Cattle Kate (7 page)

Most of our neighbors weren't too happy with me, and I overheard more than one person scolding my Ma.

“She made her bed and she's got to lie in it.”

“If girls could just leave their husbands because there's a bad patch, where would we be?”

“It isn't right for a woman to divorce a man. That doesn't happen in these parts, you know.”

I was real proud of Ma when she stood up for me: “Ellen is a good girl and she has good reasons.” Ma said those words in a voice that was sharp enough to stop the busybodies in their tracks. But still, when we went to church, I could feel them looking at me and whispering behind my back like I wasn't a good wife that didn't honor her vows. I wondered if some of those women weren't wishing they could escape like I did.

That next New Year's Eve, Pa gathered us to celebrate Hogmanay, like he always did. This was the one custom he kept from his people—he said his Ma always favored it. She told her boys she hoped they'd sing it in their own homes and to always remember it came from a Scotsman's poem long ago.

Pa told us that you'd normally celebrate at midnight as the new year came in, but that wasn't for us. “Farmers are never up at midnight unless a cow's in trouble with a new calf,” he joked, so we did it after supper. We stood in a circle, holding hands and sang the song from the Old Country that Pa taught us.
“Should auld acquaintance be forgot, And never brought to mind? Should auld acquaintance be forgot, And auld lang syne?”

The girls favored the chorus:
“For auld lang syne, my dear, For auld lang syne. We'll take a cup o' kindness yet, For auld lang syne.

The boys liked the last verse best because it was about friends having a good-will drink together and that sounded manly to them.
And there's a hand, my trusty fiere! And gie's a hand o' thine! And we'll tak a right guide-willy waught, For auld lang syne.”

Pa always choked up when he got to the verse about being so far away from a friend, and I suspected he sang this one for the family that had turned their backs on him and Ma. “
We twa hae paid'd i' the burn, frae morning sun till dine; But seas between us braid hae roar'd sin auld lang syne.”

***

It was a Thursday in February when John was sent to Red Cloud for supplies and I insisted on going along. I quickly filled Ma's order from the Mercantile, and while my brother was still at the feed lot, I ran over to the courthouse.

A very sturdy-looking woman was sitting at a desk, her spectacles perched on the top of her head. “I want a divorce,” I told her, and she just looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language. “Is there something I have to fill out?” That brought her back to the moment.

“Yes, there's a dissolution of marriage form,” she said, “but I've never handed one out before. I'm not even sure we have one.” She still sat there, looking at me curiously, and I wasn't moving and finally, she said, “But I could go look,” and I thanked her and she went into a big cabinet at the back of the room. It took her a couple minutes of digging until she finally announced, “Here it is!” like she'd found a missing treasure. And for me, it was. Here was the first legal paper I'd ever sign on my own and it was a paper most women in the entire country would never consider signing.

I filled it out and the whole time this clerk kept looking at me, but when I met her eyes, I didn't see a harsh judgment. I saw the kind of woman who'd never allow a man a second hit, and when I smiled at her, she smiled back like a loving sister.

“And I need to see the judge,” I told her after the paper was signed and stamped so it was officially entered. She didn't even question me, but went to the door and knocked gently. She walked into the judge's fine-looking office and laid the form on his desk and told him someone wanted to see him. I was lucky he was in and even luckier that he was my Pa's friend who had married us.

There was a shocked look on his face as he read the form and then looked at me with eyes that said, “Ellen, this just can't be.”

I ignored the look and went straight to my point: “I have to ask you something special that isn't on the form. I want my maiden name back. I don't want to be Ellen Pickell anymore. I want to be Ellen Watson again.”

I could just tell he was primed to give me a lecture against divorce, but my request stopped him in his tracks. “But Ellen, your legal name is Pickell now and even if you divorce him, it's still Pickell.”

I straightened up my back for courage and told it to him straight: “Judge, he wasn't a good man. I thought I was marrying a man like my Pa, but he wasn't. I can't honor a bad man by carrying his name. I want to honor a good man by carrying his.” By his reaction, I knew it was a powerful argument.

“Did he mistreat you?”

“Yes.”

