Chapter 4

Caroline and Alice rode out to the Lazy C ranch in that hired single-horse gig. Alice drove it confidently for the first twenty minutes or so, and they were well out of town before she handed the reins over to Caroline. The older woman took them hesitatingly at first, but relaxed once she realised the horse hadn’t missed a stride in the changeover and was virtually driving itself.

“I guess Back East they have fancy Hansom cabs or sedan chairs to take you back and forth, huh, Ma’am? I seed them once in a book o’ yah Pa’s.”

“Not quite, Alice, I think sedan chairs went out, probably, a hundred years ago.”

“So you ain’t seen no sedan chairs?”

“No, and I think they only had, er, have Hansom cabs in New York.”

“Tell me about Back East, Miss Caroline, I bet it ain’t nuthin’ like Sweetwater.”

“It is nothing like here, true. I can take a b— er omnibus into the town of 100,000 people to shop, eat and go home again, and not see or speak to anyone l know.”

“Gee!” Alice’s eyes were wide open, “Ah cain’t walk to the drug store without twenty conversations ‘long the way.”

“Yes, I know! But Back East, there are all these people all crowded together in one place and so many are lonely and sad, and afraid. Here, everyone knows everyone else, and cares about them, and you only have to worry about a few Injuns, rustlers and gunslingers.”

Alice remembered the reason for Miss Caroline coming out to Sweetwater, after her Pa was gunned down in the Main Street by three desperadoes. She put a hand on the back of Caroline’s, “Your Pa loved it here an’ he wouldn’t have wanted to go out any other way, ya know.”

“I know, Alice.”

Caroline fell silent, thinking about her father. Her memories over the past thirty years was of a man who had lost his wife, then suffered a paralysing stroke almost immediately, when he was in his prime aged about 58, and after that was virtually housebound for the rest of his life. Yet he had a whole new life here in this fantasy world, during all that time. Here he had been a vigorous young man, maturing into a respected middle-aged entrepreneur, carving a living town and prosperous ranch out of a desert wilderness.

“I would have liked to have known more about him, his life here. I must speak to Dove Feather to find out more.”

“Well, dang, Miss Caroline, I kin tell you a lot about Jed Pinner, cos my Uncle Tom was his deputy way back when all this wus wilderness, nuthin’ hereabout but rattlesnakes an’ Injuns.”

“Deputy?”

“Yeah, there weren’t no law here in the territ’ry then. There wus just a tradin’ post fer the Injuns here, before the silver mines opened up on Silver Butte, about a mile south o’ town. The town sure built up fast, made o’ tents at first, before Old Man McCulloch’s timber mill opened up an’ the town got built. Your Pa wus one o’ the first here, struck it rich and bought up the best spread in the county and named it after you.”

“The Lazy C?”

“Dang! Ma’am, I never meant—”

“It’s all right Alice, I know exactly what he meant, I settled for the wrong man in marriage. My father never approved of Robert.”

“No, ma’am, it couldn’t have been that. Let me think. Uncle Tom wus about 16 when he became deputy sheriff.”

“You grow up quick around here!” Caroline laughed, “I was still in school at 16.”

“Well, we never had no schoolin’, only what we could pick up.”

“We must do something about filling that school house.”

“I think Mr Jed was hopin’ ya’ll ‘ud come here an’ learn us, if only he coulda git ya to come out West.”

“I now wish he’d told me or, well, been more persuasive,” Caroline said, “So, just an Injun trading post here to start with?”

“Yeah, so they say, tradin’ buck hides mostly, according to Miss Dove Feather.”

“She remembers the trading post?”

“Yeah, she wus just a nuncksquassis, but she had a medicine man fer a father, so folk paid her mind. She took me on to train as ya maid a year before ya came, Miss Caroline, so meybe she does has that second sight that folks whisper that she had.”

“That wouldn’t surprise me, one bit!”

“Well, it wus mah Grandpappy that came out here fust, fer the silver, but the big motherlode wus gone and his claim were all played out, but then yah Pa was Sheriff an’ he needed help in the form of deputies, so mah Grandpappy joined him in the Sheriff’s office. It wus a baptism o’ fire, mah uncle tells me, with gunfights every night.”

