The Central Hotel on Main Street was managed by a round, sour-faced woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Jessop. She showed Caroline to a room that was clean if not spacious, while Hutch oversaw the switching of her luggage from the station trolley to the covered wagon that would take them on to the ranch. Mrs. Jessop scowled when Caroline asked for a hot bath to be drawn, and Caroline hastily produced coins from her purse to sweeten the request.
“Go on, then. I’ll knock on your door when it’s ready,” the proprietress told her, eyeing her sternly. The latch on the bathhouse door was flimsy and there was a knot in the wood through which a tiny glimpse of the hallway outside could be had. Caroline kept a careful eye on this as she bathed, terrified of seeing the shadow of a trespassing eye fall over it. The bath was shallow, but it restored her nevertheless. Blood eased into her stiff muscles and her sore back, and she rested her head at last, breathing deeply. The room smelt of damp towels and cheap soap. The last of the evening light seeped warmly around the shutters, and voices carried up to her from the street outside; voices slow and melodious with unfamiliar accents. Then a man’s voice sounded loudly, apparently right below the window:
“Why, you goddamned son of a bitch! What the hell are you doing here?” Caroline’s pulse quickened at such obscene language and she sat up with an abrupt splash, expecting at any moment to hear more cursing, or a fight, or even gunshots ringing out. But what she heard next was a rich guffaw of laughter, and the patting of hands against shoulders. She sank back into the cooling bathwater and tried to feel calm again.
Afterwards, she dried herself with a rough towel and put on a clean white dress for dinner, forgoing any jewels because she had no wish to outshine her fellow clientèle. Without Sara’s help her waist was a little less tiny, and her hair a little less neat, but she felt more like herself as she descended at the dinner hour. She looked around for Derek Hutchinson and, not finding him, enquired of Mrs. Jessop.
“You’ll not see him again this night, I’ll bet,” the woman said with a brief, knowing smile. “He was heading over to the Dew Drop, last I saw him.”
“Heading to where, I beg your pardon?”
“The Dew Drop Inn, over Miliken’s Bridge by the depot. Whatever sustenance he’s taking this evening, he’ll be taking it there and not here!” At this she gave a low chuckle. “He’s been riding out a good few months. A man gets hungry.” Faced with Caroline’s blank incomprehension, Mrs. Jessop relented. “Go on through and sit yourself down, Mrs. Massey. I’ll send Dora out with your dinner.” So Caroline did as she was bid and ate alone at the counter with no company but the inquisitive girl, Dora, who brought out a reel of questions about the east with each course of the meal. Across the room, two battered gentlemen with careworn faces discussed the price of grain at great length.
The morning dawned fair, the sky as clear as a bell, and there was a scent in the air that Caroline was unused to; an earthy smell of dampened ground and new-sprouting sage bushes on the prairie all around Woodward. So different to the brick and smoke and people smell of the city. The sun was strong as they began the final stretch of the journey. As Hutch helped her up into the wagon, Caroline noticed a gun belt now buckled around his hips, a six-shooter holstered into it. It gave her an odd tingling in her stomach. She tilted her bonnet forward to better shade her eyes against the bright light, but still could not help but squint. The sun seemed to be brighter here than it had ever been in New York, and when she commented on this, Hutch tipped his chin in agreement.
“I reckon that’s so, ma’am. I’ve never been that far east myself, or that far north come to think of it; but I reckon any place with so much building and living and dying going on will wind up with its air all muddied up, just like its rivers.” A lively breeze picked up the sand from beneath the wagon wheels, whisking it around them, and Caroline flapped her hands to ward it off. The folds of her skirt were soon lined with the stuff. Hutch watched her, and he did not smile. “Once we’re clear of town there’ll be less of that sand blowing, Mrs. Massey,” he said.
It did not take long to pass through Woodward town. They drove down Main Street, which was flanked predominantly by wooden-framed buildings and just one or two of more permanent construction. There were several saloons, several banks, a post office, a large general store, an opera house. There was a fair bustle of wagons and horses, and a fair number of people going about their business, most of whom were men. Caroline looked back over her shoulder as they left town. From a distance she could see that many of the high building fronts were false, and had just a single storey crouched behind them.
“Is that the whole of Woodward?” she asked, incredulously.
“Yes, ma’am. Over two thousand souls call it home, nowadays, and growing all the while. Ever since they opened up the Cheyenne and Arapaho lands to the south, folks have been pouring in, starting to settle and farm. Some call it a pity, to see the open range fenced off and ploughed under. Me, I do call it progress, although I’m happy to say there’s plenty of land left open to the cow herds yet.”
“Arapaho? What does that mean?”
“The Arapaho? They’re Indian folks. From more northern parts originally, but settled here by the government, like so many others… Now, this land we’re driving through right now belonged to the Cherokee until recently, although they themselves lived further east. They leased it out to ranchers and cattle folk for years before it was opened up to settlers in ninety-three…”
“But is that safe? For civilized people to live where there are Indians?” Caroline was shocked. Hutch gave her a sidelong look, then hitched a shoulder.
“They’ve sold their lands and moved on east. I reckon they’ve as little urge to have white neighbors as some white folk have to share with Indians.”
“Thank goodness!” Caroline said. “I could never have slept at night, knowing that such creatures were roaming around outside the window!” She laughed a little, high and nervous, and did not notice Hutch’s thoughtful gaze, out over the prairie. Copying him, Caroline searched the horizon and felt her stomach flutter, to think that savages might have hunted scalps in this very place not long before. A pair of rabbits were startled from the side of the road and darted off into the brush, visible only by the black tips of their ears.
Some ten or twelve miles along the road, buildings appeared in the distance. Caroline was glad to see them. Each mile they had covered from Woodward had seemed to her another leap from safety, somehow; another mile from civilization, even if it was also another mile closer to Corin. She shaded her eyes for a better view.
“Is that the next town?” she asked. Hutch whistled softly to the horses, two chestnut-colored animals with hard legs and meaty behinds, and brought them to a standstill.
“No, ma’am. That’s the old military fort. Fort Supply, it’s called. We’ll turn off the road soon, I’m afraid, so it won’t be quite as smooth going.”
“Fort Supply? So there’s a garrison here?”
“Not any more. It’s been empty these seven or eight years.”
“But why were they here? To protect people from the Indians, I suppose?”
“Well, that was some of the reason, for sure. But more than that they was charged with keeping white folks from settling on Indian lands. So you could say, they was there to protect the Indians from the likes of you and I.”
“Oh,” Caroline said, deflating a little. She had liked the idea of soldiers guarding so close to the ranch, and had immediately pictured herself dancing a quadrille with men in neat uniforms. But as they went nearer she saw that the fort was low and roughshod, built mostly of wood and earth rather than brick or stone. The empty black gaps of its windows seemed eerily watchful and she looked away with a shiver. “But where does this road go to now?”