“Water, water every where,
And not a drop to drink!”
Before setting out homeward on the next day we met O. Porter Rockwell, and took him to the house with us. This old Mormon, in days gone by, suffered or did not suffer imprisonment for shooting or not shooting Governor Boggs, of Missouri: he now herds cattle for Messrs. Russell and Co. His tastes are apparently rural; his enemies declare that his life would not be safe in the City of the Saints. An attempt had lately been made to assassinate him in one of the kanyons, and the first report that reached my ears when en route to California was the murder of the old DaniteTHE OLD “DANITE.” by a certain Mr. Marony. He is one of the triumvirate, the First Presidency of “executives,” the two others being Ephe Hanks and Bill Hickman—whose names were loud in the land; they are now, however, going down; middle age has rendered them comparatively inactive, and the rising generation, Lot Huntington, Ike Clawson, and other desperadoes, whose teeth and claws are full grown, are able and willing to stand in their stead. Peter Rockwell was a man about fifty, tall and strong, with ample leather leggins overhanging his huge spurs, and the saw-handles of two revolvers peeping from his blouse. His forehead was already a little bald, and he wore his long grizzly locks after the ancient fashion of the United States, plaited and gathered up at the nape of the neck; his brow, puckered with frowning wrinkles, contrasted curiously with his cool, determined gray eye, jolly red face, well touched up with “paint,” and his laughing, good-humored mouth. He had the manner of a jovial, reckless, devil-may-care English ruffian. The officers called him Porter, and preferred him to the “slimy villains” who will drink with a man and then murder him. After a little preliminary business about a stolen horse, all conducted on the amiable, he pulled out a dollar, and sent to the neighboring distillery for a bottle of Valley Tan. The aguardiente was smuggled in under a cloth, as though we had been respectables in a Moslem country, and we were asked to join him in a “squar’ drink,” which means spirits without water. The mode of drinking was peculiar. Porter, after the preliminary sputation, raised the glass with cocked little finger to his lips, with a twinkle of the eye ejaculated “Wheat!” that is to say, “good,” and drained the tumbler to the bottom: we acknowledged his civility with a “here’s how,” and drank Kentucky-fashion, which in English is midshipman’s grog. Of these “squar’ drinks” we had at least four, which, however, did not shake Mr. Rockwell’s nerve, and then he sent out for more. Meanwhile he told us his last adventure—how, when ascending the kanyon, he suddenly found himself covered by two long rifles; how he had thrown himself from his horse, drawn his revolver, and crept behind a bush, and how he had dared the enemy to come out and fight like men. He spoke of one Obry, a Frenchman, lately killed in a street-quarrel, who rode on business from Santa Fé to Independence, about 600 miles, in 110 hours. Porter offered, for the fun of the thing, to excel him by getting over 900 in 144. When he heard that I was preparing for California, he gave me abundant good advice—to carry a double-barreled gun loaded with buck-shot; to “keep my eyes skinned,” especially in kanyons and ravines; to make at times a dark camp—that is to say, unhitching for supper, and then hitching up and turning a few miles off the road; ever to be ready for attack when the animals were being inspanned and outspanned, and never to trust to appearances in an Indian country, where the red varmint will follow a man for weeks, perhaps peering through a wisp of grass on a hill-top till the time arrives for striking the blow. I observed that, when thus speaking, Porter’s eyes assumed the expression of an old mountaineer’s, ever rolling as if set in quicksilver. For the purpose of avoiding “White Indians,” the worst of their kind, he advised me to shun the direct route, which he represented to be about as fit for traveling as is h—ll for a powder magazine, and to journey viâ Fillmore and the wonder-bearing White Mountains;[225] finally, he comforted me with an assurance that either the Indians would not attempt to attack us and our stock—ever a sore temptation to them—or that they would assault us in force and “wipe us out.”
[225] An emigrant company lately followed this road, and when obliged by the death of their cattle to abandon their kit, they found on the tramp a lump of virgin silver, which was carried to California: an exploring party afterward dispatched failed, however, to make the lead. At the western extremity of the White Mountains there is a mammoth cave, of which one mile has been explored: it is said to end in a precipice, and the enterprising Major Egan is eager to trace its course.
