by Carla Kelly
“That must have pleased her,” Ramsay said, imagining Carrie’s delight.
“You’d be wrong,” Mr. Wylie said, surprising him. “She cried and said she wouldn’t be an expense to me.” He looked away and Ramsay focused his own attention on Roaring Mountain, which was hissing more than usual this morning as they rode by.
“That’s Carrie,” Mr. Wylie said simply. “Desperate to learn, but far too well brought up by a deaf mother who worked herself to death in a seedy hotel kitchen. Carrie had been taught to be beholden to no one. She refused to go inside that building until I promised her I would let her keep working for me until she paid me back.”
“Stubborn little button,” Ramsay commented. He could see Carrie behaving that way, proud and determined, without a penny to her name.
“She is that, as well as persuasive,” Mr. Wylie said. “Carrie talked the prep school principal into letting her take a typewriting course. For three years she typed all my correspondence, kept up her prep grades, and cooked for us. She has a hunger for education.”
Yikes, I was so happy to finish the eighth grade and leave school behind, Ramsay thought. I don’t think my record of scholarship will impress Carrie too much. “Uh, schooling is a fine thing,” he said, and winced to hear his lame words.
Mr. Wylie either didn’t notice, or kindly overlooked Ramsay’s tepid response.
“I was walking by her room one night and heard her crying inside as if her heart were breaking.”
“Don’t stop there,” Ramsay spoke up, suddenly anxious.
“I wasn’t sure what to do, and Mary Ann was out playing bridge at the neighbor’s. I finally knocked on the door. I heard her blow her nose really loud, and then she opened the door.” He laughed, and Ramsay thought he almost heard the fondness of a parent. “Seems she had just finished reading A Tale of Two Cities, one of those prep-required books, and was sobbing her heart out over poor Sydney Carton. You’ve read the book?”
“A few years back,” Ramsay admitted. “School was never my number one idea of how to spend my youth.” He read it only two winters ago when he was in charge of the super-isolated West Thumb soldier station and even Charles Dickens started to look good, along about February. He even owed his horse’s name to a dusty book about the Persian Wars, just dying to be read in the West Thumb station.
It took no imagination for him to see Carrie weeping over the death of a reformed rascal—a lawyer, of course—who chose to go to the guillotine to spare the husband of the woman he secretly loved. It also took no imagination for him to know that someone with his lack of scholarly interest would have no appeal for a Carrie McKay.
He had no more to say. Ramsay rode in silence, wondering how long it would take him to quit thinking about the strawberry blond who had sung his mother’s favorite song so sweetly, and who didn’t mind sharing her life’s story with him, for some reason. He reasoned it was going to be a busy summer, once the bulk of the tourist trade started. He had desk work to do, and probably an entire summer of tasks like the strange one waiting for him in Fountain Hotel. Uncle Sam wasn’t paying him the princely sum of ninety-four dollars a month plus quarters, food, and forage to moon over a pretty lady, even if Major Pitcher and his wife thought it was a good idea.
He had nothing to say beyond casual comments when Mr. Wylie mentioned his summer expectations, or groused mildly about the way the drivers seemed to punctuate every sentence with a curse, or the irritation of dust on the roads that hadn’t been graveled yet. Finally even Mr. Wylie stopped talking.
He was yanked out of his self pity when Mr. Wylie grabbed Xerxes’ reins and forced his horse to a standstill. Ramsay lurched forward and grabbed the pommel of his saddle like a pea-green private. “What in the world?” he exclaimed as he righted himself.
“Are you moping because Carrie likes school and you didn’t?” Mr. Wylie asked, and he didn’t sound like he wanted a stupid answer.
All Ramsay had was a stupid answer. “I guess I … I didn’t think this whole thing through, or even very far, Mr. Wylie. She has big plans, hasn’t she? She’s probably studying to be a teacher.”
Mr. Wylie took his hand off Xerxes’s reins but he stayed where he was, glowering at Ramsay as if he were a misbehaving high schooler sent to the office for some living, breathing misdemeanor of monumental proportions.
