by Rosalyn Eves
A maid answers the door, and, after a searching look over our unfamiliar company, calls Mrs. Jackson instead of letting us in the house. I wonder if strangers turn up at the door often, or if the maid is just being cautious.
Mrs. Jackson, however, recognizes Alice and me almost at once. “Good afternoon! We met at Dr. Avery’s, yes? But I’m afraid I’ve forgotten your names. Come in, come in! I was just about to sit down to some tea and sandwiches. Would you like some?”
Alice begins to demur, but Will accepts with such enthusiasm that it makes me laugh.
Mrs. Jackson sees us settled into a parlor, with shelves lined with fat volumes of books, before bustling out again. Will and Alice sit down, but I prowl along the bookshelves, marveling that a single person could own so many—almost as many as the library in Denver. But maybe that’s part of the job of a writer.
At the end of one bookshelf, I find an old newspaper wedged between two books. Curious, I work it loose.
It’s a copy of the Woman’s Exponent, from last year. My fingers tremble a little as I work over the familiar names of the writers: Emmeline Wells, Lula Greene Richards. I’ve come across an unexpected bit of home, in the voices of these Mormon women. My throat begins to ache from missing Mama and my sisters.
When Mrs. Jackson returns to the room, followed by her maid bearing a heavy tray, I brandish the newspaper at her. “How did you come by this?”
Mrs. Jackson looks briefly startled but comes to inspect my prize. She smiles. “Oh, yes. I met the woman who now edits that paper when I was in Utah. She sent it to me some months ago, thinking I might enjoy it.”
It does not look as though it has been well enjoyed, stuffed where I found it. “May I have it?” I ask.
Her eyebrows lift again in surprise. “If you wish.”
“Thank you!” I fold the paper and stick it in my pocket, then drift toward the others. Mrs. Jackson sets out plates piled with sandwiches, and my stomach growls at me. But Mrs. Jackson only laughs. “I like a girl with a good appetite. I have one myself.” She hands me a plate and a sandwich, and I take a seat and begin to eat.
Alice explains that we’ve come to try to see the eclipse from the peak but we’re looking for a guide to take us safely up the trail.
Mrs. Jackson purses her lips in thought for a moment, then says, “Try Mr. Navarro, over by the Methodist church. He’s one of the best. If he’s not available, his daughter knows nearly as much as he does.”
We chat easily as we finish the meal—the Stevenses and Mrs. Jackson have a number of common friends in Denver, and Mrs. Jackson has lots of questions about Alice’s proposed eclipse painting.
When she waves us off, I feel better for the food and the new directions, despite the still-lowering clouds.
Mr. Navarro isn’t at home, his services already being spoken for by another traveling party. But his daughter, Daniela, answers the door and says she’d be ready enough to take us up, for a fee. She’s a tall girl, taller than me by a good five inches and nearly as tall as Will, with black hair braided around her head and wearing men’s trousers.
She inspects us carefully, her eyes lingering on the skirts Alice and I wear—particularly Alice’s. It’s a serviceable gray, but the flounces across the hem and sleeve don’t exactly scream practicality. “Are you sure you’re equipped for this? It’s a hard climb at times, and mountain sickness is fairly common among townfolk.”
“We’re tougher than we look,” Will says, grinning at her.
She only raises her eyebrows at him and shrugs. “Well, it’s your funeral. My father usually takes people up the mountain on horseback, but I’ve only got two mounts left in the stables. We’ll have to ride double, which will slow us down. But we should be able to get to the peak by Monday morning.”
“Good enough,” Will says. “I’ll ride with you.”
Again, that slow eyebrow lift. “You can ride with your sister, Mr. Stevens.”
Alice laughs. Will murmurs, “I am cast down but not disconsolate, Miss Navarro.”
