We women here all spend our days about the same: brushing floors and cleaning dishes and washing clothes, making jellies and preserving fruit or putting up vegetables for pickling to see our families through the winter, and baking bread and pies. We feed chickens and tend to goats and cows, feeding and milking them and making butter or cheese. Our evenings are spent in knitting or stitching, until our eyes give out. Then we go to bed, up again at daybreak for another day of the same, most every day of the week and every week of the year.
Of course, we do this with children to look after, babies teething and crying, and older ones squabbling and fighting, and the fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds arguing with us and slamming out of the house in a sulky fit.
The men work from daybreak until sundown, in farming or cattle, or woodcutting or boatbuilding or whatever labor it is that they undertake to earn enough coin to put bread and meat on the table for their families. If a new barn needs building, the men do it. If a gate or fence needs mending, the men do that, too. In the evenings they dig over the yard ready for planting, and chop wood for the fires. And when it comes dark, yes, sometimes they sleep in their chairs before the fire.
But sometimes they, too, wake in the night to hush a crying child, or sit in the barn until daybreak with a birthing animal, and take the children fishing on a Sunday afternoon to give their mothers a rest.
In short, life here is mostly hard labor. Women and men work from sunrise to sunset side by side. No one thinks overmuch of whose right it is to do one thing, and whose obligation it is to do another. We are practical folks, we Pioneers, and rightly proud of ourselves, or so I think.
There is a great movement afoot back East, arguing for women’s rights, saying that women should have as much freedom as men to have an education and earn a living, and vote in political matters and be considered equal to men in all ways. I can’t help but feel that the women who advocate this the most are those with the luxury of time on their hands: women with servants and maids, and living on the money provided by their husbands and fathers. I wonder if they see the joke of it.
I agree with the idea somewhat. I believe in fairness, as any right-minded person would. But even so, I get riled up by having folks back East, who know nothing of my life here, telling me what I should think and how I should behave.
And the thought of a woman wearing a practical Bloomers Suit to do it, makes me laugh despite myself.
When Minnie is gone, and the dinner is on the stove, an experiment using the Indian spices which Mr. Sahid says is called a curry, or a type of chili, which I hope Jacob will like, for he enjoys spicy foods; and the children are set up at the table with their paste pots and their scrapbooks and scissors, and are arguing already about who should have what, I settle in the chair by the kitchen window. I take up another of Minnie’s periodicals that I haven’t seen before, the Sonoma Illustrated News, and settle down to read it.
And of course, there it is. A True Account of the Desperate Tribulations of the Donner Party by a Survivor . . .
I tear out the page, and thrust it into the kitchen stove.
Stories and lies, stories and lies. They never end.
23
At the end of October, the way began to steepen as we finally reached the foothills of that last great mountain. We followed the path of a shallow creek that came tumbling down the hillside, collecting into deep pools here and there before overflowing and sending water cascading over the rocks beneath. The way wound up through dense forests of pine, the air cold and sharp-smelling, a welcome relief after the exhausting heat of the plains and canyons we’d left behind. Occasionally the trees opened out onto areas of stony grassland, and here we pulled the wagons over to rest awhile, and the animals grazed a little and drank their fill.
Beautiful though this place was, now the vast range of the Sierra Nevada rose above us, black and forbidding against the gray clouded sky. I could not imagine how we could travel through it, with the little children and the beeves and our wagons.
Mr. Keseberg told me not to fear. “We have crossed plenty other mountains on our way, and we have joined the known route now. Wagons cross this mountain with ease, month in and out!”
He said it with a smile, but I could not smile back. The wagons that crossed the mountain did so in the late summer, but we were weeks delayed on our journey, and from the minute we had first seen the snow shining ahead of us, the thought of it had haunted us all. Were we too late to get through the pass? Even as Mr. Keseberg spoke, little dots of snow swirled past us in the chill breeze, and we left footprints behind us as we walked.
