“We left on a Wednesday. Don’t ask me how I remember that. We took our time. It was a pretty ride. The trail hugged this wall of red cliffs to the east, and the plains we rode on for the first little bit were grassy. Prime grazing land. I saw Luke eyeing it with interest. Further south, it turned scrubbier, more desertlike, but the view. Lord have mercy, the desert can be a beautiful place. Utah has some of the nicest scenery in the West, and I’ve been all over it.
“Garet was well enough to ride on her own for about ten days, then we took turns riding double with her. Claire suggested we get a wagon for her comfort, I told her Garet wouldn’t want it, but she asked anyways. I was right. So we kept riding. We saw some Utes one day, riding the ridge of the cliffs. There were a few tense hours, but they eventually decided that a band of a bunch of women and two men wasn’t worth their time.
“There wasn’t a lot of civilization, to be honest. That’s why the outlaws used it to travel. The trail extended from way up in Montana to Mexico, and I’d be surprised if a thousand people lived on the whole of it. But the people we did run across were nice enough, for outlaws. Listen to me, judging outlaws when we were recently retired. We were able to buy some cannabis off of a cowboy for Garet’s pain.
“We’d been following the Green River for some time, knowing it joined up with the Colorado, which would lead us into the canyon. The further south we went, the fewer people we saw and the more beautiful it got. The last day we came to a dead end. We were high up on a mesa that narrowed into a point. Just below, the Green flowed into the Colorado. Green and red water ran alongside each other for a bit till they mixed together off in the distance.
“I was riding with Garet at the time. She sat in front of me, and she’d fallen asleep on my shoulder. I nudged her awake and told her we were here. She opened her eyes and I could see the confusion in them. It took her longer and longer to come to herself. When she finally did she gave me a heartbreaking smile. Her lips were dry and cracked, her eyes were circled with bruises, and her breath was coming in short little gasps.
“‘You’re my hero,’ she said. I told her to look at the view, partly because I didn’t want her to see me cry. She let out a little sigh and said it was just as beautiful as she expected. We all sat on our horses for a while, enjoying the beauty, coming to terms that this was the end of our journey. Garet inhaled deeply and whispered to me, ‘I better say my goodbyes.’
“I had my arms around her, to keep her upright on the horse, and I tightened my grip and told her I wasn’t ready. That it wasn’t fair, she had so much life left, so much more to give, and that I didn’t know if I could be the full me without her there, believing in me, respecting me, teasing me. She said I had Jehu, and I did, but it’s not the same, lovers and friends. You need both kinds of closeness to be whole, and I was losing that. It really did feel like someone was scooping my heart out of my chest.
“What I really wished was that it was just me and her. I wanted all of her at the end. I didn’t want to share her goodbyes. I’m a possessive and jealous person. Always have been. But Garet wasn’t, and I knew saying goodbye was important to her. She had messages to give everyone, and who was I to deny them the last little bit of her wisdom and love?
“Luke helped her down, and she held on to his arms to hold herself up. She leaned into him, and he held her like she was as delicate as an eggshell. She whispered into his ear, and they talked like that for a minute. We all looked away, not listening, to give them privacy. She ended with an admonishment to never shave his magnificent mustache. He laughed, but when he turned away from her, he was wiping tears from his eyes.
“She went to Claire next, who wasn’t trying to hide her grief, and you know what, I loved her for it. Garet asked her if she’d had fun these past few months, and Claire nodded and cried harder. Garet gave Claire her journal and said she hoped Claire still liked her after she read it.
“Joan and Newt had stayed at the ranch. Joanie told Garet she couldn’t go on a death march like that, not so soon after Stella. None of us could blame her, and Newt staying with her seemed the natural thing. He was the only one who could tease a smile out of her.
“She asked Jehu to escort her to the edge, help her sit down. Ruby wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and they said their silent goodbyes.
