Vows, Page 2

  "It's understandable why my daughter would be a little touchy over being criticized about the horses," Walcott commented, dropping onto the chair and rolling it toward his desk. It bumped over the rough floor like an unsprung wagon over frozen ruts. "She's been around 'em all her life and she's corresponding with a man from Cleveland, name of Barnum, who's teaching her veterinary medicine."

  "Veterinary medicine—a girl?"

  "There are a lot of animals out here. She's putting it to good use."

  "You mean she's studying by mail?" Jeffcoat inquired with wonder.

  "That's right," Walcott confirmed, reaching for a receipt book and a pen. "It comes pretty regular now, five times a week most weeks, by horseback. Here you go." Walcott swiveled around and handed Jeffcoat a receipt made out for two bays with white markings and a doublebox wagon, green with red trim. A careful man, Walcott, one who'd never be accused of horse theft, keeping records as he did.

  "You mind my asking what you're doing in town, Mr. Jeffcoat?"

  Pocketing the receipt, Jeffcoat answered, "Not at all. A man named J. D. Loucks placed an advertisement in the Springfield newspaper about this town and what it had to offer an enterprising young man. It sounded like a place I'd like to live, so I took the train to Rock Springs, outfitted there, and drove the rest of the way by wagon; and here I am."

  "And here you are … to do what?"

  "I intend to set up a business and make my home here as soon as I buy some land to do it on."

  "Well"—the older man chuckled quietly—"J. D. Loucks'll be more than happy to sell you as many lots as you want, and this town can use more young people. What's your line of work?"

  Jeffcoat hesitated a beat before replying, "I do some blacksmithing. Taught by my father in Springfield."

  "Would that be Missouri or Illinois?"

  "Missouri."

  "Missouri, eh? Well then, he shod plenty that came through this territory on their way up the Oregon Trail, didn't he?"

  "Yessir, he did."

  "This town's already got one smithy, you know."

  "So I see. I drove the streets before stopping here."

  Edwin rose and led the way to the team still waiting outside. "But I'll tell you something that's no secret to anyone in Sheridan. Old Pinnick could do better work and more of it. Spends more time at the Mint Saloon than at his forge, and if he'd've shod Sergeant right in the first place we wouldn't be doctoring him now."

  "Pinnick, huh?"

  "That's the name of your competition: Walter Pinnick. Too lazy to put a sign out above his smithy that says so. Instead he just lets the sound of his hammer bring in the customers … when it's ringing." Outside in the sun Walcott paused to cock his head and listen, and—sure enough—the ringing of earlier was absent.

  "Old Pinnick must've got a touch of the dry throat," he ended with a sarcastic drawl, then moved on toward the team.

  Jeffcoat cogitated momentarily before deciding it was best to be straightforward with this man.

  "I want to be honest with you, sir. I've been around horses all my life, too, and I plan to do a little more than smithing. The truth is, I plan to open a livery stable."

  Walcott paused with his hand on a bridle, and turned to look back at the younger man. The wind seemed to catch in his throat before he let it escape with a soft whistle.

  "Well…" he said, letting his chin drop. For a moment he mulled, then chuckled and looked up. "You kind of took me by surprise there, young man."

  "I think, from what I've seen and read, that there's business enough in this town for two of us. Lots of Texas cowboys either trailing herds through here, or starting their own small ranches in the vicinity, aren't there? And immigrants coming, too, now that the land has been thrown open for homesteading. A valley like this is bound to attract them. Hell, it's ninety-five miles wide, to say nothing of the sheep-ranching land in the hills up there. I think Loucks is right. This town is going to be the center of commerce, and soon."

  Again Walcott chuckled wryly. "Well, let's hope so. So far it looks like the center of commerce around here is Buffalo, but we're growing." He turned toward the horses. "You plan to leave the wagon too?"

  "If I could."

  "I'll pull it around back by the horseshoe pits. From the looks of this load you plan to get busy building right away."

  "Soon as I buy that plot."

  "You'll find Loucks's place up on Smith Street. Ask anybody, they'll point it out."

  "Thank you, Mr. Walcott."

  "Call me Edwin. It's a small town. We mostly go by first names."

  Jeffcoat extended a hand, relieved that the man had taken the news so graciously.

  "I appreciate your help, Edwin, and you can call me Tom."

  "All right, Tom. I'm not sure whether to wish you good luck or not."

  They laughed, parting; and Jeffcoat removed his carpetbag from his wagon raised a hand in farewell, and advised, "The horses' names are Liza and Rex." Watching Tom Jeffcoat move off, Edwin felt a brief stab of envy. Young—no more than twenty-five—and adventurous, far flying, with his whole life before him and choices still to be made in a territory where young people were granted the right to make those choices for themselves. It had been different when he was in his twenties. Then a man's future was often dictated—as his had been—by stern, dominating parents who planned his life with the best of intentions but without consulting him. They'd planned it all, from how he would earn a livelihood right down to the woman he would marry, and he'd been a dutiful, obedient son. He'd become a hostler like his father, and had married one Miss Josephine Borley, to whom he was still respectfully wed. But there was another whom he'd never forgotten.

