A Christmas Promise

by Zina Abbott

  A Christmas Promise

  Zina Abbott

  Christmas Promise by Zina Abbott

  Copyright© 2014 Robyn Echols (aka Zina Abbott)

  Cover Design Livia Reasoner

  Prairie Rose Publications

  www.prairierosepublications.com

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  A Christmas of second chances and a promise for a brighter future.

  “Can we come out yet, Ma?”

  “No,” Annie called back to her oldest, eleven-year-old Samuel, who, along with his six-year-old sister, Arletta, had been ordered to stay in the small lean-to bedroom off the kitchen where she slept. When she first came to work for the Clayton family, Thea Clayton had offered her one of the attic bedrooms and another for her two children. She had declined, giving the reason that she wished to be close to the kitchen so she did not wake up the Clayton household when she rose to start the family’s breakfast each day.

  “How long before you’re done, Ma?” The whine belonged to Arletta. “Ow! Stop it, Sammy!”

  “Sam! I go by Sam now, Letta.”

  “Samuel Edward Murdock, you stop a-tormentin’ your sister or there won’t be nothin’ for you this Christmas except some rocks and double chores. I’m about done, you two.”

  “Won’t be nothin’ much no-how.” Samuel’s mutter filtered through the door, prompting Annie’s shoulders to slump with discouragement. That was the only expression of emotion she allowed herself. She had learned years earlier to keep her mouth shut and not wear her feelings on her face.

  Annie could not shake the truth of her son’s words. She knew she couldn’t offer the children much in the line of gifts for Christmas. All she could do for her family was forge forward the best she could.

  Yes, their living situation was much better than the previous Christmas. They had still been at Fort Laramie and her late husband, Daniel Murdock, had still been alive. But, it was not his passing that led to their bleak Christmas this year. As had happened almost every year that she could remember, during the holidays, he had managed to squander most of his pay. Unlike most married laundresses at the fort, there was only her pay to buy Christmas presents for the family.

  Annie’s wages as an Army laundress, about the same or slightly better than what her late husband who was a private had earned, had covered the living expenses for her and the children. However, there was little left over for Christmas presents. The last few years, the children had been old enough to realize that the new clothing they received Christmas morning was nothing more than the clothes they needed anyway, with or without the holiday.

  It would have helped in the past if, while he was still alive, their father had contributed some of his private’s pay toward Christmas. However, each year, he had complained he had expenses and no extra to spare. That was what he used to tell the children. Annie knew he had nothing left over because he chose to spend his pay on drinking, gambling and entertaining either one of the other laundresses who welcomed late night male company for a price, or one of the painted ladies working at the “hog ranch” known as the Openly Lewd. The whorehouse had been set up about three miles from the fort after the prostitutes had been kicked out of the old Fort William, the trading post established by William Sublette, after the Army bought it and renamed it Fort Laramie.

  In their early days at the fort, when Daniel Murdock had run out of his own money, he had come after her money. He claimed it because, as her husband, the law of coverture gave him the right to control all the money earned by his wife and his children who were not of age. The other women at the fort insisted it was different in Wyoming, that her earnings were hers to control. Of course, Daniel preferred the law still in effect in Kentucky, their home state.

  As an Army laundress, Annie had a right to lodging, firewood, medical care and a food allowance for herself, so she hadn’t worried that she and the children would freeze in the winter or starve. But, especially since Daniel was not inclined to contribute toward family expenses, she needed her wages for food for the children, clothes and other incidentals. For one thing, he had refused joined her when she moved into Soap Suds Row, the substandard housing for the washerwomen that also served as the married enlisted men’s quarters. He had talked his commanding officer in to allowing him to stay in the barracks with the single men. He had explained to Annie that her quarters were too small for everyone and he couldn’t handle the odor of the cowshed built onto the back of the building. The real reason was that he had no interest in actively parenting his children and living like a family man. In the barracks, he continued to be surrounded by the camaraderie of his fellow soldiers, and living there gave him easy access to one of the many card games frequently organized there.