“She’s taking the domestic science course because she wants to sew and cook and take care of children and probably make some knuckleheaded imbecile like you really happy some day,” Mr. Wylie said, with considerable asperity. “I thought you were a smart man.”
“The older I get, the less I seem to know, sir,” Ramsay said frankly. “I think I came home from the Philippines about as dumb as a man can be.”
The Norris soldier station was coming into view. Ramsay felt some relief at the sight. Mr. Wylie probably wouldn’t have time to say everything he thought.
He said enough, exhibiting the triumph of great powers of condensation over irritation, and maybe even the kindness Will Wylie was known for, whether a man deserved it or not. “Sergeant Major Stiles, could this be the beginning of wisdom? Most nincompoops have no earthly idea how little they know. You at least are willing to admit it. Don’t throw in the towel so soon,” Mr. Wylie said.
Ramsay nodded, too unsure of himself to speak. Was Mr. Wylie in cahoots with Major Pitcher in want to see a perfectly capable sergeant major turn into a blithering idiot in five easy steps?
“One thing to consider, Sergeant Major,” Mr. Wylie said, when Ramsay thought he wouldn’t say anything more on what was obviously a delicate subject. “Plans change. “
He didn’t feel up to debating the matter with Mr. Wylie. “They can, sir,” he admitted. “I thought I would spend the rest of my career as a first sergeant.”
“And I thought nothing was better than being superintendent of schools in Bozeman,” Mr. Wylie said. “Then I fell in love with Wonderland.”
“So did I, sir,” Ramsay said, feeling himself on sure ground again. Well, nearly. Was he destined to overthink everything? Could a man fall in love in Wonderland too? And so quickly? He sighed and shook his head.
Mr. Wylie leaned over in his saddle and gave Ramsay a quick punch on his arm. “Be a bit more creative, Sergeant Major.”
That’s the second time someone has told me that, Ramsay thought as he gave his riding companion a casual salute and peeled off toward the soldier station.
“Let me know what you decide to do about that thorn in everyone’s side,” Mr. Wylie called after him. “Maybe the other matter too.”
When pigs fly, Ramsay thought.
Chapter Sixteen
The soldiers were overjoyed to see the sticky buns, no matter their shape. Ramsay ate one, shook his head over it, and left the rest for the men. He argued with himself all the way from Norris to Fountain Hotel, a four-story wooden monster that seemed to exude comfort, stability, and old money. The ladies in the lobby wore the requisite linen dusters, the best protection in the park from dusty roads, even this early in the season. Their flowery hats were fetching and useless.
While he waited for the hotelier, Ramsay watched the leisurely class promenade through the lobby, looking so out of place in their rustic surroundings. He tried to imagine them sitting around a campfire and couldn’t.
As he stood there wondering where to find Mr. Bell, the hotelier he remembered from his last visit, an older lady bore down upon him. She walked with a cane, but he suspected it was merely ornamental when she raised it inches from his campaign hat and slapped it on his shoulder. Suddenly thinking of the jungle, he nearly grabbed the stick and thrashed her with it. He stopped just in time.
“You there! I have been waiting for a bellboy five minutes and more!”
Startled, Ramsay wondered if she really meant to address him. Humiliated, he saw several ladies titter in a well-bred way behind their gloved hands.
“There is some mistake,” he started, then stopped when she poked his chest with that cane. “Oww!”
Employing what he thought was great restraint, he took the cane out of her hand. “Ma’am, I am not your bellhop. I am a sergeant major in the United States Army,” he said, giving her The Stare in a medium-sized glance.
Unimpressed, she snatched back her cane. “What on earth is the army doing in this national park?” she asked in the kind of voice that demanded an explanation from someone obviously her inferior.
“We work here,” he tried to explain, “protecting the park from poachers and tourists.”
The tittering behind him turned into laughter but the woman was undeterred. The artificial bird among the flowers on her hat started to shake as though preparing to fly.
“You should be chasing Indians or apprehending road agents, not mingling with your betters,” the lady said, her voice still full of command, but her cane under more control, as she leaned on it now. She reminded him of an eagle glaring at road kill. “Find me a bellboy.”
