No Job for a Lady (5 page)

The upper berth is presently flat against the wall and ceiling above his head as he sits on a sofa seat. It is “made down” by being dropped into position by the porter at bedtime.

I chew on my bottom lip, trying to find a way out of the predicament, bringing more head shaking on his part.

“You really don’t like to lose, do you? And it’s obvious that you give no quarter and take no prisoners. Do you always get your way?”

“For your information, whatever slight progress I have made in this world has been the result of having to run twice as fast and twice as far as my peers. Now, sir, there are three contingencies to sharing this compartment. You forthwith pay me the ten dollars you owe, your deportment will never be less than the gentlemen you claim to be, and I get the lower berth.”

The critical difference between the two berths is that the upper is as high up as my five-foot head-to-toe height. To get in and out, the porter provides a ladder at night and again in the morning.

He hands me ten dollars. “Agreed. Except you get the upper.”

“Any gentleman worthy of his salt would give a lady the lower. Please consider the situation. Your long frame makes it easy for you to reach the top bunk, while my short, insignificant body makes it a horrendous task because I am not a monkey.”

“That’s why the porter has a ladder.”

“I don’t like being cooped up. I get claustrophobic.”

“Madam, perhaps for a moment you might want to consider my point of view. You wanted a sleeper badly enough to connive to get it, using me as your tool. Next, you attempt to evict me. Failing at that, you wish to cramp my long frame into a small box while you stretch out below in luxury. May I ask—are you by chance the only daughter of a railroad or banking magnate?”

“I’ll have you know that I earn my bread with my own hands and the only thing I have to do with railroads is buying tickets, while banks are where I store what few hard-earned pennies I have left after providing for basics.”

He jumps to his feet and offers his hand, a more English than American gesture when it comes to a woman, but one that independent women like myself are pleased to accept.

“Watkins … Roger Watkins, New York City.”

“Nellie Bly. Pittsburgh.” It comes out as a grumble, but I give his hand a good squeeze. “Now, sir, I know you are a true gentleman and sportsman and will be gracious enough to resolve this matter with the flip of a coin.”

“Good try, Miss Bly.… It is Miss, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“I would expect that to be the case.”

My jaws go tight. Any goodwill that had momentarily risen between us is now dead as he deliberately tries to get my goat.

“My apology, Miss Bly. I’m sure you are not truly destined for spinsterhood. It just appears that way when you are so persistent.” He gives me a once-over. “Are you, uh, on your way to Mexico to meet a husband?”

“Do I look like a mail-order bride?”

His shrug signals he might think that.

“For your information, sir, I am traveling to Mexico on important business. And maybe I’ll even climb a pyramid or two.”

“I hope—”

“Stop!” I tell him. “Wait.”

I close my eyes tightly for just a moment and then open them.

“Darn, it didn’t work. My mother says that if you close your eyes very tight and wish really hard, when you open your eyes again, unpleasant things will have disappeared.” I give him a sour smile. “But you’re still here.”

Nellie’s personal creed:

Determine right.

Decide fast.

Apply energy.

Act with conviction.

Fight to the finish.

Accept the consequences.

Move on.

7

A fine mess I’ve gotten myself into. How am I going to explain my sleeping arrangements if word gets out?

More important, why do I do these things?

It is only a short time before the train crosses the Rio Grande and into Mexico and everyone has to leave the train to have their luggage examined by Mexican customhouse officers. Standing in line for my turn, I have time to think and realize what a state of potentially embarrassing scandal and gossip my bold move to get a sleeper has placed me in.

An unmarried woman sharing a private compartment with a man! If my mother were here, she’d take a birch rod to my bottom, despite the fact I’m a full-grown woman. And my brothers—heaven help Roger Watkins if they were here. They’d tar and feather him and run him out of town on a rail.

Worse of all is the newspaper. If word of this gets to my editor, I will not find a job there when I return.

There is nothing I can do about it now except keep the cauldron from boiling over. I have deliberately not told Watkins I am a newspaper reporter. I don’t know enough about him to expose that fact. For all I know, he might be a news reporter himself. Or use the knowledge to get his way with me.

