Dream Car

"I would have liked to have known more about him, his life here. I must speak to Dove Feather to find out more."

"Well, dang, Miss Caroline, I kin tell you a lot about Jed Pinner, cos my Uncle Tom was his deputy way back when all this wus wilderness, nuthin' hereabout but rattlesnakes an' Injuns."

"Deputy?"

"Yeah, there weren't no law here in the territ'ry then. There wus just a tradin' post fer the Injuns here, before the silver mines opened up on Silver Butte, about a mile south o' town. The town sure built up fast, made o' tents at first, before Old Man McCulloch's timber mill opened up an' the town got built. Your Pa wus one o' the first here, struck it rich and bought up the best spread in the county and named it after you."

"The Lazy C?"

"Dang! Ma'am, I never meant—"

"It's all right Alice, I know exactly what he meant, I settled for the wrong man in marriage. My father never approved of Robert."

"No, ma'am, it couldn't have been that. Let me think. Uncle Tom wus about 16 when he became deputy sheriff."

"You grow up quick around here!" Caroline laughed, "I was still in school at 16."

"Well, we never had no schoolin', only what we could pick up."

"We must do something about filling that school house."

"I think Mr Jed was hopin' ya'll 'ud come here an' learn us, if only he coulda git ya to come out West."

"I now wish he'd told me or, well, been more persuasive," Caroline said, "So, just an Injun trading post here to start with?"

"Yeah, so they say, tradin' buck hides mostly, according to Miss Dove Feather."

"She remembers the trading post?"

"Yeah, she wus just a nuncksquassis, but she had a medicine man fer a father, so folk paid her mind. She took me on to train as ya maid a year before ya came, Miss Caroline, so meybe she does has that second sight that folks whisper that she had."

"That wouldn't surprise me, one bit!"

"Well, it wus mah Grandpappy that came out here fust, fer the silver, but the big motherlode wus gone and his claim were all played out, but then yah Pa was Sheriff an' he needed help in the form of deputies, so mah Grandpappy joined him in the Sheriff's office. It wus a baptism o' fire, mah uncle tells me, with gunfights every night."

"How did he, did he survive?"

"No, he never did, Miss Caroline, but he lasted a few years as Deputy Sheriff. I never knew him, but he sent for his family from Back East and my Grandmammy, Ma and Uncle Tom arrived here, about five years before I wus born. Grandpappy wus cowardly ambushed an' gunned down, along with a couple o' other deputies, an' they wounded ya Pa, too. But my Uncle Tom was a deputy who stood up with yah Pa an' they plugged them bushwackers so good there wusn't no need fer any lynchin'!"

"So that's how your Uncle became Marshal?"

"He wus made Deputy Sheriff for a while an' he has lots of stories ta tell 'bout yer Pa, but when the valley became a Terri'try, the Sheriff became a Marshal, an' Jed Pinner decided ta step down to run the ranch full time, marry his new squaw Dove Feather, an' raise young Samuel."

They could see the five-bar gate to the Lazy C Ranch on the track ahead, but unusually, the gate was closed.

Caroline dropped down from the gig and opened the gate for Alice to drive through. As she moved the gate, a brass bell hanging from one of the posts rang out, and rang out again as Caroline closed the gate behind them. As Caroline walked around the back of the gig, she noticed a crate behind the seat full of dark green bottles. Each bottle was wrapped in a cloth to stop them rattling on the rough trail, which is why she hadn't noticed them before. Painted on the side of the crate in stencilled old-style Wild West lettering were the words "FIREWATER, Fer Injuns Only".

"What's this, Alice?"

"That's a box of firewater delivered from Carson on the Stagecoach, fust thing this mornin'," replied Alice easily. "Cain't stand the stuff meself, Miss Caroline, it fair burns ma throat. Far too strong fer me, in fact, all womenfolk round here don't touch it. I don't know how the men in that saloon kin sit an' drink it all night long!"

The bottles were corked, but only half the cork was in the neck, the other half poked out the top. Caroline pulled one of the bottles out of the crate and unwrapped it. Sure enough, the label pasted on it, in that curious Western type, was printed, "Carson Brewery's Patented FIREWATER Elixir Specially Formulated Fer The Injun Nation, Guaranteed To Make Any Ornery Injun See Red. Drink Responsibly Or Spend The Night In Jail."

She pulled the cork and sniffed at it, the smell was powerful, but not quite what she expected, so she tentatively sipped some. This "Firewater", she noted with some amusement, was ginger ale.

