by Carla Kelly
She looked at his face, happy to see the exhaustion gone now. He was looking back just as intently. He put his hand to her cheek and turned it slightly.
“Caroline, you have little wicker crosshatches on your cheek. Doesn’t this tent come with another bed?” he teased.
“Of course it does. Like a ninny, I thought I would just sit in that rocking chair for a minute and then get up and … and do something,” she said.
“What?” he asked. “Worry some more? Rush across the road and help out, even though you’re not assigned here this week? Stew about Mrs. LaMarque? Why do you always have to be doing something?”
She couldn’t help the tears that welled in her eyes. How did he know exactly what she was wondering was wrong with her? She rubbed her eyes. “I’ve never had a time in my life when I can remember having nothing to do. I think it frightens me a little. That’s all. I’ll be all right.”
“When?”
“I don’t know,” she said, irritated with herself or him; she wasn’t sure.
“How about right now? Is that soon enough to be all right?”
Bless his generous heart. He stepped inside the tent, and did the only thing she really needed, without knowing what it was she needed. He took her in his arms. He pulled her close and patted her back in what felt like a big-brother way. She hesitated only a moment then put her arms around him, which meant the big-brother patting went away immediately and he simply held her close.
He didn’t try to kiss her, or put his hands anywhere but on her back. She had never felt so safe, an emotion she barely understood. She wondered for a moment just what she did feel, but the only thought that came to mind was safe.
“I don’t want to ever move again,” she whispered into his chest. “You’re going to laugh, but I feel safe.”
“Never move again? You’ll change your mind when a few weeks pass and I start to reek,” he whispered back. “And no, I’m not laughing. I feel safe too.”
She let him go, but not too far, just far enough to stop the edgy feeling and the distinct knowledge that Mam would be clearing her throat, if Mam had lived long enough to see her now. Mam, I wish you could know this kind man, she thought.
“Ram, do we just sort of pick our way through life and hope for the best?” she asked, when he just stood there looking at her face as if she either had a leaf plastered to it, or he wanted to memorize what she could have told him wasn’t anything remarkable.
“That’s been my understanding, Caroline. Are you hungry?”
For you, I think, she told herself, and knew that wasn’t going to come out of her mouth. She took a good look at his face. She already knew he was a soldier without an ounce of fat on him, but did he have to look half-starved? She thought of her own dodgy life and knew why she always had a handful of bread or crackers to look at before she went to bed at night. What was his life like? Was it her business to ever ask?
“Yes. Let’s go eat,” she said. “I’ll peek in on Mrs. LaMarque first.”
She wasn’t aware she had been holding his hand until she had to let it go to cross the partitioned room. She pulled back the curtain, relieved to see the lady asleep, the lines on her face smooth. Her hands were tucked under her cheek like a child would sleep.
“She’s out,” she whispered.
“What are we waiting for?”
“You’ll be getting beef burgundy again, and probably those regrettable canned tomatoes with bread chunks that Mrs. LaMarque sniffed at,” she said.
“Which I recall she ate,” Ram said. “I’m nuts about breaded tomatoes. It’s even better with Worcestershire sauce.”
She looked down at the Wylie girl dress and apron she still wore, and sent him across the street to save her a space. “I’m changing first. If I show up like this, Bonnie Boone will think I want to work.” She hesitated.
“But you don’t, remember?” he reminded her. “I think the expression is ‘off the clock.’ In the army, we have a bugle call, ‘Recall from fatigue.’ That, Miss McKay, is your status right now. Hurry up and change. I told you I was hungry.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Ramsay had saved her a place in the dining hall, where she sat and enjoyed the novelty of being served by others. Carrie focused her attention on the plate of beef burgundy in front of her and the humble breaded tomatoes. She realized she had been so busy making pies and helping Bonnie before her complicated employer returned from Apollinaris Springs that she hadn’t eaten since breakfast, that lowly bowl of oatmeal.
“I paid for your dinner and mine,” he said as he reached for the rolls and butter. “Ever-scrupulous and a leader of his troops, that’s me.”
