Orchard invited his new acquaintances to join him for dinner, which they did, and Salisbury steak was most definitely not on the menu. His was an easy-going, open nature (Sadie thought he must be related to the gatekeeper), and he showed genuine interest in their story, which they told between mouthfuls of mushroom soup, trout almondine, mutton, asparagus, potatoes, and carrots, and two helpings of crème caramel.
“I’ve died an’ went to ‘eaven, I have,” said Sadie at the end of the meal. She massaged her belly seductively for Orchard’s benefit. While not immune to her charms, which had become decidedly more obvious in the months Thomas had known her, Orchard seemed more bemused than enthralled. Hers was not a behavior he seemed to have encountered much, despite his life at the rough-and-tumble edge of civilization.
He put them up in a suite adjoining his at the Antlers that night, and for once in her life, superlatives failed Sadie, who spent four hours luxuriating in a bath kept perpetually hot by a brigade of female servants. Thomas, enthralled by the telephone, spent much of his time calling the front desk and asking what o’clock it was.
Though Sadie had some experience of mattresses, neither she nor Thomas had ever slept on a genuine goose down bed. Their rooms were separated by a large, comfortable sitting room with a huge porch overlooking General Palmer’s Garden of the Gods. Thomas was startled when, some time after midnight, Sadie lifted his covers and crawled into bed beside him. It had often been their custom to sleep together out in the wild, where survival sometimes depended on their ability to keep one another warm.
This was different, though. After four hours in the bath, draped in a clean linen nightgown provided by the hotel – at Orchard’s insistence – smelling decidedly feminine and nuzzling her soft places against his flesh, it was impossible to regard Sadie as anything but a woman.
“What’s the matter?” he said, as he struggled with some way to get her out of his bed without hurting her feelings. “Somethin’ wrong with your bed?”
“Yeah,” she said, nuzzling closer still. “You ain’t in it.”
“Sadie, please . . . ”
She sat up. “Ow’m I ‘sposed to sleep alone in that great bed? It’s like a bleedin’ goose-feather prairie. An’ that room! It’s ‘alf the size’ve St. Paul’s!”
“You’re scared.”
“I ain’t scared’a nuffin’!” She slowly lay down again, resting her head on his arm. “Well . . . it’s like I can ‘ear the echoes of me breavin’, only by the time it comes back, it don’t sound like my breaf . . . but sumbuddy else’s.”
They lay for a long time looking up at the ceiling. “I miss the stars,” he said at last. Sadie didn’t reply. A moment later he heard her gentle snoring and felt the cool trickle of her drool on his shoulder. God had heard his prayers.
James Orchard required three days to conclude his business in the Springs, during which time he bought both the Conllans new clothes, including a dress for Sadie that had heads turning, up and down the streets of town, like those on carnival dolls. Sadie, who knew how to stir lust in the menfolk and envy amongst their women, played the attention for all it was worth. Understanding that the effect would be ruined if she opened her mouth, she spoke as little as possible.
Thomas, in suit and tie for the first time in his life, with his father’s boots polished to a deep, dazzling sheen, proceeded along the boardwalks with Sadie on his arm, pretending to look in shop windows as if they might buy something. He felt six inches taller.
Evenings they spent with Orchard. It seemed to amuse him to take them, especially Sadie, to evening diversions: plays, concerts, even a charity event. On the first night, Sadie clung tightly to Thomas’s arm. On the second night, she threaded her arms through the elbows of both men, but on the third night she held Orchard’s arm exclusively and that gentleman, unless Thomas was greatly mistaken, succumbed completely to her dubious charms. He laughed at her jokes. He guffawed when she swore. He giggled at her absurd observations and, in short, positively glowed in her presence – never failing to treat her not simply as a lady, but as his equal. This was a first for Sadie, and it quickly differentiated Orchard from all other men of her acquaintance.
On the morning of the fourth day, with all their worldly goods in hand in preparation for the next leg of their journey south, the Conllan’s accompanied Orchard to the train station and saw him off with their warm best wishes for the Gerrard family, past, present, and future.
