1902
The journey from New York to Woodward in Oklahoma Territory was a long one, covering a distance of nearly two thousand miles. State after state rolled out beneath the train, ever westwards. At first, Caroline was awed by the scene beyond the window. As they left behind the familiar towns of New York State, settlements became fewer and further between. They passed through woods so thick and dark that they seemed to belong to another age, closing the train in for mile after countless mile. They passed through fields of wheat and corn no less vast, no less astonishing; and towns that grew smaller and smaller, as if compressed by the wide expanses of land all around them. Beside the tracks in one station, rough dwellings had been built and children were playing, running alongside the train, waving, begging for pennies. With a start, Caroline saw that their feet were bare. She waved to them as the train eased away again, and turned to look back as their fragile homes shrank into miniature, and the land yawned away on either side. It was truly untamed, she thought, this land to the west. Men lived upon it, but they had not yet shaped it; not in the way they had shaped New York City. Caroline sat back in her seat and studied the distant purple hills with a pull of unease, feeling the once mighty train to be a mere speck, an insect crawling across the endless surface of the world.
By the time Caroline changed trains for the third and final time, at Dodge City in Kansas, she was heavy with fatigue and stale in her clothes. Her stomach felt hot and empty because the picnic Sara packed for her had run out a day and a half ago; Sara, who could not conceive of a journey so long that a half-dozen hard-boiled eggs, an apple and a pork pie would not be provisions enough. Caroline joined fellow passengers for lunch at El Vacquero, the Harvey Hotel beside the tracks in Dodge City. It was a brand new, brick building, and Caroline took this as proof of the new wealth and stability of what had recently been frontier land. She looked around discreetly, too curious about her surroundings to resist.
The unmade street outside thronged with people and ponies and buggies and wagons, making a muted noise quite unlike that of a New York street. Saddle horses were lined up along the hitch racks, resting their rumps on one tipped-back hoof. The reek of slurry was strong, drifting over the town from the nearby stock pens, and it mixed oddly with food smells and the hot bodies of people and animals. Confused, Caroline’s stomach did not know whether to rumble or recoil. Men sauntered by with pistols strapped to their hips, their shirts untied at the throat, and Caroline stared at them in amazement, as if they had walked straight out of legend. Her heart beat hard with nervous energy and her throat was dry. For one instant, she almost missed Bathilda’s indomitable presence at her side; missed having the barricade of her respectability to hide behind. Ashamed, she straightened her shoulders and reread the menu card.
The restaurant was busy with the lunch crowd, but a crisp girl in a neat uniform soon served her; bringing out consommé with vermicelli, and poached eggs, and coffee.
“Are you travelling far, miss?” a man asked her. He was sitting two seats away along the table, and he smiled and leaned toward her, so that she colored, shocked to be spoken to so casually. The man was unshaven and his coat cuffs were shiny.
“To Woodward,” she said, unsure whether she should introduce herself before speaking, or indeed if she should speak to him at all.
“Woodward? Well, you’ve not too far to go now, I guess, considering how far you’ve come already—New York, if I can tell by your accent?” He smiled again, wider now. Caroline nodded quickly and concentrated on her eggs. “You got family there you visiting? In Woodward I mean?”
“My husband,” Caroline replied.
“Your husband! Now that’s a crying shame. Still, lucky this place has opened up now, isn’t it? The Fred Harvey place before this was in a boxcar on stilts! Did you ever see such a thing back east?” he exclaimed loudly, and Caroline tried to smile politely.
“Ah, leave the girl alone, Doon. Can’t you see she wants to eat her lunch in peace?” This was another man, sitting next to the first. He had an ill-tempered look, deep creases around his eyes. He had combed his hair fiercely to one side and there it remained, held fixed by some substance or other. Caroline hardly dared look at him. Her cheeks blazed.
“Beg pardon, missus,” the first man mumbled. Caroline ate with unseemly haste and returned to the train with her hands tucked into her fox-fur muffler, in spite of the warmth of the weather.
The country after Dodge City was wide and sparsely punctuated. Mile after gently featureless mile of prairie rolled by as the train now turned southward on the Santa Fe line. Caroline slouched in her seat and longed to loosen her stays. Too tired to keep a ladylike posture, and since she was alone in the compartment, she tipped her head against the glass and stared into the endless, eggshell sky. The horizon had never been as wide, as flat, as far away. Gradually, the mighty span of it began to give her a slippery feeling like vertigo. She had expected to see snow-capped mountains, emerald fields of farmland, and quick rivers running. But the earth looked hot and exhausted, just as she felt. She took her copy of The Virginian from her bag instead and fancied herself like Molly Wood, fearlessly cutting her home ties, boldly heading to a new life in an unknown land. After a while, though, she stopped feeling like Molly Wood and started to feel afraid again, so she thought of her husband, waiting for her at Woodward, and while this seemed to slow the train and prolong the interminable journey, it did at least reassure her.
