Read Long Road to Cheyenne Online
Authors: Charles G. West
Tags: #Westerns, #Fiction, #Historical, #General
“Looks that way,” Cam said, and nudged his horse to follow Mary and the girls.
• • •
Mary supposed the Chugwater Inn could be classified as a hotel of sorts by a most generous appraiser, but it looked good to her after her adventures on the high plains. Perhaps it would be better described as a boardinghouse with a couple of extra rooms built onto the rear. These two rooms were seldom used since there were ample accommodations for stage passengers in the main house. But it was these two rooms that Mary requested, because they were handy when it came to unloading the packhorses and transferring the load they carried to the rooms. “You folks could have your pick of the rooms,” Sarah Kelly told Mary. “There ain’t nobody in ’em right now. The only time we rent ’em is when the stage lays over here for the night, and that’ll be tonight when the stage pulls in from the north. We ain’t but about fifty miles from Cheyenne, so they only stop overnight on their way back from Deadwood.”
“Why is that,” Ardella couldn’t resist asking, “if it ain’t but fifty miles?”
“Because the stage doesn’t usually get here until late in the afternoon,” Sarah answered.
“I shoulda figured that out,” Ardella said.
“We’ll take the two rooms out back,” Mary told Sarah. “They’ll do just fine.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Sarah replied. “The rooms in the main house are a little bit nicer, but I reckon it’ll be a lot easier for your husband to carry some of your things off your packhorses into those two on the ground floor.”
“He’s not my husband,” Mary was quick to correct her. “The rooms are for us and my daughters—and they’ll be nice enough after sleeping on the ground for so many days. He’ll be sleeping in the barn with the horses.” When Sarah raised her eyebrows in response to that remark, Mary said, “It’s his idea.”
“He’s just like Long Sam,” Ardella offered, “worried more about the horses than the folks ridin’ ’em.”
Cam was always concerned about the horses, but not at this station. In fact, he was somewhat relieved of the worry about Mary’s gold, thinking there was very little danger of being robbed at this point. No one knew what they were carrying on the packhorses. There had been no one around to see them unloading the packs into the rooms. The simple reason he had not insisted on a room for himself was that he didn’t see the sense in paying for a room when he could sleep in the stable for nothing—or for twenty-five cents at the most. In fact, he was giving some thought toward loading Mary, Ardella, and the girls on the stage to Cheyenne when it came through. With no tipoff to anyone that there would be over a hundred pounds of gold dust on board, he seriously doubted there was much danger of a holdup. Most of the worry about holdups was in the territory between the Black Hills and Hat Creek. There was always a risk, but not a very big one, he figured. He would talk it over with Mary. The question he had not settled on, if they did take the stage to Cheyenne, was whether he should go with them or bring the horses along after them as quickly as he could. He could not escape his feeling of responsibility toward not only Mary’s safety, but also the safe delivery of her gold.
Too much thinking will give me a headache,
he thought.
I’ll see what she has to say about it
.
Supper that evening found the ladies in good spirits, Mary because of a semblance of normal living with a roof over her head and four walls surrounding her. Ardella, on the other hand, was always in high spirits, and would have been had she been bunking in the stable with Cam. When Cam walked into the dining room, Emma immediately summoned him to sit beside her, which he did. They had seated themselves around one end of a table long enough to handle a dozen or more. The food was good, although not fancy, but to this party fresh off the plains, it bordered on exotic, with beef, fried potatoes, field peas, and biscuits, with a slice of honey cake for dessert.
After Grace and Emma asked to be excused, and Mary told them not to wander away from the inn’s front porch, the adults remained at the table to drink coffee and consider what they should do from this point on. Mary was very much in favor of taking the stage in to Cheyenne, but there was still some concern about the safety of her fortune without Cam on hand to watch over it. They had come so far, and overcome so many dangers, that she felt that she would be devastated if she lost it this close to a major town and a place to secure her deposit. She had still not decided when they were interrupted by the sound of the southbound stage thundering into the station. They got up to witness the arrival, for usually the drivers liked to give the folks in the towns and changeover stations a big show by whipping up the horses to a gallop before dragging them to a sliding halt.
