The land beyond the mist

By Ernest Haycox Author of “A Wooing in the Wilds,” etc.

To keep out the misery of the eternal Oregon rain, Tom Cameron sang.

The heavens leaked with a persistence beyond the experience of the emigrant train. In seven days there had been no sun or sky above the tops of the fir trees. A heavy rolling mist hung over the line of wagons, shutting them out from the rest of the world as effectually as if they were in a fog bank at sea. Through this dark, lowering curtain came the steady deluge, soaking into the canvas schooner tops, wetting clothes, bedding, penetrating the food--reaching every fabric and every article. There was not an ounce nor an inch of anything dry in the whole weary column.

Cameron’s pony walked as if he were a twenty-year-old nag. His flanks steamed and twitched, his hoofs were weighted down with huge lumps of gummy clay, his mane hung in separate twisted hanks. The animal was in no worse shape than his master, whose blanket capote dripped water like a colander sieve. Rivulets ran from the man’s beaver cap across his wet face to a yellow mustache; fell from either side of this, like twin waterfalls, to the capote and thence streamed down the buckskin breeches in an ever-growing course, falling finally to the sodden, mud-sunken road in a tiny cascade.

“I’d be a danged sight more dry if I turned this hyar shirt inside out,” muttered Tom, wringing his mustache free from its accumulation of water. Then he fell again to the song.

“Oh, Kernel Doniphan-o----”

It was in the late fall of ’48, and these twenty wagons were traversing the Barlow Road over the Cascades to the valley of the Wallamet. The trail ended for them after a long, long journey. They had started from Independence, Missouri in April and it was now November. In the beginning, it had been a hundred wagons trekking across the vast prairie lands, following the plainly marked, deeply rutted Oregon Trail. At Fort Hall many months later the greater part of the caravan turned south for California and gold while the rest followed the older road to the Columbia and the old Wish-Ram villages at the Balles. Here they split again, part rafting down the bitter-cold river to Fort Vancouver, the rest coming over the new Barlow Road.

The patient oxen pulled at the traces, slipping and sliding in the muck. The bull whips whistled and cracked. Somewhere ahead of Tom Cameron the lead wagon groped in the mist seeking the road through the everlasting, dismal firs. The cattle herd was equally lost in the mist behind. It was all a confusion of noises, overborn by the clack and clatter of vehicles and the incessant pattering of the rain. The wailing of infants came up to him from many a direction, mingling with the shouts and epithets of the drivers. A brave pioneer woman in some distant schooner was singing a hymn:

“Bless’d be the land of plenty----”

It was a stirring tune and an inspiring thought, yet the woman’s voice cracked in the middle of the verse and went down a-wailing. Ah, it was weary and heart-breaking, this last stage of the trip! Where was the promised land, the lush meadows free for the preempting, the bountiful game, the smiling sun? Had they come so far to find so poor a welcome? Better by far the fever and ague of Missouri, infinitely better the crowded, dearer land of Iowa.

Off to the right boomed the turbulent Clackamas. Tom Cameron wrung his mustache again and pulled a little aside to allow another horseman passage room. It was “Old Man” Follett, holding a dripping hand to a Websterian brow. The elder’s face formed an incongruous appearance. A bulging upper part harbored a pair of sweet, candid blue eyes, complemented by an undershot bull-dog jaw covered with stubble.

“By Godfrey, Tom, ain’t there any sun in this cussed land?” A linsey woolsey coat hung like a meal sack from his shoulders. “My fambly’s all got chills. I ain’t been dry fer a week. Ef we don’t find Oregon City mighty soon thar’ll be some buryin’ to do.”

“What’s Captain Bell say?”

“Shucks, Tom, he ain’t no wiser nor you and me. Dang, sometimes I wish I was back in old Illinois. Ef I don’t find good land here I reckon the missis won’t ever look me in the face again.”

A lank Missourian shouted from his wagon seat. “Land o’ plenty, hey? Thunder, I’m ready fer the turn around! I’d like to git aholt of the alligator who guv me the idea of leavin’ St. Louis! I’d put his haid in a tub o’ water an’ see how he liked drownin’. Got a chaw?”

Old Man Follett moved on. “No, I ain’t. Ain’t been up to our wagon for a couple days, Tom. Another scrap with Susie? Waal, I reckon I wouldn’t blame anybody fer quarrelin’ this weather.” He was lost the next minute in the fog, leaving the younger man silent. There was no longer any savor in singing the song about Colonel Doniphan. The misery of the dank, skin-creeping atmosphere worked on his nerve. A draggled sight he made, but no sorrier than any other of the train. There was no laughter throughout the whole caravan; the flame of anger and personal grievance had burst out continuously in the past week. Elders were bickering over directions; young men going at it rough-and-tumble fashion behind the cattle herd where there was no hindrance to gouging or heel and toe. The Emory boys bullied all the rest. Tom Cameron pulled at his mustache and was warmed by a persistent anger.

