Book: 54 40 or Fight

E >> Emerson Hough >> 54 40 or Fight




The grass was burned to its roots, the streams were reduced to ribbons,
the mirages of the desert mocked us desperately. Rain came seldom now,
and the sage-brush of the desert was white with bitter dust, which in
vast clouds rose sometimes in the wind to make our journey the harder.
In autumn, as we approached the second range of mountains, we could see
the taller peaks whitened with snow. Our leaders looked anxiously ahead,
dreading the storms which must ere long overtake us. Still, gaunt now
and haggard, weakened in body but not in soul, we pressed on across.
That was the way to Oregon.

Gaunt and brown and savage, hungry and grim, ragged, hatless, shoeless,
our cavalcade closed up and came on, and so at last came through. Ere
autumn had yellowed all the foliage back east in gentler climes, we
crossed the shoulders of the Blue Mountains and came into the Valley of
the Walla Walla; and so passed thence down the Columbia to the Valley of
the Willamette, three hundred miles yet farther, where there were then
some slight centers of our civilization which had gone forward the year
before.

Here were some few Americans. At Champoeg, at the little American
missions, at Oregon City, and other scattered points, we met them, we
hailed and were hailed by them. They were Americans. Women and plows
were with them. There were churches and schools already started, and a
beginning had been made in government. Faces and hands and ways and
customs and laws of our own people greeted us. Yes. It was America.

Messengers spread abroad the news of the arrival of our wagon train.
Messengers, too, came down from the Hudson Bay posts to scan our
equipment and estimate our numbers. There was no word obtainable from
these of any Canadian column of occupation to the northward which had
crossed at the head of the Peace River or the Saskatchewan, or which lay
ready at the head waters of the Fraser or the Columbia to come down to
the lower settlements for the purpose of bringing to an issue, or making
more difficult, this question of the joint occupancy of Oregon. As a
matter of fact, ultimately we won that transcontinental race so
decidedly that there never was admitted to have been a second.

As for our people, they knew how neither to hesitate nor to dread. They
unhooked their oxen from the wagons and put them to the plows. The fruit
trees, which had crossed three ranges of mountains and two thousand
miles of unsettled country, now found new rooting. Streams which had
borne no fruit save that of the beaver traps now were made to give
tribute to little fields and gardens, or asked to transport wheat
instead of furs. The forests which had blocked our way were now made
into roofs and walls and fences. Whatever the future might bring, those
who had come so far and dared so much feared that future no more than
they had feared the troubles which in detail they had overcome in their
vast pilgrimage.

So we took Oregon by the only law of right. Our broken and weakened
cavalcade asked renewal from the soil itself. We ruffled no drum,
fluttered no flag, to take possession of the land. But the canvas covers
of our wagons gave way to permanent roofs. Where we had known a hundred
camp-fires, now we lighted the fires of many hundred homes.




CHAPTER XXVI

THE DEBATED COUNTRY

The world was sad, the garden was a wild!
The man, the hermit, sighed--till woman smiled!
--_Campbell_.


Our army of peaceful occupation scattered along the more fertile parts
of the land, principally among the valleys. Of course, it should not be
forgotten that what was then called Oregon meant all of what now is
embraced in Oregon, Washington and Idaho, with part of Wyoming as well.
It extended south to the Mexican possessions of California. How far
north it was to run, it was my errand here to learn.

To all apparent purposes, I simply was one of the new settlers in
Oregon, animated by like motives, possessed of little more means, and
disposed to adjust myself to existing circumstances, much as did my
fellows. The physical conditions of life in a country abounding in wild
game and fish, and where even careless planting would yield abundant
crops, offered no very difficult task to young men accustomed to
shifting for themselves; so that I looked forward to the winter with no
dread.

I settled near the mouth of the Willamette River, near Oregon City, and
not far from where the city of Portland later was begun; and builded for
myself a little cabin of two rooms, with a connecting roof. This I
furnished, as did my neighbors their similar abodes, with a table made
of hewed puncheons, chairs sawed from blocks, a bed framed from poles,
on which lay a rude mattress of husks and straw. My window-panes were
made of oiled deer hide. Thinking that perhaps I might need to plow in
the coming season, I made me a plow like those around me, which might
have come from Mexico or Egypt--a forked limb bound with rawhide. Wood
and hide, were, indeed, our only materials. If a wagon wheel showed
signs of disintegration, we lashed it together with rawhide. When the
settlers of the last year sought to carry wheat to market on the
Willamette barges, they did so in sacks made of the hides of deer. Our
clothing was of skins and furs.

