21
Tales to Tell
By the time Pard began our separation from the Union Pacific and moved full bore into land development, I wrote to my mother and sisters with pride that I’d had several more letters published. Robert now penned and printed a monthly paper called The North West Illustrated, an expansion of his New West Illustrated. He’d completed revisions of his Wyoming book, and worked on another title integrating pieces of former articles he called “Where Rolls the Oregon.” He sought my editing advice and usually took it and incorporated some of my writing into his compilation without credit. Nothing has changed, but then I haven’t told him that his conscription of my words bothers me either.
March 20, 1881
My writings were autumn leaves, bright and beautiful and flashy but unmoored from their larger, more imposing hosts, simply dropped to the forest floor to be trampled upon and turned into humus for an acorn to grow one day into a mighty oak. But who remembered the leaves that mulched and gave the nutrient? It’s the oak we admire.
My investment in my mining town real estate had gone nowhere. I paid my taxes on the commercial property, but otherwise, it sat. I guess that’s what happens when one speculates in land acquisitions. It’s risky. I thought I had an inside track, pun intended, with Robert’s having discussed with city fathers that the railroad might well come their way.
We rented a small house in Hailey. Pard’s company hoped to buy up the silver mining town that nestled in the Wood River Valley, build a hotel near the hot springs, market it as a healing resort. We only spent the summers there. It was a respite from boardinghouses and stage stops and we often had visitors. Pard’s father came for a few weeks. Like Robert, he was tall and slender and a gentleman toward me. After a few days, he would share little worries he had, and I’d give him suggestions for his foot that sometimes ached, or he’d describe a discomfort in a letter from one of his sons and ask how to address it. Apparently, I had “I listen” tattooed on my forehead, and I was glad for that. It gave us a way to relate when we had but few days together before he headed out to visit his son in Denver.
He was a more revealing man than Robert. Perhaps that comes with age. One afternoon while we sat on the porch beneath that Idaho sun, he spoke of Robert’s growing up, how he hated to have Robert leave school when he was ten to help him on the farm, then Robert took that job working in a printer’s shop. “He was a little tyke, but with his mama gone and younger ones at home, what could I do?”
“It must have been a very difficult time for you.”
He nodded. “I didn’t need to ask the boy. He offered. He’s that kind of generous.”
“He had a good model.”
He spoke then of the death of his wife and two children in their toddler years. The grief was still raw in his voice, and I wondered how a soul went on after the loss of one’s flesh and blood. Having no children at nearly thirty, and no prospects in sight, I’d be spared of so great an absence as that.
Robert’s father was not the only one who brought small worries to my door, and I found that my “I listen” stature could bring a comfort to others that in a small way brought comfort to myself.
My sister, now Dr. Harriet E. Green of Chicago, arrived that summer in Hailey. She traveled with Alexander Caldwell, a former Kansas senator, who was the president of Pard’s land development company, and his wife, Pace. With them came a Pittsburgh banker, Mr. Mellon. The senator came with a bit of corruption behind his name, having bribed other candidates with cash to get out of the race so he would win. When the subterfuge was discovered, Caldwell resigned and went into banking. Past history was simply overlooked in the West, where criminals of a more violent nature tended to follow the railroad, attempting to overtake a town, while those committing crimes in their suits moved into acceptance, a fresh “den” even if they didn’t always change their stripes. I think Caldwell did, but I write this as a reminder that these were the sorts my husband teamed up with. Shaving the icy edges of ethics.
Robert and I took Hattie and the rest of that party around, showing off the vistas, traveling to Shoshone Falls, a primitive stage stop that Pard and Caldwell believed would make a good railroad depot and which Pard had touted as the Niagara of the West in his book. The falls were 212 feet higher than Niagara’s. Pard could see a hotel near the springs in Hailey and a lovely inn near Shoshone Falls for tourists to gaze agog.
“This is fabulous,” Hattie told me. Well, she had to shout it to me over the roar of the falls. We sat beside them, having made a precarious move down slick lava rocks while the great Snake River surged over smooth boulders, forming rainbows as it plunged into pools and rock cauldrons below. I could feel the thundering at my feet. Cool mist proved a pleasant wisping on our July-hot faces. Later when the two of us walked back in front of the others toward the small boardinghouse that Pard imagined a hotel site one day, my sister said, “Have you written of this place?”
“This one’s Robert’s venue,” I said. “But I did get a lovely review of my work in the Helena Herald. The editor said, ‘Montana’s scenic grandeurs were the charms that broke the chrysalis from Mrs. Strahorn’s embryonic literary talent and developed its charming colorings.’ Quite impressive, wouldn’t you say?”
“It’s a bit over the top, though, don’t you think?”
I felt my face grow warm because I had liked the praise despite its cloying flower. “I write effusively sometimes and I think the editor was matching my style. It might have been a tiny bit lavish.” A thought occurred to me: “You don’t think he was mocking me.”
She shook her head no, but I wondered. Hattie asked, “How did he know it was your work?”
“I’ve written a few stories for the Herald under my own name, with Robert’s approval, of course. Now that we’re in a different relationship with the railroad, there doesn’t seem to be a problem with my expounding as someone other than Emerald Green or A. Stray.”
“I always thought that a funny nom de plume.”
“You got the pun.”