Carrie looked around the hall half-filled with diners, because the season was still early. “I like this.”
“You’re supposed to,” Ramsay said. “Think of the satisfied sigh that will rise from diners’ throats when they eat your cherry pie.”
“Ramsay Stiles, I didn’t know you were such a smooth-tongued operator,” she said. “All indications didn’t point that way, the first time I met you.”
“Just you and me and a privy,” he said, then he ate the roll he had over-buttered. He discreetly brushed the crumbs off the table when he finished. “Tidy too.”
His self-assurance deserted him then, because Carrie noticed that tell-tale blush, the curse of all blondes, inching its way north of his collar. She decided not to focus on him, to give him some room. He would speak when he felt like it; she already knew that much about him from their brief acquaintance, privy or not.
“When we’re done here, and you don’t allow yourself to be dragged away by Bonnie to wash dishes, let’s sit by the campfire. I learned a few things at Apollinaris Spring.”
“About Mrs. LaMarque?”
“Partly. Maybe about me too.”
She nodded and looked up when Jake Trost tapped her on the shoulder.
“Could you sing some Stephen Foster for us tonight?” he asked, holding his hands together as if in prayer. “You already know how pathetic my magic tricks are.” He leaned closer and lowered his voice. “Sophie is good and she’s game, but she’s a little shy in front of an audience.”
“I can do that,” Carrie said. “Even better, maybe I can prevail upon Louise LaMarque to sing. She’s sleeping right now in Tent One.”
“Louise LaMarque? Here right now? That would be swell,” he said. “Is she as wonderful as I imagine?”
“She exceeds all my wildest imaginings,” Carrie said, figuring that was as close to the truth as she could manage. It seemed to be enough for Jake, who clapped her on the back and returned to his seat across the dining hall.
“Well done, Caroline,” Ramsay said, reaching for the last roll. “That was a masterpiece of diplomacy.”
“It was, wasn’t it?” she replied. She stood up and worked her way out of the bench. “I’ll take some dinner to Mrs. LaMarque and see what she says.”
The tourist in question sat in the parlor portion of the tent, finishing her piece of cherry pie. Carrie held out the beef burgundy and stewed tomatoes, plus rolls and applesauce. “Can I interest you in dinner?”
Louse LaMarque eyed it with some disfavor. “Set it on this wobbly table,” she told Carrie. “The sergeant major has encouraged me to be more flexible.”
Carrie smiled inside at that and did as she was asked. She sat in the other rocking chair. Might as well get right to the point. Her employer didn’t seem to relish small talk any more than Carrie did. “I mentioned to the savage who does magic tricks that you might be prevailed upon to sing for us tonight at the campfire.”
“He said more flexible, not stupid,” Mrs. LaMarque said. She picked up a fork and stabbed the breaded tomatoes as if they were guilty of a felony.
“I told him I would ask,” Carrie replied, unruffled. Maybe she was finally beginning to understand Mrs. LaMarque. “If you don’t need anything else right now, I’ll go to the campfire.”
That wasn’t so hard, she thought,
as she smiled and left the tent. She stood a moment in the street, wondering about something else, then she went into the kitchen, where Bonnie was organizing her kitchen crew.
“You don’t belong in here right now,” was Bonnie’s greeting.
“I love you too,” Carrie teased. “Tell me, Bonnie: where is Millie Thorne?”
“That Thorne in everyone’s side? She was here one day and gone the next. Mr. Wylie’s been too busy to bother, but the gossip mill says she asked for a transfer to … where was it?”
“Greenland?” Carrie asked. “That might be far enough.”
“No, silly! Somewhere closer. Whichever it was, she didn’t go smiling.” Bonnie scraped a few more plates into the garbage can with such fervor that Carrie wondered what else she was scraping away. “No one seems to be missing her.”
“That should simplify my life when I’m back here sometime late next week,” Carrie said. “I may never be out of Sergeant Major Stiles’s debt.”
“Good,” Bonnie said complacently. “Scram now.”
