Roadside Assistance
a Laramie/Frontier Circus crossover
by Sevenstars
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SUMMARY: An accident on the road to Cheyenne leads Daisy and Mike into an unexpected little adventure of their own.
Frontier Circus, for which there is no page on FFNet (although there ought to be), ran for a single season 1961-2, and is now available complete on DVD, by way of the usual online venues, from Timeless Media (the same people who gave us home versions of Wagon Train, Alias Smith & Jones, The Virginian, The Texan, Yancey Derringer, The Deputy, The Tall Man, Cimarron City, Tombstone Territory, Laredo, The Guns of Will Sonnett, Tales of Wells Fargo, Zane Grey Theatre, The Restless Gun, Laramie, and—after some delay—the complete four seasons of The Big Valley). It was a Revue Studios production, and on occasion used the standing Laramie town set (Casey, in fact, once spent a few hours in "Mort Corey's" jail!). It followed the adventures of one of the many small horse-drawn "mud shows" that trekked about the rural districts of post-Civil-War America, this one chiefly west of the Missouri-Iowa-Minnesota border, with Winter Quarters in St. Louis (later California). Richard Jaeckel played Tony Gentry, Texan, former Confederate officer, and advance man; John Derek (perhaps best remembered as the discoverer and husband of Bo, "the Perfect 10") was co-owner Ben Travis; and the immortal and inimitable Chill Wills appeared as Colonel Casey Thompson, showman extraordinaire. Although in one episode ("Journey From Hannibal") the year is given as some time between 1876 and 1880 (the "last election" was the Hayes-Tilden presidential contest), Tony in "The Hunter and the Hunted" makes it pretty clear that he joined the circus not many years after the war—and found in it a family, a home, and a father (Casey), which he desperately needed. So I decided it was entirely plausible that the T'n'T might have been somewhere in Wyoming in 1872.
Set early in third season. Thanks to Katy for beta.
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Whatever am I going to do now? Daisy Cooper asked herself, looking up and down the long deserted road.
Everything had been going so perfectly that she probably should have been expecting trouble. She and Mike had left Sherman Ranch first thing after breakfast to drive the buckboard to Cheyenne and see the circus which (according to Mose, who had seen its broadsides while turning the stage around) was due to be performing there for four days. Slim had asked why they didn't wait a couple of months—"We get a circus in Laramie every year for Roundup Day," he'd said. Daisy had replied that he and Jess had been so focused on the summer work that they'd barely taken time out to observe Mike's birthday in July, and besides, what law said a child must see the circus only once a year? Especially if (as Mike himself agreed) he'd never seen one at all. Slim had seemed a bit blindsided by this argument, but had then asked why they didn't take the stage instead of driving. "You're part of this household. You get to ride free any time you want to. You know that from when you took Jess to get his tooth pulled. It would be safer and faster and a lot easier on you." To which Daisy had replied that she wanted to get a really good look at this beautiful country where she had come to live, and she thought Mike ought to have the same opportunity. It seems we're going to get rather a better look at it than we anticipated, she reflected.
They had crossed over the pass on schedule, paused by the roadside to eat the picnic lunch they'd brought along and to rest the team and give them their nosebags, and gone on. Mike, who had never been to Cheyenne—his parents had brought him into the Laramie Basin from the south, by way of Denver, the same way Daisy herself had come—had been full of questions about it and asked if, maybe, they couldn't stay an extra day to see the sights. Of course they had come prepared to sleep over; it was fifty good miles from Laramie to Cheyenne, thirty-eight starting out from the ranch, and the buckboard only did sixty to the day, if it had a good road.
Quite without warning it lurched and dropped off to the right, so startling the horses that they broke into a lunging gallop. Mike hadn't been prepared for the sudden movement—besides not being able to brace his feet against the dash—and had toppled off over the side of the seat. Daisy had managed—how she didn't know—to pull the team to a halt, in part because the canted attitude of the vehicle made it difficult for them to pull it at any speed; had scrambled down off the seat, taking only a moment to snap the anchor weight to Rusty's bit, before hurrying (as fast as one could in a corset and long skirts) back to where a dazed and bruised Mike was just trying to sit up. He'd gasped and swallowed a yelp of pain when she took his arm to help him, and it was then that she saw that his left shoulder looked deformed when compared to the right one. A dislocation.
Thank Heaven, he didn't seem to have any other injuries, except a scraped cheek and hand, and those few bruises. She had gotten him on his feet, and they had both stared in dismay at the wheel lying in the road just past his landing place, two spokes splintered. Daisy knew what to do about a dislocation, but not about a broken buckboard wheel—and even if she had, the vehicle weighed a good five hundred pounds; there was no possible way she could lift it up to get the wheel back in place.
She got Mike back to it, cleaned him up, immobilized his arm, and treated the scrapes with carbolic acid and the bruises with arnica, thankful that she had thought to put a few basic medical supplies in their valise. He had been incredibly brave about it all—she thought he was trying to behave as he thought Slim or Jess would do—and she herself had suffered nothing but a fright and a little shaking up. But she knew he was in pain, and they had no food left, no wood with which to repair the wheel (even if she'd had the skill to do so, which of course she didn't), and no idea which way to go for help. The last stage station they had passed must be a good ten miles back; Cheyenne itself was probably at least another five. Of course this was a well-travelled road, and eventually someone would be bound to come along... but when?
