by Chloe Carley
“I hope you don’t mind my offering to escort Rosalie on her rides. I can assure you she’ll be quite safe,” Joseph said as he thanked the mayor for his hospitality.
“Not at all, son. You saved my life today and I have no trouble entrusting the safety of my daughter to you. Besides, it’ll make her happy. She is so lonely without her sister here; I worry for her sometimes. You’ll be a good influence, I’m sure,” the mayor replied, bidding Joseph a good day and thanking him once again for rescuing him from the longhorns.
~
As Joseph stepped down from the veranda and across the garden, he could hear the neighing of the horses from the yard behind the house. Canaan was certainly a spirited creature, and Joseph looked forward to riding out with Rosalie in the days to come.
“Are you all done boot polishing at the mayor’s?” Quentin asked when Joseph entered the sheriff’s office, taking off his hat and knocking the dust from his boots.
“He was grateful I saved his life, that is all,” Joseph replied, seating himself at his desk. “I met young Rosalie, too. She’s a shy girl but seems animated enough on the subject of horses. It’s some mighty fine beasts the mayor has out back there.”
“Well, he’s rich enough to afford them and to let Rosalie please herself whilst Isabelle is away at her fancy finishing school,” Quentin said, his tone somewhat critical.
“Do you have something against the mayor?” Joseph asked.
But before the sheriff could answer him, a commotion came from the jailhouse, the sounds of a fracas between several prisoners who had just roused themselves from varying states of inebriation.
Joseph and Quentin walked through to the cells, which contained a motley collection of ruffians and vagabonds.
“Quite your yapping or you’ll be sleeping off that liquor for a week in there,” Quentin shouted at the men, who issued a string of obscenities.
“I said quit it,” the sheriff repeated, spitting on the floor as he kicked the bar of one of the cells.
“Frank James will see to you good, Sheriff Quentin. He’s coming into these parts to show you a thing or two, make no mistake,” one of the prisoners, a man with a thin scar running down his cheek, said.
There was murmur of agreement from the others, the reputation of the notorious Frank James preceding him.
“You think I’m scared of an outlaw and a common bandit?” Quentin asked. “He’ll be behind bars before any of you are released if he dares to show his face in this town.”
Further obscenities and threats were directed at the sheriff, but Monroe Quentin had spent his life dealing with hardnosed individuals. A few drunken ruffians held no sway with him, nor did Frank James, a cattle thief and a man of low moral standing. Monroe feared no man, and he repeated that sentiment to Joseph as the two prepared to meet the wagon train that was due to arrive at any minute.
“You need a strong man to be sheriff in these parts,” he said, putting on his cowboy hat and straightening his sheriff’s badge. “That way no man can you push you around.”
The two stepped out from the jailhouse onto the wide central street of Little Hope. It was busy that afternoon with folks coming and going.
The saloon was busy, and already it looked like several of the customers may find themselves joining the occupants of the jailhouse that night. The church bell was ringing as several ladies in their best church clothes hurried to Mr. Jesse Wayne’s revival meeting.
The sun was hot, beating down on the dusty scene, and the wagon train could be seen approaching over the hill.
“It all seems normal enough at the moment,” Joseph replied. “Just Heck Carter’s longhorns to see to.”
“That’s the thing about these places though,” Quentin said. “You just never know what’s going to happen.” And with that the two men stepped forward, a new band of adventurers arriving into Little Hope, bringing with them new stories, new hopes and new dreams.
Chapter Three
A Southern Belle in New York
Isabelle Taylor crossed the street, dodging several carriages and carts. The city of New York was busy and bustling that afternoon, just as it was every day, and she narrowly avoided several collisions as she made her way through the throng of traffic. This was a far cry from the sleeping town of Little Hope, which she had left all those months ago.
Isabelle had left her lodgings on Crosby Street shortly after lunch and was on her way downtown to a meeting of the New York Ladies Suffrage Society at which Miss Susan Brownwell Anthony was due to give an address.
She cut quite a striking figure as she walked. Though short in stature, her red hair stood out amidst a crowd, and her temperament was feisty, the expression on her heart-shaped face often giving away the emotions she felt inside.
She was not afraid to speak her opinion, and her belief in women’s equality had transformed her from the prim and proper daughter of the mayor of Little Hope into a woman who believed in doing all the good she could for the causes she believed in.
