Calamity

by Libbie Hawker

  “Yeah,” Blasphemy said under his breath. “If you go East you’ll run right into Custer.”

  “Only looking for work,” I said. “I can do laundry real good, and keep rooms in a boarding house, too.”

  “Better go on to Fort Laramie,” Bridger said. “It’s booming, so I hear. Good prospects for anybody who wants steady work. The Overland Stage Line just ran a route through Fort Laramie; it’s as lively a place as you could hope to find.”

  “How far is Fort Laramie?”

  “More than a day’s ride,” Blasphemy said, then whistled softly through his teeth. “That’s for damn sure.”

  Bridger laid it out for me: the weeks of riding, the passes and rivers I must cross, the long empty stretches of nothingness out there in the high sage country.

  “Shit,” I said when he was finished.

  Those two fellas grinned at each other, charmed as some men were by my coarse tongue. But I couldn’t use their approval to my advantage. My mood was too dark just then. The last of my money was gone, and the Lord alone knew what prospects I could find within a day’s ride. Even Fort Bridger might not be enough to sustain me.

  Just then the jangling, glad music of the piano rattled out across the long hall. The men of the road ranch set up a unison whoop as, in a flurry of bright colors and a flash of gay smiles, the dancing girls came bouncing into the room. Even Bridger and Blasphemy forgot their momentary enmity; they clapped and whistled and slugged each other’s shoulders as the girls took up their cue and began to dance. The ladies wove through the room, kicking their legs up over the faro tables and leaning low to reveal the tops of their plump bosoms.

  The two men beside me fished coins and notes from their pockets, and watched the women with eager, speculative stares.

  I watched the women, too—watched the ease with which they danced, their confidence as they tumbled down into a man’s lap, then skittered away again with a flirty shake of their hips.

  Laundry. Or keeping up boarding rooms. It was all just a cover; I knew that, even in my own mind, even as I tried to tell myself that I only wanted honest and respectable work. But what honest, respectable occupation could stand up to the onslaught of the rail lines?

  None. That’s what I knew right then. There was one sure way for a girl to make her living. And by God I would do it, or starve in the trying.

  It took me almost two weeks to reach Fort Laramie. Rainbow was lucky on the trek, for the spring grass was lush and sweet, and she had her fill to eat every time I stopped to graze her. The journey went a damn sight harder on me. In Fort Bridger, I sold what assets I had for mean little bargains—for I had competition, as any girl does in an established town. I was obliged to take whatever pay I could get, and if I felt cheated, I quickly learned to swallow my complaints. But despite the tight-fisted cheats who inhabited that town, I rustled up enough hard tack and salt pork for one meal a day. Then I set out east, toward Fort Laramie, riding as hard as I dared push my mule—or myself, for my body ached and protested after days of busy work.

  Every hour I spent on that trail was marked by hunger. Lord, what a trial it was to restrict myself to just one biscuit and a couple mouthfuls of that chewy, salty pork each morning when I rolled from my hard, cold bed. Way out there, alone in the open prairie, the wind would sometimes sound like a chorus of voices, all of them singing together: Eat it all up, Martha. Fill up your belly for once in your life. If you’re to die out here alone, at least die full and satisfied.

  In those desperate moments, I kept my eyes fixed to Rainbow’s bobbing head, the sway of her long patchwork ears, and I answered that voice back, my thoughts treading along to the rhythm of my she-mule’s walk. No, no, never. No, no, never. Laramie is waiting for me. Laramie and money and dreams come true. Never, never, never.

  For all my desperation, the journey wasn’t entirely one of dread. Moments of great beauty drew close and walked beside me for a spell, then departed as quiet as they came, leaving memory that has stayed with me all these many years. I remember a storm sweeping down from a distant line of mountains, the coal-gray underbelly of clouds breaking and spreading, bleeding a dense blue haze of rain, and a bright flick of lightning, white against dark. I listened for the thunder, but it never came. I remember how I looked up from my saddle horn and found a herd of pronghorns walking with me, peaceable, unafraid, their slim, tawny shapes emerging from the long grass and vanishing again, their black antlers stark against a hot, pale world, like the words of a letter I couldn’t read. The pronghorns traveled with me for more than an hour, and by time they finally left, I was half convinced I had dreamed them up—that I had fallen into the grip of a starvation dream. Once, at the top of a gentle rise—it couldn’t hardly be called a hill—I spotted three Indian women foraging near a stand of juniper trees. When they saw me, they put their children up onto their ponies’ backs and ran, vanishing behind the shoulder of their slope. At night I heard wolves howling out across the prairie, and I howled along in chorus. I thought I might bring the wolves down to kill me, but in that moment, I didn’t care. I was raw and bony like a wolf myself, and the song made me feel less lonesome.

