“Do you think they can get through, with their wagons, Fitzpatrick?” queried the lieutenant.
“If anybody but that missionary doctor was leading them, I would say not,” replied the Broken Hand. “Why, even the Fort Hall people don’t try to fetch in their goods on wheels; they canoe it from Vancouver, for two hundred miles, then they use pack animals for the land trail, up along the Snake to the post. I agree with Captain Grant that no wagons can go over that pack trail. But as I understand, this missionary doctor came riding in hot haste, from down the Snake, found the emigrants discouraged by Grant and other post people, called them together, made a speech, told ’em he’d been over the trail and he knew and that they were foolish to abandon their wagons and implements and try to take their goods and families in by saddle, that they’d need their States animals to plough with, and that he guarantee to get ’em through!”
“Will he?”
“Well,” answered Thomas Fitzpatrick, slowly, rubbing his chin; “they left, wagons and all, August thirtieth, and now it’s September eighteenth and none of ’em has come back; and there aren’t any wagons lying ’longside the trail, far as we’ve seen.”
Now the two parties united camped beside the walls of Fort Hall. Agent Grant himself stepped out to give welcome and meet the lieutenant.
“You Americans are a wonderful people,” declared Agent Grant. “Why, this emigration that just went through is four or five times as large as that of last year, and it’s taking wagons in! Heavy farm wagons, heaped with goods!”
“Will they succeed?”
“No, sir. I and every other man of experience know that the trail is impossible for wagons. At least——” and Agent Grant hesitated, “impossible except perchance for this Doctor Whitman. I never heard or talked with such an obstinate, determined man. He has a tremendous responsibility on his hands, though. I’ll wager that before you get two hundred miles from the post you’ll find the trail fairly littered with cast-off wagons. But if not, lieutenant—if not, then it will be a blow to British rule in Oregon. I have heard Dr. McLoughlin, our chief agent, at Vancouver, say that Oregon is safe, because it never can be reached by Yankee families except around Cape Horn; but what he’ll say when he sees the Yankees coming down from the mountains, with wagons, all the way from the States, I don’t know. And such a number! Last year Dr. White took in a few, afoot or by saddle and pack—but this year, eight hundred, with wagons—my stars! If they get through, then I shall expect to hear of them continuing right on down to the ocean and under it to Japan!”
The lieutenant laughed.
“You British in Oregon don’t know the American,” he said. “When the Yankee once starts for a new country, nothing can stop him.”