Page 14 of Rough Hands on the Prairie
"June," I introduce her. "A friend of my sister’s. She’s visiting from out of town."
"Not a fleeting visit, I hope," he continues, as he takes her hand and lifts it to his lips. I can see June wrinkling her nose at his attentions, and I step in swiftly.
"Listen, John," I tell him, voice dropping to a threatening low. "I’m here to sell furs for your daughters. And if you don’t get back behind that bar in the next minute, you’re going to have to explain a lot more to them than why you don’t have their warm clothes for the winter. You understand?”
A flash of anger crosses John’s face, but by the tone of my voice, he must know I am serious.
"My apologies, miss," he remarks to June, who seems a little taken aback by my attitude. But if she thinks I am going to allow a man like him to look at her like that, she’s got another damn thing coming. I swing the bag onto the counter – I didn’t come all the way down here not to make a sale, no matter what kind of ass John is being.
We finish up the transaction and leave to gather a few more things for June. With the money I have, I head to the tailor, Mrs. Yumi, to pick out a couple of dresses for her.
"How do you have the money for this?” she murmurs to me, as I explain to her what we’re doing. "That cabin doesn’t exactly look like it cost a whole lot, if you don’t mind me saying..."
I chuckle.
"I don’t," I assure her. "I have a good amount of savings. No family to take care of."
At least, not anymore.My family came out from Missouri a decade or so ago, but they didn’t make it far. The little cabin my father had bought for us never saw my five siblings or my parents, apart from my youngest sister, Lizzie. Fever took them when I was just seventeen, and I made the rest of the trip to that place with Lizzie by my side, determined to make a home for her. Of course, by the time we got there, she passed, the heartbreak too much for her to take. Now, it’s just me – at least the trapping keeps the money coming in, even in the face of everything else.
She picks out a couple of dresses, one in peach, one in a light lavender, and Mrs. Yumi carefully matches them to the shape of her body, prodding and picking here and there to make sure the fit is exactly as she wants it. She doesn’t comment on June’s sudden arrival, but if anyone knows what it’s like to attract attention here, it’s her.
Still, that doesn’t stop her from shooting a few pointed looks in her direction. I wonder how fast the gossip about this is going to spread. Hell, let them gossip all they want. This girl walked out of the woods as naked as the day she was born and right into my cabin – I'm not going to go questioning that, not after all the pain this life has dealt me.
She is my miracle girl.
With her new dresses tucked into my satchel, we make our way back to the trail, which is lit now with a warm sunlight, thekind that often fills the air after a storm. The snow has cleared, the memory of it remaining only in the saturated earth below.
"I love my new clothes, thank you," she gushes to me, as she practically skips along the track beside me.
"Makes a change from you accusing me of stealing them..."
"Hey, what choice did I have?" she protests. "I came out of the water and everything I had left there was gone, everything I’d been travelling with..."
"So you were a traveller?”
She tips her head to the side, pondering the question for a moment.
"I guess you could say that."
"And what else could you say about it?" I wonder aloud. I don’t expect her to give me a straight answer, not after everything that has happened. There’s so much about her that doesn’t make sense, but that only intensifies my curiosity to uncover her. What exactly is it she’s hiding under there, that spark of enticing strangeness that keeps my attention fixed...?
"Uh," she considers for a moment, tapping her finger against her bottom lip. "I suppose...I suppose you could say that I wrote dispatches for people, about my travels."
"What kind of people?”
"The kind of people who might want to do the same thing," she explains.
"There are others out there like you?”
"Others out there who’d like to travel like me, yeah," she replies. "Not everyone can, though."
"So why did you?”
"My mom died," she admits, her voice softening slightly, as though the memory is still painful for her to touch on. "She – she was the one thing keeping me back in my hometown, and when she was gone, I just knew I needed to see more of the world. Ipacked up everyone I had into a – into a carriage, and I took off to write and explore."
"By yourself?”
"You didn’t see anyone else in the river with me, did you?" she teases lightly. I laugh.
