Daria On The Trail Chapter Fourteen: The Sutler's Store And Other Adventures
DISCLAIMER: I do not own either A Song of Ice and Fire or A Game of Thrones. I do not own Daria Morgendorffer either. This story is based on my research on the real Oregon Trail, not on the computer game with the same name.
I am writing this story for amusement for fun and for ego gratification, not for profit. If you are enjoying this story, please write and post a review.
Daria On The Trail*Daria On The Trail*Daria On The Trail
I turned away from the broken woman and walked back to the store, my conscience twinging as I walked towards the entrance. I felt for the woman. It was tough being out on the trail stone-broke and without any resources. I should know: I was in the same boat. Almost.
Except that she had skills and resources that I didn't. She was from this time period and knew the ins and out of the culture much better than I did. She also probably had what used to be called "womanly skills": sewing, gardening, cooking, canning, and laundering and had learned them from her mother or whoever raised her. She also had religious ties and could draw some help from whatever denomination she belonged to: I didn't know what her faith was, but most of what used to be called Mainstream Protestantism was well-represented among the Overlanders. So were the Catholics. They could help, but even at worst, she might be able to find work as a washerwoman or a cook at one of the mining camps down in what would shortly become Colorado Territory. As grim as her prospects were, I pegged her odds of survival as being much higher than mine. I lacked most of her skills.
I walked into the store and was intercepted by the shopkeeper just after I cleared the doorway.
"Can I help you?" he said.
"I'm browsing and I'm looking for trail guidebooks," I said.
"You have some already, I see," said the shopkeeper.
"I do," I said. "I want more." I decided that I didn't trust him and that the battle of wits was on. En garde, I thought.
"Anything in particular?" he said.
"I'm looking for guidebooks and maps for the Lander Road," I said.
He turned away and picked up a couple of books from the bookshelf.
"Here you go," he said. He gave me a price. I reached for the book and opened the inside cover. He pushed my hand away.
"You haven't paid for them yet," he said.
"I know," I replied. "But I want to buy a reliable trail guide and not a pig in the poke."
I heard a man chuckling behind me, turned around, and saw a man in an Army officer's uniform with a grin on his face. He must have walked in while I was talking to the shopkeeper.
"Let the lady look, Baines," he said. "You aren't guarding the Crown Jewels of Britain." I noted that he had a Southern accent. What was going to happen to him in the next few years? I feared that this world's history was paralleling my own. I suspected that the Civil War would break out here just as it did in the world I came from. Things were already lining up: Abraham Lincoln was seeking the Republican Party's nomination and I'd heard some of the men on the wagon train say scathing things about both Slaveholders and Abolitionists alike.
In spite of my need for caution, my tongue got away from me. "He's not? And here I was thinking that he had the crown jewels of Old Valyria buried in his cellar," I said.
"The jewels of what?" said Baines.
"The crown jewels of Valyria," I said. "Where that guy Aegon the Conqueror came from before he conquered Westeros. That place," I said.
"I don't have crown jewels in my basement," Baines said, giving me a sour look. "You can look at the books but be careful. Don't mess them up."
I turned to the officer and smiled as best I could. "Thank you," I said.
"You're welcome," he replied. He looked over my clothing, mercifully not commenting on my body odor.
I don't often see women dressed the way you are, madam," he said.
"I doubt you do," I said. "I haven't either."
"Emigrant?" he said.
"I am," I said. "I'm with a party headed for Oregon." To my surprise, I found myself smiling at him.
The practical side of me chose to make its presence known and told me that I was here on business. I decided to obey it. "Excuse me, but while I'd like to chat more, I'm on a mission," I said.
"It sounds dangerous," he said. "What sort of mission."
"My company is headed by a Riverlander named Orrick Trout," I said. "He sent me here to buy stuff about the Lander Road."
"Riverlander as in?" he said.
"He's Westerosi," I said.
"Are all of his people Westerosi?" he said.
"No, Just him and his family. The rest of our company are Americans," I said. "He sent me ahead because I read English better than he does."
"Did he say why he was going there?" said the soldier.
"To buy land and to be someplace else if the wars spread from Westeros through the Arch," I replied.
"Well I'm going to put up these books if you're going to be chatting," said Baines.
