That was a concept that I was reminded of Sunday afternoon, as Blondie and I drove away from the King William historical district – those witty and cutting remarks that you only think of later; in the staircase, or as happed with us, after we merged into traffic from the onramp from Commerce Street.

Our trouble was not that we didn’t think of appropriately witty and cutting remarks at the time and place; it’s just that what we immediately thought of to say would have been rude, even slashingly cruel, and totally ruined the popular image of Southern (and Texan) courtesy and hospitality to guest, even clueless ones. I don’t know from how far out of town this family group came, who chose to wander around King William on a Sunday mid-day; their accents were non-specific American … but from what they did say – rather loudly – upon wandering into the parking area behind the Steves mansion, I would guess that They Are Not From Around Here.
I would also judge that their knowledge of local history was conspicuously lacking, which most immediately offended me, straight off – and might have led to me saying such cutting things, or delivering a furious parking-lot lecture of at least twenty minutes in length … but even Blondie was angry, and it was more to govern her tongue that I told her to just leave it, and drive away. Even if she rolled down the passenger window on the Montero as we backed out of the parking lot; no, neither of us delivered a parting shot.
The overheard remark which so raised our ire was – as this extended family wandered within earshot and regarded the outbuildings at the back of the Steves Homestead was, “That’s the slave quarters.”

The slave quarters.

Jesus jumping everlasting Key-rist on a pogo stick; it’s as if every big mansion south of the Mason-Dixon Line built before the mid-20th century had slave quarters as a matter of course.

Perhaps we should have said something, which is what we agreed on as soon as we were on the highway. I write my books to amuse and educate – and there went a chance to educate a party in the direst need of it that I ever saw in the flesh. Except that my own first remark would have been along the lines of, “I assume you must be a graduate of our finer public schools.” No, not a good start to a lecture on the history and background of the various families who established fine houses in King William … in the decade after the Civil War and well after slavery had been abolished. Lately I have begun to doubt any graduates of our finer public schools are acquainted with the details of abolitionist sentiment in Texas; or are even acquainted with the exact dates of the Civil War, any of the other nuances involving that war, or anything much to do with the peculiar institution itself, other than the immediately obvious.

So here was the thing – which I would have liked to have been calm enough to pass on to the family of visitors: the Steves Homestead was built in 1876 in a very showy French Second Empire style for one Edward Steves, whose family had originally settled in Comfort. Mr. Steves owned an extremely profitable lumber company, and the complex or buildings behind the house included an indoor pool, since Mrs. Steves loved swimming, a wash-house, to process laundry, a carriage house, and a small building which provided housing for the gardeners and the stable hand. Mr. Steves was prominent in city government during his life, and also in the many doings of the substantial German community, and contributed to the construction of the True to the Union monument in Comfort. In fact, two of the Unionists dead in the Nueces fight included Edward Steves’ brother and brother-in-law. So, no – the Steves and their friends and family were most emphatically not slave owners – and the casual assumption that they were struck us as insulting and ignorant in the extreme.

And that’s why we didn’t even begin to calm down until we got to the highway. Sigh. I missed a clear opportunity there to shed enlightenment. But I just didn’t think I could have held on to my temper. Which is why I could never have been an academic – I just don’t have that kind of patience.

This next book is supposed to focus on the next generation of the characters from the Adelsverein Trilogy; Dolph and his English Isobel, of Sam and Lottie Becker, and Lottie’s suitor, Seb Bertrand – all of whom were babies, children or just very young adults by a point halfway through the Trilogy. Time for them to pick up the chore of carrying on the plot, in and around the Centennial year of 1876 – although some of the older characters, heroes and heroines of the earlier narrative make occasional appearances now.

1876; a little more than ten years after the end of the Civil War, which I think was a great scar across the American psyche – as 1914-18 was for Europe. Everything was different, afterwards, although many of those things that made the difference so marked had already been put in train before that marking point. Many who had been rich, or even just well-to-do before the war were impoverished afterwards. But many who had been impoverished before were well-to-do or rich after it through mining, wholesale ranching, transportation, manufacturing and developing new and useful technologies. That very technology made the post-war world a different place; the telegraph brought far places closer, the railway brought them closer still. Before the war, it was pork which had been the favorite meat on American tables; ham, salt pork, bacon. Afterwards, beef from western ranches and shipped to the stockyards and slaughterhouses in the mid-West began to predominate.

Before the war, it was a wagon-journey of six months to get to California from the mid-West, or a long, bone-cracking stagecoach ride of twenty-four days. When the transcontinental railroad was completed – a traveler could go from Council Bluffs to Sacramento in about a week and in relative comfort. Should the traveler possess a parlor car and sufficient funds and connections, the journey could even be done in considerable luxury – instead of the dangerous and difficult trek it had been a mere three decades before. I worked in this transition for the last chapter of Truckee; an elderly man who had been a small boy on the emigrant trail in 1844 traveled east over the route that his family had followed – and noted that it wasn’t have the labor and adventure it had once been. The steam engine brought Europe closer to the US; now it was possible to travel relatively easily, and comfortably. Regularly scheduled steamship packet lines transformed a miserable, cramped journey of a month or six weeks (or even more) to barely a week from New York to Hamburg, or Southampton. I pointed up this transition again, in the Trilogy, comparing the hardships suffered by Magda’s family on their journey from Germany on a on a sailing ship – and how, thirty years later, it was only a week on a steam packet from New York to Hamburg. And in the new book, there is a chapter of the Richter and Becker clans traveling across Texas in their own parlor car; think of the change this represented to those who lived long enough to see and experience it! But there was a shadow over all of this; the shadow of the war.

Another author in the IAG has reminded me of this – that someone visiting the United States ten years later would have noted effects of it, most especially in the South. There would have been the ghosts of the dead from a thousand battles haunting the living with their memories; the badly scarred and disfigured, the chronically ill – and the chronically criminal. Even more visible were those amputees with their crutches and empty sleeves, the widows wearing black, and the young women who never married at all because the boy they loved was buried in the Wilderness, at Gettysburg, or Shiloh. Progress came at a price; and although one can’t say one caused the other, it made the handy demarcation point of a life that for most Americans had been rural and agrarian.

And that’s what I am working around, in The Quivera Trail … then there is the difference between England and Texas, which one has to admit, is still pretty marked. There is a reason that I am describing it to readers as ‘Mrs. Gaskell meets Shane.’

But Phantly Roy Bean had been knocking around the far west for decades before attaining the office for which he is most famed. And yes, that was his real name; his father was also named Phantly – and why he was laden with such a moniker is unknown. In any case, our Phantly Roy ditched the unfortunate first name as soon as possible. He was a Kentuckian who gravitated down river to New Orleans in his mid-teens, got into trouble with authorities there and migrated to San Antonio to work with Sam Bean, an older brother who had worked up a nice business hauling freight after serving in the US Army during the Mexican War. Eventually, the brothers Bean – Roy and another brother, Joshua, followed the Gold Rush to California. Cannily, the brothers Bean did not waste time and energy hunting for gold. Joshua set up a saloon in San Diego, and eventually another one in San Bernardino – but Roy continued to be the scapegrace little brother. There is a pattern here – but he lived long enough to break out of it, at least in a little way.

