As my Indian mare was not deemed a proper animal for a lady, I had to content myself with riding sidesaddle again on a gelding whose ancestry was impeccable enough for the renovated daughter of the Union Pacific treasurer. I did make certain that our groom – Muskrat Watkins, of course – exercised Fair One and her little traveling circus.

Incidentally, Muskrat – he owned to Henry Watkins now – never gave up chewing tobacco, but he did consult a physician about his lice and pubic crabs. He was cured, and lived happily ever after with our housekeeper, who took him to church regularly and saw that he bathed. When Father bought a finer pasture on the edge of Omaha, the happy couple moved there with the horses. This meant Mother finally got the German housekeeper and French chef she wanted. Everyone was happy.

I presented a serene figure to the community, as the new Elizabeth Ann fumed and plotted below the surface, yearning for news, any news. I never let on how really bored and unhappy I was. Everyone who meant anything to me, besides my immediate family, was either dead or gone. I figured I was to mark time until I either made an advantageous marriage or dwindled into spinsterhood. I only confessed to my mirror that I felt older than I cared to admit.

Upon one subject I remained firm. Mother came into my room one morning not long after my return and caught me in my chemise. Her eyes widened to see Hawk’s Jefferson peace medal before I had time to stuff it inside my chemise.

“What are you doing with that…thing?” she asked in shocked tones, as if she had chanced upon me worshiping the Sun God Amun-Ra.

I explained to her that it was a gift that had originally been given to a long-defunct Nez Perce by Meriwether Lewis himself. Never a student of history, Mother was unimpressed. All she saw was a heathen relic (Thomas Jefferson? Heathen? Well, perhaps a little.) She ordered me to take it off. I refused. She drew back, her mouth open.

“Mother, the only way I will ever take off this necklace is if the owner shows up and claims it.”

At the thought of that, she paled, swallowed a couple of times, and left the room. Although she never bothered me about the medallion again, she gave me a beautiful silver chain a month later for my birthday. I loved her for it, this woman of contradictions who was my mother.