Happy to get a little farther from the cane, he looked around for the bellhop stand and saw two young men in a uniform vaguely resembling his own, if one were remarkably nearsighted, as the woman probably was. He gestured to them, but both men shook their heads.
“Cowards,” he muttered under his breath. What was the republic coming to?
“They appear not to want to get your luggage,” he said to the lady, who was beginning to resemble his lower grades teacher, who had no tolerance for boys who came to school barefoot.
“Why do you think that is?” she demanded, a bully in full flower.
“Perhaps because you are a dragon with no manners,” he told her.
The woman gasped and turned the color of raw liver. “Do you know who I am, and what I can do to your rapidly vanishing career?”
“I have no idea who you are, ma’am. Do your worst to my career,” he said, tired of bullying, and ready to tell Carrie McKay to punch Millie Thorne in the face.
“I know General Nelson Miles!” the woman said, firing what he hoped was her last shot.
“So do I, ma’am,” he said. “He stood beside me while President Roosevelt pinned a Medal of Honor on me in January. Where do you want your luggage?”
Gaping like a fish now, she pointed her walking stick toward the door.
Ramsay fixed The Stare on the bellboys. “Now,” he said, pointing down at the floor in front of him. “Front and center.”
To his relief, both bellboys did as he ordered. “You heard the lady.”
He turned on his heel and stalked across the lobby, where absolute silence reigned now. I hate my job, he thought in misery.
He saw Mr. Bell, worried expression on his face, standing by an open door. Even if it had been a broom closet, Ramsay felt like diving in headfirst, anything to get out of that lobby.
The men shook hands. Mr. Bell closed the door behind him and gestured to a chair. Ramsay sat and watched as the hotelier poured them each a drink from a flask he pulled from his desk drawer. Ramsay knocked his back and shook his head at another.
“I apologize for that,” Ramsay said. He leaned forward. “Do you deal with people like her every day?”
“ ‘All the livelong day. Doo dah, doo dah,’ ” Mr. Bell sang, which made the low level in the flask not too surprising to Ramsay. And it’s not even high season yet, he thought, his mind back on Carrie for a moment, and her lovely voice. He doubted she had sung “Camptown Races,” anytime recently.
“I could never do your job,” Ramsay said, taking in Mr. Bell’s wan expression.
“I feel that way at the end of every season, when snow flies and we are closing this hotel,” Mr. Bell said. “It’s early in the year, but I feel it now.” He stood up and went to the window. “Every day, when the touring coaches arrive, I look out over a sea of eager, disgruntled, irritated, enthusiastic faces and ask myself, ‘ Which one of you is it?’ ”
“Is what?” Ramsay asked.
Mr. Bell turned back to his desk and plopped himself into his chair. “The guest from the Infernal Regions, who causes nothing but trouble and whom we would gladly pay to leave.”
“Are you pretty good at telling?”
“You’d be amazed. That woman who ordered you about is the wife of a steel magnate from New York City. She likely treats her own help like dirt, and they are probably happy to see her off to Yellowstone, in hopes that a bear will eat her. By the time she leaves, I predict we will hope she gets squashed by a hansom cab in Central Park.”
“It’s more fun at a Wylie Camp,” Ramsay said, embarrassed at his scene in the lobby. “I should have kept my temper.” Maybe I needed a little humility, he thought, wondering if Carrie would have scolded him. “What can I do for you? Something about a peeping bear?”
“Yes,” Mr. Bell said, rubbing his hands together. He looked pleased to discuss something besides the Gorgon in the lobby. “For the last few nights, a bear has been observed peering into one of the main floor windows. We moved the lady in question to another room—she doesn’t care to climb stairs—and the same thing repeats itself, no matter the room. The woman hasn’t slept a wink and she’s developed a nervous tic.”
And you brought me here for this? Ramsay thought, but wisely kept his counsel, something he regretted not doing in the lobby. “Could you station a bellhop or a custodian outside to watch for the bear? You know, just to yell ‘Hey bear!’ and swat it with a broom?”
Mr. Bell poured himself another drink with shaking hands. “None of us are that brave, Sergeant Major Stiles.”
“You’d like me to set up shop outside the hotel and watch for a bear?”
