I perked up when the faint light picked out the outline of a water tower less than a mile ahead, but when we reached the water tower we wilted. There was no station house. Yet another two hours on, we passed another water tower without a station house.
About two miles past Winona, we stumbled up the steps to the veranda of the La Crosse railroad station. Under cover at last, we wrung our skirts, scraped our boots, and shook out our ponchos.
Ma opened the door. "Anybody here?"
I crept into the waiting room behind her, expecting someone with a railroad badge to pop out from behind a bench and tell us we were trespassing on Union Pacific property. I held my breath, listening.
Bedsprings squeaked in the room behind the door on one end of the waiting room. The door opened and a sleep-wrinkled man in trousers and unbuttoned railroad uniform shirt peered out. "Where on earth did you come from? It's miles to the closest house. And..." he said as he pulled out his railroad watch, "it's one-oh-seven in the morning! The next train in either direction isn't due through here for five hours."
"We're not taking the train," Ma said. "We're walking."
"This waiting room is for the use of Union Pacific passengers." He looked down to see that we were standing in puddles of our own making. I was shivering hard enough to break a molar.
"We've walked fifty miles today," Ma said.
I did some quick figuring. If this was La Crosse, we'd only walked forty-three miles. But if she was stretching the truth to save our lives, I wouldn't quibble.
The stationmaster scratched his head. "It's against the rules," he said. "But I can't turn you out on a night like this. You can have the waiting room to yourselves until six a.m., but then I'll have to come back out to get ready for the first train."
We spread our petticoats and ponchos over the backs of the waiting room benches to dry, then loosened our corsets. A hard wooden bench had never felt so good.
May 10, 1896 – Day 5 La Crosse to Hay
While Ma and I took turns dodging raindrops to the outhouse, the stationmaster, Mr. Willis, stoked the trash-burner stove and prepared breakfast.
When Mr. Willis started to get out three cups, Ma held out a forestalling hand. "Clara's too young for coffee," she said. She didn't know I'd treated myself to a cup almost every morning when she was in bed this winter. The aroma of real coffee—not chicory—and the thought of cold fingers around a warm cup were more than I could bear. "Mr. Willis, I'd like some, too."
"Stimulants aren't good for you," Ma said. She sighed a put-upon sigh and looked to Mr. Willis for sympathy for having to deal with such a wayward, contrary daughter.
I sighed a put-upon sigh, too. How could I keep up with Ma today without some stimulation?
Mr. Willis glanced back and forth between Ma's disapproving look and my longing one. He decided in my favor. "Sure enough," he said. "A cold, wet day needs coffee."
All through breakfast, Mr. Willis had that poised-to-say-something look a shy person has when he's itching to ask you something but is waiting for the right way to put it. I knew that feeling, because it was one I often had myself. As we put down our forks, he finally came out with it.
"Are either of you good with a darning needle?" he asked. "Every sock I own has heels worn thin and a hole in the toe, and I got wash piled up, too. I never quite got the hang of laundry."
I looked at Ma to see what she thought. I wasn't going to have her blaming me for roping us into more work again. I took her wry smile to mean that as tired as we were, we owed him something for breakfast.
While Ma caught up in her journal and curled her hair, I washed and hung clothes by the Franklin stove to dry over backs of chairs. Although the socks were still damp, Ma darned them while I explored the station.
Mr. Willis had a mahogany roll-top desk stacked with canvas-bound ledgers against one wall, and a flat-topped desk for his telegraph key. When a train stopped, he exchanged pouches of ingoing and outgoing mail and helped unload a coffin and boxes from Montgomery Ward. He was matter-of-fact about the coffin, as if handling dead bodies was no different than piling boxes of blue willow dinner plates or cultivators. I stared at the coffin, wondering who was in it. If Ma and I died on this trip, would Miss Waterson pay to have us shipped back home to Mica Creek, or would we have to be buried where we dropped?
