“It’s not like you to sit so long idle, Lenora. What is on your mind?”
Lenora thought a while before answering. “Lemonade,” she finally said, still staring out into the nothingness of the prairie. “With lots and lots of ice.”
Mrs. Nolan chuckled. “Lemonade and what else?”
Lenora sighed gustily and returned to the moment. “I’m going to lose this ranch, Etta. I’ve thought about it from every angle. There is no hope.”
“Those are mighty gloomy words from one such as yourself. What makes you speak in such dire terms?” Mrs. Nolan tied a knot on the reverse side of her white-on-white spring bouquet, clipped the excess floss with small brass scissors, pulled a fresh length of embroidery floss from the basket at her feet, wet one end of the floss between her lips, and began to thread her needle once more.
Meanwhile Lenora just sat, motionless, her wide indigo cotton skirt spread around her like a queen. Between her yards of billowing blue and Mrs. Nolan’s pool of dove-gray cambric, the narrow wooden bench they sat on was hidden from view.
“I can’t help it. Everything I’ve done or tried to do to hang onto my property has turned to ashes. Sometimes I think I’m fighting an invisible foe. Perhaps it is best if I move back to New York now and spare myself this heartache. I have the baby to think of.”
“Deputy Davies is still working on your behalf.” Mrs. Nolan placed the hoop on her lap and began winding the embroidery floss around the tip of the needle, round and round, to create a French knot.
“You heard what he said in his letter, Etta. He missed the judge by only forty-eight hours. If the good Lord wanted me to keep this land, He would have arranged to get Deputy Davies to Fort Laramie in time to speak to Judge Stillman.” Her tone was more than a little peppered with pique.
Mrs. Nolan waved her hand to disperse one of the flies buzzing around the porch. She didn’t take her eyes off her embroidery hoop. “I think you’re seeing an awful lot in something that is merely a coincidence.”
“I’m tired of believing.”
Mrs. Nolan stopped stitching a moment, needle in the air, to look at Lenora straight on. “Things aren’t always as they seem.”
“No, most times they’re worse.”
Mrs. Nolan shook her head and returned to stitching. “You were a very little girl during the Great Rebellion, weren’t you Lenora? How old?”
Lenora cocked her head, thinking. “I was three when it started.”
“Have you ever heard of General Irvin McDowell?”
“He’s a Union officer. I studied him in school but I don’t remember which battle he fought.”
“He led the Union Army at the First Battle of Bull Run in Virginia, a battle he lost. Around 3,000 Union men died. That was in 1861, our first major battle of the war. Lenora, we thought that number was horrific. We had no idea how much more bloody it would get. President Lincoln lost faith in General McDowell after that terrible loss and replaced him with General George McClellan, which of course humiliated McDowell.”
Lenora listened yet never broke her doleful gaze across the prairie.
“A year later in the Second Battle at Bull Run, General John Pope was put in charge, and General McDowell was put under General Pope. They lost that battle too, and thousands more Union soldiers died in the second battle than had been lost in the first. I’m sure General McDowell felt like you do right now when he looked across the battlefield a second time and saw all those wounded and dying boys of his.” Mrs. Nolan removed her spectacles, wiped them briskly with her skirt, put them back on, and resumed stitching.
Lenora continued to stare, eyes fixed, seeing nothing but gloomy images of death and loss behind her eyes.
“And then there was Antietam in September 1862. Neither side could claim victory, and both suffered heavy losses. Twenty-three thousand men died on the battlefield in one day. And Lenora, that bloodiest of battles was fought in Pennsylvania. Northern soil.
“In May ’63 we lost at Chancellorsville, also in Virginia. We lost again in ’63, in September, at Chickamauga in Georgia. In ’64 more than 18,000 Union soldiers died in Spotsylvania, Virginia. The Union lost that battle too. The Union had some wins throughout our long ordeal, but most of the time our cause looked hopeless. Much like yours.”
