The women made their way across one blue range of mountains after another, along narrow trails, past boulders and giant pine trees, climbing up steep trails beside deep chasms, as they slowly moved westward. They wondered how those ahead of them had made it that far before tossing out saw blades and axes, gold pans and washers. They found a spinning wheel and, to Joseph’s amusement, a pulpit.
The trail was crowded with gold seekers hurrying to reach the mining camps before the snow. From time to time there were curses directed at travelers and recalcitrant oxen. Most of the emigrants were men, but a few women were among them. The women’s train passed a man crying over the crushed body of a child, a woman screaming that the death was his fault. They saw hollow-eyed women hunched over as they trudged up the steep inclines, women who had left behind everything that mattered to them to follow their husbands’ dreams.
Maggie stopped to comfort a woman who sat beside the trail sobbing. When Maggie offered aid, the woman replied, “There is none can help me. All is lost for a devil’s dream of gold.”
Not all of the gold seekers were depressed, of course. The closer they came to the diggings, the more the men became animated. Some of them whistled or sang “Oh! Susanna” as they walked along. They talked of the gold they would find and how they would spend it. At night, around the campfires, the men spoke of riches. Their women did, too, but most of them talked of the gold they hoped would take them back home to buy fine houses and farms that would impress their families and neighbors. “My feet are reluctant going west, but oh how I shall skip when we are eastbound,” one woman told Maggie.
Those demoralized women were so different from her friends, Maggie thought. Her band grew more excited the closer they were to the gold country. They asked each other how many weeks, how many days. They talked of the husbands who waited for them, of the fortunes they might find. Were their hopes too high? Perhaps in a year or two, some of them would be among the disgruntled go-backs.
With so many travelers crowding the trail, Maggie and the others became sociable. At night they could see a dozen campfires dotted across the mountains. They visited nearby emigrants, inquiring where others had come from and recalling the names of friends they might have in common. The women in the camps looked at Mary and Maggie and Winny in awe, asking if it was true they had come west on their own, had actually volunteered to make the trip in search of husbands.
“Perhaps you will decide when you reach the diggings that you do not need a man,” one suggested. “How I do envy you.”
“We have proven that we do not need them. The question now is, do we want them?” Mary said.
Winny inquired of eastbounders whether they had heard of Davy Rupe, but none seemed to know of him.
“If you will agree to marry me, I will turn around and go with you to look for him,” one man told her.
“I have no need of a go-back,” she replied.
Now that they were close to the gold camps, Maggie discovered that they were an even greater curiosity. Travelers ahead of them had spread the word that a wagon train of women looking for husbands was soon to arrive, and the women learned that a welcome was planned for them at Goosetown.
“What will they think of us, dirty and brown as beans, dressed in rags?” Dora asked.
“Perhaps they will not want us,” one woman worried.
Joseph reassured her. “There will be a hundred, maybe a thousand suitors for each of you. They will be grateful for the strongest, bravest women in Christendom.”
THE SNOW STARTED in the middle of the night, surprising them all. The September days had been warm, and there had been no feel of moisture in the air. The snow, heavy and wet, woke Maggie, and she shivered as she rushed through breakfast, then helped yoke the oxen. William, frantic, hurried them along, shouting for them to be on their way before the blizzard worsened.
“We must wait a day until the storm is over,” Joseph told him, as he studied the thick flakes that descended on them. “The trail is obscured. I believe we face a greater danger from stumbling over a cliff than we do from outwaiting the snow.”
“You do not know,” William told him harshly.
“Listen to Joseph, brother,” Caroline said. “We are only days from our destination, and the men there know we are coming. You or Joseph could ride on ahead and ask them to rescue us if the snow does not stop.”
“You do not know!” William told her.
Maggie and Sadie glanced up at his loud words. “Know what?” Maggie asked.
“I will not see you perish. I should never have allowed us to visit City of Rocks. I bear the fault for the wasted time.”
“I am against it,” Joseph said. “I will not allow you to let them face even more danger.”
“You are a fool, Joe. Do you want the women to die?” William’s voice rose so that he could be heard above the wind.
“Some will surely die if we go on today. We cannot see five feet ahead of us.”
Reverend Parnell turned away. His back heaved, and Maggie realized he was sobbing.
“What is it?” Caroline asked. She put her hand on his arm. “Willie, what is it?”
He shook off her arm, but she persisted. “What is wrong?”
