Nomadic Experiences of a Frontierswoman [pp. 316-326]

324 Nomadic Experiences of a ~rontierswoman. [Sept
to her story with earnest sympathy. She tion more difficult than either of us had anwas a handsome creature with the long ticipated.
blonde braids of hair peculiar to Jutland On the eighth day of May, 1869, the last
women. Her form was perfect and her tie between~the Union Pacific and Central
costume as picttIresque as it was startling. Pacific Railroads was put in place and pinShe sat by our camp fire moaning and ioned by a golden spike at Junction City, a
bewailing the sins of Mormonism. She was little west of Last Chance. The ox-trains folevidently on the verge of insanity, for she lowing the pioneer trails were already few and
began a little song, then suddenly cast off small; and the hand-cart trains, those curithe shawl we had just put about her shoul- osities of Mormon locomotive device in the
ders, and ran along the road westward fifties and into the sixties, with their men
screaming in the Danish language, Save and women in the traces and men and womy baby! save my baby! - God or human, men pushing the two-wheeled vehicles bewill some one save my baby!" We pur- hind, were no more. These most insanely
sued her a short distance, but with her courageous trains, two or three of which
bleeding bare feet she was too swift for us. set out annually from Omaha for a journey
We thought she would return, but though of over a thousand miles of unsettled desert
we moved on toward evening we neither land, with their fanatically fool-hardy adults
saw nor heard of her again. and helpless children trudging along with
Our little family in our last move passed their heavy burdens over mountains, across
Corinne, Blue Creek Town, Deadfall, and vast plains, and through capricious rivers, on,
pitched the big tent at Last Chance. By on to the valley of the Great Salt Lake,
his time my brother and I had again drifted were now ready to pass away into the legenapart; but by another strange accident I dary spheres, their terrors only to live fully
here met another brother whom I had be- rea]ized in the memory of their survivors.
lieved to be east of the Missouri; if living. The railroad finished, there was an imI had heard of him two years before and the mediate scatteHug of the herds of humanity
news was far from cheering. He had writ- in every direction. There seemed not to
ten to our elder brother from Davenport, be enough radiating lines from Promontory
Iowa, and said: "I was robbed of my money to supply the departing mass. The line of
and clothing in New York. I fear now I the railroad when finished, suddenly reshall never see any of you dear ones who pelled these thousands of frontiers-people
have attracted me from Europe. I have as forcibly as it had a year before attracted
managed, under the most painful circum- them. Its presence betokened a too close
stances, a step at a time, to get this far. I neighborhood with the artificial world. All
can go no farther, I am weak and exhausted. were eager to go, no matter where, but let
I can't talk the English and so can neither it not be anywhere along the magnetic belt
explain my situation nor get anything to do. in which they had figured up to date.
My c~urage as my strength fails me. I suf- Mrs. Bak~er sold stove and fixtures for
fer rather than beg. I shall surely starve." next to nothing to Mormon workers who
And there he was, the proud brother I had had families living somewhere; then hitchparted from on the other side of the ocean ing her span of mules, bundled the tent
eight years before, toiling in the contractor's aboard, with provisions and other necessary
big boarding house, with a little broken Eng- accoutrements for camp and travel, and
lish at his command; while I, having partly joining company with a few teams going our
forgotten our own language, found con versa- way, we started eastward, bound for Sweet