Chapter 3

Caroline Bagshaw was doing her Christmas shopping in the Ye Olde Christmas Fayre in Market Square at the end of the High Street on the first of December. The place was crowded, heaving with locals and outsiders, all searching for seasonal bargains. Then a double decker bus passing by splashed her coat, and a dozen others, in a spray of muddy water.

It was wet and cold, the skies overcast and raining, with heavier rain forecast to come. The cloud cover kept the temperatures just above freezing, but the windchill factor made it feel far colder.

‘Brr!’ she thought to herself as she dabbed at her dripping nose, ‘Right now I wish I was back in Sweetwater Valley!’

No, first she had to get the Christmas shopping out of the way, including presents for her two boys, Adam and Robert Junior, not that they were boys any longer. And no grandchildren on the horizon, yet from either of them. Both boys had failed marriages, but being still in their early 30s they each had time on their side. She had no other family, no work colleagues and no friends either, to a woman her old friends had all let her down while her family fell apart last year, ending in divorce.

But she did have some strange new friends and family to buy presents for, but some of those were already packed in her late father’s old car, safely parked in her garage at home.

As soon as she got home to her tiny drab little semi-detached house in the suburbs, all she could afford in the divorce settlement, she parked her car on her driveway, close up to the securely locked garage.

Indoors, on the kitchen table, she wrapped the boys’ presents in bright paper, labelled them and left them in the kitchen until she returned. She packed up her last minute purchases in a couple of bags and had a final look around. No decorations up, no Christmas tree, no Christmas food in the refrigerator. Where she was going, she would have a different kind of Christmas. She locked up the house and carried her bags through to the garage.

There the old car stood, the thirty-odd year old Jaguar XJ12, its maroon paint dulled by age and neglect, spotted with rust, the windows smeared with grime, moss and mildew tussling it out for supremacy in one corner of the glass, and all four tyres flat to the ground. She opened the passenger door, which creaked in protest, to place her new bags next to the others already in the foot well.

‘I must get some WD40 on that,’ Caroline reminded herself again, before slamming that rarely used door.

The driver’s door opened silently, smoothly on well oiled hinges, which reminded her of her late father, Samuel Jeremiah ‘Jed’ Pinner, who loved this car, but never actually drove it, suffering a stroke which paralysed him a week before the car, ordered by his late wife, was delivered. She eased herself into the lovingly polished leather seat, pulled the door shut behind her with a smooth click and closed her eyes for a moment’s reflection.

She opened them again. It was decidedly chilly in the garage and her breathing was starting to mist up the inside of the glass.

‘Enough of this,’ she thought, ‘I must get moving, so much to do to get ready for Christmas in Sweetwater.’

She reached over to the passenger seat, where her father’s old Stetson lay. She put it on, leaned back comfortably in the bucket seat and closed her eyes...

When Caroline opened her eyes she was sitting on the hard but now familiar wooden seat in the old stagecoach. It was twilight, somewhen between night and dawn, but then the stagecoach between Sweetwater and Carson always ends up in this twilight zone, a buffer between fantasy and reality.

Her bags of Christmas presents from the car came with her and nestled on the bench seat next to her. Everything in the front two seats of the Jaguar XJ12, her Pop’s Dream Car, always goes with her to Sweetwater if she used the Stagecoach service. Anything in the back seat or in the boot remained in the car. Which reminded her, she needed to speak to her mother about the contents of the car boot. She felt sure that she would know what to do with them.

The only other thing that never comes with her to Sweetwater, is Pop’s Stetson. It must be an essential link that takes her back to reality, she supposed. Something else to discuss with Dove Feather, when she next saw her at the Injun Reservation. So many mysteries in Sweetwater Valley to think about and find solutions to!

The Stagecoach to Carson comes back to Sweetwater each day, usually arriving about noon, but sometimes earlier if there is a full moon for the early ride. Chuck and Dale are the drivers of the four-horse stagecoach. They all sleep just off the edge of the fantasy grid and wake up in time to return, fully refreshed as if nothing has happened. Sometime they bring goods back, sometimes passengers, and they drop off passengers heading to Carson, too, who disappear into nothingness, beyond the fantasy grid.

Chuck was holding the reins in his leathery hands, his sweat-stained ten gallon hat jammed over his head, his chin resting on his chest. Next to him, Dale had his Winchester across his lap, his head lolling back, and snoring almost loud enough to wake the horses. The team of four horses were at rest, ready to awaken on the crack of a whip or a barked command of “Giddy up!”

