by Kelly, Carla
She leaned over and handed the pouch to the major. “That way I won’t be tempted to steal it, will I?”
“Miss Blue Eye, I didn’t mean . . .”
“Sergeant, I know you didn’t,” she said, wondering where her nerve was coming from. “Major Pettigrew will feel safer if an Indian doesn’t carry it.”
“You’re the Indian?” the paymaster said as he took the money.
“I am, sir,” Mary said.
“I wouldn’t have known,” he replied. “I thought . . .”
“I know,” she said, and started backing up her horse to get out of the conversation. “We Easterners of the Iroquois League do tend to look lighter, don’t we? But I understand your reluctance.” She couldn’t help but notice admiration in Sergeant Blade’s eyes. Whether it was the expert way she handled her mount or the fact that she stood up for herself, Mary had no idea. “I am Seneca, from Genesee, New York. My great-grandmother was Mary Jemison, whom you have perhaps heard of.”
The major nodded. “Anyone who has read any history at all has heard of Mary Jemison.”
What had gotten into her? “I am named for her. My great-grandfather was Hiakatoo, Mary’s second husband. And imagine this: my father is a graduate of Dartmouth College.”
The major tried to return the pouch, but Mary backed her horse farther away. “No. It is safer with you, sir. I trust every man in this detail, but who knows who we will run into? I trust you, too,” she added, feeling generous.
Mary sat a little straighter, overwhelmed by what she had just done. Up to this moment, she had spent much of her life hoping no one would notice that she was different from Victoria Masterson’s other friends, or that she knew how to ride, or sit quietly in council in the longhouse. I am Seneca, she thought, I am a Keeper of the Western Door. She would have to write to Papa and let him know. It was a letter long overdue.
She sat quietly by herself as Sergeant Blade continued his work. When the detail had lined up, he motioned her closer, and she obliged.
They left the fort’s corral area as the sun rose, fanning out soon so no one had to eat dust. Sergeant Blade set a brisk pace.
Mary knew she had said too much to Major Pettigrew. He probably meant well.
“Should I apologize to Major Pettigrew?” she asked her riding companion.
“Under no circumstances,” Rowan said, with no hesitation. “I don’t mind that he feels a little downtrodden.” He looked around at his troopers. “You have a lot of allies here.” He laughed, mostly to himself. “After all, they remember how you so selflessly leaped into the water to save Mrs. Masterson’s china.”
She shook her head at that one. “Sergeant Bl—”
“Rowan.”
“Very well then, Rowan! You’re fighting my battles, and I don’t know why.”
“It feels good,” he said, after a lengthy pause worthy of a Seneca elder.
They rode in silence for some distance. It was enough to pound along on a good horse and breathe deep of autumn advancing and winter coming. There was something beguiling about the expanse of earth and sky here that appealed to her. No wonder the admittedly more primitive Sioux and Cheyenne were reluctant to give it up and submit tamely to a reservation. She understood. There were old Seneca who wore sad faces when they talked about land no longer theirs.
Mary watched the sergeant and saw his head on a nearly continuous swivel, watching, always watching. When they reached an area where the terrain became more gullied, he motioned to a rider on each end of the fan. When they rode ahead, the other soldiers pulled back into a double file.
“We’re in an area where Sioux don’t mind lying in wait to cause a bit of trouble,” he told Mary. “If I see warriors, I’m plunking you in the ambulance.”
She nodded and sidled her mount closer to his, an act that wasn’t lost on the sergeant.
“You’ll be fine, Mary,” he said. “In fact, talk to me. Do you live on a reservation? I don’t know anything about the Seneca.”
Silently, she blessed the man beside her. She knew he was keeping her calm by letting her talk.
“My family lives on land that used to belong to Mary Jemison herself.”
“The White Indian of the Genesee,” Sergeant Blade said. “I’m from Connecticut, and I remember hearing the stories.”
She thought she had heard a bit of New England in Rowan Blade’s speech. “I am named after her: Mary Jemison Blue Eye.” She couldn’t help her sigh. “Everyone back home calls me Jemmy. Mrs. Masterson used to.”
