Journeys West Chapter 2 The Saga is Set in Motion
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Journeys West - Chapter 10 - Wagons Ho free porn video
Chapter 10 - Wagons Ho
By Marina Kelly and Monica Rose
Editor: Qmodo
The book was still on the table bedside the bed when they wheeled him
back to his room. While he wasn't restricted to his room, considering
that he was only an observation patient, Pat didn't feel like wandering
around the hospital wearing only a drafty gown.
It would be an hour or two before the doctor would have time to review
the scans that had been taken of his head and neck. To kill the time,
Pat decided to learn a bit more about Yolanda Petalengro. He opened the
book with great care as the parchment seemed rather fragile. The
conformist that he was he started reading from the beginning.
April 1897
The wagon train has stopped for the night and this is the first time
I have had a chance to write my thoughts down since the wagon train
left home two weeks ago.
I guess that I should start by saying that I am no longer Yandilo,
but Yolanda, a girl's name. In our language it means violet. At
first I objected to having a girl's name but Mama assured me that,
over time I will become as pretty as a wild flower.
When Mama came back after the house was searched, she made me gather
up my bedroll and journal. We left the house and made our way to
the west side of town where a wagon train was camped out.
Before she took me out of the woods and over to the wagons, she sat
down in the woods with me. She said that I must leave and not come
back, maybe forever. The sheriff thinks that I used my knife to
murder one of the men who killed father, because they found my knife
sticking out of the back of one of the vigilantes that hunted down
father and hung him from a tree. Father was found outside of town,
hanging from a tree. The sheriff says that father was hung because
they thought he had stolen a goat, and he was just a gypsy.
Father was not the best man in the world, but the thought that he is
gone still makes me cry. How could a goat be worth a man's life? I
know that father was innocent of that crime; I was with him the
entire day, so I know that he did not steal it, even though he had
taken other things before. But nothing is worth killing him for.
Mama was sure they would hang me too. Father's only real crime was
being a gypsy so she is sending me away with the wagon train. Mama
must have given it a lot of thought and heard all wagons leaving
town were being searched. The only way I can escape safely is to
pretend to be a young woman and indenture myself as a nanny and
helper for a family already on the train. If I hired on as a single
man, I would be identified and turned over to the sheriff.
She had me wear one of her old dresses and introduced me to Mrs.
Wilson and her children as Yolanda. Mr. Wilson was at a meeting
with other wagon owners and the wagon master. Mrs. Wilson is very
weak and she needs help with Hiram and Lorraine. I think that Mrs.
Wilson has consumption and her husband thinks that the weather out
west would be better for her. I don't think that Mr. Wilson knows
how hard the wagon train could be on her. I'm not sure that I do.
These past two weeks have been hard on her, but the medicines that I
learned from Mama have helped.
Before she left me, Mama gave me a bundle of herbs that she had
stored up over the winter and told me that I could use them to help
Mrs. Wilson. She also gave me a pouch of special herbs, just for
me. Because I must appear to be a girl, she told me that I must
take some of the herbs as a tea every day. She explained that when
my supply runs out I must find more as I will have to continue to
take it the rest of my life. She said that because I looked a bit
girlie already, the herbs would work quickly to help me appear as a
girl, she did warn me that my behavior must also match my physical
appearance. I will need to be on guard at all times. Mama told me
to watch how the other young women behaved and to mimic them. She
warned me that I must never let anyone know that I am a boy. It
could get me thrown off the wagon train or killed. She hugged me
tightly and told me that she loved me. We were both crying when she
hurried off into the dark.
Pat looked up from the page that he had been reading. He was surprised
to see that the exceptional young woman Yolanda that he and Mary had
been researching wasn't what they thought at first. Some folks would
have been turned off by the fact that Yolanda appeared to have been
either a cross-dressing boy or a transgendered boy. But in reality he
was disguised as a woman merely as a way to save his life. This fact
made his/her accomplishments all the more memorable. Then he paused to
realize that there was no reason why there could not have been
transgendered individuals before the present day. Pat had some idea of
how hard it was in current society to have a gender identity disorder;
he couldn't even begin to understand how difficult it would have been on
a young man in the 1800's when such things were never spoken of.
Yolanda appeared to have been a good person and the tales that had been
told about Yolanda bore that impression out.
Mama was right about the herbs. The most important one is called
field violets and I have been using them since we left Independence.
I think that I am changing a little because I seem to want to cry
whenever Mr. Wilson scolds me for something and my voice does not
sound quite right. I can't believe that the herbs are working this
quickly though, I wonder if mother knew something and she was
already feeding the herb to me.
