Westering Women

by Sandra Dallas

  The last hill was the worst, too steep to allow the oxen to proceed on their own. The bottom was littered with the remains of more vehicles and dead oxen and mules.

  “We must take each wagon down separately. We will have to use ropes, and we will need all the women to steady the wagon,” William said. He and Joseph took two ropes and tied them to the rear of Mary’s wagon. When he was satisfied the ropes would hold, William offered to drive the lead wagon down the final slope.

  Mary shook her head. “You are stronger than I,” she told William. “Your strength will be needed to hold the ropes steady.”

  “And you are stronger than I am,” Maggie told Mary. “You, too, should help with the ropes. I will drive the oxen.”

  Mary started to object, but Maggie was right. It would take all of the women gripping the ropes to steady the wagon. If they could not hold it back, the wagon would crash down the final slope.

  Maggie did not let the others see how frightened she was. She knew that if the women slipped, if they let go of the ropes, she could be crushed by the oxen or thrown over the side of the mountain. Still, if one of them was to die, perhaps it would be best if it was she. After all, Clara was gone, and Dick. California did not seem so important now. Still, Maggie did not want to die. She had not given up before, and she would not now. “Ready?” she called. The others nodded, and she cried, “Giddap!”

  The women held tight to the ropes, slowly letting them out as the wagon made its way down the slope. The wagon hit a bump and swerved, knocking against her, and Maggie bit her tongue, tasting blood. Her nails dug into her hands. A woman cried out as she slid and let go of the rope. The others strained to hold the wagon steady. Maggie heard the wheels slide, but the women held fast, and at last the wagon was on flat ground. Maggie closed her eyes in a word of thanks. When she opened them, the women were gathered around her. Mary raised her fist, and the women cheered.

  The men who had crowded in front of them stared, their mouths open. They were digging a grave for one of their number who had been killed in the crash that Maggie had heard. The men had stopped to watch as the wagon made its torturous way down the slope, had stood there the entire time, waiting for the wagon to come loose, for Maggie to be killed. Now they looked at the women with awe. One of them stepped forward. “You need our help with your other wagons, do you? No charge.”

  William started to reply, but Maggie looked around at the women standing beside her wagon in awe, prouder of themselves than they had been for a thousand miles. She raised her hand to stop Reverend Parnell from speaking. Then, her head high, she replied, “Thank you for the offer, sir, but as you can see, we have no need of it.”

  They could have used the help, of course. Their other wagons had to descend the rest of the way into the valley, and the women ached from the strain of holding the ropes taut. But at that moment, not a one of them would have given her place to a man. Nor would they have wanted a man to replace a single woman.

  Then Mary spoke up. “We should be happy to offer our help to you, should you need it.”

  By the end of the day, all the wagons were clustered beside a stream and the women sat around their campfires, happy and proud but too exhausted to talk. It was then that Dora announced that her baby was coming. The pains had started just as Maggie had begun the final descent. She had not only kept silent but had taken her place at the rope.

  * * *

  “HAS ANYONE AMONG us ever delivered a baby?” Caroline asked. The women looked at each other and shook their heads.

  “I have helped mother cows. It cannot be that much different,” Mary told her.

  “I have given birth,” Maggie said.

  “I…” Sadie began, then stopped. “I have seen a baby born.”

  None of the others spoke up, so Maggie said, “Boil water. We will need clean rags, if there are any.”

  “In my trunk,” Dora said. “Hurry. I think the baby will not wait longer.” Her face was twisted, and Maggie wondered how she could have borne the pain so long without letting on.

  Caroline went to the stream and dipped up a pail of water, then poured it into a kettle that she set on the fire. She dropped a length of twine into the water. Maggie found Dora’s trunk and removed the rags and some tiny garments. When had Dora found the time to stitch them? Maggie wondered. The others made up a pallet on the ground and helped Dora lie down. In a moment, she began to moan and thrash about, trying not to cry out. Mary cleaned off a stick and told Dora to put it in her mouth and bite down when the pains got too bad. That way, she wouldn’t bite her tongue. Bessie rubbed Dora’s back. A few yards away, the rest of the women gathered around a campfire to prepare supper. And to wait. As tired as they were, none would sleep until the birth was over.

