CHAPTER 35: Paying by the Word (Lillabit)
(was Hashtag Fort Laramie)
Luckily for Jacob, I couldn't hold a grudge for long. Not against him, anyway. Against the cavalry, for ruining our beautiful morning?
Oh yeah.
But against my husband for getting a teensy bit stressed about standing alone and unarmed between me and whatever danger they represented? No. No, I was going to be a cheerful, supportive wife, damn it.
Most of the morning, although cut short, had proven just how worthwhile being Jacob's wife could be!
Halfway back to the herd, unwilling to ride in silence any longer, I started singing what I could remember of the "Darling Clementine" song, and I took some satisfaction in watching Jacob's shoulders relax as I did. When I made up some verses--G-rated versions, unlike with slutty Betsy of Pike--he even glanced at me with his almost-a-smile eyes.
Then I took my Clema riding
And I'd say she did just fine
'Cept her saddle kept a'sliding
Mind the cinch, my Clementine.
It was nowhere as enjoyable as our time in the river, before Jacob turned all bossy on me. But it reminded me that arguments could be temporary.
At one point, once the chuck wagon and the wife cart came into view, he said, "Ho!" and stopped his mare. I practiced stopping Valley Boy by leaning back, rather than tugging back on the reins.
"What?" I asked, while Jacob tugged the faded scarf from around his neck.
He held the scarf out and said, "Lick it."
I said, "Excuse me?" Was this some kind of test of my ability to follow orders? Because if it was, I was about to fail spectacularly.
With a sigh, he licked his own bandana, then reached across the space between our horses and rubbed it, hard, down the side of my face a couple of times, until satisfied with the result.
Great. I'd had mud on my face this whole time--the Old West was turning out to be a very dirty place. Now I had husband-spit on my face.
"Thank you?" I hedged, and he nodded his you're welcome, seemingly ignorant of my sarcasm.
Okay, so ours was a complicated relationship. Complicated enough that Jacob didn't come to our tent until really late that night, although in time to interrupt whatever slippery dream my subconscious had begun to tempt me with--something about showers.
A lot of my most seductive thoughts of home involved indoor plumbing.
When I started to rouse enough to kiss my husband, choosing him even over hot running water, he hushed me. "Go back to sleep."
Sleep proved too powerful, especially curled against his chest. So he got the last word with that one, too.
And the next morning? Finally. Finally!
The next morning--after I milked Sundae--we rode to Fort Laramie!
We, in this case, meant Jacob, Benj, me, and a pack-mule from the remuda. I'd decided to wear my second best dress, the one with the gray stripes and the berry buttons, because my best dress was my wedding dress and... I don't know. It felt wrong to overuse it. I even put my clean hair up in a loose bun, after Amos told me married ladies weren't supposed to wear it down.
Over two weeks into marriage, and only now did someone mention that? Also: There were even Victorian rules about hair?!
Women's hair, that is.
Luckily, Amos knew a little something, from his youth, about hair styling--at least enough to keep my bun kind of fluffy and friendly rather than school-marm strict. While he fussed over my hair, I closed my eyes and savored that little bit of touch, of attention. It reminded me of a salon I used to visit in Chicago....
The sound of blow-dryers and clippers from the other two stations. The heavy plastic, pink-polka-dotted cape draped around me and velcro'd around my neck. Denise, my stylist, misting my hair and then fingering through it, lifting bits of it at a time while she snip-snip-snipped it into a longer layer....
I forced my eyes open, suddenly sick to my stomach. Stop visualizing, I ordered myself, firmness undercut by desperation. How terrible would it be, to accidentally slip home mere hours from getting advice from the experts?!
Assuming they're still there. Assuming they can help.
They had to be able to help!
"This all right, Boss?" asked Amos -- who hardly ever called my husband Boss. I think he felt extra nervous about after touching my hair. Because racism.
"She'll do," agreed Jacob as he rode in from the remuda leading Lady Billie Holiday, already saddled for me.
Do?! I'd left my gown hanging from the chuck wagon all night, occasionally sprinkling it with scented water to weigh out the worst of the packing wrinkles--we did not have an iron. I'd asked several of the boys to wake me if the wind shifted, since I had no intention of smelling like cow crap, but for once the wind behaved. I'd also used some of Maddie's rice powder, and the barest touch of rouge and lip-color, little enough to pass as natural, I hope.
After all, women who resemble strumpets apparently didn't deserve respect around here, and wearing makeup was a sure sign of strumpetness.
Strumpetation?
Wearing my hair up, which I'd rarely done in my previous life other than as a bridesmaid, made me feel extra fancy.
