Besides that I did not want them walking into that pool; it was clear, seemed clean.
The dogs finished drinking. I looked at Fritz and wished that he could talk as well as a mule. Did I have anything to write on? No, not a durn thing! If I told him to fetch Dora, Fritz would try—but would she come? I had told her flatly to stay in the kraal till I got back. Minerva, I wasn’t thinking straight; the heat and no water had got to me. I should have given Dora contingency instructions . . because if I stayed away too long and it started to get dark, she was going to come looking for me no matter what.
Hell, I hadn’t even fetched a bucket!
In the meantime I at least had sense enough to scoop up and drink a couple of handfuls of water, Gideon style. That seemed to clear my head some.
I dropped the straps of my overalls, got my shirt off, soaked it in water, and gave it to Fritz. “Find Dora! Fetch Dora! Fast!” I think he thought I had gone nuts, but he left, carrying that wet shirt.
Then the first mule showed up—old Buck, praise Allah!—and I ruined a hat.
That hat Zack had fetched as a present for me. It was alleged to be an all-weather hat, so porous it would let air in, yet so water-repellent that it would keep your head dry in a pouring rain. The former allegation was only moderately true; the latter I had not had a chance to test.
Buck snorted and was all for going into the water up to his knees; I stopped him. Then I offered him a hatful of water. Then a second. And a third.
“Enough for now, Buck. Assembly. Water call.”
With his throat wet Buck could do it. He let out a trumpeting bellow that was mule talk, not English, and I won’t attempt to reproduce it, but it meant “Line up for water” and nothing else. “Fall in to be harnessed” was another sort of bellow.
Then I was trying to cope with a dozen-odd thirst-crazed mules. But between me, Buck, Beulah who was Buck’s straw boss, Lady Macbeth who was used to helping Buck too—and a hat that wasn’t quite all that waterproof—we made it. I never did learn how seniority was established among mules, but the mules knew and Buck enforced it and water call always found them queued up in the same order, and heaven help the youngster who tried crowd in out of turn; the least he could expect was a nipped ear.
By the time the last had been given a hatful of water my hat was a mess—but here came Dora with Fritz, her needle gun in her right fist, and, glory be!—two buckets in her left hand. “Water call!” I told my top sergeant. “Line ’em up again, Buck!”
With two buckets and two of us working we got a full bucket into each mule pretty rapidly. Then I got my shirt back from Fritz, scrubbed out the buckets a bit, filled them, and announced a third water call, telling Buck to let them drink from the pond.
He did so, but he still maintained discipline. As Dora and I left, each with a bucket of water in one hand and a drawn gun in the other, Buck was still requiring them to drink one at a time, by seniority.
It was nearly sundown when Dora and I and the dogs got back to the wagons, almost full dark as we finished watering goats and sow and cats and chickens. Then we celebrated. Minerva, I swear solemnly: On the half bucket of water we saved for ourselves Dora and I got stinkin’ drunk.
Despite earlier resolutions not to stop short of the pass, we bivouacked there three days—but very useful days. The mules grazed steadily and filled out, plenty of water, plenty of forage. I shot a prairie goat at the water hole; what we couldn’t eat, Dora sliced and dried as jerky. I filled all the barrels—not as easy as it sounds as Buck and I had to work out a route to the water hole, then I had to chop some, then I had to take the wagons in one at a time; it took me a day and a half.
But we had cooked fresh meat and all we could eat—and hot baths! With soap. With shampoos. With a shave for me. I carried Dora’s big iron kettle to the pool, she fetched a bucket, I built a fire—then we took turns getting the stink off, one guarding while the other washed.
When we rolled toward the pass the morning of the fourth day, we were not only in fine shape, but Dora and I smelled good and kept telling each other so, in high spirits.
We were never again short of water. There was snow somewhere above us; you could feel it in the breeze and sometimes catch a distant glimpse of white in a saddle between peaks. The higher we got, the oftener we encountered rivulets, water that never reached the prairie in so dry a year. The forage was green and good.
