Snowbound and Eclipse Read online

  SNOWBOUND

  AND

  ECLIPSE

  RICHARD S. WHEELER

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  Copyright Page

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  SNOWBOUND

  To Tom Doherty,

  who asked me to write about the Pathfinder

  PROLOGUE

  Senator Thomas Hart Benton

  I shall never forget the months I spent as a spectator in the Washington Arsenal watching the fiendish glare that Brigadier General Stephen Watts Kearny directed at my daughter’s husband, John Charles Frémont. I had never seen anything like it. General Kearny had fixed his unblinking scowl upon my son-in-law with the full intent of intimidating the young man.

  The court-martial of Colonel Frémont began on November 2, 1847, and ran eighty-nine days. General Kearny had brought the charges, including mutiny, disobedience, and conduct prejudicial to good order. These sprang from the period when Frémont and his battalion of irregulars, along with Commodore Robert Stockton, had largely conquered California with little help from the regular army. Commodore Stockton, the senior United States officer in the region, had appointed Colonel Frémont the governor of the newly conquered province, a position he ardently defended against the meddling of Brigadier General Kearny, until the malice-soaked Kearny stripped him of the office, accused him of insubordination, and then hauled him east as a prisoner.

  Kearny must have seethed, for the young and celebrated conqueror of California was neither a veteran line officer nor a West Pointer but a junior officer, an explorer and map-maker with the Army’s Corps of Topographical Engineers, who happened to be near the Pacific coast when war broke out. Not only that, but Frémont and Stockton had won California with minimal bloodshed, and Frémont had made a generous peace with the conquered Californios.

  It didn’t end with that, either, for the young man was also a national hero, well known to his countrymen as the Pathfinder. In previous explorations he, along with a company of gifted scientists and cartographers, had mapped large portions of the little-known West, and the accounts of these journeys had been published by the government and made available to pioneering Americans bent on settling the West. Thus the Pathfinder had been a great instrument of westward expansion, an enterprise dear to my heart, and one to which I had devoted my entire career in the Senate.

  But all this success, which seemed to wrap my son-in-law in a golden aura, was too much for the old guard in the army, and in General Kearny it found the means to ruin the most celebrated young officer in the republic. I knew, even as the two sides prepared for the trial, that Colonel Frémont would have to endure a special burden, the rage of envious senior officers who vented their rank hostility and contempt toward my son-in-law at every opportunity, sometimes stating their case in the sensational daily press.

  I took steps in my own fashion to salvage my son-in-law’s career, one day interviewing President Polk about the matter. I noted his tepid response, and I marked him as a pusillanimous opponent of the Bentons, though we had made common cause for many years. I took to the Senate floor, where I still commanded a faction of my Democratic party, and did not hesitate to let the whole body know of the malign effort to disgrace Colonel Frémont, and by extension, bring ruin upon my family.

  How I ached for my daughter Jessie, who was forced to listen day after day to the most disgraceful and base accusations against her beloved husband, even while she bore his unborn child. It was plain to the whole world that the charges against my son-in-law were utterly without merit, concocted by a vindictive old general who had arrived in California too late and with too little force and had suffered the mortal indignity of defeat by the Californios. Was it any wonder that a bilious stew began to boil in the bosom of the old soldier or that it was soon to spew over the true conqueror of California?

  I took my own measures as I watched the trial progress through the weeks and months. When General Kearny took the witness stand, I stared back, as relentlessly and unblinkingly as he had glared at my son-in-law, and my steadfast gaze had its effect. The general exploded in rage, and the tribunal directed its attention toward me, even as I sat with glacial calm among the spectators. But the conduct that was perfectly acceptable to the tribunal in Kearny’s case was not acceptable to them in my case, and I suffered the rebuke of its presiding officer, Brevet Brigadier General G. M. Brooke. That gave me the measure of the thirteen members of that tribunal. I knew where the Bentons stood with them, and some things I do not forget or forgive.

  I like to think that the whole lot of them were recollecting an earlier utterance of mine that still follows me around, much to my advantage: “I never quarrel, sir, but I do fight, sir, and when I fight, sir, a funeral follows, sir.”

  They found Frémont guilty on all charges and directed that he be thrown out of the army. The miserable Polk affirmed the charges but remitted the sentence, permitting my son-in-law to remain in the service. But that additional rebuke was too much for the young man; he resigned in deepest sadness, and thus the Pathfinder, the young republic’s most honored young man, found himself tarnished and alone. Those were hard days for my daughter Jessie and her husband, and I ached for them.

  It mattered not that the American people, along with the press, were solidly behind Frémont for it was plain to the whole country that sheer spite among senior army officers had brought the Pathfinder to his ruin. It mattered not that this vindictive verdict caused grave illness in Jessie and threatened the life of her unborn child. It mattered not to the Polk administration that it had wrought an injustice and that the American people were aware of it and outraged by it.

