As if knowing what Maggie was thinking, Mary said, “Being part of our group of women has been the greatest adventure of my life.” It seemed that Mary was talking to herself as much as to Maggie. “If I do not find a husband, if something happens and I do not make it to the gold camps, I will be satisfied, because I know I have been part of a remarkable journey with you and the others. We are sisters. We are a band of sisters.”
* * *
MARY AND MAGGIE returned near midnight. The women should have been asleep, but most only dozed, uneasy about their friends. Mary, they knew, had not slept for more than thirty-six hours. How could she stay awake to repeat part of that awful journey?
Then suddenly the two women were in their midst. William lifted Maggie from the saddle and set her on the ground. Penn fetched an ointment she had made when they reached water and spread it on Maggie’s inflamed face. Joseph knelt beside Maggie and examined her ankle. She grimaced as he turned it from side to side, then gently pressed the bone. When he was finished, he announced the bones were not broken, but the ankle had been sprained and was badly swollen. He bound it tightly with strips of cloth and told Maggie that she must ride in the wagon until the ankle would support her weight.
“No,” Maggie said, mindful that any weight would make it harder for the oxen to pull the wagon. “I am not an invalid.”
“You are an invalid,” William told her. “If you do not take care of yourself, you will be an even greater burden.” He looked abashed at what he had said and added, “It is not your fault. We must thank God your foot was not worse injured.”
“We should let her rest another day,” Joseph said, but William held up his hand.
“No, we move on tomorrow. I will not allow more delay.”
“What does one day matter?” Caroline asked.
William looked at his sister a long time, then muttered, “It matters. Oh, yes, it matters.”
* * *
THEY HAD REACHED the river, but to Maggie’s consternation, the sand did not end. In fact, it seemed to be deeper, and the oxen strained to pull the three remaining wagons. The heat was stifling, and although she knew the way through the Sierras was even more challenging than the Forty-Mile Desert, Maggie could not wait to be in the mountains, where it would be cooler.
They passed an eastbound wagon and stopped to ask about the trail in front of them. The men looked over the women and shook their heads. “You think you have seen the elephant, but you seen only his tail. The body lies on ahead,” said one.
“Perhaps we should turn back, then,” Mary said in jest.
“We have already crossed the Rocky Mountains,” Winny told the men.
“Pah! They are mere hills compared with the Sierras. You will wish for the desert again before you are done.”
The Sierras were indeed impressive, giant towers of granite piercing the sky, more awe-inspiring—and more frightening—than anything the women had seen before. The wagon train followed a trail beside the river, then turned into a pretty canyon, where cottonwoods gave way to pine trees. At first the trail was easy, and Maggie thought the difficulty of crossing the mountains had been exaggerated. Before long, however, the road became a twisting trail blocked by logs and boulders, some as large as a wagon. Steep rock walls rose hundreds of feet on either side, casting the deep chasm in shade. Everywhere lay the carcasses of both wagons and animals that had fallen victim to the trail.
The women’s three wagons barely made it halfway up the steep trail before night came on and they were forced to stop. They secured the wagons, then chained the oxen to keep them from running away. There was no place to pitch tents, so the women slept on the ground, under the stars.
Maggie declared that the wagons moved so slowly that she was more comfortable hobbling along with her cane than riding under the canvas wagon cover. The truth was, however, that she felt safer on foot than in a wagon, which might at any moment veer off the side of a cliff. And safer surrounded by women, if Asa’s brother had escaped and was behind them. Edwin had said Reed Harvey would hang, but Penn was sure he was following her.
The next day, the canyon opened onto a valley, but Maggie found little relief. The train still had a hundred miles to go, and the way led through distant mountains. There would be no more fifteen-mile days. The journey would take a week, perhaps two, and every mile of it would be treacherous.
Other parties were camped in the valley, and they viewed the women with curiosity. A few men offered to guide them—for a price—but were turned down. “We made it this far. Why would we need a man to tell us what to do?” Mary asked.
As Mary and Maggie were yoking the oxen one morning, a bearded man in ragged clothes approached them and said he would offer his services in exchange for food. Joseph recognized him. He was one of those who had abandoned the women at City of Rocks. It was Maggie, however, who spoke. “We do not care to mix with thieves and deserters,” she said. “Go on your way.”
“There is forgiveness,” Joseph told her.
“Not for horse thieves. At the first opportunity, he will abscond with Mary’s horse and who knows what else. We would need to set two guards at night, one for the camp, the other to watch him.”
“I was wrong. I should not have listened to the others. It has not gone well with me,” the man said.
Mary scoffed. “You mean because you are afoot?”
“All the animals are dead. They did not make it across the desert. Green Holt died when a wagon ran over him, and the rest of us, we quarreled.” He paused. “You could use the help over the mountains.”
“We do not need your help,” Mary said. She turned and went to her horse and mounted it, as if she were afraid he would steal the chestnut.
“You have your answer,” Joseph said.
“But I am starving.”
“And you want the help of those from whom you stole food? What happened to the provisions you took from us?”