The train arrived at Woodward late in the day, as the sun began to set smeared and orange against the dusty window glass. Caroline had been dozing when the conductor strode past her compartment.
“Woodward! Woodward the next stop!” His shout woke her, sent her heart skittering. She gathered her things and stood up so quickly that her head spun and she had to sit back down again, breathing deeply. Corin, was all she could think. To see him again, after so many days! She peered eagerly out at the station as the train squealed to a halt, desperate to catch a glimpse of him. Catching her reflection in the glass, she hastily patted her hair into shape, bit her lips to redden them and pinched some color into her cheeks. She could not keep calm, could not keep herself from shaking.
She climbed stiffly from the train, her skirts clinging to her legs, feet swollen and hot in her boots. She looked up and down the wooden platform, her heart in her mouth, but could not see Corin among the handful of people quitting the carriages or waiting at the station. The train exhaled with a weary sound and crept toward a siding where a water tower bulked against the sky. A warm wind greeted her, singing softly in her ears, and sand on the platform ground beneath her feet. Caroline looked around again and felt suddenly empty, suddenly unbound, as if the next rush of wind might carry her off. She straightened her hat nervously, but kept her smile ready, her eyes searching. Woodward looked small and slow. The street leading into town from the rail track was wide and unmade, and the wind had carved tiny waves into the sand all along it. She could smell the tar on the station building, hot from the sun, and the pervading stink of livestock. She looked down, sketching a line in the grit with her toe.
As the locomotive moved away a new kind of quiet settled, behind the rattle of a passing buggy and the creak of the trolley as the station man pit his back against the weight of her luggage. Where was Corin? Doubts and fears bubbled up inside her—that he regretted his choice, that she was abandoned, would have to take the next train back to New York. She turned in a circle, desperate to see him. The station porter had paused with her luggage and was trying to catch her eye, to ask, no doubt, where he should take it. But if Corin was not here, Caroline had no idea. No idea where to go, where to stay, what to do. She felt the blood run out of her face and a rush of light-headedness spun her thoughts. For a terrifying moment, she thought she might faint, or burst into tears, or both. She took a deep, trembling breath and tried desperately to think what to do, what to say to the porter to conceal her confusion.
“Mrs. Massey?” Caroline did not at first register this as her name, spoken with a slow drawl. She ignored the man with his hat in his hands who had come to stand to one side of her, his body curved into a relaxed slouch. He looked to be about thirty, but the weather was wearing his face as it was fading the blue from his flannel shirt. His scruffy hair was shot through with strands of red and brown. “Mrs. Massey?” he asked again, taking a step toward her.
“Oh! Yes, I am,” she exclaimed, startled.
“Pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Massey. I’m Derek Hutchinson, but everybody around here calls me Hutch and I’d be happy if you would too,” he introduced himself, tucking his hat beneath his arm and holding out a hand, which Caroline shook tentatively, just with her fingertips.
“Where is Mr. Massey?” she asked.
“Corin was due back in time to come and get you, ma’am, and I know he sorely wanted to, but there’s been some trouble with cattle thieves and he was called upon to ride out and see to it . . . He’ll be back by the time we are, I’m sure of that,” Hutch said, seeing Caroline’s face fall. Tears of disappointment blurred her vision and she gripped her bottom lip in her teeth to halt them. Hutch hesitated, unnerved by her reaction.
“I see,” she gasped, swaying slightly, suddenly longing to sit down. Corin hadn’t come to meet her. In sudden terror, she began to guess at reasons he might have to avoid her.
Hutch cleared his throat diffidently and shifted his feet in an awkward manner. “I . . . uh . . . I know it truly was his wish to meet you here himself, Mrs. Massey, but when there are thieves to apprehend, it’s the duty of the landowners to help one another in that mission. I have come in his stead and I’m at your service.”
“It’s their duty to go?” she asked, tentatively.
“Absolutely. He was duty-bound to it.”
“Are you his . . . manservant, then?” she asked.
Hutch smiled and tipped his chin. “Well, not quite that, Mrs. Massey. Not quite that. I’m foreman at the ranch.”
“Oh, I see,” Caroline said, although she did not. “Well. Will we be there in time for dinner, do you think?” she asked, fighting to regain her composure.
“Dinner, ma’am? Tomorrow, do you mean?”
“Tomorrow?”
“It’s nearing on thirty-five miles to the ranch, from Woodward here. Now, that’s not far, but too far to make a start this evening, I think. There’s a room waiting for you at the boarding house, and a good dinner too, for you do look in need of a square meal, if I can be as bold as to say so.” He studied her tiny form and the pallor of her skin with a measuring eye.
“Thirty-five miles? But . . . how long will it take?”