  But I have my own ways and means, and I thought of an enterprise that not only would regain Frémont’s reputation for him as the nation’s foremost explorer but also would open a way for Saint Louis to funnel the entire commerce of the West and the Pacific into the States and to hasten the day when the republic would stretch from sea to sea. I proposed to several Saint Louis business colleagues that they fund a private survey along the 38th parallel, with the intent of running a railroad to San Francisco along the midcontinent route. I received somewhat hesitant backing because the gentlemen feared that Frémont might once again fail to use sound judgment, but in the end, we raised enough to finance Frémont’s fourth expedition. It would be up to the Pathfinder to restore his name and reputation. But in this case he would not be defying a superior officer; he would answer only to himself. This time there was no one looking over his shoulder.

  CHAPTER ONE

  John Charles Frémont

  General Kearny killed the baby. I would never say it publicly, but I knew right down to my bones that it was true. Jessie would come to it also; she thought that Benton was
sickly because of the court-martial.

  Ten weeks was all the life allotted my firstborn, named after Jessie’s family. The ordeal in Washington City was more than Jessie could endure, and it afflicted the child she was carrying, and now the bell tolls.

  Stephen Watts Kearny and his cronies brought the charge, mutiny and disobedience in California; put me and my family through the ordeal; and triumphed. He who was a friend of the Bentons, supped at their table, could not contain a raging envy of me, and now the bell tolls.

  Benton was a sickly infant, delivered by a worn woman, though Jessie was but twenty-four. Even Kit Carson, almost a stranger to children, said as much. He had visited Jessie in Washington only a few weeks ago, having completed his courier duty for the army, and thought that Benton would not live long.

  I watched the pewter river slide past in the dawn. We were aboard the Martha, plying its slow way to Westport from Saint Louis. Most of my men were there, awaiting me, receiving and guarding the expedition’s materiel and mules. I didn’t much care to go on this expedition. It would not be the same. A great weariness has afflicted me ever since the verdict—no, ever since General Kearny marched me to the States as the rear of his column, in disgrace.

  I had read in the press that I have changed: “Colonel Frémont looks weary and gray since his ordeal,” according to all reports. I have not changed and nothing bends me, and soon the republic will see what I am made of. The army will see what I am made of. So will President Polk. And their brown claws will not touch me this time.

  The Martha vibrated more than most river packets do, and I wondered if Captain Rolfe knew his main bearings were out of true. The hooded shores, heavy with mist-shrouded trees wearing their yellow October colors, slid by. I would need to talk to Rolfe; I would need to help Jessie out of her world and into the real one. I had left her in the gloomy stateroom, sitting in her ivory nightclothes on the bunk, crooning to Benton at her breast. The boy was dead. Sometime in the small hours his weak heart had failed. Kitty, her colored maid, had discovered it. Now the infant hung limp in her arms, while she whispered and sang and clutched the still, cold infant.

  I would have to disturb her. It is not in me to flee from any duty.

  I retreated from the deck rail and entered our dank stateroom. Jessie sat on the edge of the bunk, rocking softly, the child still clamped to her breast. She eyed me, and then the shadows, where Kitty sat helplessly.

  “Jessie, it’s time to let go.”

  She nodded. “He’s dead, I know.”

  “Yes. May I take him?”

  “I had him for such a little while.”

  But she handed the cold infant to me. It didn’t resemble anyone I knew. I stood, holding it. She turned away, not knowing what to do or caring to see what I would do with the dead boy.

  I found the blue receiving blanket and wrapped it around Benton. The boy should have weighed more. He weighed almost nothing. Did souls have weight? Did a living infant weigh more?

  “I’ll have the cabin boy bring you something. Tea?”

  “It was the strain,” she said. “All the while you were under a cloud, the little baby knew it. It shrank him up.”

  “Jessie—you are a beautiful mother.”

  She smiled fleetingly. “I wanted him to be like you,” she said.

  “Rest a while. I’ll be back.”

  “I’ll never see my baby again.”

  I nodded. Then I slipped out on the dewy deck and made my way forward, the bundle in my arms. Below, the side-wheeler shivered its way upstream, gliding over murky water, leaving a gentle wake behind. A quiet rhythm punctuated the dawn as the paddles splashed and the great drive piston reciprocated.

  The grimy white wheelhouse was ahead. I knocked, and was shouted in, but I saw only the helmsman steering the boat’s slow passage. “Captain Rolfe, please. Frémont here.”

  The helmsman simply pointed at a door behind the wheelhouse. I opened it and found myself staring at the half-dressed captain eating breakfast in a small galley. The man wore blue trousers and a stained gray union suit.

  “It’s you, Frémont. I knew you were aboard.”

  “Captain, we have lost our boy.”

  Rolfe stared at the small bundle. “I am sorry. Was it cholera?”

  “He was sickly and died in the night.”

