Jo's Triumph

by Nikki Tate

  Chapter Three

  When the Paiutes returned to Carson City, they brought with them the Washo chief and three young Washo men with their wives, mothers, and sisters.

  “These are the guilty men,” the Washo chief said. The young men were promptly arrested, their arms pulled behind their backs and tied tightly at the wrists.

  A crowd gathered to see the Indians and many of the white people hollered rude things at them. The Indian women who had come with their men cried and wailed. One old woman shouted at Major Ormsby who was pointing at the jailhouse.

  “What are they saying?” I asked Sarah.

  “They say the men are innocent, that their chief only brought them here so the Washos did not have to make war with the Paiutes.”

  Two men with rifles came toward the crowd and, seeing them, the three Washo men shrieked in terror. They struggled against the white men who held them. First one, and then the other two, broke free and ran.

  Everyone was screaming and shouting. The two men with rifles raised their guns and fired again and again. The three Indian men fell onto the icy ground, blood pouring from their wounds. The women cried out in horror and rushed to their sides, howling with grief.

  Sarah turned to Mrs. Ormsby and said, in a voice so quiet it made me shiver, “I believe those women. I don’t think those men were guilty.”

  “I won’t hear such nonsense. My husband knows what he is doing.”

  Sarah said nothing to this but turned her back on the hideous scene before us and walked away.

  A short time after that, her cousin, Chief Numaga, came to take Sarah and her sister from Major Ormsby’s house. I missed her more than I would have imagined. But part of me was also envious. Sarah’s father, Chief Winnemucca, her grandfather, a man they called Old Truckee, and her cousin, Chief Numaga, would never abandon her the way my own heartless brothers had done. Who would rescue me?

  The mood of Carson City turned dark. Blood had been spilled on our streets. For many days stains could be seen where the Washo men had fallen. When we heard that white men, robbers, had been the ones to murder the miners for their money, I thought of Sarah and hoped she and her people, and the Washo people, too, could forgive the men of Carson City for shooting the innocent Washo men.

  Things went from bad to worse as the coldest winter anyone could remember settled in. With Sarah gone, Mrs. Ormsby could not manage without my help. I stayed on at Ormsby House.

  Long after Christmas had come and gone, we heard that the Paiutes had attacked the Williams brothers’ place, burned it to the ground, and killed both brothers and several others besides. Why would they have done such a thing? It made no sense at all.

  When Major Ormsby heard of the attack on Williams Station, he was furious. “It’s time we teach those double-crossing Paiutes a lesson,” he declared. Word spread like wildfire. Over the next two days several dozen men gathered downstairs, drank whiskey, and made plans for revenge. Mrs. Ormsby and I brought the men steaming bowls of soup and slabs of bread. The men made plans to ride toward Pyramid Lake where Sarah’s people lived.

  “We’ll show them Indians what happens when they attack a white man,” a round fellow with gray hair said as he raised his glass.

  My blood chilled in my veins as I thought of Sarah, her sister, and the rest of her family. There must have been a reason for the attack on Williams Station. I knew Sarah well enough to know that her people would not have attacked without reason. The Williams brothers must have done something terrible. Everyone knew they were nothing but trouble. They cheated everybody — whites and Indians alike — and had more enemies than anyone else I knew.

  But the drunken men at Ormsby House did not care to remember these facts. At dawn the next morning, the whole lot of them set off riding horses thin from poor feed and a long winter.

  When we heard some days later that there had been a terrible battle near Pyramid Lake during which our men had been ambushed by the Paiutes, I was not sure what to think. Many white men had been killed. One of the dead was Major Ormsby. Mrs. Ormsby and Lizzie were near blind with distress. Behind closed curtains, they clutched at each other and wept. In the quiet of that morning, the house was still save for the sounds of their misery.

  On the day that we heard the ter rible news about the defeat of the men from Carson City, I was sent back to the orphanage. Together, we all waited to see what might happen next.

