Dream Car

She opened them again. It was decidedly chilly in the garage and her breathing was starting to mist up the inside of the glass.

'Enough of this,' she thought, 'I must get moving, so much to do to get ready for Christmas in Sweetwater.'

She reached over to the passenger seat, where her father's old Stetson lay. She put it on, leaned back comfortably in the bucket seat and closed her eyes...

When Caroline opened her eyes she was sitting on the hard but now familiar wooden seat in the old stagecoach. It was twilight, somewhen between night and dawn, but then the stagecoach between Sweetwater and Carson always ends up in this twilight zone, a buffer between fantasy and reality.

Her bags of Christmas presents from the car came with her and nestled on the bench seat next to her. Everything in the front two seats of the Jaguar XJ12, her Pop's Dream Car, always goes with her to Sweetwater if she used the Stagecoach service. Anything in the back seat or in the boot remained in the car. Which reminded her, she needed to speak to her mother about the contents of the car boot. She felt sure that she would know what to do with them.

The only other thing that never comes with her to Sweetwater, is Pop's Stetson. It must be an essential link that takes her back to reality, she supposed. Something else to discuss with Dove Feather, when she next saw her at the Injun Reservation. So many mysteries in Sweetwater Valley to think about and find solutions to!

The Stagecoach to Carson comes back to Sweetwater each day, usually arriving about noon, but sometimes earlier if there is a full moon for the early ride. Chuck and Dale are the drivers of the four-horse stagecoach. They all sleep just off the edge of the fantasy grid and wake up in time to return, fully refreshed as if nothing has happened. Sometime they bring goods back, sometimes passengers, and they drop off passengers heading to Carson, too, who disappear into nothingness, beyond the fantasy grid.

Chuck was holding the reins in his leathery hands, his sweat-stained ten gallon hat jammed over his head, his chin resting on his chest. Next to him, Dale had his Winchester across his lap, his head lolling back, and snoring almost loud enough to wake the horses. The team of four horses were at rest, ready to awaken on the crack of a whip or a barked command of "Giddy up!"

Caroline climbed a step up, noticing that her comfortable Ugg boots had changed themselves into polished brown leather riding boots, while her size 16 woollen plaid skirt and man-made fibre blouse was now an ankle length silk bottle green dress with a pinched 22-inch waist, full bustle at the back and the front buttoned up to the neck with tiny pearl buttons. The transformation never ceased to amaze her, even though she should have become used to it by now. She gently shook the stagecoach driver's arm.

"Who? What? Why, howdy there, Miss Bagshawh, I must've dozed off for a moment. Dale! Dale! Wake up ya damn lazy good fer nothin' varmint! Ya're asleep on the job agin, I should have ya bullwhipped!"

"What are ya bein' so ornery fer, Chuck? Yu wus a sleepin' an' mekin' a noise like that damned steam buzz saw, that that there carpenter from Carson used ter build the School House the Fall before last, long afore I — oh, Miss Bagshawh, I never seen ya there. I must apologise fer ma lang—"

"Don't you worry, Dale, I am in no hurry. How long do you think it will take to get to town?"

Chuck and Dale peered forward into the gloom. Not for the first time, thought Caroline, they never look back into nothingness, they only really see Sweetwater Valley.

"Why, ma'am, we're at Wet Patch Gulch, where we always water the horses and rest. The township of Sweetwater is on'y the other side o' the ridge. We'll have ya'll outside the Grand Hotel in no time at all!"

The team of horses shook themselves awake and snorted, eager to get moving again. Soon the Stagecoach was over the ridge and flying down the dusty track towards the one horse frontier town of Sweetwater, a place that Caroline now regarded as home.

All around the valley, the mountains were topped with snow, and Caroline knew the high pastures of the Lazy C Ranch would be under snow by now and getting to them would involve skilled horsemanship and endurance. She rubbed her hands together. She was looking forward to this, her first winter in the high sierras above Sweetwater.

It was so early in the morning when the Stagecoach rumbled into the town from the East that no one yet appeared to be awake. Nobody stirred at first anyway. A lone coyote at the end of the Main Street looked up lazily from whatever dead creature it was scavenging flesh from, turned and lollopped away out of town and up the trail westward.

A few frozen patches of moisture nestled in the dirt street, and traces of wind blown ice crystals gathered in quiet corners, showed that it had been cold, but the air here was too dry for frost, the sky above clear of clouds, as it usually was in the Township of Sweetwater.

