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Pack-trains are laden with every requisite tents, hammocks, attendants, waiting-women and retainers are provided. Winding out of the meadows of the Alameda, eastwardly over the Coast Range defiles, the train advances. Guards watch the bride's slumbers. Star-lit nights make the journey easy.
He drank with those who asked him and talked with those who cared to pass a word with him; talked about the output of the near-by gulches, the necessity of armed guards for the wagons and pack-trains, or the chances of capturing Joaquin Murieta. In spite of his good looks and expensive clothes he was about as unobtrusive as a Mexican could be, which is saying a good deal at the period.
These journeyed in various ways. Some walked afoot and unencumbered, some carried apparently all their belongings on their backs, one outfit comprising three men had three saddle horses and four packs a princely caravan. One of the cargadores' pack-trains went up the road enveloped in a thick cloud of dust twenty or thirty pack-mules and four men on horseback herding them forward.
Major Rucker fulfilled this duty perfectly, sending out pack-trains loaded with food by the many routes by which the immigrants were known to be approaching, went out himself with one of these trains, and remained in the mountains until the last immigrant had got in. No doubt this expedition saved many a life which has since been most useful to the country.
Again and again we sent down improvised pack-trains composed of officers' horses, of captured Spanish cavalry ponies, or of mules which had been shot or abandoned but were cured by our men.
This house was a small wayside inn, situated where a miners' trail crossed the emigrant route; a roughly-made, two-story, frame building, with a corral adjoining; at which mule pack-trains stopped overnight, when carrying supplies from Sacramento and Marysville for miners working the gold placer diggings along the American and Yuba rivers.
So now, in addition to the gleaming fragments upon the table before them, they saw mountain ranges with ledges of rock all sparkling like this ore, deep mines with Indian workers, pack-trains, and burdened holds of ships. After a time one lifted a piece of the ore, hesitatingly, as though he made to take up all the Indies, scrutinized it closely, weighed it, passed it to his neighbor.
I do not know how many draft-animals General Shafter had; but in four journeys over the road between Siboney and the front I happened to see only two pack-trains, one of them going forward with ammunition, and the other returning without load.
The road from Daiquiri and Siboney to the front did not become impassable for loaded wagons until the end of the second week in July. For ten days after the army landed it was comparatively dry and good; and for ten days or two weeks more it was at least passable, and was constantly traversed, not only by pack-trains, but by wagons with loads.
During most of the time our means of transportation were chiefly the improvised pack-trains spoken of above; but as the mules got well they were taken away from us, and so were the captured Spanish cavalry horses.
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