The Open Road. Adventures V. and VI. A Story

The Open Road BY JOHN HENRY EVANS, OF THE LATTER-DAY SAINTS UNIVERSITY Adventure V. In Which Brocketts Pushes the Dour Open.

On that point of going to America, Brocketts was clear. If he did not go now, he would go when he could. That was decided. And so he began planning to bring about this desirable end. First, he endeavored to put himself in as good a way as possible with the three seamen who had expressed their intention of crossing the Atlantic. He was freer with them now than he had been. He sought them often. He talked with them and drew out endless narratives like those he had listened to that — morning by the shadowful candle light like all but one. For if there is any short cut to an old tar's heart, that way lies in getting him to tell sea tales and then accepting them yourself as his personal experiences. And the result was in this case that the three seamen developed a fondness for the boy. "And what kind of country is America?" he had asked Max, as the two stood against the taff-rail. Max had his broad, unshapely hand flattened out against the — rail that very hand in which Brocketts' own hand had been, once upon a time, when they had gone along the road to Vinningen and whence Brocketts had not returned. That was the hand that had done him and others of his kin such mischief. "Well, it's a big country —bigger 'n all Bavaria, maybe bigger'n all the land where the Rhine flows. The Abbot says so. He's been there, he says; I ain't." "It must be a grand country," Brocketts added, " 'cause so many go from Germany there. They do go from Germany to America, don't they?" "Yes, a good many do, that's a cinch ; and I warrant the country's better'n this, else they wouldn't go." "Do vou know, Max, that I'd like to go to America?"

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"Would you now?" Max looked at the boy. "Say," he said presently, "can you keep a secret?" "Keep it so's a tug of war couldn't pull it out of me!" answered Brocketts quickly. "Well, I'm going to America." Very softly, for a seaman. Max had evidently forgotten about that morning in the bunkhouse. Or had he supposed Brocketts had fallen asleep again? The men had heard nothing from him after those questions about the stolen boy, and the head had been withdrawn into the bunk. But, anyway, most men indiscreetly ignore the presence of boys, as if a boy now and then didn't have ears in exactly inverse ratio to his size. But he continued: "Adam and the Abbot's going, too. The Abbot says there's a place called Californy where all you have to do is to kick the dirt and pick up nuggets of gold. It's a land — of gold I wonder everybody ain't gone there." The reader must not mistake the date of this story on account of Max's allusion to our western coast state. Everybody knows that gold was found there in 1849. But even good news or, — unfortunately, in some cases it proved to be bad news — like this takes a long time to reach the inland countries of Europe. And besides the glamor of this event took longer to pass away everywhere outside of California than it did to come. This conversation happened more than twenty years afterwards. "I suppose, though," hinted Brocketts, "you've got plenty of money to pay your way there?" "Not a pfennig, boy, not a pfennig— leastways, not for passage. We're all going to work our way across to New York. We know the Captain of the Maria Pinta, and we're to be taken over as hands. Old Behner don't know this yet." "Do they ever need boys on the big ships ?" "Course they do !" "And do they ever work their way over sea, like you're going to do?" "Sure!" "Then maybe I can go over to America ! You wouldn't mind my going with you, would you ?" "Sure not— I wouldn't. And I'll speak to Captain Gunderson. He'll be at Rotterdam when we get there."

THE OPEN ROAD 227 At Rotterdam the three seamen abruptly left the Walrus, after drawing their pay, without saying a word to the captain of their intention to quit his service. What their purpose or motive might be Brocketts was wholly at a loss to fathom. When it was decided that he could go on the Maria Pinta and work his passage across the sea to New York, he went to Captain Behner. "I'm going to leave you now," he said. "What ? Going to leave me !" "Yes, sir." "And what's that for? Ain't I treated you right?" "Yes, sir." "Ain't I give you enough money?" "Yes, sir." In truth, the captain had paid him more than he had expected. "Well, then, what's the matter?" "Oh, I just want to quit." Brocketts was too chary to say more than was necessary. Something might happen to prevent his sailing for the Land of Hope. But he wanted to leave the captain on good terms. Seeing the way in which Behner took the matter, he added: "It won't put you out any, will it?" "No ; You've done your work but I've taken a liking to you. well, and I like you. But if you want to leave, of course, it's all right with me. I don't want to tie any strings on you."

