by Judith Stacy
“The name’s Ingram, ma’am,” he said, almost offering his hand until the roughness of it, and perhaps their audience, apparently made him change his mind. “The colonel knows you’re supposed to get here today?”
“I sent him a telegram with the best estimation of when I’d arrive, yes. I have a letter telling me to come, if you don’t believe me,” she said, because she suddenly felt that he didn’t.
“The letter was from the colonel?”
“From his sister-in-law, Mrs. Lavinia Selby. I also have two subsequent letters from the secretary of the Selby Cattle Company.”
“The secretary,” he repeated.
“Yes,” she said pointedly.
He drew a breath and gazed somewhere over her left shoulder.
“I work for Colonel Selby. I can take you the rest of the way,” he said, looking at her again. “Can you ride, ma’am?”
“I cannot, Mr. Ingram.” Her only experience on horseback had been when she was a child—on a gentle mare that had been more a pet than a mode of transportation.
He looked away, and if he wasn’t wondering what he’d gotten himself into, he gave a good imitation of it.
“I’m supposed to be here,” she said. “I don’t understand why there is a problem.”
“Not for me to say, ma’am. I…don’t suppose you could drive a wagon. I would drive it myself, but I need to be on horseback in case—” He abruptly broke off and frowned.
“I’m aware of the troubles out here with the tribes,” she said. She was aware—and she had come anyway.
“Colonel Selby has his own treaty with the Indians—Mrs. Selby saw to that. So far they’re trusting her more than him or the United States government.”
“Then what are you worried about?”
“Well, you never know, ma’am. There’s not much law out here. Stealing cattle and horses is pretty common, for one thing,” he said, as if he wanted to see her reaction to such a revelation.
“Treaties get broken,” she said, because she was more concerned about that than about common thievery. There had been times in her life when she would have stolen a cow or a horse gladly, given the opportunity.
“Not by Colonel Selby’s people. Not yet, anyway. Have you got a trunk, ma’am?”
“I had it taken to that building up there,” she said, pointing to a two-story structure halfway up the hillside. “I was afraid it might rain.”
“It doesn’t rain that much here,” he said, in spite of the muddy ground around them.
She could sense a certain element of reproach in his tone of voice, but for what she had no idea. For sending her trunk to an inconvenient place? For arriving at all? She just knew she didn’t like it.
“Then where did the mud come from?”
“Late snow.”
“It snows in June here?”
“Sometimes. And the late snows are pretty wet. The winter snows aren’t.”
“Are we leaving now?” she asked.
“No, ma’am. It’s nearly a full day’s ride to the colonel’s ranch. I reckon we’ll be staying the night here.”
Someone in the nearby group of men guffawed at the remark, but Ingram paid no attention to him, in spite of the sudden redness of his ears.
“Don’t worry, ma’am,” he said again. “I reckon one of the railroad surveyors will give up his bed for you—one way or the other. We’ll leave in the morning after the funeral.”
“Whose funeral?”
He walked on without answering, and she followed, understanding now what the white shirt was likely for. Someone he knew had died here.
She tried to worry about his plan for finding a bed for her, and couldn’t, in spite of the fact that nothing she’d experienced thus far left room for any expectation whatsoever that there would be decent accommodations for the female traveling public. All she wanted was a place to lie down, and she didn’t much care where.
“Are you hungry, ma’am?” he asked over his shoulder.
“No,” she said, because of her fatigue. “Yes,” she immediately amended, because she suddenly remembered where she was, and that, out here, one did not forgo a meal of any kind and expect to soon find another.
She looked around at the sound of horses. A detachment of the U.S. Army—coming in from their ride to the stalled train, she decided. There was supposed to be a garrison in the vicinity, but she couldn’t imagine where. She watched them pass, averting her eyes at the last moment and ignoring their rapt attention as decorum demanded. She realized after a moment that Ingram, too, was staring at her.
“You needn’t concern yourself about them, ma’am. The captain has his wife and child with him. He keeps a firm hand on his men out of respect for them.”
“I’m not concerned. I’ve lived in an occupied town as one of the conquered enemy for the last four years. I’m quite accustomed to what soldiers are like.”
“That explains it then.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You’ve got a soft way of speaking. I reckon it’s because of where you come from.”
If there was a question in there somewhere, she made no attempt to find it. He looked as if he were trying to make up his mind about something.
“I don’t want to stand here any longer, sir,” she said. “And I’m not concerned that there’s a saloon in the building where my trunk was taken.” She started walking in that direction, leaving him to follow or not.
The truth of the matter was that there were all kinds of things in the building where her trunk had been taken. The drummer from Cincinnati had called it the “exchange”—which meant, as far as she could tell, a saloon, a general store, a telegraph office of sorts and a very limited, one dish restaurant—and probably a house of ill repute somewhere upstairs or in the back.
She walked along the muddy street, all too aware of the fact that the ground smelled more of manure than of wet dirt. But traveling cross-country had taught her to take pleasure in the small things—like stepping up out of the mud and onto an actual wooden sidewalk, even briefly.
