by Debra Samms
"Oh, but not for long," Molly said quickly. "You see, Mr. Mitchell – the camp boss – has said that any man who marries can put in to buy a house of his own! A whole section of fine small houses are going to be built right up here on the high road, right beside all of these other ones."
"And how long will it be before these houses can be built? How long before any of those men could afford to buy one? They spend their money on drink as soon as they get paid. How much do they have left to buy a chair or a table or a bed, much less a house of their own?"
"Ellie – I'm sure that – "
"Mrs. Strong. Please. Come with me." Ellie walked down the dirt road in front of houses, and Molly walked with her.
Soon they were down on the next road, in front of the livery stable and looking down on the campsite on the wooded hillside below. "That's where we'd be living," Ellie said. "In all of that mud and filth and wet, with smoke hanging in the fog and drunken men everywhere you look."
And even as she spoke, a group of men saw her and Molly standing up there and began shouting up to them. "Come on down! Good times down here! Rum and whiskey for all of us! Plenty of room in my tent. Come down here and join us!"
It was too much even for Molly. "I'm so sorry," she said, and turned and walked away. She felt like weeping. "I'm so sorry. I had so much hope . . . "
This time, Ellie took her arm and led her back up the road. "It's not the house," Ellie said. "It's not even the tents. Tents can be made comfortable enough, if necessary. It's those men."
Molly could only nod. Her own husband was a wonderful man. He had been an officer in the United States Army and was both a leader and a true gentlemen. But the loggers here at Sawyerville –
"They're no better than animals," Ellie said. "Beasts. Monsters. Worst of all, they've made it clear they will not change their ways in the slightest – not even to get a wife."
"I understand," Molly said quietly, as they climbed back up the road to the house. "I would not marry one of them, either."
"At least we've learned not to take our chances on meeting men sight unseen. Ten of us are leaving today. We'll return to the east and go back to work. If we want to marry, we'll find men in the city. After this, they don't seem so bad."
A short time later, Molly and Mrs. Frost and Mrs. Mitchell could only stand in the road and watch as the supply wagon train started down the road to the west. She could not see the women inside, for they all hid inside the covered beds of the wagons so the men would not shout at them anymore.
"Oh, this is just awful!" cried Mrs. Frost. "Mrs. Strong, your husband is the sheriff. And Mrs. Mitchell, yours is the camp boss. Can't something be done to make those men behave at least a little more like gentlemen?"
"I don't know," Mrs. Mitchell said. "The logging camp can't operate without them. If they're pushed too much to change, they will leave and go to work somewhere else where no one cares how they behave. Then what would we do?"
"And no matter what we attempt," said Molly, "in any case, we can't make wild boar hogs behave like a little lap dogs."
"I suppose not," said Mrs. Frost. "But something will have to be done. We're down to forty prospective brides for nearly one thousand men. And if those men can't be made to change their ways, there's not going to be any women left here at all. Including me!"
***
Molly waited for a few days, hoping to allow the women to calm down and grow more accustomed to being in Sawyerville. So, early one morning, a week after the ten girls had packed up and left to go back east, Molly tried again.
"This afternoon, we're going to have a picnic," she said to the forty young women standing in the parlor of the Ladies' House.
All of them frowned, and looked at Molly. "Picnic?" one of them said. "Where? Along the river? In the camp? Never!"
The rest of them agreed. "There's no place for a picnic out here. I'm still not going near the camp. Not ever!"
"Listen to me. It won't be anywhere near the camp." Molly raised both her hands in a kind of surrender and tried to soothe them as best she could. "We're going to take the wagons and drive down to the Cedar Ridge Dairy. We have to go anyway to pick up the milk and butter for the next few days, and they've agreed to allow us into one of their hayfields."
"A hayfield?" asked one of the young women.
Molly smiled. They were city girls, after all. "Yes. Right now that field is nothing but newly growing clover and a few wildflowers. It's clean and it's beautiful. It'll be the perfect spot for our picnic."
The women quieted. "There will be twenty women – half of you – and just ten men," Molly went on. "So, let's start frying chicken and baking cornbread. We leave in two hours!"
***
Later that afternoon, Molly and two armed guards drove one of the covered wagons a mile down the road to the dairy farm. The wagon was fully loaded with twenty young women and several wicker baskets filled with hot fried chicken, newly baked cornbread, crocks of butter, and pies made of fresh rhubarb and dried apples.
"No one can eat the way loggers can eat," Mrs. Mitchell kept saying. "There's no such thing as too much food, even for just ten of them." So, the women had packed their baskets accordingly.
Soon they were all sitting in a field of clover, while the herd of big black-and-white cows watched them across the wooden fence from the next field over. The women spread blankets out on the clean clover and lined up the baskets along the edges – and then waited.
Molly was beginning to think that maybe the men wouldn't come out to meet them this time. Maybe the last time had ended on such a sour note that they'd given up. Maybe –
"Look!" called one of the women. Molly looked up, and caught her breath. Sure enough, walking down the road were a couple of the loggers. Followed by a few more. And then ten of them in all, as agreed, came striding down the road. The women got to their feet as the men climbed over the wooden pole fence that surrounding the clover field.