Benj, at least, praised me to the moon and back. He's the one who kept most of the conversation going on our ride through the hills to the fort, since Jacob seemed distracted by Deep Thoughts. It was Benj who suggested that I offer a reward to whoever in Julesburg could rush my first telegram out to the Castaways to fetch them to town.
"Can I somehow wire the money, in case Maddie and the others can't pay?" It had been almost three weeks, after all. What if my time-traveling friends had already slipped home!
Jacob said, "Send someone, fetch the response tomorrow." To him, it was simple geometry. Last night, the herd had bedded about six miles from Fort Laramie. But Fort Laramie wasn't moving, while we traveled maybe twelve miles a day, so tomorrow we'd be about six miles from the opposite side. By design, I'm sure.
"Tomorrow, I won't be there to wire right back. I need my friends at the telegraph office today, while we're at the fort."
"Need." He really didn't seem to like me using that word.
"So I can respond to their response. And they can respond to my response to their response." It had never even occurred to me that I should run something like this by my husband, and the sudden hint of disapproval concerned me. "I've been waiting weeks for this, Mr. Garrison, so I expect a few hours extra at the fort won't be a problem for you."
He did not look at me this time, which was a shame, because I had a really solid, don't-mess-with-me expression all ready to go. Instead, he just said, "Telegrams cost money."
"If I get to talk to Maddie, it'll be worth every penny."
"Ain't no bank." He meant he was no bank.
"It's okay," I assured him. "I've got money."
"Money's to start the ranch."
For a minute, I thought, no it isn't. It's my money. Then I realized we were discussing different money, and I felt suddenly, horribly selfish. Jacob had fed and clothed me since well before our marriage. He'd sold cattle to settle me at a good boarding house, back in Dodge City, and to stable my horse and buy my side saddle. As his wife, I assumed he would pay for everything from my milk cow to the cabin and the children. His money was our money.
But for weeks--weeks--I'd been sitting on my money, a fortune of back wages paid to me by my fellow castaways. They'd used the inside information of time travelers to make some excellent investments--but Jacob didn't know about any of that.
True, the note that accompanied the money had read Keep it for yourself, just in case. Maddie had even added a PS: You've got 7 months to change your mind.
Closer to six months, now. But I had no intention of changing my mind, and I'd been living an ugly double-standard.
When Jacob glanced toward me, he must have seen something of my guilt on my face. He offered, more gently, "Two cables won't break me."
Jump back, Daddy Warbucks.
"Us," I corrected weakly. "Won't break us. But it's okay--I have some of my own money for telegrams."
"Keep yer egg money. I can afford telegrams." He held up two fingers as he said that, and he was neither flashing a peace sign nor celebrating allied victory over the axis of evil. Egg money meant pocket change. In his world, wives usually took care of the milk cow and the chickens, often selling their extra product. Some husbands kindly "let" the women keep that income for themselves, for the little extras in their life.
"About that..." I started. But then we topped another hill, and I forgot whatever I'd been about to say, because there lay Fort Laramie, sprawled between us and the river. A dirt road had been worn by countless others along the last of our approach, as beautiful as the famous yellow bricks that showed Dorothy's route to the Emerald City, but all of these buildings were white. Beyond them, an actual iron bridge with arches spanned the river.
Civilization!
As with Fort Dodge, Fort Laramie looked more like a town than a stereotypical fort. It boasted no stockades or protective walls. Instead, it had dirt roads, and stables and barracks and what Benj pointed out as a hospital! Some of its snappy white buildings, most with black shutters, looked to be made of wood, and more were some kind of concrete. Most of them, though not the hospital, framed a huge, rectangular parade grounds. More buildings than I would have expected were two-stories high, with pretty galleries running their length. Some were industrially long and low. All of them were clean and somehow welcoming.
Off to the west stood a small neighborhood of really nice, two-story houses, probably for the officers' families. It felt so weird, to have not been inside a building for weeks and now to gaze upon actual homes! And I could see people, dozens and dozens of them, bustling about. Soldiers drilled, or stood guard, or just went about their days. Off near the houses, I spotted women and children.
I kind of wanted to cry, I think from relief. This world that I'd chosen consisted of more than a herd of cattle and a chuck wagon, after all!
Best of all? Telegraph lines swooped from tall pole to tall pole across the plains from the south, converging on one small white building before continuing westward, connecting this place to the wider world.
I had never been so happy to see wires in my life!
I only noticed as we got closer that Jacob and Benj, by unspoken agreement, now flanked me and Lady Billie Holiday. Unlike yesterday's cavalry, the army sentries managed professional disinterest. Maybe Jacob was right, and our clothes commanded a certain respect. In fact, the contrast between this, and my entrance to Fort Dodge back in Kansas, couldn't have been more stark. Then, I'd walked in alone--at my own request--ignorant of the world in which I'd found myself. I'd worn farmer-boy clothing, and I'd foolishly thought finding civilization would solve all my problems.
