Crazy Woman Creek

by Welch, Virginia

  Wherever he was, he was gone now. She opened the office door and left, leaving it unlocked just as she had found it. Feeling lonely and lost and like she were drifting in a vast ocean with neither mast nor sail, she set out for the milliner’s.

  #

  “Lenora, I didn’t expect to see you here,” said Mrs. Nolan, turning from the sales counter at the sound of Lenora’s entrance.

  Ellen Doherty was showing Mrs. Nolan a velvet winter bonnet, its long, silky blue ribbons draping fluidly down the front of the polished counter. Mrs. Doherty’s face fell and her mouth became a straight line at the sight of Lenora. She shut the door behind her and, passing open shelves of elaborately decorated women’s hats to her right and men’s headgear to her left, approached the two women. She had seen the shock and then the mild disdain on the shopkeeper’s face. On her own face Lenora wore a practiced mask of calm.

  “Ellen, you know Lenora,” said Mrs. Nolan.

  Lenora noted that Etta’s tone was a little breezier than usual.

  “Mrs. Rose,” said Mrs. Doherty with the slightest nod of her head.

  Lenora was glad for this polite crumb of civility, though she knew that the milliner had tossed it her way only out of deference to Etta.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Doherty,” replied Lenora with a stiff smile.

  “You done with your shopping already?” asked Mrs. Nolan.

  “No, I forgot that I needed buckram. And I’m waiting for Mr. Aeschelman to put my order together.”

  “I’ll get it,” said Mrs. Doherty. And without further ado, the bespectacled shopkeeper in the starched white shirtwaist left the counter to rummage among her boxes of notions for the stiffener Lenora needed for her new hat.

  Lenora was mortified. Mrs. Doherty would use any excuse to get away from her, as if Lenora had brought head lice to this little party. She burned with unfounded shame. It was all so unfair.

  Nonplussed, Mrs. Nolan ignored the shopkeeper’s judgmental response and fingered the blue velvet hat. She lifted it from the counter and placed it on her head.

  “What do you think?” Mrs. Nolan smiled wide.

  “It makes you look twenty years younger,” said Lenora.

  “Good. Then I’ll buy one in every color,” said Mrs. Nolan with a straight face. Lenora smiled but did not laugh.

  In short order Lenora and Mrs. Nolan had their buckram and new blue velvet hat, respectively, and were walking through the jingling doorway of Aeschelman’s. As they approached the counter Lenora saw that Mr. Aeschelman had gathered her purchases into a bundle secured with paper and string, which he had set on the counter.

  “Thank you Mr. Aeschelman,” she said, reaching for the bundle. “How much do I owe you?”

  “Lenora, you forgot your letters,” interrupted Mrs. Nolan, glancing at the basket on Lenora’s arm.

  “Oh, so I did,” she said, handing them to Mr. Aeschelman.

  “Faustus forget too,” said the proprietor, tapping his head as if to wake himself up. With his hand he signaled them to wait a moment. He walked to the end of the counter, rummaged around underneath, and returned with an envelope, which he handed to Lenora. “Fort Laramie,” he said, pointing to the return address. And then he winked.

  Lenora stood still as a fence post, staring at Mr. Aeschelman, trying to take in what had just transpired. So, his English was poor but his imagination was rich indeed. Swell.

  “Thank you, Mr. Aeschelman.” Lenora paid for her purchases and they left.

  After Mrs. Nolan had checked on her house in town and found everything in order, the ladies continued to Olathe’s for the wagon and the Morgans. Mr. Olathe’s cool reception didn’t surprise Lenora this time, though. She paid him for his services but didn’t bother to favor him with a smile as she had done in the past, before James went missing and before the forces of Hell were unleashed on her. It was pointless to pretend that her reputation in Buffalo was any whiter than a soiled dish rag, especially if others wouldn’t pretend as well.

  “Lenora, you sit and I’ll drive,” said Mrs. Nolan as she stood by the wagon.

  “You think you can handle them?” Lenora looked doubtfully toward the Morgans.

  Mrs. Nolan made a shooing motion with her hand, urging Lenora to climb aboard. “Of course I can handle them. I handle Malcolm, and when he was alive, I handled Arthur. You just have to keep a firm grip on ‘em is all.”

