Walker Canyon

Part 1: 1873

Chapter 1: Silver City

Wagon wheels did not yet creak along the rutted trail. Nor did goats and children bleat complaints at the hot sun. Men were yet to whip their mules and curse the day’s grievances. Women had not begun to stare into the bleak, lonely distance.

Nighttime was a reprieve. The few hours of peace for westbound settlers, when they renewed their resolve to face another day of drudgery that obscured the razor’s edge they walked between survival and death.

Birds had not yet begun to sing on the banks of the Rio Grande, but Tad Walker was awake, tending hot coals in the fire pit he had labored to dig out of hard, rocky earth. Ma slipped out from her wagon undetected, arms full of supplies she had secretly purchased in Santa Fe days earlier. She was tired, but her smile softened her sun-baked, wrinkled face. She loved a good surprise. She loved more her son showing care and attentiveness to his wife.

Tad took sugar and butter and eggs from Ma and began to mix them as she had told him. He aimed to make Zelda a 1-2-3-4 cake for her 20th birthday, limits of the dusty trail Pa called Cooke’s Wagon Road be damned. Ma managed to work a cup of milk out of the pair of malnourished goats, stubborn beasts that had persevered across the width of the continent, from the cotton farm they abandoned in Alabama when the post-war South turned into something Pa could no longer abide. She scooped out the lumps and handed the milk to Tad. He folded it with the other ingredients to form a sweet batter. Ma watched carefully, concerned.

“You don’t want me to do that? It takes a practiced hand.”

“I want to do it myself. It’ll be specialer that way.”

She hovered anyway. “Well, you’re doing just fine. I don’t know how it’s going to turn out in a dutch oven, though.”

Ma greased the cast iron pot with lard to keep the cake from sticking. This was the part she fretted, the part of the plan she came up with, that would be her fault if it didn’t turn out. “You need even heat to make a cake. If that fire is full of hot spots, we’ll have a burnt birthday cake on one end and a wet mess on the other.”

“It’ll be fine, Ma.” The woman had raised three children, serving three square meals every day and feasts on holidays. And yet, somehow, Ma believed she had never cooked a single thing right. Tad poured the cake batter into the cast iron pot, which Ma covered with a heavy lid. She set it down carefully onto the bed of embers, then Tad grabbed a shovel and began to cover it with the sand and gravel that had taken him an hour to dislodge.

The first hint of gray lit a small range of desert foothills to the east. The songbirds were ready for their cue. A symphony arose from the willows and grasses populating the river wetlands that surrounded them. As they sounded the sweet alarm, men began to stir from their wagons. Most had a long day ahead, south and west away from the river into hard desert country. They would drive west along the Gila Trail to Arizona or some even as far as California. The Walkers had learned these settlers stories over weeks and months as allies in makeshift caravans traveling down the Santa Fe Trail from St. Louis. A few were turning west straightaway with the Walkers, down the junction to Silver City — New Mexico territory’s newest boom town.

“She’ll be up soon,” Tad worried.

“That cake shouldn’t take more than 20 minutes.” Ma surveyed the busying campsite, then looked far out to the west. She pointed at the tallest peak in the large mountain range that would be their guiding star to Silver City. “When the sunlight touches that peak, dig out the pot and slide the cake onto the platter. If I know Zelda, she won’t be the first to rustle up. There’s time.”

Almost as timely as the birds, little Erasmus crawled out of the wagon where he slept with his parents, Asa and Clara, and his older brother Harry. Erasmus had never been much of a sleeper. Only seven years old and small for his age at that, he was also light on his feet with a knack for sneaking. For all those reasons, not the least of which were his peculiar facial features, the family had always taken to calling him Mouse. “Whatcha cookin?” Mouse whispered in Ma’s ear as she squatted by the fire pit.

“God almighty, Mouse!” Ma started. “You like to scare me to death.” Tad shushed them both. Uncle Demus, Pa’s brother who slept on a ratty bedroll under a rattier buffalo fur, pulled the dusty cover over his head and grumbled his displeasure at the bother.

Clara and Asa, the middle of Ma’s three boys, followed Mouse from the back of their covered wagon, inside which Tad could see nine-year-old Harry still fast asleep, sprawled out across the now open space.

“Morning, brother,” Asa said. “How goes the surprise?” He was tall and lean like Tad, though his little brother had outgrown him in the last couple years. Hair a thick auburn-brown like Ma’s, he was the only Walker boy to escape Pa’s bright red hair, dry and bristly like the desert.

“Fine, I reckon.”

Asa held his hand over the filled in fire pit, testing its heat. Clara offered everyone a morning embrace as was her custom. “Well, it smells mighty fine. I’m sure it’ll be a powerful success,” she said.

