Levi slipped his hand into Elly’s, and whereas many of the women in the Vermont group wept, she looked straight ahead and gripped his hand as firmly as if she were a man.

When the service ended the young captain left his pew and passed among the Vermont emigrants, wishing them well and assuring them that he and his sergeant would be accompanying them through the worst of the Indian country and that there was little to fear. As Levi Zendt strained to hear this reassuring news he felt his arm being taken, and turned to see Curtis Wainwright, the man who had tried to buy his horses that morning.

“Hello!” Wainwright said amiably. “Glad to see you’re a churchman.”

“It’s a long trip. We need blessing.”

“Yesterday I was importunate,” Wainwright apologized. “Today I want you to meet our minister,” and he led Levi and Elly to the porch, where the minister was bidding his parishioners goodnight. “Reverend Oster,” Wainwright said, “I wish you’d inform these strangers that I’m a man of reasonably decent character. I’m afraid I frightened them yesterday.”

Reverend Oster turned and smiled. Grasping the hands of Levi and Elly, he beamed on them and said, “This is Curtis Wainwright, responsible citizen and good friend of this church. You can trust him in anything except when he’s trying to buy your horse.”

Elly laughed, and Wainwright said, “The wrong words, Reverend, the wrong words. I was trying to convince them they ought not take their fine horses onto the Oregon Trail. It’ll only kill them.”

“In that he’s right,” Reverend Oster said. “Our experience is that you must take oxen, not horses or mules.”

“What’s that about mules?” a new voice asked, and they turned to face Captain Mercy.

“Captain Maxwell Mercy,” the minister said. “I don’t believe I caught your names.”

“Levi and Elly Zendt, Lancaster, Pennsylvania.”

“Are you the couple with the Conestoga?” Mercy asked.

“That’s ours.”

“We’re going west together.”

“When?”

Captain Mercy broke into a laugh. “With Captain Frake? Who knows! He was scheduled to sail on Wednesday. He may make it by Monday.”

“Why did he make me rush so?”

“He likes to get his freight aboard … fare paid.”

“But we’re eatin’ three meals a day.”

“Cheaper to feed you than to lose you.” He bowed politely to Elly and said, “Tomorrow buy lots of cloth and three pairs of shoes that fit. And as for the horses, they do not do well on the trail. If you can make a profitable deal, consider it.”

“I love those horses,” Levi said stubbornly, and the men knew that further argument was useless, for they were the kind of men who loved their horses too, and they appreciated his refusal to trade.

“He’ll have trouble,” Captain Mercy said as the Zendts left. “I’m taking mules—army orders—and they’ll give trouble enough.”

If Captain Frake had sailed on Friday noon, it is probable that Levi and Elly Zendt would have gone to Oregon without ever knowing that a place like Rattlesnake Buttes in Colorado existed, but the boat did not sail, so on Friday afternoon Levi and Elly strolled along the streets of downtown St. Louis, buying cloth and extra shoes, and as they turned a corner off what used to be Rue de l’Eglise they came upon a building unlike any they had seen before. It seemed to be a store but it was more like a theater. Its front was plastered with signs announcing Mr. L. Reed, Gastriloquist Extraordinary; Master Haskell, Wizzard of the Ages, Thaumaturgist and Metamorphosist; Madame Zelinah-Kah-Nourinha, Fair Lady of Turkey; and Last Time to See the Gigantic Elephant Discovered in These Regions by Dr. Albert C. Koch, now of London.

Levi looked at Elly as if to ask whether she wished to see these wonders; she shrugged her shoulders, and they were about to pass on, when the owner of the museum came into the street and cajoled them with promises of delights they could not even imagine: “You may never have a chance to see the mighty elephant, because next month we must send it to Europe.”

Since neither Levi nor Elly had ever seen an elephant, except in books, they diffidently allowed the man to sell them tickets, and in they went. It was, as Levi had expected, mostly a theater, with chairs and a stage onto which came a juggler and two pretty girls. Then Mr. Reed appeared; he was worth the whole admission, because standing alone with no equipment of any kind, he could make almost any sound you might care to hear: a roaring alligator, a train falling off a trestle, a trumpeter playing an aria from Donizetti, the explosion of a volcano.

The Zendts were quite captivated by Mr. Reed, and Elly was convinced he must have little bugles and things hidden in his mouth, but Levi asked, “How could he?” They were about to leave when the manager reminded them, “You haven’t seen the elephant,” and they passed behind a curtain expecting to see a live elephant. Instead, they saw something they would never forget: a truly massive skeleton of a gigantic mastodon that had lived along the riverbank thousands of years ago. They were so astonished that they barely heard the monologue: “… ate a ton of hay each day … each mighty tusk twenty-two feet long … the mother carried the baby in her womb for four years, seven months and nineteen days … I want this young lady to lie down beside the foot … it could crush her entire body with one savage blow … the tail was nine feet long … huge, huge, huge.”

The Zendts remained staring at the giant skeleton long after the other spectators had left, Levi in particular being captivated by it. “How could he find enough to eat?” he kept asking.

“You heard the man. A ton of hay every day.”

“But where would he find it?”

“If he had a trunk to match the rest of him,” Elly reasoned, “he could stand in one spot and sweep in a ton of grass.”

When they reached the streets they found themselves in a veritable flood, and Levi pondered how he might get Elly back to the boat without being drenched, but she said, “I’m not afraid of a little rain.” They were about to set forth when they heard themselves being hailed. “You there! From Pennsylvania! Want a ride back? This is going to get worse.” It was Captain Mercy heading for his nightly intelligence regarding the Fell.

When they were inside his carriage he told them, “I’m being sent west by the army. To select a site for a new fort. Sergeant Lykes, eight mules and me.”

At the Fell, Captain Frake warned Mercy, “We sail tomorrow at twelve sharp. And you better have them mules aboard, because this boat never waits a minute.”

So the Zendts went up the gangplank, and for some time they lingered on deck, staring at the lights of a city which had been hospitable, and Elly saw principally the dark river which was beginning to rise because of the excessive rains, but Levi saw only the elephant, massive and plodding and filling the sky with its premonitory form.

On Saturday, May 4, to everyone’s amazement, Captain Frake finally ordered his crew to fire up the boilers, bring in the gangplanks and cast off from the iron rings. At twelve sharp, as he had predicted, the Robert Q. Fell, with as full a load as the craft could carry, set out for the middle of the Mississippi and turned its bow upstream.

It was to be a difficult and ugly day, for whereas the steamboat did well in the slow-moving Mississippi, when it reached the mouth of the Missouri, that river was throwing so much water into the main stream and so much mud, that for some hours the Robert Q. Fell seemed to be standing still. Captain Frake grew plainly worried, allowed his craft to slip backward some distance, then headed for the Illinois shore. Ordering a major head of steam, he tried again, but his engine could deliver only six knots forward while the river was flowing four knots in the opposite direction.

Cursing the Missouri, he edged closer to the northern bank of the muddy river and fortunately caught a reverse current which helped him enter the main channel. With a final burst of speed he brought his boat into calmer water, and just as darkness fell he pushed ahead to safety—and a sandbank.

They stayed caught on the bar throughout the night, and in the morning all able-bodied passengers were rowed ashore and given heavy ropes to pull. By exerting almost superhuman strength, they edged the boat off the bank and with a cheer returned on board. Elly said, “It must have taken all the strength you had,” and Sergeant Lykes, in charge of the army mules, said, “Ma’am, you could hear the muscles poppin’.”

To go up the Missouri was of itself a notable adventure, with sandbars and jagged tree trunks which could rip out the bottom of a boat, and sudden turns and high romantic cliffs on alternate sides. It bore no comparison with the tame Ohio; this was a wild, undisciplined river, with each curve bringing its peculiar problems.

On the fourth day they reached the remarkable twin cities of the lower Missouri, and in accordance with the rule, “Franklin up, Boonville down,” they stopped at the former city to allow the horses and mules to forage for the afternoon, while the passengers walked inland to the new town which had replaced the old one that had fallen into the river when the land on which it was sitting was undercut by currents. Franklin was a beautiful town of five or six thousand population, with a newspaper, lawyers, good schools and a lively concern for all that happened in the west. From here caravans had formerly set forth for Santa Fe, and the returning freight wagons were often driven by Mexicans who spoke no English. From here, too, men headed for the Yellowstone and the distant forts at the head of the Missouri. Indians of all tribes were common in Franklin; they would stand solemnly at the back of public meetings when local dignitaries discussed Socrates and the philosophy of Edmund Burke.

Elly said, “It’s like Lancaster with common sense,” and if anyone had at that moment made the Zendts a worthwhile proposition, they would have been willing to keep their horses ashore, unload the Conestoga, and let Captain Frake have their passage money. They would remember Franklin as the best of the west, the kind of community they hoped to build in Oregon.

Nine days out, on Sunday, May 12, they passed under the cliff once dominated by Fort Osage and looked up to see the rusted cannon pointing harmlessly down the river they had so long guarded. That afternoon they were in Independence, rowdiest town in the west, and they had been ashore only a few minutes when an ornery Pawnee Indian, liquored up by fur traders, tried to take a pistol from a riverman, who shot him dead. The body was kicked to one side and no law officer made any pretense of arresting the murderer, or even investigating “the accident.” Three hours later the corpse was still beside the river.

When Captain Frake decided to lay over several days to see if he could pick up Mexican goods for the trip north, it gave Levi a chance to exercise his horses, and when he led the six grays down the gangplank they excited a storm of interest. Many offers were made, for the men of this region appreciated good horseflesh.

“I’ll give you three hundred dollars a horse,” one prosperous merchant proposed, but Levi said they were not for sale, not under any circumstances.

He was then approached by a slim, handsome young fellow in his mid-twenties who said with an unusual accent, “I’ve just come in from Santa Fe, and believe me, you’d be a fool to take those valuable beasts onto the prairie. They simply will not last.”

“I don’t want to sell them,” Levi snapped.

“I don’t want to buy them,” the young stranger replied. “I am speaking as a friend.”

“Who are you?”

“Oliver Seccombe, Santa Fe, Boston, London, Oxford.”

“What’re you doin’ here?” Levi asked suspiciously.

“Exploring. Seeing the world before I settle down. Are you by chance headed up the Missouri?”

“I am.”

“To the forts?”

“Oregon.”

“Well met! I’m for Oregon too. Are you by chance a passenger on that disgraceful old tub?” And he pointed with his wrist toward the Robert Q. Fell.

“I am.”

“Fellow passenger!” he cried, embracing Levi. “And is this your good wife?”

“It’s Elly.”

“We shall celebrate!” And he led the Zendts to a mangy saloon which sold everything from Taos Lightning to lemon soda. Rapping on the unwashed bar, he cried, “My good man! Drinks, if you please.” A thin, sad-faced man who had watched hundreds pass through this room on their way to hopeful adventure came unhappily to stand before the Englishman. “Whaddle ya have?”

“Whadda ya got?” Seccombe answered, imitating the man.

“For you, horsepiss. For the lady, if she is a lady, lemonade.”

“Excellent!” Seccombe cried. “In mine a little ginger, and for the lady’s husband what do you propose?”

“Him?” The jaundiced bartender studied Levi and said, “Sarsaparilla.”

“Three whiskeys,” Seccombe said quietly, and with a quick movement he produced a pistol.

Grudgingly the man brought three whiskeys, sloshed them on the bar and said, “I’m about to throw you out of here.”

Seccombe caught him by the arm and said, “Before I tried that little trick, my good friend, I would consult with counsel.” He pushed the arm away and added, “Because otherwise you would find yourself flat on your ass.” When the bartender left, Seccombe told the Zendts, “When you’re an Englishman in the west, you have to establish your reputation fast, otherwise …”

“I don’t drink whiskey,” Elly said.

“My good man!” Seccombe called. When the bartender appeared, the Englishman laughed disarmingly and said, “You were right all along. She does want lemonade.”

As they drank he told them of his trip to Santa Fe, the dust, the Comanche, the good times along the road, the great money to be made in western trade. “But I’m for Oregon,” he said brightly. “Catch a ship home and write my book, Travels in the Great West, with slaughter on every page. How do you spell your names?”

He was an exhausting young man, two years older than Levi but a whole world brighter. When he inspected the gear Levi had assembled for the trip west, he was shocked. “You’ve overlooked the one thing you need most,” he said.

“Another gun?”

“Fie on guns. Everyone carries too many. But the hat. The hat!” He said that the one thing the traveler needed was a broad-brimmed hat so wide that the sun could not reach his lips. “You walk on those prairies for five months, with the sun beating down every day, and your lips burn right off. Madame, you simply must get yourself two sunbonnets, because if you lose one and allow the sun to strike those beautiful lips …”

His manner irritated Levi, because he well knew that Elly’s lips were not beautiful. In fact, there was little about his wife that anyone in his right mind could call beautiful, and he was perplexed by Seccombe’s obvious insincerity. However, the man did appreciate horses, and recognized that the grays were superior. “Hold out, Zendt,” he counseled. “In this town you can get four hundred apiece for that group. But I would sell the Conestoga, if anyone makes an offer. Too heavy.”

Seccombe was captivated by Levi’s Melchior Fordney rifle, and arranged a test-firing with Captain Mercy and Sergeant Lykes. The men set up targets and fired each other’s rifles. Mercy had an expensive Boston weapon, Lykes a standard issue from the Harper’s Ferry arsenal, and Seccombe a good English gun; but all agreed that Zendt’s Lancaster rifle was the easiest handling of the lot. “When you decide to sell it, I’m your man,” Seccombe said, balancing the beautiful weapon.

“I’m keeping it,” Levi said.

“On the plains you’ll find your Hawken to be the better rifle,” Captain Mercy said. “I carry two of them.”

“He’s right,” Seccombe agreed. “On the Santa Fe trip I used my English gun for antelope, my Hawken for trouble. You’ll do the same.”

From his previous stay in Independence, Oliver Seccombe knew everyone and helped the Zendts purchase their last-minute needs: baking powder, the extra lead for bullets, the dried beef. “You’ll get damned tired of bacon,” he predicted. And when all was in readiness he took them aside and said, “I’ve studied you two. You’re fine people. Why don’t we make it a team to Oregon?”

“We’ll need more,” Levi said, so they approached Captain Mercy.

“We’d like to join up with you and Lykes, if we may,” Seccombe said.

“I’d be honored,” Mercy said. “But I’m not going all the way to Oregon.”

“You could help us get started right,” Seccombe said, “and at Blacksnake Hills we’ll see who else is preparing to go. We’ll form a tight party.”

“I don’t want to travel with the Vermont people,” Levi said. “Too churchy.”

“I prefer to give the Psalm-singers a wide berth myself,” Mercy agreed.

So on the five-day trip north to Blacksnake Hills, these five formed a solid team: an army officer on an important commission; his knowledgeable sergeant; Oliver Seccombe, who had already crossed the prairies twice; the patient, hard-working Zendts.

The boat stopped at Fort Leavenworth, where officers boarded to give Captain Mercy last-minute instructions: “The Arapaho and Cheyenne are peaceful, but watch out for those Oglala Sioux.” A young officer said, “The Pasquinel brothers are riding with them, and they’ve caused a lot of trouble.”

Zendt had never heard of the Pasquinel brothers, but he noticed that when the name was mentioned, Captain Mercy firmed his mouth. “We’ll take precautions,” he said.

“Who are the Pasquinels?” Levi asked when the soldiers departed.

“Rough,” Seccombe broke in. “Half-breeds who lead the Indians on war parties. Last August they cut the Santa Fe trail for three days. Burned some wagons.”

When the boat resumed its tortuous journey to Blacksnake Hills, Levi heard again of the Pasquinel brothers, for a trader who had come aboard at Independence told Elly, “White men on the prairies can be animals, and Indians can be terrifying, but the half-breed is the worst of both. When those brothers get the tribes roiled up, there’s hell to pay.”

“Who are they?” Elly asked.

“Who knows? A French trapper named Pasquinel, I suppose—took himself a squaw, and now we have his bastards to contend with.”

“You ever see them?” Levi asked.

“That I did. Came downriver in 18 and 39 with three bales of buffalo robes, and they led a bunch of Cheyenne who cleaned me out.”

“Why didn’t they kill you?” Elly asked.

