by Iris Kelly
“Shall we give the horses a bit of exercise?” Lydia asked timidly.
Giles raised an eyebrow. He had only been holding back for her sake.
“The stream’s this way. They’ll need it by the time we get there.”
Lydia pulled her horse into a run, and Giles followed suit. She loved the rush of a gallop, but it had still been a more restrained event on a lady’s saddle. This felt as if she was flying as fast as humanly possible. She and Giles climbed down at the stream and gave their horses a well-deserved drink. Lydia was breathless and needed to scoop a drink out for herself.
“Why is it that it feels like such exertion, when the horse is doing all the work?” she asked.
“Never thought of it that way.”
Lydia looked around contentedly:the soothing babble of the stream, with the sun sparkling off it, a large gathering of cattle watering about half a mile downstream, and a handsome, attentive cowboy beside her. An enterprising one who had made a real success of his life.
“There is one thing that troubles me, Mr. Cooper, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on it.”
“What is troubling you, Mrs. Maxwell?”
“Eighteen seventy-one.”
“Eighteen . . . seventy-one . . . What do you know about that?”
“I know that 75% of the cattle in Kansas died in those blizzards. I don’t have statistics on the other territories, but I think many of them were similarly hard hit.”
“Worst thing I’ve ever seen. Depending on the ranch, it was closer to 90% for some of them.”
“And how did you fare?”
Giles sighed. “It was like startin’ from scratch. I was lucky that I had so much money set by. But it still took three or four years ’fore I was feelin’ steady again. I think it was those hard days that actually turned my boys off of ranchin’. It was pretty bleak times. Anyway, I was one of the lucky ones. I’d say over half of the ranchers lost everything and had to walk away.”
“But . . . it seems to have recovered. The industry seems very healthy now.”
“Oh, it surely is. Eighty-six dollars a head for those beasts. Over twice the price of just fifteen years ago. So the ranchers are doin’ just fine. But it’s not the same fellas. After everyone lost their ranches, a bunch of wealthy businessmen from the East and from England swooped in. After the smoke cleared, they had bought up everything that wasn’t nailed down.
I used to hate the barbed wire. Now, I’m not so sure that I don’t need to make sure my cattle get their fair share of grazin’ land. Some of the herds of those newcomers are enormous, and I’ve got a thousand head myself.”
“Aren’t you worried? About more terrible blizzards?”
Giles shrugged. “I think about it from time to time. But there’s not much you can do.”
“I read that everyone just lets their cows fend for themselves in the winter. But it seems like such a gamble. Doesn’t it seem safer to make provisions to feed them in the winter?”
“Do you know how expensive that would be? And a waste of money, when they’re perfectly capable of surviving the winter on their own.”
“Provided there is no catastrophic weather. Mr. Cooper, what is the longest amount of time that you have experienced between these truly calamitous winters? Ten years? Fifteen years?”
Giles pondered. “That’s about it. Somewhere between ten and fifteen years. We’ve had almost twelve good years since that last one.”
“I’m sure you’ve given the matter a great deal of thought. And you have so much experience in these matters. But as I said, it is a troubling concern.”
“Well, I’m touched that you should take such an interest in my little ranch, Mrs. Maxwell.”
Our little ranch. And when are you going to ask me to call you Giles?
It was a peculiar courtship, but it suited her just fine. It was fitting that they should take their time getting to know one another. They were no impetuous, silly young things. And yet, a few days with Virginia and her husband had Lydia dreaming of a more affectionate stage. But he was being respectfully patient. Perhaps all he needed was a little hint!
The remainder of the day, Giles had to devote to work, and Lydia was free to wander around. From a distance, Giles saw her frequently engage in conversation with members of his crew. He could only guess at the barrage of questions coming from her. But clearly, none of them minded. There were wide grins all around. As long as they minded their manners around his guest. That made him smile. How had she gone from being Fanny’s guest to his?
*****
Dinner was roast chicken, a special treat. Although Giles suspected that Mrs. Maxwell was used to far more upscale fare, she was as appreciative and complimentary as anyone Fanny had cooked for.
