Song of the Red Sparrow: Book One: on Angels’ Wings

By Rory Shane Riggs

In the tradition of Gone with the Wind, Cold Mountain, and Lonesome Dove, Song of the Red Sparrow presents the first installment of a sweeping historical epic that moves from Maryland at the time of the Civil War to a small, isolated Texas town.

In Prairie Gulch, Texas, guarded secrets are told, legends are whispered, buried lies are uncovered, and hidden identities arent hidden for long. For residents of this rough-and-tumble town tucked away on the fringes of the civilized world, any change of pace is a welcome one. When a company of four lovely young dancers and singers rolls into town, all sorts of unexpected adventures ensue. But even their sworn protector, the stalwart Ralph Waldo Horowitz, cant prevent their first night in Prairie Gulch from becoming one theyll never forget. Luckily, the towns sheriff takes the ladies under his protection.

Soon enough, the ladies of the Miss Lilliforth Dance League will learn that nothing sings quite like the song of the Red Sparrow.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: May 26, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462014613

Rory Shane Riggs

Rory Shane Riggs is an award-winning reporter, playwright, editor, and novelist. He is the author of Song of the Red Sparrow Books One and Two, and of the successful plays Confessions from the Ladies Room, The Lightbearer, and The Marie Defense. He lives and works in western Maryland.

Book preview

Contents

The Arrival

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

To be continued….

Coming Soon:

About the Author

Song of the Red Sparrow

Book One

is dedicated

To those who believed

But especially to my parents, who have been waiting a long time for

this…

"And o ye high flown quills that soar the skies,

And ever with your prey still catch your praise,

If e’er you deign these lowly lines your eyes

Give thyme of parsley wreath, I ask no bays.

This mean and unrefined ore of mine

Will make your glistening gold but more to shine."

Anne Bradstreet

The Arrival

Chapter One

The year was 1885.

There were fifteen years before the turn of the new century.

It was a gilded age for those who lived it and yet still the dark ages for those who yearned for a more peaceful and industrial existence.

It was the decade of last chance for those capitalists wishing to make their fortunes in such ventures as wheat, textiles, and railroad. It was the last gasp of an age where horse and buggy were still the desired mode of transportation, when ocean travel took weeks if not months, and where letter writing was an art form.

It was near the dawn of the last decade of the nineteenth century. It was a time of fear, independence, rebellion and oddly—a sense of station and purpose. It was a strange decade when the spirit of one half of the nation remained wild while the spirit of the other half was on the mend from being broken.

And even though Grover Cleveland’s administration had officially proclaimed a more virile and rational United States of America, the west was still believed to be very much wild, wicked, and unsettled territory.

The south was still feeling the ill effects of the War Between the States. And the north, where the nation’s capital was debated among many to be, was the only place in the young nation with the reputation of containing all the industrial fineries and modern facilities of a postwar civilization.

New York City had its theatres, shopping stores, and the new Brooklyn Bridge and the grandeur that was becoming an island known as Manhattan.

Philadelphia had its colonial homes and its old world charm that the city of brotherly love would need to have.

Washington, D.C. had its pageantry and power. President Lincoln had ordered the completion of the magnificent capital dome twenty years prior. It still stood as a testament to a nation’s ability to heal.

How quickly that wound was scabbing, however, was still the subject of national questioning and heated parlor conversation.

So it was a little more than odd that instead of the traveling company of the Miss Lilliforth Dance League heading north to savor the finer luxuries of life, or east to soak in some political exposure, the troupe was heading west to a town no one had ever heard of, much less locate on a map.

It was a town called Prairie Gulch, allegedly found somewhere in the tiniest cracks in the obscenely large state of Texas.

The Miss Lilliforth Dance League was comprised of four attractive females accompanied for their journey by an aging, rickety stout man with a nervous trigger finger and a habit of placing his chubby hands on a lady where male hands need not go without prior permission.

