Westering Women

by Sandra Dallas

  “Are them the marrying women, like the kind that advertises for a man in a magazine?” an immigrant lady asked her husband as the two stopped to stare at Maggie and Sadie. The word was out that two ministers were taking a wagon train of unmarried women to California, and many of those who were camped along the river had come to inspect them. Some made unkind remarks, but others were merely curious. One woman glanced over her shoulder at her husband, who was spitting a chaw of tobacco onto the ground, and said she wished she’d married after she reached California instead of before.

  “Bunch of old maids,” the husband of the nosy woman replied now. “They’s touched in the head going all the way to California for a pig in a poke.”

  “Better than marrying a hog with his breakfast on his beard,” Sadie told him. The couple hurried off, the man brushing crumbs and bits of sausage from his face.

  A few minutes later, after Maggie had finished Sadie’s hem and was biting off the thread, a young woman who had been sitting on a rock watching them approached the two. “Is it true? Be you truly a wagon train of women?” she asked.

  “We did not advertise for husbands, but we are going to California in hopes of finding them,” Maggie replied.

  “You the one that’s in charge?” The woman was thin and poorly dressed, and she could not look Maggie in the eye.

  “There are two ministers who organized the company.”

  “Are you filled up?”

  “Are you of a mind to join us?” Maggie asked.

  “Would you take me?”

  Maggie studied the girl a moment. “Why do you want to go with us?”

  The girl pushed aside her sunbonnet to show that half of her face was bruised and there was a cut near her eye. She might have been pretty at one time, but her face was now thin and haunted, like a mask of sorrow. She was of medium height with gray eyes and hair so pale it was almost white. It was snarled and uneven and as lank as a horse’s mane. Maggie saw that her arms were bruised and scraped. She was sure that worse injuries were hidden by the girl’s dress.

  Without realizing it, Maggie reached out and took the young woman’s hand, knowing she had been beaten by some man, probably her husband. Her heart went out to the poor creature. Maggie was well aware of the pain, the constant worry of being hit again, the fear that the next time would be fatal. She wondered if all men were like that, if all wives were afraid of their husbands. She could not imagine that Reverend Swain hurt his wife, who worshipped him. But what did she know about what was hidden behind closed doors?

  The girl’s eyes flicked back and forth, as if she were afraid of being spotted. “Yesterday he beat me awful with his whip. I can’t walk hardly. Last time it was his belt, although mostly he uses his fists. Next time he’ll kill me.” She removed her hand, and Maggie saw that two of the fingers were bent, as if they had been broken and hadn’t healed properly.

  The words brought back Maggie’s own pain. “How awful! Your husband?”

  “Asa says he is, but we never had the words said over us. He was real nice at first, said I was the prettiest thing he ever saw and brought me flowers he picked hisself.”

  Maggie remembered how Jesse had brought her violets.

  “He got me to go off with him. ’Course he didn’t have to say much, because it was bad at home. Pa died, and Ma married a man…” She shook her head. “Getting beat ain’t new, but beat like this is. Sometimes I wish I could die. I stood it for a time, because he’s always sorry later, always says he wouldn’t do it no more if I didn’t rile him. I try. I don’t talk back, and his supper’s always ready, but it don’t do no good.” She paused and said in a rush, “I got to get away. You think I could join up with you?”

  “Yes,” Maggie said. She had never told anyone but Mary what Jesse had done to her. This woman seemed to have been beaten even worse than she had. She wanted to put her arms around the girl and hold her safe. How could she refuse to let her join them?

  “Won’t your husband—that is, your man—come after you?” Sadie asked.

  “I thought it all out. He don’t plan to leave for a week or two, maybe longer. We are waitin’ here for his least brother. There’s three of them Harvey boys—Asa, Reed, and Elias. I can tell him I’m going in town. When I don’t come back, he’ll be thinking I found a place there to hide.” She shivered. “I fear the other two as bad as I do Asa.” The girl shook her head. “Them brothers together, they do things to me…”

  Maggie frowned, not understanding, but Sadie spoke up. “They take you at the same time?” she asked.

  The girl turned away, as Maggie blurted out, “All of them?” Maggie had never imagined such a thing, and her face reddened.

  “It shames me.”

  “We could hide her in one of the wagons until we leave,” Maggie told Sadie.

  “We would have to ask the ministers first.”

  Maggie’s face fell at that. Of course. The ministers would have to approve. She had a thought. “Perhaps we should ask Caroline instead.”

  “And she would ask Reverend Parnell.” Sadie grinned. She spotted Caroline and waved her over. “This is … What is your name?”

  “Pennsylvania House,” the girl said.

  “That’s your name?” Sadie asked.

  “I ain’t picked it. Ma named me after where she come from. She called me Penn for short. My step-pa called me Girl, and Asa, he knows my name, but he just calls me Woman—or God-damn Woman.”

  Caroline looked at the girl curiously, and Maggie said, “She wants to join us. Look at her face.” Quickly she told Penn’s story.

  “I will have to ask my husband,” Caroline said.

  “Ask your brother,” Sadie told her.