He was handsome and a snappy dresser, fancied – and fancied enthusiastically in return – by ladies of every nation. He fought a horseback duel with another man in the streets of San Diego, likely over the affections of a local damozel. Both men wounded each other, and startled the town considerably. Bean was arrested, and confined in San Diego’s first proper stone-built jail; the first prisoner confined there, and also the first to escape from it, with the aid of a pair of knives smuggled into him, supposedly concealed in the gift of some tamales from one of his lady admirers. Prudently, Roy moved to San Bernardino to manage the saloon that his brother Joshua had left to him, but trouble followed after, resulting in a duel – again, over the favors of a lady with a rival. This time the other duelist finished up very dead, and at Roy Bean’s hand. Supposedly, several of the rival’s good friends set him on a horse with a noose around his neck and tied to a high branch; only the timely intervention of the woman saved Roy Bean from death by hanging/slow strangulation. In any case, prudence dictated a prompt remove from California. He joined his other brother Sam, in running a saloon and grocery store in a hamlet near Silver City, New Mexico. During the last years of the Civil War, he was working as a teamster again, in San Antonio, hauling cotton to Matamoros, Mexico, to evade the Union blockade.

The post-war years saw him remaining in San Antonio, varying his career by keeping a saloon, and retailing firewood, beef and milk to the good housewives of the area. Alas, the firewood was cut from a neighbors’ wood-lot, the beef also rustled from neighbors; the milk was was adulterated with creek water and when an indignant customer objected to strenuously to the presence of live minnows swimming in the Grade-A, Roy Bean is alleged to have answered that he would stop allowing the cows to drink from the creek. In the first year of peace, Roy Bean took to himself a wife of his own instead of someone else’s. She was Virginia Chavez, a woman not quite half his age, and the marriage was bitterly acrimonious, in spite of (or because of) producing four children. Roy Bean parted from her in the early 1880s and also from San Antonio. A storekeeper in the neighborhood where they had lived was so eager to see Roy Bean gone, that he purchased all of their spare possessions – just so that Bean would have the means of leaving town. Roy separated from his wife, deposited the children with various friends and went west … one more time.

His new enterprise was a saloon in a railway camp in West Texas, which proved to be equally knockabout, until he settled on a permanent location. Typically for him, it was on land that he did not own, on the railroad right of way in Langtry. The railway camps were lawless and rowdy places, with the nearest court of any kind at all being in Fort Stockton, a good two hundred miles away. As appallingly misguided as it seems at first glance (and even on a second), Roy Bean was the nearest available person resembling a solid citizen of fixed abode in the opinion of the local Texas Ranger detachment, who had become wearied with the chore of hauling apprehended miscreants all the way to Fort Stockton. This does bring one to wonder about any of the other candidates. In any case, Roy Bean was appointed as a Justice of the Peace for the district. He held court in his saloon for the larger part of the next two decades, famously advertising himself as the only law west of the Pecos.

For someone who had notoriously trodden well over the side of the law in his day, he didn’t seem to have done too bad a job, given the age and the circumstance. Certainly it satisfied his neighbors, who routinely returned him to office by election until 1896, in spite of his administrative eccentricities. He routinely recessed the court to sell liquor to all present, drafted the barflies present to serve on the jury, and used the butt of his revolver as a gavel. In his rulings from the bench, he was guided only by rough pragmatism and those statutes in the 1879 edition of The Revised Statutes of Texas of which he personally approved. Since he did not have a jail at his disposal, he was at a disadvantage in administering punishments – but never mind. Fines would do; and by interesting coincidence, those fines were always the exact sum of money which the convicted had on him. If the convicted was dead broke, JP Bean’s sentence usually included performing any casual labor needing doing in the district. Only two death sentences were ever handed down in Bean’s court – and one of the condemned promptly escaped. Judge Bean proved adamant concerning turning over the income from fines to the State of Texas, claiming that his court was self-sustaining.

By the end of his life, a large proportion of the fines and the profits from his saloon went to assist the poor and – touchingly – to keep the local public school supplied with firewood. Even without reelection, he continued to administer his eccentric brand of justice until his death in 1903. (From natural causes, I will add.) By then he was a celebrity, and for all of that rather an endearing and relatively harmless one. Certainly, his neighbors thought the world of him. But that is Texas for you.

Think of looking down from the air, at that great metal armada, spilling out from every harbor, every estuary along England’s coast. Think of the sound of marching footsteps in a thousand encampments, and the silence left as the men marched away, counted out by squad, company and  battalion, think of those great parks of tanks and vehicles, slowly emptying out, loaded into the holds of ships and onto the open decks of LSTs. Think of the roar of a thousand airplane engines, the sound of it rattling the china on the shelf, of white contrails scratching straight furrows across the moonless sky.

Think of the planners and architects of this enormous undertaking, the briefers and the specialists in all sorts of arcane specialties, most of whom would never set foot on Gold, Juno, Sword, Omaha or Utah Beach. Many of those in the know would spend the last few days or hours before D-day in guarded lock-down, to preserve security. Think of them pacing up and down, looking out of windows or at blank walls, wondering if there might be one more thing they might have done, or considered, knowing that lives depended upon every tiny minutiae, hoping that they had accounted for everything possible.

Think of the people in country villages, and port towns, seeing the marching soldiers, the grey ships sliding away from quays and wharves, hearing the airplanes, with their wings boldly striped with black and white paint – and knowing that something was up – But only knowing for a certainty that those men, those ships and those planes were heading towards France, and also knowing just as surely that many of them would not return.

Think of the commanders, of Eisenhower and his subordinates, as the minutes ticked slowly down to H-Hour, considering all that was at stake, all the lives that they were putting into this grand effort, this gamble that Europe could be liberated through a force landing from the West. Think of all the diversions and practices, the secrecy and the responsibility, the burden of lives which they carried along with the rank on their shoulders. Eisenhower had in his pocket the draft of an announcement, just in case the invasion failed and he had to break off the grand enterprise; a soldier and commander hoping for the best, but already prepared for the worst.

Think on this day, and how the might of the Nazi Reich was cast down. June 6th was for Hitler the crack of doom, although he would not know for sure for many more months. After this day, his armies only advanced once – everywhere else and at every other time, they fell back upon a Reich in ruins. Think on this while there are still those alive who remember it at first hand.

He made an impression on his very first day on the job, by making a demand of his deputy marshal, one Bill Johnson, a notorious sot who had possession of the keys to the city jail. Marshal Stoudenmire asked Johnson for the keys; Johnson mumbled that he didn’t know which were his and which belong to the city. Not a good answer; in the middle of the street, Stoudenmire picked up Johnson, turned him upside down and shook him until the keys fell out of his pockets. Then the new marshal dropped Johnson in the dirt and collected up the keys. This established his authority in no uncertain terms, amused all who witnessed or heard about it later, and made a dangerous enemy of the humiliated Johnson, who had many friends in town. Still – the city fathers were content they had made an excellent choice. Before the week was out, the good bourgeois of El Paso had additional confirmation of their good sense … or perhaps a harbinger, when a ruckus of international dimensions landed in their lap.

