Fifteen feet above the new river, the chute leveled out and I pushed myself onto the ledge and looked down. "I made it, Ma!"
Seeing me safe on the ledge, Ma smiled. Her hair had come undone and separated into wet seaweed strands down her shoulders. Her face was streaked with rain—or maybe tears. I would have expected her to look panicked or angry, but her face melted from a smile to a mix of surprise and resignation. "I can't make it," she said.
I crouched on hands and knees, still panting, staring down at the water, sensing its power and pull. For a moment—just a moment—I imagined sliding down to Ma. If we stopped fighting the current, it would be over in minutes. Our bodies would be dashed against the rocks; our lungs would fill with water. I might catch one last glance at Ma's battered body as it was tossed from boulder to boulder, and then—nothing. What kind of hubris had made us think we could cross a continent? Our pride would be the death of us.
No, it wouldn't. Not today. All I had to do was help Ma up to the ledge. I shouted over the roar of wind and water. "At least try!"
I watched Ma loop her satchel handles over her forearm and attempt the first foot- and handhold, but the bulk of the grips kept her from firmly bracing her arm against the side of the chute. She lost her tenuous hold and slipped back down.
"Let it go, Ma," I said. I motioned tossing her satchel into the river so she could climb unencumbered, but she shook her head. She lifted the bag toward me, indicating I should catch it.
I shook my head, but she nodded again. She was so gosh-awful stubborn. I'd just have to get her bag and hope to get her up here, too, before she was swept away. I lay down at the edge of the ledge, water streaming under my poncho and skirts, and stretched down my arms. She shifted her position several times, apparently feeling with her feet underwater for a place between rocks to wedge her feet while she got ready to throw.
She lifted her satchel two-handed behind her head for an overhand throw, still fighting for her balance in the river. The satchel sailed up toward me and my fingertips grazed one rain-slicked end, but it slipped away from me like a greased pig. Ma threw her hips forward to trap the bag between her body and the rocks and snatched a handle before it could be washed away in the river, still rising minute by minute.
She rested her forehead against the wall, her back heaving as she gulped in air. Then she clutched her bag for another try.
"Forget the bag, Ma!" I wasn't sure she could hear me, so I mimed again throwing the bag into the river. "Just get yourself up here."
She shook her head and flung the bag again. This time I hooked two fingers on the handle long enough to get a two-handed grip on it, and rose to my knees to shove it to the back of the ledge. Now for Ma.
She made a weak try at the first foothold and slipped down again into the water.
"You just have to make it the first few feet on your own, Ma. Once you're partway up, I can help you from here." I waved a loop of my satchel's rope handle over the edge. "See, Ma?" I began to fumble with the knots that connected the rope to my satchel, but rain had swollen the knots into place like glue. I sobbed with frustration. Then I remembered Arthur's penknife. "Hang on, Ma! I'll have a rope for you in a minute!" I sawed frantically at the rope with the little knife, but it was so dull that I despaired of slicing through in time to save Ma.
She made it up one handhold, two, three, while strand by strand the fibers on the rope snapped. Her fingertips were white with the cold and pressure of clutching at the merest knobs of rock. "Clara, I can't!" she wailed as one foot lost its purchase on the rock and she started to slide down the chute.
"Don't you dare leave me alone here!" I shouted, still sawing at the rope. I jerked once, again, and ripped the last few strands of rope from the short leather handle. "Here, Ma!" I leaned over the ledge and dangled the three feet of rope toward Ma as she started to slip another foot down the slide.
Her feet were just inches above the churning rapids. An uprooted twenty-five-foot pine, tossing like a twig in the river, hurtled toward Ma and threatened to sweep her off her slippery hold.
I cautiously edged another two inches forward. "Up, Ma!" I screeched. "Handhold six inches straight up with your left hand." Her left hand groped the rock like a blind crab and found the wedge of rock to cling to. Just as she shifted her weight to her higher handhold, the pine tree swept past, brushing Ma's skirts and dousing her with spray. Ma seemed oblivious to her near miss with death and continued her tortuous climb.
