Lillian Morris, and Other Stories

I know not to this day how it could be that when I recovered from that intoxication and came to my senses twilight was shining again among the dark branches of the hickories, but it was the twilight of evening. The woodpeckers had ceased to strike the trees; one twilight on the bottom of the lake was smiling at that other which was in the sky; the inhabitants of the water had gone to sleep; the evening was beautiful, calm, filled with a red light; it was time to return to the camp.

When we had come out from beneath the weeping-willows, I looked at Lillian; there was not on her face either sadness or disquiet; in her upturned eyes was the light of calm resignation and, as it were, a bright aureole of sacrifice and dignity encircled her blessed head. When I gave her my hand, she inclined her head quietly to my shoulder, and, without turning her eyes from the heavens, she said to me:

“Ralph, repeat to me that I am your wife, and repeat it to me often.”

Since there was neither in the deserts, nor in the place to which we were going, any marriage save that of hearts, I knelt down, and when she had knelt at my side, I said: “Before God, earth, and heaven, I declare to thee, Lillian Morris, that I take thee as wife. Amen.”

To this she answered: “Now I am thine forever and till death, thy wife, Ralph!”

From that moment we were married; she was not my sweetheart, she was my lawful wife. That thought was pleasant to both of us, – and pleasant to me, for in my heart there rose a new feeling of a certain sacred respect for Lillian, and for myself, a certain honorableness and great dignity through which love became ennobled and blessed. Hand in hand, with heads erect and confident look, we returned to the camp, where the people were greatly alarmed about us. A number of tens of men had gone out in every direction to look for us; and with astonishment I learned afterward that some had passed around the lake, but could not discover us; we on our part had not heard their shouts.

I summoned the people, and when they had assembled in a circle, I took Lillian by the hand, went into the centre of the circle, and said, —

“Gentlemen, be witnesses, that in your presence I call this woman, who stands with me, my wife; and bear witness of this before justice, before law, and before every one whosoever may ask you, either in the East or the West.”

“We will! and hurrah for you both!” answered the miners.

Old Smith asked Lillian then, according to custom, if she agreed to take me as husband, and when she said “Yes,” we were legally married before the people.

In the distant prairies of the West, and on all the frontiers where there are no towns, magistrates, or churches, marriages are not performed otherwise; and to this hour, if a man calls a woman with whom he lives under the same roof his wife, this declaration takes the place of all legal documents. No one of my men therefore wondered, or looked at my marriage otherwise than with the respect shown to custom; on the contrary, all were rejoiced, for, though I had held them more sternly than other leaders, they knew that I did so honestly, and with each day they showed me more good will, and my wife was always the eye in the head of the caravan. Hence there began a holiday and amusements. The fires were stirred up; the Scots took from their wagons the pipes, whose music we both liked, since it was for us a pleasant reminiscence; the Americans took out their favorite ox-bones, and amid songs, shouts, and shooting, the wedding evening passed for us.

Aunt Atkins embraced Lillian every little while, now laughing, now weeping, now lighting her pipe, which went out the next moment. But I was touched most by the following ceremony which is a custom in that movable portion of the American population which spends the greater part of its life in wagons. When the moon went down the men fastened on the ramrods of their guns branches of lighted osier, and a whole procession, under the lead of old Smith, conducted us from wagon to wagon, asking Lillian at each of them, “Is this your home?” My beautiful love answered, “No!” and we went on. At Aunt Atkins’ wagon a real tenderness took possession of us all, for in that one Lillian had ridden hitherto. When she said there also in a low voice, “No,” Aunt Atkins bellowed like a buffalo, and seizing Lillian in her embrace, began to repeat: “My little one! my sweet!” sobbing meanwhile, and carried away with weeping. Lillian sobbed too; and then all those hardened hearts grew tender for an instant, and there was no eye to which tears did not come.

When we approached it, I barely recognized my wagon, it was decked with branches and flowers. Here the men raised the burning torches aloft, and Smith inquired in a louder and more solemn voice, —

“Is this your home?”

“That’s it! That’s it!” answered Lillian.

Then all uncovered their heads, and there was such silence that I heard the hissing of the fire and the sound of the burnt twigs falling on the ground; the old white-haired miner, stretching out his sinewy hands over us, said, —

“May God bless you both, and your house, Amen!”

