“Oh.” It was a concept Peter had never heard before.
“Peter says that Brigham Young, the leader of the Mormons, is planning to settle around the Great Salt Lake,” Reed said. “You know that territory?”
There was an amused laugh. “Sure do. In ’26 me and some other trappers circumnavigated the Great Salt Lake in a bull boat. First white men to do it, far as I know. Proved there’s no outlet to it. That’s why it’s so salty.”
“It really is salty?” Peter inquired, fascinated now. “I always thought it was just a name it was given.”
“Whoo-ee,” the trapper said. “Take a swallow of that, and a man can choke to death. Go swimming in it and you bob like a cork in a tub of water. Can’t sink.”
“Really?” Reed said, looking a little dubious. Mountain men were renowned for their whopping exaggerations.
Clyman saw his look and crossed his chest. “It’s true, I swear it. Don’t get it in your eyes, though. Darn near blinded me.” He looked at Peter. “The Valley of the Salt Lake ain’t no place for a home. Nothing with two legs is gonna live there very long excepting them Utah Indians.”
Peter said nothing. He wasn’t about to argue with a man as knowledgeable as this one. “So when did you leave California, Mr. Clyman?” he asked.
“Well, I met up with Hastings and Hudspeth at Johnson’s Ranch, which is about forty miles from Sutter’s Fort, and we left there April twenty-third, just over two months ago now.”
Peter’s employer jerked forward. “Hastings? Not Lansford Hastings.”
“Yep. One and the same.”
“The same that wrote the book?”
There was a frown. “’Fraid so. Why do you ask?”
Reed had become quite animated, surprising both Peter and Clyman. “Is he traveling with you now?”
“No. We planned to rest up and recruit our stock at Jim Bridger’s fort on the Black’s Fork of the Green, but when we got there the place was deserted. Old Jim and his partner, Vasquez, had gone somewhere, probably up the Green to a rendezvous.”
“What did you do?” Peter asked, fascinated by the man’s account now.
“Well, there was some consternation among us. Hastings had planned to wait at Fort Bridger for the incoming emigrants to guide them across his new route to California and—”
“Yes!” Reed exclaimed. “He wrote about that route. We’ve talked much about trying it ourselves. It saves four hundred miles, they say.”
Clyman was shaking his head before Reed finished. “Don’t do it.”
“What?”
“Don’t take his new route.”
Reed sat back, clearly shocked and dismayed.
“Look,” Clyman went on, “you take the regular wagon track and never leave it. It’s barely possible to get through if you follow it, and it may be impossible if you don’t.”
Reed’s voice turned testy now. “There is a nigher route, and it seems to me it is no use to take such a roundabout course.”
“I admit as much,” Clyman said doggedly, “but that nigher route crosses a great desert and the height of the Sierra Nevada. A straighter route might turn out to be impracticable.”
Stubbornness was written clearly across Reed’s face. “Hastings crossed it last year. He says it is not that hard. We go around the south end of the Great Salt Lake and then head straight for California.”
“Hastings doesn’t know of what he speaks,” Clyman shot right back. “He didn’t come that way last season, though he hints that he did, especially not with wagons. He came another way to California.”
“But—”
“It is true that once he reached Sutter’s place he met Captain John Frémont of the U.S. Army survey party. Frémont had brought a group through a new route that cut across the great desert, then followed Mary’s River and the Truckee River to the Sierra. There’s a pass there—Truckee’s Pass, it’s called. It’s high and rough terrain, but manageable by wagon. We came that way ourselves this trip and—”
Again Reed cut him off. “You took the new route coming here?”
“Yes.”
“Then why do you say not to take it? Isn’t it shorter?”
“We didn’t have wagons, and shorter ain’t always the best way, Mr. Reed,” the man said flatly. “There are long stretches without water, and if you don’t make that last pass over the Sierra in time . . .” He shook his head.
There were several seconds of silence. Peter watched the man who was making it possible for him and Kathryn to cross the plains. It was Lansford Hastings’s book that had fired the imagination of James Reed and the Donner brothers and motivated them to form a party to go to California. Now to hear that name maligned and his proposal treated with open skepticism was clearly unsettling.
“Where is Hastings now?” Reed finally asked after the awkward silence had stretched on.
