Beyond the Mapped Stars

by Rosalyn Eves

  But there’s no sign of that rough town in the clean, whitewashed station, or in the neat streets beyond it. Will and Alice find seats in the dining room, but I don’t want to borrow more funds than I already have, so I find market stalls outside the station and purchase purple-red serviceberries along with some bread and cheese for my supper.

  We climb back on the train and retake our seats without incident, though the smoking gentleman doesn’t rejoin us. Perhaps an hour out of Laramie the train slows to a near crawl. My heart picks up speed as the train slows. “Is something wrong?” I remember the robbery, how the train slowed, then stopped unexpectedly, miles from a station. Outside, the landscape stretches brown and dry and rocky.

  “Nah,” Will says. “We’re approaching the Dale Creek trestle is all. The train can’t go above four miles per hour across it.” He grins. “Best part of the journey.”

  Alice presses her lips together. “You might like it, William Stevens, but I don’t. That trestle bridge is a sight too long and too high, and I don’t care what masterpiece of engineering it is, it looks like a child stuck twigs together with glue. I’m not sure it won’t all come apart at a high wind.”

  “Well, at high winds they won’t let you cross,” Will says reasonably. “So if they let you cross, you’re safe enough.”

  I press my forehead to the window, but all I can see is a guard posted outside by a sign that warns us of the four-mile-an-hour speed limit, and piles of rocks on either side of the track. I grimace. That sounds a miserable job, to spend the day beside the railway track to stop the train if the winds are too high. All that heat and emptiness for only a few minutes of actual work each day.

  The train eases onto the trestle. Is it only my imagining, or can I hear the bridge creaking below us? As soon as we clear the guard, I see why Alice dislikes it so. The trestle stretches perhaps a hundred feet above a steep ravine, its inclines strewn with boulders, a few windblown trees clinging to the dirt as though they’ve given up hope of anything better.

  I don’t mind heights: I’ve climbed the walls of our canyon often enough. But the ground is always solid beneath me. This—I can only catch glimpses of the thin iron rods of the trestle out ahead of the train. Where we are looks as though the train is floating in midair, an uncertain miracle of engineering. The early-evening sun shafts through the gorge, making everything waver in the heat.

  Shivering, I pull back. “Has the trestle ever collapsed?”

  “See?” Alice demands, just as Will says, “No. Couple trains a day pass this way, have for more than a decade, and nothing’s ever gone wrong. You’re safe as houses.”

  Will jiggles his leg for a bit, then stands and leaves the compartment.

  “Will!” Alice hisses after him, but he’s already out of sight.

  She doesn’t look well. Sweat beads along her hairline, and her hands are gripped tight on the seat. Her eyes meet mine.

  “I’ll go,” I say, and follow Will into the hall. The windows alongside the narrow corridor all give an expansive view of the gorge beneath us. I swallow and put one hand against the wall to steady myself.

  I find Will at the end of the car, standing in the open doorway leading onto the narrow metal platform. The wind pulls at his curls, and he grins at me. Through the doorway, I can make out the gap between cars, and the flicking rails as the train crawls along the bridge. Far below, water glints from a stream at the base of the ravine.

  It’s terrifying.

  “It’s marvelous, isn’t it?” Will asks. “It feels as though I’m on top of the world, as though I’m flying.”

  Has anyone ever fallen from a train platform and down through the gaps in the trestle? I swallow again. “Will, come back to the compartment, please. Alice isn’t well.”

  “Scared of heights is all,” Will says. “She’ll be all right when we’re across.”

  But he follows me back to the seat anyway.

  At Alice’s request, I try to read her novel out loud to her, to distract her. Her eyes are shut, her complexion clammy. I don’t think the distraction is working. I keep looking out the window, at the emptiness beneath us. My words trip over themselves.

  Will doesn’t appear to hear us. He looks out the window, a tiny smile curling his lips. I mistrust that look. It’s the look David Charles had a couple springs back when he decided to go out hunting the bear cub someone had seen near our canyon. Luckily Hyrum got word before David Charles’d gone too far and dragged him back before he could get himself killed by the cub’s mama.

