“The information you give us about the country west of here is considerably more favorable than the news given us by Major Harris,” Orson Pratt declared at that great council of the Twelve held beside the ford of the Little Sandy, where Bridger and Bass agreed to tarry till breakfast, answering every last one of the Saints’ questions concerning the unknown country ahead.
“If this here Harris is a feller of dark skin,” Bridger explained, “I figger you run onto Moses Harris, but he goes by the name Black Harris. You read the same sign, Scratch?”
Bass nodded.
Brigham Young confessed, “Said he was a pilot—could guide for us. We shared a camp with him last night at Pacific Springs, but, I’ll admit I never got the man’s first name. Moses.”
Bridger said, “I don’t know how he come to call hisself a major, but I’d be curious to hear what he told you Mormons ’bout where you’re headed.”
“There’s the lake where I feel I’m drawn,” Brigham declared. “I asked him about that lake.”
“Big’un, or small?” Bridger inquired. “Salt or sweet?”
Young grinned. “Salt. Yes! Salt.”
“What’d Harris say ’bout it?”
“Not much good,” Young admitted, his jowls working. “The whole region is sandy, destitute of timber of any size, and there’s no vegetation but for the wild sage. Tell me, should I trust the word of Major Harris?”
Making a casual sign of the cross from brow to breast, Bridger explained, “Can’t figger what he’d know of that part of the country. As for me, there’s plenty of timber. Last twenty year, I made sugar from the trees. Right where Harris told you there ain’t no timber.”
“So you do know the valley?”
Titus snorted, “Know it? Hell, Bridger floated on the Salt Lake his own self.”
The Prophet was taken aback. “You’ve floated the lake? Then it isn’t all as big as Fremont shows it is on his map?”
“It’s so durn big we figgered it for the ocean at first!” Jim explained.
“I ’member you telling me that story, Gabe,” Bass said with fond remembrance. “Not long after I first met up with you. Same time I met Beckwith* too.”
Bridger smiled. “I recollect that too, sitting by the crik an’ scrubbin’ the grease off our hides. Shit, weren’t we the young bucks back then?”
The Prophet waved a hand in the manner of a man impatient to bring someone else’s conversation back to his topic. “What do you know of Hastings’s route?”
“It’s a likely way to get where you’re goin’,” Bridger answered.
The Prophet drew a few lines in the dirt at their feet. “Through Weber’s Fork?”
“Yep. Go right on by my fort, keep marching south by west instead of turning north for Fort Hall. That takes you on Hastings’s road to California. He come out last summer—”
“So that route will lead us to the valley of the Salt Lake?”
“Less’n you get lost off it. Been least a hunnert wagons go through there last year, by way of Hastings’s road.”
“What do you know of the country beyond the valley?”
Jim hastily scratched some lines on the ground with the tip of his belt knife. “After you get around these here mountains, it’s purty flat for aways.”
“From there?”
He jabbed his knife into the grassy soil. “A country covered with a hard, black rock. Ever’ stone looks to be glazed, just like glass. An’ ever’ piece so hard and sharp it’ll cut your horses’ hooves to ribbons in a matter of a mile.”
G. A. Smith leaned forward and asked, “South of the valley of the Salt Lake, what lies there?”
“You run onto the Green again,” Jim answered. “The way runs through some level country, then winds into some hilly ground, but all of it bare as the face of hell, all the way to the salt sea.”
Howard Egan interrupted now. “Hastings reports that from your fort to the Salt Lake it is no more than a hundred miles. How far say you?”
“I been that way more’n half-a-hunnert times,” Bridger declared. “But I couldn’t lay any number on how far it is from my post.”
Wilford Woodruff asked, “Can we pass through the mountains farther south of here with wagons?”
“Sartin you can,” Jim replied. “But there’s places you’ll be in heavy timber, where you’ll have to cut your way through for wagons.”
Now Young asked, “You said you’d floated the lake. Have you been to the other side?”
“I know a half dozen men or more been around that lake,” Bridger said. “Had a brigade over there one autumn. Some of ’em got their horses stole by Diggers or Utes*—you best watch out for them Utes, they’ll be troublesome for you—so we cut some canoes outta cottonwoods an’ sent our men around the lake, looking for beaver.”
“How long did it take for them to bring back the beaver pelts?”
He grinned at Young. “Never did find no beaver, and them boys was about three moons getting back to us. Said it was more’n five hunnert fifty miles to get around.”
“What of these Indians stole your horses?”
“Utahs and Diggers both, bad Injuns. They catch you out, got you beat on the odds—they’ll plunder your outfit an’ whup you, if’n they don’t just kill you outright. But, a bunch big as you got here, ain’t got no worry. Them Injuns is yeller cowards less’n they got big odds in their favor.”
“With my apologies, President Young?” James Little injected. “I’d like to ask Mr. Bridger about the favorable conditions for growing our crops, like corn.”
“Yes, how is the soil in the valley?” asked William Clayton.
“I know of a feller was a trapper too, he has him a small place up in the valley of Bear River,” Bridger explained. “Soil’s good up there for his growing season, so I figger it’s good on south in the Salt Lake country. Only trouble is—”
“Trouble?” Young repeated the word with his stentorian voice.
“I figger the nights get too cold in the Salt Lake Valley for your people to grow Missouri field corn. Frosts of a night’ll kill off most grain. Country south of Utah Lake better for your crops.”
Three of the bystanders immediately leaned over Brigham Young’s shoulders as the Prophet hunched in study of his Fremont maps.
“Ah, here it is,” Young announced with pride. “Is this the valley?”
Jim squinted and asked, “A little’un? South of the Salt Lake?”
“Yes,” the Prophet assured.
“That’s the place I’m telling you of,” Bridger continued. “There’s a band of good Injuns down that way, got farms of their own, and they raise grains. I can buy the very best wheat from ’em. As I recollect that country, I ’member a valley down that way. If there was ever a promised land your God was leading you to, it’s gotta be that valley aways on south of the Salt Lake Valley.”
Surprised at that declaration, Young stammered, “W-why do you call it a promised land?”
“There’s a cedar grows down there, bears a fruit, like juniper berries, but bigger an’ yellow—’bout the size of a small plum. And the Injuns in the country ain’t thieves. They feed themselves: pick them berries and grind ’em into a meal.”
Little asked, “There’s a lot of this fruit?”
“I figger I could gather more’n a hunnert bushels off one tree alone,” Jim declared. “I’ve lived on that fruit afore, when I couldn’t bring no game to bait.”