Bittersweet

by Anita Mills

  Near Fort Kearny, Nebraska Territory: July 31, 1865

  Flies buzzed, playing cat and mouse with the rolled newspaper in Laura Taylor’s hand. Drawn by food, they swarmed over the camp, and a closed tent flap was no match for the winged beasts, she realized wearily. By day, they held sway, feasting on everything from bread dough to meat cooking on a spit over fire, drowning themselves indiscriminately in coffee, milk, and gravy. Then at night, the mosquitoes from the Platte River took over, attacking any exposed inch of human skin in an insatiable quest for blood.

  Today, the supposedly dry heat was anything but, and within the confines of the tent, the humid air was stifling. Between swats, she had to stop to mop the sweat from her face. Telling herself she had an easier life than Jesse, she uncovered the bucket long enough to fill the dipper and wet a rag with the tepid water. After wiping her face, arms, neck, and the crevice between her breasts, she felt a little better, but as she reached to put the piece of wood back, she realized she was too late. Two flies were already swimming in the bucket.

  People who thought hell was a fiery pit deep in the earth hadn’t been to Nebraska in July, she decided as she secured the towel covering the bowl of bread dough. Sighing, she picked up the almost full bucket and carried it outside, where she tossed the flies out with the water. She supposed if she’d been like the men, she’d have just strained out the flies and drunk what was left, saving herself a lot of trouble. Bucket in hand, she headed to the river for water she’d have to strain and boil before she used it.

  While Jesse had it hard, too, she couldn’t help resenting how much of himself he was willing to trade to the railroad for that good pay. All William Russell had to do was dangle a little more money in front of him, and Jesse’d volunteer to do anything, work anywhere, even if it meant he had to work six and one-half days a week so far away that he only got back to camp twice a month, and then for just long enough to spend the night and pick up a clean change of clothes before he left again.

  He was doing it for her, he said, but she knew better. She hadn’t asked him to, she didn’t want him to, and no matter how much money he made, no dream was worth what he was doing to himself. She’d been alone through years of war, waiting for him to come home, and she was alone again, only this time she was fifteen hundred miles from home, living in a tent smack dab in the middle of a camp of the roughest, dirtiest men she’d ever laid eyes on. It was hard to dream in a place like this.

  But perhaps the worst aspect of the situation was that for the first time in her life, she found herself regarded as a liability. Jesse’s foreman had made it more than clear that he preferred hiring bachelors. In his opinion, a man’s having a wife gave him divided loyalties and kept him from giving his all to the railroad. There wasn’t any place for a decent woman here, he’d told Jesse. And when he’d seen her, he’d suggested she ought to go back to North Carolina, which was impossible.

  She and Jesse had sold her homeplace for just enough money to get them out there, so they’d have to make the best of things, she told herself resolutely. Her only other choice right now would be to go back to Omaha and stay there until fall, when the Union Pacific would be setting up winter quarters farther west. But she didn’t have anyone in Omaha, either.

  The one thing that Mr. Russell had been right about was that there weren’t any decent women out here, or if there were, she hadn’t seen them. But there sure wasn’t any dearth of the other kind, the hard-eyed hussies who plied their unfathomable trade in tents a few hundred yards beyond the camp. Hog ranches, those places were called. After pay envelopes were handed out, the unwashed, unkempt men streamed across the staked rail beds to stand in line, money in hand, for a ten-minute turn with a girl dozens of men had already been with that day. And when they came back, drunk and loud, they’d brag about how such and such a girl wouldn’t be able to sit for a week.

  No, she’d just have to get by alone until fall, she told herself. Russell had told Jesse if they got far enough west before they made winter camp, there was an abandoned trapper’s cabin on the railroad right-of-way out beyond Fort McPherson she and Jesse could use until it was time to move on in the spring. Jess didn’t know much about the place, but he said even if it was a shack, he’d make it habitable for her and the baby.

  “Well, ain’t you something?” somebody said behind her. “Umm-umm—if you don’t look good enough to eat, honey.”

  Whirling, she faced a leering stranger, and his manner frightened her. Running the tip of her tongue over dry lips, she considered her escape while she stayed outwardly calm.

