Colter's Path (9781101604830) (13 page)
Read Colter's Path (9781101604830) Online
Authors: Cameron Judd
“You get down and shove on this pole awhile, if you're not happy,” said Treemont to the general at one point while trying to help urge a wagon up a steep incline with a lever pole.
Lloyd's face reddened at the challenge and he stammered a moment and said, “Insubordinate scoundrel!” before petulantly riding away from Treemont on his plodding horse.
“Good riddance,” Tree muttered just loud enough for the old military man to hear.
Near the end of May, Crozier Bellingham wrote the following in his journal:
Louisville at last! We reached the city on the twenty-sixth and the general spirit among the emigrants is one of hope that finally, if we are fortunate, we are past our hardest obstacles until we cross the plains and reach the western mountains. If the rugged country of Kentucky was sufficient to slow us as much as it did (with the help, of course, of General Poke-along Lloyd), I shudder to think how long it will take us to finish our journey.
The plains, I am sure, will be much easier to cross than what we have dealt with so far. Beyond the river the country will be flatter for a great distance. It is my hope we will be able to make up for some of the time we have lost, though I know my inexperience and thus wonder if I am merely hoping wishfully rather than realistically.
For reasons not readily obvious, General Lloyd seemed to gain some new energy and motivation for a few days. He made arrangements to move the expedition forward a little more rapidly. Most of the wagons were put, already loaded, aboard a riverboat for shipment to St. Louis. A delegation of men, including Treemont, Ferkus Varney, the artist Dupont Gale, and a few others, was sent along on the voyage and would later reunite with the others. Those others, with provisions refreshed, made the journey overland, Jedd leading.
Witherspoon Sadler rode at Jedd's side some of the time, mostly, Jedd noticed, when the widow Rachel McCall happened to be close by. She was one of the few women among the travelers, a late addition to the group, making the journey with her brother, Robert Dukane. She was an attractive woman with hair the color of a chestnut hull, and wore it long and flowing down across her shoulders. Despite being very feminine in voice, features, and build, she was physically strong and considered
herself the equal of any of the men around her. In fact, the impression given was that she thought she was most likely on a plane well above most of the malesâ¦except perhaps Jedd Colter. Jedd caught her looking at him quite often, and she was not abashed when he caught her at it. He was as flattered as any man would be by such attention, though the truth was he thought her a somewhat odd woman, mostly because of her habit of wearing rugged trousers instead of dresses, and riding in a man's saddle, straddling her horse. It was considered scandalous by the other women. The men were openly intrigued by her.
Particularly Witherspoon Sadler. If the widow Rachel was anywhere within view, his eyes were on her. If she glanced his way he gave her a smile, and on a couple of particularly daring occasions, a wink. Rachel usually pretended not to notice. Her own attention was perpetually focused on Jedd Colter. It was obvious to any who cared to observe it that the main reason Rachel McCall insisted on riding on a horse rather than a wagon was that it made it easy for her to be near the horseman Jedd. Where Jedd rode, Rachel rode not far away.
Also not far away was, usually, Witherspoon. By keeping near Jedd he kept near Rachel McCall. The rotund fellow's obvious attraction to a woman far too beautiful for him was an ongoing point of humor among the other travelers. Witherspoon was oblivious of the fact that he was being laughed at on all sides. He'd made no declarations of his affections to her, nor had any meaningful conversations at all with Rachel, so as far as Witherspoon could see it, his feelings were fully hidden to all but himself. In reality he might as well have written them across his broad forehead.
Witherspoon was riding near Jedd when the overland portion of the group neared St. Louis. By now the group had traveled so far that they all felt seasoned as travelers. Having at last reached the Mississippi River country, there was a welcome sense of having passed an important milestone. The longest part of the journey remained
ahead, but even so, they would soon be at Independence, the town generally perceived as the gateway point for overland passage to California.
“How does it go from here?” Witherspoon asked his brother and Jedd as they stood together looking across the band of travelers and the broad river beyond. “Men, freight, and dray horses by water to Independence, right?”
“That was the plan. It's changed,” Wilberforce replied.
Jedd said, “The general?”
“Of course. He's heard stories of cholera, that the riverboats are rife with it.”
Jedd frowned. “Is it true?”
Wilberforce shrugged. “He is afraid to take the chance and find out. Which, I must admit, makes a certain degree of sense, given that it is possible for us to reach Independence by land.”
“Yesâ¦but once again, we're hopelessly slowed. We're falling further behind every day, and it's already too late to make it up later. Our pledge of speed-of-crossing has already been kicked to the ground, and now the general is proceeding to stomp it flat. We may set a record as the
slowest
passage.”