"This is ginger ale, Alice."

"Yeah ma'am ain't that the honest truth! That stuff really burns ma throat!"

As an amused Caroline climbed back in the gig, after replacing the cork, and rewrapping the bottle back in the crate, they could see a couple of riders heading towards them from the direction of the ranch house. One of them waved his hat in the air.

"That's Clint, Miss Caroline, I guess he's bin outriding the steers, worried about rustlers. But I guess too, that Sam wus expecting us to come this way as soon as ya'll arrived home."

Yes, thought Caroline, l'm almost home for Christmas.

Clint and his partner rode up to the girls in the gig, both Cowboys full of smiles.

"Howdy, Miss Bradshawh and Miss Alice. Did ya have a good trip Back East, ma'am?"

"I did, thank you Clint. You been out all night waiting for us?"

"No, ma'am," he chuckled, "we set out just after breakfast to relieve the cowboys doin' the night watch. Oh, mah pardner here is Seth, he wus one o' yah Pa's first hands. I think when you wus here last, Miss Bradshawh, he wus with the cattle drive to the railhead in Pertinence township, Chowtah Territ'try, the place where the railroad ends."

"Pleased ta meet yah, Ma'am, we all thought the world o' yah Pa, an' he talked about yah all the time, so we're all glad yah've come home an' we hopes yah stay."

"I hope so too." Caroline waved at the older cowboy and, not for the first time, wondered if all of these men on the ranch had skin made out of leather, tanned dark by the relentless sun. There were patches of powdery snow skulking in the shade of sagebrush and in gullies, but everywhere the warm winter sun touched, the snow had melted and the ground desiccated once more.

The two fell alongside the gig, one on each side. Alice said, "giddy up!" and the gig moved off down the track at a canter, the pony in anticipation of an end to the trip, a warm stable, a cool drink and a bag of oats.

"Are you on the look out for rustlers, Clint?"

"Yeah, Marshal Denton came by yest'day afternoon to see if we'd seen any signs. I think he suspects the Injuns, though we on'y just sent over a few head for their needs a week past. Anyhoo, Sam sent us out in pairs ta make a runnin' check on the stock. The Marshal wus still there this mornin' when the chow bell rang fer breakfast."

Within the hour, Caroline could see the two storied ranch house, made of white painted wood, perched on the top of a rise, with spectacular views all around. Off-white wood smoke rose from a number of stone-built chimneys, the plumes rising up like puffs of cotton candy against the azure sky. The outbuildings, barns and corrals were now familiar to her, and the stout wooden bridge over the meandering river welcomed her home with a crack and a few groans.

Her brother Samuel, the capable 16-year-old half owner of the ranch, greeted her and Alice, with a embrace for his sister and a squeezing touch on the shoulder for her pretty maid.

"It's great to see you back, my dearest sister Caroline, I trust you had a good trip East?" Sam said, "we must sit in the parlour and catch up with each other's news."

She slapped him lightly on the arm, "Not just your dearest, but your only sister, brother dear. We'll visit your mother tomorrow, will that be all right?"

"Yeah, 'course we will, though I find it hard that you two seem ta get on so well, almost like I'd imagine sisters would, I'd 'a' bin satisfied if you was only able to tolerate each other."

"Well, we both have you in common, dear brother, so we always have plenty of things to discuss!"

Marshal Tom Denton, tall, moustachioed, an authoritative figure, in his black coat and pearl handled pistols, appeared, to welcome his niece Alice, and to kiss the hand of his host's sister.

"I'd like ta accompany ya'll to the Injun village, Miss Caroline. I understand they already have enough cows fer their needs from ya brother's generosity, but I'd still like ta check the brands o' them steers fer myself."

"It'll be a pleasure to be in company with you, Marshal."

"Please call me, Tom, Miss Caroline, when we are in private, it is so much better to be in relaxed company."

"Indeed it is, Tom."

Caroline begged leave the party soon after supper, eager to go to bed and sleep.

"Of course, Sis, you have travelled much these past two days."

That was true, she had travelled further than anyone could imagine. Sleep came soon after her head touched the pillow.

Wakefulness, came even quicker, waking with her body refreshed, sitting in her father's mouldy old car, safe in her chilly garage.

'Brrr,' she shivered involuntarily, she was cold, so cold. She took off the Stetson and set it down carefully on the passenger seat. By her watch, she had been gone about an hour. An hour had passed in her Cotswold reality, while she had spent some fourteen hours in the Old Wild West, a fantasy that while she was there had seemed so real.

