--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Lyman, Albert R. collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 16 number: 7 published: 1913-05 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'Lyman, Albert R., "Voice of the Intangible: Chapter X—A Trail of Flour," *Improvement Era* 16, no. 7 (May 1913): 705–714.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1607unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera1607unse start_page: 705 end_page: 714 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1913-05) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1607unse publication_year: 1913 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1913, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # Voice of the Intangible: Chapter X—A Trail of Flour elNTANGIBLE> Lake Pagahrit Chapter X—A Trail of Flour Josh Widder's lust for self-praise, included a mania for bragging on one or more of his horses. It was usually some brute of which he had lately become owner, and often the extravagance of his boast was matched by the extravagance of his cruelty to the animal of which he boasted. In the spring following the affair at the mouth of Lake Gulch, it was a blue mule — a wonderful creature about twice as big as a billy-goat, with a slim, razor-backed look, and ears that hung like a pair of bedraggled daps. He could kick a streak, a blue streak, of course, and packing him up was like packing a jack-rabbit ; for sometimes when Widder had all but hung the panniers on the forks, the mule slipped away like an eel, and anteloped it over the hills with tail straight out behind. He, of course, received a stiff beating for such insolent conduct, and the fat man's masterly hand tied knots in the cinch to make it short enough, and then pulled the laragos till ring struck ring. With the pack lashed securely in place, you might see the ears in front, the tail behind, and four slender pegs holding the load above the sand ; but the hips and neck and narrow body of the blue mule, reached through the center of the pack like a core through an apple. According to Widder's version of it, the mule was "a absolute honey." Josh had a grain pack on a gray mare, but the "absolute honey" carried the stupendous food supply intended to furnish one generous gorge every morning, noon, and night for. thirty days. The little fellow nipped along under his heavy burden, and everything went smoothly and merrily enough on the outward trip as far as Greenwater. At that camp the knots had made sores 706 IMPROVEMENT ERA in the mule's belly, and when the saddle went on for the last time before reaching Pagahrit, he dropped his ears and became despair personified. I lowever, when the knots of the cinch drew up against his raw flesh, he became Satan, or one of his imps, and waited with Satanic cunning to promote his Majesty's purposes. The panniers went on O. K., and the sacks between had given the pack its shape, the pannier-strap was buckled and ready for the canvas, when Widder's precious blue mule simply exploded, and flew down the gulch like a comet, leaving behind a path pale with Hour, and rice, and beans, and baking-powder; a perfect "Duke's mixture" of all the grub but a side of bacon, — that wouldn't mix, it landed all in one place. That mule appeared to kick the very flap of. his ears, and certain it is that he jabbed a hind foot through the bottom of each pannier, and smeared himself with preserves and flour and molasses, (ill lie might have been green and no one know it. With a pannier on each hind leg, the strap tight across his hips, he presented a vulgar picture indeed — a figure suggesting a slovenly cook in ill-fitting bloomers. Josh mounted in red-hot pursuit, and in due course of time came towing ihe mule back, dap-eared and demoralized ; but the biscuit-dust and its companions of the chuck-bags had gone entirely to perdition. A knotty problem faced the Pagahrit outfit: eighty miles to any base of supplies — food for only three ordinary eaters — four caters to eat it, and one of them with stomach-capacity to outswine a four-hundred-pound porker. A contract binding the delivery of steers to time and place, precluded a home-trip for more provisions, so the round-up went forward ; with the understanding, however, that all hands should eat plenty of beef, "go light" on everything else. Now it might be an injustice and a falsehood to say that Josh didn't go lighter on the hash than at other times, but granting that he ate even twenty-five per cent less than ever before, he could still circumnavigate beans and rice on a wholesale basis, and the way he shoveled them through the semi-lunar aperture in his face, was nothing less than a sure prophecy of famine within fifteen days. But to mention that fact to him, without using some blood-bringing, bone-breaking argument, would be without effect ; and no one felt disposed at first to use the only effectual logic. Besides the impending famine for bread, the weather bade fair to bring a famine for water also. Not a drop of rain had fallen since February, and now, on the tenth of May, the tanks were either dry or containing only a seething mass of perishing pollywogs. A successful drive from Pagahrit to the Elk Mountain