“Sometimes they kill, sometimes they don’t. But if I ever see them again, they won’t have the option.” The other trappers who had moved in to listen agreed that on next meeting, the whites would fire first and there’d be two dead half-breed troublemakers.

On reaching Blacksnake Hills, the passengers found that the well-known store run by French trapper Joseph Robidoux had been closed. The proprietor had moved to a new riverfront settlement where he was selling plots for the establishment of a town to be called, after his patron, St. Joseph. He had chosen his site well; it encompassed a projection made by a bend in the river and was protected to the rear by bluffs.

“Capital of the river!” said Robidoux. “No need to travel any further west.” He told the Zendts, “Stay here and grow up with a great city.” As soon as he saw the gray horses he said, “Don’t take them beasts onto the prairie. They won’t last a month.” He offered to buy the grays at four hundred dollars each and to sell them six oxen to take their place at twenty dollars a head. Levi refused, but that night Oliver Seccombe appeared with a grizzled old man who changed everything.

“This is Sam Purchas,” the Englishman said, pushing forward a wizened man of forty-nine who looked seventy-nine. He dressed like an Indian, except for a huge slouch hat whose brim nearly covered his face, which was notable for a tobacco-stained beard, broken teeth and a nose whose tip had been sliced off by either a rusty knife or the jagged end of a broken bottle. “He calls himself King of the Mountain Men, and I’ve hired him to lead us to Oregon.”

“Has he ever been there?” Captain Mercy asked.

“Been there?” the guide snorted. “Sonny, I been acrost these prairies with all the great ones. Sublette, Kit Carson, Fitzpatrick, the Bents—I’ve knowed ’em all.”

“But have you ever been to Oregon?” Mercy repeated.

“And they taught me just one thing. Don’t never try to reach Oregon with horses draggin’ your wagon.” He turned to Seccombe and asked, “Which one is Zendt?” When Oliver pointed him out, the old guide came up to Levi and growled, “Sonny, no horses travel with this mountain man. Sell ’em and get oxen.”

This was an order, delivered by Sam Purchas. “Anybody got any whiskey?” he asked, and when this was provided he reviewed his plans for getting the party to Oregon: “The whole trick is timin’. We leave St. Joe as soon as these rains stop, allowin’ the rivers to fall. But not before there’s plenty of grass for the oxen. Too soon, your oxen starve in Kansas. Too late, you freeze to death in Oregon snow.”

As he spoke Elly could not take her eyes from his nose. She very much wanted to ask what had happened, but that would be impolite, so she listened as he droned on: “I want every man to have two rifles, two pistols, an ax, two knives, a penknife, a hatchet and twenty pounds of lead.”

Captain Mercy protested, “That’s enough ammunition to fight your way inch by inch,” whereupon Purchas looked at him condescendingly and said, “Soldier boy, that’s just what we may have to do.”

Mercy retorted, “The officers at Fort Leavenworth assured me the Arapaho and the Cheyenne were peaceful this year,” and Purchas snapped, “I wish they’d give me the same assurance about the Oglala Sioux, the Crow, the Blackfeet and the Gros Ventres. Because they’re the ones we have to deal with.”

Captain Mercy said he still thought the armament too heavy, and Purchas lost patience: “Sonny, I been with ’em all. Kit Carson, Sublette …” He went through his litany of recommendations, adding a few names like Bridger and Jackson, and ending, “And they taught me just one thing. Carry plenty of guns. Me, I carry four rifles, two pistols and this little beauty.” He placed on the table one of the newfangled revolvers. “Without reloading, I can kill six Indians.”

He told them he had been born in Fauquier County, on a farm owned by General Washington: “Of course I seen him, many times. We paid him the rent, didn’t we?” He had wandered out to Ohio, where he had shot deer to feed the surveying crew of Alexander Hamilton’s son, “Colonel William S., and a fine man he was.” From there he had drifted on to Indiana Territory, where General William Henry Harrison had served as representative in Congress: “He musta been thinkin’ then of goin’ into politics, because he plastered every home with free books sent out from Washington, and that’s how I got hold of Lewis and Clark’s report on their trip to Oregon, and I was lost.”

“You ever been to Oregon?” Mercy asked again, but before Purchas could reply, Sergeant Lykes asked, “What happened to your nose?”

Purchas pinched his half-nose with his right thumb and forefinger and grinned at the sergeant. “Sonny, I could tell you that I lost it in one of them river-boat gougin’ battles they write about in the St. Louis newspapers—Say, speakin’ of newspapers, you might like to see this,” and from a deerskin wallet he produced a clipping from the New Orleans Picayune:

“Strong as a lion, fearless as a tiger, keen-eyed as an eagle and quick as a panther, Samuel Purchas, greatest of the mountain men and frontiersman extraordinary, departed our city on Thursday last week leading a party of merchants on an exploratory trip to the forts of the Upper Missouri. Sylvestre O’Fallon told this journal, ‘It’s a very dangerous journey, but since we are in the hands of Sam Purchas, we have no fear.’ We trust that the redoubtable Purchas will get his charges safely home again, for they are among the ornaments of this city.

“That sort of tells you who I am, don’t it?” he asked proudly.

Early next morning he brought in a farmer from a settlement downriver, and when Elly awoke she heard Purchas selling their horses. “Levi,” she called, shaking him, “get up! They’re taking your horses.”

Levi ran out to find Purchas trotting the big grays before a man who obviously was eager to get them. “Deal’s set,” Purchas said brusquely. “He’ll take your horses for five hundred dollars each. Wants the mares to start a line. And he’ll sell you eight of the best oxen at fifteen dollars each. My commission is fifty dollars, so it’s done.”

The farmer had the cash, more than Levi had seen at one time before, and he had brought with him the eight oxen, big lumbering beasts without a shred of beauty—six for pulling the Conestoga, two for replacements. Purchas knew that Zendt would not want to see his horses go, so he put his arm about him and drew him away, but when Levi actually heard the stranger speak to his horses and start them across the field, he broke loose and ran to them and bade each goodbye, patting their sleek rumps and fighting back tears as they moved eastward.

In a kind of daze he returned to Elly. “I had to sell them,” he said. She brushed by him and ran into the field in time to see those splendid gray animals disappear over the hill. As she stood there, the morning wind blowing her hair, Levi came to her side and whispered, “Now we really are alone. Now we can never go back,” and in that moment the Zendts knew what moving west meant—the awful loneliness, the burden of rifles, the strange rivers flowing swift with mud, the unknown Indians lurking, the long, long trails with no homes and no lights at dusk. They had barely started; over half the continent lay ahead, and their courage might have waned, except that Captain Mercy, aware that their grief could be diverted only by new tasks, warned them: “You’ll have to study fast and learn all you can about oxen. These look like good ones.”

When it came time to pack, Levi experienced a stubborn sense of satisfaction in telling Elly, “They all said, ‘Get rid of the Conestoga,’ but now everybody says, ‘Can we fit this into your Conestoga?’ You’d think we were plannin’ to open a store.” Captain Mercy, Oliver Seccombe and Sam Purchas had each brought oddments to be tucked in “out of the way,” they said, until a man with lesser good will might have told them all, “Go to hell.” But Levi shrugged his shoulders and said, “Tuck ’em in somewheres,” and the Conestoga creaked.

Friday afternoon Sam Purchas appeared with two heavy wagons drawn by oxen and occupied by two of the dourest-looking families central Missouri had so far produced. “The Fishers and the Fraziers want to join us” he said by way of introduction, and four lean people stepped forward to shake hands, withdrawing their fingers grudgingly, as if to count them. Mrs. Frazier established the tone of the meeting by asking Purchas, “That young one? She married?”

“Claims to be,” the mountain man replied.

“I doubt it,” Mrs. Frazier said, and off she went to report her suspicions to the other three.

“They’ll be intolerable,” Seccombe predicted, but Purchas silenced him by pointing out, “We got to have at least three wagons—for defense and to stand the night watches.” So the Fishers and the Fraziers were accepted.

On Saturday morning, May 25, 1844, Sam Purchas chewed his cud, spat in the road and handed down his judgment: “Time to move out.” But as the three wagons drew up in line, Levi saw with some distress that Purchas, Mercy and Lykes each rode a horse and led two. “You made me sell my horses, but you kept yours,” he protested.

“We ain’t haulin’ wagons,” Purchas growled.

The procession wound slowly along the riverbank till it came to a pitiful ferry, which took them aboard, one wagon at a time, for a perilous journey across the Missouri. By noon the party had assembled in Kansas and that afternoon covered the first six miles of the trip west. The oxen moved so slowly that Levi could not hide his impatience, but Purchas reassured him, “They start slow, but God, how they keep movin’.”

The first crisis on the trip occurred next morning. It was Sunday and the Zendts had their wagon harnessed early. Sergeant Lykes had his mules shaped up, and Captain Mercy was ready, but the two wagons from Missouri showed no signs of life. “Get the Fishers and the Fraziers up and going,” the captain told his sergeant, but when Lykes went to the wagons and shook them, a voice protested, “This is Sunday.”

After a long delay, Mr. Fisher and Mr. Frazier climbed out of their wagons to explain that under no circumstances could they travel on the Sabbath. God had ordained this to be a day of rest, and it would be an offense to Him and to their animals if they did any work on Sunday. Captain Mercy replied, “We have only so many days to get west, and we need the Sundays,” but Fisher and Frazier argued, “A day of rest will strengthen our animals, and they will progress better than if we violated God’s law.” Captain Mercy snapped, “We’ve been resting six months. Now we move.”

Levi and Elly Zendt voted with Mercy and Lykes, but to everyone’s surprise, Sam Purchas sided with the Missourians. “A day’s rest in seven don’t do no harm,” he said. “I seen plenty of parties that galloped the first half and bleached their bones the second.”

So it was agreed that Captain Mercy’s party would travel six days and rest the seventh, but trouble again brewed that afternoon when Mrs. Fisher and Mrs. Frazier, two gaunt women who feared the trip west, came to Captain Mercy to lodge a formal protest: “Mrs. Zendt ain’t restin’.” Captain Mercy looked toward the Conestoga and could see no untimely work on Elly’s part. She was sitting quietly, her back to them.

“She’s scribblin’,” Mrs. Fisher said, and Mrs. Frazier nodded. Then Captain Mercy looked closer and saw that Elly had a pad in her lap and was writing. “God don’t hold with scribblin’ on His Sabbath,” Mrs. Fisher whined, “nor mendin’ harness, either,” and she pointed at Levi.

“We’ll have to let them observe Sabbath as they see fit,” Mercy said, but the women were not satisfied.

“You must order them to stop,” they insisted. “They will bring God’s wrath upon this venture.”

“Perhaps Mrs. Zendt is writing out her Sunday prayers,” Captain Mercy said, and this seemed to mollify the protestors.

Actually, Elly was writing the first of those many letters she would send back to her friend Laura Lou Booker. Often it had been Laura Lou’s unquenchable optimism that had kept alive Elly’s courage. Now Elly would repay that kindness by sending her an account of what she was doing and seeing on the Oregon Trail. Laura Lou preserved the letters, and many years later they were printed and widely read; into dry history they breathed the living reality of adventures as witnessed by a seventeen-year-old scrawny Pennsylvania Dutch girl who realized during every moment of that arduous trip that she was heading for a new life:

May 26, Sunday … The funniest thing about our trip is Sergeant Lykes and his mules. He fancies himself a great expert in handling them, but I think they handle him. He has eight of them and says that each is ornerier than the other, which makes a circle. He makes them obey not by pleading, which they ignore, and not by hitting them, which merely makes them more stubborn, but by what he calls his mule persuader. This is a stout wooden pole with a heavy leather cord tied in a circle at one end. He slips the circle over the snout of the mule, then twists the pole ever tighter until you’d think the mule’s nose would fall off, and then, as he says, the mule realizes a message is coming. With the mule’s head twisted at an impossible angle, Sergeant Lykes gently pats him on the rump and says, “Now we go this way,” and the mule obeys. Sergeant Lykes told me, “There must be an easier way to handle mules, but I haven’t found it.”

The following days were painful for Levi Zendt. Travelers with horses attached to their wagons moved ahead, throwing dust in his face and disappearing over rises in the road, while his plodding oxen lumbered on, swaying from side to side like ships at sea. Each time he looked at their ungraceful rumps he thought of his gray horses and groaned, but Sam Purchas fell back and reassured him: “Sonny, come two weeks, we’re gonna pass them horse-folks like they was hitched to the ground.”

Three days out from St. Joseph the emigrants arrived at the last organized community they would see before they reached Oregon—the Presbyterian mission to the Sac and Fox Indians—and it was here that Oliver Seccombe’s frustration began. He had left England after graduating from Oxford with one determination: to see for himself the noble Indian as he lived in a state of nature before being defiled by the white man. He was assured, by his reading in Rousseau and the romantic philosophers, that this nobility did exist and he wanted to describe it for European readers before it vanished. He had begun his trip to Santa Fe with the most exalted expectations, but his experiences had proved confusing. The first untamed Indians he encountered were the Comanche, and as he rode forward to greet them they unleashed a parabola of arrows, one of which killed the horse of the man riding next to him and several of which came close to killing him. He explained away this unfortunate beginning as a result of regrettable behavior on the part of white Americans, who did not understand the Comanche, but when his party reached the Apache and found them even more murderous, he decided that the noble savage of his dreams lived not in the south but in the freer, colder north.

He was confirmed in this belief when he reached Santa Fe and made a side excursion to the pueblos, hoping that in these ingenious houses he would find his natural man. Instead, he found a miserable congregation of hovels, and upon his return to Santa Fe, discovered that he was infested with lice. He had to shave his head to get rid of the nits and smelled for some days of buffalo fat. His return trip through Apache and Comanche country, with running battles days on end, did little to restore his original enthusiasm, which was almost completely eradicated when the train ran into a war party of Kiowas, who killed two traders. The noble Indian of Rousseau, just and sagacious, must live in the northwestern territories, and now as he started on the Oregon Trail, he dismissed his previous encounters only as a preparation for the great adventure of seeing the unspoiled Indian.

On May 29 he met the Sac and Fox. They came down from the mission building in a party of eleven, well dressed, well fed, speaking English and offering the travelers a selection of blankets, tomahawks and deerskin moccasins decorated with beads. Each item was priced in bits—Spanish silver dollars sawed into eight parts so that twenty-five cents was equal to two bits—and they would not allow the travelers to chivvy them down.

“Those moccasin best quality … one dollar two bits,” the leader of the merchants said, and he would accept no less. But while the bargaining was under way, six other Indians arrived on the scene, begging for meat, and when they got none, they stole one of Sergeant Lykes’ mules, and when he found out, there was a great to-do until Sam Purchas fired his Hawken in the air and warned the man with the moccasins, “You get that mule back here or next shot is right through your head.” The Indian believed Purchas, as well he might, for Sam was well known along the trail as a ruthless man, and the mule was recovered.

As the party resumed its way west Seccombe explained that the Sac and Fox were prime examples of what he was talking about: “They have been corrupted by the white man’s religion. All their inherent nobility has been eroded away by Presbyterianism, for which they were not prepared.” In his opinion they would see no real Indians until they reached the Pawnee, of whom he had received good reports.

“Pawnee!” Purchas exploded. “They would steal Monday in order to get a chance at Tuesday.”

For these emigrants the trail west contained an unfolding series of surprises—it almost seemed as if a superior dramatist had prepared the script best calculated to excite the imagination. Now the first hills appeared, and the travelers began to realize that the going would be difficult, yet the way was eased with excellent grass and good water, from which they could take consolation. Farmers from eastern areas saw the hickory, the oak, the plenitude of walnut and birch, and found themselves in reassuring surroundings, but suddenly at the crest of some hill they would catch a glimpse of landscape reaching to the horizon, infinitely far, with few trees and only scrub grass, and they would catch their breath at the strangeness of the land they were penetrating. The whole trip would be like this, one contrast after another.