By the time the sun’s first light struck the western peak, Ma’s prediction had come true. The cake was ready and the entire family, save Zelda and Harry, partook in the morning’s activities.

Uncle Demus joined Pa and Abner readying the mules, fixing them into position to lead the three Walker wagons. “Why do I gotta fix up Tadpole’s mules?” Abner complained. Past 30 years and the oldest of Pa and Ma Walker’s boys, Abner lived with the entrenched belief that being the eldest and heir entitled him to doing the least and commanding his brothers about like a prince.

“Tad’s busy doing woman’s work, which I can’t seem to break him of.” Pa glared back at his youngest, who was worrying over the cake. Abner chuckled, thinking he was in on the joke. “You won’t be laughing after I pop you in the mouth. Yer fixing up Tad’s mules cuz I told you to fix up Tad’s mules.”

Melinda breastfed baby Lilme, whose Christian name was Wilhelmine, after Ma, from the back of her and Abner’s wagon. She and her eldest, Georgie, whom she could not believe was now three and no longer the baby at her breast, sat watching the commotion over the dutch oven. Crowding the fire pit, Ma and Clara fussed over Tad as he slid the cake onto Ma’s old silver platter, one of the heirlooms she refused to part with for the great Walker migration from the green foothills of Northern Alabama to the desiccated, dry desert of New Mexico. To hear them squawk, you’d like to believe the cake had stuck to the cast iron and turned to a ruined mess. But from Melinda’s vantage, a perfect disk, browned just right, slid onto the platter. It smelled lovely, too, as was evidenced by Nicole silently drifting from the periphery toward the treasured sweet.

“Nicole, don’t you dare think about touching that cake with those grubby fingers,” Melinda warned. “Go wash up by the river. I can’t bear to look at your dirty face.” Nicole was Abner’s daughter from his first wife, who Abner married in his rogue days hiding out with hillbillies in the Ozarks to dodge conscription in the war. The wife died in childbirth. Melinda didn’t intend to be cruel to Nicole, but the truth was she found it a challenge to love another woman’s child like a mother. That Nicole was a mute did not endear her any more to Melinda. She always intuited sass and ill-intention in the girl’s mannerisms. Those feelings steered Melinda to an alien meanness, which took on a wicked cruelty with the knowledge Nicole could never smart talk her back. It had only gotten worse since Lilme was born.

Clara gave Nicole a hug and invited her to help with the arrangements. Thank God for her sister in law, Melinda thought. Clara’s beauty was only topped by her saintliness, as far as Melinda was concerned. Nicole was 13 and should be learning all the ways of women, so Melinda was truly grateful for Clara, who had always wanted a daughter to sew with and teach to paint but instead got two roughhousing boys. Whatever Melinda’s misgivings about her stepdaughter, she could appreciate the love Clara poured into Nicole through those warm eyes, dark and sparkling as desert night.

Zelda emerged from the covered wagon she and Tad had shared with Ma and Pa for months on the long drive west. Despite the unwelcome closeness to her in-laws, she always managed a good sleep. She appeared bleary eyed, stumbling a bit as her limbs sought upright equilibrium. Yet, her golden straw hair was pulled back neatly and she wore her finest dress. It was her birthday, after all. She expected to be celebrated, and so she intended to look worth celebrating.

“What’s all the commotion?” she said. Just then, her nose turned to the direction of the still-steaming cake. “And what is that delightful scent?” Holding the platter as if it was a crown being presented to a queen, Tad revealed the cake. “Is that for me?” Zelda touched her heart, feigning surprise.

Tad began to sing “For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” and the rest of the Walkers joined along, even Abner and Pa, who took a break from the mules. Properly feted, Zelda smiled ear to ear. Tad’s grinning face hid more complex notions as he set the platter down before Zelda. Look how beautiful she is. If only she could smile and be this happy more than once in a moon. He tucked the nasty thought away as Ma presented Zelda with a knife to cut the cake.

“Happy birthday, Zelda. I’ll have you know that Tadpole made this cake all by hisself.”

“Is that so?” Zelda teased. They had been married less than a year, and they still struggled to meet on firm ground. Playfulness did not come easily to her, though Tad thrived on it, and so Zelda tried.

“I watched him make the whole thing myself,” Clara said, lying only a little. “He mixed that batter better’n an old house slave.”

“My husband, a house slave? Now that arrangement, I would enjoy.” Zelda sliced the cake and handed it out in handkerchiefs Ma had set next to the platter. Miraculously, Harry appeared just in time to nab the first slice. Clara lovingly smacked her boy’s hand as he tried to take the first bite before everyone was served. There was just enough cake for every Walker, all 13 of them save the baby, to receive a slice. It did not escape Ma’s attention that Zelda preserved for herself the largest, but she supposed that was alright, given that it was her birthday cake. No one in the family took a bite, waiting for Zelda.

