Читать книгу Big Gun On the Tetons - Amanda Couverme - Страница 4

It was a dark and stormy night in the high country. There were mountains everywhere. Great stone sentinels capped with snow. Grey fangs of granite rimmed with tall forests and tarns. A man couldn’t swing a cat or a fry pan full of beans without hitting a mountain.

Even without a cat and a fry pan full of beans, it was a hard place for a man to live. It was even harder for a woman. And a woman without a fry pan: impossible.

That’s what they told her. But she wouldn’t listen. She had set out West in her conestoga wagon and 400 bolts of fabric. She was a dressmaker. The winner of the 1857 Gingham Sew-off in Upper Saddle River New Jersey. She was a professional, and she wanted to famously facilitate fine fashion in the frontier.

‘Don’t go west, please!’ they had told her.

She wouldn’t listen. Instead, she bought a nice, lady weight revolver from the Sears Catalog and learned to shoot it. No one was seriously injured, although many of the neighborhood pets were never seen again. But by the time she was ready to head West, she could shoot, and shoot well.

“Go West! please!” they had told her.

The neighborhood was so impressed with her marksmanship that they pitched together and bought her the conestoga. They were wonderful neighbors. She would miss them all. When she had her gun, she only missed a few.

And so she had left the tidy little neighborhood, with it’s tree lined streets and bandaged dogs and cats, to make her way west. Her trail was marked by the sudden appearance of lingerie in the scattered towns of the Amish Pennslyvanias, and the river towns bordering the Mississippi. Furniture was left undone and the tills and furrows in Ohio were not in the fields.

She encountered the redoubtable Cannataucnow, with whom she spent two winters reviving the remnants of the peaceful but lusty tribe. She thought about it many times as she continued west, but the flashback would have to wait; for now, in the high alpine town of Buzzard’s Gulch, her dreams of dressmaking seemed lost. The further she penetrated the western wilderness, fewer wanted her stunning off-the-shoulder creations and gracious gowns. She was downcast. Even forelorn.

She’d had to make her money the new fashioned way, by driving a herd of cattle. It was a tough upstart business and cattle drives were crisscrossing the prairies at an alarming rate. No one can forget the epic steer-tipping battles of ‘56 as the hungry herders fought for market share.

Fortunately, there was another need to fill. The west, wild as it was, was short of argyle and she had a plan. Drive a herd of rare argyle cattle across the Great Divide, across the plains and hostile Indian Territory, all the way to Ft. Major Dix in Oregon, where it could be sold to the Himen McCracken sock and sweater mill for a ridiculous profit. If she lived.

But she was tough. Not gristly tough, but tough in a sirloin steak kind of way. Something that feels just right when you chew on it and the juices start to flow.

She was born Elizabeth Tungsgood. When she was crafting, it was ‘gowns by Elizabeth’.

But when she had her gun on, everyone called her Betty. And sometimes: ‘Betty ... don’t!’.

Well, the gowns were going to have to wait. Peignoirs may not sell well with the frontier women, and there were only so many brothels, most of them far away, and the shipping costs were killing her. Yes, for now, the only hope was the cattle drive. If she was going to drive cattle, she needed to find a driver.

(ed. note: ‘drover ... past cooperative tense)

She was in the Tetons with a frying pan but no cat.

She headed between the hills and then followed the old treasure trail down through Navelle’s gully and into the slippery Sweet Flower Gorge before arriving at Soggy Bottom. She’d rest there and then continue to the BarB Dahl Ranch where she’d pick up the herd. While she was in Soggy Bottom, she’d have to hire a bunch of hands. She didn’t know what kind of hands she’d like to surround herself with, but she was sure she’d find what she wanted.

First she’d sew up some quick negligees and babydolls, and sell them to the local women and saloon girls to raise some cash for supplies. She needed some trail clothes, leathers that she wasn’t prepared to sew herself. And a whip. She’d be ready for anything.