Free American Ghost: A Family's Haunted Past in the Desert Southwest by Hannah Nordhaus Page B

expects me to accept the offer,” she wrote. “When he was convinced that I could not go to Europe, he said he would be satisfied if I would accompany them to the city of New York. But I am satisfied to remain in Santa Fe.”
    Sister Blandina’s superiors, however, were not satisfied: at the end of May, she reported a compulsory change of heart. “Sister Augustine tells me that the most Rev. Archbishop Lamy”—the archbishop of Santa Fe—“wishes me to go with the Staab family to the terminus of the railroad.” The railroad was now five miles from Trinidad, the scruffy frontier town at the base of Raton Pass. It was a five-day, two-hundred-mile stagecoach ride from Santa Fe, much shorter than the seven hundred miles Julia had traveled on her first journey across the plains, but a difficult trip nonetheless. The plan was for Blandina and another young nun, Sister Augustine, to ride with Julia and two of her children; the others must have stayed behind in Santa Fe, or perhaps traveled ahead of them. The women would be accompanied in another stagecoach by Julia’s physician, Dr. Symington, Abraham, and “two gentlemen who are going to Chicago.” Men in one coach, women in another.
    It was a hazardous time on the trail. Billy the Kid was terrorizing Colorado and northern New Mexico with a gang of criminals,stealing horses, robbing stagecoaches, and raiding settlements, guns ablaze. (This was not the famous Billy the Kid, but a less famous Colorado outlaw who preceded him—also young, also named William, also rampaging in the late 1870s.) “Everyone is concerned about our going,” Blandina wrote. “Mr. Staab spoke to Sister and myself about the danger of travel (at the present time) on the Santa Fe Trail, owing to Billy the Kid’s gang. He told us that the gang is attacking every mail coach and private conveyance.” Abraham wanted to make sure that Blandina was comfortable with the prospect of a run-in with the region’s most notorious outlaw. “‘We will have many freight wagons well manned, but if you fear to travel, we shall defer the trip,’” he told her.
    Blandina found Abraham’s chivalry touching, but she told him that she had “very little fear of Billy’s gang.” This was not only because of her abiding faith in God, but also because she knew—though she didn’t explain this to Abraham—that she could offer the family some protection: she was already acquainted with Billy the Kid.
    Only a few months before, in late 1876, she had been teaching at a church school in Trinidad when word came that Billy’s gang had been wreaking havoc on the other side of the mountains. One of Billy’s thugs had “painted red the town of Cimarron,” Blandina wrote, “mounting his stallion and holding two six-shooters aloft while shouting his commands, which everyone obeyed, not knowing when the trigger on either weapon would be lowered.” A few days later, the same gunman arrived in Trinidad. Sister Blandina watched him approach from her schoolyard. “The air here is very rarified,” she wrote, “and we are all eagle-eyed in this atmosphere.”
    We stood in our front yard, everyone trying to look indifferent, while Billy’s accomplice headed toward us. He was mounted on a spirited stallion of unusually large proportions, and was dressedas the Toreadores (Bull-Fighters) dress in old Mexico. Cowboy’s sombrero, fantastically trimmed, red velvet knee breeches, green velvet short coat, long sharp spurs, gold and green saddle cover. A figure of six feet three, on a beautiful animal, made restless by a tight bit—you need not wonder, the rider drew attention.
    The thug passed on through the town, but a few weeks later a member of the local “Vigilant Club” had come to fetch Sister Blandina. “We have work on hand!” he told her. The same outlaw—Schneider was his name—was again in the vicinity. This time, however, he was doing no parading. He had been shot in the thigh after a quarrel with his