Chapter Seven
There were two men set to compete, three men if you counted me. I might as well have been a man standing there in the dust and the wind and the sun outside the grounds of St. Peter’s Mission waiting for the priest’s contest to begin.
There were three empty carriages standing in a perfect line. The work horses were grazing at the edge of the dirt road that ran past the Mission and all the way into town. The harnesses, bridles, collars, yokes, and a tangle of leather straps were in piles on the ground. I was a head taller and at least fifty pounds heavier than each of my competitors.
The work horses seemed oblivious to the drama that was about to unfold. They had heavy faces. They snorted, blew, and tossed their heads as they grazed on the very open field the Catholics hoped would one day become a lawn. Actually, the only creatures moving that day that were taller than me were the horses.
The men would have to look up to find the horses’ withers and hurriedly throw the harnesses over their backs in order to win the contest. On the other hand, I was tall enough to look the horses directly in the eye and look down on their sway backs as I tossed the harnesses over the backs of my team.
The men waited for the priest to appear out of the shadows of the Mission, open the gate, and start the competition. The men avoided eye contact with me. Nevertheless, I stared at them. I wanted to intimidate them.
“Which of you boys is coming in second?” I asked. “This ain’t gonna be no real competition. I’m fixing to kick your asses. This is going to be an exhibition, an ass kicking exhibition, not a contest. Hell, you boys don’t look like you know your way around a horse and know even less about running a coach.”
I watched the eyes of the men. They didn’t look at me. Instead, the men looked at the ground.
“Talk a lot of shit, lady.“ Albert, the shorter of the two men, finally mustered courage. He was a short Mexican with black, oily hair. He had a barrel chest, like he hadn’t missed many meals.
The taller of the two men, a slender Irishman with a long, ruddy nose, didn’t say anything. He put his hands in his pockets and looked at the ground.
“There ain’t nothing much written on the ground there that you’re staring at that is likely to help you any now, do you think?” I taunted.
The priest emerged from the shadows of the Mission. His black robes twirling in the wind seemed hideous outside on the open field with the prairie all around. I guess that’s where the folks in Cascade got the idea to call the priests at the Mission “Black Robes.” The wind had its way with his hair, too.
There was a silver crucifix dangling from a long chain around the priest’s neck. The jewelry was quite impossible to miss. A group of Ursuline nuns followed, the points of their veils made them look like a flock of birds with wings poised for flight. Their Mother Superior, Sister Amadeus, followed the group into the sunlight. She, too, was excited over the promise of the contest.
The tangle of black leather straps, chains, rings, collars, yokes, and other equipment in each pile on the ground would likely be nearly impossible to untangle quickly, or at all, particularly if you didn’t know exactly how to harness and hitch horses. The priest had purposely rigged the piles to test our skill. The contest was designed to test both skill and speed. In this way, the race would resemble the steamboat race between the Robert E. Lee and Natchez.
There were massive collars that had to be placed over each horse’s neck and shoulders. The harnesses, including brass hames, spider, hip drops, breachings, turnbacks, tug chains, quarter straps, girth bands, belly bands, butt straps, bottom hames straps, and bridles, including bits, tongue chains, reins, and blinders, had to be sorted, arranged, thrown over the backs of the beasts, and cinched, and then the team of two horses had to be backed into position to hitch the whole affair to the shaft of the coach. This was a handful. The whole operation took the finest coachmen over ten minutes to complete. I doubted the Mexican and the Irishman could figure out the riddle if they were given an hour head start.
“Silence,” the priest said, raising his right hand. “Get ready, set…go!”
He dropped his right hand.
The contestants sprinted to the piles. The nuns cheered loudly, pulling for their favorite contestant, almost as though the pious nuns had taken odds and staked wagers on which of the contestants would prevail. They rooted hard, pounding their fists, stamping their feet, and hollering, like the crowds that gather near the quarter pole at Churchill Downs as horses turn for home in the Kentucky Derby.