  “Whatsamatter? Cat got your tongue?”

  “No,” she responded coldly. “I don’t like being startled.”

  His gaze dropped lower, taking in the gentle round of her stomach. “Since you already got yourself a bun in the oven, I reckon you know how to show a man a real fine time, don’t you?”

  “You made a wrong turn, mister—the hog ranch is on the other side of those tents,” she told him tartly. “I’m told you can get whatever you want for a couple of dollars over there.”

  “I got no interest in some tired ole whore, honey. I got myself a real hankerin’ for fresher meat, and I don’t see anybody out here but you,” he said, lunging for her.

  Dodging him, she flung the empty bucket at his face and ran back toward camp. He was so close behind her that she could feel his hot, reeking breath, and smell the ripe stench of his sweat-soaked clothes. His dirty hand caught her sleeve, ripping it from the shoulder of her dress as she jerked free. Gulping air, her heart pounding in her ears, she managed a desperate burst of speed.

  “Damned bitch—I’m gonna hurt you for this— ain’t nobody ever gonna see that purty face again,” he threatened her.

  As her foot gained the road, the heel of her shoe broke, sending her sprawling face first while white-hot pain gripped her ankle. She tried to scramble to her feet, but the ankle wouldn’t hold her. Feigning capitulation, she lay still.

  “Yeah, you and me’s gonna have some fun, all right,” he said, bending over her. His hand grasped her damp hair roughly, jerking her down into a shallow ditch, as she tried to claw her way free. He hit her, snapping her head back, then crouched over her, unbuttoning dirty trousers. “Now you buck real good, you hear?” he said as his other hand pushed up her skirt.

  A gunshot split the heavy, humid air, and her attacker jumped back, tripping over his sagging pants. “What the hell—? Tommy!”

  “Leave her alone! You don’t, and I’m pulling this trigger again! I won’t miss twice neither!” a younger voice shouted. “I mean it, Jake! You back off her or I’ll plug you right there!”

  “Hell I will! You damned little bastard—”

  While her attacker was distracted, Laura scrambled on all fours for the stranger with the gun, “He was…he was trying to force himself on me,” she managed as he stepped between her and the man he’d called Jake.

  “It’s all right, ma’am,” the red-headed kid reassured her. “He ain’t touchin’ you again.” Facing the glowering man, he declared, “You’re a no-count son-ofabitch, Jake Eldred, and I aim to see you get what’s comin’ to you. I don’t reckon you’re gonna be hurtin’ Maggie or any other woman like this again.”

  “You sniveling, lily-livered little—you ain’t got the guts to shoot again, and you know it. You’re as spineless as that puling sister of yours.”

  “Ain’t nobody on earth deserves a beating like that. She lost the baby, but seein’ as it was yours, maybe that part of it was a blessing,” the kid told him. “You ain’t gonna be gettin’ no more babies on her or anybody else, Jake.”

  “Go to hell, Tommy. I ain’t afraid of you.” Rising cautiously, Jake measured the distance between them with his eyes.

  “Watch out!” Laura screamed as he jumped for the kid’s gun.

  Tommy pulled the trigger, and Eldred pitched to the ground again, holding his elbow, as blood soaked his sleeve.

  “My
arm—you broke my arm! You little bastard, you broke my arm! My elbow’s gone!”

  Cocking the hammer, Tommy moved closer. “Let’s see you hit a woman now, Jake,” he gibed. “Let’s see you swing on somebody now. I took care of one thing, and I’m about to take care of another.”

  “Don’t kill him—you’ll just ruin your life, too,” Laura argued. “Let the law take care of him.”

  “Not much law out here, ma’am,” the kid said, leveling his sights on the wounded man. “But killin’s too good for him, so I’m just gonna fix him.”

  Realizing what the boy meant to do, Jake Eldred cringed. “No, Tommy…don’t…don’t do this,

  Tom. I didn’t mean to hit Maggie like that, but she riled me—dammit, a man’s got a right to do what he wants to his wife, Tom, and it ain’t like she…No…don’t shoot…No! No!”

