A Bride Goes West

By E. C. Abbott and Helena Huntington Smith WE POINTED THEM NORTH; RECOLLECTIONS OF A COWPUNCHER a GOES WEST By NANNIE T. ALDERSON and HELENA HUNTINGTON SMITH Drawings by J. O'H. Cosgrave II FARRAR & RINEHART, INC. NEW YORK TORONTO COPYRIGHT, 1942, BY FARRAR k MNE^KC ARTr XJNTC, PRINTED I3ST T3E3CE XJ3STITED STATES OF AOSCEmiCA BY THE FERRIS PRINTING CO3MPA3STY, 3STEW YORK: RIGB:TS FOREWORD NANNIE TIFFANY ALDERSON is one of the last gen- eration of American women who were pioneers. When they are all gone, there will be nobody left who will remember what it felt like to set up housekeep- 3 from a store ing two days journey ^grocery ; or what were the problems of keeping a dirt floor clean. Mrs. Alderson, or "Domo" as she is universally called, is old enough to remember it all, and young enough she was eighty-one her last birthday to remember it in a very lively fashion. She acquired her nickname, or rather her title, some thirty-odd years ago, through the efforts of her first grandchild to pronounce "grandma." Because her daughter Patty is married to Bill Eaton, Domo lives today on Eaton's ranch, oldest and best known of dude ranches, outside of Sheridan, Wyoming. Still thoroughly independent, she has her own house, where she serves fruitades and "swizzles" to dudes who ride the three miles down from the ranch on a summer's morning. Tiny and frail as she is to look at, she has the energy of a woman half her age and twice her size, and will still lift mammoth kettles of boiling wild-plum jam, or will tote pails of id FgJRJgWORD \Vater around, umess someone stops her. Of- course, has never lived in a her homcl|\i|uilt of logs. She frame house "since she was married, except for the few years she spent in Miles City. And she has gotten up at five o'clock every morning of her life, until the last few years. Since she is always exceedingly dainty and smartly dressed, with nothing rugged about her to outward view, you would never guess that she was a pioneer woman except for something about her eyes. They look at you very straight, without flinch- in like that ing. Few women reared luxury have eyes ; all the surviving women I have met, who have lived against Domo's hard background, have them. Many of those who tackled the hardships of a new country in the early days were poor folk, farmers, people who had known nothing but hard living even before they went west. But others, among them Nan- nie Alderson, were bred up to silver and old mahog- any, pretty clothes, servants and leisure. How could such girls have turned their backs so gladly on all that women live for, or think they live for, to find ful- fillment between log walls, in a life barren of every- thing but living? That is the riddle of American pioneering. When you know the answer, you will know one reason why we are a great people. And Alderson's Nannie story throws a good deal of light on the question. She is a natural story-teller. For years she has been FOREWORD Vll telling her tales of the cowboys and the children., the Indians, the Eastern visitors and the animals who peopled the domestic scene on a small Montana ranch; and these tales of hers have made the wild West seem a good deal less wild and more human. I have put the stories together for her in this book, but they are still told in her own words. HELENA HUNTING-TON SMITH. A BRIDE GOES WEST Chapter I LlKE MANY OF THOSE WHO SETTLED THE FAR WEST, my husband and I were both Southerners. I was born in the village of Union, West Virginia, on Septerpbjer 14, 1860. My father, Captain Hugh Tiffany of Monroe County, West Virginia, or Vir- ginia as it was then, was killed at the beginning of the First Battle of Manassas, and was said to be the first southern officer who fell in the war. He was a young lawyer not quite twenty-seven years old when 3 4 A BRIDE GOES WEST the war came, and he at once formed a volunteer company of his old schoolmates and friends, the cream of Monroe County. The village gave a ban- a quet for them the night before they left, and small silk Confederate flag, which the ladies of the village had made, was presented to them on the occasion. My father made a speech of acceptance and a very flowery one I'm sure saying that wherever the company marched the flag would go, in honor of the fair so forth. hands that had made it, and Long after- wards it went with me to Montana, where it was one of the few things saved when my house was burned by Indians. Mother married again before I was four, and one of the first things I remember is her wedding day. I remember my colored nurse taking me down into the kitchen where old Uncle Caesar was getting the wedding breakfast ready; I have also kept an impression of being underfoot, and not wanted. Then I was taken up to a room where my mother was sitting in her riding habit, talking to a gentleman dressed in black broadcloth, who must have been the bridegroom. She was married in riding clothes, because she was to ride to her new home. It seemed to me that one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen was the black velvet turban with two pearl pins in it, which rested on her light, golden-brown hair. But it appeared that I wasn't wanted in that room A BRIDE GOES WEST 5 i either, for the next thing I remember was sitting on the stairs watching the guests arrive. It was June, 1864, and my uncle was home on furlough from the war. He picked me up and carried me into the parlor, setting me down on a side table at the back of the room, I don't remember being much impressed by the ceremony, but I do remember playing with the snuffers of a pair of silver candelabra, while all the people were quiet. Years later those snuffers and the candelabra too went with me to Montana. They had told me that mother was going tcfesend for me after her wedding trip. I waited, it seemed, a long time, but the summons came atlast, and I went in front of an old mulatto woman on a white horse, to visit my mother's new plantation home. The family always spoke of it as Nannie's long journey it was five miles. After staying a few days, I was taken back to Union to live with my grandmother in the village, and for many years thereafter my mother had me only for visits in the summertime. She couldn't have been over twenty-one at the time of this marriage. My stepfather, Colonel Rowan, was a good many years older than she, and was in politics. I know he served in the Confederate legislature all during the war. Through him, I acquired a family consisting of a stepbrother and two stepsisters older than I, with whom I played on those summer visits to the plantation. My stepbrother, Andrew Rowan, 6 A BRIDE GOES WEST was to gain fame in the Spanish-American War by to Garcia he stands out in carrying the message ; my childish memory as a lordly and awful being, who somehow hypnotized us younger ones into doing his will. We would roam the woods gathering berries or chestnuts my stepsister Betty and I, and several pickaninnies and when we came home with our pailful, Andrew would offer to divide them for us. His way of dividing was to say: "Here's one for for Nannie and one for me ; one for Betty and one me" and so on till he took half of all we had gath- ered. I don't know why we let him do it ! In the winter my stepsister Betty, eighteen months older, came in and stayed in town with me and we went to school together. As I looked at it, this arrange- ment had a serious drawback; it obliged me to go to school the year round. The public school near the plantation kept in summer, when the roads were better and the children could get there more easily, and my stepfather, perhaps for political reasons, made his own children go. Later on in Union I went to a seminary where the girls were taught a smattering of music and French and other polite subjects, but not much of any of them, so that when I had to support myself years later, the only thing I knew was to take boarders. I didn't even graduate from the seminary, because when I was fifteen my stepfather decided that Betty and I had reached the stage where we had boys A BRIDE GOES WEST 7 in our heads, and it was a waste of money to pay for any more schooling for us. In spite of my grandmother's devotion I was a lonely child, for she was deaf, and talking to her was difficult. My mother was a very pretty woman, fond of dress and society, and I was always a disappoint- ment to her because I was neither. Not that I was bad- looking but my stepsister Betty was the pretty one, and mother liked to hear people say, as they often did, that Betty looked more like her than her own child.

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