“I cannot cook at all myself. But I think I mentioned that,” Lydia said to Giles.
When did she say that? he wondered.
“So, who do you think will buy Widow Ainsley’s property?” asked Fanny, anxious to change the conversation.
“Probably someone I’m not interested in living next door to,” Giles complained.
“Well, you could have bought it.”
Giles turned to Lydia. “Our elderly widowed neighbor is ready to sell her ranch. And it is prime land. Great access to the stream, same as us, but much closer to town. And it’s right smack against our property.”
“But you weren’t interested?” Lydia asked.
“Oh, once upon a time. If I was a young man with a young family, I’d be lookin’ to expand. Or if one of those no-good sons of mine had decided to stick with ranchin’.”
“Which no-good son should have stayed on the ranch?” Fanny scolded. “The no-good doctor? Or the no-good engineer? Or the no-good hotel owner?”
Giles couldn’t hide his pride. “I guess they did all right.”
“Do any of them live close by? It would be wonderful if any of them could be here for the wedding.”
“What wedding?” Giles asked.
Fanny’s panicked expression and Mrs. Maxwell’s confusion gave Giles a very uneasy feeling. He scowled—this was not going to be good.
“WHAT WEDDING!?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Oh, dear. Lydia could see that Fanny thought that she had spilled the beans about the young woman’s engagement. She needed to correct that misunderstanding so that Mr. Cooper didn’t find out Fanny’s secret.
“Our wedding, Mr. Cooper,” Lydia said and then smiled reassuringly at Fanny. Crisis averted! “I would love to have your children here for our wedding.”
The look on Giles’s face was indescribable. What sort of nonsensical babble was this? His first impulse was to ask Mrs. Maxwell if she had lost her mind. But manners prevailed.
“I’m afraid I don’t take your meaning, Mrs. Maxwell. Our wedding. What exactly does that mean?”
Lydia’s face fell. Had she offended him by mentioning the wedding before he did? His proposal and her acceptance had been made very clear in their correspondence.
“Pa. I’m getting married,” Fanny blurted out, seeing no other solution. “To Ned Sullivan. Only I didn’t want to leave you here all by yourself. So I wrote an ad for a wife in one of those mail order bride catalogues, and I signed your name to it. And Mrs. Maxwell answered. And here she is.”
Lydia’s hand flew to cover her mouth. But her shock and horror were impossible to cover. There were few things that could strike Giles speechless, but this certainly was one of those occasions. Lydia turned to him in disbelief.
“Mr. Cooper, am I to understand that you never advertised for a bride? And that you didn’t know why I was here?”
Giles’s eyes darted rapidly between Lydia and his daughter, not wanting to lose sight of either of them.
“No, Mrs. Maxwell. I had no idea that . . . are you saying that you agreed to marry me!?”
The tone of incredulity in his voice was more than Lydia could bear. She pushed herself away from the table and fled to the guest room. But closed doors were
not enough to keep out the sounds of the loud and furious argument back at the dining table. Giles could be heard saying something to the effect of, “You know I’m never getting married again.” and “You don’t order people from a catalogue like they were blankets!”
Fanny was also quite vocal. “You’re going to be miserable sitting here alone in this house, whether you admit it or not!” and “Why can’t you just think about it? She couldn’t be any nicer.”
Lydia frantically paced back and forth in the small room. She didn’t know what was worse: the humiliation of being seen by Mr. Cooper as a desperate and pathetic woman, or the heartbreak of having the certainty of love and devotion destroyed in an instant. She paused to sink to the edge of her bed and started weeping profusely. Most definitely the heartbreak. The long cherished dream of . . . being cherished.
By the time Fanny came in an hour later, a tear-stained Lydia had thrown all of her belongings back into her trunk and was tensely waiting for her hour of deliverance.
“I can’t tell you how sorry I am, Mrs. Maxwell. I hope you don’t blame my pa for any of this, ’cause he didn’t know any more than you did.”
Lydia could not indulge in directing any anger at Fanny. She needed her too much.
