Agnes Canon's War

by Deborah Lincoln

  Agnes submerged her impatience and tried to keep busy. Each day, she and Rose settled themselves in the passageway outside Agnes’s stateroom, sewing or reading. Harrie was crawling, now, and managed to move with a rapidity that kept one or the other of the women on her feet whenever he was awake. Thank goodness he was not yet walking; what a nightmare that would be. When he slept, which he still did twice a day—he grew so fast he was worn out with it—they simply watched the strange and lovely world pass by. The shoreline daily presented new and varied landforms, fluctuating hues of cliff and vegetation, washed by the light and shades of sunrise and dusk, glowing in gray and mauve. Soon antelope, then buffalo, appeared on the riverside plains, and the men expended vast amounts of ammunition vying for trophies which were butchered and served for dinner. She enjoyed antelope, to her taste somewhat sweeter than venison, but buffalo was truly excellent, less fatty than beef. By the time they steamed into the upper stretches of the river, they relished any fresh meat the hunters brought in.

  As March turned to April, they grounded again. And again. The wind often sent the boat scurrying into the lea of the bank, and thunderstorms crackled overhead, violent torrents of rain sweeping across the plains.

  Then April faded into May, and they arrived at the farthest northern point. They followed the river as it swung west, leaving the Dakotas and entering the newly minted Montana territory, and she began to count the days. At a hundred miles below Fort Benton, a three-day journey when the river flowed well, they stuck fast on the monstrous Dophan Rapids. After a full forty-eight frustrating hours, they winched over only to repeat the operation at Drowned Man’s Rapids twenty miles farther up. The three days stretched to eight and then to eleven, when they turned a bend and Agnes saw ahead a haze of smoke against a ridge of treeless hills. A cluster of buildings squatted along the wide plain of the river’s bank, and the white adobe walls of the fort shone in the bright sun of a cloudless day. They had arrived. It was May 30, 1865, and they had been seventy-eight days on the river.

  

  “I don’t see him,” Agnes said to Rose who stood next to her at the upper deck rail, a wide-eyed Harrie in her arms. She searched the crowds, listened to the babble, the shouts, the bawls of oxen, bark of dogs, crash of crates being unloaded. She’d dressed so carefully in her pearl gray poplin traveling suit and a never-worn straw bonnet. But Jabez wasn’t there.

  “Keep looking, Missus,” Rose said. Her eyes flitted over the throng. “So many people!” Buckskin predominated, along with blanketed Indians and uniformed soldiers. Agnes spotted an assortment of women whose tricked-out gowns suggested their occupation.

  Agnes was always and forever aware of his presence, and she sensed he was not there. She bit her lip in disappointment, shook back a treacherous tear and looked around.

  On the south side of the river the bluffs rose abruptly, crenellated on top like a great fortress. The town huddled on a flat bench along the riverbank which rose gradually to the north in folded hills, their contours soft and golden like the curves of a naked human form. Stores and saloons fronted the levee behind a street inches deep in muck. Massive freight wagons, yoked to a dozen oxen each, were being loaded with merchandise from the newly-arrived ship while the great stolid beasts stood patiently, tails twitching at a horsefly, drool and excrement mashed into the mud beneath their hooves.

  Rose shifted Harrie to one arm and grasped Agnes’s portmanteau with her free hand. “Let’s find Dick, Missus, get out of this bustle.” She shouldered her way through the throng on deck, leading the way to the stairs. With one last glance at the crowd, Agnes followed, and they plunged into the chaos on the docks.

  They found Dick with ease, but a hotel room proved more difficult. After an hour’s search, they settled their luggage in a cramped boarding house off a side street and procured an over-priced meal. Meanwhile, Dick canvassed three general stores, the shipping facilities and two hotels, finally unearthing a letter from Jabez that had arrived several weeks earlier instructing her to take the stage from Fort Benton to Virginia City. Virginia City is an easy ride from our ranch, he wrote, and I will have a comfortable home for you and Harrie by the time you arrive. “Our ranch? We have a ranch?” Agnes thought. Jabez had been busy.

  Newspapers accompanied the messages, and six weeks late, they learned of the final surrender of the south and the death of President Lincoln by assassin. So jaded and frayed were Agnes’s feelings about those long, sorry, sad years, that this ending seemed gruesomely fitting, an indication that in the midst of defeat and anarchy, her countrymen managed to sink still lower.