The contestants hauled the mass of leather straps, chains, and other equipment to where the horses grazed, leather straps trailing behind comically. They dropped the piles on the ground, picked them up again, only to see the leather straps and chains spill hopelessly over their arms in a tangle. The process of untangling the mess was underway.
The men puzzled over the leather straps and chains, comically turning them upside down, right side up, holding them up, dropping them, stepping on them, and cursing at them. Conversely, I coolly and expertly spread my pile on the ground, sorting the leather straps, chains, and other equipment into a logical sequence, separating the bridle from the harness, and ordering the entire affair. I even stopped to light a cigar. I held the cigar between my teeth as I worked. Cigar smoke trailed overhead.
I hefted the first ordered pile and carried it to the two horses that would form my team. I fit the collar over the head and neck of the right-side horse. The horse accepted the collar on its shoulders without incident. The horses stood proudly erect for me, like statues. Then, I threw the collar on the left-side horse and asked it to line up alongside the right-side horse.
“Whoa, now back to me, now back to me, back to me,” I said.
The horse followed the mysterious commands as though we shared a secret language. “Now, get over there, get over, get over there.”
The horse side stepped, inched slowly, and side stepped again until my team stood side by side perfectly. “Now stand!” The horses obeyed. It was magnificent. It was fast.
Still confounded, the Mexican and the Irishman held the straps of their piles hopelessly in the air. They tried to figure out which strap and which chain went where in the configuration.
I ignored them. I was tall enough to see over the withers of my horses. I threw the harness, including the framework of leather straps and chains, over the back of the right-side horse. The hames was adjusted so that it sat snuggly in a groove on top of the collar. I proceeded to adjust and cinch the quarter strap, girth band, belly band, butt strap, and spider, swinging low beneath the horse’s belly when necessary, puffing my black cigar when necessary, too. Once again, I was outrageously overconfident.
I dropped the bridle over the horse’s head with expert precision, opening the horse’s rubbery lips so it would accept the bit, cinched the straps, and pulled the reins to the left-hand side of the horse. With the bulk of the equipment’s framework on the right-hand side of the right horse, I dropped the reins to the ground on the left and commanded: “Now, stand.” The right-side horse complied.
The nuns cheered.
The nuns laughed and pointed as the clumsy inefficiency of the Mexican and the Irishman was on full display. The Mexican stared at the tangle of straps in the pile like it was calculus. The Irishman dragged his somewhat orderly pile to his horses, trying to catch up to me. In a way, he was catching up. In another way, he was hopelessly far behind.
The Irishman threw the collars on his team. He was catching up. The Mexican was hopelessly far behind in third place, still fumbling with leather straps.
I repeated the process of throwing the harness over the back of the left-side horse that I had completed with the right-side horse, adjusting the bridle, cinching the straps, bands, and chains in precisely the same fashion as I had done with the right-side horse, except I dropped the reins on the right side of the horse when I was finished, and the bulk of the equipment was on the outer left side of the left-side horse. I crossed the rein
s through a brass ring between horses. Now, I was ready to hitch the team to the sled. I was almost finished.
I let out the full length of the reins and held the thin leather straps between my horses far away from their rumps. Then, I began to walk them backwards methodically.
“Now, back to me, back to me, back to me,” I said, calling to the horses.
The team responded, inching slowly backwards together as a team. The backward march continued until the horses had backed up to the coach, and the shaft of the coach was between them on the ground.
“Whoa, stand,” I commanded, tying off the reins on the coach.
The Irishman had his harness and bridle in place on his right-side horse. The right-side horse was ready to be hitched. He only needed to harness the left-side horse of his team to catch up to me. However, this didn’t trouble me at all: I remained composed, unaffected, even manly.
I calmly walked around to the front of the team, picked up the iron bar and ran the bar through the ring in the shaft. I was in full command, even dismissive of the competition. I walked calmly to the rear of the team, hooked chains on each side of each horse to the sled, and climbed aboard the coach to tie off the reins.
When I hopped off the coach, my team stood proud, obedient, and motionless, like magnificent statues. I was the victor. It wasn’t even close.