“I have to get out of this house. Tonight. Anywhere. A hotel. You have to take me back to town. And . . . I cannot see your father again. Please get me out of here without seeing him again.”
“I’ll get one of the men to load your trunk in the wagon. And I’ll grab some things, so I can stay the night with my cousin, Willie’s, family. And I’ll tell pa to stay clear. I’m so sorry.”
Somehow, Lydia’s departure was smoothly orchestrated. And in an hour and a half, they drove up in front of Miss Mabel’s Boarding House.
“I do laundry here for Miss Mabel. Someone just moved out last week, and I don’t think that room’s been taken yet.
“Miss Mabel? Is this where Virginia stayed?”
“Sure is. She was right cozy, and you will be too. Until . . . things get figured out.”
There were residents in the parlor who all gave Fanny a warm welcome.
“Ya’ll know if the room’s gone yet?”
She was assured that it was still available and led Lydia back to the kitchen, where Miss Mabel was washing the dishes. She was a stocky, gruff, no-nonsense woman in her early sixties. She eyed Lydia suspiciously.
“What we got here?”
“This is Mrs. Carlyle’s aunt, Mrs. Maxwell. You remember how they said she was comin’.”
“Yep. Gettin’ married as I recall.”
Lydia turned away in a state of obvious distress.
“As it turns out, she’ll be needin’ your spare room for a little while,” Fanny explained.
“Hmmph. It’s seven dollars a week, up front. Extra for food.”
“Oh, of course.” Lydia reached for the cash inside her reticule and offered it to Miss Mabel.
“It’s where John Wilson was stayin’. Fresh linens are out. Why don’t you show her up, Fanny, so I can finish my work here? And tell them lazy no-goods in the parlor to give a hand with the luggage.”
Miss Mabel gave Lydia the once-over and then looked pointedly at Fanny.
“Stop back on your way out.”
With that, she returned to her work. Lydia strained to remember the stories that her niece had told her regarding Miss Mabel. They had been quite positive, which seemed so unlikely. Miss Mabel seemed so rough and unaccommodating; it was hard to imagine her as Virginia’s friend.
Lydia was soon settled into a small, rustic room, equipped with the barest of furniture essentials. Her well-appointed bedroom back in Boston was absolutely palatial in contrast.
“You’ll be right cozy here. Miss Mabel keeps a clean place. And I imagine you’ll be seein’ Mrs. Carlyle soon enough. Anyways . . . I’ll be back to look in on you and see if you need anything. . . I know how wrong it was, what I done. I just wanted him to have a chance to be happy again. He used to be real happy when we was growin’ up.”
Lydia perched gently on the edge of the bed, her head still trying to catch up with her predicament.
“You try and get yourself some sleep, Mrs. Maxwell.”
Lydia desperately needed to be alone. “Good night, Fanny.”
The room was cool, and the effort to get into her night clothes was too great. Lydia allowed herself to collapse into the bed and curl up into a tight ball of distress.
She was in Cheyenne, Wyoming Territory without the slightest idea of what tomorrow would bring. No husband, that was for certain. That had been a mirage, a figment of her famished romantic imagination. What was she going to do now? She had no one to live with. There were the Carlyles, of course, but they were a young family, living in a small apartment. She couldn’t impose on them. And in her present frame of mind, she would only be a gloomy presence.
The thought of Florence and Oscar Bellamy back in Boston flashed into her mind. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. She had escaped that prison. There was no turning back.
It had been a long, exhausting day, and her fatigue reminded her that she had been up with the sunrise. She wanted to fight her sleepiness, for she had not yet figured a way out of her difficulties. That being the case, she knew that she would awaken to panic and despair. But exhaustion won out, as if her body was quite sure she would need every ounce of strength for the days ahead.
*****
Lydia awoke to the noisy footsteps in the hallway as the boarding house residents gravitated to the breakfast table. Fifteen minutes of paralyzed inactivity passed before she forced herself to sit up and stare at the door. What lay outside that door for her? Perhaps breakfast, but then what? How was the rest of her life to unfold?