From the Eastern States I scarcely could now hear in less than a year,
for another wagon train could not start west from the Missouri until the
following spring. We could only guess how events were going forward in
our diplomacy. We did not know, and would not know for a year, the
result of the Democratic convention at Baltimore, of the preceding
spring! We could only wonder who might be the party nominees for the
presidency. We had a national government, but did not know what it was,
or who administered it. War might be declared, but we in Oregon would
not be aware of it. Again, war might break out in Oregon, and the
government at Washington could not know that fact.

The mild winter wore away, and I learned little. Spring came, and still
no word of any land expedition out of Canada. We and the Hudson Bay folk
still dwelt in peace. The flowers began to bloom in the wild meads, and
the horses fattened on their native pastures. Wider and wider lay the
areas of black overturned soil, as our busy farmers kept on at their
work. Wider grew the clearings in the forest lands. Our fruit trees,
which we had brought two thousand miles in the nursery wagon, began to
put out tender leafage. There were eastern flowers--marigolds,
hollyhocks, mignonette--planted in the front yards of our little cabins.
Vines were trained over trellises here and there. Each flower was a
rivet, each vine a cord, which bound Oregon to our Republic.

Summer came on. The fields began to whiten with the ripening grain. I
grew uneasy, feeling myself only an idler in a land so able to fend for
itself. I now was much disposed to discuss means of getting back over
the long trail to the eastward, to carry the news that Oregon was ours.
I had, it must be confessed, nothing new to suggest as to making it
firmly and legally ours, beyond what had already been suggested in the
minds of our settlers themselves. It was at this time that there
occurred a startling and decisive event.

I was on my way on a canoe voyage up the wide Columbia, not far above
the point where it receives its greatest lower tributary, the
Willamette, when all at once I heard the sound of a cannon shot. I
turned to see the cloud of blue smoke still hanging over the surface of
the water. Slowly there swung into view an ocean-going vessel under
steam and auxiliary canvas. She made a gallant spectacle. But whose ship
was she? I examined her colors anxiously enough. I caught the import of
her ensign. She flew the British Union Jack!

England had won the race by sea!

Something in the ship's outline seemed to me familiar. I knew the set of
her short masts, the pitch of her smokestacks, the number of her guns.
Yes, she was the _Modeste_ of the English Navy--the same ship which more
than a year before I had seen at anchor off Montreal!

News travels fast in wild countries, and it took us little time to learn
the destination of the _Modeste_. She came to anchor above Oregon City,
and well below Fort Vancouver. At once, of course, her officers made
formal calls upon Doctor McLaughlin, the factor at Fort Vancouver, and
accepted head of the British element thereabouts. Two weeks passed in
rumors and counter rumors, and a vastly dangerous tension existed in all
the American settlements, because word was spread that England had sent
a ship to oust us. Then came to myself and certain others at Oregon City
messengers from peace-loving Doctor McLaughlin, asking us to join him in
a little celebration in honor of the arrival of her Majesty's vessel.

Here at last was news; but it was news not wholly to my liking which I
soon unearthed. The _Modeste_ was but one ship of fifteen! A fleet of
fifteen vessels, four hundred guns, then lay in Puget Sound. The
watch-dogs of Great Britain were at our doors. This question of monarchy
and the Republic was not yet settled, after all!

I pass the story of the banquet at Fort Vancouver, because it is
unpleasant to recite the difficulties of a kindly host who finds himself
with jarring elements at his board. Precisely this was the situation of
white-haired Doctor McLaughlin of Fort Vancouver. It was an incongruous
assembly in the first place. The officers of the British Navy attended
in the splendor of their uniforms, glittering in braid and gold. Even
Doctor McLaughlin made brave display, as was his wont, in his regalia of
dark blue cloth and shining buttons--his noble features and long,
snow-white hair making him the most lordly figure of them all. As for
us Americans, lean and brown, with hands hardened by toil, our wardrobes
scattered over a thousand miles of trail, buckskin tunics made our
coats, and moccasins our boots. I have seen some noble gentlemen so clad
in my day.