I could try to walk, she thought, and almost at once rejected the idea. She wasn't worried about getting lost, not on a clearly-marked stage road, but she'd already learned, in even the short time she had lived in Wyoming, that even the most innocent-seeming countryside could hold all kinds of peril... like the time one of Slim's cattle had wandered into the yard and "treed" her in the barn, as Jess called it. (Well, how could she have known that Western cows didn't think twice about people on horseback, but tended to get belligerent when they found one on foot?) In any case, her delicate, high-heeled black kid shoes were hardly made for walking much farther than the length of Laramie's Front Street. And I can't leave Mike here, alone and hurt... how would I ever explain it to Slim?
We should have taken the stage, just as he said.
"Aunt Daisy... Aunt Daisy, look!"
She turned and saw that he was pointing with his good arm. "Look, Aunt Daisy, a rider!"
She looked, and it was. A man on a handsome red chestnut with four white socks and a blaze, twenty or thirty feet below the crest of the slope that rose about a hundred yards north of the road. The horse danced and circled as he swung it to and fro, scanning the scene below him, then jumped forward in a long-reaching gallop.
He pulled up and swept off his hat, which was light gray with the brim turned up and pinned in front. "Ma'am? You seem to be in a bad patch—can I help?"
"Oh, I do hope so!" Daisy replied in relief, not even stopping to think how many men out here weren't what they looked like at first glance. "Our buckboard lost a wheel, and Mike has dislocated his shoulder..."
"Well, I don't know that I can do anythin' about the shoulder, but maybe I can help you with the wheel," he said, and dismounted with the kind of easy grace she had seen so often in Jess. "Name's Gentry—Tony Gentry."
"How do you do, Mr. Gentry. I'm Mrs. Daisy Cooper, and this is Mike Williams. We were on our way to Cheyenne..."
"And things caught up with you," he guessed. "Okay. Let me tie up my horse, and we'll have a look at the situation." He tethered the chestnut to the wagon's tailboard and strode back to the stranded wheel.
"Mike, you stay there!" Daisy ordered, and followed.
"Mmm... hm!" Gentry murmured to himself as she came up. "Well, ma'am, I'm no wheelwright, but I see a good few breakdowns in my line, and I can tell you this wheel's goin' nowhere. See here? The axle nut's gone. Looks like the wheel didn't quite come off all at once, it kinda pancaked out from the top, and that put so much strain on the spokes that they couldn't hold. Lucky the whole thing didn't flip over and hurt the pair of you a lot worse."
"Oh, dear," said Daisy, "whatever are we going to do? I haven't enough money to pay for repairs—we were only planning to go to the circus and stay overnight..."
"Circus?" Gentry echoed. "Which circus would that be, ma'am?"
"The one that's playing in Cheyenne," she said. "Now what was the name...?"
He grinned. "T'n'T. I oughtta know, I'm scout and advance agent for it. Just comin' back from checkin' out the next stand on our route."
"Oh," said Daisy, and then everything caught up with her and—as much from sheer relief as anything else—she fainted.
**SR/FC**
"...No, she's okay, it's just the sun, I reckon—it'll do that to ladies, 'specially if they're upset and worried..." Something metallic touched her lips. "Here, ma'am, I know it ain't too cold, but drink it anyway, it'll help..."
She felt the water on her tongue, swallowed reflexively, coughed, sputtered, and sat up abruptly, only to find her head spinning at the sudden movement. "Better take it easy, ma'am," came Gentry's voice. "I don't know how long you all have been stranded out here, but that sun can do you in if you're not used to it."
"And I suppose I'm really not," Daisy admitted unsteadily. "I've only been in Wyoming a couple of months. Foolish of me... I ought to have worn my leghorn hat... Heaven knows the boys have warned me... no, please, Mr. Gentry, I'm all right. Don't worry about me. What are we to do about the buckboard?"
Gentry was squatting on his heels in the shade of the wagon bed, supporting her weight against his thigh. Close to, she could see that he was quite a young man, no older than Jess—younger in appearance, indeed, since he didn't have Jess's ingrained caution and hard-bought bitterness—but heavier and not so square-set about the shoulders. In the shape of his face and in coloring he was more like Slim—blond, with light-blue eyes and a similar high color under his tan. He wore a buff-colored buckskin shirt, thickly fringed along the sleeves and yoke, and tight sky-blue breeches with a yellow stripe down the outseams, which Daisy recognized as having been popular with cavalry regiments on both sides during the war; she knew it was hardly ladylike, but she couldn't help noticing how hard and muscular his legs and thighs were, as if he'd spent most of his life in a saddle. There were two sixguns belted at his waist—the one on the right turned for a conventional draw, the other butt-forward—but they were high-hung and not tied down like Jess's, or even Slim's.
