Two Men Too Many
A Short Western Story
By Maryanne Peters

Some say that when you are headed west and there is nothing before you except open space and hard work, that you need more young men than you do young women. But as far as the Haddon Colby train of 1861 was concerned, they had two men too many.

I was not a professional wagon train boss, but I had decided that it was time to leave North Texas with my wife Maria, and my two young boys Henry and William. Things were getting difficult for us even before civil war broke out because I was an abolitionist and my neighbors were in support of the Confederate cause, whatever that might be. In addition, my wife was half Mexican and she was not treated well by such people. With all of that, Texas was dry and I was looking for a place where the grass truly was greener. California seemed like the place, with water coming down from high mountains. I was not looking for gold, and I was not a great stock herder. I wanted to grow crops and not be sneered at for doing it

But I had been born and raised in Texas and had worked the states and territories around it. I knew the trails and the pitfalls of overland travel – the ditches and the rivers, and the outlaws and the Indians, the plants and the wildlife. I was better able than many, but I was not going to do it on my own, so I answered the advertisement in the St Louis Gazette looking for settlers headed west. After a little correspondence Messrs. Haddon and Colby invited me to join them as “Trail Master” or “Captain” of their wagon train.

I went on ahead up to St. Louis to meet those gentlemen and buy and equip a wagon before I wrote home to have my wife and sons board the Butterfield Stagecoach and join me, with only the baggage that would be allowed. I knew the value of travelling light, and the importance of being ready to cast off the unnecessary to make an important journey. It was a lesson that I would have to pass on to others.

We set off on April 7 1861 with the intention of reaching San Francisco Bay by the end of September, although my plan was to branch off a few days before then and head further south to seek farmland in the St Joachin Valley. I wanted my family housed and settled by Thanksgiving Day, and I had sound faith in my ability to do that.

Half of the 26 wagons were of the extended Haddon and Colby families, and they struck me as people worthy of admiration. They were people like me who judge others by their conduct and not by the skin they were born with or the language they spoke. They believed in education and proper standards of behavior. For some that is religion but these folk did not demand that others shared their faith – only that they followed the rules.

Nancy Haddon and Anne Colby were likewise women of principle. They were the ones behind the formation of “The Ladies’ Committee” on the very first night we camped under the stars. They said that its purpose was to keep the youngsters in hand, the men respectful of women and the women aware of their role. It sounded useful to me. It meant that I only had to captain the men, and I knew that would follow when I proved my ability to lead.

Out of Independence Missouri, it does not take long for the trail to enter the Great Plains, a sea of grass that goes on forever. By 1861 Indians and bandits were not the issue, it was simply the distance. It would be over 900 miles to Fort Laramie and even on flat ground and rutted trails that would take up 6 weeks. I sometimes think that it would be easier to take the mountains first, but that is not the way it is. Adversity can assist in uniting people, but drudgery causes conflict.

The youngest Colby boy, Emmett, was the big problem. He had older brothers and sisters who were married but he was (as it turned out) not inclined that way. The other troublemaker was a boy called Titus Mackey, who struck me as having some sickness driven by his crotch. Still, I am sure that he would never have attacked the young lady had it not been for Emmet and his general hatred of women.

My advice to the committee of menfolk was that the boys be ejected from the wagon train with a single horse to take them wherever they wanted. Banishment is a harsh punishment but would spare them a worse fate if they were held in custody in a wagon for weeks and then handed over to the sheriff in Laramie. Then the discussion turned as to whether these boys weren’t young enough to be the responsibility of The Ladies’ Committee.

“If they were women they might be, but they ain’t children no more!” Those are the words I said, and nothing more than that. But as it turned out, somebody mentioned all of this to Nancy Haddon and Anne Colby, and they came up with a way to spare the boys and satisfy the victim. For the rest of the journey Emmet and Titus were to be Emily and Matilda, or Tilly - apprentice womenfolk.

For the new Emily Colby this seemed not too hard a task given that the boy had a girlish appearance, and (as it turned out) an attraction to men, but before we ever knew that, there were howls of protest. For Tilly there was just confusion, but an understanding that the alternative would be a worse fate.

The only special tool that needed to be constructed was a pair of “cock cages” commissioned from our blacksmith and made out of brass wire that was fused and tempered. I had never seen the like of it before, but Nancy appeared to know a pattern and the blacksmith made them and riveted them into the groins of the boys to ensure no more sexual activity for either of them.

The Ladies’ Committee then undertook the task of turning these miscreants not only into young ladies, but useful ones as they were doing with the real girls in the train. It was made easy a little because both of them had long hair – Emilys soft blond hair by virtue of his being shy of the scissors where Tilly’s red hair had grown under the hat he wore 24 hours a day and was only discovered when that hat was burnt and the mass inside untangled. Both had enough for the hair to be put up under a bonnet and a little French powder and rouge applied to their plucked faces.

They were both put to work mending canvas covers and clothing, and assisting with food preparation, cooking and cleaning, while all the time being schooled on what was expected in terms of feminine behaviors. It worried me not one bit. It seemed to me that the girl they had toyed with was satisfied and they were learning a lesson that prison would never have done.

In addition, Anne Colby had her youngest under firm control and the parents of Tilly (as she now was) were happy that they were no longer responsible for control of Titus. Our wagons rolled on through Chimney Rock and on to Fort Laramie.

By that time, it seemed as if our two new womenfolk had come to terms with their partial imprisonment. They both conducted themselves in a town full of strangers, as women among other women. Tilly had come to regard the other girls as friends, if only because to think of them as mating partners would cause such a biting pain in her tender parts that she was conditioned by a bridle and steel bit as a wild horse might be. Sexual desire appeared to abate in her.