Out on the front porch, they looked up the lane to the stage road to see the horses racing into the station with two familiar figures on the seat. Larry Bacon bent over the reins, driving the weary horses with the slap of his reins, while Bob Allen yelled encouragement in a singsong manner. The horses were pulled to a stop in front of the inn and Bob called out, “Chugwater Station! We’ll be stayin’ overnight. Step right on inside and Mrs. Kelly will fix you up with a room and some supper.” He climbed down and opened the coach door, holding it while the passengers disembarked. When the last one stepped down from the coach, he stuck his head inside to make sure he hadn’t missed anyone before closing the door. Glancing up toward the porch then, he stopped and muttered, “Well, I’ll be. . . . Larry, lookee here.”
Larry looked over to see the smiling faces of Cam, Mary, and the two little girls, plus another grinning lady he didn’t recall seeing before. “Well, I’ll be . . .” he echoed. He hopped down to join Bob on the ground to help passengers with their luggage. “Didn’t know if we’d ever see you folks again,” he called out.
After taking care of the passengers, they moved over to shake hands with Cam and give Mary a courteous nod of the head. “What are you folks doin’ here?” Bob asked, surprised that Cam was still accompanying Mary and her two daughters. “Did you find your brother-in-law?”
“We found him,” Mary answered, then introduced Ardella. “This is a friend of ours,” she said, “Ardella, this is Bob Allen and Larry Bacon. They drove the stage we were on coming up from Cheyenne.”
“The one that got held up?” Ardella asked.
“That’s the one,” Bob replied, “and if it hadn’ta been for ol’ Cam here we’da all been bleachin’ our bones out on the prairie now.” He looked at Cam and grinned. “Which way you folks headin’ now?”
“Cheyenne,” Cam answered. “Mary’s thinkin’ ’bout takin’ the stage on in. You run into any road agents between here and Cheyenne lately?”
“No,” Bob said, “not for a long time, not since the army started sendin’ regular patrols along the road.” There was no further comment from either Cam or Mary, so Bob asked, “You folks goin’ inside for supper?”
“We’ve already eaten,” Mary replied, “but we can go in with you and have some more coffee, and we’ll tell you what we’ve been doing since we saw you last.”
“That sounds good,” Larry remarked. “I’ll join you as soon as I drive the horses down to the barn.”
• • •
“My Lord in heaven,” Bob Allen remarked after he had heard about all that had happened to them since they had said good-bye at Custer City. He gave Cam a shake of his head. “So you’re still healin’ up from that bullet you took, huh? Well, you look spunky as ever. Don’t he, Larry?” Larry answered with a grin. Bob then turned his attention to Ardella and commented, “And you lost your cabin and everythin’. I know that smarts some, but you’re hooked up with some fine folks now.”
“Ardella’s going to help me run a boardinghouse in Fort Collins,” Mary said. “We’re going to build a brand-new building, have a big kitchen to feed our boarders, and everything.”
“That sounds mighty nice,” Bob said, then turned to Ardella. “Are you gonna do the cookin’?”
“Lord no,” she replied. “We wouldn’t wanna run the customers off. I ain’t much of a cook. Long Sam, that was my husband’s name, Long Sam Swift, he used to say he’d et road apples better’n my biscuits.”
Bob’s eyes lit up and looked back at Mary. “I know where you can hire a jim-dandy cook, a Chinese woman—”
“Japanese,” Larry interrupted.
“Japanese,” Bob repeated. “And she’s one helluva cook.” Then he remembered. “You’ve et her cookin’ before, at Hat Creek.”
“Atsuko,” Mary said, remembering the name. “You’re right, she’s a good cook, but what makes you think she wants to leave Hat Creek?”
“Just from talkin’ to her,” Bob said. “She’s ready to live somewhere closer to a town.”
“He’s fixin’ to ask her to marry him,” Larry said with a chuckle. “That’s why she might be leavin’ Hat Creek.” He prodded Bob on the shoulder. “But you’re tryin’ to get her to go to Cheyenne. You don’t want her to go to Fort Collins in Colorado Territory.”
“Maybe we’ll talk about it later on when we’re farther along with our plans,” Mary said, but the idea intrigued her. Atsuko’s cooking could be a strong draw for customers.