  As the gun fired, the man on the ground gave an unearthly shriek, then he doubled up, jerking and quivering. When Laura dared to look down, he was babbling incoherently, holding what was left of his bloody crotch.

  “Don’t guess you’ll be puttin’ that where it ain’t wanted no more,” the kid said coolly.

  “Oh, God…oh, my God…Jesus…ohhh…,”

  Turning to Laura, the boy shook his head. “I shoulda done that the first time he beat up on my sister. He’d change after the baby came, she said. He was upset. She made everything out to be her fault. But it didn’t make any difference whether she crossed him or not He was always upset about something, and he was always hittin’ her. Now they got two little kids, not countin’ the one she just lost.” Squinting up at the sky for a moment, he added, “A man don’t change his nature—if he’s born mean, he stays mean until somebody takes it out of him. I shoulda done that a long time ago.”

  “Thank you,” she managed. “If you hadn’t shown up when you did, I don’t know what I would have done.”

  “I heard you hollerin’, so I figured I’d find him. You’re lucky he didn’t cut you up some first, ‘cause he likes to do that, too. Jake don’t enjoy a woman ‘less he hurts her.”

  “He’s done this before?”

  “Yeah. There’s been two others I know of, but the law wouldn’t do anything about it, ‘cause the women wouldn’t say it was him. I guess they figured if he wasn’t hanged for it, he’d be back to kill ‘em, and they was beat up pretty bad the first time, you know. And Maggie woulda sworn he was at home when it happened, anyways, ‘cause she’d be afraid to tell on him.”

  “I see.”

  “No, you don’t. Nobody can. Three days ago he beat her until she spit up blood, and like I said, she lost the baby. She’s twenty years old, and she looks forty.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “But I got even for her,” he went on. “To somebody like Jake, his life ain’t worth much without his tallywhacker.”

  “Aren’t you afraid he’ll come after you?”

  He looked to his brother-in-law, who was still flopping on the ground like a fish out of water, crying and moaning in agony. “By the time he can get on a horse and ride, me and Maggie and the kids’ll be somewhere he can’t find us,” Walking to his horse, he swung up into the saddle. “You tell ‘em what you have to, ma’am, ‘cause the law ain’t findin’ us neither.”

  “She’s lucky to have a brother like you,” Laura said softly.

  “I’m just sorry it took me so long to grow up enough to help her, that’s all.” Adjusting the brim of his hat to shade his face, the kid kneed the animal. “Tell ‘em it was Tommy Hale that shot him.” Turning his horse, he went east on the Platte Road toward Omaha.

  “Jesus…you gotta help me,” Jake Eldred gasped. “My privates is gone,”

  Instead, she walked away. Her pity had left with the boy. “Hey, you!——I gotta have a doc—I gotta!” Eldred called after her.

  When she reached the cluster of tents, she hesitated for a moment before she ducked beneath an open canvas flap. “Mrs. Taylor,” Dr. Warren murmured, looking up from a battered campaign chair. Refolding the newspaper on his lap, he exhaled. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

  ‘There’s a wounded man across the road—over by the river,” she said, coming to the point quickly. “He accosted me when I went for water.”

  “I can’t say it wasn’t bound to happen,” he observed dryly. “This is hardly the place for a decent female, and so I told your husband when he brought you out here.” Realizing how unsympathetic that sounded, he unbent enough to ask, “You aren’t hurt, are you?”

  “Just my dress, and I can fix that.”

  “I told your husband your condition wouldn’t protect you—there are men in these camps so woman-hungry that a wart-covered crone isn’t safe around them.”

  “He wasn’t from camp—he’d apparently just stopped for water when he saw me.”

  He heaved himself up from the folding chair and reached for his hat. “I’ll see if I can round up some fellows to look for him, but if you’re going to stay out here, things like this are bound to happen. It’ll be different in another year or so, but right now, it’s no place for a lady,”

  “I’m not the only female out here,” she pointed out.

  “Oh, we got hog ranches popping up like dandelions after a rain, all right, but women like that know what they’re getting into.”

