Impatient With Desire (4 page)

Y
esterday, Milt Elliott came over from the lake camp, and I cannot tell you what a tonic it was for us to see that dear open face. Milt has been with us since Springfield, ever faithful to his employer, James Reed, and to us. George has known Milt since he was a little boy, and though they’re not blood relatives, Milt was only one of many young men in Springfield who would do anything for his “Uncle George.”

Milt says Mrs. Reed and the children and Mrs. McCutchen are doing as well as can be expected. More than two months now since James Reed was banished and rode off on one horse with Walter Herron, and nearly that long since Mr. Stanton brought back word that “Big Bill” McCutchen was recovering at Sutter’s Fort.

When the weather breaks, Milt and Charles Stanton and William Eddy and others are going to try again to cross. We wrote out a list of things for Milt to bring back for us. Unable to rouse Jacob to sign the promissory note, George signed for him.

We have requested horses, mules, and flour, promising to pay for them in California. Outside, I privately asked Milt to also bring back unguent, bandages, and whiskey.

“You hankering for a drink, Mrs. Donner?” he teased, and I laughed and said, “Strictly medicinal purposes, Milt.”

B
efore we could hardly start counting the days, Milt appeared at our door again. Due to soft snow and drifts, he and the others didn’t get as far as the last attempt. “Don’t worry, Uncle George,” he said, “we have another plan. We’re making snowshoes. Graves saw them in Vermont and Stanton in upstate New York.”

He handed me a letter from Mr. Stanton—addressed to “Donnersville,” which made George and me smile wryly. Charles Stanton traveled in our wagons from Independence on, and a more congenial traveling companion there never was. He was as keen on botanizing as I, and we spent many a pleasant nooning together on the prairies with their vast grasslands and profusion of wildflowers. One day we found wild peas, and my sister-in-law, Elizabeth, was ecstatic.

In his letter, Mr. Stanton asked if we had any tobacco and if he could borrow my compass. “Graves is coming right back for his family,” he wrote, “and he’ll bring your compass back to you.”

I can’t lend him my compass, I thought wildly, I’ll need it…

“Mrs. Donner?” Milt said, and I realized he was waiting for my answer. George was looking at me too. I couldn’t think what to say.

“We can spare some tobacco,” George said and got up to get it.

A
storm prevented Milt from leaving. He was with us nine days, staying in the teamsters’ hut. He sat at Jacob’s bedside with us all night long, George holding his brother’s hand until Jacob died, and he helped us bury Jacob in the whirling snow. He was there when our teamster Samuel Shoemaker died.

Night before last, poor Milt, shaken and scared by the almost simultaneous deaths of Jacob and Samuel, and the moribund condition of our other teamster James Smith, wanted to leave for the lake camp immediately. It was with some difficulty that George persuaded him to wait until daybreak.

We sat by the fire, and when I handed him a cup of coffee, his hands shook uncontrollably. I had to hold it for him to drink. “Sammy won the calf-lifting contest four years straight,” he said. “Nobody could beat Sammy.”

“We don’t understand it either, Milt,” I said. “Young, healthy men like yourself, and we have been unable to rally them. They don’t seem to want to live.”

“Are we all gonna die like Mrs. Donner said?” Milt blurted out, saying aloud my sister-in-law’s words that had been thundering unspoken in the air since Jacob’s burial.

“Of course not,” I started, but there was a crash on the stairs as if someone had fallen, and we jumped up just as Joseph Reinhardt, the German staying in the teamsters’ shelter, staggered into our shelter and collapsed. Milt dragged him to a platform.
Although she rarely comes out volitionally, Mrs. Wolfinger instantly appeared from behind her blanket.

Mr. Reinhardt opened his eyes, looked wildly at George. “Wolfinger, Wolfinger. I’m sorry…”

George leaned close. “Who killed Wolfinger?”

“Have mercy, O God have mercy, O Gott…,” Mr. Reinhardt said over and over, thrashing back and forth. He lapsed into German. “Ich komme in die Hölle…”

“Ja,” Mrs. Wolfinger spit out and went back behind her blanket. George tried to soothe Mr. Reinhardt without success until the thrashing and babbling stopped. I suddenly realized that Leanna and Elitha were sitting up on their platforms and Frances stood nearby, wide-eyed. “Mr. Reinhardt has died,” I said. “Go back to bed, Frances. All of you go to sleep. You need your sleep.”