But the snow was a pretty sight. The little ones ran about and tried to catch the snow as it fell, and the bigger boys started throwing it at one another, and wrestling one another to the ground in it. Virginia was there and Meriam, who the boys chased, threatening to put snow in her hair, so there was a deal of shrieking; Leanna and Elitha, trying to catch the snow on their tongues, and even the Graves girls larking about with the rest of us.
Something went sailing past my head, and I turned to see a lump of snow splat against a tree trunk behind me. Just at that moment Landrum Murphy ran up to me. He shoved some snow down the back of my dress, making me scream, and then he spun me round and fetched me a kiss. He ran off back to the other boys, laughing and punching his fist into the air, with them all clapping and whooping like he was a hero.
Before I knew it I had caught up a big handful of the snow and made it into a ball, and I threw it right at him, harder than I knew. It hit him square between the eyes and he sat down sudden-like, backward in the snow, looking as surprised and foolish as could be.
There was a moment’s shocked silence, then in a second everyone was laughing. We laughed so hard that tears came into our eyes, and we gurgled and snorted for breath; as soon as one of us calmed down enough to stop, we only had to catch the eye of another and off we went again. The boys came across and slapped me on the back, and said what a great throw it was and that I should be a pitcher for their next game of ball. And the girls cheered me and said it served out Landrum, who had tried to steal a kiss from more than one of them.
* * *
When we were making camp that night, there was a shout in the distance, “Hollo!” Coming toward us on his horse was Mr. Stanton, waving his hat in the air and a great smile on his face. He brought with him a whole line of mules loaded up with sacks of flour and dried beef and sugar and all manner of good things besides; and riding at the head of the mules were two Mexicos, Luis and Salvatore, come to show us the way through the pass. We cheered the Mexicos, and we cheered Mr. Stanton, but most of all we cheered the news that the pass was still open, and that within a very few days we would be through, and safe and well in California.
We pressed Mr. Stanton for news of our companions. When we’d eventually caught up with the Donners, a couple of days ahead of us on the trail, they’d told us that Mr. Reed had stayed with them one night, and set off again accompanied by Walter Herron: but Mr. Stanton knew nothing of what had befallen them after that. Mr. McCutcheon had been left at Sutter’s Fort, too ill to make his way back to join his wife and child, and of course the Eddys were once more to be seen at one fireside and another, with poor Mrs. McCutcheon yet again the source of scandal and gossip.
After weeks of being careful with our food it was a fine thing to sit in the wagon and eat a big dish of Mrs. Keseberg’s good beef stew, with doughballs and corn bread besides. Mr. Keseberg was merry, and sang a song to us in German, and Mrs. Keseberg’s eyes sparkled, and she told me it was a song that was sung at their wedding.
Mrs. Keseberg was from a family who had one faith, and Mr. Keseberg’s family another, and both families were against the match, she said, but they were in love and they would not be gainsaid; then she joined in with the chorus, and he clasped her round the waist and she leaned on his shoulder and they swayed back and forth. I could not help but clap along, and even little Ada banged time with her spoon. Baby slept through it all
.
* * *
The next morning the Kesebergs and I set off just after dawn. We had hardly gone an hour when we spied wagons halted ahead of us, and we pulled over to discover what was amiss. Mr. George Donner’s wagon had broken an axle, and in trying to free some bolt or other he had driven a knife clean through the palm of his hand. Mrs. Donner had the salve out and a bandage and was hard at work dressing her husband’s wound, while the men stood round scratching their heads and debating what to do.
A goodly part of our journey was taken up with making repairs to the wagons. Mostly this was mending the wheels. The wooden wheels shrank in the dry heat, and the iron bands round the rim swelled up, so they were constantly coming loose and having to be heated up and hammered back into shape, an afternoon’s work. But replacing an axle was a heavy, long-winded job that would take a day at the very least. At last, it was decided that a couple of the teamsters would stay and help, and Mr. Jacob Donner pulled his wagon round to assist his brother. The little bits of Mrs. Reed’s goods being in his wagon, she had no choice but to stay as well, and the same with Mrs. Wolfinger. But the rest of us were to carry on, eager to complete our journey now the end was so near. It was a sad day to see our party divide, and to know that our journey together was come to an end.