“We’ll set out early tomorrow and we should get there by noon time on the second day . . . I had not reckoned on you bringing quite so many boxes and trunks with you, and that might slow the wagon down some. But the horses are fresh, and if the weather stays this fair it’ll be a good, smooth ride.” Hutch smiled, and Caroline rallied herself, finding a smile for him in return in spite of the weariness that even hearing about another day and a half of travel made her feel. Hutch stepped forward, proffering his arm. “That’s more like it. Come with me now and we’ll get you settled. You look fairly done in, Mrs. Massey.”
The Central Hotel on Main Street was managed by a round, sour-faced woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Jessop. She showed Caroline to a room that was clean if not spacious, while Hutch oversaw the switching of her luggage from the station trolley to the covered wagon that would take them on to the ranch. Mrs. Jessop scowled when Caroline asked for a hot bath to be drawn, and Caroline hastily produced coins from her purse to sweeten the request.
“Go on, then. I’ll knock on your door when it’s ready,” the proprietress told her, eyeing her sternly. The latch on the bathhouse door was flimsy and there was a knot in the wood through which a tiny glimpse of the hallway outside could be had. Caroline kept a careful eye on this as she bathed, terrified of seeing the shadow of a trespassing eye fall over it. The bath was shallow, but it restored her nevertheless. Blood eased into her stiff muscles and her sore back, and she rested her head at last, breathing deeply. The room smelt of damp towels and cheap soap. The last of the evening light seeped warmly around the shutters, and voices carried up to her from the street outside; voices slow and melodious with unfamiliar accents. Then a man’s voice sounded loudly, apparently right below the window:
“Why, you goddamned son of a bitch! What the hell are you doing here?” Caroline’s pulse quickened at such obscene language and she sat up with an abrupt splash, expecting at any moment to hear more cursing, or a fight, or even gunshots ringing out. But what she heard next was a rich guffaw of laughter, and the patting of hands against shoulders. She sank back into the cooling bathwater and tried to feel calm again.
Afterwards, she dried herself with a rough towel and put on a clean white dress for dinner, forgoing any jewels because she had no wish to outshine her fellow clientèle. Without Sara’s help her waist was a little less tiny, and her hair a little less neat, but she felt more like herself as she descended at the dinner hour. She looked around for Derek Hutchinson and, not finding him, enquired of Mrs. Jessop.
“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.
The 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.
The 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.
“Good morning, Mrs. Massey,” Hutch called, giving her a start. He was approaching from the green expanse beyond the parked wagon, a chestnut horse held by a halter rope in each of his hands. “How did you find your first night as a cow-puncher?” he smiled. Caroline smiled back, not really understanding him.
“Good morning, Mr. Hutchinson. I slept well, thank you.”
“I’m taking these two to water at the creek over this way, then I’ll get some breakfast cooking,” he said. Caroline nodded, and glanced around. “I put a can of water there, in case you wanted to freshen up any,” he added, smiling again as he made his way past the camp.
Caroline’s real want, however, was for plumbing. She dithered for a while and then realized, to her dawning horror, that she would have to relieve herself amidst the bushes, and that Hutch’s ostentatious departure in the other direction was probably meant to reassure her that he would be nowhere around to witness this indignity. He had placed a wad of torn up news sheets and a thin cotton towel next to the solicitous can of water. With a horrified grimace, Caroline made as best use of these meagre facilities as she could. Upon his return, Hutch, with great delicacy, neither looked for nor asked after any of the items he had set out for her.
By midday the sun was scorching, but Caroline’s arm, clutching her dusty parasol, was heavy with fatigue. She gave up and folded it into her lap. Looking up into the vast, fathomless sky, she saw two distant dark spots, circling high above.
“Are those eagles?” she asked, pointing skyward, and noticing as she did how brown with dirt her lace glove was. Hutch followed her gaze, squinting.
“Just buzzards, I’m afraid. Not really many eagles down here on the prairie. If you go up into the Rockies you’ll see some beautiful birds. Those are some sharp eyes you’ve got there, Mrs. Massey,” he told her. He looked back out over the horses’ ears and sang quietly to himself: “Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do . . .” Caroline let her eyes drift to the horizon, then she straightened in her seat and pointed again.
“Somebody’s coming!” she exclaimed, excitedly.
“Well, we’re not at all far from the ranch now, ma’am. It could be one of our own riders,” Hutch nodded, with a subtle smile.
“Is it Corin?” Caroline asked, her hands flying to her dishevelled hair. She began to tuck wayward strands of it beneath her bonnet. “Do you think it’s Mr. Massey?”
“Well,” Hutch smiled again, as her frantic grooming continued, “I know of no other man who rides a mare as black as that in this vicinity, so I think it just might be your husband after all, ma’am.”
