by Karen Osborn
I cannot believe you when you say that you had not expected an end and that her illness was sudden. Did she not take to her bed last September? And as for your love for me, I feel these are words at best, empty of any substance. I shall let Amy take my part at the funeral. I shall not return east.
Abigail
June 5, 1885
Dear Maggie,
It has been five months since Mother’s death. Until last week, I thought I would not write to you again, for I do not think I will ever forget that you took from me any chance that Mother would welcome me back into her keeping before her death. But now I see that there is more betrayal that binds us. Even now that Mother is no longer alive, you have the ability to alter the course my life runs.
Amy’s latest letter states that she has refused the teaching post offered to her in New Mexico and that she has a suitor who will write to Clayton asking her hand in marriage. Now you stand between me and my daughter as you stood for so long between me and Mother. She writes that his name is Everett Turner and explains that he is from a good family, as if I did not know the name, as if Sally, the closest friend of my girlhood, were not the boy’s aunt.
Stillwater appears in her letters as if some magical kingdom, with its paved streets and buggies, the men in coats and hats and ladies in silk or taffeta basques, with stiff petticoats and ruffles, their hair tied with ribbons. Has she shown you the bustle I once taught her to make by folding a thick towel over a string? I suppose you had a long laugh at our simple poverty. Now Amy tells me she wears only suits and dresses that are in fashion.
I am an outsider to this world where one can buy soft, narrow-toed shoes and a new hat for every season. I did not know that Japanese parasols are carried in the sun or that the Inmans hold a ball each spring. Do the mimosa trees still drape over the sidewalks on Chelsea Avenue, and do the ladies gather on the porches along Vine Street to hear the latest gossip? I cannot imagine a Stillwater that is any different than the one I left eighteen years ago.
Maggie, know that it is not the young man himself that I object to, only that I have lost too much in this world already. I cannot face the loss of my own dear Amy, and it will be a loss if she marries this boy, for I feel sure they will settle near his home.
The wide sky that stretches over our ranch seems too full of light this summer, fragile and empty. Clayton and George have gone to check on a mine that Clayton plans to invest in. I have sent Margaret to play at a neighbor’s house, for she needs company her own age, even if they do speak Spanish. If Amy were here, I would ride with her to a grove of piñon trees that grows along the base of the mountains. They are so pretty against the sandy hills.
I remain your sister,
Abigail
Chapter 6
September 29, 1885
Dear Maggie,
Clayton has given his consent so that Amy and Everett Turner may wed. It went against him to do so. But she would only resent our interference, and we will not force her to live in New Mexico. Amy writes that the wedding will take place this winter in the Turners’ home. Clayton refuses to attend, insisting she should be married out here. Now that his oldest brother has moved to Denver, he has no family ties left in Virginia and will not leave the ranch for the two or three weeks we would need to make the trip.
I will plan to take the train east with Margaret. Amy is my oldest and dearest daughter, and as you say, I could not bear to miss her wedding. I will look forward to seeing you also, Maggie, despite our quarrels. When we were young, each thought I had could have easily been yours. I knew all of you—your quick, fluttering gestures, the sadness that stayed in your eyes for months after we heard about Father’s death, and the brightness that came into your voice the summer you met John. I hope you are not right in saying we no longer know one another. But perhaps time and distance, wide as the sky, have lain down between us.
Your Sister,
Abigail
December 7, 1885
Dear Maggie,
George Michael has disappeared. Last week he asked Clayton to let him ride twenty miles north to a ranch and help move cattle. George was supposed to be in school, and the weather is unpredictable this time of year. Clayton told him he could not make the trip. All last summer George begged us to let him ride out to the Deerings’ ranch and help out, but there were not many days Clayton could spare him. He has always been a mindful boy but recently talked of nothing but ranching and being a cowhand, so there is no telling what he will do.
It is more than a week he has been gone. Margaret is despondent, and I fear that if not for the cold she would try to follow him. Clayton rode up north, where the rancher, a Mr. Robertson, told him that some of the boys went farther north towards Colorado, to get on with a bigger ranch. We fear that George went with them. Clayton blames himself for allowing George to help with cow herding last summer, but had he not allowed it, I doubt he could have prevented George from going. Out here the boys are wild as wolves or coyotes, and nobody can do a thing with them.
I have written to Amy saying I will plan to come in January to help with all the preparations. I pray George is returned to us safely by then. We had several inches of snow last night. By morning the sun came out and the sky turned a hard, brittle blue. Now, in the late afternoon, there is a thin sheen across the snow where the sky melted it, then froze it to a blue ice. The whole world has turned blue. When there is snow here, there is more of it north, where George Michael must have ridden.
Your Sister,
Abigail
January 25, 1886
Dear Maggie,
You must know how much I wanted to board the train last week, how much I want to be there with my daughter, helping to prepare for the wedding. Aunt Celia writes that all of you are pleased with the union Amy will make and that I must come soon, for my delay gives the appearance that I still harbor some resentment. Maggie, please convince Aunt Celia of my sincere desire to be in attendance. As I have written to both Amy and Aunt Celia, I will come as soon as I can, but I am afraid to leave with George gone and Clayton in a heated fury over it.