We stopped in a little alp close to the pass. There I left Dora with the wagons and the mules and with flat-footed instructions about what to do in case I did not come back. “I expect to be back by dark. If I am not, you can wait a week. No longer. Understand me?”
“I understand you.”
“All right. At the end of a week, lighten the first wagon by chucking out anything you can do without on trek. Put all food into that wagon, empty the barrels in the second wagon and put them in the first wagon, turn the sow and the chickens loose, and head back. Fill all your barrels at that trickle we crossed earlier today. After that, don’t stop for anything; roll all day from dawn till dark. You should reach Separation in half the time it took to get us up here. Okay?”
“No, sir.”
Minerva, a few centuries earlier I would have started to boil up at that point. But I had learned. It took me about a tenth of a second to realize that I could not make her do anything—if I were gone—and that a promise made under duress won’t hold. “All right, Dora, tell me why not and what you intend to do instead. If I don’t like it, perhaps we both will start back for Separation.”
“Woodrow, while you did not say so, you are asking me to do what I should do—and I would do!—if I were a widow.”
I nodded. “Yes, that’s right. Dearest, if I’m not back in a week, you’re a widow. No possible doubt.”
“I understand that. I also understand why you are leaving the wagons here; you can’t be sure that you can turn them around higher up.”
“Yes. That’s probably what happened to earlier parties—reached a place where they couldn’t go forward and couldn’t turn around . . then tried one or the other and went over.”
“Yes. But, my husband, you mean to be gone only one day—half a day out, half a day back. Woodrow, I won’t assume that you are dead—I can’t!” She looked at me steadily and her eyes filled with tears, but she did not cry. “I must see your dear body, I must be certain. If I am certain, I will go back to Separation as fast and as safely as possible. And then to the Magees as you have told me, and have your child and bring him up to be as much like his father as possible. But I must know.”
“Dora, Dora! In one week you will know. No need to look for my bones.”
“May I finish, sir? If you aren’t back tonight, I’m on my own. At dawn tomorrow I start out on Betty, with another saddle mule following. At noon I turn back.
“Perhaps, if I can’t find you, I’ll find a spot higher up where I can take one wagon and turn it around. If I find such a spot, I’ll move one wagon up and use it as a base and look farther. I could have missed your track. Or I might have followed mule tracks—but you aren’t on the mule. Whatever it is, I’ll search and search again. Until there’s no hope at all! Then . . I will go to Separation as fast as mules can get me there.
“But, my darling, if you are alive—maybe with a broken leg but alive—if you still have a knife or even your bare hands, I don’t believe that a loper or anything can kill you. If you are alive, I’ll find you. I will!”
So I backed down and checked watches with her and agreed on what time I would turn back. Then Buck and I, with me up on Beulah, set out to scout ahead.
Minerva, at least four parties had tried that pass; none had come back. I’m certain enough that they each failed from being too eager, not patient enough, unwilling to turn back when the risk was too great.
Patience I have learned. The centuries may not give a man wisdom, but he acquires patience or he doesn’t live through them. That first morning we found the first spot that was too tight. Oh
, someone had blasted there and probably got around that turn. But it was too narrow to be safe, so I blasted some more. Nobody in his right mind takes a wagon into the mountains without dynamite or some such; you can’t nibble at solid rock with a toothpick, or even a pickax, without risking being still up there when the snows come.
I was not using dynamite. Oh, anyone with a modicum of chemistry can make both dynamite and black powder, and I planned to do both—later. What I had with me was a more efficient and more flexible blasting jetty—and not shock-sensitive, perfectly safe in wagon and saddlebag.