A triple hurrah answered that blessing. All separated then, leaving me and my loved one alone.

When the last man had gone, she rested her head on my breast, whispering: “Forever! forever!” and at that moment the stars in our souls outnumbered the stars of the sky.

Chapter VI

Next morning early I left my wife sleeping and went to find flowers for her. While looking for them, I said to myself every moment: “You are married!” and the thought filled me with such delight, that I raised my eyes to the Lord of Hosts, thanking Him for having permitted me to live to the time in which a man becomes himself genuinely and rounds out his life with the life of another loved beyond all. I had something now of my own in the world, and though that canvas-covered wagon was my only house and hearth, I felt richer at once, and looked at my previous wandering lot with pity, and with wonder that I could have lived in that manner hitherto. Formerly it had not even come to my head what happiness there is in that word “wife,” – happiness which called to my heart’s blood with that name, and to the best part of my own soul. For a long time I had so loved Lillian that I saw the whole world through her only, connected everything with her, and understood everything only as it related to her. And now when I said “wife,” that meant, mine, mine forever; and I thought that I should go wild with delight, for it could not find place in my head, that I, a poor man, should possess such a treasure. What then was lacking to me? Nothing. Had those prairies been warmer, had there been safety there for her, had it not been for the obligation to lead people to the place to which I had promised to lead them, I was ready not to go to California, but to settle even in Nebraska, if with Lillian. I had been going to California to dig gold, but now I was ready to laugh at the idea. “What other riches can I find there, when I have her?” I asked myself. “What do we care for gold? See, I will choose some canyon, where there is spring all the year; I will cut down trees for a house, and live with her, and a plough and a gun will give us life. We shall not die of hunger – ” These were my thoughts while gathering flowers, and when I had enough of them I returned to the camp. On the road I met Aunt Atkins.

“Is the little one sleeping?” asked she, taking from her mouth for a moment the inseparable pipe.

“She is sleeping,” answered I.

To this Aunt Atkins, blinking with one eye, added, —

“Ah, you rascal!”

Meanwhile the “little one” was not sleeping, for we both saw her coming down from the wagon, and shielding her eyes against the sunlight with her hand, she began to look on every side. Seeing me, she ran up all rosy and fresh, as the morning. When I opened my arms, she fell into them panting, and putting up her mouth, began to repeat: —

“Dzien dobry! dzien dobry! dzien dobry!”

Then she stood on her toes, and looking into my eyes, asked with a roguish smile, “Am I your wife?”

What was there to answer, except to kiss without end and fondle? And thus passed the whole time at that meeting of rivers, for old Smith had taken on himself all my duties till the resumption of our journey.

We visited our beavers once more, and the stream, through which I carried her now without resistance. Once we went up Blue River in a little redwood canoe. At a bend of the stream I showed Lillian buffaloes near by, driving their horns into the bank, from which their whole heads were covered as if with armor of dried clay. But two days before starting, these expeditions ceased, for first the Indians had appeared in the neighborhood, and second my dear lady had begun to be weak somewhat. She grew pale and lost strength, and when I inquired what the trouble was, she answered only with a smile and the assurance that it was nothing. I watched over her sleep, I nursed her as well as I was able, almost preventing the breezes from blowing on her, and grew thin from anxiety. Aunt Atkins blinked mysteriously with her left eye when talking of Lillian’s illness, and sent forth such dense rolls of smoke that she grew invisible behind them. I was disturbed all the more, because sad thoughts came to Lillian at times. She had beaten it into her head that maybe it was not permitted to love so intensely as we were loving, and once, putting her finger on the Bible, which we read every day, she said sadly, —

“Read, Ralph.”

I looked, and a certain wonderful feeling seized my heart too, when I read, “Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever.” She said when I had finished reading, “But if God is angry at this, I know that with His goodness He will punish only me.”

I pacified her by saying that love was simply an angel, who flies from the souls of two people to God and takes Him praise from the earth. After that there was no talk between us touching such things, since preparations for the journey had begun. The fitting up of wagons and beasts, and a thousand occupations, stole my time from me. When at last the hour came for departure we took tearful farewell of that river fork, which had witnessed so much of our happiness; but when I saw the train stretching out again on the prairie, the wagons one after another and lines of mules before the wagons, I felt a certain consolation at the thought that the end of the journey would be nearer each day, that a few months more and we should see California, toward which we were striving with such toil.