Mrs. Wilson spends most of her time in the wagon resting. The train
boss, Mr. Bridger, was angry when he found out that she wasn't as
strong as he thought she was and he yelled at Mr. Wilson. Because I
am here as a helper, he decided not to make Mr. Wilson leave the
train. I sleep in a blanket under the wagon. I get up early to
prepare the family's meal, help pack everything up and walk behind
the wagon.
Pat laid back in his bed and thought about what he had read, 'There were
some passages that described how the land changed as they journeyed, and
even a day's worth of travel seemed to present them with a different
landscape. It sounded like Yolanda's life was very pretty tiring. It
was interesting that the life of a pioneer wasn't all glamour or
exciting like Hollywood would have us believe.' He picked up the
journal and continued to read.
Hiram and Lorraine are good children. They ride at the back of the
wagon while I walk behind with the cow. Even though I am walking, I
am able to help them with learning their letters and how to do their
numbers. When the children are resting, I fall back and practice
talking like a woman. At first it was hard, but after a few weeks
my normal voice now sounds just like some of the other girls here.
At night, I help Hiram learn to read from the Bible and he reads to
his mother. Before bed time, I have started gathering with some of
the other girls my age and I have made a few friends despite the
fact all they want to talk about are the boys in the train. My best
friend Nina has fallen in love with one of the drovers. She is
funny to listen to.
Pat smiled when he read that teenage love was not something invented in
the 20th century. Yolanda sounded like someone he would have liked to
have met and made a friend of.
The water stored in a barrel on the back side of the wagon is almost
gone. I don't know how many days it has been with no rain, maybe a
couple of weeks. The water holes have been dry. It it's been hot
and dusty, and we have not come across anybody, no farms, no towns,
for days!
I've worn out the shoes I had when we left Kansas. I went barefoot
until Mr. Wilson was able to scrounge up some rawhide and then I
made myself some makeshift moccasins. Sometimes Mr. Wilson was able
to shoot some wild game for a meal. Sometimes he wasn't. We share
what we got with those left because they shared with us.
May 1897
We have been on the trail for almost 2 months now. Last week, there
was a powerful thunderstorm that passed over us. I was glad that I
had been invited to sleep inside the wagon; I am now treated more
like an older daughter than a servant. The wind and hail damaged
some of the wagons and people got hurt when a couple of wagons
turned over in the wind. I helped Mr. Wilson and some of the men
tend to some of the people who were hurt.
By the time the work crews reached our part of the train, I had made
some poultices for their cuts and managed to set their broken bones.
I guess Mr. Bridger heard about it and came to see what I had done.
He was so impressed and happy that he had someone who could do
medicine that he is no longer angry with Mr. Wilson. They went off
and talked for a while. When they came back, I found out that Mr.
Bridger is going to move our wagon into the middle of the train so
that we will be just behind one of the supply wagons. He wants me
to be able to help take care of people who get hurt or sick. That
is, when I am not taking care of Mrs. Wilson or the children.
The best thing is that I don't have to walk anymore. I get to ride
most of the time, just like Mrs. Wilson. I still walk whenever the
wagon must go up a hill. They even gave us another horse to help
pull the wagon. Mr. Wilson is really happy with me.
Pat smiled as he put down the journal. Here was a young man who had run
away from a murder charge masquerading as a young girl on a wagon train.
He had gone from being a nanny, to a daughter, to a self-taught doctor
of sorts. This was a real-life success story.
The thunderstorm must have caused a flood somewhere up river because
it took us 3 days to cross the river we came to. Mr. Bridger was
unhappy about that, but we all worked as hard as we could to get
across the river. We lost one wagon and the horses got drowned.
Because I could not help with the wagons, I tried to keep the
younger children out of the way of the teams moving wagons across
the river by gathering them together and I worked to teach them
their letters. Some of them already knew how to read a little, so I
had a reading class with the little ones that I was helping.
The river water we passed used must have been bad. There are a lot
of people of all ages who are ill. I believe there is something
here in my journal about how to treat it, but I cannot find it.
I met a band of Indians today in the woods near where we are camped.
The medicine man seemed to have been waiting for me because he had a
lot of roots and herbs that he wanted to show me. He was able to
speak some English so he was able to make me understand what they
were for. When he showed me that simple charcoal could have some
affect upon the sickness, I couldn't get back to the wagons fast
enough.
Mr. Bridger came to scold me about leaving the wagons, but he
stopped when I told him that I might have something that would help
my patients. When he asked what I needed, I told him that I needed
charcoal from the oak and ash trees in the woods and he had men
gathering the dried wood that I needed. We had bonfires burning for
hours.
