Authors: Amelia Rose
Chapter 1
1
: Steel Heart
It was called the Narrow, Crooked & Ornery Railroad, at least once it got started. The first stake was pounded into the ground in Reno on May 28, 1881. It was the Nevada, California, & Oregon Railroad and it was going to run through the three states, from Reno into California along the Columbia River heading up to The Dalles in Oregon, serving the cattle ranches, hauling supplies and hauling herds.
The engineer who talked Matthew into it bought into the fledgling railroad when it formed in 1880, still the Nevada & Oregon. He knew full well nothing had come of it by the following spring but he led Matthew into it and Matthew went willingly.
It got us out of Gold Hill.
The house was on Lake Street. Small and neat, with a garden in the back that I found an unexpected affinity for and roses in the front that grew just because they loved the soil. On our first day there, I met Jenny Lynn Day on one side and Mavis Elliott on the other.
Their husbands both worked for the new railroad and they were fast friends, our house standing between theirs, which automatically brought me into the circle, as did their children, running between houses through my front yard. We had a tiny, whitewashed fence up around our front yard that seemed almost a challenge rather than a deterrent to the boys. If either family had a girl, I hadn't seen her but there were a herd of boys.
The first two weeks in Reno were sweet. It was early May, the desert summer heat just starting. The flower garden bloomed, the vegetable garden was planted and the apple trees were covered in pink and white blooms. I was learning the city, unpacking in the modest house, cleaning, trying, very hard, to learn to cook before I starved Matthew.
"Intent of the railroad's to serve the cattle ranches," Mavis said. We were sewing in the late afternoon as a number of the boys from both their families rampaged across the yards. Earlier, I'd watched a clutch of cowboys drive four head of cattle through the neighborhood. We were on the edges of Reno, still at the far end nearest Virginia City, unwilling to be quite as far away maybe, though Matthew hadn't said. Maybe the house was simply what we could afford, or maybe he didn't want to be farther in. Dust rose under the hooves of the horses and the dark tanned men tilted their hats as they rode past. "They're not going to make it if they can't stop arguing amongst themselves."
"Matthew says the same thing," I replied, slowly. The heat of the day made me sleepy. I longed to take off the long sleeved dress I wore and go wading in a creek somewhere nearby, the way the boys could.
Matthew actually said quite a bit about the new railroad. He'd been hired to oversee much of the building, the procurement of goods and services, the hiring of workers and the buying of locomotives and equipment. I thought what he probably really wanted to do was drive the trains, the sage-scented wind whipping through his dark curls, his blue eyes squinting as he looked down miles of track for whatever came next. But first, there needed to
be
miles of track and somewhere for the trains to go and some purpose for the trains to go there. Cattle ranching was the purpose and, once the trains were built, he promised he'd take me to Alturas, somewhere on the California length of the line, to meet the family I'd married into, his two younger brothers and his parents on their ranch.
In the meantime, there was the building—and the frustration and the tempers raised, the men gathered to make the venture go, whose patience, daily, was exhausted. Fights broke out over money, over ownership, over responsibility and the lack thereof.
The board meetings he went to when the workday ended sounded entertaining, if frightening, and when he went off to work in the mornings, I saw him off with a qualm.
"Sam says the railroad's never going to get built," Mavis said. Her needle dipped in and out of the fabric easily and neatly. My row of stitches looked like a cat had walked across it and left footprints, or maybe a quail had left those curious three-toed marks.
I let the sewing drop to my lap. I'd worked on my wedding dress with Annie and Maggie but it had been a labor of love, something I'd done because Matthew would see me in the dress, because I wanted to be beautiful for him. This was a tablecloth, something meant to cover a heavy wood table that was serviceable on its own. Maybe someday we'd have visitors over, other than Mavis and Sam and Jenny and Richard, but that was some time away and, in truth, my mother had given me damask cloths when we married and I had my grandmother's china and my own silver and I didn't think what I was doing to this piece of linen was improving it in any way that would make it an attractive, or even necessary, cover for our dining table.
Matthew was going daily to the railroad, most days he was gone, and when there were meetings in Carson City, he took another line and rode the rails, sometimes staying the night, coming home with his cheeks sunburned, his hair wild and his eyes happy.
I missed him, missed having him in our bed overnight, missed sleeping beside him, his heat sufficient that I would hardly need quilts in the winter and felt he might burn me come summer.
More than that
, I thought and found myself standing without having meant to get up.
"Is something wrong?" Mavis asked. She'd set aside her own work and taken a sip of lemonade. She looked cool, her dark hair pulled back, her dress not clinging to her as mine was to me. She managed the sewing, the cooking, the children, even the producing of children, I suspected, all of it with the aplomb of a natural wife and woman.
I was failing at every one of those things. Maggie was pregnant. Annie, letters from Maggie reported, was almost definitely in love, though Annie's letters continued to tell of the antics of Gold Hill and Virginia City residents and Hutch and Maggie and suppositions of what her other brother was getting up to, many of which were eerily correct. Annie did know Matthew and his propensity for trouble. A couple of times he had come back from railroad board meetings with a black eye or a split lip. He said he gave as good as he got. He wore denim trousers and cowboy boots, work shirts rolled to mid-biceps, and he was dustier than his accountant-type position would account for. He loved the trains, loved what he was doing, didn't even mind the administrative work.
