There was no question now that Mary would finish the dresses on time. Private München mentioned that he could do more if she needed to be about her duties in the Masterson household. She assured him that Victoria Masterson could manage well enough.
It really wasn’t true. Victoria complained when Mary returned from the guardhouse that she wasn’t paying her to neglect her duties. Mary finally took a page from Sergeant Blade’s book and gave her employer the Sergeant Stare.
“You bullied me into making fifteen calico dresses for this stupid ball,” she snapped. “The ball is in two days, and after that I will do whatever you need, at least until I leave.”
Her former friend burst into ready tears and spilled out her own misery at having to decorate that barn of a commissary warehouse for the ball and round up glass dishes and cups for the desserts, which would probably include pounds and pounds of raisins, and what could they do about that? Snow had stopped any wagon trains from Fort Russell north. At least the hostiles were hunkered down on their reservation to the northeast and no one was going to lose any hair, and she didn’t think she and the lieutenant were going to be together much longer.
That last bit of misery popped out before Victoria could close her mouth in time. She put her hand to her mouth, her eyes wide and tearful.
Mary’s head ached. She wanted to rush to her tiny room and flop on the bed, yearning for solitude to untangle her own thoughts. At least she was leaving Wyoming without the baggage of a marriage gone wrong, or at least at cross purposes, since one or both of the parties were too childish to apologize and try again. Instead, she held out her arms to Victoria, because under all her own turmoil, Mary was kind.
They cried together, Victoria sobbing because she was still a spoiled, pouty thing with her prettiest years probably already behind her, and Mary because she suddenly did not want to leave without her man, who probably thought, when she came right down to it, that she was too childish or maybe even too Seneca. How could she know? He was busy with his usual duties, plus making a coffin, which had to render a man melancholy, at the least. There was no time to talk.
She soldiered on in the morning, because Indians did that as well as troopers. She marched herself to the commissary storehouse and used her own money to buy raisins, which she wrapped in fabric scraps. She watched for the child she had first seen weeks ago, trudging behind her mother to the killing floor for scraps. She gave away her raisins.
The word must have got out, because other dark-haired children came for raisins, which meant more trips to the commissary. She handed out raisins, and sewed dratted dresses, and wished for money to buy better food for little friends cast adrift in that uncertain land where the truly poor existed.
Whether he knew it or not, Private München turned the guardhouse duty room into her haven. On the day when only one dress remained, the rest having been handed over to delighted owners, he produced a doll made of white ticking and stuffed with lint from the hospital steward, who was also German and who liked to share a drink now and then with a fellow German.
“Fräulein, with these scraps, think of the dresses we can make.” He set the doll beside her sewing machine. “Do you have yarn for hair?”
She did. Mama had sent her with a skein of black yarn to knit herself some mittens. “I do. I’ll get it when I go home for luncheon.” She held the doll and imagined other dolls with black yarn hair. She knew three little girls about to lose their mother who might need a small distraction. Four girls, counting the hungry one with raisins on her mind.
Her mistake was mentioning the matter to Victoria when she hurried home for a quick sandwich of nothing much beyond army bread and canned meat of mysterious origin. “We’ll have the last dress done at the end of the day. After that, Private München and I are going into the doll business.”
Victoria clapped her hands, looking more cheerful than Mary had seen her in a week. “What a delightful notion! We can send all the dolls you can make along with the dresses to poor children in Chicago. Mary, this is wonderful.”
She tried to set Victoria straight. “These dolls are staying here. There are Indian children here who need our attention.”
Victoria wouldn’t have it. “All our efforts are for the women and children rendered homeless by the Chicago fire. You promised.”
“I promised no such thing,” Mary fired back. “I have nearly done my task for you. We are using the scraps for another purpose.” She left the house before Victoria had time to finish her next sentence, angry and certain she would get a visit soon from Captain Hayes’s wife.
Head down against the wind and snow, Mary crossed the parade ground, desperate to see Sergeant Blade, who had plenty of his own worries and no time for hers. The badgers were starting to circle her lovely web, and she wanted to fight back this time, patience be hanged.
Private München heard her out in silence, shaking his head. “When this last one is done,” he said, indicating the half-finished dress, “it’s back to the cells for me.” He brightened. “Can you drag out this dress while I make more doll bodies?”
“I can and will,” she said and started picking out a perfectly straight seam in the skirt.
It was worse than she thought. Exactly one half hour later, Captain and Mrs. Hayes arrived in the duty room. Her heart in her throat, Mary looked up from the next seam she was picking out.
