Roughing It
After all our hard travel, here we were on the bank of the stream again,
with the inn beyond dimly outlined through the driving snow-fall. While
we were considering what to do, the young Swede landed from the canoe
and took his pedestrian way Carson-wards, singing his same tiresome song
about his “sister and his brother” and “the child in the grave with its
mother,” and in a short minute faded and disappeared in the white
oblivion. He was never heard of again. He no doubt got bewildered and
lost, and Fatigue delivered him over to Sleep and Sleep betrayed him to
Death. Possibly he followed our treacherous tracks till he became
exhausted and dropped.
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Presently the Overland stage forded the now fast receding stream and
started toward Carson on its first trip since the flood came. We
hesitated no longer, now, but took up our march in its wake, and trotted
merrily along, for we had good confidence in the driver’s bump of
locality. But our horses were no match for the fresh stage team. We were
soon left out of sight; but it was no matter, for we had the deep ruts
the wheels made for a guide. By this time it was three in the afternoon,
and consequently it was not very long before night came—and not with a
lingering twilight, but with a sudden shutting down like a cellar door,
as is its habit in that country. The snowfall was still as thick as
ever, and of course we could not see fifteen steps before us; but all
about us the white glare of the snow-bed enabled us to discern the
smooth sugar-loaf mounds made by the covered sage-bushes, and just in
front of us the two faint grooves which we knew were the steadily
filling and slowly disappearing wheel-tracks.
Now those sage-bushes were all about the same height—three or four feet;
they stood just about seven feet apart, all over the vast desert; each
of them was a mere snow-mound, now; in _any_ direction that you
proceeded (the same as in a well laid out orchard) you would find
yourself moving down a distinctly defined avenue, with a row of these
snow-mounds an either side of it—an avenue the customary width of a
road, nice and level in its breadth, and rising at the sides in the most
natural way, by reason of the mounds. But we had not thought of this.
Then imagine the chilly thrill that shot through us when it finally
occurred to us, far in the night, that since the last faint trace of the
wheel-tracks had long ago been buried from sight, we might now be
wandering down a mere sage-brush avenue, miles away from the road and
diverging further and further away from it all the time. Having a cake
of ice slipped down one’s back is placid comfort compared to it. There
was a sudden leap and stir of blood that had been asleep for an hour,
and as sudden a rousing of all the drowsing activities in our minds and
bodies. We were alive and awake at once—and shaking and quaking with
consternation, too. There was an instant halting and dismounting, a
bending low and an anxious scanning of the road-bed. Useless, of course;
for if a faint depression could not be discerned from an altitude of
four or five feet above it, it certainly could not with one’s nose
nearly against it.
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CHAPTER XXXII.
We seemed to be in a road, but that was no proof. We tested this by
walking off in various directions—the regular snow-mounds and the
regular avenues between them convinced each man that _he_ had found the
true road, and that the others had found only false ones. Plainly the
situation was desperate. We were cold and stiff and the horses were
tired. We decided to build a sage-brush fire and camp out till morning.
This was wise, because if we were wandering from the right road and the
snow-storm continued another day our case would be the next thing to
hopeless if we kept on.
All agreed that a camp fire was what would come nearest to saving us,
now, and so we set about building it. We could find no matches, and so
we tried to make shift with the pistols. Not a man in the party had ever
tried to do such a thing before, but not a man in the party doubted that
it _could_ be done, and without any trouble—because every man in the
party had read about it in books many a time and had naturally come to
believe it, with trusting simplicity, just as he had long ago accepted
and believed that _other_ common book-fraud about Indians and lost
hunters making a fire by rubbing two dry sticks together.
We huddled together on our knees in the deep snow, and the horses put
their noses together and bowed their patient heads over us; and while
the feathery flakes eddied down and turned us into a group of white
statuary, we proceeded with the momentous experiment. We broke twigs
from a sage bush and piled them on a little cleared place in the shelter
of our bodies. In the course of ten or fifteen minutes all was ready,
and then, while conversation ceased and our pulses beat low with anxious
suspense, Ollendorff applied his revolver, pulled the trigger and blew
the pile clear out of the county! It was the flattest failure that ever
was.
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This was distressing, but it paled before a greater horror—the horses
were gone! I had been appointed to hold the bridles, but in my absorbing
anxiety over the pistol experiment I had unconsciously dropped them and
the released animals had walked off in the storm. It was useless to try
to follow them, for their footfalls could make no sound, and one could
pass within two yards of the creatures and never see them. We gave them
up without an effort at recovering them, and cursed the lying books that
said horses would stay by their masters for protection and companionship
in a distressful time like ours.
We were miserable enough, before; we felt still more forlorn, now.