Even in death, Mr. Reinhardt’s distress remained on his contorted face. Milt helped us wrap him in a blanket and drag the body up the stairs and out into the snow behind the shelter, looking stunned and bewildered the whole time. This time, even though dawn was two hours away, neither George nor I could persuade him to stay the rest of the night in the teamsters’ wigwam—“Not with James Smith, Mrs. Donner”—or even on hides near our fire.

Milt gone, the children finally asleep, George and I sat by the fire, lost in our thoughts. George met my eyes, gestured toward Mrs. Wolfinger’s blanket, and whispered, “She asleep?”

I nodded.

“I didn’t know how to comfort Reinhardt,” he said. “He was such a troubled soul. Was he raving or confessing?”

“He said he was going to Hell,” I said.

I
opened the Bible to write Mr. Reinhardt’s name.

W
hen we came here, we had some coffee, tea, and a little bit of sugar that I saved for Frances, Georgia, and Eliza. Every night when I put them to bed, I gave them a tiny lump. Every night Uno, on the platform at their feet, waited eagerly for Georgia to finger the fleck of sugar dissolving on her tongue, and hold out her finger for him to lick thoroughly.

Tonight, Georgia stuck out her tongue for her lump.

“There is no more, Georgia,” I said.

Her big eyes filled with tears.

“Can you get us some at the store?” Eliza asked.

“California has bags of sugar on the ground,” Frances said.

Whimpering, they finally fell asleep.

Ears pricked, Uno waited for his sugar in vain.

• 1.
  James Reed, his wife and four children at the lake camp waiting for him.
  
• 2.
  “Big Bill” McCutchen, his wife and baby girl at the lake camp waiting for him.
  
• 3.
  Hiram Miller, our teamster from Springfield, who joined a pack mule train in July because the wagon train was too slow for him. He will have heard of our plight from Mr. Reed and Mr. McCutchen. Hiram has no family here but is especially fond of “Uncle George.”
  
• 4.
  Walter Herron, James Reed’s teamster, who rode off with him after James was banished. We could spare only one horse, and Walter said, “I don’t want to go out there, Mr. Donner.” “You’re his teamster, Walter,” George said.
  

In that order, I think, we have four hopes just across the mountains to the west, who will tell others, may already be forming relief parties.

Do they look east at the mountaintop and imagine us as we look west and imagine them?

Later

George just had a terrible thought. Neither Reed nor McCutchen will know we lost almost all the cattle in the snow. They will figure we have enough food to last till spring.

T
he snowshoers didn’t wait for Milt to get back, and Mr. Stanton left without the tobacco and never knew I didn’t lend him my compass. Jean Baptiste said that fifteen of them started out to cross the mountains December 16th.

“They sawed oxbows into strips, keeping the curved shape,” I told the children. “Then they cut hides into narrow strips and wove them like this. Something like your little chair seat, Georgia.” I dashed off a sketch of snowshoes for the children. “Wasn’t that clever of them? I saw snowshoes in Maine. You can walk right on top of snow—”

“Where’s my special chair?” Georgia asked.

“It’s in the third wagon that has all the things we won’t need until California,” I said, then continued. “Five women, eight men, and two boys went. Three of the women were nursing and their milk dried up. They’ve gone to get milk for their children.”

“Oh, how quickly I’d give my green velvet dress and my green Moroccan leather shoes for one glass of milk,” Elitha said. “A
half
glass of milk, white and thick and creamy, little bits of butter—”

“Mr. Stanton has already made the trip to Sutter’s Fort and back, so he knows the way,” I said. “Rescue will be coming soon.”

Now we have five hopes.

I’ve already told you, Betsey, how agreeable a traveling companion I found Mr. Stanton, but I also found him a man of great integrity.

In August, when we found the first note from Lansford Hastings—“Weber Canyon bad. Make camp and send someone ahead. I will return to lead you.”—Mr. Stanton was the first to volunteer. “Pick a married man, so we know he’ll come back,” Mr. Breen said, and Mr. Stanton colored. He rode off with James Reed and William Pike, and we waited four long days until James Reed reappeared alone. Mr. Stanton’s and Mr. Pike’s horses had broken down, and James on a horse borrowed from Hastings brought bad news. Lansford Hastings was not coming back to lead us; the company before us that he was leading had barely gotten through the Weber Canyon, and they had many more men than we, far fewer women and children. Our only possible route was through the Wasatch Mountains.

