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The mourning doves sing their song welcoming the sun to brighten the sky and the plains. The range is quiet, the horses stir and the one heifer in the field begins her morning graze. Early morning wind blows through the previous day's laundry strung up on the line. The lone ranch house sits in its valley. Lucy Pendleton, who spent the night guarding the range from bandits and vermin, begins her morning routine getting up from her perch in the den, trusted shotgun in hand.
Stowing away the gun she pulls her tawny hair into a bun. The job of the eldest daughter when the father is a drunk and the mother is dead is to be both. That means all the housework: laundry, cooking, child rearing falls to her. That also means the ranching and defending does too. Lucy opens the windows letting the early morning breeze greet her. It feels nice, the cool dry Oklahoma air carrying the scent of the wildflowers growing in their little valley.
“The laundry will smell nice,” she whispers to herself heading to their small kitchen to begin a pot of oats for breakfast. After a week in the mines her brother managed to bring back some little luxuries: bread and butter. As a treat she was going to make the kids some toast with the butter and the last of some peach preserves she had gotten from a Georgian merchant heading west. She wondered what that was like, passing from east to west. She wondered what it would be like to go from these flat plains to the new territories.
Lucy didn’t let her mind dwell, as the eldest daughter it meant she could never leave.
The last of her morning routine as the pot of oats bubbled and thickened and the bread lay at top the range to crisp was to count the ‘squirrel fund’. Oklahoma was still a territory which meant the best place for your money was where you could defend it. On the highest shelf, furthest from any light when the cabinet opened was a blacked out jar and inside the jar the only savings the Pendleton family had. The wages earned by her at the Laundresses, her brother in the mines and the little change the Littles bring in from selling their wildflower bouquets to pretty ladies passing through town. She counted fifty and added the two dollars she received from her brother yesterday night. This was good, this was enough to buy meat to smoke and a chicken. Putting the jar back she thought it maybe even enough to have her saddle repaired. It was a nice thought that put a smile on her face as she finished preparing breakfast.
“Tom, Will, Littles!! Get on up, it's time for breakfast!!” She called down the corridor that led to the two bedrooms that the siblings shared. After listening for the signs of her siblings waking up she went to the front door. Unlocking the several locks and removing the bolt she swung the door open to her father’s passed out form on their porch.
“Daddy, if you’re alive, I’ve got oats in the kitchen.”
As soon as breakfast is complete her father is back out the door. With pursed lips Lucy orders the Littles, Liza and Reggie, to clean the table while she checks in on Baby Charles who woke this morning with a fever and sniffle. The baby is no better, he won’t open his little mouth other than to cry at the discomfort of his throat and nose. If he's this sick he’ll need medicine, even worse a possible visit from the town Doctor. They can’t afford either without dipping into the Squirrel fund, which was not negotiable if they absolutely wanted to survive the winter.
Entering back into the kitchen, Lucy pulled her siblings together. “Charlie is sick. Tom has to go to the mine, we need that money. Will, you and the Littles will stay home today.”
“But–”
“I know y'all have school today, I’m going into town for work so I’ll stop by the schoolhouse. I need you and the Littles to watch the house, get the chores done. Make sure to feed Charlie even if he won’t take it. I’ll be back ‘fore supper.”
The road town is quiet as her older brother isn’t one for talk, never has been since going to mines. Lucy wonders what he would be like now if he could have finished school instead of going to work. She wonders if he would still want to be a cowboy like he used to when they were little chasing each other around the stable on horses made of sticks with hay for manes. Lucy wonders if there’s still a part of her brother in there or if like her, when the father is a drunk and the mother is dead, he cast off his childlike self.
As she makes her way deeper into town she can’t help but glance at the Saloon and all its rowdy noise despite the early morning, knowing in its depths lies her father possibly drunk and most definitely gambling away whatever pocket money he has.
“A den of Vice!” cries the Preacher as she passes by. In return, the girls on the upper balcony call to him to free them of their sin. She wonders if they had homes like hers once upon a time. She wonders if in another life she would be dangling her handkerchief coaxing men into that dark and smoke filled building.
As if reading her mind a haggard man calls to her “That could never be you girl,”
The man is balding and blond which doesn’t help him look any less old and looks as if he’d walked the whole trail just to tell her this. She smiles at him.
“Would you be able to spare even a dime, girl? For a sad man trying to get home, I’ve lost everything.”
Lucy stops to consider if she can, if she can help someone less fortunate than herself despite not being very fortunate at all. She pulls a few quarters from her satchel and gently places them in his dirty and dry cracked hand.
