Her Hesitant Heart. Carla Kelly

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СКАЧАТЬ her short walk from the depot to the stage station. Perhaps she could wire Emily at Fort Laramie and explain her plight. Maybe she could leave her luggage at Western Union. Surely some establishment needed a temporary dishwasher, or even a cook.

      If not that, perhaps she could find a church, and pour out her troubles to a minister. Her optimism faded. If she had to tell her whole story to a minister before he would help her, she would fail. Her own minister in Carlisle had counseled her to return to the man who had abused her. When she refused, he had shown her the door without another word.

      “Mrs. Susanna Hopkins?”

      Startled, she looked up at a tall man in uniform. His greatcoat was unbuttoned, and she saw gold braid and green trim on his collar. She glanced at his face and then looked away, shy, even though her brief glance took in a kind face. “Do … do I know you?” she stammered.

      “No, ma’am, you don’t, but I have been sent by Mrs. Emily Reese. She said you were medium height and blonde, and I’ve been looking.”

      She took a deep breath. “You’re from Fort Laramie?”

      “Yes, ma’am.” He gestured to the bench. “May I sit?”

      “Of course, uh, Captain …” She paused, not sure of his rank.

      “Major, ma’am, Major Joseph Randolph, with the Army Medical Corps.”

      They shook hands. Before she could stop herself, Susanna blurted out, “I’m three dollars short of the fare for the Cheyenne-Deadwood Stage.”

      “It happens,” he told her, unperturbed.

      He was a big, comfortable-looking man, his hair dark but graying. Fine lines had etched themselves around his eyes and mouth, probably from the sun and wind. Susanna thought his eyes were brown, but she gave him only a glance.

      “When Emily heard I was to be in Fort Russell, she thought I could spare you a trip on the Shy-Dead.”

      “How kind of you!” She stopped, embarrassed.

      She could tell her exclamation startled him. “It’s easy, Mrs. Hopkins, if you don’t mind keeping company with men in an ambulance.”

      “An ambulance?” she asked doubtfully. “Someone is ill?”

      “We travel that way in the winter, when we can.”

      He had a distinct Southern drawl, stringing out his words in a leisurely way, and saying “ah” instead of “I,” and “own” instead of “on.” She hadn’t thought to hear a Southern accent from a man in a blue uniform.

      “I was planning to meet the train, but New Year’s interfered,” he said.

      She had to smile at that artless declaration. “Too much good cheer?”

      He smiled back. “Medicinal spirits! Fort Russell’s post surgeon and I refought Chattanooga and Franklin, and before I knew it, I was late. We’re leaving tomorrow morning, ma’am. There’s room for you.”

      “I’m obliged,” she said. “I’ll be ready.” She stood up, as though to dismiss him, unsure of herself.

      He stood, too. “I can’t just leave you here until tomorrow morning,” he told her. “I’ll take you to a hotel.”

      She shook her head. “I’ll be fine.” She looked around at men sitting on benches, a cowboy collapsed and drunk in the corner, and an old fellow muttering to himself by the water bucket.

      “A modest hotel,” he insisted.

      She could tell he wasn’t going to leave her there. “Quite modest, Major Randolph,” she replied.

      “Cheyenne has only modest hotels,” he informed her. “There is a pathetic restaurant close by, and we’ll stop there, too.”

      “That isn’t necess—”

      “I’m hungry, Mrs. Hopkins,” he said. “So is my driver. Be my guest?” He peered at her kindly. “Don’t argue.”

      “Very well,” she said quietly.

      “Excellent,” he said, as he buttoned his greatcoat and put on his hat. “You’ll find it a relief from those cook shacks along the UP route.”

      “I never got close enough to the counter,” she said, then stopped, embarrassed.

      “In two days?” the major exclaimed. “Mrs. Hopkins, you are probably hungry enough to chew off my left leg.”

      She had the good sense to capitulate. “I am famished, but not quite that hungry!”

      He picked up both of her bags. “This all your luggage?” he asked.

      “I left a portmanteau at the depot.”

      “Then we’ll get it.”

      He helped her into the boxy-looking wagon with the straight canvas sides. The vehicle was unlike any other she had ever ridden in, with leather seats along each side, and a small heating stove. “This is for wounded people?” she asked, after he got in and seated himself opposite her.

      He nodded. “You can take out the seats and stack four litters in here. Wives and children in the garrison generally travel this way.”

      The major fell silent then and she was content not to make conversation with someone she barely knew. At the depot, the private retrieved her portmanteau and stowed it beside her other luggage in the rear of the ambulance. She was soon seated in the café with the major, the private having found a table in the adjoining bar.

      She ordered soup and crackers. The major overruled her and chose a complete dinner for her. “You’re my guest,” he reminded her, “and my guests eat more than that, Mrs. Hopkins.”

      She was too hungry to argue. “Thank you.”

      “You’re welcome. How would it look if you starved while in my company? The Medical Corps would rip off my oak leaf clusters and kick me down to hospital steward.”

      He left her at the Range Hotel, but not without making sure the clerk put her in a room between two families. “This town’s just a rung up from Dante’s inferno. Never hurts to be careful,” he told her.

      She gave him the same startled look that had puzzled him in the stage station, but he understood now—Susanna Hopkins was unused to kindness.

      He would gladly have paid for her room, and she must have known that. Before he could say anything to the desk clerk, she took out the money she must have reserved for the stage, and laid it on the counter. She hesitated for a moment.

      She kept her voice low. “Major, do I pay something for my transportation?”

      “No, ma’am, that’s courtesy of the U.S. Army.”

      “How kind,” she said, and returned to the desk clerk. Joe was struck again at her wonder, as though good fortune had not been her friend, or even a nodding acquaintance recently.

      He СКАЧАТЬ