Telegraph Days: A Novel Read online

  “If a woman gets a little uppity and there’s a man around, pretty soon all the gentlemen will be calling her a witch,” she said.

  I knew what she meant, though I was too young yet to be thought a witch. If Ted Bunsen had had to come up with a word to describe me when he walked out of the general store, I doubt it would have been a very nice word.

  Of course, she was right to mention that I wasn’t through with Father. On our slow trip to town several big storms of tears came over me at the memory of Father. He was a fine fiddler, for one thing—his eyes would light up at the pleasure of his music; and if he wasn’t fiddling he might be reading us some Walter Scott. No one that I knew ever thought of Father as anything but a gentleman. If only he hadn’t read those cursed brochures and got a vision of Western paradise in his head. And then he promptly lost his wife, six of his eight children, and all the servants. I suppose that much loss would cause any man of gentle temperament to start thinking of the noose. He even lost his fiddle, which fell out of the wagon somewhere west of Westport. On the boat from St. Louis Father had played it frequently, and I danced with Bill Hickok as often as I could coax him onto the floor. Wild Bill Hickok had never seemed wild to me, though it had to be admitted that he took a long time with his dressing—he’d show up well past the end of breakfast, in a boiled silk shirt and a velvet coat and a fine hat and yellow boots, his collar fastened onto his shirt with pearl studs.

  It was a mystery to me that folks called him Wild Bill. He was far from being the best dancer I ever danced with, and not once did he try to kiss me—I don’t believe I would have objected if he had tried. Certainly he was more of a gentleman than Georgie Custer ever pretended to be. Sometimes Billy Hickok would clap his hands to Father’s fiddling—that was about as excited as the man ever got. Thinking of Father undid me—right there in Mrs. Karoo’s kitchen a Mississippi of tears flooded out of my eyes. The tears fell like a waterfall. I tried to push my way outside but instead I stumbled into the churn. It was the thought of Father fiddling and Billy Hickok clapping that undid me. I guess my sobbing woke up Josh—by the time I caught my breath and dried my eyes on a dish towel the old mail rider was gone and I was sitting in the rocking chair where he had napped.

  When I was steady enough not to spill liquids on myself Mrs. Karoo brought me a large mug of tea. In Virginia we drank tea every day, but we had long since run out of the substance on the Black Mesa Ranch.

  It had been a while since I had tasted anything as good as Mrs. Karoo’s tea.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I can’t remember when I’ve cried that hard.”

  “People who make it as far as No Man’s Land often have many loved ones to cry for,” Mrs. Karoo said.

  “Most of that cry was for Father,” I told her. “I regret that you never heard him fiddle.”

  Mrs. Karoo stood by her back door, looking out at the hot flat distance.

  “My father was a hanged man too,” she said. “Only he didn’t hang himself. We worked for the Choctaws then. One evening the night riders came and took him, and the next morning we found him hanging.

  “He didn’t settle easily, though,” she continued. “Some people don’t settle easily into being dead. My father was partly with me for a long time—he hadn’t been ready to go.”

  10

  I DRANK THREE MUGS of Mrs. Karoo’s strong sweet tea before I more or less gathered my wits about me and hiked it on back to the general store. While recuperating with the healthful tea I had scribbled down a list of things I’d need: a settee if one was available, a small chair, a bureau, some material I could convert into a bedspread, a couple of fans, some candles, and a small picture of The Stag at Eve, which reminded me a little of Walter Scott.

  While Hungry Billy got my purchases together and was preparing to load them in a wagon I thought I’d nip across the street and have a word with my brother, but before I got far a horrible screaming suddenly issued from a little house I hadn’t noticed—a small frame house set back from the street. Hungry Billy paid the screaming not the slightest mind.

  “That’s Doc Siblee’s office,” he informed me. “He’s more or less a dentist, but right now he’s setting the leg bone of a cowboy that got kicked by his horse.”

  “Oh, is that all?” I said. “At least I’m glad to know there’s a doctor in town. Now all you need to find is a mayor and a schoolmarm—I suspect I could fill both roles, if anyone asked me to.”

