“We’re really going to do this!” I could barely keep from giggling.
“Yes, we are, and if we survive, I will ask to have my head examined by the nearest physician.”
“Oh, Robert. It’ll be such a joy. Hang on—”
The train jerked into movement, slowly at first. The thin air felt cool, then cold against my face as we picked up speed, the engine noises making any speech impossible, the metal’s cold seeped through the stays of my corset. Wind in our faces pushed at the ribbons I’d wrapped over my hat and tied beneath my chin to keep it on. The smell of smoke wafted around us as we gained speed, two engines and a string of cars with passengers and freight surging behind us. Then we were racing, racing down a mountain with trees and rocks whizzing by us on either side. I screamed, the wind shoving even my joy back into my mouth. My face felt frozen. With effort, my cheeks flapping, our bodies vibrating, I looked at Robert, but he stared straight ahead, his jaw clenched. He wore no hat.
And then we were slowed upon the Dale Creek Bridge itself and all scenery backed away and there was only sky on either side. It was as though we were in the clouds. I tried to peek over the edge to see the depths, that sliver of silver that was Dale Creek, six hundred and fifty feet below us. I pressed back after a glance.
We picked up speed again, racing through high sagebrush desert and then suddenly, darkness.
It was the blackness that began my panic. “What’s hap-pen-ing, Ro-bert!”
He left his grip to put his arm in front of me as if to protect me from an unknown assailant in the dark cavern of what I realized must be the snowshed, a place for the trains to be protected from the heavy snows that would otherwise close the tracks in deep winter. But why the dark? Usually lanterns lit the way. It was like a coffin. And then we were in a long tunnel, equally black, the echo of the engine in that dark cavern rattling against my ears, the surrounding darkness pressing like a great weight against me. I had trouble breathing. I wondered if we had somehow died, the smoke a heavy presence with no escaping allowed.
Or perhaps the engineer had purposely plunged us into darkness so we’d never again use our pass.
But when we hit daylight again at the end of the tunnel, we slowed, then stopped. Trainmen jumped from the side and two on the ground came running toward us. I could see from the engineer’s face that he was horror-struck. We learned why. The keeper of the lights had become ill so there’d been neither light in the tunnel nor assurance for each train that the track ahead in the tunnel was safe. By the time the engineer realized no lanterns lit the snow-shed, it was too late to stop, and once inside the tunnel, he couldn’t stop or the smoke from the train would have suffocated everyone.
Robert and I were both shaky and grateful. He walked us beside the train to the Pullman car so we could recover. Me, to search for my breath.
“Maybe that was foolish,” I gasped.
“We survived.” He coughed. “And you talked your malleable husband into doing something he really would never have done on his own. You’re quite the adventurer yourself, Mrs. Strahorn.” He kissed me, touched his fingers to my wind-and-hat-smashed hair.
“Indeed.”
And I was. Quite the adventurer.
“Now it’s my turn to offer up an excursion,” Robert told me a few weeks later. We’d arrived in the Idaho town of Bonanza and in the morning headed up the mountain by horseback, taking narrow trails no wider than a horse’s steady foot in places. I kept my eyes on Robert’s horse in front of me, my stomach queasy from the depth of the ravines on either side of that ridgeback. I wasn’t feeling well that morning, the “mocking monthlies” having arrived while on the train. And I hadn’t really wanted to go to the mine. Close places made me clammy inside, increased the pace of my breathing. My temples would throb. Heights were not a problem, but narrow passageways were.
I remembered as a child having my sister Mary and her friend roll me up in a carpet. I thought it great fun until I couldn’t move my limbs, couldn’t see out, the wool fibers so close to my nose I thought I’d inhaled a sheep. My cries were muffled, so my sister thought I giggled. By the grace of God, my mother walked in at that moment, assessed the situation, and unfurled me. Snot ran from my nose and I clung to her in tears.
“I suffocate,” I told her.