“You mentioned forgiveness.”
Joseph nodded. “Yes, we do forgive, but we are not fools. None of us would trust you, and our safety is my concern.”
He turned to Caroline, who said, “I agree he cannot join us, but we will share our supplies.” She went to a wagon and returned with cornmeal and flour and a small piece of bacon that was covered in mold. “We scrape off the mold before we eat it,” she said, handing the food to the man.
Maggie told Caroline, “You are a better Christian than I.”
“No,” Caroline said. “Perhaps I am just someone who is more fortunate.”
* * *
MAGGIE THOUGHT THEY had seen the worst of the mountains, but the pass they encountered now was more treacherous than any other. It took all their oxen hitched to one wagon to pull it to the top of the pass. As they started up, they heard the terrifying sound of a wagon ahead of them that had fallen over the side of a cliff, splintering on the rocks below. Maggie blanched, and Mary grasped her arm. “There is nothing but to continue,” she said.
The wagon made it to the top. The women unyoked the oxen and returned with them for the second wagon. And the third. When they were finished, a man who had watched them told his companion, “Now we truly have seen the elephant—a trainload of women getting not one but three wagons up the Devil’s Ladder. The wonder of it!” He went up to Mary and Maggie, took off his hat, and bowed.
Twenty-Two
The women made their way across one blue range of mountains after another, along narrow trails, past boulders and giant pine trees, climbing up steep trails beside deep chasms, as they slowly moved westward. They wondered how those ahead of them had made it that far before tossing out saw blades and axes, gold pans and washers. They found a spinning wheel and, to Joseph’s amusement, a pulpit.
The trail was crowded with gold seekers hurrying to reach the mining camps before the snow. From time to time there were curses directed at travelers and recalcitrant oxen. Most of the emigrants were men, but a few women were among them. The women’s train passed a man crying
over the crushed body of a child, a woman screaming that the death was his fault. They saw hollow-eyed women hunched over as they trudged up the steep inclines, women who had left behind everything that mattered to them to follow their husbands’ dreams.
Maggie stopped to comfort a woman who sat beside the trail sobbing. When Maggie offered aid, the woman replied, “There is none can help me. All is lost for a devil’s dream of gold.”
Not all of the gold seekers were depressed, of course. The closer they came to the diggings, the more the men became animated. Some of them whistled or sang “Oh! Susanna” as they walked along. They talked of the gold they would find and how they would spend it. At night, around the campfires, the men spoke of riches. Their women did, too, but most of them talked of the gold they hoped would take them back home to buy fine houses and farms that would impress their families and neighbors. “My feet are reluctant going west, but oh how I shall skip when we are eastbound,” one woman told Maggie.
Those demoralized women were so different from her friends, Maggie thought. Her band grew more excited the closer they were to the gold country. They asked each other how many weeks, how many days. They talked of the husbands who waited for them, of the fortunes they might find. Were their hopes too high? Perhaps in a year or two, some of them would be among the disgruntled go-backs.
With so many travelers crowding the trail, Maggie and the others became sociable. At night they could see a dozen campfires dotted across the mountains. They visited nearby emigrants, inquiring where others had come from and recalling the names of friends they might have in common. The women in the camps looked at Mary and Maggie and Winny in awe, asking if it was true they had come west on their own, had actually volunteered to make the trip in search of husbands.
“Perhaps you will decide when you reach the diggings that you do not need a man,” one suggested. “How I do envy you.”
“We have proven that we do not need them. The question now is, do we want them?” Mary said.
Winny inquired of eastbounders whether they had heard of Davy Rupe, but none seemed to know of him.
“If you will agree to marry me, I will turn around and go with you to look for him,” one man told her.
“I have no need of a go-back,” she replied.
Now that they were close to the gold camps, Maggie discovered that they were an even greater curiosity. Travelers ahead of them had spread the word that a wagon train of women looking for husbands was soon to arrive, and the women learned that a welcome was planned for them at Goosetown.
“What will they think of us, dirty and brown as beans, dressed in rags?” Dora asked.
“Perhaps they will not want us,” one woman worried.
Joseph reassured her. “There will be a hundred, maybe a thousand suitors for each of you. They will be grateful for the strongest, bravest women in Christendom.”
* * *
THE SNOW STARTED in the middle of the night, surprising them all. The September days had been warm, and there had been no feel of moisture in the air. The snow, heavy and wet, woke Maggie, and she shivered as she rushed through breakfast, then helped yoke the oxen. William, frantic, hurried them along, shouting for them to be on their way before the blizzard worsened.
“We must wait a day until the storm is over,” Joseph told him, as he studied the thick flakes that descended on them. “The trail is obscured. I believe we face a greater danger from stumbling over a cliff than we do from outwaiting the snow.”
“You do not know,” William told him harshly.
“Listen to Joseph, brother,” Caroline said. “We are only days from our destination, and the men there know we are coming. You or Joseph could ride on ahead and ask them to rescue us if the snow does not stop.”