had never yet been made without the aid of recent rains. Still, despite VOICE OF THE INTANGIBLE 707 the faith and hope of Fred Rojer, the sky staid clear, and the panniers grew woefully gaunt. Even in all this, and between Ben's moments of intensity, when the flames of his anger had burned out and died away, he heard the Intangible,— that silent music from the brilliant day — that call of enchantment from the distant haze. It came mysteriously to him from somewhere, perhaps from "his own soul the music of wonderful melodies." Sometimes the heated desert became a plain of glory, and the heat-legions took form of seraphs on the hills. They spoke to him in words that the spirit hears, they stirred an emotion akin but superior to the emotion of sweet music. Also in his cave he felt the old-time peace, put a new notch below the date on the wall, and renewed his covenants with every intangible element of joy that had blessed him in that place. Along with all this, like the sound of something coming — coming — were self-shaping thoughts of hunger, thirst, and a dark gulf of misery yawning between them and the date and place named in their contract. In the afternoon of the first hard day's drive from the lake, when the bawling herd had smelled water and hurried up Castle Wash, only to reach a sorrowful pool too small to satisfy ten head ; when the horses, gaunt and weary and covered with dried lather and dust, stood sadly and patiently to one side of the mad scramble for drink, — Ben fancied himself on the edge of that gulf. He heard no Intangible, he hated Josh, and unconsciously he admitted that the clear sky was brass above, with no God to see or know their hunger and weariness, nor the financial failure they could so ill afford in their poverty to meet. Josh was in a violent pet. His beautiful blue mule had fagged out, and from a few noisy licks on the canvas over the saddle, the fat man developed a fierce rage, and beat the poor little '"honey," till bloody lumps stood out on all parts of its body not covered with the pack. "Every man an' beast in the outfil'll follow that mule's example within five days," he mused to himself, "we can't hold up without chuck, an' the horses've got to have grass, an' the cows water, or it's all off mighty quick now." Then old Bill, for young Rojer rode the old gray to favor Alec and Flossy, stubbed his toe, and tumbled on to his nose. Without taking time to consider anything but the awkward fall Ben exploded in a volly of blows on the poor old grey. "Don't beat your horse, son," interposed Fred Rojer, happening just then to ride down that side of the herd, "he's a poor dumb creature,' and he isn't to blame for being away off here in this starving, choking wilderness. Do you see that sweat under his eye and back of his ear? He's played out. A horse can't live 708 IMPROVEMENT ERA on grain alone, he must have grass, and you know they get mighty little of that." "Oh I'm sorry I hit 'im," and young Rojer caressed the lopping ears apologetically, "but it seems to me that everything is against us. I never did see affairs quite so black." "Son, this is a very important time," declared the father, his brave soul towering above his fear and anxiety, "I'm eager to see what kind of grit you show under conditions like these. I've seen this sort of thing before, but you never have. I know what it means, and I'm glad I'm here to remind you that this is one of the special man-proving or thing-proving tests, that the Lord has arranged for us to pass through. I'm tired and hungry, and I don't know how this thing is going to turn out. It does look dark as you say, that is, far as the herd and the debts are concerned, but the Lord knows all about it, and He'll fix it all up some way. The main thing for me and you to do is to act the part of men, to show by our courage and determination that our manhood is not the kind to peter out just when it is needed most." "But Pa, it looks pretty tough to see this herd so hollow and bawling with thirst, an' all these horses so near flunked. Alec can't hold up till we get to the mountain, and as you say this old fellow is about 'all in' right now." "Yes, son, I've taken account of that, and of the prospects of big loss and lots of misery ; but when this herd and these horses are all dead, you and I will be building in this or some other world, and all we will have to build on will be the foundation we begin here — the foundation of man or thing. So I'm not thinking of the herd alone, but of you ; and hoping and praying that you'll have the sand to be true blue whatever comes. If I lose the round-up and find out at the same time that you're a weakling, I'll feel pretty bad. If I find you to be of good, reliable stuff, I can stand the loss of the cows, for I expect to claim you as my son when our poverty and hardships are matters of the remote past. I hear good voices yet, son — something tells me it will be all gain and no loss if only we are true to the last bitter end of the ordeal." The sky looked dry-eyed upon the bleaching sand, and the last pollywogs died in the tanks. Though Castle Gulch and Clay Hill almost smoked with thirst, they yet had more water than the country beyond, and the outfit waited there three days