She didn’t correct my grammar, chastised my sister and her friend who got sent home while Mary spent the rest of the afternoon in a corner. The smell of a wool carpet can take me back there in an instant. Even the thought of a closed space causes my heart to race.
Which was what my heart was doing, pounding like a steam engine. Plus, I didn’t feel like being my sweet and funny public self that morning, watching my Pard glad-hand potential investors in the railroad’s future.
But I did love horses and a good ride through grand vistas, and Robert promised me I’d have that. Staying behind in the hotel lent itself to self-pity, a never-pretty condition that is often remedied by putting oneself into challenges that require one’s total absorption. The greatest antidote to tiredness was engagement. I’d let the steep trail up to the mine consume me. I didn’t have to do more than arrive. I could say no to going down into the mine shaft.
I forced myself not to think about the closed-in shaft that awaited me and turned as I had before to the landscape to bring me calm.
The trek up to the Montana Mine was glorious. I’d never seen such timber thick with birdsong drifting through the firs. Then rocks and walls dotted with lichens, patches of snow leading to a steep ascent where I held on to my horse’s mane to keep from sliding back as the gelding lunged upward to the top, areas having been axed out so the animals and people could stand level. Wide as an arena. A hardy wildflower pushed itself between a craggy crack, while stacks of ore waiting to be hauled by mules down the mountain looked like mountains themselves.
And there gaped the wide hole in the earth—the entrance to the vertical tunnel. I soon wore a raincoat and gum boots, and I peered into a gold mine shaft of the Montana Mine at the top of Mt. Estes in the shadow of the Saw Tooth and Salmon River mountain ranges of Idaho. A railroad had been built from Challis to Bonanza, a distance of thirty-five miles for the cost of $30,000, and it saved days of travel and offered spectacular vistas. I’d remember that cost later when railroad building became a part of the Strahorn agenda.
It was a narrow shaft, wet from melting snows and thus the rain gear and rubber boots we were given by Captain Hooper, the superintendent. The only way down the shaft was hand over hand on a ladder that clung precariously to the wet sides. Loose ropes hung from different levels of the ladder to be grabbed in case of emergency. Emergency such as a woman suffocating from the confining space.
“I’m the biggest man here,” the superintendent announced. “I’ll put the rope around me and the other end around you, Mrs. Strahorn. You wrap it around your middle there.”
“I . . . I don’t know. It might be better if I stayed on top. Keep the horses company.”
“Nonsense,” the superintendent said. “You don’t want to miss out on such an experience. Few women ever get inside a mine.”
“You’re usually up for adventures,” my Pard encouraged. He took the other end of the rope and slid it around my jacket, secured the knot. I removed my hat. He handed me my safety lamp. I’d have to hold it while I descended, my right hand doing double duty.
“Let’s attach the lantern so you can use both hands.” The superintendent latched it to my wrist, the flame secure behind an iron mesh that let in air, he told me, but didn’t allow the flame to set off the gases that permeated the mine. Gases? Flames?
Pard patted my back. Had I ever told him of my fear of close spaces?
“I’ll be above you on the ladder,” the superintendent assured. “That way, if you lose a step I’ll hold you back.”
“If I don’t pull you down with me.”
“You aren’t that much of a weight, madam.”
“Too much for the winze basket,” I said. The winze basket worked on a
pulley to bring ore up to the surface. “It only holds one hundred pounds, I’m told.”
“It isn’t running today. The pully needs to be restrung, I’m afraid. The ladder is our route.” Then as an afterthought he added, “Besides, you can’t weigh much more than one hundred pounds.”
“I didn’t know military men to be such diplomats.” I had forty pounds over that.
He grinned, tipped his fingers to his hat. Other guests chattered. An investor and author who was another major. He and Robert had spoken of publishing issues and the military, as the major’s book was a history of a certain Pennsylvania cavalry. I hadn’t considered it until then, but since the Roman times, men have written both of their exploits and regrets in war. Robert gravitated toward these kinds of men, trusted when they proposed new investment ideas. Superintendent Hooper had been a captain for the Union.