This time, I sat tall in my side saddle on my beautiful blue roan, flanked by the co-owners of a fair-sized herd of cattle. I not only looked respectable--I looked good. While I might not be completely fluent in the behavior of a respectable Victorian bride, I could now mimic it a hell of a lot better.
I mean... a heck of a lot better.
Marginally better?
We rode to one of the only buildings that wasn't white -- a long, low structure of stone, which seemed to be the result of two halves fused together. It had neither porch nor awning, and its shutters weren't particularly decorative. Neither were the several civilian men loitering outside its two widely spaced doors.
I stated the obvious. "This isn't the telegraph office."
"Post trader," explained Jacob, dismounting and moving to hitch the pack mule to the extra-long hitching rail.
"You mean the store?" It had been weeks since I'd gone shopping in Ogallala. You wouldn't think I would miss the simple process of buying things so badly! But I missed something else even more. "I'll go send my first telegram, then meet you back here."
"Alone." Jacob had turned to help me off Lady Billie, but paused to stare at me from under the shadow of his hat, challenging my crazy idea.
I nudged him into action by starting to dismount anyway, and he caught me by the hips and lowered me the rest of the way. "I think I can find the place. I'm guessing...." I pointed across the parade grounds. "The one with the wires?"
Benj interceded. "How's about I walk the lady over while you trade news, Jacob?"
Because of course I needed an escort to walk the distance of a block, in plain sight of the store! Still, this was the world I'd chosen. As Jacob had made abundantly clear yesterday, being respectable affected how people would treat me.
Jacob looked from me to the store, and back to me.
"We'll be fine," I assured him.
So he nodded permission--did I really need permission? And I did my damnedest to walk on Benj's arm instead of hauling him by the hand, all the way to the small white building that stood only half as high as the impressive poles that held up the wire.
Telegraph, a sign over the door announced in tall letters.
Inside, a low wooden railing--with a counter, and pencils, and forms--separated the public from the telegrapher himself. His desk sat beside a larger window than you usually saw around here, I guess to take advantage of the natural light. The black wire snaked down the wall from the ceiling to his dark wooden desk, with its clock and its oil lamp and its papers and thesurprisingly small, wood-and-metal telegraph itself.
The great, great grandfather of my old phones.
"Why yes, we do business with civilians," the Army telegrapher said in answer to Benj's query, while I helped myself to one of the blank forms and started my first message of the day at the counter. "But you should realize that this is a military wire. Official business takes precedence."
"Is it a busy day?" I asked, forcing myself to print slowly enough to stay legible. My hand shook, I was so excited. "Military-wise?"
He seemed startled that I would speak to him directly. "Well... not yet." Then he looked at Benj again. "But that could change."
I'd learned how to send telegrams back in Dodge City, when I was first tracking down the Castaways. You write the note on the form. The telegrapher taps it into the wires. Then you wait--possibly for days.
Days would not work for me. I needed Maddie and the others to wire back today, as soon as possible.
"The first one goes to the telegrapher in Julesburg, Colorado," I explained, handing it over. It promised a large tip for whoever rushed the incoming telegram out to Miss Madeleine Sinclair and Mr. Mitch Haywood at the hunting lodge south of town. If the recipients refused the tip, I would wire the money myself.
"Have you got the money to do this?" the Fort Laramie soldier asked Benj. Even as Benj started to answer in the affirmative, I snapped a $10 gold piece onto the counter and started writing my second telegram, the one that I wanted rushed to my friends.
Benj consulted with the Army clerk, and soon I could hear the comforting tappety tap of my first message heading out, even as I finished the second:
Please bring yourself and the guys to town ASAP! I am at Fort Laramie until midday today and can respond IRT. I have big questions about slipping. Miss you!
Benj looked over my shoulder and suggested I add "Repeat Back" and "Report Delivery." Then he noted that, "They won't transmit the punctuation marks, there, less'n you pay for each one as an extra word."
"Really?" That could have led to a hella confusing, run-on telegram.
"That's how he has to send them," Benj explained. "Some folks just write out the marks as words, like stop--"
"For a period." My Nana used to watch old movies, and now it made sense. But for this one, I simply said "Please transmit the punctuation marks" as I handed it over to the Army telegrapher. "They are very important to me."