  It had been twenty-two years but he thought of her still. Fannie. With her bright eyes and blustery spirit. Fannie, Josephine's cousin, as different from Josie as ash is from coals. Fannie, who instead of asking why, always asked why not. Fannie who at age seventeen had fought for women's suffrage, ridden astride and secretly smoked a cigar with him, then demanded, "Kiss me and tell me if I taste like smoke." Fannie, from whom he'd run soon after his marriage because remaining near her would have proven dangerous. Fannie, who'd inherited her parents' wealth after their deaths and had used it to travel and experience things that most women would have found outlandish, even improper. Fannie, whose latest letter reported in her usual breezy fashion that she'd purchased a Monarch bicycle and had joined the Ladies' North Shore Bicycling Club, which was planning a tour-day outing from Maiden to Gloucester, Massachusetts, with overnight lay-overs at Pavilion and Essex House, briefer stops at Marblehead Neck and Nahant and such attractions as a picnic lunch on the rocks at Pigeon Cove and visits to Rafe's Chasm and Norman's Woe.

  Fannie, outrageous Fannie—what did she look like now? Was she happy? Did she love anyone? She'd filled her life with the uncommon, the progressive the liberal, but never with a husband. Why? In twenty-two years, had there been anyone special? Her letters never included any mention of men beyond the most casual description of her social activities. But Edwin had never stopped wondering if there was one special man, and he never would.

  It was because of his memories of Fannie, he knew, that he'd never resisted any of Emily's outrageous wishes. Emily was so much like the Fannie he remembered that he loved her unconditionally and had always secretly hoped she might turn out like Fannie—part rebel, part sprite, but all woman. When his daughter began tagging along to the livery stable, asking to help with the horses, Edwin had laughingly allowed it. When she narrowed a pair of his pants and began wearing them around the barn, he made no comment. When she read in the newspaper of Dr. Barnum's correspondence course on veterinary medicine and asked permission to apply, he had obligingly paid for it.

  Because his own life had been indubitably dulled by parents who'd forced their will on him, he had, as a young father, vowed he'd never do the same to his children.

  And now Emily was eighteen, and quite, quite like the Fannie of old—single-minded, wearing bri
tches, taking up masculine interests, an upstart in the eyes of many.

  Returning to her after the departure of Tom Jeffcoat, Edwin found Emily much mollified. She was waiting in the corridor between the box stalls with two feed boxes already filled and four snap lines in her hand as he led Jeffcoat's horses inside and stopped before her.

  "Oh, Papa. I'm sorry." She walked against him and hugged his chest with the ease of one accustomed to doing so often. With reins in both hands, Edwin could only drop his cheek affectionately against her scratchy wool cap.

  "No harm done. We got his business anyway."

  She stepped back and looked into her father's face, finding the forgiving grin she'd expected.

  "He did make me angry though, calling me young fellow. Do I look like a young fellow to you?"

  "Mmm…" With a half smile on his face he assessed her cap, apron, and boots. "Now that you mention it…"

  She tried to hold back a smile, but it won in the end. "Honestly, Papa, sometimes I don't know why I love you so." She gave him an affectionate mock punch, then sobered. "How's Mother?"

  "Resting. There's no need for you to hurry back. Help me take care of the horses first." He understood that she preferred the work at the livery barn to the nursing and housework at home and tried not to burden her unfairly with domestic tasks that seemed never-ending as the ailing Josephine grew less and less able to cope with them. He sensed his daughter's unconscious relief as she eagerly took a pair of reins, looked up into the mare's brown eyes, and asked, "What's her name?"

  "Liza."

  "And his?"

  "Rex."

  "Come on, Liza, let's get you undressed and rubbed down."

  They worked together amiably, securing the horses in the center of the corridor, removing their harnesses, cleaning their coats with dandy brushes, raising the fecund scent of horse sweat. While she stroked Liza's warm, damp hide, Emily inquired, "How long will these two be staying?"

  "A week … maybe more."

  "While he does what?" She refused to speak Jeffcoat's name, though she'd clearly overheard it.

  "Buys himself a lot and puts up a building."

  Emily's hand stopped moving. "A building?"

  "He's a blacksmith. He's here to set up a business."

  "A blacksmith!"

  "That's right, so try to get along with him if you can. We'll probably be using his services in the future if he turns out to be even a quarter as sober as Pinnick."

  She started brushing again, with more elbow grease than necessary. Edwin glanced at his daughter's face to find it darkened with a scowl as she wielded the dandy brush, then tossed it aside in favor of a curry comb. Guessing her reaction to the rest of his news, Edwin added carefully, "That's not all."

  Emily's head snapped up and their gazes met

  "What else?"

  "He plans to do his smithing in his own livery barn."

  Her mouth dropped open. "He what!"

  "You heard me right."

  "Oh, Papa…" Her dropping note held true sympathy. With all he had to worry about, must there be more? Mama ill and everybody trying to do double shifts at home and here. And now this! She'd like to take J. D. Loucks and his advertisement and Mister Tom Jeff coat and drop them off the edge of a butte!