  Even after she refused to hand him money, insisting it was her right to keep what she earned, for a time he still found a way to get Annie to cover his gambling losses. He sent those to whom he owed money to Annie for payment. She turned in her charges for each soldier whose clothing she washed and the money due her was deducted from their pay each month. Those to whom her husband owed money stood off to the side when she received her money from the paymaster. They presented her with Daniel’s I.O.U.s as soon as she started back toward her quarters. Most were polite and apologetic; others were rude and threatening. Either way, Annie had felt an obligation to pay her family’s debts, especially when the soldiers approached her so publicly.

  Only after she had been unable to pay her account with the Post Trader’s store too many times had the commanding officer put a stop to Daniel’s pilfering ways. Thanks to the efforts of Sergeant Jenkins, Daniel’s immediate superior, the fort’s commanding officer had been persuaded to order Annie’s pay to be credited directly on her account at the Post Trader, the old sutler’s store, rather than handed over to her. He also ordered that only she could charge against her balance to purchase items from there. Only Annie could make cash withdrawals from her account, and then, only with his written approval. She had occasionally asked for funds when she was able to catch transportation to the city of Laramie. But, having her requests scrutinized by the fort commander unnerved her to the point she didn’t make the request very often. The men who played against Daniel soon learned to refuse accepting Annie as a source of payment for any of Daniel’s bets.

  Each time she had stood up to Daniel, it had cost Annie a beating. Feeling trapped by the responsibility of family, he grew even more bitter with her once he found out he no longer had access to her wages. For Annie, it had been worth it. It allowed her to provide for herself and the children, even if there still had not been much for extras. She didn’t know what she would have done if Sgt. Jenkins had not stepped in, on occasion.

  At the thought of Sgt. Isaiah Jenkins, a wave of longing coursed through Annie. After she had been forced to leave Fort Laramie, Sgt. Jenkins was the one person at the fort that she missed. He had always been considerate and polite to her. More importantly, as Daniel’s immediate superior officer, he had done everything he could to help and protect her from Daniel without interfering with his husband’s rights over his wife and children. More than once, his intercession on her behalf because of her position as an Army laundress had spared her from suffering physical abuse at Daniel’s hand.

  This Christmas, Annie did not need to worry about any of that. Daniel’s excuses for why he would not help with Christmas presents and his self-serving cavorting
around were a thing of the past. Blood poisoning from a self-inflicted ax wound to his leg when he had been out on firewood cutting duty the previous spring had claimed his life. Instead of grief, she felt like a burden had been lifted from her life, as if God had finally decided that she had paid a sufficient price for her sin and He had set her free.

  That euphoria had been short-lived. In June, two months after Daniel died, Colonel Smith, the commanding officer had refused to renew her contract as a laundress. As soon as they heard, the few people who had been friendly toward her had offered her their regrets and their speculations about why she had not been allowed to stay at the fort. Then, they had quickly turned their backs on her as if she were already gone.

  But, Sgt. Jenkins had been different.

  The day she was forced to leave Fort Laramie, she had no idea where to go. Her ma had died trying to bring a little brother into the world, and her pa and older brother were both dead in the war. None of Daniel’s family would have anything to do with her. As her father had warned her, the Murdocks were a shiftless lot.

  After Kentucky’s neutrality was broken in September, 1861, Daniel had signed up to fight as a Yankee. His family blamed her for trapping Daniel into marriage. The Murdocks claimed she lied about the baby being his. They spread the rumor that it could have been one of several young men, but she made the claim that it was Daniel’s in order to get her hands on his re-enlistment incentive pay.

  It was a ridiculous claim, Annie mused as she shook her head. Except for her son’s coloring that was more like hers instead of Daniel’s reddish hair and green eyes, he looked too much like his father for anyone to deny who had sired him.

