In January, two more Ladies had come. Libby Trembly and Gema Volko-something. Neither of them had children, which was appealing, but Red had been involved with courting Laura at the time. Libby had a sadness about her that Red didn’t think he’d ever be able to breach. Gema was only twenty. At thirty-four, Red thought she was too young for him.
Well, maybe if another batch of women came this summer, he’d find one he wanted to court. He’d be sure to watch his attitude and tongue next time.
Rain had begun falling about a half an hour before, and with the temperature dropping, it was beginning to turn into sleet. Red was thankful he’d bought one of the new hats Ben Cutler was selling in his store. It was made by an eastern company called Stetson. Wide-brimmed and made of felted fur, the hat was expensive but looked as though it would last him a lifetime. It kept the sun out of his eyes and was now keeping the rain and sleet from slipping past his collar and down his back.
A flash of white appeared between the trees. Not the white you’d see on a cow. No, it was more the white of a shirt.
Red kicked his horse to speed him up. He studied the area as he approached, slowing Ralph to a walk. Hawk had warned him not to try to take on the outlaws. All he was going to do was scout and see if he could tell where their hideout might be.
The white darted between trees again. Yellow trailed behind. Not yellow cloth, blonde hair. Long blonde hair. Whoever it was had long hair and was probably a woman. Red kicked Ralph into a trot. A woman out here in the rain and sleet was in danger whether she was part of the outlaw gang or not.
As Red moved closer, he got a better glimpse of the woman. His jaw dropped, and he almost did the same to the reins. That was Gema Volko-something. Her Russian name always escaped him, not that he could pronounce it anyway. What was she doing this far from Stones Creek? Without a coat. The day had started off warm for late March, but the weather was fickle, and the temperature was dropping fast.
He saw Gema glance behind her and scream. She ran even faster, dodging between the trees. Red called her name, hoping she’d recognize his voice. She just kept running.
Then, she went down, falling into a small stream that cut its way down the hillside. Red caught up just as she was trying to get up. Her brown skirts were soaked, making it difficult for her to rise.
Red jumped off Ralph and ran to her, pulling her from the stream. Gema screamed and fought him, wind milling her arms, trying to hit him with her fists. He grabbed her hands, bringing her to his chest. He wrapped his arm around her, hoping to stop her struggles.
“Shh, Gema, it’s Red Dickerson. You’re safe with me. Shh.” He kept up what he hoped were comforting words and sounds. He didn’t know if she was understanding him in her panic. Finally, she stopped and looked up at him. Recognition seeped into her being. Gema laid her head on his chest and began to cry. She was trembling. Red didn’t know whether it was from the cold and wet, or panic. He did know he had to get her out of the rain and into warm, dry clothing.
“Come, let’s get away from here. When you’re warm and dry, you can tell me why you’re way out here.” He led her over to Ralph. “Stand here while I mount. Then, I’ll lift you up.” He hugged her once before letting her go. “You’re safe with me.”
Red mounted, then reached down to lift her onto the saddle in front of him. There was no way, in her condition, that she could hold on to his waist or the back of the saddle. She was shaking too hard. By placing her in front, he could tuck her into his coat, sharing his warmth with her.
Soon, he had her settled against him, knowing she was as secure and protected as he could provide. “Hup,” he said. Ralph began walking and Red turned the horse toward the line shack.
CHAPTER TWO
Gema was trembling even more when they arrived at the line shack. Red dismounted, then lifted her off Ralph and carried her into the shack. Placing her on her feet next to the small stove, he quickly stirred the coals and added more wood. She just stood looking at him with wide frightened eyes.
Red looked at his laundry hanging to dry on lines strung across the room. One thing his courting of Laura had taught him was how to do laundry. Everything was dry so he pulled all the items off the line. Piling them on the table, he said, “Gema, I’m going to go tend Ralph. He needs to be taken into the lean-to, brushed, fed, and watered.