She hurried to the campfire circle, which had been swept and tided, but the logs left still unlit. Ram sat there, his back to her. She stood a moment in silent appreciation, wondering how he bore all his responsibilities so efficiently, wanting to know more about him, but shy to ask.
Perhaps for the rest of this little odyssey, she could pay more attention to the guidebook in her lap, and not entertain herself watching him on horseback. That would be a better use of her time, she decided, even as the other side of her brain laughed and hooted at her.
He turned around before she got any closer. This wasn’t a man to sneak up on. She sat beside him, leaving what she considered a proper six inches of space between them.
“I was afraid I’d have to storm the kitchen, weapon in hand, and demand that Bonnie let you go,” he said.
“No. I left Mrs. LaMarque not precisely rejoicing in a tray of dinner. She did inform me that you advised her to be more flexible on this trip.”
“I did, but I don’t hold out any high hopes.”
“Wise of you. She pretty much vetoed my suggestion that she sing tonight, which didn’t cast me down too far. I didn’t think she’d agree.”
“We’re learning, Caroline, we’re learning.”
She waited a moment, then moved an inch closer, which she knew was still proper. “What did you learn at Apollinaris Spring?”
“That it didn’t kill me to apologize to her,” he said.
Startled, she looked him full in the face. “What on earth did you apologize for?”
It was his turn to inch closer, as if unconsciously seeking comfort. She had no objection. “You didn’t hear me at Cinnabar, when I rode over her like a troop charging the enemy. I’m not proud of that. I apologized,” he concluded simply. “We sat there a long time in silence, just watching how the water spouts from that little spigot—it looks so out of place.”
“No apology from her?”
“I didn’t expect one. I decided to tell her what had happened to me a week or so before in Fountain Hotel, when an overbearing lady—I didn’t mention she reminded me of anyone we know—called me a bellhop and demanded that I help her with her bags.”
The little gap narrowed even more. “So unkind,” Carrie murmured.
“When I told her I was a sergeant major in the army, she told me to leave the park alone and go chase troublemakers.”
Carrie moved closer and ended the little space between them. They sat together almost hip to hip, nearly touching, but not quite. “Any comment from Mrs. LaMarque?” she asked, even though she knew the answer.
“Certainly not. I had long ago arrived at the conclusion that people in the higher social orders aren’t much interested in folks like us, Caroline.”
“They’re missing out,” she said, and bridged that last tiny space by resting her head against his shoulder, which gave him permission to put his arm around her waist.
“I hope you don’t mind, but I told her about you, and tough times at the Railroad Hotel,” he said, half-apologetic, maybe uncertain of her reaction.
“I don’t mind,” she said, and she meant it. Leaning there with a good man’s arm around her and her head on his shoulder felt almost as safe as his arms around her in the tent.
“I also reminded her not to ever shout at you.” He gave a self-conscious laugh. “And that’s what I did today, Colonel McKay, to further the aims of the US Army in peacetime and wartime.”
His arm came up higher when she turned her face into his chest. “I’m too proud, Caroline, and she reminded me. That’s not a bad thing. I wish she had some idea, her and that lady at the Fountain Hotel, how hard I work and how doubtful I feel, at times.”
“No one talks about that much, do we?”
“We should.”
They sat there in the peace and quiet of the empty campfire circle as the sun continued its descent behind the Gallatin Mountains to the west. He told her about taking the cave in Luzon Peninsula, about the noise and the shouting and the darkness, and how they crawled on their hands and knees. “We were demons, Caroline,” he said. “The Moros whip themselves into frenzies before they attack, but we were even worse. The sight of Lieutenant Bonham losing his head was plenty of incentive.”
Her arm went around his waist at that. He breathed deep until she felt his shaking stop. “The night before, Lieutenant Bonham read us a part of a letter from home. His wife had just delivered their first child. Said she was going to wait until he returned to name the boy. We gave him all kinds of great suggestions and we laughed a lot. Lieutenant Bonham truly was a great leader of his troops. Caroline, it broke my heart.”