“She and Jehu sat for a good while on the edge of that canyon. I don’t know what they said, or if they said much of anything. We never shared our goodbyes with Garet to each other. I wanted to keep mine close, private, something to pull out on a bad day, something that would make me smile. I think Jehu wanted to do the same.
“The sun was starting to set when he got up. He walked straight past the fire and over to the picketed horses. I saw his eyes when he did. He couldn’t share his grief right then. I rose and went to Garet.
“I’ve seen a lot of sunsets, but nothing like that one. The colors in the sky were magnificent. The sky was aflame, the dark sky butting right up against it, pushing it below the horizon. When the sun finally dipped out of sight, the sky turned purple, and that’s a fact. Every color purple you can imagine. The underside of the clouds was lavender; closer to the ground was a deep, almost black purple. The dark blue sky lightened, if you can believe it, to a color I’ve never seen again. It wasn’t purple, but it wasn’t blue.
“We’d been silent; there was nothing left to say and too much to say. It was beyond us. Beyond me, at least. But that beauty, sharing it with Garet as her last moments on earth?
“She leaned her head on my shoulder, and I put my arm around her to hold her up. She felt light as a feather; she’d lost considerable weight on the trail, and I knew she’d been in a lot of pain, but she never complained. Not once.
“She exhaled so completely I thought that was it, but she spoke and told me this was what she wanted. She was right to come, it was beautiful. ‘Even if it’s not the Grand Canyon?’ She smiled up at me and told me she’d suspected she wouldn’t make it, but this was a wonderful substitute. She took my hand and it felt as fragile as bird bones, like it was hollow and would crumble at the slightest pressure. The important thing, she said, was that we were together, that she was with me. ‘You’re my favorite, you know.’ I teased her and said she probably told every one of us the same thing. She admitted it, but said she meant it with me.
“‘I knew you would be my confidante, my challenger, my one true equal and friend from the moment I saw you.’ I asked her how she could have known that. ‘You looked me straight in the eye. Never flinched. Never backed down. Don’t you ever lose that, Hatt. But be careful. I worry about you the most.’
“It took me aback, I have to admit. Before I could argue with her, she said, ‘We both know how cruel people can be, especially to women they don’t understand. I want you to live a long, long life. Promise me?’
“She didn’t need to spell it out for me. I understood. But I didn’t want our last moments to be so solemn. I asked her, my parting wisdom was ‘Don’t die’ and Luke’s was ‘Don’t shave your mustache’?
“That put a smile on her face. She closed her eyes and nestled closer to me. ‘It is a magnificent mustache. Very soft. Tickles in all the right places.’
“I laughed long and hard, and eventually my laughter turned to tears, and I told her what I felt. The words poured out of me, and I don’t know if she heard a one. When the sun finally set, and I saw that purple sky for the last time, Garet had gone limp. Her breath still came, but there were longer pauses between them. She was still in there, and I had to believe she could hear me. I said, ‘I love you, Margaret Parker, and I’ll never stop.’
“She breathed in one last time and exhaled her spirit to the heavens, and there was a smile on her face. I stayed there with her for a long, long time. I cried so many tears, took me forty years to cry again. Nothing could ever match the loss I felt that day. Jehu died in his sleep, which was a blessing. I didn’t want to watch him die like I did with Garet. I grieved for Jehu, of course I did, but he was an
old man and we’d had a good life. Garet’s death was a tragedy.
“Garet gave each of us what we wanted, even if we didn’t know it ourselves. She gave Jehu a home. She gave Joan and Stella a mother figure. She gave Claire the adventure of a lifetime. She gave Newt safety and Luke genuine affection, if not love. Hell, she even gave Dorcas something. Dorcas went on to turn Connolly Enterprises into one of the biggest companies in the West, until she finally sold out to Hearst at the turn of the century. Retired as the richest woman in Colorado.
“What did Garet give me? If you don’t have an inkling after hearing me talk for all these hours, well … you haven’t been listening.”