I placed that first charge in a crack where I thought it would do the most good, set the fuse but did not light it, then walked both mules back around the bend and exerted my histrionic talent to its limit to explain to Buck and Beulah that there was going to be a loud noise, a bang!—but it could not hurt them, so don’t worry. Then I went back, lit the fuse, hurried back to them and was in time to have an arm on each neck—watched my watch. “Now!” I said, and the mountain obliged me with Ka-boom!
Beulah shivered but was steady. Buck said inquiringly, “Paaang?”
I agreed. He nodded and went back to cropping leaves.
We three went up and took a look. Nice and wide now—Not very level, but three tiny blasts took care of that. “What do you think, Buck?”
He looked carefully up and down trail. “Doo wagon?”
“One wagon.”
“Ogay.”
We explored a little farther, planned the next day’s work; then I turned back at the time promised, was home early.
It took me a week to make a couple of kilometers safe to another little alp, a grassy pocket big enough to turn one wagon around at a time. Then it took all of a long day to move our wagons, one at a time, to this next base. Someone had made it that far; I found a broken wagon wheel—salvaged the steel tire and the hub. It went on that way, day after day, slowly, tediously, and at last we were through the notch and headed—mostly—downhill.
But that was worse, not better. The river I had been sure was there, by photomaps from space, was far below us, and we still had to go down, down, down, and follow it a long way before we would reach the place where the gorge opened out into valley suitable for homesteading. More blasting, lots of brush chopping, and sometimes I had to blast trees. But the nastiest part was rappelling those wagons down the steepest places. I didn’t mind steep places going uphill (which we still encountered); a twelve-mule team can drag a single wagon up any slope they can dig their hooves into. But downhill—
Certainly those wagons had brakes. But if the grade is steep, the wagon slides on its tires—then goes over the edge, mules and all.
I couldn’t let that happen even once. Not ever risk letting it happen. We could lose one wagon and six mules and still go on. But I was not expendable. (Dora would not be in the wagon.) If that wagon cut loose, my chances of jumping clear would be so-so.
If the grade was steep enough to give me even a trace of doubt that I could hold a wagon with its brakes, we did it the hard way: used that expensive imported line to check it down such pitches. Lead the line out fair and free for running, pass the bitter end three times around a tree stout enough to anchor it, secure it to the rear axle—then our four steadiest mules, Ken and Daisy, Beau and Belle, would take the wagon down at a slow walk (no driver) following Buck, while I kept tension on the line, paying it out very slowly.
If terrain permitted, Dora on Betty would take station halfway down to relay orders to Buck. But I could not permit her to be on the trail itself; if that line parted, It would whip. So maybe half the time Buck and I worked without liaison, doing it dead slow and depending on his judgment.
If there was not a sound anchor tree properly positioned —and it seems to me that this happened more often than not—then we had to wait while I worked something out. This could be anything: a sling between two trees, then rig a fairlead to a third tree—A bare-rock anchor using driven pitons —I hated these as I had to do my checking right at the rear axle, walking behind, and God help us all if I stumbled. Then that was always followed by the time-consuming chore of salvaging those pitons—the harder the rock, the better the anchor, but the tougher the job of getting them out—and I had to get them out; I would need them farther along.
Sometimes no trees and no rock—Once the anchor was twelve mules faced back along the trail, with Dora soothing them while I checked at a rear axle and Buok controlled the progress.
On the prairie we often made thirty kilometers a day. Once we were through Hopeless Pass and had started down the gorge the distance made good over the ground could be zero for days on end while I prepared the trail ahead, then up to as high as ten kilometers if there were no steep pitches that required rappelling down by line. I used just one unbreakable rule: The trail had to be fully prepared from one turnaround base to the next before a wagon was moved.
Minerva, it was so confounded slow that my “calendar” caught up with me; the sow tittered—and we were not out of the mountains.
I don’t recall ever making a harder decision. Dora was in good shape, but she was halfway through her pregnancy. Turn back (as I had promised myself, without telling her)—or push on and hope to reach lower and fairly level ground before she came to term? Which would be easier on her?