  The settlers and townsfolk wasted no time. Immediately, they began to plan another attack on the Indians. Though it was May, snow continued to fall and I found myself wondering whether God was punishing the people for all the killing.

  Though Miss Critchett and Mrs. Pinweather tried hard to bring some order to our days, none of us could concentrate on our lessons or needlepoint. Every loud noise outside made us jump. We were at war with the Paiutes and none of us knew when their warriors might ride back into Carson City, this time to attack us as they had attacked Major Ormsby and his men.

  No matter how I tried to busy my-self, I never felt safe. I often thought of Sarah and worried that she would be killed in the battle that was sure to follow. Sarah’s words about going to California came to me as I lay in my bed each night. California seemed so far away, so safe. Finally, I decided to make some arrangements to get myself out of Carson City. From that moment on my mind did not rest.

  How would I get away? Where could I get my hands on some money? Even if I could somehow buy a stage ticket, surely someone would ask questions of a girl travelling alone. They’d bring me back and I’d be stuck here again.

  The whole plan of my escape came to me in small pieces, like patches in a quilt. The first piece to fall into place was David Morton’s cap.

  The Home for Unfortunate Girls employed a porter by the name of Mr. Morton who had a son called David. David had ears so big they might have belonged to a mule. He was close to my age and helped his father with the chores: chopping wood, clearing snow, and shoveling coal.

  David always pulled his cap down so low over his ears you could hardly tell who was under it. If someone else put on David’s cap and pulled it way down like he did, it would make a pretty good disguise. ‘Course, it wouldn’t work for a girl — unless — unless the girl cut off her hair.

  I wrapped the end of one of my long braids around my finger and looked down at my dress and pinafore. If a girl cut off her hair and wore boy’s clothes, maybe, just maybe, she could pass as a boy, particularly if the girl was tall and bony and pockmarked like me.

  Not long after that I saw my chance to take David’s hat.

  The nights were still bitterly cold when a new delivery of coal arrived for the hulking furnace in the cellar. David’s father shoveled the coal into the chute leading down into the cellar. David’s job was to move the coal back to make room for more. It wasn’t quite high enough for him to stand up in the cellar, so before he went in he hung his hat on a peg by the door. Poor fool. It was no trouble to take his cap from the peg and tuck it up under my pinafore until I could get back to my room to hide it.

  I didn’t feel real good when his pa boxed his ears for his careless ways, but I didn’t feel bad enough to give the hat back, either. After all, David was lucky to have a pa, even one with a temper.

  It wasn’t right to steal, but, the way I figured, if the Good Lord hadn’t meant for me to have the cap he wouldn’t have put the idea in my head to take it and most certainly wouldn’t have left it hanging right there on the peg as plain as day.

  A pair of trousers was harder to come by. At about this time Miss Critchett got the idea of taking in washing as well as the mending we already did.

  My job was to crank the big handle of the wringer to squeeze the water out of the sopping wet laundry. Another girl, Kathleen, worked with me. We both grew strong cranking that handle.

  Sometimes, Kathleen would look at me with her droopy eyes and say, “I bet we could make a fortune in the gold fields if we ran a laundry.”

  Then we wouldn’t talk for a long t
ime because we were both thinking about the gold fields. Always, when the afternoon’s work was done, I felt a little bit sad because I so longed to know what had become of my brothers. But I only stayed sad for a short time before I grew spitting mad at the two of them for leaving me behind. It was best not to think of them at all, for such black thoughts as I had served only to darken my soul.

  One laundry day I dropped a pair of trousers right into the mud.

  “Now look what you’ve done,” Kathleen said.

  “I’ll take ’em back inside,” I said, and hurried into the kitchen.

  The big washtub stood in the middle of the kitchen floor half-filled with murky water. Two kettles heated on the wood stove, but the girls were not there.

  After a long moment I tucked the pants under my pinafore and rushed up to the sleeping room. There, I pried loose a wide floorboard from under my bed and stretched the trousers out in the small space so they could dry. I pressed the board back and hurried outside where Kathleen cranked the handle by herself.