  Despite my privations, I did have one strange and gracious bit of luck on that long ride. Somewhere east of a mountain pass, which took me two days to cross, I smelled wood smoke on the air, too thick and acrid to be the smoke of a camp’s cook fire. At first, I thought I imagined the smell. But after a mile or two, I could see a smudge of brown-gray haze hanging trapped among the cottonwoods alongside a shadowy crick. I rode toward that haze, heedless of Indians—and maybe thinking, in my stupor of hunger and lonesomeness, that if it was Indians I would throw myself on their mercy and beg them to take me in as one of their own.

  As soon as I reached the source of the smoke, I realized what a fool I’d been—and realized, too, that I was far luckier than any fool deserved to be. It was Indians—or it had been, at least. In a recent clearing below the cottonwoods there stood the sad remains of a cabin, built all of wood with its walls charred black and its roof fallen in, and threads of smoke still rising from inside. I sat silent on my mule, staring at the wreckage. Rainbow seemed to sense the danger, too; she never twitched a muscle, but raised her head and strained her ears toward the burned house, tense and waiting. Suddenly I felt more alert than I had for days. I wanted to turn Rainbow and ride away, but I was too frightened to move, to make the slightest sound. After a long spell of fear, I realized the clearing lay dead still, except for a buzzing of flies somewhere off in the brush. I knew what those flies must be buzzing over. I didn’t want to see. But I reasoned the clearing was empty now, save for me and my mule and the thing upon which all those flies was feasting. If any Sioux had remained, I would have already found myself stuck full of arrows. So I dismounted with the slowness and care that always come over a person in the presence of death. Then I crept across the trampled yard toward the cabin.

  The smell of fire was sharp—choking. It raised in me the same instinctive fear and awe that it brings to the hearts of all creatures. The house was dead-black on the inside, and just about hot as the fires of Hell. A few pale squares of light showed in the walls where window shutters had once hung. The shutters was gone now, torn away or burned. My mouth was dry, bitter with the taste of ash. My heart pounded loud in my ears. But my eyes adjusted to the dimness.

  There wasn’t much left inside the cabin. The Indians took it all—or else there hadn’t been much to begin with. A small table and two chairs was blackened and overturned; white shards of plates and bowls lay smashed upon the hard-packed earthen floor. The roof had fallen in on one side, obscuring everything but the foot of a bed-stead, which held the smoldering timbers of the roof up in a grotesque peak, as if the house itself was still trying, of its own conscious will, to remain standing.

  Near the foot of the ruined bed, I spied a small trunk and approached cautiously, as if it might conceal a nest of vipers. The trunk’s lid was charred, still hot to the touch; I wrapped my ke
rchief around one hand to pry it loose without burning my fingers.

  Inside, folded atop a couple of patchwork blankets, I found a lady’s dress—finely made from a calico of tiny white flowers against a background of mulberry red. Thin strips of lace decorated the ends of the sleeves and the collar, too. Right beside the dress, perched atop the blankets, was a little felt hat in a shade of purply-red that almost matched the calico. A pearl hat pin was stabbed through the felt, right beside a curved feather of snowy white.

  “Christ in Hell,” I swore, staring down at the unexpected treasure. Then I felt miserably sorry for letting out such an awful cuss when people in the vicinity was freshly dead. If their spirits still hung around the place, I didn’t want them latching onto me and haunting me to madness—particularly since I intended to steal from those very same spirits.

  So, “Pardon me,” I called out the nearest window, in the general direction of the flies, and then, “Rest in peace, poor souls.” Then, before I could shiver myself out of doing it, I scooped the dress and hat up in my arms and ran from the burned-out house.

