“Read to the sick perhaps? Visit the library. It’s old, been here since the town was called Last Chance Gulch. A subscription one. I’ll give you coins. Write that article. Rest your pretty head on our linens and sleep in a morning or two. Aren’t you exhausted? Don’t you want a little rest?” He stood before the mirror in our Cosmopolitan room, more spacious than most, with furniture hauled across the prairies from some eastern town. I needed to give his hair a trim.
“Do you? Want rest?” I shifted the pillow behind my back.
He smiled at me in the mirror, wiggled his eyebrows. “If we’re never separated, how can we ever have that joy of reunion?”
“I suppose I could write yet another letter to my mother, but she must be bored by my descriptions of mountains and valleys and all nature of hustle and bustle in towns. And her letters to me and my sisters’ missives don’t catch up in a timely fashion, so it’s hard to respond to what’s happening in their lives, how Christina is growing, how Hattie’s studies progress.”
“I bet Fisk, from the Herald, might like something about your observations. Maybe you could send a post back to the eastern papers, a woman’s point of view from the West.” He turned to me. “You’ve convinced me that women need to see themselves as part of the future of these towns.”
“Would you have me tell them of the hard work that awaits them? The separations from their husbands?”
“Some women might like time away.”
“Would you?” A man could get a shave and haircut without a mate’s assistance too.
I left my place of comfort on the bed and brought the straight razor across his foamed cheeks as he sat now before the mirror. “I suppose separation does offer a natural kind of birth spacing.”
“There, you see?” He reached his arm around and patted my bustle.
“But we’ve no need of such separations. The opposite, in fact.” I approached this delicate subject with a razor in my hand. But he didn’t take my bait.
“I’ll talk to Fisk. Your words are more . . . conversational than mine, more—” He searched for the word.
“Colorful? Dramatic? Plot-filled?”
“Invitational. They read like a letter you’re sending home to a friend. You bring a kind of intimacy to your writing, something that my words of stats and numbers lack.”
“And yet you have the published books. The reviews are excellent all the way to the New York Herald.”
“Because you edit them before I ever send them off to the New York editors—Ouch!”
“Sorry. Did I nick you?”
“Maybe a little.”
“Serves you right for trying to distract me from going with you to Butte. We’d better get this straight, Robert. From what you’ve just said, you need me in Butte with you. You need my perspective, my invitational ways. And maybe, occasionally, my way of saying things. How can I do that if I’m stuck here, away from you?” I wiped his face with a towel. The little spot where I nicked him still bled, so I pulled alum from my kit and dabbed it.
“I’m listening,” he said.
“I know that in these established places like Helena, it’s the push to bring the rail lines to them. Helena will survive the gold bust if she’s got other businesses, and the railroad promises that transition from gold to other commerce. I do understand that. But I also understand what you’re trying to do to form unknown towns in places not on any stage route, places where the railroad will be promised after the town is there. I have to see what will make it possible for the Buttes and Helenas to persevere even after there’s no mining and somehow write things down about that resilience for women, so they’ll take the risk that their new town can endure too. And the better for it because of the railroad. For women, it’s not all about fighting the elements or fleeing to posts for protection when times get tough. We need places to tend and others to befriend. Some of us are lucky to have our best friends be our pards, but others aren’t. Love gets lost in work, challenge, and disappointment. Or in distance. I don’t want that happening to us.”
He pulled suspenders over his shoulders that had been lying on either side of his white shirt and checked the nick on his chin. “Wise, as usual. All right. We go to Butte. Together.”
I squealed. “And every other place. As you convinced UP I needed to.”
He nodded. “The survey team that’s here is heading to Yellowstone as soon as the warring stops. They’ve invited us. Would you like to make that trek?”
“You couldn’t keep me from it. That would give me something to write home about!”
“It would. I’ll let the captain know he’ll be having a lady along.”
“Unless I’m with child by then.”
“We can hope for good timing then between babies and wars. Best you get things packed up, Mrs. Strahorn.” He swatted me on my bustle as I moved by him.
“Indeed, I will, Mr. Strahorn. What are mates for, if not packing up.”
He grabbed me by the hand and pulled me to him. He looked at me directly and appeared about to say something, but he kissed me instead—which led to other things mates are known to do.
From Fifteen Thousand Miles by Stage, vol. 1, by Carrie Adell Strahorn (page 96)
Pard was a veritable Corliss engine at pumping up statistics of the various products and prospects of every foot of land. . . . There did not seem to be much left for me, except just little, every-day things as they come and go in frontier lands . . . yet with the coming of the dainty matron, the real homemaker, the whole western world brightened, and it was no wonder the great and glorious pioneer cried for a mate.
9
Paradise Road
Yesterday I felt the consequences of what we’re doing. It was at the top of a mountain people called Paradise Road, but it wasn’t a paradise. The family we met looked exhausted, the horses worn as two young boys and a man walked them to an area where scraping snow would bring them brittle blades of grass if they were lucky. The woman, the mother, a child at her side and one at her breast, blamed her misery not on the elements but on the author of a book, some “Strahorn,” who had convinced her husband to take his family west. None of us in the stage said a word. I couldn’t think of a comforting thing to say to her or to Robert.
