I held my cup so tight I feared it would break, but I finally told him the secret I’d carried all this time, saying it all in one burst so I would finally get it out in the open.
“Jimmy, I made a terrible mistake back in Kansas and that’s one reason I came out here. I married a man I thought was like my Pa, but he wasn’t. He was mean and he cheated on me and he hit me. I left him and I divorced him. At least I filed the papers for divorce. But the divorce wasn’t final when I left Kansas. I couldn’t sit around waiting, but he wouldn’t answer the court summons and so I finally just left. But today I got this letter from the court and the divorce is finally done. He says I deserted him, but I don’t care what he says. I just care that this paper says I’m a free woman and I can now marry you. I’m sorry I kept this from you, but everything is all right now.”
Jim sat there looking at me like he had been hit by a stick.
“Why didn’t you tell me before?” Oh, I dreaded that question. Would he resent that I cheated him, not owning up to a first marriage? Would he think I was damaged goods now? Would he still want me?
“I was afraid. I couldn’t tell you I was married without telling you I was divorced, and I couldn’t tell you I was divorced because I wasn’t legally. I was free in my mind and my heart but not by the law. I was afraid this would queer you on me and I’d lose out on the man I love. I prayed that eventually this day would come and the court would say I was free and by then, you’d love me enough to excuse me for keeping this secret. It’s been terrible keeping this from you, but I didn’t want….”
Jim lowered his head and held up his hand to end my speech and my heart dropped. This was the conclusion I always feared. I just knew the next words out of his mouth would be ‘get outta here.’ I heard myself give out a little cry, and that brought Jim’s head up. But his eyes weren’t mean and hurt. They were kind and gentle.
“Ella, stop. I can’t…I have to…please sit down because…please, sit…I have something I have to tell you, too.”
And that’s when Jimmy told me about how he had killed Charley Johnson.
It wasn’t cold-blooded murder, like the indictment said; it was really self-defense, but that had never been resolved because there’d never been a trial. He said all that up front so I wouldn’t spend any time believing the worst, and then he told me his side of the story.
Charley Johnson was a big bully who had been threatening Jim for months over some slight he couldn’t even remember. Jim was in the army then and had gone to his commander to alert him to the threat and was advised to stay out of the man’s way. Which, Jim stressed, he had done every time he came into Buffalo, but one day in May of 1880, Johnson cornered him in a saloon and came at him, demanding a fistfight. Jim knew he was too small to survive hand-to-hand combat with this large man. It happened so fast, it wasn’t until it was all over that he realized he had shot three times as Johnson advanced on him—the first shot went into the ceiling, the second into Johnson’s leg “and that spun him around and the third went into his back.”
Jim emphasized that several witnesses were ready to speak on his behalf, “and there was only one man who took Johnson’s side.” Even so, he was indicted for murder and sent away, ending up in the Rawlins Jail.
“Some prominent friends posted my bail and I was very grateful to be out of there. The court finally dismissed the case, saying it should be handled in a military court. Of course, there never was a military court because everyone knew this man was out to get me and I had no choice.”
When he was done, I took his hand and told him, “Jim, you had to protect yourself. Of course I understand. There’s no reason you couldn’t have told me this. This was unfortunate, but you didn’t do anything wrong.”
Jim started a smile. “That’s exactly what I want to say to you. You made a mistake, but you corrected it by leaving that horrible man. I’m proud of you for that. I understand why you didn’t tell me. But now I know. And you know what this means? It means you have no excuse not to run off with me and get married.”
Jimmy and I had shared small kisses since we met. But tonight, when Jim took me in his arms, we kissed for a very long time.
***
Within a month of the happy letter and the secret-sharing, we were bundled up in Jim’s buggy on our way to Lander to get married.
Lander was 105 miles from the roadhouse and it took us five long days. We started out along the Oregon Trail that had been the highway for so many wagon trains over the years, and Jim told me stories about the immigrants.
The one that broke my heart was about the Mormon handcarts.
“You know, I’m not Mormon and I’m not like some who can’t stand them, but even people who hate Mormons cry when they hear about the handcart disaster,” Jimmy began, and he had that tone that let me know this was such a sad story, I’d probably cry, too. And I did, thinking about all those converts trying to get to the promised land in Salt Lake City, who froze to death in Wyoming instead.
“They say a thousand people started out and over two hundred died. They never even counted how many fingers or toes or limbs the frostbite took. Brigham Young tried to save them, but he didn’t even know they were out there until it was too late.”
I was quiet for a long time, trying to wrap my mind around the idea of putting everything I owned in a small handcart and then pushing it a thousand miles.
“Would you have done it?” I finally asked Jim.
He answered with a statement I adopted as my own thinking on the subject. “I’ve never believed in anything that much.”
We rode along in silence for awhile, and I think it convinced Jimmy that funny stories were more appropriate for a long trip like this.
So he told me all about Big Nose George Parrott, the most notorious outlaw W.T. ever knew.
“Now you can imagine how Big Nose George got his name and I’m here to tell you, it was completely earned. I have never seen a proboscis like that on another human being in my entire life.” Jim started out on a roll and never let up until the entire story was told. “I met him when they threw me in the Rawlins Jail for that mess in Buffalo, and you didn’t have to say three words to him to know he was nobody you wanted to know.