Right foot searching, finding. Left foot searching, finding. Right hand reaching, reaching. Fingertips finding the frayed end of the rope. I tried to look only at Ma and not the rapids below as I slithered another four inches toward the edge and locked my ankles around the base of a scrub pine behind me.
When Ma grasped the end of the rope, I felt the pull from my hands to my ankles. The intense pressure abated as Ma found a place for one foot and took most of her weight off the rope. "One more and you're up, Ma!"
Ma took two shuddering breaths and tightened her grip on the rope. "I'm pulling on three," I said. She nodded.
"One." Check ankle grip. "Two." Check grip on the knot. "Three!" I tried to flex my knees toward the tree as I pulled hand over hand on the rope to bring Ma closer to the ledge. My temples throbbed and my arms and knees shuddered with the tension as I finally reached Ma's hands and dragged her up beside me. Her knuckles were bloody and she'd ripped the front of her poncho as she slid up on the ledge, but we were together, above the water. Gasping and shaking, we pushed ourselves back on our seats as far as we could, wedged our satchels between our feet, and collapsed against the rock wall.
I leaned my head back and let the rain cool my flushed face. We were still alive. I tried to laugh. "This will be another chapter for your book, Ma." I wrapped an arm around her shoulders and leaned my head against hers to reassure myself that she was still here, with me, and not swept away. She nudged her head against mine in answer.
"You can write this chapter," she said.
CHAPTER 18
AFTER THE FLOOD
August 11, 1896–Day 98 The ledge of our salvation, Wyoming
I WOKE to swooping and chattering siskins and finches. Was there anything more beautiful than sunrise when you thought that you would die before another morning? My teeth ached from chattering all night. My shoulders and hands throbbed from clutching the tree. I was starving. But the sky was clear and we were still alive.
The only proof of yesterday's maelstrom was the charred stump of the tree struck by lightning and the flotsam of uprooted bushes left behind by the receding water, reduced by now to an innocent trickling stream. Compared to yesterday's ear-numbing thunder, roaring water, bruised muscles, terror, despair, hope, and relief, Mica Creek was just an imitation of real life. I felt like I had not been totally alive before this day.
If I did write the chapter about the storm, how would I begin? With the storm? With our argument before the storm? My teacher had convinced me that I wasn't a natural-born writer, but the only way to get better was to practice. I scooted back on the ledge, took out my journal, and began to write.
When Ma woke, she stood and saluted, as if we had just completed a successful mission. "You can't let fear of dying keep you from living the life you want," she said.
Was that bravado for my benefit, or hers?
"I intend to keep my guardian angel busy," she said.
As I put my writing away, I said, "Your angel must have a whole flock of apprentices to keep up with you, Ma."
Still perched on our ledge, we doctored each other's barked knuckles and I flexed my fingers until I regained enough dexterity to retie my rope to my satchel. A length of rope, given to us by a lonesome stationmaster. Had he any idea that it would save Ma's life three months later? I had already forgotten his name among the list of more than fifty people we had stayed with so far.
While I was fussing with my rope handle, Ma kneeled to fumble in her bag and unfold the oilskin she kept wrapped around her letter from
Mayor Belt, cartes de visite, and copies of our picture. "These papers are why I needed you to save the bag," she said. "Thanks for saving me, too," she said with a smile that quickly faded as she turned serious. "If something did happen to me—if I couldn't go on for any reason—would you continue on your own?" She stressed the word any.
"But I promised Pa..." My voice quavered. I didn't want to think—not for an instant—of having to leave Ma behind someplace and going on.
Ma thrust her papers toward me. "Maybe you should carry these."
I kept my hands at my side. "If we can both survive flood and lightning, highwaymen, lava fields, and snowstorms in the Blues, we can both make it through anything. We'll be celebrating my birthday in New York."
Ma grasped one of my hands and gently raised it toward the papers in her other hand. She nudged the papers against my closed fist, like a cat wanting her chin scratched. When I opened my hand, Ma slipped the oilskin pouch into it. I was now the keeper of the papers. Did Ma think I had a better chance of surviving this trip, or was it her way of admitting that I was as important as she was to the success of this walk?