Virginia and I might not have been the best of friends, but we kissed each other good-bye all the same. As for Leanna and Elitha, why, after our long months traveling together they felt more like sisters to me than my real sisters ever had, and we hugged one another right fierce.
Mr. Keseberg whipped up the beeves. They leaned into the shafts, grunting with the effort of getting the wagon in motion, and I set my steps to the trail, looking back once or twice to wave to my friends. After a couple of hundred yards, I spied Leanna running to catch up with me. Into my hand she put a lock of her hair, tied up with a little snip of pink thread, and she threw her arms round me, crying most bitterly to see me leaving.
“Leanna, do not cry so! For in just a few days’ time we shall meet again in California, and then we shall be merry together!” and I laughed, and she did, too.
How could we know that it would be months before we would meet again? And that when we did, it would be in circumstances as far removed from merriment as could possibly be imagined.
I lay down my pen, and close my journal. It is full dark with no moon, and the night air is thick with the summer heat. A moth flutters around the little pool of light where I sit with my candle. I pick up my journal, and make my way through the house to our bedroom.
I reach in under our bed. Here are the winter blankets, stored in canvas bags with cedar chips to keep away the moths. I move them to one side, and open up my hidey-hole—a loose floorboard. This is where I keep my journal. Perhaps it is a foolish hiding place in the house of a master carpenter, but Jacob would never concern himself with looking under the bed.
I take out what lies there already, and hold it to my face for a moment. A square of ragged cloth, no hint of the pretty pink color it once was. Wrapped in it are five silver dollars; a much worn and folded scrap of paper—what might once have been a drawing of bluebells; and a faded lock of hair, tied up with a snip of faded pink thread.
24
At sunset, we reached the great lake that was to be our final camp before we crossed the pass. After I had made up the campfire, and mixed up a batter with the last of the dried fruit to make johnnycakes and set the Dutch oven to heat, I walked down to the water.
In every direction was forest, row on row of dark pines stretching to the horizon and crowding down to the shoreline; though where I stood was grassy ground and then stones, with reeds and rushes along the water’s margin and to each side of the narrow banks of the creek heading back the way we had come. The sky was pretty as could be, a pale color of blue with streaks of pink and orange where the sun was setting behind airy puffs of gold-edged cloud. In the far distance the hills were crimson and lavender-color, and all was reflected in the smooth dark water, as clear as a looking glass. And now, for the first time in all my journey, I let my mind turn to thoughts of my ma.
I had wondered, from time to time, how my brothers fared after I left, and thought on my little sisters some. I could not have forgotten my pa, much as I might have wished it. But I had been resolute in not letting my thoughts linger on my family back in Cincinnati, for the more I heard of the happy lives the other folks in our party had left behind, the more I had been ashamed of mine, and my mother in particular.
I had left home a slattern, I guess. I knew no different. My mother had not brushed and braided my hair for me and tied it in ribbons. She had never made me a pretty dress from dimity cloth or stitched a pattern of daisies onto a white collar for me to wear for best, or sent me to school with a kiss and a smile. She was a drunk, and a whore, with her hair tumbled in her eyes and bruises on her neck and sores around her mouth; as different as could be from Mrs. Murphy and Mrs. Donner and the other women, neat in their simple homespun gowns, with their clean aprons over.
To start with I had hated them for it, mothers and children both, and my own mother most of all. But now I was reminded of better times, that I guess had been pushed to the back of my mind and lost, over the years.