Clyman shrugged, sensing Reed’s coolness. “We all figgered that it wasn’t safe to stay at Bridger’s fort when there was no one there. I dropped back a little and caught up with some more of our party, and then came on here. Hastings said he was going north to the Greenwood Cutoff. That bypasses Bridger’s fort and cuts straight for Fort Hall. He was going to try and convince them to follow him and take his new route. Haven’t seen him since.”
He withdrew the stub of his cigar, now chewed into a flat, rubbery mass, and flipped it into the fire. “You do what you think is best, Reed. But I’m telling you, his route is not proven, not with wagons and a large company.”
When Peter slipped beneath the covers, Kathryn stirred beside him, then rolled over, flopping one arm across his chest. “Hi,” she murmured sleepily.
“Hi.” He turned to her and brought her into his arms. “Sorry I woke you up.”
“I wasn’t asleep,” she mumbled. “I was only sleeping.”
“Oh.” He chuckled. “Well, now you can go to sleep.”
There was a soft murmur which could have meant anything. Then after a moment her head rose, and the sleepiness in her voice largely disappeared. “Did he take the letter?”
“Yes. He said he would post it in St. Louis.”
“Good. Any charge?”
“None. He’s a fine man. I liked him very much.”
“Good.”
The silence stretched on for several moments, and he wondered if he had lost her again, but then she snuggled in closer. “You were gone a long time. What did you talk about?”
“Oh, the trail, which way to go, what it’s like out there. He’s been a mountain man and a fur trapper. He knows the West well.”
“Really? That must have been interesting.”
“Yeah.” He lay back on the pillow, remembering the change of mood in James Reed.
After a moment, she came up on one elbow. “What’s wrong, Peter?”
He laughed in spite of himself, then kissed her nose. “Is it because you’re Irish?”
“What?”
“This second pair of eyes you seem to have that sees right through me.”
“Aye, that it is,” she said, a lilting brogue now in her voice. “So, tell me what’s bothering you.”
He sighed and found her hand. “Not a lot, but just . . . I don’t know. I just have this general feeling of uneasiness about things.”
“Like what?”
“I’m not sure. All the bickering and contention. The fact that we’ve split into separate parties. Governor Boggs being our leader.”
“None of that is new, Peter. What happened tonight?”
He sighed again. “Mr. Clyman thinks it is a bad mistake to take this shorter route that Lansford Hastings is proposing. Mr. Reed didn’t like what he heard.”
“Will he change his mind about it?”
“I don’t think so.”
She lay back, and he could sense her concern in the darkness.
“I trust Mr. Reed a lot, Kathryn. But . . . I don’t know. It’s just that everything is changing. The family is not here like we expected. We may have to go all the way to California. Now this.” Then, realizing that he was only adding to her worry, he tried to lighten his voice. “I’m just tired. It’ll be all right in the morning.”
She rose up and kissed him softly. “I love you, Peter Ingalls.”
“You do?” he said in surprise. “How come?”
“I can’t think of a single reason,” she answered.
He reared back. “Hey!” he cried with offended pride.
She laughed. “But isn’t that the best reason of all? I don’t need a reason to love you. I just do.”
Chapter Notes
The details of life on the trail are taken from the various journals and reminiscent accounts of those who were there (see, for example,
Chronicles,
pp. 70–78; Boyd Gibbons, “Life and Death on the Oregon Trail: The Itch to Move West,”
National Geographic,
August 1986, pp. 147–77;
What I Saw,
pp. 80, 86–91, 97–98). The sawing of the wagon in two is reported by George McKinstry, who also traveled with the Donners for a time (see
Overland in 1846,
pp. 210, 405–6). The story of Scotts Bluff as related by Kathryn here is the most common version that was told to the emigrants, but there were several variations, and there may be some legendary aspects to the tale. Incidentally, Chimney Rock, which is about thirty miles east of the present Wyoming-Nebraska border, is the most frequently mentioned landmark along the Oregon-California Trail. Today it measures 474 feet in height, having lost some thirty feet between 1846 and the present time.
