by Jill G. Hall
24
The next morning, the weather had warmed. Outside, as she filled a bucket with snow before it all melted, Sally Sue’s spirits lifted and she waved when she spied a wagon coming down the trail toward the cabin. This might be her chance to escape.
She glanced over at the barn. The door was open, but there was no sign of Cliff. She hadn’t seen him yet that morning.
Pots and pans clanged on the makeshift shed in the wagon’s back. The man’s nag made his way toward her and stopped.
“Yes, girlie!” The driver doffed his bowler hat, revealing dark hair speckled with gray. His voice was high and squeaky. “I’ve got anything you could ever want. I’ve got ribbons and laces to set off faces of pretty young sweethearts and wives.” He held up a handful of brightly colored remnants.
What an odd little man. Sally Sue tried not to laugh as she recognized the lyrics from Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore, which she’d seen in Kansas City with her aunt. “Sir, I—”
He interrupted her and held up a jar. “Yes, I have Dr. Pierce’s Pleasant Purgative Pellets.”
“Sir.” She waved him farther away from the barn.
He followed her and jumped down out of the wagon. His patchwork jacket hung loosely on his shoulders, and his pants had holes in the knees.
Speaking fast, he said, “Cures bilious headaches, dizziness, constipation, indigestion.”
She shook her head. “Sir.”
He eyed her and held up some lace. “You could sure use something pretty.”
She looked around for Cliff.
“How about Blackwell’s Durham Smoking Tobacco for your husband?” He held up a pouch with a bull on its side.
Sally Sue waved her arms above her head, but the peddler just kept on talking.
He showed her a small vial. “Price’s Special Flavoring Extract? Great for that home cooking of yours. Or perhaps this potion to cure what ails you?” Sally Sue recognized the medicine she’d had to give her aunt, along with strict directions not to give her too much or it could kill her.
He finally stopped to catch his breath.
“Sir, I’m ever so glad to see you.” She finally got some words in edgewise. “I’ve been kidnapped by an outlaw.”
“You have, have you?” He raised his bushy eyebrows and grinned. She could tell he didn’t believe her.
“Please take me to town.”
The man’s smile fell. “You’re not gonna buy some of my goods?”
“I told you, I’m captive here. I don’t have any money. This man is wanted. You could collect the bounty.”
“Ma’am, I’ve heard that one before. Your man’s not taking care of you the way you’d like.” He tightened the rope belt around his waist. “I can’t get mixed up in any domestic disputes.”
She clenched her fists beside her and stamped her boot. “It’s not a dispute, I say. There’s a one-thousand-dollar reward out for him, dead or alive. Please, take me to Flagstaff!” She folded her hands under her chin.
His dark eyes shifted. “I’m not headed that way.”
“How about down to Prescott?”
“I need to keep from towns these days.”
Sally Sue understood what he meant. Flimflam men like him had come through her neighborhood in Kansas City all the time. What they said was always too good to be true. The last one had sold a tonic that gave folks diarrhea, including her ma. Sally Sue hadn’t been able to enter the outhouse for a week, the stench had been so bad.
“If I write a quick note, will you post it for me? I’d really appreciate it.”
“Be happy to.” He beamed. “I’ll wait right here.”
Sally Sue ran in the cabin, grabbed her writing materials out of her basket, set them on the table, and sat. Dipping the pen in ink, she started writing:
Dear Mama,
I’m okay.
That was a lie. Sally Sue scratched it out and started again:
Ma,
I’ve been kidnapped by the bank robber and taken to a homestead outside Flagstaff. Please send help.
Your daughter,
Sally Sue
She hurriedly wrote another:
Sheriff Mack,
I’m out at the Ivrys’ place with Clifford the outlaw. Please bring a posse.
Sally Sue Sullivan
She folded the notes in half, slid them into her last two envelopes, addressed each, grabbed some coins for stamps, and ran back outside. But the wagon was way up on top of the knoll. Darn it! She stomped her foot, ran out onto the meadow, and opened her mouth to yell.
