[pg 327]
Wingate, his three friends; a little group, augmenting, crossed for Oregon. The women and the children stood aloof,--sunbonneted women, brown, some with new-born trail babes in arms, silent as they always stood. Across from the Oregon band stood almost as many men, for the most part unmarried, who had not given hostages to fortune, and were resolved for California. A cheer arose from these.
"Who wants my plow?" demanded a stalwart farmer, from Indiana, more than fifteen hundred miles from his last home. "I brung her this fur into this damned desert. I'll trade her fer a shovel and make one more try fer my folks back home."
He loosed the wires which had bound the implement to the tail of his wagon all these weary miles. It fell to the ground and he left it there.
"Do some thinking, men, before you count your gold and drop your plow. Gold don't last, but the soil does. Ahead of you is the Humboldt Desert. There's no good wagon road over the mountains if you get that far. The road down Mary's River is a real gamble with death. Men can go through and make roads--yes; but where are the women and the children to stay? Think twice, men, and more than twice!" Wingate spoke solemnly.
[pg 328]
"Roll out! Roll out!" mocked the man who had abandoned his plow. "This way for Californy!"
The council ended in turmoil, where hitherto had been no more than a sedate daily system. Routine, become custom, gave way to restless movement, excited argument. Of all these hundreds now encamped on the sandy sagebrush plain in the high desert there was not an individual who was not affected in one way or another by the news from California, and in most cases it required some sort of a personal decision, made practically upon the moment. Men argued with their wives heatedly; women gathered in groups, talking, weeping. The stoic calm of the trail was swept away in a sort of hysteria which seemed to upset all their world and all its old values.