“How did he, did he survive?”

“No, he never did, Miss Caroline, but he lasted a few years as Deputy Sheriff. I never knew him, but he sent for his family from Back East and my Grandmammy, Ma and Uncle Tom arrived here, about five years before I wus born. Grandpappy wus cowardly ambushed an’ gunned down, along with a couple o’ other deputies, an’ they wounded ya Pa, too. But my Uncle Tom was a deputy who stood up with yah Pa an’ they plugged them bushwackers so good there wusn’t no need fer any lynchin’!”

“So that’s how your Uncle became Marshal?”

“He wus made Deputy Sheriff for a while an’ he has lots of stories ta tell ‘bout yer Pa, but when the valley became a Terri’try, the Sheriff became a Marshal, an’ Jed Pinner decided ta step down to run the ranch full time, marry his new squaw Dove Feather, an’ raise young Samuel.”

They could see the five-bar gate to the Lazy C Ranch on the track ahead, but unusually, the gate was closed.

Caroline dropped down from the gig and opened the gate for Alice to drive through. As she moved the gate, a brass bell hanging from one of the posts rang out, and rang out again as Caroline closed the gate behind them. As Caroline walked around the back of the gig, she noticed a crate behind the seat full of dark green bottles. Each bottle was wrapped in a cloth to stop them rattling on the rough trail, which is why she hadn’t noticed them before. Painted on the side of the crate in stencilled old-style Wild West lettering were the words “FIREWATER, Fer Injuns Only”.

“What’s this, Alice?”

“That’s a box of firewater delivered from Carson on the Stagecoach, fust thing this mornin’,” replied Alice easily. “Cain’t stand the stuff meself, Miss Caroline, it fair burns ma throat. Far too strong fer me, in fact, all womenfolk round here don’t touch it. I don’t know how the men in that saloon kin sit an’ drink it all night long!”

The bottles were corked, but only half the cork was in the neck, the other half poked out the top. Caroline pulled one of the bottles out of the crate and unwrapped it. Sure enough, the label pasted on it, in that curious Western type, was printed, “Carson Brewery’s Patented FIREWATER Elixir Specially Formulated Fer The Injun Nation, Guaranteed To Make Any Ornery Injun See Red. Drink Responsibly Or Spend The Night In Jail.”

She pulled the cork and sniffed at it, the smell was powerful, but not quite what she expected, so she tentatively sipped some. This “Firewater”, she noted with some amusement, was ginger ale.

“This is ginger ale, Alice.”

“Yeah ma’am ain’t that the honest truth! That stuff really burns ma throat!”

As an amused Caroline climbed back in the gig, after replacing the cork, and rewrapping the bottle back in the crate, they could see a couple of riders heading towards them from the direction of the ranch house. One of them waved his hat in the air.

“That’s Clint, Miss Caroline, I guess he’s bin outriding the steers, worried about rustlers. But I guess too, that Sam wus expecting us to come this way as soon as ya’ll arrived home.”

Yes, thought Caroline, l’m almost home for Christmas.

Clint and his partner rode up to the girls in the gig, both Cowboys full of smiles.

“Howdy, Miss Bradshawh and Miss Alice. Did ya have a good trip Back East, ma’am?”

“I did, thank you Clint. You been out all night waiting for us?”

“No, ma’am,” he chuckled, “we set out just after breakfast to relieve the cowboys doin’ the night watch. Oh, mah pardner here is Seth, he wus one o’ yah Pa’s first hands. I think when you wus here last, Miss Bradshawh, he wus with the cattle drive to the railhead in Pertinence township, Chowtah Territ’try, the place where the railroad ends.”

“Pleased ta meet yah, Ma’am, we all thought the world o’ yah Pa, an’ he talked about yah all the time, so we’re all glad yah’ve come home an’ we hopes yah stay.”

“I hope so too.” Caroline waved at the older cowboy and, not for the first time, wondered if all of these men on the ranch had skin made out of leather, tanned dark by the relentless sun. There were patches of powdery snow skulking in the shade of sagebrush and in gullies, but everywhere the warm winter sun touched, the snow had melted and the ground desiccated once more.