And it was no surprise that Miss Donna Lilliforth herself, owner and manager of the song and dance entertainment company, was sitting out this particular trip.

My health, she had said, with a dramatic cough from her still relatively young lungs added for punctuation. It’s not what it used to be.

Truth be told by any of them, Miss Lilliforth’s voice and figure weren’t what they used to be either but that didn’t stop her from insisting on solo numbers in the more civilized venues, places with black ties and red velvet balconies.

Miss Lilliforth told them, as she convinced all four of the young women to sign on for the duration of the month long trip, that the good people of the state of Texas need a healthy dose of culture just like anyone else and we are making history by bringing it to them.

In short, the ladies believed, they had been sold out.

None of the women were sure who had done the buying or what the total bill of sale had been but there was someone, they knew, in a place called Prairie Gulch with more money than he knew what to do with.

Miss Lilliforth’s Dance League.

Four very attractive and young women.

All of them, save one, fresh from high school studies. The other member was attending a finishing school of charm for girls. The Academy of Social Refinery for Properly Educated Ladies of the Reconstructed South. It had been upon her father’s insistence and her father’s money that she attend. But this was summer and school was in recess and she was ready to taste independence – a flavor she had savored only a few years prior before a series of unfortunate events made her father a bit more possessive of his only child than need be.

The four of them nonetheless had always been and felt safe before. They had never ventured more than two or three hundred miles away from home. They were never gone more than a summer’s week.

This appointment, in Texas, however, would be strikingly different. It was a contract with a period to be no less than four weeks. That would mean six weeks away from home this time. A week of traveling to get there, a week to get back home, and the four-week engagement at the location Miss Lilliforth and her mysterious client had already pre arranged.

First, it had been a rickety train on newly laid rails that would take them nearer their destination. A privately hired coach and driver would service the rest of the way into town.

The four women tried to fall asleep on the last night of the rail excursion in a series of bunk beds in a private car. The beds more resembled shelves with thick burlap curtains drawn around each weak cot. Sleep was a difficult task that evening, however. Perhaps it was the anticipation of the arrival in town or perhaps it was merely the constant shimmy and shake of the train beating to and fro on the tracks.

As they reclined in the dark, Ellen, one of the dancers and singers belonging to the entertainment organization, threw open the curtain that surrounded her bunk and called out in disgust to her colleagues.

That’s it, she announced in defeat. I can’t take this thing any more. Who can be expected to get her beauty sleep in this? Does its engine contain coal car parts? I thought we were supposed to be traveling in the lap of luxury.

Ellen was the youngest of the four. She was dark eyed, raven-haired and olive skinned. Her appearance was almost exotic. It was rumored that her father was half Cherokee who kidnapped her mother from a settlement and forced her to become his bride. Of course, that rumor was rumored to have been started by Miss Lilliforth who not only believed in raw talent but also in promotion and free publicity. Ellen’s smile was as big as her heart. Her waist was as small as her patience.

Apparently, the lap of luxury has bony knees, called another voice from behind a faded curtain with holes burned in from previous patrons who had obviously found it necessarily to smoke tobacco while lying in bed. And there’s no windows in here. I can’t even see the light of the moon. It’s like riding in a funeral train to my own service.

That voice belonged to Laura, an often naïve but always optimistic and bright girl. Laura’s skin was the complexion of fine imported porcelain. Her hair was so blonde it was almost white. Everything about her was genteel and the picture of Southern beauty except for her laugh. Her spirited guffaw was said to scare small ponies and shake flocks of migrating birds from moss-covered braches.

Laura swung her thin white legs over the side of the bed and blew a hot breath up into her forehead, sending a lock of hair bouncing against her face. As she did so, her limbs thumped an object in the bed below her.

Ouch! moaned another female orator, a voice that had been disturbingly silent thus far, which seemed a bit out of character for the personality. Then, another set of curtains flew open, so fast in fact that they nearly fell from their rings. What in the devil do you have up there? Legs or tree trunks?