“Big Nose robbed stagecoaches for fun and killed people for sport, and now he was in the hoosegow charged with killing two Carbon County deputy sheriffs back in ’78. They took three days to try him and sentenced him to hang. They had him shackled, but all day, you could hear him working those shackles. We thought he was just wasting his time, but darned if he didn’t hack right through the bolt with a pocketknife. We didn’t know that then, not until we heard the commotion. Big Nose got out of his cell and hid in the water closet. Sheriff Rankin’s younger brother, Bob, and his wife both worked at the jail—she cooked some delicious meals, by the way. Anyway, Bob Rankin came in and Big Nose beat him over the head and tried to get out of jail. But Rosa, that’s Bob’s wife, she slammed the outer door shut and the rest of us grabbed for Big Nose and kept him still. I felt terrible for Bob. There was so much blood I thought he was dead at first, but he wasn’t. He just never was quite right in the head after that.
“When word got out that Big Nose had almost escaped, the men in town turned mean and formed a mob and attacked the jail. For a minute there, we were afraid they’d take everybody out, but they just came for Big Nose and they hung him from a post on Main Street. Nobody ever was charged with anything in Big Nose’s lynching. If anybody ever had it coming, he did. Saved the county the cost of hanging him.
“The County Commissioners gave Rosa a gold watch to thank her for her bravery in stopping the escape. We never got anything, but then, nobody else in that jail was proud to be there in the first place, so it was just as well we didn’t get any notice for what we did. I did hear that when the official execution day arrived, the sheriff informed the court that Big Nose could not be found in all of Carbon Cou
nty. He had been six feet under for two months by then!”
By now, this outrageous story had wiped away my sadness and had me giggling.
“But that isn’t the end of the story,” Jimmy pushed on. “Big Nose was so hated that before they buried him, they cut off his head and they skinned him.” I shuddered.
“No really. They skinned him and you know what happened to that skin? When Dr. John Osborne became governor, he wore shoes made from Big Nose’s skin to his inauguration. Even bragged about it. And somebody still has the skull in a closet somewhere.”
I slipped my arm under Jim’s and cuddled closer. “Didn’t know I had such a hero for a husband-to-be.” He got a kick out of that.
The trip went fast as Jim told me stories like that. He promised that one day, we’d go even farther north and visit Yellowstone Park and watch the geysers. Jim was proud that W.T. had the first national park, and it flummoxed him that others saw it as foolish. Some said it would mean far more money to W.T. if developers could build up that pretty land, but Jimmy disagreed.
“There are just some things you have to protect for the good of everyone.”
We stayed at the Rongis Stage Station one night, camped out the others, finally followed the Rawlins-Fort Washakie stage road into Lander on the Shoshone Reservation. I’d never been on an Indian reservation before, but while the surroundings were strange, I never felt any trepidation. I’d only seen pictures of teepees in books, but here they were along the road, and I couldn’t help but stare.
One had a pile of brush in front of the opening flap and Jim explained that meant the owner was away for awhile but would return.
“So that’s like their front door key?”
Jim had to admit, that was about it. He took a short detour off the main road to show me a grave. It was a mound of earth with stones covering the top.
“Why is there a washboard by those stones?”
Jim explained this was a woman’s grave and that was her prized possession. “But couldn’t somebody else use it?” My practical side. Jim said that’s not how the Shoshones saw it.
“You know a band comes through by us now and then. They like the creek,” he told me, and I hadn’t known. Now that I did, I wasn’t sure how I felt about a band of Indians in my backyard.
But I did know how I felt about this man next to me in the buggy. I felt safe with him. I felt sure with him. I could ride around an Indian reservation and not feel any fear. A soon-to-be new wife couldn’t ask for much more.
Jim said it was necessary to go so far—and into the next county—so our marriage records wouldn’t be detected. I totally agreed. Our plan from the start was to secretly marry so we could file a couple claims each. Our marriage wouldn’t have been much of a secret if we’d just rode into Rawlins to get hitched. No, the long ride was necessary, even though my sore backside protested now and then.
I wore my Sunday dress and a hat to fill out our official marriage application. It was May 17, 1886. At the last minute, I decided not to use my given name, in case anyone ever checked if an Ella Watson had gotten married and was cheating the Homestead Act. Jimmy agreed it was smart to be cagey.
“After all, if this was ever discovered, it would be your claims at stake,” he told me. I already knew that. So I used my first and second names, but made up a last name to cover my tracks. I signed “Ellen Liddy Andrews.”
I carefully rolled up the piece of parchment and smiled at myself at what a good story this would be someday for our children. I tucked it away.
“I’m going to have this framed and we’ll put it on the wall of the big cabin we’ll build after we get all our claims. What a good story it will be for our children.” Jim agreed that was a great plan.
John Fales was the only one who knew the truth. He’d hold our secret safe. He’d held down the fort while we were gone and his Ma had come over to cook the meals. But he took me aside to give a secret report:
“Now, I’m not sayin’ my Ma isn’t a good cook. She is, yes, ma’am, she is a very good cook. And she can sew better than the dress shops in Cheyenne. But I have to report, Miss Ella, that even though my Ma put a right good meal on the table, there were some very disappointed cowboys who come by for one of your dinners!”