When the drinking was finished we exchanged a cordial poignée de main with Porter and our hospitable host, who appeared to be the crême de la crême of Utah County, and soon found ourselves again without the limits of Camp Floyd.
On the evening of the 25th of September, the judge, accompanied by his son and the Marshal of the Territory, entered the cantonment, and our departure was fixed for the next day. The morning of the start was spent in exchanging adieux and little gifts with men who had now become friends, and in stirrup-cups which succeeded one another at no longer intervals than quarter hours. Judge Crosby, who had arrived by the last mail, kindly provided me with fishing-tackle which could relieve a diet of eggs and bacon, and made me regret that I had not added to my outfit a Maynard. This, the best of breech-loading guns, can also be loaded at the muzzle; a mere carbine in size, it kills at 1300 yards, and in the United States costs only $40 = £8. The judge, a remarkable contrast to the usual Elijah Pogram style that still affects bird’s-eye or speckled white tie, black satin waistcoat, and swallow-tailed coat of rusty broadcloth, with terminations to match, had been employed for some time in Oregon and at St. Juan: he knew one of my expatriated friends—poor J. de C., whose exile we all lament—and he gave me introductions which I found most useful in Carson Valley. Like the best Americans, he spoke of the English as brothers, and freely owned the deficiencies of his government, especially in dealing with the frontier Indians.
We started from Lieutenant Dudley’s hospitable quarters, where a crowd had collected to bid us farewell. The ambulance, with four mules driven by Mr. Kennedy in person, stood at the door, and the parting stirrup-cup was exhibited with a will. I bade farewell with a true regret to my kind and gallant hosts, whose brotherly attentions had made even wretched Camp Floyd a pleasant séjour to me. At the moment I write it is probably desolate, the “Secession” disturbances having necessitated the withdrawal of the unhappies from Utah Territory.
About 4 P.M., as we mounted, a furious dust-storm broke over the plain; perhaps it may account for our night’s méprise, which a censorious reader might attribute to our copious libations of whisky. The road to the first mail station, “Meadow Creek,” lay over a sage barren; we lost no time in missing it by forging to the west. After hopelessly driving about the country till 10 P.M. in the fine cool night, we knocked at a hut, and induced the owner to appear. He was a Dane who spoke but little English, and his son, “skeert” by our fierceness, began at once to boo-hoo. At last, however, we were guided by our “foreloper” to JOHNSTON’S SETTLEMENT.“Johnston’s settlement,” in Rock Valley, and we entered by the unceremonious process of pulling down the zigzag fences. After some trouble we persuaded a Mormon to quit the bed in which his wife and children lay, to shake down for us sleeping-places among the cats and hens on the floor, and to provide our animals with oats and hay. Mr. Grice, the marshal, one of the handiest of men, who during his volunteer service in Mexico had learned most things from carrying a musket to cooking a steak, was kind enough to prepare our supper, after which, still sorely laden with whisky dying within us, we turned in.
To Meadow Creek. 27th September.
We rose with the dawn, the cats, and the hens, sleep being impossible after the first blush of light, and I proceeded to inspect the settlement. It is built upon the crest of an earth-wave rising from grassy hollows; the haystacks told of stock, and the bunch-grass on the borders of the ravines and nullahs rendered the place particularly fit for pasturage. The land is too cold for cereals: in its bleak bottoms frost reigns throughout the year; and there is little bench-ground. The settlement consisted of half a dozen huts, which swarmed, however, with women and children. Mr. Kennedy introduced us to a Scotch widow of mature years, who gave us any amount of butter and buttermilk in exchange for a little tea. She was but a lukewarm Mormon, declaring polygamy to be an abomination, complaining that she had been inveigled to A MEAN PLACE.a mean place, and that the poor in Mormondom were exceedingly poor. Yet the canny body was stout and fresh, her house was clean and neat, and she washed her children and her potatoes.