1902
Goosetown
Maggie’s marriage was a good one. She and her husband had three children of their own. The first, a girl with pale hair like Clara’s, they named Mary. The boys were William and Joseph. After the gold ran out, they stayed on in Goosetown and farmed.
When they had been married forty years, Maggie and Robert retraced part of the trail that Maggie had traveled with the women. The journey was easier now. There were railroads and good wagon roads. The couple covered part of the distance on horseback. Maggie had not forgotten the trail. She remembered the twists and turns, the climbs and crossings. Most of all, she remembered the Green River, the place where the raft had crossed it, the place where Clara had perished.
She was solemn when they reached that spot, dismounting and trudging up the hill, more winded than she had been forty years earlier. “There,” she told Robert, pointing to a group of trees. “I remember there were saplings. Look how they have grown. Somewhere close is a rock that is shaped like an egg. Mary placed it there. Clara’s grave is beside it.”
She started toward the grove, but just then, she spotted a man working in a field. The land was no longer wilderness but had become a farm. The man came over to them.
“I was through here in 1852 with a group of women,” Maggie told him.
“They tell of you still.”
“You have heard of us, then?” Maggie smiled. “Thirty-six of us made it to California.”
“And one did not,” the man said.
“Several did not.”
“One you buried here.”
Maggie touched the locket with the strands of Clara’s hair that she still wore. “How did you know? She was my daughter. She drowned. She was four.”
“A girl, then. We thought she was a grown woman.”
“You know of her?”
The man nodded. “We found the grave. It must have been a deep grave, because wild animals never dug it up. You will see that there are still rocks on top of it. There was a cross, too.”
Maggie’s eyes filled with tears as she remembered Mary pounding the cross into the ground. “It was made from the spokes of a rocking chair.”
“Part of it was broken off, and we could make out only one name. Come.” He led them into the trees, then pointed to a small plot of ground surrounded by an iron fence. Inside, beside the remains of the cross and the egg-shaped rock, was a headstone. “We considered it to be sacred ground, so we never planted here.”
Maggie went inside the fence and knelt beside the headstone. Chiseled into it was “Clara. 1852?”
“Her name was Clara Hale. She drowned,” Maggie said, her voice filled with emotion. “I was afraid she would be forgotten.”
The man shook his head. “She is written up in a history book about the county. We have all wondered about her. We placed the gravestone. The wife, Ella, tends the grave. She puts flowers on it. She says she knows that somewhere someone may still be grieving for her.”
He introduced himself as Ephraim Tanner before he left them alone. Maggie and Robert stayed by the grave for a long time, Maggie sitting beside the mound of dirt and rocks, holding her husband’s hand, feeling the grief of that awful time. After she composed herself, she and Robert went to the farmhouse. Ella Tanner invited them to sit on the porch. She brought a pitcher of water and glasses, because it was a hot day. “We think of her as a part of this place,” she said. “She was here before us. That’s why we call it Clara Farm.” She cleared her throat and glanced away so that she would not embarrass Maggie, who was crying. “Would you like to take the cross with you?”
Maggie thought that over and shook her head. “No, Clara is part of this land now. The cross should remain with her.”
TO MARK THE fiftieth anniversary of the women’s arrival in Goosetown, the town commissioned a statue of Mary. It was made by the noted artist and sculptor Evaline Whitney Parnell. Her Overland Trail sketchbook, first published in 1855, had become a classic. The statue was dedicated at a ceremony attended by all twenty-one of the wagon-train women who were still living. William was an invalid, but Bessie had come with Evaline. Joseph was there, along with Caroline and four of their five children. Maggie and Penn, both widows, were accompanied by Maggie’s daughter, Mary. Sadie and Winny brought Davy. Sadie still wore a gold nugget around her neck that Davy had given her in place of a wedding ring. She preferred it to the diamond ring he had bought for her after selling his mining interests and taking her and Winny to live in a mansion in San Francisco. Dora was accompanied by Wash. Now fifty, Wash wore a worn gold ring. Dora saw Maggie looking at it and said, “You must remember. It was her mother’s. There are initials inside.”