Once I mixed up a sweet mash and got some of my patients to eat some
of it, they appeared to be more comfortable. I now have almost 50
people in the wagons that I am watching over. I hope I can save
them all. I am now treated with respect by everyone, not something
a gypsy is accustomed too. Mama would be proud of me.
The only time I felt they were unhappy with me was when one of our
nightly sentries shot an Indian brave. I rushed out to see how
badly he was hurt and to bandage his wound. The Indian paranoia
said I should have left him to die because of the problems we had
with the water they had guided us to. I couldn't leave him though.
I had been given a pony for my services by one family; I got the
injured man on the horse and sent him on his way. I don't think
people were happy about that, but Mr. Bridger announced that it
might help us get through without any problems from the Indians
around us. I felt better after that.
So many people were sick that the train could not start again for
several days. Mr. Bridger was not happy with the time we are
losing, but he knows that we cannot go on if people are too weak. I
heard him call me a miracle worker because of how many people
recovered.
I was able to save all but 3 of them. We just got done burying
Constance Dahlman and her little girl. I couldn't stop crying
during their funeral services. Mr. Bridger thanked me for what I
did for the train and said that I was like an angel. I wish that I
felt like one. An angel would have saved everyone.
The emotions just this little passage seemed to convey made Pat pause to
blink back some tears. Whether Yolanda was a boy or a girl, she cared
deeply for everyone around her. She would have been a great friend. He
was getting sleepy but couldn't put the book down. He kept reading
about how Yolanda continued to change during the journey and how she was
coming to think and act more and more like a young woman.
When the train reached Fort Laramie, everyone realized that the wagon
train could not continue on to Oregon and that they would be forced to
winter over in Laramie. A yellowed newspaper clipping was stuck between
the pages that spoke about how the mother in the family Yolanda was
caring for died and that Yolanda was listed as a member of the family.
That wasn't something that had been common back then. What he found
interesting was that the family decided to remain in Laramie and that
the last name was familiar. He wondered if this was Hiram the
mechanic's family.
He read on to the end of the journal to discover that Yolanda had become
the school teacher.
So Yolanda had been the school teacher and she had a thing for violets.
It was interesting that violets often seemed to be found in the school
house. That was one of the reasons the place had been locked up. It
would have been demolished, but it was a landmark. There had been at
least two incidents in the recent past involving arson at the school
house. The reason anyone knew about them was that both firebugs had
experienced burns that required hospitalization. No one believed their
fantastic stories about a ghost. They told stories of the place being
haunted and the ghost and burned them instead of allowing the flames to
hurt the building. After their medical treatment, both had been taken
to jail in Casper. Neither had returned after their incarceration.
Pat thought it interesting that Tom Kaylock was adamant about keeping
the building locked and everyone out. There was no reason for it
really. The place was a state landmark and the town would have no
liability issues. Tom must have some personal reason to keep the public
out.
* * * * *
Liz dropped Mary off at Pat's house so that she could get the truck and
they met up again at the diner. Liz had jumped to help with the end of
breakfast rush and hurried over to Mary when she came in.
"Come sit back here," she said and led Mary to a booth at the back of
the dining room. There were a few looks from the men still finishing
their meal. Mary didn't know if they were admiring her figure or if
there was a darker reason. It was a bit ironic that she would be
happier if they were undressing her in their imaginations instead of
planning some kind of assault like what happened to Pat.
When they reached the back, Mary realized that being unable to see her
transportation made her uncomfortable. She tried to explain the problem
to Liz, but the woman just patted her on the shoulder and led her back
to the front and put her at a table where she could easily keep an eye
on the truck.
"I completely understand honey," Liz said as she put the glass of water
she carried down in front of Mary. "You just need a chance to
completely relax. If you like you could come upstairs...for a nap."
Mary smiled her thanks at the invitation but shook her head no.
"I need to get out to the hospital to check on Pat." Liz asked her
several times if Mary had heard anything about who the chief suspect was
for the Pat's assault. Mary told her she had no idea, and was sure the
local cops would never solve the case.
Even though she was hungry, she could only make a half-hearted attempt
to do any damage to the omelet and hash browns Liz had slid in front of
her. When Liz saw that Mary really had not eaten anything, she scolded
the younger girl. "You need to eat. You can't live on black coffee!
Going all day without food isn't good for you."