“I know, Jedd. I know. But here we are.”
“I find myself astonished,” wrote Crozier Bellingham a few days later in a June entry in his journal.
After days of delay owing to General Lloyd's fear of cholera on riverboats, it seems now it does not matter because he had decided we will not go to Independence at all. Cholera fears again. The general has heard the disease is in that town. No verification, only rumors. Even so, General Lloyd has changed our destination to St. Joseph.
Jedd Colter and the Sadlers are obviously frustrated but, showing the deference proper to leadership, are keeping their thoughts to themselves. I have been instructed by Wilberforce Sadler to present the change in plans in my newspaper reports as routine and unimportant. I am doing so,
but like much else they seek to suppress, even yet the truth will find its way out through my pen when I begin the writing that they know nothing of, and which will be seen by many more eyes than my meager and localized little half-truth newspaper reports.
Days dragged on with General Lloyd insisting upon handling the arrangements for all alterations of plans. No one expected him to achieve any changes quickly, and he did not frustrate that anticipation. But even the most pessimistic about the general's lethargy were surprised when it was early August before the wagon train departed St. Joseph.
They were near Fort Leavenworth when General Lloyd, striding across the camp one evening with a jovial smile on his face and an atypical happy greeting for everyone he met, staggered suddenly to his right and fell, grunting as his head struck hard against a wagon wheel. He crumpled down like a body without bones as drool flooded out of his mouth and his head lolled to one side.
Several people saw him fall, but the first to approach his limp form was a man who had kept himself nearly invisible to most in the band of emigrants. Zebulon McSwain knelt at Lloyd's side and spoke softly to him, calling his name and feeling about on his flopping wrist.
“Is he dead?” asked a girl of about twelve, the youngest traveler in the group.
McSwain shook his head. “Not dead. He's got a pulse yet. But I'm thinking his heart has gone bad on him. Needs a doctor, no question about it.” He looked at the little girl, started to ask a question, then paused and asked the question of a nearby man instead. “Is there a physician among us, sir?”
“Who are you?” the man asked. “I ain't seen you before, I don't think.”
“I keep to myself. Stay in my wagon most of the time. Can you answer my question about a physician?”
The man knelt beside McSwain and studied the pallid face of General Lloyd, who was unconscious. “We do
have a doctor. But he's not much good. Too much of this.” He extended the thumb and little finger of his right hand and tilted the thumb toward his mouth in imitation of a tipped bottle.
“Well, if he's the best we have, we must fetch him,” said McSwain. “I'm pessimistic regarding the chances of General Lloyd surviving a wagon ride into town and a search for a physician there.”
The man rose and darted off into the camp. McSwain could only hope he was going to fetch the doctor he'd referenced.
“Do you know that man who just left?” McSwain asked the little girl, who still stood by, staring at the pathetic and unmoving General Lloyd.
“His name is Gibbons,” she said. “Charlie Gibbons. He's my uncle. I'm Lorene Gibbons.”
“Can I rely on him to bring that doctor back, miss? Because General Lloyd needs one.”
“No,” the girl said sorrowfully. “Never rely on Uncle Charlie. Likely he won't be back. My papa says that Uncle Charlie is âsorry stuff.' Even though he's his brother.”
But Uncle Charlie did come back, minutes later, dragging along a middle-aged man who was trying to stuff a slender metal flask back into a pocket but failing because Uncle Charlie was repeatedly yanking him by that same arm. As the pair reached General Lloyd's side, the flask thumped to the ground, clattering on a stone. Charlie Gibbons scooped it up and pocketed it, telling the doctor he'd give it back to him later.
“This the patient?” the supposed physician asked.
“Yes, Doctor,” said McSwain. “This is General Lloyd, the commander of our expedition. He has been stricken and has passed out.”
“I ain't far from the same situation,” the supposed doctor said. “He been drinking?”
“I don't think so, sir. I can tell that you have, though. Are you in any shape to evaluate this man?”
“I'm finer than a baby boy's chin whiskers,” the doctor said as he lowered himself, with effort, to his knees, upon which he swayed a little as he scooted toward
General Lloyd. “I already know what's wrong with him. He's passed out.”
What a dolt,
McSwain thought. “But why?”
“Probably his heart. He's old. His face and mouth ain't drooping, so I figure it probably ain't a stroke. You sure he ain't been tippling, though?”
“If he was I knew nothing of it. Not that I've been sitting around watching him. But he's a man of strong religion and not a drinker at all, or so I've heard.”
