“Bet they do have some useful skills, though,” I said slyly.
At that, the men all roared with laughter.
“Come on and join us for a drink and a round of cards,” somebody said.
“All right if I will,” I replied. I think none of them could tell my true age, so it seemed natural enough to offer me a whiskey. I craved the liquor’s warming effect, for winter had sunk deep into my bones. “I’ll stay the night here,” I told the men, “and in the morning when you’ve taken everything out of my wagon, I’ll be on my way.”
I had only just arrived, but already I dreaded my departure. The camp was aglow with fires and the welcoming light of candle lanterns; the night hummed softly with a murmur of friendly talk. From somewhere on the edge of the camp came the aimless, tuneless, wandering sound of a mouth-harp, and it made me feel lonesome, but in a comfortable way—in a way that said, Stay on, stay on—stay and laugh and play games. Live your life well, while it’s here and ripe for the living.
A few men got up, making space for me at a great, blazing fire. The smoke smelled of burning chips and roasted meat. I stretched out my boots before me, warming at the coals. And in another moment, as if it was magicked there, a cup of whiskey appeared in my hand, heavy and inviting. I sipped it—smooth, sweet, woody. I felt the warmth of belonging, of life, spread and slide all down my throat into my belly.
“Takes right to whiskey,” somebody laughed appreciatively. “What’s your name, miss?”
“Jane,” I said. I don’t know why I gave them my middle name instead of my first, for I didn’t feel as if I had any cause to hide from these men. It was just the name that came to me out there in the night, in the comfortable society of the railroad camp.
They raised their cups in salute. “To Jane, the girl mulewhacker! To Jane, who likes her whiskey!”
And then we all drank, every last one of us, till our cups ran dry.
In the morning my head ached from liquor, for it had been many long weeks since I last wetted my tongue. But the ache wasn’t so fierce that I couldn’t tend to my mules. They was all glad to see me, nuzzling my hands to search for the pieces of apple I saved just for them, blowing their warm breath across’t my skin.
“Got to get back,” I told them. “Got to get back even though we none of us want to go.”
The mules nodded in agreement, so I led them to the wagon and began harnessing up.
Cards—faro and brag and three card monte. And laughter and warmth besides. Some people might call it whooping up, but it wasn’t nothing more than friendly interaction, the reaching of a few lonesome souls toward one another in the damp cold of winter, in the isolation of a vast, quiet darkness. Cards and whiskey, and under it all, the gentle singing of a mouth-harp, away off somewheres in the night.
I loved that camp, as I loved the camps I had visited before. I loved the fellas; the girls who preferred a tent to a house, and wild, open sage to mud-packed roads or the orderly walls of a city. This was life; this was living. I never wanted it to end. Still, I couldn’t help but recall (with a shiver of quiet dread) what Braddick had told me. The rails brought change along their slick black lines. Even as we made the West, we unmade it with fire and coal, with the thunder of wheels and the scream of a whistle. I pressed my face against a mule’s neck and breathed in her clear, icy scent, and heard from afar the mauls begin to ring, the rhythm of spikes driven into the ground—of ties being laid, of sleepers scoring deep into the earth.
My life—what brief time I had to live—existed in a place that both was, and was not. The West had just been born, but already it was dying, and me along with it, thirteen years old, cold-scalded, with the fire of the whiskey still smoldering inside and the lonesome cry of a harp in the darkness, echoing faint in my heart.
Winter gave way to spring. Braddick’s ranch bloomed with fresh green points of sage, with drifts of yellow-and-purple flowers piled up against the feet of hills out across the range. I’d done well with the mules and deliveries all winter long, but by the time the snow melted away, I could no longer deny the truth. Braddick’s business was dying—and quickly, too. Winter should have been the slowest season, with fewer camps operating out along the railway lines. But come spring, Braddick found even less demand for his mule team. By then the rails was joining up, like trickles of water that flow into each other and grow into one rushing stream. Soon the trickles would become a flood. Progress was more than Braddick’s business could withstand. I knew it was so, and so did my friend.
