Chapter 5: Silas Hawthorne

The decision to leave St. Louis came quietly, almost inevitably.

After the man in the saloon told Lise that Hans was near a place called Placerville, the sisters spent several nights whispering in the storeroom, weighing fear against hope. St. Louis was no place for them ... too loud, too dangerous, too full of men who saw four unprotected immigrant girls as easy prey. The sisters had soon learned that women who worked in saloons carry an unwelcome social stigma.

And the West called to them. Not with promise, but with unfinished business.

“We can’t stay here any longer,” Greta said one night, her voice steady. “Papa went west. We must follow.”

Adelheid nodded, though her eyes were shadowed. Irmgard clutched Lise’s hand, trembling but determined. Lise looked at her sisters ... thin, tired, but unbroken ... and she knew the truth. The four of them hadn’t crossed an ocean to give up now.

In the late summer of 1852, they boarded a train belonging to the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad, one of the few railroad lines pushing westward. The train was crowded with emigrants, prospectors, and families fleeing debts or drought. The sisters squeezed onto a wooden bench, their meagre belongings at their feet. However the line went no farther than St. Joseph on the banks of the Missouri river. That’s were the westbound wagon trail began for Oregon and California.

Lise paid a wagon driver bound for Fort Laramie for four places on his wagon. He charged a daily rate that didn’t include food. Passage was going to cost more than Lise anticipated, but she wasn’t in a position to bargain. Three days later the wagon departed among a wagon train of twenty covered wagons.

At first the wagon train passed through Missouri farmland, past fields of corn and wheat, past small towns where children waved from dusty roads. But the further west they travelled, the rougher the land became ... rolling hills giving way to open prairie, the horizon stretching wider each day.

Irmgard watched from her assigned place behind the driver. “It feels like the world is getting bigger.”

Lise rested a hand on her shoulder. “It is.”

But bigger did not mean kinder. At each stop, the sisters saw more signs of hardship: wagons broken on the roadside, families begging for supplies, men with hollow eyes and empty pockets heading back east after failed attempts at finding fortune.

The West was merciless and unforgiving.

The trail became little more than a rutted track through endless grasslands. Dust coated their clothes, their hair, their throats. Nights were cold, days blistering. They slept under the open sky, listening to wolves howl in the distance.

Money drained faster than they expected. Food cost more the further west they went. Water was scarce. Diversions were frequent to avoid obstacles, or to find food and water. Every diversion cost time, and money. By the time they reached a small settlement ten miles west of Fort Kearny, their purse held only a few coins.

“We can’t afford to go any farther,” Lise said, her voice tight with worry.

“We must,” Greta replied. “Papa is still ahead of us.”

But determination could not buy passage.

The wagon driver shook his head. “You’ll need more than that if you expect me to take you any further.”

The sisters disembarked from the wagon and stood in the dusty street, the wind tugging at their shawls, the vast plains stretching endlessly behind them. They were stranded.

The settlement was little more than a cluster of buildings ... a lodging house, a general store, a blacksmith, and a saloon. The air smelled of dust and horse sweat. Men lounged outside the saloon, watching the sisters with open curiosity.

Adelheid stepped closer to Lise. “I don’t like the look of this place. We shouldn’t stay here.”

“We have no choice,” Lise murmured.

They found a corner of the saloon’s common room to sit, their trunks beside them, their future uncertain.

That was when the door opened and a man walked in. That was their first glimpse of Silas Hawthorne. He was unlike any man they had seen on the frontier. Tall, impeccably dressed in a dark coat that looked freshly pressed. His boots polished. His hair neatly combed. He carried himself with the calm assurance of someone who belonged everywhere ... and feared nothing.