The stagecoach pulled up in front of the Sweetwater Grand Hotel, the horses breathing out steam into the cold air. A lamp glowed dimly in the lobby, but no one came out to greet them.

Dale opened the door for Caroline to step down to the boardwalk, while Chuck collected her shopping bags from the other door and carried them up the steps through to the hotel lobby.

"Thank you boys," Caroline said, ferreting around in her purse and, next to some £1 and 20p coins, found a couple of more-than-acceptable two-cent coins, with which she thanked them for their assistance.

Once in the hotel, she put down her case next to the shopping bags, took off her bonnet and banged her palm down once on the brass bell on the counter. In the back office Caroline smiled as she fancied she heard someone fall off a chair.

"Who's there?" stepped out old Henry, the night clerk, spluttering at the intrusion, "well, howdy Miss Bagshawh, I wus jus' catchin' up on some ... paperwork. What can I help you with at—" he glanced at the grand clock on the wall, designed, it appeared, more for a railway station terminus concourse rather than the lobby of a provincial hotel — "at a quarter before six in the morning? ... Oh, of course, I was forgetting, you had your Pa Jed's rooms, ain't ya?"

Old Henry must be in his seventies, yet he had more jobs than anyone else in town, thought Caroline. As well as night porter at the hotel, he daily swept out the Saloon just a block down the street, and on Saturday night he played honky tonk on the old piano at Ma Goodden's Good Time Hall on the east end of Main Street, as well as twice a week he cleaned the office and surgery of the mysterious Dentist/Doctor G Hollywell. Again, she had wondered what the 'G' stood for but didn't want anyone to know that she wanted to know.

Mysterious, thought Caroline, because they hadn't crossed paths yet. When Caroline first came to Sweetwater a couple of months ago, she moved straight out to the Lazy C for a couple of weeks to settle affairs with her half-brother and mother. By the time she returned to the Hotel, just before her recent three-week trip "Back East, via Carson", the good Doctor had already gone Back East himself, on a family emergency. One of the mysteries she needed to speak to her mother about was the apparent independence of action that all these fantasy characters seemed to have. The dreamworld wasn't managed quite as well as she would have liked. Old Henry shook her from her thoughts.

"Let me help ya'll with them bags, Miss Bagshawh. Young Alice arrived from her Ma's yesterday afore noon, so I s'pose she's got it spick 'n' span an'all fer ya. I'm sure last night she said we wus expectin' ya on the noon stage."

As they climbed the creaky staircase, he added, "Marshall's bin having trouble with rustlers over at Alice's Ma, the Marshal's sister's place, Cottonwood Pines, ma'am. They damn well took a mess o' their steers an' he ain't caught up with the varmints yet, cos the snow fell thick enough an' covered up their tracks."

"Have we had much snow since I left, Henry?"

"Not here, ma'am, not in the last three weeks, but Ma Wells and her hands wus snowed in last week an', when they dug 'emselves out, they found some outlaws had cut out a bunch o' their stock."

That was worrying, Caroline thought, she had believed that rustlers rarely operated that close to town.

"They wus takin' advantage o' a widder, ma'am," old Henry added, possibly appreciating her silence, "an' folks round 'ere won't put up wi' that, but that Marshal Denton, now, he'll string 'em up fer sure!"

She sorted out a half-cent tip for old Henry, and let herself into her suite. It had a large double fronted reception room in the front facing onto Main Street and two small bedrooms looking out over the quiet back of the hotel. The smaller of the two bedrooms was her maid Alice Wells' room and she was clearly still fast asleep.

Caroline thought, 'I keep telling myself that this Clearwater Valley is all a fantasy world, that right now I am really just sleeping in my Pop's mouldy old wreck of a car in my garage at home. This is a dream, albeit a really vivid one, in which my Pop lived a full and vigorous life, which helped him maintain a lively mind inside a half-paralysed shell in the real world, until two months ago when his heart finally gave out. In this dreamworld, he was gunned down by three desperadoes, two of whom were hanged, but one, an imbecile, received a prison sentence and shipped Back East to prison in Carson. Why would a dream fantasy have real gun fighters and real rustlers for? I need to get out to the Lazy C Ranch and as soon as possible I want to visit Dove Feather, my mother. She knows a lot more about this place than she's telling me!'

"Alice," she called through the bedroom door, it's me, I'm home and we need to get moving."