I sat on a bench outside the station and watched the sun climb halfway to noon. Using a yard or so of rope I'd begged from Mr. Willis, I tied a long handle onto my satchel so it could ride on either shoulder. Even if I still had foot blisters, maybe my hands would heal. I offered to make a strap for Ma, but she said the shoulder strap would wrinkle the shoulder on her jacket, and that carrying the satchel by hand was more genteel.
Since we weren't starting until noon, we only planned to walk fifteen miles to the next station today. I didn't know if Mr. Willis was grateful for clean, darned clothes or he just felt sorry for us, but he telegraphed the stationmaster in Hay to ask him to find us a real bed to sleep in tonight. If word got out we were willing to do laundry in exchange for bed and bread, we might be doing a lot of laundry.
May 16 and 17, 1896 – Days 11 and 12 Walla Walla, Washington
As we approached Walla Walla, the sun's rays found gaps between the clouds to shine on miles of rolling hills, covered thickly with well-sprouted wheat instead of sage and rock. Pa would have given his eyeteeth for crops that came in that lush.
Between the joy of walking in dry clothes and anticipating the first town big enough for its own newspaper, Ma was building herself up to a tizzy. "Do you think they'll want to take our picture? Will the mayor of Walla Walla want to meet us?"
I just wondered if we'd find food and a bed tonight.
At the newspaper office, Ma handed the reporter one of her cartes de visite.
"Mrs. H. Estby and daughter, Pedestrians. Spokane to New York," he read. His eyes flicked back and forth between the postcard-size picture of us in the black silk dresses we'd donned at the photographer's studio and the muddy vision we presented to him now.
"You must be 'and daughter,'" he said, nodding in my direction as I pretended to peruse a back issue of the Union from the stack on the counter. I supposed he was inviting me to say something, but if I opened my mouth, I'd probably put my elbow in it. Besides, Ma had seen fit to put only her name on the cards; she could provide the fodder for his article.
He shrugged and turned back to Ma. "You're really walking all the way to New York?" He cocked his head, probably trying to decide whether Ma was crazy or heroic.
Ma gave the same speech she'd given in Spokane, and seemed gratified that the reporter was impressed that we would win ten thousand dollars if we reached New York by November 30. She watched as he wrote down the part about the money. "Mention also that we have to earn our own way as we go, so we are open for any odd job," she said.
Ma caught my eyes peeping above the newspaper and gave me a conspiratorial smile. "Except chopping wood," she added.
I lowered the newspaper far enough for her to see my answering grin.
CHAPTER 8
INDIAN ENCOUNTERS
May 18, 1896–Day 13 Union Pacific Railway Station, Pendleton, Oregon
WE STOPPED for the day at the Pendleton station, near the edge of the Umatilla Reservation. While I waited for Ma to finish washing up, I poked through the wire rack of postcards picturing local Indians. The train tracks we followed would lead us right into the reservation tomorrow, which meant that for a day—the whole day and maybe into the night—we would be on foot, without cavalry escort, surrounded by Indians. Was I scared? A little. But maybe I had just read too many Deadwood Dick stories. Anyway, by now I was looking forward to an adventure, as long as it was one I would live to tell.
"Everybody goes for that card, the Cayuse papooses."
As I whirled to see who had crept up on me, the card slid from my fingers. I was too embarrassed to look at the man's face, but glimpsed his crisply pressed blue railway uniform as I bent to retrieve
the card. His black shoes had been polished to such a shine I could almost see my face redden in them. Just as I reached toward the card, he swooped down and plucked it from the floor, nearly bumping heads with me. We both quickly straightened.
He held out the card and pointed to the picture of howling twins laced onto their cradleboards. "Tox-e-lox and A-lom-pum," he said. He pronounced the names with deep-throat clicks that would need a whole new alphabet to get recorded in my journal. "Cayuse names."
"Ma and I have to walk across the reservation tomorrow," I said.
I looked at him for reassurance that we would be safe. His bristly black hair broke out on both sides of his railway cap in cowlicks in spite of an effort to pomade it smooth. His eyes were a gentle brown, the color of walnuts. His cheekbones were high and sharp, like Laplanders from the north of Norway...
Or Indians! I stumbled back a step.