A man lay on the rough planks next to the nearest building, his body curled as tightly into a ball as he could make it. She thought at first that he was humming, but then she realized that he was crying.
“Is he drunk?” she asked Ingram, who had caught up with her.
“More sorrowful than drunk, ma’am,” he said.
“And lying on the sidewalk is his remedy for it?”
“I reckon so, ma’am. Now and again.”
She didn’t say anything more. Sorrow she understood—and the kind of despair that made a person want to lie down and weep.
“Most of the time he’s all right,” Ingram said. “He works hard. He’s a good hand—a good man to ride with when you’re out looking for strays. He’d not leave you behind if things went bad.”
The sidewalk abruptly ended, and she stepped bravely into the muddy street again. The next building was some distance away, and she noted with interest that the lawyer who occupied it, a man named Hapwell, seemed to be the local undertaker, as well.
But she made no comment. She begrudged no man his method of making his living, short of murder or taking advantage of women.
“Will you wait here, ma’am?” Ingram said. “I need to go inside a minute.”
He didn’t give her a chance to say whether she would or not, and after a moment she followed behind him, stepping up on the crude lean-to porch to wait out of the wind.
“Is she ready?” she heard him ask someone she couldn’t see through the windows.
“She’s ready. The baby, too. The reverend says he’s not going to say anything over her. The girls want to know if you’ll do it.”
“Me?”
“That’s what they said—ask Dan if he’ll do it.”
“I’m a long way from a preacher, Hap.”
“Well, it’s not like you haven’t done it before. That’s good enough for the girls. I don’t think Lillyann and her baby would be offended b
y it.”
No one said anything for a moment.
“You’ll get your money. It might take me awhile—”
“I’m not worried about the money, Dan. I know you’re good for it. What do you want me to tell them?” the man she couldn’t see asked.
“Tell them what I said. I’m not a preacher.”
She stepped back as the door opened. He looked startled to see her there, but he didn’t say anything.
“Who has died?” she asked. He kept walking and didn’t answer her. She had to hurry along to keep up. She kept glancing at him, but she didn’t ask any more questions.
“I’d be pleased to know your name, ma’am,” he said when she’d given up on any further conversation.
“Miss Eleanor Hansen.”
“There are some crude men here, Miss Hansen,” he said when they’d gone a bit farther.
“Are you one of them?”
“I’ve…been known to be,” he said.
“Then I’d appreciate it if you didn’t backslide until I’m safely delivered to Colonel Selby’s place.”
“I’ll try not to, miss. The trouble with the straight and narrow, though, is you can’t always tell where that is.”
They walked in silence the rest of the way to the exchange—which was a good thing, because she was growing more and more out of breath. Finally, she had to stop altogether.
“You’ll get used to the thin air,” he said. “If you stay.”
“Why—wouldn’t I—stay?”
“Most people don’t.”
“You did—apparently.”
“I like it. It suits me.”
She glanced around her, still trying to get enough air, wondering what about this place could possibly suit him. She stood for a moment longer, then began walking again, and she still had the sense that he was being wary and watchful.
Given her breathless state, it would have been appropriate for him to offer her his arm the rest of the way up the steep slope, but he didn’t. Once they reached the building, he did hold the door open for her to go inside.
She could see the telegraph office straight in front of her, the counters for the general store to her right, a potbellied stove, a few tables where one could eat. And, on her left, the swinging doors to the saloon. Someone in the saloon was playing the concertina, or trying to. She could see the stairs that led to the second floor, and two women—girls—standing on them, watching her with interest. She could hear the slap of cards just inside the doors and an occasional oath. The entire place was smoky because of the windy back draft from the stove.
It pleased Eleanor to know that she could send a telegram regarding her safe arrival—if she’d had anyone to send it to. Her mother had long since given up on her, and there was no one who would care but Maria Markham Woodard, her only friend left in this world and the one who had told her about Lavinia Selby’s quest for a teacher brave enough to come to Wyoming Territory. It was Maria who had pointed out that, fallen woman or not, “Nell” had quite enough education to undertake the job of teaching children if she felt like it. And it was Maria who didn’t throw it into her face that she was desperately in need of a new place and a new beginning as “Eleanor.”
So here she was. Two thousand miles from home. Alone and, thus far, in spite of the mud and the thin air and the failed transportation, without regret.
Ingram was talking to the man behind the general store counter—who kept shaking his head. She spied her trunk sitting on the floor nearby. Her valise had been tossed on top of it. She had mistakenly assumed that both would be locked up someplace, and she went to get the valise, amazed that no one had walked off with it. She opened it, expecting to find half if not all the contents missing, but everything seemed to be just as she had packed it. Apparently, the thievery Ingram had mentioned was limited to livestock.