How the magic worked, always intrigued her. She transports to the fantasy world, after donning her father's hat in his old car. Her sleeping form remaining there in the car, while her imagination takes her into the fantasy, where she remains until she sleeps. Asleep in Sweetwater, she awakens back in the old car, where only a small proportion of the actual hours spent, have elapsed in the real world. Yet she always wakes up fully refreshed, however short the sleep.

When she returns by donning the Stetson, whether it was the next day or week later, the lapsed time in Sweetwater was the next significant disturbance in her sleep, usually dawn the next day. Although there was a case at the hotel, where a fire broke out in the hotel's livery stables, which roused the whole town at 3 am. Caroline awoke with the rest of the town, immediately after putting on the Stetson in her father's car and closing her eyes. It reassured her that she was physically safe in Sweetwater and wouldn't sleep through a disaster.

However, she thought, as she used the connecting door from the garage into her warm kitchen, the consideration of her comfort here, as the winter progressed, needed further consideration, possibly by installing a radiator in her garage.

While the kettle boiled for her tea, Caroline looked up a number in the local trades telephone directory and called a plumber. She was happy to agree to an early appointment in three days, due to a previous cancellation, but was informed that she needed to come to the shop in town first, to select a suitable radiator from their stock.

Caroline drove her small car towards the plumber's shop. How wet and windy it was, with the rain turning to sleet. In front of her, a sporty car accelerated to get through the traffic signals, as they changed from amber to red. He passed close to a young girl on a bicycle, his wing mirror clipping her so she fell off the bike into the gutter. The car drove off without stopping. Caroline stopped and jumped out of the car.

"Are you all right?"

"My arm," the girl cried, "and my knee!"

The girl was crying. Her parents were at work, she said, and the girl didn't know their numbers. So, Caroline drove her to Casualty, helped her sign in at the desk and waited with the distraught girl until a doctor became available. She called the office of one of the parents and was put through to the father. He worked too far away to come quickly, he said, but he would try and get his wife to go to the hospital, hopefully within an hour or so. Caroline happily offered to stay with the girl until the mother arrived. The nurse asked Caroline to come in with the girl, presumably thinking she was the mother.

In the cubicle, Caroline met Dr George, a kindly doctor, a rather elderly doctor, she thought, who dealt with the poor girl's injuries sensitively. Caroline smiled a lot in his company, he was charming, had a twinkle in his eye, and had a nice smile. His hair was grey, and it seemed odd that he should be working in casualty, as all the other doctors looked fresh out of medical college.

The girl was in the toilet, and Caroline was sitting quietly awaiting the arrival of the parent, when Dr George sat down next to her.

"Your daughter will be perfectly all right, you know," he said, "it must've been a shock, but there will be no lasting damage."

"Oh, she's not my daughter, I was just a witness to the accident. We chained up her bike and came straight here."

"A Good Samaritan then?" His eyes twinkled.

"Hardly," she replied, "anyone would have helped if they had been there."

"Not everyone, not in my experience."

"Talking of experience, I usually only see young doctors in Casualty."

"Ah, yes. Well, my wife met someone else and now she's my ex-wife. So I moved to this town, which I had fond memories of forty years ago as a young man. Now I'm waiting for my house to be altered ready for me to move into by the New Year." Dr George said, smiling, "I'm staying in a hotel at the moment and it is so boring and lonely there, that I am doing extra shifts in the hospital to pass the time, and I go where I am needed, usually Casualty."

"I see, where is your new house?"

"Coronation Road, do you know it?"

"Yes, we will be near neighbours, I live in Albert Crescent." Caroline smiled, "The houses in Coronation Road are grand Edwardian detached and semis. What work are you having done?"

"Reslating the roof," he started.

"Oh!" Caroline jumped in, "it must be the house on the corner by Charlotte Mews, isn't it?"

"That's the one," he grinned, "and, as well as the roof work, I am having it rewired and installing new radiators."

At that point, Caroline remembered the plumbers and realised it was too late to get the radiator sorted, that day.

Chapter 5

Dr George was called away to a Casualty cubicle, just as the injured girl returned from the toilet. At the same time the girl's mother arrived to collect her. It took a few minutes of embracing, accepting thanks, and spilling a whole bucket of tears, before Caroline was able to get away from the hospital.

