Riding Freedom

James Birch and Frank Stevens, Ebeneezer’s former stable boys, have returned from California to Rhode Island. They tell tales of the gold rush and the Wild West. They tell Charlotte that they started their own stage line because people need to get back and forth between the gold mines and Sacramento, so there is plenty of business. They want Charlotte to join them as a driver for their line. She could earn good money, and she could also buy a piece of land out West, an opportunity she doesn’t have in Rhode Island. They explain that it is a month-long journey that includes mule and boat rides, “but when you get there, there’s land as far as the eye can see, just waiting to be bought by you, Charley” (81). Charlotte knew she had to go to California as soon as they mentioned the land. This is the best way to achieve her and Hay’s dream of owning their own ranch.

Charlotte is nervous to break the news to Ebeneezer. He responds with concern about the dangers in California, particularly the horses: “You don’t know what you’re in for. Most of the horses are just wild mustangs they brought in from the foothills that don’t know how to work in the traces” (82). He also expresses concern that “California ain’t no place for a…for a…you know…for you!” (83). Ebeneezer has never addressed Charlotte’s secret in all their years together. They both know that she will go because she wants to buy land so badly, but it is hard for Ebeneezer to let her go. He tells her that part of why she is so special to him is that she reminds him of his daughter, who died of a fever along with his wife. Charlotte asks him to come out to California and start a livery once she buys land. He agrees to at least visit when she’s settled. Before they say goodbye, she whispers her real name to Ebeneezer.

Charlotte travels for a month, and the narrative rejoins her aboard a large steamboat traveling up the Sacramento River. The wide-open spaces and scenery are just what she was expecting of the West. When she arrives at the port in Sacramento, she is met with crowds and “a mass of confusion” (86). There are stagecoaches, guards with trunks of gold, and masses of passengers. She makes her way through the crowd, looking for James. As she rides away with James, they happen upon a woman standing “on the steps of a saloon, passing out handbills to anyone who would take them” (87). She is talking about women and the right to vote. She states that “Wyoming Territory is already talking about giving women the right to vote […] If Wyoming can recognize a woman’s rightful voice, then California should, too!” (87). She argues back and forth with the jeering men on the street, pointing out that women in the East have already begun to organize. Charlotte approaches the woman and asks for one of her pamphlets. The woman asks if Charley is mocking her, and Charley responds that “you are much braver than me” (89). After she and James leave, Charlotte thinks about all that the woman shared and wishes she could do more to help the women’s rights movement.

Charlotte arrives at James and Frank’s stables, called the California Stage Company. The stables are in a “converted ramshackle building” (91). The boys explain that there is so much business they don’t have the time needed to fix up the barn and stables. There is no loft, so Charlotte sleeps in a storeroom so she can have privacy. They also explain that they are waiting for their stock horses and stallion, which are being shipped from Australia; in the meantime they are using mustangs. Charlotte asks if they are tamed, and James replies, “Welcome to California, Charley! Here, everything’s wild!” (92).

On Charlotte’s first day working with the mustangs, she assists in attaching horse shoes to their hooves (getting them shod). One of the wild horses rears up and kicks Charlotte in the head. She blacks out and wakes up in a doctor’s office. Charlotte’s head injury is so severe that she vomits when she tries to sit up. Charlotte asks what happened, and the doctor explains that she was kicked by a horse and might lose sight in one eye as a result. The doctor asks what a girl like Charlotte was doing trying to put shoes on a horse. He says that although Charlotte is dressed like a man and has calloused hands, he knows that she is a girl because he is a doctor. Charlotte implores him not to tell anyone she is actually a girl. He tells her, “you’re not the first woman pretending to be a man that I’ve ever treated […] I’m not going to tell anyone” (94). He goes on to describe another female patient whose husband left for the gold mines, so she pretends to be him to save “her from many a problem” (95). Another patient’s husband was killed, so she pretended to be her husband to protect her children: “When her sons got old enough, she changed back and told everyone the true story” (95). Charlotte asks the doctor about her eye. He says she will most likely be blind in one eye, and he doesn’t think she will be able to drive coaches again.

Charlotte leaves the doctor’s office with her mangled eye exposed, and people are afraid when they see her. She cannot wear a patch until it heals, and this is particularly hard for her because “she had spent years trying to blend in and not be noticed and now everyone walking by examined her face” (96). When she arrives back at the stables, James tells Charlotte that they can’t allow her to drive with only one eye, but she can stock tender instead. Charlotte goes to her room and cries, even though the tears sting her injured eye. She cries until she can’t cry another drop.

Once she starts wearing the eye patch, people call her One-eyed Charley at the livery. People accept her appearance with the patch much more easily “than they did a crooked, deformed eye” (98). A month after losing her eyesight, Charlotte catches her reflection. She lifts the eye patch, looks in a barrel of water at her changed appearance, and remembers “another night long ago when she had looked at herself in a pool of water” (99). She reflects on how she has changed since then, both physically and emotionally. She realizes that the only way to achieve her dream is to keep driving coaches. The next day James and Frank leave to go to the bank, and Charlotte takes advantage of their absence. She takes out a team of six horses to find out if she can still drive with one eye. She has a difficult time with turns and even overturns the coach. But she is determined to succeed, so she studies the way the horses and the road sounds, learning to use her other senses to compensate for her blind eye. After she has memorized her route and feels confident, she approaches James and explains that she wants to begin driving again. He says they can’t allow her to with only one eye, and she convinces him to go for one ride with her and let her prove that she can do it. He reluctantly agrees.

The next day there is a terrible storm, but Charlotte insists on driving with James anyway. They set out with a coach full of passengers and blinding rain. They reach the river, where the water has risen almost to the bridge supports. Charlotte stops the coach, gets out, and walks across the bridge to verify it is safe to take the coach across. She decides that it is too risky and asks the passengers to disembark and walk carefully across the bridge. They do so, although one man tries to insist on staying in the coach because he thinks Charley is being overly cautious. She forces him out, and once all the passengers have crossed the bridge, she prepares to cross with the empty coach and six horses. She moves the horses across slowly and calmly, even as lightning strikes around them. When she is in the middle of the bridge, she hears it begin to crack and collapse. Charlotte has flashbacks to the moment her parents died in a similar situation, but she stays focused—“the back wheels [had] barely turned on solid ground when the bridge collapsed and dropped into the churning river” (107). The passengers are amazed and impressed, and the man who had wanted to stay in the coach remarks that Charley saved his life. By the passengers’ comments and James’s nodding head, “Charlotte knew there wouldn’t be a question about her driving a stage again” (107).