Cattle Kate (4 page)

So, after seeing the wall of unity my parents represented, it was strange to see them on opposite sides of the fence about going to America.

At night, I'd lie in the loft with my sisters under our feather tick, and I'd hear the murmurings from their bedroom downstairs—never enough to make out words, but enough to know the arguing didn't stop at the bedroom door.

I could see Ma's side, looking around the nice cabin it had taken a whole summer to build, back when I was just a girl. We'd added on since then, of course, as the children came—raising that roof for the loft had been a job for Pa and the boys and all our neighbors—and you could easily see how much love and muscle was in this home. I think my Ma had about the best kitchen you'd find in all Ontario, laid out in an “L” so she could do several things at one time. She could be canning tomatoes off the cast iron stove while someone else was shucking corn by the sinkwell and there was still room to roll out a pie crust. Of course, I knew it was one thing to have a grand kitchen and another to know what to do with it, and my Ma knew what to do. Pa joked that the bachelor boys down the road could smell my Ma's baking bread better than their own smelly selves, and that's why they always showed up just when a loaf was cooling on the sideboard.

Randall and Gregory would sit down at the big table that took up most of the room—Pa had traded Mr. Specht an old plow for that beautiful table—and act like they just happened to be in the neighborhood. I could see why Ma wouldn't want to give this house up. I loved the place too. I don't remember living anywhere else, and until now, I thought I'd be coming here with my own children someday from my own farm not far away.

Of course, I didn't know yet who I'd be settlin' down with. It wasn't like I wasn't lookin'. I looked plenty, but nobody really seemed to be the right one and when I asked Ma if I should be worried—after all, she already had two children when she was my age—she looked me in the eye and said, “There's no hurry. What's important is to find the right one.”

“I want a man like Pa,” I told her and she smiled because she already knew that. Here's what I knew: I knew that Mickey Larkin wasn't the right one. I knew Adam Jennings wasn't the right one. I knew Joey Phalin wasn't the right one. And pickings got slim after them. Maybe I'd never find the right one, I worried at night in my bed. Maybe I'd end up an Old Maid. There was a shame in that I didn't want to feel, but I didn't want the wrong man, either.

But for all my sympathizing with Ma's side of things, there was something else pulling on me.

I saw a burning in my Father that would not be squelched. He wasn't a man who made quick decisions or foolish choices that put his family in harm's way. He was a thoughtful, hard-working, determined man. In all my years, I had never once worried about going hungry or not having a roof over my head. This was a man you could be proud of. I know my brothers, John and James, shared the feeling. For the rest of the children, I don't think they ever thought about those kind of things. But we were old enough to pay attention to the decisions our parents made, and this time, all three of us were completely on Pa's side.

The barn's loft was where we nurtured our conspiracy, trying to think of things to help Pa sell the case. Poor Jimmy didn't know much about salesmanship. I started calling him “Stu-pid” whenever he came up with another idea that I knew would push Ma in the opposite direction.

It was after I discovered he got most of his information from Beadle's Dime Novels that I understood what I was up against. “You know, when the Cavalry fights the Indians, the Cavalry always wins,” Jimmy told us one day.

John and I looked at each other and laughed out loud. “For a thirteen-year-old boy, you are pretty stu-pid,” I hissed at him. “How about Custer? He sure didn't win. And, young man, you bring up fighting Indians with Ma and we will
never
get to Kansas.”

He had to allow as how that was right. I vowed to find his secret stash of those ten-cent novels and throw them away. You'd think a pamphlet with orange wrapper paper would be easy to find on a farm in Canada, but James hid his dime novels so well, I never did find them.

Then one day he came home all excited, telling almost-ten Andrew that they were going to live with cowboys. The boys at school knew all about Kansas and there was this place called Dodge and there were gunfights in the streets, but the sheriff was strong and wise and….well, you can imagine how well that went over with Mrs. Tom Watson.

“You want me to move my family to a place where they have shoot-outs in the streets?” and she stopped Pa short for a moment there. “And I bet they have a drinking establishment every ten feet and that brings those women, and no, I want none of that for my family. You boys ever drink and play cards and I'll tan your hides, I don't care how old or tall you get. I had no idea Kansas was so
uncivilized
!” Pa reminded her that the letter-writing lady said our part of Kansas—I was already thinking of it as “our part”—was Dry, but Ma said she didn't believe that a place that would allow gunfights in the streets would ban liquor.

I wanted to tan Jimmy's hide myself and got him to lie and tell her the boys were wrong and they weren't talking about Kansas, but my Ma is no dummy, and she knew he was just trying to put the horse back in the barn.

