The Legacy (10 page)

“You’ll not see him again this night, I’ll bet,” the woman said with a brief, knowing smile. “He was heading over to the Dew Drop, last I saw him.”

“Heading to where, I beg your pardon?”

“The Dew Drop Inn, over Miliken’s Bridge by the depot. Whatever sustenance he’s taking this evening, he’ll be taking it there and not here!” At this she gave a low chuckle. “He’s been riding out a good few months. A man gets hungry.” Faced with Caroline’s blank incomprehension, Mrs. Jessop relented. “Go on through and sit yourself down, Mrs. Massey. I’ll send Dora out with your dinner.” So Caroline did as she was bid and ate alone at the counter with no company but the inquisitive girl, Dora, who brought out a reel of questions about the east with each course of the meal. Across the room, two battered gentlemen with careworn faces discussed the price of grain at great length.

T
he morning dawned fair, the sky as clear as a bell, and there was a scent in the air that Caroline was unused to; an earthy smell of dampened ground and new-sprouting sage bushes on the prairie all around Woodward. So different to the brick and smoke and people smell of the city. The sun was strong as they began the final stretch of the journey. As Hutch helped her up into the wagon, Caroline noticed a gun belt now buckled around his hips, a six-shooter holstered into it. It gave her an odd tingling in her stomach. She tilted her bonnet forward to better shade her eyes against the bright light, but still could not help but squint. The sun seemed to be brighter here than it had ever been in New York, and when she commented on this, Hutch tipped his chin in agreement.

“I reckon that’s so, ma’am. I’ve never been that far east myself, or that far north come to think of it; but I reckon any place with so much building and living and dying going on will wind up with its air all muddied up, just like its rivers.” A lively breeze picked up the sand from beneath the wagon wheels, whisking it around them, and Caroline flapped her hands to ward it off. The folds of her skirt were soon lined with the stuff. Hutch watched her, and he did not smile. “Once we’re clear of town there’ll be less of that sand blowing, Mrs. Massey,” he said.

It did not take long to pass through Woodward town. They drove down Main Street, which was flanked predominantly by wooden-framed buildings and just one or two of more permanent construction. There were several saloons, several banks, a post office, a large general store, an opera house. There was a fair bustle of wagons and horses, and a fair number of people going about their business, most of whom were men. Caroline looked back over her shoulder as they left town. From a distance she could see that many of the high building fronts were false, and had just a single storey crouched behind them.

“Is that the whole of Woodward?” she asked, incredulously.

“Yes, ma’am. Over two thousand souls call it home, nowadays, and growing all the while. Ever since they opened up the Cheyenne and Arapaho lands to the south, folks have been pouring in, starting to settle and farm. Some call it a pity, to see the open range fenced off and ploughed under. Me, I do call it progress, although I’m happy to say there’s plenty of land left open to the cow herds yet.”

“Arapaho? What does that mean?”

“The Arapaho? They’re Indian folks. From more northern parts originally, but settled here by the government, like so many others . . . Now, this land we’re driving through right now belonged to the Cherokee until recently, although they themselves lived further east. They leased it out to ranchers and cattle folk for years before it was opened up to settlers in ninety-three . . .”

“But is that safe? For civilized people to live where there are Indians?” Caroline was shocked. Hutch gave her a sidelong look, then hitched a shoulder.

“They’ve sold their lands and moved on east. I reckon they’ve as little urge to have white neighbors as some white folk have to share with Indians.”

“Thank goodness!” Caroline said. “I could never have slept at night, knowing that such creatures were roaming around outside the window!” She laughed a little, high and nervous, and did not notice Hutch’s thoughtful gaze, out over the prairie. Copying him, Caroline searched the horizon and felt her stomach flutter, to think that savages might have hunted scalps in this very place not long before. A pair of rabbits were startled from the side of the road and darted off into the brush, visible only by the black tips of their ears.

Some ten or twelve miles along the road, buildings appeared in the distance. Caroline was glad to see them. Each mile they had covered from Woodward had seemed to her another leap from safety, somehow; another mile from civilization, even if it was also another mile closer to Corin. She shaded her eyes for a better view.