On a bright, clear morning, the kind that should have filled a girlish heart with hope (due to an abundance of flowers and birdsong) I came in from the corrals to find Braddick sitting slumped and dreary beside his fire.
“Come here, Martha-girl,” he said to me.
I didn’t like the tone of his voice. I knew hard words was coming—hard for him to say, but harder for me to hear. So I spoke up, kind of pre-emptive, as I shuffled reluctantly toward him. “Let me stay on the ranch. You know I work hard. You won’t have to do no more work if you don’t want to. You can take it easy now, with me here. Guess you’ve earned that much, after a long life of hard toil.”
“Hush, Martha.”
I hushed, for there was a sting of tears in my eyes and I didn’t trust myself to talk without bawling.
“There won’t be a ranch to work no more,” Braddick said. “I got to sell off my mules. Ain’t enough work to justify keeping ’em.”
“No, you can’t!”
“Got to sell off the land, too,” he went on ruthlessly, staring into the low, weak flames. “Move back to town, I guess, and board somewheres.”
I shook my head, mute with pain. My heart felt crushed and severed—aching not only for the animals, who I’d come to love so dear, but for Braddick, too, who must lose the only way of life he had known. Let me never grow so old that I see the world move on without me, I silently prayed. But even as I prayed it, I thought I could hear God up beyond the clouds, snickering.
Braddick looked up at me then, solemn and sad. “I can’t pay you for the work you done. I wish I could, for you sure worked hard and loyal. But I got no money to spare.”
“I don’t want money,” I told him. “You gave me kindness. I guess that’s payment enough.”
“One thing I can give you,” he said. “You take a mule of your own—any mule you like. And a good saddle and bridle from the barn. I guess that’ll be enough to see you on your way safely to… wherever it is you’ll go next.”
Wherever it was I’d go next. I tried not to imagine it—another place like the Altons’, with another Emma to scorn me and beat me. Another kettle of laundry, another stick to sting my burned palm. I’d far rather chap my hands on a team’s reins than in a soup of hot lye and stinking underthings.
“Go on out,” Braddick said, with his head turned so he didn’t have to look at me. “Find you a good mule.”
“It’ll be a hard choice. I love them all.”
There was a pause. It hung heavy between us, waiting for one or the other to break the silence. Then I ran to him and threw my arms around him, and kissed him on his wrinkled old cheek.
“Go on now,” Braddick said. “Better if you get it done fast. It hurts somewhat less that way.”
I spent hours considering the herd before I finally chose my mule. She was one I called Rainbow, for her coat was spotted with great, round patches of black and brown and a grayish color like the feathers of a dove, all on a background of snowy white that reminded me of that first delivery, my first drive out in the world as a lone and grown-up thing. She was flashy and memorable, and I thought a memorable mule might convey some advantage as I struck out into the world again, searching for a place to belong. But Rainbow was sensible, too, and easy to ride.
Next morning, I cried as I clung to Braddick’s shoulders. I knew my face must be scrunched up all ugly, but I couldn’t smooth my sorrow away. He laid his hand on my head, briefly, just as Reverend Wilkes had done to bless me—
but I felt no peace with Braddick’s blessing, only the hollowness of longing, a sharp pain of loss.
“Go on,” he said to me, and gave me a leg up into Rainbow’s saddle, though I hated to lean on him, hated the way he shook and quivered.
I looked down at Mr. Braddick from my saddle, but I couldn’t think of anything to say. So after a minute I just clicked my tongue, and Rainbow and me, we headed off northward, toward Montana and the gold fields, toward the black crisscross net of the rail lines. And somewhere beyond, I desperately prayed, I would find a new way of life—one the trains could never destroy. One that would go on forever, as unchanged, as unchangeable as the West was not.
I braided while I rode. I pulled long hairs from Rainbow’s mane, and from her tail, too, when we stopped for water or to make camp at night. I got pretty clever at twisting and knotting those many-colored hairs into bracelets and hat bands, and whenever we passed through a town I would glide casually past a hitching post and yank a few hairs from horses’ tails so I could have more colors to work with. Hour by hour, I rocked to the steady rhythm of Rainbow’s gait, and braided till my fingers ached, and sang whatever songs I could think of to pass the time.