Caroline was still brushing her skirts and pinching her cheeks, not caring if Hutch witnessed these efforts, when the rider drew near, and she at last saw Corin for the first time since she’d wed him over a month before. She let her hands fall neatly into her lap, and sat up straight even though she was bubbling with nerves inside. The black horse covered the ground in an easy lope, kicking up sprays of sand, and when at last he reached them Corin pulled the kerchief down from his face to reveal a wide grin. He was as golden and lovely as she remembered him.
“Caroline!” he cried. “It’s so good to see you!” He swung down from his horse and came to stand by her foot. There she remained, seated high on the wagon, transfixed with fear and anticipation. “Are you well? How was the journey?” When she didn’t reply Corin’s face fell a little and a puzzled look came into his eyes. This was her undoing. Still lost for words, and more relieved to see him than she would ever have admitted, Caroline surrendered all propriety and toppled herself from the bench into his waiting arms. Only the sparseness of her prevented the couple ending up in the prairie sand. Behind them, reins held casually in one hand, Hutch watched with a laconic smile, and gave his boss a genial nod.
There was a scattering of people around the ranch house when the wagon bringing Corin Massey’s new wife finally pulled up outside. They were young men mostly, with worn, dusty clothes, who seemed, nevertheless, to have made some attempts to comb their hair and tuck in their shirts. Corin smiled at the trepidation on Caroline’s face as she gave her own filthy attire another despairing glance. The men nodded, tipped their hats and murmured greetings as she climbed down from the wagon, and she smiled and acknowledged them politely.
“I so want to take you on a tour of the ranch, Caroline. I’m so excited to show you everything! Unless you’re too tired after your journey?” said Corin, swinging down from his horse.
“Oh, I am so tired, Corin! Of course you must show me everything, but first I need to lie down, and then take a bath,” she said. Corin nodded readily, although he looked a little disappointed. The tall, white house Caroline had envisaged was instead a low, wood-frame building; and although the front had indeed been painted white, prairie sand had blown up against it and given the bottom half a grubby look. Corin followed her gaze.
“A spring wind blew up before the paint had a chance to dry,” he told her, sheepishly. “We’ll paint over it, don’t worry. Luckily we only had time to do the front, so not too much work was undone!” Caroline peered around the corner of the house, and sure enough the sides remained bare wood.
“I’ll see to Strumpet. You take Mrs. Massey on into the house,” Hutch said, taking the reins from Corin.
“Strumpet?” Caroline asked, bewildered.
“My mare,” Corin grinned, giving the horse’s forehead a rub. Caroline knew little enough about horses, but the animal appeared to scowl. “The most contrary, bad-tempered soul you’ll find on these lands, and that’s a known fact.”
“Why do you keep her, if she is so unpleasant?”
“Well,” Corin shrugged, as if this had never occurred to him, “she’s my horse.”
Inside, the walls were bare and no curtains hung at the windows. There was furniture enough but it was placed higgledy-piggledy, at odds with the angles of the room. An easy chair drawn up to the burner, with piles of livestock journals and seed catalogues beside it, was the only thing that looked to be in its right place. Many boxes and cartons stood around the floor. Caroline turned a slow circle, gazing at all this, and sand rasped beneath her boot heels. When she next looked at her husband she could not hide her dismay. Corin’s smile faded from his face.
“Now, I deliberately didn’t have it all fixed up because there was no point, I thought, until you’d arrived and told me how it should be fixed. We’ll get it set up quickly enough, now that you’re here,” he explained, hurriedly. Caroline smiled, drawing in a shaky breath rich with the scent of newly hewn oak. “It just . . . it took me longer than I had planned to get the place built . . . I’m sorry, Caroline.”
“Oh, no! Don’t be!” she exclaimed, anguished to see him crestfallen. “I’m sure it will be wonderful—I know just how we should finish it. You’ve done so well.” She turned and leant her head against his chest, and revelled in the smell of him. Corin pushed strands of hair back from her forehead and held her tightly. His touch made her warm inside, and gave her a tight feeling, like hunger.
“Come with me,” he murmured, and led her through a door in the far corner of the main room, to a smaller room where a large iron bedstead dominated. It was draped with a fine, multicolored quilt, and Caroline ran her fingers lightly over it. The fabrics were satins and silks, cool and watery to the touch. “I had the bed freighted all the way from New York,” Corin told her. “It arrived right before you did; and the quilt was my mother’s. Why don’t you try it?”
“Oh, no! I’d dirty it. It’s so lovely, Corin,” Caroline enthused.
“Well, I’m dirty too; and I say we try it out.” Corin took her hands and then her waist, and then linked his arms around her.
“Wait! No!” Caroline laughed, as he pulled them both down to land, bouncing, on the mattress.
“We never did get our wedding night,” he said softly. The sun streaming in from the window lit his hair with a soft coronet and threw his brown eyes into shadow. Caroline was very aware of the stale smell of her own unwashed body, and the dryness of her mouth.
