Chapter 16

It's amazing how different life can be with some relatively minor changes.

Bob, for instance, had generally spent about two hours with Millie each day, usually in the evening. An hour of that involved eating. Granted, that other hour was a lot more emotionally charged, but even after they started engaging in sexual behavior, that usually only lasted half an hour, at the most. So in one sense, all Bob had lost was two hours with his girlfriend per day, and only half an hour of nookie ... and only low-key nookie, at that.

Bob, however, didn't look at it in that sense. For Bob, Millie's loss affected him all day long, most days. It was true that there were other things happening to distract him, but most of those things were pretty short term distractions. Some of them even made things worse.

Such as one night, about three weeks after she'd gone. Bob was finished with supper, but since Millie wasn't there, he had nowhere to go, so he sat, sipping coffee.

"I just wanna talk to him for a minute." He turned his head to see Boots standing in the doorway to the dining room. Martin, the waiter was barring her way. "Damn, Martin, I ain't gonna soil up your pretty eatin' room," said Boots, and shoved the man out of her way. That she had matured in Millie's company was visible by the fact that she only shoved him gently.

Martin, who had only been halfhearted in his denial in the first place, stood aside. Just knowing that Boots could now read had made a difference with a lot of folks in town. They still didn't know quite what to make of her, but now she was more educated than some of them. It had caused a sort of grudging respect for her to infect the town.

Boots sauntered over to the table, turned the chair opposite Bob around and straddled it, leaning her breasts against the rungs of the back.

"What's going on, Boots?" he asked. He took a sip of coffee.

"I was just wonderin' iffen you could give me one of them pelvic massage things, like you done fer Millie."

The coffee that spewed from Bob's nose hurt like the dickens, and the tabletop glistened with it. He brought his napkin up to wipe his nose and lips, swallowing. He had to blow his nose to clear it. Through it all, Boots just sat and looked at him. Finally he could talk.

"What brought this on?" he asked.

"Well, I cain't go see Dusty, 'cause it's too soon, but I got the itch. An' I know I could take care of it my own self, except it's so much nicer when Dusty does it. I ain't askin you to do the rest of what he does. But I know it would relieve my urge iffen you helped me out."

Bob surveyed the girl across the table from him. He'd noticed her as a woman before, despite the fact that she dressed and acted like a man most of the time. He was actually glad she'd taken up with Dusty. She was a lot less volatile these days, and more patient. Of course some of that might be the result of Millie's influence, but Dusty was a big influence too. He wondered, idly, what she was going to do when she got pregnant. It was just a matter of time. And it was that errant thought that made him shake his head in wonder. He'd been about to agree to her request!

"I don't think Dusty would appreciate it if we had that kind of relationship, Boots," he said.

She looked to her right, for some reason, and then back at him.

"I know," she said sadly. "But it's just so much better when somebody else is involved."

"Why is it too soon to go see Dusty?" asked Bob.

"Well, fer one thing, we're tryin not to have a baby, so we don't do it all that often. An' I know you and Millie fooled around without doin' the baby makin' stuff and all that, but Dusty and me ... well ... once we get started, it just naturally seems to lead to the stud mountin' the mare, so to speak."

"That's what nature intended, Boots," he said, smiling. "Nature wants you pregnant, because you're a woman."

"I wouldn't have the foggiest notion of what to do with a baby," she said. "I'd be a turrible mama."

"I disagree," said Bob. "I think you'd be a wonderful mother. Unconventional, but wonderful nonetheless."

"I don't know what all of that meant," said Boots, "but I know it was nice, so thanks. You're a good man, Doc. That's why I thought I could ask you fer some help. Cain't ask nobody else. They'd get the wrong idee."

"You know, I've heard there are some things the Indian women do to keep from getting pregnant. You got any friends in the tribes?"

Boots thought on that. "I know one woman. I found her snakebit one day and sucked the poison out. Took her to her camp. They fed me, but I don't know any of their talk. Used sign language that day."

"Well, maybe you could use sign language to ask her what to do," said Bob.

Boots snorted. "Tellin' her tribe what happened to her was as easy as pointin' to the fang marks. She told 'em the rest. That's a far cry from tryin' to figger out how to say what you're talkin' about."

"I have faith in you, Boots," said Bob.

"Even so, they give me grief about comin' on the ranch to see him. They give him grief too."

"They wouldn't do that if you were married," said Bob.

She laughed. "Me? Hitched? Sittin' in some shack with a garden out back? I don't think so, Doc."

"Who says it has to look like that?" asked Bob. "You've never done anything else like a normal woman. Why would anybody expect your marriage to be like other women's marriages either?"

The scout gazed at the doctor for a long minute. She was obviously mulling over what he'd said. Finally she responded.

"He ain't asked me, Doc," said Boots.

"Again, I say, who says that's how it has to work?"

"You sayin' I should ask a cowboy to get hitched to me?" She looked skeptical. "That's like sayin' you should throw an orphan calf in with a mare so she can raise it."

"All I'm saying is that you deserve happiness as much as anybody else, and while the Declaration of Independence of these great United States does not promise you will be happy, it does say you have the right to pursue happiness."

Boots stood up. She put her hands on her hips.

"Thanks, Doc. Iffen this don't work out well, though, I may be back. You an' Dusty are the only men around these parts worth spit, an' if he don't go fer it, I may just have to throw a rope around you."