“Sadly, yes. I worry about you.” My sister put her arm around me and hugged me to her.
“No need.” I chirped, so far from any intimate discussion of my mental being did I want Hattie to travel. “I’m fine.”
Back at the hotel, Pace Caldwell, the senator’s wife, joined us. Hattie told her of my nom de plume. It annoyed me a little, her mentioning them.
“Why do women write under those?” Pace asked. She was a tiny woman, birdlike, more with my sister Hattie’s frame than my fuller form. Her bottom barely took up the pillow on the cane rocker. One could see the cross-stitch edges, whereas my chair pillow was drowned by my linen skirt—among other things. I had given up a few of my petticoats though. Travel was cooler that way and thank goodness fashion had given the death knoll to the steel forms for hoops, making way for the flouncy peplum that emphasized my narrow waist over my rounded hips. This heat of Idaho called for a simple summer frock. “I would have read Jane Eyre if Charlotte Brontë had used her real name,” Pace added.
“Charlotte Brontë wouldn’t have gotten it published with her real name,” I said. “Men make those publishing decisions even today. I used A. Stray for a variety of reasons, but one was that I hoped an editor and eventually readers might at least read what I wrote. If it had come from Adell Stray, a woman, I have my doubts.”
“Surely the name Strahorn would have gotten you published.” Pace blinked when she talked. Frequently. Perhaps the western sun was too bright for her pale blue eyes. She didn’t wear a hat as we sat on the porch.
“It did, I’m sure. But I wanted to see if without Robert’s influence, would someone other than my mother like my work enough to print it for general consumption. And they did a few times.”
“Did you write an essay or a feature story, the way Mary got her article picked up?” Hattie asked.
“It was a humorous piece about travel in the West. It was an honest rendition of the conditions, but I think it made people laugh. I didn’t want to discourage them from coming west, of course.”
I went inside and requested a tray of iced tea. We could get ice, with the snowcapped mountains close.
“We women ought to read some books together,” Pace said when I returned. “We could write to each other about them, how they affected us or what we thought was missing, maybe how the story spoke to our hearts in some way. Or didn’t. I’m a terrible letter writer and can rarely find a thing to say so I don’t, but then I lose contact with people. I’d never think to write about the senator’s travels the way you do, Carrie.”
“That’s a great idea.” My sister cooled her face with the boardinghouse’s advertising fan, featuring a drawing of the falls on it. Guests could take the fans with them when they left. That had been Pard’s idea. Commerce mustn’t miss a beat. “I love your letters, Carrie, but you seldom let us know what’s really going on. Your words about Robert are always so sweet, but I have married patients and they let me know that life isn’t always sugared.” She raised one eyebrow at me.
“That’s for certain,” Pace said, “though you and your Pard are such lovebirds.”
“He’s my best friend.”
“Even friends have disturbances. That’s what Pride and Prejudice is all about, really.”
“Jane Austen wrote with a pen name too but gave away her gender, writing as ‘A Lady.’ That was quite nervy for her time,” I said. “It took courage to pursue her passion that way.”
“Courage marks what you’re doing too,” Pace said. “I admire your vagabond life. I could never get comfortable not having a home base.”
I considered what to say. “Riding the stage or horses into unknown places isn’t courageous. I’m rarely alone.” I hadn’t told either of the women about my time waiting in Yellowstone with rifle in hand to fend off a grizzly bear while the men chased after our horses. I sat quite alone then. “I’m more inclined to think of the true pioneering women as courageous. There was a mother we encountered on Inspiration Pass one winter, nursing a baby in a high snowstorm, wind blowing, kids sent off with freezing hands to hold horses pawing for sparse grass. It was chilling to think they’d left the green fields of Missouri for that unwelcoming place.” I also didn’t share how she’d blamed Robert for their misfortune on the mountain nor the guilt I felt about my part in that.
“See, we could have quite a conversation sending the letter around, adding to it and posting it on to the next. I bet Mary would join in too. We could let the novels help us think about things like courage and overcoming fears.” Hattie warmed to the idea.
“And keeping marriages alive during strained times.” Pace added that last. Having a husband resign his Senate post because of corruption charges had to be one of those times.
“We could do that. Oh, did you see that deer bound over there?” All eyes squinted toward the rocky landscape close to the falls.
And I successfully diverted the conversation, not committing to the round-robin book letter. The idea of sharing my feelings with people—even those I loved, even about a book—gave me pause. It’s easier to move into what I call my “happy lane.” I’d likely never write about a night we spent next to those falls waiting for the ferryman to rouse and bring us across. We shivered together, the senator and Pace, Mr. Mellon and Hattie and Pard and me without blankets above the falls, hoping the rocks would keep us warm but knowing also that rattlers liked warm rocks too. We used our luggage for pillows, and I confess that though there were stars above us as bright as diamonds, I was so disgusted with our plight that I failed to enjoy them. Now that’s a sin, surely. But writing of that? No. What would my mother say if I had to tell her of Hattie’s demise by a rattlesnake or because of exposure to the elements beside the wild Snake River?
Truthfully, I hated Hattie seeing the primitive nature of our life in the West, one adventure at a time, going back and forth as it were, getting nowhere really, except in and out of the boat, that rowboat a metaphor for my life then. And I was embarrassed, wanting my West to show a bigger heart than the ferryman’s who had neglected us.