“Did Wash ever find out who she is?” Maggie asked Dora.
“She never tried. She says I am her mother.”
The dedication included fireworks, a picnic, and speeches. The women, many old and bent and one in a wheelchair, recalled the excitement of the trip, the beauty of the land, the companionship. Few talked of the hardships. They remembered Clara and Lavinia and Adela, the woman who had died during the Indian attack. Most of all, they remembered Mary. Maggie spoke for all of them when she recalled Mary’s strength and her love and said they would not have finished the trip without her help. “She was the ablest and purest of us,” Maggie said, recalling the words of Reverend Parnell a half century earlier, spoken the day Mary died.
It was a wonderful gathering, Maggie thought, as she chatted with her friends from so long ago. “We have grown old,” Maggie told Caroline. Joseph shook his head. “Caroline will never grow old.” Maggie knew he had never seen Caroline as she really looked but had always considered her beautiful.
“Come, Mother,” Evaline told Bessie at the sound of a train approaching. “The train has arrived. Father will be anxious for us to return.”
Penn tightened a worn red shawl around her shoulders while the others gathered their belongings and made ready to leave. But just then a portly couple as old as the women hurried up.
“We are late,” the woman said. “It could not be helped. We made our disappointment known to the conductor, but he did nothing.” Distressed, she looked around. “Why did you not delay the ceremony and wait for us? You knew we were coming. When I heard of it, I sent a telegram. We expected to be part of the occasion.” She held out several pages of paper. “I have prepared a speech.” With the back of her hand she wiped perspiration from her face.
Maggie, confused, glanced at Penn, who shook her head. Dora frowned, and Joseph and Caroline exchanged a glance. The others, curious, stared. Maggie couldn’t imagine who the couple was. There had been so many telegrams back and forth among the women, and even newspaper reporters, that she was not surprised she had missed one or two. The event had been reported in all the California papers and picked up across the country. Maggie had been interviewed a dozen times. Perhaps the woman had been a member of the wagon train. Maggie had thought that they had all been accounted for. She went over the names of those listed in the program as dead. Had she made a mistake? Was this woman one of them? Perhaps she was among those who had started out but turned back.
“I read of it in the Chicago newspapers, and my wife sent word we would be here. It is strange that you went ahead without us, for who could be more important than us?” the man said.
“Than you?” Maggie asked. She was tired and leaned on her cane, the one Sadie had given her so long before.
“Mary would not have joined the train had we not urged her to go. Why, you might say that none of you would be here if it were not for us.”
“Who are you?” Maggie asked.
“Why, we are Louise and Micah Madrid,” the man said. “I sold half of our farm and gave the money to Mary for the trip. We encouraged her to go.”
“And I presented her with my prized china teapot. I should like to know what happened to it.”
“It was broken” was all that Maggie could think to say. She stared at the couple. She remembered how they had called Mary a fool, how they had mistreated her, how Mary had had to threaten Micah with a lawsuit to get a fraction of her inheritance. Most of all, Maggie recalled how happy Mary had been once she was away from them, how she had bonded with the women as she had never done with her brother and his wife.
Louise held her chin high and announced in a loud voice, “Mary was our sister.” She looked around for acknowledgment.
Maggie glanced at Penn, then at Dora, Sadie, Bessie, and Caroline. At Wash and Evaline. The women exchanged glances, then clustered around Maggie. She rested her hand on the cane’s knob, silver now since the gold had worn off long ago. “I remember,” she said. She did not tell them what she remembered, did not remark on how they had belittled and exploited Mary. She would not dishonor Mary’s memory with pettiness. But one thing she would not accept. “You say she is your sister,” Maggie said. Her back stiffened, and she raised her head. “No. Oh, no.” She felt Penn’s arm tighten around her. “She was not yours. She belonged to us. Mary Madrid was our sister.”