He walked on. Now he knew what went on at the encampment in St. Joseph; here the men were not diggings for something; here a different labor in the earth took place.
On another occasion he stopped and listened to two men who were felling a hickory tree; the wood was used for repairs of the ox wagons. In their conversation they had used an English word that he had recently seen on a wooden board near a water hole: death. One of the men was leaning against his ax handle for a moment; death had taken twenty-seven people yesterday, and several hundred lay sick in their wagons and tents.
In the Train of the Hundred Thousand the men practiced to dig graves before they had opportunity to dig for gold.
Then one day Roberts master entered the tent, fear in his eyes, stuttering, “Yellow Jack has come! Yellow Jack is in St. Joseph!”
And Vallejos explained to his muleteer who the Feared One was, but he used so many incomprehensible words, in rapid Spanish; when he grew excited his mother tongue would spurt from his mouth. And now Robert understood that Yellow Jack was not a person, nor an animal, nor one of the Lord’s tempests or earthquakes: the feared one was an invisible murderer who had sneaked into the gold-seekers’ camp; it was because of him they already had been forced to dig while on the road.
At last the day of breaking camp dawned, and on one of the first days of May the gold army moved out of St. Joseph. Mario Vallejos was excited and happy that morning as he sat up on his mule. He kept singing, “The good time has come at last!” He was anxious to get away from Yellow Jack, he wanted to ride so fast that the pursuer would be unable to overtake him.
The road from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Hangtown, California, was about two thousand miles. At an average speed of seventeen miles a day they would reach their destination in September.
Now the march was headed for Big Blue River. The animals were rested and the first day twenty miles were laid behind them. The second day they were down to eighteen. The same distance was announced the third and fourth day. But after one week the caravan moved barely fifteen miles a day. The animals were getting tired and a day of rest was decided upon. Because of the good speed of the first few days they still held to the average.
At the camp, each evening a few of the dead were buried. The men threw lots among them to decide who would dig the graves. It sometimes happened that a man who helped dig one evening was buried the next.
The dead animals — horses, oxen, and mules — were left along the wayside and no one counted them. Close on the track came flocks of red-furred animals with sharp noses and long tails. They were the only animals that grew fat on the California Trail.
After two weeks they reached the first great obstacle — Big Blue River. All the belongings and all living beings who could not swim were taken across the broad river on floats, which had been left behind by gold seekers who had crossed before them. The crossing delayed them two days, but on the west bank of the river the endless plains lay before them. This prairie was wider than any they had seen before, it was like eternity — had it no end?
Now they were crossing Nebraska, the land of the big buffalo herds, the great plains. As they moved along under the open sky with its burning sun, and rested under the clear stars of the prairie, their train grew ever smaller: their army diminished as it encountered this immense expanse; like a long worm it crept its way over the ground.
Robert was carried along without asking where, his life one of the thousands which made up the worm crawling along the ground.
While crossing the great plains they managed their seventeen miles almost every day. Here the road had no hindrances and was easy to traverse. The next big road sign would be the fork of the Platte, which was supposed to be twelve days from the last river crossing.
On the fifth day out the plain was broken by a mountain range. In the evening the California farers had reached Spring Creek, a recently established trading post, and here they made camp to rest for a day. Plenty of healthy drinking water was available here, and buildings of a sort had begun to go up. They chose a camping site near a stream with such glitteringly clear water that it shone even after dark, as if an unextinguishable light burned at its bottom. Robert stood for some time in the evening, looking at this stream. He had always had a liking for streams.
Next morning when Robert rose to attend to the mules, Vallejos remained in his bed. The master’s look struck fear into the muleteer. Vallejos held his head between his hands and complained loudly:
“The Yellow Jack! The Yellow Jack is here. .!”
After Robert had listened to him and watched his contortions he knew who Yellow Jack was.
Vallejos’ limbs trembled and shook in fever; he felt his back while he screamed, he grabbed his head in both his hands as if he wanted to tear it from his body because of the burning ache inside. And from his mouth streamed blood and foam — black and sticky like crushed blood. The vomiting went on until he almost choked; congealed blood stuck in his throat and interfered with his breathing.
Now at last Robert understood what his master had been trying to show him: arms and legs shaking with fever, the contortions of the body, pain in the back, the twistings of his head. He recognized the sickness that had attacked the Mexican: a lurking, treacherous, contagious disease. It had been after them in St. Joseph, it had followed them when they broke camp, it had all the time been in their train, swimming with them across the broad river, pursuing them across the prairie. It attacked people without warning, like a way-laying bandit; it threw itself over them, like a tearing wild beast; it lit immediately its consuming fire, and that fire did not go out until life was out. It was because of this disease that the men each evening drew lots for grave-digging.
And now Vallejos had been overtaken by this pursuer whom he had spoken of and feared from the very beginning, the pursuer he himself had fled from and who had taken the lives of his friends: Yellow Jack.
Yellow Jack was a fever. Mario Vallejos was on his way to California to seek yellow gold. Instead he had found yellow fever.
— 3—
Close to the Indian trading post at Spring Creek a big tent had been raised in which a great many people lay sick. It was a makeshift hospital. Here lay the sick left behind by earlier caravans. Most of these earlier people had already died, less than twenty were still alive. To this makeshift hospital the Mexican Vallejos was now brought, accompanied by his Swedish muleteer who was determined to remain with his sick master and take care of him.
In this wilderness emergency hospital the victims of yellow fever lay on beds of dry prairie grass, looked after by an old half-Indian woman, tall, with a red-brown face and white hair. The sick were not expected to get well; the nurse was there only to look after them during their remaining days. They couldn’t be left to die alone. Here lay those who were too weak to continue on the California Trail and too weak to go back.
Vallejos was often unconscious, although intermittently he would babble in his incomprehensible Spanish. Delirious people usually speak their mother tongue. His face had turned yellow as a chamois. It was easy to see whose stamp he bore.
Sometimes when his mind was clear, he recognized his muleteer and shouted out to him:
“Leave me! He’ll take you too! Get out! Hurry away! You’re young! You still have your life! Leave me! Save yourself while you still have time!”