Patiently, but with blighted hope, we broke more sticks and piled them,
and once more the Prussian shot them into annihilation. Plainly, to
light a fire with a pistol was an art requiring practice and experience,
and the middle of a desert at midnight in a snow-storm was not a good
place or time for the acquiring of the accomplishment. We gave it up and
tried the other. Each man took a couple of sticks and fell to chafing
them together. At the end of half an hour we were thoroughly chilled,
and so were the sticks. We bitterly execrated the Indians, the hunters
and the books that had betrayed us with the silly device, and wondered
dismally what was next to be done. At this critical moment Mr. Ballou
fished out four matches from the rubbish of an overlooked pocket. To
have found four gold bars would have seemed poor and cheap good luck
compared to this.
One cannot think how good a match looks under such circumstances—or how
lovable and precious, and sacredly beautiful to the eye. This time we
gathered sticks with high hopes; and when Mr. Ballou prepared to light
the first match, there was an amount of interest centred upon him that
pages of writing could not describe. The match burned hopefully a
moment, and then went out. It could not have carried more regret with it
if it had been a human life. The next match simply flashed and died. The
wind puffed the third one out just as it was on the imminent verge of
success. We gathered together closer than ever, and developed a
solicitude that was rapt and painful, as Mr. Ballou scratched our last
hope on his leg. It lit, burned blue and sickly, and then budded into a
robust flame. Shading it with his hands, the old gentleman bent
gradually down and every heart went with him—everybody, too, for that
matter—and blood and breath stood still. The flame touched the sticks at
last, took gradual hold upon them—hesitated—took a stronger
hold—hesitated again—held its breath five heart-breaking seconds, then
gave a sort of human gasp and went out.
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Nobody said a word for several minutes. It was a solemn sort of silence;
even the wind put on a stealthy, sinister quiet, and made no more noise
than the falling flakes of snow. Finally a sad-voiced conversation
began, and it was soon apparent that in each of our hearts lay the
conviction that this was our last night with the living. I had so hoped
that I was the only one who felt so. When the others calmly acknowledged
their conviction, it sounded like the summons itself. Ollendorff said:
“Brothers, let us die together. And let us go without one hard feeling
towards each other. Let us forget and forgive bygones. I know that you
have felt hard towards me for turning over the canoe, and for knowing
too much and leading you round and round in the snow—but I meant well;
forgive me. I acknowledge freely that I have had hard feelings against
Mr. Ballou for abusing me and calling me a logarythm, which is a thing I
do not know what, but no doubt a thing considered disgraceful and
unbecoming in America, and it has scarcely been out of my mind and has
hurt me a great deal—but let it go; I forgive Mr. Ballou with all my
heart, and—”
Poor Ollendorff broke down and the tears came. He was not alone, for I
was crying too, and so was Mr. Ballou. Ollendorff got his voice again
and forgave me for things I had done and said. Then he got out his
bottle of whisky and said that whether he lived or died he would never
touch another drop. He said he had given up all hope of life, and
although ill-prepared, was ready to submit humbly to his fate; that he
wished he could be spared a little longer, not for any selfish reason,
but to make a thorough reform in his character, and by devoting himself
to helping the poor, nursing the sick, and pleading with the people to
guard themselves against the evils of intemperance, make his life a
beneficent example to the young, and lay it down at last with the
precious reflection that it had not been lived in vain. He ended by
saying that his reform should begin at this moment, even here in the
presence of death, since no longer time was to be vouchsafed wherein to
prosecute it to men’s help and benefit—and with that he threw away the
bottle of whisky.
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Mr. Ballou made remarks of similar purport, and began the reform he
could not live to continue, by throwing away the ancient pack of cards
that had solaced our captivity during the flood and made it bearable.
He said he never gambled, but still was satisfied that the meddling with
cards in any way was immoral and injurious, and no man could be wholly
pure and blemishless without eschewing them. “And therefore,” continued
he, “in doing this act I already feel more in sympathy with that
spiritual saturnalia necessary to entire and obsolete reform.” These
rolling syllables touched him as no intelligible eloquence could have
done, and the old man sobbed with a mournfulness not unmingled with
satisfaction.
My own remarks were of the same tenor as those of my comrades, and I
know that the feelings that prompted them were heartfelt and sincere. We
were all sincere, and all deeply moved and earnest, for we were in the
presence of death and without hope. I threw away my pipe, and in doing
it felt that at last I was free of a hated vice and one that had ridden
me like a tyrant all my days. While I yet talked, the thought of the
good I might have done in the world and the still greater good I might
_now_ do, with these new incentives and higher and better aims to guide
me if I could only be spared a few years longer, overcame me and the
tears came again. We put our arms about each other’s necks and awaited
the warning drowsiness that precedes death by freezing.
It came stealing over us presently, and then we bade each other a last
farewell. A delicious dreaminess wrought its web about my yielding
senses, while the snow-flakes wove a winding sheet about my conquered
body. Oblivion came. The battle of life was done.
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