“No. But it’s not bedtime yet. And I need to bathe . . . and someone might see in.”
“We’re not in New York any more, love. You don’t have to do as your aunt tells you, and we don’t have to do what society tells us . . .” Corin placed his hand flat on her midriff and Caroline caught her breath, fast and shallow in her chest. He worked each button of her blouse free and smoothed it gently aside.
“But, I—”
“But nothing,” Corin murmured. “Turn over.” Caroline obeyed, and Corin fumbled slightly as he undid the laces of her corset. Released, the sudden rush of air into Caroline’s lungs made her head spin, and she closed her eyes. Corin turned her to face him and traced the lines of her body with the roughened palms she had noticed the first time they met. He kissed her eyelids softly. “You’re so beautiful,” he said quietly, and his voice was deep and blurred. “Eyes like silver dollars.” Alarmed by the force of the passion she felt, Caroline kissed him as hard as she could. She had little enough idea what to expect, knowing only that Corin now had rights to her body that nobody had had before. Bathilda had hinted darkly at pain that was to be borne, and duties that were to be performed, but the press of Corin’s skin against her own was a feeling more wonderful than any she had yet experienced; and the gentle insistence of his touch, the shift of his weight between her thighs, filled her with a sensation that was hot and cold and almost painful and so far beyond anything she had felt before that she cried out in astonished joy, no longer aware that there was any impropriety, or anybody else in the world to hear her.
Corin toured his new wife around the ranch in a buggy, since it was too far to walk and she had never ridden horseback before. He had seemed stunned by this fact, but then he’d shrugged and said, “Don’t worry; you’ll learn soon enough.”
But Caroline did not trust the animals, with their ugly teeth and brute strength, and the thought of sitting atop of one did not appeal to her in the slightest. When Corin proudly introduced her to his brood mares, and to the stallion Apache, Caroline nodded and smiled and struggled to tell them apart. The creatures all looked the same to her. He drove her around the various corrals, stock pens and cattle chutes, and the low, roughly built bunkhouses where the line-riders slept. Caroline noticed how comfortable her husband seemed, without a trace of the uncertainty or diffidence he had shown in New York society. They passed a pitiful-looking hovel, half dug into the ground and then roofed with planks and sod.
“That would have been our home, if you’d come to me much sooner!” Corin told her with a smile.
“That?” Caroline echoed, appalled. Corin nodded.
“That dugout’s the very first dwelling I put here when I staked my claim in ninety-three. And I wintered in it twice before I got a proper house set up—I found one out on the prairie and dragged it here—if you can believe that!”
“You stole a house?”
“Not stole! No, not that. I suppose it had been put up by some boomer, trying to settle the land before it was legal. Well, whoever built it had moved on, or been moved on. It was just sitting there, sheltering nothing but rattlesnakes; so I shook them out, loaded it on a flatbed wagon and dragged it back here. It was a good little house, but certainly not roomy enough for a family.” As he said this he took her hand and squeezed it; and Caroline looked away bashfully.
“A large family?” she queried, tentatively.
“I reckon four or five kids ought to do it,” Corin grinned. “How about you?”
“Four or five ought to do it,” she agreed, smiling widely.
“Here, now; this is the shelter we bring the mares into when they’re due to foal.”
“What’s that?” Caroline asked, pointing to a conical tent beyond the mare’s corral.
“That’s where Joe’s family lives. See the dugout beside? Joe and his wife sleep there, but his folks wanted a teepee like they’d always had, and so that’s what they live in still. They’re a traditional sort of people.”
“Why would . . . Joe’s family live in a teepee?” Caroline asked, perplexed. Corin looked at her, as puzzled as she.
“Well, they’re Indians, sweetheart. And they like to live as they ever have, although Joe himself is more forward-thinking. He’s worked the trails for me since the very beginning, when I could only pay him in clothes and five-cent tins of Richmond tobacco. One of my best riders—”
“Indians? There are Indians here?” Caroline’s heart quickened and her stomach twisted. She would not have been more shocked if he’d told her he let wolves roam amidst his cattle. “Hutch told me they were all gone!” she whispered.
“Well, most of them have. The rest of Joe’s people are on the reservation, east of here, on land that reaches the banks of the River Arkansas. Those that remained here in Oklahoma Territory, that is—Chief White Eagle leads them. But some went north again a few years back. Chief Standing Bear led them back to their Nebraska lands. I guess they were more homesick than the others . . .” he explained, but Caroline scarcely heard this brief history of the tribe. She could not believe her ears, or her eyes, that here camped on her doorstep were the savages of whose atrocities lurid stories had circulated in the east for decades. Fear froze her to the core. Wildly, she grabbed the reins from Corin and dragged the horse’s head around, back toward the house.
“Hey—wait, what are you doing!” Corin exclaimed, trying to wrestle the reins from her as the horse tossed its head in protest, the bit clanking against its teeth.