"Your pardon," I said to the soldier with a smile and a nod. Lady-like manners. Wouldn't Grandma Barksdale be proud of me, I thought wryly.
"Sir, I'm still shopping," I said, giving the shopkeeper my best fake smile—which isn't very good. I opened and riffled through the first book Baines had set aside for me, dismissing it as useless boilerplate. I opened and scanned through the second book. If it wasn't an AAA guidebook or as informative as the books I'd bought outside the store, it was informative enough to prove useful as a trail guide.
"I'll take this one," I said.
Baines looked disapprovingly at me. "I'll take two gold-pieces," he said.
I opened my handback and dug out the sack of coins Captain Trout had given me for my purchases, accidentally flashing my wristwatch. I hoped that the soldier wouldn't notice it.
"I don't have a US gold piece," I replied. "I do have a gold Dragon and a couple of Stags." I put them on the counter.
"I'll think about it," said the clerk.
"Well, too bad," I said, reaching for the coins I'd set on the counter. "I would have enjoyed doing business with you."
The shopkeeper's expression changed from indifference to alarm.
"Wait!" he said. "I'll deal."
I bought the guidebook books for a Dragon, three Stags, and a Quarter-Dollar. He took the coins and pushed the book forward.
"I'd like a receipt, please," I said.
The shopkeeper scowled at me, then produced a sheet of paper listing the title of the guidebook, but instead of listing the price, he merely wrote "PAID."
"Thank you," I said, tucking the book under my arm along the ones I'd bought from the woman outside..
A couple of other customers had come into the store while the shopkeeper and I were dickering. They saw my clothes and started pointing at me and whispering.
"I think it's best that I allow the ladies some elbow-room," I said. I smiled at the soldier, nodded at the clerk, and prepared to leave. The soldier gallantly allowed me to step outside first but continued to walk behind me instead of going his own way.
"I'm sorry but I didn't catch your name," he said.
"No reason to be sorry," I replied. "I didn't give it. My name is Daria Elsbeth Morgendorffer."
"Cleon Potter," he replied. I looked at him more carefully. I could read military ranks and saw that he was an officer, a lieutenant. I already knew that he was a Southerner. I wondered where he was from. I could recognize some Southern accents, but there had been a lot of changes between 1860 and my proper time. In my time I would have pegged him as being from the Carolinas.
"And where are you from, Miss Morgendorffer?" he said.
"From Carroll County, Maryland and someplace else before that," I said. "I have a sketchy background." Please don't ask me awkward questions, I thought.
"You don't talk like someone from Maryland," he said. "I was wondering because we have some strange people passing through," he said.
"I could imagine," I said. "This is a major transcontinental artery. Anyone who wants to get to the West Coast by land has to pass by the Fort unless they want to go through the Sonoran desert and take their chances with the Apaches."
"Which you clearly don't," he said, chuckling
"You got it," I replied. In other times and places, I might have enjoyed talking to this guy. But not here and now and under my circumstances.
"I was wondering because it wasn't but a few months ago that a couple of mountain men led in a party of lost souls who claimed that they came off a wrecked airship. A Navy airship. Darnedest thing I ever saw. A bunch of sailors from a wrecked airship beyond the edge of Nebraska territory."
My internal alarm bells started going off.
"An airship? I said. "I suppose that had to be some sort of balloon. I couldn't imagine anyone in this time finding a way to building a guided heavier-than-air aircraft in this day and time."
"It was indeed a sort of balloon," said Potter. "They called it a dirigible."
Uh-oh, I thought.
"Did they have another name for their craft?" I asked.
"Why yes," he said. "They called it a Zeppelin."
Red alert, I thought.
"You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?" he added.
EEEP, I thought.
-(((O-O)))—
Author's notes: The Zeppelin idea crept up on me when I wasn't paying attention. I'd long intended to have this Daria run into other cross-dimensional travelers and the consequences of having Antebellum Civil War soldiers meet survivors from a wrecked US Navy airship might make things more interesting for our heroine. The airship crash is going to cause some interesting side-effects.
In our history, the US Navy did experiment with several rigid lighter-than-air aircraft in addition to their more successful blimp program. The only successful one was the German-built USS Los Angeles; the other three came to grief in wrecks between 1925 and 1933. The only one that crashed on land was the USS Shenandoah, which crashed in Ohio in 1925.