  “Seems it took a long time to take them pants inside.”

  I wiped my hands on my pinafore and took hold of the handle.

  “I had to stop at the privy on my way back,” I said, hoping that would satisfy her.

  It seemed to. We worked for the rest of the afternoon without saying much, cranking the handle of the ringer around and around. We hung the damp clothes from the washline until a whole army of trousers marched before the breeze.

  I waited nearly three more weeks before I hid a shirt behind the wood-pile when Kathleen’s back was turned. Later, I fetched it and stuffed it into the same space beneath the bed where I had hidden the trousers and the cap.

  Finally, nearly ten months to the day after my brothers had left me behind, I was ready to borrow the shears from the sewing room and put the final part of my plan into action. By then, I was a full head taller than Miss Critchett and not quite thirteen years of age.

  Chapter Four

  The evening I borrowed the shears, I was so petrified that I nearly changed my mind about running away. Even when all the other girls were breathing evenly, I forced myself to keep still under the blanket for a while longer, just to be sure.

  All I had to do to steady my nerves was imagine another year of stitching samplers and lugging wet laundry while I waited for a war to happen right in Carson City. There had been another big fight near Pyramid Lake, this time with soldiers from as far away as California. As near as I could tell, nobody won and nobody lost, though men on both sides lost their lives. In the end, the Paiutes headed deeper into the hills and the settlers came back to the towns and homesteads.

  I hid under my covers for a long while before I took hold of the end of one of my thick braids, scarcely daring to breathe. Snip, it was done. Too late to stop, I snipped off the other braid.

  My hair fell about my ears in a square, short cut like a boy’s. By stretching my arm under my bed I could just reach my fingers to the crack in the floor and slowly pry up the loose board, praying it wouldn’t creak. I reached underneath for the stolen trousers and shirt, pulled them under my thin blanket, and wriggled into them. My, didn’t it feel strange to be wearing a man’s pants! When I reached up to touch what was left of my hair, I felt stranger still.

  I tucked my nightdress and my braids under the loose board. Then, with the moon spilling cold light across the wood floor, I crept from my bed, pulled David’s cap low over my ears, and slipped along the hall to the sewing room to replace the shears.

  “Oh!” I gasped aloud as I caught sight of my reflection in the looking glass. For a moment I thought David was in the sewing room with me and I clapped my hand over my mouth to stop myself from screaming. But when I touched my other hand to my cap, the person in the glass touched his cap, too, so it was me all right. I turned to the side and then back the other way. A boy. I looked like a boy for certain.

  There was no time to waste admiring myself. I tiptoed down to the kitchen. Once, I stepped on a loose floorboard and the creaks sounded as loud as a baby’s wailing. I stood stock-still and held my breath. But the place remained quiet save for the tick-tock-tick of the big grandfather clock in the front entry hall.

  At last I reached the kitchen door. As I struggled to lift the stiff latch, it occurred to me I’d best take some kind of food along. I helped myself to half a loaf of bread and pushed aside my guilty feelings. All things considered, it was a small enough contribution for the orphanage to make to the rest of my life.

  Just like that, I was outside making my way through the dark streets of Carson City. I had to find a place to hide as soon as possible because, come morning, they would be looking for me. I dodged from shadow to shadow, keeping my eyes down and staying out of the way of the few men who staggered along the main street.

  Trouble was, I had no idea where to go. My plans had only extended to escape from the orphanage walls. Ormsby House was out of the question. Mrs. Ormsby would send me right back. The night was cool but the breeze carried the smells of early summer. In the distance, a dog barked. From somewhere in the hills, the eerie wails of coyotes answered.

  I skirted around the edges of town and when the dawn began to break I took refuge in a deep pile of straw in the back corner of the stable behind the freight station. I slept uneasily, jumping at each rustle in the straw. Once I sat up, convinced someone was trying to saw a hole in the wall, but it was only the wind working a loose board back and forth.