But the first days of the journey did not pass over-successfully. Beyond the Missouri, as far as the foot of the Rocky Mountains, the prairie rises continually over enormous expanses; therefore the beasts were easily wearied, and were often tired out. Besides, we could not approach the Platte River, for, though the flood had decreased, it was the time of the great spring hunts, and a multitude of Indians circled around the river, looking for herds of buffaloes moving northward. Night service became difficult and wearying; no night passed without alarms.

On the fourth day after we had moved from the river fork, I broke up a considerable party of Indian plunderers at the moment when they were trying to stampede our mules. But worst of all were the nights without fire. We were unable to approach the Platte River, and frequently had nothing to burn, and toward morning drizzling rain began to fall; buffalo dung, which in case of need took the place of wood, got wet, and would not burn.

The buffaloes filled me with alarm also. Sometimes we saw herds of some thousands on the horizon, rushing forward like a storm, crushing everything before them. Were such a herd to strike the train, we should perish every one without rescue. To complete the evil, the prairie was swarming at that time with beasts of prey of all species; after the buffaloes and Indians, came terrible gray bears, cougars, big wolves from Kansas and the Indian Territory. At the small streams, where we stopped sometimes for the night, we saw at sunset whole menageries coming to drink after the heat of the day. Once a bear rushed at Wichita, our half-breed; and if I had not run up, with Smith and the other scout, Tom, to help him, he would have been torn to pieces. I opened the head of the monster with an axe, which I brought down with such force that the handle of tough hickory was broken; still, the beast rushed at me once more, and fell only when Smith and Tom shot him in the ear from rifles. Those savage brutes were so bold that at night they came up to the very train; and in the course of a week we killed two not more than a hundred yards from the wagons. In consequence of this, the dogs raised such an uproar from twilight till dawn that it was impossible to close an eye.

Once I loved such a life; and when, a year before, I was in Arkansas, during the greatest heat, it was for me as in paradise. But now, when I remembered that in the wagon my beloved wife, instead of sleeping, was trembling about me, and ruining her health with anxiety, I wished all the Indians and bears and cougars in the lowest pit, and desired from my soul to secure as soon as possible the peace of that being so fragile, so delicate, and so worshipped, that I wished to bear her forever in my arms.

A great weight fell from my heart when, after three weeks of such crossings, I saw at last the waters of a river white as if traced out with chalk; this stream is called now Republican River, but at that time it had no name in English. Broad belts of dark willows, stretching like a mourning trail along the white waters, could afford us fuel in plenty; and though that kind of willow crackles in the fire, and shoots sparks with great noise, still it burns better than wet buffalo dung. I appointed at this place another rest of two days, because the rocks, scattered here and there by the banks of the river, indicated the proximity of a hilly country, difficult to cross, lying on both sides of the back of the Rocky Mountains. We were already on a considerable elevation above the sea, as could be known by the cold nights.

That inequality between day and night temperature troubled us greatly. Some people, among others old Smith, caught fevers, and had to go to their wagons. The seeds of the disease had clung to them, probably, at the unwholesome banks of the Missouri, and hardship caused the outbreak. The nearness of the mountains, however, gave hope of a speedy recovery; meanwhile, my wife nursed them with a devotion innate to gentle hearts only.

But she grew thin herself. More than once, when I woke in the morning, my first look fell on her beautiful face, and my heart beat uneasily at its pallor and the blue half circles under her eyes. It would happen that while I was looking at her in that way she would wake, smile at me, and fall asleep again. Then I felt that I would have given half my health of oak if we were in California; but California was still far, far away.

After two days we started again, and coming to the Republican River at noon, were soon moving along the fork of the White Man toward the southern fork of the Platte, lying for the most part in Colorado. The country became more mountainous at every step, and we were really in the canyon along the banks of which rose up in the distance higher and higher granite cliffs, now standing alone, now stretching out continuously like walls, now closing more narrowly, now opening out on both sides. Wood was not lacking, for all the cracks and crannies of the cliffs were covered with dwarf pine and dwarf oak as well. Here and there springs were heard; along the rocky walls scampered the wolverine. The air was cool, pure, wholesome. After a week the fever ceased. But the mules and horses, forced to eat food in which heather predominated, instead of the juicy grass of Nebraska, grew thinner and thinner, and groaned more loudly as they pulled up the mountains our well filled and weighty wagons.

