Calico Christmas at Dry Creek
There. Elizabeth crossed her arms. She’d said enough. She’d be left in peace.
Jake should have realized what would happen. He’d gone to beg some hot water off the blacksmith so he could shave again without needing to build a fire and, when he had gotten back, he’d seen the men. He wouldn’t have taken so long, but he had a new razor strap and he felt a wedding proposal deserved a careful shave. While he was gone, the men had gathered.
He knew right away what that meant. It hadn’t taken long for word to get around that the woman was going to live. There weren’t many women at the fort and it wasn’t often an opportunity to marry presented itself to these soldiers. If the men hadn’t been so scared of the fever, they would have been lined up to court Elizabeth before now.
Jake couldn’t blame them for taking any chance they could. He knew how tired a man got of his own company. He just wished they were not lining up for this particular woman. Jake could see the men looking at each other and wondering if the doctor really had miscalculated how long it would take for someone to come down with the fever.
“I can’t marry one of them,” Elizabeth said as she turned to Jake. Her eyes were wide. “I’ve never even seen most of them until this morning. They’re absolute strangers.”
Jake wished he could ease the panic he saw in Elizabeth’s eyes, but he knew he wasn’t going to. “Given that you’ve known me a bit longer, maybe you should marry me instead.”
She just stared at him as if she hadn’t heard him right. Jake figured he better add some more persuasion. “You’re going to have to do something before winter comes anyway.”
Jake could hear Elizabeth’s breathing as she considered his words. He’d heard the same shallow breaths from wild horses that had been corralled for the first time. He would have put his hand on her arm to soothe her, but he thought it would have done the opposite.
“But what if she does get sick?” one of the soldiers called out. “You’d likely die, too, if you married her.”
“I’m not worried. She looks healthy enough to me. And pretty, too.”
Ah, good, he thought. She wasn’t looking so scared now that she was a bit angry again. He found it hard to believe Elizabeth was a widow when she blushed up pink the way she was doing.
“They’re right. If the doctor’s wrong, I could be dying any day now,” Elizabeth said. Jake thought she sounded downright hopeful. “You need someone else for your daughters.”
“They’re my nieces, not my daughters.”
“Oh.”
“The doctor’s not wrong,” he said. She looked so troubled that he decided to reach out to touch her arm anyway; he only pulled back when he saw her move away. “If you’re waiting to see if you get the fever, you could wait just as easy if you are a married woman.”
“I am a married woman. At least, I—I was.”
Jake nodded. He’d expected that. She was still in love with her husband. Well, it was probably better that way. All he really needed was someone for the girls. “I’m not asking for myself. It’s for the baby.”
“I don’t need to marry you to help with the baby. Of course I’ll help with the baby.”
Jake nodded. That was something. “I can’t keep the girls here at the fort all winter, though. We have to go back to my place and folks won’t understand us living under the same roof and not being married.”
Jake didn’t add that the girls wouldn’t be welcome at the fort. The only Indians at the fort were the Crow scouts and the Sioux who were here against their will. The girls would be treated like captives and he couldn’t do that to them. They would have a hard time gaining acceptance with civilians; but they would have no hope of finding it among the soldiers and their families. The girls’ tribe had fought General Custer and his men. No army man would forget that defeat soon.
“I could take my tent with me,” Elizabeth said.
“You would need to be with the baby at night. The baby can’t sleep in your tent when it gets colder.” He wondered if the woman had any idea what winters were like here.
Elizabeth nodded. “Still, we don’t need to get married.”
“The people of Miles City will see it differently.”
“I don’t care about gossip.”
“Neither do I, but Spotted Fawn needs to go to school.”
“Ah.” Elizabeth nodded.
She still didn’t look convinced. And she was looking at him as though there was something lacking in him.
Jake had known a woman from back East would have a hard time with the land out here. But he’d never quite considered that she might have an even harder time with him. He’d changed out of his buckskins, but he knew he didn’t look like what an Eastern woman would expect in a husband. Well, he decided, it was best she know the truth about him.