  Caroline gave a faint smile. Then she called to William and explained about the girl. “She is not married, so it would not be bigamy if she found a husband in California,” she said. “You know one of our women quit yesterday, so we already have provisions for her.”

  William thought that over. “I would worry the man would come after her and put the others in danger,” he said. “Still, if we hid her in one of the wagons, that might work. He would not know she had gone on west, and if he did, he would not know which train she had joined. We will have to have Joseph’s permission, however.”

  Caroline sighed, and Maggie’s heart dropped. If they turned away the woman, she would die. That was as true as anything. Maggie herself might be dead if the ministers had not allowed her to join the train. She reached out and took the girl’s hand again and nodded, as if to say they shared the same pain. Maggie understood what it was like to hear footsteps and pray that her man was not angry, that he would not strike her because a carriage had splashed mud on him. Or take her by force because he was upset that he had been refused credit at a saloon. She wanted to tell the girl they were sisters that way, but the others thought Maggie’s husband was a loving man who had died.

  “It would be best if you did not mention she has been living with a man,” Caroline told her brother.

  William smiled. “Joseph is a good man. He will take her in. We shall ask him now.”

  The two turned to see Joseph striding up to them.

  “We were talking of you just now. We have a dilemma,” William said. “A young woman has just approached and asked to join our train. She would replace the woman who quit yesterday. I believe it is a fine idea.”

  “What do you know of her? Is she a Christian?”

  “Of course. She spoke to me of God,” Caroline said. It wasn’t a lie. Penn had said the man called her a God-damn woman.

  “Perhaps she is a troublemaker.”

  “No, she is just a poor woman. She was with another train and has had an unhappy experience. She has been abused. She is unmarried and would feel safe with us. I believe we should take her into our fold. It is our duty as Christians.”

  Joseph thought that over, then nodded his approval. “If you put it that way,” he said, adding, not unkindly, “You always do.”

 
Caroline touched her husband’s arm and smiled. “I do not believe we will be sorry.”

  “I suppose she is running away from something,” her husband mused.

  William glanced at Maggie and Sadie. “We all of us are running from something,” he said.

  Five

  At last the wagons were packed and the oxen harnessed, and Maggie and the other members of the women’s train slowly made their way alongside them to the river crossing. Mary had offered to drive an ox team, she told Maggie. But Joseph had thought that unseemly.

  “But all the women will drive before we reach Fort Kearny,” William protested.

  “That may be so, but I expect to start our journey in a way that befits us as a group of proper Christian souls.”

  “Even if some of those men he engaged don’t know the front end of an ox from the back end of a mule,” Mary whispered to Maggie.

  They had hoped to be among the first at the ferry, but when they arrived, they discovered that a long line of teams had already formed. Clara laughed at the sight of a wagon driven by a man in a top hat and military jacket who slapped the reins over six matching white horses. “I want to ride with him,” she said.

  “You would not get far,” William told her. “Those animals will not last half the way to Fort Laramie. Our oxen may be slow, child, but they will feed on prairie grass instead of grain. In time, you will like them better than horses.”

  Clara stared at the minister and gripped her mother’s hand. Maggie wasn’t surprised that after the way her father had treated her, Clara was frightened of men. At the thought of Jesse she looked around, but no one in that nearby throng of dirty, bearded men looked familiar.

  Clutching Clara’s hand lest she be trampled, Maggie pointed at wagon covers—or sheets, as they were called—decorated with pictures of elephants and buffalo and maps of California. “We are going to see the elephant,” Maggie said, but Clara did not know what an elephant was, did not understand the popular gold-rush expression. It meant they would see what there was to be seen.

  The covers were emblazoned with the names of companies—Wild Kentuckians, Gold Diggers, Never Say Die, and Rough and Ready. Maggie showed that last one to Winny, who rushed to inquire if anyone knew the whereabouts of her brother Davy. But those Rough and Readies were from Georgia, not Illinois.

  “Should we have thought up a name to be painted on our wagons?” Maggie asked Caroline.

  “Joseph suggested ‘God’s People,’” Caroline replied. “Fortunately, William said that by the time we reached California, the wagon sheets would be a disgrace to God.”

  “A wise decision,” Maggie said. She studied the bearded men in fringed buckskin and rawhide boots or flannel shirts, corduroy trousers, and broad-brimmed hats as they walked along, and could not help staring at half-naked Indians, their hair powdered red, who begged for “ko-fee” and crusts of bread.

  “When it is your turn to drive a team, I will watch Clara,” Mary offered. “I think the men will drive until the oxen are broken in. They are green yet. I am glad we are not driving mules. They are hard to break and mean. I do not believe the women could drive them. Oxen are not so difficult, as you know.”

  Maggie did indeed know. On the farm, Mary had taught her how to handle the brutes. She knew to tap the lead ox on the rump and yell, “Move out! Giddup!” to start the team, and to stop it by calling “Whoa!” with a tap on the head. “Haw!” with a tap on the right ear made the team turn left. “Gee” and a slap on the left ear, and they turned right. “Back!” and a knock on the chest or the knees sent the team backward. “At least that is what they are supposed to do,” Mary had told her after one of her lessons. “Oxen are dumb. And stubborn, as stubborn as Reverend Swain sometimes.”