She opened the small velvet case lying nestled on the top, the daguerreotype of Rob Markham taken just before he went blithely off to war. Maria had given it to her the day she left to come to Wyoming Territory. Eleanor had destroyed her own copy, in a fit of grief and anger when word reached her that Rob had been killed at Gettysburg. She had hated Rob Markham then, in the same passionate way she’d always loved him. It was demented to hate a man for dying, but she had done so, and for a long time. How could she not? He wasn’t a soldier. He was a man of books and learning, and their kind of love happened but once in a lifetime. They would have opened a school together, had children and grown old together—and he had thrown it away on a cause that had destroyed more lives than could ever be counted. She still couldn’t bear to think of the terrible waste of it all, of him and of her. The pain had been unbearable. Seemingly without warning or conscious choice, she had become the flirtatious and irrepressible “Nell,” a favorite of the Yankee officers. She had taken the enemy to her bed, taken their money and their favors—and sometimes their abject admiration. And she had felt nothing. No shame. No regret. It seemed to her, when she dared to examine her behavior, that she had wanted to punish Rob as much as she’d wanted to punish the men who had killed him. But the reasons no longer mattered. She had a choice to start over. Now, she hoped and prayed that she was “Eleanor” again—or what was left of her.
She snapped the case closed and looked up to find Ingram standing nearby.
“No bed,” he said. He nodded toward where the man he’d been talking to was loudly hammering a nail into the wall. “He’s going to string up a couple of blankets so you’ll have some privacy. I’m not sure what you’ll be sleeping on, but you’ll be all right in here. The privy is out back. I wouldn’t go wandering around in the dark, though. I told him to get you something to eat. He set it over there.”
She looked at the small table he indicated near the stove, and nodded. Ingram walked with her and pulled out the chair.
“What happened to him?” he asked as she sat down.
“Who?”
“The man in the tintype.”
“What makes you think something happened to him?” she said, avoiding looking at him. The question unsettled her more than she wanted to admit. No one asked her about Rob Markham.
No one.
“You wouldn’t be here if it hadn’t.” He didn’t wait for a reply or for a criticism of his impertinent behavior. He left her sitting alone with her tin plate of beans and corn bread, and walked away, ultimately pushing through the swinging doors into the saloon.
The conversation inside and the concertina suddenly stopped. And all she could hear was the wind.
Chapter Two
The daguerreotype wasn’t the only memento Eleanor carried in her valise. She had Rob’s revolver, as well, a fancy pearl-handled model Mr. Markham had presented to both of his sons the day they marched away for glory. Rob had said the thing made him feel like a riverboat gambler, and some kind soul had sent it home with his personal effects months after the battle that had killed him. Maria had given it to her wrapped in a piece of linen the day Eleanor left Salisbury, just as the train pulled into the station. She hadn’t wanted to take it; it was an even sharper reminder of Rob and his dying than the daguerreotype. But she understood the way of the world, too much had happened in her life for her not to.
She had placed the revolver in her valise, and she had been surprised by the degree of comfort she received knowing it was there. She removed her hat, then took the revolver out and stretched out on the sacks of flour that had been draped with a rough wool blanket for her to sleep on. The blanket was thick enough to keep her from breathing in flour dust and wide enough for her to cover herself. Even with a gun in hand, it was better than sitting upright on a stagecoach or a train.
She lay in the semidarkness, listening to the ever-present wind whistling through the cracks in the building and to the muttering of voices in the saloon and the occasional burst of forced, female laughter, the kind designed to flatter some man into thinking his feeble attempt at wit and charm had met with favor. Eleanor wondered idly if the giddy laugh came
in response to something the terse Ingram had said.
She closed her eyes and drew a wavering breath, aware suddenly of the monumental step she had taken in coming to this place. It was likely that she would never see home again, and it surprised her that, expatriate by choice or not, it mattered.
For all her weariness, it took her a long while to finally fall asleep and what seemed like no time at all for someone to awaken her—a young girl with her blond hair in a long pigtail, holding a can of hot water and a piece of flannel.
Eleanor struggled to sit up, surprised that beams of daylight were coming in through the chinks in the walls.
“Danny said I was to bring this to you,” the girl said, setting the can on the floor and handing Eleanor the flannel. If it bothered her that Eleanor slept with a gun in her hand, it didn’t show.
“Who?” Eleanor said, trying to force herself awake.
“Dan Ingram. You know.”
Ingram. Clearly he was more accommodating than she had first thought.
“I don’t reckon you needed that gun,” the girl said, after a moment spent staring at the rumpled dress Eleanor had slept in, and at her open valise. “Dan wouldn’t let nobody bother you.”
“I expect you trust in Mr. Ingram more than I do,” Eleanor said, laying the revolver down beside her on the flour sacks.
“You don’t look like a schoolteacher,” the girl said. “Not any I ever seen, anyways. Can you sing?”
“Sing?” Eleanor said, thinking she’d misunderstood.
“Can you sing ‘Farewell My Friends’? It was Lillyann’s favorite song, only none of us knows the words to it. She used to sing it a lot, but I reckon none of us never paid that much attention. Just weren’t thinking she’d die like she did and we’d be wanting it. That old preacher and his sister—I bet they know it, but he won’t even come and say any words for her. Won’t even come and stand there while she’s put away.” She gave a heavy sigh and made no attempt to leave. “I figure we can do without him, though. Would you come? To Lillyann’s funeral?”