Chapter 5

Dr George was called away to a Casualty cubicle, just as the injured girl returned from the toilet. At the same time the girl’s mother arrived to collect her. It took a few minutes of embracing, accepting thanks, and spilling a whole bucket of tears, before Caroline was able to get away from the hospital.

The plumbers’ supply shop, as expected, was shut, locked up tight for the night. Fetching the torch she kept in the car, she shone it through the plumbers’ window, and picked out the radiator she preferred, identified it on a rough sketch she drew on the back of a handbill, added her address and telephone number, and popped it through their letterbox.

When she reached home, she felt quite hungry and tired, so she heated up some soup and, when finished, she put on her thick, warm coat and took a fleecy blanket out to the garage with her. She slipped into the driver’s seat and made herself warm and comfortable, before saying goodbye to the Cotswolds, donning the Stetson and closing her eyes.

It was a cold but sunny dawn in Sweetwater Valley, on the Lazy C ranch, when Caroline awoke instantly and felt fully refreshed.

Mrs Duggan made sure that the party going to the Injun Reservation were filled up with a hearty breakfast and supplied them with extra packages of vittles because, “I ain’t sure what them there varmints eat, but, to be sure, ev’ry Injun I ever sees is a skinny one!”

Caroline filled one of her saddlebags with sweet treats for the Injun children, that she had brought with them, plus a wrapped gift for Dove Feather, which she would keep back in her other saddlebag, if her mother agreed to come back for a family Christmas Celebration at the Lazy C.

It was a eager party of four that rode out along the river bank route to the Injun Reservation. When they mounted up, it was Sam who was the most surprised that Alice wasn’t riding sidesaddle, as she had on their previous trip.

“When did you learn to ride like that?” he asked.

“At my Ma’s at Cottonwood Butte. I had to try, after I see Miss Caroline ridin’ so comfortable, I thought I’d learn.”

Marshal Tom joined in with a booming laugh, “Mah sister wus none too pleased, she don’t hold with no girls on horseback, no siree, Bob, she ain’t never. She reckons all womenfolk should be driven everywhere by coach!”

They hadn’t gone a couple of miles before Sam complimented Alice on her riding. Alice thought, with some conviction, that in order to compliment her, he must have been watching her. Caroline had never seen her smile so broadly before, and it seemed to sustain her throughout the long, tiring ride.

As they rode upstream, they climbed, and as they did so they found more snow had fallen, then, around the other side of the mountain, they found snow was falling steadily. They stopped for a break after about two hours, at a commonly used stopping point, where there was a rocky overhang to provide some shelter from the falling snow.

Caroline asked Marshal Tom about how his investigations were proceeding into the rustlers.

“Well, Miss Caroline, Ah couldn’t find no trace o’ tracks over at Cottonwood Butte. They had a big fall o’ snow that week, that snowed in the ranch house fer a few days. It’s built in a gulch below a bluff, which shelters them from the prevailin’ hot southerly wind in the summer, but this storm came in from the north. They had a foot o’ snow fall in a day, but it wus blown some three feet deep in the drifts. The rustlers must have struck at the start of the storm an’ cut out fifty steers, gettin’ clean away.”

“How many Cowboys would that take to move and control fifty cows in the driving snow, Sam?”

“In good conditions,” Sam answered, “two men would be fine. If it was snowing that hard, I would venture at least three or four. I would drive them south with the wind behind, so everyone could see better, but the McReady’s sheep farm lies in that direction.”

“Yeah, that’s what Ah figured,” the Marshall agreed, “Ah rode all around the ranch but Ah jus’ couldn’t find any sign of what direction they wus headin’.”

“So you think it might be the ... Injuns?” Caroline asked, still having to give the word second thoughts before saying it here. They simply never used the word ‘Indian’, and didn’t appear to know the word existed.

“I don’t!” spoke up Sam, “They have no need to take the risk of stealing anyone’s cows. They haven’t needed to do that for years.”

“Maybe so,” the Marshal commented, “but I will investigate, Sam. I am not like the sheriffs and marshals of old frontier towns, like ya read in the pulp westerns. I ain’t got no posse, no lynchin’ mob, I ain’t goin’ in behind a wall o’ lead. I jus’ wanna look around fer evidence. If they ain’t guilty, I will be the first to apologise to ‘em. If they are guilty, then they will have to repay my Sis fer her loss, say work it off around the ranch, for instance.”

Soon the Injun Reservation was evidentially nearby, as a band of young braves on painted ponies, suddenly and silently appeared, surrounding them, their bows charged with arrows. But they were full of non-threatening smiles.

“Caught you nappin’, huh, Paleface Red Coyote!” one of them laughed. Red Coyote was Samuel Pinner’s Injun name, his mother being an Injun squaw.

“I see’d ya comin’ a mile off,” Sam growled, “That’s why I drew my six gun a while ago and have it under my poncho pointing at your heart, Yellow Snow!”

Yellow Snow looked down. Sure enough, the half-Paleface/half-Injun rancher had his six gun in hand, the barrel making a significant bulge in the poncho and pointing to the Injun’s heart. “Ha! Sneakier than any full Injun, Red Coyote, I reckon we’ll have to call this one even.”

Yellow Snow laughed and all the other braves laughed with him, putting their arrows away back in their quivers. The whole party, white men, women and escorting Injuns, rode into the encampment as one.

Caroline’s mother, Dove Feather, was waiting outside her teepee. Yet it was Red Coyote who jumped down first and greeted his mother in a warm embrace. Caroline and Dove Feather exchanged a more restrained welcome, in the form of light kisses on cheeks, as did Alice, who Dove Feather knew well and had trained to become Caroline’s maid. Dove Feather and the Marshal merely nodded in greeting. Red Coyote was not aware yet that Caroline was a whole instead of a half sister. That was a conversation that would have to wait until the time was right and all three were alone.

And Caroline and Dove Feather would have to wait until the pair of them were alone before they could discuss pressing matters.

“Hi, Mum,” Caroline said later as she entered the teepee, “I wasn’t sure I’d be able to catch you on your own before I fell asleep.”

“That would have been inconvenient, dear,” Dove Feather smiled, “come here, Carrie dear, give your old Mum a cuddle.”

It felt so good, so many years of hurt melting away.

“Tell me about David, Mum, and Samuel. You died, so how did you end up here?”

“I didn’t die, I left that body behind and came here, I stayed here permanently and that old body of mine was dying anyway and eventually died of my neglect. I poured every ounce of my life force that I could spare to build this fantasy world for your father and me to live in. I started it all off at home but my strength there ran out of time and I had to do the rest of it from here.”

“But Dad died here at the same time as back home. How was it you died at home but live here?”