“Anne,” he said at last, using the back of his hand to wipe his eyes.
“Anne?” Maggie remembered the name carved with William’s on Independence Rock.
“His wife,” Caroline murmured.
“I have told you only that Anne died on the trail. In truth, my wife died because of the snow. She was murdered.”
Caroline gasped. “I knew Anne had perished in California, but you have never given me the details. How could it be that she was murdered?” she asked.
“She was. I found her frozen body in the snow.”
“How awful for you, for her.” Caroline put her arms around her brother. “You have never spoken of it, and I did not want to intrude by asking. Was she truly murdered?”
“I consider it so.”
“What happened?” Joseph asked.
William bowed his head for a moment, then looked out into the storm. “We stopped two days to rest. A blizzard came on, like this one. It was not far from here. If we had been just one day ahead, we would have missed it. I and another man volunteered to go to the diggings for help. I thought Anne would be safe in camp. When we returned, she was lying in the snow, curled up, frozen. If we had not wasted those days, we would have been safe on the other side before the blizzard started.”
“But murder?” Joseph asked. “Was it not a tragic accident?”
“The others, they refused to let her shelter with them. I had protected her against mistreatment the entire trip, but I was not there, and the others turned their hatred on her. She had been violated. She sought shelter among some rocks and must have died in her sleep.”
“How beastly. They were degenerates,” Maggie said.
“Why would they do such a thing?” Caroline asked.
“I believe you know the answer,” William said. “Oh, they told me she had chosen to be by herself, but I knew them, knew the way they had dishonored her. I should have known they were waiting until I was away. If only I had insisted she go with me, but I deserted her.” He stared off into the soft whiteness that blanketed the harsh landscape, hiding the detritus of thousands of gold seekers and their wagons.
DESPITE WILLIAM’S INSISTENCE that they leave, Joseph prevailed, and the women camped that day, huddled in the wagons and tents, taking turns at keeping the campfires going. The night turned bitter, but in the weak dawn they saw that the snow was slowing, and by midafternoon it had stopped. Joseph said they would move out the following morning.
The melting snow exposed the scarred earth and turned the trail to mud. The oxen strained to pull the wagons through the foul mire of dirt and animal waste that littered the trail. Mary walked beside the lead team, urging the animals on. They were stubborn, however, and the train moved slowly. Once she slipped in the wet earth and rose covered in mud. She laughed as Maggie helped her up and said, “Oh, what a bride I must appear to be.”
“None of us looks appealing,” Maggie replied, helping Mary brush off her skirt. “We would be taken for little more than washerwomen.” She paused. “Have you grown anxious for a husband, then?”
“Not anxious, but curious. After all, this was the reason we signed up.”
“It was the reason the ministers signed us up.”
“But not the reason we came.” Mary paused. “Are you still worried about being recognized?”
Maggie thought that over. “I am not the frightened woman I was when you first knew me. Now I think of the future, not the past. But yes, I fear a little, although not near as much as I did before.”
“It will not be long,” Mary said. “Once we counted this trip in months. And then weeks. Now it is only days, and soon it will be hours. It does not seem possible. I wonder what lies ahead for us.”
Maggie stared off into the distance. “I shall miss you when this is over. The others, too. I hope we will not be separated.”
“We will not ever be separated, except perhaps by distance. What we have come through together will always keep us close. I do not believe a husband could be as dear to me as you and the others,” Mary said. “You are more than a family to me.”
Maggie grasped her friend’s muddy hand. “I would not have made it without you, Mary. None of us would.”
Touched, the large woman turned away. “You give me too much credit. We are all each other’s strength. Our band of sisters has accomplished what no other women have, and we have done it together, each one contributing. I do not wish a single one would have turned back.” She seemed embarrassed at her sentiment and struck the lead ox with a stick, urging him on.
KNOWING THAT THEY would be at Goosetown in a few days, the women were more excited than they had been since the first hours of the trip. In the evenings, they washed and mended their clothes and studied themselves in the sliver of mirror that one of them had kept. Their faces were tan and leathery, and Bessie and Evaline rubbed bacon fat into their skin to smooth and soften it, then laughed, telling each other they smelled like pigs. Maggie and Dora washed each other’s hair in the melted snow. Dora braided her hair, while Maggie fastened hers into a twist on top of her head.