“I’m sure you’ll find what you’re missing one day,”
“I ain’t got no work for you girlie,” the Laundress deadpans. “I’ve got all the girls I need, so unless a caravan wanders through here I don’t need the help.”
“But please there’s gotta be something! I need to buy some medicine for my brother!”
“I’m sorry to hear that but I ain’t got work! Come back tomorrow.”
Lucy is shooed back onto the road to the Laundress with promises that she’ll save a spot for her tomorrow and nary a new dime to her name. She wants to curse, wants to cry. Instead she swallows down that feeling and straightens her shoulders, she’ll find work today if its the last thing she does. First stop, the printers and then every other business with an open door.
Resounding no’s at every stop before a pair of cowboys offers her five dollars to help them get supplies around town as one of them is unable to walk. They’re going to be leading the next leg of a journey west of an incoming caravan. She spends the day wheeling the disabled man, Johnny, and listening to their stories of great plains and rivers, of deserts so dry the ground shimmers like a lake in the sunlight. Lucy wonders out loud if she could ever see the same sights as them as they turn back to the Inn where the two cowboys are staying.
“Well, you’re a girl,” says the Italian cowboy in a thick accent. “So you can’t ride on my horse.”
“I have my own horse,” Lucy rebuttals as she helps Johnny up the small set of stairs to the Inn’s entrance where his chair waits.
“You ride?” Johnny asks, getting settled back into the seat. “How ‘bout shoot? There’s lots of scary things that go bump in the night out there.”
“I’d say Imma good shot!” Lucy boasts, “Prairie life ain’t like them nickel novels, ya know. We got lots of scary out here too.”
The two men share a glance, Johnny smiling and the Italian man rolling his green-blue eyes. They seem to have a conversation without words and Lucy supposes when you’re out on the Trail like them you have to be able to speak without uttering a word so as to not alert the ‘scary things’.
“Have you ever shot someone?” The Italian man asks finally.
“No…” Lucy answers truthfully. The man nods at Johnny and takes their things into the Inn.
“He’s just being hard on you ‘cuz you’re a girl. Don’t mind him none. If you wanna join us I’d be happy to have the help on the Trail. It’s just me an’ him. Between me an’ you I’m gettin’ sick of his constant singing into the night.”
They share a laugh even though Lucy couldn’t imagine what the Italian man’s singing could sound like. The laugh she shares though makes her wistful to take his offer, to pack up her horse and nickel novels and say goodbye to the ranch and its wildflowers. Say goodby to the Littles and Will and Tom. Goodbye to the drunk of a father and the grave of the mother.
“I wish I could,” she replies solemnly. Johnny nods his head in understanding and hands her the pay for the day.
“You know where to find us, if you change ya’ mind.” He turns his wheelchair and rolls inside the Inn to meet his companion.
She holds onto the five dollar bill and makes her way to the Doctor’s office.
The Doctor is unfortunately not there when she arrives. Lucy sits on the stairs until the sun finally dyes the sky orange and the clop of his horse’s hooves reach her ears.
“Why Miss Pendelton! What brings you out here?” the Doctor says a top his horse.
“Good evening, sir. My baby brother, Charlie, he’s sick something fierce. Burning up, dry coughing and weezin’. Won’t eat none. Do you have medicine for that?”
“I would need to examine him, why would you not bring him with?”
“He’s three sir,” she tries to keep her voice even. Who in their right mind would bring a wheezing three year old out to town, she thinks.
“A home visit it is then, would you like a ride?”
Lucy’s lip curls, a home visit would cost her. She would need to dip into the squirrel fund no matter what. Even worse she’d have to ride with this man and he’ll probably charge her for that too. Lucy nods and lets him pull her up to ride front. As they pass the Saloon she sees her father tottering back through the doors and wonders if he was kicked out again.
When they arrive at the ranch she quickly dismounts, feeling something is off, the lamps are already on and there’s a hole through her front window.
“Littles! Will!” Lucy calls as she darts into the house, glass crunching at her feet. In the open kitchen there lies Will holding his face amid her kitchen strewn apart, cabinet doors off hinges and porcelain plates in pieces on the dusty floor.
“Lucy!” calls Liza holding Charlie and Reggie right behind. “Daddy, he came and he hit Will and he broke the plates and he screamed at us!”
The Doctor chooses then to walk in. She wants to panic, wants to scream because she just wants Charlie to be well but she knows when Will looks at her with an eye black and filled with blood that their squirrel fund is gone.
“You did a good job, Will. Did the best you could. I’ll handle the rest.” She pats his head. “I need you to do one more for me ok? Keep watch while the Doctor looks at Charlie ok? I’ll be right back.”
By door she pulls out the shotgun she’s always kept close to guard her family.