  The next stage for Helena and points south was scheduled to leave the following morning. Agnes slept almost not at all, thanks to Fort Benton’s all-night revelry, and they were up and ready long before the horses were harnessed. Leaving Dick behind to accompany the freighted baggage, Rose, Harrie and Agnes traveled in a large Concord coach, which didn’t prove large enough for the ten passengers inside and three on the roof. Gentlemen jostled the ladies for the best seats, and Rose and Agnes drew the center bench, their backs supported by a leather band hanging from the roof. In this uncomfortable manner, and with Harrie in their arms, they swung and swayed and braced themselves for thirty miles, until a stop at a home station for a change of drivers allowed them to snatch the rear seat from two mongers forced to heed the call of nature.

  Twenty-five hours later they reached Helena. There they changed coaches, lost a few traveling companions, picked up new ones, ate a warm meal at a real hotel, loaded up and moved on, over the backbone of the continent, across the Jefferson River, along the foothills of the Tobacco Root Mountains, down the valley of the Stinking Water River, and finally arrived at the spectacle that was Virginia City.

  

  “Lord a’mighty!” Rose murmured when they stepped down from the coach. She stared around her at the scene in the street. Virginia City’s citizens didn’t honor the Sabbath with rest and worship. Every prospector within fifty miles must have descended onto the town. The stores stood open for custom, the smithies banged away at their fiery business, the saloons burst with patrons, the dance halls rang. Hundreds of oxen, horses and mules stirred up the dust of a dry Montana day, all braying and complaining. Chinamen, dark-eyed and silent, slipped in and out of the crowds on the boardwalk. Children of both sexes ran barefoot and begrimed through the streets, chasing dogs, carrying packages, dodging deadly hooves and wheels. Three fancy ladies leaned out the second-floor windows of the Star Billiard Hall, smoking cigars and laughing at a street orator on the corner whom everyone else ignored. Agnes and Rose stood on a rough plank walk in front of the Oliver and Conover stage facility, their valises at their feet, the circus flowing around them.

  Rose touched Agnes’s arm, nodded her head up the street and smiled her soft, amused smile. “Look there, Missus,” she said, and lifted Harrie from his mother’s arms.

  There he stood, arms crossed over his chest, leaning against a porch post and grinning.

  Jabez—brushed coat, clean starched white shirt, dove-grey waistcoat, shined boots, freshly trimmed hair and beard. White teeth flashed in that wicked grin, his eyes danced, and Agnes’s first thought was horror at how she looked. After forty-eight hours on the road, her fresh grey poplin had wilted, her new hat was jammed into her valise. Sweat marks stained her jacket, her hair tumbled loose from its pins, and the faint scent of Harrie’s soiled cloths clung about her. But she cared not a lick. She picked up her skirts, ran the length of the block and threw herself into his arms.

  He buried his head in her neck, lifted her off her feet, spun her in a full circle and laughed.

  “You’re a sight for these old eyes, Agnes, my love,” he said in a booming voice that caused a dozen people to stop and stare, and he kissed her squarely, a kiss which brought hoots from onlookers. She clutched him and smiled, attempted to control the tears, and then pulled him toward their son.

  “He’s gro
wn so much, Jabez, you’ll not know him. He’s strong and healthy and he hated being confined in the coach; he’s like you, always on the move.” She babbled on and on, as Jabez lifted his son from Rose.

  Harrie wrinkled his brow and pursed his lips like a Baptist minister and studied this big, strange man who held him high. Jabez laughed and swung the boy onto his shoulders, and Harrie sunk both fists into his father’s hair and drummed tiny heels against his chest.

  “Have you laundered your shirt every day?” she asked. “So you would be fresh and clean and upstage us?”

  “You’re always a beauty in my eyes.” He held onto Harrie with one big hand, grabbed her valise in the other. “Rose, how are you, girl? How’s your reading coming?”

  “Fine, Mr. Robinson, just fine. We practiced on the boat.” Rose picked up her own valise and Harrie’s bag and followed Jabez.

  “I have us rooms at the Fairweather, ladies, and there’ll be a good meal waiting. Harrie here’ll have to bunk in with Rose, Agnes. I want you to myself.”

