The Year We Were Famous (7 page)

"You need to get something for your hands," he said.

I returned the postcard I'd been looking at to the rack and clasped my hands—still raw from chopping half of Mr. Ramsey's woodpile—behind my back to hide them.

"My grandmother used to make a poultice of
Chaenactis douglasii
or fleabane and wolf lichen for my rope burns."

I crossed the room, succumbing to a sudden urge to study a map of the reservation on the side wall of the station. What was I to make of an Indian who knew the Latin names for plants, worked for the railroad, and played the trumpet in a brass band? Johnny and Arthur would never believe it!

I hadn't heard his footsteps following me to the map, but from behind my back came the soft voice again. "Don't worry about walking across the reservation tomorrow. You'll be as safe on the reservation as you would be in town, but if you don't want to take the word of an Indian on it, you should talk to Major Moorhouse, the Indian agent."

I was saved from having to make more conversation when Ma bustled through the door of the ladies' waiting room. She saw immediately what I had not and put one arm protectively around my shoulder, tugging me away from Mr. Fletcher. "Are you all right?"

Ma claimed never to have read a dime novel in her life, but I suspected her ideas of Indians—like mine—had been shaped more by the adventures of Buffalo Bill and Deadwood Dick than firsthand experience.

"I'm fine, Ma. Mr. Fletcher was just telling me about the Indian agent for the reservation, Major Moorhouse."

As we walked toward the agent's house, I couldn't believe I had met a real live Indian. Arthur, Johnny, and Billy would be jealous. Ida and Bertha would faint.

Dear Olaf, Arthur, Johnny, and Billy,

I met my first Indians today and got a close-up look at a real
teepee! An Indian woman we met had her baby in a cradleboard like the twins on this postcard. I bet Ma sometimes wished she had you laced up and out of trouble when you were little. We stayed overnight with Major Moorhouse (the Indian agent who took the pictures on these postcards) and by getting an early start, crossed the entire Umatilla Reservation in one day.

Love, Clara

P.S. Indian children have to go to school, too—and wear uniforms!

Dear Ida and Bertha,

The woman on this postcard is the grandmother of the Real Live Indian I talked to at the railway station just outside the Umatilla Reservation! Take a close look at the beadwork on the earrings, headband, and necklace, and try to imagine them in red and yellow and blue and green.

I was amazed that white settlers have farms on the reservation. You could look one direction, see a white clapboard house surrounded by plowed fields and think you were right home in Mica Creek. You'd look across the road and see a dozen teepees!

I miss you both!

Love, Clara

P.S. Send me a letter with all the details from Tilda and Carl's wedding next week! Hug Billy and Lillian for me.

A
S
we left the Gibbon station on the far side of the reservation, Ma predicted a beautiful day for us in the Blue Mountains. For the first hour, her prediction was right. After two weeks of rain, I'd almost forgotten how blue a sky could be.

As we climbed higher, however, the air grew chilly and the wind picked up, swirling my skirt and pulling my hair out of its pins. Ma held one hand to the top of her head like she thought the wind would take off with her hair entirely. After five miles of buffeting, we were relieved to find shelter at the Duncan station.

The stationmaster assured us the brown bears in the mountains seldom attacked. All we had to do was make lots of noise as we went along and they'd most likely choose to get out of our way. "Most likely" was slim comfort. As we walked, Ma carried her squeeze bulb filled with pepper and I kept one hand on my pistol. It wouldn't kill a bear unless I got it in the eyeball, but maybe it would make enough noise to scare him off.

It was too much work to think of a steady string of things to say, even for Ma, so I started singing, and Ma joined in. The bears wouldn't care that neither of us could carry a tune. I went through all the verses of "She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain," followed by some rousing hymns. While I thought of what to sing next, the only sound was our shoes on gravel.

Even a rousing hymn and a brisk pace weren't enough to keep us warm as we climbed higher. We pulled on our ponchos to cut the cold, damp wind that whistled through the pass, through the trees, and through my wool skirt and cotton petticoat on its way to my bones.

When we stopped to rest, I took a sip from my canteen. "
Uff da!
" The words were muffled because my lips had half-frozen to the metal spout. I kept blowing warm air into the canteen until the spout warmed up enough to peel my mouth off the metal without losing a layer of skin. I touched my lips cautiously to reassure myself they were still there. My knees knocked in the cold. "I wish I'd brought my quilted wool petticoat and union suit," I said.