"I know. I'm just not hungry," Mary answered. Considering what has
been going on over the past few days, she thought that she was entitled
to feel a little down. Liz came up behind her and began a neck/shoulder
massage that Mary thought was wonderful, but a little intimate. After a
few minutes, Liz patted her on the shoulder and told her to try to eat a
bit more before she had to check on someone sitting at the counter.
As badly as she wanted her degree, Mary was seriously wondering if the
subject she had chosen to write on was worth the aggravation and obvious
danger she was dealing with.
First, there was a law officer who decided on his own what crimes were
worth his attention and appeared to regard the county as his personal
fiefdom. Then there was the Kaylock family that could have been lifted
from a soap opera.
Then there had been the fire at the library. The fact that they had
been locked in said that their deaths were acceptable fallout. But the
arsonist had to have known that they could escape. It was possible that
locking them in had been intended to keep them from putting the fire out
before it did any damage.
The attack on Pat had been a warning, but it could still have resulted
in serious damage. But the problem with her car was really too
convenient to be a coincidence. Luckily, Mary wasn't a speeder, if she
had been, heaven only knows how things would have turned out. She
really wanted it be nothing other than a simple malfunction. The
alternative was that someone had tampered with the car and they were
just as willing to kill her as they were to only scare her.
As moody as the whole situation made her feel, Mary couldn't help but
review everything that she already knew.
First, no one wanted her to research the town's history and they were
willing to destroy a historical landmark to do it. The fact that they
were willing to risk killing the two of them meant that the arsonist did
not even want it know what Mary might already have found.
Second was Ron Kaylock's attempted assault in the pub last night. She
thought it telling that Pat had been arrested for disturbing the peace
and not Ron. She was willing to bet that no one inside the bar had
called the sheriff. All that followed by the fact that Pat was mugged
at his very doorstep. She speculated that Pat's assault could have been
payback for the bar skirmish. If she had to point fingers, she would
pick Ron Kaylock as Pat's attacker.
Third, was the problem with her car. Even though there was no evidence,
she was sure that they were all related. It was the proverbial riddle
wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.
The more she thought about it, the more the decision to back away from
what was happening here made sense. If things kept on the way they
were, someone was going to be seriously hurt and she did not want to put
anyone else in danger.
Once she had made her decision, she knew that she had to tell Pat. He
had been willing to help her and it was only right to tell him before
she left. Then once her car was fixed she would just leave town, maybe
under the cover of darkness. She wasn't going to give the assholes the
pleasure of laughing at her as she retreated.
* * * * *
She thanked Liz for all of her help and found that Liz wouldn't let her
pay for breakfast.
"Honey, you've had a couple of bad days. You needed some comfort food
and I couldn't think of anything better than that. Don't worry about
paying for it. I'll tell Mel that it fell on the floor." Liz gave her
a wink. Mary knew enough to graciously accept Liz's generosity and
thanked her with a hug. Then she was out the door to return to the
hospital, still driving Pat's truck.
She could see the back of her car on the left in Hiram's garage. She
had gotten the impression that he was a pretty good mechanic, but a
little creepy. Even so, she was glad that her little Volkswagen was an
older model so that there wasn't much in the way of electronics to go
wrong. She hoped he would have the car ready for her so that she would
be able to head home fairly soon.
On the way out of town, she passed the sheriff's office. She saw a pair
of state police cruisers parked in front. She could only assume that
they were touching base with the local constabulary. It stood to reason
that the different levels of law enforcement would communicate with each
other. Mary idly wondered what the staties thought of the job the
sheriff did around here. She wished she could stop in to tell them what
had been going on around here. With the way her luck has been going
though, the state police would support him and she might find herself in
even deeper trouble.
Once at the hospital, she found her way back to Pat's room without any
difficulty. She paused in the hall and just looked into the room. She
saw him reclining on his bed one end raised so that he could read. She
watched as he studied the journal.
The thought that she would have to say goodbye to Pat made her feel bad
enough to cry. Being here now made it all the more real to her. She
had only been in town for a few days, but she and Pat had bonded far
more quickly than she would have believed possible. She didn't know how
Pat felt about her, but she had wanted to see if things could have gone
further. Now, she wouldn't have that chance.
She couldn't bring herself to sneak away. The journal Pat was reading
was important to her dissertation. She had enough to complete her
research here and continue on the path of the wagon train. Solving the
secrets that were here in this town really meant nothing to her degree,
at most it was worthy of only a footnote.
She knocked on the door to announce her presence and stepped into the
room. She looked at how he was positioned on the bed and said,
"Wouldn't you be more comfortable in the armchair?"