“Wot you make of ol’ Jim?” said Sadie. Swaddled in steam, she waved as the train fussed and blustered out of the station in the cool of the morning and was soon out of sight.
“I like him.”
Sadie nodded. “Interestin’ ol’ geezer.”
“It’s them!” yelled a man nearby. The cry was nearly lost in the cacophony surrounding them. For the moment, they had forgotten they were fugitives wanted up and down the line, their posters – even after so many months – still plastered on bulletin boards and waiting room seat backs from here to Exchange Place. “It’s them!” The cry this time was much closer and shook them from their contemplation of Orchard’s departure. “There’s a reward!”
The danger dawned upon them both at the same time. Sadie glanced at Thomas, Thomas glanced at Sadie. “How’d they reco’nize us from them pi’tures?” Swallowing offense to be nursed later, she lifted her skirts and took off after a train departing from an adjacent platform and Thomas was on her heels even as every porter, off-duty mechanic, security guard, and policeman in the station joined in hot pursuit, most without a clue who they were chasing, or why – except they had heard mention of a reward.
When it comes to being chased, youth is a wonderful thing. Despite the encumbrance of her abundant skirts and the weight of her new carpetbag, Sadie jumped aboard the tiny rear porch of the caboose with a foot and a half to spare. Thomas, bedroll, suitcase, and all, even more. In fact, upon landing, he nearly knocked her out the other side, only managing to grab her by the fingertips and pull her back at the very second she overbalanced. The reward-seekers, however – without exception men for whom the physical exertion of hot pursuit exacted a heavy toll – soon fell behind their quarry so far that Sadie, had she but known, could have strolled the last few yards in a manner becoming a lady, and Thomas needn’t have slammed his knee into the cast-iron railing.
The station was soon swathed in coal smoke and white steam, obscuring their pursuers from view, and vice versa. At the same time, the din of the departing train completely absorbed their hue-and-cry until it was nothing more than another subtle thread in the great, combustible composition.
“I forgot,” said Sadie, breathlessly, fanning cinders from the folds of her dress.
“Me, too.”
“Well,” said Sadie, “I guess here’s yer Wil’ West wot ol’ Gerrard says was dead.” She nodded back toward the station. “Someone ought t’tell them that.” They looked at one another and laughed.
“I wonder where this train goes?” Thomas thought aloud. “We’ll need tickets.”
“Guess I’d bes’ be a boy again,” said Sadie. “Not that a pair’ve trousers seem to’ve fooled many so far.”
“It’s all the . . . bouncy bits,” said Thomas. “You’ve got to . . . tuck ‘em away better.”
“Why, Thomas?” Sadie said mockingly. “You mean t’ tell me you been noticin’ me bouncy bits?”
Thomas turned away. “Shut up an’ change.”
And there on the rear platform of the D&RG 410 bound for Antonito, Colorado, at eight forty-five in the morning, Sadie bound her bouncy bits as tightly as the ability to breathe would allow, and once again became Sammy Conllan, the name she had adopted one night in Pennsylvania.
Their first night in Antonito they took a room, as brothers, in the Railhead Hotel, and by the smudgy light of a kerosene lantern, she cut off her hair while Thomas scratched the following entry in his journal:
“The train men still hard on our trail. Don’t know why they don’t give up. We left th
eir box on the platform at Exchange Place. It don’t figur their takin such truble about our few things. Don’t unerstand. Still wunder if Sadie did sumthin that nite I don’t know about. She says no, but I cant always tell when shes lyin or not.
“We come down from the Springs all rite. But hid in the mail car when the agents com abord in Peublo. Near got cot when Sadie sneezed. They handed out our picshurs to the passenjers but nobody seemd to take notice of us.
“Antonitos in the middle of flat country but over west theres mountins which is mor what i got in mind. Theres broadsides all over town for railroad workers. Tomorrow im goin to get a job an will do all rite long as i dont get reconized, wich i shoudn’t long as Sade keeps outta site.
“i think the soles of these boots mite finely be wearin thin as i can almost feel gravel thru em now.
“‘bout time,’ Sade says.”
