Crazy Woman Creek (33 page)

She was relieved to see the street empty, the few shoppers busying themselves inside shady Main Street shops. When she was about a block from the milliner's and roughly across the street from Belles
’, she heard a man yelling angrily from that direction. She turned to see what the ruckus was just in time to see a large man stumble raggedly out the door of the saloon, the result of an encouraging shove by the barkeep. In a flash of recognition, Lenora realized who the man clinging to the post was, though she couldn’t remember his name. It was the man who had tried to heave Sam Wright onto his horse many months ago in this same spot. Lenora stared a few seconds, expecting to see his little friend come flying out the saloon door behind him. Pea-Pod Pendergrass Deputy Davies had called him. The little man’s name was easier to remember than the big man’s. Lenora waited, but the little man did not appear.

Suddenly the large man was looking straight at her. Horrified to have made eye contact with the
obviously drunk ranch hand, she turned then, clutched her shopping basket to her body, and continued down the boardwalk, heels clicking loudly as she went.

“Mrs. Rose!” yelled the large man, grinning lasciviously and waving one hand at her. “Wait! I’ll eshcort you home.”

Escort her home? How did he know her name? Lenora did not remember ever having made the man’s acquaintance, but Buffalo was a small town, only a settlement really. Perhaps the man had been introduced to James in the course of business and knew her by association? Curious, she slowed down long enough to glance backwards. The man was dressed like all the ranch hands about Buffalo, though his hat had taken a tumble onto the dusty street outside Belles’ place. His hair was in need of a cut, slick with dirt and sweat, and stood up ridiculously on one side, shoved skyward when his hat flew off. And like all the others, he was tanned and ruddy from hours in the sun. But unlike all the others, this ranch hand was following her down Main Street, leering and swaying and calling to her. And he knew her name.

“Wait
, Mrs. Rose!”

Lenora kept walking at an even pace, refusing to add to the brouhaha by sprinting in public. She felt self-conscious for sure, and was growing increasingly annoyed at the molester, but she was
not panicked. It was, after all, broad daylight. She wished only that he’d give up and shut up before someone stepped out of a shop and observed the lout’s insistence on speaking to her.

But the man was too stupid or too drunk to respond reasonably to a brush-off. He continued to call her name, ever louder it seemed, as he followed her down the street, keeping pace about twenty feet behind, close enough that Lenora could hear his heavy boots slogging along the boardwalk. His demanding tone was more unnerving that his footsteps. Each time she heard him call her name she recoiled at the cloak of intimacy inherent in the use. She thought of turning around and shushing him but quashed the idea. Acknowledging him might encourage him. Neither did she want to be seen speaking to him.

While she held her back and shoulders primly, her mind chug chugged like a steam engine, gears turning round and round as she tried to figure out how this obnoxious drunk knew her. Then it dawned on her that that the current flavor of gossip around town might make her an attractive morsel to men of base desires. Indeed, all the men in and around Buffalo, base or no, surely knew by now about the missing rancher, the wife he left behind who was with child, her association with the very eligible and very attentive deputy, and how that deputy had been whisked away to Fort Laramie on "emergency" duty. Horrified, Lenora realized with heart-stopping chagrin that the drunk man—and who knows how many other men—must think of her as nothing more than a common strumpet. Buffalo was a military town, after all, established to serve all the peculiar needs of the lonely men who lived and worked just minutes away. Lenora was reasoning through all this when the man’s voice turned ugly, edged with contempt.

"Wait
, bitch!”

Bitch?
Feeling publicly unmasked and frantic at his angry tone, Lenora glanced right and left, abandoning all worry about being seen. Right now she would accept assistance from any male citizen of Buffalo of any stripe. But all of Main Street was empty.

Where was a good clump of ogling soldiers when a girl needed rescuing?

With the desire for self-preservation crowding out all conscious thought, she could only react. She cast about for a door, any door, to seek safety behind. In her fevered state even a barber's den would suffice. She saw a door handle and rushed to grab it. She flung herself through the doorway in such a panic she didn’t have time or inclination to read the sign on the window to the right of the door that identified the sheriff's office.

The only sound in the two spartan rooms that comprised Buffalo’s law enforcement office was Lenora’s ragged breathing as she leaned against the door a few seconds to pull the reins on her runaway heart. She was hugely relieved to see an empty chair at Sheriff Morris’ desk. But out of self-preservation, she stared several seconds to assure herself he was really absent, that her eyes weren’t tricking her.

Once she was satisfied she was alone, her glance moved naturally to the other desk where Deputy Davies usually sat. She was surprised at the hollow ache she felt at the sight of his unoccupied chair and empty hat rack. As she worked to calm her breathing and with the faint smell of old coffee in her nostrils, she tried to visualize him sitting there, smiling in his warm and welcoming way. If
he were here now, she rehearsed in her mind, he would stand politely to greet her as he usually did. He would bring her a chair and treat her with quiet respect. Unlike that skunky Sheriff Morris, Deputy Davies would listen sincerely to what she had to say and try to help.

Oh my. Am I falling in love with Deputy Davies? And what if he never returns to Buffalo?
Now there was a disturbing thought, a quiet angst that shaded Lenora’s mind like a silent gray cloud that floats slowly across the noonday sky, creating gloom where a moment ago there was happiness and light. What if he falls in with some girl he knew before he left Fort Laramie? He said he had lived there since he was eighteen. He must know many eligible young ladies. The settlement at Fort Laramie was older and bigger than the settlement at Buffalo. Chances are, she mused, he would return to the familiar and comfortable delights of home and decide that Buffalo had nothing to hold him.

But there wasn’t time to weigh the merit of this revelation about her changing feelings for Deputy Davies. Likely Sheriff Morris was lunching at the Occidental and would turn the knob on the office door at any time. She must not dawdle. Determined to avoid another testy encounter with the crusty sheriff, Lenora walked to the window and scanned as much of Main Street as she could from her limited vantage point. The drunk
en ranch hand had continued on his way, likely discouraged when Lenora took refuge in the sheriff’s office.

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.