trying to give each choking steer a drink, before venturing into the desert at the foot of the hill. The beans gave out, — the oatmeal and preserves and molasses and bacon gave out, and the rice and bread came down to a woefully narrow allowance for a meal. When the last slim mess of that rice was lifted from the coals, its toothsome bubbles called loudly to the taste-nerves of four starving souls. One of those souls, in the bitterness of his need, VOICE OF THE INTANGIBLE 709 had considered only his own self, and grown ravenous and brutal like a famishing wolf. The other three, in their gnawing hunger, found new strength of compassion for each other's distresses. Josh lowered himself to that meagre spread, with the grunt and puff of a huge bull reposing for a nap. In his studied diplomacy he waited till the rice dish had gone through the modest hands of the other three. They each took about a twelfth of the precious morsel, expecting it to return three or four times during the meal. Then the fat man took it up with triumphant grin, and blamed if he didn't scoop out all that remained, and gulp it down •with greedy smile as the biggest pug at the trough is wont to do. Jud's jaws grew knotty, and the lips of his wide mouth pressed firmly together. "Well I'll be" — snorted Ben, half rising, but Fred Rojer's stern look demanded peace in their starving camp, and the three sat still in disgust, while the victorious hog grinned his satisfaction and licked his chops in perfect delight. Each man's eyes sank farther into his head every day. Widder's trousers hung in a vacant flap at the waist-band, but all that he lost in size he made up in ill-temper to man and beast. He whipped his horses and beat the cattle, he growled and grumbled as if the three others of the outfit were personally responsible for this famine of bread and water, and as if their pangs of hunger and weariness were never so keen as his own. He sang no more in the evening, nor wasted breath to boast of his mule. He worked himself into a perfect frenzy whipping the poor little creature, and finally pulled off the empty saddle, and left that "absolute honey" dap-eared and dejected like a dummy in the trail. Jud's lusty voice announced the gray arrival of every one of those miserable days. He came out of bed like a thing wound up to go off at a certain time, and he wasn't at all timid in bawling through the young day-light, "Git up an' take yer rations an' fly at it." His separation from the blankets meant a crackling, and commotion, and smoke, which all hands had to join at once. "Our bill-o'-fare's awful simple," he would say, cocking some ribs up by the fire, "but I've hearn say that all great men eat simple chuck an' not much of it neither." He grinned his heavy-jawed defiance at every disheartening situation, and sang some chivalrous cow-boy doggerel, just when Ben felt most like indulging his tears or his curses. Tud may. or may not. have added a little extra for young RojeV's benefit,— but in either case words were more than bread and milk to the starving boy. "Ben," he would say, looking with his own into young Rojer's hollow eyes, "a man's the kind of a thing that takes 'is medicine, an' keeps a hangm' an' a ratthn . The grumbler an' the bellyacher might be as big as a cow, but e aint no man." 710 IMPROVEMENT ERA Something in the heavy jaw, or the hawk-bill nose, or the crow-feet, inspired Jud's horses with the assurance that they were fellow-laborers in a great struggle, and they bore him with the same good will and starving fidelity, that he bore his own hunger and weariness. Roast meat became the regular fare, and the perishing biscuits choice dessert. During the three days wait at Clay Hill, a liberal slab of beef was hung by the fire in the morning ; and at noon, or as soon thereafter as he could be spared from the herd, each man came in his turn to camp, cut off a rib or a joint, and gnawed it as he rode back on the "lope." For seasoning, besides a little salt, there was the dust of the round-up, and the echoing protest of a herd growing desperate with thirst. In the afternoon of the third day, when they made a special ride to clear East Fork of the cattle allowed to hunt water in its side-canyons, Ben coming out of a cove met his father on a horse completely fagged. "You see, son," said the man, drawing the boy's attention to the exhausted condition of the horse, "we're having some valuable experience. I hope you'll have it to remember that I bore these things with good grace, and didn't complain against the Lord, nor vent my feelings of misery on his children or his dumb creatures." Young Rojer had no answer worthy of expression ; he simply looked the reverence he felt for honor and fidelity, for he saw it in hunger and rage on a given-out horse. The herd came stringing down from dry Clay Hill to a drier desert, and the dust rose up in a great choking cloud and followed like a boding evil. To fall short of Dripping Spring that day meant failure, sure, and yet it would never do to urge those famishing creatures — they must go their own slow gait or not at all. Some of them had no heart to drag one foot after another, and turned their sunken eyes threateningly back, as if to weigh their courage to