At the end of the first week it began to rain, not the way it did back east, but in sullen sheets of water. The rain fell with such intensity that it bounced back up from the earth, and Elly Zendt wrote:

June 2, Sunday … I am writing this at night huddled inside the Conestoga beside a flickering candle. It is raining, but not like any you have seen in Lancaster. It falls in great tubfuls, drowning everything. Sometimes the wagon shakes so that I cannot control my pen, and the wind whistles so piercingly that I cannot think. Levi has put an India-rubber sheet over our wagon, but still the rain drips through. I understand how Noah felt …

The rains continued until the emigrants reached the first great obstacle of their course, the Big Blue River coming south out of Nebraska to join the Kansas River. Sam Purchas had warned them in advance of this dangerous crossing: “You can’t get west till you cross it, and it’s a killer. Ain’t much in October, but in May and June, it sweeps you away.”

When they approached the steep banks through which it normally ran they could not see the sides, for the rains had thrown it into flood, and full-sized trees were roaring along the crest.

“What do we do?” the Fishers and the Fraziers wanted to know.

“We wait,” Purchas said.

“Can’t we build a ferry?”

“You put a ferry in that, and before you reach the other shore you wind up back in Independence.”

So they waited. For sixteen interminable days, while late-starting parties from St. Joseph caught up with them, they waited. The only consolation Levi found was that all the horse-people, those who had passed him so blithely, were delayed and fretting the same as he. Each morning the men would go down to inspect the Big Blue, and each afternoon they would study the skies, hoping for some break in the weather. “Hell,” Purchas told one contingent camped beside the river, “I come acrost this stream last October and I didn’t even dismount. I coulda jumped it.”

“When will it go down?” the leader asked.

“We been here fifteen days and it ain’t made no signs yet.”

“Can we get to Oregon? With this late a crossing?”

“Enjoy the heat now,” Purchas said, “because you’ll get lots of snow later on.”

Then, on the evening of the June equinox the river began to recede dramatically, and by morning Purchas called out the good news: “We cross!”

Captain Mercy and Sergeant Lykes were first over, swimming the mules. Then the Fisher and Frazier wagons were edged down to the water, where heavy logs were strapped to their sides so that they would float. The men dismounted and pushed from behind, but the women remained in the wagons, clinging atop their baggage so their feet would remain dry. Then the oxen were lured into the water, and slowly the wagons sank, sank, sank until it looked as if they must go under. But at the calculated depth they floated, with the bottom eight inches of baggage getting soaked.

Now the moment came when the oxen could no longer feel bottom, and they panicked, but the men swimming alongside comforted them, and soon they were swimming with confidence. To those watching, it was sickening to see the wagons almost submerged in the raging water, but after a tense moment Elly cried, “They’ve reached shore!” With much scrambling and snorting the oxen refound their footing and clambered up the muddy slope, laboriously dragging the water-soaked wagons to safety. Seccombe cheered.

Reassured, Sam Purchas led his three horses across, and they took it easily, having often forded such streams; and then Oliver Seccombe and Levi Zendt edged the Conestoga down to the water, where they lashed extra logs to its sides. Levi entered the river, leading the oxen, which did not want to follow. For one dangerous moment they were fractious, but he quieted them, and the big beasts found their footing and proceeded to the spot at which they had to swim.

Something went wrong. Either the oxen grew afraid or Levi gave them bad guidance, but there was confusion and the Conestoga rocked and almost turned over, pitching Elly, in her long and encumbering skirts, into the crest of the flood. That night Elly wrote:

June 22, Saturday … I would not have believed that two men of such exalted station as Captain Mercy and Oliver Seccombe would have leapt into a raging torrent to rescue a girl for whom they have no responsibility. When the wagon tipped and I fell into the river, I thought for sure that I was lost, because Levi was ahead and could not see me go. I was lashing my arms and screaming and swallowing muddy water and I was near dead when these two men disregarding their own safety leaped in to save me. I feel very important, as if God intended me for some significant duty and did not wish to see me lost so young for Him to have risked the lives of two such men on my behalf. The rains have stopped and the sky is clear and this may be the most beautiful night in my life.

If it was God who saved Elly Zendt, it was also God who was responsible for the tremendous falling-out that occurred the next morning. Despite the fact that it was Sunday, Captain Mercy and Sergeant Lykes believed that they should move west in an effort to make up some of the days lost at the Big Blue, but this ran counter to the contract which had been forced by the Fishers and the Fraziers to keep the Sabbath, and they did not intend to break that rule on this particular Sunday, especially since God had seen them safely across the swollen river.

“We have got to move west,” Mercy said firmly.

“We shall not profane this day,” Mrs. Fisher, an unusually acidulous woman, said.

They appealed to Sam Purchas, who listened for less than a minute, then handed down his decision: “After our delay, anybody don’t move west as fast as possible got his brains in his ass.”

Mrs. Fisher wanted her husband to horsewhip Purchas, who told her, “You get your old man to make one move and he’s gonna have more than brains in his ass. Now you get them wagons rollin’.”

The entourage started, with Purchas in the lead, followed by Lykes and the mules, then Captain Mercy on horseback, and the Conestoga, with Elly riding and Levi walking by the left front wheel. It was pretty clear that there was going to be no halting on this day of deliverance, and after a half-hour of wrangling in the wagons the men hitched up and fell tardily in line. They made fourteen miles that day, but the Fishers and the Fraziers spoke to no one.

Purchas now led his group westward a few miles till they encountered the Little Blue, up whose left bank they would travel in a northwesterly direction for nearly two weeks in a long reach for the Platte River, where the real trail west would begin. On July 2 they saw beaver for the first time, a fine small dam with young playing along the banks. On July 4, which they celebrated with much firing of guns and a fine sermon by Mr. Frazier on the grandeur of the American experiment, followed by the most gracious remarks of Oliver Seccombe, who pointed out that England, in losing a colony, had gained a friend. More shooting followed and Elly baked a pie made with dried apples. Sam Purchas got very drunk and kept firing his revolver until it jammed.

The days were pleasant for everyone except Levi, because once more the parties using horses sped forward, while the oxen slogged ahead so painfully slow. “Let ’em go!” Purchas called reassuringly. “Your turn will come.”

On July 5 the farmers saw their first buffalo grass, and the next day, their first grama. They studied each, pulling the short stems apart and judging that nothing much could come of such stuff.

On July 7, as they came over the crest of a small sand hill, they halted to look down upon the Platte, the strange and obstinate river they would follow for hundreds of miles. Each remarked upon its curiosities, but only Sam Purchas came close to comprehending it. Elly summarized their thinking:

July 7, Sunday … Like Moses looking into the promised land, we stood on a small hill and looked down at the river which will be our companion for many weeks. How small it appeared! Back east we would call it a creek, nothing more. The men all remarked how high it ran above the surrounding land. Really, it seems to be laid on top of the earth with practically no banks. And it has so many islands you would not believe it, all cluttered up. The Missouri women made some scornful remarks about it and Sam Purchas spit tobacco and said, “Lady, you see that cliff way over there? You see that one way back there that we just come down? Well, when the Platte goes into flood, it reaches from cliff to cliff.” We were awed …

At last they were on the real road, that remarkable, flat, solid, unbroken highway along which the wagons could move with greater speed and security than along the streets of St. Louis or Philadelphia; some days the oxen made eighteen miles, plodding along a highway as smooth as the National Road. Levi said, “This must be the best road in America,” and Sam Purchas said, “Enjoy it while it lasts.”

Now Levi Zendt had his triumph, for with diminishing forage and hard-packed roadways, horses found the pace too much. They began to pull up lame and even to die, while parties who had relied on oxen overtook them and left them far behind. Levi found little to savor in his victory, for whenever he saw an injured horse he wanted to halt and try his hand at treating it, but Purchas was adamant: “They guessed wrong and now they’ll pay for it.”

“What will happen to them?”

“Their horses’ll die, and then probably they’ll die,” Purchas said, adding, “And if you’d insisted on bringing your grays, they’d be dyin’ now and two weeks from now you’d die.” When they came to a group of three wagons where horse deaths had forced a halt, Purchas would not permit his party to fraternize with them or give them help. “They made their choice,” he said, but Elly ran to them with food. They were in pitiful shape, having crossed the Big Blue before there was adequate pasture for their animals.

“Their bad luck,” Purchas said. “They shoulda asked the men who know,” and he forged ahead.

On July 9 they came upon meadows crowded with flowers, yellow and blue, as far as they could see, and Purchas told them, “Last month this was a desert. Give ’em a little rain, they bloom overnight.” On July 10 there was enormous excitement, for they spotted buffalo tracks, a profusion of tracks which made the wagons bump as the wheels bounced from one depression into the next. And next day came the thing they awaited, real buffalo. Elly wrote:

July 11, Thursday … Mrs. Frazier saw them first. Their wagon was in the lead and we heard her screaming, “They’re here! They’re here!” and we hurried up and saw below us on the other side of a small hill a herd of buffalo so immense that we could not see the other side. They should be counted not in hundreds but thousands, big and black and all with their heads down grazing. They were moving south, across our trail, and since they were making less than half a mile an hour, it was going to require many hours for them to pass, which meant that we would have to wait most of the day. This was settled by Sam Purchas and Captain Mercy, who got on their horses and rode down right to the edge of the herd and began shooting the younger cows, which are good to eat, the old bulls being not much, and after a while the buffalo turned away and we stopped to butcher the kill …

Wherever emigrants went they announced their presence by a constant fusillade, for they fired at anything that moved: antelope, deer, buffalo, prairie dogs, quail, eagles, hawks that watched from the roadside, beaver. Each group that moved west was a perambulating arsenal with guns bristling from every angle. Trains of a thousand wagons would pass without engaging in gunfire with a single Indian, but few made the journey without these doleful entries: “This day we buried Jacob Dryer of Framingham. He pulled his gun out of the wagon unmindful that it was loaded, and it blew his chest open. He lived six minutes.” “Baby Helen Dover is dead, to the great sorrow of her parents. A man in a neighboring wagon was riding with his rifle across his knees and it accidentally went off, blowing away the top of her head.” “Bill Acroyd shot off his right foot and it gangrened and we had to bury him.” For every white man killed by an Indian, and there were almost none, fifty or sixty others killed themselves or their neighbors by accidental gunfire.

On July 12 the three wagons were heading westward in desultory fashion when two Pawnee braves rode up along the north bank of the Platte, and as soon as they came in range Sam Purchas grabbed his Hawken, took aim and put a bullet through the head of one of the young men. His horse reared, his hands fell limp, blood spurted from his forehead and he fell to the ground. Whereupon Purchas grabbed for a second gun and would have shot down the other brave except that Captain Mercy knocked the barrel away, allowing the Pawnee to gallop off.

“You let him get away!” Purchas bellowed.

“You son-of-a-bitch!” Mercy cried, wresting the gun from him.

“Don’t nobody call me a son-of-a-bitch,” Purchas snarled, grabbing for one of his knives.

“I’m sorry,” Mercy said quickly. “I apologize.”

“You better.” Then Purchas appealed to Levi. “Indians ain’t human. They ain’t real people, like you and me.” He looked at Seccombe, whose English mannerisms seemed prissy, and added grudgingly, “Or even him.”

“You killed a man who’d done you no harm,” Seccombe protested.

“He was an Indian,” Purchas said, and rolling back his left sleeve, he showed them the scars on his forearm. “I been fightin’ Indians all my life … and they’re no damned good. That one the captain let get away will go back and make trouble for us.” He spat tobacco and stalked away, and as he disappeared, Captain Mercy said, “I’m beginning to wonder if he ever was a mountain man. They have more sense.”

By some miracle the enraged Pawnee did not attack. But the next day they killed a defenseless husband and wife, traveling alone, some miles farther west, so that when the Purchas column reached that spot, they found a boy of six and a girl of four sitting dull-eyed by a burned-out wagon with their scalped parents bloating in the dust.

“We can’t take no kids with us,” Purchas warned.

“What the hell do you think we’ll do with them?” Sergeant Lykes stormed.

“Leave ’em here. Somebody else’ll find ’em,” Purchas said.

“I’ll take the children,” Elly said quietly, forcing her way between the two men.

“There will be no children picked up,” Purchas shouted. He took out his revolver and said, “I am runnin’ this wagon train, and we can’t be held back by brats.”

Before he could speak further, a rough hand reached from behind, grabbed his revolver arm and threw him to the ground. As Purchas reached for his knife, Levi leaped upon him, tore it away and smashed him across the face with a heavy right fist. “I’m takin’ the kids,” he said. At this point Captain Mercy, who had been outriding, rode up and could only guess at what had happened.

“Mr. Purchas, what goes on here?”

“Them fools want to take aboard two kids.”

“What children?”

“The Pawnee, sir,” Lykes explained. “They scalped the parents.”

Quietly Captain Mercy looked down, and quietly he said, “Mr. Frazier and Mr. Zendt, will you please bury the bodies? Mr. Seccombe, will you find some stones for a marker?” When the graves were dug and the bodies placed within them, he directed the two children to stand beside him as he read the soldier’s benediction from Romans:

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

“As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.

“Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.

“For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,

“Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Closing the Bible, he took a shovel and handed it to the little boy, saying as he did, “Son, bury your father, who fought the good fight and who died for the sins of others. Bury your mother, who loved you and who turned you over to us for protection. Remember this spot, these hills, for here your new life starts.” He helped the child to toss in the earth, then passed the shovel to the girl. Then he turned the job over to the other men and told the children, “We are your parents now. God sent us to rescue you,” and he delivered them to Elly, who took them into the Conestoga so that they could not look back upon the graves. That night she wrote:

July 13, Saturday … We have brought the children into our wagon, and they shall be our children from this time on. When they grow up in Oregon and become who knows what, perhaps a doctor and the wife of a minister, what a story they will be able to tell of how they got there, abandoned on the desert and near death only to be saved by God’s infinite pity. This is no ordinary trip, for we move within a great dimension …

Each of the travelers west carried with him misconceptions of the gravest order, errors which would persist and do great damage. Captain Mercy shared Elly Zendt’s impression that what they were traveling through was a desert; he could see no possible use for it in the years ahead and his reports to Washington would be widely circulated throughout the United States and Europe, giving credence to the term “The Great American Desert”:

The land beyond the Missouri River is barren, windswept, without cover for man or animal and without any possible kind of future promise. Our government should maintain forts at scattered intervals throughout the area and subsequent reports of mine will recommend where and at what distances. But these are merely for the control of Indians and for the protection of emigrants on their way to greener fields in Oregon and perhaps California. No civilized man could live in either Nebraska or Kansas and as for the lands more westerly, perhaps a few Mexicans can survive in Santa Fe, but none other. This is desert, untillable, unprofitable, and unneeded.

Sam Purchas and Oliver Seccombe divided between them most of the existing theories about Indians, and very contradictory they were. Sam was sure the Indians had come originally from Egypt, where they had served the Pharaoh who had persecuted Moses. “They was sent here as punishment,” he explained, “and it’s our duty to punish ’em … every chance we get. God intends it that way.” He proposed executing Indians as long as his rifle fired: “This land won’t be fit for white people till they’re all dead.”

Seccombe, like many intellectuals of his day, believed that the Indians were really the cream of Welsh society which at an early period in history had emigrated to America in search of a more natural existence, and he was convinced that somewhere just beyond the visible horizon he would come upon the noble Welshman-Indian he sought. He had acquired this faith when a student at Oxford studying the poetry of John Dryden:

I am as free as nature first made man,

Ere the base laws of servitude began,

When wild in woods the noble savage ran.

This noble savage had not resided among the Pawnee, for the ones he saw were beggars living in low, mean huts, but he felt that this was not their fault. They had been contaminated by French traders, but he felt sure that a little farther west, among the Cheyenne, he would find the type he was seeking. He had high hopes for the Cheyenne, having been told that they were tall and straight and possessed of a superior social organization.

Levi Zendt had begun to acquire his misconception, the strangest of all, that rainy afternoon in St. Louis when he first saw the monstrous elephant of the west; it had haunted him for several nights. Tonight, after he finished helping Elly put the two orphaned children to bed, he volunteered for the early watch, and as he studied the prairie he began to see in the heavens a vast form taking shape among the clouds, and the old sense of terror and mystery took possession of him.

“Sergeant Lykes!” he called. “What’s that?”

“Just the elephant … flicking its tail.”

And as soon as the words were spoken, Levi could see the gigantic animal consuming the heavens, and as from a distance he could hear the ghostly voice of Sergeant Lykes telling of the beast that stalked the prairie, striking terror in the hearts of emigrants: “It’s not like them elephants you see in the circus, no sir. It’s immense. Taller’n most trees, with tusks that curve back like Turkish swords. It has a trunk that switches like a hurricane and a tail that can flick a wagon off’n the trail. Its disposition is mean—my, is it mean—and when he comes at you, you best run, because he has only one thing in mind, to crush you flat.”