"You've got questions about... slipping," he repeated, after reading my message and making some notations. He said it the way Jacob sometimes asked questions, without his voice going up at the end. Since he didn't have Jacob's gravitas--and he did have big ears and a scrawny moustache that made him look younger instead of older--it didn't work anywhere near as well for him.
I did my own Jacob impression and just said, "Yes."
"Asap?" He pronounced it with two syllables, stressing the second. "Irt? You aren't allowed to use coded words."
I was shifting my weight from foot to foot, so impatient to get this sent that I could scream. What if Maddie was busy, or away from the house, or out of town? "Turn ASAP into 'quick,' and IRT into 'in real time.'" I should probably have written them that way in the first place.
In blatant disregard of Jacob's limit, I started on a third telegram, to save time by having it waiting for my friends when they arrived at the Julesburg office.
Help exclamation mark! Visualizing home a lot comma despite my all efforts to forget and adapt to new environment stop. Could I accidentally slip question mark? How can I prevent it question mark?
Benj suggested I change "question mark" to query, but I was already getting the hang of this. The telegrapher made slow change before he started tapping out my latest message, every few clicks another word winging southward. It wasn't texting, but it was close.
And then?
Then there was nothing left but to wait and to hope.
And go shopping for an hour.
Benj was grinning at me as he offered his arm to walk me back to the store, which made me suspicious.
"What?" I asked.
"You ain't the least bit shy when dealin' with that private first class, now are you?"
"Why would I be? He's offering a service. I'm buying that service." It was no different from dealing with the cable guy at home, or a gate agent at the airport, or a car mechanic....
In the future, I corrected myself. Not at home.
Something disturbing occurred to me. "Should I be more shy when doing business? As a Victorian wife, I mean? Or am I not even supposed to be doing business at all?"
Please don't say that!
"You just keep being Lillabit, and you will do fine," Benj assured me. But I sometimes suspected Benj of telling me what he thought I wanted to hear, instead of the whole truth.
Mr. Whole Truth was waiting for us at the post trader's store, actually talking to another man near the counter. That was so surprising that for a moment, between the surprise of it and my usual, fangirl ooh it's Jacob internal flutter, it distracted me from the fact that I was in a store.
But not for long. Because I wasn't dead.
On the downside? Everything the store carried was in this room. Despite shelves all the way to the ceiling, and inventory stacked and bunched, they only had so much. Worse, much of that inventory focused on the basics--salt, sugar, flour, canned goods. Stuff like that. Important for anybody who needed the basics, of course, but not as fun for shopping
Little posters were tacked to the wall, advertising SHOVELS or TOBACCO, in all caps--that was their way of getting attention, before going into paragraphs of text. Other than bright labels, very little came in color except a few bolts of material I glimpsed. If I wanted a pot, it would be a black pot. If I wanted a butter churn, it would be raw wood. Period... or should I say, stop?
On the upside? It was a store.
After making sure Jacob saw I'd returned safely, I started moving around the perimeter of the store like a dancer falling into a long-ago-learned choreography. Rice. Coffee. Ribbons. Peppermint candy. Knives. Nails. Cheese....
I wanted to buy everything. Definitely some peppermint candy. Material for curtains, for a house we hadn't even built yet... curtains meant home, right? Pencils, for my journaling. A second pair of sewing shears, as backup, and probably more needles and thread.
Finishing with his conversation, Jacob crooked his hand at me, beckoning me to the counter, so I hurried back to his side. "Yes, Mr. Garrison?"
"Got mail," he said.
"Really?!" As if he would lie.
"Your Mrs. Elizabeth Garrison, aren't you?" asked the post trader, who was apparently postmaster today as well. And he lifted a surprisingly large package onto the counter.
We're talking big. The kind of package that gets you excited as a child, before you learn that little boxes can also hold amazing things. I felt like a child during the magic of Christmas morning--especially when I recognized Maddie's big, loopy handwriting addressing the brown paper wrapping.
I dove at it. When I started tugging uselessly on the strings, Jacob produced a big knife and cut them for me, without saying a word. The sight of that hunting knife doing domestic duty, when normally he used it for gutting rabbits or trimming hooves, made me smile.
But I also might have been smiling because I had a package!
Inside the paper wrapping sat a large, canvas-like duffel, and pinned to that was an envelope with my name on it. At that moment, a Super Target could open next door to the Fort Laramie Post Trader, and I would have chosen to read my letter first.
Something no store could carry was friends.
I stepped closer to the window and feasted my eyes on Maddie's round words. Her writing was as different from the regimented, narrow-slant of 19th century penmanship as she and I were from the rest of this world... even if I was trying to narrow and slant myself to better fit
While Jacob said something to the post trader about reservations, and someone who smelled shouldered in the door with an armful of animal skins, I started reading.