We Americans were forced to listen to many toasts at that little
frontier banquet entirely to our disliking. We heard from Captain Parke
that "the Columbia belonged to Great Britain as much as the Thames";
that Great Britain's guns "could blow all the Americans off the map";
that her fleet at Puget Sound waited but for the signal to "hoist the
British flag over all the coast from Mexico to Russia" Yet Doctor
McLaughlin, kindly and gentle as always, better advised than any one
there on the intricacies of the situation now in hand, only smiled and
protested and explained.

For myself, I passed only as plain settler. No one knew my errand in the
country, and I took pains, though my blood boiled, as did that of our
other Americans present at that board, to keep a silent tongue in my
head. If this were joint occupancy, I for one was ready to say it was
time to make an end of it. But how might that be done? At least the
proceedings of the evening gave no answer.

It was, as may be supposed, late in the night when our somewhat
discordant banqueting party broke up. We were all housed, as was the
hospitable fashion of the country, in the scattered log buildings which
nearly always hedge in a western fur-trading post. The quarters assigned
me lay across the open space, or what might be called the parade ground
of Fort Vancouver, flanked by Doctor McLaughlin's four little cannon.

As I made my way home, stumbling among the stumps in the dark, I passed
many semi-drunken Indians and _voyageurs_, to whom special liberty had
been accorded in view of the occasion, all of them now engaged in
singing the praises of the "King George" men as against the "Bostons." I
talked now and again with some of our own brown and silent border men,
farmers from the Willamette, none of them any too happy, all of them
sullen and ready for trouble in any form. We agreed among us that
absolute quiet and freedom from any expression of irritation was our
safest plan. "Wait till next fall's wagon trains come in!" That was the
expression of our new governor, Mr. Applegate; and I fancy it found an
echo in the opinions of most of the Americans. By snowfall, as we
believed, the balance of power would be all upon our side, and our
swift-moving rifles would outweigh all their anchored cannon.

I was almost at my cabin door at the edge of the forest frontage at the
rear of the old post, when I caught glimpse, in the dim light, of a
hurrying figure, which in some way seemed to be different from the
blanket-covered squaws who stalked here and there about the post
grounds. At first I thought she might be the squaw of one of the
employees of the company, who lived scattered about, some of them now,
by the advice of Doctor McLaughlin, beginning to till little fields;
but, as I have said, there was something in the stature or carriage or
garb of this woman which caused me idly to follow her, at first with my
eyes and then with my footsteps.

She passed steadily on toward a long and low log cabin, located a short
distance beyond the quarters which had been assigned to me. I saw her
step up to the door and heard her knock; then there came a flood of
light--more light than was usual in the opening of the door of a
frontier cabin. This displayed the figure of the night walker, showing
her tall and gaunt and a little stooped; so that, after all, I took her
to be only one of our American frontier women, being quite sure that she
was not Indian or half-breed.

This emboldened me, on a mere chance--an act whose mental origin I could
not have traced--to step up to the door after it had been closed, and
myself to knock thereat. If it were a party of Americans here, I wished
to question them; if not, I intended to make excuses by asking my way
to my own quarters. It was my business to learn the news of Oregon.

I heard women's voices within, and as I knocked the door opened just a
trifle on its chain. I saw appear at the crack the face of the woman
whom I had followed.

She was, as I had believed, old and wrinkled, and her face now, seen
close, was as mysterious, dark and inscrutable as that of any Indian
squaw. Her hair fell heavy and gray across her forehead, and her eyes
were small and dark as those of a native woman. Yet, as she stood there
with the light streaming upon her, I saw something in her face which
made me puzzle, ponder and start--and put my foot within the crack of
the door.

When she found she could not close the door, she called out in some
foreign tongue. I heard a voice answer. The blood tingled in the roots
of my hair!

"Threlka," I said quietly, "tell Madam the Baroness it is I, Monsieur
Trist, of Washington."




CHAPTER XXVII

IN THE CABIN OF MADAM

Woman must not belong to herself; she is bound to alien
destinies.--_Friedrich von Schiller_.


With an exclamation of surprise the old woman departed from the door. I
heard the rustle of a footfall. I could have told in advance what face
would now appear outlined in the candle glow--with eyes wide and
startled, with lips half parted in query. It was the face of Helena,
Baroness von Ritz!

"_Eh bien!_ madam, why do you bar me out?" I said, as though we had
parted but yesterday.

In her sheer astonishment, I presume, she let down the fastening chain,
and without her invitation I stepped within. I heard her startled "_Mon
Dieu!_" then her more deliberate exclamation of emotion. "My God!" she
said. She stood, with her hands caught at her throat, staring at me. I
laughed and held out a hand.