Ma dropped her satchel and pulled her hands up under her poncho. "As long as you're wishing, how about a fur muff and a sleigh with six white horses?"

"I can't come up with six white horses," I said, "but we have something to take the place of a muff." I pulled my spare socks onto my hands like mittens and held them up for Ma's approval.

"It'll do," Ma said, and put socks on her hands, too, before continuing on.

Just as I was about to remind Ma about her prediction of a lovely May walk in the mountains, I gasped.

"Look—it's like Christmas!" Light snow began to sift down from a white sky and dust the fir trees. The first flakes were damp and clumped together like teaspoon-size snowballs. I caught a clump in my mouth. In six hours we'd climbed from summer into winter.

"It won't last," Ma said. "Most of it will melt as soon as it touches the ground."

But the snow didn't melt, and the wind didn't die down. Snow accumulated inch by inch until it completely covered the tracks, covered my boots, and came up halfway to my knees. "How will we know which way to go if we can't see the tracks?" I said.

Ma clutched her satchel with both arms to keep it from being snatched away by the howling wind. Another layer of snow settled on her shoulders and the brim of her rain hat. I waited for her face to light up with an answer. Instead, her face took on that paralyzed look a deer gets when caught in a lantern's light at night. "I don't know," she said.

I brushed the snow off my eyelashes and squinted ahead. I could just make out the next telegraph pole, and a miragelike glimpse of what was either a sparsely limbed fir tree or another pole. "The telegraph poles run alongside the tracks," I said, answering my own question. "We'll find our way."

Leaning into the wind and navigating from one telegraph pole to the next, we pushed our way through ten inches, twelve inches, fourteen inches of snow.

Finally, a sign materialized out of the haze of snow:
MEACHAM STATION, ELEV. 4,055 FT
. Most people would read that sign from inside the train, sipping tea or hot chocolate from porcelain cups. Not Ma and me.

I clomped up the steps to the door of the station. With icy socks on my hands, I couldn't get the door handle to turn and nearly fell into the room when a burly man in Union Pacific uniform opened the door. "Oh, golly," he said. "You look like ghosts. Not to criticize, but most people have the sense to take the train instead of walking across the Blue Mountains in a blizzard."

As I pulled Ma toward the potbelly stove, she looked like she was in shock that the weather had not behaved itself for us today. What would have happened to Ma if she had been on her own? We had armed ourselves with ponchos, a pistol, and pepper gun, but never thought we'd have to battle a snowstorm in May. What else had we neglected to prepare for?

Dear Arthur and Johnny,

In case you have not had your quota of dime novels this month, I am sending you a true account of our First Adventure:

Our two brave heroines are Helga Estby, a Norwegian immigrant homesteader, and her daughter Clara. For two weeks they had walked through heavy mud, swollen rivers, and rugged mountains, determined to reach New York City to win a wager that would save their family's farm.

Only the day before, the valiant women walkers had crossed the Blue Mountains in a ferocious blizzard. When the next morning dawned clear, they had no presentiment that this day would be other than an uneventful walk into La Grande, Oregon, where they hoped for the reward of a long, hot bath.

Late in the day, they came out of the foothills on the far side of the Blue Mountains. Looking down on the wheat growing in the Grande Ronde Valley, they could see the ruts left by the
thousands of wagons carrying courageous pioneers westward on the Oregon Trail.

Still concentrating on their footing in the loose rock slicked by melting snow, they did not notice the slow hoofbeats behind them until they heard a man's voice. "You headed into La Grande?
"

Helga Estby quickened her pace. She did not answer.

In a quick glance back, Clara observed the man's straight dark mustache, oiled hair, bowler hat, suit, and once white shirt.

"
How far you two been walking?" he asked.

Clara, innocent as she was of the darker side of human nature, started to reply, but her mother warned her to keep her silence.

The man was willing to do all the talking himself, however. He slid off his horse and walked along behind the two women.

Though travel-ravaged and less clean than was their wont, their proud carriage still identified them as paragons of decent womanhood. In the gentle wind blowing southward through the valley, a strand of Clara's fair hair pulled loose from her decorous bun and glowed like a golden filament halo in the solitary ray of sun, which pierced the billowy cloud.

