23
Buckets from the Boise
I find myself struggling with what to write here. The task ahead is overwhelming. And if I write of the hardships, will that bring me down at a time when I must maintain a stalwart stand? I’ll try to be honest so I may draw on what I was feeling if later I write that memoir. But who wants to read of everything going well when within our own lives things usually aren’t chugging along without a break in the tracks? It will take my greatest effort to imagine what Pard sees and to not be discouraged by the day-to-day plodding through alkali desert toward success. Perhaps I will write less until I can bring in the light that makes things grow.
August 7, 1883 in Caldwell
What I hadn’t realized then—and that Caldwell helped teach me—is that it’s how we respond to the broken tracks that matters, because there will always be brokenness. It’s what we do with the punches we take, the heart-stopping moments, those are the knives that carve out who we are. I came to believe that people born with silver spoons in their mouths never get the real nourishment they need to grow to their full height unless the spoon tarnishes or the food drops off now and then and they have to find a way to pick it up themselves. They’re really deprived, which may be why we call them “spoiled,” like meat left out in the sun.
I was one of those spoiled children until Robert and stagecoaches and Caldwell. Wealthy parents, matriculating at the University of Michigan, a European voice tour and instruction, marrying a popular writer and adventurer, diamonds on my wrist and ears, never lacking for anything. Yes, when Pard gets ill, his needs carve something of my character in how I respond, but any woman wearing diamonds cannot complain loudly, or ought not to.
Pard got the load of lumber ordered in first off and had spoken with a man about setting up a mercantile to handle the lumber sales. They sat on those boards while Pard did his best pitch.
“You’re sure the railroad is coming here? I want to see some side rails before I buy property and start to build.” He was a man after my own heart, that lumberman.
Pard had barely opened his mouth to assure him yet again when we heard the train whistle, and a work crew coming from afar arrived ready to lay the rails. It was what I called “divine intervention” and needed as, until then, our tent was but a lonely dot in that town-building sentence.
We moved full steam ahead and then that lumberman stuck Pard with the bill. Scoundrels abound in a growing town, I came to discover. I worked at not letting that fact discourage.
Then came the death threats. Boise people were truly distressed by Robert’s starting a new city rather than urging the railroad to go where one already was. And I was worried sick each time he had to go to Boise, where once we’d enjoyed ourselves in that bustling place.
“Don’t think about it,” Robert said. We were huddled in our tent home. I swept the canvas floor of what dirt I could, the action serving as a snake patrol too. “I understand why they’re upset. They worked hard to build a town that would do even better with the railroad.”
“Those threats and rumors make my blood boil.”
“Very few people act on their outrage, Dell. As long as they’re making threats, there’s a greater likelihood they won’t manifest it.”
“I’m not sure my doctor sister would agree with your assessment. Threats ought to be taken seriously.” I brushed the dust from my shoes on the back of my calves, one at a time.
“Every time I go into Boise where a bunch of men stand around, and I hear them saying my name before I enter, grousing about me, threatening to run me out on a rail, I greet them with a hearty, ‘Hello, gents. Great to see you.’ They always turn with a scowl that fades into a smile, and they greet me with a handshake. It’s blowing off steam, the complaints, Dell. Don’t worry over it. Fear’s an elixir that feeds anxiety and drains common sense.”
“I won’t try to talk you out of going there, but be careful.” I wiped my hands on my apron.
“I will.”
Robert could lessen my worries with his confidence. Still, I said, “Shouldn’t we try to get a sheriff here?”
“There’s a county sheriff. He covers Caldwell too.”
“And would take hours to reach us after sending a runner.” I put aside the broom, sat on one of the leather folding stools that traveled well in wagons and now helped furnish our home.
Robert took my hand. “Every venture forward carries risk with it. We can’t be deterred by that.”
“I know, but—”
“No buts.” He patted my hand. “I’ll be careful. I’ve calmed many a soldier riled up beyond where he should be. I can simmer down those Boise boys. Don’t let your worries drag you down, Dell. Put that fuel somewhere else.”
Don’t let your worries drag you down, Dell. Doesn’t that sound like a song lyric? Phrases from other people’s mouths would get stuck in a rhythm in my head. Don’t let your worries drag you down, Dell. Fear’s an elixir that drains our common sense. I hummed those mantras whenever I began to hear a dissonant note.
We platted the townsite in August of 1883, and within four months, forty businesses had set up shop. One hundred fifty dwellings grew out of the desert almost overnight, though mostly they began as tents and shacks.
Pard built a frame office to work out of, to meet various investors, to charm and cajole a banker to come, druggist, hardware shopkeeper, and of course there was the necessary saloon operator, though I was grateful Robert hadn’t sought after that commercial establishment. The Fahey brothers came on their own.
We lived upstairs of the Land company’s offices. Not a house. Not even a cottage. I cooked for workers, until Pard and I began taking meals in a freight car, which served as the boardinghouse for the town. That was fine with me. Cooking over an open fire was not my idea of time well spent, but the arrival of cookstoves would have to wait for the train to bring them or to be hauled in with some enterprising freighter leading his sturdy pack mule. Still, a framed house would have been nice.
A tent mercantile opened within those first weeks, operated by Montie B. Gwinn—of Boise, no less—and his wife, Delia. He was the son of the Methodist minister in Boise and he had a sister too. The merchant Gwinns lived in the back of the tent. I looked forward to having another woman in the vicinity.
“Your husband could have convinced the Union Pacific to come through Boise and saved all this mess here. What were you thinking letting him talk you into coming to this jackrabbit-and-badger resort?” Delia had quoted that description from the Boise paper. I’d read it in there myself. She swung her arm to take in the tents and greasewood, the flesh of her arm still swinging long after she’d lowered her hands and her gaze at me.