  “Maybe we should smack him on the side of the head with the whip handle when he is put out with us,” Maggie said. Joseph was now complaining that the wagon line was untidy. Did he think the oxen cared?

  I wish we would hurry, Maggie thought as she watched Mary stride off with Clara to examine a goat. Just that morning Mary had told her she had heard of a man inquiring about a woman and child. Maggie shivered as she thought that someone might be in St. Joseph searching for her. Although the man could have been looking for anyone, the two women thought it a good idea for Clara to stay with Mary and to continue to dress like a boy. Maggie would feel safer once they crossed the river. The companies would spread out, and there was a smaller chance she would be recognized. She glanced at the crowd near the ferry but did not see anyone familiar. So many of the emigrant men looked alike in their mud-spattered clothing and formless hats. She scuffed her toe in the dirt and spotted a blue flower in the grasses that somehow had escaped getting crushed. Intending to give it to Clara, she picked it, but as she rose she spied a woman she had noticed on the boat. The woman, a girl really, who was young with the blond hair and pale face of a bisque doll, seemed sad, and Maggie thought perhaps she was sorry she had come. “I’m Maggie,” she said, handing the girl the stem.

  The girl looked at the flower as if wondering how such a pretty thing had survived the wagon wheels and boots of thousands of travelers. She took it and held it in her hand, not knowing what to do with it. “Dora Mifflin,” the girl said at last.

  “You are peaked. Are you thinking you made a mistake? It is not too late to turn back. Others have.” Maggie wondered if she should have spoken so. The girl was none of her business, and Maggie should not have intruded on her thoughts. Still, Dora was alone, and it seemed as if she needed a friend.

  “No. I had no choice.”

  “Perhaps you are ill, then. They say the river bottoms breed disease.”

  “Only a little. Breakfast did not sit well.”

  “Are you saying you do not enjoy a coarse meal of pancakes covered with dust instead of sorghum?” Maggie laughed a little at her joke.

  Dora gave her a slight smile, showing small, even teeth, then glanced at the flower in her hand. “I wonder if we shall see such flowers on the trail.” She fastened the stem in her long flaxen braid. “I hope so. It is very brown here.”

  “I think we shall get used to it,” Maggie said.

  Dora nodded. “I suppose we must get used to many things—sleeping on the ground, for instance. But I cannot complain, for I want to go on in the worst way.”

  “I hope you are not a criminal, then.” Maggie tried to lighten the conversation. When the girl did not reply, Maggie apologized. “I overspoke. Forgive me.”

  “No, it is all right.” The girl put her hands in the small of her back and stretched, bending backward a little, and Maggie saw the swelling in her belly.

  “Oh!” Maggie said before she could stop herself.

  Dora straightened up and put her hands over her belly. “You will not tell, will you?” The girl sounded desperate. “The truth is I do not want to go to California at all, but nothing else presented itself. The father—he is married. I did not know, and when I told him of my condition, he would not have a thing to do with me. He denies the baby is his. But it is! I have never been with anyone else.”

  “Were you in service?” Maggie asked. Maggie knew that pretty servant girls were often violated by the sons of their employers—or the employers themselves. She thought of Evaline. Perhaps Bessie had joined the company to prevent the Negro girl from encountering such foul behavior. She glanced around until she spotted Bessie, Evaline beside her. Bessie always kept her servant close.

  Dora shook her head. “A teacher. I was a schoolgirl. I was going to be a teacher, too. I loved to learn. He read such beautiful poetry that I could not help but give him my heart.”

  “And there is no one to take you in?”

  “Mam and Pap would turn their backs on me if they knew. I never told them. I just ran away. Likely the ministers would do the same as my folks if they found out. So you must not tell them,” Dora pleaded. “What would I do if they turned me out? I am hopeful I can go far enough toward California before I show so that they cannot leav
e me behind.” She grasped Maggie’s hand. “You will keep my secret, will you not?”

  Maggie nodded solemnly, thinking how alike their stories were. Both had been betrayed by men, and both had families who would not help them. Of course she would keep Dora’s secret. She would do what she could to help the poor girl. She remembered the minister saying they were all running from something. That was true for her, for Penn House, perhaps for Sadie, and now Dora. “Your secret is not mine to tell. Besides, there are other secrets here that the women do not want known.” She leaned forward and whispered, “I know of a fancy woman among us.”

  “Who?” Dora asked, shocked.

  “I shall not tell that either. You see, I can keep a secret. But yours, it will be known long before we reach California.” She laughed. “The ministers believed some of the women would drop out. They did not know we would add to the company. When is the baby due?”

  Dora shrugged. “I cannot be sure, but I think maybe four months, perhaps five.” Then she mused, “I wonder what I shall do when I reach California. Do you think I shall be an outcast?”

  “They say there are many outcasts there already. Surely you will find a husband, if you want one. I am told that many a man would be pleased to acquire not just a wife but a family. You see, I have a four-year-old child with me.” She put her arm through Dora’s and said, “We will walk on the shady side of the wagon. Lean on me if you feel faint.”