“Well, you gonna dig in or let us all stand here and starve to death?” Melinda — blond, blue eyed and big boned, a giant of a woman from pure Swedish stock — wore a smile as big as her substantial milk-swollen bosom.

“Alright, alright. It’s just so pretty, I can’t believe it. I can barely bring myself to disturb it.” But that she did, as Zelda set aside her ladylike airs to inhale a substantial mouthful of cake. At first, bliss. She closed her eyes and tossed back her head in ecstasy. Tad turned to Ma with the dumb grin of a boy who just caught a frog. He had pulled it off. He had done the impossible, pleasing the unpleasable, through sweets, one of the only safe paths to navigate Zelda’s prickly demeanor. But then she stopped chewing; her face soured. The other Walkers had begun to eat, singing the cake’s praises and thanking Ma and Tad for the gift. But Tad and Ma both watched Zelda as she spat the wet ball of chewed cake to the ground.

“What is it, darling?” Tad kneeled next to her, a gentle hand on her knee.

“Did you use goat milk in this?”

Tad looked to Ma, his brothers, their wives, to anyone who could save him. The weight of another day in Zelda’s infinitely capacious doghouse fell onto his shoulders, shrinking him.

“Blast it, Tad. You did. You did use goat’s milk. You fool of a Walker, you know goat milk makes me ill.” She tossed the rest of that largest, perfectly good piece of cake into the fire pit and stomped away toward the wagon. She did her best to hide the tears streaming from her face, which were the reason she fled so quickly. She hated to be seen crying, which was a severe challenge on the open trail, sharing a covered wagon, given that she cried so often.

“Griselda, stop. It’s my fault. I gave him the milk. I ruined it.” The words tumbled from Ma’s lips as she sought some way, any way, to save her youngest from this embarrassment.

Zelda shouted back, now hidden inside the wagon. “He should know how to take care of his wife. I’ll be sick all day.”

The sound of her sobs carried over the campsite. Families from adjacent camps looked over to see what the fuss was about. A great shame fell over Tad as he felt Pa, Ma, his brothers, their wives, bursting with pity. Only the children seemed unperturbed, used to infantile outbursts among each other. Harry carefully picked Zelda’s discarded piece of cake out of the fire pit and knocked off the ash. “God made dirt and dirt don’t hurt,” he sang.

The family broke back to their usual morning tasks, leaving Tad to his disappointment. The smell of coffee and cornmeal pancakes soon wafted in the air, mixing with Zelda’s waning sobs. Gifted with a more expressive heart than any of the Walkers by blood, Melinda found a quiet moment to wander over to Tad as she burped Lilme, who had remained quite peaceful through the morning ordeal. She touched a hand to Tad’s shoulder. “She’s not worth a darn when she’s like that, Tadpole. She ought to learn to treat you right, praise you for good intent instead of punishing every mistake.”

Only a few feet away, Zelda’s sobs grew loud again. Though he was thankful for Melinda’s support, Tad raised his finger to his lips to shush her. He didn’t want Zelda’s recovery from her state of melancholy to take any longer. Melinda, however, was unconcerned with such consequences. She turned to the wagon and spoke even louder. “Well, what if she does hear? Serves her right to know where she stands. It’s the second best birthday present she’ll get today.”

Melinda smiled at Tad, touched his boyish cheek, and walked away to chase after Georgie, who as per usual was tagging along in Harry and Mouse mischief. The older boys were poking at an agitated scorpion with a stick. Tad made his way to the wagon, where he carefully opened the cover. When Zelda didn’t yell at him to go away, he knew enough time had passed. He slid into the wagon to start the painful, slow process of repair.

“You know my parents always made me eat food that made me sick,” she whimpered.

“I know, darling.” He laid down next to her and stroked her wet cheek. “I’m sorry. It’s just harder to do everything right out here like we did back east.”

***

Pa Walker had not fully appreciated how long it would take to move a family of 14, including five children, across the great expanse of the United States, in three covered wagons pulled by six mules — seven, if you counted the one Demus rode — loaded down with water barrels, goats, clothing, food, firearms, tools, cookware and all manner of sundry.

He read a book about the long journey, but books were for average people. The Walkers were exceptional. Destined. The easy steamboat floats up the Tennessee River and then the Mississippi to St. Louis stoked his hubris. He purchased wagons and mules and off they went.