“That sums it up.” Mr. Bell’s color had improved with each sip; so had his good cheer. He raised his glass to Ramsay. “Here’s to the army.”
“Uh, yes, sir.” He sat there, waiting for Mr. Bell to offer him a room at the Fountain Hotel where he could wait until dark. The longer he sat the more he realized that neither Mr. Bell nor the outraged lady in the lobby saw him as a responsible, well-trained, noncommissioned officer. He was someone convenient to do their work, but not stay in a hotel. Maybe I needed this comeuppance, he told himself grimly. I’m one of the little people, just like Carrie.
Still, a man has some pride. “Where should I stay tonight so I can do this?” he asked.
“I assumed you’d be more comfortable among your own kind at the Fountain Soldier Station,” Mr. Bell said, and gave him an owlish look that hinted at over-involvement in the bottle.
There it was; his own kind. “It’s three miles to the soldier station, Mr. Bell.”
“So it is. You can eat there and be back here by dark.”
Someone knocked on the door. Mr. Bell reached for a small box on his desk and shook what looked like Sen-Sen into his hand. He tossed them into his mouth and chomped down. Ramsay shook his head in amazement at his own naivete, and vowed to be smarter as soon as tomorrow, if not before.
Ramsay didn’t bother with saying good-bye, because Mr. Bell was busy composing himself for his next problem. He opened the door on a fetching little thing in summer white and smelling of rose talcum powder who looked ready to chew nails. I don’t want to know, Ramsay thought, as he quietly closed the door.
He retrieved Xerxes and rode behind the hotel, looking at the window ledges. An older lady with white hair and a winning smile waved to him from one of the rooms, and he waved back. She looked like his grandmother.
The three miles to the middle geyser’s soldier station restored his equanimity, particularly since his trip through the geyser basin coincided with Old Faithful at play. Xerxes was used to geysers, so Ramsay rested his leg across his saddle and thought of what he had written, based on Captain Chittenden’s excellent study: Old Faithful is a cone geyser that erupts every sixty-five minutes, give or take, to a height of some one hundred and fifty feet. The play lasts from three to ten minutes, day and night.
“Xerxes, I could cuddle Carrie McKay here on a log, provided she and I could ever find a time to get together on said log,” he told his horse
. Impossible.
At the Fountain soldier station, he ate with the regiment’s newest sergeant and two privates and then spent a thoughtful hour walking with the sergeant, listening to his concerns about duty at Fountain, with tourists getting too close to geysers.
“We caught one yahoo tossing a bar of Ivory soap into a hot spring,” the sergeant said. “When we asked him why, he said he heard it would make it erupt sooner.”
“Did you explain the difference between hot springs and geysers?” Ramsay asked.
“Sergeant Major Stiles, I assured him that hot springs don’t erupt, and soap’s for people,” the sergeant said. “I don’t think he believed me.”
“They seldom do.”
The sergeant nodded, a wiser man. “What I really don’t like is watching the hotel toss out garbage for the bears,” he said. “They have bleachers and a fenced-off area for visitors. It doesn’t seem right.”
“It isn’t.”
He spent another hour with the men, taking notes on their grievances and listening, always listening. When the sun started to head toward the pines, he saddled up Xerxes and headed back to Fountain Hotel, where snobs and drunks held court.
He rode behind the hotel and tied Xerxes to a strut on the bleacher by the distant garbage dump, where visitors were starting to assemble. He watched their faces, noting the bored self-interest of the youths—it came with the age—contrasted with the jump up and down enthusiasm of the children, soon to return to their lives back East and writing essays about what they did during their summer vacation.
He breathed in the odd fragrance of sulfur and pine oil, which reminded him that no matter how vexing this particular assignment, patrolling Yellowstone Park was always going to be the highlight of his army career.
He admitted to some curiosity about the bear feeding. He had never seen one, although he was well-acquainted with the park’s brown bears, lumbering masses of flesh and teeth that generally minded their own business in the meadows and forests. He knew the sows with cubs would keep their babies at a distance from crowds. He took out his binoculars to look for the little ones sitting on the periphery of the clearing, following Mama’s first lesson—obedience.
