Courting Carrie in Wonderland

by Carla Kelly

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  After she splurged on a glass of lemonade from the lunch counter, Carrie tucked Mrs. LaMarque’s envelope down her shirtwaist front and walked the two blocks to the Wylie Camping Company office, hoping Mrs. Wylie would be there to help her find a ride to Willow Park.

  “There you are!” the lady in question said when she opened the door. “How did you fare? I hear she was a terror.”

  “Only until we got to know her,” Carrie said. “Mrs. Wylie, for my services, she gave me enough money to pay all my expenses this coming year.”

  “That is good news, indeed, Carrie,” Mrs. Wylie said, beaming at her. “Have a seat. I have something here for you that I suspect a certain man mailed from Bozeman.”

  “Oh, dear,” Carrie said as she sank into the chair.

  Mrs. Wylie regarded her with sympathy. “We heard what happened. Say the word and William will write a letter on his behalf. So will I.”

  “Yes, thank you.” Please don’t make me say anymore, she thought. She held out her hand for the package and rested it in her lap.

  “I doubt it will bite,” Mrs. Wylie said as Carrie sat there staring down.

  Carrie opened the package and took out a bank book from the Bank of the Rockies. She opened the letter stuck inside the little blue book and spread it on her lap.

  My Dearest Caroline, I closed my savings account here, opened one in your name, and deposited my life’s savings in it, she read. “Mrs. Wylie. Please help me,” she said.

  Mrs. Wylie quickly came around the desk and sat beside her.

  “I’ve been crying so long that my eyes hurt,” Carrie said, embarrassed to admit such weakness. “Please, could you read it out loud.”

  “I will after you take a deep breath and then a sip of water. Carrie, you’re as white as milk.”

  Mrs. Wylie handed her a paper cup of water. “That’s better. All right, here I go. “ She began the letter again. “ ‘My Dearest Caroline …’ He calls you Caroline?”

  “He likes it,” Carrie said simply.

  “ ‘I closed my account here, opened one in your name, and deposited my life’s savings in it.’ My word, Carrie, how much is that?”

  With shaking fingers, Carrie opened the bank book and stared at the last entry. “Mrs. Wylie, two thousand dollars!”

  Mrs. Wylie got herself a drink of water from the cooler. She sat down again with a plop. “I need a deep breath too. Here we go. ‘I have no idea what the army is going to do to me, but I don’t want them to come after my savings. If you’re going to continue to be stubborn and visit me after you graduate next year, it would give me some peace to know you have funds for whatever you might need.’ Going to be stubborn?” Mrs. Wylie asked. “Good for you, Carrie. He’s a fine man. Where was I?”

  “I’m stubborn,” Carrie said, wondering when that happened.

  “ ‘It isn’t a huge amount,’ ” Mrs. Wylie read. “ ‘Like others, I lost money in the Panic of ’93. It’s recouped a bit since then, and I want you to have it.’ ”

  “I can’t possibly accept this,” Carrie said.

  “Yes, you can, missy!” Mrs. Wylie insisted. “He’s protecting his interests by giving them to you. Pretty smart, if you ask me.”

  And kind, Carrie thought. So kind. Carrie thought of Mrs. LaMarque’s money stuffed down her shirtwaist, and all her years of scrounging about to get enough money for the necessities, let alone college. Now this. It was Ramsay’s money, hers to protect, because she was stubborn.

  Mrs. Wylie cleared her throat and turned over the note. “Just a little more to read, Carrie. ‘The army might try to take this away too, but they can’t have it. I earned it. It’s yours. You’re as brave as any trooper I ever led, and a darned sight better-looking. All my love, Ram.’ What is he talking about?”

  Carrie took a rectangular red box from the package and pressed the button to open it. She gasped to see Ramsay’s Medal of Honor, with its tricolor ribbon and the spread eagle perched on a cannon. She gently touched the five-pointed gilt star.

  “This is what he is talking about, Mrs. Wylie. This is his Medal of Honor.”

  “That’s what they look like? Oh, Carrie.”

  They stared at the medal together. Stunned, Carrie closed the box and set the bank book back on top of it. “I don’t have a good place to keep this. May I leave it here in your safe?”