He cried as quietly as she cried. He stopped first and blew his nose on his red bandanna that seemed so out of place with his usual spit and polish. “Here’s a good corner,” he said and handed it to her. “I can’t even imagine what the etiquette book would say about this,” he told her, with a hint of his usual humor.
“I’ve never seen it in any book on manners,” she assured him and blew her nose. “I’ll wash it. No argument.”
“None given.”
He took his arm away from her waist and she straightened up. “I’d better make sure the Wylie savages know how to take care of Xerxes,” he told her. “I’ll be back. Wouldn’t want to miss the magic tricks. Oh, and your singing.”
“Ram, you’re nutty, even if no one knows it but me,” she said.
“You’re enough,” he replied but then stopped before he had gone more than a few steps. He came back and squatted on his haunches to be close to her. “I nearly forgot. I told—no, no, I’m learning—I suggested to Mrs. LaMarque that we start early enough tomorrow to take in the Norris geysers, plus the lower geysers, before we get to Fountain Hotel for the night.”
“A sergeant major suggesting?” she joked. “I’ll never tell.”
“You’re a bigger nut.” He turned serious. “The odd thing is, she doesn’t seem to be interested in geysers or hot springs. Not even Old Faithful.”
“I’m looking forward to seeing it,” she said.
“There’s this: She said quite emphatically, ‘After your unfortunate incident at the Fountain Hotel, we will skip that one entirely. Shake the dust off our feet.’ ”
“That might be her way of apologizing,” Carrie said.
He stood up. “I think you’re right. I’m starting to wonder why she is really here at all.” He touched the brim of his hat to her. “See you in a few minutes.”
“I’m starting to wonder about a lot of things,” Carrie whispered to his retreating figure, “Like if maybe I’m in love with you.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Xerxes was in excellent hands, but Ramsay brushed him again, enjoying the effort because every trooper knows the value of a good remount. As he brushed, he thought about the mechanized vehicles he was seeing more often now, especially in the larger garrisons.
Even when he was a little boy, he had thought ahead, imaginin
g a farm where a man like his father didn’t have to go to an early grave from overwork. He remembered entertaining his parents with stories of hot and cold running water in every house, and threshing machines that ran on steam power. They laughed, but even at age ten, he knew a wistful laugh when he heard one.
Just as he knew what would happen if all the wolves, coyotes, and mountains lions were eradicated from the park, he knew that eventually motorized vehicles would turn cavalry horses out to pasture.
“It won’t be anytime soon, Xerxes,” he promised, as he groomed his remount. “I know it’s coming. You ought to give the matter some consideration.”
“Do you always talk to your horse?”
He turned around to see Jake Trost with a shovel in hand, mucking out a loose box.
“I always talk to Xerxes,” he said, not in the least embarrassed, because he knew most troopers did what he did. “How else is a man to get a good conversation going? I didn’t know you worked in here.”
“We savages take our turn at nearly everything,” Jakes told him. “My dad agrees with that philosophy.”
“Smart man.”
“There’s this: Mucking out stables makes me happy to be a civil engineer major. You know I can’t count on magic tricks to see me through.”
They laughed together over that little stretcher. Jake leaned on the shovel. “I wanted you to know the rumors have stopped dead in their tracks.”
“I’m glad. High time.”
“You like her, don’t you?”
It was a simple question. Why did he blush? “I do, plus Carrie’s certainly helping me out right now.”
“I like Carrie too,” Jake said. He leaned the shovel against the stall. “See you at the campfire.”
When Jake was out of earshot, Ramsay returned to the business at hand, conversation with Xerxes. “I guess he spelled that out, didn’t he? Any suggestions? Nothing?”
Ramsay lingered outside the stable until the sky darkened and he smelled a campfire. He glanced toward Tent One, where Mrs. LaMarque sat on the wooden porch. Her head leaned a little to one side, and he thought she slept. He felt a momentary pang that maybe this trip, as simple as it seemed, was proving too much.