Emily in particular, received the attention of young men who did not know of her curious condition, and she appeared to relish that. Her true preferences were becoming clearer to many. Some might call such a thing a mortal sin, but this appearance as a woman had been brought about by a democratic process, so accusations could hardly be fair.

It thus became evident that Emily had maintained some sexual desire, but not of the male kind. She must have found company in the wagon train, but in Fort Laramie she went a little wild, and I have heard that ever since her adventures in that place she had worn padding in her nether regions just as regular women are called to do monthly.

Still, they played their part as women as we crossed the Rockies, and on one occasion Emily put to use her special abilities in a moment of need. As women at our direction, both of these new women were never called upon to do hard labor, but when we had driven the wagons up and over a scree over a mountain landslide, I remember well Emily standing at the top and raising her skirt and shouting down a promise to give favors to the man who pushed the hardest and longest.

It was not something any other female member of the wagon train would do, but I laughed rather than disapproved. She was for the Women’s Committee to manage, not the Trail Master. I have no doubt that several men claimed their prize and she gave it to them – it is not mine to ask who. All I can say is that to lie with that girl could hardly seem perverted, being as comely as she was.

But Tilly was prettier still, and chaste – or so it appeared. I had heard that there were plenty of men who suggested to her that she should be more like Emily, but she just laughed at them. It was not in a nasty or teasing was – she had just come to terms with her uncomfortable penalty by adopting a general good humor to the benefit of us all.

So, spirits were high for the downhill run into California. We had lost a woman in childbirth, two others through illness and a man thrown from his horse. Four deaths and none by Indians or bandits. I felt my job was well done, and by the time we came to the San Joaquin Valley I was ready to part company on very good terms with everybody. For those headed further west it was a line of wagons rather than a wagon train.

Many were headed to the gold fields – they said just to get a little money to buy land. I had my money and I was not interested in digging in the dirt and praying for good fortune. I always thought of mining as a gamble, based on luck and then easily lost, but I understood why some would want to throw the dice. I had a house to build while the weather was good.

We had a feast the night before I took my leave, and there my second son made an announcement that shook me to the core. He said that he was in love with Tilly and that she was ready to come with us and be his wife. Everybody around the campfire knew of the impossibility of this, so much so that it seemed unnecessary to point it out, but I did anyway.

“William, she may look like one, but she is not a real girl,” I said. “She has only a little ways to go and she will be able to cut off those curls and put on some pants and put all this stuff behind her … I mean him.”

“You’re wrong Pa,” he said, and I have to say I was proud that the boy was ready to say what he thought. “She is a girl. She has breasts and everything. She just has a bit extra below the belt … and a bit missing too.”

I did not believe about the breasts but I have to say I looked across and it seemed that there was something visible there that did not belong on a man, and then there was her demure appearance, looking like the perfect young lady stepped of a train from New York City and looking on my boy with pride, and yes, with love too.

It later turned out that at some stage in the journey we had just completed, this child had been denutted like a steer, it was said because those organs were rotting for their constraint. Instead of asking me to have the blacksmith break the cage (which I would have insisted on immediately) it was her choice to cut away her manhood to free herself. The result was that she would never be the man I had just said she would be. I am not of cold heart and I felt sympathy for this gentle soul.

“You have a family to raise, son, and I hope that Tilly will understand that she cannot give you that, but if she wants to come with us to Fresno, she is welcome.” And then I turned to Emily and referring to the blacksmith I said – “It is time to free you, Emily … I am sorry child, I have forgotten your male name … you should be free of your cage also, tonight.”

“Hell no,” she said, looking genuinely concerned. “Maybe I want what Tilly has got – she has such pretty little tits and such soft buttocks!”

“A young man in the crowd called out – “Be my wife, Tilly” and to my surprise one of the old cowboys who had escorted our herd behind the wagon train offered himself as her husband, and then I heard another.

I looked across at Nancy Haddon and Anne Colby, of “The Ladies’ Committee”. I could see that they were in a state. This was their doing, and now the camp was in an uproar.

To be honest I was glad to peel off our wagon (we had acquired a second on the journey) and head south. I had promised to stay in touch with many of the others as friendships forged in adversity ought to be strong and lasting, but I was keen to get on.

There was a tender parting of our new women, Tilly and Emily. They did stay in touch and I heard later that Emily had married that old cowboy who had no need of a family, and that she set up a bordello in the goldfields that made a lot of money.

My son Wiiliam did go on to marry Tilly, in a fashion. Certainly, nobody in Fresno had any idea that she was not a woman, but it became widely known that she was barren. Being the person she was, she received offers from two women that they would carry a child from my son’s seed. Henry, my oldest son gave us seven grandchildren following his marriage to a local girl. William fathered three of our grandchildren in the end, well mothered by Tilly and her friends who gifted her space in their wombs.

It is said that we have created something of a dynasty in this town, helping to build a cooperative irrigation system that has seen our farm and our neighbors’ farms avoid droughts and floods and help turn our little part of California into a green and fertile valley.

I now look back fondly at my time as captain of that wagon train. I did a good job, and I came to realize that the one thing I doubted I should have approved – having those two young men turned into women, turned out alright in the end. Tilly was Titus Mackey – I remember that now … but perfect and pretty Emily … well, to me she has always been just Emily.

The End

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(c) Maryanne Peters 2025

Author’s Note:
The Oregon Trail to the Pacific Coast – a journey of six months or more, at 10-20 miles per day was heavily used in the 1840s, 1850s, and 1860s. The length of the wagon trail from the Missouri River to Sacramento, California was about 1,950 miles.

I was supposed to post this story on the weekend, but I confess to being a little troubled by the absence of comments on my recent stories.