Lenora hardened her jaw. She didn’t want to take umbrage with Etta. The woman meant well. She was just sick of sacrifice and tired of waiting for ... what? James to ride up to their front door? His body? A letter from some faraway place telling her he had filed for divorce? She felt frozen in time and place, like that woman in the Bible who had turned into a pillar of salt. A woman and a wife, but not. Lenora looked down at her hands. She couldn’t meet Etta’s eyes. She was ashamed of her angry, black thoughts, but mostly, she was just angry.
“Not only that, no one in America, North or South, had ever seen such unspeakable bloodshed. You were too little then to understand how devastating it was, but Lenora, our hearts bled for four years.”
Lenora nodded glumly to show she was listening.
“You know how it ended. The Union won the war, but for a long time victory looked impossible.” Mrs. Nolan stopped stitching. “Lenora,” she said in a tone that demanded attention.
Lenora broke from her melancholy long enough to turn toward her friend. Her eyes were dulled by the heaviness in her heart.
“Just because we suffer losses doesn’t mean we are without hope or that we’ve been abandoned.”
“But I have suffered a great loss,” said Lenora, becoming animated, “and I feel cruelly abandoned.” Just then a particularly unrelenting fly zoomed in toward her face. She poured out her cup of indignation without reserve, swatting madly at the pest with both hands. “And I don’t even know what I’m waiting for!”
“I know how you feel, Lenora,” said Mrs. Nolan, placing one hand over Lenora’s after she had stopped swiping the air. “I’m a widow too, you know.”
“I’m sorry, Etta. I’m thinking only of myself. Please forgive me.” Lenora lifted Etta’s work roughened hand to her lips and lightly kissed it.
Mrs. Nolan leaned into Lenora, gave her a quick squeeze, and returned to her stitching. “There’s no need to apologize. That was long ago. My pain is gone. I just want you to know that I understand how angry and abandoned you feel. You are not alone. I’m here.”
Lenora nodded dejectedly.
“But child, just because you’ve lost some battles doesn’t mean you’ll lose this war. Circumstances can turn to your favor in a single day.”
“True.” Lenora didn’t sound convinced.
“You will find out what happened to James. The most important thing is to never give up.”
“I’ll try,” she said, though her tone of resignation belied any real commitment.
The ladies sat in silence, Lenora brooding and swatting, Mrs. Nolan absorbed in her embroidery. Finally Lenora had had enough.
“Let’s go in, Etta. These dreadful flies. Besides, the beans should be ready. We can have an early dinner and go to bed. I’m tired.”
#
“It’s called a hard bustle.”
The sound of the two ladies’ heels clumping on the wood planks of Main Street's boardwalk filled the pause that followed. Lenora clutched Mrs. Nolan’s arm for moral support, and each carried a shopping basket on their free arm. The street was dotted with a few late-morning shoppers, though town was predictably quiet today because it was harvest time. Lenora tried to discreetly search the faces of those few who approached before they were close enough to make eye contact. She wanted to determine if she’d be shunned or welcomed and respond accordingly. Despite Etta’s encouraging words that morning before they’d left for town, Lenora’s chest felt squeezed each time she saw another citizen of Buffalo walking toward her on the boardwalk.
“Is it like it sounds?” asked Mrs. Nolan.
“Yes,” replied Lenora. “It’s not like the soft fabric bustles we’ve always worn. It holds up more dress folds because it
's stiffer. My mother writes that it’s de rigueur in Paris and only the most fashionable women in New York wear them. I plan to get one as soon as I can.”
“With a bustle like that you will look as motherly in the back as you do in the front,” teased Mrs. Nolan with a chuckle.
Lenora glanced down at the soft bump in front of her, which she could feel but not see through the all-white calico day dress she wore. She hardly showed. “I’m not that big in front. And you know what I mean,” she said, “to wear after the baby is born.” Then, remembering her promise to herself to dress more like a ranch wife about town, she added, “For special occasions, of course.”