Seccombe, hearing voices in the dark, came up to them, and when he heard what they were talking about, contributed his lore: “There’s about forty of the real big ones between here and the mountains. There was one hiding at the Big Blue, threatening us as we tried to cross. And there’s a real monster hiding north of the Pawnee village. But it’s farther west, beyond Fort John, where they congregate.” He allowed his voice to drop, conveying apprehension.

The digging up of mastodon bones, like the ones Dr. Koch had exhibited in St. Louis, had given rise to the mythology of an enormous elephant who roamed the plains, and scores of documents of that period testified to the existence of the beast:

Last night, as we prepared to make camp after a long day, a storm came up worse than any we had seen before. Water so thick you couldn’t look through it like to wash us away, and I heard Mr. Stephens say, “Well, that time we caught a flick of the elephant’s tail.” And two women told him they would be quite content to complete the journey without seeing any more elephants.

When Levi came back to the fire after his guard duty, Purchas sought him out to mend the rift that had come between them over the children. As he poured a cup of coffee for Levi, he said, “You ever seen the elephant, Dutchman?”

“Yep.”

“Where?”

Levi hesitated, not wishing to share any confidences with Purchas, but in the end he said softly, “I saw him.”

“Where? Come on, where?”

“You know …”

Purchas scratched his head, trying to decipher what Levi was saying, and something in the Dutchman’s grave manner betrayed the fact that he was thinking of the Big Blue. “Oh, you mean …” and by tipping his right hand toward the flame, Purchas indicated a wagon upsetting in the river. He said, “Yes, by God, you really did see the elephant.”

And once again Levi felt the despair that had overtaken him at the Blue, when it looked as though Elly would be swept away, and he helpless with the oxen. At that moment he had cried, “She’s gone,” and he had known then how desperately he loved her. Other men, braver than he, had leaped into the flood to rescue her, and in the darkened sky he had seen the brooding elephant that sapped men’s courage.

He went to the Conestoga and looked inside. There Elly slept with her arms about the orphaned children; she seemed the summation of all that men love on earth, and in the darkness he bent down to kiss her, but she was so exhausted from that day’s decisions, she did not waken.

On July 14 the emigrants took upon themselves a new burden, for on this day they reached the point at which the South Platte flowed into the North. There was much argument as to where this happened, for the waterway was so studded with islands and sand bars that any clear definition of either river was impossible; all that could be said was that somewhere in the vicinity two considerable bodies of water joined.

The junction was like no other in North America; for nearly forty miles the two rivers ran side by side, with only a shallow peninsula separating them. After the travelers had marveled at the phenomenon they became aware that in following the South Platte, they were heading in a southwesterly direction, which took them well away from Oregon.

“We’re off course,” Sergeant Lykes finally protested.

“It’s the South Platte,” Purchas agreed. “Heads south to the mountains.”

“We better cross over,” Lykes said. “Follow the North Platte.”

“You pick the spot, sonny,” Purchas suggested, but wherever the emigrants looked for a possible spot to ford the South Platte, they found only steep banks and quicksand.

“What shall we do?” Captain Mercy asked.

“We’ll wander off our course for some days,” Purchas said, “and pray that we find a good place to ford.”

So now as they drove the oxen, the men kept one eye on the Platte. It was a mean, surly river, offering no invitation to cross, and it was luring them farther and farther from their destination.

On July 15 they met strangers who had seen the elephant. No Oregon for them. They were turnarounds, emigrants who had persevered as far west as their courage would allow, but the elephant had flicked its tail, and they were scurrying back to St. Joseph and civilization—six wagonloads, with only nine oxen surviving.

Levi, the member of Captain Mercy’s group who could best appreciate their terror, took one look at the stricken women and said, “I’ll give you my two spare oxen.”

“You’ll hell!” Purchas cried, and he enlisted Captain Mercy’s support to forestall such stupidity. “We’ll need our oxen,” he warned. “Mebbe for food.”

“They’ll perish,” Levi argued, as the defeated ones listened to the debate which might mean their lives.

“Then they’ll perish,” Purchas said coldly. “They have no right to come onto this prairie unprovisioned.”

“I’m giving them two oxen,” Levi said, and there was such firmness in his voice that Purchas withdrew, but in a moment he was back with a sensible proposal: “If they’re headed back, let ’em take the two kids.”

Everyone but Elly agreed that this should be done, and preparations were made to transfer the children. But she began to cry and protest, and would not listen to their arguments.

In the end the decision was made by Captain Mercy. “They should go back,” he said, trying to console Elly while Levi carried the two youngsters to the turnarounds.

He delivered them to the apparent leader, then dug into his pants and came up with fifty dollars. Thrusting the money into the hands of the gaunt and weary man, he said, “This money is for the kids. When they get to St. Joe. And if you abuse them in any way, may God strike your pitiful soul.”

“It’ll be for the children,” the man said, and they drove eastward without even thanking Levi for the oxen.

When he returned to the Conestoga, Purchas said, “Did you give them thieves money, too?” Levi nodded, and Sam said, “You know they’ll kill the kids and make off with it.”

“Don’t you trust anybody?” Levi asked.

“Nobody,” Purchas said, “especially not no turnarounds. No character. The kids’ll be dead by nightfall.” Elly heard these words and that night she wrote:

July 15, Monday … I feel as if my own children had been stolen from me. For as long as my eyes could see I watched the sorrowful wagons plodding eastward, taking my son and daughter with them, and when they passed over the final hill and were gone forever I looked about me, and in each direction to the horizon miles away there was nothing, not even a tree or a tall rock, only the road winding to the west, and I felt as if God had deserted me and that I had no friends, no hope, and I think Levi suspected how I felt over the loss of the children, and he was ashamed that he had not sided with me in the argument, and he came to comfort me but I pushed him away, and when night came I felt ashamed, for I remembered how he had given the lost ones his oxen and his money and only because he is such an honorable man, and I went out in the night to find him, but he was wandering somewhere alone, so I came in to write these lines and the gray spots are my tears.

Early on the morning of July 16 Captain Mercy and Sam Purchas rode ahead, determined to locate a likely spot for crossing the South Platte. There was a sense of urgency about their mission, for already the party was much delayed in schedule. According to the wisdom of the prairie, by this date they should have been crossing the Continental Divide, and here they were plodding along, thirteen days short of Fort John, nineteen to reach the Divide. It was frightening, and Purchas, who had seen parties perish in snow, insisted that on this day they had to make their fording.

“How about here?” Mercy asked.

“Let’s go in and test the bottom,” Purchas said.

They slipped off their shoes and stockings and waded gingerly into the river, but wherever they stepped the bottom gave way: water eddied under their toes and the gravel washed out. Within moments the water rose from their knees to their waist.

“Whole damned river’s in motion,” Purchas said, and they tested two other spots, with equal results. “Better drive one more day,” Mercy suggested, but Purchas would not hear of it. “Today we go. Time’s wastin’.”

So they compromised on a spot which was not ideal; the crossing was much too wide, at least half a mile, but it did have a fairly solid bottom. “The wagons’ll sink in,” Purchas said, “but if we keep them movin’, we can make it.”

“You satisfied?” Mercy asked.

“Not exactly, but …”

This was not good enough for the captain and he abruptly left the guide and spurred his horse farther west along the riverbank. It was good that he did so, for at a ford which had been used before, he came upon seven wagons backed up, trying to muster courage to try the crossing. He fired his pistol and Purchas came galloping up.

“Good to see you!” the mountain man cried with unaccustomed warmth to the waiting emigrants. “Trouble?”

When they explained that they had already tried to ford once, only to find the bottom giving out beneath them, he was surprisingly congenial. “Wait here. We’ll have our wagons with you before night, and we’ll all get across real easy.”

Alone with Mercy, he explained, “We need them a lot more than they need us,” and the two men galloped back to speed their wagons.

In organizing the crossing Purchas was invaluable, for only he was familiar with the one system that had any chance of working: “You ten men, swim to the other bank with them ropes. Two of you stay in the water about twenty feet from shore, and when a wagon reaches you, lash the ropes to it, and you other eight pull like hell and get the wheels up the slope. You men, harness sixteen oxen to that first wagon. You two fellows, can you swim? Good. You swim with the heads of the lead oxen and keep them movin’ forward. All the rest, back here with me. Now! Shove her into the water. No matter what happens, keep shovin’.”

With appalling suddenness, the wheels sank up to the hubs, but Sam was ready. Lashing the oxen and shouting to the two swimmers, “Keep ’em movin’,” he gathered a group of husky men to grab the spokes of the wheel. “Keep ’em turnin’,” he roared, and with a mighty effort the combined strength of ox and man broke the wagon free of the clutching gravel and got it started across the river.

Oxen bellowed; men cursed; a woman inside the wagon screamed as water rose about her feet; but Sam Purchas kept the wagon moving until the rope men on the other shore could pull it up the steep and muddy bank. The first emigrants were across.

Allowing no one a moment’s rest, for the trick was to keep the oxen working as long as possible, he led the beasts and the men back across the river to the next wagon. Six more times he engineered the passage, until the backed-up wagons were safely across.

“Now ours,” he said. Marshaling all the men, he tried to harness the oxen to the Fisher wagon, but the big beasts had had enough. Without losing patience with them, he told a boy from one of the other wagons, “Let them graze on this side and we’ll save them for the Conestoga.” He summoned Sergeant Lykes and told him, “We’ve got to use your mules.”

“That ain’t easy,” Lykes said.

“Get a turn on the nose of that big black one,” Purchas suggested, and when Lykes had such a grip with his tourniquet as might have wrenched the mule’s head off, he led him into the water and the others followed, dragging the Fisher wagon behind them.

“Can we work it again?” Purchas asked.

“Not with that mule,” Lykes said, “but maybe that other big one.”

This mule proved a lot more difficult, and the men struggled with the Frazier wagon for more than an hour before they could get the mules hitched to it. The mule, which had had its upper lip practically twisted off, was especially mean, and at one point Purchas asked in desperation, “Shall I shoot him!” but Lykes said, “He’s only bein’ a mule.”

At last they got the wagon across, and then they came back bone-weary, both animals and men exhausted, to try the Conestoga. “I think we can get one more trip out of the oxen,” Purchas said, and Captain Mercy, dripping and muddy, asked Elly, “Would you prefer to cross with a horse?” and she said, “Oh, no. This is my wagon,” and she sat inside, guarding the equipment lest it fall overboard.

The oxen, those great and patient animals, moved wearily into position for the last effort. Seccombe and a man from the strangers’ wagons swam from the other shore with extra ropes, then swam back. They looked exhausted, but when they reached land they organized the teams for pulling and stayed in the forefront during the next difficult minutes.

Slowly the huge wagon was let down into the water, where its heavy wheels disappeared in gravel. “Now!” Purchas bellowed, and every man exerted maximum strength while Levi urged the oxen forward. For a moment it looked as if the wagon might stick, irretrievably, but the combined force of the pullers and pushers got it moving, and just as the sun sank, the Conestoga was pulled onto the northern shore. Of this crossing Elly wrote:

July 16, Tuesday … It was dusk when we finished, and the men, wet and muddy, went to their several wagons and collapsed. Some slept on the ground just as they fell, too exhausted to care for themselves. One of the strangers who swam the river so many times with the ropes vomited for the better part of half an hour with nothing coming up and then fainted. Levi, who swam the oxen across the river sixteen times and the mules four, had nothing to say nor could he eat, but about midnight he did a strange thing. He asked me to put on an old dress and take off my shoes and he led me down to the river and made me go in and duck my head under water and I could hear the river moving sand and gravel and even large rocks along the bottom, and Levi said, “It’s alive and it mighty near trapped us.”

There could be no prolonged rest for the travelers, because the next day they had to hurry across the peninsula between the two rivers and let their wagons down the steep slope at Ash Hollow. When they first saw the hill to be negotiated they felt they had not the strength to accomplish this, but in the end they did.

Once more they handled the strangers’ wagons first, then used those men to help lower the Fisher and Frazier wagons. Finally they got to the Conestoga, but in easing it down, the ropes broke, the wagon rushed ahead and the left rear wheel collapsed. It was completely shattered, and the ten wagons had to lay over a day, with all the men trying to improvise a substitute. In the end the Conestoga was able to limp along.

It was now July 18, and although the Mercy party was two and a half weeks behind schedule, they did have before them a hundred and fifty miles of the finest part of the road. It was level, well packed, free of any obstacles or difficult crossings, and passed through some of the finest scenery in all of North America. To travel this section in midsummer, with the days hot and the nights bracingly cool, was a spiritual adventure; on some days the exhilarated travelers would do twenty miles, looking in amazement from side to side as new wonders unfolded. Now buffalo were plentiful and steaks chopped out of the hump were more tasty than beef, while a roasted tongue was a delicacy that the women travelers relished. Levi Zendt, thrifty butcher that he was, thought it shameful to kill a two-thousand-pound buffalo and then eat only six pounds of it, casting aside the rest of the carcass as useless, but as Sam Purchas pointed out, “Hell, you could kill five thousand of them critters and not leave a dent. They ain’t like cattle. They’re more like ants, and who cares if he steps on a passel of ants?”

On July 23 the column came in sight of the first great monument of the trail, a pile of whitish rock, standing in such a way as to resemble some dignified building of antiquity. Court House Rock the formation was called, and from a distance it did resemble the massive courthouse of some important city, but each traveler saw in it such comparison as his education permitted. In later years, after the gold rush, it would be fashionable to depict all emigrants as defeated persons, or as people who could not get along back east, or as the scum of our industrial cities, cast out by a society they could not understand and with which they could not cooperate. It may be instructive, therefore, to lift from the diaries of those who passed Court House Rock in summer of 1844 brief passages to show what this particular group of emigrants thought when they saw the impressive monument:

VERMONT HOUSEWIFE. It looked to me like the Temple of Sargon, huge and heavy and close to the ground and very Persian except that it had no carved lions.

BOSTON PHYSICIAN. While others said that it did indeed resemble the courthouse of their home county, I could not drive from my mind the image of Karnak, for this was most Egyptian, save for the columns. I think no man could view these ruins without recalling the impressions of his early reading.

MRS. FISHER, OF MISSOURI. It reminded me of the picture in my Bible of the Tower of Babel. I am satisfied that the buildings of Babylon must have looked much like this.

MICHIGAN FARMER. The emperors of Rome had buildings like this. Looked exactly like the buildings in my schoolbook.

OLIVER SECCOMBE, OF OXFORD. Precisely like the sketches of Petra, but of a less reddish color. If these ruins were in Europe they would be world famous.

ELLY ZENDT, OF LANCASTER, PENNSYLVANIA … I was ashamed to tell the others what I thought for fear they would laugh at me, but do you remember, Laura Lou, that framed picture that hung in our schoolroom where Miss Histand taught? Of the Acropolis? And how we used to promise each other that when we grew up we would go see Athens and the first to get there would write and tell the other? Well, I have seen Athens, on the Platte. It is not white as we thought but grayish, and it is not surrounded by men in togas, but Indians on ponies. But the look is the same, and the buildings are even more beautiful than we imagined. I think it may be because the sky is so very blue and so unbroken, not even a cloud showing anywhere. For six hours as we traveled I watched the Acropolis, and from whatever position we were in, it was magnificent. I am sure that when you get to Greece and tell me of the real building it will be something to remember. But I shall not see it, for my Athens lies in the west.

Then came Chimney Rock, a needle pointing skyward; and Scott’s Bluff, shame of the west, where early trappers had been accused of abandoning a sick partner named Scott, leaving him to die alone; and then the vast and open land where Indians were on the move.

At dusk one day Sam Purchas caught sight of a war party to the north and he signaled Captain Mercy to proceed with caution, but very soon the Indians disappeared from sight. Nevertheless, that night Purchas insisted that the wagons draw close together and he posted watches. Levi Zendt drew the hours from two till dawn, and as he sat in the total darkness, not even a star showing, he occupied himself with trying to identify the night sounds: far in the distance a coyote’s two low notes and a high, over there an owl, to the north a night bird, the soft scuffling of some animal, then a spell of quietness so deep Levi could hear the sound of his own pulse.