"
Why you out here by yourselves?" His voice was coarse and menacing He paused, inviting a reply, but the women remained silent. "You got a boyfriend, titmouse?" He drew abreast of Clara and poked his elbow into her arm to make sure she knew he was addressing her, but Clara still did not answer.

He dropped behind again and continued his one-sided conversation.

"
Sure would like to see what's in them satchels. Run off with your old man's loot?
"

When he shoved her mother, Clara's eyes widened in hor
ror. Would she have to use the gun her father had insisted they carry? Her face grew hot as she fumbled in her bag to bring her gun to the top where she could grab it if she had to.

The dark-mustached man shoved Clara's back this time. As she lurched forward he jabbed her again, harder, and she fell to her hands and knees across her satchel. He grabbed her chin from behind, like a cougar snapping a sheep's head around to break its neck. As Clara flailed helplessly, he leaned over her to growl, "When I talk, look at me like you're listening
"

Clara's frantic mother grabbed one of his shoulders and tried to wrench him off her daughter, but he swung one scarred fist, which landed with a thud on her brow. In spite of the trickle of blood now running into her eye, she held steadfast to the villain's arm, straining with every ounce of a mother's courage to drag him off her daughter.

He tried to shake her loose, but she would not release her grip, so he stooped to his boot, where Clara was alarmed to see the hilt of a knife. As he pulled out his glittering dagger, she pulled her gun from her satchel and before she could lose her nerve, she shot.

A hole bloomed red in his lower leg, just above the line of his boot. He howled and fell back on his posterior.

"
Get on your horse and get out of here," she commanded.

She kept her gun trained on him while he limped to his horse, swearing oaths too coarse to commit to print. As he put one leg in the stirrup and swung his other, bleeding leg over the saddle, he issued a warning: "The sheriff in La Grande will throw you both in jail!
"

"
I doubt it," said the valiant Clara. Soon he was nothing but a dust cloud.

Clara tucked the ripped top of her skirt into her waistband and washed the cut above her mother's eye. As they walked the last two miles into town, Clara's mother took over the gun. "If there's any problem over this shooting, I'll tell the sheriff I did it" she said. "I'll not have you hung for protecting me
"

Clara anxiously scanned the horizon for any sign of a posse out looking for a would-be murderess and her mother. With faith in the power of truth and the fairness of justice in this land, however, she and her mother strode directly to the sheriff's office.

As they entered the office, the man who had accosted them jabbed an accusing finger at them from his position on a rough-hewn bench. "That's them!" he shouted. "Put them in jail!
"

Clara's mother slammed her satchel on the sheriff's desk and jabbed her own finger at her assailant. "That's the man who should be in jail—assaulting defenseless women...
"

"Defenseless!" The man started to stand and groaned as his leg oozed fresh blood through the rags he had bound around it. He collapsed back on the bench and pointed to his wound. "There's all the proof you need on who should be locked up
"

"
How dare you..." Clara's mother started.

The sheriff held out one open palm against Clara's mother and the other against the man on the bench as if to physically stop the accusations and counter-accusations. "Both of you, quiet! The judge'll be through here next week, and we'll hear both of your stories then.
"

"
But we can't stay here a week," Clara said. "We'll miss our deadline!
"

"
And look at us, Sheriff," Clara's mother said, pointing to her bleeding forehead and Clara's ripped skirt and bloodied
hands. "We were only virtuous women defending our honor"She sorted through her bag to find her letter of recommendation from Mayor Belt of Spokane and the clipping from the
New York World.

"
Well," the sheriff sighed as he finished reading the article and handed it back. "I think you women are crazy for trying to walk across the country by yourselves, but it looks like you were provoked into using your gun, so I won't lock you up. In fact," he said, turning to the villain on the bench, "I am going to keep you here for a day or two. You need to keep off that leg anyway, and I'm sure these ladies would continue on easier in their minds if they knew I was keeping an eye on you
"

The sheriff escorted Mrs. Estby and Clara to the door and pointed the way to his house. "My wife will see you cleaned up and mended before you're on the way. Try not to use that gun again between here and New York
"

And so ends the first installment of the adventures of Helga and Clara Estby. Do you think I should change our names for the book? Helga and Clara sound more plodding than dashing.

Love,
Your gunslinging sister;
Clara