31
Spokane Splash
We are in Hawaii, not exactly the West of my lumbering stagecoaches, though they have them here with fine horses and seats of worked leather. But even in this tropical land I discovered sturdy cowboys moving large herds of cattle against the backdrop of volcanoes and of course the quiet sandy beaches. It feels like a honeymoon, so much better than the trip from Illinois to Omaha all those years before. Maybe we’ll truly have a new start when we head to Spokane. Or will Pard surprise me and keep me in the tropics?
New Year’s Day, my birthday, 1900
It was December again before Robert said, “Hawaii. For this Christmas.” He’d returned from his foray to various spots west and east. It was a drizzling day in Marengo, spitting snow. A warm, sandy beach sounded wonderful. I’d settled my parents’ estates and we three sisters had small amounts to invest on our own. Robert and I used our passes to book a Pullman across the continent to arrive on a steamer that sailed across the Pacific.
When it was decided we should leave Argos with my niece’s family in San Francisco to save him the strain of travel in his later years, I thought my heart would break. I made it my decision, though it had been Pard’s suggestion. The choice came after watching that dear dog play with my niece and her children and seeing his eyes clouded and knowing his time to leave this earth could not be far behind. I could not stand it if it happened while we were on the road or in Hawaii, or Alaska, or wherever our future paths might take us hither and yon. And a hotel is not the greatest playground for a large, old dog. I hugged his neck. “Goodbye, old friend. You have a good life with my niece.” He twisted and licked my neck and then we left.
I still grieved both my parents—and leaving Argos behind added to that sadness—but we were now wealthier than we’d ever been, and that was supposed to keep me always in my happy lane. It didn’t. I said as much to Robert.
“It’s natural for you to feel saddened. Your mother was dear to you.” He had gathered a cup of tea from the steward, made his way weaving with the ship’s sway as we headed to the islands. So far, seasickness had stayed away. “And Argos your good friend.”
“It’s been a year. I should be over it, don’t you think?”
He handed me the cup and saucer. Sat across from me on the divan. “Hawaii will do you good. Put sad memories of death and loss behind you. Come spring, we’ll make a splash in Spokane.”
I rather liked that image of “splashing” but wasn’t sure how that would happen. We arrived on Christmas Eve. Then on the eve of my birthday, at a hotel in Waikiki, I managed to get my dear Pard to dance with me to a ukulele playing “Auld Lang Syne.” He kissed me, held me closer without his usual brief squeeze before releasing me.
“It’s a new century and a new beginning, Dell.”
“To get you up and dancing? I guess it is.”
“No, Spokane. That’s where we’ll put down roots. I promise.”
I didn’t want to hope too much, but planting roots anywhere is an act of hope.
On our last days, after the luau and a ride to the top of a volcano and watching young dancers move their hips to festive music, we decided to go out on the ocean with one of Pard’s old comrades in the military, another railroad colonel named Stearns and his daughter. Mrs. Stearns declined to don her bathing costume and join us on a log canoe with each of us using our paddles. An outrigger would keep us from being swamped, we were told.
But that day, our boat was slammed by a twenty-foot swell, and we were dumped into the sea, hitting a coral reef before we could resurface, gasping for air. Pard hung on to me, pulling me to the upside-down boat, grabbing me when another wave tore at us. One of our native paddlers grabbed the Stearns girl and swam with her to shore while the other tried to manage the broken outrigger as the colonel, Pard, and I hung on.
I could not swim.
Pard pushed me astride the boat bottom, where I tossed up gallons of sea water. Then realizing his mistake—that neither he nor Colonel Stearns could easily cling to an overturned boat—he tried to convince me to come back into the sea.
Go back into the water? Risk that we could turn the canoe over before we sank ourselves? But Pard’s shouts of assurance, his eyes holding mine and with a belief that he would not ask me to do something menacing without the conviction of the rightness of it, gave me courage. And I left behind the security and slipped back into the sea. He held me up while the two men turned the boat over, water sloshing over the sides we clung to.
In those moments, I didn’t know if I would survive and I longed for the peace I’d found on that terrible stage ride in Colorado years before. The colonel hung on. Pard kept his arm around me and lifted me when I appeared to lose strength. Eventually, the waves took us shoreward where our young companion and her rescuer cheered us on.
Then as we seemed near to rescue, the colonel gasped. “Oh, Mrs. Strahorn! Oh, Mrs. Strahorn!” He hung in front of me. I feared he was slipping away into a warm watery grave.
“We’re almost there,” I shouted. “Hang on.” His wife paced on the shore.
“Oh, Mrs. Strahorn, I fear—” he gulped a bit of water, spit it out—“I fear . . . I am losing my suit.”
