by Karen Osborn
Sally is able to walk again. She worries about losing Rachel to Indians or sickness before they reach California. Yesterday we passed a fenced-in grave site, the markers for two brothers, dead within a day of each other from cholera. We have passed a number of such graves, and sometimes there are several of them standing together. It took both Martha and me to pull Sally away, and she would not let go of Rachel’s hand the rest of the afternoon, carrying the child on her back when she complained, much as I begged her to put Rachel in the wagon and save her strength.
Your Sister,
Abigail
September 3, 1867
Dear Maggie,
Last night we heard of more Indian killings. A band of Indians attacked a wagon train some ten miles ahead of ours, killing six of the men and one woman and her child. They plundered one of the wagons, stealing all that was in it, including several hundred dollars, the bags of grain, and the yoke of oxen, then they shot the little girl who lay inside the wagon four times.
This morning the Captain decided we would proceed anyway, armed and ready against all attacks, but Sally refused to go on, saying she would burn the wagon if Roger did not agree to turn back east. I know you cannot imagine our meek Sally threatening thus, but Maggie, this land is nothing like Virginia, and every one of us has been changed by it.
Roger does not have much patience. He attempted to pick her up bodily and throw her into the wagon, and when she kicked and screamed that she would walk back carrying Rachel, he cuffed her. Clayton said that any woman gone crazy needed the sense knocked into her and warned me not to interfere, but I ran towards them, pulled at Roger’s arm until he stopped long enough to hear me.
“Sally’s not in her right mind,” I told him. All that she lost—her child, her brother, and her first husband—were in my head.
When Roger let go of her, I told him to hitch up his wagon, that I would see that she came.
“I’m not leaving her to get her own way back,” he said in his defense, and then went on about the dangers of traveling back alone and how their only safety was to stay with the wagon train, until finally I saw how scared he was, and I pitied him.
The land is dry, with little vegetation. At first I thought it had no color, as everything except the sky seemed gray or brown. But these last few days I look out across the land and see that the brown is mixed with different shades of red and even orange. And there are plants. One that grows in abundance is given the name “prairie torch.” It has stiff sharp leaves and a tall flower stalk that shoots up into the air and is covered with small yellow blossoms. Yesterday we traveled through a field of what Sally is sure were bluebonnets. I would give anything to see the field in the spring when thousands of deep-blue blossoms cover both sides of the trail.
The day before yesterday there was a windstorm, and we had to make camp early. The road was nearly all sand, and some of the wagons had sunk to their hubs. The oxen strained under pulling their load. We were stopped for a day and a half, and the children enjoyed this inconvenience as if it were a holiday, “visiting” with their friends in the other wagons or curling up with a favorite plaything under a comforter, protected from the wind by the wagon’s canvas.
When the storm died, Mr. Garfield rode out to hunt buffalo and returned with his feet swollen up from the needles of the prickly pears. Needless to say, there was no buffalo hide. The men do hunt antelope, deer, and fox. Every so often we pass a ranch with a well of good water and are able to stop and refresh ourselves. Some days I feel sick from all the heat and exhaustion, but we keep moving.
We have seen mud houses, which we are told are the huts of Mexicans or Indians. The few Indians that came to our camp tonight were peaceful, but as you can imagine, we were wary. They seemed to know nothing of the killings and were impressed with my blond-headed child, stroking his hair and commenting to one another about it. A young Indian woman who was with them was pock-marked. They have contracted small pox from us and do not know what it is that kills them. It is said that they get it from digging up our dead for the clothes and jewelry.
Please tell Mother that we will reach New Mexico in a few weeks. If the land is as inexpensive and as rich as we hear, perhaps she will come out with you and John when you join us! I am so anxious to see all of you,
My loved ones,
Abigail
September 27, 1867
Dearest Maggie,
Oh, how can I tell you? Maggie, I do not know if I can write this down on paper and send it to you. My baby is gone, drowned by the Pecos River. Two days ago now, and still all last night I spent searching for him. Clayton woke me as I was sifting through the bed clothes before light. “Stop,” he said. “Lie still and sleep.” But how can I when Josh, my littlest, is gone?