Toward morning he heard three birds awaken, and as he listened more closely to their call, he suddenly discovered that they were moving closer to the wagons and on the spur of the moment decided that these were Indian calls. Discharging his rifle into the air, he bellowed, “Indians coming,” and he was right. Sixteen or seventeen Oglala Sioux came thundering in, a white flag held aloft and barely visible in the pale light of dawn.

I wonder if they’d have showed that flag if I hadn’t fired, Levi asked himself as they reined in, throwing dust over the wagons as sleepy men clambered down, each with a rifle at the ready.

“Hello!” the leader of the Indians cried. “Bacon?”

“Christ!” Purchas whispered. “That’s Jake Pasquinel. Look at the scar down his right cheek.”

When Captain Mercy heard this name he caught his breath, then moved quickly to the fore, calling in a loud voice, “Jake Pasquinel! Come in! We do have bacon.”

The Sioux were surprised that the white man should have known their leader, and they spoke among themselves in obvious agitation, but before they could react more positively, Mercy called, “You too, Mike Pasquinel. Come on in.”

This further identification caused the Indians to laugh, and some pushed others forward and there was considerable horseplay before two men in their mid-thirties dismounted and came hesitantly toward the wagons. They were good-looking, tough men, dressed Indian style. They carried themselves with an air of confidence, their hands close to their knives in case of trouble.

Captain Mercy, ostentatiously handing his rifle to Oliver Seccombe, moved forward to greet the two men. They halted, looked uneasily at each other, then resumed walking until they stood facing the captain. Mercy extended his hand, saying, “Jake Pasquinel, I’ve heard a lot about you.”

The Indian refused the hand, asking cautiously, “How did you know my name?” Mercy grabbed suddenly for the man’s right hand, bringing it to eye level. “This finger,” he said, pointing to a missing joint. “They told me I’d know you by this finger,” and now he ran his forefinger down the scar on the man’s right cheek, “and this scar.” He laughed easily and asked, “How are you, Jake?”

“Who are you?”

“Captain Maxwell Mercy, United States Army.”

“You come to fight?”

“No, I’ve come to establish a fort. Permanent fort.”

“Where?” Jake asked suspiciously.

“Call your braves in. We’ll smoke.”

So a council took place, there on the open prairie, with Captain Mercy, Oliver Seccombe and Sam Purchas sitting on one side of the ring and the Pasquinel brothers accompanied by two Oglala chiefs on the other. In a long and carefully phrased speech Captain Mercy outlined his mission, assuring the Indians that all the United States government wanted was guaranteed safe passage for emigrants to Oregon.

“You take our land?” Jake asked.

“Never!” Mercy assured him. “This land is yours for as long as the grass grows and the eagle flies. All we want is one road west.”

Here one of the Oglala broke into wild speech, which everyone allowed to run its course. Then Jake Pasquinel interpreted: “Wild Horse says that this one, Cut Nose,” and Jake pointed to Sam Purchas, “cannot be trusted. Evil man. Kills Indians.”

Purchas listened impassively, and then the other Oglala continued the diatribe against him, and after this had been translated, Purchas said, “You tell the chiefs you Pasquinels have killed a damn sight more white men than I ever killed Indians. You tell them that.” Now Jake remained silent, so Purchas broke into sign language and scattered Indian phrases; the chiefs understood.

The parley continued for several hours, during which pipes were smoked and flitches of bacon were given, and at the end Jake Pasquinel asked, “So what land will you take for your fort?”

“That is not known,” Mercy explained. “That’s why I’m here.” There was a long silence, broken by Mercy when he said, “And I was wondering, Jake, if you and Mike would act as my guides for the next three months?”

Mike Pasquinel interpreted this to the sitting chiefs and then to those standing, and the offer caused much consternation, during which Mercy handed the calumet to Jake, as a tender of his sincerity. Jake considered the offer for some minutes, then countered with an act of statesmanship: “I’m a half-breed. If I serve you, the Indians will say, ‘Pasquinel, he’s a traitor.’ I won’t work for you. But Red Feather here,” and he took the hand of one of the standing braves, “knows a little English. He will guide you.” Red Feather, a tall young man in his twenties, joined the circle.

Purchas did not like the offer. “That leaves you free to continue your killin’, eh, Pasquinel?”

“The day must come,” Jake said evenly, “when the killing stops. If you stop, I stop.”

“I wouldn’t trust you to stop killin’ rabbits,” Purchas snarled.

Jake stared at the trapper, then drew his right thumb across his throat. “We will kill you yet, Squaw-Killer,” he said.

The nickname Cut Nose had not disturbed Purchas, but when the Indian used this appellation, earned and hated, he leaped to his feet. Mercy pulled him back down. “We’ll take Red Feather,” he said, “and when we decide on a location, we’ll do nothing before meeting with you and Mike and the Oglala chiefs.” Jake nodded without committing himself, whereupon Mercy proposed, “And at that time we will want you to bring in the Cheyenne and the Arapaho.” Jake said he couldn’t speak for those tribes, and Mercy said, “But you’re an Arapaho.” Jake Pasquinel seemed embarrassed at this disclosure of information he supposed the white man did not have. “How do you know I’m an Arapaho?” he asked.

Captain Mercy pointed to the missing finger, then at the scar. “That finger you lost in a Kiowa fight. That scar you got at Fort Osage. Jake, in St. Louis everyone knows you. They think you will be the man to bring peace to the prairie.” He told Purchas to translate this, so that all the Oglala would know what he said, and once more Jake Pasquinel looked uncomfortable.

Then Captain Mercy asked, “This morning, when you were creeping in? If our watchman here hadn’t heard you? Would you have shot us all?”

Jake sat impassive, his broad face betraying no line of response. Then he looked up at Levi Zendt and said, “You have good guards,” and Mercy said, “We shall keep them posted.”

The Oglala Sioux mounted and drove off. Their backs were to the wagons when they heard a wild shout, “No! No!” followed by the explosion of a gun. They turned in their saddles to see Captain Mercy knocking into the air the rifle with which Sam Purchas had intended to shoot Jake Pasquinel in the back. Only by a fraction of a second was this prevented, and now Mercy swung his right arm and knocked Purchas into the dust.

“You son-of-a-bitch,” the captain barked. “We work so hard …”

He was interrupted by Jake Pasquinel, who rode back into the crowd of emigrants. Looking down from his horse, he spat at Purchas and said, “Squaw-Killer, he didn’t need to interfere. Shooting at a man, you’d have missed.”

“Nobody spits at me,” the fallen man said, reaching swiftly for one of his knives, but before he could grab it, Jake Pasquinel was well away, laughing at Purchas and deriding him again with the hated name: “Squaw-Killer!”

On July 29 the column approached that quiet and restful spot where the Laramie joins the Platte, and there in the distance across the river they saw the fort, a major focus of white man’s civilization between the Missouri and the Pacific, Fort John, a trading post with three towers, castellated ramparts and adobe walls. It contained a sutler’s and a blacksmith shop inside, a score of Indian tipis outside, and everywhere a last reminder of home.

When those inside the fort detected the approach of the column, with Captain Mercy and his mules in the lead, they fired a salute from one of the cannon located in the towers, and Indians clustering below whispered, “Big noise, he come awake!” They did not like the cannon, having seen at first hand the desolation it could wreak; they preferred that it stay asleep.

For the Zendts the arrival was timely. They required the services of a blacksmith, not only to repair the broken wheel but also to reset the three other iron tires lest they grow loose and rattle off. They also wanted to purchase what dried meat they could to supplement the bacon, and they needed flour badly. Therefore, after driving their Conestoga inside the palisades and delivering it to the blacksmith, they went to the general store, where they found a tall, thin man in his late sixties supervising sales, aided by an attractive Indian woman.

“Levi Zendt, from Lancaster. I’m gonna need a lot of your stuff.”

“Alexander McKeag, Scotland. It’s waitin’.”

“This is my wife, Elly. Let her have whatever she needs.”

“This is my wife, Clay Basket. She’ll get it.”

They conducted an interesting conversation, two men not given to useless chatter. Zendt spoke of the bad crossing at the South Platte, and McKeag said, “It’s always bad.” Zendt told of how Purchas had killed the Pawnee and how the Pawnee had slain the emigrant couple, leaving behind two children. “Usually they take the young ’uns,” McKeag said.

Then for some reason he could not have explained, for he was not a curious man, Zendt asked a question that was not routine: “How did you come to settle here?” and McKeag said, “I wouldn’t have if there was trading posts farther south,” and he told them of the good land he had known at the Buttes and the chalk cliff.

“You say you got a lot of beaver there?” Zendt asked.

“All gone now.”

“Then what’s it good for?”

“Farming, I reckon. There’s good water, there’s good land.”

“Captain Mercy says it’s desert.”

“Encourage him to go on sayin’ it. That’ll keep the bad ones out.”

“Why don’t you have your post down there?”

“Nobody comes along down there, that’s the beauty of it.”

When Elly had finished her purchases she was surprised to find at her elbow a young Negro boy who said, “Master, he wants for you all to have dinner with him.” He led her and Levi to the headquarters building, where men were drinking whiskey, and as she entered they rose formally and bowed. A tall man with a heavy beard said, “Madame Zendt, you do us great honor,” and after a long spell of storytelling, during which the man with the beard said, “I’d never have that swine Sam Purchas in my compound, let alone at my table. He’s a squaw-killer, by God, and that’s all he is.”

“He served us well at the river crossing,” Captain Mercy said. “Knows his job.”

“I’m appalled that the army would hire him as a scout.”

“We didn’t.” Mercy said. “He’s Seccombe’s idea.”

Finally the food was served, and Elly said, “I was surprised that you had so much good food for sale here,” and Levi said, “I was surprised at the prices, too,” and Elly said, “But Mr. McKeag was very helpful.”

“Who?” Mercy asked.

“Alexander McKeag,” Levi said.

At the mention of this name Mercy laid down his knife, looked down at the table for some moments, then rose and excused himself. He left the headquarters and asked the little black boy, “Where’s the store?”

“Yonder,” the boy said, pointing, and with slow, almost painful steps the captain headed in that direction. Stepping inside the store, he saw that the tall man and his Indian wife were preparing to close down for the day.

“Alexander McKeag?” he asked. The thin Scotsman nodded, and Mercy turned to his wife. “Clay Basket?” She looked up at him, puzzled, and he took her hands and kissed them.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Maxwell Mercy, of New Hampshire.”

“Why do you kiss my hands?” she asked gravely.

“I am married to Pasquinel’s St. Louis daughter, Lisette Bockweiss.”

No one said anything. McKeag moved to the door and closed it, turning the key. He pulled down the window shade, then sat on a pile of beaver skins. “How is Lise Bockweiss?” he asked.

“The grand woman of St. Louis,” Mercy said warmly, and with this opening he spoke of all that had happened in the city: Cyprian Pasquinel a state senator; old Hermann Bockweiss dead, with choice properties left behind; his daughter Grete and her husband, with many shops in New Orleans; Lise Bockweiss Pasquinel still giving parties in the big red-brick house on Fourth Street.

“Did Lisette grow into a pretty girl?” McKeag asked.

“Ravishing!” Captain Mercy took from his pocket a miniature of his wife, and she was wearing the same kind of French princesse gown as on the first night McKeag had seen her.

Clay Basket said, “You met my sons on the prairie?”

“Yes,” Captain Mercy said quietly. “Jacques and Marcel.”

“Are they in trouble again?”

“I think so.” As he said this she drew her hands down her face, and for the first time Mercy saw what a fine-looking woman she was, still slim in her mid-fifties, with streaks of gray in her hair and the handsome high cheekbones that had characterized her father, Lame Beaver. She was a woman of considerable dignity, as notable in her way as Lise Bockweiss Pasquinel was in hers. Captain Mercy took her by the hands and said, “That Pasquinel, he married beautiful women.” Clay Basket did not smile, for she was thinking of her sons, but whatever thoughts she entertained were broken by a sharp knocking on the door and the petulant cry, “Yoo, inside! Open the door!”

McKeag did so, and into the store came a seventeen-year-old girl in elk-skin dress and deerskin moccasins. She was tall, had very black hair and features which bespoke an Indian heritage, even though her skin was quite fair. She introduced herself as Lucinda McKeag and said that fiddlers were playing and a dance was in progress.

For the next few nights Captain Mercy gave farewell parties for the emigrants who would be continuing westward, and Oliver Seccombe danced so exclusively with Lucinda that on the last night Mrs. Fisher told Mrs. Frazier, “I’m sure there’s a romance under way,” but if so, it came to naught, for Captain Mercy warned McKeag, “I don’t think I’d want Oliver Seccombe courting my daughter.” When McKeag asked why, Mercy explained, “He’s not altogether reliable.” McKeag was about to ask why Mercy had been willing to travel with a man he did not trust, but he was interrupted by Sergeant Lykes, who banged loudly for attention, then cried, “Sam Purchas cannot leave this fort until he tells us how he lost his nose.”

“One of them gougin’ fights you read about in the papers.”

“You tried to tell us that in St. Joe,” Lykes protested.

“Fact is, I was sleepin’ with the wife of a river captain and he come home unexpected and found me where he ought to be, and without wakin’ me or in any way inconveniencin’ me, he leaned down and bit off my nose.”

“You’re a horrible man,” Mrs. Fisher said, and Purchas nodded in her direction, saying, “Most people in Natchez-under-the-Hill are that way. Know what happened to my river captain? He tried to bite off the nose of a Creole gentleman from New Orleans and was shot through the heart.”

In such reminiscences the night was spent, but early next morning things grew more serious when word was shouted from the watchtower: “Pasquinel brothers bringing an Indian war party. Arapaho and Cheyenne.”

Everyone scrambled to the towers to watch the Indians arrive. Out of respect for a grave occasion, the older chiefs had donned ceremonial headdress, and since they were coming from the east, the sun framed the eagle feathers in silhouette. It was summer, and the younger braves wore only loincloths, their faces hidden in shadow, their bodies glowing bronze in the morning sunlight.

They sat astride their horses as if they had always lived thus, as if the pintos were a part of them. Sometimes a horse would become skittish and move sideways for a distance, shifting its hoofs in the dust, and then the rider would move easily with it, not endeavoring to check his animal, for he could be confident that the horse would correct itself and resume its place in line.

How handsome these Indians were that morning, how confident and self-assured. It was the year in which the two races approached a state of equilibrium: the Indians still owned the land and still controlled it, the buffalo were plentiful, and white soldiers had not yet begun to shoot at Indians they were fearful of, and peace was still possible.

Slowly the chiefs cantered up to the fortress gates, and Elly whispered to Levi, “They’re so much taller than the Pawnee and the Sioux,” and Levi replied, “They sure look better than those Sac and Fox who tried to sell us moccasins.”

Oliver Seccombe was delighted. “These are the Indians I’ve been looking for,” he shouted, climbing down the ladder and running forward to greet them. The first brave he encountered stared down from his horse in amazement. What was the silly fellow trying to do? The Indian was Lost Eagle, grandson of the warrior who had counted so many coups. He was then thirty-four years old, with broad forehead, deep-set eyes and very high cheekbones. His coloring was somewhat darker than that of the average Arapaho, so that he looked intensely Indian.

Now he edged his horse past Seccombe, noting with pleasure that his aunt, Clay Basket, was inside the fort. Dismounting, he moved like a stately automaton to where she stood, extending his hands in greeting and saying to her husband in Arapaho, “McKeag, we come to talk peace, but we are confused about what the army wants.”

Mercy, indicating all the chiefs, said simply, “I bring you many presents from our Great Father in Washington.”

“Why have we been summoned to a meeting?” Lost Eagle asked, and when Jake Pasquinel finished interpreting, Mercy said, “The Great Father in Washington requires a fort, somewhere here in the west.”

“You have a fort,” Lost Eagle said, pointing to the adobe within which they had taken seats.

“But the Great Father does not own this fort. Mr. Bordeaux owns it, and the army must have one of its own.”

“Why the army?” Lost Eagle asked, and when Jake Pasquinel translated this, Captain Mercy said gravely, “Not to shoot. Not to kill. Only to protect.”

