darlin’, an’ we’ll reap the benefit, you’ll see.’
‘Provided the gold-fields are manned entirely by decadent Frog poets, we’ll make a bloody fortune,’ says I. ‘Thank God we shan’t have to go through Customs.’
The whores were another anxiety, for while Susie had them thoroughly chastened, and kept them dressed like charity girls, they wouldn’t have fooled an infant. They were all coloured, and stunners, and they didn’t walk, or even sit, like nuns, exactly. You just had to look at the stately black Aphrodite, regarding herself in a hand-mirror while the pert creamy Claudia dressed her hair, or Josephine perched languidly on a box, contemplating her shapely little feet with satisfaction, or Medea and Cleonie sauntering among the wildflowers with their parasols, or the voluptuous Eugenie reclining in a wagon, sultry-eyed and toying with her fan – no, you could tell they weren’t choir-girls. I took one look at the score of drivers and guards that Owens had hired for us, and concluded that we’d have been a sight safer carrying gold bullion.
They were decent men enough, as hard cases go, half of them bearded buckskineers, a few in faded Army blues, and all well-mounted and armed to the teeth with revolving pistols and rifles. Their top spark was a rangy, well-knit Ulsterman with sandy whiskers and a soft-spoken honey-comb voice; his name, he informed me, was Grattan Nugent-Hare, ‘with the hyphen, sir – which is a bit of a pose, don’t ye know, but I’m attached to it.’ There was a dark patch on his sleeve where chevrons had been; when he dismounted, it was like a seal sliding off a rock. Gentleman-ranker, thinks I, bog-Irish gentry, village school, seen inside Dublin Castle, no doubt, but no rhino for a commission. A very easy, likely lad, with a lazy smile and a long nose.
‘You were with Kearny,’ says I. ‘And before that?’
‘Tenth Hussars,’ says he, and I couldn’t help exclaiming: ‘Chainy Tenth!’ at which he opened his sleepy eyes a little wider. I could have bitten my fool tongue out.
‘Why, so it was. And you’re a naval gentleman, they tell me, Mr Comber – your pardon … captain, I should say.’ He nodded amiably. ‘Well, well – d’ye know, I’d ha’ put you down for cavalry yourself, by the set of the whiskers? I’d ha’ been adrift there, though, right enough.’
It gave me a turn; this was a sharp one. The last thing I wanted just then was an old British Army acquaintance – but I’d never known the Tenth except by name, which was a relief.
‘And how far west did you go with Kearny?’ I asked.
‘Gila River, thereabout … that was after Santa Fe, d’ye see? So it’s not new country to me, altogether. But I apprehend you’re all the way for California – with the ladies.’ And he glanced past me to where Susie was chivvying the tarts out of sight into the wagons. He grinned. ‘My stars, but they’re as bonny as fluffy little doe rabbits on the green, so they are.’
‘And that’s the way they’ll stay, Mr Nugent-Hare—’
‘Call me Grattan,’ says he, and grinned as he patted his pony’s muzzle. ‘I’m up the road ahead of you, Mr Comber. You were about to say, I think, that after a few weeks those boys of mine might feel the fever, and those charming little maids – if ye’ll forgive the term – would prove a temptation? Not at all, at all. They’ll be as safe as if they were in St Ursula’s.’ He tilted his hat back, not smiling now. ‘Believe me, if I didn’t know how to manage rascals like these – I wouldn’t be here, would I now?’
He was a cocksure one, this – but probably, I reflected, not without cause; the Army had left its stamp on him, all right. I reminded him that military discipline was one thing, and these were civilians, out on the plains.
He laughed pleasantly. ‘Military discipline be damned,’ says he. ‘It’s simple as shelling peas. If one of ’em so much as tips his tile to your young ladies, I’ll blow the bastard’s head off. And now, sir … the order of march … what would ye say to a point rider, a rearguard, two to a flank, and myself riding loose? If that would be agreeable … And you’ll be riding herd yourself? Quite so …’
If his nose hadn’t been quite so long, and his smile so open, it would have been a pleasure to do business with him. Still, he knew his work, and he was being well paid; captain or no captain, it struck me I might spend most of the trip lounging in the carriage after all.
However, when the great moment of starting came I was in the saddle, in full buckskin fig, for one has to show willing. With Wootton silent alongside, I led the way down the meadow and into the trees, and after us trundled the carriage, with Susie fanning herself like Cleopatra, and her nigger maid and cook perched behind, and then the eight big schooners, flanked by Nugent-Hare’s riders; their canvas covers were rolled up like furled sails in the spring sunshine, with the tarts sitting primly two by two; in the rear came the mules, with a couple of Mexican savaneros, the three-hundred-pound loads piled incredibly high and swaying perilously. It was a well-rutted trail, and the schooners rolled now and then, which caused some flutter and squeak among the girls, but I noticed that the guards – who might have taken the opportunity to render gallant assistance – barely glanced in their direction; perhaps Grattan was as strong a straw-boss as he made out, after all.
Once through the timber, we came out on the prairie itself, all bright with the early summer flowers, and I galloped ahead to a little hillock for a look-see. That’s a moment I remember still: behind lay the woods with the smoke haze rising from Westport; left and right, and as far ahead as the eye could see, was limitless rolling plain, dotted with clumps of oaks and bushes, the grass blowing gently in the breeze, and fleecy clouds against a blue sky that seemed to stretch forever. Below, the wagons crawled along the trail, its furrows running clear and straight to the far horizon, where you could just see the last wagon of the caravan ahead. And I absolutely laughed aloud – why, I can’t tell, except that in that moment I felt free and contented and full of hope, with my spirits bubbling as high as they’ve ever done in my life. Others, I know, have felt the same thing about starting on the trail west; there’s an exhilaration, a sense of leaving the old, ugly world behind, and that there’s something splendid waiting for you to go and find it, far out yonder. I wonder if I’d feel it now, or if it happens only when you’re young, and have no thought for the ill things that may lie along the way.
For it’s an illusion, you know – the start of the trail. Those first ten days lull you to sleep, as you roll gently down over that changeless plain, through the well-used camp-places to Council Grove, which is the great assembly point where little caravans like ours form themselves into regular wagon-trains for the long haul to the mountains – there! I’m writing in the present tense, as though it were all in front of me again. Well, it ain’t, thank God.
But it soon becomes dull; the only notable thing happened about the third day, when we came to a little stream and copse where there was a fairish assembly of wagons, and the trail divided – our fork continuing south-west, while the northern trail branched up towards the Kansas River, and then to the North Platte, and eventually to Oregon. As we were breaking camp, with several other California-bound parties, the Oregon folk were already setting out, and there was great badinage and cheering and singing as they got under way.
They were a serious lot, those Oregoners, being mostly farm folk intent on honest work – not like us California scamps off to the gold-fields. We were a raffish crew, but they were sober men and grim women, with never a tin pan or a rope out of place, everything lashed down hard and the kids peeping solemnly over the tailboards. They had an American flag on their lead wagon, and their captain was a bearded Nemesis in a tail coat, his harsh voice echoing down the mule lines: ‘One train, are ye set? Two train, are ye set?’ and every arriero sang out in turn, ‘All set! All set!’, which was the signal to go, for you don’t loaf about with a laden mule, and you don’t stop for a noon halt, either, or the brute will never start off again. So now it was ‘All set!’ and the whips cracked and the skinners yelled and the wheels groaned, and the great train rolled away and the mules plodded forward with their bells jingling, and all the California people yelled and waved their hats and hurrawed and fluttered their handkerchiefs and cried: ‘Good luck! Oregon or bust! Take care,