5
On the Road at Last
These past months of travel and rootlessness wear on me. Or perhaps it’s the immediate demands of attention that have my stomach in a swirl. We await word on whether we can go forward or not. Oneida, a small Mormon town, is sweet and it houses a number of us. Robert and I are hoping to reach Helena in Montana Territory within the week. But the Bannock and the US military are at war, and the conflict has reached us on the Utah-Idaho Territory border. We passed burned-out ranches and have huddled at this stage stop for safety, not intending to leave while the conflict continues. The army is unable to position enough soldiers to protect so wide an expanse while still engaging in conflicts. I won’t write to my mother of this day, nor my sisters. I am praying that this will not be my last entry into this journal or any journal.
July 15, 1878
There’d been Indian wars before and this one was no different, having raged on since early June, stockades packed with frightened settlers. They were fighting over land, which is almost always the case. Your land; my land; settler’s land; the railroad’s land—all of it initially Indian land. I had mixed feelings. Who could blame the Bannock for warring? I’d heard that a former Oregon missionary, Josiah Parrish, had met with the tribe, hoping to dissuade them from their latest fierceness, and at least one group had returned to their reservation convinced of the futility of their conflict. But others pillaged on in the very country that we must travel through to reach Montana Territory.
We had boarded the stage in Utah and were in good hands with the well-known and respected jehu, or stage driver, but even Jake Farson acted nervous now. I wondered if I should insert my lesson from that terrible trip last Christmas and suggest we not start out. We stood in front of the stage station, the Concord loaded to the hilt on the top, with long-delayed mail stuffed between luggage, shipments of ordered goods. Red streaks in the sun-setting sky belied dangerous war clouds that couldn’t be seen but existed nonetheless. I watched as Robert’s eyes drifted away and wondered if he was back in Crook’s Army, in one of his four Sioux campaigns. A little moisture beaded on his forehead. His breathing sounded funny.
I handed him my handkerchief. “You’re sweating, Robert.” I touched his face with my gloved fingers. It was hot, but a lady still wears gloves.
“Am I?” The action toward something of the senses like that seemed to bring him back. He removed his hat and used my handkerchief to dab at his head, his neck. He was short of breath and his eyes looked glazed, wild even. Maybe he was tired from helping load, but I suspected it was more than that.
“I’ve got my little revolver here,” a New York passenger boasted. “We’ll make light of those heathens, won’t we, Jake.”
“That’s Mr. Farson to you.” Our driver wasn’t one to be called “Jake” by a stranger.
“Making light of warriors isn’t advised.” Robert chewed his lip. “Why don’t you wait inside, Dell.”
I hesitated but then did as Robert asked, lifting my skirts up as I took the steps slowly to listen to him talk to Jake and the New Yorker. A bird someone called a meadowlark chirped a cheery tune in the air perfumed with sagebrush. The evening heat was oppressive, and I felt perspiration beneath my corset. I left the door open to the sunset, leaned against the doorframe, fanning myself with my fingers. I could tell that Robert was considering something—namely suggesting we take a separate trip, again, that he head to Helena without me.
I certainly didn’t want to wait for peace in Oneida—which might take months or years—though the little Mormon town was pleasant enough. It would be less so without Robert. I wanted to be with my husband no matter what happened, rather than wait as the wives of soldiers did, for word of his life or his death. I think it was the first moment that I considered my mortality—and Robert’s. What would I do if something happened to him? I didn’t linger long with those thoughts. Instead I urged the cook at the station to finish up the fried chicken to take with us.
Through the window I watched as Robert gestured with his hands, the two other men nodding their heads, looking my way. Then Robert took the steps in a long stride, his mind made up to leave me behind, I knew it.
I grabbed our dinner box and met him at the door. “Pardy,” I said, reminding him that we were all for one and one for all. I touched his evening-stubbled cheek. “We’ve plenty of fried chicken to get us to the next stop if the Indians don’t take it from us. Let’s be on our way.” I handed him the hamper before he could protest, asked the New Yorker to help me up, which he did, casting wary eyes at Robert. Then the bulky man plopped across from me, squeezing himself between stacks of mailbags.
Robert stood at the stage door by then. “Dell—”
“Hand me the food. I’ll hold it on my lap. Doesn’t appear to be any other room except next to me, and that’s where I expect to see your handsome frame.” I gave him my warmest smile and refused to let him see any of my own trepidation. “Doesn’t it look grand? Red at night, sailor’s delight.” I scanned the blazing horizon, then back at him.
He looked at the sunset. His eyes glazed again.
“Smell that chicken. Yum.” I took a deep inhale.
Robert inhaled too, his eyes thawed. Then he handed me the hamper, which I placed on my lap.
“Let’s go, Jake.” Robert lifted himself into the stage, pulled the door shut, while Jake from on top gave the shout to his team, ribbons in his able hands, and we were off.
Mailbags stashed like sausages were stuffed everywhere, including where other paying passengers might have sat: on leather seats, beneath them, lashed onto the outside where our luggage rode. Inside, we were locked into a single position, unable to stretch our legs and barely able to move our bottoms. Like pickles in a jar, Robert and I held each other upright while the New Yorker—James Randolph—sat like a sausage between gray bags marked U.S. Mail.
“We’re so packed in here I can barely pull my rifles.” Robert looked toward where the weapons rested, barrels down, on the other side of a mailbag next to the door. I saw for the first time what he was seeing: a situation where bravado wouldn’t be enough. We were in a war zone and the poor man was stuck with one other good soldier—the driver—and two misfits when it came to self-defense. I vowed to have him teach me how to shoot once we arrived in Helena, if we arrived. Meanwhile, I needed to reassure him that whatever happened, I was here because I wanted to be and because he’d had the confidence in me to push the railroad to let us be a partnership in the first place. I wasn’t going to fail Robert nor the railroad, and I didn’t want him to assume blame for whatever might happen next.