“Who’s that?” Cliff came around the side of the cabin on the mare.
She froze, hid the letters behind her, and started backing up toward the cabin. “Nobody. Just a flimflam man. I sent him away.”
“Really? What’ve you got there?” Cliff asked.
“Uh, just a little poetry I’m writing.”
“I didn’t know you wrote poetry.”
“You don’t know everything about me.”
“I suppose not.” He rode toward the barn, a fowl swinging from the back of his saddle. He stopped and turned around. “Do you want to learn how to pluck a turkey?”
“Not really.” She averted her eyes away from the disgusting dead bird. She couldn’t imagine touching it, let alone plucking it. At home, they got their meat ready to cook from a butcher. Next, Cliff would be asking her to muck the horse manure.
“Clean out the fireplace, why don’t you?”
Sally Sue saw some things lying in the mud. She stooped down, picked them up, and brushed them off on her trousers: black lace and red ribbon remnants. Had the man left them for her because he felt guilty about running off, or had he dropped them by accident? Didn’t really matter. She’d keep them anyway.
She hid the letters and the remnants in the trunk under the red dress. Was there anything more she could have done to get that man to take her with him? She set to work cleaning out the fireplace ashes, now that they had cooled.
After a supper of flapjacks and eggs, she rinsed the dishes while Cliff reset and started the fire. She checked his holey socks to make sure they were dry on the hearth. From the trunk, she pulled out the darning egg and sat in the rocker. She inserted the egg into the sock under the hole and stretched it slightly, examining it.
His tall body stood before her, and when she looked up, he was smiling. “This is just cozy.”
“What?”
“Nothing.” Cliff knocked his pipe on the mantel and sat across from her. He added tobacco to the pipe, lit it, took a puff, and blew out the smoke. The aromas of anisette and chocolate filled the air.
She put her basket on her lap and searched her sewing kit for a needle.
“Darn it!” She jumped up. “Mouse droppings. They’re all over in here.”
“I’m sorry. Let me take care of it for you.” He began to stand.
“No, you set.” She waved her hand at him. “I’ll be right back.”
She shook out all her supplies off the porch, waggled the basket upside down, and stomped back inside.
“That darned powder didn’t work.”
“It hasn’t been long. You gotta give it some time.” She could tell Cliff was trying not to laugh.
She held up her metal tatting shuttle. The collar she’d been making had been nibbled through. “How much time?”
He shrugged.
At least her Bible hadn’t been eaten. She was glad she had put it in her basket. She’d planned to read it to her bedridden aunt. Had she died? What did Ma think now that it was long past time for Sally Sue to return home?
Sally Sue found her biggest needle and pulled the egg and some yarn scraps from her pocket. She chose indigo blue, to match his eyes. She paused. She shouldn’t be thinking like that. Instead, she chose blue to match the sky and threaded it through the needle.
“How did the turkey cleaning go?” she asked.
“Fine, fine. We’ll be eating some tomorrow.” He took another puff on his pipe
.
“Did you get all the buckshot out of it?” One time, she had broken a back tooth on some the butcher hadn’t found.
“No buckshot. I use a bow and arrow. It’s cleaner that way.”
“Really? Like an Indian? Wouldn’t you be able to get more turkeys with a gun?” She leaned toward the lantern hanging nearby and carefully began to weave the needle around the hole, making sure it lay flat. If it didn’t, he could get a blister on his foot—though why she should care about that, she didn’t know.
He put down his pipe on the end table next to him, stoked the fire, and sat again. “I only kill what I’m gonna eat.”
That made sense. She began to create the warp over the sock hole. She looked up to say something, but his eyes had drooped closed.
Loneliness gnawed at her chest. She began to give up on the notion of ever going home again. She missed Rusty the mutt. Did he still wait by the door for her return with sad eyes and whining lonesomeness? She missed her favorite dress, sky blue and white checkers, with the blue satin bow she’d worn to the potluck the night Johnny Jones sat next to her.