  Before Hungry Billy could comment on my suitability as a mayor and school marm, a wild fusillade of shooting broke out from the direction of the saloons, at which point Beau rushed out and pulled me into his store, where he insisted that we crouch behind a keg of nails. While we were hunkering the gun battle slopped over into the street, which seemed to be full of men shooting off guns. Then horses began to whinny, and some of the combatants mounted in a hurry and raced away, while the fighters that happened to be on foot blazed away at the horsemen until they were out of range, which was soon.

  Only one man was down, that I could see, though another was hopping around on one foot—evidently he had been shot in the boot. Beau Wheless was eyeing the fellow stretched out on the ground—no doubt he had a coffin sale in mind—but before he could make his move the man sat up and two others began to drag him off in the direction of the doctor’s shack.

  “People here don’t seem to be very good shots,” I said. “All those bullets flying, and nobody dead?”

  I remembered Bill Hickok, back on the boat, telling me that he had achieved his fame, such as it was, by being a fair pistol shot.

  “What do you mean you’re only fair?” I asked. “Nobody’s got a bigger reputation.”

  “Pistols are dern hard to shoot with accuracy,” Bill insisted. “I’m fair, at least I am at close range. The reason I have the big reputation is because everybody else is terrible. Jesse James couldn’t hit a house at ten paces with a pistol, and neither could any of the Earp boys.”

  “What about Billy the Kid?” I inquired, a question that caused Bill to frown. I had already learned that he was vain as a prince, and was hoping to tease him a little.

  “I have no reliable information about that young scoundrel,” Bill said. “You can’t depend on much of the talk that comes out of New Mexico.”

  I let the matter drop. It seemed to me that Mr. Hickok might be a little jealous of Billy the Kid.

  As for the poor shooting in Rita Blanca, Beau Wheless had a simple explanation.

  “Those were not the gunslingers,” he told me. “These were just cardplayers, with maybe a cowboy or two mixed in. You can’t expect accurate marksmanship from a bunch of drunk gamblers.”

  I looked over at the jail. Neither Jackson nor Teddy was in view. A can of paint was sitting on the gallows, but nobody was painting, just not at that time.

  11

  MRS. KAROO HAD an old cowbell hanging on her back porch, which she rang when her evening meal was ready. Her big table sat twelve but only eight showed up that first evening: Jackson, myself, Joe Schwartz from the livery stable, Aurel Imlah, Hungry Billy Wheless, Doc Siblee, Preacher Milton, and Mrs. Karoo herself, who presided. Josh was outside cleaning his rifle—he declined to join us.

  I had put on one of my new frocks, which needed hemming, and had scrubbed my face and tied a nice red ribbon in my hair. In Virginia that much primping would have got me a proposal, probably, but at Mrs. Karoo’s table it only produced a request to pass the sauerkraut to Joe Schwartz, a large man who looked neither left nor right when there was food in front of him. Besides the sauerkraut we had roast goat, snap peas, spuds, biscuits, corn, brown gravy, and vinegar pie for dessert. The drink was buttermilk and the meal was served expertly by Pete and Pat, both girls and both Choctaws, who lived in a small room off the back porch.

  Though I enjoyed the tasty food, I was sorely disappointed by the total absence of conversation. In Virginia supper might take two hours at least, because of all the talk that accompanied it: there was bound to be plenty o
f general gossip, and talk of politics or novels. When the plates were cleared the gentlemen smoked and drank brandy, while the ladies, in good weather, would drift out onto the porch, to rock in rocking chairs and spout more gossip.

  At Mrs. Karoo’s supper table there was no talk—the only sound being the slurps and belches that accompanied the multiple mastications. Within ten minutes Joe Schwartz, Hungry Billy Wheless, Doc Siblee, and Preacher Milton had all pushed back their chairs, complimented Mrs. Karoo on the vinegar pie, and were swiftly out the door. My brother, Jackson, showed signs of wanting to go with them, but I grabbed his sleeve and kept him in place.

  Aurel Imlah was also through eating, but he busied himself with filling a short clay pipe, while Mrs. Karoo produced a long-stemmed brown pipe of her own and joined him in a smoke.

  “Where’s Sheriff Bunsen? I thought he ate at this boardinghouse,” I inquired.