The horse started and wheeled, plunging against the Missourian’s wagon. Cameron brought up and turned to see the dripping face of an Indian buck poke through the vine maple, stare a moment, and disappear. He spurred the horse in pursuit, but the underbrush was too heavy and, recollecting a clearing a short distance back which seemed to promise entrance into the soaked woods, he swung around and galloped down the line of schooners. The coast tribes, he had heard, were not openly hostile. It paid, however, always to keep on the alert. One Indian might mean a whole band of warriors waiting at some convenient ambush.

So thinking, he edged between bushes and wagons, the horse sliding in the mire. Of a sudden the brush dropped back into the mist and a bare foreground loomed up ahead. Turning, horse and rider were immediately isolated from the column. The grind and clatter advanced out of the haze, witness to the proximity of people; a driver spoke to his oxen in tones that boomed up to Cameron like a gun shot; and yet there was not a single glimpse of movement to be seen through the uncanny pall. The rain beat slantwise against him, redoubled in force. Then the horse stopped and a young man in homespun, hatless, dashed through the mist, closely followed by a mounted trio. The young fellow pulled up directly before Cameron with something like a gasp of relief. Upon sight of this the horsemen came to a sharp stop.

“Oh, you’re hereabouts, huh?” grunted the foremost. A scowling chap, he was, with a black cowlick roaming below the brim of his Missouri hat and dividing a narrow forehead. It was a dark face with a broad nose and thick, mobile lips--handsome in a way and possessing, when broadened into a smile, an undoubted attraction for women. It was otherwise with the men of the train, who saw only the danger signs in the ill-disciplined features. They left “Hank” Emory, leader of the three Emory boys, alone. The other two were lesser copies of the older brother, with much the same sullen expression, the same pouting lips and depth of chest.

“Tom,” said the young fellow, panting. “They’re pickin’ on me ag’in.”

“I’ll teach you to stand in my road!” cried Hank Emory, swinging down from his saddle. “Make a monkey out o’ me, huh?”

The first rule of frontier existence bids each man shoulder his own burden and go his own way; interference is not tolerated save as it comes by request. Here was a fight brewing between the bully and the other, with three men a-saddle impassively looking on. Emory was the heavier, the more dangerous, carrying with him the threat of many whispered brutalities. The chap facing him, while not much younger, seemed to be overawed by his reputation, but he shook his fist at the aggressor and appealed to Cameron. “I ran because all three were on me. You see fair play’s done, and I’ll fight. I ain’t afraid.”

Cameron nodded. “Clean fightin’, Emory. No rough an’ tumble.”

Emory bore down upon his opponent viciously. There was a wild swinging of fists and the swift escape of breath. The lad’s head snapped back and his hands went down; he was sprawled upon the wet turf with a hand to his stomach, writhing from side to side and sobbing like a child.

“Teach you manners!” yelled Emory, jumping forward. His hat fell off, and the mop of black hair waved wildly above the cowlick. The dark face was a seamed battleground of unrepressed fury. The two followers looked on with satisfaction. Tom Cameron brought his arm from beneath the capote, bearing a pistol.

“That’s a plenty. Stop right thar.”

Emory stumbled and brought up. “Plenty? Why, I ain’t begun to teach him manners.”

“You’ve had yore chance. That’s plumb plenty. Git along and leave him alone.”

“Maybe you’d like to try it out,” said Emory, his eyes growing wider. “I’ve had my fill of yore ways. Climb down and risk a fall.”

“When I fight with my fists I’ll choose the place,” replied Cameron. “Want to have somebody holding a gun on the rest of yore friends.”

“Haw! Reckon yore back is made out o’ the color yaller!”

“Thar’ll be plenty o’ time to decide that, too.” Cameron pulled on his mustache until the skin grew white at the roots. “When I come callin’ you’ll git plenty chance to prove it.”

From beyond the curtain of fog there emerged an unusual, disconcerting sound. It started with a distant shout from the front, half inaudible. The successive wagons picked it up, men and women alike adding their voices until, when the rear of the column was reached, it had become a mighty cry. Guns were fired, pans beaten. A woman screamed at the top of her voice:

“Glory, glory, glory! Oregon City! Praise God!”

The whole train resounded with the racket. Dogs were yapping; the cattle bawled out of fear. Some one took up a banjo and a popular tune trembled on a nasal voice while the strings made a flat, unmusical sound against the wet sounding board of the instrument. No matter, the song was sung with vigor, with a dozen voices picking it up.

Journey’s end at last! Somewhere in front was the goal they sought, the shining reward that had held their courage night after night. Somewhere in the mist was Oregon City, the capital of the provisional government of Oregon, whose fame had lured them away from solid, comfortable homes and sent them all the way across the desert and over the mountains. Oregon and plenty!

Emory gave a last scornful glance at Cameron, sprang to saddle and tore through the fog, with his followers close behind. The fallen lad picked himself up and hobbled toward the train with an apologetic glance at his protector. “Reckon they’ll be layin’ for you now,” he said. “There’s been plenty of talk of a fight atween you and him. Whole camp speaks of it.” He grew angry all in a moment. “Don’t you let him swipe yore girl.” Then, ashamed at the outburst, he broke into a trot and vanished.