Here and there, on the edges of towns or in travelers’ camps, I sold my horsehair bracelets for a penny or two apiece. Folks bought them for their daughters, for little girls always like fancy braids and pretty colors. With those few meager pennies, I managed to keep myself fed all the way to a road ranch north and east of Piedmont. I had some mind to continue on to Fort Bridger, and there find work as a mule driver again, though I knew the odds was slim that anybody in Fort Bridger would be impressed by a girl driver. But the road ranch promised a bite to eat and maybe a sip of whiskey, if I could make my pennies stretch that far. Better yet, it promised talk. Talk might guide a body to work—that much I knew—so I was plenty eager to see what rumor had in store.
Don’t know if you’ve ever seen a road ranch in your time, but let me tell you what they was like back then. Most often, they consisted of boarding rooms up above, with a big, open space for drinking and gambling and general milling-about on the ground floor. They always featured a kitchen, though mostly the grub was pretty dismal. Now and then, you’d find a road ranch with a real cook at the helm—somebody who actually knew what to do with a potato and an onion, who could turn most any cast-off butcher’s bone into a good, rich soup. Those was the places that always filled up, packed to the walls—and such places had the liveliest talk, too, and the best faro games for miles around. Nothing draws folks in like a good, hearty supper.
Of course, food and cards wasn’t all a road ranch offered. For a fella who’d been out driving cattle for a week or two straight—or a boy from the rail camps who’d seen nothing but his maul and the ties since his last payday—road ranches was havens of the most precious commodity known to mankind: girls. I dare say those girls made for more appealing armfuls than the type you found out among the rail camps, too, for ranch girls found it easier to stay clean and perfumed and dressed in the finest of clothing. Many a road ranch boasted of ladies who could sing almost as good as the great stars of the stage Back East (though I confess, I never did hear a true-blue stage star sing, so I can’t say one way or t’other.) But if you wanted an eyeful of ruffles and lace and shiny, curled locks—and a handful of something else—there was no place better to find it than in a frontier road ranch.
I don’t recall the name of the place where I stopped that day, nor just exactly where it was. I remember the sky was blue and cloudless. The air smelled sweetly of new-blooming flowers, but despite the pleasant weather, Rainbow had started to sweat from the warmth and toil. I determined that a few hours’ stay would do both of us some good. I tied my mule in the stippled shade of a cottonwood and went inside, with my much-too-thin and lightweight purse swinging from the belt of my trousers.
That road ranch, like most others I had seen, was heavily populated by men smelling of the outdoors: dust and distant rain, cattle dung on their boots. The place fairly shook with the sound of all those voices, for they all talked at once in little groups of three and four, gathered around tables with cards spread before them or huddled together at a long oak bar-counter spanning the back of the room. I edged into the crowd a little skittish-like, but no one remarked on my presence. Evidently, girls wearing britches and carrying great big sombreros in their hands was a commonplace sight along this particular road.
At the bar, I inquired after the price of a bowl of stew. I could smell it away back in the stone kitchen, which hung off the end of the road ranch like a bum leg. It didn’t smell especially rich or remarkable, but my stomach rumbled loud, all the same.
“Fifteen cents,” the bartender said.
I counted out my pennies and found that I had fifteen exactly. The knowledge that I would have nothing left over for whiskey—and nothing left to see me through the next day—curdled my stomach. But my gut wasn’t curdled enough to stamp out the hunger. I handed the coins over.
As I stood waiting for my stew to materialize, I wished bitterly for a snare, like the kind I traded for back on the wagon trail—though truth was, I didn’t know how to use a snare anyhow. Would have been better by far to have Cilus or Lije with me, to catch rabbits or prairie dogs or even the little ground squirrels that didn’t give more than a mouthful of meat at best. But a mouthful was better than nothing, and out on the trails and the long, lonesome roads, nothing could mean the death of you.
To distract myself from my plight, I listened in on the conversation between two fellas set beside me.