“What you are is delusional—and you talk too damn much for a man with any sense,” she says, and leads us around the house to the horses.
chapter twenty-four
Saturday, July 27, 1878
Pikes Peak, Colorado
Two days until eclipse
Our chatter comes and goes in pockets of talk interspersed by silence as we ride out of the valley and wind our way upward toward Pikes Peak. I ride in front of Daniela, my skirts hitched up to my knees.
Alice and Will tell Daniela about their grandpa and his hotel, and about their father and his family, who settled in New York and then Ohio before coming to Colorado. Daniela tells us about her own father, who was part of the original gold rush on Pikes Peak twenty years earlier, then stayed on and made a living farming in the valley and leading expeditions up the mountain. Daniela’s mother, who died when she was small, was Tabeguache, one of the bands of Ute Indians living in Colorado.
Daniela nods toward the faint trail before us. “My mother’s family used to live on the mountains before the prospectors came. They hold it sacred. Look.” Daniela points to a ponderosa pine nearby, the bark showing an old scar. “You can see where Tabeguache have gathered the inner bark for medicine.”
Her story echoes that of Sarah and Brother Timican, the Paiutes from back home who came to church the Sunday before I left. They also talked about how the coming of settlers to build cities in the Rocky Mountains changed their way of life. I don’t know how to undo those actions, but I can listen. I can try to understand my own role in all of this.
Daniela tells other stories of her mother: How she knew the times and seasons for all the plants that grew in the mountains and valleys. How she knew when to burn, when to gather, how to make and use and store. “My mother’s baskets were always the most prized for their tight weaves and fine patterns.”
When Daniela’s stories end, I tell them about my own parents coming to Utah from Europe and England. I think about all the different stories behind ours, all the lives and distances crossed for the four of us to intersect in this moment.
We pause at the base of the mountain for a meal, sometime in the late afternoon, and I stare up the slopes in dismay, wrapping the coat I borrowed from Mrs. Stevens closer around me. I cannot see the top of Pikes Peak: the clouds are too low, an impenetrable ceiling cutting off our goal. Right now it seems impossible that we are only two days from an eclipse of the sun. It feels as though we may never see the sun again.
Daniela squints up at the sky. “I was hoping to reach Tweed’s homestead around dark, but I don’t think we’ll make it before the storm bursts.”
We keep moving.
The flat gray light makes it impossible to tell the time or gauge our distance. We pass through miles of trail, interspersed by long golden meadows dotted with bright red desert paintbrush and blue larkspur. The air is fragrant with the smell of pine. Though the trail up the mountain is greener than the mountain trails back home, I find myself missing Monroe. Not just my family, but the pinyon and scrub pine too.
And yet, when I think about home, it doesn’t feel as settled as it used to—as though Monroe is only a stopping place, somewhere that I’ll return to but leave again.
It begins to spit rain—cold, stinging drops that turn to a sudden burst of hail. We leave the trail and take shelter under the trees to wait for the worst of the fury to spend itself. My wool coat begins to reek as it absorbs the water, and my fingers, curled inside the sleeves, are like ice.
We struggle to set up tents in the growing gloom, and only manage to get one upright before the rain begins in earnest. We all crowd in together, leaving the horses lashed outside.
The crowding I don’t mind so much, as it reminds me of sharing a bed with Emily and Mary back home. But the sky outside lights up with periodic lightning, and I can’t
help thinking how the whole tent could go up in flames if we get hit, and the water seeps across the ground, through even the coat I’m wearing, and then I can’t sleep for the cold.
In the morning, when we resume our climb, we all move stiffly.
A thin layer of snow blankets the ground. The horses inch upward as the trail becomes steeper.
The bristlecone pine trees grow shorter, clinging desperately to increasingly sheer rock walls. Some look like flags, all their branches pointing in a single direction from the assault of the wind, which howls around us.
Sometimes we skirt the edge of the peak. Alice glances across the trail, to where the sides of the mountain tumble down. “I don’t like heights,” she mutters, reminding me of her white-knuckled intensity when we crossed the trestle bridge.
“It’s all right,” Will says, for once not teasing. He eases their mount closer to the reassuring rocks, as far from the edge as he can reach. “I’m here. I’ve got you.”
