Hearts West (3 page)

It seems as though I can't live without my husband. I feel so lonely. I think of so many things I want to tell Mr. Walker. I realize more and more how much more I loved him than anyone else.

Mary Walker—December 18, 1877

Mary passed away twenty years after her beloved Elkanah. The relationship, which had begun in writing, endured for close to four decades.

ELEANOR BERRY & LOUIS DREIBELBIS
The Schoolmarm and the Scoundrel

Lonesome miner wants wife to share stake and prospects. Please respond to Louis Dreibelbis in Grass Valley, California.

San Francisco Magazine
—April 12, 1873

P
lease come out, Eleanor,” the frail voice of an elderly Ida Eigleberry pleaded from one side of a closed door. She knocked lightly, but urgently, on the frame. There was no answer. Ida turned the knob and gently pushed the door open. Her senses were immediately assaulted with chloroform fumes.

Choking back violent coughs, she made her way to a still body on the other side of the suite. Twenty-two-year-old Eleanor Berry was face down on the mattress, with a handkerchief covering her head. The old woman quickly evaluated the desperate scene and panicked, racing out into the hallway. “Norman!” Ida called out to her husband. “Run and get the doctor. I'm afraid our Eleanor has gone and done something foolish.”

According to the historical publication
The Californians,
if Eleanor Berry had gotten her wish, she would have expired a month earlier, on July 27, 1873. She reasoned that if her life had ended on her wedding day, she might have escaped the degradation and heartbreak that was to come. But alas, God had not struck her dead and now the deed was left to her.

Eleanor's life began in the spring of 1851 in Gilroy, California. Her parents died when she was an infant and so she was raised by her neighbors, the Eigleberrys. She grew to be an attractive young lady, and chose to teach school as her profession. Still single at the age of twenty-two and fearing she always would be, Eleanor responded to an advertisement posted in a Bay Area literary journal. Louis Dreibelbis, the author of the advertisement, was searching for a wife and was thrilled to receive Eleanor's letter in response to his ad. In the advertisement, Louis described himself as a wealthy, average-looking man eager to settle down.

Letters between the two went back and forth from Eleanor's home in Gilroy to Louis's in Grass Valley. The pair corresponded for three months. She was quite taken with his candor and his praise of her desire to work with children. “Such a woman will make a fine mother,” he wrote. Louis found Eleanor's letters to be “intelligent and sincere in tone.”

It did not take long for the mutual attraction to evolve into affection. Louis's letter of proposal was met with enthusiastic acceptance, and the couple decided on a wedding date of July 27, 1873. After resigning her position as Gilroy's schoolmistress, Eleanor packed her trunk and boarded an east-bound train to meet Louis for the first time and marry him.

Eleanor fanned herself with a newspaper as she took her seat on the train. The temperature inside the Central Pacific passenger car was oppressive, hotter even than the ninety-five degrees outside the train. She was accompanied by several passengers making their way to the mining camps near Grass Valley in Nevada County. Once the train reached Colfax, the bride-to-be and her belongings were transferred to a six-horse stagecoach. Of the thirteen passengers on board, Eleanor was the only woman.

The stage driver promised Eleanor and the other passengers a safe trip and tried to assure them that they would not be overtaken by highwaymen, men who robbed travelers on public roads. Given the cargo, the driver no doubt needed to reassure himself of that notion as well. Nestled between the trunks and suitcases was a safe containing $7,000 in gold that was to be deposited into a Grass Valley bank.

The trip was relatively uneventful for the first leg of the journey. According to one newspaper account, the passengers passed the time on the eight-hour journey swapping stories about the places they had lived or visited. Eleanor contributed to the conversation as well, trading brilliant remarks and witty banter with other passengers. The men admired her “vivacity and charm.”

During lulls in the conversation, Eleanor daydreamed about her upcoming nuptials and life thereafter. She removed a few of Louis's letters from her handbag and reread them. She smiled to herself, imagining she and her betrothed standing at the altar, looking into one another's eyes, and seeing all the possibilities to come. The coach's abrupt stop brought her back to the present, tossing her on the floor in the stagecoach.

A gruff voice outside the buggy demanded the passengers step out with their hands in the air. She exchanged anxious glances with her wide-eyed travel companions, as they reluctantly did as they were told.

Four armed men wearing gunnysack masks over their heads shouted at the passengers. The bandits eyed their victims carefully. For a moment no one made a move. Then the driver lowered his arms a bit and a highwayman with a six-shooter pulled the hammer back on his gun. The driver's arms shot back up.

“We'll take your treasure box,” the man with the six-shooter demanded.

“It's on the other stage,” the driver insisted.

The bandit snickered. “Then we'll keep you here until the other stage comes around,” he warned.

The driver studied the dress of the bandits for a quick moment. Their feet were encased in gunnysacks and tied in place at the ankle, a trick professionals used so no visible footprints would be left for a posse to follow. The driver realized these were ruthless desperados who would make good on their threats, and he finally relented. “It's no use fooling any longer,” he said. “This is the only stage tonight.”

The man with the six-shooter snickered again. “That's what we thought.”

A bandit carrying a shotgun aimed the barrel of the weapon at the driver's head and motioned for him to move away from the stage. The two other thieves instructed the passengers to do the same.

After lining the travelers up against a nearby fence, the gunmen climbed on top of the stage and headed for the strongbox attached to the coach. Several attempts were made to break into the safe with a pick, but to no avail. The thieves decided to blow the lock with gunpowder.