“See these clothes here. You get out of your wet things and into these. They aren’t what you’re used to wearing, but they are dry. It will help you warm up. We need to get you dry.”
Gema looked at him and gave a slight nod. When he turned to leave, she grabbed his arm. “Don’t leave me.”
Red took Gema’s hands. “I’m not leaving you. I’m just going to put Ralph in the lean-to and settle him. It’s attached to the back of the shack. You’ll be able to hear me in there. Milly the donkey is in there, too. You change while I’m gone. Then, we’ll make some coffee and food and try to get warm.” Red touched her cheek. “You’re safe here. No one but I will come in. I won’t leave you. Get changed now.”
She nodded. Red touched a finger to her cheek, then left to tend to the horse and donkey as quickly as possible. He’d bed them down now. He didn’t think Gema would allow him to leave again once he got back.
When he was finished in the lean-to, Red took note of the weather. The sleet had changed to snow, and it was coming down in large wet flakes. Just her being here was going to damage her reputation. There was no way he could take her to Hawk’s Wing Ranch homestead this evening. Not in this weather. He prayed it didn’t turn into a blizzard. That would snow them in for who knew how long.
Red didn’t want to think of the consequences of them being together overnight, let alone several days.
Red opened the door, slipped in and immediately turned toward the door. He shut it and lowered the wooden bar into place. His rifle went into the rack above. Turning around, the sight stopped him cold.
Gema stood with her bodice open and halfway down her arms. The fabric was sticking to her skin, and she was trying to pull it over her hands. He could see her shivering. Her fingers kept slipping off the fabric. She was concentrating on her task.
Red swallowed. Just what he needed: to help her undress. “Miss Gema?”
She gave a little shriek and stumbled back. Red crossed the small room and caught her before she fell against the hot stove.
“I cannot undress. Fingers not work.” Gema turned defeated eyes to him. They tore at his heart. He knew she had to be in shock and needed to get out of those wet things.
“Can I help? I don’t want to do anything to scare you or hurt you.”
Gema didn’t answer. She simply held an arm up to him. Red swallowed again. So far, she was still covered fairly well. Nothing was revealed underneath but a white embroidered shirt. It was short sleeved but with buttons all the way up the front to a square neckline near her throat.
Part of her difficulty was that she’d forgotten to unbutton the cuffs. “Look here, Gema. You’ll do better if you unfasten these little round things. What are they called?” He grinned just a little at her. Maybe teasing her a bit would help.
“Knopka.”
“What?”
“Button.” Her accent made the word sound like ‘booton.’
“No, this is my boot on my foot.” Red lifted his boot and twirled his foot around. Mud dripped off the leather, plopping on the floor. “Now, I made a mess. Comes with the weather.”
While he was chattering, Red slipped first one, then the other sleeve off. The white bodice most likely would never be truly white again. It was stained and muddy from her fall into the stream. He set it on the chair.
He looked over her brown wool skirt. It hung in a sodden mass around her legs. He figured there would be a couple of petticoats, at least, underneath, soaked by her fall into the stream. That she hadn’t moved from the spot he had placed her told him they probably weighed her down.
She fumbled at the side at the waistband, trying to unbutton it. Failing
she looked up with pleading eyes. “Please?”
There was no help for it. He’d have to touch her waist to release the skirt. At least she wasn’t wearing any sort of hoop or crinoline. Her skirts hung too close to her body.
Gema was shaking so hard he knew she had to be freezing. He needed to get her out of these things and into his clothes quickly. He thought he could hear her teeth chattering. Red released the button and began trying to push the skirt down.
“Nyet.” She pushed his hands away.
“Gema, you need to let me help you get the skirt off.”
“No, not down. Up. Over head.”
“What?” Her accent was thicker than he remembered.
“Skirt, up, over head. Down no work.”