The plumbers' supply shop, as expected, was shut, locked up tight for the night. Fetching the torch she kept in the car, she shone it through the plumbers' window, and picked out the radiator she preferred, identified it on a rough sketch she drew on the back of a handbill, added her address and telephone number, and popped it through their letterbox.

When she reached home, she felt quite hungry and tired, so she heated up some soup and, when finished, she put on her thick, warm coat and took a fleecy blanket out to the garage with her. She slipped into the driver's seat and made herself warm and comfortable, before saying goodbye to the Cotswolds, donning the Stetson and closing her eyes.

It was a cold but sunny dawn in Sweetwater Valley, on the Lazy C ranch, when Caroline awoke instantly and felt fully refreshed.

Mrs Duggan made sure that the party going to the Injun Reservation were filled up with a hearty breakfast and supplied them with extra packages of vittles because, "I ain't sure what them there varmints eat, but, to be sure, ev'ry Injun I ever sees is a skinny one!"

Caroline filled one of her saddlebags with sweet treats for the Injun children, that she had brought with them, plus a wrapped gift for Dove Feather, which she would keep back in her other saddlebag, if her mother agreed to come back for a family Christmas Celebration at the Lazy C.

It was a eager party of four that rode out along the river bank route to the Injun Reservation. When they mounted up, it was Sam who was the most surprised that Alice wasn't riding sidesaddle, as she had on their previous trip.

"When did you learn to ride like that?" he asked.

"At my Ma's at Cottonwood Butte. I had to try, after I see Miss Caroline ridin' so comfortable, I thought I'd learn."

Marshal Tom joined in with a booming laugh, "Mah sister wus none too pleased, she don't hold with no girls on horseback, no siree, Bob, she ain't never. She reckons all womenfolk should be driven everywhere by coach!"

They hadn't gone a couple of miles before Sam complimented Alice on her riding. Alice thought, with some conviction, that in order to compliment her, he must have been watching her. Caroline had never seen her smile so broadly before, and it seemed to sustain her throughout the long, tiring ride.

As they rode upstream, they climbed, and as they did so they found more snow had fallen, then, around the other side of the mountain, they found snow was falling steadily. They stopped for a break after about two hours, at a commonly used stopping point, where there was a rocky overhang to provide some shelter from the falling snow.

Caroline asked Marshal Tom about how his investigations were proceeding into the rustlers.

"Well, Miss Caroline, Ah couldn't find no trace o' tracks over at Cottonwood Butte. They had a big fall o' snow that week, that snowed in the ranch house fer a few days. It's built in a gulch below a bluff, which shelters them from the prevailin' hot southerly wind in the summer, but this storm came in from the north. They had a foot o' snow fall in a day, but it wus blown some three feet deep in the drifts. The rustlers must have struck at the start of the storm an' cut out fifty steers, gettin' clean away."

"How many Cowboys would that take to move and control fifty cows in the driving snow, Sam?"

"In good conditions," Sam answered, "two men would be fine. If it was snowing that hard, I would venture at least three or four. I would drive them south with the wind behind, so everyone could see better, but the McReady's sheep farm lies in that direction."

"Yeah, that's what Ah figured," the Marshall agreed, "Ah rode all around the ranch but Ah jus' couldn't find any sign of what direction they wus headin'."

"So you think it might be the ... Injuns?" Caroline asked, still having to give the word second thoughts before saying it here. They simply never used the word 'Indian', and didn't appear to know the word existed.

"I don't!" spoke up Sam, "They have no need to take the risk of stealing anyone's cows. They haven't needed to do that for years."

"Maybe so," the Marshal commented, "but I will investigate, Sam. I am not like the sheriffs and marshals of old frontier towns, like ya read in the pulp westerns. I ain't got no posse, no lynchin' mob, I ain't goin' in behind a wall o' lead. I jus' wanna look around fer evidence. If they ain't guilty, I will be the first to apologise to 'em. If they are guilty, then they will have to repay my Sis fer her loss, say work it off around the ranch, for instance."

Soon the Injun Reservation was evidentially nearby, as a band of young braves on painted ponies, suddenly and silently appeared, surrounding them, their bows charged with arrows. But they were full of non-threatening smiles.

"Caught you nappin', huh, Paleface Red Coyote!" one of them laughed. Red Coyote was Samuel Pinner's Injun name, his mother being an Injun squaw.

"I see'd ya comin' a mile off," Sam growled, "That's why I drew my six gun a while ago and have it under my poncho pointing at your heart, Yellow Snow!"