“You made me leave him,” I cry out, even when I do sleep. I wanted to make a bed for him in the wagon, carry him with us to New Mexico. But Clayton insisted on burying him beside the trail, not even a picket fence to keep the wolves away. Five hours I carried him limp and bluish in my arms, still Josh with his glistening white hair, I carried him until every strand was dry and pulled the gown I’d sewn for him last winter over his head and carried him some more, and he was sweet-smelling and soft. “Please let me bring him,” I begged Clayton. “It is only two weeks more, maybe three.” To leave him when we were so close.
It was near dark, and Clayton had the shovel. The sound of him breaking hard clay. “Go to Amy,” he kept telling me. “Leave his body alone now. Go to her.” He thinks my mind is gone. His voice is soft, but his eyes are hard on me as the dirt he breaks.
Abigail
October 1, 1867
Dearest Maggie,
I will put this down now and say it all. Do not tell Mama and Aunt Celia, not yet. We had paid the Indians to ferry us across the Pecos River at Horsehead Crossing. There was no other way, as the river was wide and too deep for oxen or wagons. I had the children in the front of the wagon. The current was swift, we knew this, but it was a calm, still day, heat and light shimmering off the water. I sat with the children before crossing and watched the dragon flies light on the water with their clear, transparent wings.
The crossing seemed easy; the Indians and their strong rafts a blessing. Roger and Sally were behind us, and I leaned out of our wagon and waved to them. Then, part way across, as water lapped against the raft and Amy and Josh peered out from inside the wagon, I heard someone yelling before the shots were fired. Carl Thomas had discovered a small chest missing. He accused the Indians of stealing it, shooting at them, and us dependent on them for our lives. Carl’s raft overturned, and I felt ours sway, the wagon almost rolling off, going under. I had Amy’s hand, but when I reached for Josh there was nothing. Clayton dove for him, but when he brought the child up, there was nothing even the old Indian, who tried a good part of the morning, could do.
Sister, I have cut some of his hair to keep but do not have even a picture of him to carry.
Your Sister,
Abigail
Chapter 2
November 12, 1867
Dear Maggie,
We have settled in one of the mining towns in the southwest part of the New Mexico territory. Mr. Carlton and the Prestons and Mr. Howell decided to stop here also. There is gold fever in this area, and hundreds of people have come to these newly risen towns to make their fortunes. Clayton is investigating a vein, which they are digging out of the bedrock. Meanwhile, we are living in a tent camp with at least a hundred other miners and their families. Some of the shelters are made of carpets or bedding hung on ropes. Fortunately, our tent serves us well. We have dug it into a hillside for added warmth and spread the wagon cover on the ground as a floor.
One sees every kind of person here: Chinamen wearing their strange, colorful jackets and small black caps, Mexicans, hearty, rugged men who have come down from the mountains of Colorado, and those, like us, come from the east. The camp is populated mostly with men, but there are a few families. Our immediate neighbors are
the Prestons, who have three boys, the youngest of whom is eight. I spend afternoons with Mrs. Preston, or Mira as she insists I call her, planning and cooking an evening meal. This is no easy feat, as there is no fresh food to be had here and we are forced to live off our staples of flour, sugar, meal, and dried apples. Clayton and Mr. Carlton have been successful at hunting the deer and antelope, so we occasionally add meat to our meals of biscuits and cooked grain. I have had to cook out-of-doors over a fire, heating the food on a pile of red-hot rocks, and we eat out of cups and plates of tin.
There are many rough men to be found in the camp. A good portion of them are disappointed to learn the gold must be dug out of the ground. I think they envisioned themselves scooping it up with their hands, as if something that precious would have been scattered across the desert by fairies. Their disappointment often turns to anger, and Maggie, this is a corrupt place full of gambling and fighting. There was a man killed two nights ago in the camp, shot dead, and there was talk of riding down the ones that did it and hanging them.