“Doctor, please see to my brothers, I’ll be back with your payment.”
Lucy doesn’t wait for a reply before heading out the door and to the barn. She doesn’t bother to even sattle her horse, mounting her and immediately going into a gallop into town. Night is falling and the sky is a deep purple. Purple like her brother’s eye. Purple like the flowers her sisters sell in town to add to their squirrel fund. Lucy, who is used to swallowing all her feelings as one does when the father is a drunk and the mother is dead, screams into the wind, bidding her horse to go faster.
When she arrives at the saloon she cocks her gun and fires into the air quickly reloading.
“Bring that scoundrel Adam Pendelton out here!” There's commotion as the balcony girls run inside and the preacher runs for cover. Inside there’s shouting before her father is thrown out to the ground followed by a gang of burly men. Lucy trains her gun on him, no mind to the men jeering at him.
“What’s this now little lady? Why you causing a fuss?” one of them shouts at her.
“This man owes me money.” She replies looking her father in the eye. “Where is it Adam?”
He grimaces, clearly drunk. He begins babbling about a debt and paying it off. Ramblings she does not care for.
“I’ll shoot you dead right now, where’s my damn money!?” She cocks the gun again ready to shoot. There’s more commotion as people begin to exit the various buildings around her. Lucy does not care, mayhaps it's time for the father and mother to be reunited, she thinks.
“Now hold on there,” the man that spoke earlier addresses her. “He owes us a lot more than he could possibly owe you. How ‘bout you take that horse and go on back home, hm?”
Lucy whips the gun on him instead. “I don’t give a damn, he’s gon’ pay me first and you better not get in my way.”
“Well Pendelton looks like we got a problem!” the man laughs. Lucy aims her gun back on her father, he’s sniveling in the dirt road and she’s never been more disgusted by him in her life.
“How much?” She asks her father. He can’t offer a coherent answer so she asks again, this time to the man.
“More than your little ranch is worth.”
Lucy wants to scream again, wants to pull the trigger, wants to end this all but even with a death the debt would remain.
“Lucy…” her father mumbles. “What about her, she's a good working girl. She can get you your money.” Lucy can hardly believe the words out of her father’s mouth. He’d sell her to the Saloon to pay off his debt, he’d sell her to pay for his sins.
The man laughs and seems to consider it, talking with his gang. The people around her begin to murmur. Her father crawls to the hoove of her horse sobbing.
“You have to Lucy, for the kids. They’ll take everything. You have to, you're a good girl.”
Hot tears fill her eyes and she can barely see her fathers dirt covered visage before someone comes up to him and places a hand on his shoulder. Lucy blinks rapidly to rid herself of the tears. The old balding man she had given some change to spoke softly to her father until the man broke down in tears. Then he turned his wrinkled face to her, she notices his face is clean and clothes were lacking all the wear they had earlier in the day.
“Girl, put the gun down. Let me repay your charity.”
Lucy had no idea what he intended but hesitantly she lowered her shotgun. The balding man patted her leg before turning to the men of the saloon.
“Gentleman, how much is the debt in full?”
The leader laughed and came down the two steps to the balding man. He gave the elder man a once over and shook his head.
“Hundred fifty, including interest.”
The balding man nodded and pulled out a little book just about as big as his palm. “If you gentleman allow it, I will take Mr. Pendelton and Miss Pendelton home and in the morrow we will convene and I will write you all a promissory note and check for the full amount.”
“Sir, now I don’t mean to be rude of course, but who are you to offer such money to me?”
“Why of course, I am Steven Steel.”
“The fraud?” the man laughs. The crowd that had formed began to murmur again. Lucy looked around her as the spectators began praising him in hushed words. She could only make out ‘coast to coast railroad’ before one of the group members whispered into the leaders ear. The man’s eyebrows raised and he smiled widely.
“Well, Mr. Steel, we have a deal.”
The air is drier than she’s ever felt, but Lucy can help but smile despite her cracked lips. In her hands a letter from Liza, detailing all the changes in their life since Mr. Steel took the siblings in: They are all in a school in New York and have made many friends. Will has a girl he’s courting and Mr. Steel has made him his apprentice. Charlie has begun to talk in earnest and his favorite word is train. Liza, had some pressed wildflowers in her journal so she’s sending Lucy one so she doesn't forget the smell of home.
Lucy pulls the little flower out of the envelope and sniffs the lingering sweet perfume from its petals. Her companions across the fire are going over the words of a song about a food she’s never heard of. Around her the sounds of a caravan of people heading west and wester still. The flower smells sweeter, she thinks, but maybe everything does when you’re free.