I had to consult her—but I had to decide. Responsibility cannot be shared. I knew how she would vote before I took the matter up with her: Push on.
But that would be simply her gallant courage; I was the one with experience both in wilderness trekking and in childbirth problems.
I studied those photomaps again without learning anything new. Somewhere ahead the gorge opened out into a broad river valley—but how far? I didn’t know because I didn’t know where we were. We had started with an odometer on the right rear wheel of the lead wagon; I had reset it to zero at the pass—and it had lasted only a day or two; a rock or something did it in. I didn’t even know how much altitude we had managed to drop since the pass, or how much more we must lose to get down.
Livestock and equipment: fair. We had lost two mules. Pretty Girl had wandered over the edge one night and broken a leg; all I could do for her was to put her out of her misery. I didn’t butcher her because we had fresh meat and I could not do it where the other mules could not see it, anyhow. John Barleycorn had simply upped and died one night—or possibly lost to a loper; he was partly eaten when we found him.
Three hens were dead and two piglets failed to make it, but the sow seemed willing to suckle the others.
I had only two spare wheels left. Lose two more and the next broken wheel meant abandoning one wagon.
It was the wheels that made up my mind.
(Omitted: approximately 7,000 words which reiterate difficulties in getting down the gorge.)
When we came out on that plateau, we could see the valley stretching out before us.
A beautiful valley, Minerva, wide and green and lovely—thousands and thousands of hectares of ideal farmland. The river from the gorge, tame now, meandered lazily between low banks. Facing us, a long, long way off, was a high peak crowned with snow. Its snow line let me guess how high it was—around six thousand meters, for we had now dropped down into subtropics, and only a very high mountain could keep so much snow through a long and very hot summer.
That beautiful mountain, that lush green valley, gave me a feeling of déjà vu. Then I placed it: Mount Hood in the land of my birth back on old Earth, as I had first seen it as a young man. But this valley, this snowcapped peak, had never before been seen by men.
I called out to Buck to halt the march. “Dorable, we’re home. In sight of it, somewhere down in that valley.”
“ ‘Home,’ ” she repeated. “Oh, my darling!”
“Don’t sniffle.”
“I wasn’t sniffling!” she answered, sniffling. “But I’ve got an awful good cry saved up and when I get time to, I’m going to use it.”
“All right, dear,” I agreed, “when y
ou have time. Let’s name that mountain ‘Dora Mountain.’ ”
She looked thoughtful. “No, that’s not its name. That’s Mount Hope. And all this below is Happy Valley.”
“Durable Dora, you’re incurably sentimental.”
“You should talk!” She patted her belly, swollen almost to term. “That’s Happy Valley because it’s where I’m going to have this hungry little beast . . and that’s Mount Hope because it is.”
Buck had come back to the first wagon and was waiting to find out why we had stopped. “Buck,” I said, pointing, “that’s home out there. We made it. Home, boy. Farm.”
Buck looked out over the valley. “Ogay.”
—in his sleep, Minerva. Not lopers, there wasn’t a mark on Buck. Massive coronary, I think, although I didn’t cut him open to find out. He was simply old and tired. Before we left, I had tried to put him to pasture with John Magee. But Buck didn’t want that. We were his family, Dora and Beulah and I, and he wanted to come along. So I made him mule boss and didn’t work him—I mean I never rode him and never had him in harness. He did work, as mule boss, and his patient good judgment got us safely to Happy Valley. We would not have made it without him.
Maybe he could have lived a few years longer turned out to pasture. Or he might have pined away from loneliness soon after we left. Who’s to judge?
I didn’t even consider butchering him; I think Dora would have miscarried if I had so much as broached the idea. But it is foolish to bury a mule when lopers and weather will soon take care of his carcass. So I buried him.
It takes an hellacious big hole to bury a mule; if it hadn’t been soft river-bottom loam, I’d be there yet.