I knew he wanted more but that was all I cared to share.

“There's no way you two can fix this?”

“No. No sir.”

He took a minute to consider all this and then added in his own handwriting that upon the dissolution of marriage, I would resume the Watson name.

I walked out of that courthouse a happy woman for the first time in a long time. I pressed my hands against my heart and beamed, like I'd just gotten the best Valentine's present ever.

It was February 14, 1884.

Chapter Six—My Train to a New Life

I kept looking at the ticket as my brother, John, paced the platform. “Miss E. Watson. One-way. Cheyenne, Wyoming Territory.”

“Don't lose that,” my brother yelled over, as if I'd be careless with my ticket to a new life.

It was March 17, 1885.

“You know, these tracks aren't even twenty years old.” He was reading a story about the railroad tacked on the wall. “But they say the cars are borrowed from the East. Bet they're old.”

Those cars could have come from a Red Cloud shed and been nothing but two boards nailed together and I would have thought them beautiful. As it was, they were real rail cars—not the fancy ones toward the front—but just fine, as far as I was concerned.

John helped me to my seat.

“The floor is dirty and it has cracks so big, you can see the ground underneath,” he complained, but I didn't care.

“The windows are grimy, you can hardly see out of them.” But I saw that he was wrong. I could see out just fine.

“Do these cars jostle a lot?” he asked the couple in the seats across from mine.

The woman with the big hat said, “Well, let me just say, when we're underway, if you try to hold a tin cup full of water, it will all slosh out.”

John gave me the I-told-you-so look. “I'm not going to hold a tin cup full of water,” I told him. He had to smile at that.

“There's not a bit of upholstery on your seat. You're going to have a rough ride.”

I hadn't expected a plush couch for my trip. Seat No. 19 was a wooden bench and it was a fine wooden bench.

From the moment we'd arrived at the Union Pacific station in Red Cloud for the 10:12 a.m. train, John had been trying to convince me to turn back. But there was no way. I was moving on. I was on an adventure. I was wearing my Pa's name and there'd be nobody to know any difference.

My trunk was safely stowed in the freight car and I carried a valise of gray and pink velvet that Ma had traded for making two men's shirts—perhaps her finest shirts ever. It was the prettiest valise I have ever seen.

It was a fine new thing for my fine new life. And my new name.

“I want to be called Ella from now on,” I announced to my family soon after I came back from the courthouse. Mother understood instantly and agreed Ella was a fitting nickname for her grown daughter, just as Franny had so fit me when I was a child. “I know I'll sign legal with Ellen, but I like the sound of Ella,” I explained to Pa. And then I told him the judge had agreed I could have my maiden name back. I think that pleased my Pa.

So now I was Ella Watson, except when Ma or Pa had something very important to say and then, as always, they reverted to my Christian name.

“Ellen, you can't be serious.” That was Pa when I first mentioned my plans to go west.

“Women don't go west alone, child. If your Ma and I were going, sure you could come along, or if you brothers were moving or…[I could tell he thought better of mentioning the prospect of following a husband]…but you can't just go yourself. Ellen, that's no place for a woman on her own.”

My family was unanimous in trying to dissuade me.

“Ella, there's still savages out there,” Franny cried, as though this were still the 1870s.

“Ella, what about train robbers? You don't want to be killed by train robbers,” argued Andrew, as though Jesse James were still alive.

“Ella, most of those places aren't even states,” John scolded, as though Kansas hadn't once been a territory itself.

“Ellen, it isn't proper,” Pa kept repeating, as though nothing was proper for a woman but staying home and clinging to a man.

But I held firm. None of them knew this plan had been in the works for months. Ever since Old Man Stone came home from his trip to Denver with that railroad brochure.

Not long after I filed for divorce, I knew it was time to move on. But moving on in Kansas didn't offer much. I wasn't from a family that owned a business that would give me a job and I wasn't educated enough to teach school, which was about the only other work women were allowed. But I did know everything about cooking and cleaning and so when Jacob Stone put out the word he was looking for a housekeeper, I jumped at the opportunity.