Chambermaid Alice Wells was pleased to see Caroline returned to Sweetwater, and squealed with delight as she bounced out of her room in the hotel suite.

"Ma swore you'd never ever come back, Miss Bradshawh. She said that once ya'll went Back East, that ya'd stay with all them fancy rich folk, an' leave us to dry up like sticks here on our own. An', without a Pinner in charge, Ma said that the Lazy C ranch would close up altogether or become just another part o' the Injun Reservation."

"But Sam was in charge of the ranch while I was away, and you said yourself, he was the best cowboy around."

"Yeah, Ah did, an' Ah do, but Ma says she don't consider no Injun no proper person, so he don't count."

"That isn't right, Alice, you know that. He's a man like everyone else. In fact he owns half that ranch, so he's richer than a lot of folk Back East. Anyway, I thought you really liked Sam?"

"Ah rightly do, ma'am, Ah like him right fine. He's the bestest an' nicest cowboy Ah know, and he'd realise Ah wus sweet on him if he ever got his damned head outta his britches!"

"Ha! Ha! You will soon learn in life, Alice, that all menfolk have their heads up their backsides most of the time, and Samuel Red Coyote Pinner is just a boy playing at being a man, same as all the rest. Keep working on him, though, the message'll get through to him eventually."

"So you ain't neither of you leaving Sweetwater soon, then ma'am?"

"Not ever. That would never happen, Alice, the more I come here, and stay here, the more I regard this as home," Caroline reassured her. "The ranch will carry on going all the while there is a Sweetwater Valley here. That much I am sure of. And you already know that the ranch means everything to Sam. That's why I thought it would be best to leave him in sole charge from the very first day I arrived, so he knows that I trust him, and I am sure he would have run the spread fine, while I was away."

"That's what Ah tried to tell Ma, but she kept on sayin' it so often while you wus away, that after a while, that's all Ah could think of, too."

"I know, Alice, I've had my fill of negative thoughts recently, too, and it needs something special to shake you out of that thinking. I think coming here helps me too."

"It's just that Ma's had it hard since Pa upped and left us, an' she don't trust nobody no more. She says that folk around here had better meke the most of it an' do just whatever they can do to get by."

"Well, let me assure you, that all the while I am living here, the Lazy C will still be raising cows with my brother Sam running the place. So, other than your Ma mouthing off about my family, what else has been going on since I went back East?"

"Aw, gosh! Ah don't know much myself, Miss Bradshawh. Ah only got back into town yesterdee, so I ain't heard that much news. I kin tell yah that my uncle the Marshal is out combing the whole territ'ry fer them damn rustlers. Oh, did you hear that we lost about fifty head o' cattle to them bushwackin' rustlers?"

"Yes, I heard from old Henry just now," Caroline said, "you were all safe in the ranch house?"

"Yes, ma'am, the butte at Cottonwood Pines always gets bad weather early, it ain't as pretty or well sheltered as the ranch house at the Lazy C. We had a bad snow fall a week ago, an' when we dug ourselves out a couple of days later, we noticed we wus short on cows. Our foreman checked on the herd and then me an' a couple of hands rode in to fetch Uncle Tom."

"You rode in?"

"Yeah, I bin practicin' using a man's saddle. It made ma butt as uncomfortable as hell, beggin' yah pardon Miss Caroline, at first, but I succeeded."

"Good for you, Alice!"

"So we rode ter ma Uncle the Marshal's office. He wus mighty vexed, Miss Bradshawh, I never heared him swear so much before!"

"Well, he seemed to have good reason, Alice, with your Mother trying to run the place and make a go of it on her own."

"It is hard, as they never left no tracks cos o' the snow. He ain't even raised no posse yet, cos Uncle Tom is still investigatin', just like them Pinkituns Agents, but he'll sniff 'em out 'n' lynch 'em soon fer sure!"

Caroline remembered, with some horror, the last public hanging, the first and only hanging she'd seen. The Judge had said that she being one of the leading landowners in the county, that it was important that she were present to see justice being done. She had attended the trial, and two of the men who gunned her father down in cold blood, were hardened criminals, implicated in a series of murders, stagecoach hold-ups and had even robbed the bank in a nearby township that she had never heard the name of before. It was all a fantasy, she had told herself; the trial seemed fair, the guilty all had their say, despite Judge Justice Makepeace's earlier declaration to her that he would hang them for sure. Well, the hanging wasn't clean and antiseptic, like she thought it would be. These men did not have their necks broken in the drop, no, they died together slowly by strangulation, kicking and struggling for breath for five full minutes. Those minutes seemed to take an hour for Caroline. She never wanted to see another hanging and was still unreconciled to that unnecessary part of the fantasy.

