Woman of Three Worlds

by Jeanne Williams

  Stallings’ bushy moustache couldn’t quite conceal a grin as he placed a small overdone roast in front of Edward and hastily withdrew.

  Red spots burned in Regina’s cheeks. “It’s too utterly hateful!” she sobbed, springing up. “Your—your friends, Edward, are teaching my children to despise their Southern heritage!”

  “What’s that?” inquired Edward.

  Regina wailed and darted from the room. Edward followed with a sheepishly distressed glance at Brittany. Stallings brought in bread and butter, rice, and a bowl of evil-looking brown goo with black lumps. “Gravy burned again, miss,” he said cheerfully.

  In spite of Brittany’s misgivings at the chill tone of Regina’s letter, she’d hoped deep down that she could become part of her cousin’s family, love them, and be loved. It was all too painfully clear that such love as there was in this house came from poor, weak Edward.

  Brittany sighed and began to dish up the rice.

  The cot maneuvered into Angela’s room by Stallings and a trooper had a thin mattress with batting stripped bare from parts to form hard lumps in others. In spite of it and a thin pillow appropriated from the settee, Brittany had no trouble going to sleep that night. She didn’t wake till spirited music filtered insistently into her consciousness. The unfamiliar white ceiling puzzled her until a wad of batting in the small of her back reminded her that she was in her cousin’s house.

  That music! Bold and gay, it filled the beginning day with challenge. Brittany hurried to the small window. Cavalrymen were riding out as the band played and women and children waved. Gallant in high black boots, blue uniforms with yellow stripes down the trouser legs, and black broad-brimmed hats, each man, in addition to sidearms, wore a saber, and a carbine was fastened across each saddle.

  Though this was the army that had defeated her father’s and though the flag rippling in red-and-white streams from the flagpole was the one that had struck down the Bonnie Blue flag of the South, Brittany couldn’t keep from thrilling to the sight. Craning her neck to try to see the head of the column winding out of the basin, she thought she glimpsed a gray hat.

  Whatever else Zach Tyrell might be, he was no coward, but why had he chosen to make her a scandal? Less than that had fatally ruined a woman’s reputation. And yet, though she was angry with him and remembered Regina’s warnings with a stabbing pang, her mouth tingled at the memory of his.

  In the bed behind her, Angela stretched and yawned. “That rackety old band! I declare, I don’t know why they have to make all that commotion when the men ride out.”

  “Your mother and Ned are out by the rectangle, waving good-bye to your father.”

  Angela sniffed. “That’s the parade ground. Mama has to, or people would know she and Daddy had a row. Ned’s still little enough to like uniforms and horses. He even wants to join the cavalry when he grows up.”

  Both appalled and amused at the girl’s bored voice, Brittany tried to tease a bit. “Don’t you want to marry an officer?”

  “Not unless he’s at least a colonel so we can be sure of nice quarters even when he’s not the commander.” She spoke with a promptness that showed she’d either worked it out for herself or been thus admonished by her mother.

  Unnerved at such calculating shrewdness in a child, Brittany listened to the last flourish of music. “Does that tune have a name?”

  “It’s ‘The Girl I Left Behind Me.’ The band always plays it when the troops go on an expedition.”

  There was a rap on the door. “Angela, love,” came Regina’s voice. “You and Cousin Brittany must hurry and have breakfast. We have to move today!”

  “Today?” wailed Angela.

  “Yes,” returned her mother peevishly. “Major Erskine’s lost no time in ranking the Fenwicks out of quarters, so naturally they’re taking ours. The Tattersalls are packed to leave on the stage, so the sooner we start carrying things over, the sooner we’ll be through.”

  Regina’s steps moved away as Brittany hurried into her clothes.

  Since the Graves owned none of their quarters’ furniture, moving consisted of countless trips to carry mirrors, pictures, curtains, rugs, cooking equipment, dishes, bedding, and clothing to the dwelling next door.

  “Only two bedrooms!” Regina fumed as Brittany helped her make the big bed in the larger sleeping chamber. “Stallings promised to rig a partition between Ned’s and Angela’s cots, but what I’m to do with you is beyond me!”