Ma finger-combed her hair and twisted it into a tidy knot. When she threw back her shoulders and raised her chin, she could have been the model for a statue glorifying indomitable American womanhood. "At least one of us has to make it to New York, so men can't say women are too frail for such a venture, or quit too easily. I have no patience for people who accept whatever life gives them without a fight," she said. "'God's will,' they say. Well, I say, 'With God, all things are possible.' The worst is behind us. Once we get to the plains, it's just a flat walk in the field to New York."
CHAPTER 19
WE GET LETTERS
August 16, 1896 – Day 103 Laramie, Wyoming
LAST NIGHT we camped along the Laramie River with the Arapaho. Taking pity on us for our lack of survival skills, two of the women showed us how to roast sego lily bulbs and dry grasshoppers and crickets in the sun. Once the crickets and 'hoppers were ground fine as flour and mixed with seeds, I just held my breath and swallowed my share. Hunger is the best sauce, they say. I'd have to describe them to Johnny and Arthur in my next letter. This morning we traded pictures of ourselves for beaded hair ornaments, which I will save for Ida and Bertha.
Our canteens were empty, but I learned in the most stomach and gut-wrenching way not to drink alkali water. American womanhood was about to shrivel to empty husks and float away like thistledown.
Dry as I was, my curiosity was still healthy enough to investigate a glint of something shiny at the end of one of the railroad ties twenty or so feet ahead. I picked up two bottles of clear, pure water and stomped down on a bit of paper that had been under the bottles before it could blow off to Kansas.
"Water!" I croaked, waving the bottles like flags. Since our pastor at home used grape juice for communion, I had never tasted wine, but I was sure no wine or magic elixir could have tasted sweeter than that water. I closed my eyes to savor the taste, and carefully recapped the bottle.
While Ma drank, I picked up and read the paper I had trapped under my foot: "For the walking ladies." I looked around for chimney smoke or any other signs of a house, but there was nothing. We were in the middle of nowhere, and water had miraculously appeared. Ma would have claimed special delivery from one of her guardian angels, but I knew there had to be an earthly deliverer out there somewhere.
Twenty minutes later, we passed two gandy dancers pumping their cart along the track, with their mallets and burlap bag of supplies. I raised a bottle and shouted, "Was it you?" They did not stop, but waved shyly back. I blew them a kiss.
More bottles and canning jars of water appeared every five or ten miles for the next month. There must have been an organized campaign to keep us alive, with telegraphers sending word of our progress, letting railway workers and townspeople know when we were expected through. Sometimes the bottles were still cool, even when we saw no one. Other times we'd see a shy child or farm wife standing back from the track, shading her eyes with one hand and waving as we passed. We left our bottles at the next station we passed through, and assumed they somehow got back to their owners. I did not believe in Ma's guardian angels, but I had plenty of proof of the kindness of strangers.
I smiled as I read Ma's fourth report to Miss Waterson. For the first time it read from Helga and Clara Estby.
To: Miss A. J. Waterson, 95 William Street,
New York City, New York
From: Helga and Clara Estby
Monthly Report #4: Greeley, Colorado
Miles covered, August 5—September 3: 335
Notes: Survived flash flood.
September 9, 1896 – Day 127 Denver, Colorado
The reporter would have been more interested in us if we had discovered another gold deposit, but perked up at Ma's account of my shooting a man in Oregon and our camp out with Indians. As we left the newspaper office, the reporter gave Ma a free copy of a pamphlet they'd printed on Colorado mining. Remembering how Ma had tried to send Pa to Colorado to find us a mine two years ago, I was sure she'd read that pamphlet from first word to last.
At the post office, she sat and read her pamphlet while I stood in line at the general delivery window. Would there be a letter from Salt Lake City? As the clerk left the counter to look for our mail, I watched the second hand on the wall clock make one circuit, two circuits, three. At last the clerk returned with a stack of letters, which I flipped through with trembling fingers. A letter from Pa, from Ida and Bertha, from Olaf, from Miss Waterson, and yes! Mr. Doré!
