“Please understand, RuthAnne. One mention of a woman being accosted by that bandit and the good citizens would be up in arms. Before you know it, they’d be lynching every Mexican man in the city, just to prove a point and satisfy their blood lust. Military law is the only way we can see justice done. We’ve been searching him out, but he’s smart. I’m getting closer, and he’s getting careless. You see...your driver is the first man he’s killed. And, Mara...well.”
She swallowed around the lump in her throat at the mention of Mara. “So, you think I’m better off if I am just Mrs. Newcomb, alone, lost in a storm and needing shelter?”
“For the moment, yes.” His stony gaze held hers like a vice. “The truth comes out, it’s your telling. You’ll be safe here until the army wagons can get through. You’ll get your money, and maybe we’ll get another bead on El Tejano. If you help me find his hideout.”
She thought long and hard about what he said. Sighing heavily, she figured he was right. Still, she yearned for the peace that came from knowing she made the right decision.
“So. You’re stashing us away. Mara at the chapel, and me here on wash duty.” She picked up a smooth, flat stone and skipped it down the dirt path. “I don’t see as how I have much of a choice. It’s a good offer, Captain. And it’s honest work. I thank you for it. If you could just show me where the chapel is, I’d really like a moment to pray on this.”
He cleared his throat. “Fort Lowell hasn’t had much call for one, ma’am. Not yet.”
“No chapel? What do the people do on Sunday?”
“You could go to the Presbyterian church in town. Most of the good citizens are still sleeping off Saturday night.” The humor in his tone didn’t reach his eyes. She suspected that he was more than likely one of them.
“I see. Well. Is that all of our business, then?” She stood and brushed the stray bark off her skirt. He nodded, brusquely. “Then I’d best be getting to work. I’ll be seeing you, Captain Shepherd.” RuthAnne squared her shoulders and set off across the compound to the laundresses’ quarters.
Bowen kept his eyes trained on her back. Though her slight figure and lengthy frame got more than its share of head turns from soldiers at arms across the field, she never broke her stride.
Bowen wondered at this woman, her inner strength, and smiled. They’d see just how strong she was when she realized what she’d be up against as a brand-new army laundress.
Chapter 11
RuthAnne entered the laundresses’ quarters. Her eyes swept the room, noting how the hard-packed dirt floor had been disguised by a wide, threadbare rug. A settee and set of camp chairs appeared silent audience to the guitar leaning on the opposite wall. The sparse furnishings seemed arranged for entertaining and conversation.
She could almost imagine folks gathering to sing songs, tell tales, and enjoy company on long summer evenings.
Dolly waited on the worn, blue velvet settee; her suntanned face beamed into a ready smile at RuthAnne’s entrance. “Well, I see that ol’ Bowen’s finally turned you loose. Did he manage to scare the livin’ daylights out of you yet? Have a seat, and we’ll get ourselves acquainted.” Dolly took her by the hands, talking a mile a minute.
Moments later, RuthAnne perched on the small settee and accepted a tin cup of cool water from the sweet hand of Dolly’s little girl. Dolly shot a proud grin in her daughter’s direction. “Thank you, Katie. This here’s Miss Newcomb.”
“Pleased to meetcha.” Katie gave a wobbly curtsey. RuthAnne couldn’t help but smile at the girl’s skinned knees and loosening braids that were mismatched with her prim outfit. “I’m Katie Jewel, and I’m five.”
“Oh, well, isn’t that nice?” RuthAnne said, hiding a laugh.
“Skedaddle, miss! Time to go do your schooling.” Dolly shooed the girl out the door to fetch her slate and pencil.
Dolly returned to a wicker basket stuffed full of clothes, shoes, and indeterminate items and began sorting through them. RuthAnne spied a small silver and turquoise cross brushing against Dolly’s blue gingham dress. With a long, slow breath, Dolly slipped the necklace inside her bodice and tucked the loose strands of red-gold hair behind her ears. It framed her sweet face and eyes that danced with good humor while she spoke. “It isn’t much, here, these quarters of ours. Not more than a lean-to set up against an old half-built, mud brick barracks, but it’ll do. It’s clean. We managed to finagle a tin roof even before the officers’ wives. Don’t you bet that didn’t beat all!”