She missed her favorite books, which lined the shelf in her bedroom: Walt Whitman, Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters. Main Street, with the café, bank, and courthouse. The giant pine in the town square. She didn’t miss Pastor Grimes’s guilt-ridden sermons but longed to sing hymns with the congregation. She even had begun to miss her ma.
Weaving the last loose ends, she made sure her sewing was secure. If she used knots, Cliff would get blisters for sure. There she went again, worrying about his blisters. She folded the socks and put them on her lap to give to him to take to the barn. The fire crackled.
She looked up, and he was staring at her, his eyes bright in the firelight. “Sally Sue, read me one of your poems.”
She flushed and put a hand to her cheek. He probably thought she was embarrassed. How imprudent she was to have told him she wrote poetry. “They’re private.”
“Please.” He paused and leaned toward her. “When I was growing up, my ma used to read to us every night.”
“Us?” He’d never mentioned anything personal about his life before.
He lit his pipe again. “Ma, Pa, three brothers, me, and my little sister, Lula. She was cute as a button. Kind of reminds me of you.”
Sally Sue felt herself blush again, for real this time. “Where was that?”
“Buffalo.”
“New York?”
The fire snapped.
“How long since you’ve seen them?” she asked.
“Nigh on many years. They’re all gone now.” He sighed.
“I’m sorry.”
“Pa and my brothers died in the Civil War. I’m the only one who survived.”
“You must have been only a boy.”
“Fourteen. Lied about my age to enlist. When I finally returned home, Ma and Lula had passed from consumption.” He unwrapped the kerchief from around his neck and wiped tears from his eyes.
Sally Sue had a hankering to put her arms around him. She got up the nerve to finally ask him the big question again: “Why’d you do it? Why’d you rob that bank?”
He scowled at her. “I had my reasons.”
“What reasons?”
He shrugged sadly. “Please read me a poem. It would feel ever so good to hear you.”
Her shoulders fell. “Maybe some other time.”
“Please.”
“I could read you something from the Bible.” She picked it out of her basket. “What’s your favorite?”
“The Psalms.”
She couldn’t believe it. “They’re my favorite also.” She opened to the first verse and began, “Blessed is the man . . .”
25
The next day, early in the morning, without even eating breakfast, Cliff took off again without telling Sally Sue where he was going or when he’d be back. What did he do all day? Was he hunting again?
Most of the snow had melted, but dark clouds still hung overhead. She put another log on the fire. She sure needed a bath. She untied her braids. The matted mess, which hung down to her waist, itched like the dickens, as if it had a mouse nest in it. She tried to untangle the snarls but couldn’t get her brush through them.
It had been two weeks since she’d last bathed. Saturdays at home were bath days. Early in the morning, she’d heat water, fill the tub, climb in, and wash her hair. After she got out, Ma would brush it out, and by the end of the day, it would be dry, ready to put up for the church potluck.
The water basins in the cabin were all too small. If she told Cliff she wanted a bath, he’d probably throw her in the horse trough. How had the woman who lived here before, the one with the beautiful dress, bathed?
Rain tapped on the window and soon battered the tin roof. She scooped a handful of soap flakes from the box and ran outside. Shivering in her nightgown, gritting her teeth, she stood in the downpour, letting the cold water douse her body.
Her fingers massaged the soap flakes into her scalp for a few minutes and rubbed the rain along her shoulders, underarms, arms, stomach, back, and legs. Her feet were muddy, so she’d need to deal with them inside later. When she couldn’t take the cold anymore, she threw back her head and let the rain rinse out her locks. She rushed back inside, slipped out of her clean nightgown, laid it on the crib to dry, wrapped a blanket around her, and warmed herself by the fire. It felt wonderful to be clean.