He pondered her question. "Well, if it was just you, you could come up in front of me, and I'd take you back to the outfit, and Casey—that's Colonel Casey Thompson, my boss—he could send out a few of the rousties with a spare wheel. But I don't know if my horse can carry three even if one of 'em is kinda small, and anyway if the boy's shoulder's dislocated like you say, the joggin' might hurt him worse. He'd be better lyin' down in the wagon, if we could get it rollin'. The circus is camped a quarter-mile or so out of Cheyenne, it ain't that far, and I could unroll my bed to make a pad for him... all we gotta do is figure a way to get the buckboard up and runnin'." He eased her back against the vehicle's rear wheel and pushed to his feet, scanning the landscape around them. "Ma'am? You got a tool box in this rig?"
"Yes, under the seat," Daisy told him, sending grateful thanks to Heaven that Slim was so fixated on being prepared for things.
"Okay," said Gentry, "let's see if there's anything in it I can use," and he turned and walked toward the front of the buckboard. She could hear him lifting the lid of the tool box and rummaging around inside it, then a satisfied "Hah! That'll do it," and he came back carrying a lightweight ax and a coil of rope. "You and the boy just set and rest, ma'am, and I'll have this outfit back on the road before you know it."
And he did. Inside ninety minutes he had cut and trimmed a limber pole from one of the young trees on the slope, piled some stones under the bare end of the axle to prize it up to the right height, and lashed the pole underneath, thin end projecting upward past the seat, butt dragging along the surface of the road. "Now that," he said, "is what we call a Texas drag."
"Will it hold?" Daisy asked doubtfully.
"Sure. Not for more'n a day or two, but all we need is for it to last to the circus camp. Why, I've seen full-size emigrant wagons limpin' along on these. Same principle as an Indian travois."
Mike was rather pale and trying not to move too much, but he'd perked up at mention of the Lone Star State. "Are you from Texas, Mr. Gentry?"
"Yep," he said. "Montague County, up along the Red River."
"My friend Jess is from the Panhandle," said Mike.
Gentry tilted his head. "Is he now. Wonder why that seems familiar to me... Okay, let me unroll my bed for you to lie down on, and we'll stretch my tarp out from the back of the seat to keep the sun out of your eyes, and get goin'."
**SR/FC**
"Okay, Tony, you git a good grip 'roun' his middle... an' ma'am, you hol' tight to his good hand... now don't you be skeered to holler if it hurts too much, son... Ben, keep that shoulder steady... here we go now..." A sharp jerk, a muffled pop, a gulping yelp from Mike, and Casey Thompson grinned and said, "There now, that oughta do 'er... try movin' your arm, boy, jist easy now..."
Gingerly Mike obeyed, then looked up with astonishment written all over his face. "It doesn't hurt! Well, maybe just a little still..."
"Now wha'd I tell you?" Thompson demanded. "Times it does seem like I spend more time on this hyere show patchin' folks up than anythin' else... but a dislocate, why, that's somethin' happens plumb reg'lar on a circus, reckon I had some practice with 'em."
"Let's put it in a sling," his partner suggested, "so it can rest a day or two. You stretched the ligaments—those are the things that hold the bone seated in the joint—and they'll need time to get used to being settled back into place, or it might pop out again." Ben Travis was a lean, handsome man with sharp features and a beautiful smile, his wavy dark hair just beginning to show the barest feathering of gray at the temples. He wore a blue corduroy riding jacket and close-fitting trousers finished off Mexican-style with a double row of decorative buttons; his sixgun was carried cavalry-fashion, for a twist-hand draw, but with the holster's top flap removed to make for easier access to the butt.
Mike allowed the length of white cotton fabric to be slipped under his forearm and knotted behind his neck, looking at it with a kind of delight. "A real honest-to-goodness sling! I never reckoned I'd have one—not till I was grown up, anyway."
"Mike!" Daisy scolded. "Don't pay him any mind, gentlemen. It's just that... well, Slim and Jess, his guardians, do seem to have a way of ending up bandaged... or wearing slings... or worse..." She looked up at the circus's senior partner—a big, tall, heavily-built man in his fifties, with a slightly flattened nose and a peculiar breathy-gravelly voice that definitely came out of somewhere in the South, a planter's hat of fine-grained straw shoved back on his close-clipped graying hair, a thickly fringed white buckskin jacket with a big panel of beadwork on the back pulled over a shield-front shirt in a light stripe, a flowing silk tie knotted in a flamboyant bow under his collar, ample middle circled by an Indian-beaded belt—and, oddly for a showman, a gunbelt and holster. "Colonel Thompson, I can't tell you how grateful I am to you—to all of you—for your kindness. I don't know what I'd have done if Mr. Gentry hadn't come along when he did—and then for you to take care of Mike's injury too..."
"Shucks, ma'am, 't'weren't no bother 't'all," Thompson assured her, "an' least of all since you was on your way to see our circus anyhow... you missed tonight's show, but I'll see you git the best seats in the house for tomorrow's, an' no charge neither. Ben, you reckon you could find somebody that'd put the boy up in their wagon? I'm thinkin' maybe we can put Miz Cooper in with Madame Sofia—that's if you ain't got no objections to sleepin' a night in a gypsy caravan, ma'am? Madame Sofia's our fortune-teller."