A large party of armed Mexican vaqueros came across the Rio Grande that week, searching for a herd of stolen cattle – and for two of their fellows who had been trailing them. The rancher was a wealthy man; he wanted his cows and employees returned pronto. Following a brief search on the American side, the two missing vaqueros were found dead … near property owned by one Johnny Hale, who had a reputation locally for cattle thievery. Two other men who also had reputations for not being punctilious regarding ownership of wandering livestock were overheard boasting of having committed the murders. The two vaqueros had seen where the herd was going – and were murdered before they could talk.

The inquest was held in the morning of April 14th, 1881. The atmosphere was tense and no wonder, considering the presence of so many angry and well-armed men. Constable Gus Krempkau, fluent in Spanish, served as interpreter during the proceedings, and presently the two men accused of murdering the vaqueros were formally charged and bound over for trial. Satisfied that justice had been, or was going to be done, the Mexican posse took the bodies of the slain vaqueros back over the border. Everyone probably breathed a sigh of relief and broke for supper. From the hearing room, Marshal Stoudenmire headed to Doc Cumming’s restaurant for a meal, and Constable Krempkau went to to the saloon next door retrieve his own pistol and rifle, left there for security during the morning hearing. As he came out of the saloon, Krempkau was confronted by Johnny Hale – extremely drunk and belligerent – and the former head marshal of El Paso, George Campbell, who had been replaced by Marshal Stoudenmire. Campbell was infuriated with Krempkau’s translations, and accused him of slanting what was said and taking the part of the Mexicans. The encounter devolved to shouts and curses; as Campbell turned away towards his horse, Johnny Hale grabbed his sidearm and shouted, “I’ll take care of this for you, George!” He fired point-blank at Krempkau, who staggered back against the saloon door, mortally wounded, but still able to draw his own pistol.

Hearing the shot, Dallas Stoudenmire barreled out of the Globe, drawing his own weapon as he ran down the street. His first bullet killed an uninvolved bystander, but he didn’t miss with the second. Johnny Hale dropped like a sack of old clothes, shot between the eyes, while George Campbell shouted, “This isn’t my fight!” Some accounts have both the dying Krempkau firing a shot at Campbell, but most say that Marshal Stoudenmire took down Campbell, too. The encounter was written in newspapers as the ‘Four Dead in Five Seconds’ gunfight, although it may have taken as long as ten seconds. The city council of El Paso was impressed with his alacrity in getting involved, and his accuracy in three out of four. They upped his salary to $100 a month, and presented him with a gold-topped walking stick, but soon they might have been forgiven for having second thoughts.

Bill Johnson, still simmering about how Stoudenmire had humiliated him over the jail keys, was the next to take on the marshal. He was a friend of the three Manning brothers, George, James and Frank, who owned several saloons and other properties in El Paso. It is thought the brothers encouraged Johnson to take revenge. One day Johnson crouched behind a pile of bricks in El Paso Street, shotgun in hand and waiting in ambush for Stoudenmire and Doc Cummings. Unfortunately for the hapless Johnson, he was extremely drunk, and when he fired both barrels – and missed – the recoil knocked him over backwards. Between Stoudenmire and his brother in law, they put nine bullets into the ex-city marshal. Legend has it that one of the shots blew off the unfortunate ex-deputy’s testicles.

For the remainder of the year and into 1882, El Paso was peaceful – or at least, the crime rate dropped dramatically. Marshal Stoudenmire did kill another six men in shoot outs and thwarting robberies, not in job-lots, for which the city fathers were appropriately grateful. In February, he felt able to take a break and return to Columbus, Texas, to get married. While he was gone, James Manning had an altercation with Doc Cummings at the Coliseum Saloon and Variety Theater – which went from harsh words to fatal bullets in a matter of seconds. When Stoudenmire returned to El Paso, his best friend was dead and the feud was on. Marshal Stoudenmire took the death of Doc Cummings and the acquittal of James Manning on charges of murdering him very, very badly. Cummings was the only person able to put a brake on Studenmire’s temper and his drinking. With that governance was gone, Stoudenmire often drank himself to insensibility in public, and he outraged the devout of El Paso by using the bell of St. Clement’s Church for target-practice when patrolling the streets nearby. He frequently confronted those who he held responsible for acquitting James Manning, to the point where men began avoiding the saloons. Some even took their families and left El Paso altogether, fearing the violence that would be unleashed when the vendetta came to a head.

Some soberer citizens negotiated a truce between the parties in April, 1882; “We the undersigned parties having this day settled all differences and unfriendly feelings existing between us, hereby agree that we will hereafter meet and pass each other on friendly terms … and that we shall never allude in the future to any past animosities that have existed between us.” The pledge was signed by the Marshal, the Manning brothers, and four witnesses and published in the El Paso Daily Herald. The pledge did little good for Stoudenmire’s relations with the city fathers, increasingly unhappy with his penchant for alcohol and violence. He may have reduced street crime and eliminated many of the worst elements by inducing them to depart on their own feet or in a pine box; but the original problem was replaced by another – himself. He had no close friends and allies in El Paso, having succeeded in alienating just about everyone who would otherwise have backed him up. In May, the city council decided to fire him – but how to dismount from the tiger? Marshal Stoudenmire strolled into the city council meeting with revolver in hand, boasting, “I can straddle every g*d-damned alderman here!” and daring them to take either his guns or his job. The city council hastily adjourned, assuring Stoudenmire that he could keep both – but he resigned two days later, anyway. That resignation did nothing solve the dilemma of his dangerous presence. He was appointed deputy U.S. Marshal for West Texas and New Mexico Territory, and made El Paso his headquarters.

The feud continued unabated all through the summer. In September, the three brothers, Marshal Stoudenmire and a friend met with the Manning brothers to sign another peace treaty, as they had in April. It seemed to have gone well, so much so that James Manning assumed that all had been resolved and left the saloon – but as he did, words were exchanged. George Manning accused Stoudenmire of not keeping his word, and Stoudenmire bellowed, “Whoever says I have not tells a damned lie!” The two of them drew their revolvers as the friend tried to push them apart. Stoudenmire was hit twice, the second bullet lodging harmlessly in a thick packet of papers in the breast of his coat, and the impact threw him backwards through the batwing doors of the saloon and onto the sidewalk. Even so, he had his own revolver in hand, and fired a single shot at George Manning … before James Manning ran back towards the saloon with his own revolver. James also fired twice, from behind the wounded Stoudenmire – one bullet struck a barber pole, but the other struck Dallas Stoudenmire just behind his left ear, instantly ending the turbulent life and violent career of the lawman that had made a start on cleaning up El Paso.

His funeral was held at a local Masonic lodge, and the Masons paid for all the expenses. His wife had the body shipped back to to Texas for burial. James and George Manning stood trial for murder – but the members of the jury were well-disposed towards them, and they were acquitted.