"Why, good morning, gentlemen," Molly said, quickly walking over to the men as they poured over the fence. "I'm so glad you could – "
But the first man didn't answer her at all. He was huge even for a logger, Molly saw, with black hair and a black beard, and simply walked past her as though she was not there.
"Where's the food?" said the next man, striding towards the blankets and the women.
"We were told there'd be food."
"Where is it? We don't have much time. We have to be back at work right after we eat."
"Yeah. So bring it on!"
All of the women stood at the edge of the blankets, crowding together as they had done in the parlor at the tea. This time, the men hardly looked at them but instead began ransacking the baskets and pulling out the fried chicken and the pans of cornbread and even whole rhubarb pies.
One of the women – a slim brunette whom Molly remembered as Clara Kingston – was not the prettiest of them, but occasionally showed a little more spirit. When the first man, the huge silent one, grabbed hold of the basket she had brought, she took a step towards him and yelled, "Stop!"
To Molly's surprise, the man stopped. He stood there glaring at Clara. "Put it down," she commanded. "I'll serve it out for you. But first you have to put it down."
It was clear that the man could hear Clara, but he simply grunted at her and turned his attention back to the basket. He pulled out an entire rhubarb pie, scooped half of it out of the pan, and devoured the chunks of pie in just a few bites.
After that, he started on chicken legs and wings. "I said stop!" Clara cried again. She took a step back as he continued to glare hard at her, even as he went on devouring the chicken. "Stop it, George!"
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The sound of his name got the man to stop. He grunted at her again, and continued to stare.
"I remember hearing about you back in Manchester," said Clara, boldly staring back at him. "Your name is George Conyers, isn't it? But you're known as George the Giant Ox."
The man seemed to grin,
even though the pieces of rhubarb pie dripping from his black beard.
"You – you disappear sometimes," Clara went on. "For hours. Or days. Nobody knows where. Apparently you just like to be alone sometimes."
Slowly George lowered the piece of chicken he was holding. He seemed to be paying attention to what Clara was saying about him.
"You're a choker setter," she said. "That's the man who places loops of cable around the fallen logs, and slides the metal bell up tight on the loop to hold it in place. You're supposed to be the best choker setter in the camp because you're so strong and so fast."
A piece of rhubarb dropped from his beard as George stared at Clara. Then he finished devouring the piece of chicken, threw the bones into the clover, and pulled out the whole apple pie from the basket.
At that, Clara gave up. She turned away and joined the other women, who remained closely huddled together at the edge of the blankets.
Molly's heart sank. She hoped there was still time to turn this around, but now she was afraid of how their picnic was going to end.
"Now, now, gentlemen," she said brightly, hurrying over to the men and standing over the baskets. "Why not sit down and allow the ladies to serve you lunch? They have said they would be glad to – "
But she herself was forced to step back as a couple more of the men pushed past her and grabbed for the last of the baskets. None of them even bothered to sit down. They just cleaned out all of the food and gobbled it down, and when it was gone they tossed the baskets and the pans and the bones and the scraps back onto the clover.
Molly's anger began to rise. "How can you men do this?" she cried. "These women have prepared all of this food especially for you. They brought it out here to this beautiful setting. They agreed to serve it to you, that you might enjoy it more. But you have behaved worse than any animals!"
The man nearest to her – with pale blond hair and grey eyes – tossed the last of the baskets onto the rumpled blankets. "We didn't ask them to do any of this," he growled.
Molly put her hands on her hips. "No. You didn't. But they offered anyway. I am sorry that means nothing to any of you men."
The blond man drew himself up to his full height, but Molly just kept looking up at him. "Listen, lady – "
"My name is Mrs. Strong."
"Yeah. Well, you said these women came out here to marry us. Right?"
She glanced back at them. "Yes. They did."
"This is the way we are. We're loggers. Toughest men anywhere. We're not going to change anything for anybody. You want us? This is us. Take it or leave it."
"He's right," said another of the men. "Maybe you women should all go back east and marry a bunch of sissypants, baby-faced lawyers who never did an honest day's work in their life."
"Yeah," spat a third man. "We can see that none of you wants a real man, no matter what you say."
With that, the men threw the last of the bones and scraps and pans back into the clover and onto the blankets, and then they all climbed back over the wooden fence and started back down the road.
***
Port of San Francisco
May 25, 1878
Maeve Eleanor Harrison, along with four other young women, walked down the ramp of the Sea Spirit clipper ship and stepped onto the dock at the Port of San Francisco. All of them looked towards the land and then hurried towards the terminal building. "I just want to step foot on solid ground again," said Maeve. "Never thought I'd miss it so much."
Soon they reached the building and sat down to wait for the steamship that would take them on the last part of their journey to Oregon. "Wonderful to sit on something that isn't moving!" said her friend Hattie, finding a spot on a bench. Maeve agreed with her, as did Eulalie, Ruby, and Jemima.
As they sat together enjoying a few moments of stillness before having get on a boat again, Maeve looked up to see a group of young women walk up to stand in front of her. There were at least a dozen of them, and they were all nicely dressed in good cotton dresses. Most wore bonnets and carried small purses.