“What do you like to be called?”
No one had ever asked her that before. “I’m used to Jemmy.”
“May I continue to call you Mary? I like it.”
She wanted to tell the tall, careful man riding beside her that Mary would be a name for no one but him and her. Her practical nature reined in that thought. He’s just making conversation, she told herself, but yes, she would be Mary now to this man.
“Certainly you may,” she said, keeping her voice low. “I like it, too.”
She wanted to say more, but the point rider on the west rode toward Sergeant Blade, who spurred his mount ahead. She looked around and noticed that all of the troopers watched intently, some leaning forward, ready to do immediate bidding. The corporal edged his horse closer to hers.
“Sarge’s orders, ma’am,” he said cheerfully. “If he’s not beside you, I am.”
“Is he this careful with all his hangers-on?” she joked, and the corporal surprised her.
“Nope. Just you.”
“All because I tried to rescue a crate of china a few months ago?” she asked.
“He didn’t mention any china, ma’am,” the corporal replied, and there was no overlooking the twinkle in his eyes. “Here he is. Sarge?”
Rowan motioned his men to gather closer. When Mary started to back off, he reached for her reins and kept her there.
“Private Reilly saw a handful of chipper fellows in the next draw,” he said. “No one’s painted up, though. Be alert but not overly interested. Maybe they’re just playing mumblety-peg.”
The troopers chuckled at that. Mary saw no fear. “Where do you want me?” she asked.
“In the ambulance,” Rowan said. He tightened his grip on her reins and led her back to the vehicle. “If any shooting starts, lie down on the floor.”
She nodded and let him help her down. The sergeant spoke a few words to the major inside, and the door opened. “Major Pettigrew, here is Miss Blue Eye,” he said. “Take care of her, sir.”
The major ignored Mary, and she would have been fine with that, except that such a stance seemed almost cowardly. She took a deep breath and decided to make conversation. As they traveled that notorious part of the trail, Mary decided she had been hasty in thinking ill of the paymaster, who, she learned, had a wife back East he saw now and then and two grandchildren.
She was well on her way to telling him more about her father, a Dartmouth graduate who served as Judge Wilkins’s secretary, and Mama, who cooked, when the driver set the brake and Sergeant Blade opened the door.
“I believe we’ll arrive at Hunton’s stage station with all our hair,” he said. “Thank you, Major Pettigrew. I trust Miss Blue Eye wasn’t unruly or demanding?”
“Not at all,” the paymaster replied. “In fact, if she’d rather stay with me . . .”
“Your choice,” Rowan said to her.
“The point is, I had a choice,” she told the sergeant a few minutes later after she had thanked the major prettily and resumed her place atop a horse that didn’t mind a sidesaddle or an Indian.
“That’s all anyone wants,” he said. “The major decided you weren’t a fearsome creature?”
She knew he was teasing her, but Mary saw something else in his firm expression. Funny that she had ever thought him formidable.
“I never was,” she said.
He smiled at that. Maybe it was his turn to feel shy.
Hunton’s stage station was as noisy as Mary
remembered it from her trip to Fort Laramie. With few travelers in late October, she had a curtained-off partition to herself, which was all the luxury anyone could expect. His eyes on some barely sober cowboys, Sergeant Blade posted a guard outside her curtain, which turned out to be him and then the corporal halfway through the night. Mary slept better than she thought she would.
They left at dawn, making a steady push that saw them to Cheyenne at dusk, just as the eastbound train pulled in to the Union Pacific depot. Sergeant Blade retrieved the calico money from the military strongbox and sent the paymaster on his way rejoicing.
Earlier that afternoon, another Indian scare meant the major heard the whole story of the calico ball when Mary joined him in the ambulance again.
At his request, she told the paymaster some favorite longhouse stories and answered his questions about life on the still-shrinking Seneca reservation. In turn he assured her that her relatives had almost nothing in common with western hostiles. She could have told him that earlier, when he chose not to share his ambulance. She decided the paymaster was better informed now, and she could be charitable.