"Indeed!" Daisy exclaimed. "Well, if she doesn't mind having company... I daresay it might be something of an adventure! Or rather, another adventure."
"Tony, Madame Sofia likes you, you go ask her, an' then you come join us at the cook tent. I reckon, ma'am, that you an' the boy could do with a bite o' supper after what you all been through today?" Thompson guessed.
"Now that I have the time to think about it," Daisy admitted, "I'm ravenous! But we can't impose on you any further, Colonel..."
"No imposition, yo're our guests," the showman insisted. "Why, time you drove on into Cheyenne ever'thin'd be shut up tighter'n a drum an' you wouldn't git nothin' t'eat nohow! C'mon, Sam oughta be up still... our people git peckish after a show right frequent, most of 'em's too keyed up to eat beforehand, or else they don't want a bellyful of grub slowin' 'em down."
The circus cook served them steaks smothered in onions and hash-brown potatoes, with stewed fresh tomatoes and steamed spinach and carrots on the side, fresh hot buttermilk biscuits, rich brown gravy, spicy bread-and-butter pickles, and an apple tart for dessert, coffee for the four adults and fresh buttermilk for Mike. "I never would have thought that a travelling circus would eat so well," Daisy confessed.
"That there's one o' the things Tony sees to when he rides out ahead," Thompson explained. "He finds us a good campsite with water for the animals, contracts for the lease of it, pays any license fees the town charges, pastes our posters up, lines up a butcher or a rancher to furnish meat for the cats, farmers that kin sell us fresh veg'tables, hay for the menagerie an' grain for the horses, an' food enough to take us through to the next town. Times we end up goin' on short rations, but that ain't his fault—jist takes us longer to make the passage in between than we figured on. So we like t'eat good when we got the chance, an' that's likeliest to be when we're playin' somewheres."
"It must require quite a lot of organizational skill," Daisy mused, "to keep such a large troupe on schedule and in order and such."
"Well, I ain't one to brag..." But she thought the ringmaster was pleased at the implied compliment.
By the time they finished their meal, Mike was on the verge of falling asleep in his plate; days in the fresh air he was accustomed to, but the shock of his injury and the excitement of the last few hours' events had worn him out. Ben Travis scooped the boy up in his arms and bore him off to bed, nightshirt and tomorrow's clean shirt folded on his chest. Tony, who had joined them just in time to get a share of supper, took the valise and escorted Daisy to Madame Sofia's wagon; she proved to be a stoutish woman with long gray braids trailing out from under a gaudy headscarf, skirt and blouse and vest patched together out of a dazzling miscellany of colorful fabric, loops of bright beads strung around her neck, bangle earrings and bracelets, surprising light eyes sharp and discerning. Her caravan, like the other wagons, looked somewhat clumsy and top-heavy from outside, but inside it was a marvel of engineering, with storage drawers and cabinets tucked into every possible place, shelves with lift-up slats or wooden fiddles installed across them to keep the contents from falling out, two long bunks that could convert to benches at need, and a little table and seats that folded up against the wall. "It was we, the Rom, who invented what Casey calls the circus wagon," she told Daisy. "Without our work, such circuses as this could not be." She quickly made up one of the beds for her guest and went outside to allow privacy. "Perhaps," she suggested just before she shut the door, "you will join me for a tea? I am feeling rather psychic tonight... I will tell you your fortune, if you wish."
"I don't believe I've had that done since soon after my son was born," Daisy admitted. More than thirty-five years, that had been. The palmist had told her that Troy would make her very proud... and then her face had gone dark and still and she had refused to say another word. Not till after Troy's death at Chickamauga at the age of twenty-eight had Daisy remembered that hesitation, and wondered if she had seen his fate.
Daisy changed into her tucked and embroidered linen nightgown—her finest one, chosen in case the hotel took fire in the night and she had to evacuate without getting dressed—and best purple wrapper, took her hair down and gratefully removed her shoes, replacing them with soft fleece-lined slippers made in Scotland, which Lloyd had given her their last Christmas together. Madame Sofia was waiting outside the caravan, brooding over a tiny campfire over which a kettle hung on a tripod; to Daisy's astonishment she was puffing on a long slender pipe such as the Dutch were said to use. "Ah! Sit," the gypsy invited, waving to a folding stool. She poured hot water into a cup of tea leaves, stirred it, and passed it to her guest before doing likewise for herself. "Do you wish to accept my offer?"
"Yes," Daisy said slowly, "I believe I do."
"Let me see your hand," Madame Sofia ordered, and Daisy extended it, holding her teacup in the other one.
Sofia peered at the outspread palm, tracing its lines with a fingertip. "You have had a good life," she said, her voice suddenly deeper. "I see a father who was well supplied with gold, a table always bountiful, pretty clothes, servants. I see... ah, I see a lovely young mother, but she did not live; three brothers and two sisters she gave you, and died before you had seen six years. I see an older woman—your father's sister, yes—who came to live in your home, to run the household and direct the servants and see that you were properly brought up. Your father was bitter and severe with his grief; she blunted it, and made certain you and your sisters learned to cook and sew and wash, to tend a garden, drive horses, and nurse the sick."