  “You can, but I think you should store it in the Willow Park safe.”

  “Why?”

  “Something tells me you might like to take that medal out and look at it now and then,” Mrs. Wylie. “You know, just to remind you how brave you truly are, and stubborn. He’s right, Carrie.”

  They sat close together in silence. “I can do that,” Carrie said finally. She took the contents of the box and put them in her purse. “You’re right. I wouldn’t want these so far away from me.” She closed her eyes against the pain that rolled over her. “He is far enough away.”

  She gathered herself together. “Mrs. Wylie, I stopped here to see if you could recommend a way for me to get back to Willow Park. I have work to do.”

  Her heart sank when Mrs. Wylie hesitated. “Is something else wrong?” Carrie asked.

  “I honestly don’t know,” Mrs. Wylie said. “Major Pitcher from Fort Yellowstone sent a note to me by courier ordering you to report to him at the administration building as soon as Mrs. LaMarque is on the train.”

  “I will not,” Carrie said, getting to her feet as if pulled by strings. “I won’t. It’s still a free country and I owe nothing to the US Army. I’ll walk to Willow Park before I will have anything to do with Major Pitcher. Good day, Mrs. Wylie, and thank you for your help.”

  “Carrie …” Mrs. Wylie began. She smiled then. “I’ll claim I never saw you. Someone will let you hitch a ride.”

  “I wasn’t worried,” Carrie said, serenely in charge of herself again. “See you around the campfire soon?”

  “Of course!” Mrs. Wylie blew her a kiss.

  She picked up her carpetbag, opened the door, and started walking, confident someone would give her a ride before she walked too far. People heading to the park were kind that way.

  Am I stubborn, Ramsay Stiles? she thought as she strode along, breathing in great lungfuls of Montana air and feeling surprisingly liberated. She thought of the Medal of Honor safely stowed in her purse and knew its home from now on would be under her pillow.

  For the fun of it, she walked through the construction site that was going to become what people had already dubbed the Roosevelt Arch. She smiled at the masons who tipped their hats to her and went back to work, mortaring the stones in place.

  She didn’t have to walk far. She couldn’t recall his name, but he was one of the older drivers for the Yellowstone Park Transportation Company. He pulled his team to a halt beside her.

  “Fred Lonnigan, at your service,” he said with a tip of his hat.

  “Are you going to Willow Park?” she asked.

  “Eventually. One quick stop first at Mammoth. I’ll give you a hand up.”

  He helped her into the seat beside him. Carrie turned around. “No tourists?”

  “Not right now,” he said. “This won’t take long.”

  Carrie settled back, thinking about the four weeks to come before she took the train back to Bozeman and her senior year. By the time she left Wonderland, fall would be making its presence known, with the elk bugling their challenges to other bulls and keeping a sharper eye on their harems. She thought of Ramsay’s wolves in the Lamar Valley and wondered how they would fare this winter, with no advocate.

  She hoped it might snow before her last day at Willow Park, because she enjoyed the fumaroles of steam that seemed to pop up, unannounced, through Yellowstone’s white blanket. In early June, a solitary buffalo had strolled into Willow Park during a spring squall and hunkered down by the creek until he was covered with snow. She remembered that Jake Trost had watched the solitary bull with her and wondered out loud if they e
ver got lonely.

  She hoped with all her heart that Ramsay Stiles wasn’t sitting in the stockade, staring up at a postage stamp of sky through iron bars. He was a man used to the out of doors, a patient observer of wolves, an admirer of cherry pie, the man she wanted to marry and have her children by.

  She closed her eyes, tired of everything, wondering if she would ever have a good night’s sleep again. She couldn’t help but lean against Fred Lonnigan, who put his arm around her in an avuncular way and said, “You’ve had a trying time, missy.” It was the last thing she remembered as Fred spoke to his team and they took the steep grade to Mammoth Hot Springs.

  “Miss McKay? Carrie? I need to speak to you.”

  Carrie opened her eyes and sat up, alarmed to realize that the traitor driver had taken her directly to the administration building at Fort Yellowstone. She blinked her eyes to get the sleep out of them and found herself staring down at Major John Pitcher.