  The dress fit in the top of my saddle bag, though I had to push it down hard and wrinkle it up something awful to get it inside. The hat I tied to my saddle horn, which was the only place I could think to put it where its plume wouldn’t be crushed. I looked down at that bouncing, waving feather most of the way to Fort Laramie. Countless times I told that hat, All my hopes depend on you now. Don’t let me down, or I’ll throw you in the river, and let the ghosts drown trying to get to you back.

  A cold wind seemed to follow me all the way from the cabin to my destination, and I sang while I rode, and talked out loud to Rainbow to distract myself from the eerie chill. Whenever I fell quiet, I could all but feel icy fingers reaching for me, seeking to tear me out of my saddle. I knew it was only my imagination, but still I couldn’t rid myself of the shivers.

  When at last I saw Fort Laramie on the horizon—a flat, red town nestled around the feet of low, coppery hills—my voice was hoarse and dry. But the feeling of ghosts left me all at once, as if the sight of a town was enough to drive vengeful spirits clean away. My own spirit felt considerably lightened. I rode down to a crick bed and let Rainbow suck noisily at the red water while I (screened by a bunch of scraggly willows) changed into the mulberry dress.

  It was too tight in the shoulders, so I could hardly lift my arms without fear of tearing the calico, and it was a few inches shorter than it should have been. But it fit me good around the waist and bust, and looking down at my chest, I liked the look of the intricate pintucks that fanned across its bib. The lace tickled my neck. I had never worn a fancy lady’s hat before and didn’t quite know how to do it, but after some experimentation, I wrestled my hair up into a bird’s-nest of a bun and tied it with a piece of twine from my saddle bag, and managed to stab the pearl hat pin through the felt and into my hair without spiking the thing through my skull. I counted that a major accomplishment, considering I had neither skill nor mirror.

  I washed every bit of skin that showed with pure, clean crick water, hoping I didn’t look like I’d just spent two weeks riding through the wilderness and howling with wolves. Then, when I was ready as I ever could be, I swung up onto Rainbow’s back and arranged myself side-saddle so my knees wouldn’t show, and headed straight for the town.

  Almost as soon as I came out of the willow grove, I saw a man riding my way, driving a few cattle before him. He noted my dress and my ladylike posture on my mule, and lifted his hat in greeting, though he was still some way off. I waited for him to catch up. His cattle passed me, plodding toward town, heads down as if they knew what was in store for them.

  “Good day to you, sir,” I said in a way I thought might sound kind of formal and ladylike.

  “Mam,” he said.

  I blushed. It was the first time anybody had ever called me mam, and I didn’t quite know how to take it. I said, “I come over from Fort Bridger to look for work. Do you know anyone who’s hiring girls?”

  “Hiring girls,” he said. “To do what, exactly?”

  For answer, I tossed my head so the white plume danced. “This and that.”

  “In that case, you want Madam Robair. Can’t say what she’s like to work for, seeing as how I’m not a girl myself. But I’ve sampled her wares many times, and she has the best girls and the nicest cat-house in all of Fort Laramie. She’s a real Frenchie, and I don’t know but the French know how to sell it better than anybody else in the world.”

  Certainly, plenty of tents and rough shacks stood in the vicinity of Fort Laramie, but the man I’d met at the road ranch hadn’t lied. The Overland Stage Line seemed a conduit for wealth and activity as much as it was a means of delivering goods. Quite a few proper buildings lined the town’s main street, though all of them was newly built, as evidenced by the bright, unfaded paint and the smell of sawdust hanging on the air. More buildings remained under construction, skeletons of beam and brick rising along the town’s central route. Real houses sprouted along the side streets, too, replacing shabby lean-tos and canvas tents, their growth accompanied by the relentless ring of hammers against wood. Soon enough I located Madam Robair’s place, following the tell-tale sign of the clattering piano and the suggestive moan of the hurdy-gurdy.