He could have been a boot-licker, making points with the new Lady of the House, but this was another moment that endeared me to this skinny man.
Officially—and for anyone who came in for dinner—I was still living in the room behind the cookstove, but at night, after everyone had left, I’d join my husband in his home.
“It’s our home now,” he told me, and I liked the sound of that.
This time, marriage was a totally different thing. My man did not turn into a monster once he had me hitched. He wasn’t a rough man. He never hit me. He didn’t treat me with disrespect in our marriage bed. I never laid there with my eyes closed, hoping it would be over. There was no routing pig in my marriage bed now. There was a loving man who made me realize what it was about marriage that was so pleasant.
Chapter Nine—My Claim, No. 2003
Business was good at the roadhouse before I ever got there. It was strategically located at two major roads—one north and south, the other east and west—so there normally was healthy travel most days. Jim stocked up the kind of supplies travelers and cowboys needed—cans of Arbuckle’s of course (his number one seller, but anyone could have predicted coffee would lead any shopping list); Greeley Snowflake Flour (cowboys said it was better than Nebraska Flour for biscuits); Kirk’s soap, Fairbank’s Lard, Michigan Salt, four kinds of canned beans.
Business got great when I started cooking. There was no place else to get a hot meal for miles—unless you had your own stove or campfire or a good woman at home. But not only cowboys came to have their noon meal at the roadhouse. So did neighbors, first the men and then they brought their wives, sometimes their children. Of course, never on Mondays, as that was the dreaded wash day that left women feeling “worse than a stewed witch.” It was Mondays when I usually made Ma’s Irish potato soup that hit a home spot with most cowboys. Whether their own Ma had made it or not, it tasted like something a loving Ma would make, and that was good enough for men who made their living punchin’ cows.
If women came to join their husbands for dinner it was usually on Wednesday, and so that was the day I planned my best specials, for obvious reasons. It was one thing to please the belly of a cowboy; it was quite another to satisfy a cook whose own stove produced delicious delights. The kudos that really mattered to me came from my neighbor ladies.
I varied the menu so folks could taste it all after several visits: fried chicken, beef loaf, steaks, baked chicken and dumplings, beef stew, stewed chicken—the list went on, depending on what I had on hand or could kill. There were always corn muffins at every meal and I found folks were wild for my escalloped corn—my secret was the bits of real butter I put over the top that made the dish so good, grown men were seen licking their plates. I usually had a pot of soup on the back burner—I threw everything left over into the pot and it cooked up real nice—but my tomato soup with its secret teaspoon of soda was a favorite. And of course, nobody went away without a piece of pie. Once I decided to make cake instead of pie and while they ate every crumb, one cowboy after another politely asked if I could please have pie the next time they came. I scored big with my pig’s foot jelly.
I got to know our neighbors through these dinners, although “neighbor” in these parts meant folks who lived miles and miles away. I was disheartened that the only exception to that rule was the big cabin on the Broken Box Ranch of one A.J. Bothwell which sat between the roadhouse and my claim. Darn, why did he have to be my only real neighbor?
It was at a Wednesday dinner that I first met Canzada Earnest, who became my favorite person on the Sweetwater. Mattie, as everyone called her, was older than me, but of the same sturdy stock. She always wor
e a sunbonnet and a smile on her face, and the stories she could tell! I could sit forever and listen to this woman tell about the adventures of her life. My favorite was the time she was traveling by stage from South Dakota to her sister’s in Texas and ran into bandits. She had been warned the Indians were on the warpath and road agents were holding up stagecoaches left and right, but that hadn’t stopped her. She sewed her fortune—three thousand dollars in gold!—into her petticoats and put two dollars in her purse. Sure enough, here came the road agents and they ordered everyone out and told them to hand over all their money. Mattie started to cry and asked if they’d take a poor girl’s last two dollars, and danged if they not only gave her back her money, but five more dollars besides! Folks would cheer and chuckle for a half-hour over that story and Mattie would just smile like it was something any brave girl would do.
And then Boney Earnest would chime in with praise for his wife. How they’d hunted together and she’d fought Indians and herded cattle and they both knew a whole cast of colorful characters. “Like who?” somebody always asked, and that opened the door to stories about Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickok and Buffalo Bill.
One day, this stranger who was visiting one of the ranchers sat there with a pen and notebook all afternoon, writing down what Mattie said. When Boney called him on it, he introduced himself as Owen Wister and said he was a writer and found the West fascinating. Boney snickered and said it wasn’t so fascinating when you were living it, and then everyone slapped their thighs in agreement. Yes, when the Earnests came to dinner, I knew to put on an extra pot of coffee and cut some more pie because it was going to be a full afternoon of stories.
I always hoped that Tom Sun would bring his nice missus to dinner so I could tell Mrs. Sun how we had the wonderful Mary Hayes in common, but he never did. The one time I brought it up to him, he screwed up his nose like he wouldn’t want his wife to associate with me.
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