  “The sheriff’s got a toothache—he asked to be excused,” Jackson said.

  “I see you’re handy with a paint can, Deputy,” Aurel told him. “Those old shabby gallows have never looked so good. It’s bound to be a consolation to those who find themselves getting hung.”

  He chuckled at his own wit, and blew a smoke ring.

  I suspected that there was more to Teddy’s absence than a toothache. My arrival in Rita Blanca as a resident had put him off his feed. Perhaps he had realized he couldn’t marry me and keep me at a safe distance too. A dilemma of that sort probably contributed to his toothache.

  “So will you really be staying with us for a while, Miss Court-right?” Aurel asked.

  He didn’t appear to be studying me, but I had the feeling that he didn’t miss much, and the same could be said for Mrs. Karoo, though she smoked her pipe and kept her thoughts to herself.

  “I can’t speak for Sis but I’m sure not going back,” Jackson said. “If I was to, one of my uncles would pop me right in school.”

  Jackson was right about that: the Courtrights had an innocent trust in highfalutin education—Greek and Latin and the like. If the uncles got hold of Jackson he’d be in Harvard College so quick it would make your head swim. Or if it wasn’t Harvard College, it would be somewhere else just as stuffy. Maybe there wasn’t much to be said for Rita Blanca, but nobody could mistake it for a stuffy place. I was a little startled that Jackson had been so forthright about his plans—usually he cleared major decisions with me before announcing them. I guess being a deputy sheriff for one day had been enough to render him independent, a happenstance I was of two minds about.

  “I won’t be going back either,” I said, not to be left out. “In the course of walking up and down the street I noticed that the telegraph office is closed. Is that permanent, or temporary?

  “A town without a well-functioning telegraph office is never likely to amount to much,” I added. I thought I’d hit them with a blunt opinion before springing my surprise.

  “We had a telegrapher till last month,” Aurel said. “His name was Zeke Ryan. But then Zeke took himself a Comanche bride and is farming weeds somewhere down by the South Canadian.

  “Your point is on the nose, though,” he added. “The hide business is hard on knives—we use ’em up at a terrible rate. If the telegraph was working I could replenish my knives in an efficient fashion, which presently I can’t.”

  “Why, Nellie can work a telegraph lickety-split,” Jackson said. He was on his way out the door but paused long enough to put a plug in for his sister.

  “Uncle Grandy taught her,” he added, and then he left.

  “I seem to remember that your uncle Grandy was a particular favorite of General Grant,” Aurel Imlah said, in a light tone. “Didn’t he lose a leg or something?”

  “At Antietam,” I said. “He was the only one of the uncles to fight for the Union side. And he was General Grant’s personal telegrapher for most of the war.”

  Mrs. Karoo got up and went to a small cupboard—she returned with three small glasses and a bottle of rum. She poured each of us a little, and I was glad to be included, although I did not often partake of spirituous liquors.

  “I suppose there was some bitterness, after the peace,” Aurel remarked, sniffing his rum.

  “Yes, there was,” I admitted. “So much bitterness that Uncle Grandy had to move to Louisville, Kentucky. But he was my mother’s favorite brother, war or no war, so I was able to visit him in the summer.”

  In fact Uncle Grandy had been a wonderful man, with a white tapering beard and a gift for watercolors. He taught me to play checkers when I was two—if I saw he had me cornered I’d push his hand away.

  “You’re in this game of life to win, aren’t you, missy?” he said to me with a chuckle. I don’t think he ever made it up with his brothers, but then ours was hardly the only family that bitter conflict divided.

  “I may be a little rusty with my codes at first,” I told the two of them. “It’s been a while since I tapped a telegraph key. I’ll soon improve and be reliable. Does anyone have a key to that shack of an office?”

  “I’d be surprised if it’s even locked,” Aurel said. “And I’d be surprised if you don’t find a snake or two on the premises.”

  “What would I get for a salary?” I asked, finishing my rum.

  That stumped the two of them. Neither of them had any idea what a skilled telegrapher might be worth to the community of Rita Blanca. There was only the group of deacons Teddy Bunsen had mentioned, a loosely organized bunch, at least by the standards of Virginia small towns, where city fathers are thick on the ground.