What restless, fit and daring male teenager could resist? Besides considerable prestige, the Pony Express job paid north of $100 a month, or more depending – a higher rate of pay than for all but those at an executive-level for the transcontinental freighting company of Russell, Majors & Waddell. The Pony Express service was initiated partly as a stunt to attract public attention and partly for a deadly serious purpose; to fill in the communications gap between the established United States (Northern Division) and the outposts in the Far West – California, Oregon, Nevada and Utah – as a transcontinental telegraph line was being surveyed and constructed. The riders carried nothing valuable in their mochilas; only the mail, and newspaper dispatches; they depended for their safety on the speed of their horses, and perhaps a pair of Navy Colt revolvers in saddle holsters. Company policy was that riders would not engage in careless gunplay. Indeed, their horses – many of them pedigreed and in superlative condition – and those revolvers were the only items tempting the larcenous to even consider attacking a Pony Express rider.

The riders eventually hired did tend to be young; one began work at the age of eleven, and they did tend to be light of build physically. There was no uniform dress provided, although the straight-arrow member of their employer triad, Alexander Majors, did insist on them swearing an oath of teetotality, and also to abjure swearing and fighting with other employees. It was a prestigious thing, to be a rider for the Pony Express; both ‘Wild Bill’ Hickok and ‘Buffalo Bill’ William Cody later claimed to have been Pony Express riders. Hickok was a stage station employee of Russell, Majors and Waddell, and William Cody was a messenger, but neither of them were on strength as transcontinental express riders during the brief glory year of the Pony Express. The riders gained fame for spectacular feats of endurance; one of them was English-born Robert “Pony Bob” Haslam. He participated in the record-breaking feat of transmitting the written copy of Lincoln’s first inaugural address from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California in seven days and seventeen hours. But that wasn’t Pony Bob’s most hazardous drive.

In 1861 Pony Bob was by the skin of his teeth, twenty-one years old, riding a hundred and seventeen mile segment between Smith Creek and Fort Churchill, Nevada. Today that is in the neighborhood of Carson City, but in that year it was a most dangerous transit. Paiute Indians were raiding express stations and attacking travelers, in revenge for a particularly egregious offense involving stage station employees. Pony Bob had very good reason for caution, coming up on those places along his route where hostiles could lie in ambush. The initial leg of his long run passed without incident, but when he came to Cold Spring Station, he personally selected his horse for the next leg. His choice fell on a wily mustang named Old Buck, who had a reputation for sensing the presence of Indians. Just short of the next station, at Middle Gate, Old Buck’s ears suddenly twitched and the horse snorted. Alerted, Pony Bob gave Old Buck his head. A quick burst of speed, just as a small band of Paiute warriors burst from cover. A scattering of arrows and bullets whistled past – but Pony Bob and Old Buck were out of range and moving fast. Unfortunately, Old Buck had already run at a good pace for miles. Ordinarily, the Paiute mustangs wouldn’t have been able to match any Pony Express horse in a race, but some of the warriors had better horses, gotten from raids on the Express relay station remudas. Pony Bob couldn’t outrun them this time.

He dropped Old Buck’s reins and drew the two revolvers from their saddle holsters. He turned with a revolver in each hand as his closest pursuers launched another volley of arrows. Pony Bob took aim as carefully as he could, considering the situation – not at the foremost Piute warrior, but the larger target of his horse. The horse staggered and fell, just as an arrow struck Pony Bob’s left arm, with just enough punch to sink into the flesh. He holstered the revolver in his right hand, and tore the arrow loose. Now the trail led through a narrow ravine, just wide enough for a single rider at a dead gallop. With the revolver in his good hand, Pony Bob fired several shots at the closest horse behind him. Success – the horse went down and the next-closest horse collided dead-on. Two horses, two deadly pursuers down, but a single Piute on a nimble horse jumped the tangle of bodies blocking the ravine. One final shot from Pony Bob and that one went down as well – but not before an arrow struck Bob Haslam in the face. It fractured his jaw and loosed several teeth – but horse and rider were nearly safe at the Middle Gate Station. As soon as his face and arm were bandaged up, Pony Bob Haslam mounted a fresh horse and carried on to Fort Churchill. Not for nothing were the express riders paid high wages for doing dangerous routes. Later that year, in May, he made the single longest round-trip run by an Express rider; 380 miles in thirty-six hours. After his brief turn with the Pony Express, he continued working for Wells, Fargo & Company, as a US Marshall in Salt Lake City and as a scout for the U.S. Army. He died of natural causes – probably much to his surprise – in 1912.

As was always expected from day one of the Pony Express service, it would soon be replaced. All the while that the young riders galloped at break-neck speed east and west, work crews were setting up poles and stringing the ‘singing wires’ for the transcontinental telegraph. Like the railway, two separate companies began at opposite ends and worked towards each other. On the 22nd of October, 1861, they connected the final wire, and the first message from San Francisco was received in New York. “The Pacific to the Atlantic sends greeting; and may both oceans be dry before a foot of all the land that lies between them shall belong to any other than one united country.” No longer would news take weeks or months to cross the continent. Newspapers in Denver, San Francisco, and Salt Lake City would have the word to their readers of the great battles and events of the Civil War as readily as those back east.

The fatal telegram arrived two days before Christmas, at Cousin Peter’s sprawling house in Austin. Isobel had begun to fret guiltily, because her husband had not yet arrived – while she and the whole Richter ménage had come safely and comfortably by train, some ten days before Christmas. They had traveled in the luxury of Uncle Richter’s parlor car; this year Aunt Richter came willingly with them.
“Her nerves,” Lottie whispered, as they entrained at the Austin Street main station. “She has been better of late – there were days, months even – when she could not be coaxed to set foot outside, or even come from her room. But she does love your daughters – I think she has consented to come with us because of the girls. She does love children…”
“Children are small, adoring and biddable,” Isobel answered. “But you are correct – she is marvelous with children; she spoils them with affection … she would never consider a harsh punishment, no matter what they did.”

It comforted Isobel, wrapping herself in Aunt Richter’s unquestioning affection, after her talk with Mrs. Becker on the morning that Dolph had taken himself off. At least there was someone in the world, not judging her harshly, or telling her of matters that she had no idea of how to reckon with. When Anna Vining tapped on the door of her room that morning, Isobel thought first that it was because there was a message from Dolph.
“You should come downstairs to the parlor,” Anna’s face was unnaturally grave. “There is a telegram come for you. From England. I think it is bad news.”
“It would be, if it’s a telegram,” Isobel gasped. She gathered her skirts in one one hand, and fairly ran down the stairs, heedless of ladylike dignity. In the Vining’s comfortable, elegant parlor, her mother-in-law waited for her, with Aunt and Uncle Richter hovering protectively.
“This was just been delivered to the house,” Uncle Richter’s voice was heavy, as if he already knew the contents of the little brown telegraph office’s envelope. Aunt Richters’ eyes were already welling up with tears. “You had best sit down.” He guided her to the divan where Aunt Richter already sat, and put the envelope into her hand; it was not sealed. She opened it with shaking fingers and read the few words printed neatly on the slip of paper within.

