Courting Carrie in Wonderland

by Carla Kelly

  The two of them watched the little herd approach. After silent observation, Sam spoke. “I hear your shoulder strap officer who builds roads made a survey of the whole park to count these boys.”

  “Captain Chittenden sure did. Came up with twenty-nine, he told me,” Ramsay said. “Buffalo Jones added some bulls brought up from Texas.”

  “I was here last spring when we rounded up more big boys, little red dogs, and their mamas from Lamar Valley,” Sam said. He pointed toward the approaching herd. “Look now. Thirty-nine.”

  “I’ve spent some time watching the herd,” Ramsay said. “Probably too much time to suit Uncle Sam. I watch wolves too.”

  Deer Nose looked around elaborately. “Don’t see Uncle Sam out here, do you?”

  “Nope.”

  “Keep watching.”

  Ramsay remembered his first spring at Yellowstone, when the bison calved their red offspring. He knew he had wasted a lot of Uncle Sam’s pay, comfortable in a tree with his binoculars, watching the little ones trucking about on stiff legs. He could have stayed there for hours, and probably did, truth be told.

  Time to push off, as much as he wanted to remain in the little draw with a frozen stream starting to run free again, and suitable gullies and swales to keep a buffalo happy. The fenced enclosure was the surest protection against poachers, some of whom valued bison heads for trophies in some back east board room.

  “Yeah, just leave me a note if you need me, but it looks like you have things in hand, Sam,” he said.

  “More like the buffalo do,” Sam commented.

  Ramsay mounted his horse and tapped his forefinger against his campaign hat. He stifled a laugh when he saw Sam start to scuff the ground with his moccasin in—hopefully—unconscious imitation of a bearded and burly gentleman behind the stout fence. Yep, Sam was a buffalo man. No worries here.

  He pointed Xerxes toward the travertine beauty that constituted Mammoth Hot Springs. He rode slowly by, ticking off the names in his head: Opal Terrace, Palette Spring, Jupiter Terrace, and Canary Spring. He liked Jupiter the best and reined in to watch the deep blue water play over the edge to another pool below.

  No tourists walked the terraces yet, but he knew they would come soon: the women with their wide-brimmed, impractical hats and wearing linen dusters, and the men in suits and bowlers—so improbable, so overdressed, but visitors deserving of his best attention.

  As he turned toward distant Norris Geyser Basin, Ramsay found himself envying the sergeant who had replaced him in B Company. It would be his duty to place privates at vantage points to keep visitors from stepping where they shouldn’t, and answering questions—some silly, some thoughtful—that came the guardian-trooper’s way on an average day.

  He had visited last night with Sergeant Chambers of B, advising him to learn what he could about the terraces, because there would be questions. “You’ll never learn enough about the place,” he had told the sergeant and meant it. Yellowstone was a lifetime’s duty.

  He stayed at the hot springs long enough to soak in the sight of elk lying down on the terraces, savoring, in their elk way, the warmth after a long winter. For the few months since his return he had watched this particular band struggle through deep snow, peeling bark from trees to stay alive. It was a reward to their tenacity to see them at leisure now. Another layer of wartime funk slid away, and he hadn’t even left the terraces yet.

  Glory be, no wind blew down on him as he ambled along in no hurry, doing his own savoring of earth reawakening and sky so blue it looked postcard fake. He took a deep breath and another, relishing the fragrance of nothing more glamorous than fresh-turned dirt. Given enough time, he knew he could forget the stink of the jungle, where everything seemed to rot, from damp socks to leather hatbands.

  I am here and I am happy, he thought, as he followed a water wagon up a moderate incline made much less difficult to travel by the work of Captain Chittenden’s road crews two summers ago.

  He reined in Xerxes again where the road turned and he saw a black bear and two cubs minding their own business in a cluster of lodgepole pines. In a mere week, tourists would be crowding too close, taking too many snapshots, blocking the roads and offering bread and apples and licorice and other stuff bears didn’t need. He could argue with visitors, telling them all the reasons that such largess only turned bears into beggars, because that was their nature. Some tourists might listen, but most would look apologetic, turn away, and keep doing what they were doing, once they thought he was out of sight.