Years later, a cowboy passing through our roadhouse in Wyoming Territory entertained us over my best stew with tales about Doc Holliday. He knew the man long before the Tombstone shoot-out and all the trouble in Arizona Territory. Knew him back in the days when he dealt faro in Dodge at night and was the town dentist by day. I almost spit out my mouthful of coffee.

“Doc Holliday used to live in Kansas?” I asked him in amazement, and because of my tone, he asked if I knew the man. “No, never knew him, just heard stories about him. Had no idea he once lived in Kansas.”

The cowboy laughed and said most of the stories were dime novel inventions and Doc wasn't the killer everyone claimed. I had to laugh to myself. I sure was glad Doc Holliday wasn't yet famous when we were thinking of moving to Kansas, because if he had been, and Ma knew he lived within the boundaries, we'd never have moved there.

It took Pa a couple months to wear her down. I never knew if it was the strength of his arguments or just that she loved him so much she couldn't stand the disappointment of not letting him get all that land.

We learned on a Sunday in April in the glorious year of the Lord of 1877. Ma kept us inside for our praying circle because the Canadian spring doesn't come that early, and this day even Pa stayed to give thanks to the Lord. (He preferred the barn at moments like this.) Ma always said that it didn't take a church to make a Sunday service, but it did take clean children, so the boys came with their hair combed and the girls with fresh aprons.

While she was praying for all the good things in our lives, she simply said: “And please give us a safe journey to our new home in Kansas.”

Well, I don't care if it was Sunday service, most of us jumped up and shouted in glee. We were laughing and yelling and hugging each other and Pa was beaming and Ma still looked hesitant, but she'd said the prayer, so it was settled.

“Your Pa wants to go this fall, so we have a lot to do to get ready.” It was just like Ma to focus on the work ahead, rather than the journey.

We turned to Pa because we figured he was thinking like us at that moment. “How will we go, what can we take, when will we leave?”

Jimmy was beside himself to think he was going to live with real cowboys and breathlessly asked Pa, “Are we going in a
wagon train?'

Pa laughed and tousled Jimmy's hair: “We're not going
that
far west, son. We're going to Kansas and they don't have wagon trains to Kansas anymore—probably did at one time, but Kansas is far more
civilized
than that now,” and we knew Pa used that word for Ma's sake.

Jimmy was clearly disappointed, because he knew a lot about wagon trains from his dime novels, but when Pa said we'd build a covered wagon and go in that, it seemed a second-best that Jimmy could brag about to the boys at school.

“Can we take Bessie Number 4?” came a little voice from almost-ten Andrew, who was so fixated on his next birthday, he regularly reminded us, “I'm almost ten.”

When that magic day finally arrived we were already in Kansas and had a special birthday pie for him. I told him: “I suppose now you'll want us to call you almost-eleven Andrew,” but we never did, and that became one of our lasting family jokes.

Pa assured us that the fourth cow we named Bessie was going with us and we'd buy two ox to haul the wagon. Somewhere in the revelry he mentioned that we'd have to walk most of the way, but we were too excited to hear that just then.

“Ellen, you need to write me a letter,” Pa told me that afternoon, and I didn't hesitate to get the paper and pen and ink. I sat next to him at our dinner table with everyone else hanging around—the little ones kneeled on their chairs with their elbows on the table. “Write to Bruce…Mr. MacDonald. Tell him we're coming and to start the search for my claim. Tell him we can be there before the snow. Tell him Ma sends her best to his missus.”

We had a sale to get rid of what we couldn't take, which was almost everything. That beautiful table Mr. Specht made went to Gary Golder's family, and before they hauled it off, I saw Ma sneak a loving rub along one edge, her thumb sweeping over the top like it was memorizing every moment her family had sat there. I watched as she handed over her best linen cloth to her friend, Ann, and she whispered, “Please take good care of it and think of us when you use it.”

Pa sold off the few acres he owned and our house. The Goss family was the new owner, and they were ready to move in. Their missus—a beautiful young woman who insisted I call her Lisa, instead of Mrs. Goss—was so happy that Pa threw in the stove and the pie safe. He did so only after swearing to Ma that he'd replace them when we landed in Kansas. He sold his favorite rocker to our uncle Mel, and the bachelor boys came and bought the washing cauldron. Ma insisted on keeping the rinsing tub, but to give it a reason to go along, she filled it full of blankets that cradled the fine dishes her Ma had given her over the years.