“I want to go! I want to get away from them!” Caroline cried, shaking all over. She put her hands over her face, desperate to hide. Corin steadied the horse and then peeled her hands into his.
“Now, look!” he said seriously, eyes pinioning hers. “Listen to me, Caroline. They are good people. People, just like you and me. They just want to live and work and raise their families; and no matter what you’ve heard back east where they like to paint Indians as the worst kind of villains, I am telling you that they don’t want to trouble you or anybody else. There’s been strife in the past, strife that often enough we white men brought with us, but now all any of us wants to do is get on as best we can. Joe has brought his family here to live and work alongside us, and that’s taken a kind of courage you and I can’t understand, I do believe. Are you listening to me, Caroline?” She nodded, although she could hardly credit what he was saying. Tears rolled down her cheeks. “Don’t cry, my darling. Nothing you’ve been told about Indians applies to Joe. I can guarantee you that. Come along now and I’ll introduce you.”
“No!” she gasped.
“Yes. They’re your neighbors now, and Joe is a firm friend of mine.”
“I can’t! Please!” Caroline sobbed. Corin took out his handkerchief and wiped her face for her. He tipped her chin up and smiled affectionately.
“You poor thing. Please, don’t be afraid. Come on, now. The second you meet them you’ll see you’ve got nothing to be frightened of.”
Clicking his tongue at the beleaguered buggy horse, Corin turned it again and drove them toward the teepee and dugout. Surrounding the two dwellings was an array of washing lines and drying racks, ropes, tools and harnesses. A fire was burning outside the tent, and as they approached a small, iron-haired woman emerged with a blackened pot to place over the embers. Her back was bowed, but her eyes sparkled from deep within the creases webbing her face. She said nothing, but straightened up and nodded, eyeing Caroline with quiet interest as Corin jumped down from the buggy.
“Good morning, White Cloud, I’ve come to introduce my wife to you,” Corin said, tipping the wide brim of his hat respectfully at the old woman. Caroline’s legs, as he helped her down, felt unsteady beneath her. She swallowed, but there remained a lump in her throat that made it hard to breathe. Her thoughts swirled inside her head like a blizzard. A man came out of the dugout, followed by a young girl, and another woman came from the teepee, middle-aged and severe looking. She said something incomprehensible to Corin, and Corin, to Caroline’s utter amazement, replied.
“You speak their tongue?” she blurted out, and then recoiled when all eyes turned to her. Corin smiled, somewhat diffidently.
“Indeed, I do. Now, Caroline, this is Joe, and this is his wife Magpie, most commonly known as Maggie.” Caroline tried to smile, but she found that she could not hold the gaze of either one of them for more than a few seconds. When she did she saw a stern, dark man, not tall but broad across the chest; and a plump girl, her long hair prettily braided with colored strings woven through it. Joe’s hair was also long, and they both had high, feline cheekbones and a serious line to their brows. Magpie smiled and ducked her head, trying to catch Caroline’s eye.
“I’m very pleased to meet you, Mrs. Massey,” she said, and her English was perfect even if her accent was strong. Caroline gaped at her.
“You speak English?” she whispered, incredulously. Magpie gave a cheerful chuckle.
“Yes, Mrs. Massey. Better than my husband, although I have been learning for less time!” she boasted. “I’m so glad you are here. There are far too many men at this ranch.”
Caroline took a longer look at the girl, who was wearing a simple skirt and blouse, with a brightly woven blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Her feet were shod with soft slippers of a kind Caroline had never seen before. Her husband, who wore a heavy, beaded vest beneath his shirt, muttered something sharp in their own tongue, and Magpie scowled, answering him with something short and indignant. Joe did not smile as readily as his wife, and his expression seemed, to Caroline, most hostile. The blackness of his eyes alarmed her, and his mouth was a straight, implacable line.
“I have never met any Cherokee . . . people before,” Caroline said, somewhat emboldened by Magpie’s cheerful demeanor.
“Still you have not.” Joe spoke for the first time, wryly. His accent was so guttural that it took a little while for her to understand him. Caroline glanced at Corin.
“Joe and his family are of the Ponca tribe,” he explained.
“But . . . Hutch told me these lands were Cherokee before . . .”
“They were. It’s . . . well, put simply, there are many tribes in this country. It was Indian Territory before it was Oklahoma Territory, after all. Joe and his family are a little out of the ordinary, in that they have chosen to adopt some of the white man’s ways of living. Most of his people choose to stay with their own, on reservation lands. Joe here got a taste for cattle driving and has never looked back—isn’t that right, Joe?”
“Got a taste for beating you at cards, mostly,” the Ponca man said, twisting his mouth to one side sardonically.
As they moved away from the teepee, Caroline frowned.
“Joe seems an odd name for an . . . for a Ponco . . .”
