“So it looks like we should build some corrals.”
Fales slapped his leg:“I like how you think, young lady!”
On August 30, 1886, I was proudly riding into town next to Jim in his Bain freight wagon to file my “squatter’s rights” claim on one hundred sixty acres along Horse Creek in the Sweetwater Valley. My claim number was 2003. To prove my intent, I noted I had already built a two-room log house and an irrigation ditch to bring water from the creek. There it was, an official paper with the seal of Carbon County, attesting to the fact that in five years, if I continued improving and using the land, I would own that property free and clear under the Homestead Act.
As soon as we left the courthouse, Jim and I marched into the Rawlins House and spread the document out on the table for Mary Hayes to see. She congratulated me and gave Jim a friendly pat.
“I hear you put out a nice dinner spread. And you’re still making those wonderful pies! Good for you, Ella. And now, Jim, make me a happy woman and invite me to your wedding to this nice young lady.” She gave him the eye of you-know-better-than-that-James-Averell. He smiled back and agreed that indeed would be a joyous day.
Jim took me on a side trip to see the Rawlins schoolhouse that was being built when we first met in January. They did an impressive job. It’s a two-story brick building with a bell tower that makes it look like three stories. When Jimmy pronounced it “a real feather in Rawlins’ hat,” I couldn’t agree more.
We stopped at J.W. Hugus & Co. for grocery supplies. I found a floral cotton fabric to make a new dress, and picked up old copies of the Carbon County Journal to catch up on the news. On the ride back to the roadhouse, I entertained Jim with the stories. The Panama Canal was under construction somewhere. A fourth of the United States Army was gathered in Arizona Territory to hunt down Geronimo—again.
I couldn’t resist reading an item from my favorite column, “Home Happenings.” We’d just left Dyer’s where Jim had stocked up on whiskey to resell at the roadhouse, so I knew this would interest him.
“A character known as ‘French Louey’ became possessed of a desire to go into the wholesale liquor business and as a starter for his future stock he stole a case of ‘Old Forrester’ whiskey from Mr. J.C. Dyer. He was doomed to disappointment, however, as Marshall Finley nipped his scheme in the bud by taking Louey to jail. He was given a hearing and sentenced to do sixty days for the benefit of the city.”
Jim hooted and said he’d never think of stealing from Dyer because if he did, he’d be out of luck the next time his own stock ran low.
“There are better reasons for not stealing, Mr. Averell.”
“Yes, Mrs. Averell.”
“Oh Jimmy, I wish we could go to Cheyenne in a couple weeks. They’re having the first Wyoming Territorial Fair. It says the Union Pacific is offering half fare rates from all points of Wyoming. We could take the train and see the fair. We had great fairs in Kansas. My brothers showed their sheep one year and won a prize.” My mind was dancing with the thought of such a grand trip in September—such a great month, with trees turning color and that ripe smell in the air.
But my dance stopped when Jim said, “We’ll see,” which meant we wouldn’t.
We had a happy ride back to the roadhouse with my claim certificate in my pocketbook. This was a day I’d always remember with a smile. The hills shone purple and gold as we got home.
Chapter Ten—I Wanted a Nice Christmas
We didn’t get much of a Christmas in ’86.
I’d never seen a winter like that one, even back in Canada where winters are pretty fierce. Kansas wasn’t like this, even on its worst day. A normal Wyoming winter is miserable, sure, and there are days I’d trade a winter here for almost anything anywhere else. The snow falls until you have to dig out of your cabin and then the wind howls and then it snows some more. By Thanksgiving, you’re already getting tired of it, so you can imagine how you feel when it finally gives up to spring in April. I already knew that kind of winter, but that’s not the winter we had in 1886. No, that year, I found out that a Wyoming winter can be Mother Nature’s most unforgiving attack.
