Buck selected the outfit to go into the wagon, while I fitted up the wagon and bought the team.
We had butter, packed in the center of the flour in double sacks; eggs packed in corn meal or flour, to last us nearly five hundred miles; fruit in abundance, and dried pumpkins; a little jerked beef, not too salt, and last, though not least, a demijohn of brandy for "medicinal purposes only," as Buck said, with a merry twinkle of the eye that exposed the subterfuge which he knew I understood without any sign. The little wife had prepared the home-made yeast cake which she knew so well how to make and dry, and we had light bread all the way, baked in a tin reflector instead of the heavy Dutch ovens so much in use on the Plains.
Albeit the butter to considerable extent melted and mingled with the flour, yet we were not much disconcerted, as the "short-cake" that followed made us almost glad the mishap had occurred. Besides, did we not have plenty of fresh butter, from the milk of our own cows, churned every day in the can, by the jostle of the wagon? Then the buttermilk! What a luxury! Yes, that's the word—a real luxury. I will never, so long as I live, forget that short-cake and corn-bread, the puddings and pumpkin pies, and above all the buttermilk. The reader who smiles at this may recall that it is the small things that make up the happiness of life.
But it was more than that. As we gradually crept out on the Plains and saw the sickness and suffering caused by improper food and in some cases from improper preparation, it gradually dawned on me how blessed I was, with such a partner as Buck and such a life partner as the little wife. Some trains, it soon transpired, were without fruit, and most of them depended upon saleratus for raising their bread. Many had only fat bacon for meat until the buffalo supplied a change; and no doubt much of the sickness attributed to the cholera was caused by an ill-suited diet.
I am willing to claim credit for the team, every hoof of which reached the Coast in safety. Four (four-year-old) steers and two cows were sufficient for our light wagon and light outfit, not a pound of which but was useful (except the brandy) and necessary for our comfort. Not one of these steers had ever been under the yoke, though plenty of "broke" oxen could be had, but generally of that class that had been broken in spirit as well as in training, so when we got across the Des Moines River with the cattle strung out to the wagon and Buck on the off side to watch, while I, figuratively speaking, took the reins in hand, we may have presented a ludicrous sight, but did not have time to think whether we did or not, and cared but little so the team would go.
FIRST DAY OUT.
The first day's drive out from Eddyville was a short one, and so far as I now remember the only one on the entire trip where the cattle were allowed to stand in the yoke at noon while the owners lunched and rested. I made it a rule, no matter how short the noontime, to unyoke and let the cattle rest or eat while we rested and ate, and on the last (1906) trip rigidly adhered to that rule.
An amusing scene was enacted when, at near nightfall, the first camp was made. Buck excitedly insisted we must not unyoke the cattle. "Well, what shall we do?" I asked; "They can't live in the yoke always; we will have to unyoke them sometimes."
"Yes, but if you unyoke here you will never catch them again," came the response. One word brought on another, until the war of words had almost reached the stage of a dispute, when a stranger, Thomas McAuley, who was camped nearby, with a twinkle in his eye I often afterwards saw and will always remember, interfered and said his cattle were gentle and there were three men of his party and that they would help us yoke up in the morning. I gratefully accepted his proffered help, speedily unyoked, and ever after that never a word with the merest semblance of contention passed between Buck and myself.
Scanning McAuley's outfit the next morning I was quite troubled to start out with him, his teams being light, principally cows, and thin in flesh, with wagons apparently light and as frail as the teams. But I soon found that his outfit, like ours, carried no extra weight; that he knew how to care for a team; and was, withal, an obliging neighbor, as was fully demonstrated on many trying occasions as we traveled in company for more than a thousand miles, until his road to California parted from ours at the big bend of the Bear River.