  “If your husband could hear you now!” said Lenora, laughing. She obediently hiked herself up onto the wagon bench.

  Mrs. Nolan handed her cane to Lenora and then hoisted herself awkwardly onto the wagon. Lenora handed her the reins. In no time they were beyond the tall doors of the livery stable, had passed the last false storefront of Buffalo, and were alone on the prairie, headed toward Lenora’s ranch.

  “Now, let’s hear what your deputy has to say,” said Mrs. Nolan.

  Lenora screwed up her face and gave the older woman an I-know-what-you’re-trying-to-do look. “I should have known that’s why you wanted to drive.”

  Mrs. Nolan only smiled.

  Lenora reached into her basket and pulled out Luke’s letter. She tore open one end of the envelope, pulled out the single page of cream paper, unfolded it, and began to read silently. “Oh no,” she said after several seconds.

  “What is it?”

  “Deputy Davies says he’s not coming back to Buffalo until after September. That’s past the six-month deadline!”

  “What’s keeping him?”

  “Sheriff Clarke needs him to stay on. He says I should speak to Judge Stillman myself.”

  “Yes. And what else?”

  “Let me see here.” Except for the jangling of the traces and the clop of the horses’ hooves, all was quiet in the wagon while Lenora quickly read through the front and back of Luke’s letter. Warm rays of late summer sunshine meant that the women could ride comfortably on the open buckboard without cloak or shawl. Nary a cloud dotted the wide blue sky above them as they rode in companionable silence, Mrs. Nolan guiding the horses while Lenora bent over Luke’s letter.

  At last Lenora stopped reading, folded the page in thirds, and slipped it back into the envelope. Then she took the envelope and folded it in half and shoved it to the bottom of her reticule, as if burying something rotten to stem the stench. She pulled the drawstrings tight and sat silently gazing out onto the prairie.

  Mrs. Nolan watched all this with patient interest. Finally she said, “Is everything alright, Lenora?”

  “I’m doomed.”

  “What do you mean, ‘doomed’?”

  “I mean it’s all over. I’ve lost the ranch. Good as gone. I’m returning to New York penniless, with child, and alone. There is not a scrap of hope left to me.”

  “Lenora,” said Mrs. Nolan, turning to her bench mate, “I don’t understand your sour thinking.”

  “That wily Sheriff Morris, he’s thick with Judge Stillman. I’m sure of it.”

  “And what of that? You think Judge Stillman won’t rule fairly on your behalf?”

  “Not for Buffalo’s notorious fallen woman, that Jezebel of Jezebels. God only knows what Judge Stillman has heard about me,” she said, shaking her head. And about my condition.

  “What an imagination you have.”

  Lenora grimaced and looked away. She didn’t care to argue with dear Etta.

  “Well, if it’s as gloomy as you say, then I suppose it would be futile for the deputy to speak to Judge Stillman as well. He’s an actor in this drama too, you know.”

  “But Deputy Davies is a law enforcement officer. Judge Stillman would listen to another representative of the law. Especially another man.”

  “Maybe, maybe not.”

  “Oh Etta, why doesn’t He just strike me dead?” Lenora wailed. She bent over her lap, her head in her hands.

  “And have you miss your appointment to petition Judge Stillman? I think not.”

  Lenora bolted upright. “You don’t really think I’m going to speak to him on my
own behalf, do you?”

  “I don’t think it. I know it. I’m not going to let you lose your ranch merely because you’re afraid to speak up. That would be poor stewardship.”

  “But I can’t!” More wailing.

  “Don’t be a goose. Of course you can.”

  “How? Like this?” Lenora clasped one hand to her growing belly. “Everyone thinks the baby is Deputy Davies!”

  “And that is untrue, or so you told me ...?”

  Lenora turned then to look Mrs. Nolan in the eyes. “Etta, this is James’ baby. Our baby.”

  “I believe you,” said Mrs. Nolan, nodding her head in confirmation. “Then why can’t you march right into Judge Stillman’s office and tell the whole story about James’ disappearance if it’s true?”