“Is that the next town?” she asked. Hutch whistled softly to the horses, two chestnut-colored animals with hard legs and meaty behinds, and brought them to a standstill.

“No, ma’am. That’s the old military fort. Fort Supply, it’s called. We’ll turn off the road soon, I’m afraid, so it won’t be quite as smooth going.”

“Fort Supply? So there’s a garrison here?”

“Not any more. It’s been empty these seven or eight years.”

“But why were they here? To protect people from the Indians, I suppose?”

“Well, that was some of the reason, for sure. But more than that they was charged with keeping white folks from settling on Indian lands. So you could say, they was there to protect the Indians from the likes of you and I.”

“Oh,” Caroline said, deflating a little. She had liked the idea of soldiers guarding so close to the ranch, and had immediately pictured herself dancing a quadrille with men in neat uniforms. But as they went nearer she saw that the fort was low and roughshod, built mostly of wood and earth rather than brick or stone. The empty black gaps of its windows seemed eerily watchful and she looked away with a shiver. “But where does this road go to now?”

“Well, not to any place, I suppose. It runs from this here down to Fort Sill, but this end of it’s mostly used by odd folk like us now, to make the run into town a bit easier on the bones,” Hutch told her. Caroline looked behind them, back along the empty road. She watched the dust resettling into their tracks. She had pictured the country virgin, untouched by any hand but God’s. Here already were ghostly ruins and a road to nowhere. “We’ll be crossing the North Canadian in just a short while, Mrs. Massey, but I don’t want you to worry about that none. This time of year it’s not going to pose us any problems at all,” Hutch said. Caroline nodded, and smiled gamely at him.

The river was wide but shallow, the water reaching only halfway up the wagon wheels, and to the horses’ stomachs. Hutch let the pair take the reins from him when they reached the far side, and the animals drank deeply, kicking up sprays that spattered their dusty coats and filled Caroline’s nostrils with the smell of their hot hides. She wiped at some droplets on her skirt, succeeding only in making a grubby smear. They paused for lunch on the far side, where a stand of cottonwood trees curled their roots into the sandy bank and cast a dappled shade onto the ground. Hutch spread out a thick blanket, and Caroline took his hand down from the wagon, seating herself as well as she could on the ground. Her corset would not let her be comfortable, though, and she spoke little as she ate a slice of ham that required an indelicate amount of chewing, and bread that crumbled into her lap. Grains of sand ground between her teeth as she ate. The only sound was the soft hiss and clatter of the breeze through the cottonwood leaves, which twisted and trembled, flashing muted shades of silver and green. Before they moved on again, Caroline went to some lengths to extract her scalloped silk parasol from her luggage.

The wagon made slower progress over the open prairie, bumping over knots of sagebrush, dragging sometimes in patches of shifting sand or the boggy remnants of a shallow creek. Occasionally they passed small dwellings, homesteads dug in and knocked together in haste to keep a family safe, to stake a claim, to make a new beginning. But these were far apart, and grew more infrequent the further they went. As the afternoon grew long Caroline drowsed, swaying on the seat next to Hutch. Each time her head began to droop some jolt brought her around again.

“We’ll stop for the night soon, ma’am. I reckon you could use a hot cup of coffee and to bed down.”

“Oh, yes! I am rather tired. We must be very far from town, by now?”

“It seems further in this slow wagon. I have made the journey on horseback in a day before, without even trying too hard. All you need is a good, fast saddle horse, and your husband raises some of the finest such animals in all of Oklahoma Territory.”

“Where will we stop the night? Is there some other settlement nearby?”

“Oh, no, ma’am. We’ll make camp tonight.”

“Camp?”

“That’s right. Don’t look so alarmed, Mrs. Massey! I am a man of honor and discretion,” he said, smiling wryly at Caroline’s expression of wide-eyed bewilderment. It was a moment before she realized he had imagined her scandalized at the thought of spending the night alone with him, just the two of them. She blushed and dropped her gaze, only to find it resting near the waistband of his trousers, where his shirt had pulled a little loose to reveal a small area of his hard, tanned stomach. Caroline swallowed and set her eyes firmly on the horizon. Her first fear had actually been of being outdoors all night, unprotected from animals, weather, and other savageries of nature.