Jake wasn’t the man his mother had hoped he would grow up to be. He didn’t much care for big cities. Or small ones, either. He was wearing wool now, but he preferred buckskin. Still, he was a fair-minded man and he didn’t expect more in a bargain than someone should have to give. “It can just be a piece of paper between us. All I need is someone for the baby.”
She was silent.
“My girls, they’re good girls.”
“Oh, I’m sure they are.”
Jake could see he wasn’t making progress. Her eyes still seemed drawn to that grave, as if she was afraid the ones who were dead and under the ground could hear what she was saying and would rise up to accuse her of disloyalty.
“It wouldn’t need to be a real marriage,” Jake made his words even clearer. “You’ll be able to get it annulled in the spring if you want.”
He’d do whatever she wanted in that regard.
Elizabeth just stood there looking sad. “I just buried my husband. I don’t need another one.”
As a boy, Jake had watched his father trading pelts. Everyone, no matter their tribe, had something they wanted. A good trader just watched until he figured out what that was. It didn’t take long to figure out what Elizabeth really wanted.
“I can make you a marker for that grave if you agree to help me. We can get a good-sized piece of granite sent down from Fort Benton. It’ll last forever.”
Elizabeth was looking at him now.
“I’m a pretty good carver. I’ll set their names on it and anything else you want to say. There won’t be a fancier headstone in the whole territory.” It was the best he could do.
“Oh.” Elizabeth breathed out. “Matthew would like that, but—”
“And an angel. I could carve an angel on the corner of it for your daughter.”
Jake hadn’t carved anything but letters on his mother’s stone. But he whittled some in the evenings and he’d carved shapes of most of the animals around here. He could do an angel.
Elizabeth just stood there, blinking.
“Don’t cry,” Jake said.
“I never cry,” Elizabeth whispered and then took a deep breath. “You have yourself a deal.”
Now it was Jake’s turn to be surprised into silence.
“You can’t marry him,” one of the soldiers in line protested. “I haven’t had a chance to read you my poetry. I wrote a poem for you and everything.”
Elizabeth turned to the soldiers in line and squared her shoulders. “I’m sorry. I haven’t thanked any of you properly. You’ve paid me a great compliment. I’m honored, of course. Could I give you each a jar of sweet pickles? I canned them myself.”
“Well, that’d be nice of you,” the soldier who had removed his hat said. “I haven’t had anything like that since I was back home.”
Jake helped Elizabeth hand out four jars of pickles.
After the soldiers left the campsite, Elizabeth turned to Jake. “This marriage—it’s only for the baby?”
“I’ll bunk down in the lean-to and give the rest of the place to you and the girls.”
Elizabeth nodded. “I gave Mr. Miller my oxen in exchange for his promise to bury me when the time comes so—well—I expect him to do what he said. Even if he has to come to your place and get me.”
“You don’t need Mr. Miller now. You have me.”
“Oh.” Elizabeth looked at him skeptically. “Are you a God-fearing man, Mr. Hargrove?”
Jake was a little taken back. “Yes.”
She still looked suspicious. “The God of the Bible?”
Jake smiled. “Yes.”
“Well, then…” She paused as though weighing his words. “Do you promise to dig the burying hole yourself?”
“If that’s what you want.”
“I don’t want any easy promises here. I know I can’t come back and make sure you’ve done that particular job properly so I’d be relying on your word. I want you to dig the hole yourself and do it with prayer in your heart.”
“You’ve got my word.” Jake had seen peace pipes passed with less resolve than Elizabeth showed. “I’ll take care of you in good times and bad times. Dead or alive.”
“When I go, I’ll want to be buried beside my baby.”
“I’ll see to it. I’ll even leave room on the headstone for all three of you.”
Elizabeth nodded. “Then I think we should ask for the oxen back.”
Jake knew a battle could be lost if a man didn’t act quickly to secure his victory. “I’ll get the oxen and then we’ll head out. I know the minister in Miles City. The Reverend Olson. He’ll say the words for us.”
“Matthew and I never did get as far as Miles City. But I heard they had a fine preacher there. Mr. Miller promised to ask the man to come and say a few words over my grave when I—you know—” Elizabeth nodded to the grave “—when I died—which I guess isn’t going to be as soon as I thought.”