Her arrival in New York City had been something of an awakening. The long journey from Little Hope had taken her through country scarred by the Civil War. She had seen the terrible effects which that conflict had had upon the people of this proud nation and she was determined to do all she could to prevent such a thing occurring again.
Her father had enrolled her at Merritt’s Finishing School, run by the formidable Miss Merritt and her widowed sister Mrs. Foster.
These English ladies had come to New York with the express purpose of founding an establishment which would refine the young ladies now being produced by the first generation of American gentry. Untitled and unfettered by aristocratic ties, such people still needed to know the proper ways in which to behave.
Miss Merritt prided herself upon producing well-rounded young ladies who could not only draw, play the piano, and converse in French, but also knew the correct order in which to use one’s cutlery and the myriad of ways of addressing European nobility.
In short, theirs was a finishing school which the likes of Isabelle Taylor had little need for, despite her father’s pretensions. Isabelle was far too free spirited, and it had not taken long before she and Miss Merritt had clashed spectacularly over the effort to be invested in what Isabelle considered outdated and old-fashioned practices.
It had been when Isabelle had questioned Mrs. Foster’s declaration that a woman’s place was firmly at her husband’s side—that she should bask simply in his glory rather than attempt to create her own pool of light, and that a woman’s duty was to be dutiful.
“Don’t you believe in equality between the sexes?” Isabelle had asked, causing the elderly woman to splutter into her china teacup.
The conflict had escalated from there, and unbeknownst to her father it was decided that perhaps the time had come for Isabelle to leave Miss Merritt’s establishment and find a more suitable place to finish her education.
“One which fits with your new-fangled ideas,” the proprietress had said, as the two had settled Isabelle’s final bill.
Thus, Isabelle found herself with a choice to make, and taking the money meant for her finishing she invested instead in the future.
Not just her own education but those of Little Hope, both boys and girls, whom she hoped to one day teach by enrolling in a teacher’s training college. From which she hoped to emerge as a full-fledged school mistress ready to return to Texas and begin her philanthropic work.
It was from that establishment that she had just departed, and now she arrived at the temperance hall where the address was to be given. A number of other women had also gathered, and Isabelle milled about amongst them, offering greetings and encouragement to her fellow campaigners for women’s suffrage.
The movement, as one might imagine, was not popular amongst most of society. Her own father would no doubt be horrified if he learned that his daughter was involved with such things. Casey B.
Taylor had a very traditional view of women and had brought her
up to the prospect of marriage to a well-to-do gentleman. He’d hoped that by sending her to finishing school in New York she might gain something of an advantage over other girls in the locale.
Whilst by no means a well-to-do place, Little Hope had its share of respectable gentleman and new homesteaders were arriving all the time, as fortunes were made and the riches of the prairies exploited for economic gain.
It would come as something of a shock to him, Isabelle knew, to discover that Miss Merritt had failed in her promises to make Isabelle a respectable young lady. The life of a school mistress, however noble a cause, was not that which Casey had envisioned for his daughter.
Casting such thoughts aside, Isabelle took her seat amongst the gathered women as that hero of the suffrage movement took to the stage, welcomed by the society’s president Mrs. Wilson. Dutifully the audience applauded her, and Miss Anthony spoke with gentle passion about the cause before them.
“It is imperative that we women, and those men who support us, speak out for the unequal ways in which our sex is treated daily. Unequal rights have no place in our great nation, and we must work hard to ensure that we pioneers of this movement do all we can to make our voices heard,” she said, a rapturous round of applause now breaking out.
Isabelle too clapped, fired up by the eloquent yet forceful way in which the lady spoke to them. Her time in New York had been quite an awakening.
In years past she would have believed her father’s rhetoric, and if she had remained in Little Hope then Isabelle had no doubt that her fate would have been like that of any other woman. She would have remained a perfect southern belle, content to entertain her husband’s guests to tea parties on the veranda and be the mother to any number of children, living out her days in quiet gentility.
New York, and the ideas she had been exposed to here, had put paid to all that. Isabelle Taylor intended to change the world.
Amongst the gathered assembly in the temperance hall that afternoon there was a mood for protest, and at the conclusion of Miss Anthony’s speech a call went out for a march. Placards had already been made, and the group now made its way out onto the street calling for equal rights and freedoms for women. Isabelle too joined the march, holding aloft a placard which read Free Votes for Women and chanting the slogans which the others were offering up.
