Ella

by Sadie Conall

  Ella thought of the other girls asleep in the building. She hadn’t made friends with any of them, except one, for she mostly kept to herself. Three of the girls entertained customers and had bedrooms such as this one, large and luxurious on the first floor, although the girl who had occupied this room had left suddenly the day before with a customer. But by midday tomorrow another girl would be living in this room, a girl with no fears about entertaining men in that bed.

  Another woman slept in the attic, but she worked in the kitchen as cook and cleaner. Two barmen slept in tiny, cold rooms in the basement while the owner and his wife slept in a big room on the second floor next to the room occupied by their two young children. That room was above this one, which made Ruby keep her silence while she laid low here.

  She would miss this place. She had been happy in this town. Employed as a singer on her first day here, she had been given a small box room on the first floor all to herself. And it was luxury compared to what she had experienced in other places.

  But now she had to leave. For if those men returned in the morning or saw her in town, they would sweep her away before anyone could stop them.

  She returned to the window and glanced down on the empty street. She might have nowhere to go and be running scared, but at least she had two things to be grateful for.

  She had money, thanks to dear Papa.

  And she had Clara. And she knew Clara would help her, for Ruby trusted her with her life.

  She glanced across at the bed, thinking she might chance it and stay the night after all, although she found the thought of sleeping in the bed distasteful.

  She had spent days cleaning her room and paying for fresh straw when she first arrived here, to make sure the room and bed were free of bugs. But she doubted this mattress was free of anything.

  She glanced over at the battered chaise longue in the corner. She could drape a blanket over it. At least that would be cleaner than the bed.

  Ruby felt her belly clench with hunger but ignored it for now, for hunger was the least of her problems. Besides, Clara would feed her in the morning. And hopefully hide her away, just until she could get out of town.

  She was about to move away from the window when she saw a big man stop on the other side of the street and glance across at the saloon. Ruby would recognize him anywhere.

  It was the man who had come to her rescue earlier in the alley. Yet what was he doing here? Had he come to see if she was alright? That thought stunned Ruby, for no-one had bothered to see if she was alright for a very long time.

  His wife had said they were going to California. They were just waiting for their wagon to be fitted out.

  Ruby wondered how long it took to outfit a wagon. As she was thinking on it, the man turned and walked away, heading for an alley which lead towards the back of town. And as Ruby remained by the window looking down on the street, an idea began to form.

  What did she know of California?

  Almost nothing, although she had vague memories of another singer in another saloon she had worked in speaking of the big singing halls out there, in a place called San Francisco. The girl had said you could make in one night what it would take weeks to earn here. Ruby hadn’t believed her. Although she vividly remembered the girl saying it took more than a year to travel out there.

  She would have to buy a horse, although she knew very little about horses.

  And supplies. For what was there to eat out there?

  And what would she sleep in? A canvas shelter like the rest of those settlers camped out in the fields on the edge of town? Ruby didn’t fancy that idea, but she would do it, if she had a chance of freedom. But she couldn’t do it by herself. She had no idea where to go.

  She stood up, pacing again, keeping her boots on the carpet as her mind reeled with the thought of all that travelling. It would be hard, but she had come this far. She went to her case and opened it, reaching down into the bottom for a smaller bag. It held all her savings. And along with the money she’d earned over the past four years singing across the country, was the money she’d taken from her father’s safe.

  Like father, like daughter. Take what you can. No matter the cost.

  It never occurred to him that she knew the code. But then, a lot of things never occurred to him. But bullies were like that. Absorbed in their own self gain.

  Anyway, Ruby didn’t see it as stealing. She thought of it as a mere pittance of the eventual fortune she would have one day inherited, although that day would now never come.

  She counted it twice, just to make sure she had it right. A little over five thousand dollars. A fortune by anyone’s reckoning. And her father could well afford the loss of it, for this kind of money was just petty cash to him.

  Although she wondered again as she often did, if she hadn’t taken the money, would her father have sent those thugs after her?

  But Ruby knew he would. Because hunting her down was never about the money. It was about control. Her father wanted her back for the sake of his vanity. He couldn’t bear to think that his only child, his only daughter, had run away, humiliating him before all of New York. So he would spend every last penny he owned to get her back. To teach her a lesson. To show her who was boss.

  She put the money back in the bottom on her case and thought once more of her plans. She didn’t have much to take with her. Only what she carried in the case.

  The dresses she wore at night for her performances belonged to the saloon and in truth she would be glad to see the back of them. For every night she had to grit her teeth as she pulled them on, for none had been washed well enough and the body odor and cheap perfume other girls had splashed over themselves to conceal the fact they hadn’t bathed for a while, lingered in the fabric.

  She felt the hunger gnaw at her belly again and as she reached for a blanket off the bed, a wave of dizziness almost brought her to her knees. She gripped the side of the dresser to stop herself falling. Although it wasn’t just hunger which made her feel ill. It was fear, along with bitter disappointment. Because another town, a town she had grown to like in the short time she had been here, was now lost to her like so many other towns.