  I walked right in like I owned the place, and though none of the gentlemen who lounged about the parlor took much notice of me (their attention being otherwise engaged), there wasn’t one pair of feminine eyes that failed to slit in my direction. No doubt the girls in Laramie all knew each other by sight, so I was marked out at once for an interloper. Laramie may be booming, as the fellows back at the road ranch promised—but in a boom, it was all the more crucial to grab up as much money as a body could make while the grabbing was good. Competition was never welcome anywhere. How much faster that truth held when purses was fat with money and bank notes fell from men’s hands like rain.

  Sensing the girls’ hostility, I determined to stand my ground and carve out a sizeable chunk of Fort Laramie for myself. I braced my fists on my hips and said aloud, demanding of nobody in particular, “Where’s Madam Robair? I come a real long way to speak with her, and I won’t leave till I do.”

  The closest girl, whose hair was a forceful, unconvincing shade of red, tossed me a glare over her exposed shoulder, even as her friend of the hour covered that same shoulder in kisses. “You ain’t got no business here. Better for you if you shove off now.”

  “I won’t shove nowheres,” I said. “Point me in the direction of Madam Robair and I’ll thank you kindly, though.”

  “Oh joy,” she said. A few of the other girls laughed.

  The red one stood up, leading her fella by the hand. She sauntered toward a carved staircase with fancy gilding all down its newel-post and rail. One of the girls still left in the parlor said, “Just tell her, Nancy. She’s too doggy to work here, anyhow. It won’t make any difference; Madam’ll send her packing once she gets a look at her mug.”

  Red Nancy laughed sort of cruelly and said, “Madam’s in the back room, down that hallway there. Good luck, Missy. You’re going to need it.”

  The hall was long and dark, for it was lined in fine wood paneling, as polished and slick as any that might be found in a queen’s palace. At the end of the hall there stood a door, just as dark and shiny as the paneling, carved in pierce-work scrolls with bits of red glass winking in all its intricate, patterned holes. I went as slow down that hall as I’d gone toward the burned-out cabin under the cottonwoods. The feeling I got from that door, with its glaring red glass, was almost the same—dark and forbidding, a distinct sensation that I didn’t belong, that I wasn’t wanted.

  But I had nowhere else to turn, so I rapped on the door just below the pane of scarlet glass. A second later a woman’s voice called, “We!”

  I didn’t know what she meant by it, so I stood there like a stunned heifer till she said (impatiently this time), “Who is it! Come in!” Her accent was thick and exotic. I thought
, That’s how the Queen of England must sound, even though I reckoned the Queen of England most certainly was not French.

  Accordingly, I opened the door. Then, I’m sorry to report, I stood on the threshold, staring, gape-mouthed, at the woman who sat behind the desk. She was as tiny as they come, like a little sparrow bird, with hair like a sparrow’s feathers, too—a color somewhere between brown and gray and golden, impossible to name but pretty in a naturely way. The hair was fixed simply, in a great round poof atop her head, held in place by a tortoiseshell comb. She wore a dress of a modest, blue-gray color, cut in a style that could never be called showy. Her collar came up high, almost to her chin, and her sleeves was long. The buttons was covered in plain cloth, not made of silver or pearls. But though I was no great judge of finery, still I could tell at a glance that the woman was richly attired. Her dress may have been plain in color, but the fabric held a beguiling sheen, so lovely and inviting and smooth, my hands itched to feel the sleeves. The woman’s face wasn’t painted, either, like the girls in the front parlor—and that was well, for she must have been forty years old at least. But her skin was clear, and her mouth was naturally pink, and her bright blue eyes needed no blacking of the lashes to shine with stern command. She was as perfectly fine a woman as I had ever seen.

  “Who are you?” she asked, with that strange, lilting slant to her words.

  “My name is Jane,” I said, again finding no inclination to supply my real name, for no reason I could think of. Maybe by that time, lying about my identity had become a matter of simple habit. “Jane Burch, out of Fort Bridger. I heard tell that Laramie is the best place in all of Wyoming Territory for a girl to find some work. I also heard tell that Madam Robair is the very best to work for. Are you the madam herself?”

  “Indeed I am herself,” she said, lifting one sparrow-colored brow, looking me over slowly. Her lips tensed and pressed smaller, and I knew straight away that she wasn’t too impressed with what she saw. But I was determined to make the madam take me in.