Red examined the waist opening. She was right. There was no way the skirt would go down over the bulk of the petticoats. He bent and grabbed the hem, lifting it high. The waistband of the skirt stayed at her middle, with only the front of the skirt above her head. There was so much fabric it trailed down with the back hem still reaching the floor.
He began trying to gather more of the skirt into his hands, still holding them above her head. As he got a hold of one section of hem, another slipped out of his fingers. How in the world did a woman dress or undress herself with all this cloth? And there were more layers underneath.
A giggle came from within the bundle he was producing as he worked more fabric into his hands. “You make harder than is.” Gema’s hands appeared from under the waistband. She grabbed it and pulled the skirt up, over her head. When she let go, it fell to the floor with a slopping sound. Droplets of water splashed.
Red stepped back, then scooped up the skirt and laid it over the back of the chair. When he looked at her, Gema was pulling the drawstring tie of her petticoat open. It too was soaking wet with mud stains rising from the hem. As she drew the petticoat up, he helped her work it over her head. The dirty white fabric was leaving stains on the white of the shirt.
There was at least one more petticoat. She began untying the string as he set the first one aside. The petticoat began rising, and Red became more uneasy. What did she have on under this? Or not have on? He didn’t know much about women’s underpinnings, but somewhere there would be skin. Skin he wasn’t supposed to see.
He squeezed his eyes shut and helped get the sodden garment off. Turning to the chair, he opened them a crack so he wouldn’t either drop it on the floor or stumble into the chair or table.
Red turned to face her again and aimed his narrowed gaze at her lower legs. Another petticoat. His embarrassment would wait a little longer.
This one fell to the floor as he watched. Gema’s boots and stockings came into view. Raising his gaze slowly, ready to shut his eyes if skin began to show, he breathed a sigh of relief when the hem of some white garment appeared.
When he looked up, Gema was trying to unbutton the white shirt. Her fingers had a blue tinge to them and shook so hard she couldn’t work the small white buttons through their holes.
He swallowed. This was worse than the waistband. There were at least a dozen small white buttons marching down the front. Although it was loose fitting, there was the chance that he’d have to touch her chest to undo the buttons. He was chilled from the ride and the rain, but even so, Red began to sweat.
“Here, let me.” Red’s voice sounded gravelly to his ears. The memory of Laura telling him gravelly voices were alluring to women flashing through his mind didn’t help his concentration toward his task.
He brushed her hands aside and tried to do the unbuttoning while holding the fabric away from her torso. The first couple cooperated. The next one didn’t. He ended up pressing his fingers against her chest. Something hard met his fingertips. What was that? As the shirt gaped open, a quilted garment was revealed. There were metal hooks running down the front holding the sides together. Flat rods of some sort were what he’d been pressing against. This must be her stays. He’d heard of stays and corsets but hadn’t ever seen one.
As soon as he’d finished, Red watched Gema take the shirt off. Now, she stood with the quilted stays covering, well, from the swell above to the swell below and, thank the Lord, another white cotton gown underneath that reached to her knees. Red swallowed again and, taking off his Stetson, wiped the beads of sweat from his forehead.
Gema sat in the only other chair and began unlacing her boots. Though her hands were still shaking, as was her entire body, she was able to pull the strings from their holes. Red picked up the white shirt she’d worn under her bodice and tossed it over the wash line. He continued with the rest of the discarded items until the entire line was filled with dripping female garments.
When the second boot thudded to the floor, Red turned his attention back to her. Gema was rolling a black wool stocking down her leg. Red turned away quickly. Now, skin was being revealed.
He grabbed the Union suit from the pile of his clothes on the table and thrust it out, arm’s length behind him, to her. “Here. You need to put these on. They’ll be too big but will keep you warm.”
They disappeared from his hand, and he breathed a sigh of relief. Fumbling and muttering, in what he figured was her native Russian, made him crack a smile. She was just as flummoxed with his garment as he was with hers.
Something he figured were her stays flopped over the back of the now empty chair. While more fumbling and mutters sounded behind him, he examined the stays.