  “Oh, no,” she said and tried to scramble over Fred to escape out the other side. The driver grabbed the waistband of her skirt and she realized she wasn’t going anywhere.

  “I don’t know anything and I have nothing to say to you,” she told the major when Fred Lonnigan, grinning, deposited her on the boardwalk next to Yellowstone Park’s acting superintendent.

  “Thanks, Fred,” the major said. “Hang around and you can drive her to Willow Park when I’m done.”

  “I’d rather walk than ride with someone as sneaky as Fred Lonnigan,” she declared, which made Fred laugh and the officer turn away and cough.

  “Carrie, Major Pitcher put out a memo telling all of us drivers to look for you. I got lucky. Will you still make pie for me?”

  “I might,” she said, unwilling to cooperate. “Maybe in a year or two.”

  Carrie folded her arms and glared at the major, too tired to care what impression she made and thoroughly disgusted. “As for you, Major, I currently have no use for the US Army,” she said.

  “Carrie, all I want is to let you know what we’re trying to do for Sergeant Major Stiles,” Major Pitcher said. “Come into my office. Please?”

  “Since you said please, I suppose I must,” she told him, searching for dignity when all she wanted to do was find a dark corner to lick her wounds.

  He showed her to a seat in his office and closed the door. Rather than sit behind the desk, he took the other chair. He gave her a look so full of sympathy that Carrie felt wretched tears gathering again.

  What could she say? “Major, I’m so tired.” Well, that’s a bit of brilliant repartee, she thought, almost past caring what the major thought of her, but not quite.

  “I imagine you are,” he said. “I didn’t mean to send out scouting parties for you, but everyone here at the fort wants you to know we will do our best to see that Sergeant Major Stiles is not incarcerated for what, to the US Army, is a most serious offense—disobeying an order.”

  “He told me he was looking at a court martial and years of hard labor at Fort Leavenworth,” she said, wondering where she found the courage to even say the words, let alone think them. “Major Pitcher, it’s wrong.”

  “No, it isn’t, Carrie,” he said, and took her by both hands. “Disobeying orders is a terrible offense. He knew that when he told his troopers not to use the strychnine at the soldier stations.”

  She looked away and withdrew her hands. “I know you’re right, but I hate that you’re right.”

  “Is it any consolation that I agree with you?” the major asked.

  She felt her shoulders droop and exhaustion claim her. She nodded, unable to speak.

  The major seemed to have trouble with his throat. He cleared it several times. “Carrie, nearly every trooper at this fort has sent a letter, plus all the Yellowstone Transportation drivers—yes, even Fred Lonnigan.” He reached behind him to a packet of papers on his desk and took out a thick document. “I also sent a typewritten copy of this, plus a lengthy letter, to Colonel Ward who commands our regiment. I sent another to the Department of the Interior. This is your carbon copy, plus Ramsay’s handwritten copy.”

  Her curiosity outweighed her sorrow. She accepted the handkerchief Major Pitcher gave her, blew her nose, and looked at the document. She scanned the pages, her heart opening wider, as she thumbed through what seemed to be field notes dating back three years.

  “My goodness, he kept a record of his wolf observations in Lamar Valley,” she said. “Summer and winter. Everything.”

  “It’s amazing. He brought it to me the morning of his departure for Fort Clark. Told me—ordered me, actually—to read it and make sure it was given to you. I read it and took the liberty of having my clerk type it and provide carbon copies.”

  “He’s been watching the wolves for years,” she said, alert and interested.

  “The notes date from Ramsay’s arrival here three years ago as First Sergeant of B Troop. There’s a year’s gap during his time in the Philippines and then in Letterman Hospital in San Francisco. Carrie, he was badly wounded in that assault on the cave,” Major Pitcher said. “I’m certain you haven’t seen his injury.” He chuckled. “… At least not yet.”

  “Major Pitcher,” she said and blushed.

  “One of the insurrectionists took a real slice at his ribcage. He said fifty stitches closed the wound. I know he nearly died of the infection.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  Major Pitcher tapped the documents in her lap. “One of the entries states how the wolves helped him heal. He watched them and wrote that something happened to his heart.”