  Maggie examined the girl. “The baby is crowning,” she said. When the others didn’t understand, she added, “I can see the crown of the head.” She knelt beside Dora. “I know it hurts, but you must push. You will think your body will tear itself apart, but pushing expels the baby, and soon it will be over. And then you will feel such joy.”

  Dora didn’t appear to hear. Sweat ran down her face, and she gripped the stick with her teeth. “I did not know it would hurt so much,” she whimpered after a pain let up. Her face contorted again, and she bit down on the stick as she struggled to push out the baby.

  “Good girl,” Mary coached. She was kneeling beside Maggie. “You are doing fine. It will be over soon.”

  Dora began to pant. Then, as another pain hit her, she cried out, the stick falling out of her mouth. “It hurts. Make it stop,” she begged.

  “You walked a thousand miles and helped hold back a covered wagon. Birthing a baby, why, that’s easy,” Mary said.

  “No it is not!” Dora pushed again, her whole body straining, and Mary said, “The head is coming out.” She stepped aside, deferring to Maggie, who grasped the infant. Another push and the shoulders were out.

  “Almost over. Once more, Dora. Once more,” Maggie said.

  The girl closed her eyes and gripped Mary until her fists were white. With one final push, the baby slid into Mary’s hands. The infant twitched and began to mewl.

  “We need to cut the cord,” Maggie said.

  Caroline hurried to her wagon and removed a pair of scissors from her sewing basket. She plucked the twine from the kettle of hot water, then cut a length. Maggie tied off the cord, then raised the baby in the air and said, “There, it is done.” For the second time that day, the women cheered.

  While Caroline and Mary cared for the baby, Maggie attended Dora. “We must dispose of the placenta,” she said “Some say to bury it under a rosebush.”

  “A rosebush!” Caroline laughed. “Where do we find a rosebush in this God-forsaken land?” She began to laugh, and with the tension broken, the others laughed with her.

  Mary wrapped the baby in the quilt that Maggie had made and placed it in Dora’s arms, showing her how to hold the infant. Tears streamed down the new mother’s face, although whether they were from joy or relief that the pain was gone, Maggie did not know. Dora held the baby close, then asked, “Is it a girl?”

  In the excitement, Maggie had not told her. “A boy,” she said.

  “A boy?” Dora looked confused. Then she asked, “Is he all right?”

  Maggie took only a second too long before answering. “He is breathing fine.” She was not so sure, however. The baby’s breath seemed shallow to her, and the infant was small, maybe too small. Still, she had not attended any births but those of her own children, so she did not know.

  When the women were finished and Dora and her son were resting by the campfire, the whole company knelt, and William gave a prayer of thanks. They were all exhausted, and the prayer was short. As they returned to their blankets, Caroline began to sing the Old One Hundred, and Maggie wrapped herself in a quilt to the sounds of “Praise God from whom all blessings flow.” As she drifted off to sleep, Maggie thought of the ebb and flow of life on the trail. The company
had lost Clara, but it had been given a baby boy.

  In the morning, one of the men from the wagon train ahead walked into the women’s camp. “We heard a baby,” he said.

  “Born last night,” Maggie told him.

  “We thought so.” He held out two wrinkled apples. “For the mother, to give her strength, although after seeing what you did yesterday, I am not sure she needs them.”