She remembered asking herself such questions in Boston. The reluctance to open her eyes in the morning because each day promised the same deadening sameness. And the conclusion she had reached—that she was to be an intrusive and unwanted guest in her brother-in-law’s house for the remainder of her life. That she had aged twelve years since her husband’s death. And that aging and the passage of time were her only certain future.
It was that grim prognostication that had driven her to answer a fairytale ad of happiness in The Matrimonial News. What a blissful delusion she had been engulfed in. And now she was returned to the cold realities of the real world, and the bleak promise of uneventful aging again unfolded before her.
With the greatest force of exertion, Lydia changed into fresh clothes and descended the stairs. There she found a large gathering that was entirely too loud and cheerful for her present frame of mind. Miss Mabel waved her over.
“Got a seat for ya right here, Mrs. Maxwell.”
Lydia took a seat, and a young, earnest, curly-headed young man sitting opposite tipped his head at her. “Mornin’, Mrs. Maxwell. Aunt Mabel tells us you’re from Boston. I’ve been out east a couple times. Those are some big cities.”
Lydia nodded. Aunt Mabel?
“This is Ajax Harper, Mrs. Maxwell. My nephew.”
“Great nephew,” Ajax said.
“She don’t care how great you are or how many greats you are. I think ya’ll just enjoy makin’ a body feel old. Keep things simple. Nephew, and that’s the end of it.”
Lydia was relieved for the moment of conversational diversion. “I’m inclined to agree with you, Miss Mabel, as my niece has just had a child. I don’t quite feel up to being called anyone’s great anything.”
“Yeah, I seen that child. Day after she was born. She ain’t much to look at now, but her parents are handsome enough, so I guess she ain’t got nothin’ to worry about. That niece of yours can’t cook worth a darn, so I had to drop some food by. In fact, I got a package for you to drop off to them today. I assume you’re gonna stop by for a visit.”
“Oh, I suppose I should. Although, I have no idea how to get there.”
“Well, that’s where Ajax comes in. Since he has no gainful employment, he can take you up to M
ain Street to get your bearings. See a bit of the town. Then he’s gonna drop you off at the feed store, so you can see Mrs. Carlyle. And he’ll have plenty to do in town, since he needs to find a respectable job.”
Ajax scowled defensively. “There was nothin’ disrespectable about my job.”
“See if they need any help at the feed store,” Miss Mabel said.
“Not a feed store. I need something a little more stimulatin’.”
“And I need a little rent out of you,” Miss Mabel warned.
Ajax scowled. “I’m ready to head out any time you are, Mrs. Maxwell.”
Lydia sensed that she was not the only one at a major crossroads in life. Although the prospects of a strapping, healthy young man would surely be brighter than her own.
“Go on,” Mrs. Mabel urged. “Clear your head.” She leaned in closer to Lydia and lowered her voice. “Fanny told me about the situation. You go clear your head. You’ll figure somethin’ out.”
Lydia nodded, grateful for the sympathy but lacking any real hopefulness.
*****
Under any other circumstances, the sights of Cheyenne’s Main Street would have tickled Lydia with delight. Mercantile, barbershop, dressmakers, saloons, dance halls, a photography store, a jeweler’s store, mining equipment, saddles and leather goods . . . it was a visual feast of frontier Western society, newly established and energetic, and refreshingly unassuming at the same time.
Lydia was wearing one of her pretty day dresses and received a number of head nods and admiring glances from the men they passed.
“They’re wondering what on earth you’re doing with a rascal like me,” Ajax said.
“No, Mr. Harper. You mustn’t say such things.”
“I’m just funnin’ ya. Don’t tell Aunt Mabel, though. I’m havin’ a tough time getting’ on her good side these days.”
“Ah, I take it you are in search of employment. May I ask . . . what your former employment was?”
“Oh, the disreputable employment Aunt Mabel was gettin’ at. I don’t suppose you’ll think much of it either, Mrs. Maxwell. I was a bounty hunter. For goin’ on the past five years.”