"That was Aunt Louisa," Daisy breathed, marvelling. "She was quite practical and independent-minded—far ahead of her time; she didn't come to us because she needed support or a home, but because she felt it was her duty to provide her brother's children with a mother-figure. She wasn't easy to love, but we all did, just the same."
"Yes-s-s-s," Sofia hissed. "Now I see a young man... not handsome, but kind and funny and clever, with good schooling and fine prospects. I see you walking down the aisle to him on your father's arm. I see you making a cozy home, with much laughter... ah, but sorrow too: two babies who did not live. And then... a son who grows up strong and handsome and full of energy, who enters his father's office to read the law and one day become his partner... Now the clouds of war gather, and your son stands before you in a suit of blue. You cry, but you send him with your blessings to fight for his country and his beliefs. Then, because you feel a need to help also, you volunteer yourself to a hospital as a nurse. The doctors think highly of you, they give you of their knowledge, and the men under your care call you an angel... and then the telegram comes... your son is dead."
"Yes," Daisy whispered, "at Chickamauga, with Thomas's brigade."
"At last there is peace," the gypsy murmured on, "and you return to your home and your husband, and in each other you find consolation for your loss, drawing closer together than ever. You begin to talk of going west, making new lives away from these scenes that now remind you only of what you once had. Then comes a man in a stovepipe hat and a canary-colored vest. He tells you of a thriving town in faraway Wyoming, where sturdy pioneer families are making good lives; the man who owns their store wishes to retire to California and has engaged him to find a buyer for it. Twelve thousand dollars your husband pays him, and you make arrangements to sell your house and travel west in the spring... but in February your husband dies."
This time Daisy could only nod as her throat closed up and her eyes filled with tears. Had it been only six months? So much had happened... dear Lloyd, how she missed him still...
"The money is spent and the store awaits. Your friends and family tell you not to go; a woman alone in a savage country... but you are certain you will find trustworthy men to be clerks for you. Your house is sold; you walk away from it, not looking back... you take the long journey west... Now I see a little low house, of logs and planks; a barn, and two men—one tall and straight, with light hair, one smaller, but wiry and strong, black hair like a gypsy's and blue eyes that shift their color with his moods... a man who can be fierce and dangerous but also loyal and loving and brave. You are there, speaking with the taller one... he says something, and you fall in a faint. Your husband was deceived. There is no town, only this little ranch. Your money is gone, you are alone in a strange land... but these two young men are alone too, and both have lost their mothers—and so has the little boy who watches from the porch. Stagecoaches call at this place, the passengers and drivers have grown accustomed to coffee and food. And there is a judge who hesitates to give them custody of the boy unless they can find a woman to take care of him while they are working, looking after their cattle and horses and buildings. They ask if you will stay and be their housekeeper.
"Now there is meaning for your life again, people to do for, work to keep you busy. Sometimes it is hard, but your young men help you whenever they can, and the boy quickly grows to love you. You see—indeed you tell the judge, even before you know that this will be your new home—that your young men could not care more for each other if they had been brothers born, and it is so; their love and loyalty is the foundation on which your home is built. The black-haired one is shy and carries the shadow of much pain, but always he is polite and kind, and sometimes he laughs and plays pranks like a child of ten. His friend is a hard worker who drives himself harder than anyone around him, honest and true, of a family old in these parts, much respected. Often they wear badges for the sheriff in the town. The neighbors welcome you. One of the stagecoach drivers is smitten with you. You go on a stage with the black-haired one, and there is trouble—outlaws; but he has seen such trouble often, and at his side you find courage you never guessed you possessed—you pretend to faint so he can gain the upper hand. Sometimes he or the tall one are hurt, but always they are cheerful and reassuring even in their pain, and they heal quickly... I see the boy growing up now, finding love. I see another boy, dark of hair and eye, returning from school in the East... and there is an old man with him, who wears a derby hat and looks at you with eyes that have never looked in such a way at any woman. Your life is full and rich, with not one son but four... and, yes, there is love for you also, though you had never thought it would be so again... I see your young men struggling, suffering sometimes; they know loss, but in time they find the women they were meant to marry. The little house grows larger, and another is built on the land for the second family, your black-haired son and his wife. The boys are men, they have found success and started families... there are many children who call you grandmother and great-aunt, and all the folk for miles around know and respect you for your kindnesses, food brought to a house where there is sickness or a new baby or a death in the family, skill at nursing and helping with births... often you fear for your sons, but a bright shield of protection hovers over your new home, and even when you think their luck has run out, they survive..." Her voice faded, died away in a sigh; she looked up, smiling. "It is a good future. :Long life, much joy."
"Thank you," said Daisy softly. "I've wondered, once or twice, whether I did the right thing to come out here. But if your vision is true... I see I don't have to wonder, ever again."
"My gift has never lied," Sofia told her. "It comes at times of its own choosing, not mine... but when it does, always it shows the truth. It is given to few in this life to have a second chance, no matter how deserving they may be... but to you this has been granted. Be grateful for it; there are thousands who would sell their souls to have it. Now," she added briskly, "it grows late, and tomorrow is another busy day as we make ready for our next show. Let us finish our tea and go to bed."