James Clyman, an experienced mountain man and fur trapper, was returning to the United States from Upper California in the summer of 1846. He arrived at Fort Laramie on the same day as the Donner-Reed party and in his journal notes that “several of us continued the conversation untill [
sic
] a late hour.” He and James Reed knew each other from before, having been associates in the Black Hawk War. Another of their companions in that campaign was known as Abraham Lincoln. Clyman strongly warned Reed against the proposed shortcut to California (see
Overland in 1846,
pp. 58–59; see also
WFFB,
pp. 23–29, 46–48; and
Chronicles,
pp. 82–83). Hastings’s book about Oregon and California was a major factor in encouraging the great migration of 1846, and therefore Hastings was held in high esteem. Also, John C. Frémont, who was likewise held in high esteem after his military explorations, had taken the same route as Hastings was proposing. Though it was foolish to do so, this helps explain why the emigrants would trust Hastings’s word over that of more experienced men like James Clyman.
The Reshaw mentioned here was actually John Baptiste Richard, an American-born trapper and mountain man who, his ancestors being French, used the French pronunciation of his last name.
Chapter 6
The first of the Saints arrived at Council Bluffs on the banks of the Missouri River late in the afternoon on Saturday, June thirteenth, a full two months later than had been originally planned. It was clear to Brigham Young and the Twelve that it was far too late in the season to take everyone across the plains to the Rocky Mountains. Even as wagon after wagon poured in from the east, the chief Apostle set to work on three primary tasks. First, they had to find a place for a winter settlement where the great majority of the Saints could wait for spring. That required negotiating with Peter Sarpy, the local Indian agent, and the tribal leaders for permission to stay on Indian lands. Fortunately the Indians—Potawatomis on the east side of the river, and Otoe and Omaha on the west—were friendly to the white man. There was no threat of hostilities except from the Pawnees, who lived farther west along the Platte River.
The second task was to find a way across the river. Deep, muddy, swift—the Missouri was too wide to bridge and too deep and treacherous to ford. There was an existing ferry at Traders Point downstream a few miles, but with close to a thousand wagons either already here or somewhere east along the trail in Iowa Territory, there was no way the Church could afford to pay to have them all ferried across. With typical pragmatism Brigham convened a council meeting on the afternoon of June twenty-first, their second Sabbath day in the area, and called for carpenters, hewers, and other laborers to begin immediate construction on a ferry of their own.
With possibilities for winter camps being investigated and a ferry under construction, that left one major task undone. At half past eleven a.m. on the twenty-eighth of June—their third Sabbath day and only the sixteenth day after arriving—the Saints assembled at Mosquito Creek for worship services. To no one’s great surprise, after prayer and some brief preliminary business Brigham Young rose and began to speak on the third primary task facing the Saints.
The Steed family found a spot near the temporary rostrum and spread out their blankets on the grass. The ground was still damp from a brief but violent thundershower that ripped through the camp shortly after midnight. While it had made for a miserable night, for the moment at least it had left the air cool.
Nathan watched as Brigham came to the makeshift podium. Behind him were seven other members of the Twelve—Heber C. Kimball, Orson Hyde, Parley P. and Orson Pratt, John Taylor, George A. Smith, and Willard Richards—and Father John Smith, uncle to the Prophet Joseph and Patriarch to the Church. As Brigham moved to his place, Nathan noted the thinness of his face and the fact that his coat hung on him loosely. The last few months had taken their toll. About five foot ten inches high, Brigham had always been somewhat portly. Back in Nauvoo he rarely buttoned his coat because it couldn’t quite contain his girth. Now that same coat could easily overlap its buttons by an inch or two. Nathan guessed that the chief Apostle had lost thirty or thirty-five pounds since they had crossed the Mississippi and started west. He had also become more serious. He could still be lighthearted, displaying his razor-sharp sense of humor, but those times came less frequently now, testimony to the weight of responsibility which he carried on his shoulders. Still clean shaven when many men were letting their beards grow, Brigham looked younger than his forty-five years. As the Apostle’s head came up, Nathan could see the somberness in the blue-gray eyes and the lines around his mouth.
“Brethren and sisters, I should like to speak to you of a matter relating to the situation of the Church, of the gathering of Israel, and of the building up of the kingdom of God. It is my firm testimony that God controls all things for the perfecting of the Saints and the overthrow of the wicked. I know that while an evil deed may be overruled for good, yet a good deed may bring a greater good.”