Forgotten Women Podcast (Transcript)
Hosted by Krys Chestnut
Episode 5.17
Guest: Historian Stephanie Bailey, Western American History professor, University of Colorado Boulder
In this episode, historian Stephanie Bailey, a professor of western American history at the University of Colorado Boulder, will talk about her new book, Heresy, an account of a gang of female outlaws in Colorado during the late 1870s and the long, winding road to discovering the story.
Krys Chestnut: Welcome to the Forgotten Women podcast, I’m Krys Chestnut and today we are talking to Stephanie Bailey, author of the recently released book Heresy, a nonfiction book about a gang of female outlaws in 1877 Colorado. Thanks for joining me.
Stephanie Bailey: Thank you for having me. I’ve been a listener since episode one. I think you’re doing important work, highlighting women who have been lost to history, bringing them to a wider audience. A younger audience.
KC: Thank you, and it should be disclosed that Professor Bailey and I are friends. I was her TA when I was working on my master’s in women in history, and we have remained friends. I’ve contacted Professor Bailey many times to confirm a fact that I thought was too fantastic to believe.
SB: There are quite a few of those in history, aren’t there?
KC: Yes, and I have to confess to you, Professor: I found myself doubting this book many, many times as I read it.
SB: I don’t hold that against you, because I had much the same reaction when I started focusing in on the research. European historians seem to come across scandalous women buried in letters and archives all the time, but to discover these women who were so outside of the norms of the time in the American West? Well, I went back and forth between thinking I’d hit the mother lode of forgotten women, or the whole story would fall apart with the next found document.
KC: Tall tales were common then.
SB: Yes, they were, and if any story is ripe to be accused of being a tall tale, it’s the story of the Parker Gang.
KC: Briefly, for our listeners who aren’t familiar with the story or the book, tell us about the Parker Gang.
SB: As you know, the story is anything but brief. My children tease me that I’ve finally made it as a historian because I’ve published a doorstop. But I’ll give it a go. The Parker Gang was a group of women, numbering anywhere from four up to seven, who worked during the years 1873 to 1877. There are six confirmed robberies they did, seven if you include one Margaret Parker did when she killed Callum Connolly. They were never officially caught, and they definitely were never convicted, though one member spent about a week in jail. Before they busted him out.
KC: I can’t believe they walked in and walked out with him.
SB: I couldn’t, either.
KC: That’s a great outline of the story. Before we talk about the story and the characters, I want you to tell our listeners how you discovered the Parker Gang.
SB: By accident, as most good stories are. As you know, I have friends across the country, the world really, who I exchange finds with. We all have our areas of expertise, and when we run across something that isn’t our specialty but might be of interest to someone else, we send it to them. About ten years ago a friend of mine found a penny dreadful at a flea market. The owner knew what he had, and she paid a pretty penny for it. But it was an American penny dreadful, and those are all but lost to history. She sent the original to one of our literature professor friends who specializes in nineteenth-century American literature and folklore, and sent me copies because of the subject matter: a gang of female outlaws.
I read it and dismissed it as fiction, wholly fabricated, immediately. I’m an expert on Colorado history and I’d never heard about or read about a band of female outlaws. It was an interesting premise, no doubt. But as a historical document to benefit my area of research, it was useless. But historians are pack rats, so I dutifully filed it away.
Five years or so later, I came across a book about prostitutes in the Old West. It was a book written in the early twentieth century by amateur historians who seemed more interested in confirming their rose-colored ideas of the West than any actual historical accuracy. One chapter was dedicated to Opal Steele Driscoll, a prostitute turned miner’s wife turned society lady when her husband hit a lode. I’d known of Opal and of her claim to ride with the Spooner Gang, but she was considered an unreliable narrator.
KC: She was a liar.
SB: For the most part, though I’ve come to give her more of the benefit of the doubt as I researched this book. It was just a little piece of information in that book, a throwaway line that sounded like the least plausible part of her story, to be honest, that Opal Steele had played the accordion. There had been an accordion-playing prostitute in the penny dreadful, so I pulled it back out and looked at it a little closer, and with the assumption it was based on fact.