  These quarters had no settee, but a long broad bench against the parlor wall was covered with a long flowered cushion that the Tattersalls hadn’t been able to take with them.

  “I can sleep there,” suggested Brittany with a nod.

  “There certainly isn’t an alternative. But what about your clothes and things?”

  In spite of wry sadness over the things she’d had to leave at Tristesse, Brittany was startled into laughter. “Two books, toilet articles, a little jewelry, and three dresses,” she enumerated. “They won’t take much room.”

  It was late afternoon by then and Stallings was helping, having evidently finished his military duties. “How about the washroom, mum?” he offered as he hung a mirror over a scarred chest of drawers. “I could put up a rack for Miss Laird’s clothes and make her a nice little dresser out of a couple of packing crates.”

  Regina looked almost grateful. “Thank you, Stallings. That’s a good idea. But get supper first, won’t you?”

  Stallings stayed late to prepare Brittany’s little dressing niche. He had even scrounged a veined mirror to hang above the packing crates so that she could see to do her hair. She thanked him warmly, suspecting that except for his ingenuity her things would have remained in her valise indefinitely.

  “My pleasure, miss,” he grinned, showing chipped, tobacco-stained teeth through the heavy moustache. He drooped one eyelid in a confidential wink. “Zach Tyrell asked me to do anything I could to make you comfy. Just let me know if you need something. Zach saved my hide when a bunch of Apaches jumped the wood detail I was with, so I owe him plenty.”

  The big soldier went whistling out the back door. As Brittany put away her belongings, she didn’t know whether to be grateful to Zach or annoyed with him for acting as if he had some right to be concerned in her affairs.

  Still, she prayed he’d come back safely, with all the men who’d ridden out that day.

  V

  They were barely settled when Mrs. Shaw gave a tea, as much, Brittany suspected, to keep the wives’ spirits up while their men were away as to welcome the newcomer. Mrs. Shaw had the only maid on the post, Marie, a woman so flat, plain, and colorless that even women-starved soldiers had left her spinsterhood unassailed.

  While Mrs. Shaw poured tea into almost transparent china cups, Marie offered plates of scones, little jam tarts, and tiny sandwiches made with cucumbers from the post garden and cress from a stream.

  It was a small gathering. Alice Taunton, the chaplain’s wife, was a tiny woman with alert dark eyes and waving white hair drawn into a loose knot with tortoiseshell combs. She obviously felt that if Colonel Shaw commanded the men’s temporal life, her husband, Major Taunton, was in charge of their morals.

  “That bar in the post trader’s!” she began as soon as Brittany had been introduced and a few polite words exchanged. “It encourages the men to dissipate themselves and brawl. Most of them don’t have a dime left after payday.”

  “There’s not much other recreation for them except baseball,” Mrs. Shaw said soothingly. “After all, Mrs. Taunton, most of them are young, and there’s no nearby town where they can go for entertainment.”

  “But the drunkenness!”

  “Colonel Shaw feels,” said his wife firmly, “that Mr. DeLong fills a great need in supplying a decent, honest place where men can socialize.” She offered Regina more tea. “Are you nicely moved in, my dear?”

  “Yes, though we’re sorely crowded,” began Regina. She began to complain of the children’s partitioned room when Gertrude
Fenwick, the surgeon’s wife, gave a toss of her tight taffy curls.

  “You’re lucky these quarters have floors, or you’d be up to your ears in mud when it rains. I was ranked into a hall at our first post and had our first baby there. You’ve little to fret about, Regina, but when you’re tempted, it might help to remember that your choice of quarters advances with your husband’s rank and eventually you’ll be cursed by young wives for having the nicest dwelling—which, of course, you’ll feel you’ve earned!”

  She helped herself to another scone. Mrs. Shaw bridged the awkwardness. “We lived in a doubled tent for one Nevada winter,” she laughed. “The problem was keeping from freezing without burning down the shelter. At Camp Supply, the floors were dirt, so damp that mushrooms grew overnight. Up at Fort Fetterman, we lived in a dugout.” She paused, glancing around and said slowly, “Still, we were together. And because we were, each of those places was home.”