He hadn't, so far, said a word to me about my obvious shortcomings. He didn't need to. I was daily numbering them for myself. I still couldn't cook, though my kitchen was clean and well stocked. I couldn't sew, not well, and didn't understand the point anyway. I kept house but it wasn't like there was a herd of small Longrens making that difficult. I wasn't a teacher and didn't think I wanted to be and even if nursing had attracted me, most nurses were young, unmarried women, which I wasn't, or older, widowed, which I clearly had no desire to be. Maggie hadn't taught me midwifery and I wasn't sure I was cut out for it.
If I'd told the truth, if there'd been anyone for me to tell the truth
to,
I'd have said what interested me the most were Matthew's tales—the trains, the journeying, not just to Carson City and back, not just to test an engine, but
going somewhere.
Maybe to San Francisco, maybe all the way across the country to Maggie's Boston, maybe to Alturas, maybe on a ship, to Europe…
Mavis had asked me if something was wrong. Annie, I could have told. Maggie, I would have already told. Issy would have known without my having to tell her. I liked Mavis and Jenny both, but they were new friends. We had no history. And they didn't have a list of shortcomings they were daily finding items to add to.
"Sometimes, I'm restless," I said. I was standing at the edge of the small front porch, where several geraniums gave off an overheated stink. They'd never been my favorite flower and I couldn't think what they were doing there.
Mavis gave a contented chuckle that absolutely made me disbelieve her when she said, "Sometimes we all feel that way. You'll find your place when you're expecting your first."
My fingers tightened convulsively on the porch railing. I didn't want to be expecting my first. Should I add that to my list of misgivings? Matthew had said of course he wanted to start a family. I had said of course I wanted to start a family. But I wasn't certain I did.
I wasn't certain I wanted to start a family.
"Did Jenny invite you to dinner for Saturday?" Mavis asked from behind me. Having established that the restlessness would soon pass, she had moved on to other topics.
I went back to my seat and reclaimed my sewing, stabbing uselessly and viciously at the once-snowy linen. "She did. I was going to make a cake." I was going to buy a cake and claim to have made it, if anyone asked. Making a cake to take to any kind of celebration would be cruel. "Is she celebrating something?"
And I made myself listen to the answer, reminding myself that I liked both Jenny and Mavis and that procuring a cake would mean journeying to the shops and that, at least, would be something to do.
The first spike of the Nevada & Oregon Railroad was driven into the ground in Reno on May 28, a roasting hot day. Mavis, Jenny and I went and met the men there, Sam, Richard and Matthew in their capacities as engineer, mechanic and increasingly frustrated administrative accountancy support.
A ceremony of sorts occurred, with a band playing and balloons flying, streamers tied to the trains that, as of yet, had nowhere to go that wasn't V&T line. Children drank lemonade and sarsaparilla and ate cakes and shouted and wives gossiped and the men shook hands and cut ribbons and the owners made speeches of grandeur that lacked eloquence but made huge promises of what the railroad would do for our city, the money that would be brought in, the boon to ranchers. The president of the board stood up and gave a somewhat more rational speech about the hopes and plans for the future and for Nevada and for the railroad. When he finished, it looked likely the president of the board and one of the owners of the railroad would come to blows.
Or worse. They were armed. The railroad men walked about with Colt pistols on their hips. Most of them carried a Colt Peace Maker, a name I'd come to loathe. I didn't think carrying a .45 bred any kind of peace. But Matthew had bought one after one of the board meetings, when members had come to blows and someone had drawn a gun.
On the night he'd bought it, he went off for a bath. I sat staring at the thing, the blue steel barrel and the walnut stock. It was heavy, smooth and deadly and, when Matthew came back, clean and damp and beautiful with that broad, silky chest and the work-roughened hands, I'd asked him to teach me to shoot.
"Shooting's not for girls," he said, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me close.
I pressed against him, turned my face up to his.
"I'm not like other girls," I said lightly, but I meant it. The more I was around other wives, the more I thought there might be something wrong with me, or, if Matthew continued happy, something right with me, but something different.
He pulled back to look down at me contemplatively. "You're not, are you? Alright, I'll teach you. Might not be a bad thing for you to know. As the lines get longer, I'll be away more, over nights and—"
"—Shh," I said and put my fingers on his lips, then followed my fingers with my own lips. "Let's not talk about that."
He tightened his lips together, curving them upward. His eyes narrowed as he considered. "What do you want to talk about?"
I pretended to consider. "Who says we have to talk?"
The next night, he took me out at sunset, driving well out of town where we could set up empty cans and bottles along a low rock wall, where only trees and foothills ranged beyond. He handed me the gun, unloaded, which I initially protested, saying I wasn't going to hit anything if I didn't have bullets.
He pointed out he wanted to see how I aimed before he let me hit anything with or without ammunition. But it turned out this was something I could do and, throughout the sunlit evening and the lowering of the sun, I picked off targets that ranged farther and farther away and challenged Matthew to do better—which he did, but only barely.