  Now there was a good question. Was the truth good enough? When James and Lenora had embarked on their great adventure years before, their sheer confidence in the rightness of what they were doing combined with the mutual bravado of youth had kept them afloat in rising waters. Untested confidence alone was their strength, confidence enough to endure every hardship, fight every foe, overcome every obstacle that threatened to steal away their dream.

  But what had happened to the self-assured woman Lenora had once been? She hardly knew herself anymore. The thought of standing before Judge Stillman, in a motherly way yet alone, recounting her specious story of James’ brash foray into the dark of night for no good reason, how his horse was found tied to a tree on the banks of the North-East Creek, and how his body had never been found, it all sounded so, so ... unbelievable. Lenora slumped lower on the buckboard bench. She didn’t have the will to swim upstream anymore.

  “This goose is going to be plucked,” she said. “And you know what happens before the plucking.” Lenora drew a hand across her throat. “Whack.”

  Mrs. Nolan laughed out loud. “So young to be so negative,” she sputtered, still laughing.

  “Other than the baby,” said Lenora, patting her tummy, “I can’t think of anything good that’s happened to me in six months.” Her countenance was as gloomy as her speech.

  “That remains to be discovered.”

  The ladies rode in silence a while, becalmed by the gentle song of the rolling prairie, a soft breeze stroking their faces. In the distance low hills were beginning to cast bluish-purple shadows on their eastern flanks, blurring the outline of the trees. The lengthening shadows stirred a dark memory for Lenora.

  “Etta, I was chased down Main Street by a drunkard while you were at Ellen’s.”

  “Really? What happened?”

  Lenora was reluctant to give voice to her memory of the run-in with the obnoxious ranch hand, but keeping the disturbing images of the day hidden inside her seemed to strengthen their dark power. She told the entire story to Mrs. Nolan, leaving off that particularly distasteful term the man had used to describe her. It upset Lenora to bring the word to her lips.

  “That was Buck Jennings or my name isn’t Marietta Applegate Nolan,” said Mrs. Nolan with a flourish.

  “Yes, that is the man! Deputy Davies pointed him out to me one day,” said Lenora, remembering.

  “The only good thing I can say about that despicable ranch hand,” said Mrs. Nolan, giving the reins a little snap to encourage the Morgans, “is that he regularly blesses the people of Buffalo.”

  Lenora turned a puzzled face to her friend.

  “With his absence,” Mrs. Nolan continued. “Being an itinerant, he’s away from Buffalo much of the time. Did you inform Sheriff Morris?”

  Lenora paused, her first thought straying to Deputy Davies’ empty desk and how she had lingered shamelessly in the sheriff’s office, daydreaming about the handsome deputy and missing his tender attentions. She blushed at the memory.

  “I took refuge in his office but he wasn’t in, so I left.”

  “I’ll talk to Malcolm as soon as I can. Get him to work with Sheriff Morris on running that man out of town for good.”

  “Thank you, Etta.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Four weeks later

  Thesun was a wavy red ball sinking slowly into an inky purple sky when Luke rode up to the hitching post in front of the Buffalo sheriff’s office. He pulled on the reins to halt his horse, stiff but grateful that the numbing hours on the trail from Fort Laramie had finally come to a saddle-sore end. It was cold too. Autumn’s chill crept early over the darkening landscape. Luke wanted only to leave a short note for Cyrus, alerting him of his unscheduled arrival, get a hot meal at the Occidental, and fall into his bed at Mrs. Byrne’s as quickly as humanly possible. Every muscle in his body ached for sleep. September twentieth had come and gone. James Rose had been missing more than six months. By now Mrs. Rose had made her petition to Judge Stillman, and Luke had not been around to speak for her. He felt frustrated by impotence. He hadn’t found James Rose’s body. He hadn’t helped his widow keep title to her ranch. He wondered if Judge Stillman had ruled in her favor or if he had already completed the paperwork to have her homestead transferred to the government. Luke winced, remembering how she had asked him to help her. He had promised to assist, but in the end he had not helped her at all. He wasn’t even sure if his letter to Judge Stillman had ever arrived at the man’s office. The justice of the court had never responded.