She gave a saucy wink while she folded and stacked some worn-looking dresses. “We rate here in the army, you see. We’re paid regular as any enlisted man, and more than some. The officers’ wives, they’re just tagalongs for the most part. There have been some that pulled their own weight. Missy Sutton for one. Her Jack was the old quartermaster before John Cross was assigned here, God rest him. They were a pair, to be sure. Not many like her. Tough as they come, and that’s something, considering he dragged her all the way from Virginia as a young bride. They got reassigned, oh, about two year ago, up to Prescott. Me, I’m from the territories, born and raised. Never even been back east. Heck, never been east of the Rio Grande!”
She waited as if prompting RuthAnne to offer some personal information. Instead, there was a moment of awkward silence while RuthAnne fingered the stack of clothes, took a garment, and started folding.
“Let’s see...” Dolly continued. “There’s a privy right out back. The kids won’t stay underfoot if you shoo them outside like a flock of hens every now and again. That and a day’s work that would terrify the bravest man’s about all there is to tell.”
Dolly helped RuthAnne to her feet and shoved the basket into her arms. “These are yours. Some’ll fit, some’ll have to be fitted, and some are plain trash. Up to you to decide. I have a sewing kit you can borrow and even a Singer treadle table stashed in my room, if you’re handy with a pattern. You ready?”
RuthAnne clutched the basket and blanched, but quickly saw that Dolly was only teasing.
“You gotta have a good sense of humor when you’re faced with our workday in and out. Hope you have a strong stomach. Follow me.”
Sure she was going to be forced to the washbasins immediately, RuthAnne followed Dolly down the dark corridor, passing canvas flaps that served as doors. Behind were the sparsely furnished laundresses’ quarters. Each small room was about a ten-by-ten box, sectioned off by a canvas partition and included a cot, a gray army blanket, and a hard pillow of striped cotton duck cloth.
“Doesn’t matter if there’s just one of you or four or five, we all get the same amount of space. Of course, some of us are better at procuring the comforts of home than others.”
Dolly opened a flap at the end of the room and led RuthAnne into her own personal quarters. A Singer treadle sewing table was stuck neatly in one corner, the only tidy part of Dolly Jewel’s quarters.
A carved wooden wardrobe with a silver-backed mirror perched inside graced one corner. Clothes were stuffed in the drawers and draped over the cane-backed chair at a small secretary desk. Dolly’s cot was mounded with a featherbed ticking, and a hand-stitched quilt was thrown hastily over its mass of pillows. Katie’s small bed stood beside, bedecked in a handmade quilt with butterflies made from purple, pink, and green bits of cloth. A rosy-cheeked, porcelain doll with curling brown hair sat proudly displayed among her pillows.
“This here’s mine and Katie’s spot.” Dolly plopped down on her bed in a heap.
“It’s very...cozy.” RuthAnne barely managed to find something pleasant to say about the jumbled mess.
“Cozy! That’s rich. It’s a mess. I never did take to military styling. Never had the need. My parents dragged us from here to Texas and back again, and I used to drive them crazy, having to crate up all of my belongings! After the Injuns burned everything we owned when I was fourteen, we hooked back up with an army escort. Came back by way of Tucson. I swore I’d never make that trek east again. That’s them, there.”
/> She pointed to the steamer trunk that served as a table. It sat topped with daguerreotype pictures in leather pocket frames; the faces of people Dolly knew and loved stared stoically out at the room.
“You got family, honey?”
Such an innocent question, and yet RuthAnne’s throat began to seize up. Each breath drew hard and fast, yet no air seemed to fill her lungs. Her thoughts circled around the life she and Mara had left behind in Somerville, Alabama. Her mother, lost to the world. Her father, a mere shadow of his former self. Both of her brothers were buried and gone. Evan...It all seemed very far away.
“My husband...he died...and...” Her breath hitched.
Dolly took her hand and gave it a squeeze. “One thing’s certain in this world. If you come this far west you’re either running from something or running toward it. Me, I’m through with running. It just makes you sick. The army’s got its drawbacks, but it’s good for three squares and a roof over your head. If you’re willing and able, we’ve got the work. Ready to enlist?”
