Later that month an Indian hunting party found Janette, according to Fowler, in “the last stages of exhaustion,” down to her last handfuls of soggy cornmeal and rancid meat. So moved were the Indians by this bedraggled but bold young woman, they fed her, loaded her few possessions on a horse, and escorted her to “Walla Walla station,” likely the Hudson’s Bay Company trading post, called Fort Nez Percés, near the mouth of the Walla Walla River, in present-day Wallula, Washington.
Fowler mentions that Janette Riker eventually married a fellow emigrant (name unknown), and settled down to homestead and raise a family. Of her father and two brothers, no trace was ever found. It is assumed they were attacked and killed by hostile Indians, perhaps fell to their deaths, or somehow became lost in the vastness of the Northern Rockies.
I first came across mention of Miss Riker while researching a nonfiction book I wrote, Cowboys, Mountain Men & Grizzly Bears: Fifty of the Grittiest Moments in the History of the Wild West (2009). Though I devoted a brief chapter to her in that book, Janette’s story stayed with me. In the years since, I asked myself, “What if . . . ? What if Janette Riker had kept a journal during that harrowing, formative winter? What if it were found many years later? By whom?”
These and many other questions led me to explore, in novel form, the possibilities and probabilities of Miss Riker’s ordeal. In relating her story, I have used authorial license in fabricating, based on historical facts, a raw winter in the Northern Rockies as it may have been lived by a young woman, alone, in 1849 and 1850. Care was taken to ensure details about clothing, food, tools, and gear, as well as the terrain, flora, and fauna are as accurate as possible.
The resulting story is as much a paean to Janette Riker as it is an homage to those early emigrants who settled the western United States. I am humbled by their blind trust in the belief that what they were seeking would prove better than what they left behind. Often it did, though sometimes intrepid travelers never made it to their intended destinations, instead becoming casualties of the indifferent wilderness through which they trekked. I wonder about those who never made it, forever silent, their stories lost in the still-wild places of the West.
My wife and I, avid travelers, regard Miss Riker’s incredible saga as inspiration to explore the lives and routes of westward emigrants of the nineteenth century. We find the past speaks volumes to those who take time to listen. And so, with ears perked, we search for clues to the life of the mysterious and courageous Janette Riker, who with fortitude and courage endured incredible hardship in the face of certain death . . . and survived.
—Matthew P. Mayo
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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Matthew P. Mayo is an award-winning author of thirty books and dozens of short stories. His novel, Tucker’s Reckoning, won the Western Writers of America’s Spur Award for Best Western Novel, and his shor t stories have been Spur Award and Peacemaker Award finalists. His many novels include The Outfit: To Hell and Back; North of Forsaken; Winters’ War; Wrong Town; Hot Lead, Cold Heart; The Hunted; Shotgun Charlie; and others.
Matthew’s numerous nonfiction books include the bestselling Cowboys, Mountain Men & Grizzly Bears; Haunted Old West; Jerks in New England History; and Hornswogglers, Fourflushers & Snake-Oil Salesmen. He has been an on-screen expert for a popular BBC-TV series about lost treasure in the American West, and has had three books optioned for film.
Matthew and his wife, photographer Jennifer Smith-Mayo, run Gritty Press (www.GrittyPress.com) and rove the byways of North America in search of hot coffee, tasty whiskey, and high adventure. For more information, drop by Matthew’s Web site at www.MatthewMayo.com.
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