Days on the Road: Crossing the Plains in 1865Herndon, Sarah Raymond
History
Days on the Road: Crossing the Plains in 1865
Herndon, Sarah Raymond
Overland journeys to the Pacific; West (U.S.) -- Description and travel
We caught fish enough for breakfast last evening, and gathered currants
enough for sauce, but I spoilt the sauce by putting the sugar in, when
I put them on to cook, they hardened and were not fit to eat. I have
been experimenting to-day and have succeeded in making a nice cobbler.
I did not sweeten at all before baking, but made the sauce sweet enough
to sweeten all. I also made a fine sauce by cooking the currants only
a very few minutes, and putting in the sugar after they were cooked.
We will have currant dumplings for dinner to-morrow. We have picked a
lot, enough to make sauce and pies and other good things for a week.
The currants are a beautiful fruit, and some are as large as small
cherries. We are waiting at Camp Plentiful, in the hope that some of
the wagons from the train will drive in before night.
There are three wigwams within sight of our camp. Sim and Hillhouse
went hunting to-day. On their way back they stopped at the wigwams and
found them occupied by white men with squaws for wives. Ugh!
* * * * *
Wednesday, August 9.
Somehow I felt a little suspicious of those white men living with
squaws, and feared some of our horses might be missing this morning,
but my suspicions were groundless. Our horses and cattle were all here,
well fed and ready for a long drive. We were off bright and early,
without seeing any one from the train.
We passed the Bridger Road, where our friends going to California will
turn off, so we are not likely to see them again, perhaps for years,
perhaps never again in this life.
There is a very fine ranch at the junction of the roads, where we
stopped at noon. Two men from this ranch visited our camp this evening.
They were rather fine looking, genteel in appearance, dressed in
civilization style, but for some unexplainable reason, I was afraid of
them. They tried to be very cordial and polite. They engaged Sim in
conversation, and plied him with pertinent questions, such as:
“Who owns those big American mares?” (referring to our horse team).
“They are the property of a widow.”
“Whose bay pony is that?”
“It belongs to the widow’s daughter.”
“Who is the owner of that chestnut sorrel?”
“Mr. Curry, father of those boys playing over there.”
They asked many more questions. Where we came from? Where we are going?
What we expect to do, etc.
Sim answered them patiently and civilly. He thinks they are horse
thieves, but hopes they will not be mean enough to steal from a widow.
As if horse thieves care who they steal from. No doubt, their ranch is
stocked with stolen horses and cattle, for they have things as they
choose away out here, where there is no law, except the law of might.
God’s Word says, “As the partridge sitteth on eggs, and hatcheth them
not; so he that getteth riches, and not by right, shall leave them in
the midst of his days, and at his end shall be a fool” (Jer. 17:11).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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