  “If you need me to send an order for some skinning knives I’ll do it tomorrow,” I told Aurel. “We can figure out the salary, I expect. My younger brother is making fifteen dollars a month as deputy sheriff—and I’m well ahead of him when it comes to education, so I expect a little more than that.”

  Aurel Imlah seemed amused. It seemed to me that Mrs. Karoo got a special light in her eyes when she looked at him.

  Since there was still a little light left in the summer sky I left the two of them to their pipes and strolled down the street to my new place of business, the telegraph office. It wasn’t locked, but it was snaky. I had taken the precaution to borrow a spade from Mrs. Karoo, and I used it to ease two bull snakes and a small copperhead out the door. Of course, bull snakes won’t tolerate rattlers, so there was none of that breed to be seen, though I did have to mash a bunch of black widow spiders and one sizable tarantula. There was the dust of the ages on the windowpanes, but the most important thing of all, the telegraph key, seemed to work fine. Zeke Ryan had been thoughtful enough to cover it with a snug leather sheath.

  Impatient as ever, I immediately sent a wire to Dodge City—I wanted to wake them up to the fact that there was a working telegrapher in Rita Blanca once more.

  When I came out I happened to look over at the jail. Ted Bunsen was sitting on the edge of the gallows, swinging his legs and smoking a thin cigar. The man had proposed to me six times—I figured the least I could do was inquire about his toothache.

  “Toothache’s gone,” Ted mumbled. “Doc Siblee pulled the tooth. Now I’ve got a hole in my jaw big enough to stick a stob in.”

  “Gargle some warm salt water,” I advised. “That usually helps, if you give it time.”

  “Doc says rye whiskey might provide the best cure,” Ted said—it was not a reply that sat easy with me. It would be just like Teddy to get drunk and fall off his own gallows. He didn’t strike me as lucky, which meant that he might break his neck in the fall. That might result in quick promotion for Jackson, but I didn’t dislike Ted’s ticklish kissing enough to really want him to break his neck.

  I decided my intervention was doing Ted more harm than good, so I went on home in the deepening dusk. The back porch still held the smell of rum and pipe tobacco, but of the landlady and the hide hunter there was nothing to be seen.

  12

  I HAD BARELY tucked into a plate of flapjacks, sweetened with blackstrap molasses, when my b
rother, Jackson, popped in the door and gave me an irritated look.

  “You’re late for work!” he informed me. “You’ve got people lined up halfway to Dodge City, wanting to send off telegrams.

  “The Skivvy Kid is even in line,” Jackson added, as if he were announcing the arrival of Napoleon or somebody else important enough to make me hurry my breakfast.

  “I would have thought the Skivvy Kid would just shoot a line of people, if he found one in front of him,” I commented, though all I really knew about the Skivvy Kid was that he wore his long johns winter and summer, and was said to be a fine marksman.

  I popped up to my room and hit a lick or two with the comb and the brush—when I looked out the window I saw that there was a big line of people waiting at the telegraph office. From a distance the folks seemed to be in a pretty good humor, idling and gossiping as human beings will when opportunity offers. I borrowed one of Mrs. Karoo’s sunbonnets and was quickly out the door.

  A cheer went up when folks figured out that I was no fluke—now the women could send off all the wires they wanted to the mail-order stores. The first thing I noticed was that the bull snakes had moved back in.

  “Move back a step, miss,” I said to the first woman in line. “Let me just evacuate the snake population and I’ll get to you as fast as I can.”

  The bull snakes didn’t take kindly to being evicted from their home of recent weeks. They hissed at me in that aggressive way they have, which seemed to irritate a lanky cowboy to such an extent that he picked one of the snakes up by the tail, swung him around a few times, and threw him about halfway to Aurel Imlah’s hide yard. The other snake prudently found himself a hole and crawled in it.

  “I could probably educate those snakes, if I can have a day or two,” I informed the cowboy, who was no more impressed with me than he had been by the bull snakes.

  “I got a herd arriving in Dodge tomorrow,” he informed me. “I need to be sure the railroad’s ready for them.”