Indeed, Clayton would have ridden out before now to look for our boy, except that the weather has been so fierce. Snowstorm has followed snowstorm for more than a month now, and if there is not some respite soon, we will be hip or waist deep. It is with some difficulty that we manage simple tasks such as feeding the animals, and Margaret has not attended school since Christmas. We have heard that the trains are still running with some regularity, but the trip will certainly be more difficult to make in this weather.
Earlier this month I wrote to Amy asking if she could delay the wedding until spring, but as she pointed out, that time of year is one of the busiest for us, and all of the invitations have been sent. I have finished sewing Margaret’s dress, a green plaid silk, long-waisted, with two rows of pearl buttons. Amy insists that I wait and buy my own dress when I reach Virginia, but I will alter my blue velvet to bring in the event that I reach Stillwater with no time to spare before the wedding. I can only hope that conditions will change so that I can make the trip, however hasty it might be. But, Maggie, if I cannot, give what I have enclosed, a mother’s words, to Amy the morning of the wedding.
Your Sister,
Abigail
January 1886
My Dear Daughter,
Here are the pressed flowers I had thought to bring you, a bit of desert to scent your clothes, a wedding sachet of verbena, yellow roses, and the petals from a flowering cactus. Marriage is not something that is always easy, year after year. But you can make of your life what you will have of it; know that, dearest Amy, for I have always wished for you the best of life.
I send this letter and the flowers in your Aunt’s care that in the event I cannot be there, she may give them to you the morning of your wedding. Know that like the desert scent, I am with you. I wish that I were not held here so tightly.
I know that you will he the loveliest of brides. Oh! that I could see you in your
dress, touch for myself the lace of your veil, brush out your fine hair, hold you, Daughter, in my arms those moments before you are given away to a life of your own making. I am with you, Amy; I am there as you walk into the church, as you say your vows to Everett, like the color and scent of these flowers.
I send you my love,
Your Mother
February 25, 1886
Dear Maggie,
Amy writes that the wedding was beautiful despite the terrible cold and that all the ladies wore white or a pale pink so that the room looked like winter itself had come indoors. You must know how I envy you playing my part, but I am grateful Amy was not left there alone to be a bride. This will be one of my deepest regrets, to have missed my daughter’s wedding. I do not think that I shall ever forget it.
We still have no word from George. There are days when Margaret refuses to go to school and despite the ice and cold takes a horse and rides out into the desert. Clayton has ridden north and returned without news. He thinks George is somewhere waiting out the winter and will come back home in the spring. Even as a boy, George always took care of himself, and I must hope he is doing that now.
I have put the pieces of material Amy sent that were from her dress and veil in a frame.
I remain your sister,
Abigail
April 2, 1886
Dear Maggie,
Amy has written she and Everett are nicely settled in the house Everett’s parents provided for them and that Everett has begun to practice law and she is teaching at the academy. I sent her a set of dishes made in Mexico to remind her of the land she grew up on, and the silver spoons passed down from Grandmother. I know that she is content to be surrounded by books at the academy and busily attending dinners and the orchestra and church functions with her husband.
Our lives here continue to rotate with the seasons. As soon as the ground dries enough to work the soil, we will put in our crops. Clayton has hired four or five Mexicans to help with the planting, for we have decided to add more acres of both corn and alfalfa. Several ditches will need to be dug, along with the planting. The snow that fell this winter has seeped down into the earth, so that the soil is as wet as I have ever seen it. We are hopeful of a good harvest.
Margaret is becoming as wild as George. There is not a thing I can do with her, or the teacher either. We send her to school each morning on a gentle spotted mare, but yesterday the teacher told us Margaret has not been to school in a week’s time. When we asked her where she had been, she only stared out the window as if she could not hear us. Pamela Porter tells me that some of the young people gather in front of the store beside the mission school, hoping for excitement. But Clayton thinks she is all the time out riding through the valley and the desert. I am afraid for her.
Yesterday morning Clayton rode in to deliver her to the teacher. Miss Alden has suggested that she board there until the end of the term. I have tried to teach her fine embroidery and quilting, but she has no patience if the thread should break or get a knot She is not like Amy and refuses to learn her lessons, staring out of the window or making some excuse so that she can leave her work. I do not know what will become of her.
Your Sister,
Abigail
August 30, 1886
Dear Maggie,
This summer has been spent so quickly. Clayton’s brother and his family were here for a visit in early May. Clayton’s nephew, Steven, had recently finished university studies in geology and was most interested in the southwest landscape. To oblige him, all of us made a five-day camping trip to the northwest corner of the territory. We came across some unusual red sandstone formations and caves that had been built into the walls of the cliffs. Steven stayed behind to work with an expedition that has begun to uncover geological findings.
I believe Clayton and I enjoyed the trip as much as his nephew. We took numerous hikes up along the red cliffs where the earth falls away into the sky. Clayton and his brother fished in the streams. It was like being on holiday.
