14
Backtrack to Bonanza
Robert is leaving me. He says only for a few weeks, but he needs to look over a timber stand and check mining conditions in an area impassable by stage right now because of flooding streams, and the only horses available for me to ride are not trail broken. I vowed to make the best of this separation, knowing I’ll soon be moving on again. This vagabond life may have adventure written on it, but there is little room for friendship building.
June 25, 1879
I accepted that the swollen streams and lack of ferries was a good reason to remain behind, but I was as good a horse rider as Robert and they surely could have found a seasoned mount for me. They had wanted to go without me. Pard too. At least he made no complaint when Mr. Norton set down “the law.” I think he rather relished going off with a good guide and the author major, camping out as in his “days of old” when he was twenty-two instead of now at nearly twenty-seven.
There were distractions in Bonanza, I admit, and people were warm and generous. We packed picnics and climbed heights to carve our initials in trees. Where the streams had sent their swollen flows onward, we found good fishing. One gentleman sought to improve my fly-fishing and said kind things about my skills. It was something I found peace within, that flick of the wrist, watching the line drift in the stream toward a spot I thought a trout might be resting in a shady pool. Several of us planned a weeklong fishing trip, in fact, that got cut short when two horses disappeared and after two days of searching could not be found. So instead of riding all the way out, men went ahead a mile, then left a horse tied tightly (this time!) until walkers came to pick up those mounts. We women would ride until the next marked area, usually a mile or two down the trail. We’d leave the horses tied for the walkers/riders behind us. Walk two miles to the next tied mounts, get on, ride a mile or two, and so it went for twenty miles until we made it back to Bonanza.
Where I was not happy. This separation agitated me. It was a dangerous trip Robert engaged in and my imagination knew no limits. I wondered if I waited as a widow without knowing.
Pard’s traveling partner, a military man and attorney, had left his office key with me. I tried the diversion of writing at his pine table. After I wrote to my mother describing the office in detail, including mentioning the scent of old pipes and a few colorful paintings on the walls, I sketched out through words what was happening in my heart. My worry over Robert. The feeling of aloneness despite the kind people to spend time with. The uncertainty of the future. I even penciled a scene with us sharing mounts on that interrupted fishing trip. And I expressed on paper how upset I was that Mr. Norton had made the decision about my remaining and that Pard had not dissented. Writing the words made me feel better. And I vowed to write more often of what I felt and not just of everyday observations. So as not to worry my mother, I didn’t mail that one, kept it for myself.
I was in the major’s office writing when I saw riders approach through the window and recognized the officer’s mount. Without waiting to see Robert, who was surely behind him, I straightened up my papers and bundled them as I stepped outside to greet my darling Pard. I’d missed him!
He wasn’t there. Only Major Hyndman and the guide.
“He’s gone on to Boise. Everything’s fine. You’re to wait here until he returns.”
I had a range of emotions to write about that afternoon, I can tell you, though I no longer had the use of the major’s office. Once again, I had been left behind with no say in it. I broke a pencil pressing so hard on the paper expressing my thoughts about my dear “pardner” who gave me no recourse, assumed I’d do as he said. Didn’t I always?
Writing, and the hospitality of the people, helped calm my grievances, but after two weeks more, I wanted to get back to where there was a railroad so I would more likely get into contact with Robert. I felt adrift without him, though I would never have shared my loneliness with the fine people of Bonanza. They only saw my “happy lane.”
“He won’t want you to make that trip to Salt Lake on your own,” the major insisted. He had kind eyes.
“He’ll be grateful in the end that he doesn’t have to backtrack to Bonanza to pick me up.” The words Backtrack to Bonanza sounded like the title to a novel I might write about a woman left behind and how she dealt with her wayward husband. Alright, he wasn’t wayward, but it was a novel. I could make him any way I wanted. My Pard, my liege lord, was willful, however. I could be too.
“A stage is my second home,” I told Major Hyndman, grateful he didn’t ask where my first home was because I had no answer and I realized then how very sad that made me.
I headed to Challis. At the stage stop there, I encountered a ticket agent for the UP in Omaha who had just come through and he urged me not to make the trek. “It’s alkali and lava rock, hot and miserable as any place I have ever been. I will not go back that way until I can go by train. Reconsider, Mrs. Strahorn.”
But I didn’t.
The first stop at Big Butte would have been uncomfortable with its mix of private travelers, their teams, and stage passengers all packed into a rather small stop. But Providence reigned and a US Marshal and his wife were there. I knew them slightly and they graciously looked after me. He had booked a room and he suggested his wife and I share it, as it had recently been cleared of a rattler by a snake-killing dog.
It was at that stop that I was reminded of the stalwart women who peopled this untamed country. Cooking and cleaning for guests day after day, fighting dust and snakes and dealing with uneasy men with guns. My life was so privileged by comparison. And when I spoke of my gratitude for the fresh water in the basin in our room or mentioned how good the johnny cakes were or asked “However do you keep your dishes so clean in this alkali country? You’re remarkable!” my words brought tears to their eyes. The effect of a compliment seasoning hard, dreary days was something I could give and vowed to do that more. Kindness. To notice small moments of service, even asking for a woman’s name, brought joy out of proportion to the simple act. We all want to be known.
In the morning, the marshal arranged for me to ride atop with the driver when we left, a marginally better seat for finding a smidgeon of fresh air. But there was no avoiding the powdery grit. We pulled bandanas up over our noses, and the driver—his name was John Johnson—slapped the ribbons on the horses’ rumps and we started out. I wondered how the animals breathed. They too needed bandanas.
The grit seeped through our scarves, clogged our throats, filled our noses, shrouded our clothing, so when we disembarked one could barely tell us from the dusty earth.
I had several days rumbling through that barren country. If I never see another lava rock, it will be too soon. Salt Lake City was a mecca of warm water, a place to put my feet up and write. There’d been no such option on that journey south.
“Can you locate Robert Strahorn for me? He’s likely in the Boise country. That’s my husband. He works for the railroad.”
The UP agent stood as though at attention. “I’ll send a message to track him down for you straightaway, ma’am. No problem at all. Thought I knew that name.”
It wasn’t the first time that I wondered if Pard might have backtracked to Bonanza while I headed to Salt Lake but given his intention to go all the way to Boise, I figured it would have been weeks, if not months, before he returned for me.
After two days, I received a telegram. “Go home to Omaha. Stop. Grand Central Hotel. Stop. There soon.” He signed it “Love, Robert Strahorn, Chief, Union Pacific Public Relations.”
Did it mean we’d be staying in one place now? Had Robert written all the books, traveled to all the places in the West that the railroad needed, and now he’d be drawing on those trunks of copious notes to write more pamphlets? Perhaps they’d identified the places where new towns would now be promoted. I danced around the room, holding the telegram.
Chief of the Union Pacific Public Relations Department. A promotion.
We’d have much to talk about in Omaha. Might this mean a home of our own? A place to consider taking in an orphan or adopting a child or two? Maybe I could get published as my sister had. As my husband was. The idea felt welcoming, and after weeks of travel mostly without my Pard, I looked forward to that place called Omaha, seeing it with now more experienced and hopeful eyes.