Gold Rush Bride

While the young folks were having their good times
some of the mothers were giving birth to their babies
Three babies were born in our company that summer
My cousin, Emily, gave birth to a son in Utah,

forty miles north of the Great Salt Lake one morning
But the next morning she traveled on
'til noon when a stop was made and another child was born,
this time Susan Mollmeyer And gave the baby the name Alice Nevada

Follow the typical signs, the hand-painted lines,
Down prairie roads
Pass the lone church spire
Pass the talking wire from where to who knows?

There's no way to divide the beauty of the sky
from the wild western plains Where a man could drift,
in legendary myth, by roaming over spaces
The land was free and the price was right

Dakota on the wall is a white-robed woman,
broad yet maidenly
Such power in her hand as she hails the wagon man's family
I see Indians that crawl through this mural that recalls our history

Who were the homestead wives? Who were the gold rush brides?
Does anybody know? Do their works survive
their yellow fever lives in the pages they wrote?
The land was free, yet it cost their lives

In miner's lust for gold,
a family's house was bought and sold, piece by piece.
A widow staked her claim on
a dollar and his name, so painfully

In letters mailed back home
her Eastern sisters they would moan
as they would read accounts of
madness, childbirth, loneliness and grief