It started early and stayed late—it froze on top of ice and then froze again. It starved every critter that relied on the land, and it wasn’t just cows that died of hunger and cold. A couple good men got lost in the storms. The only ones who got fat that winter were the wolves. Their nightly howls terrified me—their proud announcements of yet another feast on a beast that had died in its tracks. Their cries were so heartbreaking, I bet the Shoshones rethought their idea that a howling wolf at a full moon meant good luck. Because in 1886, it sure didn’t.
No going into town because you couldn’t stand to be in an open wagon that long, no matter how many layers you wore or how many blankets you tucked around you and pulled over your coat like an Indian blanket. Even inside the cabin, you had to break up the ice in the bucket before you could make coffee in the morning. And now you drank coffee, not because you loved it, but because you’d drink anything hot to fight off the cold that was sneaking into your bones.
I killed all my chickens rather than see them freeze and we needed that meat. I never ate so many beans in my whole life. There was a mountain of frozen cans out the back door. I ran out of flour and sugar before New Year’s and it seemed like forever before we got more supplies.
So you did with what you had or you did without. Mainly without. I knew by December my wood wouldn’t last. Every time I put on another log, I cursed the calluses I got in chopping all that wood, day after day, all spring and summer and fall. But I did it because the first thing you learn on the frontier is that if you don’t chop wood every day when you can, you won’t have wood when you can’t.
Even following that rule wasn’t enough for the winter of 1886-87, when every rule went out the door and every human hope died.
I wore almost everything I owned every day to keep my limbs from stiffening up with cold. I stayed in bed longer than usual because that was the only place I was warm—and that was only because I had all my pieced quilts stacked on top of me. The only thing I can say of a positive note is that I lost weight all that winter because you burn up fat just trying to stay warm and there wasn’t that much to eat even when you wanted to.
And I knew if I was suffering this much—me, a young, sturdy, healthy woman who knew how to take care of herself—what was happening to those older and punier and weaker? Just thinking of that made me want to cry.
The winter would have been hard enough all by itself—eventually they’d called it The Great Die-Up—but it came after a miserable summer and fall. I’ll never understand how you can have that much drought in the months when crops and gardens are supposed to grow, and then so much wet snow in the months they aren’t. But that’s the way it turned out.
Gunpowder isn’t as dry as that summer. The grasslands that are normally full and lush were skimpy at best or not there at all. Poisonous weeds we normally didn’t bother with because the healthy grass choked them out, now had a free reign and the poor cows didn’t know any different—they were so hungry they ate anything and when they ate the poison weed, they died. Cowboys looked like ghosts when they rode to the roadhouse, covered with dust and dirt. They wore their neckerchiefs over their faces so they could breathe and always looked like dirty thieves when they showed up on your doorstep.
You could tell from their stories and their tone that they were sad for the poor, starving cows out there, fending for themselves on the open range, and they didn’t even know about the winter that was coming yet. But they already knew there were problems.
The way it was supposed to work was simple—cows would roam wherever they wanted over the open range all summer and fall, eating their fill and then they’d survive by foraging whatever they could find under the snow during the winter. In the spring, a cowboy band would come round them up and take them home to be branded and sold off, especially hap
py to see all the mothers and their new calves. But the way things were supposed to happen and the way they truly happened in the winter of ’86-87 were two different things.
My Jimmy was predicting bad things before we ever got one snowflake. “There’s too many cattle out there on a range that can’t feed that many in a good year, and this isn’t a good year, my friends. This is the worst spring and summer I’ve seen.” He used a word that you never saw in the newspaper and you only whispered. He said the land was “overstocked.” And while he usually got a blasphemy back at him to scold that he was wrong, he sometimes got a nod that he was right.
But I wasn’t worried about cattle on the open range. I was worried about my garden. I’d planted in the spring—planted way too much Jimmy kept saying, but I wanted to be sure my first garden on my first land was something to brag about. I never got a single bragging right out of that mess I called a garden. Bet I didn’t get half the produce I should have—in fact, I know I didn’t get half. My potato plants almost gave up altogether. When I’d pull up a plant and expect to find ten to twelve good-sized potatoes, I’d find one or two small ones. I expected enough tomatoes to can sauce for the winter, but I only got a few, and most got dry rot before they were even ripe. When I figured I could count on my squash, I saw the vines brown up and the yellow blossoms fall off in failure. And even what little grew, the grasshoppers got most of that. Never saw or heard so many of those terrible bugs in my life. Jim said they could eat as much as a cow—he’s exaggerating of course—but there’s so many of them that by the time they’re done, they’ve stripped the land and the garden and that awful clicking sound they make has driven you crazy. It’s the sound of someone eating you out of house and home.