  She linked her hand through his elbow and felt her ears grow hot. “Don’t be crude in public.”

  He laughed again and leaned over to kiss the top of her head. “Where’d you leave Dick?”

  “At Fort Benton. He was loading the baggage. They planned to leave the day after we did.”

  “So he should be here tomorrow or the next day. We’ll need to wait for him. Did he get a cast-iron stove? There was supposed to be a shipment on your boat.”

  “Are there no stoves out here to buy? What do you cook on?”

  “Most folks use a camp stove, or the open fireplace.”

  “Is it that wild out here? There’re not even stoves?”

  “You’ll find there are many things we do without, Agnes, or we pay dear for them. But we’re booming and where there’s people, someone figures out how to sell them things. Now that the snow’s out of the passes, there’ll be freighters from Salt Lake coming through. We just need the cash to take advantage.”

  “And do we have cash?”

  “We have enough to get us started, and wait until you see the ranch—good grassland, good water, cows can fatten and wheat will grow like you’ve never seen it.”

  “Is it … is there a house?” She flashed back to Rachel’s apprehension, when first they arrived in Holt County. She hoped for … she knew not quite what she hoped for, but she wanted a solid roof over her head. As long as they weren’t consigned to a canvas tent, she was determined to accept whatever came.

  “There’s a house.” He looked at her sideways. “It won’t be quite what you’ve been used to, love, but it’s warm. Keeps the rain off. Not quite finished yet.” He studied a display of wilted vegetables in front of a store, didn’t meet her eyes.

  Inside she sighed. Outside she squeezed his arm and said she’d be delighted with any place he made for her. He lit up at that and ushered them into the hotel.

  They stayed for two days, and Virginia City fascinated her the way the insane of Bedlam, put on public view for the entertainment of the upper classes, must have fascinated their visitors. Compared with the tiny boat cabin, the hotel accommodations were luxurious. Carpets covered the floor and lace curtains hung at the windows, and though they slept on bare ticking because she neglected to pack linens in her small trunk, she felt like they honeymooned again, so pleasing it was to be together. She bathed and soaped her hair thoroughly for the first time in weeks and sent their clothes to a laundress who washed out the Missouri River muck.

  Jabez had bought a farm wagon and driven the mules to Virginia City, Jupiter trailing behind, and they shopped for tools and household items newly arrived from Salt Lake or Fort Benton. The prices were outrageous, and the cost of stabling the animals, lodging at the hotel and eating in restaurants and the better saloons disturbed her. But he answered two medical calls—one an arm crushed when a sluice collapsed, the other a gunshot wound to the foot when a drunken freighter attempted to demonstrate his shooting skills to the crowd at Madame Dumont’s saloon—and earned enough gold dust to defray the costs. Gold dust and nuggets acted as currency, greenbacks were roundly scorned, and Jabez carried with him a small set of gold scales to weigh what he took in and what he paid out.

  They bought lamp oil and molasses and salt, flour and sugar and coffee beans. And then they added whitewash and water buckets and a used adz and saltpeter and saleratus and a cake of precious yeast from the brewery. They searched for furniture but found none, no chairs or tables or bureaus. Jabez added an open crate with six hens and a raucous rooster. When Dick arrived with the baggage, he and Jabez loaded trunks and barrels and boxes, an iron cook stove and Agnes’s precious new sewing machine onto the wagon, and they left Virginia City for home.

  45

  They traveled along the Madison River where it coursed lazily through open country, winding however its fancy took it, braiding and channeling, cottonwoods thick along its banks. The road melted into soft yellow hills, rounded in sweeping curves, from a distance appearing soft to the touch, a sprinkle of pines in their creases. Shadows floated over their flanks as feathery clouds danced across the face of the sun. They made thirty miles the first day and crossed the river at Blacks Ford where sturdy gravel bars formed a half dozen riffling streams. They camped on a wide bench of pebbled land where the high mountains gave way to squared bluffs, which in turn yielded to low broad grasslands, and ate trout from the stream and biscuits baked in a dutch oven buried in coals. They slept, exhausted, as the light faded and stars winked into sight far above.