  The rock wall of the far side of the bridge appears, and the front of the train edges onto solid ground again. Alice opens her eyes. “Are we across?”

  “Nearly,” I say, and she releases a long breath.

  Will says, “I want to walk the trestle.”

  We both stare at him. “What?” Alice asks.

  Will repeats himself. My stomach sinks. I was right: he was planning something stupid.

  “No,” Alice says flatly. “You’ll kill yourself.”

  He shakes his head. “The rail ties are plenty wide. I was watching them. It won’t take but fifteen, twenty minutes to walk back across the tracks—I’ll be across before the next train comes, and I’ll catch the next eastbound train and meet you in Cheyenne in a few hours.”

  “Will, don’t,” Alice begs as Will stands again.

  He looks down at her, his usually smiling face still for once. “You know what Papa’s like, and Grandpa. I want to remind myself I’m alive before I go back to all”—he waves his hand vaguely—“that.”

  “And wasn’t a train robbery exciting enough? Or a man waving a gun in your room at midnight?”

  Will’s eyes brighten. “Oh, they were exciting. But they weren’t for me. They weren’t my choice.” He evades Alice’s grasp for him and slips down the hallway.

  We’ve passed the rock piles marking the end of the trestle, and a solitary guard watches the train pass. Maybe he’ll have sense enough to stop Will.

  Alice and I scurry after Will, calling his name. Some of the passengers in surrounding compartments look up at us, but most seem largely uninterested. I bet that would change if they knew what Will was planning.

  Throwing open the door to the platform, Will steps onto the metal floor. The train moves slowly, at a walking pace, and wildlife scuttles away from the tracks. A hare bounds away, a lizard slithers into the crevice of a rock.

  “Will!”

  But Will doesn’t turn at his sister’s voice. Easily, gracefully, as though he’s done this a dozen times or more, he jumps from the train. He stumbles a little on landing, his arms pinwheeling, then regains his balance. He doesn’t even lose his hat, which he doffs to us.

  Alice steps out onto the platform and I crowd after her, watching Will. If we bend over the metal railing, we can just see him, sauntering toward the wooden planks where the rails meet the trestle.

  The dark shape of the guard moves to intercept Will, and I pray hard, for Will, for Alice, that he stops him. But Will bends down to him and says something, and the guard shrugs and steps aside.

  Fingers pressed tight on the railing, Alice whispers, “I’m going to kill him.” I’m not sure if she means Will or the guard.

  The last thing we see, before the train slides around a curve, cutting off our view, is Will’s tall, trim figure, dancing out onto the trestle.

  chapter twelve

  Saturday, July 13, 1878

  Approaching Cheyenne, Wyoming

  Sixteen days until eclipse

  Alice and I don’t speak much the rest of the way to Cheyenne. We stay out on the platform well past the point where we can no longer see Will, until the conductor comes through the car and tells us, rather sharply, that it’s dangerous to ride on the platform and would we kindly return to our seats.

  We sit stiffly for some time in silence
. I calculate in my head how long it might take to walk across the trestle. It didn’t take long for the train to cross—perhaps ten minutes to get all the cars back onto solid ground. A person could surely cross the trestle in about that time, or a little more. Whether Will succeeded—or failed—he must have done so by now. I try not to think about what will happen if he’s failed.

  The aching tension reminds me of the long night I spent waiting to see if Rachel survived. It was unbearable then; it must be unbearable now for Alice. I reach out, and Alice grips my hand as though it’s a lifeline pulling her to safety.

  By the time we reach Cheyenne, Alice seems to have come to some decision. She releases my numb fingers, sits up straight, pats her hair, and adjusts her hat. She pins a smile to her lips.

  We wait our turn to disembark from the train, then approach the luggage car, where porters are setting down the trunks marked for Cheyenne. Alice gives one of the porters an address where her luggage is to be delivered.