  The final straw with the Murdocks had come when her own pa and brother had joined up to fight with the South. With Kentucky being a border state, it was not uncommon for a community of citizens to be divided. Some chose to support the Union, while others favored the shadow Kentucky state government set up by the Confederacy. Many of her neighbors were Southern sympathizers; while others, like Daniel, supported the Union.

  After Daniel died, Sgt. Jenkins had done his best to help her get all of Daniel’s pay to which she was entitled, and to get the Post Trader to release the balance of her account to her. The sergeant arranged transportation for her and the youngsters to go to the city of Laramie where she might search for a new situation.

  It had been a fearful time for Annie. The rowdy and dangerous conditions of four years earlier when Laramie had been a new railroad city had lessened. However, inexpensive housing, especially for a widow with two children, was almost non-existent. Even if Annie had been able to bring her laundress equipment with her, the town had been teaming with laundresses. The only job she could find was cleaning a saloon. The owner had strongly suggested that she become one of the painted ladies who took men up to her bedroom. In spite of the opportunity to make three times more money, she refused to prostitute herself. From the way she had been raised, she knew it was wrong. Because of the children, she didn’t even want to take any job at the saloon if she could avoid it. The thought of the kind of trouble that awaited her children on the streets while she worked, especially in a place like a saloon, terrified her. As her money from the fort began to run out, she had experienced several days when she had not been sure what would happen to her and her children.

  Her salvation had come when she had stumbled across newlywed Thea and begged to work for her in exchange for room and board. That had been the previous July.

  Because of the nature of her late father’s investments in the Credit Mobilier which funded the Union Pacific Railroad, the scandal of 1872 involving Jay Gould and that organization caused Thea Thurmond, now Mrs. Virgil Clayton, to lose most of her inherited wealth. Then things had turned badly for cattle ranchers everywhere, including those in Wyoming. In spite of their own difficulties, the Claytons had hired her and taken on the burden of helping her with Samuel and Arletta.

  But, even though she and her children were in a better situation now, Annie still had little extra money after buying anything but the basics. She felt too grateful for her living situation with the Claytons to ask for more than room and board. In spite of the reverses to their financial situation, the Claytons had not turned her and her family out. However, she knew it was all they could do in exchange for her labor to give her a place in which to live, educate her children plus a little pin money. She refused to accept anything additional, not even for Christmas presents for her children.

  Annie thought back to Sgt. Isaiah Jenkins’s visit two months earlier. He had traveled with Lieutenant Preston who was over procurement for the fort. The small group of soldiers had come to the Clayton ranch to see about purchasing beef for the fort to get them through the coming winter. Toward dark that Indian summer October evening, Sgt. Jenkins had made a point to ask her to walk with him. He had inquired after her situation and how it was working out for her and the children.

  He had also shared his plans with her. After twenty years in the cavalry, he intended to muster out at the end of his current term of enlistment and leave the Army for good. Annie knew from that talk that Isaiah Jenkins was fed up with the Army’s foolishness when dealing with the Indians. Events like the Sand Creek Massacre had not set well with him. He could see how the local tribes who often came to the fort for help were starving much of the time. Now General Custer’s plans for the coming spring to deliberately violate the reservation agreement with the Sioux by mounting an expedition to the Black Hills to confirm the rumors about the presence of gold annoyed him to no end.

  That night, Isaiah had voiced his bitterness over the Fetterman debacle. It was being called a massacre. According to Isaiah, what had really happened was that Lt. Fetterman had deliberately violated a direct order from his commanding officer and engaged the Sioux, resulting in his death and the gruesome deaths of eighty of his men. And, how had the Army handled this military failure? It had made a martyr of the man and named a fort after him. But, what annoyed him the most was that the Army seemed intent on taking actions that would lead to the same kind of hostilities with the local tribes that had existed at the time of the Fetterman attack.

  Annie knew that Sgt. Jenkins no longer felt he could support how the Army operated. He was ready to get out and go his own way.