We set off on a vague course that James had tried to blaze. There was no road, not even a trail. A week later, Mr. Stanton and Mr. Pike, who had been wandering through the wilderness for days trying to find us, limped up on foot to deliver the dispiriting news that the road we had been hacking out was leading straight to an impassable gorge. Again, we had to turn around and start over.

In September, when it became obvious that our supplies were inadequate, Mr. Stanton was again the first to volunteer to go ahead to Sutter’s Fort for help. This time, Mr. Breen said nothing about married men. “Big Bill” McCutchen volunteered to go with him, the giant McCutchen and the diminutive Stanton making a funny duo as they rode off on one horse.

In October, we had our first cheerful day in a long time when Mr. Stanton came clattering down the trail toward us with pack mules laden with food from Captain Sutter and two vaqueros, Luis and Salvador, and news that James Reed was nearly to Sutter’s Fort. “Big Bill” McCutchen, too ill to travel, was recouping his strength at Sutter’s Fort.

With no blood ties to our company, only his honor guiding him, Mr. Stanton has already come back twice. I know he will come back again this time.

Godspeed, Mr. Stanton.

Dear Betsey,

Christmas has come and gone. We ate the loathsome oxen hides in silence. Across the table, I looked at Georgia’s little pinched face, Frances’s golden curls dull and lank…my head whirling with pictures and voices: “Who wants to crack walnuts, you’ll spoil your supper with all that gingerbread, save room for the hot mince pies, Now children, just because it’s roast turkey you don’t have to gobble gobble, Father, you say that every year.” When Frances asked me to tell a story about other Christmases, I said, “Not now.” Her face fell, and I said, “Maybe later.”

I think I told myself that speaking of those happy times would only bring the children more pain. It might just as well have brought them hope that those times will come again. The truth is, Betsey, I forgot that Frances asked me. All I could think of was a long-ago Christmas tree with candles snuffed out, keening alone in the dark, tears soaking my letter to you:

Jan, 1832

I have lost that little boy I loved so well. He died the 28th of September. I have lost my husband who made such a large share of my happiness. He died on the 24th of December. I prematurely had a daughter which died on the 18th of Nov. O my sister, weep with me if you have tears to spare.

I remember writing those words after Tully died, thinking I would never recover. Margret Reed lost her first husband too, and lost a little boy three months before we left Illinois, and now
she may have lost another husband—nearly three months since James was banished. Her children did not eat hides on Christmas Day. Jean Baptiste spent Christmas at the other camp and brought the story back today. Weeks back, Margret planned—burying bits of food deep in a snow mound—and early Christmas morning, she began her surprise.

I can see only too clearly the Reed children cluster about the small kettle. Their faces bend close to suck in the steam, the smell of the unexpected feast. Their cabin fills with unfamiliar sounds—the noise of excited children, not like mine, who lie languidly on their racks and have to be cajoled to get up, go outside—little Jimmy Reed shrieks with joy, “There’s
mine,
” as a small white bean surfaces, bobbling in the swirling broth.

Margret Reed. Always suffering from “sick headaches” back in Springfield, and the day James was banished, his head dripping with blood from Snyder’s bullwhip, Margret too distraught to dress his wounds, leaving Virginia, a slip of girl, to attend properly to James…. God forgive me, forgive me, Margret. Margret was wounded too, “down came the stroke full upon her,” James said with anguish, the men gathering to hang him: How would I have responded? We all came here strangers to ourselves.

Margret Reed celebrated Christmas properly. I am awed and shamed.

In the corner of the cabin, Jean Baptiste said, the smaller Graves children watched the four Reed children sitting around the table on their best behavior as their mother ladled out the meager feast.

“Tripe! And salt pork! And beans! Tell us again where it came from, Mother,” Virginia said.

“Weeks back I hid it for today,” Margret said.

“It’s a Christmas miracle!” little Patty said.

A half-inch wedge of salt pork, a tiny bit of tripe, a handful of beans. They all bowed their heads. “We give thanks for this bounty,” Margret said. “We pray for your father’s safety on this Christmas Day. Now eat slowly, children. There is plenty for all.”