"Madam Baroness," I said, "how glad I am! Come, has not fate been kind
to us again?" I pushed shut the door behind me. Still without a word,
she stepped deeper into the room and stood looking at me, her hands
clasped now loosely and awkwardly, as though she were a country girl
surprised, and not the Baroness Helena von Ritz, toast or talk of more
than one capital of the world.

Yet she was the same. She seemed slightly thinner now, yet not less
beautiful. Her eyes were dark and brilliant as ever. The clear features
of her face were framed in the roll of her heavy locks, as I had seen
them last. Her garb, as usual, betokened luxury. She was robed as though
for some fete, all in white satin, and pale blue fires of stones shone
faintly at throat and wrist. Contrast enough she made to me, clad in
smoke-browned tunic of buck, with the leggings and moccasins of a
savage, my belt lacking but prepared for weapons.

I had not time to puzzle over the question of her errand here, why or
whence she had come, or what she purposed doing. I was occupied with the
sudden surprises which her surroundings offered.

"I see, Madam," said I, smiling, "that still I am only asleep and
dreaming. But how exquisite a dream, here in this wild country! How
unfit here am I, a savage, who introduce the one discordant note into so
sweet a dream!"

I gestured to my costume, gestured about me, as I took in the details of
the long room in which we stood. I swear it was the same as that in
which I had seen her at a similar hour in Montreal! It was the same I
had first seen in Washington!

Impossible? I am doubted? Ah, but do I not know? Did I not see? Here
were the pictures on the walls, the carved Cupids, the candelabra with
their prisms, the chairs, the couches! Beyond yonder satin curtains rose
the high canopy of the embroidery-covered couch, its fringed drapery
reaching almost to the deep pile of the carpets. True, opportunity had
not yet offered for the full concealment of these rude walls; yet, as my
senses convinced me even against themselves, here were the apartments of
Helena von Ritz, furnished as she had told me they always were at each
place she saw fit to honor with her presence!

Yet not quite the same, it seemed to me. There were some little things
missing, just as there were some little things missing from her
appearance. For instance, these draperies at the right, which formerly
had cut off the Napoleon bed at its end of the room, now were of
blankets and not of silk. The bed itself was not piled deep in down, but
contained, as I fancied from my hurried glance, a thin mattress, stuffed
perhaps with straw. A roll of blankets lay across its foot. As I gazed
to the farther extremity of this side of the long suite, I saw other
evidences of change. It was indeed as though Helena von Ritz, creature
of luxury, woman of an old, luxurious world, exotic of monarchical
surroundings, had begun insensibly to slip into the ways of the rude
democracy of the far frontiers.

I saw all this; but ere I had finished my first hurried glance I had
accepted her, as always one must, just as she was; had accepted her
surroundings, preposterously impossible as they all were from any
logical point of view, as fitting to herself and to her humor. It was
not for me to ask how or why she did these things. She had done them;
because, here they were; and here was she. We had found England's woman
on the Columbia!

"Yes," said she at length, slowly, "yes, I now believe it to be fate."

She had not yet smiled. I took her hand and held it long. I felt glad to
see her, and to take her hand; it seemed pledge of friendship; and as
things now were shaping, I surely needed a friend.

At last, her face flushing slightly, she disengaged her hand and
motioned me to a seat. But still we stood silent for a few moments.
"Have you _no_ curiosity?" said she at length.

"I am too happy to have curiosity, my dear Madam."

"You will not even ask me why I am here?" she insisted.

"I know. I have known all along. You are in the pay of England. When I
missed you at Montreal, I knew you had sailed on the _Modeste_ for
Oregon We knew all this, and planned for it. I have come across by land
to meet you. I have waited. I greet you now!"

She looked me now clearly in the face. "I am not sure," said she at
length, slowly.

"Not sure of what, Madam? When you travel on England's warship," I
smiled, "you travel as the guest of England herself. If, then, you are
not for England, in God's name, _whose friend are you?"_

"Whose friend am I?" she answered slowly. "I say to you that I do not
know. Nor do I know who is my friend. A friend--what is that? I never
knew one!"

"Then be mine. Let me be your friend. You know my history. You know
about me and my work. I throw my secret into your hands. You will not
betray me? You warned me once, at Montreal. Will you not shield me once
again?"