And so Brocketts boarded the Maria Pinta as a hand. It — was a fine vessel for those days larger than Brocketts even dreamed a steamship could be. There were upwards of five hundred passengers on board, though it carried tons and tons of merchandise down there in the bottom of the hull. They sailed throught the Strait of Dover and the English Channel, and then almost due west to America. That was a hard voyage in more than one respect for pooi Brocketts. He was sick part of the way. But he had to work, sick or well, for Captain Gunderson was a different sort of man from Captain Behner. The fare, too, was coarse the biscuits — were hard enough to knock a man down with, and only the hot soup could reduce them to an edible state. He did not complain, though, for it was all of his own seeking. It required just thirty-two days to go from Rotterdam to New York.

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228 IMPROVEMENT ERA Leaving- the Maria Pinta— the three German seamen with huge regrets, for they were rough men used to the hard knocks of the sea; the German boy with none, for to him that was an undesirable life — the migrating four landed in the noisy harbor, high of hope, but thin of purse, to traverse a continent in search of an easy fortune.

Adventure VI. Which Tells What Happened in the Land of the Shallow Waters.

This particular camp fire merely acted like any decent camp fire on which you throw unexpectedly a quantity of brush, partly green. It showed a smudgy face, which said, as plainly as could be, that it had half a mind to go out and never come back again.

"You've put the thing out of commission, Brocketts," said a voice at his elbow. But the fire crackled softly and sent up into the prairie sky a beautiful column of white smoke — a tribute to the green brush. It would not have done even this much, though, if Brocketts had not fanned it with his hat; for camp fires, like some people, love to be coaxed and wheedled. Whereupon it burst into the cheeriest blaze you ever looked at.

All unconscious that it was only a lone fire on a wide Nebraska prairie, miles away from any human habitation— unless old Caesar Bodkin with his squaw wife and eight papooses, who lived ever so far off, and seven other families like his, only with more papooses, scattered over as many broad quarter-sections of land, might be classed under this category. All unconscious, too, that three men and a boy, bedraggled so their own mothers, if they ever had any, would not know them, were sitting or reclining around its comfortable warmth. There was the twelve-year-old Brocketts, first of all, a bit weary and hungry, but with no discouraging lines on his face. There was Max sitting dejectedly hugging his knees, fagged out inexpressibly. There also was Adam, sitting in the same posture, the most bedraggled of all, as being older, but with more of the dog's look on his face. The Abbot lay stretched out on a blanket near the fire, breathing heavily and groaning with fever and pain A wheelbarrow, also tired of life and action, tipped up on its side

THE OPEN ROAD 229 and one leg, sat disconsolately looking into the fire. A box had spilled its contents angrily at the feet of the barrow and would not pick themselves up. "Well, this huntin' gold ain't what it's cracked up to be!" Max burst forth, evidently to the fire, which answered by crackling louder and eating up more fuel. The Abbot groaned a timely acquiescence to the sentiment. " 'Tain't that," Adam corrected. "It's the bigness of this blasted continent. That fish at Omaha said we'd got barely half way —curse him for a felon!" Nature, you see, who made the big continent, escaped censure,and the man who merely recorded the fact of its bigness came in for all of poor Adam's spleen. The Abbot groaned again. Brocketts took a cloth dampened it in a small lard-pail of fresh water and spread it out over the sick man's forehead. The boy was greatly disturbed over the Abbot. "I feel all right about it," said the boy. "I c'n go another thousand miles, as long's we have plenty to eat." "That's because your bones ain't bones —they're gristle, an'

don't creak whenever you move." This from Adam. "Anyway, I don't see as that's any reason we shouldn't have supper," Brocketts added, changing the disagreeable subject and going immediately about the task of preparing the meal. And, indeed, it stood in sore need of being changed. When the four started out from New York, on foot and pushing by turns a loaded wheelbarrow, everybody was full of spirits of the im- — material kind, I mean. It was only those absurd Yankees whom they passed on their way that seemed full of the other kind, to look in their faces ! But the farther they went and the farther they pushed that barrow, the lower did the barometer of their feelings sink, now it had gone past zero and was ready to till freeze everything stiff. And their customary strong nature had risen proportionately into strong language. Of course it will not — do to set all that down in these pages not, mind you, because it could not be translated ; for our American vernacular is especially rich in that kind of explosives. But for other reasons. The unguarded word of the miserable "fish" at Omaha as to the immense stretches of countrv over which they had come, but more concerning