Eleanor looked on in horror as one of the men hauled a small canister of gunpowder from his saddlebag on the stage. The safe was in direct proximity to the passengers' luggage. An explosion would destroy the trunks and all of their belongings.

“Stop,” Eleanor yelled. The men halted their work to listen to the prospective bride. “Gentlemen, my trousseau is in my trunk. Won't you take it down before you blow up the coach?”

The thief with the six-shooter stood up and backed away from the safe. “With pleasure, miss,” he replied. Eleanor walked over to the stage as the robber chief jumped off and motioned for the gunman near the safe to toss her trunk down. As he reached up to take hold of the trunk, Eleanor noticed a long, jagged scar on the back of the man's hand. She filed the image away in her mind and was pleased at the sight of her possessions being returned to her. The highwayman turned away and went about his business.

KABOOOOOOMMMM!!!

Seconds after the robbers lit the fuse on the canister of gunpowder, a fierce explosion ripped through the stagecoach. The thieves wasted no time searching through the rubble to find the gold. After securing their ill-gotten gain in their saddlebags, the leader hopped on the back of his horse. “Come on!” he yelled to his cohorts. Following suit, the gunmen leapt onto their rides and all four hurried off into the trees, disappearing from sight.

The shaken driver inspected the damage to his coach and determined that the frame of the stage and the running gear were still intact. The spooked horses were settled and readied to continue the journey to Grass Valley. The passengers found their places on the shattered coach and they were off.

Upon their arrival in Nevada City, the crime was quickly reported to authorities, and police officers immediately set out to apprehend the culprits. The stage then proceeded on to its appointed destinations, first depositing Eleanor at the cottage of her betrothed.

Louis Dreibelbis's landlady greeted the exhausted bride and informed her that her fiancé had been called out of town but would return shortly. The kind woman escorted Eleanor into a room where she could prepare for the wedding.

The bride-to-be washed away the dust and dirt from her travels with a bath the landlady drew for her. Afterward, she dressed in her most elegant attire, pinned up her hair, and made up her face.

“It's time, dear,” the landlady said as she burst into the bedroom. Eleanor quickly stood up, smoothed down her dress, and checked her look in the mirror. The next time she saw her reflection she would be Mrs. Louis Dreibelbis.

Eleanor entered the parlor smiling nervously. There were two men sitting off to one side, a minister and a witness. Opposite the pair, Louis stood dressed in his Sunday best. The pair sized each other up for the first time. He looked considerably older than she expected, but there was a strength of character in his face that she always imagined her husband would have. Louis, on the other hand, was taken aback for a moment, almost as if he was surprised to see her. He covered his response with a slight smile before drinking in the petite, agreeable features of his fiancé.

The minister took his place in front of a fireplace and the bride and groom made their way toward him. The minister happily opened the Bible he was holding and began the proceedings. As the couple recited their vows to one another, Eleanor paused between pledges to think. Louis's voice sounded strangely familiar.

“We've been corresponding for months,” she told herself. “Perhaps what I recognize is the echo of the idea of him in my head.” The minister pronounced the two “man and wife” and Louis timidly leaned in to kiss his spouse. Their embrace was brief and awkward. The minister rescued them from the tense moment by escorting the newlyweds to a table to sign the marriage license.

Eleanor took the ink pen in hand and placed her name in the appropriate area. Louis followed suit once she passed him the pen. As he signed his name, the light from the flames in the fireplace reflected off his hand revealing a long, jagged scar. Eleanor knew in an instant where she'd seen the mark before. The color drained from her face and she screamed. She hurried out of the parlor and locked herself in her assigned quarters.

Louis looked on, stunned, not knowing what to say or do. Of course he had recognized Eleanor as the young woman on the stage he robbed earlier, but he could not imagine that she had recognized him. He raced out of the home, mounted his horse, and rode off into the night, saying nothing to the landlady, minister, or witness when he left.

The landlady pressed her ear to the bedroom door and listened for a sound on the other side. Eleanor was crying. Too ashamed to face anyone and wishing she would simply expire, she remained holed up in the room until the next morning.

The unfortunate bride stepped into the parlor the next day, her face wet with tears. The minister and landlady greeted her with apologies and words of comfort. Eleanor looked at them confused. “Mr. Dreibelbis and I never married,” she told her compassionate new friends. “I have no memory of a wedding, only a dream that in the night I was carried off by robbers.”

The minister and the landlady exchanged worried glances, assuming that the shock from the previous day's events had left her disoriented. “I've changed my mind about taking Mr. Dreibelbis as my husband,” she told the pair before her. “He's not as well-fixed as I expected to find him.”

After packing her trunk and soliciting a ride to the stage stop from the minister, Eleanor was on her way back to her home in Gilroy.

Nevada County Sheriff's deputies caught up with Louis Dreibelbis more than two months after the wedding. He confessed to his crime, turned state's evidence, testifying against his fellow bandits, and was subsequently released without charge. The detective who initially located Louis bought him a one-way ticket to Louis's hometown in Illinois and warned the robber against ever returning to California.

Eleanor slipped into Gilroy under the cover of darkness. She was too embarrassed and ashamed to admit to her friends and neighbors that she had married a thief. For anyone who dared ask what happened, she maintained that her mail-order groom had not been what she expected. Eventually, the truth of the ordeal became public knowledge and Eleanor was the topic of conversation. Humiliated beyond words, the young woman decided to commit suicide.