The women embraced and then parted in front of Aeschelman’s, each with town errands to attend to before meeting again at Olathe’s for the ride back to Lenora’s ranch. But before they went to their separate business, Mrs. Nolan reminded Lenora to mail the letters in her basket. At Mrs. Nolan’s urging, Lenora had finally put pen to paper, informing her parents of the tragedy that had befallen her and the good news of her impending delivery. After some discussion, Lenora was forced to agree that it was sinful to procrastinate. She had dragged her feet in notifying family back East, hoping a miracle would occur and she wouldn’t have to distress them. But five months had passed and she still had no sign of James. Her parents, and especially her in-laws, deserved to know the state of her and James’ affairs. Her shopping basket carried a second letter addressed to the elder Mr. and Mrs. Rose, a missive enclosed bearing the same sweet and sad news.
Lenora pushed open the door to the mercantile. Mr. Aeschelman heard the tinkling bell and came through the brown curtains as he always did, greeting Lenora with a good morning before she reached the counter. His wide, friendly smile was as appealing in this prickly town as the lemonade Lenora had wished for weeks earlier. She returned the greeting and then, strangely, as she approached the counter, found herself reflexively sweeping her eyes over the displays around the store, searching for Deputy Davies, but she was the only shopper today. Feeling disappointed when she did not see his tall frame and warm eyes looking back at her, she walked toward the shop counter and set her reticule on it. Of course he’s not here. Deputy Davies is at Fort Laramie. What’s wrong with you?
Lenora pulled her shopping list from her reticule and handed it to Mr. Aeschelman. Then she asked to see Buffalo’s one and only dress catalogue. As she suspected, after poring through pages of laced and beribboned women’s foundations promising to pull in, push out, and plump up, she found nothing akin to a hard bustle. She resigned to write her mother and ask her to have one shipped to her in the Territory. She returned the catalogue to Mr. Aeschelman, thanked him, and told him she’d return for her purchases in thirty minutes or so. With her business complete at Aeschelman’s, Lenora wished she could hide there until this dreadful shopping trip was finished, but she couldn't. So feeling unsettled, and encouraging herself out the door with a bit of chin-up-and-carry-on, forthwith she set out for the milliner’s. She needed buckram for the bonnet to match her new daffodil silk dress. Only Buffalo's hat maker carried hat-making supplies.
She was relieved to see the street empty, the few shoppers busying themselves inside shady Main Street shops. When she was about a block from the milliner's and roughly across the street from Belles’, she heard a man yelling angrily from that direction. She turned to see what the ruckus was just in time to see a large man stumble raggedly out the door of the saloon, the result of an encouraging shove by the barkeep. In a flash of recognition, Lenora realized who the man clinging to the post was, though she couldn’t remember his name. It was the man who had tried to heave Sam Wright onto his horse many months ago in this same spot. Lenora stared a few seconds, expecting to see his little friend come flying out the saloon door behind him. Pea-Pod Pendergrass Deputy Davies had called him. The little man’s name was easier to remember than the big man’s. Lenora waited, but the little man did not appear.
Suddenly the large man was looking straight at her. Horrified to have made eye contact with the obviously drunk ranch hand, she turned then, clutched her shopping basket to her body, and continued down the boardwalk, heels clicking loudly as she went.
“Mrs. Rose!” yelled the large man, grinning lasciviously and waving one hand at her. “Wait! I’ll eshcort you home.”
Escort her home? How did he know her name? Lenora did not remember ever having made the man’s acquaintance, but Buffalo was a small town, only a settlement really. Perhaps the man had been introduced to James in the course of business and knew her by association? Curious, she slowed down long enough to glance backwards. The man was dressed like all the ranch hands about Buffalo, though his hat had taken a tumble onto the dusty street outside Belles’ place. His hair was in need of a cut, slick with dirt and sweat, and stood up ridiculously on one side, shoved skyward when his hat flew off. And like all the others, he was tanned and ruddy from hours in the sun. But unlike all the others, this ranch hand was following her down Main Street, leering and swaying and calling to her. And he knew her name.
“Wait, Mrs. Rose!”
Lenora kept walking at an even pace, refusing to add to the brouhaha by sprinting in public. She felt self-conscious for sure, and was growing increasingly annoyed at the molester, but she was not panicked. It was, after all, broad daylight. She wished only that he’d give up and shut up before someone stepped out of a shop and observed the lout’s insistence on speaking to her.