“Ponca. Well, his real name, in his own tongue, is just about unpronounceable. It means Dust Storm, or something of that kind. Joe’s just a lot easier for folk to say,” Corin explained.
“He does not seem to show you much respect, considering you are his employer.”
At this Corin glanced at Caroline, and a frown shaded his eyes for a moment. “He has plenty of respect for me, I assure you; and it’s respect I’ve had to earn. People like Joe don’t give out respect because you’re white, or because you’ve got land, or you pay their wages. They give it when you can show you have integrity and a willingness to learn, and can show respect to them where it’s due. Things are a little different out here than in New York, Caroline. People have to help themselves and help each other when a flood or a freeze or a tornado might wipe out everything you have in an instant . . .” He trailed into silence. A warm wind blew off the prairie, singing through the spokes of the buggy wheels. Stinging with his rebuke, Caroline sat in unhappy silence. “You’ll soon settle in, don’t you worry,” Corin said, in a lighter tone.
A few days later, they took their honeymoon picnic; setting out in the buggy while the sun was skirting the eastern horizon, and heading due west of the ranch for three hours or so, to a place where the land rolled into voluptuous curves around a shallow pool, fed by a slow-running creek. Silver willows leaned their branches down, shading the water’s edge and touching it in places, pulling wrinkles in the wide reflected sky.
“It’s so pretty here,” Caroline said, smiling as Corin lifted her down from the bench.
“I’m glad you like it,” Corin said, planting a kiss on her forehead. “It’s one of my favorite places. I come here sometimes, when I need to think about things, or when I’m feeling low . . .”
“Why didn’t you live here, then? Why did you fix the ranch over to the east?”
“Well, I wanted to fix it here but Geoffrey Buchanan beat me to it. His farmhouse is another two miles that way, but this land is in his claim.”
“Won’t he mind us coming here?”
“I doubt it. He’s a pretty relaxed kind of fellow but, more importantly, he won’t know we’re here,” Corin grinned, and Caroline laughed, crossing to the edge of the pool and dipping her fingers into the water.
“Do you come here often then? Do you get low, out here?”
“I did sometimes, when I was first here. Wondered whether I’d staked the right claim, wondered if it was too far from my family, if the land was right for the cattle. But I’ve not been back here for many months,” he shrugged. “It soon became clear to me that I never did a better thing than staking the claim I did, and making those choices. Everything happens for a reason, is what I believe, and now I know that’s right.”
“How do you know?” she asked, turning to him, drying her fingers on her skirt.
“Because I have you. When my father died, I thought . . . I thought for a time that I should move back to New York and look after my mother. But the second I got back there I knew I couldn’t stay. And then I found you, and you were willing to come away with me . . . and if any good thing could come from losing my father, then you are that good thing, Caroline. You’re what was missing from my life.” He spoke with such clarity, such resolve, that Caroline was overwhelmed.
“Do you really think that?” she whispered, standing close to him, feeling the sun’s heat flush her skin. It shone brightly in his eyes, turned them the color of caramel.
“I really think that,” he said quietly; and she stood up on her toes to kiss him.
In the shade of the willow trees they spread out their rugs, unpacked the hamper and unhitched the buggy horse, which Corin tethered to a tree. Caroline sat with her legs tucked carefully beneath her, and poured Corin a glass of lemonade. He lay down easily beside her, propped on one elbow, and undid the buttons of his shirt to let the cool air in. Caroline watched him almost shyly, still not used to the idea that he belonged to her, still not used to his relaxed manner. She had not known until her arrival at the ranch that men grew hair on their chests, and she examined it now, curling against his skin and damp with the heat of his body.
“Corin?” she asked him suddenly.
“Yes, love?”
“How old are you?”
“What? You know that!”
“But I don’t! I just realized . . . I don’t know how old you are. You seem so much older than me—not in appearance, I mean! Well, partly in appearance, but also in . . . in other ways,” she floundered. Corin smiled.
“I’ll be twenty-seven next birthday,” he said. “There now—are you appalled that you’ve married such an old-timer?”
“Twenty-seven is not so very old! I shall be nineteen in just a couple of months. But . . . you seem to have lived here for a lifetime already. You’re as settled here as if you’d been here fifty years!”
“Well, I first came out here with my father, on a business trip—prospecting for new beef suppliers. My father traded in meat, did I tell you that? He sold to all the best restaurants in New York, and for a time I was destined to go into the business with him. But I knew as soon as I got out here that we were at the wrong end of that chain of supply, and I never left. I was just sixteen when I decided to stay on out here and learn about raising the beeves instead of just buying their dead flesh.”
“Sixteen!” Caroline echoed. “Weren’t you scared, to leave your family like that?” she asked. Corin thought for a moment, then shook his head.
“I’ve never been much afraid of anything. Until I asked you to dance,” he said. Caroline blushed happily, straightening her skirts.