The Conllan Homested
Canyon Ridge, New Mexico
March 12, 1957
“The next day,” said Regan, brushing away an ash from his pipe that had fallen on the page, “all he says is; ‘got a job building grade up through the mountins. Guess where to? Chama! Im finely going to see it!’”
“What about Sadie?” Maryellen asked.
“He says Sadie got a job as a cook in the section house in Sublette.”
“I remember passing that on the way here. Not exactly the bright lights of Colorado Springs. Must have been a disappointment for her to end up in a place that wasn’t much more than a couple of worker’s shacks and a post office.” She tried to imagine herself in Sadie’s place, but at the back of her imaginings she realized that much more than distance separated her from that fiery, whip-wielding little survivor; a hybrid of a time and place that would never come again. “What’s this grade he mentions?”
“Grading is the earth the track sits on,” Tiffin explained. “Generally, the railroad tries for no more than a 2 percent grade. That means two feet in elevation for every hundred feet the train will travel. It takes fewer engines to pull a train along that kind of grade. But in country like what you came through from Antonito, they sometimes had to settle for 4 or 5 percent. Mighty steep for a train.”
“Anyway, when they laid out the grade, if the pitch was more than 4 or 5 degrees, they had to cut into the earth. If it was less, they’d sometimes have to build it up. That’s grading, and that would’ve been Gramp’s job.”
“Hard work,” said Regan.
“So that’s how he got to Chama,” said Maryellen.
“Seems so. That’s the last entry.”
“Nothing else?”
“Well, there is a date here, September 14th, 1933, in pencil. That’s all.”
Becky had finally settled on the sofa. She was staring through what they called ‘Katy’s Window’ at the stars. “That was Gramp’s 70th birthday. The year they sent him back to Ireland.”
“Who sent him?”
Becky shook off some private reverie. “Uh? Oh, the family took up a collection – Josh, Katy, and T-2. Josh had been saving for a couple of years and bought Grampa Tom a ticket to Ireland. Just when we could least afford it.”
“How do you mean?”
Once more, Becky’s attention drifted out the window. “Josh got the sheep down the mountain to the pens down in Los Ojos. Some of the other ranchers didn’t even get theirs that far. Next spring, there were thousands of carcasses in the mountains. Even the crows, the vultures, bears, and wolves couldn’t keep up. The stench was horrific.
“Anyway, the snow was too deep to herd the sheep to Abiquiu.”
“Snow seems to be a recurring theme around here,” Maryellen observed.
Becky nodded. “That it is.”
Maryellen, who felt she was having to draw the story out one sentence at a time, was growing impatient. “Well? What happened?”
“Pardon?”
“On Thomas’s trip back to Ireland. That must have been - amazing. Bittersweet.”
“Wouldn’t know. He never talked about it.”
Maryellen, recovering from a momentary daze, shook her head. “So . . . ”
“So, we never knew what happened. All he’d say was that he attended a funeral, and a rebirth.”
“Don’t forget the money,” said Tiffin with a grin.
“What money?”
“Oh, he came back with thirty-thousand dollars . . . ”
Los Ojos, New Mexico
November 16th, 1931
“Well, good mornin’, Josh.”
A year or two earlier – once it was clear that the Depression was settling in for a long stay – Hignio Martinez had moved from Chama to Archuleta County, Colorado, where there was some land available for homesteading. There, during the growing season, he farmed. During the winter, though, he returned to the Valley to help run the store for Josefina Burns. His was one of those dispositions that seemed content to meet life on its own terms. If he was having a good day, well, that was good. If he had a bad day, well, there was always tomorrow.
“Besides,” he had once told Josh, “even a bad day is mostly good. I mean, let’s say you get run over by a wagon and get a leg broke. Si? Well, that whole bad thing, she only took this long!” He snapped his fingers. “The rest of the day, she was beautiful! The sky she was blue. The birds, they was singin’. The fish they was jumpin’ in the stream. Your friends, they take you to the doc. The doc, he’s sober. The other leg, she’s fine! You little ones, they come to your bed an’ cry ‘cause they love you. You wife, she’s yell at you for bein’ so stupid . . . because she loves you. Everybody, they bring you cookies and brownies. See? She’s a wonderful day!”
