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Authors: James D Houston
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discourage the coyotes. After the burial, papa climbed onto his mare and said good-bye.
I have already compared that river to a snake, and it was not by chance. Every river I have ever seen goes curving and looping from where it starts to wherever it ends up. The Snake River, which I have not seen, is one example. The Humboldt is another. For a while it was called the Mary’s. But that is one they could just as well have called the Snake, in my opinion, instead of naming it for a fellow who never even saw Nevada. It makes an evil mark through a devilish place, and I am glad I have not had to go anywhere near it since the time we made the crossing. We had to stand by that river and watch papa ride out on a starving horse with his head wrapped in a bloody kerchief and his hat split to fit around the bandage. He was wearing buckskins then, like some of the other men, trousers and fringed tunic, so elegant when we left Fort Laramie, all smeared and dark now with firesmoke and sweat, and nothing in front of him but sand and chalk and bare mountains. I can tell you it was the hardest day of my life up to that time, and the hardest day for mama too, though we would all have worse days before that trip was done.
She had put one husband in the grave. Now she had followed her second husband to the very end of the world and was surely imagining that she could be widowed again, at thirty-two. She looked as if it had been her who took the knife blow to the chest, not Snyder, as if it was her life that flowed into the sand beside the river. I know now that she wanted to fall down and quit right there, but she braced herself against the wagon, so she would not seem to falter. She had decided to be strong for the rest of us, and I have to say that from that day forward she was strong in ways none of us had seen before. As I have said, the stabbing of John Snyder changed all our lives.
That evening she made up a packet of jerked beef and biscuits. Where it came from, I still don’t know. She wrapped up some powder and percussion caps too, in defiance of the terms of banishment, and passed them to Milt Elliott, along with papa’s rifle. Under cover of darkness he and Virginia followed the river trail on horseback. They rode all night, caught up with papa, and got back to the wagons before dawn. I know she hoped papa would take her with him, to be his horse-girl companion, as she’d been all the way across the plains. I had wanted him all to myself. So did she. But he knew better than anyone else what lay in store for him.
After he sent Virginia back with Milt, she cried without letup. She cried until our wagons came upon the place where they had found him camping. There were the markings of the fire he had built, and scattered around it were the loose feathers of a bird he must have shot the next morning—which was his way of telling us he’d already made good use of the rifle and found himself something to eat. Mama said we would build our family fire on the same spot, as if the place held some of his spirit, or perhaps by making a fire there we would send our blessing forward to travel with him. Or perhaps it was just a family’s way to keep the flame of hope burning from one day to the next, touching papa’s campfire spots and, when we could, gathering one feather of a bird that had helped keep him alive.
A few days later, when we caught up with the advance party, we learned that he spent a night with the Donners before moving on. So we knew he made it at least that far along the Humboldt. They gave him another packet of food to carry and a partner to travel with, a young teamster who no longer had a team to drive with all the animals and wagons we had lost. Crossing the desert was too risky for one man alone. The Donners couldn’t spare a horse, but they could spare a teamster. So papa and his new partner had one horse between them. They made a lonesome sight, I heard George Donner say, heading out at dawn, one mounted, one on
I have already compared that river to a snake, and it was not by chance. Every river I have ever seen goes curving and looping from where it starts to wherever it ends up. The Snake River, which I have not seen, is one example. The Humboldt is another. For a while it was called the Mary’s. But that is one they could just as well have called the Snake, in my opinion, instead of naming it for a fellow who never even saw Nevada. It makes an evil mark through a devilish place, and I am glad I have not had to go anywhere near it since the time we made the crossing. We had to stand by that river and watch papa ride out on a starving horse with his head wrapped in a bloody kerchief and his hat split to fit around the bandage. He was wearing buckskins then, like some of the other men, trousers and fringed tunic, so elegant when we left Fort Laramie, all smeared and dark now with firesmoke and sweat, and nothing in front of him but sand and chalk and bare mountains. I can tell you it was the hardest day of my life up to that time, and the hardest day for mama too, though we would all have worse days before that trip was done.
She had put one husband in the grave. Now she had followed her second husband to the very end of the world and was surely imagining that she could be widowed again, at thirty-two. She looked as if it had been her who took the knife blow to the chest, not Snyder, as if it was her life that flowed into the sand beside the river. I know now that she wanted to fall down and quit right there, but she braced herself against the wagon, so she would not seem to falter. She had decided to be strong for the rest of us, and I have to say that from that day forward she was strong in ways none of us had seen before. As I have said, the stabbing of John Snyder changed all our lives.
That evening she made up a packet of jerked beef and biscuits. Where it came from, I still don’t know. She wrapped up some powder and percussion caps too, in defiance of the terms of banishment, and passed them to Milt Elliott, along with papa’s rifle. Under cover of darkness he and Virginia followed the river trail on horseback. They rode all night, caught up with papa, and got back to the wagons before dawn. I know she hoped papa would take her with him, to be his horse-girl companion, as she’d been all the way across the plains. I had wanted him all to myself. So did she. But he knew better than anyone else what lay in store for him.
After he sent Virginia back with Milt, she cried without letup. She cried until our wagons came upon the place where they had found him camping. There were the markings of the fire he had built, and scattered around it were the loose feathers of a bird he must have shot the next morning—which was his way of telling us he’d already made good use of the rifle and found himself something to eat. Mama said we would build our family fire on the same spot, as if the place held some of his spirit, or perhaps by making a fire there we would send our blessing forward to travel with him. Or perhaps it was just a family’s way to keep the flame of hope burning from one day to the next, touching papa’s campfire spots and, when we could, gathering one feather of a bird that had helped keep him alive.
A few days later, when we caught up with the advance party, we learned that he spent a night with the Donners before moving on. So we knew he made it at least that far along the Humboldt. They gave him another packet of food to carry and a partner to travel with, a young teamster who no longer had a team to drive with all the animals and wagons we had lost. Crossing the desert was too risky for one man alone. The Donners couldn’t spare a horse, but they could spare a teamster. So papa and his new partner had one horse between them. They made a lonesome sight, I heard George Donner say, heading out at dawn, one mounted, one on
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