Stop bickering with the man is a must. It’s just that it’s hard not to. Something about him raises my ire. I think it’s that whenever I say yea, he says nay. The man appears determined not to give me an inch. I get the impression that there is a woman behind his attitude—perhaps one that left him at the altar, refused his overtures, or otherwise offended his manhood.

I will be spending a lot of time in the parlor car.

After clearing customs, I’m told the train will not depart for more than an hour. I return to the compartment to drop off my bag before heading for a restaurant near the station. I spotted my traveling companion returning to the train earlier.

He’s camped out on the seat, smoking a pipe and reading a newspaper. His feet are extended across to the other bench, blocking my way if I had wished to take a seat. His only redeeming grace is that he has removed his shoes. There is a hole in the big toe of his sock. That establishes the fact that he is not married nor living with his mother.

Determined to be polite and gracious to avoid confrontation, I give him a smile and a gentle “Hello.”

Engrossed in his reading, he barely nods his head and doesn’t look up.

A man of few words.

I take a deep breath. My bag belongs under the seat he presently has his feet on—my seat. Thus I have two choices. I can get down on my hands and knees and attempt to slide my bag under the seat by slipping it under his legs … or I can ask him to get his head out of his blasted paper and remove his feet long enough for me to bend over and slip the bag under the seat.

To exercise either alternative, I must ignore his rudeness.

Submission to this man is just not in me. Neither is compromise.

I drop the bag on his extended legs.

He looks up, startled.

“Get your head out of that paper, your feet off my seat, and store my bag under the seat.”

Without further ado, I leave for a restaurant to enjoy being as far away as possible from him.

“Uppity woman” follows me out the door.

I can’t help but smile.

8

I find the restaurant recommended by the customs officer when I told him I wanted to sample good Mexican food. Strangely enough, it is run by Chinese.

Scribbles on the chalkboard that passes for a menu in the place tell me that corn, beans, and peppers are extremely important food items in Mexican cuisine, because it appears that about everything offered is some combination of those three food items, ranging from cornmeal to corn tortillas, refried beans to bean soup, along with peppers that seem to accompany everything that is offered. And all are offered at a very fair price.

As I’m sitting and studying the menu, someone hovers over me.

“Tolerate some company, Nellie?”

Sundance grins down at me.

“Please do. On one condition—how do you know my name?”

“Your name? It’s the name on your luggage tag. Hope it’s yours.”

Why didn’t I think of that? So much for conspiracies.

We order corn, beans, and peppers, of course, and he has beer served in a clay cup. As we chat, I get a surprise—he’s from Mont Clare, Pennsylvania, a village that’s a stretch from Pittsburgh, but not too far from Philadelphia. Mont Clare isn’t much bigger than my own Cochran’s Mills. He left home just four years ago to head out west on his own.

“Knocked around Sundance, Wyoming, for a while and that’s where I picked up the handle Sundance. Easier to spit out than Harry Longabaugh.”

“What are you cowboys going to do in Mexico?”

“Riding herd on some valuable head of cattle, horses, that sort of thing. Bring them back across the border from deep in Mexico.”

“Don’t they have Mexican cowboys to do that?”

“They do, but the buyer says too many prize bulls and Thoroughbreds he’s bought don’t make it back when he hires local wranglers.”

He asks me what I’m doing in Mexico and seems very impressed that I’m a newspaper reporter.

“A foreign correspondent at that. I’ve never met one of those.”

I didn’t volunteer that I hadn’t, either. The food is dished up almost immediately. I really like the tortillas and beans, but Sundance says he’s a meat and potatoes man. So is my mother. I’m sure she would hate Mexican food. I can already hear her complaining.

“Sorry old Howard bothered you,” he says out of the blue.

“Oh, he’s harmless, I guess.”

“He is. Just has a habit of drinking too much and mouthing off. Did he tell you about his big claim?”

“No … he has a big claim?”

