Maggie was silent as she stared into the white. For a moment, she could not move. Then she spoke, her voice choked and raw. “I will fetch a rope. Mary will be hurt bad. We will find her.”
“And the man,” Caroline added.
“He can go to hell,” Maggie said. “I am only sorry he did not die months ago, before we left Chicago.”
Maggie started for the wagon, but William took her arm. “Miss Madrid is gone. No one could have survived such a fall.”
“You do not know that,” Maggie told him.
“I do know it, and so do you. You have seen the remains of men who have fallen into canyons that are only half so deep as this one.”
“Maybe she survived. She could have been caught on a tree branch,” Maggie said. “We cannot leave her. Remember the stories we heard about men with cholera who were left behind by their friends for dead, but they recovered?”
William shook his head. “Miss Madrid did not have cholera. No one could live after a fall of hundreds of feet. It is likely she hit a rock or was crushed by the oxen or the wagon long before she reached the bottom. I am so sorry…” His voice trailed off as he himself was overcome with sorrow.
“Then we will bring up her body,” Maggie told him. She yanked away her arm and clenched her fists. Tears ran down her face and froze on her cheeks. Nothing on the entire trip had prepared her for the loss of Mary. Or for the fact that she was responsible. Two of their number had died because of her—Clara and now Mary—the two she cared about most. She had considered that she or Penn or some of the others, even the ministers, might die, but Mary was invincible. Maggie would not have survived the trip without her. None of them would. Maggie would not even have had the courage to sign up for the journey in the first place. How could she desert Mary now? “I won’t leave her here for the bears and panthers to rip her apart. We will take her with us to the diggings and bury her there.”
William shook his head. His eyes were wet. “How will you find her body, Mrs. Hale? We cannot see more than a dozen feet into the depth. And if you do find it, how will you bring it up?”
“We’ll find it. I’ll go with you,” Penn spoke up. “Me and Maggie’ll fetch her. If she’s dead, we’ll bury her in my red shawl.”
“I’ll go, too,” Sadie offered. “We’ll bring her up with a rope.”
“All the ropes we have tied together would not reach half the way down that canyon. You would endanger not just yourselves but the rest of us. It is hard enough to follow the trail in the snow. Do you really believe you can safely descend hundreds of feet when you cannot see where you are going? How could you find her?” Joseph asked. “You would perish yourselves.”
“Then we shall camp until the snow clears,” Maggie said.
“Until summer?” William asked. “This is the first of winter’s storms. The snow may not melt in these canyons until June or July.”
“We cannot leave her to freeze,” Maggie cried.
Penn put her arms around Maggie and held her as the two sobbed. The others wept, too.
“Only her body will be frozen. Her spirit is alive in us. She is in heaven, where she is looking out for us, as she has these many months,” Caroline spoke up. “I believe we must ask ourselves what Mary would have wanted. Would she have wished her friends to risk their lives to find her body? She herself has no use for it now. She has deserted it to be with God.” She glanced at Maggie and added, “And Clara. Clara is not alone now.”
“She almost made it to California. All these months and thousands of miles. She would have reached the diggings in just hours,” Dora sobbed. “She was so close.” She let her tears spill onto baby Washoe’s head.
“She did make it,” Caroline told her. “She made it because you will arrive safely. You will take Mary there in your hearts. I believe Mary’s mission was to bring the rest of you through this journey. Her strength is in all of you. We will go on because Mary showed us the way. Perhaps, like Moses, she was given a glimpse of the Promised Land, and that was enough.”
Maggie stood in the snow, oblivious to the cold, contemplating Caroline’s words. It was not enough, of course. Mary deserved better. She had wanted to complete the journey, but still, she had had a sense that she would not. Maggie remembered Mary saying that if she did not reach the gold camps, she was still glad she had come.
Mary was dead, and Joseph and William were right. It would be folly to try to recover her body. Mary would not have wanted her and the others to risk their lives just to bring back her remains. Anyone who descended into the canyon would likely not return. She went to her wagon and found the bundle containing the few things she had not discarded. She reached inside and removed the china teapot that she had planned to give to Mary at their journey’s end. Running her hand over the tiny roses, she thought of how much the teapot had meant to Mary. Then, slowly, she raised it above her head and threw it into the canyon where Mary had disappeared, listening as it hit a rock and shattered into a thousand fragments.
“WE MUST GO on before the snow worsens,” said Joseph. “I will take the first wagon.”
Maggie stared at him. Since leaving the desert, Mary had always led the first wagon. There were only two wagons now. William said he would drive the second.
“No,” Maggie spoke up. “I will take the lead wagon.” Mary was dead. Now Maggie would see them through.
“Evaline and I will drive the second,” Bessie said.
William started to protest, but Joseph stopped him. “It is up to the women. This is their train—Mary’s train.”
Maggie moved toward the wagon. As she did so, William turned to Joseph. “Another woman dead, and it is my fault,” he said. “Of all of them, why did it have to be Mary?”
“Perhaps, as Caroline suggested, her mission was done. She more than anyone brought our band of women through. Because of you, Mary found her purpose.”