make a full stop. Some did stop, and stood stark-still in the road, while the herd moved on over the next raise in the desert. Horses and cattle gave out that day at a sickening rate, and young Rojer raised his hollow eyes to the dry, black forest a-head, and wondered what the end would be. He was hungry and weary and sick, — of a diet of flesh, sick of the bawling steers with their glassy eyes and lean bodies, sick of the given-out horses and their pleading looks, of the heat and dust and the draggling herd that scarcely moved, and sick to death of Widder's thick nose, his black mustache, and the evil words proceeding always from under it. Without his father and Jud — without their kindness and hope, young Rojer would have thrown himself on the ground with a sullen curse for the herd and the desert, and the blistered trail of hunger and thirst ahead. VOICE OF THE INTANGIBLE 711 They had hoped to water some of the "drags" at Cow Tank, but that great cistern, cut by ancient streams in the solid sand-stone, held seven dead cows, and poisoned the air a long way on all sides. The herd crossed the gulch below the tank, and at sun-set reached the sand-hills five miles from Dripping Spring. It may have been ten o'clock and it may have been later when they came, scratched and weary and thirsty and sore, down through the scatteringtrees and over the rock to the spring itself. It is probable they lost a part of the herd in the dark and the cedars, and it is certain they had a big dose of misery in keeping any of them at all. Fifteen of the strongest steers may have fought the others away all right, and satisfied their thirst before morning, but the herd as a whole got no drink. They were turned down a gulch where a ledge hemmed them off below, and the outfit camping above completed the corral. Jud took his bed and the horses to a shelf a mile below, and brought them back in the gray dawn of nprning. At an early hour the bawling herd started into the cedar forest east of Dripping Spring. With no place nearer than Peavine to corral the bunch, and no horse-flesh with which to night-herd ; it was Peavine or nothing that day — all hands knew it. The sun mounted up through a cloudless sky, and by noon they had covered barely a quarter of the distance. Josh glanced up at the time, and raised his voice in many a wild yell which echoed away in the dry cedars of the Ridge. "Hay! Hay! Hay!" he urged, "Git out of it, confound yer lazy souls!" and the big lariat came fiercely down on the bony backs of the "drags." Some of the cattle staggered uncertainly along, while others, with just strength enough to match their desperation of thirst, walked fast and far in their search for water ; going away ahead, or stringing far up or down a shallow ravine to one side. Twice before noon the herd seemed to be scattered in the forest beyond all recovery. The horses, packs and all, traveled straight for the mountain, and at noon six miles separated them from the steers. Dinner, if dinner it could be called, was strictly out of the question,-— neither could their burning thirst argue that canteen out of the pack so far ahead. No man could be spared from the herd before it reached Harmony Flat, for Harmony Flat is the first opening in the forest on the trail from Dripping Spring. No consultation brought forth this decision, all hands understood it without a word. The "drags" moved slowly, oh ! so slowly through the trees, like a nightmare, leaving lean, glassy-eyed steers weak and motionless in the trail behind. That trail was punctuated every hundred yards with a yearling or a two-year-old. Whether they 712 IMPROVEMENT ERA found water or perished in the hunt, nobody knows. Very few of them ever came in sight again. From Harmony Flat, Ben took up the trail of the horses, and the various tones of the bawling herd died away behind him, — it died away but for the echo in his ears, an echo that would not hush. He rode Flossy. She alone of his mount would go without urging. Her pacing gait of one-two-three-four, one-two-three four, with an animating bound after four every time, afforded rest indeed. It was rest to look away from the misery and weariness behind, and to move straight ahead without turning back. The song of a bird or a breeze in the tree-tops, and better still the voice of that silent Something in the forest, became sweet harmony in contrast to the sounds of suffering behind! Then out of it all, as from a spirit that spoke through the medium of those things, Ben heard the same old voice, or at any rate he caught the same old feeling in the same old way: "It can't last always — it is but a short moment," and giving Flossy an affctionate touch with the spurs, he felt a new vigor in spite of the thirst that out-tortured his hunger. The tracks led on over Grand Flat, through the cedars, across Grand Gulch, across Hell's Half-Acre and into the cedars again, but there they were and they hated like sin to turn back. Ben met the herd on Grand Flat, and all hands drank and roasted a snack of beef. The meat did little for their failingstrength — it did more to build up the nausea and cramp which preyed on every man. They ate in silence, that is, all but Josh, — he cursed and growled over his three ribs, though