  My growling belly woke me. Every part of my skin scratched and prickled from all the hay. All I could think of was how much I wanted to go back, even if that meant begging for forgiveness from Miss Critchett.

  Then I remembered something my pa always used to say, Don’t never think on an empty stomach.

  Gnawing on the last of the bread, I tried my best to ignore the uneasy squeezing deep in my belly. What had I gone and done? Without a penny to my name I would never be able to get to California. Heck, as it stood, I couldn’t even buy me another loaf of bread.

  “Here he comes!” someone shouted from just outside the barn. I eased back into the shadows.

  Horse’s hooves pounded toward the barn at a gallop. They stopped outside and I heard men talking and the heavy breathing of a horse that had been run hard.

  “Here, let me walk him.” The tired horse’s breathing moved farther from the barn.

  “Any trouble on your run?”

  “Some Indian fires in the hills, but no trouble.”

  “Aye — those militia patrols are doing a good job of keeping the trail open. Bad news, though — the rider didn’t show. I heard tell he’s been drinking again.”

  “So, I got to go on?”

  “’Fraid so. Be a bonus in it for you, though.”

  The rider gave a short laugh. “Assumin’ I’ll be in any shape at the other end of the ride to claim it.”

  I heard the smack of leather and the uneasy movement of a fresh horse.

  “Up you go, then. Godspeed.”

  With a grunt, the rider settled onto the new horse. “Gee-yap!” He was off, his horse’s hooves drumming a rapid departure from Carson City.

  “We need more men like him,” a voice said and I realized the second man had returned with the first horse. Its breathing had slowed a little.

  “Aye. That we do. I have a notice posted. With any luck we’ll attract some fresh blood.”

  “With any luck, yes. I’ll cool Big Sam out a little longer. Then, how about some coffee?”

  “Sounds mighty good to me,” the first man said.

  For the next little while all I could hear was the slow, even sound of the horse being walked back and forth outside. When the hoof beats came straight toward the barn, I scurried out of sight. I had just enough time to tug a couple of empty feed sacks over top of me before the door opened.

  “Good boy, Sammy. Here you go.”

  Hay rustled and the man left, the latch clicking shut behind him.

  I moved quietly to where a tall,
black horse was tethered. Big Sam was a handsome animal. He steamed slightly in the cool air of the barn as he munched his hay.

  The men sounded like they were with the Pony Express. It didn’t take long for me to find the notice they had spoken of. It was posted clear as day on the front wall of the freight company.

  Wanted: Young, skinny, wiry fellows.

  Not over 18. Must be willing to risk death daily.

  Orphans preferred.

  Wages $25 per week.

  Inquire within.

  Twenty-five dollars a week? That was a small fortune! With work like that it wouldn’t take long to save enough money to get to California. A coach ticket from Carson City cost a little more than a hundred dollars. Then I’d need enough put aside to pay for room and board and maybe hire me a guide to take me to the gold fields to find my brothers.

  I leaned forward and read the notice again. It sounded so exciting. I glanced up and down the street and read the notice one more time.

  Orphans preferred. Well, that was me, sure enough.

  It was horses, it was riding, and they wanted skinny boys. Sure I was skinny, but did I look enough like a boy to get the job? If I did, the work would get me out of town in a hurry. I looked up the road again. Then, without pondering further on the ifs and maybes, I stepped forward and knocked on the freight office door.

  “C’mon in.”

  I pushed the door open and stepped inside. The office wasn’t large, but it was warm. Two men looked at me over steaming mugs of coffee.

  “What can I do for you, son?”

  I ducked my head, cleared my throat, pushed my voice low, and mumbled, “Saw the notice.”

  The man who had spoken stood up and thrust his hand toward me. “You’ve come to the right place. Name is Bolivar Roberts with the Pony Express. So happens we’re looking to replace a few riders in Utah Territory.”