“She is making dolls and doll clothes now for the Indian children here and refuses to consider sending them to Chicago, along with the dresses and money we will raise,” Gertrude Hayes said, pointing an accusing finger in a most theatrical gesture, as if there were many seamstresses in the tiny room and Mary needed to be singled out.
Mary swallowed. She had never needed to stand up for herself at home, not with big brothers and a respected father who clerked for a judge. She had coasted through her life, pampered, well fed, and happy. She also remembered lessons about silence and quiet tears and standing her ground, if need be. She knew those lessons would never apply to her, until finally, at a fort far west of her ancestral home, they did.
Mrs. Hayes was looking at her husband, a captain with the brevet of major, a Medal of Honor recipient for some remarkable bit of military daring at Antietam, a man used to obedience, respected. “William, what are you going to do?”
Private München slipped next door to the duty sergeant’s office, abandoning her, or maybe not. He came back into the duty room at the same time she heard someone else running from the other office.
Captain Hayes cleared his throat. “Miss Blue Eye, the dolls should go to Chicago and the worthy poor.”
The little spider prepared to defend her web. “There are worthy poor right here, Captain, if you please,” she said. “Mathilde, the wife of your Arikara scout, is dying. Sergeant Blade is making her a coffin, as I am certain you know.”
He nodded. “Bill Curly is a good and faithful scout.”
“Bill and Mathilde have three daughters. I want to give them comfort with dolls and dresses to play with, something to distract them from the sorrow coming their way soon. There is another little girl who follows her mother to the killing floor for meat scraps and offal. I doubt she has ever had a doll of her own. I am making a doll for her, too. I know there are others.”
Mary spoke simply, ignoring Mrs. Hayes. She knew enough about women to know that Mrs. Hayes could easily make her husband’s life miserable. He was the leader of his troop, she reasoned, and maybe that would be enough to sway her argument. If not, she would not surrender the dolls without a struggle.
“We’re dealing in scraps, sir,” she said. “Some ticking and some lint. The yarn is mine. Please, sir.”
The outside door to the duty room opened, and Sergeant Blade stood there, breathing hard. He must have run from the quartermaster warehouse where she knew he was making the coffin. He was out of uniform, and his sleeves were rolled up to expose muscled forearms covered with sawdust. Mrs. Hayes sniffed and stepped aside, as much as she could in a small room with too many people and far too much anger.
Captain Hayes looked like a man who had just seen the coming of the Lord. “Sergeant Blade, kindly reason with Miss Blue Eye and let me get to work.” That last bit was directed at his wife, who glared back.
Rowan shook his head. “She’s in the right, Captain. She was asked—no, told—to make dresses, and she has fulfilled that task. Scraps are scraps. That’s all Indians get, so what’s the harm done? You and I both know that matters out here will only worsen. I say we leave her alone to her work of charity. Real charity.”
Mrs. Hayes narrowed her eyes. “I never thought a sergeant in the US Army would side with . . . with . . .”
“An Indian?” Rowan asked. “Yes, I am on Mary’s side. She has done what you demanded, ma’am. Don’t ask more than she is willing to give.”
“What will she do?” Mrs. Hayes demanded.
“I have no idea,” Rowan said with a smile, “but I lay odds on Mary to see that four little ones get dolls with fantastic calico wardrobes.”
Apparently Captain Hayes agreed. “There you have it, Gertie,” he said. “I am figuring out next year’s budget. Unless you want to help me with that, I suggest you go home and leave the tailors to their work.”
The door slammed. Captain Hayes grinned at Mary and rubbed his hands together. “It’ll be cold as can be in my quarters for a few nights, but what the hell? As you were, Miss Mary Blue Eye. Make those doll clothes. Sergeant, back to work.”
He left the room, chuckling to himself, and obviously a husband who knew his wife pretty well. Mary couldn’t help but think of Shell and His Pony.
Private München went into the adjoining office, muttering something about checking the flat irons, which gave Sergeant Blade perfect leave to gather Mary close. She wasted not a moment and practically leaped into his arms, shivering with the effort of standing up for herself.
“I hope Captain Hayes won’t give you a difficult time, Rowan,” she said into the sawdust on his shirt. “Thank you. I was afraid of what I was going to do to that dreadful woman.”
“I recall you mentioning something once about the Iroquois League and scalping techniques,” he said into her hair.
“Oh, you! I would never do such a nasty deed.”
“Kiss me, then, and send me back to work.”
She kissed him, pulling him close and pressing her lips softly against his, despite the sawdust. He did smell nicely of pine, and that was no liability. He took the liberty of patting her hip, then apologized, his face red.
“Go to work,” she said. “We can settle up later.”
“That’s one way to put it,” he told her. He started whistling before he even closed the door, and the little spider sat down to continue the unbroken web.