I felt like a calf attached to a child preparing to pull me onto a parade grounds with my roped waist leaning into the hole. I took deep breaths, imagined myself beneath a blue sky and not in that shaft we stood above.
Why am I doing this? Because I’d made a bargain with Pard? To force new experiences? To take advantage of the opportunities my unusual life offered? To forget that the next day was Mother’s Day? I honestly didn’t know.
Four men started down, their lanterns bobbing; then Robert, then me. The superintendent was the last to grab the ladder, his larger bulk blocking the daylight above me. All seven of us were on that rope at once.
One hundred fifty feet into the depths of the earth we went, the very channel sweating. I kept my eyes on the ladder, did not look up or down, ignored the jerk and pull of others. When I gained a rhythm with hands and feet, I closed my eyes to keep the closeness out. My gloves soon became damp and my fingers cold, but I hung on, the gum boots wanting to slip from the wet. The sounds of dripping water serenaded us. I could hear my heart. Prayers came to my clenched jaws. Please don’t let me suffocate.
My legs wobbled as we hit the shaft’s floor, Robert there to help me with the last rungs. I stood with a sense of satisfaction. Half the journey completed. I only had to get back out.
It was cramped but a wider space had been clawed out where miners could swing a pick and load ore into the winze basket when it was in service. We congratulated each other, the tenderfoots did, as we were handed our own tools from two miners awaiting us. “You’re the first woman in this mine,” Captain Hooper told me. “You’ll want to dig for a little gold.”
“Perhaps one day I’ll write of it.” My voice sounded shaky. We sloshed around with our spades, poking and picking the walls. I could not imagine working here eight or twelve hours a day. The cramped space, pale lights, the hard work, that small shaft, the dampness—although in the summer, the shaft was apparently bone dry.
“I’ve picked out a rock.” I held it up. “Is it gold?”
“It is,” the major said, rolling the nubby ore around in his hands. “It’s yours to keep as a memento of the day.”
“Ephemera,” I said. “That part of the historical record that is neither documents nor maps. The truly treasured things.”
“Just remember,” Robert said. “That ephemera you put in your pocket has to be carried back up. By you.”
“A gentleman would help a lady out.”
“A gentleman wouldn’t have let a lady come down here,” Pard teased. “Unless the lady was an adventurer.”
The climb up was much more grueling than going down, and it was at that point that I wondered at Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream and words, “Lord, what fools these mortals be.” It was a prayer for certain, the answer to which could only come from the Divine. My arms were weak from pulling that one hundred forty pounds of me up out of that hole while fighting back a sense of panic. It was only later—much later—that I permitted myself to feel a certain pride in having accomplished that climb in and out. I’d let go of the terror as we made our way down the mountain. I had not allowed fear to prevent me from taking on a challenge. I remembered a verse from Philippians with the apostle Paul saying he must leave the past behind and seek the goal God gave him. I thought having a family was my métier, but I no longer knew what that call was.
From Fifteen Thousand Miles by Stage, vol. 1, by Carrie Adell Strahorn (page 167)
All kinds of encouraging words were echoing down the long dark passage, but in spite of them, the one thought of “What fools we mortals be” seemed uppermost in my mind. We were praised for our courage but felt that those who remained at the top were the only ones with a grain of sense.
14
Backtrack to Bonanza
Robert is leaving me. He says only for a few weeks, but he needs to look over a timber stand and check mining conditions in an area impassable by stage right now because of flooding streams, and the only horses available for me to ride are not trail broken. I vowed to make the best of this separation, knowing I’ll soon be moving on again. This vagabond life may have adventure written on it, but there is little room for friendship building.
June 25, 1879
I accepted that the swollen streams and lack of ferries was a good reason to remain behind, but I was as good a horse rider as Robert and they surely could have found a seasoned mount for me. They had wanted to go without me. Pard too. At least he made no complaint when Mr. Norton set down “the law.” I think he rather relished going off with a good guide and the author major, camping out as in his “days of old” when he was twenty-two instead of now at nearly twenty-seven.
