Cattle Kate (9 page)

That night I wrote in my journal: “Today I learned about boiling coffee in the West and I drank a cowboy's coffee from the saucer. Oh my, I am in a new land.”

***

Sally Wills wasn't exaggerating about Cheyenne. My eyes got their first hint the minute I climbed down from the train and looked at more of a city than I'd ever seen. Two-, three-, and four-story brick buildings lined up like soldiers ready for inspection, and already, there was a grand street stretching out from the depot. There were fancy wagons and three-wheeled bicycles everywhere, and the streets were so crowded, I wondered at first if we'd arrived on a special holiday. My first real lesson in city living was to discover this was just an ordinary day in the territorial capital of Cheyenne.

Mrs. Wills was kind enough to take me under her wing that first day, barking at Horace to help with my trunk and load it onto their carriage. She took me to a reasonable boardinghouse where she knew the proprietor and thankfully, there was a room to let. We parted with promises to stay in touch and for me to come to a temperance meeting, but none of that ever happened.

The next morning, I set out to find work in the new city that was now my home, and I saw nothing that resembled the life I'd left. I went by the Inter-Ocean Hotel, but didn't even bother going in, for this was not a place where I would ever expect employment. The Simmons Hotel was just as imposing and I ended my tour concluding I'd be far more at home at Frank A. Meanea's Saddle Shop—”If it can be made of leather, we do it”—than anyplace else in town.

But my landlady knew a landlady with a large boardinghouse who needed help, and so by my third day, I was employed as a cook and waitress in a sturdy three-story home that catered to traveling cattlemen—the kind praying for the day they'd get beyond the waiting list for the Cheyenne Club.

Being the new girl, I was up at five a.m. to get the fire started, the coffee boiling, and the biscuits ready. I had to make sure the closing girl had done her job and put fresh linens on the tables, rearranged the wooden chairs and swept the floor, and more often than not, she hadn't so I did that, too. By the time the first men came down for breakfast at six a.m., it was my job to be sure everything was ready. It was a steady stream of customers all the way to nine-thirty a.m. and then the room had to be refreshed and dinner had to already be underway. By three p.m., I was making pies for supper and when I got done with that, I was finally done for the day. It wasn't difficult work, just long hours, but I soon found there were benefits I'd hadn't considered.

I had never lived anywhere there was a daily newspaper—well, not on Mondays, but that didn't count. Cheyenne didn't just have one, it had three dailies and a handful of weeklies and all of them were chocked full of news! I could just imagine how ecstatic Annie would be at this treasure trove, and it pleased me too, because I was anxious to learn about this territory. Of course, I never would have squandered the five cents to buy a paper, but luckily, many who came to the boardinghouse did, and they'd read it over breakfast and then leave it behind. I snatched up the discarded papers and folded them into my shawl that hung in the pantry, and after work, I'd read news that was already a day or week old, but that didn't matter.

I was surprised to find the Cheyenne dailies put mostly national news on their first pages—column after column of small type that needed a good lamp to read at night. Most of that was Greek to me, because I knew neither the place nor the names, and I skipped over most of the stories about the Panama Canal and the scandals in places like New Bedford. What caught my eye were the kinds of stories I wished I'd never read, like the one in May when a woman in New York—Lucy Gilebrist was her name—chopped off her baby's head. The woman was drunk. I thought that must go on the list of reasons women should never drink.

The June 23 paper gave me a real scare when a page one headline read: “Bad Day for Indians” and told how whites had killed six Utes near Denver. “The chief of the tribe is very much enraged,” the story read, “and demands satisfaction. If the rumor proves true there will probably be trouble in southern Colorado with the Utes.” When I brought this up to my landlady, she assured me there were no Utes in Wyoming Territory.

The local news went on page 2 of the dailies and often focused on the struggles of rural areas to get going—bond issues and plans for a school and irrigation conflicts. Of course, there were constant stories exalting the cattlemen of W.T. and how much money they were bringing in and how the price of cattle fluctuated wildly. I sure didn't find the same kind of stories about homesteaders. The only stories about homesteaders were about how they were ruining the “open range” and endangering the cattlemen and were probably bad people who shouldn't be in W.T. The first time I read a story like that, I shook my head like it had to be a mistake. Kansas had been so grateful that people moved there and homesteaded. Homesteaders in Kansas were respected people. It never occurred to me that it wasn't like that everywhere, and this new attitude was an unpleasant surprise.