“We, too, want to protect,” Lost Eagle said. “We do not want our squaws killed. Nor our buffalo driven off the range.” He paused, then added significantly, “Nor do we want our men, like Jake here, shot in the back.”

“I saved Jake’s life,” Captain Mercy said solemnly.

“We know you did. Why?”

“Because he is my brother.”

The chiefs accepted this as a form of felicitous address and nodded approvingly. “We are all your brothers,” Lost Eagle said.

Captain Mercy walked to where Jake Pasquinel stood and took him by the hand. “But Pasquinel is my real brother. I am married to his sister.” This information caused a storm of discussion among the Indians, and among the whites, too, and in the end Jacques Pasquinel and his brother Marcel detached themselves from their companions and asked if what Mercy had just said was true, and he replied, “Yes, my wife is Lisette Pasquinel,” and he produced the miniature, and it passed among all the chiefs, Arapaho and Cheyenne alike, and they marveled both at the girl’s beauty and at the fact that she was half sister to their Pasquinels.

That evening the various Pasquinels convened: Jake and Mike and their sister Lucinda McKeag and Clay Basket, and Captain Mercy of the St. Louis branch. There was considerable laughter and Jake conceded that the chiefs ought to allocate some of the Arapaho land to Captain Mercy and the Great Father in Washington for a fort. Oliver Seccombe arrived to ask unsuccessfully if he could take Lucinda away for a dance, and there was much frivolity.

But when the time came actually to pin down the land that would be given, Captain Mercy and his aide Sergeant Lykes found themselves negotiating not with Lost Eagle, who had already agreed in principle, but with Broken Thumb, young chief of the Cheyenne, who proved himself to be a man filled with hate engendered by the thoughtless depredations of certain emigrants: “They kill our buffalo and do not eat them. They cut our trees but bring no presents.” When he spoke, he spoke of war, and Mercy noted that when Jacques Pasquinel interpreted his speeches, an added fury was injected. In his report to Fort Leavenworth, Mercy wrote: “One Cheyenne who will bear watching is Broken Thumb, his right hand deformed from having been run over years ago by a fur trapper’s wagon.”

It was now time for the emigrants continuing to Oregon to move on, and with regret they bade goodbye to Captain Mercy and Sergeant Lykes. Of the departure Elly wrote:

August 1, Thursday … At the fort we saw our first Cheyenne Indians and the first Arapaho. They were tall, handsome men, and Oliver Seccombe said, “I told you that in his natural state the Indian was a noble figure,” but he changed his tune when he found that while he was dancing with Miss McKeag they had stolen most of his gear. He explained that it was contact with the white man and the influence of half-breeds like Jake and Mike that had corrupted them. With what sadness we bade farewell to Captain Mercy, Sergeant Lykes and their mules. I better than most realized what a fine man Mercy was, for at the flood he risked his life for me. He showed me a portrait of his wife in St. Louis and I was startled at how beautiful she was. I felt the same way about the half-Indian girl at the store. I sometimes think we plain women appreciate beauty even more than men do. I always considered you a real charmer, Laura Lou, and I suspect that you will grow prettier as you age, but as for me …

It was now that the elephant began to swish his tail and to threaten with his trunk. To the dismay of everyone, the mended rear wheel quickly showed signs of weakening and on the fourth day west of Fort John it collapsed completely. Sam Purchas and Mr. Frazier studied the wreck and told Levi, “No hope. Only thing you can do is find a tree trunk and work it as a travois.”

But where to find a tree? They had now left the Platte and were lost in the middle of an endless plain, with never a tree in sight. So Levi and Elly, with two axes, started walking south to where the river ran, and they walked for eleven miles before they found a cottonwood. Levi chopped it down and rested while Elly hacked off the branches. Then they bound the heavy end with rope and proceeded to drag the tree back to the wagon. This expedition required two days, and as they labored their way back Elly asked, “What if they have gone on without us?” and Levi snapped, “How can you think such a thing?” and Elly said, “Sam Purchas would do anything.”

She had proof of this next night. Because there was no wood, the women of the caravan took it as their job to scour the plains for buffalo chips, those circular flat dried remnants of manure which burned so steadily and gave so good a fire for cooking. Wearing aprons, which they held gathered before them as they walked, they went ahead of the wagons, fanning far out and conducting friendly contests to see who could chuck into her apron the most chips, and sometimes they would run from opposite directions at the same chip, shouting, “I saw it first!”

Tempers had not been good this day. The men had lashed the tree trunk in such a way that it took the place of the missing wheel, but progress was slowed, and the Fishers even suggested that they and the Fraziers go ahead at their own speed, but Purchas talked them out of this.

Elly Zendt, off by herself and behind a hill in her search for chips, became aware that someone had come up behind her. It was Sam Purchas, grabbing at her and pulling her down. She fought him and scratched at his slashed nose, but he whipped out a knife and grunted, “You make a sound and I’ll kill you.”

He tore at her clothes, and when she was nearly naked he held the knife against the skin below her chin, but when he was about to mount her she uttered a wild scream and tried to kick him away. A bruising fight ensued, with Purchas trying to knock her unconscious. But Levi heard the screaming, rushed over the hill and grabbed her assailant by the throat. If Elly had not interceded, Levi would have killed him.

Before the sun had set the Fishers and the Fraziers had insisted upon moving on. “We wish to have no further part of this sorry outfit,” they said, and their wagons traveled all that night.

Only the lively spirits of Oliver Seccombe made it possible for the remaining four to operate. “We must all forget that it happened,” he said airily. “I assure you that it won’t happen again, because if it does, I will personally shoot Mr. Purchas between the eyes. That understood, Sam?”

“Lots of young men have tried to do that, sonny,” Purchas replied.

An abiding tenseness now settled over the diminished camp, but next morning, when the right rear wheel collapsed, their energies had to be united on a common problem. Elly was convinced that Purchas had tampered with it, but she had no proof; besides, the trail had grown so rough that normal wear could have accounted for it.

What to do? After exhausting all reasonable alternatives, Seccombe pointed out that the only way to keep going would be to saw the Conestoga in half, throw away most of the baggage and forge ahead with a two-wheeled cart. Levi was so distraught at losing first his fine horses and now most of his wagon that he could not bear to do the sawing, so Seccombe and Purchas cut the rear half off the wagon.

Now came the difficult part. Elly and Levi had to decide what to throw away, what to keep. The extra barrel of bacon—out! The pans bought with her wedding gift at Cincinnati—out! The extra bolts of cloth—out! The guns and bullets—forward! The flour—forward! The tools and the spare rim—out! With what pain the Zendts watched their treasures discarded—how wretched it was to have dragged these goods two-thirds of the way across a continent and now to toss them aside. Of these decisions Elly wrote:

August 6, Tuesday … When we had finished I was in tears but I did not want that animal Sam Purchas to see me crying, so I went to the great rock that rises up from the plains where names are written and sometimes carved, and I took a piece of stone and scratched on this desert newspaper this message: “On this day Levi and Elly Zendt cut their Conestoga in half and threw away most of their goods. May the bacon be found by Indians or those in need.” And I signed my name.

The two-wheeled wagon enabled them to move faster, and on the next day they made twenty-two miles, but on August 8, as they were approaching the Continental Divide and the easier downhill portion of the trip, one of the oxen died. This patient animal had exhausted itself at the crossing of the Platte and had managed to survive only by the fierce courage that kept his breed alive. Elly Zendt wept as they lifted the harness from him. To her he was more than friend and loyal servant; he was the stubborn, solemn creature she had grown to love.

On the next day another died, and they felt the heavy burden of travel. “Now, by God,” Purchas gloated, “I’ll bet you wish you had them two you gave away.”

“You bastard!” Levi yelled. Immediately he was ashamed of himself and walked away. His nerves were in sad shape and not even Elly’s attempt at consolation quieted them, but that night Oliver Seccombe came to the half-wagon and said, “Levi, that man is a bastard. Don’t let him rile you.” And Zendt felt reassured to know that Seccombe agreed with him.

On the next day came a moment of triumph, for the small caravan passed over the Continental Divide, and Purchas shouted, “From here on, downhill all the way!” Elly reflected the reaction of many emigrants when she wrote:

August 9, Friday … I cannot believe it. All my senses rebel at the idea, but it seems true without challenge. From Pittsburgh, which cannot be much above sea level, we have never once climbed a mountain nor even a hill, so far as I remember. The path has been absolutely level, yet now we find ourselves across the Rockies and at the top of a rise more than eight thousand feet high. I wonder if life is not much like that. We go along unmindful and all the while we are climbing a very steep mountain of insight and understanding. Remember how we used to guess about men and marriage. It was so much simpler than we thought …

And then, as if Elly Zendt had been guilty of the sin of hubris, on the night of August 10, when the road lay clear and easy to Oregon, her husband Levi went into the darkness to check his four remaining oxen, and out of the shadows rose the elephant. It was gigantic, thirty or forty feet tall, with wild, curving tusks and beady eyes that glowed. It seemed to Levi to represent all the terror they had experienced and all that might lie ahead on the way to Oregon. It was overwhelming—the menace of that towering creature, and Levi knew that he was destined to turn back.

He returned to the camp, wakened Elly and said, “I saw the elephant.”

“Where?”

“Out there. We’re turnin’ back.”

She made no attempt to dissuade him, and before dawn he wakened the other two and told them, “We’re turnin’ back.”

“Why?” Seccombe asked.

“I saw the elephant.” That was enough. On this trail, when a man saw the elephant, clear and overwhelming, rising out of the darkness with those beady, flaming eyes, he must heed its warning.

“So you’re a turnaround?” Purchas asked contemptuously.

“I saw the elephant,” Levi said, “and he showed me you with your head hangin’ to one side, because in Oregon sure as hell they’re gonna hang you.”

For some minutes he lost sight of Purchas, for he was saying farewell to Seccombe. Despite their partnership in a perilous venture, the Englishman showed no regret at their forced parting. “We’ll meet somewhere,” he said nonchalantly. And as if he had no care in the world, this young man started to whistle as he and Sam Purchas headed west for Oregon. Levi thought they were moving with unusual speed, but it was not till some hours later, when he and Elly were well started on their long retreat, that he discovered what Purchas had been up to and why he had left so swiftly.

“The bastard stole my rifle,” he said, and Elly searched the wagon and the beautiful curly-eyed-maple Melchior Fordney was gone. So was her knitted cash bag and her good scissors. They were about to rain curses on the old trapper, but the bitterness of this final indignity was so great that instead of reviling him, they burst into laughter at his pitiful bravado: his constant drawing of knives, his tobacco-stained beard, his bit-off nose, the futility of the man—and as they drove east they laughed, but that night Elly wrote the long letter which one scholar has called “The Litany of the Loser”:

August 11, Sunday … We have devised many names for what we are doing in turning back, but the real name is one we have not used. The word is defeat, the defeat of all we had hoped for. The horses we loved are lost. The wonderful oxen who were so good to us are dying, and those that live break my heart with their loyal plodding. They can’t last long. We have thrown away most of the things we were going to use in Oregon for our new life and even our wagon is a poor thing, cut in half, with only two wheels that cannot continue turning much longer. We have nothing, and now we have lost hope …

On August 19 they arrived at Fort John again, this time from the west, and they were relieved to see it, for with only a half-wagon, they had begun to run short of supplies. They headed directly for the store, where McKeag said, “I never figured you for a turnaround,” and Levi said, “I saw the elephant.” They talked for a long time, and finally Levi asked, “That place to the south. Rattlesnake Buttes you called it. You ever think of goin’ back down there?”

“Every day of my life,” McKeag said without emotion. “But I never found a partner.”

“Why don’t we try it?”

“Why not, indeed?” McKeag said, and he called out to his wife. When Clay Basket appeared he said, “This one wants to open a trading post for Indians down at Beaver Creek,” and she said, “This fort is no place to keep our daughter.” They called Lucinda and the five of them spent no more than fifteen minutes discussing the dangers involved, and all agreed that they would head south as soon as McKeag could turn his accounts over to another.

They were three days out of Fort John when McKeag astounded the Zendts by announcing, “At the bank in St. Louis, I’ve got twenty-three thousand dollars, so we’ll have them send us up three wagonloads of stock.”

“Where’d you get twenty-three thousand dollars?”

“Saved it … when Pasquinel was wastin’ his. When word gets out that we have trade goods, the Indians’ll come flockin’ in, and I can speak most of their languages.”

“I can put in two thousand dollars,” Levi said.

“Where’d you get two thousand dollars?”

“Sold my horses … in St. Joe.”

In this manner a solid partnership was formed, the second such in McKeag’s life, and he would prove as faithful to the second as to the first. Of the relationship Elly wrote:

August 25, Sunday … On a day like this I often wonder if our misfortunes on this trip came to us because we traveled on the Sabbath. I think that perhaps the Fishers and the Fraziers were right and that we should have rested as God commands. And yet when I look at the three people who are traveling with us today I find that they are more Christian than those we were with before. But Mr. McKeag has no relationship with God, while Clay Basket and Lucinda do not even know the name, and since none of the three can read, they cannot know the Bible. Yet God seems to smile on them so that whatever they do prospers, while on Levi and me he has frowned …

As she was finishing these lines, Lucinda came to the half-wagon and asked, “Is it hard … to learn writing?” and Elly told her, “No, but I think you must start young,” and Lucinda, who was the same age as Elly, asked, “Am I too old?” and Elly replied, “No. I’m sure you could learn,” and she promised to teach her.

Summer was nearly over, and McKeag explained that since it was too late to get loaded wagons back from St. Louis this year, they would occupy the time building a really substantial home at Beaver Creek, on a rise he remembered where they would be safe from the Platte when it flooded. From then on they spent each evening planning how the house should be built and of what.

Clay Basket had noticed that a significant change was taking place in Elly and suspected that she had not yet told Levi, and one night when the men were discussing where they might find a supply of straight logs, she took Elly aside and said, “We must insist on another room, because your child will need it as she grows up.”

“How did you know?”

“Indian women watch.”

“I think it will be born in winter. Will that be difficult?”

“If the house is warm …” She paused, then added, “And McKeag builds warm ones.”

“I haven’t told Levi yet … the disappointments he’s had.”

“A child is no disappointment. Maybe that’s what he needs most of all.”

When Elly decided to tell her husband, she discovered that he had known almost from the first. “I kept watchin’ you,” he said, “and I noticed little things. But it came clear that day when you were swept away at the Big Blue.”

“What could you have seen? You were looking ahead.”

“No, at the last moment I turned. And saw you protectin’ your stomach as you fell. That’s why, when Purchas made for you that day …” His voice trailed off. “I would have killed him.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked, as if disappointed that he had ferreted out her secret.

“Because you’re growin’ so beautiful. Clay Basket didn’t find out because you’re fatter. She saw it in your face.” This was true. With her growing pregnancy Elly had attained a serenity she had not known before, and her thin face was becoming actually beautiful. She would never again be a scrawny, sixteen-year-old willow stem; she was now a mature woman of seventeen with a burgeoning loveliness, as if the prairie had called forth a miracle.

“It wasn’t really the elephant that made me turn back,” Levi confessed. “It was wantin’ to protect you and the baby.”

That evening while Levi wandered over the prairie, collecting buffalo chips so that Elly would not have to work, she stayed in the wagon, writing to Laura Lou. This letter stands as an epistle of hope and prescience, epitomizing the contributions made by the brave women who crossed the plains in pioneer days:

August 27, Tuesday … To be pregnant takes away the sting of defeat, for just as we shall be starting a new community where the rivers meet, so Levi and I shall be starting a new family. Also, the land we are traveling through is the kind that makes you proud, for it is beautiful in a manner that those of us who lived always in Lancaster could never have dreamed or appreciated. This afternoon we came over a hill and saw before us the two red buttes which have been our target since we left Fort John. They stood like signal towers, or the ramparts of a castle, and they created such a strong sense of home that all of us halted on the hill to appreciate the noble place to which God had brought us. I think Clay Basket had tears in her eyes, for this was where she had lived as a girl, and her father, who must have been a pretty important man, liked to pitch his tent between the two buttes, and as she looked at them she thought of her family, for she told me, “My mother was called Blue Leaf from the name of a very beautiful tree that grows in the mountains.” Mr. McKeag had often camped alone at the Buttes and told us of how, when the snows came, he might be alone underground for three or four months at a time. And Lucinda, who is trying to learn the alphabet, listened most carefully, for she had not heard these stories before. Levi and I spent only a little while looking at the buttes, because our attention was taken by the mountains to the west, and we both thought that if we were to live within the shadow of such majestic hills we would become like them. It was now growing dark, and the sun disappeared and over the prairie which we have come to love so well came a bluish haze and then a purple and finally the first dark shades of night itself and we were five travelers on the crest of a hill. I feel assured that any family which grows up in such novel surroundings will be strong and different and I thank God that I am pregnant so that I can watch the growing.