  “It’s my favorite of the Cheyenne hotels,” she tells me. “If W— If people want to find me, they’ll know where to look. And luckily, I am known there, as I’m down to my last few dollars.”

  I wonder if Alice knows how telling this detail is: that she has sufficient wealth and leisure to travel out of Colorado often enough that the owners of a hotel in Wyoming know her by name. No one but Rebekka knows me in this part of the world.

  “You’re staying the night? Couldn’t you just go on ahead without Will?”

  She flinches at her brother’s name. “My parents are a little…traditional…when it comes to my brother and me. My mother wouldn’t like me to be traveling alone, especially at night, even if the circumstances behind it were not of my making.”

  In other words, I suspect, she might find herself in more trouble than Will if she shows up at home without him.

  Where is Will, right at this moment? I hope he’s on a train (or waiting for one) and not shattered at the bottom of the ravine. Please, God.

  Some of the buildings around the station are fine brick stores, and others are squared-off wooden buildings with signs painted across the front: billiard saloon, meals for fifty cents. Children stand in front of several, ringing bells furiously and hollering to attract customers from the train.

  I consult with a carriage driver outside the station and a clerk at the Western Union office and discover that it costs nearly the same to hire a carriage driver as it does to send a telegram to Ammon informing him and Rebekka of my arrival. Hiring a carriage would spare Ammon the long drive into town from their farm out near the fort, but neither is within my slim means. Alice would loan me more money, if I asked her, but I can’t bear to do so. Our friendship already feels unbalanced as it is; she’s given me so much. I’ll walk if I must.

  Alice looks over at me as we leave the Western Union building. “I suppose you’ll want to be going. It will be getting dark soon.”

  She’s right: I don’t want to wake Rebekka and Ammon with a late arrival. And Alice has a hotel waiting for her, where Will can find her when he arrives. (I do not let myself think about the other alternative.) She does not really need my company any longer.

  But even as I think this, my heart contracts. I do not want to go to Rebekka’s and wait for the baby to arrive, to fill my days and hours with small talk and housework to spare Rebekka during her lying-in. I don’t want to be reminded, by contrast with Rebekka, of all the ways I fail to be an ideal Mormon woman. Even if such charity is supposed to be my highest aspiration. Even if I love Rebekka.

  I want a bigger world than that.

  I want to stay here, and make sure Will is all right. That Alice will be all right.

  I want Denver, with the coming eclipse and its accompanying talk of ideas. I want the entire universe, the stars in the sky. If the glory of God is intelligence, if God is both wise and good, can’t I serve God as well by learning as by serving others?

  But want isn’t the same as should. And maybe Dr. Morton is right, that women are best fitted for domestic life. As a professor, he would know.

  Enough, I tell myself. You have enough. I force myself to think of Rachel, of the promise I made in exchange for her healing.

  Perhaps Alice sees some of this in my face, because she says abruptly, “Let me show you something before you go. My treat.”

  She leads me to a restaurant by one of the whitewashed hotels near the station. She doesn’t tell me what we are doing, but when the waiter comes to take our order, she asks for lemon ices.

  The waiter returns with two shallow bowls, each bearing a pale yellow ice molded into the shape of a rose. Alice digs into hers at once, but I prod mine with my spoon, loath to break the pretty confection. At last, I spoon off a narrow sliver and set it in my mouth.

  The cold feels delicious on a hot summer evening, like a bit of unexpected winter snow. And it’s sweet, so sweet that it makes my teeth hurt, but I like it. I take a heaping spoonful, but it is too much at once, and the cold goes direct from my tongue to my brain, making my whole head ache. Sometimes in the winter Mama makes us a treat by pouring sugar syrup over snow, but that is nothing to this explosion of sweetness.

  I finish the treat, wishing I had some way of sending it back to my brothers and sisters. To Rachel, especially, who loves anything sweet. Alice tells me that in fine confectioners’ shops back east—and soon, in Denver too—they serve ices made with cream and eggs, even richer and sweeter than the ice I have just finished. I can’t imagine such a thing.