Confirming that my suspicion was correct, he spun the rack and pulled off another postcard. "This is my grandmother," he said.
I bent forward to look at the card, then jerked upright when I realized how close it brought my face to his hand. His grandmother had posed in a cape, large round earrings, and headband, each intricately beaded. Her eyes were nearly lost in a web of wrinkles as she smiled.
"But you don't live on the reservation?"
"I've done lots of things you might not expect," he said. "I played trumpet in Father Grassi's brass band at Saint Anne's Mission School, and now," he said, pointing to his cap, "I work for the Union Pacific Railway. My name is Um-ka He-yute-wa-ta-low-it."
I sprained my tongue trying to say the first part of his name, then covered my mouth and shook my head with a nervous giggle.
"At least you tried to say it." He grinned. "The fathers at Saint Anne's gave up. They chose the name Luke Fletcher for me. Fletcher means 'one who makes arrows.' Father John had a sense of humor, I think."
I avoided his gaze as I slowly turned the rack, looking at pictures of an Indian school, a pile of baskets on a porch, and a young woman in fringed buckskin, her hair loosed from its braids and tumbling to her waist.
"You need to get something for your hands," he said.
I returned the postcard I'd been looking at to the rack and clasped my hands—still raw from chopping half of Mr. Ramsey's woodpile—behind my back to hide them.
"My grandmother used to make a poultice of Chaenactis douglasii or fleabane and wolf lichen for my rope burns."
I crossed the room, succumbing to a sudden urge to study a map of the reservation on the side wall of the station. What was I to make of an Indian who knew the Latin names for plants, worked for the railroad, and played the trumpet in a brass band? Johnny and Arthur would never believe it!
I hadn't heard his footsteps following me to the map, but from behind my back came the soft voice again. "Don't worry about walking across the reservation tomorrow. You'll be as safe on the reservation as you would be in town, but if you don't want to take the word of an Indian on it, you should talk to Major Moorhouse, the Indian agent."
I was saved from having to make more conversation when Ma bustled through the door of the ladies' waiting room. She saw immediately what I had not and put one arm protectively around my shoulder, tugging me away from Mr. Fletcher. "Are you all right?"
Ma claimed never to have read a dime novel in her life, but I suspected her ideas of Indians—like mine—had been shaped more by the adventures of Buffalo Bill and Deadwood Dick than firsthand experience.
"I'm fine, Ma. Mr. Fletcher was just telling me about the Indian agent for the reservation, Major Moorhouse."
As we walked toward the agent's house, I couldn't believe I had met a real live Indian. Arthur, Johnny, and Billy would be jealous. Ida and Bertha would faint.
Dear Olaf, Arthur, Johnny, and Billy,
I met my first Indians today and got a close-up look at a real teepee! An Indian woman we met had her baby in a cradleboard like the twins on this postcard. I bet Ma sometimes wished she had you laced up and out of trouble when you were little. We stayed overnight with Major Moorhouse (the Indian agent who took the pictures on these postcards) and by getting an early start, crossed the entire Umatilla Reservation in one day.
Love, Clara
P.S. Indian children have to go to school, too—and wear uniforms!
Dear Ida and Bertha,
The woman on this postcard is the grandmother of the Real Live Indian I talked to at the railway station just outside the Umatilla Reservation! Take a close look at the beadwork on the earrings, headband, and necklace, and try to imagine them in red and yellow and blue and green.
I was amazed that white settlers have farms on the reservation. You could look one direction, see a white clapboard house surrounded by plowed fields and think you were right home in Mica Creek. You'd look across the road and see a dozen teepees!
I miss you both!
Love, Clara
P.S. Send me a letter with all the details from Tilda and Carl's wedding next week! Hug Billy and Lillian for me.
CHARTER 9
IN THE BLUES
May 20, 1896–Day 15 Gibbon Station to Meacham, Oregon
AS we left the Gibbon station on the far side of the reservation, Ma predicted a beautiful day for us in the Blue Mountains. For the first hour, her prediction was right. After two weeks of rain, I'd almost forgotten how blue a sky could be.
