Calf-high water covered the only road, giving us no choice but to slosh our way through it. Wet leather chafed my ankles. We’d sold all but one of the portrait pictures, so they needed replacing too. Our buyers had been startled ranchers out with their cattle or sheep, a few housewives who thought our adventure grand. A lot more looked at us with disgust and sent us on our way. I looked at our mud-laden skirts and snorted. “A fine picture we make.”
“Hopefully the Union article preceded us,” Mama said. “We’ll need new shoes here. I should have realized how badly the cinder packing the ties would cut the leather soles.”
“Maybe a few other things we should have thought about too,” I snarled. My ankle ached from walking awkwardly outside the tracks on the rough and uneven ground. It made walking slow and messy. “We’re far from averaging twenty-nine miles a day.”
“Clara, look on the bright side. A woman gave us dried cherries. Such a luxury. We had a day we made forty miles. Or more.”
“And I cut my foot on those empty bottles tossed out.”
“You have to pick up your feet, that’s all.”
No sympathy came from her. It was all work. Do. Persist.
Conductors on the trains emptied their wash water and human refuse right onto the tracks, and if we weren’t careful, we stepped in it, our long skirts picking up the mess as well as the stench. My mother, always so clean and tidy. Papa should see her now, I thought. Mrs. Stapleton would have fainted.
“Pretty flowers,” Mama said.
“If they weren’t so wet.”
“The Norwegian Feminist Society recently adopted the sunflower as their special flower because it follows the sun, claims light and air, and reaches for more.”
I rolled my eyes. “That can’t be so.”
“It is. I learned of it before we left. My suffragette friends certainly know that’s what a sunflower stands for.”
“So anytime we see a sunflower we can stop and perhaps be invited in by a kindred spirit to spend the night? In a bed perhaps? That would be pleasant.”
“Sarcasm does not become you,” Mama said. “I’m not saying that sunflowers are so … significant. Even though their faces are wet and gray, they turn toward the west, as though they know the sun will set there and dry them out.”
“What sun?” I said.
My mother sighed. “Let’s stop first at the statehouse. We’ll find the governor and get his signature. We’ll take that to the newspaper, and that’ll help us find work.”
“And what if he won’t sign it?” I said. “Look at us.”
“Don’t put trouble in your wheelbarrow. It’s heavy enough as it is.”
“My feet hurt. I’m cold and tired and wet. I’d like to rest tonight in a real bed.”
“You’ve been irritable all day. Are you starting your monthlies?”
“Mother. Please.”
“Nothing wrong with a woman discussing her feminine needs. I know you have rags with you because I put them in your grip, but I hope you’ll be able to work.”
“I’ll do what I must. Right, Mother?” I didn’t like myself as a grumpy woman, but I wasn’t having any luck letting go of blaming my mother for how miserable I felt.
Once in Boise City, I noticed streetcar tracks. “Can we ride to the capitol?”
“No. The streetcars are not free, so we can’t take them. We have to walk. Those are the conditions. They may have spies watching to see that we don’t cheat.”
“No one is going to come all this way to watch us. And certainly not in the middle of a flood.”
“The cars won’t run with the high water, and if a reporter saw us riding even on the back of a farmer’s wagon, the contract could be invalidated.”
“Fandem!” I said.
“Don’t bring up the devil, Clara. His ears are too good, and if you invite him, who knows what can happen?”
“I’m so … tired, Mama.” I couldn’t think of a deeper, bigger, more expansive word than tired. I was an elephant weighted with stones. My fingers ached; my hair hurt. I could barely feel my feet.
“Oh, look. There’s the capitol. We’ve walked down the right street. Isn’t that fortunate?”
I rolled my eyes at her enthusiasm.
Once inside the building, our feet clicked on the marble floors, and Mama asked directions to the ladies’ powder room. I sank onto a settee with a high wooden back and a stuffed brocade pillow seat. I ran my hands over the fine fabric. “If I weren’t so exhausted, I might find this pleasant,” I said.