  Maybe he was wrong. Maybe Yellowstone was a place for visitors to be entertained at the expense of bears growing daily more accustomed to licorice and Jujubes. After he returned, worn out from war, there had been discussions veering into heated debate about this very issue. He knew Major Pitcher didn’t mind visitors feeding the park’s year-round citizens. “We’re here for the enjoyment of the public,” the major had reminded Ramsay on more than one occasion. “Visitors want to see bears.”

  “But what about the animals?” Ramsay asked a mountain jay that swooped in for a closer view, and then soared off, either frightened or satisfied. “What’s best for you, little buddy? Hey, don’t fly away. You’re not taking this seriously.”

  Amused at himself, Ramsay looked around, hopeful no one on two feet stood anywhere near to hear a sergeant major talking to critters so early in the season. Worry about it later, Stiles, he thought. It was enough to feel the sun on the left side of his face and down his leg, warmth without humidity, silence without fear of insurgents in the jungle, hunkered down and alert.

  He rode along in solitude, bullied by mother swallows that wanted him far away from the cliffs where their babies waited, open-mouthed, for worms or grubs. Always there was the roar of water moving fast, rivers free from snow and ice.

  Once through the Golden Gate Canyon, he touched his finger to his hat in salute to Captain Chittenden’s new concrete viaduct that had widened the road, much to the relief of terrified tourists. Now two wagons could easily pass each other without major fear or more than usual cussing. He and Xerxes had the road to themselves.

  He didn’t have far to go to reach his first stop. Ramsay ignored a chipmunk scolding him for some infraction or other and walked Xerxes across the road. He looked south to Willow Park and smiled to see the red-and-white-striped tents of the Wylie Camping Company, as sure a sign of summer as red dogs, bear cubs, and what one of his privates in B Company had called little moosettes.

  He wondered if it was too early in the day, or even the summer to wish for cherry pie. The memory of cherry pie, canned cherries but still tart and sweet, had sustained him through terrible times in the Philippines, where he had promised himself he would eat pie at Willow Park again before he died.

  He rode closer, taking in the company’s permanent structures, which included a small storeroom, combination dining hall and dance floor, kitchen, and Wylie store with postcards, candy, and other tourist attractions. Only some of the striped tents had been installed so far. From their location, these were probably tents for the cooks, chore girls, custodians or camp men, and wranglers. Before another week went by, he knew there would be at least twenty tents in two rows, tents with wooden floors and partitioned areas for sleeping and for sitting around a pot-bellied stove in the evenings. Wylie advertised comfort for tourists used to the easy life, and he meant it.

  Ramsay recalled finding some excuse during summer evenings to visit this Willow Park camp with one of the other sergeants, and maybe a corporal, to sit around a campfire, eat popcorn, and listen to one of the girls sing. Mr. Wylie hired college students from Montana Agricultural College in Bozeman to staff his summertime camps. Lately, some came from even farther afield at the University of Washington, or Oregon, and others were teachers wanting summer work. It was soon obvious to anyone who didn’t have a tin ear that the chore girls, camp men, and kitchen flunkies weren’t hired for their singing ability, but who cared when there was a roaring fire and popcorn?


  Now the place was empty of guests, with the dishevelment that accompanied windows, shuttered all winter, needing to be washed, mouse nests swept out, and chairs dusted. Give the crew a week, and summer visitors would never even suspect the housecleaning chaos going on now. He watched two girls scrubbing away, one on each side of the same window in the dining room, the better to catch all the streaks. A camp man wearing a UW letter sweater walked by and stopped to chat with the girl on the outside. She looked coy and he laughed and Ramsay felt eighty years old.

  It was enough to make a man all surly and mean, except the sun still shone and the air had a whiff of sulfur to it now, certainly not every man’s eau de cologne, but a well-remembered fragrance for someone who had been missing Yellowstone Park.

  Ramsay guided Xerxes behind the dining hall and its attached kitchen, wondering where Mr. Wylie might be located when he heard someone pounding on a door. He looked around, wondering what sort of prank one of the college boys might be playing on a sweet young thing.