“All prospectors have one, or so they say. He was turning over rocks, looking for the shiny yellow, long before either of us was born. Howard’s like all the others I’ve met. They work a little here, a little there, just to get a stake, because he’s always looking for the big one. You know what I mean?”

“A pot of gold.”

“The mother lode itself. Guys like Howard always think a deep vein of gold is just up the river a ways or over that next hill, but they never come back with more than a thimbleful of glitter. And they are always looking over their shoulder for claim jumpers.

“Brags that he got a lead to a big pile a while back after he married one of them Aztec women down south, though he probably just shacked up with her. Says she told him where a big pile of gold was before her brothers tried to scalp him. He tagged along with us as camp cook to get back down south to find it.”

“From what I’ve seen of Howard, he needs the mother lode just to keep him in booze.”

“If that ain’t the truth. Suppose he told you about the pile he’s always yapping about to us?”

I’m tempted to satisfy his curiosity and tell him what little Howard actually said to me, but I don’t because it would probably just make him think that I know more than I really do.

“Howard never told me anything about his pot of gold. Is that why you followed me to dinner? To find out if he had? Are you a claim jumper, Sundance?”

Sundance chuckles and shakes his head. “Whoa, Nellie girl, grab the reins on that one. I was out to get some grub and saw you.” He leans toward me and gives me a roguish grin. “I will confess, though, that you being the prettiest girl I’ve seen since I left Pennsylvania made me head your way when I saw you on the street a few minutes ago.”

Vain that I am, a little flattery, and my suspicions fly out the window.

9

Before returning to the train, I exchange my money for Mexican pesos, getting a premium of twelve cents on every dollar.

Deciding not to deal with Mr. Watkins quite yet with my usual subtle charm, I head for the parlor car, where the seating is most comfortable and usually the least crowded because an extra fee is required for use of the car. The fee paid for a compartment entitles me to day use, but no one is permitted to spend the night there.

Now that we have crossed the Rio Grande and left behind the Mexican town of El Paso del Norte, our train slowly moves through small villages and I see for the first time women plowing fields while their lords and masters sit on a fence, smoking.

Oh how I’ve never longed for anything so much as I do to shove those lazy fellows off. Men! They seem to be the same worldwide. This will definitely make it in my first correspondence to the
Dispatch,
even though I won’t be posting any letters until I reach Mexico City.

It is not long after I am seated that the train starts slowing down for the first stop. I have already been told that the train will be a proverbial milk train, stopping not only at sizable towns but also at many villages along the way to drop off goods and pick up passengers.

The stops will increase the time it will take to get to Mexico City, but I don’t mind. The slower pace gives me an opportunity to see more of the land and its people and to acclimate myself.

I know the people in Pittsburgh will get such delight in reading about all the wonderful sights. And I will make sure to fill my letters with details about the food, clothing, way of living—everything and anything that not only educates them about Mexico but entertains them, too.

I can see the headlines:
MEXICO AND ITS PEOPLE BY NELLIE BLY.

However, I can just imagine poor, dear Erasmus Wilson cursing me for sending my correspondence on blue-glazed paper, but it is all I have. Besides, he can only thank himself for this task of editing my work. It was my response to his article, “What Woman Was Made For” that landed me a job as a newspaperwoman.

After I had written a couple of newspaper articles back then, Mr. Madden had made dear Erasmus my personal editor to correct my rocky grammar. I must say Erasmus took it all in good stride and has been a good ally. When Mr. Madden reiterated for the umpteenth time his opposition to my heading for Mexico and on the day before I left said he would make no promise that my letters from Mexico would get into the newspaper, much less on the front page, dear Erasmus took me aside and whispered, “Don’t worry, Nellie girl, you send them to me and they will appear, I promise.”
3

I just hope my articles will encourage Mr. Madden to officially make me his foreign correspondent. If they raise the readership of his newspaper, I know I’ll have the job. One thing I have learned after becoming a news reporter is that publishers are as enthralled by the almighty dollar as everyone else.