**SR/FC**
Next morning Mike was in good spirits and almost free of any residual pain; it was all Daisy and Casey could do to get him to keep the sling on. After a generous breakfast, Tony took the guests on a backstage tour of the circus, meeting the personnel and watching the rehearsals, getting up close and personal with the small menagerie and meeting Duffy, the old Irishman who took care of them and swore he could understand everything they "said" to him... and vice versa. "Lots of people in circuses are born to it," Tony said. "Ben was; his folks were acrobats and tumblers—he can still do a tuck and roll better than most. Some of our people have been in the ring four, five, six generations, some even more, goin' back all the way to Europe—that's where Casey says the circus started out." He also made sure that they knew their buckboard was repaired—the circus owned a similar vehicle and had changed out one of its wheels; there would be time for someone to go into Cheyenne and buy a replacement for it before they pulled out—and Rusty and Jimmy were well fed and over their fright, though it had been necessary to stable them in a tent, where they wouldn't catch sight of the elephants. "I don't know why it is," he admitted, "but horses are scared to death of three things—snakes, fire, and elephants. Except circus horses; they don't seem to mind 'em."
"Your horse doesn't seem to either," Daisy observed.
"Monty? No, he's like Ben, born on the circus. Grew up around 'em," Tony explained. "He was about slated to start trainin' for the liberty act when I bought him. That's why he prances the way he does; been bred to it."
Around eleven o'clock people began drifting into the cook tent for a light meal, followed by a short rest and a performance at two-thirty. Daisy and Mike, as Casey had promised, had the best seats in the house, and even though it was a small show and they had already seen many of the acts in rough, they were entranced by the aura of magic lent by the blazing lights in the rigging, the lively music of the band in its fancy jackets, the barking of the vendors passing up and down, and Casey's deep bellow introducing each turn as he stood in the center of the ring attired in a top hat and jackboots spangled with stars and an elaborately frogged and braided cutaway jacket. Mike was fascinated, and insisted on going back for the second show at seven; knowing that he had never in his short life seen a circus performance, Daisy didn't argue about it, but she did insist that he eat his supper beforehand and go to bed immediately after.
Having seen him settled, she decided to take a walk around the grounds. The audience was gone, and most of the performers were in the cook tent or relaxing near their wagons. There was a strangely peaceful feel to the scene, like a small-town residential street on a warm summer's evening.
Tony Gentry appeared out of nowhere and fell in beside her. "Everythin' all right, Miz Cooper?"
"Everything's fine," she assured him. "And please call me Daisy, as my boys do. After all the help you gave us out on the road, you've earned the privilege."
"Miss Daisy, then," he temporized. "Ma'am, I've been ponderin' over it, and I reckon I know now why it seemed familiar to me when Mike mentioned his friend Jess from the Panhandle. First I thought he was talkin' about another boy, but then last night in Casey's wagon you said this Jess was one of Mike's guardians. So that says he's grown, and I'm thinkin' maybe I know him."
Daisy felt a little frisson of apprehension. It hadn't taken her long to pick up hints enough to know that Jess hadn't always been a peaceful ranchhand. "Is that so?" she asked neutrally.
"Yes, ma'am. His name would be Harper, maybe? About the same size as me, black wavy hair, blue eyes? Lean, angular sort of face, eyebrows that kinda kink in the middle? A fast man with a gun, and a horseman worth waitin' on?"
"That's Jess," Daisy agreed carefully. "Have you... met?"
"Yes, ma'am. Virginia, '63. I was in the 27th Texas Cavalry with Hood, Jess was in the 48th. Both our outfits were in the Texas Brigade, but they'd been operatin' independently of each other most of the year, till they went into winter camp together, and Jess and I crossed paths and found out we knew a couple of the same people. I heard he was captured the next year... then after the war I started pickin' up stories about his fast gun." He sighed. "He was kinda standoffish when I knew him—not rough, but the kind of man who don't give his trust easy. I didn't understand it then. It took till I went home to Montague County to know..." His voice trailed off. Daisy waited patiently; one of the first things she had learned about this Western country was that people had to be allowed to reveal as much or as little as they cared to, and at their own speed—questions were considered ill-mannered, often indeed a serious offense.
"There was eight of us Gentrys," Tony went on after a moment, "six boys and two girls. I was the youngest; Pa died when I was just a shirttail kid, but he left a good established ranch, not big, but enough to support us and put some money by. We never had slaves either—didn't hold with it. We always heard they were lazy and had to be watched over like children. Besides, how can you work range cattle with slaves? The minute you put one on a horse he'd be takin' off for the state line. Made better sense to hire hands and pay 'em, till we boys got big enough to do the work. Maybe you don't know it, but up where I came from there wasn't a lot of sentiment for the Confederacy—not at first, anyhow. Folks in the northern counties tended to come from the Upper South and the border states; some was even Yanks by birth. Eight of those counties voted against the ordinance of secession. Once the war broke out, though, only ten per cent of the population was opposed to takin' a part in it, and most of them were neutrals, not Unionists.