Bob smiled. "I can think of worse women to be tied up with," he said. "You clean up pretty good when there's a dance on."

To his astonishment, not to mention that of the other patrons in the dining room, she stepped around the table, leaned down and kissed him soundly on the lips. Then, without another word, her long-legged stride took her out the door before anybody could react.

Bob got up from his coffee and wandered back home. It had been bad enough missing Millie. Boots had now reminded him that there was a lush, sexual woman under that buckskin. Now he had a mental image of Boots, naked, beckoning to him to come and enjoy her sexuality. For some reason, though, his image was of her dancing around a fire, naked, like some people thought Indian women did. It was foolish, of course. All the Indian women he'd ever met were just like their white counterparts, just thinking about where their next meal would come from, and what chores needed doing.

He laughed as he took off his clothes, getting ready to go to bed.

But when he lay there, masturbating, he thought about both Millie and Boots.

Missing Millie went far beyond just missing the woman. Before he'd met her, Bob had gone through his daily routine more or less happily. Had someone asked him if he was happy with his life, he'd have said he was as happy as anybody else. In truth, he hadn't thought about whether or not he was happy, in general.

But with Millie gone, he suddenly realized that his life was somewhat boring. There were relatively few major distractions, such as the one when Boots had asked him to masturbate her. That one had stuck in his mind for a week. Every time he saw her, he got half stiff and needed release.

It was mildly diverting that he was left to guess what was going on between her and Dusty. She never mentioned whether or not she'd asked Dusty to "get hitched to her" or what his answer had been, if she had. He assumed she hadn't asked him yet. She'd be as ornery as a bull with a bad tooth if she'd asked him and things hadn't gone well.

Basically, unless he was actively engaged in treating a patient, which usually didn't take massive amounts of time, he was left to sit and think.

And that wasn't good, because what he usually ended up thinking about was that he'd let her go, instead of begging her to stay. Of course he knew he couldn't have made her stay. Her destiny and fortune were in California. Her family was there. She wouldn't have stayed, even if he'd asked her. But it was easy to imagine that she would have said yes, and that he could be lying in bed with her, making love, instead of building up calluses on his penis with his hand.

About the only other thing he thought about was that, while he was in the war, he'd been saving lives, doing important work. Now, all he did was stitch up the odd wound, and set the occasional broken bone.

Without Millie, he felt like his life was pretty useless. It was, in fact, that very thing - the feeling of uselessness - that caused Bob to do something he would otherwise have been unlikely to do.

It happened when he was called to the train depot one day to treat one of the engineers of the train for an arrow wound. A bunch of Indians had ridden beside the iron horse, whooping and shooting arrows at it. One of them had struck the engineer in the arm as he leaned out the window of the locomotive to shoot a pistol at the marauding band.

When he was finished cleaning and bandaging the wound, and the train had chuffed away, Bob turned to leave and happened to see the hole in the ground, covered over with three or four planks now, that had been under the outhouse Millie had been dragged away in. No one had ever rebuilt the privy. The planks had been thrown over it so that no one would fall in the hole, but that was all that had been done.

So Bob went to see Mayor Robinson.

That conversation started and ended with the mayor saying the privy was on the railroad right-of-way, and that the town had neither the responsibility or the right to rebuild.

So Bob went to see Harvey Watkins, who said the ranchers whose boys had destroyed the thing were supposed to rebuild it, but never had.

The J R Connected ranch was the closest. That was John Relway's outfit. So Bob, having nothing better to do, got his horse from the livery and rode out there to talk to John. It turned out that the men had agreed to split the cost and have the boys rebuild the privy, but just hadn't gotten around to it.

Bob offered to be the foreman for the project.

These days lumber usually came from the sawmill in Silver Springs in the Colorado Territory, by train, rather than by wagon from back east. So telegraph messages were sent and arrangements made. Two weeks later the eastbound train stopped long enough for the boys to unload lumber and nails onto the same wagon that had carried the victim of their prank to Bob's surgery, some five months before. There was a sense of urgency in the boys. Two of them had turned fourteen, which made them both feel like this incident, which they thought of now as something "from their youth," needed to be put behind them. Plus it was getting close to first snowfall, and nobody wanted to work on this project when it was really cold.

And so it was that, exactly one week later, as the door of the new outhouse was being hung, the eastbound train stopped again. The bell rang, which was a signal that passengers were debarking. Naturally, the little work crew, and their foreman, looked over to see anything of interest.

And what they saw was most interesting.

Because what they saw was Elizabeth Philby, the young woman they all knew as Millie, step down off the train, escorted by a young man.

She was dressed in what could only be called finery, flowing skirts of green satin, with forest green ribbon worked into the design of the gown. White lace covered her bosom, but rather than hiding it, the cloth seemed to display the bulge of her breasts, announcing her femininity somehow. She wore a hat that was tall, and festooned with feathers. As her foot reached for the ground, a high-top button shoe, made of cream colored leather could be seen. Her cheeks were pink, and her lips a darker red. Her hair fell from beneath the hat in coils of shiny, raven black.

It made Bob's balls hurt.

But what made his heart hurt was her gloved hand, resting possessively on the arm of the man who accompanied her. He was tall, and dressed in a suit of grey and black striped material. Wearing a top hat and polished boots, he was obviously a man of means, and handsome enough to make Bob want to shoot him.