I didn't even look for stories about women homesteaders. I was sure there had to be some out there—the railroad brochure said there were—but they never earned a mention in the Cheyenne newspapers.

Truth be known, some days I spent more time with the advertising than with the news stories. “SPRING HAS COME!” one ad in the
Cheyenne Daily Sun
declared soon after I arrived. “The grandest display of spring and summer dry and fancy goods at Kellner Bos.” I thought I might just walk down to Kellners' one day and look over these fancy goods with prices so cheap, “they are the lowest this side of Chicago.” One of the other girls told me not to bother, because cheap in W.T. wasn't cheap enough for our wages.

I never missed the society news on page 3, as I read about the grand happenings in Cheyenne. Each new opening at the Opera House demanded a great show of wealth and fancy dresses and carriages lined up with the richest folks in town showing themselves off. The papers always made a point of describing the “feathered chapeaus” worn by the town's society women, and I figured you couldn't go to the opera in W.T. if you didn't have a feathered hat. I always watched for the comings and goings of Horace and Sally Wills, but never found any of their activities worthy of mention in a Cheyenne daily newspaper.

The chatter was another benefit. The men who ate their meals here talked freely about their businesses and the price of cattle. They gossiped what they'd heard out of the Cheyenne Club and cost of good horseflesh. They harped on what territorial governor Francis Warren was up to—some days he was a hero, others a villain. They talked about who was in the political hot seat—it alternated between the “GD Democrats” and the “GD Republicans.” I could listen all I wanted because they paid no attention to the kitchen help filling their china plates. The chatter was how I filled in the questions left from the papers I was reading. I especially listened to anything about homesteading, but these men didn't seem at all interested in homesteading. Except to swear at the “GD homesteaders” who were in the way.

The best benefit of all was my day off every week. It was really a half-day on Sunday afternoon and a half-day on Tuesday afternoon, but that was fine. I would put on my best dress and wrap myself in my shawl and walk down Seventeenth Street.

There it was, the grand Cheyenne Club that was always such a focus of the chatter. I knew the power in W.T. wasn't down the street at the territorial capital, but here at a club for members of
the
most powerful group in the territory—men so rich, they could buy anything they wanted. I wondered if they let their wives and daughters buy anything they wanted, too, or if they were misers who kept their money to themselves.

It was clear to see these were men who knew how to spend money on themselves. The club was about the grandest building I had ever seen. Three stories. A veranda wrapping around three sides. That strange roof that looked so elegant. High-backed wooden rockers lining the veranda for men to sit and look out, just as Mrs. Wills had said. I never saw anyone sitting there on my half-days off, but I could imagine.

The other girls I worked with talked about this building like they'd had a private tour, which of course, they hadn't. But they talked like they did. I stood there looking at it and remembered what they'd told me. Not one, but two grand staircases. Rooms bigger than most homes. They say there's one room just for smoking. Another just for reading. Another just for billiards. A dining table for fifty. A wine vault filled with a fortune in fermented grapes. Floor-to-ceiling red velvet drapes and brocade satin settees. Tooled leather chairs and plush carpets. Silk wallpaper, stained-glass windows and glass-etched transoms. Full length diamond-shaped mirrors to reflect walls filled with oil paintings of ranch scenes. White china edged in gold and engraved with the CC logo. Sterling silver forks and spoons. They say they have a fork just for fish. A spoon just for berries. Cut-glass crystal wineglasses and matching goblets. And that was just the first floor.

Upstairs were the private apartments, the girls had said, each with their hand-carved beds and dressers and a large fireplace with white marble mantles. Behind the building were the tennis courts. I didn't even know people played tennis.