"I was seventeen when the fightin' started. My brothers Frederic and Stuart joined up for the Confederacy. The other three—Roland, Clayton, and Wayne—slipped over the Red and headed for Kansas to enlist with the Union. I watched them all leave, and I waited and chafed and fretted for a year, thinkin' it would be over before I got to do my part. As soon as I was eighteen I signed up—not to defend slavery, but because Texans figured each state should have the right to decide things for itself—about slavery, about anything else that comes up. I went for the South, like I told you; was commissioned a lieutenant. Stuart was killed at Gettysburg; Roland and Clayton went to California after the Surrender rather than try to face the kind of sentiment they knew would be waitin' for them at home, sent for their wives and kids to join 'em there—I haven't seen either of 'em since '61.
"Texas probably came through the war with less damage than any other state in the Confederacy; there was shortages enough, and the Indians made a lot of trouble, but it wasn't like Georgia or the Valley or all those other places where folks got burned out by the other side. The crops were good, and nobody ever really suffered from a lack of food. The Union captured Brownsville at the end of '63, but there was never any plan to use it as a stagin' area to invade Texas; later they took Laguna Madre, Corpus Christi, and Aransas Pass, but shipping still went in and out through Sabine Pass and Galveston—and Matamoros, though the goods had to be rerouted by way of Eagle Pass. After Vicksburg fell, Texans in the Army couldn't get mail from home, but we picked up enough Yankee newspapers that in the beginning, when we started filterin' back, summer of '65, most of us had no cause to think our homes, or at least our families, wouldn't still be there waitin' for us. Mine was, but my mother had died, and Fred and our sisters, Rosina and Josephine, were makin' it pretty clear to Wayne that they'd never forgive him. He decided to head for the gold diggings up in Montana; asked me if I wanted to go along, since I was the nearest boy to his age left at home, and the only one of us not callin' him a bluebelly traitor.
"I couldn't do it. I didn't want to hate him, but I couldn't find it in me to accept what he'd done either. And because I wouldn't stand with them, Fred and the girls lumped me in with him and the others. Suddenly I was barely twenty-one and had no home left, no family... nothin'.
"I drifted for most of five years, takin' what work I could find. I didn't know where I was goin' or what I wanted; it seemed like there was nowhere and nobody left for me. Then I was in Missouri and came down with a fever. I don't know why to this day—what with the elephants, I mean—but my horse brought me here, to the show. Casey took me in, made sure I was nursed back to health... gave me a job, a home... a family again. He's... well, like a father to everybody on the outfit, but to me more than most, I think. I reckon there's just about nothin' I wouldn't do for that man." He looked down, embarrassed. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to... I don't run on like that, most times."
She laid her hand on his arm. "I don't mind. Tell me, does Colonel Thompson know all this?"
"He's never said so right out," Tony admitted, "but I got a notion I may have done some talkin' while the fever had me. I reckon he's figured it out—maybe not all the details, but enough."
"And you think," she mused, "that Jess went through something similar, because you see a lot of what you were after the war in what he was when you knew him."
"Yes, ma'am. I reckon that's it."
"Well," she said slowly, "he hasn't confided very much in me; we're still rather new to each other. And I know from what Slim has told me that he doesn't like to think or talk about... about whatever it was. But I think you may be right that there's something very painful in his past.
"Madame Sofia told me last night that very few people get a second chance... but I know three people who have. You, me, and Jess. If you could see him as I have... laughing with Mike, tussling with Slim... calling him 'pard'—that's a Texas word, he says; you'd know it... speaking of the ranch as 'ours,' as 'home,' even though technically he's only a hired hand... you'd be sure. You'd see that you really have found what you think you have, because you'd see that Jess has done it too, in Laramie. He and Slim... they don't have a father, as you've found in Colonel Thompson, but they have each other as brothers, and that's nearly as good. And I dare to hope that they think of me as the mother each has lost... or may in time."
He had been listening attentively, his light eyes intense. "I'm glad you told me all this, Miss Daisy," he said. "I reckon even after more than a year, I've been a little bit afraid to believe it could all be real... a man gets let down with a crash the way I was, he's kind of slow to trust again."
"The burned child dreads fire," she agreed. "It's entirely natural, to want to protect ourselves from more hurt... especially when we've lost something that meant a great deal to us. I saw it in my father, after Mother died..." She patted the strong curve of muscle under her hand. "But that doesn't make it any less real when we find something that's just as good, or almost. Actually, I think it happens much more often than most of us would credit. The only thing rare about it is people who are willing to see it for what it is, and give their hearts again. It's a terrible risk, but we have to take it... because without it we can never heal, never be whole again."
"I see that now," he said. "And I'm obliged to you. When you get back—you tell Jess you saw me, okay? And tell him I wish him the best... one old Reb to another." His tone took on a new briskness. "Come on, it's late, and you'll be wantin' to get on the road first thing, I reckon. I'll walk you back to Madame Sofia's caravan."
**SR/FC**
"Thank you again, Colonel Thompson, Ben, for all your kindness and hospitality," Daisy said. "And please be sure to give Sam and Madame Sofia our best."
"We will," Travis promised. "Mike, you keep that sling on till you get home, hear me? You might want to have a doctor take a look at that arm, Miss Daisy, just to make sure..."