The men still fiddled hopelessly, comically, with the straps and chains. This went on for another twenty minutes in the case of the Irishman, and the Mexican’s case was hopeless. He was relieved of his trouble by the priest. It was clear that he had no idea what he was doing and would never figure out the puzzle of leather straps, chains, and special equipment. There was no reason to prolong the agony.
The nuns talked openly about the competition now that it was over, nearly one-half hour after it had begun, and nearly twenty minutes after I had already beaten both of my male competitors. The priest formally announced that I had indeed won. My team was harnessed, hitched, and ready, but I was gone.
The nuns searched everywhere to congratulate me on winning the race, everywhere, that is, except where I was hiding. They looked inside cabins, behind trees and bushes, behind cabins, nearly everywhere. Finally, I was discovered sitting under the sprawling branches of a shade tree, turning up a whiskey flask, smoking a cigar, outrageously confident.
Chapter Eight
I won the job of Mission foreman. This empowered me to perform what seemed like an endless string of miracles at the Mission. I built the fieldstone chapel, steeple, bell tower, schoolhouse, dormitory, and stables. There were flagpoles, a hen house, and a garden. I instituted a system of bells at the Mission, seven bells for breakfast in the morning, twelve bells for lunch, five bells for dinner, three bells for danger, and nine bells for lights out at night.
I taught the cooks how to prepare my special tea to cure sicknesses, like pneumonia, whooping cough, and dysentery. I built a chicken coup and raised chickens, so the Mission had fresh eggs in the morning. I patched the thatched roof of the Mission, replaced windows, and even taught classes of Blackfoot girls how to read and write when the nuns were ill. I drove a team of horses on supply runs to the general store in town. I supervised the Mexican, training him in the trades, and the two of us began to build a new school using the funds that trickled into the Mission from the priest’s connections with the Church.
I served as security guard as well. My black skin and daunting size puzzled the Indians, outlaws, wolves, and black bears that had once made sport out of raiding the Mission. And when my daunting size wasn’t an adequate deterrent, I had the ten-gauge shotgun and the .38 to fall back on. Even the priest admitted I was sent from heaven.
The priest said wealthy financiers were building a railroad, and it was coming to Helena and Great Falls. The bishop predicted the railroad would not only bring prosperity to the Territory, but it would also bring even more outlaws and trouble. The town wasn’t officially incorporated until 1887, and the railroad depot opened the next year. The rumors of gold and the cattle drives from overcrowding in Texas to the open grassy plains of the Pacific Northwest guaranteed action. There was little doubt of the value of a woman with a hulking frame to an isolated Mission in the wilds of the Montana Territory.
If all of this wasn’t enough, I even cut the grass on the Mission’s lawn, and I was known to curse at whoever walked across freshly cut grass, whether it was a student, a nun, or even the bishop himself. I became so beloved that the Mission made a tradition of celebrating my birthday on March 15th, though, as a formerly enslaved woman, I was never quite sure of my actual date of birth. Although the Mission was preoccupied with the Gospel, I clung to my proclivities: I cursed, smoked cigars, and drank whiskey, and I was willing to do so unapologetically whenever I pleased, which was on a daily basis.
I drank so much whiskey that I managed to break the gender line at the local saloon. I was the first and only woman not working as a prostitute ever allowed in the saloon to drink whiskey in Montana Territory, and I drank whiskey often, brawled often, cursed often, and gambled often. This was perhaps the first instance of a woman receiving equal treatment with a man in the entire Territory. My “crass behavior” superseded the narrow prejudices of the time and planted the idea in their heads that narrow prejudices against women were just that, narrow. Ironically, I was working at the Mission at the same time that I frequented the saloon.
Chapter Nine
The snow drifts were over six feet high. Some of the drifts even swept over the Mission roofs. That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. The snow drifts insulated the cabins, like warm blankets. I piled plenty of snow against the logs at the bottom of the outside walls of each building and piled plenty of firewood at the fieldstone fireplaces, and I kept those fires burning, for pneumonia was a constant guest in Montana.