  He leaned back in his chair, staring out the imaginary window that only men who have seen combat seemed to look through. Ramsay did it too. “He was so weak and thin when he came back here in November. I didn’t think he’d survive the winter. Gradually, he began to perk up and did mention to me that he was watching the wolves. When he and I went East for that medal ceremony, he seemed almost himself again. Yellowstone healed him.”

  “The wolves did,” Carrie said.

  Through a blurry film, Carrie pressed the handwritten set of notes to her breast, holding them close as she yearned to hold their author close. She thought about the past month. To her infinite relief, serenity began to replace anxiety. Maybe the wolves would be kind enough to heal her too.

  She smiled at the major, unable to speak.

  “Are we friends again?” he asked.

  “We are. I do have a favor to ask.”

  “Ask away.”

  “I want one more copy to send to Mrs. Louise LaMarque. She’s knows what is going on, and this will soothe her too. And may I have another copy of your letter, as well?”

  “Done and done, Miss McKay.” Major Pitcher turned around and picked up what she requested from his desk. “We’re doing what we can. I’m perfectly willing to go to Fort Clark and see if my presence will help.”

  “Thank you,” Carrie said. “In fact, if I scribble a note on this copy for Mrs. LaMarque, could you mail it as soon as possible? If I have to do that at Willow Park, that adds another day or two until it gets going.”

  “Done again. I’ll get an envelope from my clerk’s desk.”

  She wrote a note to Louise LaMarque. In Major Pitcher’s absence, she took the envelope from her shirtwaist and copied the Washington, DC, address on the note. When he returned, she handed him the note and documents.

  “Very well, Carrie,” he said as he put everything into the large envelope. “It’ll be on tonight’s train.”

  He escorted her to the boarded sidewalk, where Fred Lonnigan waited.

  “Will we succeed, sir?” she asked after Fred handed her up to the driver’s seat.

  “I wish I knew,” the major said. “Write him every week, and stay busy yourself.”

  “I can do that. Thanks, Major Pitcher,” she said as Fred gathered the reins. “I’m sorry I was difficult.”

  “No need to apologize,” the major said. “Ramsay is far too valuable to languish in prison. Now, we w
ait.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Bonnie Boone was the first person Carrie saw at Willow Park Camp. With tears on her face, the cook opened her arms and grabbed Carrie into an embrace that went on and on.

  After a loud session with handkerchiefs, Bonnie sat Carrie down in the empty dining hall and made her recount the whole wonderful, miserable trip. By the time she was finished, the cook told her to report for work when she felt like it. “Just this once,” she teased and then hugged Carrie again.

  Carrie let herself be escorted to Tent Twenty-Six by her roommates and the Great Trostini, who insisted on knowing who he could write to at Fort Clark.

  “I’ve spared you this bit of snobbery, but my father is president of Seattle Electric Light Company. He knows General Nelson Miles quite well from Civil War days,” Jake Trost told her.

  “General Miles?” Carrie asked. She thought Ramsay had mentioned him once, but she was stupefied with exhaustion and misery.

  “My dear, he is General of the Army,” Jake said with a smile. “Touché! Never hurts to throw around a title.”

  “Whatever you can, Jake,” she said, then put up her hand to stifle a yawn. “My word, but I am tired.”

  He gave her a Great Trostini salaam at the door to her tent, so she was smiling as she went inside. In a matter of minutes, she had shucked off her clothes and succumbed to sleep.

  Carrie slept around the clock, waking at four the next afternoon. Eyes still half-closed, she lay in bed listening to the rain as a late-afternoon storm bullied its way over the Gallatin Mountains and through Willow Park, heading east. Hands behind her head, she lay there wondering what was happening to Ramsay. Knowing her leisure would end the moment she poked her head outside the tent, Carrie read the army clerk’s transcription of Ram’s years-long observation of the wolves. She started reading the neatly typed pages and then changed to the dear man’s original account, desperate to be as close to him as she could by reading his own handwriting.

  His meticulous attention to detail touched her heart as he described watching pups play under the watchful eye of their parents and other pack members. He wrote of eagles swooping low on the air currents in Lamar Valley, curious and wondering in that way of birds of prey out for possible misadventure, as Ram wrote, … if there might be a meal somewhere in it for them.