Two Love Letters

News? How could there be news, when these men could not know for much
more than a year that, as they outspanned here in the sage, Abraham
Lincoln had just declined the governorship of the new territory of
Oregon? Why? He did not know. Why had these men come here? They did not
know.

But news--the news! The families must have the news. And here--always
there was news! Just beyond branched off the trail to California. Here
the supply trains from the Columbia brought news from the Oregon
settlements. News? How slow it was, when it took a letter more than two
years to go one way from edge to edge of the American continent!

They told what news they knew--the news of the Mormons of 1847 and 1848;
the latest mutterings over fugitive negro slaves; the growing feeling
that the South would one day follow the teachings of secession. They
heard in payment the full news of the Whitman massacre in Oregon that
winter; they gave back in turn their own news of the battles with the
Sioux and the Crows; the news of the new Army posts then moving west
into the Plains to clear them for the whites. News? Why, yes, large news
enough, and on either hand, so the trade was fair.

But these matters of the outside world were not the only ones of
interest, whether to the post traders or the newly arrived emigrants.
Had others preceded them? How many? When? Why, yes, a week earlier fifty
wagons of one train, Missouri men, led by a man on a great black horse
and an old man, a hunter. Banion? Yes, that was the name, and the scout
was Jackson--Bill Jackson, an old-time free trapper. Well, these two had
split off for California, with six good pack mules, loaded light. The
rest of the wagons had gone on to the Snake. But why these two had
bought the last shovels and the only pick in all the supplies at old
Fort Hall no man could tell. Crazy, of course; for who could pause to
work on the trail with pick or shovel, with winter coming on at the
Sierra crossing?