As we climbed higher, however, the air grew chilly and the wind picked up, swirling my skirt and pulling my hair out of its pins. Ma held one hand to the top of her head like she thought the wind would take off with her hair entirely. After five miles of buffeting, we were relieved to find shelter at the Duncan station.
The stationmaster assured us the brown bears in the mountains seldom attacked. All we had to do was make lots of noise as we went along and they'd most likely choose to get out of our way. "Most likely" was slim comfort. As we walked, Ma carried her squeeze bulb filled with pepper and I kept one hand on my pistol. It wouldn't kill a bear unless I got it in the eyeball, but maybe it would make enough noise to scare him off.
It was too much work to think of a steady string of things to say, even for Ma, so I started singing, and Ma joined in. The bears wouldn't care that neither of us could carry a tune. I went through all the verses of "She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain," followed by some rousing hymns. While I thought of what to sing next, the only sound was our shoes on gravel.
Even a rousing hymn and a brisk pace weren't enough to keep us warm as we climbed higher. We pulled on our ponchos to cut the cold, damp wind that whistled through the pass, through the trees, and through my wool skirt and cotton petticoat on its way to my bones.
When we stopped to rest, I took a sip from my canteen. "Uff da!" The words were muffled because my lips had half-frozen to the metal spout. I kept blowing warm air into the canteen until the spout warmed up enough to peel my mouth off the metal without losing a layer of skin. I touched my lips cautiously to reassure myself they were still there. My knees knocked in the cold. "I wish I'd brought my quilted wool petticoat and union suit," I said.
Ma dropped her satchel and pulled her hands up under her poncho. "As long as you're wishing, how about a fur muff and a sleigh with six white horses?"
"I can't come up with six white horses," I said, "but we have something to take the place of a muff." I pulled my spare socks onto my hands like mittens and held them up for Ma's approval.
"It'll do," Ma said, and put socks on her hands, too, before continuing on.
Just as I was about to remind Ma about her prediction of a lovely May walk in the mountains, I gasped.
"Look—it's like Christmas!" Light snow began to sift down from a white sky and dust the fir trees. The first flakes were damp and clumped together like teaspoon-size snowballs. I caught a clump in my mouth. In six hours we'd climbed from summer into winter.
"It won't last," Ma said. "Most of it will melt as soon as it touches the ground."
But the snow didn't
melt, and the wind didn't die down. Snow accumulated inch by inch until it completely covered the tracks, covered my boots, and came up halfway to my knees. "How will we know which way to go if we can't see the tracks?" I said.
Ma clutched her satchel with both arms to keep it from being snatched away by the howling wind. Another layer of snow settled on her shoulders and the brim of her rain hat. I waited for her face to light up with an answer. Instead, her face took on that paralyzed look a deer gets when caught in a lantern's light at night. "I don't know," she said.
I brushed the snow off my eyelashes and squinted ahead. I could just make out the next telegraph pole, and a miragelike glimpse of what was either a sparsely limbed fir tree or another pole. "The telegraph poles run alongside the tracks," I said, answering my own question. "We'll find our way."
Leaning into the wind and navigating from one telegraph pole to the next, we pushed our way through ten inches, twelve inches, fourteen inches of snow.
Finally, a sign materialized out of the haze of snow: MEACHAM STATION, ELEV. 4,055 FT. Most people would read that sign from inside the train, sipping tea or hot chocolate from porcelain cups. Not Ma and me.
I clomped up the steps to the door of the station. With icy socks on my hands, I couldn't get the door handle to turn and nearly fell into the room when a burly man in Union Pacific uniform opened the door. "Oh, golly," he said. "You look like ghosts. Not to criticize, but most people have the sense to take the train instead of walking across the Blue Mountains in a blizzard."
As I pulled Ma toward the potbelly stove, she looked like she was in shock that the weather had not behaved itself for us today. What would have happened to Ma if she had been on her own? We had armed ourselves with ponchos, a pistol, and pepper gun, but never thought we'd have to battle a snowstorm in May. What else had we neglected to prepare for?
The Year We Were Famous Page 5