It was Mertyl, probably the most opinionated and therefore often the most vocal member of the group. Her hair was almost too short for a feminine style and was always tussled in a wisp of dark blonde. Her eyes danced in two pools of liquid blue. She was beautiful in her own right but her beauty was only noticed once a person could get beyond her mouth, which always seemed contorted in a sentence containing at least one or two profanities. Mertyl found her vocabulary – or lack of it – to be her defense mechanism and she defended herself quite regularly, even when the moment did not call for it.

Does anybody know where in the blessed hell we even are? Mertyl asked.

The fourth and final voice spoke.

The voice belonging to Jessica.

For her first uttered sentence, the curtain that surrounded her reclining place was closed.

We should be somewhere in Mississippi or Arkansas by now depending on the train route, she replied, in a honey dripping Kentuckian accent. And Mertyl, just so you know, I doubt it very much if there is such a thing as a blessed hell. I’m sure that if there was, my father would be telling his congregation how to avoid going there.

Mertyl laughed at Jessica’s correction and pulled back the drape to reveal the cubbyhole with the bunk and the last member of the group who was lying on top of it.

Jessica’s arms were folded across her bosom; her eyes wide open, revealing she too had not been sleeping. At least not much. She looked over at her friends and journey companions. Jessica, or Jessie, as her friends called her, was truly the most captivating member of the troupe. Her two years spent in the grooming academy, paid for by her father and even by money donated for the cause by his church, was beginning to show in abundance. It was for that reason that Miss Lilliforth had made the decision to appoint Jessica the unofficial peer leader and spokesperson of sorts for the group in her absence. As well as being older and arguably more culturally astute, Jessie could carry the solo numbers that Miss Lilliforth usually performed in the civilized establishments.

Jessie had long and nearly wild fire red hair. Her complexion was pale but clean. Her eyes were green emeralds placed against her face of ivory flesh. At first, she pursed her lips like a discarded doll in a child’s toy box and then she laughed out loud, with nearly every tooth showing, and rose from the bunk.

I can’t sleep either, she said, as she gained her balance and joined her friends who now were perched on the edges of their own selected shelves. Every time I close my eyes, I dream someone is rearranging my bedroom, with me still in it.

Ellen jumped down from her cot with a thud to the floor she did not intend to make. She sat on the bed next to Jessie.

Does anyone have any idea why Miss Lilliforth would send us out in the middle of God knows where?

We’re not God knows where, Ellen, Mertyl answered with an edge of sarcasm. Mertyl was nearly famous for her dry wit. We’re in Mississippi or Arkansas, depending on the train route, wherever in the hell those places are.

She’s trying to kill us. That’s the only explanation for it I can come up with, Laura said. She wants us dead so she can replace us with a more talented troupe.

Yes, Mertyl added, tossing her bed pillow up to Laura playfully. That may be true in your case, darling. And for once and for all, get those tree trunks of yours off of my head. Mertyl gently slapped at Laura’s legs and with a disingenuous huff, the girl obliged.

You heard that explanation she gave us about bringing culture to the masses that need it. But does anyone buy that? Jessie asked. She searched the three faces of her fellow employees and friends. They were all still and silent. Mertyl bit her upper lip, afraid of the damning message she wanted to convey about Miss Lilliforth and her inability to travel with them.

Ellen stared at the cuticles on her left hand.

I do, Jessie continued. She lifted herself from her bed and stood in the middle of the aisle to address the three of them better. She had to hold on to the bunks at either side of her to keep from falling one way or the other as the car rocked beneath her. We all joined this group voluntarily for one thing – to entertain. We are not pioneering women. We are not some martyrs for some great cause that actresses will ever study. No books or great plays will be written about our journey. In short, my friends, we are nothing more than musical prostitutes.

Then Jessie laughed for a moment because her soliloquy had gathered a captive and quiet audience. She rather enjoyed honing her acting skills on her friends.

For whatever we are getting paid for this trip, Mertyl exclaimed over her own rising laughter. We’re musical whores.

Just call me Diamond Lil, Laura giggled, her voice rolling in her throat so at any moment her boisterous laugh could spring forward and cause the train to derail under the weighty vibration.

Nickel Lil is more like it for me, added Ellen.

The troupe laughed together then, allowing for a moment the stress and worry of the trip to be released after nearly a full week of weary strenuous travel. They kept up their happy noise until the door to their tiny room in the private car came open and a short fat man with whiskers too long for his jaw and pajamas too short for his waist made an appearance.

He was their chaperone, a man by the full name of Ralph Waldo Horowitz, a sixty three year old Jewish gentleman who had been with the troupe in an official escort capacity since Miss Lilliforth founded it. Apparently, Ralph Waldo had been a fiancée’s father. This particular fiancée – one of four belonging to Miss Lilliforth in the span of her lifetime — was tragically killed in the War Between the States. He died at the tail end. Actually, truth be told, when the man heard the news that the war had ended, he yelled in jubilation so loud that the horse he was riding on bucked. He fell from the saddle and the horse came down on his skull. Miss Lilliforth felt a sense of duty to help out the man who would have been her father in law and so she placed him on her payroll. And then she placed him on a train.

What’s going on in here? Ralph Waldo Horowitz asked with a grin that revealed a few missing teeth. You sound like a bunch of hens laying eggs.

And I suppose you’d like to campaign for the position of the rooster, Mertyl snapped and the women laughed again.

I am afraid I would be out voted, ladies, he said with his heavy almost permanent panting breath. He had grown used to their ribbing and teasing. He knew they meant no real harm and they knew he was in their company to keep them from harm’s way, or at least give that appearance. Now try and get some sleep. We’ll be catching the stage in Texas in the morning when the train stops.

Then Ralph Waldo Horowitz squeezed the shoulder of Jessica and the knee of Ellen simultaneously with the fat digits he called fingers. The people in town will be expecting all of you to be bright eyed and bushy tailed for your first show tomorrow night.

When he hit the word tailed, Horowitz put extra emphasis on it and tightened his squeeze. He winked and removed his hands from the bodies of the women. Then, just as he had entered, Ralph Waldo Horowitz was gone and the door behind him was shut. His residue, a mixture of the smell of gin and talcum powder, lingered.

Ellen scrubbed at her knee. One of these days, I’m going to cut that thing off, she said.

His hand? Jessie asked, entering her bunk again and attempting to recline.

That too, Ellen replied.

The next day provided a bit of a much desired breather for the young women as the coach they were scheduled to catch just inside the state of Texas – the one that would take them on the last six hours of what had already been a very taxing excursion – was running late.

A telegram had arrived in Horowitz’s name moments before the troupe’s train pulled up to the platform of the station.

Dear Mr. Horowitz and Company. Prairie Gulch eagerly anticipates your arrival. Unfortunately, the stage to meet you has been inadvertently delayed. Please expect a wait of no more than four hours. There are two rooms in your name already paid for at the Wrigley Hotel. Sincere apologies.

The telegram’s message nearly filled the entire yellow slip of paper on which it was written. Initials only signed it. L.C.

L.C.? Mertyl cried aloud, snapping the paper from their chaperone’s thick hands. Who is L.C.? Is he the bastard who paid for this trip?

Mertyl, Jessie flushed and then scolded flatly. We are in public.

So what? Mertyl Cooper responded in kind. She was not one to be reprimanded. Or criticized for that matter. Here we are for four whole hours. Stranded in some god damned Texas cow town like one of those picture postcards you see in the five and dime. Hell, where are the tumbleweeds I have read about? I demand that a tumbleweed come blowing along. The experience is not worth writing home about without a tumbleweed.

Jessie only rolled her eyes. Truth was, the town in which they had stopped was indeed a dusty and dirty place. It appeared unkempt and nearly deserted except for the strains of a piano coming from a nearby establishment.

Following the sounds of the melody, the women picked up what baggage they could on their own and made their way toward what appeared to be a business district, in search of the hotel referred to on the note.

As she looked about at the various businesses, Jessie’s eye caught the source of the playing piano. The Wrigley Hotel….and saloon.

I think I just spotted our respite, she said, with a twist of her head, her hair wet with perspiration from the midday sun.

Dropping her luggage, Laura pushed her hands into her hips.

That’s it all right, she said. The Wrigley Hotel. Just like the telegram said.

And saloon, Jessie added. She could not help but make that correction pointedly clear.

The one condition in which her father, the Baptist minister and the pillar of the Christian community in her hometown had provided in order to allow his only child leave of his care for the trip was that Miss Donna Lilliforth could guarantee his daughter would only perform in respectable establishments.

Oh yes sir, Reverend McDowell, Miss Lilliforth had promised, knowing full well she could not keep it as she crossed her fingers behind her back. My girls and I only perform in the most highly recommended establishments. In this day and age, my girls and I have to be sure of our locations.

And now here they were. Here she was. Jessica Marie McDowell, the refined daughter of a minister from Northern Kentucky standing on the sultry sidewalk about to enter a hotel and saloon. Her father would be sorely disappointed in her behavior at just the very thought of her agreement to rest here. She should put up a fuss. She should wage a protest. She should demand shelter in the area place of worship over an ungodly place such as a saloon.

Jessie looked up at the sign once more Wrigley Hotel and Saloon. She thought of her father once more.

Jessie McDowell was the first of the group to step inside.

Ralph Waldo Horowitz held open the door to the hotel and saloon as the four ladies entered. Three boys outside followed them in at the nod from a man at the front desk just inside the entrance. Horowitz approached the desk clerk to say a few words the women could not hear.

Just off to their immediate right upon entering the building was a large archway, which served as the entrance to the saloon in the building.

From there, the women noticed at last the glances that had been daggers since they had made their way in from the street. Hard mean looks from most of the over painted women in low cut gowns wearing too much makeup for a respectable time of day. Except for one. One woman looked upon them with sympathy and worry.

And there were smiles from the men. The kinds of smiles that make the receiver want to take a long hot bath moments after observing it. One man, toothless and oily, sitting at the edge of the bar, licked his lips and grinned.

The smell, which permeated from the room, was a sweet combination of alcohol, smoke and floral perfume.

Horowitz returned to them with two keys. He seemed untouched by the reality of the setting. He acted as if he had seen all of this before. And perhaps, as a man of his years, he had.

There was a key to a room assigned to him and one that all four women would share.

As the ladies began to wearily climb the large stairs, the man with the loose tongue inched down on his barstool as if he were trying to catch a glance up the bustling petticoats. His attempt was met with a harsh slap on his stained face from one of the other painted ladies that kept both his company and his wallet.

I have only read about places like this. I thought they only existed in the minds of writers of cheap fiction, Ellen sighed, once inside the rented room.

Welcome to Texas, Laura added, untying the skirt to her dress and allowing it to fall to the floor around her ankles. And did you notice no one even said that to us when we came in?

Oh but they did, Mertyl replied. She tested the bolt on the door to make sure it was secure. They just did it in their own way.

Well, I for one am very glad to be getting out of my traveling clothes and into a real bed, even if it is for a few hours. I don’t mind telling you, I am exhausted, said Jessie. I am not sorry one bit that stage is late. God bless you, L.C., whoever you are.

With that, she collapsed into one of the two double beds the room afforded.

Did any of you notice how clean this room is compared to the rest of the place? asked Laura. Fresh bed linens. Water in the pitcher. Towels. It’s very nice, actually.

Mertyl sat at a dressing table and ran a brush through her short hair.

That’s because this is probably an office, she said. After seven.

An office? Ellen asked with a note of sincerity in her inflection. What kind of business could a person do in a…. Then she stopped and smiled and noticed the grins of the other women in the room. Oh, Mertyl. You’re wicked.

I wonder if they get paid more than we do? Laura asked. It wasn’t a question of sarcasm or spite. She was genuinely curious. It was Laura’s nature to be curious.

They do the same job we do, Mertyl answered. They entertain the masses. It’s members only here and the audience is able to give a standing ovation lying down.

Yes, what was that Miss Lilliforth said about entertaining the masses? Ellen chuckled.

Jessie kept her eyes closed from her reclined position but decided to volunteer an answer and join the conversation, nearing its end. I wouldn’t call what we saw downstairs a fair representation of the masses.

It was a mass of something, Mertyl replied. That’s for sure.

The rest was painfully short. The four hours seemed more like four minutes for the weary women. The stagecoach had arrived, as compact as the car seemed, just as the telegram had promised. It was four hours late on the nose.

The women had endured passing the men and the painted ladies in the downstairs saloon again. Only this time, the patrons and the employees were not as cold. Some of the women in the bar smiled warmly. Some of the men tipped their hats. One of them even quickly rose to open the door.

Wait just a moment, one of the ladies in the saloon called out.

It was Jessie who turned.

Yes? she asked, puzzled by the woman’s frantic approach and sense of urgency.

The woman – who was too old for the fashion she wore and too young for the age lines around her pale hollow eyes – took Jessie by the arm, which made the young lady uncomfortable.

Yet, Jessie did not pull away. She imagined the stranger was very much like herself at one time. Fresh and new and sweet in town, looking to make a little money and expecting to get back home when things had improved.

I’m Nora, the woman introduced, and then produced from her waist pocket a small silver handgun. Take this. It’s loaded. I know where you’re headed. There’s been talk of an outlaw robbing coaches. Vicious. Merciless. His image has been up on wanted posters all over the state. I don’t mean to frighten you but you may need the protection.

Jessica McDowell was shocked. Her body then backed away and she removed her arm from the woman’s grasp.

Thank you kindly, but no, she said.

It’s a rough road from here to there, Nora warned. I made the trip myself once. I was glad I had this.

But we have our chaperone, Jessie said, forcing a smile.

Yes, I can see that, Nora said, placing the pistol back into her garment. He seems very….um…capable. She too then forced an obligatory smile. Have a good trip.

Thank you very much, Jessie replied with a firm shake of the woman’s clammy hand. Nora.

As Jessie approached the stagecoach to join her friends, Mertyl seemed to be beside herself with laughter.

Hot damn! Mertyl whooped. There it is!

What’s all the fuss? Jessie asked, as she handed a bag to the driver who was securing the luggage to the roof of the vessel.

Mertyl got what she wanted, answered Laura.

How’s that? Jessie wanted to know.

She saw a tumbleweed, Ellen answered.

When Jessie joined the rest of her traveling group near the doors of the stagecoach, two trunks had already been tied to the top of the car. The same boys who had taken their luggage to the room only hours before were now stuffing hay into the mouths of the horses that would pull the carriage.

As Mertyl entered the coach, she was the first to inquire as to Jessie’s encounter with the native.

What was that all about back there anyway? she asked.

Nothing, Jessie lied. She was just wondering where we were headed. She said she had been there once and it’s a lovely ride.

Jessie pulled open the door of the coach herself, which required two violent and sharp yanks.

It had better be a lovely ride, Laura said with a bit of a whine. She was then sitting crushed up against one of the two side windows on her bench seat. Six hours in this thing? Can you imagine? Six whole hours in this until we get there?

As Laura was making her proclamation, Jessie was trying to find room to nudge. The women shifted around to make some space, sucking in their stomachs, arching their backs, and pulling legs aside.

Are you in yet? Mertyl wanted to know as she practically held her body out the window to make a place for her friend.

Jessie became positioned in her seat and sat still, breathing out for the first time since she had begun the obstacle course inside the four feet by five feet interior box.