As you know, the entire month of June, Amy and Everett were here. Everett seems the ideal husband for Amy, knowledgeable, thoughtful, kind. They spent most of their time out-of-doors, walking through the orchard or down to the river. The cacti were still flowering, and Everett had never seen anything like it. I took the young couple up and down the valley so all of our neighbors could greet them. Señora Teresa gave Amy a shawl painted with flowers and birds. There were piles of linens and table settings and finely wrought candlestick holders. Pamela Porter had made a quilt. When they left on the train, we had to have everything boxed for shipment; there was so little of it that could be squeezed into their luggage.
We have heard, finally, from George. He is in Colorado, working on a ranch, and plans to herd cattle south for wintering. There was nothing but to give him our blessing; still, I will think of him often. He is just a boy, and it is a man’s work there on the open land. I wish that he would return and perhaps enter some sort of college, but he has never gleaned much from books. Even when he was a young child I never saw him happy except when he was outside. Perhaps he is meant to work that way, his feet on the solid ground, breathing the sky itself.
We ladies in the valley have formed a lively sewing circle, which meets this evening at Pamela Porter’s house. The Reverend’s wife and his sister attend, and a Mrs. Townsend and Mrs. Sloaner as well. The local gossip is discussed over the quilts. All of the recent talk is over whether or not Mr. Berns will return to his wife and small child. When he brought his wife west to live on the land he had purchased, she planned to have a millinery, the first and finest shop of its kind in this part of the country. She soon saw what a disaster such an undertaking would be here and resigned herself to raising children and farming a piece of land that is so far from the river it is really a piece of desert.
Three weeks ago he disappeared, gone I suppose to some mining town in Colorado or perhaps California. He is a gambler and cannot live in a place that has no saloons. Mrs. Sloaner claims his young wife is left with a ten-month-old baby and a room full of fabrics and ribbons and feathers and hats. We have invited her to our meetings, but she has yet to attend one.
I have tried to convince Margaret to accompany me to the sewing circle, but she is not one to sit quietly with a needle and thread or a book. All day she spends out-of-doors, like her brother, and I cannot get her to wear a bonnet against the heat. She cares nothing for being a lady and only wants to ride the horse Clayton keeps in a small nearby pasture. Would that I had Amy here to influence her!
Your Sister,
Abigail
March 16, 1887
Dear Maggie,
Here is a letter we had from George last week. He seldom writes, and this is the only letter we have gotten that is more than a few words. Margaret would ride away and join him if she could. It is hard for me to remember that she is only twelve years old, she acts with such will power and independence. But a lack of judgment still prevails, and she does not act responsibly. It is a combination I fear.
Last week she disappeared, riding up towards the mountains, and did not return until well after dark. Señora Teresa sent her son out to find her, and then Clayton himself rode out. When she came back, riding alone, her hair was undone, her skin darkened from riding out under the sun, and in her hand she held the long feathers of an eagle. If I had not known her for my daughter, I would have thought she was from some tribe, a young Indian maiden or warrior riding down from the hills.
Teresa is certain that Margaret has hidden powers, which make her so unafraid that even the cries of the coyotes do not bring her home from the desert. But Clayton believes simply that she acts without forethought. It does not occur to her that she might put herself in danger.
We have had to hire three Mexicans to help with the alfalfa, but we will get good returns on the harvest. The grape vines and the apple trees give us what fruit we need, and our cows and chickens are productive. We are well provided for. As Clayton’s investment
s grow, we have been able to furnish our house with a hickory cabinet and a four poster bed. I spent many winter evenings sewing imported fabric to make cushions for a couch, while Clayton read aloud from the United States history. Our nights spent this way were quite cozy.
I have sent Irene a note wishing her happiness on her wedding day, along with a few yards of blue silk and a set of bowls from the southwest for her new house.
Your Sister,
Abigail
February 5, 1887
Dear Mother and Dad,
I guess you thought I forgot you with no letter or note since last summer. I am still on the Turnstone ranch in Colorado. We are high up and the winter is cold here, hut I am used to it and wear three pairs of clothing. There is a rough cabin we can hunk in with a stove, hut 1 sometimes spend that time out riding, running down the stray cattle to keep them from wandering into the hills or over the river. There are near to twenty of us cowhands, some old and a few young ones like me. The old ones are forever telling stories about cattle drives and wild Indians or some sweetheart, and they play jokes on us like sending us out in the night to bring back some steer that ain’t lost.
I guess you have heard about stampedes. There was a big one last August when we were driving the cattle. I nearly got thrown by my horse. Right before that stampede started, everything got quiet like we was out in the desert heat in the middle of the afternoon. The cattle, the horses, you couldn’t hear nothing, even no insects or the wind. I believe the world was pausing to think about what chaos was coming. All at once hundreds of them cows started running. They didn’t pay no attention to direction. They were all just thundering across the ground any way that they could, and we had to try to turn them all together to keep them from trampling each other to death. I had all I could do to stay on my horse. There was a boy with us, his first drive, and he fell off and got crushed to death under those pounding hooves.