“Well, that’s an improvement in your disposition.”
Mama washed her face in the fresh water pitcher and used the gold-framed mirror to set her hat straight and brush mud from her skirt and light jacket. The stains beneath her arms barely showed on the damp wool. “Come along,” she said. “I’ll brush your skirt off in back and you brush mine. Get the hem good.”
“I can’t stand up,” I said.
“Yes, you can.”
I brushed off my own skirt, and then we left the room and climbed up to the second floor. “He was a senator first,” Mama said. “I think he and the mayor are friends.”
She acted … excited. As bedraggled as we looked, her eyes sparkled as though she was about to enter as the belle of the ball. Was it rubbing shoulders with a governor that intrigued her? Was it reaching this first big goal, collecting the first signature, that gave her energy? I didn’t have a drop of her enthusiasm in my blood; was I even her daughter?
A door that reached to a fourteen-foot ceiling took up the wide hall. Gold eagles flew over the opening. The doorknob looked gold. Through the glass window that lined one side, a chandelier of great proportion glittered from the high ceiling inside. I gazed up at it.
“Is this mining country?” I said swirling around. “There’s so much gold.”
“Gold and silver. Don’t look so awed, Clara. We have every right to be here. It’s a public building. It belongs to the people.”
“The people of Idaho.”
“All of us,” she said. “This is America.”
She pulled open the heavy door, and I met the eyes of a woman older than Mama, looking out through thick glasses. “May I help you?”
Mama stepped up and handed her a portrait. “We’re the two women walking from Spokane to New York City,” she said. “You may have heard of us? We were written up in the New York World.”
“Did you say walking to New York City? There’s a train that goes there,” she said. “It would be much faster. Well, after the waters recede.”
“I know. But this walk isn’t about speed; it’s about endurance,” Mama said. “We’re walking for a contract of ten thousand dollars.”
I cringed. Every time she mentioned the money I felt like I’d stepped in dung, and it stuck on my feet.
“Goodness! That’s a tidy sum.”
“It is,” Mama agreed. “But we have to receive signatures of dignitaries, especially the governor’s, if we are in a capital city. Here’s a letter of introduction from Spokane’s Mayor Belt.”
The woman took the letter, looked back at Mama over her glasses. “I’ll ask His Honor if he’s free,” she said. She lowered her voice then and added, “He’s usually available to meet with pretty women, even if they can’t vote.”
“One day we will,” Mama said as the woman left us.
Pretty women? Does the woman have poor eyesight? We look like swimming cats.
The governor stepped out then and bowed at the waist. He handed the letter back to Mama. “Am I to understand from Miss Simmons here that you fine gentlewomen are walking to New York City? Whatever could you want there that can’t be had in Idaho?”
“The completion of a wager,” Mama said. “And I’ll be showing your signature along with those of other dignitaries when we reach our destination.” Mama took the signature book from her bag. The governor signed with a flourish. His dark beard framed a pleasant enough face, and he smiled when he said, “Is there anything else I can d
o for you?”
“Recommend a portrait studio, if you will,” Mama said. “And perhaps someone who might be in need of a washerwoman or ironer for the day, perhaps a servant for a fine event. My daughter has served in the finest homes of Spokane.”
He scratched at his chin. “I doubt there’s much partying planned with this river situation. Miss Simmons here can recommend a portrait studio.”
“And a place to sleep tonight?” I said, elbowing my mother. “Someplace warm. And dry.”
“Clara. The governor is much too busy to worry about where we globe trekkers might sleep.” My mother batted her eyelashes. Is she flirting?
“I’m afraid I can only recommend the Grove Hotel. I wish you well, dear ladies. Send me a post from New York.” He returned to his office, and Miss Simmons handed Mama a piece of paper.