But the man was too stupid or too drunk to respond reasonably to a brush-off. He continued to call her name, ever louder it seemed, as he followed her down the street, keeping pace about twenty feet behind, close enough that Lenora could hear his heavy boots slogging along the boardwalk. His demanding tone was more unnerving that his footsteps. Each time she heard him call her name she recoiled at the cloak of intimacy inherent in the use. She thought of turning around and shushing him but quashed the idea. Acknowledging him might encourage him. Neither did she want to be seen speaking to him.
While she held her back and shoulders primly, her mind chug chugged like a steam engine, gears turning round and round as she tried to figure out how this obnoxious drunk knew her. Then it dawned on her that that the current flavor of gossip around town might make her an attractive morsel to men of base desires. Indeed, all the men in and around Buffalo, base or no, surely knew by now about the missing rancher, the wife he left behind who was with child, her association with the very eligible and very attentive deputy, and how that deputy had been whisked away to Fort Laramie on "emergency" duty. Horrified, Lenora realized with heart-stopping chagrin that the drunk man—and who knows how many other men—must think of her as nothing more than a common strumpet. Buffalo was a military town, after all, established to serve all the peculiar needs of the lonely men who lived and worked just minutes away. Lenora was reasoning through all this when the man’s voice turned ugly, edged with contempt.
"Wait, bitch!”
Bitch? Feeling publicly unmasked and frantic at his angry tone, Lenora glanced right and left, abandoning all worry about being seen. Right now she would accept assistance from any male citizen of Buffalo of any stripe. But all of Main Street was empty.
Where was a good clump of ogling soldiers when a girl needed rescuing?
With the desire for self-preservation crowding out all conscious thought, she could only react. She cast about for a door, any door, to seek safety behind. In her fevered state even a barber's den would suffice. She saw a door handle and rushed to grab it. She flung herself through the doorway in such a panic she didn’t have time or inclination to read the sign on the window to the right of the door that identified the sheriff's office.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The only sound in the two spartan rooms that comprised Buffalo’s law enforcement office was Lenora’s ragged breathing as she leaned against the door a few seconds to pull the reins on her runaway heart. She was hugely relieved to see an empty chair at Sheriff Morris’ desk. But out of self-preservation
, she stared several seconds to assure herself he was really absent, that her eyes weren’t tricking her.
Once she was satisfied she was alone, her glance moved naturally to the other desk where Deputy Davies usually sat. She was surprised at the hollow ache she felt at the sight of his unoccupied chair and empty hat rack. As she worked to calm her breathing and with the faint smell of old coffee in her nostrils, she tried to visualize him sitting there, smiling in his warm and welcoming way. If he were here now, she rehearsed in her mind, he would stand politely to greet her as he usually did. He would bring her a chair and treat her with quiet respect. Unlike that skunky Sheriff Morris, Deputy Davies would listen sincerely to what she had to say and try to help.
Oh my. Am I falling in love with Deputy Davies? And what if he never returns to Buffalo? Now there was a disturbing thought, a quiet angst that shaded Lenora’s mind like a silent gray cloud that floats slowly across the noonday sky, creating gloom where a moment ago there was happiness and light. What if he falls in with some girl he knew before he left Fort Laramie? He said he had lived there since he was eighteen. He must know many eligible young ladies. The settlement at Fort Laramie was older and bigger than the settlement at Buffalo. Chances are, she mused, he would return to the familiar and comfortable delights of home and decide that Buffalo had nothing to hold him.
But there wasn’t time to weigh the merit of this revelation about her changing feelings for Deputy Davies. Likely Sheriff Morris was lunching at the Occidental and would turn the knob on the office door at any time. She must not dawdle. Determined to avoid another testy encounter with the crusty sheriff, Lenora walked to the window and scanned as much of Main Street as she could from her limited vantage point. The drunken ranch hand had continued on his way, likely discouraged when Lenora took refuge in the sheriff’s office.
Crazy Woman Creek Page 24