“I did not know we were so vain,” Maggie said, as she repaired a collar on Sadie’s dress. “We have come thousands of miles through desert and mountain, driving oxen, fighting Indians and weather, and now are we reduced to frail womanhood?”
“We will never be that,” Bessie replied. “We will never go back to what we were.”
“No,” Maggie said. “For that alone I am grateful.” Then she asked, “What kind of a husband will you look for?”
Bessie shrugged. “One who will be kind to Evaline,” she replied, “and one who is not perfect.”
“I’d rather have a kind man than a rich one,” Penn told them.
Maggie turned to study the girl, thinking how much Penn, too, had changed. She had joined them as a frightened young woman. Now she was strong and sure of herself. Mary did not believe Penn would ever again let a man hurt her.
“Then you do not care about riches?” Maggie asked.
Penn straightened her skirt. “Maybe I’ll get rich on my own.”
Dora laughed. “How? Will you learn to pan for gold?”
“Who knows?”
“If you do not find your brother, will you look for a husband?” Caroline asked Winny.
“I will find him,” Winny insisted. “Or he will find me.”
One by one, they stopped their sewing and primping and wrapped up in quilts and blankets, and despite their excitement, they fell asleep, not waking until the sky in the east was pale.
Maggie did not have to be hurried to eat breakfast and yoke the oxen, because with the end of their journey so close, she could not wait to reach the diggings. With the wagons packed, she moved off over the mountain trail with the others, Mary in the lead again, as she had been since they started into the mountains, her chestnut horse tied to the back of the wagon. Maggie led the second wagon, while Dora walked beside her, holding the baby. Maggie wished the animals would hurry, but they plodded along, just as they had for months, too dumb to know their journey was almost over. There were still mountains to cross, but after what they had come through, those mountains did not seem so formidable.
They reached a wagon that was bogged down in the mud and stopped. A man cursed his oxen as he whipped them, but they could not pull the wagon out of the mire. “Give me the borrow of your oxen,” he demanded of Mary.
“I am not inclined to do so,” Mary muttered, then looked at the harried woman beside him and the brood of thin and bewildered children and relented. She added her oxen to his, and they pulled his wagon onto dry ground.
The man did not thank her but said, “You ought to trade me a pair of my oxen for yours. Mine are used up.”
“You abused them. You are lucky they have got you this far,” Mary told him.
“So you would leave me here with the wife and brats?”
Mary looked him over and replied, “Your wife and brats are welcome to join us. You, sir, can sit with your wagon and poor oxen until kingdom come.” The retort pleased Maggie, who knew Mary would not have dared utter such an impertinence only a few months before.
The man cursed her, but his wife looked up, and Maggie saw the trace of a smile on her lips.
“I believe she was tempted,” Maggie told Dora, as they started on their way.
The day had turned cold, and the mud along the trail was slippery. Harsh, stinging snow began to fall, making the ground slick with ice.
They were on a downward slope now, a treacherous place where the trail was narrow. The mountain was on one side, and a steep chasm dropped off hundreds of feet on the other. “We must go lower to get out of the storm, no more than a mile,” William told them. “It is too dangerous to camp this high up.”
Mary and Maggie hurried the oxen, but the animals would not go faster. The trail was too slick, and the wind had come up, swirling snow and making it difficult to see. Other travelers, anxious to reach the diggings, passed them. Some were on horseback, but others walked. A man cursed Maggie’s oxen for blocking the trail. Another forced her close to the cliff edge as he pushed by her on the inside. She glared at him, then turned to discover another man, on horseback, who had come up behind her. He had been following them for an hour or more, she realized, but now he was moving fast, and it seemed that he might shove her aside.
Instead, the man dismounted and put his hand on her shoulder, and Maggie was wrenched around. “There you are!” the man screamed. “I knew you were one of them. It took me a time to recognize you, but I do! Come with me, or I will kill you!”
Maggie looked at the bearded face contorted with hatred, and for a moment she thought the man was someone after her for the reward. Then slowly she recognized him. “Jesse!” she cried, shrinking back, nearly falling against the wagon. She had believed he was dead. All these weeks and months she had thought she had killed her husband, had been comforted by the belief he would never hurt her again, but she was wrong. “You are dead. I thought you were dead,” Maggie whispered, trying to wrench herself away.
“If you had your way, I would be. You tried hard enough to kill me.”
“You would have killed me. And Clara.”
“It was my right.”
“We were told there was a reward.”
He laughed, and the sound chilled her. “I put it about that there was.”