“It’ll be alright.” I patted Robert’s knee. “It’s been quiet for more than a week now. You’re a good shot. Jake’s skilled. I can follow orders. Maybe tomorrow you can show me how to reload so I can at least hand the rifle to you.” He nodded, swallowed. “I admit I’m scared. But my father always said fear wasn’t a sin at all, not when you did what had to be done. I heard General Crook say he’d rather be with you on the battlefield than any other man.” I pushed my palm through his elbow, pulled him to me. “We’re in good hands.”
He looked me in the eye then and seemed to forget our New Yorker was eavesdropping on our lives when he said, “I love you, Carrie Strahorn.” That’s when I knew how scared he was.
“You’d better. My love for you would be pretty lonely if it didn’t have a pardner.”
Being jostled in a stage while scanning the horizon is not my idea of a good time. But as we traveled at night—the moon didn’t rise early—it was soon dark, with stars dotting the sky like sequins on a black gown. I vowed to never utter a moment of complaint, even when my legs ached to be lifted and rested on the seat across from me, when my knees tired of the hamper pressing against them, when I sneezed from the dust and couldn’t reach my reticule now stuffed under a mailbag somewhere beneath my seat. I won’t mention the urge my body had. Robert handed me his handkerchief that turned out to be the one I’d given him when moisture dotted his head. We didn’t talk much, listened to Jake urging his team on. The New Yorker soon snored. We were so loaded that we couldn’t move as fast as I knew both Jake and Robert would like, and if spotted by warriors, we’d be easily overtaken by the Bannock’s faster ponies. It seemed a good time to keep praying.
Dawn greeted us and I would have liked to relieve myself, but daylight was not only the most dangerous time but privacy was absent. We rambled on, gnawing on the fried chicken, wiping our hands on now dry towels. They’d been moist when I’d put them in the hamper. We changed out the horses at a small station. I found a sagebrush to relieve myself. And returned to learn that Jake and our trusty team would remain. The new driver spoke little and Robert knew nothing of his skills as a defender, which added to his wariness and mine.
We were more alert now, watching for signs of Indians. We stopped once beside a stream while the men carried buckets of water to the horses and I found a spot to squat. Then we were off again, movement being our best defense, but not so hard our dear horses would collapse.
Robert didn’t talk much, which was rare for him. His caution reached out to me and I felt small in the landscape where we rode vulnerable as newborn babes. We all have some say in the things that happen to us, even being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Somewhere along the way we made choices. I remembered a college friend say she’d survived three hurricanes and wondered why she had been singled out for such tragedy and then one day asked herself, “Could it have something to do with where I live?” She moved after that. I was here—we were here in this wilderness by our own choices, and no one else bore responsibility for what happened to us.
As night approached again, we reached the next stage stop, such as it was. Four stalls and feed awaited the weary horses. The other half of the building housed our quarters. The sign over the station door read “Hotel de Starvation, 1,000 miles from hay and grain, 70 miles from wood, 15 miles from water, and only 12 inches from h—.” I guess the stationmaster had a lot of time to make up signs but in a moment of sensibility left off the last letters of this one. Or he ran out of paint.
A single room served as kitchen, parlor, and sleeping arrangements. More signs stating “God bless our home” followed by “Wanted—a nice girl for general housework. Apply within” were scattered around the room papered with pictures from what appeared to be a police gazette with garish photos of death and destruction, not the perfect antidote to the previous twenty-four hours of fear. I was certain any “nice girl” would want to change the paper at least. I could hear the horses kick and paw on the other side of the thin partition between the animals and us.
“What news do you hear?” Robert asked the proprietor, who was also our cook.
“Not so good. The last stage was burned out, horses stolen, and the driver killed. No passengers, fortunate for them.”
Robert looked at our driver, whose eyes had gotten larger.
“Will you stand by us if there’s trouble?” Robert put the question to the jehu.
Our New Yorker took offense. “There’s no call for accusations like that. We’re in this together.”
“Some would say. But I’ve known drivers to cut the traces and ride off on one of the mounts when trouble approached. Will you cut and run?”
The jehu’s face turned bright red, but he said he’d stay with us, though he looked aside. I wasn’t confident, but there was little to be done about it. Then our New Yorker glared at the driver and said that Robert and I would be looking out either window seeking enemies but that he’d have his pistol pointed at our jehu, and if there was any cut and run to be done, we’d all ride out together.
We left at night again, with a full moon. This stage was smaller, called a mail jerky, with canvas top and sides, so we lacked even the safety of a wooden conveyance. My back felt like an ice pick had entered it. At midnight, we reached the next station, but there were no fresh horses.
“Most likely the tender was too scared to go out to bring them in,” Robert whispered as we huddled by the stage door.
“He says the Indians drove the horses off,” the jehu said. He watered the team, murmured to them.
“If they had, they’d have burned the place and killed him,” Robert said.
“You’d best stay.” The proprietor stood in the door now. “I heard tell there were Indians near, less than a few hours before you arrived. You’ll be safer here.”
I looked at the clapboard structure that to me offered no more “safety” than our canvas jerky. I’d already climbed into the stage and listened as the little man’s voice shook with fear camouflaged by his angry tone.
“If you won’t stay for me, then at least stay for that woman’s sake.”
Robert said, “That woman is my wife and she’ll decide.”