“I tell you, Buck,” one said to the other, “Robert E. Lee surrendered. The war is all over now.”
“That war ain’t never gonna end,” the other man grumbled.
“But it did, so you owe me a dollar.”
“Fuck your dollar! I’ll believe it when I see it.”
“What the Hell you gotta see to know it’s true? General Lee paraded in chains across’t the prairie?”
“For a start.”
“The papers’ll carry it soon enough. Maybe even tomorrow.”
I turned to the men. “The war’s over, you say?” I had never been much bothered by the war—far as I was concerned, it was something that happened in a place called Back East, so far away and so far removed from my own toils and troubles, it may as well have been the Queen’s Palace in England or darkest Africa or Timbuk-fucking-tu. All I wanted was a way to slide myself into the talk. Conversation was what I needed just then.
The two men blinked at me, as if trying to figure out what exactly I was supposed to be—girl or boy, or a strange and mystifying spirit from a fairy story. Then one of them laughed. “Look at you!” he said, in an approving sort of way. “Under a disguise, girl? Like running away from a bad marriage?”
I smiled in what I hoped was a playful manner. “Somethin’ like that.”
“Well, yes Miss,” the fellow said. “The war’s good and over now. I heard it this morning at the newspaper office in Fort Bridger. They got a telegraph wire.”
His friend waved a hand, as if to brush away some pernicious stinging fly. “Ain’t no damn telegraph wire at Fort Bridger.”
“There is so. They put it in for the railroad.”
“Railroad don’t need no telegraphs.”
I listened to the two men argue away till my stew arrived. Then I spooned it into my mouth faster than it could cool, gulping it down like a starved dog ripping scraps from a bone. The men ignored me the whole time; they prattled on like housewives.
“Custer was there to witness the surrender,” the first man said—the one from Fort Bridger.
“Shit,” said the other, dry and ironic. “Custer appears just about everywhere, it seems. Like some goddamn ghost haunting every idiotic rumor I hear.”
“They plan to send him out here to take care of the Sioux,” Fort Bridger said.
At this, his friend guffawed. “That so? Custer ain’t got nothing better to do?”
&nbs
p; “Not now the war’s ended.”
“Suppose he’ll come like Jesus Christ, with a sword for a tongue and ‘Fuck The Sioux’ written all down his thigh.”
“Didn’t your ma ever teach you not to blaspheme?” Fort Bridger said stiffly.
His friend, the blasphemer—who I liked best of the two—jerked his thumb toward me as I scraped the last of the stew from my bowl and licked the spoon clean. “Maybe this little scrap here is running from Custer, that it? Maybe her daddy wanted her to marry Old Ringlets but she didn’t like the curl of his mustache.”
I raised my brows, waiting to hear what Fort Bridger would say next. Some folks counted it as grave a sin to take Custer’s name in vain as the Lord’s.
Bridger gave a tired old sigh and looked away, as if Blasphemy’s talk was more than any mortal soul could bear. “Oh, come on now,” he muttered.
Blasphemy gave me a grin and a wink that said he had scored a victory. His personable ways made me sense that maybe the time was right. I reached into the pocket of my trousers and pulled out one of my horsehair bracelets.
“Want to buy this, Mister?”
He took it in his hand and eyed it carefully, but then passed it back with a shake of his head. “What would I do with a little string of hair? I look like some damn Indian to you?”
“Ain’t you got a daughter somewhere who likes to play dress-up?”
Blasphemy laughed, coarse as gravel. “Fuck no, or at least I hope not. God preserve me from being a pappy. Fate worse than death!”
“I’m selling these to get by,” I said. “Trying to make my way to Fort Bridger. How far is it? Have I got much longer to ride?” I looked hopefully over at Bridger himself. “You was there this morning, right? To hear them read the telegram?”
Blasphemy rolled his eyes. “He’s a liar, Miss. Don’t put any stock in what he says.”
“You can get to Fort Bridger by nightfall, if you ride hard,” Bridger said. “What you trying to do there, anyway?”
Calamity Page 13