We pass by a squat cabin, from which the smell of warm bread wafts in tantalizing waves. This must be the homestead Daniela was talking about. A pair of eclipse tourists, two middle-aged men, emerge from the barn in coats and scarves and start up the trail just ahead of us. They look warm and dry, and for a moment I hate them with a very unchristian intensity.
The meadows and flowers give way to sage and then to moss and lichen, and we leave the trees behind entirely, along with the tourists. We see a pair of mountain goats, but they disappear as soon as we come within sight of them, springing nimbly across rocks in a way that seems to defy gravity.
The clouds swirl around us, peppering us with rain and hail, and then in a fit of cold, a flurry of snowflakes. I’ve heard you can see for miles from Pikes Peak. All we can see is the trail some sixty or seventy feet ahead of us. Everything else is swallowed in mist.
I try to pray for our safety, for Alice’s, but my prayers seem swallowed by the mist too. Nothing seems to penetrate, and I feel the sudden terror of standing on the edge of a chasm—not so hard to imagine here, where not far from the trail the world falls away into nothingness.
It’s Sunday morning. If I had never come to Denver, I would be at church now. Suddenly, I miss that familiar, homely crowd with a fierceness that slices through me. Instead I’m on the side of a mountain, growing more chilled by the minute. I’ve never really believed in a fire-and-brimstone hell. But maybe this is hell: slowly freezing to death, cut off from God and nearly everyone that I love.
Will has kept up a steady stream of good-humored conversation, but by early afternoon, even he has been wrung dry of words. The air here is thin, and though I drink deeply from my canteen, I cannot shake the beginnings of a headache.
Guiding their horse to the side of the trail, Will tumbles from the saddle and vomits into the bushes. Alice dismounts after him.
Daniela watches Will with concern. “Is your head aching?”
Will rises and wipes his mouth on his sleeve. His skin is ashy, his eyes dull. He nods, then winces.
“Mountain sickness,” Daniela says. “The heights take some like this. You’ll be all right when you get down—best if you wait for us back at the homestead.”
Will shakes his head. “No. I’m all right. I’m here for Alice and Elizabeth, not my own comfort.”
Daniela presses some water on Will, then we move on. As the last of the hardy grasses and short vegetation give way to sheer rock, she stops us.
“We’re perhaps an hour from the summit, but it’s getting dark and I don’t trust the trail in the darkness.” As she speaks, a few flakes of snow begin to fall.
We set up tents against a jutting wall of rock and boulders, where we’re protected somewhat from the wind. We secure the tents with rocks, as stakes won’t penetrate the ground, and crowd inside.
The snow is coming more heavily now.
It is so cold, summer feels like something I have dreamed up. Will curls in a ball inside the tent, his face wan and strained. My own head feels like drummers have taken up residence in my temple. Daniela insists that we drink water, that the liquid will help with the altitude sickness, but it doesn’t seem to do much. I wish we could build a fire, but it’s too wet for that.
The cloud cover swallows any light from the stars.
Alice snatches a bedroll and blanket, and Daniela and I help her shift Will onto it. Alice bends down to set her hand against Will’s forehead. “He’s hot.” She settles down beside him and looks up at me. “Can you take his other side?”
I unroll my bedroll and lie down beside Will, thinking that in any other circumstances our proximity might be shocking. He groans and reaches blindly for my hand. I take it, feeling a rush of concern and affection like I might feel for Hyrum.
Will drops off quickly, followed by Alice on his other side, and Daniela beyond her. I can’t shut off my thoughts. I’ve never been so far from home, or so high in the mountains. The certainty I felt when Alice and I decided to attempt the peak is gone, swallowed up by a vast yawning gulf of doubt.
Rocks press into my spine as I shift. I try to take even breaths, to calm the spiking panic inside me, but I can’t seem to get enough air.
I worry about Will, groaning a little even in his sleep. Is altitude sickness fatal? Maybe we should send him down the mountain in the morning—or go down with him ourselves.