Enlisting meant accepting and depositing the basket of hand-me-down clothes into her empty quarters and being marched to the post store for meager supplies. Dolly’s step was quick and surefooted, and RuthAnne found herself scurrying to keep up. Obviously, Dolly knew where she was going, with a clear angle on all of the shortcuts to get there.
They hot-stepped it through the mess hall, around some irritated KP soldiers: one elbow deep in scrubbing out giant pots, another busy unearthing a burlap bag of pinto beans that RuthAnne assumed would be for supper. Making sure the coast was clear, Dolly pushed her across the parade ground and through a corner of the thickest grove of spiny trees that RuthAnne had ever seen. That bosque of Bowen’s couldn’t mean forest. It must be a Spanish word meaning sharp and angry trees.
Up ahead, Dolly yelped as a spiny thorn pierced her boot. “Watch out for thorns!”
RuthAnne considered the spines that littered the ground, along with the rough, peeling bark clinging to the hem of her skirts. It seemed everything in this corner of the world was dressed to defend itself. She glanced at her own feet and the comfortable, thick leather moccasins Mariposa had given her. They made much better walking shoes than Dolly’s more fashionable button boots.
On the other side of the mesquite thicket stood a stubby adobe building with a low roof and small wooden door. A sign above the rough-hewn ramada claimed that this was the Post Store. Another sign noted that patrons could send and receive mail and telegrams and order from catalogs, as long as they paid in advance. Dolly marched them right inside without as much as a how-do-you-do to the two men sitting on the bench seats in the shade. RuthAnne heard a derogatory comment come from one of them and approved highly of Dolly’s decision to ignore them. Her ears still burned with embarrassment as she stepped inside the dusty, dim establishment.
After a moment, her eyes adjusted to the light. The store was built of the same rich brown adobe brick as present elsewhere in the fort, but this one was unlike the other buildings RuthAnne had seen. The floors were wood plank and echoed hollowly underfoot. She wondered what was below as she followed Dolly to the back counter, eyeing the displayed items along the way and feeling the sharp pang that she had neither money nor the barest of necessities to call her own.
Shelves and barrels were stacked floor to ceiling with goods. Tinware lined one wall with pots, pans, cutlery, and the like for cooking everything from boiled eggs to cakes and muffins. Selections ranged from inexpensive to extravagant. She couldn’t help but notice stacked kegs of coffee, dark brown roasted beans whose aroma seeped into the air. She inhaled its rich scent, feeling instantly invigorated. The burlap sacks of green coffee beans, a flavor she had never acquired, didn’t smell like anything at all.
Gunnysacks of flour, sugar, pinto beans, and other dried goods were out with signs displaying their prices at five, ten, and twenty cents per pound; compared to Kansas City prices, it seemed the post store owner was making himself a fair profit.
Walking further through the store, she identified lye and soda ash for use in making soap, as well as bottles of indigo dye and jars of polish for army boots and brass. Her fingers trailed the items as she dimly heard Dolly tell her she’d be back directly. RuthAnne nodded absently. Moments later, she heard the hollow steps of someone going below, as if to a basement, while she found what she was looking for.
Rolls of yard goods were stacked close to a window in an effort to catch the light, though she clicked her tongue in disapproval. The pretty fabrics should not be displayed where the sun could ruin them so completely! She stretched out a bolt of calico in colors of red, orange, brown, and tan and wrinkled her nose. Too late for that one; the sun had done its work aplenty, as there was a fade line on the bias. She re-folded the fabric and went on to search out what this post store thought was essential to the average Fort Lowell woman.
She was happily cooing over a stretch of Irish linen when Dolly appeared with a man a good three inches shorter than herself. He was stocky of build, with a well-kept black handlebar mustache and thinning salt-and-pepper hair. His chocolate-brown eyes were kind, his face weathered, but his way was easy and light; he and Dolly were obviously quite fond of each other.
