Mama had warned her that when it came to shopping, men were never the best companions. Mary made an exception for Sergeant Blade, who arrived promptly at eight o’clock in time for breakfast, which he admitted was his second one of the day, and better tasting than the first.
A waiter appeared when the sergeant sat down. After a brief negotiation, the man hurried away and returned promptly with two fried eggs, a mound of bacon, and toast.
“I could eat breakfast all day,” he told Mary as he tucked in.
Mary smiled at him, thinking about this odd situation, sharing breakfast with an amiable man, who, if she gauged the admiring glances of female diners properly, was someone to look at once or twice.
Maybe it was the impeccable cut of his uniform, or possibly his excellent posture, acquired through years in the saddle. He had a satisfying tan just starting to fade with the changing of the season. Mary decided that it should be against the law for any man except a trooper to wear a moustache that drooped at the corners. She glanced around and saw no other man with shoulders so broad. She thought Rowan’s face a little thin, but that seemed to be coin of the realm in the cavalry.
Knowing it was too much to hope he would go with her to pick out fabric, Mary felt generous enough to provide an exit, should he want one. “You needn’t accompany me from store to store,” she said cautiously. “Mama warned me about men and shopping.”
That earned a hearty laugh from her dining companion. “Mary, I am made of sterner stuff than that,” he assured her. “If you don’t ask me to select a hat for you, or ask my opinion on something related to women’s finery, we will manage.”
“Very well, sir.” She could laugh inside about that artless comment. Indians were good at laughing inside.
“Besides, I have commandeered the ambulance. How were you planning to haul enough fabric for fifteen dresses?”
She hadn’t thought of that. “Did you commandeer a driver, too?”
“I did. He is in the ambulance, currently sleeping off a prodigious drunk.”
“I probably should draw a curtain over this conversation, shouldn’t I?”
“Perhaps. Let us say that when he wakes up and discovers he is not in the guardhouse, he will thank me.” He touched her hand. “And that is the secret to leadership.”
Cheyenne’s Fifteenth Street featured more saloons than dry goods stores, but the sergeant shepherded his charge past still-shuttered bars to the quieter cross streets away from the depot. As if ready to spar with each other, the Cheyenne Mercantile Emporium and the less abundantly named Wyoming Dry Goods faced each other across a wide dirt street.
“Coin toss?” Rowan asked.
“Wyoming Dry Goods,” Mary told him. “I have a good feeling about it.”
Inside a cool interior featuring the tang of dried herring mixed with hair oil, the sergeant nodded approvingly. “I suppose ladies have an instinct about these things. I bow to your superior knowledge.”
Her choice of stores was only the merest luck, but he didn’t need to know that. They stood in front of a shelf boasting at least seven different fabric colors and designs. It was still a far cry from what she might have chosen from back home, but this was Wyoming Territory and not New York.
A dapper man in a white shirt and canvas apron, with a tape measure draped around his neck stood behind the counter. Mary felt herself leaning back as he looked her over, found her massively wanting, ignored her, and turned his attention to Sergeant Blade. Maybe she didn’t have an instinct about Wyoming Dry Goods after all.
She knew what the sergeant would do before he did it, which nearly brought tears to her eyes. He casually put his arm around Mary’s shoulders and drew her close to his side. “My wife and I have been sent to buy fabric for a calico ball at Fort Laramie,” he said. “How many yards per dress, my dear?”
“Ten,” she said calmly, as if Sergeant Blade spoke to her that way from dawn to dusk. Peace covered her right down to her soul. “The fabric is thirty-six inches wide?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the clerk said promptly, after a quick look at the sergeant, who had leveled him with the same stare Mary had noticed Rowan use when leading particularly inept recruits through equitation on the parade ground.
Rowan released her and tapped his knuckles lightly on the counter, which seemed to unnerve the clerk. You’ve made your point, Mary thought, amused. “I can manage now, Rowan,” she said. “We could probably use a sack or two of peppermints. I think your troopers have earned it, don’t you?”
“Mary, you’re a wonder,” he said. “Good thing we brought you along.” He tapped the counter again, once and hard. The clerk dropped the tape measure. “If you have any difficulty, my dear, just sing out.” He walked toward the front of the store, looking back twice, which made the now totally unmanned clerk gulp audibly.
“He likes to make certain I have good service,” she told the clerk. “Ten yards of each of these calicos, and then I’ll need thread and boning.”
Mary doubted any female patron in Wyoming Dry Goods had ever received such excellent service. They had similar luck across the street at the more grandiose Mercantile Emporium, once the sergeant established his connection with Mary Blue Eye in a way that no one would dream of questioning.
“I believe we are done,” Mary said, after a lengthy time watching another terrified clerk measure and cut. “I imagine that will come as a relief to you.”
“Not necessarily,” Rowan said as he picked up the twine-tied bundle of fabric as if it weighed nothing, and counterbalanced it with the fabric he already carried from Wyoming Dry Goods. “Did you find some calico for yourself?”
“I never even considered that I would be dancing, too,” Mary said when they stood on the street. She took a long look at all the fabric. “I wager I will be sewing dresses right up to the ball itself. No time.”
He set down both heavy parcels. “That won’t do. May I escort you to the ball?”
“Me?”
The sergeant looked around elaborately. “I don’t know anyone else on this street.”
“I never thought . . .”
He picked up the bundles, then set them down again, as if he had arrived at some momentous decision. He put his hands on her shoulders. “I watched you on that first day of the trip to Fort Laramie. I saw the excitement in your eyes. In the last few months I have watched it diminish. What happened to that little lady?”
“You’ve been watching me?”
“I watch everyone connected in any way with G Troop,” he said. “Soldiers and dependents alike.” Astounded, Mary watched the lift and fall of his shoulders. “I watch you with those silly wives. I know you are being taken advantage of, and there isn’t anything I can do about it.”
Why did he have to say that? Tears welled in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. He pulled her close right there and let her babble into his overcoat about her tiresome and childish friend and the huge gulf between them now. Keeping her voice low, she raged against the realization that the officers’ wives saw her as someone biddable who would sew and do all that was expected of her because she was an Indian and a servant.
“It’s not just the officers’ wives,” she said. “The corporal’s wife who cooks for the Mastersons gets her digs in, too, that I am lazy and ignorant.”
Mary thought about that a moment, until her innate honesty took over. “She might be right. I should know more about cooking.”
“Are you the youngest in your family?” he asked.
She nodded. “Youngest and the only daughter. I might have been spoiled a little.”
“Perhaps, but nothing prepared you for . . . this.”
“No,” she said, and felt her frustration dribble away. Maybe proximity to a man disinclined to judge her was soothing the wound no one could see. “They don’t know anything about me,” she concluded, embarrassed now. She backed away and he let her go. Maybe it was time for her own confession.
“And do you know something else? I see the Indians at Fort Laramie, the ones called Laramie Loafers. I watch the Indian mothers begging with their eyes. I see them in rags, and I feel superior to them. I am not, am I?”
Sergeant Blade picked up the fabric, his face serious. “None of us are. That’s why I hate my job, at times.”
She touched his arm and gestured at the calico bundles he carried. “This calico would make a lot of dresses, aprons, and children’s shirts for the sad people hanging about the fort. I ask myself, why not start charity at home?”
“That, my dear, is a question for the ages,” he replied. “Why not? Wait here. I’m going to put this fabric in the ambulance, check on my driver, and take you one more place.”