Carla Kelly (4 page)

There hadn't been much time for packing, what with Iris stopping by to lament that she would miss her and Papa making himself at home in her room to offer good advice.

Telephoning Ezra had been difficult, as Mama predicted. He had rushed over from Zion's Bank, hatless and in his shirtsleeves, begging her to think again. They had sat together for a long time on the front porch. She knew she was wounding him, but nothing he said convinced her to change her mind.

He did not want the ring back. “Won't you think about this?” he had pleaded. “I can wait a little while longer.”

“It wouldn't be fair to you,” she told him as she took off the ring and put it in his shirt pocket.

He didn't say anything, but he sat there with his arm around her for a long while, idly pushing the porch swing with his foot. Even now, lying in the Pullman car, she felt a pang uncomfortably close to regret. His arm around her had felt good and secure, and she wondered why he could not have done that when they were engaged.

With everyone's help, she had finished her packing. The kitchen looked a little bare, in fact, with all of her cookery equipment from Boston now crated and ready for the carter. She used most of the sixty dollars that Mr. Otto had sent with the train ticket to buy gelatin, isinglass, Irish Moss, and maraschino cherries, and “anything else that moved,” Mama had teased her. Papa had been properly impressed that Mr. Otto had arranged for a Pullman compartment and not just the open section. “That indicates the measure of his desperation,” he had joked.

Papa had helped her stuff in last-minute necessities. “I doubt there is a spice left in all of Salt Lake City,” he commented as she rearranged the turmeric and cardamom to make room for the almond paste. “Julia, this is an old, longtime rancher. Don't scare him!”

“I don't know what to expect, so I shall be prepared,” she said, standing back so he could tamp down the lid.

“Is that all now, or dare I ask?”

She nodded.

“Here's one more thing.” He handed her a copy of the Book of Mormon. “I think it'll fit right here next to the anchovies and sea salt.”

“I already packed mine upstairs, Papa,” she told him.

“I know. Take an extra one,” he said, putting it by the salt. “You never know who you'll run into.” He kissed her cheek. “Don't look so dubious! These are easier to give away than you would think.”

She nodded to humor him. “I'll even read mine,” she teased.

The look he returned was more sober than she expected. “Do it, honey,” he urged. “Maybe you'll find some answers that you need. I always do when I read.”

“Maybe I will, Papa.” She stood up and watched him as he stopped to close the crate, hammering down the lid. She noticed with a pang that his hair was getting thin on top. “Papa, give me a father's blessing,” she asked.

He sat her down, resting his hands on her shoulders for so long that she felt her first real uncertainty. He placed his hands on her head. The only thing that kept her from tears was when he leaned down and whispered in her ear, “Now, what's your full name?”

It was a blessing much like the one that had sent her off to Boston with a light heart. As she sat there with her eyes closed, she knew she would miss the sound of his voice.
I will miss the priesthood too,
she thought.
I wonder when someone will have the power to bless me again. I wonder why I never thought about that when I answered Mr. Otto's letter.

He paused a long time, and she thought he was through, but then the pressure of his hands increased on her head. “Heavenly Father, protect my child from wind and storm and fire and flood.” She could hear him swallow once or twice, and she gripped her hands tighter in her lap. “Help her to discern good from evil, but bless her not to be afraid to look at people different from her with new eyes.”

They saw her off on the afternoon train, Mama crying and pressing chicken sandwiches into her free hand, and Iris in tears too. Papa gave her a hug and then held her away from him, looking into her eyes, as green as his own. “Julia, if you see an ad in the Cheyenne paper titled ‘Banker Desperate,’ will you come home?”

His last official fatherly act was to give her his handkerchief, after wiping his eyes first. That they parted with laughter was owed entirely to Iris, who blew her nose and announced, “Maybe he won't like your cooking, and he'll fire you!”

“Preposterous!” Mama declared, and blew her nose too.

Julia was standing on the top step and the conductor was about to fold up the lower one when she hesitated. She took a step down and looked into her mother's eyes.
I don't have to do this,
she thought suddenly.
I can return Mr. Otto's ticket and the sixty dollars and tell him that I changed my mind.

She took another step down, and the conductor stood back, a patient look on his face. “Did you forget something, miss?”

My brains, my heart, my courage, my testimony,
she thought, her mind in a jumble. “Mama,” she said.

“You said you were coming, and your word has always been good,” Mama said simply.

“Do you want me to go, Mama?” she asked. It was the voice of her childhood.

“No. But you gave your word. Good-bye, my dear,” she said when she could speak. Her voice was soft, and Julia had to lean out, hand on the rail, to hear her. “Darlings aren't quitters.”

Thoughtful, Julia blew her mother a kiss and forced herself to enter the compartment. She sat down and watched her family from the other side of the window as the conductor pulled up the step and signaled to the engineer.
Smile, Julia,
she ordered herself, waving back and blowing kisses.
You can cry from Ogden to Evanston, if you want to.

And here she was, almost in Cheyenne. She piled her hair into its usual pompadour, wishing the stateroom mirror was larger. Or maybe it showed her too much. The face that gazed back, eyes still anxious, looked too young. “Julia Darling, you may have prevaricated a bit when you wrote that you were mature,” she told her image.