  She sat down on the chaise longue until the dizziness passed and knew she couldn’t leave until she’d rested and had a decent meal. So she took off her boots and crept across the wooden floorboards to jam a chair hard up beneath the doorknob. It was a trick she had learned from another girl in some other saloon somewhere else. No-one could get in with the door wedged like that.

  Then she took the two blankets folded at the foot of the bed and held them to her face to smell them. She grimaced at the smell of tobacco and stale fabric. But it would get cold in the early hours of the morning and the blankets were better than nothing. She placed one over the chaise longue then lay down on it, covering herself with the other. And as she lay there in the dark, the beginnings of a plan took root and she went over it again and again, trying to find fault with it. wondering if she had the courage to pull it off.

  8

  Seven days later, Marrok and Ella were sitting in one of St Louis’s finest French restaurants, each holding a glass of wine.

  “Here’s to your courage,” he said, holding his glass out towards her.

  Ella gently touched his glass with her own. “My courage?” she asked, feeling out of depth in this fancy place, along with the man sitting opposite her.

  Neither of them had intended to come here alone. And it was Jasper who pulled out first of the celebratory dinner.

  “I got no hankerin’ to set foot in a fancy place to eat, even though I know Miss Martha’s got her heart set on takin’ us out on our last night in St Louis. But the food I get from Homer’s wife suits me just fine and I’m happy to stay with the horses.”

  And when Marrok arrived at the boarding house to walk Ella and Martha across town to the restaurant, Martha had pleaded a headache and gone to bed, with Mrs Blackwood giving her a potion to help with the pain. Although Martha insiste
d it was just rest she needed.

  “It’s just too much excitement over the past week, that’s all it is. But I know I won’t cope with all that fancy food and wine. My head will be out of sorts for days and I got to feel well for tomorrow, for our big day. So I’ll just take Mrs Blackwood’s potion and have a quiet night and go over all my purchases again and make sure I’ve got everything. Now, off with you Ella. You and Marrok go and enjoy your last night in St Louis.”

  Marrok and Ella had both been upset that Martha and Jasper wouldn’t join them. And although Marrok had thought on taking Ella out for dinner, to give her a taste of St Louis at night after her escapade a week ago, he had simply run out of time. And then Martha had suggested it, insisting the meal be paid out of funds provided her by Willard.

  Although Marrok had no intention of allowing another man to pay for the dinner he would now share with Ella. It would come out of his own money, whether he considered it an extravagance or not.

  “Yes, your courage,” he replied. “For had you not had courage, you would have taken the easy way out and married Jebediah. You know he would have indulged your every whim. Although how happy you would have been with him is debatable,” he smiled at the look of distaste on Ella’s face. “And you showed courage in negotiating the sale of the ranch. Not many women would have done that. And you’ve shown courage in your decision to go west, knowing full well you’ll have to do most of it on your own, for you’ll be responsible for your own wagon and your own team. So, yes, I’d very much like to toast your courage.”

  Ella took another sip of her wine, allowing the rich drink to linger in her mouth before she swallowed, and as it hit the back of her throat she closed her eyes, feeling her senses reel from the high alcohol content. She’d never tasted anything so wonderful. When she opened her eyes, she found Marrok watching her.

  “I’ve only ever drunk brandy wine or punch and both were at neighbors’ weddings, or dances in Chesterfield.” She looked at him, thinking his face softer in the light of the candle which flickered on the table between them. “And now here I am sitting in this lovely place with you, yet I feel as if I’m all in a whirl, as if some part of me doesn’t quite believe this is real. And I have a wagon all rigged up ready to head west, along with oxen and teamsters. Who would have believed this eight days ago? And I have you to thank for it.”

  Marrok smiled and put down his glass of wine before leaning towards her. “No regrets?”

  Ella shook her head. “None. Although I’ll admit I’m afraid of what waits for me in California. But I’ll deal with that when the time comes.”

  The waiter approached and spoke rapidly in French. Ella understood not one word of what he said but Marrok nodded and looked at his menu. Ella looked at her own, saw the French words but understood none of them. She glanced across at Marrok and found him watching her. He smiled and leaned towards her.

  “Would you like me to order? I’m partial to beef myself, rather than fish, so I think I’ll choose that.”

  Ella nodded. “That’s fine with me.”

  She watched as he spoke to the waiter, who took their orders and menus, then left them alone.

  “I can’t speak French, although I understand a little,” she said. “But not enough to get by in a fancy place like this.”

  Marrok laughed. “Well, I rarely frequent such places, but tonight is special. It’s a shame Martha and Jasper couldn’t join us.”

  He glanced around the restaurant and agreed with Ella. It was a lovely place, with expensive furniture, fancy lighting, linen tablecloths and fine china. He had booked a table for four by a window so Ella could look out on the street, one of the very windows she’d stopped to peer into on her first night in St Louis.

  He watched her discreetly as she took another sip of her wine, yet Marrok thought she looked vulnerable tonight, sitting opposite him in the candlelight. She hadn’t been able to afford a new dress for the night, so had worn one of her cheaper new muslins instead. Although the color suited her and Martha had pinned her hair up in curls.