FA PASSED TO GLORY ETERNAL 22 INST STOP. LETTER FOLLOWS STOP. SO SORRY STOP M STOP.

Isobel had been steeling herself against such news for weeks. Having it incontrovertibly in her hand came as a hard blow. She handed the paper silently to her mother-in-law.
“I could not have journeyed there in time,” she said; her voice sounding flat and dull in her own ears. “Even if I had gone when I wished to.”
“No,” Mrs. Becker agreed. “I am sorry, Daughter Isobel. I know your presence there would have meant much to you and a comfort to your father. But it would not have been possible.”

“No,” Isobel agreed; she was numb at the thought of Fa, no longer in this world but passed to glory eternal. It didn’t seem right, somehow. She could still hear his voice in her ears, close her eyes and see him in his scruffy, smoke-aged study, or out and about on horseback, trailed by his favorite wolfhounds. She wrung her hands together. “I wish now that my husband would be here … he said that his business would not permit us to travel to England at this time, and…” Suddenly, she was aware of Uncle Richter and Mrs. Becker exchanging a look – and that Uncle Richter looked perfectly thunderous. “What is the matter? Has something happened to him?” She demanded in sudden alarm. Uncle Richter made an effort to banish the dark expression from his countenance. “No, nothing has happened to Dolphchen … but that scamp, young Samuel, has decided that the cattle business is not good enough for him – he has written us, saying that he wishes to be an artist! Such ideas as he got for himself now, I wish that we had never consented to his studying in Paris. Now he fancies that he can make a living at it.”

“I think he can,” Isobel moved to defend Sam, in spite of Uncle Richter’s scowl – and the quick warning shake-of-the-head from Mrs. Becker. “He is a very talented painter…”
“Talent doesn’t put food on the table,” Uncle Richter rumbled, at his most magisterial. “I knew some of those artistic fellows, back before the war in Live Oak. Poor chaps – couldn’t make a living at anything. Finally had to go back to trade. I thought your son had more sense,” he added to the senior Mrs. Becker. “More fool him. But this leaves Dolphchen with much more responsibilities … he may not be able to join us here for another week or so. He writes that thinks of going to Galveston to meet Sam, and try and talk him out of this nonsense.”
Isobel opened her mouth – no, Sam likely wouldn’t be talked out of it, but it was useless to try and convince Uncle Richter of this. Instead she said, “I would that my husband were here now.”
“I am sure that he thinks of you often,” Uncle Richter answered, “And wishes to be at your side – but it cannot be helped. Cows, weather and hired men take no care for what a wife may say.”
“I thought he had married me, not the cows and hired men,” Isobel’s tears spilled over, and Aunt Richter put an arm around her and snapped something in angry German to her husband. “I said some horrible things to him,” Isobel added, between sobs. “Things that I am sorry for saying now … I don’t blame him for staying away from us!”

“Then you should write to him,” Mrs. Becker advised, and Isobel thought again with remorse of how she had spoken to Dolph and turned coldly away from. How terribly childish of her; it would serve her right, if he had decided to end any kind of intimacy and to be married to her in name only, like any number of Society couples in England that she had heard rumors about. But he loves Maggie and Caro, she thought – Surely he would not stay away for long! How long could Dolph spin out the excuse of business matters?
“I will do that,” she said at last, wishing wretchedly that it could all have been again as it was in summer at the Becker ranch. What an idyll that had been! She made her excuses to Aunt Richter and Mrs. Becker, and went upstairs to write that letter.

Austin, Texas
December 22, 1878

My dear husband … I have begun this letter several times over, so please excuse any blots or crossed out words and lines. First I must tell you that we received a telegram this morning from my brother Martyn, informing me that my most dear father has entered that eternal sleep, so there is now no need of a long journey to be at his side and receive his final blessing. My brother promised a letter to follow, containing all the particulars. I presume that according to custom, the final rites will be held at the church in Upton, which you may well remember from the celebration of our nuptials. I do not feel any particular need to travel Home, knowing that all will be done as custom dictates long before we would ever arrive. For now, I would sooner keep my memories of Acton simple and unaltered, with dearest Fa a living presence within its walls.

I must also apologize from the bottom of my heart for those thoughtless words spoken to you in hasty inconsideration. I was in such distress at the news received from my brother and Major Sutcliffe that I could give no thought to your feelings, or indeed to your fears for myself and for our children, and so spoke so rashly. I was often chided for speaking so impetuously as a child, and I fear that the years have made no improvement to my tongue. I would give nearly anything to have unsaid them, for your sake and for the sake of our children.

Caro and Maggie long for your return; they will need your presence as their father far more than I had reason to be with my dear Fa in his last hours. Please say that you forgive me,

Isobel

* * *

Isobel labored over that letter and mailed it the following day, wondering when and where it would finally reach her husband, and if it would have any effect in the least upon him. When her feelings of remorse became too heavy to bear in silence, she sought reassurance from Lottie and Mrs. Becker, some days after a rather somber Christmas celebration.
“He has not answered my letter, or came to Austin as he promised he would,” she confessed, wretchedly. “I don’t know what to think. Might he still be so angry with me that he will not consider any apology at all?”
“Dolph – oh, never!” Lottie answered in perfect confidence. “He is the kindest of brothers – he would never carry a grudge, not for hasty words, anyway.” But her mother frowned, deep in consideration.
“I do not like to think that he would,” she ventured. “He is my son, after all. But as I said before – he does not speak of those matters closest to his heart, or even set them to paper. All the time that he was with Colonel Ford, I think we had three letters. Although to be fair,” she added, “He might have written – just that everything was so unsettled by then, and letters were few for lack of paper.”
“I never had more than a brief note, several times, when we were courting,” Isobel admitted, and Lottie giggled.
“That would be my brother! Now Seb wrote to me once a week, sometimes more – although there isn’t anything new in most of his letters. ‘Three strayed cows found today,’ ‘weather most threatening,’ and ‘burgoo again for supper, not quite as vile as usual.’”
“Dolphchen does not waste paper with trivialities,” Mrs. Becker said, as if in austere disapproval. “No, Daughter Isobel – I think there may be more to bother my son than a grudge held over hasty words. It was in the paper some days ago. Lottie, this may be of concern to Sebastian, so I share this news with you … there was an escape from the prison in Fort Smith some weeks ago. They were all convicted of crimes – and one man eluded capture for a long time. There was a body found later, much decayed in the river which they thought might be his … Randall Whitmire. But they could not be certain.”
“The old man?” Isobel gasped; she still shivered to recall the grey-haired man she and Seb had met by chance, riding along the road to the Palo Duro ranch. She had been right to sense menace in him. Mrs. Becker nodded, while Lottie looked grave.
“Seb mentioned a rustler gang in one of his letters, and that there might be a danger from them to Dolph and Cuz, while they were still at large.”
“Yes, that was the Whitmire gang,” Isobel answered, with another shiver, remembering the warning brought to them by the mysterious Mr. Swain. “The old man was a criminal with a reputation of darkest hue. I don’t think there was a law of Gods’ or mans’ which he had not broken. Is there a chance he might be alive?”
“He is only one man, and old,” Lottie said, much relieved. “How much can one man do, alone?”
“You would not want to know what a single man full of malice is capable of doing.” Mrs. Becker looked as bleak as she had on the day when she told Isobel what had really happened to Dolph’s father. “Dolphchen, Cousin Peter, even your Seb … they may need to guard themselves and walk warily … If Randall Whitmire is still alive – he will need to walk warily also. Hansi has sent out inquiries to Fort Smith, in an effort to find an answer. If you have no letter from your husband, or from Seb,” she nodded at each of them, “It may be they have matters of more immediate concern to deal with.”
“I hope so,” Isobel answered. She still felt wretchedly ashamed of her coldness towards her husband, and hoped for any sign, or word of forgiveness from him. “I suppose then that I shall return to San Antonio with you and Aunt Richter. This is such a wretched tangle, I hardly know what to think.”
“Then that is your proper welcome to Texas,” Mrs. Becker replied dryly, and Lottie exclaimed, “Oh, Mama – you should not say such things!”
“Why not – since they are the truth?” Mrs. Becker reposted. Isobel wondered if she were correct. What would Fa have thought of all this?