November 15, 1878
My eyes shared the woman’s tears along with a saddlebag of guilt. We were near the Red Rock divide in western Montana. Some called it Inspiration Pass and it could be, on a summer day with vistas that rivaled a Tuscan landscape for its breath-taking-away beauty. There was little inspiration for that family that November dusk, though, as six of us rumbled by stage on our way to Virginia City. Winter pushed its nose into the tent of that family we encountered while we were snug as bugs in a blanket inside the Concord. They were not. I felt terrible for them.
The family had made camp while wind blew from the north, whipping a steady snow down on them. A bent-over man tried to catch the wagon canvas slapping in the wind and the wet. Crabby children serenaded and the woman who spoke held a fussy infant in her arms, its little limbs pushing out from the tight blanket she’d wrapped to keep the child warm. A losing battle in that wind and wet. The woman made her pronouncement blaming “that Strahorn” for bringing them to this desolate place.
I looked at Robert. He lowered his eyes.
Our driver broke the silence. “You’ve stopped at the top of this pass and it can get brutal up here on a night like this. A little protection waits a mile down the hill.”
We had no room to take them with us, though we could have brought the children inside, if only for a moment.
The man in the party thanked us. We didn’t say a word about the author of that promise that had led them to this horrible night being said author sitting in the safety of a stage, blankets around his legs. I reached beneath my own rug and lifted the still-warm brick the hotel had given us to keep our feet toasty. I handed it to Robert.
“What?”
I pushed it at him, nodded toward the woman.
&nbs
p; “Oh.” He opened the door to a swirl of cold and snow. “It’s not much warmth but it’ll offer some comfort to your babe.” An older child took the brick, put it to his cheek, then gave it to his mother.
She was too weary to speak. Her husband shouted to the lads with the lariats and horses, and they began the tedious process of re-harnessing. I was glad to see they were taking the driver’s advice as he flicked the ribbons and put us back on our way.
No one spoke. Then Robert began talking about the rough elements of weather and land, how exhausting wind and snow were. He spoke of his own trials during the Sioux campaigns—the bitter cold, threadbare blankets, empty stomachs of the soldiers and the reporters, like himself, covering the war. He could list by name the various men and their newspapers who counted on them writing under terrible conditions, their words important for Congress to read to ensure the best possible resources for the soldiers, and for the citizenry and families to know what was happening so far from their heated homes.
“War is never a picnic.” This from a general who was another passenger. He bumped his companion when the stage wheel rolled over a larger than normal rock, and Robert’s reminiscences were cut short by the driver pulling up.
“I can’t see the road ahead.” He was a good jehu, so this was worrisome. “Too much snow and wind.” His words whipped around him like the scarf that held his hat on, flapping him in the face. I felt a moment of panic. We should have stayed another day at our hotel, but I honestly never knew when to go and when to stand firm.
The general knew this country well, and he and another passenger—the “hanging sheriff,” as he called himself—departed the stage with lit lanterns. They ducked their heads to the gale, braced themselves against the windy howl, each stomping a parallel track with their own feet so the jehu could ease our stage forward. Robert and the other passenger offered to relieve them, but they insisted they knew the land best and pushed on until we reached the valley floor and the snow turned more to a drizzle as we pulled into Salisbury, our stop between Helena and Virginia City.
“You shouldn’t feel badly about what that woman said,” I told Robert, who had become unusually quiet as we prepared our evening rituals in the mountain town. I didn’t know if he felt badly; I did. A part of me hoped he had a little remorse for having made everything sound so sweet. But I took it as my duty as a wife to encourage him against memories of war and the shrill words of the woman on the pass.
He helped me float clean sheets from our trunk onto the bed that appeared in the pale light to be void of bugs. I made a mental note, hoping that Virginia City had laundry service so I could get our linens cleaned.
“What did you say?”
“The immigrants we came upon. Her words about ‘Strahorn’s paradise.’ Don’t let that discourage you. It’s a verification that words—your words—have power. We knew that. We knew that what you wrote would inspire dreaming, a desire that the human spirit has, a longing that’s like an ache for something better. ‘Desire realized is sweet to the soul.’ That’s what Proverbs says.” He looked at me then. “Those immigrants will make it and they’ll tell the tales of how they struggled, just as you remember your war experiences. They pursued their desires and they’ll beam that they did it all themselves. Found that sweetness. Imagine.” I felt some of that longing myself. That infant’s crying tweaked my desires. “But maybe temper your words.”
“It’s a bit discouraging to think someone’s misery is the result of what I wrote.”
“You wrote what matters to you—this country, its beauty and grandeur. One day that woman will see the beauty when the snow melts and they’re where they want to be. It’s always worse when you’re not where you’ve been, yet not where you’re going to be. You can’t sit down and think too long about it, you have to keep going. And it’s easier to blame someone else, if you can, for your misery while you’re in the middle of it. I do it all the time.”