She nodded, smiling now in an amused way. "Monsieur always takes the
most extraordinary times to visit me! Monsieur asks always the most
extraordinary things! Monsieur does always the most extraordinary acts!
He takes me to call upon a gentleman in a night robe! He calls upon me
himself, of an evening, in dinner dress of hides and beads--"

"'Tis the best I have, Madam!" I colored, but her eye had not
criticism, though her speech had mockery.

"This is the costume of your American savages," she said. "I find it
among the most beautiful I have ever seen. Only a man can wear it. You
wear it like a man. I like you in it--I have never liked you so well.
Betray you, Monsieur? Why should I? How could I?"

"That is true. Why should you? You are Helena von Ritz. One of her
breeding does not betray men or women. Neither does she make any
journeys of this sort without a purpose."

"I had a purpose, when I started. I changed it in mid-ocean. Now, I was
on my way to the Orient."

"And had forgotten your report to Mr. Pakenham?" I shook my head.
"Madam, you are the guest of England."

"I never denied that," she said. "I was that in Washington. I was so in
Montreal. But I have never given pledge which left me other than free to
go as I liked. I have studied, that is true--but I have _not_ reported."

"Have we not been fair with you, Baroness? Has my chief not proved
himself fair with you?"

"Yes," she nodded. "You have played the game fairly, that is true."

"Then you will play it fair with us? Come, I say you have still that
chance to win the gratitude of a people."

"I begin to understand you better, you Americans," she said
irrelevantly, as was sometimes her fancy. "See my bed yonder. It is that
couch of husks of which Monsieur told me! Here is the cabin of logs.
There is the fireplace. Here is Helena von Ritz--even as you told me
once before she sometime might be. And here on my wrists are the
imprints of your fingers! What does it mean, Monsieur? Am I not an apt
student? See, I made up that little bed with my own hands! I--Why, see,
I can cook! What you once said to me lingered in my mind. At first, it
was matter only of curiosity. Presently I began to see what was beneath
your words, what fullness of life there might be even in poverty. I said
to myself, 'My God! were it not, after all, enough, this, if one be
loved?' So then, in spite of myself, without planning, I say, I began to
understand. I have seen about me here these savages--savages who have
walked thousands of miles in a pilgrimage--for what?"

"For what, Madam?" I demanded. "For what? For a cabin! For a bed of
husks! Was it then for the sake of ease, for the sake of selfishness?
Come, can you betray a people of whom you can say so much?"

"Ah, now you would try to tempt me from a trust which has been reposed
in me!"

"Not in the least I would not have you break your word with Mr.
Pakenham; but I know you are here on the same errand as myself. You are
to learn facts and report them to Mr. Pakenham--as I am to Mr. Calhoun."

"What does Monsieur suggest?" she asked me, with her little smile.

"Nothing, except that you take back all the facts--and allow them to
mediate. Let them determine between the Old World and this New one--you
satin couch and this rude one you have learned to make. Tell the truth
only. Choose, then, Madam!"

"Nations do not ask the truth. They want only excuses."

"Quite true. And because of that, all the more rests with you. If this
situation goes on, war must come. It can not be averted, unless it be by
some agency quite outside of these two governments. Here, then, Madam,
is Helena von Ritz!"

"At least, there is time," she mused. "These ships are not here for any
immediate active war. Great Britain will make no move until--"

"Until Madam the Baroness, special agent of England, most trusted agent,
makes her report to Mr. Pakenham! Until he reports to his government,
and until that government declares war! 'Twill take a year or more.
Meantime, you have not reported?"

"No, I am not yet ready."

"Certainly not. You are not yet possessed of your facts. You have not
yet seen this country. You do not yet know these men--the same savages
who once accounted for another Pakenham at New Orleans--hardy as
buffaloes, fierce as wolves. Wait and see them come pouring across the
mountains into Oregon. Then make your report to this Pakenham. Ask him
if England wishes to fight our backwoodsmen once more!"

"You credit me with very much ability!" she smiled.

"With all ability. What conquests you have made in the diplomacy of the
Old World I do not know. You have known courts. I have known none. Yet
you are learning life. You are learning the meaning of the only human
idea of the world, that of a democracy of endeavor, where all are equal
in their chances and in their hopes. That, Madam, is the only diplomacy
which will live. If you have passed on that torch of principle of which
you spoke--if I can do as much--then all will be well. We shall have
served."

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