230 IMPROVEMENT ERA the immense stretches of country over which they must go in order to reach their destination ; the fact, if it was a fact, which Brocketts doubted, that a severe winter with hard frost and great depths of snow in the mountains had been ordered for their especial benefit ; and the sickness of the Abbot — all these things proved too much for the ambiton and avarice of three sailors pushing a wheelbarrow over the uneven surface of America. However that may be, though, Brocketts got out the "spider," fried some bacon and potatoes on the now tractable fire, got out some bread from among the spilled contents of the barrow, and the simple repast was ready. Nor were Max and Adam so loath to partake of it when it was prepared. The Abbot, of course, could eat nothing. There was no further conversation. The fire blazed up again, having been replenished with another armful of brush, and the sick man breathed a melancholy accompaniment. For a long time the silence continued. "I'll not go a step farther !" The men and the boy looked around. There was the Abbot sitting up, ghastly white and spectral, eyes staring frightfully in the light. Only a second of two he sat thus, for presently he sank back like lead. And the meal went on — only, with a heavier silence.

This had been the sole protest of the poor Abbot ever since he began to ail. "Ill not go a step farther !" he had cried again and again. But this was the last time he was to say it. "The Abbot's dead!" Brocketts exclaimed excitedly, when he went to replace the wet cloth on the man's forehead. He turned suddenly the pallor of the dead man. The others did not even look up. They knew it already. That night the three took turns watching the dead— as if he needed watching—and to keep up the fire. The next morning, as soon as it was light enough, Brocketts was sent three miles forward to Caesar Bodkin's for a pick and shovel, and when he returned, the last rites, simple and rude, were done for their dead comrade. And when that was finished, the three looked moodily into one another's faces. It required no second glance at those faces to see that the boy and the men were on opposite sides.

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"Will ye give in now?" Max asked. "What difference should this make?" inquired Brocketts in answer, as he moved his hand in the direction of the fresh-turned earth. "We're only three instead of four. Three can make it." "Two might make it," Adam said, looking at Max, "but three won't in this case And you can put that in your pipe and smoke !

it."

"No more won't two make it!" Max fairly shouted, ungrammatically. "Why?" asked the boy, simply. "I want to know." They stared at him incredulously. You see, adventurers in search of gold never have been so persevering, once they have come upon a difficulty, as those who have been actuated by any other motive, like religion or freedom or love. Brocketts was not made of the stuff that gives up easily and, with his higher purpose in getting to the golden country, he could see no reason for giving up. Max and Adam together enumerated the points in favor of going back. They could not stand another thousand miles of worse country than they had come over. But they had stood that, Brocketts urged. Very true, but a hard winter was coming on, and people were known to have perished by the hundreds in the mountains, and here were they — only three !

But could they not go back to Omaha for the winter? Brocketts would concede that much. They could, but they wouldn't. That was certain. And then, even if they went on at any future time, there would be the danger of going through the "Mormon" town. Well, Utah wasn't such a big town, Brocketts ventured, that it couldn't be gone round. That's most likely what others had done, anyhow. It might be, but they were not going to risk it. They didn't need money badly enough to die for it, as the Abbot had done, poor fellow. There lay the true reason, though Brocketts did not press the point —the terror that had seized upon their hearts at the death of the Abbot. The boy did not tell them his reason for what they imagined his pig-headedness, and they did not divine it. They

232 IMPROVEMENT ERA imagined it to be a love of gold like theirs. It was love of gold, though not for the gold's sake, but for the long search it would help him to make. "There'll have to be a division, then," Max said. It appeared so to Brocketts. "Take your choice of the things, boy," Max added, magnanimously. There was the wheelbarrow with the supply of food, there was the bedding, and there were two guns and a revolver. Brocketts took the wheelbarrow, part of the food supplies, and the forty-four Colt's. The three shook hands, a lump in their throats, and wishes of success for each other on their lips. Then the two shouldered their rifles and their bag of provisions, and trudged backward over the trail they had followed five days before. Brocketts sat on the handle of his barrow till the two figures grew smaller and smaller in the distance. This was a hard lot he had chosen, and required almost more courage than he could muster— more than he would have thought he could muster a few days before. The lump grew painful in his throat. He suddenly became unutterably lonely. The only two persons on the earth he had been friendly with were fast disappearing behind a sand dune. And there lay the only other one he had ever really cared for, under three feet of earth. He had half a mind to follow the two. But he did not. He watched the retreating forms till they were out of sight, and then, picking up the handles of the barrow, he pushed his way in the direction of his hopes in the Golden West. (To be continued.)

A STREET IN WOODRUFF, UTAH.

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Here happy lovers pass the hours away, The stranger muses on the scene apart Law, Record, Agriculture, Treasure, Art, — War, Patents, Justice set in due array There loom the Public Buildings, vast and gray And there the statues from the darkness startThose who in History have made their part Make one of