Chapter 2: The Start

Early the next day we met Starboard Sam and told him the result of my interview with our uncle. His comment was brief and simple:

“If the captain o’ the ship you are on now, lads, don’t want you, all you hev to do is to go with me and find a tidier and trimmer craft”

Then we three went down to the town and gathered more news about the great gold discoveries in California, and though I do not think I am very excitable, my mind was still further inflamed by what we heard. As for Henry, he was all afire. Starboard Sam took everything very coolly, which was due, I suppose, to his training on the old Constitution.

I well remember the excitement caused by these reports. According to the stories we heard the people in California were picking up gold by the handful. It lay around in chunk as abundant as the stones on some of our old fields. I was old enough and wise enough to make a liberal allowance for such tales, but even after I did that my nerves were all a-quiver. Now that we had determined to go, my eagerness to make the start almost overmastered me.

“When we come back with all our pockets crammed full of gold our uncle will think a lot more of us than he does now,” said Henry.

“Yes,” said I. “if we ever get there and find the gold.” But I knew that my face belied my discouraging words.

It was a matter of no great difficulty to arrange for the trip. All of us, even Starboard Sam, preferred the journey across the continent to the voyage around the isthmus or by the cape. The neighborhood was infected already with the California fever, and a wagon train was to start in a few days from the town. We were sure we could join it without trouble, for in those days of perils by prairie and mountain the stronger the party the better for all.

Fortunately, after the last accounts were balanced we found there was enough left from our father’s estate to buy a good rifle and horse and other necessaries for each of us. Starboard Sam provided himself similarly. I wondered where he got the money, but he laughed a dry laugh and said:

“Jest a little prize money, lad, which I put away years ago for some such v’y’ge as this.”

I found that the emigrant train had been organized somewhat like a military company. There were ten covered wagons—”prairie-schooners,” we call them. They have a deep wooden bed, surmounted by a high arching cover of white cloth, which closes them in tightly, both top and sides. I remember now some of the curious inscriptions that their owners had written on the white covers in big black letters such as these: “Clear the track, we’re coming,” “On to the Pacific,” “We’re bound for the setting sun,” “This is the Mayflower on wheels.” Every owner put up his own motto according to his fancy.

There were forty people in the party, half of whom were women and children. Ethan Simpson, a large, middle-aged, taciturn man, was the leader, and when I told him we wished to go with them he said:

“All right, but you must take your share of the work and danger. Remember, too, that I’m captain, and when I say for you to do a thing, you must do it.”

That ended the matter, for we readily agreed to his conditions. I thought that we ought to tell our uncle good-bye and Henry agreed with me.

“You’ve chosen your own road,” said our uncle, gruffly, when we came into his presence. “Follow it. It’s probable that you’ll be scalped by the Indians before you are half-way to California. Well, I won’t be to blame for it. Go!”

And he turned back to the study of the little book of accounts that he loved better than anything else on earth. When we went out Henry expanded his chest and then drew several deep breaths. In answer to my inquiring look he said:

“I think the air in that room was poisoned. I am trying to get it out of my lungs as soon as possible.”

Such was our farewell interview with our uncle.

But we were young and old Sam, too, was as young as we were in spirits, if not in years, and as soon as we started the depressing effects of that interview passed away. Capt. Simpson gave the word, the horsemen loosed their bridle reins, the wagon-drivers cracked their whips, and we shouted all together: “Ho for California!”

We followed the old national turnpike which leads across the Alleghany Mountains to the West. For a while we passed through a thickly-settled country and then we began to climb the mountains. The breath of spring was in the air. The fresh green grass was growing by the roadside, and the buds on the trees were bursting into bloom, spangling the forests with pink and white. Henry, Sam and I often galloped ahead on our horses and I saw the color coming back into Henry’s pale face, while even the old sailor’s eyes sparkled with delight at the fresh beauty of field and forest

“Ef it’s like this all the way to Californy,” he would say, “it’ll be nuthin’ but a summer v’y’ge, and we’ll jest grow fat and sassy, we’ll have sech an easy time.”

Frequently people came out of their houses to look at us and talk with us. Then they would wave us a cheery good-bye and we would promise to bring them back a lump of gold.

By and by we reached the summit of the Alleghanies and were in a wilderness. Henry used to read to me out of his old books that all men lived in the forests once and were on good terms with the wild beasts. He said it was the old Greeks who told us about it, and when I got up in that wilderness I found there was something in my blood that told me those old heathens were right The wilderness and its voices soothed me and I felt happier and, aye, better too, than ever I had felt before in my life. Sam said that was the way he felt at sea, and that the wilderness was the next best thing.

At night we would draw up our wagons in a kind of circle, tether the horses and build great fires of the fallen timber that was plentiful in the forest. Sometimes Henry would read to us out of three or four of his favorite books that he had brought along with him. Robinson Crusoe was liked best by most of us. I have never yet found a man who was not pleased by that book, and when I do I will never trust him with anything of mine. Starboard Sam was especially fond of the tale, and he told us he had been on Robinson Crusoe’s very island, which raised him still further in the esteem of the whole party.