“The Grove’s address,” she said. She looked more closely at our clothing caked with mud. “And a portrait studio.” She tapped her lips with her finger. “Do you sell these portraits?” She still held the one Mama had showed her.
“Yes. We need to get more made and hope to spend only a week here. We’re to make it to New York by the end of November.”
“I’ll buy one. Put it in my scrapbook. Not many women walkers come this way. And my sister might use a washerwoman this week,” she said. “The Grove could need extra serving girls with people stuck here because of the flood. Lots of miners in town too. You must be exhausted.”
“Oh no, we’re doing fine,” Mama chirped.
“We need a place to sleep,” I said. “Can anyone think of a place to sleep?”
“My daughter is tired,” Mama said, apology in her voice.
“What about the ladies’ preparation room downstairs?” I said.
“Clara,” Mama said.
“You told me this building belongs to us, the people,” I said.
Miss Simmons brightened. “Why, I can’t imagine anyone would mind if they did notice,” she said. “It’s nearly closing time. You could … wash out your things there and hang them. Lock the door. No one will bother you. Tomorrow I’ll see if my sister might have a couple beds to spare. She runs a boardinghouse.”
The mere thought of a warm, dry place to sleep on a brocade settee slipped fatigue from my shoulders. In the powder room, I collapsed onto the couch. “This belongs to us,” I said.
“We Americans are one big family,” Mama said plopping into the chair across from me. “The sunflowers brought us to good things. I’m sure grateful the governor signed that paper.”
“But you sounded so certain he would,” I said. She looked away, and I realized that some of her bravado was an act to convince not only me but herself.
She looked more tired than I felt now. “Here,” I said. “You take the settee. I’ll sleep in the chair. That way I can curl my feet up beneath me and get them warm for the first time in days.”
“Thank you, daughter.” She sank onto the settee and fell immediately to sleep.
The growling of my stomach didn’t keep me from joining my mother’s rest, and I hoped for sweet dreams and dry weather for tomorrow.
NINE
Shortcut
In the morning, we met with a reporter who did a fine story about the governor’s endorsement and referred us to jobs. With Miss Simmons’s sister’s boardinghouse, we located warm beds for five days. Refreshed and replenished at the end of the week, a warm sun greeted us as it dried the landscape and the river receded.
“Why are we going this way?” I asked. I’d thought we’d head back out the spur track to pick up the Union rail line again. Instead we followed a pack train more east than south.
“There’s an old immigrant trail this way,” Mama said. “It intersects with the railroad and will save us several days.”
“We don’t have a map for it,” I said. My stomach clenched at this risky change. “We should follow the rails.”
“We have a compass. I spoke with a miner who takes the road to his claim. He gave me landmarks to look for,” Mama said. “We can go with him to his claim and even pan for a little gold.”
“Mother.”
“Nothing wrong with trying that,” she said. “He’s safe enough and we lost time, Clara, through all the mud and having to work. This will help us.”
“He might lead us out to a forsaken place and—”
“Don’t fill that wheelbarrow,” she said. “Miss Simmons knows him. He’s a common man, a working soul. They can be trusted.”
Like the tramp you shot because you didn’t consider other possibilities.
We walked southeast, and the sun beat down hotter than anything we’d experienced in the summers in Washington State. I wanted to unbutton my jacket but couldn’t because the man and his pack mule traveled with us. The desert trail revealed pools of water surrounded by chalky dust. We made camp earlier than usual, beside a little stream, the miner sharing our fire. We couldn’t walk the streets of Spokane for fear of strangers; yet now we planned to bed down beside one. I wondered at my mother’s choices.
When she pulled out a frying pan, my jaw dropped. She scorned my curling iron for being too heavy, but she carried an iron pan? Worse, I soon learned it wasn’t for cooking.
The miner showed Mama how it was done—the swirl of stone and water around the edge, over and over, panning for gold. She was like a schoolgirl, giggling, her skirts hiked up into her belt, her shoes on the side of the stream. She looked … young to me. Happy.