If I remember anything of that summer, it’s the sound of grasshoppers, and I bet even the cows knew they were their competition for the little grass there was.
I canned what I could, but by the time of the first snow, we’d already eaten most of what I grew that summer, and there was just a little to help us through the winter. Jimmy knew if I hadn’t overplanted, we wouldn’t have had anything, so at least I won a point there.
Even the berries down by the river didn’t have their usual color and flavor, and they at least had water—not as much as usually flowed in Horse Creek, but still there was some. I tried to can them, like my Ma taught me, making clear, jewel-colored jars of sweet jam that anybody would love. I’d planned on making jam for my family and neighbors for Christmas, but what I got was dull, too-sour syrup I’d only serve to Jimmy if nobody else was around. The only time it tasted anything close to right was when it got soaked up in a flapjack. So the only good thing about not having much of a Christmas is that I didn’t have much of anything to give as gifts anyway.
What got me most was how the land around me was screaming all summer and fall that it was hurting. This part of Wyoming Territory was one of the prettiest places you’ll ever see. There’s rolling hills here and there to give the land some personality, the sunrise streaks the sky with so much life you don’t care that your day had to start early to get everything done. And the sunsets. Oh my, if I was a poet, how I could tell about the sunset. It is so golden you wanted to cry that you’re lucky enough to see it. Not regular gold, but a color so deep and lush it’s too good for a queen. And there’s a blue in that sky that I’ve always wanted on a dress, but I can’t imagine it on cloth.
That summer, you couldn’t see those golds or blues anywhere. You saw faded out, washed out, dirty colors in a sky that looked so tired you felt sad. Little did we know then that the only color we’d see for month after month was either the white of new snow or the dirt of horses and wagon wheels trudging through it.
This would have been my first Christmas of my new life—a lovely home with Jim, as well as my own log cabin on my land. It would have been time for me to carry on my Ma’s traditions and start my own. I’d watched my Ma carry her Christmas ideas from Canada to Kansas, so I knew it wasn’t where you were in your body, but where you were in your heart. Even when we had nothin’, Ma always made sure the holiday was special, and I wanted that to be part of life for Jimmy and me, too.
Before I knew none of this could happen, I planned on baking cookies and breads early, like Ma always did. I cut some pretty calico fabric so I could wrap cookies in the cloth to make a proper present. Ma always said that once a year you should honor the birth of the Christ Child by giving everyone you know a little something, and if it was sweet, all the better. I know people waited all year for those little cloth bundles to come to their door at Christmastime, which meant my Ma was thinking kindly of them again. That was one of my first real responsibilities—besides minding my brothers and sisters—delivering those bundles to our neighbors in the days leading up to Christmas. I figured I’d do the same thing here. I’d put all the pretty bundles in a basket and borrow Jimmy’s buggy and go around to my neighbors and give them a Christmas treat. For the most special ones I’d add a jar of my jam, but we know how that turned out.
I’m not just sayin’ this because it would make me look good, but I truly intended to drive all the way over to Tom Sun’s place and give his pretty missus one of my bundles and then drive down the road to Bothwell’s ranch house and give him one, too. Christian charity at this time of year was a tribute to the birthday we’re celebrating, and even though I bet old Bothwell would throw anything I made away, that was his business, not mine. I had no idea how Mrs. Sun would react, but everything I hear, she’s a good woman and I bet she would take it in the spirit it was given.