“You do not know!” William told her.
Maggie and Sadie glanced up at his loud words. “Know what?” Maggie asked.
“I will not see you perish. I should never have allowed us to visit City of Rocks. I bear the fault for the wasted time.”
“I am against it,” Joseph said. “I will not allow you to let them face even more danger.”
“You are a fool, Joe. Do you want the women to die?” William’s voice rose so that he could be heard above the wind.
“Some will surely die if we go on today. We cannot see five feet ahead of us.”
Reverend Parnell turned away. His back heaved, and Maggie realized he was sobbing.
“What is it?” Caroline asked. She put her hand on his arm. “Willie, what is it?”
He shook off her arm, but she persisted. “What is wrong?”
“Anne,” he said at last, using the back of his hand to wipe his eyes.
“Anne?” Maggie remembered the name carved with William’s on Independence Rock.
“His wife,” Caroline murmured.
“I have told you only that Anne died on the trail. In truth, my wife died because of the snow. She was murdered.”
Caroline gasped. “I knew Anne had perished in California, but you have never given me the details. How could it be that she was murdered?” she asked.
“She was. I found her frozen body in the snow.”
“How awful for you, for her.” Caroline put her arms around her brother. “You have never spoken of it, and I did not want to intrude by asking. Was she truly murdered?”
“I consider it so.”
“What happened?” Joseph asked.
William bowed his head for a moment, then looked out into the storm. “We stopped two days to rest. A blizzard came on, like this one. It was not far from here. If we had been just one day ahead, we would have missed it. I and another man volunteered to go to the diggings for help. I thought Anne would be safe in camp. When we returned, she was lying in the snow, curled up, frozen. If we had not wasted those days, we would have been safe on the other side before the blizzard started.”
“But murder?” Joseph asked. “Was it not a tragic accident?”
“The others, they refused to let her shelter with them. I had protected her against mistreatment the entire trip, but I was not there, and the others turned their hatred on her. She had been violated. She sought shelter among some rocks and must have died in her sleep.”
“How beastly. They were degenerates,” Maggie said.
“Why would they do such a thing?” Caroline asked.
“I believe you know the answer,” William said. “Oh, they told me she had chosen to be by herself, but I knew them, knew the way they had dishonored her. I should have known they were waiting until I was away. If only I had insisted she go with me, but I deserted her.” He stared off into the soft whiteness that blanketed the harsh landscape, hiding the detritus of thousands of gold seekers and their wagons.
* * *
DESPITE WILLIAM’S INSISTENCE that they leave, Joseph prevailed, and the women camped that day, huddled in the wagons and tents, taking turns at keeping the campfires going. The night turned bitter, but in the weak dawn they saw that the snow was slowing, and by midafternoon it had stopped. Joseph said they would move out the following morning.
The melting snow exposed the scarred earth and turned the trail to mud. The oxen strained to pull the wagons through the foul mire of dirt and animal waste that littered the trail. Mary walked beside the lead team, urging the animals on. They were stubborn, however, and the train moved slowly. Once she slipped in the wet earth and rose covered in mud. She laughed as Maggie helped her up and said, “Oh, what a bride I must appear to be.”
“None of us looks appealing,” Maggie replied, helping Mary brush off her skirt. “We would be taken for little more than washerwomen.” She paused. “Have you grown anxious for a husband, then?”
“Not anxious, but curious. After all, this was the reason we signed up.”
“It was the reason the ministers signed us up.”
“But not the reason we came.” Mary paused. “Are you still worried about being recognized?”
Maggie thought that over. “I am not the f
rightened woman I was when you first knew me. Now I think of the future, not the past. But yes, I fear a little, although not near as much as I did before.”
“It will not be long,” Mary said. “Once we counted this trip in months. And then weeks. Now it is only days, and soon it will be hours. It does not seem possible. I wonder what lies ahead for us.”
Maggie stared off into the distance. “I shall miss you when this is over. The others, too. I hope we will not be separated.”
“We will not ever be separated, except perhaps by distance. What we have come through together will always keep us close. I do not believe a husband could be as dear to me as you and the others,” Mary said. “You are more than a family to me.”
Maggie grasped her friend’s muddy hand. “I would not have made it without you, Mary. None of us would.”
Touched, the large woman turned away. “You give me too much credit. We are all each other’s strength. Our band of sisters has accomplished what no other women have, and we have done it together, each one contributing. I do not wish a single one would have turned back.” She seemed embarrassed at her sentiment and struck the lead ox with a stick, urging him on.
* * *
KNOWING THAT THEY would be at Goosetown in a few days, the women were more excited than they had been since the first hours of the trip. In the evenings, they washed and mended their clothes and studied themselves in the sliver of mirror that one of them had kept. Their faces were tan and leathery, and Bessie and Evaline rubbed bacon fat into their skin to smooth and soften it, then laughed, telling each other they smelled like pigs. Maggie and Dora washed each other’s hair in the melted snow. Dora braided her hair, while Maggie fastened hers into a twist on top of her head.
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