  Yet this night was special for both of them, for they had achieved the impossible in one week. And as Ella looked around her in awe, Marrok was suddenly glad he’d taken the time to bathe in one of the town’s bathhouses and that he’d paid extra for soap. Although the wool of his pants was annoying against his legs along with the calico shirt for both were new, purchased especially for tonight for the restaurant wouldn’t have allowed him entry had he come in his buckskin. Although Marrok didn’t regret the purchases for this girl deserved this night.

  “You did it, Marrok,” Ella said, lifting her glass in another toast. “You got me rigged up with a wagon and team within a week.”

  He laughed, touching his glass with her own. “With a great deal of help from Homer and Melvin. And Jasper. We couldn’t have done it without them.”

  Ella nodded. “I’m so grateful. I don’t know how I can ever repay them.”

  Marrok sat back and looked at her, smiling. “There’s nothing to repay. You paid them well enough for what they did.”

  “How do you know them?”

  Marrok shrugged. “I’ve known them since we were boys. We grew up together, for our fathers were best friends, both fur trappers. When Melvin and Homer arrived in St Louis eight years ago, they borrowed money off me to buy the land where Homer built his livery and log cabin. In those days Melvin worked as a blacksmith out back of the livery, until he could afford to move into that building where you met him, about five years ago.”

  Ella remembered the building. A large timber structure with a small log cabin built behind it where Melvin lived with his wife and two small children.

  “I’ll miss them when I leave,” Marrok said. “They’re like family to me. And even though they paid me back what I loaned them years ago, they still think they owe me, but they don’t.”

  As Marrok took a sip of his wine, Ella noticed the black circles under his eyes along with the hard line of his mouth. Some might have called it grief, but Ella thought differently. Because she knew better than anyone just how far and how hard Marrok had pushed himself this week, and all for her.

  But she was ready to go, with everything she could possibly want or need for that long haul west. Although Ella had spent more than she’d wanted, for everything cost so much more than she’d budgeted for. She lay awake at night worrying about not having enough money to set herself up in California, for she knew Martha had nothing to share with her. And Ella couldn’t rely on Martha’s family to take care of her.

  “Don’t forget you have money tied up in the oxen and wagon, so once you get settled you can always sell them,” Marrok had said when she voiced her concerns to him. “There’ll always be a market for them.”

  Ella had paid market value for the six oxen, which she’d purchased from Aramis Stent. And although Melvin had charged her very little to caulk her wagon and water barrels, Ella had had to pay him a fair price to frame her wagon. Claire, Melvin’s wife, had cut calico curtains to size and hung them at each end of the wagon, to keep dust and debris out once the wagon was on the trail. And although she hadn’t charged Ella much, it had still been an extra cost.

  And then Marrok persuaded her to buy woolen coats for herself and Jasper, along with gloves and socks, to keep them warm against the biting cold which lay ahead of them in the north.

  “And new blankets if you can, Ella,” he’d said. “Those ones I’ve seen in your wagon are almost threadbare. They won’t keep you warm when the heavy snows come.”

  But Ella didn’t have enough money for such luxuries and besides, once they reached California they wouldn’t need heavy woolen blankets, if all the stories she’d heard about the mild climate out there were true.

  Ella had also employed two young brothers as her teamsters. Abe and Wilber Linwood came from a small town in Tennessee. They’d left behind their parents, four older brothers and three sisters for a new start in California. Abe was the eldest, with only eighteen months s
eparating him from Wilber. They had no plans to start up on their own, all they wanted was an opportunity to better themselves for they hadn’t had much schooling, with neither able to read or write well, for their father had wanted them working on the farm rather than stuck in a classroom wasting time with books. In their early twenties, the brothers had arrived in St Louis only ten days earlier with the intention of finding work as teamsters. But with little money and desperate for work, they had accepted a job offer from Aramis Stent who took them on as soon as he met them. And he was well pleased with them. Hard workers and good with his oxen, he’d wanted them to stay on, but the brothers were eager to get moving, to find employment with someone heading west.

  It was Stent who introduced them to Ella, when she’d arrived at his ranch with Marrok and Homer to look over some oxen. She’d liked the brothers straight away and when Marrok agreed she should offer the brothers a job, she had, and they accepted. And it was Stent who suggested the brothers walk the oxen into town on the morning Ella planned to leave St Louis.

  “There’s no point in taking them into St Louis until you’re ready to go, not with all those other animals grazing out on those fields around town. Might as well leave them here where they’ll get fed and watered before they start out on that long walk west. I ain’t got no problem looking after them until then.”

  Ella agreed and the date for departure was set, allowing Marrok to book two flatboats to get her team across the Mississippi River.

  But as she enjoyed her last night in St Louis with Marrok, feeling excited and nervous about their big day tomorrow, she realized she knew very little about him.

  “Marrok Gauvain,” she said softly, teasing him a little. “What sort of name is that?”

  Marrok was surprised by the question. “If you mean it’s origins, it’s French,” he said, smiling. “My grandfather was born in France. He was an officer in the French army and came to America as a young man to fight in the Indian-French wars around 1752. After the wars he headed north with friends to trap beaver. A man could make a fortune trapping furs back in those days.”