  He had shared how he eventually wanted to get his own place where he could raise cattle and train horses. He had some money set aside, but, even with the Homestead Act, he feared he didn’t have enough yet. He hoped to work a few years for someone else’s brand.

  Annie had thought at the time that he was rather old to work as a cowboy or a wrangler. She figured he was at least ten years older than she was. But, although she had listened with interest, she had said nothing. She had schooled her facial expression to show only polite interest. She had already learned the hard way not to assume. She had listened as a friend, but refused to allow herself any hope that his plans might include her.

  After all, she might only be twenty-eight, but Annie felt careworn and used up. Even when she was young, hardly anyone ever described her as pretty. Most often the best anyone might have said about her was that she had strong bones. There was nothing distinctive about her light brown hair or her gray eyes. Even though by last fall she had no longer appeared as gaunt and haggard as she had when she was at the fort working long hours, she knew she looked and felt older than her age. She was a big woman, almost as tall as the willowy Thea Clayton. But, unlike Thea, once she regularly had sufficient food provided by the Claytons to eat, her large frame had filled out to the point she now felt as bulky and cumbersome as an ox. She doubted that Isaiah Jenkins, only a couple of inches taller than she was and on the thin and wiry side, could find her attractive.

  And then, there was her half-grown family. Arletta was a sweet little thing, but Samuel had always been a handful. Back at Fort Laramie, the commanding officer’s explanation for why he chose to not renew her contract had been that he decided to give the laundress job to a wife
of one of the newer privates at the fort. Her fellow laundresses, the ones who had always been quick to share the gossip about which woman her husband was keeping time with, had been just as quick to share with her the rumor about the real reason for her dismissal. Col. Smith did not renew her contract due to all the disruptions Samuel wreaked upon the fort and its stables.

  Annie knew that by mimicking his father’s irresponsible attitudes and destructive behavior, Samuel was grieving over his father’s death. But, the soldiers did not care about a misguided, obnoxious, trouble-making boy trying to deal with loss. Col. Smith’s solution had been to rid the fort of the entire family.

  Annie recognized that their situation overall was better for her and her son now that she was a widow and had managed to get work as a cook and laundress for the Clayton family. Now, Samuel answered to Mr. Clayton for his chores. His behavior had gradually improved. For that, she was grateful. Still, he was a challenge. What man in his right mind was willing to take on a boy like Samuel? No, Annie knew better than to hope for too much when it came to Sgt. Jenkins. She must resist the sin of longing for more than what she could expect.

  Annie forced her daydreams away from Isaiah Jenkins and back to the moment. Only one more foot of hemming on Arletta’s new red calico dress and Annie could return it to its hiding place until later this Christmas Eve night. All she had for the children were the dress for Arletta, a new shirt and hand-sewn jacket for Samuel, and the new pairs of socks for each that she had spent her late nights the last two months knitting. She would put them out on the chair in her room after the children were asleep.

  Annie wished she had some candy or other treats to go with her gifts. But it had been all she could do to purchase the fabric and yarn for what she had made. Sharing with them some of the treats Thea Clayton had asked her to bake would have to do.

  Once Annie finished the hem, she reached up and gently fingered the white fabric of the collar. Mrs. Clayton, upon learning that she had purchased enough fabric for a new dress, had been kind enough to offer her a piece of white cotton, just enough to make a detachable collar and cuffs for the dress. Annie knew that at the rate Arletta was growing, it was only a matter of a few months before she outgrew her current everyday dress. Then she would need to wear this one for every day. When that time came, Annie would take the collar and cuffs off to keep them clean during the week and only reattach them for special occasions. When they went to town or to church, or when they listened to Mr. Clayton read from the Bible on some Sundays because there were no services at the church, Annie knew it would be nice for Arletta to be able to add the collar and cuffs to make her dress special. However, until that time came, Annie hoped to save the whole dress for special occasions.