It was an easy job, taking care of a three-room house and one old farmer. With no children underfoot, once you cleaned, it stayed clean. Mr. Stone liked the same meals day in and out—flapjacks and fried ham with buttermilk biscuits for breakfast; beef stew and leftover biscuits for dinner; steak and boiled potatoes for supper. I never needed to slaughter and pluck chickens because, as Mr. Stone told me the first day, “I'm no friend to chicken.”

I broke up the culinary boredom with my wonderful pies and he loved every kind I made. Since the cooking and housework were easy, I joined Mr. Stone in the barn and the fields and he was impressed I already knew so much. He bragged in town that in Ella Watson, he not only got a good housekeeper, but a good handyman, too.

I'd been with him two months when he took the train to Denver to visit his ailing sister, and in the ten days he was gone, I realized something important—I was caring for this house and that barn and those fields all on my own. I had the strength and stamina to do it, since I've always been on friendly terms with hard work. I realized there was a joy to this work as though it were your own home and your own land. When my bone-tired body climbed into bed at night, there was a satisfaction to knowing a good day's work had been done and tomorrow was another day.

Until then, I had never been alone a day in my life. I'd never slept alone in a cabin without my mother or a sister next door. I'd never watered the stock or worked a field without my father or brother nearby. I'd never cooked a meal with no one but myself to eat it. I'd gone from my father's home to my husband's home and now to Mr. Stone's home. Years later, it would strike me that if he hadn't gone on that trip, I'd never have realized the possibility of a home of my own.

“I brought you this,” Mr. Stone said sheepishly when he returned from his trip with a package wrapped in brown paper and held together, not with plain string, but with ribbons. “My sister said she thought you'd favor this soap—it's her favorite.” I was moved that he'd think to bring me anything, and I loved the lavender smell of the cake that came in such a pretty package.

He also had a new cast iron muffin tin and sugar and vinegar. “Never can have enough sugar and vinegar,” he said, as though he had to explain provisions for his own kitchen. “And oh, yeah, I thought you'd get a kick out of this.” He threw down on the table a brochure from the Union Pacific entitled: “Wonderful Opportunities for Homesteader or Investor.” It included a poem: “Mary had a little farm, she kept it neat and tidy. It gave her crops and chicks and cows and she loved it mighty.”

Mr. Stone thought it was funny that the railroad was trying to get women to go west and claim land and he laughed about it, thinking I'd would laugh, too. But that silly little poem kept running through my mind and it wasn't long before I dared to think: “Ella had a little farm….”

The next time we went into Red Cloud for supplies, I stopped by the railroad office and asked about claims farther west. They were all too happy to give me brochures and articles from
Collier's
magazine. I read them all so often, I almost memorized the stories they told. They all painted such a rosy picture of life on a homestead. I took them at their word.

Mr. Stone provided room and board and I already had three good work dresses and a Sunday outfit, so I didn't need any more and could save almost every cent Mr. Stone paid. Within six months, I was able to save forty-six dollars. My grubstake.

That's when I told my family about the new life I saw for myself in Wyoming Territory.

“There's no land left to claim here.” I didn't have to tell them, but I did anyway. They already knew that. My brothers already knew their dreams of their own claims were being crushed because there was no longer any land left to claim in Kansas.

“Pa, I want to own my own land, like you and Grandpapa. I want my own cabin and my own crops and my own herd. There's not many places a woman could have all that for herself, but Wyoming Territory is one of them. Women can even vote out there, Pa. Imagine that.”

“You couldn't vote anyway cause you're not even a citizen,” he shot back.

“But I will be. Like you, Pa. I'll file for citizenship and study and take my test, just like you're doing.”

He jumped on that right away, insisting I couldn't even think of going until I'd helped him pass his citizenship test, but I had an answer waiting for that objection. “Annie is more up on her American history than I am. She can help you. She'll be better at it than me.”

I swatted away every concern like I was at a field picnic, keeping skeeters off the cornbread.

If there had been any plea that gave me pause, it was from my little sisters. “Ella, you'd leave us?” Little Jane held onto my skirts while she cried out her disbelief. “How can you leave us?”