  On the way back to the Graveses’ quarters, Regina said crossly, “It’s all very well for her to romanticize being together and in love in a dugout! They never had children. And she has a spare bedroom, that lovely big parlor, a maid and a striker! I’ll wager when she was a second lieutenant’s wife and pushed about by everyone that she wasn’t so philosophical.”

  Brittany suspected that Miranda Shaw had never been a whiner but it seemed impolitic to tell her cousin that, so they walked on in silence.

  The detachment returned a week later without having glimpsed an Apache. “Zach Tyrell left the column when we rode north of his ranch this morning,” explained Edward to Brittany, wisely picking a moment when his wife was out of the room. “But he said to tell you he’ll be in for the dance this Saturday.”

  Regina returned before Brittany could say that Tyrell’s whereabouts were none of her concern, which saved her from a lie. The truth was that he was seldom out of her mind, and she’d spent that week alternately worrying about his safety and devising withering speeches to deliver when she next saw him.

  Of course, she’d been busy otherwise too, helping Regina settle into new quarters and beginning lessons with the children. Neither could do more than the most elementary sums, and Angela couldn’t read much better than Ned, who was in McGuffey’s primer. Her writing was almost as bad as her spelling. Brittany did her best to make lessons interesting, and Ned responded, though he had a plodding mind. Angela was quick but flighty. The only way to get her to study was to say that they were staying in the parlor-classroom till she’d satisfactorily completed her various stints.

  “Sergeant Meadows wasn’t mean, like you!” the elfbeautiful child hurled at Brittany. “He never checked papers or made us read out loud.”

  “Perhaps that’s why your mother decided you needed another teacher,” Brittany said with pleasant firmness.

  “But Hattie’s knocked twice!”

  “Yes, she’s waiting for you to come out, so why don’t you apply yourself?”

  Angela shot her teacher-cousin a spiteful glance but attacked her division problems and was soon finished. Brittany sighed as she watched her run out and link arms with black-braided, skinny Hattie Fenwick, who didn’t attend school at all, because her mother considered her too delicate.

  Schooling at Camp Bowie, as at most frontier posts, was rather casual. The school served as a library, a chapel on Sunday, and a courts-martial room when required. Sergeant Meadows got extra pay of thirty-five cents a day for his exertions and still had to carry out his regular duties, including his turn at guard. Another sergeant had classes at night for the enlisted men. The post commander strictly prohibited favoritism to officers’ children, though they were not required to attend school, as were children of enlisted men.

  This seemed peculiar to Brittany, but she was rapidly learning the ways of military life and becoming familiar with the small world of the post.

  One thing that took some getting used to was using the adobe “sink,” or toilet, set out behind their quarters. Except for an attached chicken coop, there was no screening of trees or fences, and for a while Brittany looked to make sure no men were around before she dashed for the little building.

  The parade ground where the flag was raised in the morning and lowered to “Taps” at night was where guard mount was performed in dress uniform before breakfast, in midafternoon, and before “Taps.” Because it slanted a lot, drill was held on flatter areas.

  There was stable call down at the corrals every afternoon. Dressed in stable frocks of unbleached drilling, troopers groomed their mounts, oiled and polished riding gear, and cleaned the stables. Each corral had its own blacksmith’s shop, granary, farrier’s and saddler’s rooms. The cavalry barracks, kitchen, and mess were catercorner across the parade ground from Officers’ Row, in front of the corrals. The granary, quartermaster’s storehouse, guardhouse, and bakery were between the cavalry complex and hospital, which flanked the school next to the adjutant’s office, or headquarters, the official center of the post.

  The social center was the post trader’s, operated by Sidney DeLong, a pleasant gentleman who had a reputation for honesty, though wares were necessarily expensive because of freighting costs. Next to his office were two rooms where officers could play billiards and cards, and there was a bar for enlisted men.

  The store carried things not available at the quartermaster’s: imported delicacies, canned fruits, tobacco, sewing supplies, medicines, shoe blacking, dishes, utensils, soap, and items like Van Buskirk’s Fragrant Sozodent, a dentifrice promised to keep “teeth pearly white, the gums rosy, and the breath sweet.” There were shelves of beverages, imported Irish soda water and root beer concentrate, Guiness stout, Schlitz and Anheuser beer, champagne, wine, and whiskey.