the bones, when he threw them down, could have been no cleaner if a coyote had gnawed them. Jud looked from the bones to young Rojer, and bestowed the blessing of his wide-mouthed smile. "Well Ben, you do look skinny and gaunt," he admitted, "but you'll be a full-grown man when ye git off o' this trip." Then taking a chivalrous firmjawed view of the whole wretched situation, he put his foot in the stirrup. "I used to enjoy wolfing it," he chuckled, "but that's altogether too tame fer me any more — it ain't no ram-rod to this sort o' thing." Jud may have been no more able than the others to digest a menu of straight calf, but he could relish and digest and thrive on adversity, — for it, he seemed to have a veritable gizzard. Some element of his composition called for battle with adversity,— it formed one of the sterling ingredients in his sturdy combination. The outfit made poorer time every mile' across Grand Flat. They went at a snail's pace through the cedars, and strained every nerve getting into and out of Grand Gulch. They toiled VOICE OF THE INTANGIBLE 713 over Hell's Half-Acre, and merged into the forest east of it as the shadows grew long and dim. No one hoped now to get farther than the east brow of Cane Gulch, and make camp in the mouth of Snow-shoe Canyon. Down that long, rocky, cedar-grown hill, stumbled the herd like a thing on its last legs. The "drags," stopping and hiding in all directions, detained all hands at the tail of the herd, and when the leaders struck the bottom and scented water, they traveled straight up the gulch, and it is doubtful whether all four men on fresh horses could have persuaded those thirst-crazy creatures to wait. When the last dejected stragglers came out on the dry creekbed, the van of the round-up chose ways for itself in the forks of the canyon a mile above. Every man in the outfit knew they could never be brought back, nor induced or compelled to climb the east side if they were back. Moreover, the shades of twilight were fast prevailing in the tangles of forest each side of the stony creek-bed. Jud rode ahead to find the packs, but Ben and his father and Josh, moped silently along with the "drags." They had no more life than those "drags," and no more strength to battle the hunger and thirst which had thinned the ranks of the horses and cattle, and must soon thin the ranks of the men also. Their limbs ached and trembled for want of the elements which enable spirit to abide in flesh. Josh lacked the energy to grumble or curse, and the three horses and riders, and two dozen melancholy yearling steers, moved sadly and painfully onward, mute partners towards the bitter end of hard times. With just light enough to distinguish them, they found two pack-horses tied to a tree. The cattle had sought water up three thickly wooded forks of the gulch, and climbed out in a dozen places to the steep sides of the mountain. They could be heard in all directions, saying as plain as brute may say We thirst ! Oh we thirst." A dry breeze blew under a dry sky, and a dry forest ^f cedar and pines stretched away in the darkness on the hills, that echoed and re-echoed the cry of thirsty strangers in a strange, thi%ow's your sand, son?" asked Fred Rojer dismounting^ "think you can sleep here tonight without a drink?" He made no mention of food, for the agonies of thirst shame hunger off th scene, especially so when hunger is nauseated by a continuous diet °f ""I maTnot sleep," answered Ben, "but I can choke-it-out with thC rTSne0fneya0rest ^rass grew on top of the mountain, and if any a fire, an^ *ie 714 IMPROVEMENT ERA M £ "Thank the Lord we can rest a while," observed the father, motioning young Rojer to help spread out the quilts, "and tomorrow we'll make it up to these poor old horses." Late in the evening Jud came dragging into camp with the other three packs, and the rest of the horses. "My rattle's gettin' mighty faint," he panted, sinking down on a saddle, "but I've got the vinegar to climb that hill after I sleep a while." Let us not dwell on that wretched night, and the sleep wherein "a man dreameth he drinketh, but he awaketh and behold his soul is faint." Suffice it to say that when daylight came, no steer remained in sight or hearing; they had gone their several ways in quest of water, though most of the herd, as time proved, had followed the rocky gulch-bottoms to the mountain-top. The Pagahrit outfit clambered up over brush and trees and rocks before the rise of sun, and at ten o'clock reined up by the J. B. cabin at a certain spring on the mountain. After a drink and a rest, and another drink of the clear, cool water, they prospected the cabin, found the outfit away but the "chuck" at home, and made camp. By two o'clock the vacant flap in Widder's waistband had filled out like a bloated cow, and Widder lay helpless and happy on his blankets in a corner. For all that, he was able next morning to swing on to old Pancho and follow the outfit, each man riding his only available horse to town. Alec and Bill and practically all the mount that had not fallen by the way-side, were left to fatten on the blue-grass of Kigaly Point, while the Pagahrit outfit went home to recuperate. A COWBOY CABIN ON ELK MOUNTAIN THE (to BE continued)