She knew that these people, Alice and old Henry included, weren't real, but she couldn't divorce her mind from thinking that they seemed so real, they felt real, so somehow they must be real. That this 'fantasy world' was just another kind of 'reality'.

The only difference between her real world, where she was 54, divorced, poor, friendless and was looked down on by her two children, was that here in Sweetwater Valley she was young and attractive, relatively wealthy, the half owner of the biggest and most successful ranch in the county, and had an interest in this hotel and other businesses, had a status of prime importance in this Western community, and had a loving half brother and mother who were always glad to see her. Even her maid Alice had delighted in welcoming her, and she had taken the time to clean and dust these rooms ready for her return; that red desert dust covered everything in a short space of time, but Alice had everything dusted and polished. Once again, it crossed her mind, would she prefer to stay in this place and never go back to her old reality?

Alice was still talking, as she bustled around Caroline's bedroom, looking out from the wardrobes, and spreading out on the bed, all the clothes they would need for the trip to the ranch.

"There's still no word from the Santa Fe & Colby railroad company, Miss Bradshawh, since they dun their surveyin' way back in the summer. An' Old Henry got a Pony Express letter from Doc Hollywell last week, he's bin delayed by his family business, so we cain't expect to see him 'til nigh on Christmas."

"That's most disappointing, Alice, I was looking forward to meeting him, and I wondered—" she almost asked that question that was there on the tip of her tongue, 'what does G stand for?', and changed what she was saying to, "I wonder what the weather has been like at the ranch?"

"I met with some o' the Lazy C ranch hands who were in town last night. They were in the eatin' house called Ma Turners, you know the one behind the Liberty Drug Store? Well, they said it was still cold but dry at the ranch. I knew you'd want to go to the Injun Reservation to see Miss Pinner soon, so I asked about the mountain trail and the other way around on the riverbank. They said the mountain wus already snowed in thicker than a buckboard seat is off the ground, so there's no way over there. But the riverside wus still free o' snow. I took the liberty of hirin' a pony an' light gig from the Liberty Livery Stables, which should be light enough fer either of us to handle, on the way to the ranch an' around to the Injun Reservation."

"Well, that was good thinking, Alice, let's both get dressed and we can be off."

"Yessiree, Ma'am!"

Chapter 4

Caroline and Alice rode out to the Lazy C ranch in that hired single-horse gig. Alice drove it confidently for the first twenty minutes or so, and they were well out of town before she handed the reins over to Caroline. The older woman took them hesitatingly at first, but relaxed once she realised the horse hadn't missed a stride in the changeover and was virtually driving itself.

"I guess Back East they have fancy Hansom cabs or sedan chairs to take you back and forth, huh, Ma'am? I seed them once in a book o' yah Pa's."

"Not quite, Alice, I think sedan chairs went out, probably, a hundred years ago."

"So you ain't seen no sedan chairs?"

"No, and I think they only had, er, have Hansom cabs in New York."

"Tell me about Back East, Miss Caroline, I bet it ain't nuthin' like Sweetwater."

"It is nothing like here, true. I can take a b— er omnibus into the town of 100,000 people to shop, eat and go home again, and not see or speak to anyone l know."

"Gee!" Alice's eyes were wide open, "Ah cain't walk to the drug store without twenty conversations 'long the way."

"Yes, I know! But Back East, there are all these people all crowded together in one place and so many are lonely and sad, and afraid. Here, everyone knows everyone else, and cares about them, and you only have to worry about a few Injuns, rustlers and gunslingers."

Alice remembered the reason for Miss Caroline coming out to Sweetwater, after her Pa was gunned down in the Main Street by three desperadoes. She put a hand on the back of Caroline's, "Your Pa loved it here an' he wouldn't have wanted to go out any other way, ya know."

"I know, Alice."

Caroline fell silent, thinking about her father. Her memories over the past thirty years was of a man who had lost his wife, then suffered a paralysing stroke almost immediately, when he was in his prime aged about 58, and after that was virtually housebound for the rest of his life. Yet he had a whole new life here in this fantasy world, during all that time. Here he had been a vigorous young man, maturing into a respected middle-aged entrepreneur, carving a living town and prosperous ranch out of a desert wilderness.