Pa's fiddle came with us, of course, and our clothing and bedding. Ma's butter churn was fitted with a strap so it could attach to the bottom of the wagon. Each morning on the trip, I'd milk Bessie Number 4 and the cream would go in the churn and by the end of the day, after all that jostling, we'd have supper butter.

There was no question the big coffeepot was coming along, with the box mill (although it ground more barley than real coffee over the years, but you get used to weak coffee that's stretched as far as its taste will go). Ma's favorite iron skillets were coming for sure—she was forced to limit them to three—and her kettles—four of them—and, God-forbid she should leave behind her rolling pin. The candle molds didn't take up much space, and the washboard was lashed onto the side of the wagon.

Of course, the family Bible was safely tucked away for travel. When we started making the list of what we wanted to take—then pared it down to what we should take; then cut it again to what we could take—the family Bible stayed Number One on every list.

What broke our hearts were the things impossible to take, and the top of that list was the graveyard. For awhile, I was certain we wouldn't go because Ma couldn't leave her six babies out there under that tree. At times, I wondered if I could bear that myself.

The graveyard was the last stop before we left for the State of Kansas in late September of 1877. Our family held hands and circled the last resting place of those precious little babies. Ma was so choked up she could barely speak, but she led us in a prayer. Little Elizabeth cried the whole time and her wailing spoke for the entire family.

As we walked away, I put my arm around Ma's shoulder and whispered, “We'll never forget them.”

She sobbed back, “Never.”

I know for the rest of our lives, my Ma and I shared this: We never looked back at Canada and put our minds on the ten of us who set off in a covered wagon with Bessie Number 4 tied onto the back. We only remembered Canada as the place we left six behind.

Chapter Four—We Found a New Life

The second before I heard almost-ten Andrew scream, I was mixing up biscuits and thinking how well this trip was going. Sure, my feet were sore, but I didn't mind because every step was taking us closer to our new home and our new life. We were already in the western hills of Iowa.

The kids had been wonderful. I couldn't believe how well the boys had been about doing all their chores—without anyone ragging on them. We'd stop for the day and they'd instantly run out to find us firewood. Or cow pies if wood wasn't available, and it seemed less and less was available the farther west we went. Ma said they were hungry and knew without a fire there was so supper, but I know she was proud they were doing their part.

I had expected the girls to be a problem and to whine about the trip, but even Baby Elizabeth was always cheerful—she liked to sing and that two-year-old entertained us many a long day. She often had a fancy-dancer enacting her songs, as three-year-old Mary was the dancingist child I ever saw. Franny at eight and Annie at five were each given duties, and they never shirked. They set out the dinner dishes and always washed them after.

I scooped out the butter each night and helped Ma with supper. Franny decided to bring out the blankets for us to sit on for supper, and then shook them out so they'd be ready for bedtime. That was a nice thought.

It didn't take a second to know the scream wasn't a prank his brothers were playing on him or a minor injury like a scraped knee or a fright that he'd seen something fearful. Almost-ten Andrew's scream was the sound you make only when you think you're going to die. I don't remember taking a breath before I saw my Pa dash in the direction of the scream.

“Get my knife, get my knife,” Pa shouted over his shoulder, and that could mean only one thing. I prayed it was just a small snake. Pa came running into camp with almost-ten Andrew in his arms. The boy's eyes were as big as dinner plates. His face was red. His right arm was already swelling. He was still screaming.

Pa laid him down on the ground and growled, “Don't move. Don't move.” But even a command that couldn't be misunderstood didn't get through my terrified brother.

“James, Franny, hold his shoulders so he can't move.” I was barking myself. “Stay still, Andrew, you
have
to stay still or the poison will go all through you.”

John ran up with Pa's bowie knife, and Ma was already on her knees, ready to suck out the poison. “Ellen, get me the salt box,” and I ran as fast as I could to the wagon and back again.

Pa made an “x” over the fang marks, cutting so deep you couldn't even tell it was a bite anymore, and pressing his knife blade over the wound to get out as much poison as he could. Then Ma took over, spitting the poison out as she sucked. Twice. Three times. Four. Five. When all she could taste was blood, she grabbed the salt box and poured it into the wound. Andrew would later say he thought that hurt more than the bite itself, and he renewed his screams.

I sent Annie to the wagon for a towel, and Ma tore it into a strip that she wound around his arm, tucking in the end to keep the bandage in place. She wrapped her arms around the son she'd named after her favorite brother and let him cry as she assured him he was going to be alright.

“How big was it?” she whispered up to Pa, and he shook his head, like she didn't want to know.

