Bret Harte, as we have seen, reached California by sea, and there is no record of any journey by ox-cart that he made; and yet in A Waif of the Plains he describes such a journey with a particularity which seems almost impossible for one who knew it only by hearsay. Thus, among many other details, he speaks of “a chalky taste of dust on the mouth and lips, a gritty sense of earth on the fingers, and an all-pervading heat and smell of cattle.” And in the same description occurs one of those minute touches for which he is remarkable: “The hoofs of the draught-oxen, occasionally striking in the dust with a dull report, sent little puffs like smoke on either side of the track.”
Often the cattle would break loose at night and disappear on the vast Plains, and men in search of them were sometimes lost, and died of starvation or were killed by Indians. Simply for the sake of better grazing oxen have been known to retrace their steps at night for twenty-five miles.
The opportunities for selfishness, for petulance, for obstinacy, for resentment were almost innumerable. Cooking and washing were the labors which, in the absence of women, proved most vexatious to the emigrants. “Of all miserable work,” said one, “washing is the worst, and no man who crossed the Plains will ever find fault again with his wife for scolding on a washing day.” All the Pioneers who have related their experiences on the overland journey speak of the bad effect on men’s tempers. “The perpetual vexations and hardships keep the nerves in a state of great irritability. The trip is a sort of magic mirror, exposing every man’s qualities of heart, vicious or amiable.”[22]
The shooting affairs which occurred among the emigrants were usually the result of some sudden provocation, following upon a long course of irritation between the persons concerned. Those who crossed the Plains in the summer of 1853, or afterward, might have passed a grave with this inscription:
BEAL SHOT BY BOLSBY, JUNE 15, 1853.
And, a day’s journey further, they would have noticed another grave thus inscribed:
BOLSBY SHOT FOR THE MURDER OF BEAL, JUNE 16, 1853.
This murder, to call it such, was the consequence of some insult offered to Bolsby by the other. Bolsby was forthwith tried by the company, and condemned to be shot the next morning at sunrise. He had been married only about a year before, and had left his wife and child at their home in Kentucky. For the remainder of the day he travelled with the others, and the short hours of the summer night which followed were spent by him in writing to his wife and to his father and mother. Of all the great multitude, scattered over the wide earth, who passed that particular night in sleepless agony of mind, perhaps none was more to be pitied. When morning came he dressed himself neatly in his wedding suit, and was led out to execution. With rare magnanimity, he acknowledged that his sentence was a just one, and said that he had so written to his family, and that he had been treated with consideration; but he declared that if the thing were to happen again, he would kill Beal as before. He then knelt on his blanket, gave the signal for shooting, and fell dead, pierced by six bullets.
The misfortunes of the Donner party began with a homicide. This is the party whose sufferings are described by Bret Harte without exaggeration in Gabriel Conroy. It included robbers, cannibals, murderers and heroes; and one interesting aspect of its experience is the superior endurance, both moral and physical, shown by the women. In the small detachment which, as a forlorn hope, tried to cross the Mountains in winter without provisions, and succeeded, there were twelve men and five women. Of the twelve men five died, of the five women none died![23]
Indians were often encountered on the Great Plains and in the valleys of the Colorado and Rio Grande. They were well-disposed, at first, and soon acquired some familiarity with the ordinary forms of speech used by the Pioneers. Thus one traveller reports the following friendly salutation from a member of the Snake Tribe: