Unbridled Dreams (26 page)

For all her difficulty adjusting to her new life, Belle realized that if she made the effort to look for it, there was good even in the things she didn’t like. Rising before dawn meant she was part of the early shift for breakfast, when the coffee was fresh and the bread still warm. The fatigue from working long hours meant she slept soundly instead of fretting over things like what was going on at home and what was going to happen to Lady Blaze. There was even one good thing about the encounter with Bishop, and that was the memory of Shep’s inserting himself between the two of them so as to protect her. And if Salsbury and Cody weren’t watching her progress with Diamond, at least that gave Belle freedom to avoid Salsbury’s instructions about working in the wardrobe tent—which, Belle convinced herself, he never would have done if he truly understood how much she loved horses and hated sewing. After all, if Helen Keen could work in the stables, why couldn’t Liberty Belle? It seemed a perfectly reasonable argument to her.

Belle was untangling Diamond’s mane one day when Shep ambled up.

“I was over at wardrobe just now,” he said. “Ma Clemmons mentioned you haven’t checked in with her yet.”

Belle shrugged. “I have to ‘prove competence’ before the boss lets me in that arena, and working in wardrobe isn’t going to do a thing for my performance skills.”

Shep nodded. “I understand how you could think that. The thing is, your
act
isn’t the only thing to be proven around here.” He scratched his scruffy beard. “There’s plenty of people in the troupe who agree with what Ned Bishop said the other day.”

“And why should I care about that?” Belle said.

“Because it’ll make for an easier time for everyone if we all get along.”

“Ned Bishop can talk all he wants. I’ll prove I deserve a spot. As of this morning I can do everything Helen and Dora and Mabel do in that arena. You can ask Monte if you don’t believe me. He saw me pick this very kerchief up off the dirt from Diamond’s back. At a gallop.” She yanked on the red scarf knotted around her neck. “Of course, until Mr. Salsbury or Bill Cody see it, I don’t suppose it will matter how hard I work.”

“Just because they aren’t baby-sitting you doesn’t mean they don’t know how you’re getting along,” Shep said. He took his hat off and raked his hand through his hair. “Guess you might as well know that before he left, Nate asked me what I thought about putting you in the show when we get to the next stop.” He pretended to shape the crown of his Stetson as he said, “I told him I didn’t think you were ready.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Belle snapped.

“Now calm down and just listen to me a minute.” Shep put his hat back on. “I know how it feels to be trying to earn everyone’s respect. I grew up reading dime novels and dreaming about the West. A little over four years ago I was in Ohio on a business trip when I learned that Buffalo Bill himself was in town performing on stage. Of course I had to go.

“From the second that man walked onto the stage until he took his last bow I was completely mesmerized. I had to meet him. When I finally got a chance to buy him dinner, he told me that being a cowboy was a learned skill, just like banking or building bridges or bookkeeping. I took that for encouragement. So I emptied my bank account and headed west, and for the first few months I was the laughingstock of every outfit I tried to join, but I kept at it for almost three years.”

“And you punched cattle in Texas,” Belle said with a smile.

“Oh, I punched cattle in several states.”

“So while I was landing in the dust in my Uncle Charlie’s corral—”

Shep nodded. “Yep. I was flying through the air after being thrown or bucked off or maybe just falling off a horse or a steer or, occasionally, an old buffalo.” He looked down at her and smiled. “So when I tell you I understand how hard it is to keep waiting, I do understand. But there’s more to being part of the Wild West than the skills you use in the arena. When I showed up to audition, I told Bill Cody I didn’t care if he ever let me in the arena—I was willing to do anything to be part of his troupe.”

“But he must have made you King of the Cowboys right away.”

Shep scuffed at the ground with the toe of his boot. “Yep, sometimes it’s just a matter of being in the right place at the right time— but the point is, I didn’t care what I did. I just wanted to be part of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West.”

“Well, I do care,” Belle said. “I didn’t join the Wild West to be a seamstress.”

Later that night Belle poured out her frustrations over not being accepted by the troupe. “No matter what anyone thinks,” she said, as she and Helen got ready to turn in, “I’m not just ‘Daddy’s little girl’ who always gets what she wants. I
did
work on a ranch. I spent over two months every summer with Uncle Charlie. I know how to—”

“Two
months
? Every summer? Really?” Helen put her hands on her waist in mock amazement. “Well, sure as shootin’ yer a real cowgirl now.” She plopped down on her cot and began to pull off her boots. “I’d like to visit your Uncle Charlie’s ranch sometime, by the way, ’cause he’s figured out something I’ve never heard of before.”

Belle frowned. “What’s that?”

“How to run a ranch when your hands don’t get up until midmorning.” Helen set her boots under her cot and let down the tent flap.

“All right,” Belle confessed, as she pulled her own boots off. “So they didn’t always get me up with everybody else. But I still worked hard.”

Helen’s voice gentled. “I’m just tryin’ to help you understand what’s going on here.” She pointed out of the tent. “You’re kind of a mystery woman to everyone. The boss man himself knows you and your family, and frankly that’s not necessarily a plus.”

“Why not? Is that why everyone’s been so standoffish? Because I know Buffalo Bill?”

Helen hesitated. “You do know that most people in this country would rather meet the Honorable William F. Cody than President Cleveland? And not only are you invited to supper at the hotel on your first day in town, but then the great man himself and his partner schedule a special audition. And you don’t do all that great in the arena, but they hire you anyway—with plans to put you in a special parade. And it doesn’t take a genius to realize that, if she doesn’t mess up, Liberty Belle will be a headliner when we open at that garden place in November.”

Belle frowned. “I can’t do anything about any of that.” She snatched up her brush and ran it through her hair a couple of times, then gestured as she spoke. “I’m trying to be nice. Really, I am. I know I messed up asking to switch breakfast shifts. I just didn’t think how that would look.”

“ ’Course you didn’t,” Helen said. “Because most of your life your little world has revolved around you.” She began to change into her nightshirt. “And if all the special treatment with Buffalo Bill himself ain’t enough to make folks a mite jealous, you’ve got the Shepherd jumping through hoops like nobody’s ever seen.”

“I do
not
have Shep Sterling jumping through hoops,” Belle protested. “I’ve barely seen him since I’ve been here. Except for this morning when he delivered his version of the lecture you’re giving right now.”

“Excuse me, honey,” Helen said as she slid beneath the covers, “but wasn’t that Shep spending most of his day off polishing
your
saddle and grooming
your
ride before
your
audition? And if I’m not mistaken, wasn’t that Shep sitting with you at supper every night this week? And didn’t he sit with you in church Sunday?”

“He and Monte are friends,” Belle said. “It’s only natural he’s around us a lot. Monte promised Daddy he’d watch out for me.”

“Right,” Helen nodded, then said, “Well, it’s a good thing Shep isn’t that nice to everybody. He’d never find time to actually ride a horse.”

Belle sat back up. “It isn’t fair for people to judge someone they don’t even know.”

“Last time I checked the real world, Miss Belle, it wasn’t filled with justice and light. People aren’t always fair. The Wild West is a small town of mostly frontier people plopped down right in the middle of what amounts to a foreign country, because, believe me, St. Louis and all the other big cities we’re going to play are foreign countries to people like me.”

“What d’you mean, ‘people like you’?”

Helen sighed and lay back on her cot. Propping herself up on one elbow, she said, “I was eight years old when my mama died. It was Daddy and my five brothers and me on a spread that was about the size of a raindrop in the great ocean of Texas. Today that raindrop is a decent-sized pond. And it got that way because, in addition to cooking and mending and washing laundry, I spent a good part of every day baby-sitting orphaned calves and doing whatever I could to help my daddy hang on to his little piece of Texas. I rode spring roundup and dragged calves out of the mud and roped steers, and I did it when I was so tired I could hardly stay awake in the saddle. And you can be darned sure that if it would get me a little piece of this heaven called the Wild West, where all I have to do is look pretty when I ride my horse and peel potatoes or iron or mend or do laundry a few hours a day, I’d be willing to do it.
Any
of it.

