'"Woodrow, while you did not say so, you are asking me to do what I should do-and I would do!-if I were a widow."
I nodded. "Yes, that's right. Dearest, if I'm not back in a week, you're a widow. No possible doubt."
"I understand that. I also understand why you are leaving the wagons here; you can't be sure that you can turn them around higher up."
"Yes. That's probably what happened to earlier parties- reached a place where they couldn't go forward and couldn't turn around...then tried one or the other and went over."
"Yes. But, my husband, you mean to be gone only one day-half a day out, half a day back. Woodrow, I won't assume that you are dead-I can't!" She looked at me steadily and her eyes filled with tears, but she did not cry. "I must see your dear body, I must be certain. If I am certain, I will go back to Separation as fast and as safely as possible. And then to the Magees as you have told me, and have your child and bring him up to be as much like his father as possible. But I must know."
"Dora, Dora! In one week you will know. No need to look for my bones."
"May I finish, sir? If you aren't back tonight, I'm on my own. At dawn tomorrow I start out on Betty, with another saddle mule following. At noon I turn back.
"Perhaps, if I can't find you, I'll find a spot higher up where I can take one wagon and turn it around. If I find such a spot, I'll move one wagon up and use it as a base and look farther. I could have missed your track. Or I might have followed mule tracks-but you aren't on the mule. Whatever it is, I'll search and search again. Until there's no hope at all! Then...I will go to Separation as fast as mules can get me there.
"But, my darling, if you are alive-maybe with a broken leg but alive-if you still have a knife or even your bare hands, I don't believe that a loper or anything can kill you. If you are alive, I'll find you. I will!"
So I backed down and checked watches with her and agreed on what time I would turn back. Then Buck and I, with me up on Beulah, set out to scout ahead.
Minerva, at least four parties had tried that pass; none had come back. I'm certain enough that they each failed from being too eager, not patient enough, unwilling to turn back when the risk was too great.
Patience I have learned. The centuries may not give a man wisdom, but he acquires patience or he doesn't live through them: That first morning we found the first spot that was too tight. Oh, someone had blasted there and probably got around that turn. But it was too narrow to be safe, so I blasted some more. Nobody in his right mind takes a wagon into the mountains without dynamite or some such; you can't nibble at solid rock with a toothpick, or even a pickax, without risking being still up there when the snows come.
I was not using dynamite. Oh, anyone with a modicum of chemistry can make both dynamite and 'black powder,' and I planned to do both-later. What I had with me was a more efficient and more flexible blasting jelly-and not shock-sensitive, perfectly safe in wagon and saddlebag.
I placed that first charge in a crack where I thought it would do the most good, set the fuse but did not light it, then walked both mules back around the bend and exerted my histrionic talent to its limit to explain to Buck and Beulah that there was going to be a loud noise, a bang/-but it could hot hurt them, so don't worry. Then I went back, lit the fuse, hurried back to them and was in time to have an arm on each neck-watched my watch. "Now!" I said, and the mountain obliged me with Ka-boom!
Beulah shivered but was steady. Buck said inquiringly, Paaang?
I agreed. He nodded and went back to cropping leaves.
We three went up and took a look. Nice and wide now- Not very level, but three tiny blasts took care of that. "What do you think, Buck?"
He looked carefully up and down trail. "Doo wagon?"
"One wagon."
"Ogay."
We explored a little farther, planned the next day's work; then I turned back at the time promised, was home early.
It took me a week to make a couple of kilometers safe to another little alp, a grassy pocket big enough to turn one wagon around at a time. Then it took all of a long day to move our wagons, one at a time, to this next base. Someone had made it that far; I found a broken wagon wheel-salvaged the steel tire and the hub. It went on that way, day after day, slowly, tediously, and at last we were through the notch and headed-mostly-downhill.
But that was worse, not better. The river I had been sure was there, by photomaps from space, was far below us, and we still had to go down, down, down, and follow it a long way before we would reach the place where the gorge opened out into valley suitable for homesteading. More blasting, lots of brush chopping, and sometimes I had to blast trees. But the nastiest part was rappelling those wagons down the steepest places. I didn't mind steep places going uphill (which we still encountered); a twelve-mule team can drag a single wagon up any slope they can dig their hooves into. But downhill-
Certainly those wagons had brakes. But if the grade is steep, the wagon slides on its tires-then goes over the edge, mules and all.
I couldn't let that happen even once. Not ever risk letting it happen. We could lose one wagon and six mules and still go on. But I was not expendable. (Dora would not be in the wagon.) If that wagon cut loose, my chances of jumping clear would be so-so.
If the grade was steep enough to give me even a trace of doubt that I could hold a wagon with its brakes, we did it the hard way: used that expensive imported line to check it down such pitches. Lead the line out fair and free for running, pass the bitter end three times around a tree stout enough to anchor it, secure it to the rear axle-then our four steadiest mules, Ken and Daisy, Beau and Belle, would take the wagon down at a slow walk (no driver) following Buck, while I kept tension on the line, paying it out very slowly.
If terrain permitted, Dora on Betty would take station halfway down to relay orders to Buck. But I could not permit her to be on the trail itself; if that line parted, it would whip. So maybe half the time Buck and I worked without liaison, doing it dead slow and depending on his judgment.
If there was not a sound anchor tree properly positioned-and it seems to me that this happened more often than not-then we had to wait while I worked something out. This could be anything: a sling between two trees, then rig a fair-lead to a third tree-A bare-rock anchor using driven pitons-I hated these as I bad to do my checking right at the rear axle, walking behind, and God help us all if I stumbled. Then that was always followed by the time-consuming chore of salvaging those pitons-the harder the rock, the better the anchor, but the tougher the job of getting them out-and I had to get them out; I would need them farther along.
'Sometimes no trees and no rock- Once the anchor was twelve mules faced back along the trail, with Dora soothing them while I checked at a rear axle and Buck controlled the progress.
On the prairie we often made thirty kilometers a day. Once we were through Hopeless Pass and had started down the gorge the distance made good over the ground could be zero for days on end while I prepared the trail ahead, then up to as high as ten kilometers if there were no steep pitches that required rappelling down by line. I used just one unbreakable rule: The trail had to be fully prepared from one turnaround base to the next before a wagon was moved.
Minerva, it was so confounded slow that my "calendar" caught up with me; the sow 'littered-and we were not out of the mountains.
I don't recall ever making a harder decision. Dora was in good shape, but she was halfway through her pregnancy.
Turn back (as I had promised myself, without telling her)- or push on and hope to reach lower and fairly level ground before she came to term? Which would be easier on her?