  Though I scrape the bottom of the bowl with my spoon, making Alice laugh, soon there is nothing left of the ice, and nothing to keep me from going. Alice walks back to the station with me and, before I can stop her, negotiates a ride with a carriage driver she deems safe.

  “Are you sure you won’t come to Denver for the eclipse?” she asks again. “You would be welcome.”

  “I know,” I say. “You’ve been so kind to me. But I don’t think I can accept.”

  She doesn’t press me, but reaches into her purse and hands me a small card. Alice Stevens it reads, in flowing script. On the back, in tiny print, is her address. “If you change your mind, you can reach me here. And even if you don’t, perhaps you can write to me? I’ve enjoyed our short time together.”

  I take the card and slide it into my carpetbag. “Meeting you and Will was the best thing that happened to me.” I intend to write her more faithfully than Vilate Ann will likely write to me—which is not at all.

  Alice laughs. “Between the downpour and the robbery and the elk and the midnight visit of a crazy man, I’m not sure there was much to choose from.” She sobers, and I know we are both thinking of Will.

  “Are you going to be all right?”

  “I’ll be fine. Will’s like a cat, with nine lives waiting to be abused. He always lands on his feet. When he was fifteen, he tried to get into Miss Mattie Silk’s establishment, though Papa had forbade him from setting foot on Holladay Street.”

  From the mildly scandalized expression on Alice’s face, I can guess what kind of establishment Miss Silk runs, and my face heats.

  “Will stole one of my dresses and one of Mama’s hats with a little veil and presented himself at Miss Mattie’s, as a new girl in town. He made it all the way to speak with Miss Mattie too, before she realized he was not a girl. Instead of having him whipped, Miss Mattie just laughed at his cheek and sent him home in her own carriage. My parents were out, and Will sweet-talked all the servants into staying quiet, so they never did hear of it. That’s just how he is—he does the wildest things and never gets caught.”

  Despite her light words, her face is tight. “No doubt he’ll come banging in just as I’ve gone to sleep and wake the whole floor.”

  I wonder how often Alice has borne the brunt of Will’s actions, smoothing things over for Will as I smooth things over for Far. For Mama. I want t
o hug her, but I’m afraid she might find me impertinent, to presume at such intimacy. I content myself with pressing her hand.

  Turning back to the carriage, I find the driver has finished lashing my trunk to the back. Since Alice is watching, I climb inside. The interior is some dark fabric that smells of dust and grease, and I hold myself apart from the cushions as the vehicle lurches forward.

  I wave to Alice, who waves back.

  As soon as the carriage swings us around the corner, out of sight of the station and Alice’s too-kind eyes, I bang on the roof. The carriage sways, then stops.

  I stick my head out the window. “Can I be let down here? I can walk the rest of the way.”

  The driver, a rotund man in his middle age with a large family of daughters (Alice asked), sighs heavily. “What’s the trouble?”

  “I don’t have enough money to pay for the full journey, but I didn’t want to distress my friend.”

  He sighs again. “Are you sure? It’s a bit of a trek with your trunk and all.”

  I don’t need charity. “I’m sure,” I say, with more firmness than I feel.

  Obligingly, he climbs down from the driver’s seat, helps me out of the carriage, and unloads my trunk. I give him a quarter I can hardly spare for his effort, then ask him the way to Rebekka’s, as he seems to know it.

  He shakes his head at me. “Girl, you oughta know it’s not nice asking a man a favor when you’ve cheated him out of a good fare. You’re as green as you can stare, aren’t you?” He flips my quarter, which glints in the dim light, into the air and catches it. But he gives me the directions anyway. I repeat them to him, making sure the details are right.

  Still grumbling, the driver mounts his seat and drives off, the wheels rattling over the rough road.

  I draw a deep breath, orienting myself to this strange street, this strange city.

  My journey is almost over. Another hour or two, and I’ll see my sister. My thoughts flash to the unexpectedly long, wet walk from the train to Rawlins, and I’m torn between laughing and crying. Hopefully there are no elk this time.