  “There’s no need to send anybody out to look for the man who accosted me, anyway, Dr. Warren,” she said tiredly. “He’s been shot twice, so he’s not going anywhere,”

  “No need to get uppity with me, Mrs. Taylor. The truth’s the truth, regardless of the messenger. But you’ve come to the right person, anyway. Who shot him?”

  “I don’t know—somebody who just happened to see what was happening. I didn’t even get a chance to thank him before he rode off.”

  “Probably running from the law, and he didn’t want any notice,”

  “I don’t know,”

  “Well, there’s no need to bring you into it at all, then. I’ll just report finding a wounded man, and if he dies, that’ll be the end of it. If he doesn’t, he’ll be too afraid of hanging to mention his part in the business.”

  “Thank you,” she said dryly.

  “Doc! Doc Warren!”

  “Excuse me, ma’am. Yeah?” Warren answered loudly.

  A breathless fellow burst through the open tent flaps. “There’s been an accident ‘bout thirty miles up ahead! You gotta come real quick!”

  “How bad is it?”

  “Real bad, Doc—I guess they got a man about cut in half up there. They ain’t moving the car off ‘im till you get there to say he’s dead.”

  “I’ll get my bag just in case,” Warren decided. Noticing Laura again, he said brusquely, “Your little matter will have to wait, I’m afraid.”

  “But—”

  “Mrs. Taylor, I’m in a hurry. If that fellow across the road dies before I get back, it’s not much of a loss, anyway.” Having said that, he picked up a large canvas bag and pushed past her.

  Not wanting to go back to face Jake Eldred by herself again, she went to her own tent, where she sank into a scarred kitchen chair, laid her head on the table, and wept. She didn’t know what she’d expected .of Warren when she’d gone to see him, but what she’d gotten was little more than censure, she reflected bitterly. If she’d gone in there shaking and crying, vowing to go back to North Carolina, the railroad doctor would probably have rushed over to pin a medal on the man on his way out of camp.

  She hated it here. She hated everything about the place—the isolation, the heat, the hostility, the endless days of waiting for a husband too tired to talk when he came in. The war had taken more than Danny from her. It had changed Jesse to a driven man.

  The stinging tears of self-pity subsided, and she sat up. Things would get better. She’d be all right. She was a strong woman. Instead of feeling sorry for herself, she ought to be praying for the man trapped under that train thirty miles up the track. />
  Feeling better, she washed her hands, then turned her attention back to the bread dough. Punching it down again, she separated it into three parts, flattened them on a wet cloth, then rolled each piece, pinching the ends together before she put them into the loaf pans. As hot as the weather was, it wouldn’t take them long to rise this last time.

  Determined to keep busy the rest of the day, she baked, mended, and sewed on the fancy lawn christening dress she was making for the baby. The whole front was delicately pleated with tiny stitches, while the yoke above them was intricately embroidered with white silk roses on white lawn. The work was so tedious and so time consuming, it’d take another month to finish the gown the way she wanted it to look.

  That night, she read in bed, all but oblivious to the storm outside, finding company in the mythic heroes of the Trojan War. Too sleepy to finish the story, she trimmed down the lantern wick, then blew out the flame. As the thin line of smoke curled into the darkness, she closed her eyes.

  “Mrs. Taylor! Mrs. Taylor!”

  At first, she thought she’d been dreaming, then she realized someone was outside, shouting to waken her. Rolling over, she groped for the lantern. The wind had died down, and the rain had stopped, but the sun wasn’t up yet.

  “Mrs. Taylor, can you hear me?”

  “Yes,” she mumbled sleepily. “Yes!” she answered more loudly. “Who is it?”

  “Russell—Bill Russell! Are you decent?”

  “Yes!”

  Leaning over the side of the bed to reach the lantern, she searched for the box of sulphur matches.

  She could hear Russell fumbling to unfasten the tent opening.

  “I’ll get it!” she called out.

  She struck a match and lit the wick, watching the flame grow until it cast grotesque, flickering shadows up the pale canvas walls. Padding on barefeet to the front of the tent, she managed to unlace the heavy flaps. The yellow light illuminated the man’s haggard face and reflected in his red-rimmed eyes.

  “Whatever—?” She could feel the ground sway beneath her feet, and she knew. “It’s Jesse, isn’t it?”