Winter struck early on the plains of Kansas. At least, what the Southerners believed was winter. The Kansans just called it November. The Walkers’ progress ground to a halt. Pa spent the season — due to cold wind and hot anger — with his bald, pink head circulating through various shades of red, as if his skin was trying to recreate the ginger bristle that had once graced his bare crown.

They were saved many times over by the kindness of strangers. A warm buffalo fur here. A fill of water from a farmer’s well there. Their mules, exhausted and pushed too hard in the snow, died in the cold. Money meant for food went to new mules, so old mules became food. It took three months to pass through that hellscape, and more than one instance of Pa resisting Ma’s overtures to turn back before it was too late. It was too late to turn back the day the South lost the War Between the States, as far as Pa was concerned.

Now that it was March, the more southerly latitudes and high sun melted away those dark, cold memories of winter on the Santa Fe Trail. Hope permeated the family. Pa’s faith — in God and family — had been rewarded. The sight of Silver City on the horizon felt an answered prayer. Their destination was finally within reach. Pa’s every impulse was to run into that mining Mecca, pick up a pickaxe and never look back at what had become of their life in Alabama. It was hard enough to be the veteran of a lost cause; harder still to live under the thumb of the victors as they crushed the economics of the family cotton business.

But the climb up the southern tip of the Black Range reminded Pa just how weary they were from hard months on the trail. Earning the vantage that offered their view of Fort Bayard and Silver City beyond it to the west left the mules weak and the women and children in need of rest.

“What ya thinkin’?” Demus said from his mule, buffalo fur wrapped around his shoulders to break the cold March wind whipping over top the range.

“I’m thinkin’ these ladies ought to be a little tougher if they’re gonna be real frontier women.” Pa spat onto the rocky soil and hopped out of the driver’s seat to unhitch the mules.

Ma huffed. “Don’t blame the women when you were the one falling asleep driving the wagon. Let me take the reins. I’ll get us there tonight and we’ll sleep in a warm bed.” Pa ignored her, which generally meant she wasn’t wrong.

Asa and Abner pulled their wagons alongside Pa and the Walkers began the work of making camp for what they hoped would be the last night for a very long time.

They were nearly out of food, and dinner was a meager affair. Tad managed to shoot a pair of rabbits before sunset, which they cooked up for the children and Melinda on accounts of needing nourishment for her baby milk. The rest ate salted beans and stale bread that had been meant for the goats, who instead had to graze on desiccated desert scrub. When they arrived in Silver City, Pa knew it wouldn’t be a day too soon. They were flush out of food, money and options. The Walker men needed to swing their axes and earn their keep in the silver mines.

Night on the mountainside was cold, but they had faced colder. Spirits were high, despite their hunger and exhaustion, and Demus told tales about the war as they sat around the fire. “Why, if there was a hero of the Battle of Shiloh, it was none other than my brother, Frank Walker.” Demus shook Pa’s shoulder, laughing. Pa kept his eyes fixed on Silver City down in the valley. “They say the Union won that battle, but ask all the dead soldiers Grant left behind who won. They’ll tell you Frank won that battle.”

“Pa was that fine an officer, huh?” Tad said. “I sure woulda liked to seen it. Wish I’d been old enough for ‘em to let me fight.”

“You’dve been a wet spot at the end of Grant’s canon line,” Abner jested.

“Says the man spent the war holed up in the Ozarks drinking moonshine,” Tad mocked. Abner rose to the insult, or tried to, struggling up onto sore knees. Demus held up his hands to restore peace and order, and Tad leaned back, knowing the days of Abner pummeling him for his smart lip were left in northern Alabama, far in the past.

“The truth is,” Demus said, “neither of you greenhorns know diddly about war. Now, Asa, he got a little taste of it, right near the finish, and he’ll tell you it ain’t nothing you ever want to be a part of. Ain’t that right, Asa?” Asa nodded. He didn’t like to talk about his time as a soldier, when he was barely more than a boy. There were times when one of the Walkers would catch him staring off in the distance, and they knew where his mind was trapped. Demus took up his story again. “But your Pa, see, your Pa is built of different stuff. I never seen anything the like of it. He would stare down the barrel of a Union rifle from 10 feet, and I swear those Union boys would turn and run. Mad Frank Walker, they called him.”

Ma rolled her eyes and made an excuse to leave the warmth of the fire to clean dishes. Her upset didn’t escape Pa’s notice, and it frustrated him that it bothered her so for Demus to build a little legend around the Walker name. But nothing could keep his eyes and his mind and his heart from the twinkling lights down in Silver City. They danced in the distance. It was a place of motion, of energy, building a new direction for America, away from old farming ways into an industrial future. Pa bet everything his family owned that he was right, and tomorrow they would find out.

“I’m right,” Pa whispered to himself as Demus carried on about the war. “I’m right.”