There were distractions in Bonanza, I admit, and people were warm and generous. We packed picnics and climbed heights to carve our initials in trees. Where the streams had sent their swollen flows onward, we found good fishing. One gentleman sought to improve my fly-fishing and said kind things about my skills. It was something I found peace within, that flick of the wrist, watching the line drift in the stream toward a spot I thought a trout might be resting in a shady pool. Several of us planned a weeklong fishing trip, in fact, that got cut short when two horses disappeared and after two days of searching could not be found. So instead of riding all the way out, men went ahead a mile, then left a horse tied tightly (this time!) until walkers came to pick up those mounts. We women would ride until the next marked area, usually a mile or two down the trail. We’d leave the horses tied for the walkers/riders behind us. Walk two miles to the next tied mounts, get on, ride a mile or two, and so it went for twenty miles until we made it back to Bonanza.
Where I was not happy. This separation agitated me. It was a dangerous trip Robert engaged in and my imagination knew no limits. I wondered if I waited as a widow without knowing.
Pard’s traveling partner, a military man and attorney, had left his office key with me. I tried the diversion of writing at his pine table. After I wrote to my mother describing the office in detail, including mentioning the scent of old pipes and a few colorful paintings on the walls, I sketched out through words what was happening in my heart. My worry over Robert. The feeling of aloneness despite the kind people to spend time with. The uncertainty of the future. I even penciled a scene with us sharing mounts on that interrupted fishing trip. And I expressed on paper how upset I was that Mr. Norton had made the decision about my remaining and that Pard had not dissented. Writing the words made me feel better. And I vowed to write more often of what I felt and not just of everyday observations. So as not to worry my mother, I didn’t mail that one, kept it for myself.
I was in the major’s office writing when I saw riders approach through the window and recognized the officer’s mount. Without waiting to see Robert, who was surely behind him, I straightened up my papers and bundled them as I stepped outside to greet my darling Pard. I’d missed him!
He wasn’t there. Only Major Hyndman and the guide.
“He’s gone on to Boise. Everything’s fine. You’re to wait here until he returns.”
I had a range of emotions to write about that afternoon, I can tell you, though I no longer
had the use of the major’s office. Once again, I had been left behind with no say in it. I broke a pencil pressing so hard on the paper expressing my thoughts about my dear “pardner” who gave me no recourse, assumed I’d do as he said. Didn’t I always?
Writing, and the hospitality of the people, helped calm my grievances, but after two weeks more, I wanted to get back to where there was a railroad so I would more likely get into contact with Robert. I felt adrift without him, though I would never have shared my loneliness with the fine people of Bonanza. They only saw my “happy lane.”
“He won’t want you to make that trip to Salt Lake on your own,” the major insisted. He had kind eyes.
“He’ll be grateful in the end that he doesn’t have to backtrack to Bonanza to pick me up.” The words Backtrack to Bonanza sounded like the title to a novel I might write about a woman left behind and how she dealt with her wayward husband. Alright, he wasn’t wayward, but it was a novel. I could make him any way I wanted. My Pard, my liege lord, was willful, however. I could be too.
“A stage is my second home,” I told Major Hyndman, grateful he didn’t ask where my first home was because I had no answer and I realized then how very sad that made me.
I headed to Challis. At the stage stop there, I encountered a ticket agent for the UP in Omaha who had just come through and he urged me not to make the trek. “It’s alkali and lava rock, hot and miserable as any place I have ever been. I will not go back that way until I can go by train. Reconsider, Mrs. Strahorn.”
But I didn’t.
The first stop at Big Butte would have been uncomfortable with its mix of private travelers, their teams, and stage passengers all packed into a rather small stop. But Providence reigned and a US Marshal and his wife were there. I knew them slightly and they graciously looked after me. He had booked a room and he suggested his wife and I share it, as it had recently been cleared of a rattler by a snake-killing dog.