Not having received any word from Dolph, she returned with the Richters to San Antonio after Christmas. She hoped that he might be waiting for here there – but instead there was a thick letter with English stamps and postmarks, addressed to her in handwriting that was familiar to her, but not Fa’s or Martyn’s. After a moment, she decided that it must be Mr. Aubrey’s hand – Fa’s estate agent and man of business. She opened it carefully, wishing that it had been from Fa – which it was, in a way.

December 19th, 1877
Acton Hall, Oxfordshire

Dear madam; I have taken down this communication from Lord Robert, as he was too enfeebled by illness to write to you himself. His final decline came with little warning, and he knew before any of us attending on him that his mortal end was near. He regretted very much that he could not take pen in hand himself, or live to witness your eventual happy return to Acton with your children, as he had hoped upon your marriage. Receipt of your letters and daguerreotypes of your infant daughters provided him with much pleasure during his final months, a circumstance which he remarked upon frequently. Let me take this opportunity to convey to you my own deepest condolences. Sir Robert was not only a generous patron and employer; I flatter myself that he was a friend as well. The following was dictated to me on the afternoon of the 19th instant, while I visited at his request.

Darling Pet; Martyn and Jack arrived this morning, bearing news of their call on you at Richter’s abode in San Antonio, whilst on their way home to England to attend on this old and decrepit builder of bridges and roads. Do not regret for a moment that you were unable to accompany them; your duty is to your children, to all of them – little Caro and Margaret, and the one whose name is yet unknown to me. My prayer is that you have the pleasure of seeing them grow to a womanly estate; women of spirit, accomplished and beloved by all – the very same pleasure which I have derived as your father from watching you. It cannot be denied, though – that your mother took very little of that pleasure, for which I feel more regret than I can ever express. Your mother possesses many fine qualities, and never failed to bring honor to my name and title, in every sphere save one in particular. She took less and less joy in children, suffering increasingly during every confinement. She was most particularly afflicted following your birth, and so wretched was her condition that doctors advised that you be given over entirely to the care of wet-nurses, while your mother recovered her health. To this day I believe was the reason for her oft-demonstrated coldness towards you, which I did my best to alleviate. Pet, my sole regret is that I did not do more to repair the misery which I know this lack of proper motherly affection caused for you. I am content to know that at least I managed to secure you some portion of happiness in permitting you to marry, when all others expressed doubts of Mr. Becker’s fitness and sincerity. Indeed, I thought it fortunate that this marriage would remove you from England, and afford a means of escaping the cruel demands which our family’s station pressed upon you. Each of your many letters confirmed to me that you had attained such happiness and content as I had hoped that you would on your wedding day.
Darling Pet, farewell for now. Do not torment yourself with regrets.
Your loving
Fa

Through her tears, Isobel could barely make out Sir Robert’s barely legible scrawl of a signature. Mr. Aubrey had appended a brief note.

Sir Robert also directed me to witness his final will and testament, which included a behest to you in the form of the freehold of a small residence near Upton, with grounds and outbuildings, etc., so that in the event that you wish a return to England, you will have the means of maintaining an independent establishment for yourself, your husband and the children. There are tenants in it at present, so under the terms of his will, the rents for that property will accrue to you. Until you desire to take up residence yourself, or I am in receipt of other instructions I am most happy to continuing as your agent with regard to this property. Again, my own deepest condolences, etc, etc,
Thomas Aubrey, Esq.

Isobel wiped her streaming eyes and read it over several times more, with a taste like ashes in her mouth. A little residence of her own, near Upton … well, she had it, but she couldn’t really say that she wanted it. This would give her a place to go with the children, if she chose to leave Texas entirely – but doing so would feel like defeat.