At last on a certain afternoon we saw before us beacons, as it were, or crested clouds half melting in the distance, hazy, blue, azure, with white and gold on their crests, and immense in size, extending from the earth to the sky.

At this sight a shout rose in the whole caravan; men climbed to the tops of the wagons to see better, from every side thundered shouts: “Rocky Mountains! Rocky Mountains!” Caps were waving in the air, and on all faces enthusiasm was evident.

Thus the Americans greeted their Rocky Mountains, but I went to my wagon, and, pressing my wife to my breast, vowed faith to her once more in spirit before those heaven-touching altars, which expressed such solemn mysteriousness, majesty, unapproachableness, and immensity. The sun was just setting, and soon twilight covered the whole country; but those giants in the last rays seemed like measureless masses of burning coal and lava. Later on, that fiery redness passed into violet, ever darker, and at last all disappeared, and was merged into one darkness, through which gazed at us from above the stars, the twinkling eyes of the night.

But we were at least a hundred and fifty miles yet from the main chain; in fact, the mountains disappeared from our eyes next day, intercepted by cliffs; again they appeared and again they vanished, as our road went by turns.

We advanced slowly, for new obstacles stood in our way; and though we kept as much as possible to the bed of the river, frequently, where the banks were too steep, we had to go around and seek a passage by neighboring valleys. The ground in these valleys was covered with gray heather and wild peas, not good even for mules, and forming no little hindrance to the journey, for the long and powerful stems, twisting around, made it difficult to pass through them.

Sometimes we came upon openings and cracks in the earth, impassable and hundreds of yards long; these we had to go around also. Time after time the scouts, Wichita and Tom, returned with accounts of new obstacles. The land bristled with rocks, or broke away suddenly.

On a certain day it seemed to us that we were going through a valley, when all at once the valley was missing; in place of it was a precipice so deep that the gaze went down with terror along the perpendicular wall, and the head became dizzy. Giant oaks, growing at the bottom of the abyss, seemed little black clumps, and the buffaloes pasturing among them like beetles. We entered more and more into the region of precipices, of stones, fragments, debris, and rocks thrown one on the other with a kind of wild disorder. The echo sent back twice and thrice from granite arches the curses of drivers and squealing of mules. On the prairie our wagons, rising high above the surface of the country, seemed lordly and immense; here before those perpendicular cliffs, the wagons became wonderfully small to the eye, and vanished in those gorges as if devoured by gigantic jaws. Little waterfalls, or as they are called by the Indians, “laughing waters,” stopped the road to us every few hundred yards; toil exhausted our strength and that of the animals. Meanwhile, when at times the real chain of mountains appeared on the horizon, it seemed as far away and hazy as ever. Happily curiosity overcame in us even weariness, and the continual change of views kept it in practice. None of my people, not excepting those who were born in the Alleghanies, had ever seen such wild regions; I myself gazed with wonder on those canyons, along the edges of which the unbridled fancy of Nature had reared as it were castles, fortresses, and stone cities. From time to time we met Indians, but these were different from those on the prairies, very straggling and very much wilder.

The sight of white men roused in them fear mingled with a desire for blood. They seemed still more cruel than their brethren in Nebraska; their stature was loftier, their complexion much darker, their wide nostrils and quick glances gave them the expression of wild beasts caught in a trap. Their movements, too, had almost the quickness and timidity of beasts. While speaking, they put their thumbs to their cheeks, which were painted in white and blue stripes. Their weapons were tomahawks and bows, the latter made of a certain kind of firm mountain hawthorn, so rigid that my men could not bend them. These savages, who in considerable numbers might have been very dangerous, were distinguished by invincible thievishness; happily they were few, the largest party that we met not exceeding fifteen. They called themselves Tabeguachis, Winemucas, and Yampas. Our scout, Wichita, though expert in Indian dialects, could not understand their language; hence we could not make out in any way why all of them, pointing to the Rocky Mountains and then to us, closed and opened their palms, as if indicating some number.