  Nineteen

  The wagon train was even further behind schedule now. Every day mattered if they were to cross the Sierras before snowfall. Mary, who made the decisions with the two ministers, had insisted they give up Sunday rests to make up for lost time, and Joseph had not protested. Still, the morning after the harrowing descent and the birth of Dora’s baby, she demanded a day’s layover. They were all exhausted from the exertion, and none of them had slept through Dora’s ordeal. Dora herself needed a respite. The day was hardly one of rest, however. Maggie cared for the baby. Bessie and Evaline washed clothes, Caroline baked, and Winny, Penn, and Sadie cleaned their wagon. Others repaired the wagons and mended the wagon sheets. The axle on one of the wagons was nearly broken through, and the wheel on another was shattered. So the women abandoned yet another wagon. They removed a wheel from the discarded vehicle and used it to replace the broken wheel on the other.

  The remaining wagons were a sorry lot. The bright blue paint on the wagon boxes that had been so gay when they left St. Joseph had faded, and much of it was worn off. The wagon covers were gray from the dust and rain. The oxen were jaded, and after examining them William announced two could go no farther. Once more, he asked the women to discard anything that was not absolutely necessary.

  “What about the trees?” William asked Bessie. She had brought the apple trees with her, had insisted at the beginning that they must go all the way to California. Under Evaline’s care, they had thrived. She had watered them even when water was scarce and had washed the dust from the branches.

  “I couldn’t,” Bessie replied. “They will be an apple orchard one day.”

  William looked away as if it were difficult for him to ask her to make the sacrifice. “We must lighten the load,” he said.

  Bessie turned to Evaline, who was holding the mutt, Blackie, in her arms. Maggie had asked once if the dog had forgotten how to walk, since Evaline carried him everywhere. She knew the dog helped the girl deal with her ordeal at City of Rocks. “We have already abandoned my rocker, my fine dishes, my fur coat, most of my clothes. I cannot sacrifice the trees,” she said.

  “I would not ask…” William let the words hang there.

  Bessie turned her back and walked to one of the slender starts, running her hand over the trunk. “What do you think, Maggie?”

  “Perhaps you could take two with you.”

  Evaline looked up. “I would carry them, one in each hand.”

  “And who would carry Blackie?” Bessie asked.

  The girl gave her a sly smile. “Perhaps I could teach him how to walk again.”

  Bessie nodded. “Someday you will be sorry, Reverend Parnell. You would come to call and tell me how nice it would be to sit among the apple blossoms, if only I had them.”

  “You could grow an orchard from two trees.”

  “If they live.”

  “I am sorry to ask it of you.”

  Bessie looked away, embarrassed. “The others have sacrificed so much more.” Indeed, Mary had discarded the last of her farm implements, and Winny, to everyone’s amusement, had tossed away her maid’s uniform. Joseph had left his pulpit at City of Rocks. “I wanted to be treated like the others, so how can you not ask it of me,” Bessie said.

  Maggie spoke up. “You could plant the trees you leave behind right here, by the stream. Perhaps one day there will be an apple orchard in this place.”

  “Bessie’s grove,” William told her.

  “Dora’s grove,” Bessie said.

  After Bessie and Reverend Parnell left, Evaline went to her wagon and removed her violin and set it with the other discarded items.

  * * *

  DORA SPENT THE day resting. She had not known her body could hurt so much, she told Maggie. Each time she moved, she felt the ache. “But was not the pain worth it?” Maggie asked, handing Dora the tiny, whimpering infant.

  Dora’s milk had come in, and she tried to feed the baby, but he was a mewly little thing who did not seem to suck well. Dora held out her finger and let the baby grasp it as she marveled at his perfect fingers, the nails almost as tiny as pinheads. “Is he too small?” she asked Maggie. “Perhaps I miscalculated my months of pregnancy. Maybe he was early. He would be small if he was early, wouldn’t he?”

  “I think he is about right,” Maggie reassured her, although she did not know. Her own children had been much larger.

  “I never thought it would be a boy,” Dora said. “I had not considered a boy’s name. I do not know what to call him. He will not be named for his father, or for my father either. Maybe William or Joseph. Do you think they would mind?”

  “I am sure they would be honored.”

