I rode into darkness and that is where I remained for many a year, not caring if I lived or died. Though I’d of preferred to die, the fear of being bullyragged through all eternity by Iyaiya for taking my life stilled the knife in my hand and kept me from seeking the high cliff. To give you an idea of how low I slipped, I became a laundress. It was as such that I made my way to Trinidad, Colorado.
Coal had been discovered there and I was sudsing for the black miners who brought up that soft bit coal. Worst job I ever had. Worse even than chopping tobacco. Every man with fourteen cents to pay for getting a dozen items washed—two bits if I supplied the soap—believed he was my boss. Believed he was better than me.
I tried a time or two, two hundred maybe, to set those coal-grubbing nitwits straight. I let them know that though I might appear to be nothing but a bedraggled scrubwoman, I had served for two years in the Buffalo Soldiers. All that got me, however, was a reputation as a flannel-mouthed liar. The mockery of those gum-booted gophers got so bad that back in January of 1876, ten years after I rode away from Fort Arroyo, I agreed to let a reporter from the St. Louis Daily Times who had heard a rumor about a female soldier interview me. I expected my life would change when the facts came out printed up in a newspaper. And my life did change. Just not in the direction I reckoned it would.
Where I thought my reputation would climb out of the muck that had been thrown on it and shine the way it ought, it went south in a hurry after the story appeared under the title “She Fought Nobly.” That soft-palmed dandy of a reporter got that much right, the “fought nobly” part. He even got a few of the bones of my life, but there wasn’t a bit of the real meat left on them.
As I said way back at the start, what stank the whole deal up was that he wrote that I had “an assumed formality that had a touch of the ridiculous.” “Assumed”? With just a few words, he made me out to be a fraud and every word out of my mouth a lie.
From that day on, the snickering behind my back stopped. Instead it came right round to the front door and the sorriest souse in Trinidad, Colorado, felt free to throw off on me and call me a liar direct to my face.
I showed them, though. When the mining company built a few rows of cheap houses for the black miners who had families, they also opened up a boardinghouse for bachelors. And guess who the single, solitary black female in town able to manage it was?
Since I was tired of my name getting dragged around in the mud, I called the house Miss Kate’s. As Miss Kate’s was the only place in town’d take single black men, the louses and souses figured out double-quick they could either show me some respect or sleep out with the prairie dogs. The slow learners, I helped along with some tutoring from my right hook and a swift eviction. Once I was set up proper, I sent for Clemmie.
She arrived on my doorstep having acquired the helpful ability to read and a shiftless husband that I sent packing. Me and my baby sister, together again. Running a respectable business. I had Clemmie with me. Our bellies were full. We were sleeping indoors on beds. No one told us what to do or when to do it. In this way, we passed a dozen happy years. Without hunger driving me, though, I began to dwell on what I did not have. Which was, first, the pension I was rightfully owed by the United States Army for my years of service. And second, Wager’s personal effects.
All I had of him was the yellow kerchief he’d given me after I became his woman and it wasn’t enough. I wanted that pretty little personal effects pine box that regulations required the army to put aside for the time when loved ones came to claim it. Well, the time had come for the army to do right by me. By Wager. I was his loved one.
Of course, it was possible that the army never put Wager’s belongings aside on account of him being hanged as a traitor. One way or the other, though, I needed to know for certain sure, and there wasn’t but one man who could give me my answers.
Clemmie helped me with the letter to the General. I had her put in that there’d be sweet tater pie waiting for him at Miss Kate’s if he’d care to noon with us. Three months later, when she read the letter that arrived from Washington, D.C., her face went pale. She looked up from the fine parchment paper trembling in her hand and squeaked out, “He’s coming. The General is coming to Trinidad.”