Today, Martinez was on the wheeled ladder behind the counter, riding it back and forth as he took inventory on the upper shelves. “Where’s you sheep?”
“Out in the pen,” said Josh. He looked at the big Whitney Farm Implements clock in the corner. Six fifty-five. “I figured everybody’d be here by now.”
“Si. But, she’s not.” Martinez gestured widely. “Willis Cox, he come by an hour ago an’ said there was no train.”
“No train! What do you mean?”
“That’s what he says. ‘No train.’”
“Why?”
“She’s broke.”
“Come on, Hignio. You worked for the railroad all those years. You must be able to tell me more than that.” Josh was trying to battle back rising panic. If the local shepherds couldn’t get the flocks down to Navajo Canyon – out of snow country – they’d lose everything they had.
“Si! I was watchman. I look, is the train she there? Si! She’s still there! That was my job. The engine, she there?” He climbed carefully down the ladder. “Si! The flatcar? Si! The coal car, and stock car, and caboose? She there? Si!”
Josh was quickly running out of patience. “Where did Willis go?”
“He say he go to Stinking Lake, to break trail.”
That was the act of a desparate man, but it made sense. “Okay,” said Josh. “I’m goin’ over there an’ help him. We’ll make that the main trail. When everyone else shows up, tell ‘em to break trails over that way to join up with it. Understand?”
“Si! Si, I ‘onnerstan’. I tell ‘em.”
Using the trail Cox had made earlier, Josh and his dogs drove his sheep the four miles to Stinking Lake by nine-thirty. He heard Cox’s voice in the distance. Cresting a rise, he saw the determined shepherd beating a path through a grove of trees not a quarter mile away. He was standing astride his flat sledge, whipping his team of four horses who, between them, seemed to be generating more steam than quad locomotives in Cumbres Pass. The snow was up to their chests and, in addition to Cox and his sled, they were pulling a huge pine log, laid sideways, the weight of which was tamping the snow to a manageable depth. Following placidly along behind were three bands of sheep, near three thousand head in all, who were easily kept in their snow-bound traces by Cox’s pack of sheepdogs lead by Fleet, an animal of almost supernatural instincts and the envy
of every shepherd in the Valley. Though age had rendered him almost deaf, he was so perfectly trained, and so acutely aware of his task at any given moment, that he had no need of audible commands.
By noon, herds from all over the valley were converging on the newly broken trail, until there were thousands, all kept in some semblance of order by packs of yapping, nipping dogs. The trail was brown with steaming dung and the bleating of the sheep was almost deafening. Cox was having to rest his horses frequently from pure exhaustion. He lay on the back of his sled, rolled a cigarette, and surveyed the controlled chaos.
“What do you think, Josh? We gonna make it?”
There was no point being pessimistic. “Sure. We keep up like this, the snow won’t be as deep just up through those hills. Then it’ll be downhill all the way to Navajo Canyon.”
Cox released a lungful of mixed smoke and steam on the chill air. “Hope so.”
Within an hour of setting out again, the herds came to the shore of Fable Lake. As Josh and Cox bent their trail around it, Domy Andrews rode up on his horse.
“Where d’you think you’re goin’?” he demanded, grabbing the bridle of Cox’s leading horse.
“Whaddyou mean? Let go’ve that bridle, Andrews.”
“I’ll let go when you tell me why you’re goin’ the long way ‘round instead’ve cuttin’ straight across the lake.”
Cox laughed. “Across! What’re you talkin’ about? We ain’t had two nights hard freeze yet, an’ you want me to drive this team across that lake?”
“It’s froze plenty hard,” Domy insisted. “An’ look at it. Wind’s kept the snow down to less than a foot.”
“Don’t matter,” said Cox. “I ain’t takin’ this team across that lake. It’d be murder.”
“It’ll be murder takin’ the long way ‘round!” Domy snapped. “Sheep are already droppin’ dead back there. They ain’t gonna make it goin’ that way.”
“This way, we’ll lose some. That way,” said Cox, “we’ll lose ‘em all.”
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