“It really is hot, isn’t it? Even here in the shade,” she commented.
“You want to know the best way to cool down?”
“What is it?”
“Swimming!” Corin declared, springing to his feet and pulling his shirt up over his head.
“Swimming! What do you mean?” Caroline laughed.
“I’ll show you!” he said, sliding off his boots, kicking his pants to one side and charging into the pool, as naked as Adam, with a wild whooping and splashing. Caroline stood up and watched in utter amazement. “Come in, sweetheart! It’s the best feeling!” he called.
“Are you crazy?” she cried. “I can not swim here!”
“Why ever not?” he asked, swimming the length of the small pool with broad strokes of his arms.
“Well . . . well, it’s . . .” she waved an incredulous arm. “It’s muddy! And it’s out in the open—anybody could see! And I don’t have a bathing suit.”
“Sure you do! It’s right there under your dress,” Corin grinned. “And who’s to see? There’s nobody around for miles—it’s just you and me. Come on! You’ll love it!”
Caroline walked uncertainly to the edge of the bank, unlaced her boots and hesitated. Sunlight danced prettily on the water’s surface and tiny fish were lazing in the warm shallows. The sun beat down on her, scorching the top of her head and making her clothes feel tight and stifling. She bent down, pulled off her boots and stockings and put them carefully on the bank, then, gathering her skirt to her knees, she stepped in until the water lapped her ankles. The relief of cold water on her clammy skin was her undoing.
“Oh, my goodness,” she breathed.
“Now, how much better does that feel?” Corin called to her, coming over to where she stood. The white of his buttocks gleamed, distorted, beneath the surface, and Caroline laughed.
“You look just like a frog in a bucket!” she told him.
“Oh, really?” he asked, flicking a spray of water up at her. With a squeal she retreated. “Come on, come in and swim! I dare you!”
Caroline looked over her shoulder, as if an audience might have appeared, ready to gasp in dismay at her wantonness, then she undid her dress and stays and draped them over a willow branch. She kept her chemise on, the bare skin of her shoulders crawling, feeling utterly conspicuous, then went back to the edge of the pool with her arms wrapped protectively around her. There she paused, mesmerized by the feel of the mud as it squeezed up between her toes. She had never felt anything like it, and hitched up her petticoat to look down, flexing her feet and smiling. When she looked up to remark upon it, she found Corin watching her with a rapt expression.
“What is it?” she asked, alarmed.
“You. Just look at you . . . You’re so brave. And so beautiful. I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said simply. Water had splayed his hair across his forehead, making him younger, boyish.
Caroline had only intended to paddle, but the touch of the water and the thrill of Corin’s words made her bold, and she waded in up to her waist, the water swirling the translucent folds of her chemise around her legs. With a nervous laugh she lay back and let the water buoy her up. It felt chilly as it fingered through her hair.
“Come here and kiss me,” Corin demanded.
“With regret, sir, I am far too busy swimming,” Caroline replied grandly, paddling away with an ungainly stroke. With a start, she realized she hadn’t swam since childhood, at her family’s summer house.
“I shall have a kiss, even if I must chase you down for it,” Corin told her. Laughing and kicking her legs Caroline tried to escape; but she did not try very hard.
The sun was setting as they came over the last rise and saw the lights of the ranch house glimmering below them. Caroline’s skin felt hot and raw where the sun had singed it, and her dress felt odd without the chemise underneath, which was laid out drying on the back of the buggy. She licked her lips, tasted the mineral tang of the creek water. They both carried the smell of it on their skin, in their hair. They had made love on the riverbank, and the languor of it lingered in her muscles, leaving her heavy and warm. Suddenly, she did not want to arrive back at the house. She wanted the day to last for ever; she and Corin in a shady place on a hot day, making love over and over again, without another thought or care in the world. As if reading her mind, Corin reined the horse to a halt, surveying his home for a moment before turning to her.
“Are you ready to go back?” he asked.
“No!” Caroline said fiercely. “I . . . I wish every day could be like today. It was so perfect.”
“It truly was, sweetheart,” Corin agreed, taking her hand and raising it to his lips.
“Promise me we’ll go back there. I won’t go one inch closer to the house until you promise me.”
“We have to go back to the house! Night’s coming . . . but I do promise you we’ll go there again. We can go back whenever we want to—we will go back, and we’ll have many more days like today. I swear it,” he said.
Caroline looked at the outline of him in the indigo twilight, caught the gleam of his eye, the faint shape of a smile. She put her hand out and touched his face. “I love you,” she told him simply.
With a shake of the reins the horse began a lazy descent toward the wooden house below, and with each step it took, Caroline felt a sense of vague foreboding growing inside her. She turned her eyes to the dark ground ahead and was suddenly afraid, in spite of Corin’s pledge, that no day to come would be as sweet as that which had just passed.