  Agnes awoke to drizzle. Jabez stirred in their bedroll, rolled over, stood, as she curled around Harrie’s little body, the warmth trapped between them alluring. But Jabez had let in a draft. Half asleep, she scowled and grunted.

  “Agnes,” he said, “get up. Let’s get you two under the wagon.”

  She poked her head above the blanket. Damp coated her face and hair, a trickle slid down into her shift. “Where did this come from? It was clear when we went to sleep.”

  “Weather changes fast out here. It may just be a drizzle or we may be in for a real storm.” He squatted, lifted Harrie, tucked him against his shirt front and bent over to keep the rain off.

  Agnes sniffled. Her nose was full, and her eyes ached. Their campsite wore that bleak look and feel of too-early morning, when fog and damp and hopelessness permeate everything they touch. She felt the looming hills, heard the aloof flow of the creek.

  She remade their bed under the wagon and slipped in, reaching for Harrie. A rock jabbed into her hip, the underside of the wagon was filthy with mud and dust. She rolled onto her side, folded around her son, sniffled. Sneezed.

  Rose soon joined them under the wagon, while Dick and Jabez rekindled the fire. Agnes hung between sleep and waking for perhaps an hour, then sighed, tucked the blankets tightly around Harrie and scooted out. Coffee boiled as the rain spit into the flames. Rose was up soon after, and they ate cold biscuit and bacon, cleaned up and packed.

  They left the Madison and followed a no-name creek across the grasslands toward the sunrise, which consisted of a slight lightening of the gray. The rain continued throughout the day, and Agnes’s head grew stuffier, her mood more disagreeable with every mile. She and Rose huddled in hooded cloaks while Harrie alternately howled and fidgeted. Water dripped from the brims of the men’s hats, and the trail disappeared in sodden grass and mud. Clouds obscured everything, but Agnes could hear the swollen stream rushing nearby and sensed vast spaces stretching away all around her .

  By noon they’d traveled but fifteen miles, with another twenty to go. Once again they ate cold biscuits, cold bacon and a handful of precious dried apples while the mules rested. Judging from the hollowness in their stomachs, it was dinnertime when they reached the Gallatin River and Shed’s Bridge, and she thanked the stars they needn’t wade the crossing. The bridge appeared new and untried, but they chanced it
and turned south. Three miles yet.

  Jabez mounted Jupiter, reached down his hand to Agnes. “Give Harrie to Rose,” he said. “We’ll ride ahead and see our home, just the two of us.” He smiled through the beating rain, and she swung up behind him, tucked her arms around his waist, and buried her face in his jacket to keep the rain off.

  She dozed much of the way and missed what there was to see of the scenery along the river, which she later prized as the most beautiful she’d ever seen. At the time, though, she found nothing lovely. Her nose dribbled, and she sneezed again. An early dusk had descended by the time Jabez reined in and turned in his saddle.

  “I thought you’d up and died on me, so still you’ve been.” He put an arm around her. “Except for the sneezes. We’re here, love.”

  She raised her head and stared with bleary eyes. They stood on a gentle slope a hundred yards above the river. Fading in and out of the mist on all sides spread grasslands, the vegetation shank-high on Jupiter. A shed of squared and chinked logs hunkered along the top of the slope, two rough-cut, empty openings piercing its wall, the roof bristling with sod. Beyond, the shadowy bulk of a larger structure loomed out of the murk, but half completed as far as she could tell, with no roof at all.

  “Is that the house over there?” she asked, waving at the bigger building.

  “That’s the barn.”

  “Then where’s the house?”

  “This is it.”

  “This is it.”

  “Yes.”

  He swung out of the saddle and lifted her down, his eyes anxious. She stumbled forward and pulled aside the canvas flap that served as a door. The fading light intensified the gloom of the interior. She looked down. The floor was hard-packed dirt, and puddles gathered where steady drips plunked into depressions. She looked up. Roots and dirt hung from the ceiling, forming the uncovered underside of the sod roof. She looked to her left. A bedstead of rough cut logs with planed boards across rope, on which tumbled Jabez’s damp quilt, sagged against the wall. She looked right. A small sheet metal camp stove, a wooden crate half-filled with wood and kindling, an array of battered cook pots hanging from hooks on the wall, a table tilted unevenly beneath them. A round of stump served as a stool.