THE GENTLEMAN FROM PIKE.

 

            IN THE West (I suspect it is so everywhere) are men whom their fellowmen designate as "empire builders." Some of them deserve the title. When men put the machinery in motion and watch and work until it is made clear that it will grind away the barbarism of the frontier, and make possible, out of what was a wilderness to create glorified states, they are entitled to wear the badge of empire builders.

            There have been many of these in the world. Romulus with his plough marked the boundaries of what was to be "The eternal City" and maintained his place until it was accepted as true that a new nation had been created. He was an empire builder.

            When Hernando Cortes burned his ships that there might be no retreat and proceeded to overthrow the Aztec dynasty with its human sacrifices, and on that soil to plant a Christian nation, whatever else may be said of him and his methods, he was certainly an empire builder.

            Almost all nations preserve the traditions of how their countries were first rounded into civilized form, and to hold as empire builders the first actors in the great drama. We in the United States have had many of these ; their names would make a long and majestic roll.

            But with most of these there was a lofty or deep down selfish purpose.

            Some have been intent upon creating a place which would require high officers, and the unspoken thought was "I will fill the very highest of them and make of mine a name to be remembered."

            Others have been impelled by a desire to found on a firm basis the religion which they believed was the right one and to hedge it round with safeguards which would last for all time.

            Some have said to themselves : 'The curse of the world is poverty ; in that new land there will be opportunities, so soon

44 AS I REMEMBER THEM.

as order can be established, to gather rapidly what men really covet most, a vast treasure in gold and lands, all that the land can produce and all that gold can buy."

            Others, dissatisfied with all human government, have determined that there shall at last be one perfect government, which, when the world realizes its perfections, there will be an epoch : the nations will accept it, and the cry will be, " 'Bout face!" and "Forward, march!'

            Out of all these I select the very greatest, for a brief review.

            I refer, of course, to "the gentleman from Pike."* He is, or at least was, half a century ago, unlike all others.* He did not dream of going out and conquering a kingdom. He had no plan for starting a new religion. He was satisfied with what he had. His choice lay between the Baptist and the Methodist, but he inclined toward the latter because there was more shout to it and less use for water.

            He had no desire to found any new government. His private belief was that there was already too much government in the world.

            Neither did he dream of finding gold or silver mines. They were out of his line.

            What he wanted was more land, especially grass land. If near it there could be woods with wild game; mast for his pigs, plenty of berries in the summer, and nuts and wild honey to be gathered later, they would all be welcome.

            Most people gain their impressions from their immediate surroundings and so this pathfinder in secret thought wanted to find a new Missouri, as Missouri was before the land was increased in value by the coming of so many unwelcome neighbors. Cheap and rich lands without troublesome neighbors, whose thrift magnified the carelessness of his methods by comparison.

            So, upon his prairie schooner he loaded his household goods, leaving a corner in the huge wagon bed for his house-

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            *Half a century ago Pike County, Missouri, was so strongly represented in California that at last all emigrants across the plains were referred to as "Pike county men.

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hold goods, yoked his oxen and hitched them to the wagon, tied a cow behind the wagon, then, heading his team to the west, started.

            Then the air of the wilderness began to be sanctified by his swear words, and so varied, so picturesque and all embracing was his vocabulary, that timid animals in his path fled at hearing it, and the eagle on swift wing and fast-beating heart sought his eyrie to regain his usual repose of manner.

            He had heard that there were plenty of grass and good water one hundred or two hundred or a thousand miles away, and those were the things he wanted.

            If the sky was sapphire above him and the winds were laid, he merely said to himself, "It looks like to be a good day," and drove on; maybe he sang a little. If the winds rose and the dust half-blinded him, he did not mind them : he never even cleared his throat except when he wanted his vocal chords to help him in emphasizing his wishes to the oxen.

            He carried a stock of adjectives with which to adorn his oration in case the wild man disputed his trespass ; he carried an old-fashioned fowling-piece with which to convert wild animals into food; he and his wife and white headed children ate their simple food and never murmured, for the open air and exercise are tonics for the appetite.

            Thus, clay by day, he toiled on ; night by night the wagon supplied a house and sleeping room ; a frying pan and coffee pot and a brush fire were enough cooking utensils for the whole brood, and the march was continued until the promised land was found and pre-empted.

            It was all made possible because the man was not sensitive ; it seemed to him duty, and the doing of it was a matter of course.

            It was made possible because the undemonstrative woman in the wagon had enlisted to walk by the man's side while life lasted ; what she held repressed in her own heart who can tell ?

            When the wolves howled around them by night and the hoot of the owl became at last a sound of derision, it was she who quieted the fears of the children ; when she thought that in the event of an accident or illness she would have to be both physi-

46 AS I REMEMBER THEM.

cian and nurse ; when she dreamed at night of the dainty things she in girlhood had planned to have, and then awoke with only the natural savagery of the frontier to greet her eyes, she hid the feeling that it awakened deep in her soul and when her children cried at the desolation and loneliness, it was her arms around them and the simple song on her lips that hushed them. Talk of devotion and courage and that fortitude which faces a hard lot every day while the years come and go, without plaint and without repining; where else can a harder test be found?

            This movement of the Pike county man to the west lasted more than half a century. It was most pronounced in the forties, when he never rested until he stood on the bank of the Columbia ; and in the fifties, when his destination was the valley through which flows the Sacramento.

            And the wonderful part was that he did not know that he was a hero.

            'Did you not realize when you started that you might have to fight your way?" was asked one of them.

            "Of course," was the reply. In one form or another yer always has ter fight yer way. If it isn't Injuns it's thar thirst or thar hunger or thar sickness, one blamed thing after another. It's all in thar play."

            But nature is responsive sometimes to men's wishes, and women's longings. As the company increased, the silence which had so long surrounded the wilds like a robe was rent by the cries of advancing hosts. At last, out of the rough out- lines of the wilderness, states were hewed into form; then came the scream of the locomotive through the majestic mountains to dispute the scream of the eagle ; the chariots of commerce began their roll and it was heralded to the world that in the great west a new, mighty empire had been created.

            Who laid the foundation of this empire? Who steadied it through its infant years? To whom is the credit most due for what it now is? There are many to claim the honor, but who says the first and highest recognition is not clue to the Who-haw Empire Builder the gentleman from Pike ?