  The impending dance had sent all the women, from Mrs. Shaw to the laundresses, flocking to the store for the wherewithal to furbish their best dresses.

  “It’s too vexing!” Regina grumbled, eyeing the array of trims and ornaments. “Precious little to choose from and all priced sky-high!”

  Brittany didn’t answer, though she wished she had a little pocket money to spend on lace to freshen the sleeves and collar of her shabby best blue dress. Apparently, the notion of giving Brittany a small wage for her governess—maid-of-all-work chores had never occurred to Regina, and Brittany shrank from asking.

  While Regina fretfully held up and discarded braid, ribbons, frills, and beading, Brittany enjoyed sniffing blended odors and studied labels on everything from Jamaica Ginger to Vermifuge and Vaseline.

  A broad pink arm reached in front of Regina to extract a yellow silk rose from the merchandise. Regina looked down her nose as much as was possible at a woman who towered over her. “Pray have the goodness to let me examine that flower,” she snapped.

  “Dearie, I’ve got one tub of clothes in the boiler and another ready to wring out,” returned the woman good-naturedly. She held the rose against her carroty hair and pursed her lips as she studied the effect. “You got all day. I don’t.”

  “Why, you rude, pushy—”

  The orange-haired woman shook her head in regret. “Don’t suit.” She dropped the rose in front of Regina. “You can have it, mum.”

  “After you’ve mauled it around?” Regina snapped, cheeks crimson.

  The woman had beautiful violet eyes, dimples in her plump cheeks, and a gap-toothed grin, which broadened. “Much as my hands stay in water and soap, they’re cleaner than yours, dearie.” She picked up a massed bow of brown velvet and called to the trader, “Mr. DeLong, will you trust me for this till payday?”

  “Happy to, Mrs. O’Malley,” said the dark-bearded, moustached trader, whose wavy hair was gray at the sides. “Need snuff for Patrick?”

  “Don’t worry about that one running short,” she chuckled. “But you might put a few beers on the tab. Schlitz.”

  “Right you are.” The trader handed over the bottles and bow. “That brown velvet will really set off your hair,” he complimented. “Save a dance for me.”

  “Yo
u bet I will,” she laughed and strode out, her vitality attracting admiring glances from several men, though “healthy” was the most praise that could be given to her looks.

  DeLong, still smiling, turned to Regina. “Have you decided, ma’am?”

  “Thank you,” she said icily, “but I’m not interested in goods that have been handled by everyone at the post.” As his jaw dropped she swept toward the door but froze in the entrance.

  “Zach Tyrell!” she muttered almost beneath her breath. “Lord save us! He’s got an Apache brat!”

  Brittany didn’t know how much she’d hoped that Tyrell would call at the Graveses’ quarters till she saw him ride away from headquarters. His rescue of her would have been excuse enough to inquire. But there he went, back as straight as any cavalryman’s, though with a loose easiness in his posture. He didn’t even glance around.

  Perhaps, she told herself irefully, he’d rescued another woman by now and was flirting with her. “I wonder where he found that Indian child,” she ventured to Regina.

  “Edward will tell us at noon.” Regina’s brow furrowed. “Can you sew, Brittany? Since I couldn’t find a pretty trim for my green dress, I’ll have to wear my gray, and the hem needs turning up just a trifle to hide where it’s worn.”

  Edward’s news of Tyrell’s report was disquieting. “He tended to things at his ranch after our patrol and then managed to locate the raiders’ trail down in Skeleton Canyon. Crossed the Mexican border and encountered Mexican soldiers who’d skirmished with the Apaches and captured this child. They say that the fiercest Apache leaders didn’t surrender and go to San Carlos. Instead, Geronimo, Juh, and other chiefs are down in the Sierra Madre with perhaps four hundred followers. Even figuring lots of them are women and children, it would seem we’re in for trouble.”

  Regina’s eyes dilated with fright. “You mean that after all that hullabaloo, Agent Clum took peaceful Chiricahuas up to the reservation while the renegades are still on the prowl?”