Each day nearly bursts with the pitch of excitement, someone screaming, “Gold, Gold!” or the blast of a gun. I could hardly stand it except that the mountains nearby cut such an amazingly clear and vibrant line against the wide, seamless sky. I never tire of looking at it.
How are you and John and the children? Amy still asks for her cousin Irene. We do miss all of you.
Your Sister,
Abigail
December 12, 1867
Dear Maggie,
I was ecstatic to get your news. I am sure Alexander is a beauty, and I know how glad you are to have Mother nearby. We have moved to another camp, near the river. Clayton is helping to establish a mill, and we have secured a “house” for the winter. It is really no more than a one-room shelter built of rough pine boards, but we have a small stove to heat it with. While Clayton is away, making his fortune, Amy and I spend our days in the camp, where I am paid to cook for several of the men.
There is another woman, living in a shelter next to ours, a Mrs. Norris, but she is afraid of her husband, who is cross and sullen and likely at any time of day to come home, so I do not visit often with her. She came over yesterday to sit by the stove and have a cup of tea, and I wanted to find some words that would ease her. She is less than twenty years and married without more than a month’s engagement. Marriage can be a blessing or a curse, and I suppose none of us guesses to what extent we have sealed our fates when we agree to pledge ourselves with a ring.
There is an actual town here, with a dry goods store, but the prices are so steep I was unable to purchase anything. The currency is in gold dust or nuggets, which are carried in small bottles and weighed on scales. They look like glass filled with sky glitter, a child’s play pretty.
While we were encamped by the first mine, Clayton traded our oxen for a pair of horses, so they are now our means of travel. Some afternoons, if it is warm enough, Amy and I ride out in the wagon along a creek bed or to see the mines and the mill where they grind the ores that are dug from the ground. I still cannot get used to the sky, how blue in color it is and how much of it there is, sky, sky, sky stretching over this piece of desert. Clayton says I am “sky-crazy,” and I suppose he is right. It seems, to me, full of promise.
Your Sister,
Abigail
January 14, 1868
Dear Maggie,
We have lasted more than a month now in our wooden shack. I spend much of each day preparing breakfast and dinner for the men, but they are kind to me and appreciate any small treat I am able to give them, a few potatoes mixed in with the soup, well-risen bread.
I have done some work for Mrs. Wilson of Kansas, helping with her three children as she has a new baby. I do the sewing and cooking, whatever I have time for. They live in a more permanent structure, with a wood floor, and it is pleasant for Amy to sit playing by their stove in the afternoons while I do a few of the chores. She pays me in gold dust, and so I have accumulated nearly as much as Clayton. Her husband has found so much of it that they nearly sprinkle it around the house.
Mrs. Wilson is pleasant and a gossip, so I have learned the comings and goings of the town. There were three men killed last week in a saloon fight. Mr. Norris is suspected of having been involved. His wife had confided to me earlier that day her hopes of escaping him. She had planned to ride with another couple to Colorado, where she hoped to look for her family. But the story is that Mr. Norris returned in the night and took her with him. No one knows where they have gone, what stretch of desert or cliff or mountain.
There are numerous places where outlaws can hide. They disappear for years or turn up living in Mexico off their stolen goods. Poor Mollie, for she is a sweet girl, kind and frightened and innocent, will be dragged through the desert, and I doubt I will hear of her again unless it is her body that is found.
Mrs. Wilson claims the Norrises’ shanty was searched for evidence, but none was found. Last night Clayton said that this place is too rough, with killings every week, and he stayed awake until morning, listening for bandits.
At least on the trail we were assured our company was honest and good. The Prestons have gone on to Pikes Peak, and Mr. Howell departed for California. Mr. Carlton is in a neighboring mining town. This has become a place of strangers. As soon as spring is here, we will look for a house to rent outside the mining towns.