“Welcome to you as well,” I said. She hadn’t even given me a chance to introduce myself, but I guess I didn’t need to. “The Union Pacific has its own ways, I’m afraid. It’s run by men, after all. And a good many of them take no quarter from a woman.”
She harrumphed but nodded. “It’s just such an effort to start anew, isn’t it? I grew up in Portland and this is quite the change. We’re trying to keep the Boise store going while we’re here and putting up with people not too happy that we’ve gone over to the enemy in the first place.”
The enemy? Was it as serious as that?
“You’ll find the people here quite accommodating. There’s almost a festive mood in the air, a little like mining town eruptions.”
“Oh, we’ve packed into our share of those. At least we’re on flat ground here. And there is the promise it’ll get better once the short line is finished. It will get finished, won’t it? I don’t want to get a supply line all put together only to have it peter out like mines sometimes do.” She had intense green eyes.
“If Robert Strahorn has anything to say about it, you’ll hear the whistle by spring. Meanwhile, can I help you unpack? I’ve got some spare time.”
“Aren’t you building your own stick house?”
“In time. Mr. Strahorn believes the commercial establishments like yours are the most important. People need to know when they get here that they won’t starve to death. Your being here with your husband is significant.”
“Too bad we can’t eat dust. We’d all be fat as pigs.” She laughed. “Well, I am anyway. I like my baked goods too much.” She patted her ample stomach. “I’m hoping the master of the freight-car boardinghouse will let me use his cookstove to make a batch or two of my croissants until we get the stove here. Nothing better than a croissant on the desert. You like croissants?”
“I do. I ate them in France and Italy. Quite different in texture but both quite tasty.”
“I make the French kind with lots of butter.” I’d begun helping her take pots and pans out of wooden boxes and set them on the tables that had been made with two wide boards and legs pegged into the four corners. “Which is another thing. Are there any cows around here? You won’t get families with kids to settle without a few milk cows or goats to serve them. Kids tire of condensed milk. But then, what’ll the cows eat? We’ll have to haul in oats and whatnot. I better get animal grains on the list. At least until there’s water for planting crops. What’s happening with the water? It gets old hauling our buckets from the Boise.”
Something in the way she said those words—hauling our buckets from the Boise—made me smile. I could almost hear a tune in my head to go with them.
“Mr. Strahorn’s working on that this very afternoon, trying to hire engineers and shovelers and mules enough to start that big ditch. Where would you like this spider?”
“Oh, put it over there for now.” She pointed toward a box turned upside down sporting several other frying pans. She’d be cooking over an open fire, bless her. “Sorry I barked at you.”
“Understandable. We women keep following them, don’t we, through high water and snowdrifts too.”
“Montie always did have big ideas. Your Mr. Strahorn’s like that too. I guess if they weren’t of that kind we wouldn’t be happy either. There’s something invigorating about a dreamer, isn’t there?”
She was right about that.
“Got any kids out here catching the dust?” She looked around.
“No children.”
She hesitated, then said, “We’re childless as well. I imagined one day having children to take care of me and their father. Not to be. Maybe we’ll elicit nieces and nephews if Montie’s sister ever marries.” We worked awhile and then she motioned for us to sit on a camp box and rest a minute. “At least I hope we’ve learned a little along the way and don’t repeat the same pitiful mistakes made when we started out in Boise. My question is, what are you doing here, a lady like you? This isn’t a place for such as you.”
“You’re a lady and you’re here.”
She guffawed at that, a big noisy sound like a French horn blasting from a beginner.
“You are,” I insisted. “Well-mannered, practical, able to adapt as needed, loyal to your husband, with a good business head on your shoulders too. What more is there to a lady than that?”
“Probably a higher quality of the English language than what I speak. Neither Montie nor I ever went to school beyond a few grades.”
“You’ve both done well. Maybe one day we’ll have a college right here in Caldwell.”
“Where we can put out finished ladies.” She held her little finger out with a pretend cup of tea.
“Oh, I imagine more a real educational institution with science and music and sports teams. For both young men and women.”
She guffawed again. “If we ever have children, I’ll send them to it.”
She stood, put her hands on her hips, elbows out and said, “You’ll do, Mrs. Strahorn. You’ll do.”
“Call me Dell. Mr. Strahorn does.”
“Oh, Della is my real name but Delia got into the mix somehow.”
“My real name is Carrie.”
“My sister-in-law’s name. You’ll like her. She’s coming to visit before long. I hope to marry her off to a young Idaho man so I can spoil a niece or nephew.”
Having made short work of the unpacking for the day, she said, “Do you have any errands pressing I can help you with? Turnabout’s fair trade, you know.”
“Now that you mention it, I do. You see that tiny speck of green, way over that way?” I pointed to our plot of ground that would one day sprout a house. “I’ve planted a couple of trees there and I need to do my daily water haul to keep them thriving.”
“Well, let’s get at it, Mrs—I mean Dell. I got a wooden bucket and it’s easier to carry two at a time. Keeps me balanced, though my dear Montie thinks nuthin’ will keep my brain from being unbalanced.” She laughed her French horn laugh again. “No better way to spend a day than hauling buckets from the Boise, bringing green to the desert and shade for the soul. ’Course we’ll have to wait a few years for the shade part.”
Caldwell’s population was six hundred by Christmas. I was stunned. We had a school where we gathered for Sunday services minus a pastor, boasted a telephone exchange and, yes, a newspaper. I was given the first issue of the Caldwell Tribune published December 9, 1883. Editor Cuddy handed me the publication himself and I have it still, a treasure among my papers. Before long there was a competing newspaper, the true sign of a thriving town, where people took their buckets to the Boise, finding shade for their souls. I didn’t have a house yet, but I felt I’d found a home.