The edges that had met in the middle were stiff from whatever the flat pieces were made from. Triangles of fabric were inserted along the top and bottom edges allowing more room for the swells of her body. The back was laced together with several inches of gap between the sides. There was a drawstring on what looked to be the top edge. Maybe she tightened it with that so it formed to her… Well, best not to think of those.
“Mr. Red?” Her voice was soft and tentative. He turned around. The Union suit swamped her. The neck gaped some but didn’t reveal anything. A bit of white showed above the edge. He glanced at the chair. Nothing was on it but two masses of wet black wool and the stays. Must be her stockings. She must still have on the last, at least that he knew of, layer.
A glance at her feet showed no toes. The legs of the one-piece underwear ended far past her feet. The arms hid her hands also.
“Um, was that white, um, gown dry?”
“Chemise? Yes. Just very bottom damp. Okay.” She shuddered.
Her hair was beginning to curl as it started to dry. Red grabbed a towel from a shelf and started wiping and blotting it. Gema took it from him and, in a moment, had it wrapped around her head with the hair all swaddled inside.
“Come.” Red took her hand and led her to the bed. “Get in. I’ll make coffee and heat up some stew. You try to get warm.”
Gema nodded and climbed in as he held the covers up. He tucked them close around her. When he turned around, he looked up at the ceiling, then rubbed his hands down his face. Why Lord? Why did you put me in this situation?
~~~~~
Gema lay staring at the ceiling. She was so cold. Even in her native Russia, she didn’t think she’d ever been this cold. There was no way she could stop her shivering.
Red had been so gallant, trying not to make her uncomfortable while she changed. She’d been so ashamed when she couldn’t even get her bodice off. Then he’d teased her a couple of times, and the nervousness fell away. That’s when she’d finally felt safe.
The day had been horrible. The worst in her life. Even worse than when her papa said he had to sell her violin. Her grandmother’s violin. Babushka had begun teaching her when she was only six. By the time she was twelve, Gema was playing at festivals in the small village where they lived. The instrument had become hers, or so she thought, when her grandmother had died when Gema was fourteen.
That’s when her father had decided to immigrate to America. The serfs had been emancipated in 1861, freeing them from the land. Rather than try to purchase the farm he worked, Gema’s father deci
ded to move his family to the other side of the world. That took money. Gema’s violin was a major part of the financing. She felt it was a betrayal of her beloved Babushka. To Gema as well. The violin was a family heirloom, passed down through several generations, its tone becoming richer, fuller as it aged.
Her father had never realized his dream of homesteading in the rich prairie land of middle America. Just west of Dubuque, Gema’s parents and siblings had contracted influenza and died, leaving the sixteen-year old alone in a covered wagon with the sum of her family’s goods. She couldn’t speak a word of English and understood few.
Gema was digging graves when a farmer came upon her. He’d buried her family and hitched his horse to the back of her wagon, taking her to his farm where his wife tried to comfort and find out what had occurred. The language barrier made it difficult for Gema to be understood, but finally she was able to draw on some brown paper what had happened. And get them to understand that she was only sixteen and alone. The following day, the farmer drove Gema to Sanctuary Place, Nugget Nate Ryder’s mission for women in need, and left her there.
As terrified as Gema had been, reeling from the loss of her entire family, she was welcomed and supported by those who lived there. It had been a time of grieving, learning a new language and new culture, but at the same time of being loved by and loving the women and children she met. She still struggled with English and in times of stress lost the words she’d worked so hard to learn.
When the first group of Ladies journeyed to Stones Creek, Colorado the previous summer of 1868, Gema was offered the opportunity to be part of the group. Instead, she’d chosen to stay behind. One of the friends she had made during her tenure at Sanctuary Place was getting married in September. Gema decided to wait and go with the next group who moved. That opportunity had come more quickly than any had anticipated.
Music Of Her Heart Page 2