He smiled up at her and answered, "Yes, but I didn't want to flash my
privates to everyone while I was sitting. He closed the journal and sat
a bit straighter. "Did you know that they don't provide patients with
undergarments?"
She just blinked at the statement for a moment and said, "No. I never
wondered about that. Does that mean that you will be walking around
with nothing on under that gown all day?" She smiled broadly at the
thought.
"Well, yes. Unless I can get someone to bring me some more clothes."
He looked at her expectantly. "You know...There's that old saying that
when you save someone's life, you're responsible for them forever."
"Yes...I remember that one. Does that mean that you're my pet? I could
get you a basket so that you could curl up and sleep at the foot of my
bed." She waggled her eyebrows at him and smiled.
"On the floor at the end of your bed?" Pat managed to make it sound
forlorn.
"We could work something out," she said with a smile. "Anyway, I can
bring you some more clothes. As long as you don't mind having me
rummaging through your drawers.?
?Come on, let me help you get into the chair. Remember I have seen the
whole package, so I promise I won?t be scandalized.?
They shared a long look and a smile. For the moment, Mary Sue forgot
about the fact that she intended to leave here. She snapped back to
reality when she remembered.
Her attention was drawn to a potted plant of violets on the table beside
Pat's bed.
"Those flowers are pretty. Who sent them?"
Pat looked at them for a moment and said, "I don't know. They were just
there when I woke up."
"That's interesting. I saw a potted plant like that when I was looking
around the schoolhouse. All I could smell for a minute was violets."
"They're pretty common around here. You wouldn't think that they would
grow very well with how cold we get in the winter. But that reminds me,
the journal talks about violets several times."
Mary was looking at the plant and pulled a small card out from under the
edge of the pot.
"Look. I think this card came with the flowers." She held it out so
that Pat could take it and read it.
He looked at it for a minute or two and held it out to Mary, his hand
shaking slightly.
"What is it?" She took the card from him and looked. She saw a
handwritten message: GET WELL SOON.
Frowning, she looked up and said, "This writing looks familiar, but I'm
not sure where I've seen it."
Pat said, "I'm sure. I just got done reading it." He tapped the
journal sitting on the table beside him. Mary blinked for a moment and
Pat continued, "Yes. I'm sure that it's the same handwriting, or an
excellent facsimile. Why would anyone go to all that trouble? "
Mary felt a chill run down her back. Someone had to be pulling a prank
here. She shook her head and asked, "Have they said when you can go
home?"
?The doctor was in about half an hour ago." he said. "I took a pretty
good shot to the head and that is what gave me the bruise." He gestured
to the side of his head. "I only have a mild concussion, it just looked
worse than it was. If I'd been hit any harder, I would have been more
likely to have a skull fracture instead. I guess my mother was right
when she used to say that I was hardheaded."
Mary winced as the described his inquiry. "I'm glad that it wasn't
worse than that."
"The doc said that I might have to deal with some dizziness for a few
days and still have some headaches, but I can manage them with aspirin
or Tylenol."
"I'm really glad that it wasn't worse." She didn't even notice that she
was repeating herself. She was trying to get the courage to break her
news that she was leaving.
Before she could start though, Pat started speaking again. "I finished
reading through this journal." He held the book up. "Yolanda was
really an interesting person."
"Does the journal give any idea of what happened to her?"
"Not really," Pat said. "But, at the same time, it might. At the end
of the entries, it appears that the doctor from the fort discovered
Yolanda's secret. The doctor apparently wasn?t familiar with the
concept of patient confidentiality. He didn?t keep her secret.
"According to the journal, she was happily married at that point, and
her husband went off to confront the doctor.
"You mean that everyone found out that Yolanda was not actually a woman?
Pat nodded and he continued with a smile. "That isn't the best part of
her story though. Her husband was a Kaylock. From what I can tell, he
was gay and very much in love with Yolanda. A love that was
reciprocated by our heroine. Same sex marriages were certainly not well
received in the 19th century. It must have created a tremendous scandal
for the Kaylock family."
Mary Sue's eyes widened and her mouth made an O. Suddenly things were
making sense. Someone already knew Yolanda's secret and didn't want it
known.
"I didn't realize the issue of gay marriage went back that far. Her
husband obviously knew she was a man, that means the Kaylock's have a
skeleton in their closet that they are ashamed of. That would explain a
lot of what's been happening."
A knock at the door interrupted them. Turning, Mary saw a woman in a
police uniform, holding her hat in one hand. What really drew their
attention was her other hand. The one resting on the butt of her
service revolver.
Blaze
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