“I’m lucky enough to get to work in the stables, and I like that. But the truth is, if I couldn’t work there, I’d sew until I was blind and never say a word against it.” She lay back. “Most of the people outside this tent have stories a lot like mine. We’re all waiting to see what’s behind the fancy name and the pretty face of Liberty Belle.”

“Well, look who’s here.” Ma Clemmons looked up from the wardrobe tent worktable.

Helen nudged Belle forward. “Nate said she should report to you once she got settled.” She winked at Ma. “It took her a little longer than some. But she’s settled.” With an encouraging pat to Belle’s backside, Helen left.

Ma tucked a wisp of white hair behind her ear as she said, “You like sewing?”

Belle shook her head. “No, ma’am. But I know how, and this is where Mr. Salsbury said I should work.” She hesitated. “My momma was adamant that all ladies need to know how to sew. She started me on buttons when I was about four. Hemming at six. I made a nine-patch doll quilt when I was ten.” Belle decided it best not to elaborate on the relative success of the quilt.

Ma unrolled a length of dark blue calico and cut off a piece. Smoothing it so it would lay flat, she positioned a pattern piece on the fabric before walking over to a cabinet standing at the end of a row of treadle sewing machines. Opening the cabinet, she pulled out a square black metal tin and handed it over. “Buttons,” she said, and motioned to a basket of men’s shirts. “Those are clean, but they all need one or two buttons sewed back on.” She motioned toward a worktable piled high with the tools of her trade. “Take whatever tools you need, and if you have any questions, ask.”

She went back to the worktable and, pulling some straight pins out of a little pin cushion she had strapped to her wrist, began to pin the paper pattern in place, talking as she worked. “You’ll be less likely to go blind if you sit over where the tent flap’s rolled up. If there’s a ripped seam, go ahead and put the buttons on, but put it in . . .” She reached beneath the worktable and pulled out an empty basket. “Put it in here when you’re done. Dora and Mabel can take it from there.”

As if on cue, Dora Spurgeon and Mabel Douglas sauntered in and, with a disbelieving glance at Belle, took seats at the two sewing machines.

Ma Clemmons spoke up. “You ladies been introduced?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Belle said and nodded at Dora and Mabel, who mumbled greetings and then turned their backs. After a couple of attempts at starting conversations wherein Dora seemed friendly enough but given to one-word answers or shrugs on any topic and Mabel refused to talk, Belle fell silent. For a while the only sounds in the tent were Ma Clemmons’s humming as she worked. In an hour Belle had sewn on more buttons than she had in her entire life. Her neck and back were aching and her fingers smarting from needle pricks.

Ma Clemmons left on an errand. While she was gone a cowboy brought in a pair of torn britches. Mabel flirted shamelessly. Dora pedaled away at her sewing machine, not even looking up. As the cowboy made his way back toward the stables, Mabel watched from the opening near where Belle was sitting and muttered, “I’d like to be at the other end of that cowboy’s rope sometime.”

Dora scolded. “D-do you ever think of anything b-besides m-men?”

Mabel nudged her. “And I suppose you just normally skitter behind a tent flap to avoid talking to them.” She smirked. “Oh, wait.

I guess you do. Unless it’s Monte Mason.”

“SHHHH!” Dora said, with a glance in Belle’s direction.

Belle smiled at Dora. “If you like my cousin you’ve got good taste in men,” she said.

“
Like
isn’t exactly the right word,” Mabel said. “Dear little Lora-Dora is
obsessed.
”

“I am n-not!” Dora protested.

Mabel didn’t let up. “You are,” she insisted. “She even talks about him in her sleep.” Clasping her hands together and batting her eyelids, Mabel did an impression of a melodrama heroine. “Oh, M-Monte . . . s-save me . . . Oh, M-Monte . . .”