Two days ago there was talk of an Indian raid on the mine, and they decided in the event of an attack they would lower the women and children down into the mines. I told Clayton I would prefer scalping to being buried alive, but he refused to smile and claimed I make light too much of danger. I am not as afraid of Indians as I am of some of the miners who would be lowering us in the buckets.
Oh, I will try not to be forlorn. Clayton insists that soon he will make his fortune. Any day now I shall find myself living in a mansion!
Your Sister,
Abigail
July 29, 1868
Dear Maggie,
We are settled in a small town some fifty miles from the mining towns, in what is known here as a house. It is all made of mud and a few rough timbers, with a flat roof, and the floors are earth also. We have two small rooms and a third I made by hanging a quilt. Our yard is large enough to keep a few chickens. The land is very dry and so full of sand that a windstorm can make it drift over the trees. There is a place not far from here where the sand is six inches deep, and at times one can see great drifts of it.
I have stretched scraps of bright cloth across the narrow openings that are our only windows, and I set up the table we brought from home and the two chairs. Our bedding is rolled out on a few loose boards set directly on the ground. Amy sleeps on a bed roll in the corner of our bedroom. Small and rough as the adobe is, it seems royal after the months we spent in the tent and the dugout. The worst of it is the snakes, which come inside whenever they please. Twice I have woke in the morning, only to stare at one curled in the corner of the room. If we cannot chase them out, Clayton shoots them.
The town is quite small, with just a post office and a store that sells flour, soap, and sugar. Everywhere we hear the strange babel of tongues; there are so many foreigners here. The river is not far from us, and Clayton says we can get the water we’ll need to farm the land. In front of our yard, there is sage brush and cacti, a long-thorned prickly pear and cholla, which reach for the sky with thin arms covered with a fine, sharp fuzz. Clayton jokes that he will go out and trim them the way you would trim fruit trees planted near a front porch in Virginia.
Clayton is gone at the mines three and four days at a time, so it is just me and Amy here. The quiet is a relief to me after the constant noise of the camps. I worry about Clayton crossing the desert alone, as there are plenty of Indians and Mexicans who will shoot a man for his horse, but I prefer being settled in a home far from the shoot-outs and fights. The week before we left, there were killings in the streets over gold nuggets. Clayton says that the mine had given out. He is
at work on a new one now, which Mr. Stone has asked him to excavate. There is a lack of water in this region, which makes it difficult to separate the ore, but he is confident he will find a large vein.
Here, in our house of dirt, there is no one to bother us, there is no one at all to even talk with. Amy and I spend the day baking bread or sewing the clothes that got worn out on the trip. Already, she is good with a needle and thread. There is much to practice on.
It has been months since I have had a word from you. Give me news of everything. And please, now that we are settled, tell John he must set a date for when you will come and join us!
Your Loving Sister,
Abigail
November 20, 1868
Dearest Maggie,
It was a pleasure to read your letter, so full of the descriptions of your children and their small antics. I appreciate your offer to send a Christmas package. This year’s holiday will not be any more bountiful than last year’s. Please send some pecans, if you can, and persimmons. Amy is asking for pears. Any fruit would be most welcome. We have plenty of flour for salt-rising bread, a few dried apples, and a little coffee. I was able to purchase squash and dried corn.
Last week, when the weather turned quite cold, we woke to find frost on the bed covers and snowflakes on the table near the door. But today it is so warm I let the fire go out in the stove.
You said nothing in your letter about joining us, and I pray you are still considering making the trip. If you leave early enough in the spring, you can avoid some of the heat in Texas. It will have been two years by then since we have seen one another, too long for sisters like us to be apart. I cannot bear it.
Lovingly,
Abigail
February 2, 1869
Dear Maggie,
We were most grateful for the nuts and fruits, for the thread, lace, and notions you sent to us. There is such a lack here of everything but the basic necessities. You said nothing in your letter about joining us this spring, and instead you encouraged me to bring Amy and “come home” for a visit. I do not understand why you are so reluctant to discuss taking the trip here. I can only imagine that Mother has convinced you not to come or that John has found new business interests.