It was a chaotic scene and one which the mayor of Little Hope would have been aghast to see his daughter participating in. As the group gathered pace, they attracted the attention of the police, who had little interest in the cause they were representing.
The women endured the taunts and jeers of less enlightened New Yorkers who hurled insults at them for their stand.
“A woman’s place is in the home!” one man shouted as his wife looked on with more than a little interest.
“A load of rubbish. Women have no right in deciding the future of men!” another cried, attempting to snatch the placard from one of the women’s hands.
They were pelted with rotten fruit by several children and endured the cat calls and whistles of workers on the dockyards. But the group were determined in their cause, and walked on with decorum as around them the city responded to their protest.
It was not long before the police grew tired of chastising those who hurled abuse or tossed rotten eggs at the women, and so moves to break up the protest now began.
“Don’t you men believe we have the right to protest?” Mrs. Wilson said, berating a rather burly policeman whose uniform didn’t fit his stature.
“Madam, I have no interest in your protest, only in the keeping of law and order in this city, now kindly refrain from your marching,” he replied, removing the placard from the suffragette with some force.
“You can’t stop us from peacefully protesting,” Isabelle said, remonstrating with two more of the New York constabulary. “Rights for women, rights for women now!” she cried.
By now the policemen had grown tired of the women, and taking Isabelle aside, they remonstrated with her, her cries for equality echoing down Broadway as the two men held her by her arms.
“Do you not get tired of this? Can’t you see there’s no appetite out there for your fight?” one of them said.
“Then we must create one,” Isabelle cried, fired up by the words of Miss Anthony, who herself had been arrested amidst the throng of protestors for removing a policeman’s hat and throwing it to the ground. “Equality for women,” she cried again, struggling against their grip.
“Just give us your address, young lady, and we shall escort you home,” one of them said, exasperated.
Isabelle had no desire to give the policeman her address; she knew just what kind of trouble she would be in if she arrived back at the college under police escort. Unfortunately, as she struggled to release herself from their grasp, her calling cards fell from the pocket of her dress. It was not long before the two burly police constables were escorting her home, her cries of protest going unheeded.
The teacher training school which Isabelle had chosen to attend was, like Miss Merritt’s finishing school, a place which prided itself upon respectability.
Young ladies were expected to comport themselves with decorum worthy of the responsible role to which they aspired. Whilst the life of a school mistress would provide far greater freedom than that envisioned by Miss Merritt and her sister, the ladies of the teaching college still found themselves living in a world dominated by men.
However hard Isabelle and her fellow suffragettes might try to change it.
Thus, when the matron of the school saw Isabelle and the policemen coming up the steps, she flung her hands up in despair. It was not the first time that Isabelle had been returned to the college in such a manner, and almost every instance of trouble making in that place seemed to find its origins in the feisty young red head. The matron was not amused.
She was a formidable woman, a native of the city of New York who stood no nonsense from any of her charges. Flinging open the door, she stood seething as Isabelle was reprimanded once more by the policemen.
“Ma’am, I suggest you avoid any form of protest from now on. If you are seen again in such an action then the consequences could be more severe,” the policeman said, aware that even now the consequences for Isabelle appeared severe, the matron waiting for her turn of remonstration.
“Up these stairs, young lady,” she said, as the policemen turned to leave. “How dare you bring this establishment into disrepute again, you and your worthless causes. Inside, now! You are under curfew for the rest of the month, though it is my advice that you seek alternative arrangements for your education. Clearly this is not the right place for you any longer,” she said, slamming the door behind Isabelle as several of her fellow students peered around their doors.
Isabelle was popular in the college, well known for her feisty attitude and pioneering spirit. It was generally agreed that she would make a fine teacher, though her ways were certainly unorthodox. Now her fellow students watched as the matron continued to chastise her.
“You cannot hope to teach children if your own behavior is so abominable. What sort of example are you setting?” the matron said.
“An example that it is not all right for men to walk all over women. An example that any young girl should follow if she has any sense,” Isabelle replied.
“I do not think there is any place for you in this institution, Miss Taylor. You are a liability and have brought more scandal upon the college then any girl in living memory,” the matron said as they stood in front of Isabelle’s door, the argument now attracting the attention of the whole sorority.
“I have no desire to remain in a place that would support the oppression of women,” Isabelle replied.
