Chapter 7

The Pinkerton trio rode for well over an hour before the sun crested the horizon.  Joseph slowed his horse to allow him the opportunity to absorb the fiery beauty of the early upcoming sunrise while Oliver hurried to catch up with Nate.

“How was she?” Oliver asked with a snicker.

“From now on, you keep that trap of yours shut,” Nate scolded. 

Oliver laughed as he said, “She looked a sight when you came inside.  What’s that story about falling in a pile of shit?”

“How can a widow be untouched is what I want to know,” Nate said, more to himself than to his buddy.

“Is that a joke?” Oliver asked.

“The joke was on me,” Nate replied. “Im not in the habit of kissing and blabbing about it, but I’m angry over the fact that the tart had us all fooled.”

“You can’t call a virgin a tart,” Oliver objected.  “That’s not right.”

“Neither is entrapment,” Nate spat, “but you’re right. It was wrong for me to disrespect her that way.”

“She tried to trap you?” Oliver mused with surprise.  “She seemed so quiet and nice.”

“I should have listened to my gut. Now, she’ll show up pregnant with a brood of brothers carrying shotguns and demand I marry her,” Nate lamented.

“I told you before to get yourself a condom to carry with you,” Oliver protested.

“Condoms are for whores,” Nate argued. “I’m not big on whores.”

“You must not be getting it very often if you won’t go with a whore.  Besides, whores don’t try to trap you,” Oliver insisted.

“All women try to trap you,” Nate said with a tone that emphasized his disdain. “Some are just smarter than others.”   He thought a moment and added, “How often I get some isn’t your business.”

“Isn’t she heading back east?”  Oliver asked, ignoring Nate’s last remark.  “I’m sure that’s what she said.  You’ll probably never see her again.”

“I can only hope,” Nate said.  “Never again will I listen to your damned advice.”

“What advice?” Joseph asked as he caught up with his buddies.

“Nate poked the widow last night,” Oliver said with a grin.

“Please show some respect to the woman.  She may be poor, but she’s not a whore,” Nate growled.

Joseph's eyes lit up and his body came to attention.

“I thought that bit about falling in cow shit was a lie. Why was she wet?” he asked.

A sour look swept across Nate’s face. 

“I had to cover for the fact that she bled on her dress,” he said.

“Bled?” Joseph said.

“As incredulous as it seems, the widow was untouched,” Oliver said.  “I can’t figure that one out.”

“I can,” Joseph said proudly.  After a long silence, and when he was sure he had their full attention, he continued. “The old couple knew who she was, although I don’t think she knows that they know.  She’s the talk of Wichita Falls territory.  Turns out she’s a spoiled socialite from Boston who married some rancher by proxy on a whim and, as luck would have it, the day she got to town was the day he was found dead on the side of the road.” He paused a minute to emit a chuckle while adding, “They call her the Paper Widow because she never saw more than a piece of paper during that marriage.” After his companions nodded and expressed their approval of the appropriate nickname, he continued with, “She toughed it out on the ranch for a bit until a neighbor took her in.  She sold her dead husband’s livestock and bought passage back east.  She still owns the ranch though.   I don’t think she sold the land.”

“She’s dressed pretty poorly for a socialite,” Nate said. “Any socialite I know wouldn’t be caught dead in that dress.”

The look of mortification on Elise’s face when he mentioned she should be in black made better sense to him now.  Socialites were extremely contentious of their image. It still didn’t explain why she would be wearing such a rag.

“That’s where it gets better,” Joseph said.  He was clearly pleased to be the bearer of such good gossip.  “It seems our Mrs. Meacham might have been a victim of the Jefferson gang because, by the time she reached Wichita Falls, all she had to her name was the clothes on her back.  I see she’s got a travel case, so she must have purchased some things to replace them.  If I know socialite women, she’s saving those fine clothes for the last stretch of her trip.  That’s what my sister would do, anyway.”

