“Good! Let’s go to a tavern for a beer.”
They hung over the counter while exchanging information. Within the hour everything had been agreed upon: Robert and Arvid were employed for four months — the time needed to cover the California Trail — to serve as mule drivers for a Mexican whose name was Mario Vallejos. English was not the native tongue of either Robert or Vallejos, yet they talked with ease to each other in this language. Vallejos had been born in Texas. A few years ago the Americans had come and taken his land and now he wanted some of their California gold in exchange. A few of his friends were in the same situation and it had been agreed among them they would all meet in St. Joseph, from whence a large group of California-bound men were to start toward the end of April. From St. Louis to St. Joseph the distance was about two hundred and fifty miles; this was the road they must first travel. Vallejos figured they could cover an average of twenty miles a day so they would need about twelve or thirteen days to get to St. Joseph. They would travel over uninhabited regions of prairies and plains but he knew the road well. If the boys could leave then, he would like to start out tomorrow; he had only been waiting to find the helpers he needed.
The Mexican turned out to be the owner of eight mules, all at their peak age, between four and six years old. They were strong and sturdy pack animals, each capable of a three-hundred-pound load. Seven of them were light gray, the eighth was dark brown; this one was the largest in the herd and was to carry the owner himself.
Indian horses and Mexican mules were the toughest animals both for packing and riding, explained Vallejos. But his mules required constant attention — careful brushing and feeding and a friendly attitude.
Robert assured him that both he and his friend had always loved Mexican mules above all other animals on earth. No mules of any kind existed in their home country but they had always looked forward to the pleasure of driving and combing and feeding these wise animals. In fact, this was the reason they had emigrated to North America.
Their new boss smiled and seemed pleased with his muleteers.
The boys had never driven animals other than horses and oxen. Arvid looked apprehensively at these Mexican mules and worried about his chores:
“Asses, ain’t they? Unreliable critters, I bet. .?”
Before he had come to America Arvid had never seen an ass except the one Jesus rode when he entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, and this was only a picture in the Bible. But that ass didn’t look at all like Vallejos’ pack animals.
The Mexican soon taught Robert all about their new duties, and Robert explained to Arvid one important point: hinnies and mules were different sorts of animals, for they had entirely different parents. When an ass took a stallion a hinny was born, but a mule was not begotten in that way; with her parents it was just the opposite: a mule had an ass to father and a mare for mother. With parents, he told Arvid, it is always the mother who is most important for the offspring, and since the mule had a mare-mother she became much more important than the hinny; she was the wisest animal on earth.
“A mare as mother and a jackass for father. Try to remember that, Arvid!”
And thus Arvid learned his first sentence in English: a mare mother and a jackass father. For he must know what kind of animals he had to take care of. Arvid had heard that asses were the dumbest animals alive; on the contrary, he now learned, if you had an ass for father you were the wisest animal on earth. For all children got their sense from the mother, said Robert, and the mother was a wise mare.
“I think I got my sense from my father,” said Arvid. “My mother had a poor head.”
They helped the Mexican with the provisions for the journey and loaded the packsaddles of the mules with flour, hams, beans, rice, coffee, dried fruit, sugar, salt, and water in canteens. They were openmouthed at the sight of all the goods their boss had bought for the California Trail, and he said he would buy still more when they arrived at St. Joseph. During the four months required for the two-thousand-mile journey each man would consume 150 pounds of flour, 50 pounds of ham, 50 pounds of dried pork, 30 pounds of sugar, 6 pounds of coffee, 1 pound of tea, 3 pounds of salt, one bushel of dried fruit, 25 pounds of rice, 20 pounds of hardtack, and half a bushel of beans.
When Robert and Arvid saw all the food a single man would eat on the journey they began to understand how very far it was to California.
It took more than one day for even the most willing muleteer to learn how to saddle a mule and pack it properly. The weight must be evenly divided between the front and hind quarters, and the same for both sides; an even balance was required or the pack animal would fall on its nose or sink down on its hind legs. Robert and Arvid had only harnessed horses and yoked oxen — to place several hundred pounds on a small mule was a much more complicated matter. And Arvid decided this much: a muleteer must be wiser than everyone else on earth. In America a hired hand must be smarter than in Sweden.
And so one April morning at dawn, the Mexican, Mario Vallejos, set out on his journey westward across the prairie, with his two young helpers and his eight mules, to join the gold caravan — the train of the hundred thousand.
— 2—
The party traveled under the burning sun in daytime and camped under the chilly starlight at night. They followed in the footsteps of those who had passed here before them: soft places in the ground bore the imprints of heel irons and boot soles, of hooves and cloven hooves, and the broad wheel rims of the Conestoga wagons. But in sandy places the wind had obliterated all tracks, and on the plateaus and hard ground no tracks had been left.
The little Mexican rode ahead on his dark brown mule to locate the trail. The two youths came behind with the pack mules, each one carrying two hundred pounds for its owner. Robert and Arvid fed the mules crushed corn three times a day and watered them twice a day. They curried the animals and loaded them, followed them in daytime and guarded them at night. The longer they scratched a mule between the ears, the easier it became to take care of it.
When the mules grew hungry they folded their ears back and brayed. It sounded as if they had attacks of hiccups. The muleteers thought at first that something had got stuck in their throats; the animals wailed and hiccuped helplessly. But by and by Robert and Arvid became accustomed to their peculiar braying; they brayed when their stomachs were empty.
Vallejos considered Mexican mules most suitable for the California Trail since they required less water than horses, and in the desert they could smell water holes at a distance of two miles or more.
They were traveling across a plain and could not understand how their boss found his way. The Mexican had made himself a map for the first five hundred miles of the California Traiclass="underline" from St. Joseph straight toward the Big Blue River, the first big river to be crossed. Those starting from Independence headed for Bull Creek and Wakarusa River before they reached the Kansas, the broadest and most difficult river to cross on the whole trail. He had chosen the route through St. Joseph, the northern overland route, to avoid the crossing of the broad Kansas River.
In St. Louis Robert and Arvid had begun to prepare themselves for washing gold. They had each bought a pan of good steel, which held almost a gallon of water. Now that they were the owners of washing pans, good-sized pans, they walked behind the mules and drummed with their fingers on the pans; they were ready, and they also knew how to dig.
The days were too warm and the nights too cold. At camp in the evenings they gathered dry grass and bushes and made a fire to keep themselves warm. Each in turn stood watch and tended the fire. They slept stretched out on the ground with the saddles as pillows. Arvid kept complaining of the weather in America: either it was too warm or too cold — why was it never right?