But as grand as the Cheyenne Club was, it wasn't my favorite place. That honor was held by 300 E. Seventeenth Street. I would stand across the street from the Victorian mansion and wonder what it would be like to live in such a beautiful home. Everyone in town knew this was the Whipple House. It was only two years old, but from the chatter at the boardinghouse, people were still marveling at what Ithamar C. Whipple had spent to build the finest home in all of Cheyenne. It wasn't its three-story height that so impressed me. What got me most were the beautiful windows that graced the front. It was almost as if there weren't any walls facing the street, just grand bay windows covered with lace curtains.

I thought it was one thing for a group of millionaire cattlemen to build a great building for their club, and quite another for just one millionaire to build a great home for his family. I found out I.C. Whipple was a banker and a founder of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association and a leader of the First Baptist Church. I guess I had my answer—men like him let their wives and daughters buy anything they wanted, too.

One day when I was admiring the Whipple House, I saw a little girl I bet was his daughter climb down the front steps. She was with her nanny. She was wearing a white layered dress that gathered at the waist by a pink sash. There was lace at the collar and the cuffs, and little pink roses were tucked into the lace. The nanny scowled, but the little girl smiled at me as she skipped down the street to a house that would have been considered grand itself, if it hadn't sat next to the Whipple House. I imagined the girl was going to a party and her nanny was carrying the gift, and I wondered what was inside the box. But what I'd always remember was the sweet smile on the girl's face. It was the kind of smile Elizabeth would have had if she had lived.

Other times on my half-day off, I devoted myself to long letters home to a family I missed more than I'd ever imagined. Of course, I reassured my parents that I had found decent employment in a clean house, and that I was well and happy—I fudged on that some weeks when the loneliness got fierce, but I never told them that. I gave glowing reports on how prosperous and pretty Cheyenne was and how I was saving money. “There are fine people here in Wyoming Territory,” I wrote to them and just didn't mention those who weren't.

Like the cowboys with their fresh hands. The girls who served meals here were ignored except for one thing—a pat on the fanny or a pinch through work dresses and petticoats. The first time it happened, I was startled. Men in Kansas didn't do things like this, but here was this ranch foreman acting like he was in a saloon and had a fancy girl at his disposal. But my impression that it was just the hired help who acted like oafs was shattered a week later, when one of the big ranch owners did the same thing. I watched the other girls for clues and saw how they weaved and swayed to keep themselves away from prying hands, and I became an expert at the dodge.

But I never wrote home of such things. I just had to stay out of their way and they were harmless. That's what the other girls told me. I believed them. A few bad apples shouldn't spoil the whole barrel.

I held on to that thought for almost six months, until the day in September I learned about the Chinese massacre. I first overheard one of the regulars: “Did you hear they killed some Chinks out in Rock Springs?”

“Yeah, heard Governor Warren is waiting for a fast train comin' in from Omaha.”

“Bet those Union Pacific guys have their balls in their throats—it's their coal mines, you know.”

“Well, if the railroads hadn't brought the Chinese here in the first place, we wouldn't be having these problems. Can't expect a white man to stand by while a Chink takes his job!”

All of this was startling news. I had never seen a Chinese person. I knew nothing about them. But these men sure thought they did.

“They smoke opium.”

“They live like rats, ten or twelve to a room.”

“They eat strange food.”

“They never cut their hair. They wear it in pigtails down their backs.”

“They dress in pajamas.”

“They're ruthless. They'd cheat you in a second.”

“They aren't Christians.”

None of those things made me want to meet a Chinese person, but that didn't stop me from feeling sick over the Rock Springs Massacre.

I read all the stories, even the ones that left me with a sour stomach. And while the stories never blamed the railroads, I saw right away that this was all their fault. Those railroad men knew how to squeeze money out of a stone. They forced their workers to live in company houses and to shop at company stores and from what I heard, the prices they charged were really high. But the workers didn't have a choice. Years ago, white men fought back, striking for better wages. So the railroad brought in strikebreakers who'd work cheaper. First they got Scandinavians, who didn't demand a white man's pay. But when even their cheap wages weren't low enough, they brought in Chinese who worked for almost nothing. By now, the Scandinavians were the “white men” whose jobs were being taken by “yellow devils.”