We were all praying that almost-ten Andrew wouldn't die here, on our way to our new life.

Our neighbors in Canada had been filled with advice before this journey began, some of it useful, some of it absurd: “Never look an Indian in the eye,” someone had said, but nobody knew why not. “Keep your girls hidden at night so cowboys can't steal them,” someone else had offered, and little Annie kept bringing it up the whole trip. “Watch out for the Mormons,” another said, although we had no idea what a Mormon even looked like. But there was one piece of advice that was worth all the nonsense, and that was from the old fur trader who told us what to do with a rattlesnake bite.

A week later, almost-ten Andrew was bragging that he'd been bitten by a rattlesnake on the trail to Kansas. It became his honor badge.

I never did think the snakebite was funny. Everything about it repulsed me. The snake. The wound. The poison that could kill. Every time I replayed the scene in my mind, I felt the same fear I'd felt at the time. It made my skin cold. What was wrong with me? I'm a strong girl. I can do almost anything in the house or the barn. My Ma says I soak up doings like a kitchen rag. My Pa says I'm like a third hand. My folks rely on me to be calm in an emergency. But almost-ten Andrew's fright kept me awake at night and fear was no longer a stranger. It took a couple weeks before I could finally admit what I'd never say out loud. What if the day came when I had to suck out the poison and I just couldn't?
Please don't let me ever have to. Please.

***

The road wasn't so rough, it was just so long. We'd left home with the good wishes of neighbors in our ears and caught the Kincardine Ferry to Detroit.

All that was brand new—none of us had ever been on a ferry and us kids had never seen that much water. Then off we went, across Indiana, Illinois, Iowa. When we reached Red Cloud, Nebraska, we knew we were almost there. Our claim was near Lebanon, Kansas. That was about as far west as a decent person wanted to go. Farther west was a scary, dangerous, lawless place, filled with territories and Indians. I know more geography than most in my family, so I was real glad we turned south to an established state, rather than north into rough Dakota Territory.

It took a month and a half to cover the thousand miles, and even I had to admit it was hard to keep up the excitement of immigrating when you're walking ten hours a day. There weren't just holes in my shoes, but in my stockings. Clean clothes were a dream and the thought of a real bed almost made me dizzy. All week we looked forward to Sunday for a day of rest.

And then we were there.

I was walking with father as we came to the post Mr. MacDonald had staked into the ground to alert Pa he was finally home. He caressed that post like it was the Holy Grail. Then he stood real still, looking over the land with a face filled with joy and hope. I wanted to cry. To anyone else, it was just a hunk of flat prairie covered with chest-high grass and weeds and not a single tree, but to us, it was the Garden of Eden.

Pa reached over for my hand and gave it a squeeze. “It looks like good land,” he told me.

“Yes, Pa, it looks like good land.”

And then he did something we would never forget. “Mother,” he bellowed (scaring the beejesus out of little Elizabeth) “it looks like good land!” And he ran like a boy after a kite, jumping and skipping and hollering his head off. John ran after him—almost a man himself at sixteen and already a half head taller than Pa. Which of course meant James would follow because he always did everything his big brother did, and then like a shadow ran almost-ten Andrew.

I glanced back to see Ma hand off Elizabeth to Franny and she started to run, too, and that was everyone's cue to join the race.

“Oh, Father, it's wonderful land,” I heard Mother, puffing as she flew by me, her skirts whipping and her hair slipping out of its bun. She ran right into my father's outstretched arms. We had seen a loving pat here and a peck there, but we'd never seen our folks in a full hug until that morning when we first saw the one hundred sixty acres of land that held all our dreams. Pa lifted her up and swung her around like they were dancing to a smoking fiddle and they were both laughing and crying at the same time.

“You can thank Abe Lincoln for this,” he yelled and the boys took up the chant, “Thank you Abe Lincoln, thank you Abe Lincoln.”

I finally remembered my little sisters and looked back to see them hanging behind, kind of puzzled—startled?—at the pandemonium they were seeing. They couldn't be expected to understand. They were young and girls, and land wouldn't mean the same to them. Oh, someday they'd find a man, and his land would be important, but right now they were just relieved that they were finally someplace where they didn't have to walk beside the wagon anymore. But I didn't share those thoughts. My heart was up there, running on this precious land. My heart was with my Pa—and my brothers—with the pride of land ownership. I was jealous I'd never own my own land, but I was overjoyed that we would someday own this.

“Come on,” I shouted to my sisters. “Come see your new home.”

Franny led the way, carrying Baby Elizabeth. When Mary got to me, she threw her little arms around my legs and clung to my skirt.