The wagon dray dispatched from Comfort by Mrs. Becker arrived in Houston Street on a mid-week in January; Jane hurried from the Lockhart’s little house on Pecan Street, where she had been staying with Bill and Ellen, on receipt of a message from the driver. The upstairs rooms over the furniture shop had been scoured and swept clean, made ready for those small items of furniture and Sam’s own possessions. Jane could not yet move into those rooms – it was a busy and commercial part of town, and she had already been warned that respectable woman could not live there alone without harm to reputation. Jane was sensitive to those opinions, having skated so close to danger, posing for Sam to paint and earning Mrs. Amelia’s spiteful gossip thereby. She waited on Sam’s return, and in lieu of rent had accepted some tables and chairs, a dresser and a bedstead from the tenant; items which he had readily admitted had been either slow to sell, or bespoke and subsequently refused or refused payment for. The upstairs rooms so sparsely furnished, still appeared airy and open to Jane, long accustomed to servant’s quarters and the tiny rooms over the shop in Didcot. I must not have been so long in America, that this place would seem grand to me, she thought to herself.
The drayman grumbled when she told him that all the contents of the wagon must be carried upstairs to count as truly delivered. There was space in the back to unload the crates, to open them, and to take out the smaller things. The downstairs tenant detailed several of his men to assist in this; Jane decided that it must have been from courtesy, and not that he was expecting another deduction from the rent.
The drayman brought several boxes of books, and a trunk of clothes. Jane took particular pleasure in sorting them out and putting them away in the dresser, for they smelled faintly of verbena, camphor and lavender, and now and gain of the bay balm that she particularly associated with Sam. By the time she finished, afternoon sunlight sent long golden fingers across the city. In the room that would be Sam’s studio, Jane sat before the wide un-curtained windows that looked to the back of the city lot; and the stand of rushes and cottonwood saplings which marked the river-edge. There would be plenty of light in this room, all the day long, for Sam to paint. She hoped he would like the building, and the situation. His latest letter crackled in the pocket of her apron. He had written it from Cherbourg, waiting for the weekly steam packet; by now he would be nearly to New York. Another week would see him in Galveston, where his Richter cousins would meet him on the dock. Jane felt quite overwhelmed; their long separation was nearly over. Sam did not plan to linger there, but come straight away on the train. Jane already planned what she would wear to meet him. The only fly in the ointment was that upon arrival, Sam must make clear his intention of independence from the family business, and Jane dreaded the fireworks which would erupt from the Baron and Sam’s brother.
At last, she took off her apron, hanging it in the kitchen with a feeling of proud possession. She took down her hat and settled it on her head for the walk back across town towards Pecan Street. She locked the outside door, and stayed for a moment, looking down at the busy, dusty street outside; wagons, men on horseback passing up and down. The bustle pleased her very much. She started down the stairway to the sidewalk, when someone called out to her from the street.
“Oi! Miss G!” Jane looked around, confused – that could be no one else’s’ voice but Alf Trotter’s, no one there on the street looked in the least like him. But one of the horsemen took off his hat, waving at her. “Over ‘ere, Miss G!”
Jane was rendered speechless with disbelief – could that wiry, sun-burnt cowhand possibly be the skinny and feral street urchin that Mr. Becker had brought from London, two years ago? He was dressed in the rough working clothes of a wrangler or a drover, with the customary open-collared shirt and bright handkerchief tied around his throat … also the customary adornment of a pair of revolvers on his belt. Now he slid down from the saddle of his horse with the grace of a water vole sliding down a creek bank, an ear-to-ear grin lighting up his face. “I thought it was you, Miss G! Put ‘er here!” He bowed over her hand, plainly happy beyond all measuring to see her. “I didn’ think to se yer in Santone – thought you was school-teachering in Austin.”
“I was,” Jane answered, “but I got married …”
“O-er!” he exclaimed. “No surprise, Miss G – oo’s the lucky chap?” Jane hesitated for a brief moment; well, may as well reveal it now. “Mr. Samuel Becker.”
Alf’s eyes rounded, for once rendered quite speechless. “Sir’s brother – oh, Miss G, that’s a turn-up an’ no mistake.”
Jane thought she might as well give away the rest of it. “He’s going to set up as an artist, as soon as he returns – this is where we’re going to live.” Now Alf whistled, in wordless astonishment. “I heard summat … Sir ain’t happy.”
“No, I don’t suppose that he is,” Jane agreed. “But this is something that my husband and I have planned and agreed upon to do together.”
Alf squinted at her; Jane realized that he had grown somewhat taller since departing from England with her on the Wieland; healthier and filled out from eating better food and hard work in the open air. But he still looked young for his age; likely he would always remain rather undersized.
“Serious, Miss G? Good fortune you came wi’ ‘er ladyship, innit?”
“Yes it was, Alf,” she answered, and Alf frowned.
“I don’t go by that now, Miss G. Them as are my friends, they call me Tom – I were baptized Thomas Alfred. A bit ago, I ast Sir would he mind if I called myself Becker, too. Everyone said I was like a shadow to Sir – all roun’ the RB, they call me Becker’s boy, ‘r that Becker kid, an’ all.”
“What did he say to that?” Jane thought it sounded dreadfully presumptuous of Alf, but apparently Americans took a more indulgent view towards those who wished to cast off the rags of their old selves. Alf – no, Tom – appeared as worshipful as he always did at the mention of the ‘Sir.’ “He smiled a bit – an’ then he said I might as well, but that name did have enemies on that account, an’ I might want to think again. But I said, any enemy of theirs’ was mine as well, an’ Trotter weren’t nuffink to be proud of, any roads. That’s why I came wi’ Sir to Santone. There’s maybe a man ‘scaped from prison in Fort Smith, with a grudge ‘gainst Sir. I been Sir’s Pinkerton all this while.”
“You certainly seem prepared for anything.” Jane remarked, and Alf – no, Tom – proudly squared his narrow shoulders. “I am, Miss G – I am. Wash Charpentier, ‘e taught me to shoot – said I had a dead-eye. They taught me some other prime tricks, too. I could be a champeen buckeroo, iff’n I wanted to practice it regular. I might at that, Miss G – Miz Becker! They were right – them as said the streets were paved w’ gold! ”
“It’s been your good fortune too,” Jane said, and the boy clapped his hat on his head again, and grinned. “Adios, Miz Becker – time t’ mosey ‘long.”
“Adios, Mr. Becker,” Jane returned with equal formality. “Tell … your ‘Sir’ that we shall be at home and receiving calls sometime early in March.” He nodded an acknowledgement, then swung up onto his horse and rode away down Houston Street towards the plaza of the old citadel with an outlandish whoop and at a fast trot. Jane looked after him until he was lost in the crowd.

Isobel put the letter from Mr. Aubrey with Fa’s dictation away in her jewel-case, along with the papers concerning the freehold which Mr. Aubrey enclosed. She was not entirely certain in her mind what she ought to do now, although Aunt Richter was blissfully incurious and un-judgmental about Isobel and her daughters remaining with them. Little Helene Elizabeth was a love of a baby; rosy, placid and plumb. Her sisters were loudly disappointed in her, as they wanted another ready playmate and missed the company of their cousin Rose, Peter and Anna’s youngest.
“She is only a baby, yet,” Isobel explained one morning, which dawned fair and pleasant, not a bit like February in England. Maggie’s expression reflected crushing disappointment. “But we want to play now!” Maggie said, and Isobel sighed.
“Darling, then I will show you how to play at hoops on the lawn.” Maggie’s expression brightened instantly, and Isobel fetched out the bent ash-wood hoops and sticks from among the tangle of children’s toys left here and there on the verandah overlooking the lawn between the mansion and the play-house wooden gingerbread of the cottage by the river-bank. She left Helene Elizabeth sleeping in her pram, in the shade of the rose arbor that was the centerpiece of Aunt Richter’s garden, and began showing the girls how to trundle the hoop, urging it along with deft use of the stick. They shrieked happily, romping up and down the lawn, trying to keep the hoops rolling. Isobel ran with them, until she was breathless, feeling unaccountably happy. She loved watching Caro and Maggie run, their neatly-shod feet in high-buttoned shoes twinkling through the grass, their sashes coming undone and trailing after them. They soon lost their hats, and Maggie’s pale straight locks and Caro’s light brown curls escaped their hair ribbons. No matter what clouded Isobel’s thoughts, none of that shadow fell on the girls. This realization gratified Isobel enormously. Children ought to be happy, kept safe from every peril, far from distressful imaginings and hurtful people … people like their grandmother, Lady Caroline. That was what Fa had tried to do, Isobel realized, but he had come about it too late. What would her life had been if Mama had been affectionate, loving – everything that Aunt Richter was – Isobel wondered. No, she concluded almost at once. It didn’t matter any more; the past was past, and she cared not a jot. It gave her an enormous sense of relief, of having set down something too heavy for her to carry.
She collected up Caro’s abandoned hat from where it lay on the grass; she and Maggie had gotten their hoops to roll straight, almost to the border of rose bushes that lined the gravel drive. She shaded her eyes against the sun – there was a man standing there watching them all, a man in a dark town suit and wide-brimmed hat, watching the girls. Caro shrieked joyously, “Papa!” and immediately abandoned her hoop. She and Maggie raced towards their father, holding up their arms to him. Maggie reached him first, and he swung her up to his shoulder, laughing, while Caro launched herself at his knees. Isobel followed more sedately, but her heart was in her throat. The girls were ecstatic; with an effort, Isobel kept her own expression serene. Over her daughter’s small fair heads, she met his level gaze. She didn’t know what to say, but he spared her the effort.
“So you stayed,” he remarked with mild surprise.
“Of course,” she answered. “Shouldn’t I have? This is our home.” She took Caro from him, and balanced the child on her hip. “Well, not here, exactly – I meant the ranch.”
“I did wonder,” he observed, and kissed her very gently on the cheek. Inside, Isobel went limp with relief.
“I sent you a letter to explain,” she said, and he looked puzzled.
“I never got it. Guess I was moving around too much.”
“I wrote that I was sorry …” Isobel began, but he smiled again, lifting Maggie to his shoulder, while she squealed with excitement at being up so high.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I spoke to hasty myself, Bell.”