KC: How do you even begin to research something based on a tiny bit of information like that? It seems an impossible task.
SB: That’s what historians live for. But yes. It was one of the more difficult investigations, for reasons I’ll get into later. I had three avenues I could pursue: the accordion-playing prostitute, Opal Steele; the author of the penny dreadful; or Margaret Parker, the outlaw heroine in the story. I ruled Opal out as a good avenue immediately. She didn’t exist until the 1880 census, which meant she moved to Colorado from somewhere the previous decade, or she’d changed her name along the way. The author of the penny dreadful was another dead end. So I turned to Margaret Parker. When you read the penny dreadful, you’ll see that the names of the characters are dramatic and ridiculous, so Margaret Parker stood out for its blandness. I didn’t find her on the census rolls, but I did find her obituary in the Rocky Mountain News in 1877.
KC: And then it’s just a matter of following the threads.
SB: Exactly. I was working on another project at the time, so I did this in my spare time, which there wasn’t much of. I was getting discouraged, too. The real Margaret Parker I found was a widow who’d lost her horse ranch after her husband died. And she dropped off the record from ’73 to ’77, when her obituary ran.
I was in DC at a conference and went to the Library of Congress during a free afternoon I had. I’d decided I was going to have a shot at finding the former slave that was in the penny dreadful. Henrietta LaCour, a French Creole who had an affinity for head scarves and voodoo. The librarian chuckled when I asked her if she’d ever run across a former female slave turned outlaw. She said no, but that the LoC had just finished digitizing the WPA Slave Narrative Collection, and I could look through that. It wasn’t public yet, so of course I jumped at the chance. What do you know, there was a Henrietta Lee with a short entry, which ended with her teasing a more interesting story to come. The interviewer never followed up.
KC: You’re kidding.
SB: The WPA writers weren’t historians, and they probably didn’t really care about the subjects or their stories. This particular interviewer was especially racist in his transcriptions, including extreme vernacular, making every slave sound ignorant. Of course, we understand now that many if not all of the slaves told those white writers what they wanted to hear instead of the truth.
KC: What a lost opportunity, and not just losing the story that Henrietta Lee alluded to, but the
lost opportunity to get in-depth, real accounts of slavery experiences before it left living history.
SB: That is one of the frustrations of being a historian, as you know. But it’s the frustration of never having the complete story that makes the things you do find all the more exciting. In this case, I thought I would go back to Boulder, start working on another project I was interested in, and put the Parker Gang back in the filing cabinet.
Two days later the LoC librarian called me, said she couldn’t stop thinking about my inquiry, so she went into the archives for the original transcriptions and notes. The woman who assisted the original interviewer, Gerald Coleman, was named Grace Williams, and she kept a file of all his notes and the carbon copies of the interviews she typed up. In that file was the rest of Henrietta Lee’s story. Grace had gone back herself, over a month and a half, and taken down Mrs. Lee’s story. It was all there. Every bit of it. Talk about a gold mine.
KC: Why was it not included in the archives?
SB: Because of where it was filed. But then the question became, why was it filed there? Did she not turn it in to her boss? There’s no record or mention of the interviews in the WPA Writers’ Project paperwork, so we have no idea. We’re lucky it wasn’t thrown away.
KC: Henrietta Lee’s narrative then gave you the names and clues to discover the rest of the story.
SB: Yes, but again, we had the amazing good fortune to find Margaret Parker’s and Claire Hamilton’s journals, and in such good condition. Henrietta said that Claire Hamilton and Ruby Steele moved to San Francisco and died in the 1906 earthquake. I contacted the San Francisco city archivist, gave her their names, and asked if they had information about them. As part of the San Francisco Museum’s earthquake section, there are saved everyday items, some with earthquake damage, others just as examples of the times.
Heresy Page 38