Annie wondered if I was going away forever and wailed, “I couldn't stand it if I never saw you again.” I knew I couldn't stand that either. I had to admit that if I'd had my way, I'd have a sister old enough to go with me—the two of us would be company for one another, and it would be so much easier to go with someone else than stalk off on my own. But Franny was my only hope and at seventeen, she was already being courted and had no interest in moving away.

Whatever soft spot my sisters punched in my spine, William Pickell hardened back up. He refused to answer my petition for divorce—not once, not twice, but three times—and to pile on the agony, he filed his own decree claiming I abandoned him! He claimed to be blameless for the breakup.

He got darn right obstinate about it all. He kept showing up wherever I was. Mr. Stone threw him off the farm, but I saw him lurking more than once. I hated to admit how much that scared me. To be honest, sometimes I wasn't sure what was pushing my fantasies about a new life—the challenge of it, or the fear of what William Pickell would do if he ever caught me alone.

I pushed all those thoughts out of my mind as I settled into Seat No. 19 with my mother's blessings in my ears: “You're goin' on Saint Paddy's Day and that's a good sign.” There weren't many Irish customs that clung to Ma—Irish potato soup, of course, and soda bread, and always saying if a fork fell off the table, “Oh, a woman is coming to visit.” But St. Patrick's Day was always special in the Watson home, no matter what day of the week it fell.

“The Catholics aren't the only ones to claim him,” Ma told us. “All the Irish honor St. Patrick because he drove the snakes out of Ireland.” That's all I knew about it, but that's all I needed. Anybody who could drive the snakes out of a country was a saint in my mind.

“Saint Paddy himself is looking out for you as you start this journey. Don't you forget that. Be a good girl. Be careful. And come home to us someday.” Ma turned away from me then, sending me off. I knew she was crying. I was too.

Pa waved to me from the barn and when I started to go toward him, John held me back. “Best let it be. He's taking this real hard.” I knew my brother was right.

***

“One way to Cheyenne?” the conductor asked as he punched my ticket.

“Yes, sir,” I smiled at him. To my surprise, he returned a real smile to me.

I'd been watching him punch tickets along the way, and I saw the phony smile he gave to most of the passengers. Especially the painted ladies three rows up.

One wore a red silk dress and a hat full of feathers. Another had checks so red, I wondered at first if she was sick, but then I smiled to myself when I realized it had to be rouge. One had a snappy poodle and I thought it was queer that you'd bring a dog on a trip like this. Every one them had painted nails and hands full of flashy rings.

I had to look like a church mouse next to them. The conductor smiled at me again like he was looking at a sister after Sunday services.

“You have business in Cheyenne, ma'am?”

“I'm going to Cheyenne to start a new life.”

“Your husband meeting you there?”

“No, I'm on my own. I'm going to be a homesteader one day.”

I saw him flinch, like this was an amazing thing. I passed it off as just another man who thought I was a woman who didn't know my place.

“I wish you the best of luck. And you be careful, Cheyenne can be a rough place.”

“I can take care of myself, but thank you, sir.”

I snuggled into my seat and looked out the window. There was the familiar landscape of the prairie that I knew so well. Nearly flat land covered with crops or grasses, trees here and there standing guard, or lining a creek like cows at a trough. I'd seen this same picture every day for years, but now I was seeing so much at once—the train was going so fast, mile after mile was running by the window. I bet I saw more in the first half hour of my first train ride than I'd seen in all my twenty-four years.

I decided I was due a treat in honor of my new life, so I turned away from the window and pulled my valise up onto the empty seat beside me. Oh, I was thankful I didn't have to share this bench with another passenger, but could spread out for more comfort.

I took out a piece of cake carefully wrapped in cloth that Ma had packed. Truth be known, if I unpacked all the food Ma insisted I take, the valise would have been half empty. It was an extra generous piece of Ma's famous chocolate cake—a treat hardly ever made because cocoa was rare in our home. But Ma traditionally made it for St. Patrick's Day and this year, it not only honored him, but honored my trip. I was glad Ma had been so generous in her cut, and it looked to me like I'd be nibbling on this cake most of the way west. That's what I was thinking when I took my first bite of that delicious dark sweetness.