  Rolfe nodded. “I’ll have the carpenter’s mate build a box. Have you plans? We can stop and bury him …”

  “Can the child be shipped to Saint Louis?”

  “We’re coming on to Jefferson City …”

  “I would like to do it that way.”

  “I’m sorry, Colonel. It’s a hard thing.”

  “Hard on Jessie, yes.” That was less than I intended to say. “Hard on both of us,” I added.

  Captain Rolfe dabbed his chin whiskers, wiping away the remains of oat gruel, and tugged a cord. A cabin boy materialized.

  “Take Colonel Frémont to the shop.”

  I followed the youth down a gangway to the silvery rain-soaked boiler deck, and finally to a noisy room aft. It took only a moment. The carpenter’s mate eyed the quiet bundle, nodded, and set to work.

  I was glad to escape and headed forward until I stood at the rounded prow. This ship was heading west. I was heading west. I was going to California, but going the hard way. Jessie would meet me there, after crossing the isthmus of Panama. She had come to see me off.

  I watched ahead as the riverboat wound its way around lazy curves, scything deer from the riverbanks and alarming ravens. The bankside trees clawed at us. An overcast hid the sun and hushed the wind. This was level country. Far away, where the Rockies tumbled up to the sky, I would chop a hole through the wall. That was what this was all about as far as any other living soul knew. But I knew it was about much more. The West Pointers would eat crow, every feather and claw, beak and brain. They would rot unknown in their graves; the nation would decorate its public squares with statues of Frémont.

  But of that I said nothing, especially not to my wife. She was my ally, prized from the Benton family by our elopement. I acquired the most powerful father-in-law in Washington, and we have put each other to good use, he in his dreams of westward expansion, and I in my dream of decorating every village square. These were unspoken but ever present. He doesn’t like me, and I’ve never cared for him. But we make common cause.

  We docked at Jefferson City, an indifferent city of indifferent people, and I watched the roustabouts heft the small pine casket ashore to a waiting spring wagon, and that was the last I would see of my son. The Bentons would bury him. Jessie did not join me at the rail, and I supposed she lay abed. I am made of stern stuff, and I watched what passed for a coffin removed from the vessel. The Martha did not tarry long, but it did take on some dripping wet cord-wood, and then we shuddered west once again, and I would have it no other way.

  I put my son out of mind.

  This, my fourth expedition, had formed swiftly. It had been privately financed by that old fur trade entrepreneur Robert Campbell, along with O. D. Filley and Thornton Grimsley, but all told, they had not pledged a third of what the government would have given me. There were those in Saint Louis who saw the virtue of steel rails to the far Pacific, spanning the unknown continent, and funneling the whole commerce of the Pacific and the Orient through the gateway city. I was indifferent to that. Success would merely line other men’s pockets. But I was not indifferent to other facets of this trip. I would do it without the leave of the army, without the hindrance of government. And I would do it in winter, the very season requiring the most strenuous exertions and posing the greatest risk. Let them absorb that.

  I would be my own commander, exempt from court-martial, and my only judge and jury would be public opinion and my private esteem. I supposed there would be some obligation to my backers, most particularly my father-in-law, who contributed his skills and his purse to all this. And I would provide it. They would receive the cartographic results for which they anted up.

&n
bsp; There were other things on my mind; I wished to look upon the great foothill tract in California, Las Mariposas, that had been purchased for me by the American consul, Thomas O. Larkin, from the Mexicans. It was not anything I wanted, and Larkin had violated the trust I had placed in him. So I was stuck with a huge tract of rolling land, good for little. Perhaps something lucrative could be made of it, though I wasn’t sure what. I knew it would do for the grazing of cattle or sheep, because that was how the Californios had exploited it. But it might yield more under good Yankee management. I had sent an entire sawmill around the horn, knowing that sawn lumber is in short supply in that remote province. I planned to discover how best to line my pockets.

  The Mediterranean climate of that far shore appealed to me, and I imagined it would appeal to Jessie as well, but it fostered indolence in the natives. She could not endure the transcontinental trip, so she would travel to the Pacific across the isthmus of Panama after seeing me off and meet me in a remote place recently renamed San Francisco, destined by geography to become a fine city someday. Thus she would accompany me to Westport Landing, where my corps of exploration would assemble and depart, and then return to Saint Louis and New Orleans, and we would have a rendezvous some unimaginable distance away, at some unfathomable moment to come.

  It was just as well. She might be brimming with youth, but she was not fit.

  I returned frequently to the stateroom where Jessie secluded herself. She seemed uncommonly stricken, and I did my best to cheer her, along with her maid, who was quartered below. By the time we reached Westport she was up and about, wearing gray wool, taking tours on the boiler deck, studying the ever-moving panorama as we shivered our way west.

  “I am very nearly the only woman on board,” she said on one of our tours, her arm locked in mine.

  “The wilderness offers no closets,” I said. “Men go west first.”