Elizabeth pressed her lips together firmly.
Jake hoped that meant she was accepting her new life. “The reverend’s a good man.”
“If we’re going to see him about getting married, I’d like to have some time alone with him before I take my vows.”
Jake figured that meant she wasn’t accepting her new life at all. She was probably going to ask the minister about her funeral. He didn’t know what the Reverend Olson would think when Jake rode into town with a bride who was more intent on her funeral than she was on getting married to him.
Of course, she probably wouldn’t be content with just talking to the reverend about her worries. She might mention it to anyone who would listen until finally even the old trappers would hear about it. They’d have a fine time telling about the woman who’d rather go to her own funeral than marry up with Jake Hargrove.
Oh, well, Jake told himself with a wry grin; he never was one to begrudge others a good laugh around their evening fires. He just hoped they got a few things straight. Like the fact that his bride’s eyes were some of the most beautiful eyes a man was likely to see this side of the Missouri. He hadn’t expected that. They reminded him of the moss that grew on the side of those ponderosa pines high in the mountains where he’d lived as a boy.
Being married, even temporarily, to a woman with eyes like that couldn’t be all bad. He’d just have to think of ways to keep her happy until she decided to leave. Even his mother had taken a few months to judge this land before she decided that she hated it. His mother might have gone longer before making her decision if she’d had something to distract her. Women always liked new clothes. Maybe he should buy the woman a new dress to match those eyes of hers.
And a pretty brooch. His mother had set great store by her few jewels. Jake stopped himself. He wondered if he should offer to pay the woman outright. Eastern women were touchy about money, but even he wasn’t so sure about paying a woman to marry him. Of course, he’d see that she had plenty of money for her trouble; he’d panned a modest amount of gold in the Black Hills southeast of here this past spring so he had enough. But it just didn’t seem right somehow to bring up money quite yet.
Chapter Three
There was a cluster of cottonwood trees leading into the small town of Miles City. The trees were slender and not rooted very deep in the gray alkali soil, but they gave some relief from the vast emptiness that seemed to echo back and forth in this part of the territories. Elizabeth hadn’t been prepared for all of this vastness. It felt as though God could look right down and see her, not because He was searching her out, but just because there was so little else in sight. Well, if He wanted to look, she couldn’t stop Him. It did make her nervous, though.
She sat on the wagon seat next to Jake. It had rained some on the way here and the dampness had turned the ground dark. It wasn’t wet enough to slow down the wagon wheels, though, so Elizabeth had been holding the baby in her arms to protect the little one from the worst of the jostling as they bumped along the rough road. She looked down and smiled.
Elizabeth might not want God looking at her, but she was glad He knew about the baby. She adjusted the blanket covering the infant and, when she looked up again, Jake had turned the oxen team slightly to enter the town and she could see the main street for the first time.
The trip to Miles City had been slow. Jake had his horse tied to the back of the wagon, and Spotted Fawn had ridden her pony as far away from the wagon as she could while still riding with them.
“Why, it’s full of people.” Elizabeth couldn’t believe it. There were people everywhere and dozens of wagon wheels had made tracks down the street. Her first feeling was relief that she and Matthew hadn’t come through this town before he got the fever.
Matthew had everything so well planned. He’d told her it would be okay if he started his store by selling things from the back of their wagon. He figured most of the buildings would be thrown together with bits of canvas and mud-chinked logs so people would not expect to shop in a regular mercantile as they would if they were back East.
But Matthew had been wrong. There were no canvas and rough-hewn huts to be seen. The frame buildings were neatly painted and laid out on two sides of something called Richmond Square. There was even a sign naming the place. That meant someone had money. Miles City was not like the gold-mining towns Matthew had heard about that were thrown together haphazardly because everyone was looking for gold. The gnarled branches of the cottonwoods weren’t the kind of trees used to make the plank boards in these buildings.
“Somebody hauled in a lot of lumber.” Elizabeth wondered if maybe the town had been rough earlier, but had grown up without Matthew hearing about it.