Something inside her clicked. Would a man ever look at her that way again? Her thoughts flicked to the captain. The way his brusque manner had dissolved into a quick laugh at the little girl. RuthAnne pushed down the thoughts the handsome soldier brought to her heart. He certainly didn’t view her as anything but a means to an end. That would have to be enough.
“Ruthie, this here’s Whit Baker. He just bought this here post store from the fool who built it.” The two had a good laugh at the inside joke.
“Bought it for a song, but I’m not the one singing it at present.” He stepped forward and held RuthAnne’s hand warmly. “I’m told that you are our newest laundress. Welcome to a long and distinguished army tradition.”
“Thank you, Mr. Baker.”
“Women who keep our boys from wearing rags, what a tradition indeed!” Dolly whispered for RuthAnne’s ears alone. “Our soldiers will never mention it, but the army pays us for each one we tend to, once a month out of their salary. The only good thing Post Commander Carington ever did was see that we’re paid before the men see their money, or we’d be left holding more often than not.”
Dolly happily dug through a crate that Whit had dragged up with him from the cellar below and continued her tirade. “With the troops staying closer to the fort these days, you may have as many as nineteen or twenty to tend to. We’ll see how you do. Oh! Whit, this is why I love you so dearly. Look, Ruthie. It’s that special soap with the lavender scent to it! I just love this soap. Not a drop of lye in it! Oh! And cold cream! And hand cream! Where did you find this? I’d requested this from old what’s-his-name months ago. See, I just knew you were a catch. Isn’t he, though?”
RuthAnne offered a strained smile. She’d never seen a woman so easy to laugh, quick to tease, and able to calculate expenses so rapidly. She watched in awe as Dolly set aside things to purchase immediately and things to wait for later that month.
“I’d buy it all now, if I could. God didn’t give me the sense he gave a mule. I’m trying to be patient and wait, but it all smells so good! Doesn’t it?” She stretched out a length of red and white striped satin ribbons. “Whit, be a dear and throw in a yard of this for Katie’s hair. Won’t those look lovely with her coloring?”
Whit drew out his silver scissors, measured, and cut before Dolly changed her mind. RuthAnne had no time to answer as Dolly launched into a conversation about the torrential rain and the flood that had taken all of RuthAnne’s belongings. “Those flash floods around here are killers.”
“You are lucky that you escaped with your life,” Whit said with genuine concern.
Guilt flushed RuthAnne’s cheeks. Suddenly, she realized it was the truth. She was lucky she had escaped with her life after what that bandit had done to Mr. Bingham and Mara...
/>
“Oh, let’s not talk of such sorrowful things.” Dolly grabbed RuthAnne’s hands, which had gone ice cold, and rubbed them vigorously. “We’ve managed to put together the sorriest batch of dresses, skirts, and whatnots that you’ve ever seen. Now, what can we have on account to set our Miss Newcomb up as a proper fort laundress?”
RuthAnne watched in awe as the two of them began grabbing the soap, dye, and washboard and basin that would be her tools of the trade, but also sundry items that she hadn’t even thought of. A tube of tooth polish; a delicately carved wooden hairbrush; what Whit described as a laundress’ standard ration of coffee, tea, sugar, flour, beans, and packets of salt and pepper. She saw him grin as he shoved in a small canister of cinnamon and even a paper-wrapped bar of chocolate.
“Now, how handy are you with a sewing table?” At Dolly’s grin, she wondered if Bowen hadn’t disclosed her full story to this woman after all. “I saw you eyeing that fabric over there. Whit’s a dear, but if you want to think about making some new clothes, why not wait until the weekend and journey to town. Hernando Ochoa has the best selection of new patterns and fabric south of Prescott.”
“I don’t need anything; really, you all have been more than generous with me. I don’t even know where to begin I’m so grateful.” RuthAnne smiled warmly and couldn’t resist the urge to hug her new friend.
Dolly balked and then laughed, hugging her back. “Honey, you’re going to earn everything Whit shoved in that box for you, ten times over. Truthfully, I’m so grateful for the help I should be the one hugging you!”
Across the parade grounds, the bugles called and soldiers shouted during drills. Sounds of marching, weapons practice, and officers shouting filled the air.
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