“You have the money?”
He only smiled. “Who’d be the wiser?” He dug his fingers into her shoulder. “Where is Clara?”
“Dead. Clara is dead.”
Jesse’s face turned white in anger. “You killed my daughter.”
“She drowned. I could not save her.” Maggie paused. “What does it matter to you? You never cared about her.”
“She belonged to me. So do you.”
Maggie stared at him. The shock of seeing her husband alive had worn off. She looked at him now in fear.
Still, she said, “I will not. You will not hurt me ever again.”
“You come with me, or someone will be hurt,” Jesse told her. “Maybe one of these women. You will be responsible.”
She thought how Penn had stood up to Asa. Maggie would not falter either. She looked around then, frantic to spot one of the ministers, but they were far behind, pushing a wagon that was mired in the muck.
Only Dora was beside her, her arms protecting the baby, not sure what to do. Then Mary, who was walking just ahead beside the chestnut horse tied to the wagon, turned and stared at Jesse. She realized something was wrong. “Maggie?” she called.
“Jesse. This is Jesse. He is alive,” Maggie managed to say.
Enraged, Jesse slapped Maggie’s face. Then he struck her with his fist.
Mary stopped the oxen. “Leave be,” she ordered, her whip in her hand. “Let go of her or I’ll whip you.”
“It is not your business. I do what I like.”
“No,” Maggie cried. “Not anymore.”
“You tried to kill me. You have to pay for it,” Jesse said. “I nearly died.”
“How often did you try to kill her?” Mary asked.
Jesse didn’t answer. “She murdered our daughter.”
“Clara fell from a boat. Maggie tried to save her. Maggie would have died, too, if she had not been held back.”
“What does that matter? She will come with me.”
“Leave be, Jesse.” Maggie backed away from him until she reached Mary’s wagon. Jesse followed her.
Penn came up to them then. “Who’s that?”
“Maggie’s husband,” Mary told her. “He is not dead. He wants her to go with him.”
“He ain’t going to take her any more than you let Asa take me.” Penn reached into her pocket for the pistol, but Jesse leaned over and brushed it out of her hand.
“You’re nothing but worthless women. You back off before you get hurt.”
We are not worthless women. We have survived two thousand miles of hardship that would have defeated many men, Maggie thought. I am not the woman who once cowered before you. She straightened her back and faced her husband. “I am not afraid of you, Jesse. Not now. Not anymore. I have friends to protect me.” Both Penn and Dora moved close to Maggie and put their arms around her.
Jesse looked about and saw that the rest of the women had come up and were surrounding them. They did not know what was happening, but they sensed the danger Maggie was in. Sadie had picked up a rock, while Winny held a tree branch in her hands. Even Caroline held a stout stick. The two preachers joined them, and Joseph said, “You can see for yourself that you are outnumbered. If you hurt Mrs. Hale or anyone else, we will report you to the authorities in California. They deal harshly with men who harm women.”
“Mrs. Hale. Is that what she calls herself? She is Mrs. Kaiser. My wife.” Jesse, angry, glanced around at the group. He let go of Maggie and took a gun from his belt.
“You can threaten us all you want, but Mrs. Hale is not going with you,” Joseph said.
“I say she is.” Outraged, Jesse lunged at the minister, who fell back against the wagon. Mary grabbed Jesse and wrestled his gun from his hand. He fought for the weapon, pushing Mary down into the mud. She tried to right herself, but the mud was slippery, and she slid. She grasped Jesse to steady herself, but he stumbled and landed on top of her.
Before anyone could grab them, the two fell against the wagon, knocking the chestnut horse off balance. He reared, and the wagon shifted. The oxen tried to steady themselves, but they were tired and balky, and their hooves slipped in the mud. A wagon wheel slid off the edge of the cliff. The oxen struggled for purchase, but the weight of the wagon was too much. It fell over the cliff, dragging the oxen and the horse with it. Mary and Jesse, caught beneath the wagon, tried to brace themselves, but there was nothing to grasp, and they slid into the abyss.
Maggie stared in terror as Mary disappeared in the white.
Stunned, the women were silent, listening for Mary’s cry, but the only sounds were the oxen bellowing and the wagon crashing and splintering as it bounced on the rocks and landed hundreds of feet down. When all was still, Maggie rushed to the edge, but in the swirling snow she could see nothing, only a vast field of white obscuring the horror far below.