I wasn’t sure what I’d use for a Christmas tree, as pine trees are scarce around here, but I knew I could make some kind of tree and once it was decorated, nobody would notice anyway. When I moved to W.T., I brought three tatted snowflakes my Ma had made and two paper cutouts from Grandma Close to put on my tree. They were small and easy to pack. I knew even as I left home that I wanted to take some pieces of home with me, so besides the Bible my Ma insisted I take along, these little ornaments were among the few things I brought. I kept looking all summer and fall for something here on my land to use for more decorations, thinking I’d find something that could be tied on my tree, but except for a jawbone of an antelope that was already bleached out, I didn’t find anything. And I didn’t think a jawbone was the right thing for a Christmas ornament. If worse came to worse, I could tie pretty ribbons on my tree, and I’d saved some for just that purpose. I wasn’t sure I’d put candles on the branches, though, or maybe if I could find some, I’d put them on but not light them so as not to fear for fire.
I know they say a Christmas goose is the proper thing for dinner, but our family wasn’t much on goose and I was bettin’ Jimmy wasn’t either, so I planned a wild turkey that I’d shoot and dress and fill with cornbread stuffing. It would be so big we’d have turkey for a week afterwards. But there were no wild turkeys this year. Don’t know what happened to them, but my fear was they couldn’t make it in our drought and my prayer was they’d come back again.
Before this awful winter, my neighbors and I had promised to get together at Christmastime to share our baking and our stories and I know someone would bring a fiddle and we’d all dance. For awhile this fall, I even had Jimmy helping me to make gifts for the children of our neighbors—I needed six things for girls and four things for boys. James was whittling sling shots, and I was making rag dolls. Of course, nobody could travel over the mountains of snowbanks, so all our dreams and plans were put aside. It wasn’t until the spring thaw that we could deliver those presents and the children all liked them, but an after-Christmas present just wasn’t the same thing.
I was making Jimmy a new shirt (he had no idea). For our new life together, I was piecing a special quilt that we’d use on our marriage bed when we could tell everyone we’d been hitched. It had the prettiest fabric, some even silk, and I would never have had piece goods like that, but I got lucky one day when a man came by the roadhouse
for a hot meal. He looked so sad that I had to ask what was wrong and he told me he was movin’ back East because his wife had died out here in W.T. and he couldn’t stand it no more. I think he said he was from New Jersey, and he had hoped that leaving the West would help him forget his sorrow.
“You know, ma’am, you look kind of like my late wife and you’re built like her,” he told me, and I took that to be a right-nice compliment.
So I poured him another cup of coffee and I gave him a piece of my berry pie and I told him, “Here, nobody can stay too sad when they eat my berry pie, so have a piece on me and I hope it makes you feel better.” Then I left him alone because a man should have his peace when he’s eating the best berry pie he’s ever tasted.
The man smiled at me when he came up to give me his fifty cents for dinner and he says, “Yes, indeed, Mrs. Averell [because strangers were the only ones I dared tell] that was the best pie I ever had besides my Margie’s, and she’d have been pleased to know that another woman along the way understood how much I like pie.” And we both laughed.
Then he put a suitcase on the table and told me, “I was taking these clothes of my Margie’s with me home, but on better thought, I think you should have them. I think they’d fit you and you could maybe have use of them. Now, if this isn’t proper…”
But he couldn’t get the sentence done before I was saying how much I’d appreciate such a generous gift, and if he was sure he wanted to part with them, he could be certain I’d wear them in good health and care for them always.
Well, in grief, that man’s eyes were lying to him because the dresses were all too small for me, but some were such beautiful fabrics that I knew right away they would be perfect for a splendid quilt, and that’s what they became that winter of ’86 when we didn’t have much of a Christmas.
I ended up moving into the roadhouse that December because we thought we could make it if we combined the households and were certain we couldn’t if we kept both places going. For appearance sake, I’d make a point of mentioning how cozy it was off the kitchen because the stove was lit all night. In truth, I spent most nights snuggled next to my husband in his cabin next door, and if you don’t know how nice body heat can be on a cold night on the prairie, then you’ve missed out.
Cattle Kate Page 15