“Your sister’s not a socialite,” Oliver scolded.

Joseph’s body tensed as he said, “She’s a woman.”

“I don’t know if I’d call our Mrs. Meacham a woman,” Nate said. He was satisfied that she was a socialite, but still unhappy with her lack of womanly wisdom.  “She was so uninformed about things a woman should know.  It was more like I’d poked a child, than a woman.”

“So, she wasn’t any good?” Oliver asked with a deflated tone.

“I didn’t say that,” Nate barked.  “What I said was that she didn’t know shit about things a woman should know when it comes to preventing babies. Stuff like that.”

“Maybe she doesn’t have any sisters,” Joseph offered. 

“Girls are the biggest gossips I know,” Oliver protested.  “Sisters or not; girls talk about everything together. This gal had to be living in a cocoon not to know things a woman should know.”

“She sure was pretty,” Joseph said wistfully.  “I can just imagine her in a fine dress riding in a fine buggy that’s pulled by a fine horse.”

“Next to a fine man,” Oliver chided.

“Who isn’t me,” Nate added.

The three of them joked and laughed about women and their methods of trapping men for the better part of an hour before they realized they were close to the area where the Jefferson gang’s hideout was reported to be.  Putting all thoughts of sly females behind them, they focused on the matter at hand.  The excitement of being on such a prestigious assignment was long gone.  They were eager to wrap things up and get back home.

They left the main path that doubled as a road and followed a deer path up the hillside   Once they reached the top, they could see down into the small, cozy valley that was nestled on all four sides by hills.  Smack dab in the middle of the valley were several small buildings.  Smoke billowed out of one of the chimneys, indicating someone was there.

All talking ceased as they silently made their way down the hillside.  They had no idea how many men they would run into, so it was important that they have the element of surprise on their side.  They had hopes of it being only the six members of the gang, but from the look of the houses, the gang had family.

The sound of a baby crying in the distance alerted them to the fact that there would be women and children to contend with.  Oliver scowled his dissatisfaction, but said nothing.

They hid their horses in the trees and slithered on their bellies through the tall grass until they could crouch behind the nearest house.  All was quiet within.  Joseph cautiously peered through the window.  The one room building looked empty, but there was a curtain drawn along the corner that could have someone hiding behind it.  He debated what to do.  Picking up a tiny pebble, he tossed it through the open window to see if he would get a reaction.  All was quiet.

Determining the building was empty, they moved to the next one.  This too was empty.  There were four houses in all.  Three were empty.  The fourth one housed a crying baby at his mother’s breast, a young girl who they guessed to be around the age of six, and a young boy around the age of three. 

The gang was not at home.

They inched their way back to their horses and climbed back up the hillside.  Once they were free of the valley and any possibility of their voices being funneled into the little hamlet, they discussed their misfortune.

They had no choice but to go back to Oklahoma City to board the train headed for the workers at the end of the line.  The assignment would last a little longer.

***

Elise stretched the kinks from her body.   She ached from head to toe.  She attributed some of her conditions to the lack of suspension in the stagecoach as it made its way over rutted terrain, combined with the fact that she slept in the horsehair stuffed chair provided by the manager of the way station because he was not set up for overnight guests.  There was also the fact that she lost her virginity in a haystack in the barn the night before.

She tried to remember what it was about her social structure that she found so boring that she would marry a stranger by proxy and travel into a wild and undeveloped territory to be with him rather than remain amongst her peers.  She could think of nothing.  Even the prospect of marrying Judd Turnham did not justify her stupidity.

As if she did not feel miserable enough, she received yet another blow of humiliation when one of the stagecoach drivers announced that an animal must have killed a chicken or something because there was blood on the hay in the barn. She watched in silent mortification as the manager of the station flew out to the barn to check on his livestock while silently praying the stagecoach would leave before the manager figured out what really happened.

She wanted to get to Boston and never look back.