I don’t think there’s any room for my hat, Jessie told them with a laughing spark to her voice. I was hoping to get off the stage in Prairie Gulch wearing my hat.

I don’t think there is any room in here to even exhale, Mertyl stated, waving a paper fan in front of her face as if the inside of the coach were 300 degrees.

I’m glad we are all friends, Ellen said, with a giggle. Otherwise, we might be in some serious trouble. She dabbed a drop of perspiration from her brow using only two fingers of her gloved hands.

Laura dressed for the trip as if she was heading for cocktails just down the block. Her almost white blonde hair was piled high with jeweled pins above her head. On her ears were pearl earrings. She looked like a fairy tale princess.

Ralph Waldo Horowitz stuck his head into the window just then.

Any room back there for a tired old man, ladies? he asked, stupidly, smiling another one of his annoying horse chopper smiles.

Oh sure, hells of room, said Mertyl in reply. Why, we are planning to stretch out and take a nap so we arrive in Prairie Gulch fresh as four daisies.

No need to get snippy, Miss Cooper, Ralph replied. At least all of you know one another. I don’t know if it’s customary in these parts but never have I had to suffer the indignity of having to share a ride with a hack driver.

Jessie took her hand out the window of the car and patted Ralph’s hand that sat there.

Ralph, she said. It’s a six hour drive. That leaves you plenty of time to get to know one another.

Ralph was not certain if Jessie McDowell was being pleasant or sarcastic. He slipped his hand away just the same and disappeared.

The women felt the stage rock from side to side moments later as their chaperone boarded the top with the driver.

They had been on their journey for several hours. All of them had lost track of the hours but not of the time. Each one persistently checked a corset watch or looked at the shadows crossing the desert. They had been enduring the up and down and violent jolts from left to right as the coach rambled along a dirt road, kicking up dust and every now and then spitting dirt into the cab. The coach had stopped only once – nearly an hour ago – in order for the horses pulling the coach to relieve themselves.

You can lead a horse to water but he ain’t never gonna do his biz-ness in it, the driver had mused.

He then informed them he would be stopping again in the same manner in another hour, prolonging the trip and spilling another unwanted matter into the open cabin – a stench of fresh horse droppings.

The rest periods for the animals had not been figured into the travel and arrival time and the way Ralph had figured, and pointed out to the ladies, upon arrival in Prairie Gulch, they would be at least two hours behind schedule.

That means, we will probably hit town long enough for all of you to slip into your stage clothes and makeup, light the footlights, and begin the first set, he told them, as they stood down wind from the draining labor animals.

He did not have to say a word. The women were becoming gravely aware of their predicament with each passing moment. With each jerk of the corset watch and each shadow that passed against the yellow earth, the woman knew they were running behind, running fast, and perhaps just running.

It was for that reason that the troupe decided to hold their rehearsal in the coach, as it seemed to ramble through nowhere, the setting never changing.

They had gone through four numbers, subtracting lines now and then and editing notes the way a good editor edits lines of an epic novel or a skilled surgeon extracts tissue.

During practice of their fifth number, Jessie interrupted the harmony and the sour lacking of it.

Wait, wait, wait, she called out to them, putting her hands in the air. The other three halted their singing, although not all the same time. Someone is throwing me off, Jessie announced. Someone here is flat.

Mertyl placed her hands over her meager breasts and huffed. So, after all these years of friendship, you are finally going to throw up in my face what I can’t throw up in my own!

Then she laughed. She hoped it would break the mood. It did not. The other three were too tired and too hot to find humor.

Vocally, Jessie dictated the obvious.

Who knows who the flat voice is, Ellen said defensively, nearly a dead giveaway to her own guilt. Besides, all of this dust that has been flying around, who could be expected to have her lungs at full capacity?

Are we still talking about singing? Mertyl quipped. She was anything if not persistent. She was going to get this troupe to lighten up