William considered the words. “Do you believe that?”
“I do, and you must, too.”
William slowly nodded, and in a minute he set off toward the wagons. Joseph would have followed him, but Caroline touched his arm.
“You have found your purpose on this great journey, too, Joseph. You have risen to the challenge. I suspected there was a greatness in you, that you were intended for something better than overseeing a church in Chicago, and in the hundreds of miles we have come, I have seen evidence of it,” Caroline said.
“It is William who has led us.”
“Yes, in the beginning, but you have taken over where William faltered. I am proud of you.”
“And I you,” Joseph told her.
Caroline closed her eyes for a moment at the rare compliment. Then she smiled at her husband and said, “I believe the little one who will join us in just a few months will be proud of both of us.”
“Are you saying…?” Joseph stared at his wife. “After all these years…”
“I would not tell you before for fear you would worry about me. But now that the trip is near done, I believe it is time you know.”
Joseph smiled. “You are even more beautiful this moment than the day I married you.” Then, despite the snow and the cold and the sorrow of Mary’s death, he picked up Caroline and swirled her around as snowflakes covered them.
THAT EVENING, THE two ministers held a memorial service for Mary. There would be another in a proper church, when they reached the diggings—that is, if there was a proper church.
For the moment Mary’s friends wanted their grief assuaged by prayers and hymns. After camp was set up and supper finished, they gathered between the two remaining wagons. As befit the site, the service was informal. The ministers led the prayers, and the women sang. “She was the ablest and purest of us,” William said in a eulogy, then asked if anyone else wanted to speak. Almost all of the women did.
Maggie went first and told of meeting Mary in front of the Chicago church, the two of them encouraging each other to attend the meeting. “She was like a sister to me.” Maggie started to say more, but she broke into tears.
“Mary saved me, and you all know that is the God’s truth,” Penn said.
“She gave me my daughter,” Dora told them.
One by one, the women recalled how Mary had helped them or strengthened them when they were too wretched to continue. They cried as they spoke and held each other’s hands. When they were finished the camp was silent, except for the wind. Caroline said, “We are filled with sadness, but we must remember Mary with joy. We will complete our journey in her name.” She did not say more. That was enough.
MAGGIE WAS AMBIVALENT as she started down the trail the following morning. She mourned Mary, but as each step brought her closer to her destination, she began to think of what lay ahead. She would reach the diggings in a day or two, and then she would have to decide her future. The snow continued on and off, and it muffled the sound, but after a time Maggie thought she heard the noise of an eastbound wagon train—a large one, she concluded, because as it came near, it was very loud. Why would anyone start east in the snow?
As she led the two wagons into a clearing, she heard a man shout, “There they are! There’s the women!” A cheer rose up, and a hundred men rushed toward the wagons.
“We come to bring you home!” a man shouted.
Maggie looked at them, astonished and then embarrassed at her own slovenly state. She turned to the others. A few were patting their hair into place and straightening their dresses, but most just stared. For an instant she looked for Mary, then realized Mary was gone. She should have had this moment, Maggie thought.
The men surrounded the wagons, but a broad man with a bushy red beard, who appeared to be their leader, held up his hand to stop them. “We are anxious to make your acquaintance, but we are gentlemen. Now hold on, gents, and do not rush the ladies!” He paused. “Be there a Winny Rupe amongst you?”
“Davy!” Winny cried. She pushed through the women and embraced her brother. She turned to her friends. “I knew it. I told you Davy was here!”
“I knowed when I heard a band of women from Chicago was headed for Goosetown that you was one of them. I been writing you every month to come.”
“I never saw the letters. They must have been tore up,” Winny said. Then she asked, loudly enough for everyone to hear, “Have you made a fortune, Davy?”
“Enough so I can meet my promise. You will not be a hired girl no more, Win.”
“He serves as the judge of Goosetown,” a man shouted.
“Good enough for me,” Winny said.
William and Joseph came forward and introduced themselves. “I hope you men are worthy of these women. They have overcome hardships you can only imagine. I have never seen such courage. They are women unlike any others,” William said.
“Woe to the man who does not treat them right,” Joseph added.
“We will take care of him,” Davy laughed.
“No need. The women will,” Joseph told him.
“How are we going to choose a wife?” a man shouted.
“You will not. The choice is up to the women,” Joseph replied. “When they are ready, they will ask you.”
“These are decent men. They’ve come to carry the ladies in. Their walking days are over,” Davy said. “We brought wagons for them.”
“I could pack one or two on my back,” a man shouted.
The men cheered, but the women only looked at each other. Then Maggie spoke up. “We are grateful to you, but we have made this journey without your help. We will finish it on our own.”
“A particular lot they are,” one of the men muttered.
Caroline heard him. “Most particular. I hope you are men enough for them.”
The trip to Goosetown took the rest of the day and then one more. When the caravan at last reached the camp, the men stepped aside and cheered as thirty-six women, their backs straight, their arms around each other, walked by themselves into the diggings.