Mary also arrived at an unexpected personal judgment. The only daughter with three older brothers, she had been raised by doting parents. Perhaps, just perhaps, she had been spoiled as much as Victoria Masterson. Perhaps it was time to grow up and face the fact that while she did not live in a perfect world, she could whine less about her own lot in life.
And so Major Pettigrew had given her a courtly bow at the depot and told Sergeant Blade to take care of “this charming little lady.”
“You made a friend, charming lady,” Rowan teased as they watched the train leave. He glanced at Mary. “I feared you would hop the train and head East yourself, and how could I ever explain that to my superiors?”
“I thought about it,” she told him as they walked back to the troopers holding their horses. “I promised Mama I would weather out six months.” She had to smile. “I find it singularly amusing that during a short jaunt to Cheyenne I became a ‘charming little lady.’”
Sergeant Blade laughed at that as they rode along together. He sent the rest of the troop through to Fort Russell with the corporal. His face changed to the more serious expression she also knew. “I wish that all of us out here, white and Indian alike, had the luxury of such a discovery. Until that happens . . . Follow my lead here, if you will, and trust me not to be a scoundrel.”
Mary mulled over his words as he dismounted in front of the Plainsmen Hotel and helped her down. Sergeant Blade escorted her into the lobby, calmly signed the register as Sergeant and Mrs. Rowan Blade, then handed her the single room key after the clerk finished and before her blushing confusion subsided.
“I didn’t want to chance the clerk getting all huffy about Blue Eye and denying you a room,” he said quietly. “It’s a serviceable falsehood, and after all, unlike our major, he hasn’t had the benefit of your company, has he? I’ll meet you in the dining room over there at eight tomorrow morning, and we will scavenge the dry goods stores in town.”
“I must pay you for the room,” Mary said, and opened her purse.
“Captain Hayes already did,” Rowan said. “He told me to make certain you had safe accommodations in Cheyenne. It was his contribution to this bit of female silliness, I believe was how he put it.” He leaned toward her, a surprising conspirator. “Captain Hayes is, unlike his wife, not a foolish person.” He put a forefinger to his forage cap. “Until tomorrow, Miss Blue Eye.”
Sergeant Blade wasn’t a man to argue with, so she didn’t try. Maybe he was right in camouflaging her and protecting her behind his own name. The clerk appeared none the wiser, and must have thought they were married. She could think about Rowan’s Gordian Knot way of solving a problem later, perhaps when she was riding home to New York on that eastbound train.
If that was still her plan. During a solitary dinner and then a peaceful evening in a pleasant room, Mary thought about Major Pettigrew. He hadn’t apologized for his bigotry, but the major had changed. So had she. How much, she wasn’t certain. As she drifted off to sleep, Mary Blue Eye considered that the answer to her question wouldn’t be discovered if she ran back home when times were tough.
Mama had warned her that when it came to shopping, men were never the best companions. Mary made an exception for Sergeant Blade, who arrived promptly at eight o’clock in time for breakfast, which he admitted was his second one of the day, and better tasting than the first.
A waiter appeared when the sergeant sat down. After a brief negotiation, the man hurried away and returned promptly with two fried eggs, a mound of bacon, and toast.
“I could eat breakfast all day,” he told Mary as he tucked in.
Mary smiled at him, thinking about this odd situation, sharing breakfast with an amiable man, who, if she gauged the admiring glances of female diners properly, was someone to look at once or twice.
Maybe it was the impeccable cut of his uniform, or possibly his excellent posture, acquired through years in the saddle. He had a satisfying tan just starting to fade with the changing of the season. Mary decided that it should be against the law for any man except a trooper to wear a moustache that drooped at the corners. She glanced around and saw no other man with shoulders so broad. She thought Rowan’s face a little thin, but that seemed to be coin of the realm in the cavalry.
Knowing it was too much to hope he would go with her to pick out fabric, Mary felt generous enough to provide an exit, should he want one. “You needn’t accompany me from store to store,” she said cautiously. “Mama warned me about men and shopping.”