Next morning Elly was up early to prepare breakfast, and as she moved briskly toward the small pile of buffalo chips that Levi had gathered for her, she did not heed the warning sound, and as she stopped to lift a large chip, a giant rattlesnake, bigger around than her arm, struck with terrifying speed and sank its fangs deep into her throat. Within three minutes she was dead.

“It’s God’s mercy,” McKeag said as Levi Zendt came rushing up, too late for even one last kiss. “It’s God’s mercy,” the red-bearded Scotsman repeated, as he gripped Zendt by the shoulders. “I’ve seen ’em die slow, all swole up. Levi, it’s better this way.”

The stocky Dutchman could not be consoled. He had grown to love Elly as few men love their wives, for she had been finer in every way than what he could have expected. Life with her had been a constant unfolding of promise that the better years lay ahead, and to lose her at the moment when a new life was beginning was intolerable.

All that morning he wandered about the buttes, coming back repeatedly to her limp body to touch it, to inspect the fatal dots on her neck, but in the afternoon McKeag said, “Levi, we got to bury her.” Zendt refused to listen, until the Scotsman said, “It ain’t decent.” Then they took their shovels and dug a narrow grave in the lee of the western butte, and there she lay—Elly Zahm, patient, understanding, loving, the mother of lost children. She had come voluntarily on this great adventure and had won the love of all she met, and now she rested within the shadow of the butte. With her Levi buried her paper, proving that she had been married.

On their way to the river another ox died, and the next day the wagon itself collapsed, both wheels gone. Levi was too numb to do anything about it, but McKeag and Clay Basket lashed his gear onto the backs of the three surviving oxen and chopped the wagon up for wood.

So Levi Zendt reached the west bank of Beaver Creek, where the trading post was to be, bereft of all he had started out with. His sorrow was so heavy that for a long time he could not talk. But as the months passed, he did find some comfort in the task of helping McKeag build two sturdy houses and then a stockade enclosing the whole, with a battlement at the northwest corner, where attacks would come if they came at all. By November the place was secure, and on a cold, windy day McKeag went to the Platte and chopped himself a set of stakes. Taking Levi and the women with him, he paced off plots, each a mile square, three of them on the western bank of the creek, two on the eastern, and he staked out the corners and told his group, “We’re layin’ claim to five sections. One for me, one for Levi, one for Clay Basket, one for Lucinda, and one for dead Elly, and we will defend them against trespass.”

But there was no consolation for Levi in the possession of land, and as the winter deepened he grew even more depressed. Clay Basket did what she could to comfort him, but when she heard him ask McKeag, “Where’s the Chalk Cliff you told me about,” she encouraged Levi to seek it out and stay alone for a while, hoping that solitude would enable him to master his grief.

So he loaded a fair amount of gear on his back and walked for two days in a northwesterly direction till he came in sight of the cliffs at whose feet McKeag had once built his refuge. Some of the logs were still there, others could be cut, and he built himself a log-and-sod hut on a spot that men had occupied for the past twelve thousand years.

He became a typical hermit, talking to ducks that settled on the little stream and watching antelope as if they were people. He castigated himself for having brought Elly to this desolate land, for having turned back when the elephant threatened. He convinced himself that if they had pursued their course to Oregon she would now be alive and her son would shortly be born, and he became half mad, with the risk that when the snows covered him, he might cower beneath them and perish.

The snows did come, much earlier than usual, and he spent most of December underground. February was a vicious month and he became a real animal, urinating in a corner of his hut and allowing his excrement to accumulate there—never venturing out, never ceasing to blame himself for Elly’s death. If March were to bring blizzards, as it often did, he would soon be dead.

Clay Basket meanwhile was watching the weather, calculating the depth of snow at Chalk Cliff. She could imagine what the imprisoned Dutchman was doing, and when a thaw came in late February she told Lucinda, “You must take two horses and go to Chalk Cliff.”

“Why should she be the one to go?” McKeag asked.

“He will be ready to come back,” Clay Basket said.

“Then I’ll fetch him,” McKeag volunteered.

“He doesn’t need you,” she said. “Only Lucinda can save him.” Her words had the force of accumulated wisdom, for although Indian tradition required that a maiden remain a virgin till the day she took a husband, Clay Basket realized that a human life had to be rescued, and she was willing to send her daughter to a man who had seen no one for many months. Indeed, she suspected that two lives might be involved, for at Fort John she had watched with dismay as Lucinda shifted her attention from one useless trapper to the next. It had then seemed only a matter of time before the child must go off with some old lecher like Sam Purchas, and this she could not permit.

“Go to him,” she said, and Lucinda saddled up two pintos and rode westward.

When she came to the cliff, it took her some time to find where Zendt was holed up. Finally she discovered the hut at the north end of the cliff, and she stood at the entrance, calling, “Zendt! Zendt!”

It was some time before she got a response, then a bearded, bleary-eyed man appeared, blinking at the sun. “You are filthy,” she said, and although he tried weakly to stop her, she moved inside to witness the appalling conditions under which he lived.

“Zendt! How could you live like this!” She started to make the place habitable, and as she worked she saw that he was far too weak either to help or to mount a horse for the return trip. So she made him a new bed of clean branches cut from the little willows that the beaver no longer usurped for themselves. She built a fire and made some hot food, which he ate ravenously. Then she unloaded the pintos, and with two buffalo robes, fashioned herself a bed at his feet. He was asleep before she lay down.

In the morning he adjusted his weakened eyes and saw that she had stayed with him, and he asked in a faltering voice, “Why are you doing this?” and she replied, “My mother sent me. We love you, Zendt, and do not wish you to die.” And then the despair of recent months overwhelmed him and he hid his face and wept.

She nursed him back to strength, and one day in mid-March, forced him to ride for a short distance, and it was obvious that he was nearly ready for the trip back to the stockade. It was a beautiful day, and they rode some distance into the plains, where she showed him the little stone beaver climbing the mountain. That night when he went to bed, she lay down with him and for a moment he was confused and the memory of Elly Zahm came between them, but he was then only twenty-four and soon the passion of her body overcame him, and for one week, as spring came closer, he experienced untrammeled joy and found new strength.

But if Levi Zendt was a lusty twenty-four, he was also a strictly reared Mennonite—that a pagan Indian girl should share his bed confounded his moral sense. One morning before dawn, as he lay beside her pondering this problem, he chanced to recall the sermon about Ruth which the minister at the church in St. Louis had delivered:

And it shall be when he lieth down … thou shalt go in and uncover his feet …

and he judged that if it was permissible for Naomi to commit her daughter-in-law, the great-grandmother of King David, to such a mission, it was permissible for Clay Basket to do the same, and the first half of his dilemma was resolved. Gently passing his arm under her sleeping head, he kissed her, thus acknowledging that she had been sent, perhaps by God Himself, to save him.

The time had come when they must return, so they saddled the horses and loaded them with gear, and started the long journey home. Since there had been much snow this year, there was moisture in the ground, and from it sprang a million flowers, gold and blue and brown and red. The prairie was a carpet of buds, a more beautiful face of nature than Levi had ever seen before, more to be cherished than his groves of trees in Lancaster, for the trees endured whereas the flowers flourished for only a few days and would wither as soon as the hot sun struck them in June and July.

Occasionally Levi placed Lucinda on one of the horses and led her along the pathless route; at other times they set both horses free to wander as they wished and in time the animals smelled the Platte and headed south for water, and then the little caravan followed the river until it reached the stockade.

“You’re back,” McKeag said, proceeding immediately to show Zendt the improvements he had made during the winter.

“You’re thin,” Clay Basket said, and no further comments were made, but Levi Zendt, still wrestling with the second half of his dilemma, asked the McKeag family to sit with him in the sun outside the palisade, and when they were gathered he said, “Alexander, I want to marry your daughter.”

“High time,” McKeag said.

“But I cannot do so unless she’s a Christian.”

“All right, she’s a Christian.”

“She must be confirmed … and able to read the Bible.”

“I can’t teach her. Neither can Clay Basket. Looks like it’s your job, Levi.”

“I am not a teacher, Alexander.” This led them to an impasse, which Zendt broke with a remarkable proposal: “So I have been thinking that when you go to St. Louis to buy our goods, you ought to take her along and put her in school.”

As soon as this was said, everyone listening recognized its merit. Clay Basket wanted her daughter to learn to read. Lucinda had always wanted to see St. Louis. And Alexander McKeag knew that a life as valuable as his daughter’s ought not be wasted. It was he who proposed an improvement on the plan. “I have a room in St. Louis … with Pasquinel’s St. Louis wife. Clay Basket will take the girl there, and they can live in my room until she learns to read the Bible.”

Within two days they were packed and ready for the long trip to the Missouri. McKeag viewed the trip with pleasure, for he wanted to show his daughter the city that had played such a prominent part in Pasquinel’s life. “And while I’m there, we’ll file our claims to the land.”

“Where?” Levi asked.

“I don’t know where. But believe me, it’s important to have ’em on record … with stamps and seals on ’em.”

The idea appealed to Zendt, and he said, “Before you go I want to stake out a claim at Chalk Cliff.”

“Why do you want that forsaken spot?”

“It was important to me.” So he and Lucinda saddled the best pintos and galloped west to the cliff, where they cut saplings and staked out a square facing the cliff, and when they reviewed their land a great passion overcame them and they made love as they had never done before, wildly, like the primitives who had once inhabited this spot, and without knowing it, they became one with the buffalo bones that lay buried here, and the campfires of ancient people who tipped their spears with Clovis points, and the bones-made-stone of diplodocus, dead more than a hundred and forty million years, and they were part of the flowers that grew during one wet year and lay hidden during ten arid ones, part of the unfathomable mystery of this land and these mountains and this turbulent river. It was love in its perpetual significance, something quite different from what he had known with Elly, and he whispered, “Be sure to come back from St. Louis. I need you.”

“I need you,” she replied, and at that moment she loved more than he, because she knew by what a narrow margin she had escaped becoming the property of some tobacco-stained lout in search of beaver that no longer existed or gold that remained hidden.

The account of Clay Basket’s leading her daughter Lucinda McKeag off the river boat became part of the chronicles of St. Louis. Following McKeag up the hill to Fourth Street, they presented themselves at seven in the morning at the brass-knobbed door of Lise Bockweiss Pasquinel’s red-brick mansion. “I’ve come for my room,” McKeag announced when Lise recovered from her surprise. “Not for myself. For Clay Basket and my daughter Lucinda.”

There could have been few people in the world that morning less welcome at the mansion, for Lise Pasquinel was in the midst of the spring social season and was involved with numerous parties relating to her prominent son and daughter. This sudden arrival of people from a distant past could not have been pleasing to her, but when she saw how beautiful Lucinda was and how stately Clay Basket looked in morning sunlight, her heart went out to them and she cried, “What a splendid family you have, McKeag,” and he, without embarrassment, replied, “They’re Pasquinel’s, but I look after them.”

“The room is waiting,” she said with infectious enthusiasm, embracing Lucinda and telling her, “You’re a beautiful child. St. Louis will be kind to you.” She took the trio to a suite of four rooms, but McKeag said he’d lodge along the waterfront while he bought his trade goods. This Lise would not permit. “You earned much of the money that went into this house,” she said half in jest, “and you stay here.”

That afternoon she introduced the two women as “Mrs. Alexander McKeag, wife of my late husband’s partner, and her lovely daughter Lucinda,” and she continued this procedure throughout the spring and summer, until St. Louis society had to accept the two Indian women.

She knew what gossips were saying: “The older woman is really Pasquinel’s left-hand wife, which makes Lucinda the half sister of Captain Mercy’s wife! I wonder how he feels preparing for the war in Mexico and knowing that his sister-in-law is an Indian.” Lise Pasquinel spoke for her son-in-law when she said, “It’s an honor to have such a beautiful child living with us.

“I consider her my daughter,” she told everyone, “and she’s attending our convent to learn to read.” If eyebrows were raised over the fact that the girl was illiterate, Lise said with disarming frankness, “She was raised a savage, you know.”

When she was alone with Clay Basket she spoke easily of her life with Pasquinel and relished hearing of how the little trapper had lived on the prairies. She said jokingly that she and Clay Basket were half wives just as Lucinda and Lisette were half sisters: “There ought to be a name for our relationship.”

One day as they were talking she broke into laughter, crying impulsively, “The little bastard was fun, though, wasn’t he?”

“He was a good husband,” Clay Basket replied. “My father told me he would be.”

“Your father must have been a wonderful man,” Lise said. “Mine was, too, you know. It wasn’t easy to leave Munich with two daughters … come to a place like St. Louis.” She reflected on this for a moment, then added, “I loved him very much.”

“I loved Lame Beaver the same way,” Clay Basket said, and without voicing their conclusions, the two women reflected on the fact that loving one person completely makes it much easier to love others.

“I know that people here in St. Louis look at me with pity,” Lise confided. “I can hear them whispering, ‘Poor Lise. She married a no-good French trapper who deserted her.’ But out of it I got two wonderful children. Cyprian’s married to an excellent girl who helps him in politics, and you met Captain Mercy at the fort.”

“The Indians trust him,” Clay Basket said.

Now Lise frowned and spoke with hesitation. “Your sons … we hear such bad reports of them.” Before Clay Basket could respond, she added, “I’m sure they’re going to bring our name into disgrace, and I’m sure there’s nothing you and I can do about it.”

“It’s not easy to be half-Indian, half-white,” Clay Basket said.

The conversation was interrupted by a black boy who ran in to report that Captain Mercy had returned on the steamer from Fort Leavenworth. When the child departed, Lise felt required to explain, “We don’t keep slaves, of course. My father wouldn’t allow it. But we do hire the boy from next door. He’s a slave, so we pay his owners.”

For Clay Basket such explanation was unnecessary. Indians had always kept slaves of one kind or another, most often braves captured from another tribe, but sometimes women, too. These days many tribes traded for black slaves, who worked out rather well.

Captain Mercy’s arrival produced new problems. His wife Lisette was delighted to have her Indian cousins staying in the big house, for on his return from Fort John last year he had reported what fine women they were; the trouble arose with the captain. He was so eager that Lucinda have a good time that he kept introducing her to unmarried fellow officers, each of whom fell in love with her, for under Lise’s care she grew doubly attractive. There were dances and trips over to Cahokia and picnics on the mysterious Indian mounds back of the city, and best of all, excursions on river steamers. She became familiar with stratagems intended to lure her into some corner for a spate of kissing, and there were at least three young officers who commanded her serious attention. It became popular for the young men to joke, “When that girl learns to read, she’s going to become my wife.”

The St. Louis Republican spurred the courtships by printing bits of gossip that made the Indian girl additionally desirable:

Belle of our season is unquestionably Miss Lucinda McKeag, cousin of one of our leading families, the Lise Bockweiss Pasquinels. Miss Lucinda is not only unusually attractive, with her dark flashing eyes, but she is famed throughout the west as the granddaughter and only heir of Chief Lame Beaver, the Arapaho hero who discovered a gold mine in the Rockies. So as well as being a social delight, she is an heiress. Happy hunting, you young officers on whom the safety of this nation depends. See to it that this young lady remains in St. Louis and let others work her gold mine for her.

Lucinda was not bedazzled by such notices, nor was she swept off her feet by the young officers. She appreciated their attention and found that it was great fun to dance with them while the band played on the river boats, but she also remembered her weeks with that square-faced Dutchman at the foot of the chalk cliff and the more intense kind of love-making that he represented. But then Lieutenant John McIntosh of New Hampshire reported to army headquarters on his way to Mexico, and her attitudes changed.

In the meantime, Levi was having his problems. Left alone at the trading post when the McKeags departed for St. Louis, he occupied himself by building a corral so that when Indians did come to trade they could leave their horses, and one day as he worked he was pleased to see approaching from the east his first visitors. There were about ten in the group, riding carelessly along the Platte and obviously not a war party.