Before sundown Hutch drew the wagon to a stop on a flat area where the ground was greener than it had been, and more lush. He helped Caroline down and she stood, aching everywhere, unsure of what to do. Hutch unhitched the wagon, took the bits from the horses’ mouths and slapped their behinds. With glad expressions and swishing tails, they trotted lazily away to a near distance and began to crop huge mouthfuls of grass.

“But . . . won’t the horses run away?” Caroline asked.

“Not far, I reckon. And they’ll come miles for a slice of bread, anyway.” Hutch unloaded a tent from the wagon and soon had it built. He spread blankets on top of buffalo hides to make a bed, and put her vanity case inside for her. “You’ll be cosy as anything in there. As fine as any New York hotel,” he said. Caroline glanced at him, unsure if she was being mocked, then she smiled and seated herself inside the tent, wrinkling her nose at the smell of the hides. But the bed was deep and soft; and the sides of the tent belled in and out with the breeze, as if gently breathing. Caroline felt her heart slow, and a gentle calm came over her.

Hutch soon had a fire going and crouched beside it, tending to a large, flat pan that spat and smoked. He fed the flames with pieces of something dry and brown that Caroline did not recognize.

“What’s that you’re using as fuel?” she asked.

“Cow chips,” Hutch replied, offering no further explanation. Caroline did not dare to ask. The sky was a glory of pink and turquoise striations, marching away from the bright flare of the west to the deep velvet blue of the east. Hutch’s face was aglow with firelight. “I put that box there for you to sit on,” he said, gesturing with a fork. Caroline sat, obediently. In the darkness beyond the flames one of the horses snorted, and whinnied softly. Then a distant howl, high and ghostly, echoed across the flat plain to where they sat.

“What was that?” Caroline exclaimed, rushing to her feet once more. The blood ran out of her head and she reeled, flinging out an arm that Hutch caught, appearing at her side in an instant.

“Do sit, ma’am. Sit back down,” he insisted.

“Is it
wolves
?” she cried, unable to keep her voice from shaking.

“Nothing more than prairie wolves, is all. Why, they’re no bigger than a pet dog, and no fiercer. They won’t be coming anywhere near us, I promise you.”

“Are you sure?”

“Sure as I’m sitting right here, Mrs. Massey,” Hutch assured her. Caroline pulled her shawl around her tightly, and huddled fearfully on the hard wooden box, her every fiber strung tight with alarm. Hutch seemed to sense her disquiet and began to talk. “Coyotes, they also get called sometimes. They run around in packs and squabble over leftover bones here and there. That’s all they’re singing about—who’s found the best old cow bones to chew. The most mischief they get up to is stealing chickens from homesteaders, but they only do that when they have to. I reckon they’ve learnt not to go too close to folk, unless they want to take a bullet in the tail that is . . .” And so he talked on, his voice low, and soothing somehow, and Caroline was reassured by it. Now and again the coyote song drifted over the camp, long and mournful.

“They sound so lonely,” she murmured.

Hutch glanced at her, his eyes lost in shadow. He carefully passed her a tin cup.

“Take some coffee, ma’am,” he said.

T
he sunrise woke her, light glowing irresistibly inside the tent. Caroline had been dreaming of Bathilda, watching over her shoulder as Caroline ran scales up and down the piano, exclaiming
Wrists! Wrists!
as she had been wont to do. For a moment, Caroline could not remember where she was. She poked her head cautiously out of the tent and was relieved to see no sign of Hutch. The eastern sky was dazzling. Caroline had never in her life been up so early. She stood up and stretched, hands in the small of her back. Her hair was in disarray and her mouth was sour with last night’s coffee. She rubbed her eyes and found her brows full of sand. Her whole face, in fact, and her clothes. There was a line of dirt inside her cuffs, and she could feel it inside her collar too, rubbing at the skin. Rumpled blankets beside the cooling embers of the fire spoke of where the foreman had spent the night.