Ah, the demands of the culturally refined. “Worry not about your trousers, Colonel. I’ve seen men’s underdrawers.”
“But I don’t wear them, dear lady. All I have on is my bathing suit.”
The constant waves grabbed against his swimsuit that he didn’t dare reach to pull up for fear the waves would steal his grip on the boat.
Pard shouted, “If that’s all we lose on this voyage, we are indeed lucky, Colonel.”
I began a hysterical laughter that Pard joined in and so did the colonel. What else was there to do?
It was as close to dying as I’d come in recent years. And it did seal to my mind the shortness of life, of our responsibility to live fully, generously, and with joy. I vowed to do that and also thanked my dear husband over and over that he had kept his partner afloat. I guess he always had.
We arrived by train into Spokane, a city that had grown dramatically since we’d been there years before. A great fire had swept through the business district in 1889, but instead of it leaving ashes and shambles behind, the city grew from it, using the ash as humus. Washington was a state now. Women had the right to vote in the territory in 1883, then the Supreme Court knocked it down in 1887. But here was a city—ready to leave behind whatever it must to go forward into this new century.
In addition to the Northern Pacific and Great Northern railroads that already served the city, Pard imagined what a grand terminal Spokane would be if three other railroads were to be induced to bring their steam engines: The Milwaukee Road, the Canadian Pacific, and his dear Union Pacific. And he hoped to build that North Coast Line to link Portland to Spokane. Even while we lolled beneath the palm canopies, considered the mainland only when the mail boat arrived—or so I thought—Pard was dreaming again. He hadn’t chosen Spokane for the landscape and climate and people as I had. He had chosen it for the railroading potential.
We stayed at the Spokane House like many others new to the area, identifying a neighborhood to live in. At least I thought that was the reason we were still at the hotel after three months into the new year. He’d been busy with his schmoozing of yet more investors.
“Why don’t we find a modest home,” I said. “Get out of this hotel.”
“No, no, we’ll have a mansion when the time comes. But right now, there’s too much to do. Get involved, Dell. Suffrage is alive here. Sing your heart out.”
“I’d like to sing in my own home. Sit before a fireplace, keep my feet warm.”
Ever since Yellowstone, my toes easily numbed, as did my fingers when hit by a drop in the thermometer.
“Don’t be impatient.” He shushed me with his hand as though I was a child.
“Impatient? We finally have the resources—you say—but they can’t be spent on a home for us?”
“We don’t want to look too—immoderate. It’s all about pacing, Dell.” He pulled his shoes off, stayed sitting on the bed. “We appear wealthy because of our careful management. That draws investors. After we’ve moved things along, friends see others comfortable with me and my business acumen, we make our splash with a lavish mansion where you serve people, make them comfortable for when I close the big deals. But for now . . .” He patted my hand as though I were a pup. “Pacing.”
Something inside derailed me from my happy track. “Pacing? Have I not paced my entire life at your beck and call?” I’d never asserted myself, allowing Robert to make all the decisions while I niggled along beside him or worse, behind him. It was a lightning bolt: I suddenly knew. We weren’t “Pardners.” My heart pounded. Maybe if I had been involved with the canal company at Caldwell we could have stayed. Maybe if I’d stood firm, we’d be raising twins now. Robert put Robert first. He was a friendly snake oil salesman who dealt in land and railroads instead of elixirs and oils. Why hadn’t I seen that before?
“You . . . you’re selfish, Robert. If you treated your railroad partners as you do me, keeping them in the dark about things, always putting yourself first, why would they stay with you?”
He blinked. “Well, I . . . keep them apprised. I accede to their wishes now and then as a partner must. I didn’t think I deprived you of that courtesy, Dell. We’ve been through everything together.”
“It’s difficult to negotiate as ‘pardners’ if someone is walking in front of you on the path. That’s hardly together. It’s rather an independent trek even if the one in front occasionally looks behind to see if the follower has fallen.” I pulled a shawl around my shoulders.
“Where are you going? It’s nearly midnight.”
“Going for a walk. Alone. If I fall, I know how to pick myself up.”
He didn’t follow me and the walk near the falls with its pounding splash gave me time to calm and reminded me of our overturned boat in the crushing waves. I had believed myself safe atop the water-slogged canoe but had to trust Robert’s view that I was not. I had accomplished that leap of faith believing in my Pard, though not yet mastered it. Pastor Boone would say that is the journey we’re on in life: knowing when to trust another on the path with us as we “find our way clear” to God’s direction, living fully in life. So what was my life’s work? I hadn’t yet found it. And that wasn’t Robert’s fault.