Caroline climbed a step up, noticing that her comfortable Ugg boots had changed themselves into polished brown leather riding boots, while her size 16 woollen plaid skirt and man-made fibre blouse was now an ankle length silk bottle green dress with a pinched 22-inch waist, full bustle at the back and the front buttoned up to the neck with tiny pearl buttons. The transformation never ceased to amaze her, even though she should have become used to it by now. She gently shook the stagecoach driver’s arm.

“Who? What? Why, howdy there, Miss Bagshawh, I must’ve dozed off for a moment. Dale! Dale! Wake up ya damn lazy good fer nothin’ varmint! Ya’re asleep on the job agin, I should have ya bullwhipped!”

“What are ya bein’ so ornery fer, Chuck? Yu wus a sleepin’ an’ mekin’ a noise like that damned steam buzz saw, that that there carpenter from Carson used ter build the School House the Fall before last, long afore I — oh, Miss Bagshawh, I never seen ya there. I must apologise fer ma lang—”

“Don’t you worry, Dale, I am in no hurry. How long do you think it will take to get to town?”

Chuck and Dale peered forward into the gloom. Not for the first time, thought Caroline, they never look back into nothingness, they only really see Sweetwater Valley.

“Why, ma’am, we’re at Wet Patch Gulch, where we always water the horses and rest. The township of Sweetwater is on’y the other side o’ the ridge. We’ll have ya’ll outside the Grand Hotel in no time at all!”

The team of horses shook themselves awake and snorted, eager to get moving again. Soon the Stagecoach was over the ridge and flying down the dusty track towards the one horse frontier town of Sweetwater, a place that Caroline now regarded as home.

All around the valley, the mountains were topped with snow, and Caroline knew the high pastures of the Lazy C Ranch would be under snow by now and getting to them would involve skilled horsemanship and endurance. She rubbed her hands together. She was looking forward to this, her first winter in the high sierras above Sweetwater.

It was so early in the morning when the Stagecoach rumbled into the town from the East that no one yet appeared to be awake. Nobody stirred at first anyway. A lone coyote at the end of the Main Street looked up lazily from whatever dead creature it was scavenging flesh from, turned and lollopped away out of town and up the trail westward.

A few frozen patches of moisture nestled in the dirt street, and traces of wind blown ice crystals gathered in quiet corners, showed that it had been cold, but the air here was too dry for frost, the sky above clear of clouds, as it usually was in the Township of Sweetwater.

The stagecoach pulled up in front of the Sweetwater Grand Hotel, the horses breathing out steam into the cold air. A lamp glowed dimly in the lobby, but no one came out to greet them.

Dale opened the door for Caroline to step down to the boardwalk, while Chuck collected her shopping bags from the other door and carried them up the steps through to the hotel lobby.

“Thank you boys,” Caroline said, ferreting around in her purse and, next to some £1 and 20p coins, found a couple of more-than-acceptable two-cent coins, with which she thanked them for their assistance.

Once in the hotel, she put down her case next to the shopping bags, took off her bonnet and banged her palm down once on the brass bell on the counter. In the back office Caroline smiled as she fancied she heard someone fall off a chair.

“Who’s there?” stepped out old Henry, the night clerk, spluttering at the intrusion, “well, howdy Miss Bagshawh, I wus jus’ catchin’ up on some ... paperwork. What can I help you with at—” he glanced at the grand clock on the wall, designed, it appeared, more for a railway station terminus concourse rather than the lobby of a provincial hotel — “at a quarter before six in the morning? ... Oh, of course, I was forgetting, you had your Pa Jed’s rooms, ain’t ya?”

Old Henry must be in his seventies, yet he had more jobs than anyone else in town, thought Caroline. As well as night porter at the hotel, he daily swept out the Saloon just a block down the street, and on Saturday night he played honky tonk on the old piano at Ma Goodden’s Good Time Hall on the east end of Main Street, as well as twice a week he cleaned the office and surgery of the mysterious Dentist/Doctor G Hollywell. Again, she had wondered what the ‘G’ stood for but didn’t want anyone to know that she wanted to know.

Mysterious, thought Caroline, because they hadn’t crossed paths yet. When Caroline first came to Sweetwater a couple of months ago, she moved straight out to the Lazy C for a couple of weeks to settle affairs with her half-brother and mother. By the time she returned to the Hotel, just before her recent three-week trip “Back East, via Carson”, the good Doctor had already gone Back East himself, on a family emergency. One of the mysteries she needed to speak to her mother about was the apparent independence of action that all these fantasy characters seemed to have. The dreamworld wasn’t managed quite as well as she would have liked. Old Henry shook her from her thoughts.