They were quite a contrast to the travel-worn, threadbare, damp, and just plain dirty state of Maeve and her four companions.
"Hello," one of the girls ventured. "My name is Ellie. Are the five of you going back to New York City, by chance?"
"We're just wondering if you would like to join us," said the one beside her, quite timidly. "The more of us there are traveling together, the safer we will be."
Maeve shook her head. "Sorry," she said. "We're all going farther north, up into Oregon. Place called Sawyerville."
The girl's eyes widened. "Sawyerville!" she whispered, obviously horrified. "No! You can't go there. You can't!"
"Sawyerville is worse than anything you can imagine," said Ellie, and Maeve could see the real fear and horror in her eyes. "Don't go there! I beg you. Don't even think of going to Sawyerville!"
Maeve frowned. "What do you mean? It's still there, isn't it?"
"It's still there, all right, though I wish it wasn't," said another of the girls, looking equally frightened. "You may as well live as a prisoner as to live in that place. If you've got any sense at all, you'll get right back on whatever boat brought you here and go straight back to wherever you came from!"
"Now, listen to me, dearie," said Maeve, pointing a bony finger at Ellie, the first girl. "The five of us here just spent nearly six months on board a vile, filthy, greasy, stinking whaling ship, going from New York City around Cape Horn and then all the way up to San Francisco. We sailed with the worst men you can imagine under conditions that would make sleeping on bare stone sound heavenly."
"Oh, no," whispered Ellie. "Even an awful ship is only temporary. You can be very sure that you didn't have the worst conditions. Or the worst men. You weren't living in Sawyerville."
"We will be soon in another day or so," said Maeve, standing up. "Come on, girls. Our steamship's waiting. If we're lucky, it's the last time we'll ever have to set foot on anything that floats."
With that, the five of them walked outside and headed for the docks.
***
About ten days after the picnic debacle, Molly and her two friends and fellow marriage planners – Mrs. Mitchell and Mrs. Frost – sat on Molly's front porch with their morning coffee and tried to decide what to do next.
"They've been here for a month now," said Mrs. Frost. "Fifty women from the east."
Mrs. Mitchell snorted. "Forty, you mean. We've already lost ten."
"And we're going to lose more if we can't think of some way to bring these men around so that the women aren't either frightened to death or thoroughly repelled by them," said Molly.
"Maybe there's something to what the men said," said Mrs. Mitchell. "The women said they wanted to marry strong men, but when they got here they didn't like what they saw one bit."
"Those are loggers, after all," said Mrs. Frost. "And loggers are among the roughest and strongest of men. Didn't any of those women realize that?"
Molly shrugged. "Out in Manchester, they would have seen stevedores and mill hands. But even those would have been living in the city. They might have been rough, too, but nothing like these loggers."
She got up and walked slowly across the porch, leaning on the railing and looking out at the campsite far below. "Being strong is one thing. But being dirty, smelly, rowdy, drunk, rude, and even brutal is entirely different. I don't know of any woman, no matter how strong she herself might be, who would want that."
"Well, I'm inclined to agree," sighed Mrs. Frost. "But the question is: What can we do about it?"
Mrs. Mitchell looked at the two of them. "I'm not supposed to say so," she murmured, with a sigh. "But I think you both should know that my husband, and a lot of the loggers, are very much looking down on this whole idea of bringing in brides."
Molly turned around, truly surprised. "What do you mean?"
"I mean that – they think the problem would be solved by simply recruiting – that is, bringing in – I mean, hiring
– "
"Oh," Molly said. "I think I see what you mean. They want to bring in saloon girls, don't they?"
Mrs. Mitchell looked away.
"Fancy women," Molly went on. "So that there's no need to bother with wives at all. Just keep it simple."
The three of them were silent for a few moments. "I was afraid of that," said Mrs. Frost at last. "We're going to have to come up with a solution pretty quickly, to make these men and these brides accept each other. Or else we're going to have nothing but the same camp full of brute men that we have now, along with a town full of trollops."
"I was afraid of that, too," said Molly. "So we'd better get things turned around as fast as we can." She paced a bit, trying to think. "We've already tried a tea. And a picnic. All we got both times was a disaster. What's left?"
"What about a dance?"
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
They looked at Mrs. Mitchell. "Are you serious?" asked Molly. "A dance? With those men?"
"Well, the tea and the picnic went nowhere," Mrs. Mitchell said. "We need something different. And this time, I'd suggest not serving any food."
"No food?" Molly looked very skeptical at that. "The loggers sure don't like these women, so why else would they come to a dance – or anything else – if there's no food to be had? That's all they did care about at the picnic and the tea."
"That's right," said Mrs. Frost. "And that's precisely why we'd best not have any food. That way, they'll have to at least look at the women – and maybe even speak to them, if their own mouths aren't full of pie and fried chicken."
"And maybe even dance with them!" said Molly, her hopes rising. But then she sighed. "An afternoon dance would be a wonderful way to bring these men and women together and get them acquainted. But the men can't go on behaving as they have with these girls. If we're going to hold a dance, then we've got to teach them all some manners. How to speak to a woman, how to put her at ease. That sort of thing."