“You can use any old pan,” he told her. “None with grease. Got to be clean to capture gold.”
She called out for me to join her, but I refused. Such a waste. I wrote to Forest instead, describing the beauty of the landscape and that we’d stopped to pan for gold. I made it sound like we were having fun. Maybe I was like her, pretending.
“How could you spend money on a pan?” I hissed when we bedded down.
“I got you a gift too,” she said.
“I don’t want a pan or that speck of glitter no larger than a pimple he said is gold.”
“Nothing like that,” Mama said. “I was keeping it a surprise, but you’ve been so disheartened of late.” She rose and reached into her grip. “A sketchbook and pencils. You can record those things that interest you, to keep them in your memory. Here. Take them.”
“I … We won’t have time,” I said. Her frivolity worried me even though the pad and pencils were a rare present from my mother, impractical. There had been moments when I wished I could draw, though. That sea of sunflowers dipping their heads to the west, a cattleman moving his herd through the sage. Accepting the book would make it seem like I accepted her impulsive buying and this shortcut too.
“I still don’t know why you wasted money on that pan,” I said, deciding to keep the pad.
“We can cook in it if nothing else. I’ll carry it, for heaven’s sake. In the morning, you look for sunflowers to sketch. They always seek the light instead of dwelling on the dark.”
The miner said south of Shoshone, go left, take the settlers’ trail. We did that.
“Mama, we passed by this rock outcropping before,” I said many hours later. “See, those are our tracks.”
“I’m using the compass,” Mama snapped. “We can’t go through these … monoliths. We have to go around.”
We’d entered a dark maze of lava rocks that bit into the sky yet rolled like the folds of a giant caterpillar, slick and baked in sun. We’d been wandering most of the day, our second in this desolate place. In going around the sharp lava rocks, passing by black and red formations that shot up like chimneys after a house fire, we’d gotten turned around. These chimneys were all that remained from volcanoes exploding years and years before, and now they threatened to be the grave markers for Mama and me.
Mama repeated. “The old miner said, ‘Beyond them hills there, you can see the flat plain where you’ll meet up with the railroad. Shouldn’t be no trouble at all to make up time.’ ”
Make up time.
“I told you we shouldn’t have come this way,” I croaked with a parched mouth. Both of our canteens were down by half. No shade. Nothing green to even consider eating, and no living thing roamed except snakes. The lava cut our shoes, and I’d stumbled and jammed the palms of my hands against long strips of rock that looked like turkey talons. They stretched for miles, making walking uneven and our energy spent. I’d thought we were exhausted through the rains, but this ache sucked at my bones; the heat of the day weighted our chests, stole our breaths. My face burned from the sun despite wearing a hat, and Mama … Mama’s eyes had a frantic look that unsettled me more than the snakes we watched out for.
We rested on a rock so barren it didn’t even host a lichen. “We’ll try traveling at night,” she said, wiping her brow. “It won’t be so hot, and we’ll use the lantern to watch the compass.”
“I can barely walk in the daylight without falling,” I said. But I complied. What else could I do?
Coyotes yipped in the distance. We didn’t make it far before Mama fell too in the dark, and she agreed we needed to stop and pray that the daylight would bring us new clarity about where we should go. Every sound startled my attempts to sleep. Was that a rattler? Was that a coyote closing in? Were there scorpions out here?
I did pray. Oh, how I prayed! Please, please, please. Don’t let anything happen to Mama. Please, forgive us for being foolish. I’d never take the word of a stranger, not ever again! I’d never take a wager like this. Money needed to be earned, not received for wild schemes. I prayed for my brothers and sisters, thinking, What will they do if we die here? They’d never even know. We’d be two lost clusters of bones found one day by strangers, and they’d make up a story about what happened to us. I started to laugh.
“Clara. What’s the matter with you?” Mama asked, shaking me as I leaned against a rock that looked like a statue of flowing water.