I worry about the eclipse, that tomorrow will dawn as cloudy and miserable as the past few days, and for all my efforts, all I’ll see is a misty veil shrouding the sky.
Then I worry about Mama. Was I right to delay leaving? What if she’s worse off than Emily suggested?
And threaded through all the rest of it, I worry about this path I’ve chosen. Suppose tomorrow shows that I’m utterly unfit as an astronomer—what then? Can I bear to go back home and tuck my dreams away as though they were nothing? And suppose it shows me that I do have the makings of an astronomer. What then? I can find some way of going to school, I think, but what of me?
Miss Mitchell suggested that I need to bring all of myself to my work. I don’t know what that means.
I know how to be Mormon, and not be an astronomer. I’ve done that my whole life.
I can see from Miss Mitchell and the others what it looks like to be an astronomer and not be Mormon.
But to be both?
Does being a person of faith—particularly a Mormon—disqualify me for scientific rigor? What if my training as a scientist makes me question, even abandon, my faith?
I don’t know what it looks like to be both, if it is even possible. All the voices around me—Mama, Dr. Morton, Miss Culbertson—believe it is not.
In the snow-chilled dark on the side of the mountain, I am not sure of anything.
Except this: tomorrow is the eclipse.
chapter twenty-five
Monday, July 29, 1878
Pikes Peak, Colorado
Approximately seven hours to eclipse
The morning of the eclipse, I leave the tent to find that though it’s still cloudy overhead, the clouds have broken on the plains and sun streams across them. It’s the most curious effect, the light coming up to us instead of down, the meadows luminous yellow and green, as if the sun rises not over the horizon, but comes swimming up to us through translucent layers of grasses.
Daniela is already up, currying the horses. Will emerges from the tent. His skin is still chalky, his eyes bright with pain, but he is upright.
“How are you feeling?” I ask him.
“As though someone has placed a giant bellows in my brain and is plying it for all they’re worth and I’m trapped on a ship during a storm.”
My own head still aches. I force myself to draw slow, shallow breaths, but every time I think about how difficult it is to breathe, panic stirs in my gut.
Breathe, I think. I’m in no immediate danger; it’s only t
he altitude.
Alice exits the tent, yawning and stretching, in time to hear Will’s words. She frowns at him. “You’re ill. You need to get down the mountain before the symptoms worsen.”
Will shakes his head, but gingerly, as though afraid to trigger a deeper headache. “I promised Papa I’d be responsible for you and Elizabeth. How would it look if I abandoned you now?”
Alice puts her hands on her hips. “Papa won’t be impressed if you kill yourself, William Lancelot Stevens. We can care for ourselves just fine.”
“I’ve seen your type before, climbers wanting to summit the Peak in the worst of weather, just to prove they can,” Daniela says, her lips curling. “I don’t see the sense in it. You can’t get through life without some risks—not if you’re living—but you can be smart about those risks. What are you proving here?”
Will sways for a moment, tight-lipped. Then, “I’m proving myself a man of my word. I’ll be all right. I promise if it gets any worse, I will go down the mountain.”
Alice and I exchange glances. Sense has never been Will’s strongest suit, but maybe this expedition is changing him too.
Once we’ve eaten some stale bread and cheese and dried fruit, we head up to the summit. Daniela won’t bring the horses up any farther, so we crest the mountain on foot, picking a way along mossy outcroppings, around boulders.
The summit of Pikes Peak is covered in uneven rocks, some the size of small houses. A dozen or so people already cluster on the peak. A tourist party, complete with blanket spread across a large boulder and bottles of wine chilling in a nearby snowbank, sits some distance from a more scientific group. Several men work near a stubby stone building at the far edge of the plateau, adjusting a massive telescope on a wooden platform.
My mouth goes dry. We’re here. The ghosts of last night’s doubts return: What if the sky doesn’t clear in time for the eclipse? What if I cannot do this?