The conversation turned to other things then, and continued long after supper was finished. When it was time to put the children to bed, the party broke up. While Mary and Ardella took the girls back to their rooms, Cam let himself be persuaded to go with Larry and Bob to the small saloon at the front corner of the dining room. “Cam,” Ardella called after him, “wouldn’t be a bad idea for you to stop by the room and let’s take a look at that wound, if you ain’t gonna be too late. I ain’t gonna wait up for you.”
“All right,” Cam said. “I’m just gonna take time for one drink.”
“Now I know you’d best watch your step,” Bob baited him when they were out of earshot of the others. “That ol’ gal there might demand more’n you’re holdin’.” He and Larry laughed at the picture that inspired. Cam just shook his head as if exasperated.
• • •
Bob’s question regarding the cooking caused Ardella’s mind to question. Exactly what did Mary have in mind for her? Was she thinking of her as a possible cook? How long would Mary be willing to take her in? She wasn’t getting any younger. There had been no discussion about her role in Mary’s plans, and now that the immediate threat of danger was past, maybe things would be different. If Mary knew the real story about her marriage to Long Sam Swift, would she still want her to help run her boardinghouse? In the quiet of her room, she let her mind go back through the years, as she had done so many times before.
Long Sam Swift did cut a rather impressive figure of a man when they were married. But Ardella was an innocent girl of fourteen, and Long Sam was a mature man of twenty-seven. The first few years of their marriage were fairly pleasant, she supposed, although she was little more than a squaw to him as they camped alone all over the territory. After a while, the novelty of his bride wore off, and his true nature began to emerge. As he aged, he became more and more intolerant of her slightest mistake, and her collection of scars began to multiply with his frequent beatings. She stood his abuse for thirty years, before deciding it was time she ended it. One night he came home drunk without the supplies he was supposed to have traded for his pelts. It was not the first time he had done so, causing them to have to do without basic staples, like coffee, flour, and sugar. She complained and received a broken nose for her trouble. The actual cause of Long Sam Swift’s death was an iron skillet applied to the side of his head with every ounce of strength her sturdy body could muster, and not the arrow of a Pawnee warrior. She had rehearsed the story of his death by a war party so many times in her mind that she had almost come to the point where she believed it was true. The years that followed his death were her happiest, and she found that she was very good company for herself. Times became more difficult as the years passed, however. The firing pin in his rifle broke and she didn’t know how to fix it, so she threw it off the cliff at the end of the rock ledge below her cabin, the same place she had rolled his body over the edge to drop to the bottom of the canyon. Five years after Long Sam’s death, his horse died, leaving her on foot and with a shotgun, good only for small game. But that was enough. There was enough small game to keep her supplied with meat, most of it caught with snares she taught herself to fashion. And then Cam and Mary and the two children wandered into her world, and she suddenly missed being with people. Contrary to what she had repeatedly told herself, she did not want to die an old woman alone. And she realized that, more than anything else, she wanted to go with Mary and the children. She would be a good aunt to Grace and Emma. Being around them made her feel young again.
What if Mary finds out I killed my husband?
she thought, then relaxed her mind.
How in hell is she going to find out, if I don’t tell her?
“We’ll make a go of it,” she said.
“What?” Mary asked, entering the room just then.
“Nothin’,” Ardella said, and gave her a big smile. “I was just thinkin’ how I can’t wait to get workin’ on your boardin’house with you.”
Mary answered her smile with one in return. “Yes, we’ll make a go of it.”
“That’s what I just said,” Ardella remarked. “Are the girls in bed?”
“Yep. They’re just waiting for their aunt Ardella to come tuck ’em in.”
“Well, I best not keep ’em waitin’.”
• • •
“Damn!” Cam grimaced as he replaced the shot glass on the bar. “It’s been so long since I took a drink of likker I forgot how much it burns.” He and his two friends stood at the small counter at the front end of the dining room. The bar was not a proper one, but served the purpose with a counter of wide planks resting on two beer barrels. Cam waved Larry away when he held the bottle over his glass for another shot. “No, thanks. One drink of that stuff is enough to suit me for a while.”
“You know,” Bob commented, “I heard Mary tellin’ about how she was gonna build her a boardin’house, and what’s her friend’s name—Carmella?—is gonna help her run it. But I didn’t hear her say nothin’ ’bout you.”
“Ardella,” Cam corrected.
“Yeah, Ardella,” Bob said, “but I didn’t hear nothin’ ’bout you.”