From inside Hansi Richter’s office, unseen from outside, Hansi and Magda Becker silently observed the familial reunion. Magda blew out her breath, hardly aware that she had been holding it.
“That’s a relief,” she observed, and Hansi nodded agreement. “Lise was beside herself with worry. Every day she was afraid that little Isobel would pack herself and the children back to England. Dolphchen would have let them go without a murmur, too. Stubborn lad!”
“The problem is, they did it all backwards,” Magda said. Her brother-in-law looked at her with an eyebrow raised in puzzlement.
“Explain.”
“They married,” Magda answered. “The usual thing is – a young lady and young gentleman meet, and over time become interested in each other. Like your lads, like Anna and Marie – as you and Liesel did. Then they fall in love, and begin to court and think of marriage. Then, poof! They marry, and all follows after that. But my son and his wife, they married first. I think my Dolphchen felt sorry for her at first, poor girl; a sad little songbird in a jeweled cage. And she was desperate to escape. A pity that among the Firsts, marriage is the only way to do it. Then they came to know each other, and finally to fall in love, I think – I hope!”
“They’d better,” Hansi observed. “There’s the little ones to think of. But they look happy enough.

Instead, Manly and Rogers hired on as drovers or general hands to a lately-arrived party of emigrants and gold seekers who had sensibly decided to follow what was known as the Old Spanish Trail, which led south from Salt Lake City and then west to Los Angeles; the present-day IH-15 roughly follows this trail. The leaders of the so-called Bennett-Arcane party didn’t want to risk any more peril for their families than they had already. The Old Spanish Trail did cross some considerable stretches of desert, but there were regular sources of water all the way along, and it was quite well-traveled.

Unfortunately, the Bennetts and the Arcanes and their friends were tempted into taking a short-cut – the bane of early wagon train pioneers, and one which usually contributed considerable hardship, if not to their doom.  They had a map from a fellow in Salt Lake City who was represented as an expert geographer. As it turned out, he wasn’t – and the seven wagons of the Bennett-Arcane party went off the trail and into an endless and trackless stretch of desert, a valley broken here and there by ranges of steep mountains. By the end of November, 1849, they were across the valley – but nearly out of supplies and had butchered most their draft oxen as they failed, one by one. Fortunately, they had found a small freshwater spring. From there they decided to send for help – and William Manly and John Rogers volunteered … to set out on foot, with only what they could carry. Decades later, Manly set down an account of that journey. “… Mr. Arcane killed the ox which had so nearly failed, and all the men went to drying and preparing meat. Others made us some new mocassins out of rawhide, and the women made us each a knapsack. Our meat was closely packed, and one can form an idea how poor our cattle were from the fact that John and I actually packed seven-eighths of all the flesh of an ox into our knapsacks and carried it away. They put in a couple of spoonfuls of rice and about as much tea … the good women said that in case of sickness even that little bit might save our lives. I wore no coat or vest, but took half of a light blanket, while Rogers wore a thin summer coat and took no blanket. We each had a small tin cup and a small camp kettle holding a quart … They collected all the money there was in camp and gave it to us. Mr. Arcane had about $30 and others threw in small amounts from forty cents upward. We received all sorts of advice. Capt. Culverwell was an old sea faring man and was going to tell us how to find our way back …” There was no need for that; Mr. Bennett had utter faith in Manly’s ability to find his way out of the valley and back.

Rogers had a single shotgun, and Manly borrowed a repeating rifle.They set bravely out, not knowing that they would have to walk 250 miles through the desert before reaching aid. They found the occasional spring of sweet water, but others were contaminated with alkali or salt. “ … Our mouths became so dry we had to put a bullet or a small smooth stone in and chew it and turn it around with the tongue to induce a flow of saliva. If we saw a spear of green grass on the north side of a rock, it was quickly pulled and eaten to obtain the little moisture it contained …  Our thirst began to be something terrible to endure, and in the warm weather and hard walking we had secured only two drinks since leaving camp… We tried to sleep but could not, but after a little rest we noticed a bright star two hours above the horizon, and from the course of the moon we saw the star must be pretty truly west of us. … The thought of the women and children waiting for our return made us feel more desperate than if we were the only ones concerned. … I can find no words, no way to express it so others can understand. The moon gave us so much light that we decided we would start on our course, and get as far as we could before the hot sun came out, and so we went on slowly and carefully in the partial darkness, the only hope left to us being that our strength would hold out till we could get to the shining snow on the great mountain before us. We reached the foot of the range we were descending about sunrise. There was here a wide wash from the snow mountain, down which some water had sometime run after a big storm, and had divided into little rivulets only reaching out a little way before they had sunk into the sand.”

With the shotgun and repeating rifle, they were able to hunt for food along the way, but Manly suffered from an injury to one of his legs and could only limp along slowly. He urged Rogers to go ahead alone, Rogers refused, so they went on together. On the last day of December, the two young men finally arrived at Mission San Fernando. With the money they carried, they bought two horses, a mule and sufficient supplies … and returned the way they had come. They had to abandon the horses halfway back, but the mule with the precious supplies was as nimble-footed as a cat on the most treacherous part of their passage. They arrived to find their friends all alive but one; Capt. Culverwell, the seafaring man. The life-saving journey took them twenty-six days, there and back. The Bennetts and Arcanes packed up those valuables left to them on the backs of their surviving oxen and the nimble-footed mule and walked out. Years later, Manly wrote of the adventure which had tried them all to extreme: “There were peaks of various heights and colors, yellow, blue fiery red and nearly black. It looked as if it might sometime have been the center of a mammoth furnace. I believe this range is known as the Coffin’s Mountains. It would be difficult to find earth enough in the whole of it to cover a coffin. Just as we were ready to leave and return to camp we took off our hats, and then overlooking the scene of so much trial, suffering and death spoke the thought uppermost saying:—”Good bye Death Valley!”

The spring where the party had camped, waiting for the young men’s return is still called Bennett’s Well. It’s at the foot of the Panamint Mountains. Ironically, fifty years later, Death Valley itself would be the focus of the last of the great western gold and silver rushes.

(Manly’s account, Death Valley in 49 is available as a free eBook from Project Gutenberg, and it is a surprisingly lively read.)