The road became so difficult, that with the greatest exertion, we made barely fifteen miles a day. At the same time our horses began to die, being less enduring than mules and more choice of food; men failed in strength too, for during whole days they had to draw wagons with the mules, or to hold them in dangerous places. By degrees unwillingness seized the weakest; some got the rheumatism, and one, through whose mouth blood came from exertion, died in three days, cursing the hour in which it came to his head to leave New York. We were then in the worst part of the road, near the little river called by the Indians Kiowa. There were no cliffs there as high as on the Eastern boundary of Colorado; but the whole country, as far as the eye could reach, was bristling with fragments thrown in disorder one upon another. These fragments, some standing upright, others overturned, presented the appearance of ruined graveyards with fallen headstones. Those were really the “Bad Lands” of Colorado, answering to those which extended northward over Nebraska. With the greatest effort we escaped from them in the course of a week.

Chapter VII

At last we found ourselves at the foot of the Rocky Mountains.

Fear seized me when I looked from a proximate point at that world of granite mountains, whose sides were wrapped in mist, and whose summits were lost somewhere in eternal snow and clouds. Their size and silent majesty pressed me to the earth; hence I bent before the Lord, imploring Him to permit me to lead, past those measureless walls, my wagons, my people, and my wife. After such a prayer I entered the stone gullies and corridors with more confidence. When they closed behind us we were cut off from the rest of the world. Above was the sky; in it a few eagles were screaming, around us was granite and then granite without end, – a genuine labyrinth of passages, vaults, ravines, openings, precipices, towers, silent edifices, and as it were chambers, gigantic and dreamy. There is such a solemnity there, and the soul is under such pressure, that a man knows not himself why he whispers instead of speaking aloud. It seems to him that the road is closing before him continually, that some voice is saying to him: “Go no farther, for there is no passage!” It seems to him that he is attacking some secret on which God Himself has set a seal. At night, when those upright legions were standing as black as mourning, and the moon cast about their summits a silvery mantle of sadness, when certain wonderful shadows rose around the “laughing waters,” a quiver passed through the most hardened adventurers. We spent whole hours by the fires, looking with a certain superstitious awe at the dark depths of the ravines, lighted by ruddy gleams; we seemed to think that something terrible might show itself any moment.

Once we found under a hollow in the cliff the skeleton of a man; and though from the remnant of the hair which had dried to the skull, we saw that he was an Indian, still an ominous feeling pressed our hearts, for that skeleton with grinning teeth seemed to forewarn us that whoso wandered in there would never come out again.

That same day the half-breed, Tom, was killed suddenly, having fallen with his horse from the edge of a cliff. A gloomy sadness seized the whole caravan; formerly we had advanced noisily and joyfully, now the drivers ceased to swear, and the caravan pushed forward in a silence broken only by the squeaking of wheels. The mules grew ill-tempered more frequently, and when one pair stood as still as if lashed to the earth, all the wagons behind them had to stop. I was most tortured by this, – that in those moments which were so difficult and oppressive, and in which my wife needed my presence more than at other times, I could not be near her; for I had to double and treble myself almost, so as to give an example, uphold courage and confidence. The men, it is true, bore toil with the endurance innate with Americans, though they were simply using the last of their strength. But my health was proof against every hardship. There were nights in which I did not have two hours of sleep; I dragged the wagons with others, I posted the sentries, I went around the square, – in a word, I performed service twice more burdensome than any one of the company; but it is evident that happiness gave me strength. For when, wearied and beaten down, I came to my wagon, I found there everything that I held dearest: a faithful heart and a beloved hand, that wiped my wearied forehead. Lillian, though suffering a little, never went to sleep wittingly before my arrival; and when I reproached her she closed my mouth with a kiss and a prayer not to be angry. When I told her to sleep she did so, holding my hand. Frequently in the night, when she woke, she covered me with beaver skins, so that I might rest better. Always mild, sweet, loving, she cared for me and brought me to worship her simply. I kissed the hem of her garment, as if it had been the most sacred thing, and that wagon of ours became for me almost a church. That little one in presence of those heaven-touching walls of granite, upon which she cast her upraised eyes, covered them for me in such a way, that in presence of her they vanished from before me, and amid all those immensities I saw only her. What is there wonderful, if when strength failed others, I had strength still, and felt that so long as it was a question of her I would never fail?