  “Yes?” he asked, willing to appear foolish, if someone really was in dire straits.

  Nothing, and then another bang on a door to one of the privies. This time he heard someone. “Um, is anyone there? Is the bear still sitting in front of the door? Anyone?”

  Laughing to himself, he looked around just to make sure. Xerxes had a sixth sense about bruins, and he was looking as bored as a horse can look. Ramsay dismounted.

  He walked to the privy where the banging had originated, thinking of the chapter on introductions in Rules of Etiquette and Home Culture and wondering what its authors, all seven of them, would make of this situation. The matter had most emphatically not been covered in the entire chapter, and he had read it carefully.

  “Miss?” he asked, for she sounded young. “There’s no bear in sight. You’re quite free to come out.”

  “You’re positively certain?”

  He heard the tiniest lilt in her voice, but he couldn’t place it. Sartain, with a little twist to the r.

  “I am more certain of this than nearly anything in my entire life,” he replied. “No bears.”

  He stepped back, not sure how to pretend he didn’t know what a privy was and what she had been doing in there. He considered his options, which were slim to none. He decided to assume she was a grownup and wouldn’t make any fuss at being rescued from nonexistent bears camped around a backhouse. He might see whoever she was again sometime this summer, and Ramsay hoped she wouldn’t carry to the grave any embarrassment over this delicate situation.

  Trying not to grin, he watched as the door opened slowly. He had been right about her probable age. She didn’t look any older than the Wylie chore girls cleaning the windows, but gloriosky, she was a pretty thing.

  Oddly, her hair, what he could see of it peeking from under a bandanna, was the same color as his. He made a snap judgment and decided strawberry blond looked much more appropriate on a female head than on his. Her eyes were deep blue, unlike his own brown ones. Nature had certainly not stinted on the combination of blue eyes and reddish-blond hair. One of the B Company corporals given to slang would probably have called her a real pip.

  To his relief, she looked him in the eye and he saw no embarrassment. In fact, she smiled and then took an exaggerated look around, as though peering over imaginary spectacles. “Sergeant, when I opened the door, there he sat, as if waiting his turn. I am surprised he did not knock.”

  Ramsay knew it was useless to fight the mirth that bubbled up from some place inside where it must have been stored for a while. He tipped back his head and laughed. To his pleasure, she joined in, as she came out of the privy and shut the door behind her.

  She looked around and pointed. “Watch your step, sir. It appears he couldn’t wait.”

  Sure enough. I need to stop laughing, Ramsay thought, as he stepped sideways to avoid a still-steaming pile.

  He took a chance. “Bears being what they are, I now understand why it’s referred to as a call of nature,” he said, and was rewarded with a great peal of laughter.

  He didn’t know her at all, but her good humor seemed not even slightly dampened by what could only be deemed an awkward rescue. “Mr. Wylie says we should carry a frying pan and a stick and bang on it, but that seemed unnecessary for such a short visit. I will consider this a lesson.”

  Again he heard that little bit of a burr in her words, one that a man with the name of Ramsay might recognize. Blowing away everything he had read last night, he held out his hand. “Sergeant Major Stiles, miss. And you are?”

  She pointed to her name tag with its red and white border. “Mostly just Carrie to everyone, sir,” she said.

  “Carrie McKay,” he said. She had a nicely proportioned bosom, as much as he could tell of someone swathed in a black dress and all-encompassing apron. He didn’t stare, because that wasn’t polite, but she had pointed to her name tag, and it did reside so nicely on a pleasant slope, a bit south of her collarbone.

  Her charming face brightened. “You know how to pronounce it!” she declared. “Nearly everyone rhymes McKay with hay. You know better.”

  He could have wriggled like a puppy at such praise, but he was thirty-four after all, and a grown man. “If I had a name tag, I’d point to my first name, which is Ramsay,” he said. “Surely a Ramsay should know how to pronounce McKay.”

  She nodded as if he had said something sage and packed with wisdom. She raised her eyebrows, which only made her prettier, because her eyes were round like a child’s. “You saved me from a privy, Sergeant Major Stiles. I suppose you’ve had harder duties.”