  Dora looked pensive. “Those are awful big names for such a little thing. I shall wait. For now, he will be Baby.” She held the infant in one hand and ran her hand through his pale hair, which grew in clumps and was as fine as silk thread.

  Maggie understood what Dora was thinking, because Maggie herself had been overcome with emotion at the births of Dick and Clara. Dora loved Baby fiercely, and Maggie was aware that her friend had never known such love. Maggie would have sacrificed anything for her children. She knew too well that it did not matter how much you loved them, however. Love did not keep them safe.

  Maggie fetched Dora a plate of food. “You ought to have fresh milk and butter and eggs, but beans and creek water are the best I can offer.”

  “I should be doing my part,” Dora said.

  “Nonsense. You have just given birth. You must take care of yourself so that you will be strong for your baby.”

  “It is not fair to the others.”

  “The others agree. You may believe this is your baby, Dora, but we think he belongs to us all.” She turned aside and touched the locket around her neck. Just as Clara had belonged to us all, she thought.

  * * *

  ONE BY ONE, the women came to admire Baby and to give Dora presents they had made for him—a dress fashioned from a worn skirt, a tiny cap knitted from twine, napkins made from aprons that would have been discarded. Dora was humbled by their kindness. The women begged to hold the infant and told Dora how fortunate she was. They talked of having their own babies in California. “I hope my confinement will be more pleasant,” one said, laughing.

  Maggie would have stayed with Dora in that place a week if she could, but she knew they must move on, and in the morning, she was ready.

  “Move out! Move out!” came the call down the line of wagons, although there were only six wagons now. They had started with fifteen. The day was hot, and Maggie found it hard to believe they were hurrying to beat the snow.

  She fell back into the familiar routine, riding in the wagon or walking beside it, stopping at midday to noon, then resting for an hour before taking to the trail again. For a time, the days were easier. The land was less mountainous, and the trail led past streams. Still, the novelty and excitement of the trip were long past, and Maggie was anxious to reach the end of the journey. After a while, the land grew drier, and the water turned alkaline, but she didn’t complain. She plodded on, knowing it would get worse.

  And it did.

  The wind blew dust into every part of the wagons. Dora tried to keep it out of the infant’s eyes and nose and mouth, but Baby cried from the irritation and kept the others awake at night. He did not sleep much and still did not take milk. Maggie assured Dora he was fine, but she told Mary she was not so sure.

  “Is it normal?” Caroline asked. “He does not seem to thrive.”

  “What is normal out here?” Maggie asked.

  “If only we ha
d a cow with fresh milk,” Mary said.

  “I do not believe he would take even that,” Maggie told her.

  “What about water? His skin is like parchment.”

  Maggie shook her head. “It is too harsh. It could…” She had meant to say the harsh water could kill him, but she stopped. She could not say that the second of the children in the train might die.

  As Baby failed to gain weight and even seemed to lose it—there were no scales in any of the wagons—Maggie worried more than any of the others about him. She knew too well how quickly children could perish.

  “Do you think he is all right?” the new mother asked Maggie over and over again. As the days passed Dora had resumed some of her tasks and worked now with the baby held against her chest in a sling made from an apron.

  “Of course. With this start, he will be a tough little boy.” But Maggie did not believe that. The baby was listless, and his cries were soft, as if he did not have the energy to scream. He seemed to be starving, yet the front of Dora’s dress was wet with milk, and she complained of the fullness in her breasts.

  The other women were too exhausted to do much more than smile at Baby. Maggie decided not to burden them with her concerns. She told Mary, who said she had noticed the child was doing poorly but had no idea how to help him. “I believe he may have been born too early,” she said.

  Maggie confided in Caroline, too. “Maybe you could pray for him,” Maggie suggested.

  “I do that already. I would rather supply him with milk and relief from the heat and dust,” Caroline replied. Then she added, “I have seen such infants at the Kitchen in Chicago, and I do not hold out much hope for Dora’s child.”