She gripped her brush but couldn’t even begin to get it through the snarls. At that moment, she missed her ma. This would never do. Sally Sue really needed help, but there was only one other person on the ranch, and she’d never ask him for any favors.
Rain continued to pound on the roof. She found her sewing scissors in her basket, and tightened the blanket around her chest. She grabbed a knotted tendril resting on her shoulder, but her small scissors wouldn’t go through it.
“What are you up to now?” Cliff stood in the doorway with a grin on his face.
She shrugged. Bare shouldered, she wrapped the blanket more tightly around her.
“Let me help.” He pulled a chair over near the fire. “Sit here.” He found a pair of larger scissors in a drawer and put a hand on her head. “How short do you want it?”
“Get rid of it all!”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
He began to snip, dropping handfuls of hair on the floor.
Sally Sue kept her head still, closed her eyes, and listened to the sound of the scissors. She pictured a nice shoulder-length style, easy to braid.
He could be so kind and caring. She tried to imagine what it would be like to be married to someone like that. Sleeping next to a warm body every night. Marriage—it was expected, but after what her ma and pa had gone through, she didn’t think she would ever want it.
Cliff hummed softly and continued to cut away at her hair.
But she did have a yearning for a child. Too bad you couldn’t raise one without a husband. Well, you could if your husband died or ran off. But you couldn’t get a child without being married at some point. Then you could have a baby and it wouldn’t be a sin.
Cliff dropped another clump to the ground, walked around in front of her, lifted a handful of hair, and snipped away until he could see her face.
He stepped back and raised his brows. “Not bad.”
“Can I see?” she asked.
“Not until I’m done.” He started cutting again. “Ready to start learning to cook yet?”
“Maybe.”
“How about tomorrow?”
She hoped she wouldn’t make a fool of herself by burning up the meal. “Sure thing.”
“What do you want me to teach you first?”
She knew right away. “Apple stew.”
He grinned at her.
His offspring might have his blue eyes and a cleft chin too. What kind of father would he be?
He had the bluest eyes, eyes that changed color with the weather. On stormy days they were
steely gray; misty days, dove gray; snowy days, powder blue. In sunny weather, they seemed azure, like the sky. They also changed with his moods. Happy: bright blue; sad: pale; angry, like during the robbery: steel gray. After he drank his rum, they turned murky, like a dirty pond.
Recently, his eyes had been mostly bright. She knew now that he’d never harm her. In fact, he acted like he was even sweet on her, grinning and flattering. He could just be pretending, though. No, he wasn’t. Maybe she could let down her guard a little. He wouldn’t turn back into the fiend who’d robbed the bank and kidnapped her six weeks earlier.
The rain had stopped; the only sound was the scissors, still snipping.
After a few more minutes, he said, “All done! Take a look.” He pointed toward the mirror.
She wandered over and stared at her reflection. “Eek! I look like a drowned mouse.”
“No, you don’t. It’s much more practical.”
She ran her fingers through it. He was right about that.
“It shows off your face more.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Pretty enough to marry.”
What an odd thing to say. “Are you proposing?” How could she have just said that?
“Maybe.” He ruffled his hand over her hair and went out the door.
She looked in the mirror. Was she really pretty, like Cliff had said? She tossed her head back and forth and brushed her hair, marvelously lighter. She wouldn’t even need to braid it; she could just run her hands through it. It would be easier to keep clean too. She glanced at the door, let the towel drop, and inspected her body. Her breasts weren’t as voluptuous as that hussy’s in the green corset, but Sally Sue’s small waist and petite frame might be just as appealing to a man.
Now that she was clean, she wanted to put on something more feminine. She opened the trunk and held up the dress, but then decided against it and donned her men’s clothes. She lifted the washbowl onto the floor, cleaned her dirty feet, and put on socks and boots.
A racket came from the barn. She wanted to see what Cliff was up to, so she wandered out there and opened the door.
“I told you never to come in here!” he yelled at her.