He smiled. “No, you don’t.”
“Maybe not out loud.”
He stripped down to his long johns while I found my flannel gown and wool socks and even a bed cap to keep whatever heat my body generated within. The room lacked a stove, but the quilts floated warmth over us. Robert put his head on my shoulder that night. I pulled the quilt up around his neck, held him to me.
“They looked so cold.”
“They did.”
“You at least thought to give them a warm brick. I couldn’t even move. Her words were . . . That flapping canvas. You know they’d hear it all night with the wind. No letup, no relief.” He shivered. “And my words brought them to that place of despair.”
I pushed his hair from his forehead. “Your words are already written, Robert. You can’t take them back and you wouldn’t. She needed someone to blame for their plight and better you than her husband that she’s dependent on to get them off that mountain. You rescued him.” I kissed his forehead. “Let it be a reminder that what we do and say carries meaning.”
“You always have another way of looking at things, Dell.” We heard a gust of wind push against our window. “I do adore you. Can’t thank you enough for putting up with me. I don’t deserve it, not a whit.”
“Think of the woman’s words like a bad review,” I offered. “You read the words until you get those first ugly adjectives, then use it to line the bottom of the birdcage.”
“It’s what I should do with good reviews too, toss them aside.”
“Yes, but read them all the way through first.”
I felt him chuckle against me and knew we’d crossed a bridge between his own bad memories and the reality of the present and future power of his words.
We spent but a few days in Virginia City, visiting gulches that might become railway passages, hearing of the potential for a growing town, the mining operations. Sometimes a surveyor would go with us, which Robert was always grateful for. It added depth to his work and would please the engineers he’d be sharing his observations with, not to mention the support those other men offered when Robert met up with Jay Gould, the head of Union Pacific.
Robert made notes in his leather-bound book, sketching rock formations, stream width and direction. That notebook was mentioned now and then by newspaper reporters who shared a kinship with him, I suspect.
Occasionally, a news article even mentioned me. The Helena Weekly Herald reported that “Mr. Strahorn has a clever assistant in his wife, an educated lady and enthusiastic literary worker who is his companion in this Montana tour of sightseeing.”
I beamed. Robert grunted. Did I sense a tad of jealousy? I did.
Sightseeing, that’s what I wrote in my journal. Of course it was more than that. The landscape and people worked my literary muscles. I wanted to write of them too. Robert worked on yet another book, The New West, and we’d be heading to Chicago before long to see to its publication. But for now, I made notes about the people we met, how they looked, funny stories they told. I had an ear for accents and could detect North Carolinian from Missourian, Germans from Wisconsin, as different from those settling in Texas. I remembered names and faces—something Robert struggled with—so I could whisper who approached in a hotel dining room and even give him a hint of where we’d met before that hand reached out to shake Robert’s as he stood. I wasn’t sure then what I’d ever do with those observations I wrote down, but the activity fed me, gave me something to nurture.
The stage companies now turned to a winter schedule that was really no schedule at all. No night travel allowed except some evenings when the moon might be full or the weather projected by the width of the ring around the moon suggested rainless roads. Or we’d be awakened and told to be ready to leave in an hour, though it be three in the morning. Sometimes we stopped early afternoon; other times not. And we were at the mercy of the openings a stage had as we rode on passes paid by the railroad. We couldn’t bump other passengers who might have found a better schedule.
“It’s really inconvenient, Robert.” I rushed abou
t to put the linens into the trunk, folded the wet towels that never dried overnight in this cold country, wrapping them in newspaper to keep the damp from affecting the linens, knowing those towels would come open with words inked all over them, lifted from the newsprint. I might never get the latest column out.
“That it is, Dell. But we can’t complain. If word got back to UP that we railroader freeloaders were whining about the conditions, we’d never hear the end of it. Just be as gracious as you always are. One day maybe we’ll be able to pay our own way and then we can assert our preferences.”
“I know. At least I can complain to you, my Pardner.”
He dragged the trunk toward the door, the exertion causing him to catch his breath. He often had that sort of breathing issue. I didn’t know why. “I’ll alert the clerk and get some help with this. You bring your bag as soon as you can.”
“I’m hurrying.”
He came back in and turned me around toward him. “We’re meeting people we’ll have as friends for a lifetime, seeing places that sear the mind with beauty. You’re free of drudgery—well, most of the domestic drudgery—and adventure awaits. That’s how we must look at the inconveniences. And we’re doing it together. What more could you ask?”
“You’re keeping me from packing, Mr. Strahorn. Off with you.”
“See you at the front desk.” He saluted me, turned on his heels as his boots clicked the wooden floor toward the stairs.
I turned back to the mirror, settled the fur-lined bonnet over my head, and tied the red ribbons beneath my chin. I could see my breath in the cold air. “What more could you ask?” I spoke to that pudgy-faced image. What I was thinking was this: To be in a warm home of my own, holding an infant in my arms.
From Fifteen Thousand Miles by Stage, vol. 1, by Carrie Adell Strahorn (page 97)
Everything She Didn't Say Page 6