  "At least he was honest about it," Edwin observed.

  "What else could he be when he's going to build something as big as a livery barn?"

  "It's a free country, and for all we know he might be right. There might be enough business here for two."

  "Where does he plan to build?" she asked belligerently.

  "Your guess is as good as mine."

  But they both knew. J. D. Loucks could sell him whatever lot he wanted. The town was his. He'd bought it seven years ago, staked it out on a forty-acre plot, drawn up a plat on a piece of brown wrapping paper from his store, prepared a petition for incorporation, and was granted such a year later by the Wyoming Territorial Assembly. He got himself chosen as mayor, named the town after his Civil War commander. General Philip H. Sheridan, and went to work enticing young blood to settle there.

  It was a rancher's town. Loucks had made it so, recognizing the value of the valley's rich grassland and anticipating a prosperous future brought by the drovers herding cattle up the Bozeman Corridor from the depleted grasslands of Texas. The town had everything: vast tracts of sub-bituminous coal within a few miles meandering Goose Creeks tracing irregular dark green lines across it, the second-lowest average wind velocity in the United States, and thousands of adjacent acres of Indian lands thrown open to the public domain now that the Indian Wars were over.

  The tempting ads Loucks had placed in eastern newspapers bore speedy results. Naturally, the lots along Main Street had sold first; already Main was filled with businesses, from the Windsor Hotel at the south end to the creek at the north. It was the side streets such as Grinnell on which lots were still available.

  "Well, he'd better stay away from here!" Emily Walcott seethed, turning Jeffcoat's horse into a stall. "I don't want to be bumping into him any more than I have to."

  As it turned out, she bumped into him less than an hour later. She was heading home to check on her mother as Jeffcoat and J. D. Loucks came rolling down the street in Loucks's fine Peerless buggy, obviously on a tour of the town. She came up short in the middle of the boardwalk as Loucks, with his flowing white beard drove past behind his matched grays. Emily glared, tight-lipped, at the man beside him. He must have gone to the hotel and mucked off. The whiskers were gone and his frock coat had sleeves, and his string tie looked proper enough against a clean white shirtfront. But his grin made her fists ball.

  Jeffcoat touched his hat brim and nodded while Emily felt the color soar to her cheeks. His eyes remained fixed on her until the carriage drew abreast and passed. Only then did she resume her angry stride, wishing she had fired the pitchfork at him when she'd had the chance.

  * * *

  Chapter 2

  «^»

  The home of Emily Walcott was unlike the other homes she knew. It was always messy; meals were never ready on time; sometimes they ran out of clean laundry; and the lamp chimneys were in constant need of polishing. It hadn't always been that way. When Mother was healthy, back when they lived in Philadelphia, their house had been cheery and well maintained. Suppers were ready on time, laundry hung on the line every Monday morning and was ironed on Tuesday. Wednesday meant mending. Thursday odd jobs, Friday bread baking, and Saturday cleaning.

  Then Mother had started ailing and all that had changed. At the beginning they hadn't thought much of her fatigue. In fact, they'd all laughed and teased her the first time they'd come home to find her napping when dinner should have been on the table. Her illness had advanced insidiously, and months passed while none of them attributed her weight loss to anything out of the ordinary. She'd always, since bearing her two children, been plump. As the pounds disappeared and she took on a trimmer, younger shape. Papa had looked pleased and sometimes teased her and made her blush. But then the coughing started and his teasing changed to concern.

  "You must see a doctor, Josephine," he'd insisted.

  "It's nothing, Edwin, really," Mother had countered. "Just old age creeping up on me."

  But that had been only two years ago, when she was thirty-eight. Thirty-eight, yet she had begun withering away before their eyes. Her cough grew harsh and frequent and left her increasingly weaker while her family stood by feeling helpless.

  Then Papa had read the article about the successful Philadelphia hatter, John B. Stetson. Stetson had been a young man when the doctors told him he had lung trouble and gave him but a few months to live. Deciding there was only one way to prove their prognosis wrong, young Stetson had made up his mind that he must get away from the crowded, smoke-clogged city and out into the open; he'd struck out for the Far West, which at that time meant Missouri. Yet he'd continued even farther, all the way to Pike's Peak, tramping much of the way on foot, sleeping in the open, taking
the weather as it came. In spite of the hardships of the trail and of the year he spent as a placer-miner in the high Rockies, his health made a remarkable improvement. He's returned to Philadelphia with a mere hundred dollars in diggings, but with the most robust health he'd ever enjoyed. Strapping and strong, John B. Stetson had credited the West with giving him back his health.

  With the hundred dollars he'd built a hatting empire. And with his eternal gratitude for the restoration of his good health, he'd schooled and cared for others becoming a stickler for fresh air and sunshine, flooding his factories with both He'd been too busy to go to a doctor, so when the need arose, his physician came to him in his own office. Stetson next began bringing into his office any of his employees needing treatment. This idea, like all of his ideas, was enlarged upon. When his own physician's services were outgrown, specialists in various lines were called in. A day came when Stetson realized that if he wanted to escape the parade of doctors and employees now marching through his office, he must make other arrangements.