Jake nodded. “It came in on the steamboats. I brought some of the lumber down from Fort Benton myself. I was going to add onto my place, but I gave it to the school instead.”
Elizabeth was glad no one could see the flannel union suits and unbleached muslin Matthew had packed so hopefully in the bottom of their wagon.
“We couldn’t afford to take a steamboat,” she said. “Not with all the goods Matthew wanted to bring. That’s why he got us our wagon. Fortunately, we found a few other wagons still going this way, so we came together.”
Elizabeth wondered what she would do with all of the things Matthew had packed in that wagon. Most of it was rough fabrics with little value. The best cloth they had was the red calico cotton she’d dyed herself. It was one of the few things in the bottom of the wagon that truly belonged to her.
Most people wouldn’t even have attempted what she’d done, but an old woman had told Elizabeth about the dye process and she’d decided to try it. She liked the name of it—Turkey red oil-boiled dye. It had all sounded so grand and exotic.
She’d been pregnant at the time and wanted some bright red yarn so she could knit a blanket for their baby’s first Christmas. Matthew had said it was foolish to give a present to a baby, but she didn’t think so. Most of the reds that were dyed in other ways would fade or bleed with each washing and she wanted a blanket that would hold its color for generations to come. She had pictured her baby showing the blanket to his or her own baby in the distant future and telling the little one that Grandma had made the red blanket for a very special Christmas years ago.
A lone rider passed their wagon and Elizabeth was jolted out of her memories. She’d gotten so caught up in thinking about the Christmas yarn that she’d forgotten that her whole reason for making it was now gone. She had no family. No husband to worry about pleasing. She had no use for a red blanket that held its color for generations.
Her life had changed once again and an unbleached gray was enough to mark her endless days. She was sure she could sell the red yarn, and the fabric she’d dyed, too, but she doubted there would be much of a market for the other things she and Matthew had brought west. The people walking in and out of the stores here were not wearing poor clothes. It was mostly men walking around, but there were women, too. And they were clearly used to getting good fabrics.
Matthew hadn’t had the money to buy any but the lowest quality. He thought that, by the time people demanded better goods, he would have the money to buy them. His heart would have been broken if he had lived to see his dream fall apart.
Nothing was turning out the way they had planned, Elizabeth told herself as she looked away from the busy street and back at the man sitting beside her on the wagon seat.
She couldn’t believe she was going to marry this man. She still felt married to Matthew.
She, Jake and the girls had left the fort before midday. She had put everything back in the wagon and Jake had managed to convince Mr. Miller to return the oxen that were now pulling it. The blacksmith had even thrown in a bag of oats for good wishes on their life together. Elizabeth hadn’t known what to say when the man carried out the oats so she’d unpacked six jars of her best canned green beans and given them to him in appreciation.
Jake grunted as he turned and motioned for Spotted Fawn to come closer.
Then he turned to Elizabeth. “This town gets busier every day. Someone put up that hotel hoping that the railroad will stop here. All of the surveying the army is doing has people on edge wondering what route the railroad will take when it comes this way. I tell people it’s years away, but no one knows for sure.”
Elizabeth thought Jake wanted to say more about the railroad, but he didn’t do it so she kept looking around. She noticed that the hotel was only one of several two-story buildings on the street. The rain had turned the top of the ground into a thick mud. Several horses and a buggy were making their way through the street. The wheels didn’t sink in far, but the boots of the men walking seemed to pick up a layer of mud.
“Maybe Matthew could have gotten a job clerking in one of these places,” Elizabeth said looking down the length of the street. In her heart, though, she knew he would have refused to work for someone else. He would have given up. They would have been even poorer here than they had been back in Kansas. She would have had to take in laundry again and there would have been no one to watch the baby while she lifted the tubs of scalding water.
The laundry itself would have been difficult, too. No one seemed to be wearing simple clothes. The woman hurrying across the street in front of them was holding up skirts that showed lace-trimmed petticoats. Ruffles like that required a hot iron at the end of it all. And the skirt over the petticoats looked as if it was made of blue French serge. It would take extra brushing to keep the double weave looking nice. And no one wanted to pay extra for any of it.