Casey clouted him with his planter's hat. "Say now, you! Are you sayin' I don't know how to put a shoulder right when it's fetched to me?"
Ben ducked the blow and laughed. "No, I'm not. Just saying you're not a doctor."
"Humph!" the showman snorted, scowling, but there was a twinkle in his shrewd squinty eyes. He reached up to shake Mike's good hand, enveloping it in his own big paw, and then touched his hatbrim to Daisy. "You have yourselves a safe trip home, ma'am. That wheel hadn't oughta be givin' you no more trouble—my rousties went over it right careful, an' the whole rest of the rig besides."
"Give them my thanks too," Daisy requested, "and if you should ever bring your show to Laramie, you and Ben and Tony are invited to dinner at Sherman Ranch."
"We're headin' for Casper," Casey told her, "an' then back east by way of Nebraska. But we'll keep you all in mind, for next year."
"We're still trying on itineraries, figuring out which towns are best and how long it takes us to get from one to the next," Ben supplied. "For all I know we'll be in Montana next year."
"In any case, good luck—or should that be 'break a leg'?" Daisy wished them. "And, Tony, I haven't forgotten what you asked me to do."
"That's fine, ma'am," the advance man said. "I reckon Jess might take some pleasure from knowin' he's not the only drifter that's found his right place."
Daisy snapped the reins and clucked to the team. "Get up, boys!"
Rusty and Jimmy, well rested, threw their weight willingly into their collars, and the buckboard pulled out of the circus camp in a jingle of harness and running gear. Mike slewed around on the seat, waving his good hand at the three men until a curve in the road took them out of sight.
"We should make the top of the pass just in time to stop for lunch," Daisy noted, thinking of the repacked picnic basket (courtesy of Sam) reposing beside the valise in the wagon bed. "We can rest the horses there, and be back at the ranch by four o'clock."
"Aunt Daisy?"
"What, Mike?"
"Do we gotta tell Slim and Jess what happened to us?"
"Why do you think we shouldn't?" Daisy fenced, though inwardly she had been wondering about that very thing; delivering Tony's message to Jess wouldn't necessarily entail explaining how they'd happened to meet him.
"'Cause Jess will laugh at us," the boy said, "and Slim'll fume and scold and say we should'a' taken the stage, or at least let him go along..."
"But if we had," Daisy observed, "we'd never have met Colonel Thompson and his men, or gotten to see so much of the way a circus works. I think it was worth it, don't you?"
"Sure!" the boy agreed promptly. "Only... well, I don't have to keep the sling on—unless you say so," he qualified, "and if I don't have it, how will they know?"
"But that's not the right way to treat our family," Daisy told him. "A family has to trust one another."
Mike pondered that for a quarter mile or so. "I guess that's so," he allowed at last. He sighed. "I reckon we can stand bein' laughed at. And even scolded."
"I think so too," she agreed, and thought of all the things Madame Sofia had told her. For the sake of such a beautiful future, she thought, I think I can stand anything.
The buckboard swept westward along the stage road, taking them home.
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Note: Although Jess never specifies what Confederate regiment he served in, the flag we see reassembled in "The Replacement" is clearly the classic "Southern Cross," a square version of the national CSA flag that featured the St. Andrew's Cross blazoned with 12 or 13 stars. This flag was first flown in November, 1861, and became the standard one of the Army of Northern Virginia the following May. While many military units (North and South) had their own regimental banners, which were usually specifically designed for them by the community from which they were raised, others didn't, and the various units of the ANV frequently flew its flag, often lacking any kind of battle honors (i.e., lists of engagements in which the outfit had served) or unit designation—a description which fits the "Replacement" flag. Since we know that Jess was captured by the 7th Michigan Cavalry (which was active in Virgina), we can infer that he served in the ANV; and since he was with a "patrol" at the time, it seems likely that his was a mounted unit. In our history, the only Texas outfit that served with the ANV was Hood's, a.k.a. the Texas Brigade, which flew just such a flag, but it was composed solely of infantry (four regiments). However, since Tony in at least three segments specifically states that he "rode" with Hood, I choose to infer that, in the TV version of history, that General had cavalry under his command as well. Under the Confederate tables of organization, as set out in 1861, a brigade could consist of from three to five regiments, each made up of two to ten companies and averaging 600 men but going as high as 1250, although attrition naturally reduced this figure over time: by the final winter of the war, 300-400 rifles made an unusually strong brigade. Texas contributed to the Southern effort a total of between 45 and 52 regiments of horse, depending on which website you believe, although most of them served in the Western Theater; one of these, Terry's Texas Rangers (formally the 8th Texas Cavalry), was actually ordered to Virginia initially but was asked while en route to join Albert Sidney Johnston's army. Johnston had the authority to order the 8th to do so, but he left the question up to Terry, who consulted with his officers and decided to agree. So it seems possible that some other Texas mounted unit could have been offered a similar choice and chosen to go to Virginia. Hence I've rather arbitrarily decided that the 48th Texas Cavalry did exactly that, and served with at least one other mounted unit (Tony's) under Hood.