  Luke wondered as he dismounted and tied his horse, just as he had wondered the two hundred and twenty lonely miles from Fort Laramie to Buffalo. Wondered why his awkward attempt at proposing to the man’s widow had been met with tears. That hurt the most, wounded his pride to the point that he had seriously considered staying on permanently in Laramie. But a Davies didn’t give up that easily. Only a coward ran and hid at the first rebuff. Luke liked to think he was made of tougher stuff. Still, he wondered what kind of reception Mrs. Rose would give him now that he had returned too late to be of any worldly assistance. With a heart heavy with longing for what could have been, he wondered if he would have been a different, cleverer sort of man when it came to women if only he had grown up with a ma to teach him the secrets of these mysterious beings.

  And, more to the moment, he wondered if he would lose his job for insisting on returning to Buffalo before his work was finished at Laramie. The only thing Luke was sure of right now was the warm, wiggly puppy inside his coat front that was excitedly licking his neck and jaw. He had purchased the pesky mutt, a black-and-brown cutie with big trusting eyes, at Laramie for Mrs. Rose. Luke pressed one hand to his chest, directly over the excited pup, to restrain his slobbery affections while he gazed up and down the shadowy hulks that lined Main Street.

  He was glad to be back in Buffalo. Beautiful Buffalo, where his heart was. Then, as he stepped onto the boardwalk, he heard someone shout his name.

  “Deputy Davies! Deputy Davies!”

  Luke looked in the direction of the shouting and saw Octavius Dunn walking determinedly toward him, his hand on the shoulder of a very unhappy little boy. It was his son, the same boy who had come to Luke’s office carrying James Rose’s pocket watch. Octavius stopped shouting when he saw Luke look in his direction.

  “Deputy Davies,” said the elder Dunn as he drew closer, “we didn’t think you’d be back in town for months.”

  “Plans changed,” said Luke, offering no explanation and too tired for small talk anyway. “What can I do for you?” Luke glanced at the boy and was disturbed to see tears brimming in his eyes. The child looked terrified and then incredulous as his eyes grew wide at the bumping and shoving inside Luke’s coat.

  “I’m glad I saw you,” said Octavius. “My daughter Lucille came by my shop yesterday afternoon to tell me a story.”

  “She tattled!” said the younger Dunn.

  “Hush, Harold!” said the father, shaking the boy’s shoulder slightly for emphasis. “You’re in enough trouble as it is.” Then he turned back to Luke. “I’m afraid my son has not been entirely truthful about the item he brought to you several months ago. That gold watch, I mean.”

&
nbsp; At the mention of the watch, the boy started to cry. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and sniffled. The words had an entirely different effect on Luke. The fog of tiredness that had clouded his brain cleared instantly. He studied the boy.

  “This time Harold is ready to tell the whole truth, aren’t you, Harold?”

  The boy hesitated, his body trembling.

  “Look up at the deputy, son,” commanded the father.

  Harold turned a wet face to Luke. Luke was anxious to hear what he had to say, but he felt awful for the boy. He looked utterly miserable. Luke remembered feeling exactly like that more than once over the course of years, although usually his mortification was associated with hijinks he had exercised on his hapless brothers. Other than keep quiet when he should have spoken, to date he’d done nothing wicked that involved a gold watch and a dead man, but time would tell.

  “I didn’t find the watch on the church steps,” Harold said, his voice hardly above a whisper. He stared at Luke’s coat. A furry little head popped up and two black eyes stared back at Harold.

  The boy had Luke’s undivided attention.

  “Tell the deputy where you found it,” said Octavius, prodding the reluctant miscreant.

  There was a long, pregnant pause.

  “I found it ... I found it ...”

  Octavius tightened his grip on the boy’s shoulder.

  The boy got the message. “I found it in the cemetery,” he said all at once.

  “And what were you doing in the cemetery?” said Octavius.

  Another long pause. “Shooting rocks at head stones,” said the frightened child. His voice cracked as he spoke and he started to cry again.

  “And why didn’t you tell the deputy the truth, Harold?”

  The boy’s chest heaved.

  “Look at the deputy, Harold.”

  The boy looked up at Luke. “Because I didn’t want you to find the owner.”

  Luke squatted then, still cradling the puppy in his coat, to look at the boy face to face. “Where in the cemetery, son? Where exactly did you find it?”