A modest blue hat sat atop the woman’s brilliant copper hair. Elizabeth looked at the hair closely. The hair was so colorful she wondered, at first, if it had been dyed with henna. But surely the woman could not get those tones with the dye, so the hair must be natural. Elizabeth almost envied her until the woman lifted her head and finally saw Elizabeth and Jake. The woman glanced up with a vague smile, but as she looked fully at Jake, her expression turned to shock and then to an indignant frown. Elizabeth wondered if the woman was angry with them for some reason, but she hurried off before Elizabeth could ask Jake about her.
“I’ll send a note down to the reverend while we buy a few things at the store,” Jake said as he slowed the wagon.
Elizabeth forced her attention back to the man beside her. “Oh, you don’t need to do that—buy anything, I mean. Not for me.”
“You’ll still need things for the girls. Dresses and all.”
Elizabeth wondered if Jake knew how much things like that cost. A man who wore buckskin wasn’t likely to know how dear fabric was. If it was gingham or calico, the price might not be too bad. But a twill silk or French serge material was impossible. Still, it was nice of him to think of what they needed. It was more than Matthew had ever done. “I know how to get by. We won’t need much that’s store-bought.”
“I want the girls to look like ladies.”
“Surely they won’t need to—” Elizabeth stumbled when she saw she was giving offense. “Not because they’re Indian girls. That’s not what I meant.”
“They have white blood in them, too. Red Tail was half-white.”
“Of course. It’s just that they’re only girls.”
“I want them to have the best dresses possible. We’ll order from San Francisco if we have to.”
Elizabeth nodded. Now she’d gotten his pride involved. He was probably going to spend money on dresses that they should be saving for winter food. But she knew men well enough to know that she’d only make matters worse by continuing to press him on it. She would sew the dresses herself, of course, and she’d only pick out the cheaper fabrics. Maybe she could even use some of the muslin they had in the wagon. The bark of an oak tree made a light yellow dye that would set the muslin well and the girls wouldn’t even notice the material wasn’t store-bought.
“You should get a new dress, too,” Jake added. “Maybe something in a deep moss green to match your eyes.”
She didn’t have any dyes that went to a deep green. She had the leavings of some indigo that she could mix with wood ash to make black, but she’d have to buy bolted material to have any kind of a green. “I’d rather have some tea. And maybe a lid to cover my pan so I can steep it properly. “
Tea was cheaper and more to her liking than color-pressed fabric anyway. She’d had the luxury of real tea for a week or so now. A tin of it had been left on the seat of her wagon one morning with the hardtack. She hadn’t been able to brew it properly because she only had an open pan to hold it, but she’d enjoyed it immensely. Her conviction that she was dying had made her reckless and she’d used more of the tea than she had intended so she didn’t have much left.
Elizabeth felt Jake pull the wagon to a complete halt in front of a building with a large sign that read The Broadwater, Bubbel and Company Mercantile. The store was fronted by a small section of wooden walkway and she could look right into the windows. She had never seen so much merchandise, not even in any of the stores she’d gone to back in Kansas. She was glad she was still wearing her gray silk dress even though she didn’t have a proper hat to wear with it.
Jake jumped off the wagon and walked around to take the baby. He slipped the baby into his fur sling before reaching up with the other arm to offer Elizabeth help in stepping down from the wagon. Elizabeth was grateful for the assistance, more to impress anyone who might be watching them than because she needed the help. If they were going to do business in this town, Elizabeth wanted them to look respectable.
The warm smell of spices greeted Elizabeth when she walked through the door that Jake had opened for her. This time Elizabeth didn’t want to take any chances on unintentionally offending someone. She smiled at the woman behind the counter. She did not get a smile back. Spotted Fawn had not come in with them so Elizabeth wondered if it was the Indian baby that was causing the upset look in the woman’s eyes.
But that couldn’t be right, Elizabeth told herself. The furs covered the little one so completely that no one could even tell a baby rested in Jake’s arms. The woman was definitely staring at the furs, though. She must have been watching them through the windows.