“Where's our house?”

“We have to build one. We'll dig up this grass here, in big hunks, and we'll stack them up and make a house.”

Pa had tried to explain a sod house to his youngest children while we were on the trail, but he didn't get any farther than I was getting now.

“I don't want to live in the dirt,” Mary cried, and I assured her a soddie was just a temporary place to live until we could build a proper wood cabin. But when you're three, the only time that counts is right now and right now Mary was certain she didn't want to live in a soddie.

I finally shushed her and took the girls to meet up with the rest of the family. In the middle of the land, Mother quieted everyone down with a prayer. “Oh Lord, thank you for all you've given us. Thank you for our children (and here I heard the catch in Mother's voice). Thank you for saving almost-ten Andrew from the snake. Thank you for our safe travel and our ox, and that Bessie Number 4 is still milkin'. Thank you for bringing us here to this new land. Please watch over us and keep us safe.” And just when everyone thought she was done and we were raising our bowed heads, she threw in, “And please, Lord, bring Mr. Watson to Sunday services.”

Nobody dared giggle out loud, but we all smiled at the dig and Pa was so happy he just laughed, “Oh, Mother.”

Our next joy was hearing a wagon coming over the prairie, and there was Mr. and Mrs. MacDonald and their children and a basket full of goodies. Oh, what a reunion that was. Hugs and back slaps and children mingling and the first thing Ma said was, “Where is that Baby Bruce?” and Mrs. MacDonald handed him over with pride. She had brought a basket of biscuits and ham and jams and we decided this was the best lunch we'd ever had.

Everyone let lunch linger a little that day, with everyone so happy. But a celebration on the day you end a long trip can't go on forever. The little kids were playing, becoming instant friends, of course, and Ma did allow that they should be given that treat.

“They were so good on the trail,” she told Mrs. MacDonald, who completely agreed the little ones could get out of chores.

“We can unload the wagon ourselves,” Ma declared, and I agreed.

First, I helped my brothers remove the wood arches and canvas that had transformed our buckboard into a covered wagon. John suggested we use the canvas for a tent until we had a soddie done, but it took just one word from Mrs. MacDonald to convince Ma the canvas needed to go on the ground instead. That word was “snakes.”

The men started right away, cutting prairie sod into rectangles. As soon as the buckboard was unloaded, I ran to help. John was already an old-hand at cutting through the tough grass with a sharp blade. But I was better at stacking them precisely to make a wall. I saw Pa and Mr. MacDonald wink at one another as they watched John and me work, and I had to smile that we were doing our folks proud.

Mr. MacDonald put out the word and over the next week, homesteaders from all over Smith County came to help our family get settled.

“They did it for us when we got here, so now we do it for the newcomers,” I was told by two nice sisters who became dear friends.

“We like any excuse to get together,” Jessica said.

“Even building a soddie. We don't care. We just like seeing somebody besides our own. You know, it can get pretty lonely out here.” That was Nancy, who seemed to know everything about everything.

“We really like wedding dances,” Jessica said, like a woman who knew how to cut a rug.

“Or chivarees,” Nancy added, and I had to admit I didn't know what that was. “On the wedding night, we show up at their house late, with pots and pans and we serenade them until they feed us to make us go away. It's really fun.” I couldn't wait.

I was very pleased at how respectful everyone was to my Ma and Pa. What decent folks we'd have as neighbors. And I know it pleased my folks that they said such nice things about us kids.

“Your oldest boy is always the first to step up,” I heard a man tell Pa one day. “He's going to grow into a fine man.” Pa nodded and smiled at the truth of it. I wished that John had overheard that one because they weren't the kind of words Pa would ever say.

And I know Ma got an earful about me.

“That Ellen is such a hard worker.”

“She's going to be a good farm wife someday.”

“She's so pleasant looking. Those pretty blue eyes and that nice smile.

“I bet she's going to be snatched up lickety-split.”

“Maybe I should start saving sugar for a wedding cake.”

That last one came from Mrs. Kline.

“Oh, I think you're jumping the gun,” Ma piped up, but the busybody wouldn't stop.

“This is important. We want our young people settled down and you know, a woman isn't happy until she has a man to care for. Besides, there's only two ways to see Kansas grow. Either we import people or we birth them.” Nobody knew who'd named Mrs. John Kline the president of the Kansas Booster Society, but she had accepted the post.

So mine wasn't the only head that turned the day a handsome bachelor with a ready smile rode over to help with the soddie.

And that's how William Pickell came into my life.