That earned a hearty laugh from her dining companion. “Mary, I am made of sterner stuff than that,” he assured her. “If you don’t ask me to select a hat for you, or ask my opinion on something related to women’s finery, we will manage.”
“Very well, sir.” She could laugh inside about that artless comment. Indians were good at laughing inside.
“Besides, I have commandeered the ambulance. How were you planning to haul enough fabric for fifteen dresses?”
She hadn’t thought of that. “Did you commandeer a driver, too?”
“I did. He is in the ambulance, currently sleeping off a prodigious drunk.”
“I probably should draw a curtain over this conversation, shouldn’t I?”
“Perhaps. Let us say that when he wakes up and discovers he is not in the guardhouse, he will thank me.” He touched her hand. “And that is the secret to leadership.”
Cheyenne’s Fifteenth Street featured more saloons than dry goods stores, but the sergeant shepherded his charge past still-shuttered bars to the quieter cross streets away from the depot. As if ready to spar with each other, the Cheyenne Mercantile Emporium and the less abundantly named Wyoming Dry Goods faced each other across a wide dirt street.
“Coin toss?” Rowan asked.
“Wyoming Dry Goods,” Mary told him. “I have a good feeling about it.”
Inside a cool interior featuring the tang of dried herring mixed with hair oil, the sergeant nodded approvingly. “I suppose ladies have an instinct about these things. I bow to your superior knowledge.”
Her choice of stores was only the merest luck, but he didn’t need to know that. They stood in front of a shelf boasting at least seven different fabric colors and designs. It was still a far cry from what she might have chosen from back home, but this was Wyoming Territory and not New York.
A dapper man in a white shirt and canvas apron, with a tape measure draped around his neck stood behind the counter. Mary felt herself leaning back as he looked her over, found her massively wanting, ignored her, and turned his attention to Sergeant Blade. Maybe she didn’t have an instinct about Wyoming Dry Goods after all.
She knew what the sergeant would do before he did it, which nearly brought tears to her eyes. He casually put his arm around Mary’s shoulders and drew her close to his side. “My wife and I have been sent to buy fabric for a calico ball at Fort La
ramie,” he said. “How many yards per dress, my dear?”
“Ten,” she said calmly, as if Sergeant Blade spoke to her that way from dawn to dusk. Peace covered her right down to her soul. “The fabric is thirty-six inches wide?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the clerk said promptly, after a quick look at the sergeant, who had leveled him with the same stare Mary had noticed Rowan use when leading particularly inept recruits through equitation on the parade ground.
Rowan released her and tapped his knuckles lightly on the counter, which seemed to unnerve the clerk. You’ve made your point, Mary thought, amused. “I can manage now, Rowan,” she said. “We could probably use a sack or two of peppermints. I think your troopers have earned it, don’t you?”
“Mary, you’re a wonder,” he said. “Good thing we brought you along.” He tapped the counter again, once and hard. The clerk dropped the tape measure. “If you have any difficulty, my dear, just sing out.” He walked toward the front of the store, looking back twice, which made the now totally unmanned clerk gulp audibly.
“He likes to make certain I have good service,” she told the clerk. “Ten yards of each of these calicos, and then I’ll need thread and boning.”
Mary doubted any female patron in Wyoming Dry Goods had ever received such excellent service. They had similar luck across the street at the more grandiose Mercantile Emporium, once the sergeant established his connection with Mary Blue Eye in a way that no one would dream of questioning.
“I believe we are done,” Mary said, after a lengthy time watching another terrified clerk measure and cut. “I imagine that will come as a relief to you.”
“Not necessarily,” Rowan said as he picked up the twine-tied bundle of fabric as if it weighed nothing, and counterbalanced it with the fabric he already carried from Wyoming Dry Goods. “Did you find some calico for yourself?”
“I never even considered that I would be dancing, too,” Mary said when they stood on the street. She took a long look at all the fabric. “I wager I will be sewing dresses right up to the ball itself. No time.”