I was skillful at handling the brutality of winter. The idea of forty below zero was a way of life. The truth was, most folks in Montana were good at it. If you weren’t, you simply froze to death. If you got your fingers or toes frostbitten, or heard a story about some fellow who got liquored up at the Silver Dollar saloon and froze to death on his way home, you began to get smart about survival.
The storm stopped overnight, leaving nothing but bright sunshine in the morning. The sun made you want to forget we were in the middle of a Montana winter. I had to hitch the team and ride to Helena to pick up supplies. Helena was a good two day’s ride under these conditions and possibly into the next day through all of this snow.
Fortunately, I had a set of snow shoes. I used them to track on top of the snow drifts, and, of course, I had whiskey, a repeating rifle, and the .38. I found warmth and comfort in men’s clothing, a wool hat pulled down over my ears with a bowler hat stacked on top of the wool hat for style, two enormous coats, a wool scarf wrapped loosely over each shoulder, two layers of wool britches, and leather shoes with laces. In this getup, standing at six feet tall with a broad back, enlarged hands, and a cigar, it would have been quite impossible to detect that I was a woman. That suited me fine. We were bound to attract the interest of bandits along the way.
Fortunately, we didn’t experience any problems on the run to Helena. The team braved the going over snow drifts, bowing their necks proudly, twitching their ears alertly, dismissing the challenge of the treacherous going, kicking their knees over the snow with authority. I screamed over the singing brass harnesses and snapped the reins whenever I got the sense the horses began to lose their focus and puffed away on my cigar.
We arrived in Helena and purchased supplies, ham sides, bacon fat, sacks of beans and flour, coffee, tea, candy, kegs of molasses, and a bottle of whiskey. The Mission’s credit was good in Helena, so I didn’t settle the bill. I loaded the freight onto the wagon bed. It smelled sweet, like any load of fresh coffee, pork, and dry goods was expected to smell.
If it can be said that the run to Helena was uneventful, the return trip was quite the opposite. First, with little appreciation for my gender, I was a
llowed to sit in the Magnolia Saloon in Helena, drink whiskey, and wait for nightfall. I really don’t believe anyone in the saloon was even aware that I was a woman, and I was never opposed to the idea of getting liquored up before hitching the team and setting off on a long run.
Unlike Cascade, the saloons in Helena were always too busy and too crowded to pay close attention to any particular customer, unless you called attention to yourself. Owned by a well-heeled German immigrant who belonged to the Masonic Temple, the bar at the Magnolia was surprisingly elegant.
The gas light chandeliers bathed the long room in dim light. The dim light, the elegance, the polished furniture, the steady flow of alcohol, the men busy working to impress one or more of the high-priced prostitutes in the room, the laughing, and the drinking seemed to have everyone on their best behavior. I suppose in a crowded saloon nobody bothered to inquire whether it was necessary to discriminate against me on the basis of gender, and I wasn’t inclined to invite the inquiry by announcing my gender. I was on my best behavior, too.
I might have been mistaken for just another colored man passing through town or a rancher’s hired hand, or quite possibly everyone was having too good a time to bother to care. This meant I had little difficulty buying shots of whiskey and throwing them down, one after the other.
Waiting for nightfall at the Magnolia before beginning a journey with a load of supplies on an open wagon was typically not a good plan. Furthermore, getting liquored up to do so wasn’t a particularly good idea either. Second, the scent of the pork let every wild beast of the field in the vicinity know we were on our way. The confluence of these bad ideas proved disastrous.
I slapped the team with the reins, and we were off. It didn’t take long for us to clear the bustle of Helena’s busy main street. We were off in the open of the lonely prairie again.
As soon as we were an appreciable distance out of Helena, maybe two hours or so, it happened. The scent of pork attracted a pack of ravenous wolves. It was a particularly brutal winter. The food supply was scarce. I understood the issue. The wolves were interested in getting at the pork.
Stagecoach Justice Page 6