it
had never been renewed. The act of which I speak was this. I had been
accustomed to visit occasionally an editor whose room was in the third
story of a building and overlooked the street. One day this editor gave
me a watermelon which I made preparations to devour on the spot, but
chancing to look out of the window, I saw John standing directly under
it and an irresistible desire came upon me to drop the melon on his
head, which I immediately did. I was the loser, for it spoiled the
melon, and John never forgave me and we dropped all intercourse and
parted, but now met again under these circumstances.
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We recognized each other simultaneously, and hands were grasped as
warmly as if no coldness had ever existed between us, and no allusion
was made to any. All animosities were buried and the simple fact of
meeting a familiar face in that isolated spot so far from home, was
sufficient to make us forget all things but pleasant ones, and we parted
again with sincere “good-bye” and “God bless you” from both.
We had been climbing up the long shoulders of the Rocky Mountains for
many tedious hours—we started _down_ them, now. And we went spinning
away at a round rate too.
We left the snowy Wind River Mountains and Uinta Mountains behind, and
sped away, always through splendid scenery but occasionally through long
ranks of white skeletons of mules and oxen—monuments of the huge
emigration of other days—and here and there were up-ended boards or
small piles of stones which the driver said marked the resting-place of
more precious remains.
It was the loneliest land for a grave! A land given over to the cayote
and the raven—which is but another name for desolation and utter
solitude. On damp, murky nights, these scattered skeletons gave forth a
soft, hideous glow, like very faint spots of moonlight starring the
vague desert. It was because of the phosphorus in the bones. But no
scientific explanation could keep a body from shivering when he drifted
by one of those ghostly lights and knew that a skull held it.
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At midnight it began to rain, and I never saw anything like it—indeed, I
did not even see this, for it was too dark. We fastened down the
curtains and even caulked them with clothing, but the rain streamed in
in twenty places, nothwithstanding. There was no escape. If one moved
his feet out of a stream, he brought his body under one; and if he moved
his body he caught one somewhere else. If he struggled out of the
drenched blankets and sat up, he was bound to get one down the back of
his neck. Meantime the stage was wandering about a plain with gaping
gullies in it, for the driver could not see an inch before his face nor
keep the road, and the storm pelted so pitilessly that there was no
keeping the horses still. With the first abatement the conductor turned
out with lanterns to look for the road, and the first dash he made was
into a chasm about fourteen feet deep, his lantern following like a
meteor. As soon as he touched bottom he sang out frantically:
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“Don’t come here!”
To which the driver, who was looking over the precipice where he had
disappeared, replied, with an injured air: “Think I’m a dam fool?”
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The conductor was more than an hour finding the road—a matter which
showed us how far we had wandered and what chances we had been taking.
He traced our wheel-tracks to the imminent verge of danger, in two
places. I have always been glad that we were not killed that night. I do
not know any particular reason, but I have always been glad. In the
morning, the tenth day out, we crossed Green River, a fine, large,
limpid stream—stuck in it with the water just up to the top of our mail-
bed, and waited till extra teams were put on to haul us up the steep
bank. But it was nice cool water, and besides it could not find any
fresh place on us to wet.
At the Green River station we had breakfast—hot biscuits, fresh antelope
steaks, and coffee—the only decent meal we tasted between the United
States and Great Salt Lake City, and the only one we were ever really
thankful for.
Think of the monotonous execrableness of the thirty that went before it,
to leave this one simple breakfast looming up in my memory like a shot-
tower after all these years have gone by!
At five P.M. we reached Fort Bridger, one hundred and seventeen miles
from the South Pass, and one thousand and twenty-five miles from St.
Joseph. Fifty-two miles further on, near the head of Echo Canyon, we met
sixty United States soldiers from Camp Floyd. The day before, they had
fired upon three hundred or four hundred Indians, whom they supposed
gathered together for no good purpose. In the fight that had ensued,
four Indians were captured, and the main body chased four miles, but
nobody killed. This looked like business. We had a notion to get out and
join the sixty soldiers, but upon reflecting that there were four
hundred of the Indians, we concluded to go on and join the Indians.
Echo Canyon is twenty miles long. It was like a long, smooth, narrow
street, with a gradual descending grade, and shut in by enormous
perpendicular walls of coarse conglomerate, four hundred feet high in
many places, and turreted like mediaeval castles. This was the most
faultless piece of road in the mountains, and the driver said he would
“let his team out.” He did, and if the Pacific express trains whiz
through there now any faster than we did then in the stage-coach, I envy
the passengers the exhilaration of it. We fairly seemed to pick up our
wheels and fly—and the mail matter was lifted up free from everything
and held in solution! I am not given to exaggeration, and when I say a
thing I mean it.
However, time presses. At four in the afternoon we arrived on the summit
of Big Mountain, fifteen miles from Salt Lake City, when all the world
was glorified with the setting sun, and the most stupendous panorama of
mountain peaks yet encountered burst on our sight. We looked out upon
this sublime spectacle from under the arch of a brilliant rainbow! Even
the overland stage-driver stopped his horses and gazed!
Half an hour or an hour later, we changed horses, and took supper with a
Mormon “Destroying Angel.”
“Destroying Angels,” as I understand it, are Latter-Day Saints who are
set apart by the Church to conduct permanent disappearances of obnoxious
citizens. I had heard a deal about these Mormon Destroying Angels and
the dark and bloody deeds they had done, and when I entered this one’s
house I had my shudder all ready. But alas for all our romances, he was
nothing but a loud, profane, offensive, old blackguard! He was murderous
enough, possibly, to fill the bill of a Destroyer, but would you have
_any_ kind of an Angel devoid of dignity? Could you abide an Angel in an
unclean shirt and no suspenders? Could you respect an Angel with a
horse-laugh and a swagger like a buccaneer?
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There were other blackguards present—comrades of this one. And there was
one person that looked like a gentleman—Heber C. Kimball’s son, tall and
well made, and thirty years old, perhaps. A lot of slatternly women
flitted hither and thither in a hurry, with coffee-pots, plates of
bread, and other appurtenances to supper, and these were said to be the
wives of the Angel—or some of them, at least. And of course they were;
for if they had been hired “help” they would not have let an angel from
above storm and swear at them as he did, let alone one from the place
this one hailed from.
This was our first experience of the western “peculiar institution,” and
it was not very prepossessing. We did not tarry long to observe it, but
hurried on to the home of the Latter-Day Saints, the stronghold of the
prophets, the capital of the only absolute monarch in America—Great Salt
Lake City. As the night closed in we took sanctuary in the Salt Lake
House and unpacked our baggage.
CHAPTER XIII.
We had a fine supper, of the freshest meats and fowls and vegetables—a