  “One or two,” he replied, dismissing Apaches in the Southwest and Moros in the Philippines. He was also deeply aware that absolutely nothing either of them had said bore any relation to proper introductions. Now what? he thought, feeling the heat rise up his neck.

  “Are you looking for Mr. Wylie, or do you just rescue random people?”

  “I am looking for the boss,” he said, relieved she had just rescued him. After all, the army didn’t pay him to ogle pretty girls. “Might you know where he is?”

  “In his office. He also calls it the storeroom, but I told him he needs to dignify it with a title. Come with me.”

  To the ends of the earth, he thought, happy to walk alongside Carrie McKay, a Wylie girl who didn’t seem to mind a ham-handed introduction by a privy. As he matched his stride to hers with surprising ease, considering she was short, he made a singular discovery.

  He didn’t feel eighty anymore.

  Chapter Six

  Even though she was short, Carrie McKay had a purposeful stride. She led him past the dining hall toward a nondescript shed with a sign reading, “Mr. Wylie’s Office” tacked above the door. He noticed a daily chore board outside the door, where employees wrote in their names and hours.

  He waited for her to open the door, or at least knock, then he felt flattered when she seemed content to stand there with him.

  “When I was a little girl, I saw a tall lady in Bozeman who walked her really small dog on a leash. My, but that little fellow could move. His feet were a blur.” She laughed. “Thanks for slowing down a bit.”

  He smiled, because the picture she painted of the little dog trucking along was so vivid. “You have a way with a phrase. Are you one of Mr. Wylie’s storytellers around the campfire?”

  “I’m a kitchen flunkie, and I sing at the campfires. I worked mostly at Lake Yellowstone camp last summer, and in Gardiner the summer before, where Mr. Wylie keeps a temporary office. Lots of times the soldiers came over from their station at Lake to listen. Were you one of those? I don’t remember you, sir.”

  “I was in the Philippines last year,” he said.

  He thought he had tossed off the sentence with a certain unconcerned air, but maybe not, since she gave him a gentle look. He didn’t know how else to explain that look. “And now you’re here,” she said, so matter-of-fact. “I’ll wager this is better.”

  She knocked on the door
and then opened it and stuck her head in. “Mr. Wylie, you have a visitor of an official nature, I think.” She looked back at Ramsay, eyeing his chevrons and hash marks. “He’s some sort of sergeant, but maybe a bit more.”

  “Send the man in, Carrie, no matter what sort of sergeant he is.”

  Carrie opened the door and ushered him inside. Ramsay removed his campaign hat because the ceiling was low but then wondered what to do with the thing that seemed to grow to enormous proportions, because he felt suddenly awkward.

  He shouldn’t have worried. Carrie deftly plucked his hat from his hand and hung it by the chin strap from a hook. She stood there, hands clasped in front of her, so proper but still with that amazing twinkle in her eyes, as if life itself was the adventure.

  Mr. Wylie stood up and held out his hand. “Will Wylie,” he said.

  “Sergeant Major Stiles,” Ramsay said, glad to have something to do with his hands. Gadfreys, where was this sudden shyness coming from?

  “Mr. Wylie, would you like me to get you two some pie?” Carrie asked.

  Pie. He couldn’t help himself and sighed. “Mr. Wylie, I dreamed about cherry pie from this very dining room for the last year and a half.”

  “He was in the Philippines,” Carrie added, frowning. “I’m afraid it’s only a reconstituted dried apple pie. We haven’t unpacked the canned cherries yet, but there is whipped cream. Mounds of it, if you’d like.”

  Shoot me dead right now and I will die a happy man, Ramsay thought.

  “Will apple pie be an adequate substitute?” Mr. Wylie asked him. “I hate to disappoint the army.” He looked closer and Ramsay saw the respect in his eyes. “Sergeant major, are you?”

  “As of February, Mr. Wylie. “You might remember me from B Company. We patrol this district.”

  “Indeed I do,” Mr. Wylie replied. “I remember more than that.” He gestured toward a Nabisco box. “Have a seat in my well-appointed office. Carrie, bring us some pie, and while you’re at it, get a piece for yourself and join us.”