When Pa was a young man, and courting my mother, who still lived at home with her folks, he was something of an adventurer. He had joined a ship plying the West Indies route, and gone off sailing round the whole of the world. One time he brought Ma some sugar candies, all the way from Paris, France, and even when the candies were long gone, she still kept the box. When I was very small, before all the rest of the children started coming along year in, year out, Ma would take down this box, sometimes, and show it to me.
It was painted over with the picture of a beautiful garden. There were archways of stone, and greenery cut into fancy shapes, and a swing with flowers twisted up the ropes. And there were some beautiful ladies walking through that garden, with white hair piled up high with feathers and jewels in, and wearing fine dresses.
The inside of the box was lined with yellow silk, and here Ma kept her little treasures. She would let me pick over them, and tell me the story of each thing.
There was a tiny silver cross on a chain, given to her by her grandmamma, she said, and a piece of blue fabric patterned with flowers from her mama’s wedding dress. A lock of hair, from her sister who had died as a baby; and a piece of horn patterned all over with strange pictures of sailing ships and patterns of knots.
This was from my pa, as well, carved on one of his long journeys on the whalers, for he had lost his employment with the West Indies merchant ships on account of his liking for the drink. Then it was only the whalers that would take him on, a dangerous trade though it was good money enough. But even that didn’t last long. He broke his leg and it never mended right, and so it was that he ended up fit for nothing but the wharves, and sodden nights in the alehouse.
I had spent so long fearing my pa and hating my ma that I had quite forgot that there had once been happier times. Now it occurred to me that my mother would not have chosen such a life, and must have expected something very different. I suddenly longed to see her; with every bit of my heart I wished her with me, to eat a good helping of my johnnycakes, and breathe in the cold, green smell of the leaves and the water, and to see the view of the lake that was just as pretty as the picture on the candy box.
“When I get to California,” I thought, “I will write a letter home, to let her know that I am safe and well. And I will save up every penny that I earn, however that may be, and send it to her, and beg her to bring the children and join me in my new life.”
* * *
That night when we went to our beds, it was with the glad thought that the next time we laid our heads to rest, it would be on the other side of the mountain, in California.
The night air was chill, for we were very high in the hills now, and the Kesebergs and I crammed into our wagon to sleep, bundled up in quilts and wearing all our clot
hes. I lay half awake, thinking about crossing the pass in the morning, and my first sight of California, and what would happen to me when we got there.
It was said that the sun shone every day, that a stick planted in the good soil would bring forth fruit within weeks, and that there were plenty of men looking for wives, so that no matter how plain a body might be, she would find a home and someone to care for her.
I wouldn’t ever be pretty. I was too tall for a girl and even with all the good food I had along the way, I was never going to be more than stick thin. But my hair had grown out nice enough, and I guess I had filled out enough in the right places. Enough, at least, to make Landrum Murphy look twice, and want to kiss me; and enough for the red-haired fellow at the dance to put his arms about me. I turned those thoughts over and over in my mind, smiling to myself in the darkness as I did so. I thought of how I would have my schoolhouse set out, and imagined seeing my ma again, and how startled she would be to find me so changed. And with that, I finally fell asleep.
I was woke in the full dark by raised voices. Mrs. Keseberg started up, calling out to her husband, and Baby set up wailing. I scrambled out of the wagon to find that the chill night air had given way to more snow. Two inches or more lay about us, crisp underfoot, and more falling, faster and faster, from the sky. Mr. Keseberg and the other men were whipping the animals back into their halters, and he shouted at me, “Quick! Get the others out of the wagon!”
There was no time for coffee or breakfast. Not even time enough for me to splash water onto my face or run a comb through my hair. Within minutes we were away.
The snow fell more gently as we left the camp, and as the night faded to a gray dawn it stopped altogether. Daybreak gave us a lowering white sky, with a bitter wind blowing in our faces and no sight of the sun; but by now we were within sight of the pass, a gentle dip between two peaks. We were rejoicing in our good fortune when the storm set in.
When Winter Comes Page 15