She closed her trunk and waited for the train to stop. There was time enough to indulge in the little fiction that she had created about Paul Otto—that he and his wife had come to Wyoming years ago when it was still a territory and, at great risk to themselves, had scratched a toehold that turned into one of the state's greatest ranches. Now Mrs. Otto was old and needed the help of a good cook who could prepare barley water, arrowroot gruel, and clam frappé for the sickroom.

When that vision paled, she dreamed up a flamboyant Paul Otto, who, with his wife, a famous and slightly scandalous actress, entertained presidents, congressmen, and visiting royalty on their huge ranch, but then wintered in Georgia's Sea Islands.

Mama is probably right; he's just an old rancher who's tired of eating burned steak and greasy hash browns,
she thought as the train sounded its warning whistle. She looked out the window, wondering all over again how such a fossil had ever heard of the cooking school.

If I hang onto my hat and my skirt, I will need a third hand,
she thought, as it came her turn for the conductor to help her down the steps. She took a firmer grip on her hat brim as she left the train. She glanced toward the depot, and sure enough, there were several cowboys staring at her. She ignored them and stood in the middle of the platform, waiting for her trunk and two crates to follow.

In the efficient manner she liked about the Union Pacific, her trunk and two crates were quickly rolled from the train. She nodded as the porter moved them closer to the depot, where they would not be in the way. He asked, “Are you transferring to the Cheyenne & Northern?”

She nodded. To her chagrin, he announced to the cowboys that the lady needed a hack. All five of them rushed forward, grabbed her luggage, and hurried toward the front of the depot. Julia only had time to smile her thanks to the porter and hurry after her belongings.

She dreaded the flirtation and sly looks she knew were coming, but there was none of that. The men set her luggage down carefully and held up their hands to ward off her generosity when she dug in her purse for a tip. The bravest one among them secured a hack and blushed brick red when she smiled and thanked him.
I was wrong,
she thought, as she instructed the driver.
Cowboys are shy.

She didn't notice many automobiles on Cheyenne streets, but she did notice that most women wore last year's hats or even relic sunbonnets. Cowboys walked by in vests and shirtsleeves, with an occasional adventurous linen duster that reached to the ankles. No one was hatless; all wore boots. She peered closer to see if they carried guns.

If the hack driver had slowed down for anything except two nuns crossing the street, she never would have made the transfer connection. As it was, Julia clutched at her hat again and hurried to the train; running was out of the question in her narrow skirt.

There were nothing but day coaches. Soon they were on the prairie, climbing steadily toward mountains and then turning and paralleling a line of bluffs. Her ears popped from the altitude, but her mind was occupied with the view out the soot-coated window. She could not call it beautiful; Utah had more genteel scenery in her cities and towns and spectacular colors and formations in the south. She felt a pull she could not explain as she watched the sparse landscape click by. No compromise of any kind caught her eye.

As the morning passed, she watched people get off at tiny towns with no more to recommend them than a storefront or two and maybe a scraggly tree here and there. Federal. Hat Creek. Chugwater—she smiled at the name—with its impressive cliffs. Dark with trees and deep in shadows, the cliffs seemed to reach down into the valley like giant fingers, ready to claw at the town.

“Gun Barrel,” the conductor announced an hour later.

An army officer seated across the aisle took her valise, deposited it on the platform, and then helped her down. There were the usual cowboys; a stockman (she was beginning to tell the difference now) with a drooping mustache and linen duster; two women whispering together; and other men, who focused their attention more on the boxcars. She could hear the bawling of thirsty calves.

“Is someone coming for you, miss?” the conductor asked.

She nodded, and he left her there to pace the platform and wonder who among the crowd was waiting for her. She winced, wondering if she should have been more honest about her age.
One of these men must have a different idea of maturity than I do,
she thought.
I wonder which one is Mr. Otto?

The breeze had been light when she left the train only minutes ago, but a sudden blast from a different quarter wrenched her hat off her head, yanking out her hatpin. She watched in dismay, one hand to her ruined coiffure, as the hat swooped down the platform. The stockman with the mustache snatched it from the air. She began stuffing in her hairpins again, smoothing down her hair, as he came toward her.

He wore a linen duster that came almost to his boot tops, and she thought it quite romantic, except that his shirt and trousers underneath looked perfectly ordinary, worn out even. His mustache was even more magnificent up close, but he had not shaved in several days, and she noticed that his hair was long at the back of his neck. She tried not to smile as she wondered if any man in the state of Wyoming had completely straight legs.

“Here you are, ma'am.” He held out the hat.

“Thank you, sir,” she replied as she took the poor thing from him. The wind had torn the netting loose, but the artificial cherries looked worse, all droopy over the brim.

She thought the man's eyes were black at first, but they were just dark brown. He took off his hat and nodded to her. Then he looked at her hat. “If you're staying in the state long, ma'am, you might want to rethink the width of that brim.” With another nod, he replaced his own hat and walked back down the platform.

That was impertinent, but honest,
she thought. She admired the nice way his slightly turned-in toes made his coat swing as he walked away.
At least I will have something to write to Iris,
she thought.
When I add that he had high cheekbones and looked a bit Indian, she will be in heaven, especially out there on her dairy farm, where there aren't too many exotics.