Part 41 (1/2)
Dr Rankin shook his head
”Just the saht,” he prophesied ”This illusion of freedoation is only an illusion It will have to be paid for with added violence and turht as to that, Doctor,” agreed Danny, ”but I've discovered that often in this world a ets In fact, soh price”
”I can foresee a lot of violence before the thing is worked out”
At this point the doctor, to his ust, was summoned to attend to so,” said I to Danny Randall once ere alone, ”but I don't exactly fit it in”
”It o a little too far, and we'll have to get together and string some of them up”
CHAPTER xxxIII
THE OVERLAND IMMIGRANTS
The overland irants never ceased to interest us The illness, destitution, and suffering that obtained a these people has never been adequately depicted For one outfit with healthy looking members and adequate cattle there were dozens conducted by hollow-eyed, gaunt ed wearily, carrying children And the tales they brought were terrible They told us of thousands they had left behind in the great desert of the Hu starvation, disease, and the loss of cattle Women who had lost their husbands fro on without food or water, leading their children The trail was lined with dead mules and cattle Some said that five thousand had perished on the plains from cholera alone In the middle of the desert, ons drawn in the usual circle, the dead ani crippled from scurvy and other diseases There was no fodder for the cattle, and one man told us that he estiht animals on the plains must die
”And then where will their owners be?”
The Indians were hostile and thieving Most of the ample provision that had been laid in had to be throay to lighten the loads for the enfeebled anih often arrived in an impoverished condition Many of these on the route were reduced by starvation to living on the putrefied flesh of the dead ani the road This occasioned htfall the struggling trains lay down exhausted with only the assurance of another scorching, burning day to follow And when at last a few reached the Humboldt River, they found it almost impossible to ford--and the feed on the other side In the distance showed the high forbidding ramparts of the Sierra Nevadas A man named Delano told us that five men drowned themselves in the Hueiving sorass across to hireat numbers died The Indians stole others The animals that remained eak The destruction of property was i that could be spared was throay in order to lighten the loads The road was lined with abandoned wagons, stoves, s over and over, heavily, in little snatches, by ed and beaten even to rejoice that they had co us, but they told, as though their minds were so full that they could not help it I re at our camp the members of one of these trains, a charity every miner proffered nearly every day of the week The party consisted of one wagon, a half dozen gaunt, dull-eyed oxen, twowoift of words
He told of the crowds of people awaiting the new grass at Independence in Missouri, of theup of the parties, the election of officers for the trip, the discussion of routes, the visiting, the campfires, the boundless hope
”There were near twenty thousand people waiting for the grass,” said our friend; a stateerated, but one which I have subsequently found to be not far from the truth
By the middle of May the trail from the Missouri River to Fort Laraons
”That was fine travelling,” said the irant in the detached way of one who speaks of dead history ”There was grass and water; and the wagon seeht Everybody was jolly It didn't last long”
After Fort Lararass and less water
”We thought that was a desert!” exclairant bitterly ”My God! Quite a lot turned back at Laramie They were scared by the cholera that broke out, scared by the stories of the desert, scared by the Indians They went back I suppose they're well and hearty--and kicking theht anticipations, the joy of the life, the rorim reality The monotony of the plains, the barrenness of the desert, the toil of the mountains, the terrible heat, the dust, the rains, the sickness, the tragedy of deaths had flattened all buoyancy, and left in its stead only a sullen, dogged deter, of course,” said our narrator
”Everybody was on edge There were fights, that we had to settle so”
They had several minor skirmishes with Indians, lost from their party by disease, suffered considerable hardshi+ps and infinite toil
”We thought we'd had a hard tily ”Lord!”
At the very start of the journey they had begun to realize that they were overloaded, and had cooods
Several units of the party had even to abandon soht we could get along without I knoe spent all one day frying out bacon to get the grease before we threw it away We used the grease for our axles”