As I walked slowly back toward Ma's bench, I studied his envelope. A drop of brown liquid had smeared the word Colorado in the address. I smelled the envelope but couldn't tell if it was coffee or tea. I didn't know him well enough to guess. Had he written it at the office, or from home? I realized I didn't even know where home was for him. Did he have a room in a boarding house, or still live with his parents—or was he already married with a home of his own?
Still clutching his letter, I sat next to Ma on the bench while she opened the letter from Pa. She scanned the letter, gasped, and handed it to me.
The letter—in Norwegian, of course—covered only half a page.
Dear Helga,
Olaf has been sent to the sanatorium with the diphtheria. We made it safely through harvest, but prices were not good. I miss you, Mrs. Estby. I hope you and Clara are safe and can come home soon.
Your husband,
Ole
P.S. I am too old to be looking for another wife, so take care of yourself.
Love, O.E.
"I lost baby Ole, then Henry, and now I may lose Olaf!"
"But Olaf sent a letter, too, so he can't be dying." I shuffled through the stack and checked the postmark; Olaf had mailed his letter over a week after Pa's, and addressed it in a strong hand.
As Ma ripped open his letter, I said, "Diphtheria is more dangerous for little ones than young men." I put one arm around her shoulder. "He'll be fine soon. I know it." I lied. I didn't know it at all. Oh, why were we so far from home when our family needed us?
Ma's voice was hoarse at first, but grew clearer as she continued to read.
Sacred Heart Sanatorium
Dear Ma and Clara,
As I'm sure Pa and Ida have told you, I am recuperating from diphtheria in the sanatorium here in Spokane. The food is boring and the days are boring, too.
At least I waited to get sick until after the wheat was in. It threatened rain the week of harvest, so everyone worked clear through moonlight every night. I don't think anyone slept more than four hours a night for a week. After all that work we'll still have to borrow money for next year's seed again.
Clara, you will be amazed to hear I have read two books, cover to cover, this month!
Your loving son (and brother),
Olaf
Ma refolded the letters from Pa and Olaf and slipped them in her pocket. She was dry-eyed now, but her shoulders drooped. We w
ere always a year behind, no matter how hard everyone worked.
I read Ida's letter aloud.
Dear Clara,
Olaf said he was so bored having to stay in bed in the sanatorium that he would write letters to everyone, and you know how he hates to write. I haven't been allowed to see him yet, but the receptionist let me drop off a plate of potato lefse and a jar of Pa's pickled herring. Tell Ma not to worry about Olaf. He's so tough it's hard to imagine anything short of a ton of bricks knocking him down for long.
Don't let Olaf tell you he was the only one who worked hard at harvest. Bertha and I just about died in the kitchen keeping everyone fed. I swear each man in the crew could eat a pan of biscuits and a whole plum pie by himself.
Tilda's wedding was beautiful! Everyone brought in flowers from their gardens and we set them out in vases all across the front of the church. And her dress—her mother made it with white silk and Brussels lace appliqué.
I know Ma is worried about losing the farm, but Olaf will be carpentering in Spokane as soon as he gets out of Sacred Heart, and I know I could get a job as a shop girl in Spokane. I guess what I'm saying is, don't risk your neck on Ma's scheme to save the farm. With Pa, Olaf, and you and me all earning money in town, we could have a nice apartment. It wouldn't be the slums that Ma keeps threatening us with. I miss you. I'd rather have you and Ma home safely than all the money in New York.
Love, Ida
I passed the letter from Ida on to Ma to read, and while she was occupied with that, I read the letter from Salt Lake City.
August 20, 1896
Dear Miss Estby,
I couldn't help smiling as I pictured your mother curling hair for an entire band of Ute Indians. Our newspaper editor said it wasn't his policy to publish personal essays, but don't give up writing. With interest high in the vanishing old West, someone will want your pieces.
The Year We Were Famous Page 10