Dismounting casually and leaving their horses to roam, they surprised Levi by speaking English. “We Pawnee,” they told him, and he was reassured, for by this time the Pawnee were the plains Indians most trusted by the white man; during the remaining years of this century they would serve as scouts for the army and as the agency by which other tribes like the Cheyenne, Arapaho and Sioux would be brought under control.

“McKeag, our old friend, send us here to help guard the place,” they explained. “He come back summer.” They pitched their tipis along the Platte, and after begging tobacco, settled in easily and shared with Levi such antelope as they shot.

On a July morning as Levi worked in one of the towers, he saw to the north a cloud of dust that came rapidly toward the protective stockade, and within minutes he knew that it was a large war party galloping their ponies. The Pawnee, seeing them approach, grew apprehensive, but the war party came so fast that escape was impossible.

It was Jake and Mike Pasquinel, leading a band of Cheyenne, and without dismounting, the two brothers began shouting in English, “You Pawnee! Get the hell off this land. It’s ours.”

The intruders then dismounted and for a moment it looked as if there might be a battle, but Zendt stepped between the two factions, explaining that the Pawnee were friends of McKeag and Clay Basket. This did not satisfy Jake Pasquinel, who stormed among the Pawnee, yelling at them in Arapaho, which they did not comprehend. He returned to a broken English and commanded them to get out.

Since the Cheyenne outnumbered the Pawnee, the latter had no recourse but to depart, so they gathered their belongings, rolled up their tipis and attached them as travois to their ponies. At a signal from their leader they retreated eastward, to the gibes of the Cheyenne, who counted this a victory over their immemorial foe, and all would have passed easily except that one Pawnee lagged, his pinto proving fractious, and the farther behind he fell, the more abuse he took, until he turned on his horse and shouted something at the Cheyenne, whereupon Jake Pasquinel and two Cheyenne braves spurred their horses, overtook the laggard Pawnee and killed him. One of the Cheyenne leaped to the ground, knelt beside the corpse and scalped it, waving the bloody trophy in the air as he galloped back to the stockade.

“Don’t you let Pawnee invade our land,” Jake warned Levi.

“This land is McKeag’s,” Levi replied.

“Clay Basket’s!” Jake shouted, as Mike stood beside him nodding. “And when she dies, it’s ours. His and mine.” Again Mike nodded.

“And part of it’s mine,” Levi said stubbornly.

With snakelike speed Jake Pasquinel caught Levi by the Lancaster shirt he was wearing and jerked him close. Jake was eleven years older than Levi but much quicker. “This land is ours,” he snarled, “and on the day we tell you to get off, you get off. Like the Pawnee. You saw what happened when they didn’t move.” He released Levi and with his right forefinger tapped the scalp.

The feel of the scalp seemed to infuriate him, and to Zendt’s dismay he jerked out a knife and began leaping about the stockade, stabbing at the wooden objects as if he desired to kill them, shouting as he did so, “It will all go!” He then stood flame-eyed in the middle of the open area, grasping his knife in his right hand, and addressed the Cheyenne warriors, assuring them that this was their land, theirs and the Arapaho’s, and that it would remain so forever.

By this time he had worked himself into a frenzy. He leaped at Levi, pressing the point of his knife against the skin at the neck and shouted in English, “We’ll kill you all.” But almost as soon as he had said this, the wild passion departed, and he sheathed his knife and told Zendt reassuringly, “You can keep the trading post … no harm … till my mother gets back.”

And with these words he leaped on his horse and led his warriors back to the north. But Mike Pasquinel, hoping to see his mother, stayed behind and helped Levi with the building, and taught him sign language and fragments of the various Indian tongues.

Mike stayed at the store till August, when McKeag returned with three wagonloads of trading goods, and when Levi explained what Mike had done to help, McKeag wanted to thank him. But Mike, disappointed that Clay Basket had not returned, wished no conversation with his stepfather. He rode off to the north without even saying goodbye to Levi.

“The boys have always hated me,” McKeag said sadly.

“Why?”

“Stepsons often behave like that.”

“Lucinda doesn’t. To her, you’re her father.”

“For boys it’s harder. They see another man taking their father’s place.”

“Did Jake and Mike love their father so much?”

“They’ve never loved anyone.”

The trading post prospered, and for a curious reason. Throughout the region it came to be known as Zendt’s Farm. During the first summer, when buffalo were plentiful and work scarce, Levi returned to his old habits, and with McKeag’s help, started making large links of pemmican, which he considered as nothing but buffalo sausage. McKeag would kill a cow. Using ponies to pull the hide loose, they would tan it and bring back as much meat as they could handle, plus all the intestines. These Levi would clean and knot at one end. Then into the casing he would stuff chopped buffalo meat mixed with salt, pepper, chokecherries, sage, berries and an herb that tasted something like onion. To give the pemmican lightness, he liked to mix in deer meat, if available, and the result was so tasty that word passed among trappers and guides: “Stop at Zendt’s Farm and pick up some of that good pemmican.”

At the farm they kept an increasingly varied supply of goods, thousands of dollars’ worth, which they traded with various tribes for buffalo robes, now fashionable throughout the States and England. Instead of the compact bales of beaver which McKeag used to assemble on this spot, large, loose stacks of robes now went to St. Louis, and often in return came letters and newspapers from that capital. On the prairies men invariably referred to land east of the Missouri as “back in the United States” and to the act of crossing that river as “leaving the States.” What did they call the prairies? It was an alien land with no name, a place of exile where men worked for a while before “returning to the States.” That it might one day become part of the United States was beyond their comprehension.

During the winter of 1846 two messages from the States reached Zendt’s Farm, creating much confusion. First came a letter from Lucinda, a devotee of phonetic spelling:

Dier Levi,

This is first lettir I rite. I no who God is and Virgin Marie. I luv you.

Lusinda

The temporary exhilaration caused by this epistle was destroyed by a clipping from the St. Louis Republican which some well-meaning clerk had included in a package for McKeag. Since the Scotsman could not read, he passed it along to his partner, who read the words with deepening dismay:

Talk along the river is that our fair city may not be losing the lovely heiress Miss Lucinda McKeag, after all. It appears that a dashing lieutenant who boasts of New Hampshire as his home has been spending a good deal of time away from headquarters while his troop prepares for a punitive excursion into Old Mexico, and we are told on good authority that an announcement of more than passing interest to our community may be forthcoming at any moment. Viva, New Hampshire!

This news distressed Levi, but it did not surprise him. It was what had to be expected when a beautiful girl like Lucinda burst fresh upon a city which always contained more men than women. He was deeply pained but he could not blame Lucinda, for he remembered Captain Mercy and knew how attractive young officers could be.

“What will I do if she doesn’t come back?” he asked McKeag.

“Marry someone else.”

These days were not easy for Lucinda. There was much excitement in St. Louis as army detachments went downriver to embark for the war in Mexico, and several of the leave-takings were painful; the young officers had been kind to Lucinda and three had proposed to her, willing to incur the wrath of their relatives back east to whom an Indian was a savage, and she wept to think that they might be killed at war or depart never to be seen again.

But the real problem involved Lieutenant John McIntosh, a delightful young man from Yale University with a dry sense of humor, an intuitive distrust of Indians and a great love for this one. He was twenty-two and she was nineteen, and they made a handsome couple when they danced at the army base or dined together at Lise Pasquinel’s. They conducted a stately courtship and each grew more fond of the other, more respectful of personal preferences. Young McIntosh was a man to take seriously, and Lucinda knew that she could be happy with him, but there remained the memory of Levi Zendt and the prairies and prancing pintos, and rides through flowers, and she grew more and more perplexed.

As the time came for Lieutenant McIntosh’s departure, he became increasingly eager to formalize their engagement and pressed for a definite answer. It was at this time that she sought counsel with her father’s two wives, Lise Pasquinel and Clay Basket, and one day the older women sat with her in a bay window overlooking the Mississippi, discussing her problem.

Lise Pasquinel said, “Young McIntosh reminds me of Maxwell Mercy when he first came into this room. I was delighted to see him … knew at once that he was intended to make Lisette a good husband.”

Clay Basket said, “It’s strange that a half-Indian girl should have so many chances. Three of your men I have liked—Levi Zendt, McIntosh and the young man from Illinois.”

Lucinda said, “You mentioned Levi first,” and her mother said, “I met him first.”

Lise Pasquinel said, “You must weigh one thing carefully. Sooner or later, I am convinced, our army will have to go to war against the Indians. Yes, it’s coming. And if at that time Lieutenant McIntosh has a chance to command, it might be taken from him if he has an Indian wife.”

Lucinda considered this for a moment, then pointed out, “But it’s the same thing with your son. His half brothers are Indian,” and Lise said, “I think of that all the time.”

Clay Basket said, “St. Louis is nice, but the prairies are free,” and her daughter replied, “I think of that all the time.”

Lise Pasquinel said, “There are no goods or bads. There are only choices which lead to satisfaction and those which don’t. I know all my friends feel sorry for me, and in a way they’re entitled to—deserted as a young wife … never remarried. And do you know why? I never remarried because I loved Pasquinel. He was an untidy, untrustworthy man, but love is something, and he gave me many hours of real joy … two fine children. And I look at the wives who feel sorry for me, and they never had either.”

“I was lucky,” Clay Basket said. “I knew two good men and I loved them both.”

In July, when a caravan from St. Louis approached Zendt’s Farm, a slow, snakelike procession meandering along the Platte, its wagons raising signals of dust, Levi felt a gripping fear about his heart. “Can you tell who they are?” he called to McKeag in the tower where the older man watched. Finally he could wait no longer. Jumping on a horse, he spurred it eastward, and when he saw the lead wagon with only two trappers visible, he grew sick with apprehension, but as he dashed on to the second, he saw Lucinda McKeag standing and waving and shouting, “Levi! I’m home!” And he reined in his horse and sat staring at her, unable to believe that so beautiful a woman could have come back to him.

There was then the problem of how to conduct a marriage with no minister closer than Fort Leavenworth, and neither McKeag nor Clay Basket had suggestions. “You’re married,” the Scotsman said, and Lucinda didn’t care much what happened. But Levi wanted things legal and he recalled that early morning scene at the Columbia ferry and he said, “If we announce that we’re going to be man and wife and two people witness, it’s the same as if a minister did it. And,” he added, “then Lucinda would have a paper.”

So he wrote out a marriage contract which reflected the Mennonite vision of God, and when it was finished Clay Basket said, “I’d like Jacques and Marcel to witness,” so McKeag saddled up and rode to Fort John, where the brothers were reported to be living with the Arapaho, and after a week he returned with them plus six Arapaho braves.

Jacques, now thirty-seven and as lean as a bush snake, was proud to see his sister looking so beautiful, and there was a tender moment when he greeted her, bringing her hands to his lips. In Arapaho he whispered, “The man you choose is brave. We tested him.”

Marcel Pasquinel was thirty-five that summer, a pudgy man gifted in languages and gratified to see his sister marrying a real man instead of some Fort John voyageur. Presenting her with an oversized robe made of beaver skins, he said, “Big enough for both of you to sleep under.”

“Are you married?” she asked her brothers, and they replied evasively. She was delighted that they had come. They seemed as hard and daring as the young officers she had met in St. Louis, and she hoped that perhaps Indians like them and white men like Mercy and McIntosh would be able to find a durable peace on the prairies, for they were equals. But when the time came for her brothers to sign as witnesses she felt deep regret that neither could write. Each signed his name with an X, and she could see that each felt resentment at being cut off from men with education.

Zendt surprised the group by appearing not in his Lancaster clothes but in prairie dress which Clay Basket had sewed for him; henceforth he would wear no other. But what delighted the women, causing them to squeal in unchurchlike merriment, was the fact that he appeared for the first time clean-shaven. He looked quite different, younger and more determined, and his brothers-in-law congratulated him, telling their sister, “Now he’s a true Indian.” And they gave him the name Clear Face, signifying “One-Without-Guile.”

CAUTION TO US EDITORS. Two spellings give difficulty. Where the Oregon Trail comes up from Kansas to hit the Platte River, Fort Kearny was located, but the town that grew up at that site is Kearney, Nebraska, pronounced Karny. In northern Wyoming Fort Phil Kearny is located near the town of Kearny. The Oglala Sioux headquartered in western Nebraska near the site of Ogallala, the rip-roaring cattle depot of the late nineteenth century. The beautiful mountain in Colorado, 13,147 feet high, named after these Indians, is spelled Ogalalla, but the small town in Kansas is Ogallah. Don’t ask me why.

Politics. You may want to introduce into your text, with a panel of good portraits, facts about the debate which started at approximately this time in Congress. It dealt with the future of lands west of the Missouri. I am impressed by the fact that most congressmen were strongly opposed to our exploring, settling or incorporating the arid regions of the west into the Union. The record is filled with their doleful predictions regarding the west and their refusal to accept responsibility for it. I can dig out the quotes for you, if you should want any.

More instructive, I think, is the fact that only a handful of stubborn men, those who had a vision of the west, kept hope alive for the Trans-Missouri region. Chief of these was Senator Thomas Hart Benton, of Missouri, in my judgment one of the greatest Americans. He would be worth a take-out by himself, as a glowing example of those sturdy Americans who see something their neighbors cannot understand and cling to it with devotion and intelligence. He was a man of staunch character, and the west owes him much.

Here is where the portraits come in. Among the few congressmen who shared Benton’s vision, and who were willing to stick their necks out by defending the unpopular view, were these four: Senator John Tyler of Virginia; Senator Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire; Representative James K. Polk of Tennessee; and Representative James Buchanan of Pennsylvania. Each became President, and each, when he assumed office, took steps to incorporate the west. Apparently the way to preferment in those days was to express faith in the Manifest Destiny of the young nation.

Chronology. When you submit your article to researchers, they will probably claim that Fort John ought to be called Fort Laramie, but as you will find in my next report, this change did not occur till 1849. They may also point out that it was traditional for emigrant parties to reach Fort John at least one month earlier than the Zendts got there, and they will be right. If emigrants did not leave Fort John for Oregon or California by early July, they ran the risk of being trapped in mountain blizzards, like the tragic Donner Party of 1846–47. However, the year 1844 was exceptional. One of the first things Harry Truman did when he became President was to ask the Army Engineers to research the principal floods of the Missouri-Mississippi, and their report, which I have seen, assured him that 1844 had the worst flood in recorded history. James Clyman, who left a diary of the Oregon trip he led in 1844, trailed the Zendts by about a week, and after his safe arrival in Willamet Falls (his spelling) he wrote a letter stating that other parties were trailing his by two weeks! That was a bad year.

Inflammatory error. When my secretary, a young woman of unusual intelligence who had been educated in Wyoming, handed me her completed typescript of this chapter, she wore a look of disappointment. “I keep hoping that you’ll correct that bad error you made in your preliminary notes,” she said, “and here would have been a neat place to do it.” In frank astonishment I asked what my error had been, and she explained, “Everyone knows that the famous description ‘A mile wide and an inch deep’ applies not to the Platte River, which stole it late, but to the Powder River, which owned it early.” This claim, which I had never heard before, startled me, for in a score of historic documents I had seen this phrase used only with the Platte, but when I told my secretary so, she bristled, and next morning she brought me a book published in 1938 by the Philadelphia novelist Struthers Burt, who loved Wyoming. Powder River: Let ’Er Buck told of the heroic exploits of the Wyoming volunteers in France in World War I. They cavorted across the bocage as if it were the plains of Wyoming, and their famous battle cry was adopted by other American units and even by Australians and New Zealanders. The full challenge was, “Powder River, let ’er buck. A mile wide and an inch deep. Too thin to plow, too thick to drink. Runs uphill all the way from Texas.” Today, wherever rodeos are held, the cowboy who draws the toughest bronco shouts as he leaves the chute, “Powder River! Let ’er buck!” So do drunks entering strange bars. Intensive questioning in libraries has satisfied me that Wyoming is divided across the middle on this one. Those in the north are sure that the phrase belongs to the Powder; those in the south claim it for their Platte, and each side is ready to fight. My own guess is that the words go far back in history and were probably applied to the Platte years before the Powder was discovered. But I am not brave enough to say so in print.