“Well, all I can do for him right now is sit with him a bit and see how he does. We might have to take him into town for more help later if he appears to need it. Charlie, let me have my flask now, if you would.”
“Can't do it, Doc. You need a clear head if you're going to keep a sharp enough eye on the general there.”
“That's why I need my flask. To keep my head clear.”
“Can't help you on that, Doctor. You're drunk enough already.”
“Drunk? I ain't drunk.”
Charlie said, “Yeah, and I got nary a hair on my hind end.”
McSwain, a man with a strong sense of propriety, winced at Charlie Gibbons's crudity.
“I want my flask. It's a good oneâ¦real silver,” said the doctor.
“Ain't got it, even if I wanted to give it to you. A fellow come by a minute ago and slipped it right out of my hand.” In fact he'd given the flask to the man just to be rid of it, seeing the doctor had imbibed more than he should have already.
“You're lying!”
“I ain't.”
A hundred feet away, seated on his haunches while watching a woman cooking stew in a kettle over one of the many cook fires burning around the camp, Ben Scarlett took a swig from his new flask and blessed his good luck. He'd been aching for a drink for hours, and considering a trip into the heart of town in search of a saloon, but this unexpected turn of fortune would make that unnecessary. There was enough liquor in the slender flask
to do him. He drained off another swallow and said a quick prayer that this kind of luck would continue for him when finally he reached California and began looking for gold.
If ever they made it. It had seemed a very long trail so far from Knoxville, and by far the longest and hardest part of the journey hadn't even commenced.
For one man, though, the journey was finished. The next morning, Wilberforce Sadler stood on a cask before his assembled travelers and announced that General Gordon Lloyd, after a life of service to his nation and his fellow citizens, had quietly passed away in the night after suffering an apparent failure of the heart. He would be buried for the time being beside a nearby brook; his relatives would be sent word of his passing and the location of his grave so they could disinter his remains for burial in their family cemetery in Kentucky.
“We have lost a friend but can take comfort in the fact that he is now in heaven,” Wilberforce intoned.
“Nah,” said a man in the crowd. “No way he's there yet. He's somewhere dragging his feet. Somebody probably told him there was cholera there. Give him a few months, he might make it within view of the pearly gates.”
FROM THE JOURNAL OF CROZIER BELLINGHAM
SEPTEMBER 8, 1849
The death of General Lloyd some days back brought grief to our band, despite his admittedly annoying slowness, because of the great respect in which he was held because of his military achievements. Yet it also brought hope that we would see a speeding of our progress. It is now clear that we are hopelessly behind and will not likely make up much of our lost time.
I believe the one most disturbed by this is Wilberforce Sadler, being a man of great pride who was most vocal in the early stages in declaring our passage to be assured of record speed and the “advantages” of having General Lloyd at our head. He
has spoken to me many times in recent days about how to present, in my reports, “clarifying reasons” for our obvious failure to achieve the speed of travel we claimed would mark our progress. I am making no argument with his ongoing censorship and distortion of my reports. They are for his own newspaper, after all, and the writing that I am truly interested in is work over which he can exercise no control: my novel of the gold fields. I have told only Jedd Colter and Zebulon McSwain of my planned work of fiction.
Zebulon McSwain is a man of mystery and oddity. Seemingly disgraced, driven out of his distinguished and lauded position in Knoxville higher educationâ¦and apparently hiding from some threat, some danger, that he declines to explain. I wonder if the man has at some level lost his mind. He keeps himself almost entirely apart from his fellow travelers, hiding away most of the time in a wagon, to be hauled along therein like a piece of luggage, rather than taking a turn at driving, or sometimes opting to ride or walk, as most others do in order to make their activities diverse and more interesting. Strangest of all to me is that, at most times, he keeps clutched in his arms the stuffed remains of a cat, apparently a much-loved former pet that has now gone on to whatever glory awaits felines, if any. What causes such odd behavior in an educated and long-respected man? And what sin did he commit to cause his ignoble removal from the now-defunct Bledsoe College? I hope to learn answers to these questions over time, for the benefit of characterizations within my future novel of the “Gold Rush,” as some have taken to calling our national phenomenon.
That is as good and accurate a descriptor, I suppose, as any other one might conceive. Though our slow-as-a-tortoise pace, thanks mostly to the late general, certainly does not cohere with the notion of a “rush.” At the pace we are keeping, and sometimes
losing, California may be no more than a myth of the ancients, like Plato's Atlantis, by the time we reach it.
It is late now, and I put away my pencil to take to my blankets. We are at Council Groveâso far, so very far, still to go.
California, where are you? And why are the miles west of the Mississippi so long?
